Fallout Equestria: Storm Chasers

by Chaotic Dreams

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Crossover, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Other, Original Character
Length: 53258

During the Great War, a pegasi city made from a hurricane was sent to destroy Equestria's enemies. However, it disappeared, never to return...until now.

Surprise is a young pegasus mare eking out a modest existence as a third-rate Enclave soldier in the Primum Mobile Military Base, a remote weather outpost on the edge of the cloud cover. Life in the Equestrian Wasteland below is a constant fight for survival, but above the clouds, the worst thing Surprise has to deal with are the hallucinations caused by her schizophrenia.
However, when the base discovers a hurricane is headed towards Enclave airspace, Surprise is among those sent into action to try and intercept it. As Surprise quickly learns, though, the impending tempest is no ordinary storm. Rather, it is a militarized pegasus city from before the Great War, possessing enough prewar wonders and horrors to make whoever gains control of it the most powerful pony in the sky...if the city doesn't completely destroy the aerial nation of the Enclave.

Update: Recently O. Hinds, the esteemed editor for Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons, was amazing enough to read what currently exists of my story. Here's what he had to say about it, which he has given me permission to share:

“While at times Storm Chasers seems to me an odd story in a way that I cannot seem to put my hoof on, this is only a different quality, not an inferior one. I have found the plot and characters to be interesting, and the mechanical quality of the prose is quite impressive, particularly given Chaotic Dreams's lack of an editor; in Chapter 2 (the latest at this message's time of writing), I noticed only a few errors, and, while it has been much longer since I've read the first chapter, I do not recall anything particularly bad in that, nor did I see frequent errors in the skim I undertook just now. Oh, and the illustrations are pretty good.”

Cover art by DoomSp0rk.

Logo by TheOmegaRidley.

Surprise by Zubias.

Hurricane Megaspire by Nukechaser24.

Illustrations by me.

Published 2014-04-05 04:20:03 UTC
Last updated 2014-08-23 22:33:55 UTC

Chapter 1

By Chaotic Dreams

Chapter 1:

You know that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep? That screaming white noise, like the feeling of pins and needles brushing your flesh while the static snow of a dead computer monitor invades your veins? That’s what I was experiencing right now. The feeling was so bizarrely uncomfortable that it actually woke me up, my eyes popping open in the darkness of the room I shared with Firefly.

Darkness... oh, no. What had happened to my nightlight?

My eyes darted around frantically, seeing nothing but a pervasive blackness. I could see a slightly darker shade of black that must have been Firefly lying in the bed across from mine, as well as the darker box-like structure that must have been the nightstand between us.

I could even see the window, which showed the lighter darkness of the sky, peppered with innumerable stars. I saw the first hint of dawn creeping over the horizon of the cloud cover, obscuring the lower stars with the dark blues, violets, and oranges of daybreak.

Our room, however, was still very dark indeed. The luminance that should have been cast by my nightlight, which was always plugged in near the far corner at the foot of my bed, was absent. It must have burnt out during the night, and I had had the misfortune to wake up just before dawn. Caught between the blissful oblivion of slumber and the darkness before daybreak, I was all but smothered in the horrible, suffocating darkness.

I could’ve closed my eyes, but I knew the all-encompassing darkness would still be there, waiting. Besides, it wasn’t like I had time to go back to sleep again, and even if I did, I couldn’t have done so with that insufferable feeling of my muscles being asleep. What was that?

I didn’t want to wake Firefly before the morning roll call. Even if it was just a few minutes, she would be grumpy all day if I woke her early.  I could wait just a few more minutes. I knew I could.

No. No, I could not.

The feeling, whatever it was, grew worse and worse. I tossed and turned, every motion making it feel even more insufferable. I quickly yanked the cloud covers up over my head and huddled in a ball, bracing myself against the darkness with the scant protection I imagined the covers would provide.

I could have been in a cocoon for how tightly I had wrapped myself up. I’d seen cocoons a few times down in Blackmarsh, down on the ground. They were always hanging from branches or being spun by the large, thick, squishy-green caterpillars that crawled around on the skeletal black trees of the swampland.

I could manage being in a cocoon, I thought. After all, they always give birth to those beautiful butterflies. Wasn’t that Ministry Mare Fluttershy’s cutie mark? Butterflies?

Maybe I would metamorphosize into somepony who didn’t have to deal with a primeval fear of the dark, much less this incessant feeling that was even now still making my skin crawl. That would be nice, to be somepony else, to not have to deal with all of the things that happened in my head.

Come to think of it, cocoons weren’t the only things I’d seen down below that looked like what I imagined I did curled up in my sheets. There were also those packets of silk stuck in spiders’ webs, containing either a poor, helpless insect about to be drained of its juices by a hungry spider or an army of tiny spider babies growing in an egg sack. I wasn’t sure which was worse, dying by a spider’s bite or being a breeding ground for new spiders.

Spiders... Spiders!

I threw the blanket back and switched on the lamp on the nightstand. Firefly grumbled, her snoring interrupted as she began tossing and turning before blearily opening her eyes.

“Surprise?” she asked groggily. “What are you... it’s still dark, for Luna’s sake!”

“I know!” I cried, looking down at myself. I screamed.

An army of spiders was racing across my body, crawling over one another and rushing every which way, their spindly legs dancing across my flesh.

“Surprise!” Firefly exclaimed, sliding out of her bed and leaping to the side of mine. She placed a hoof over my mouth, muffling my scream. Her eyes were full of concern despite having been barely focused from sleepiness a few moments ago. “It’s not real, Surprise. Whatever you’re seeing, whatever you’re feeling, it’s not real. It’s okay, I’m here.”

I nodded, the scream dying in my throat.

They’re not real, they’re not real, they’re not real... I repeated madly over and over in my mind. Come on, Surprise, snap out of it!

The light was definitely helping, even if Firefly was standing in the way. There were long shadows everywhere in the room, but at least they were just shadows and not a total darkness. I could do this.

I forced myself to look back down at myself, and the spiders were gone, as if they had never been. Truth be told, they had never been. It would’ve been impossible for spiders to be above the cloud cover in the first place, but my brain had never much cared what was impossible. I knew they weren’t real, I had known from the moment I first saw them, but that didn’t make them feel or look any less real. The fear was just as real as well, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I sat there shaking, and Firefly scootched me over and wrapped a foreleg around me, making soothing promises that everything was going to be alright. After a moment, I nodded, trying not to let my wet eyes shed any tears. I wiped them away, and tried my hardest to stop shaking.

“I’m alright,” I whispered hoarsely. “Thank you, Firefly.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” she said, smiling back at me, though her eyes were still heavy with concern. After a moment, she said “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m trying to fight it, I really am—”

“Sorry?” Firefly echoed, sounding offended. “Sorry? What are you sorry for? This isn’t your fault, Surprise, and I don’t blame you for it any more than you should blame yourself, which you shouldn’t. You remember what the psychiatrist said. It’s just a chemical imbalance in your brain. You were born with it; it’s just a random occurrence. It’s nopony’s fault.”

I nodded again, swallowing my tears. I gave her a quick but firm hug.

She smiled at me again and got off my bed, yawning as she did so. Some of the sleepiness returned to her eyes, and she stretched, flaring her wings and giving them a good shake as she loosened up her limbs. Peeking out the window with a forlorn look, she glanced at the clock.

My eyes followed her gaze, and I winced as I realized it was exactly one minute before roll call. We both looked up to see the ceiling was already darkening, though not for lack of light. The sun had crept far enough over the horizon that even the shadows were being chased away, and the lamp was no longer needed. There were only a few stars left in the sky, and the fluffy white puffiness of the cloud cover stretched out beyond our barracks all the way to the dropoff.

However, the cloudstuff of the ceiling, and the walls, and eventually the floor, was growing darker. I reached out a hoof and touched the wall, feeling the dampness of the water-heavy clouds. Sparks zapped between the roiling miniature hills, fading in and out, over and through one another on all sides of the room. The sparks grew into miniature bolts of electricity dancing over every surface.

Firefly’s mane and tail were standing on end, and I knew for certain that mine were as well. My mane and tail were a poofy mess of golden curls at the best of times, but at the moment, they must look like a tiny exploding sun.

And then, it came.

Firefly and I gasped as we leapt into the air, bolts of electricity crackling along our bodies.

“One of these days, I’m going to disassemble that surge generator and use the parts to beat whoever invented the damn thing to death,” Firefly grumbled, shuddering as the electricity exited her system and flowed back into the cloudstuff of the room.

“I’ll help,” I chuckled, sliding out of bed.

“I mean, why in the world would anypony think pumping Luna knows how many volts of lightning into somepony was a good idea for an alarm clock?” she continued, throwing open the door and trotting into the hallway. I followed, looking around nervously at the other soldiers filing out of their own rooms. A few gave me dark looks, and I offered a lame smile in return. It seems my scream had woken more than a few of them before roll call, allowing them to experience the full effect of the jolt. I didn’t really blame them for their moods; I’d be mad too if I had been awoken by somepony needlessly screaming in the night. That didn’t make it any easier not to experience such a vivid hallucination, however.

“You do have to admit, though, nopony could sleep through that,” I pointed out.

Firefly merely shot me an annoyed look, and despite her comforting me a few moments ago, I knew I’d have to wait until she had her morning coffee before talking to her again. She knew when I needed her, but when I didn’t, she was perhaps the most grumpy pony I’d ever met when she didn’t have caffeine in her system.

The other soldiers, Firefly, and I trotted to the end of the hallway and made our way down to the ground level. ‘Ground’ was of course a relative term when one lived in the clouds, far, far above the actual ground. We were joined by countless other pegasi, all yawning, grumbling, or rubbing their eyes. There were the odd occasionally bright-eyed ponies, the few who were early birds by nature, but they were wise enough not to pester the others with their peppiness.

I couldn’t help but yawn myself as I made my way to the ground floor, walking through what used to be the lobby of the Cloud Nine Resort. Nowadays, of course, it was the Primum Mobile Military Base, but much of it still looked as pristine and ornate as it did back in the days before the Great War. I often wondered what it would have been like to have lived back then, back when you had to be a pegasus with money and connections to stay at a place as ritzy as this, rather than any grunt who decided to sign up with the armed forces...or any grunt who was drafted.

I could picture it perfectly. For instance, there would be a middle-aged pegasus wearing a waistcoat and a monocle, looking at his pocketwatch over by the fireplace. The clouds making up the hearth, specially enchanted to allow for flames, would be keeping him warm while he waited for his young starlet mistress to arrive from her latest movie shoot in Applewood. He himself would be a wealthy merchant from Neigh’Orleans, the port city that was still directly below the base, even if it was now an irradiated ruin rather than a festive seaside community like it had been.

Satisfied that he was still early for the meeting, the wealthy merchant looked up and scanned the hotel lobby for an employee who he could trouble for a swig of brandy. His eyes locked with mine, and he called out “I say, good chap, where can a gentlecolt get his hooves on a hearty draught? You’d think there’d be some at the bar, but Surprise, what are you doing? Brandy? You know there’s no alcohol allowed on the base. Surprise? Are you even listening to me? Surprise? Surprise!”

“Huh?” I gasped, shaking my head roughly and closing my eyes tightly. When I opened them again, the wealthy merchant was gone, and in his place was a concerned Firefly. “Wait, where did...oh, I did it again, didn’t I?”

She nodded, and I looked around to see a few less sympathetic pegasi smirking before they trotted off to the showers.

“She’s gonna lose it one of these days, I tell ya,” one pegasus said to another, just loud enough for me to hear. “Why they ever let somepony like her have a weapon is beyond me. She’ll go crazy and kill us all in our sleep.”

“What was it this time?” Firefly inquired as we continued on to the showers.

“I saw a businesspony over by the fireplace,” I said. “What did I do?”

“You were talking in some weird accent and going on about how your date was late and how you wanted some liquor,” she told me.

“What a sticky wicket I got myself into that time, I daresay, old chum,” I sighed before realizing what I’d just said and how I’d said it. I was accentuating the words in places I never had. “Nay, that is not what I meant at all, I just got my knickers in a wad, I mean, I... Oh, confound it!”

“Who’s Delacroix?” Firefly asked as we made our way into the showers at last. The roof, made of clouds, was already raining everywhere, so all we had to do was stand in place while we were soaked. I shivered in the cold water. You’d think that with all the power they allotted to the surge generator to wake us up in the morning they could spare a little to heat the water, but of course comfort never crossed the military’s mind. It was a wonder the showers weren’t spewing snow or hail.

“Who?” I said, uncertain.

“You looked at me and called me Delacroix,” Firefly continued. “And, well, you tried to... erm...”

“Huh?” I said, feeling nervous. “What did I do? I didn’t attack you, did I?”

“Of course not,” Firefly chuckled. “Besides, we both know I can handle myself. You, well, you tried to kiss me.”

“I WHAT?!” I gasped. “But I—I would never—I mean, not that you aren’t a pretty mare or anything, Firefly, but—you know me, I’m not into mares, I was just—UGH!!”

“It’s fine, Surprise,” Firefly said, shrugging nonchalantly. “I know which way you swing. I was just wondering if Delacroix was a real pony.”

“Not that I know of,” I replied.

The showers trickled into a sprinkling and then a mist before stopping altogether. Shaking ourselves to free any excess water from our coats, we hurried into the mess hall. As I waited in line for food behind Firefly, I muttered the name ‘Delacroix’ over and over to myself.

It was getting worse, and I was worried. I’d never named my hallucinations before. They’d always just kind of...been there. But if I was coming up with actual personas, actual identities for them now...

I tried not to let it get to me, instead focusing on breakfast. Firefly and I grabbed our bowls and drinks from the counter and headed to a secluded table. Firefly simply stuck her whole snout into her bowl and began slurping loudly, only breaking for air and to take few swigs of her coffee, while I took quiet sips and tried not to think about wealthy prewar ponies with foreign accents.

The broth we were served was at least some form of distraction. It was a far cry from good, but the simple feeling of liquid sliding down my tongue was good enough. It didn’t really taste bad either, at least anymore. I’d nearly thrown up the stuff the first few days I was stationed here, but after a few mornings of being woken by electrocution my tastebuds had lost the ability to taste anything. It wasn’t really a bad thing, in retrospect; it save me from wretching every meal, and besides, I had had it better than a lot of ponies. Some lost hooffulls of hair their first few nights, or worse. Losing taste was a small thing compared to what else could have happened.

“Are...you okay, Surprise?” Firefly asked, seeing the worried look in my eyes as I stared sullenly into my broth between sips.

“No,” I admitted with a sigh. “I don’t want to trouble you, though—”

“Cut the crap, Surprise,” Firefly laughed. “You know I won’t accept that as an answer. Your problems are my problems, and vice versa.”

I gave a small smile and said “What if...what if one day you can’t break me free of one of my hallucinations?”

“That’s why I always tell you to fight back,” Firefly said simply. “It’s all a matter of willpower. I know you have it in you, we just haven’t found out the right method yet.”

“But what if it isn’t?” I pressed. “What if one day I get stuck forever? And what if it’s when I’m in... the darkness?”

“Surprise,” Firefly said sternly, looking me squarely in the eyes. The seriousness of her tone was offset slightly by the broth dripping from her snout, but I wasn’t in the mood to laugh at it. “That’s not going to happen. Don’t think like that.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” I said, nodding. “It’s just—”

“For the love of Luna, Surprise, stop moping!” Firefly exclaimed. “I know it’s hard. Trust me, I do. I’ve been your friend since kindergarten, I know how difficult it can get for you, and how it’s getting worse. But you can break free of it, though self-pity isn’t going to help you.”

I was a little taken aback by her sudden annoyance—she had always been very patient with my... ‘condition.’ Was I finally getting on her nerves? Seeing the look in her eye, I didn’t think so. She smiled at me again, though the sternness didn’t leave her look.

Besides, she was right, I realized. Feeling sorry for myself, no matter how much I actually did, wasn’t going to stop the hallucinations. Even if I didn’t think they could be stopped...

NO! I thought. You are NOT thinking like that! Pull yourself together, Surprise!

I nodded, firmly. Firefly grinned.

Finishing our breakfast, or what passed for such at the Primum Mobile Military Base, we filed back through the line and tossed our bowls behind the counter for the cooks to clean. Staying in line, we filed outside, not even breaking formation when we got into position to stand at attention in front of the former Cloud Nine Resort.

We waited for five full minutes before our commanding officer flew up over the resort and then swooped down to land before us. In that time, we never moved an inch, though it was far better than some days. Commander Archangel was well known for his special brand of leadership, and sometimes we had to wait hours before he finally showed up. We’d stand stiffly at attention the whole time, knowing full well what fate awaited anypony who was caught daring to break formation, as the commander could appear at any time.

The commander himself was hardly an intimidating figure...if you didn’t know his history. In his prime, he’d been one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the Enclave. He’d also been known as one of the meanest, most ferocious fighters ever to fly below the clouds.

Nowadays, however, he was old, wizened, covered in wrinkles, and looked almost emaciated. His limbs were so thin and brittle-looking that it was a wonder they could support his frame at all, even if it did look shriveled and almost hollow. Nopony was ever foalish enough to try and take this as a sign of weakness, however. Legend had it that the one recruit who had, years ago, had left the base in a body bag.

“Good morning, recruits,” Commander Archangel spoke. His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, and even then it was hoarse and slightly raspy. It was also far more terrifying than an angry shout from a set of strong, young lungs could have ever been. “How are you this fine day in our glorious Enclave?”

“Sir, we are excellent, sir!” we all shouted in unison.

“Good, good,” he said softly, smiling. His face was so creased with wrinkles that the slightest twitch of his facial muscles made it look like his face could slide off his skull at any moment. His smile made it seem like such was just a moment away from happening, though I knew nopony doubted that if it did, his skull would keep on ordering us around as if nothing had happened. Legend also had it that he had single-hoofedly defeated a dragon once, so the idea that even a gruesome lack of a face and all the deadly bleeding that entailed wouldn’t stop him was hardly surprising. “Did you all sleep well?”

“Sir, we slept excellently, sir!” we all asserted.

His eyes, just as sharp and alert as anypony a quarter of his age, scanned us carefully. And, much to our horror, he frowned.

“Forgive me for daring to suggest that you might be incorrect in your statement,” he spoke. “But I detect a slight hint of falsehood in your claim. Does anypony want to tell me the truth?”

We were silent. Nopony dared speak.

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” Commander Archangel spoke, even more quietly than normal. My heart was pounding. “ Did. You. Sleep. Well. Recruits?”

“Sir, we slept excellently, sir!” we all shouted, just as we had every morning since being transferred here from deeper in Enclave-controlled airspace. What was he getting at?

“Please, do not lie to me,” he sighed, shaking his head. His eyes had turned icy-cold. “It insults my intelligence. Do you not think I spent over forty years as an officer of the glorious Enclave to know when a soldier of mine is being untruthful to me?”

Again, everypony was silent.

His frown grew deeper as he walked slowly towards us. He stopped in front of a soldier a few ponies down from Firefly and I.

“Did you sleep well, soldier?” he asked.

“Sir, I slept excellently, sir!” she told him.

Seeming satisfied with her answer, he moved on to the next pony, asking the same question and getting the same answer. When he finally stopped at the pony standing next to me, he scrutinized him more closely than the rest. I didn’t really know him, but he did sleep in the room directly next to the room in which Firefly and I slept.

Wait a moment...

Commander Archangel’s question was the same, and he received the same answer. However, this time he smiled.

“I believe I have found the liar,” the commander spoke. “Do tell me, you worthless pile of Luna-forsaken maggot-shit, why did you think that it was wise to lie to your commanding officer?”

“Sir, I apologize, sir!” the stallion said.

“So you didn’t have a good night’s sleep?” the commander asked, raising an eyebrow. “And why not?”

The stallion took a moment to respond, but when he did, my blood ran cold.

“Sir, private Surprise woke me during the night, sir!” he shouted. “Sir, she was screaming again, sir!”

I heard snickers near either end of the line.

“Do you find this amusing?” Commander Archangel said, looking in either direction. Nopony dared speak, and he returned his attention to the stallion. “What is your name, recruit?”

“Sir, my name is Private Falling Skies, sir!”

“Step out in front of the group, Private Falling Skies.”

The stallion did as he was told, nervousness obvious on his face despite his stalwart attempt to remain composed. He was a rather tall stallion, with long, lanky limbs. His coat was a dark blue, his mane and tail an even darker shade of the same color. Despite living right beside him, I had to admit that I didn’t know much about him.

“Recruit, please tell us your opinion of Private Surprise,” Commander Archangel ordered.

“Sir, permission to speak freely, sir?” he asked.

“Permission granted.”

“She is a disgrace to this regiment,” Falling Skies said, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “She is mentally unstable and a danger to anypony near her, especially when she is supplied with weaponry.”

I gasped in spite of myself, my mouth hanging open. I didn’t doubt a word he said, even though I wanted to believe he was spewing nothing but lies. I knew everypony save Firefly agreed with him as well. Nevertheless, I had never thought somepony would come out and say it so bluntly in front of our commanding officer!

“I see,” the commander said flatly, though a twinkle of amusement played about his eyes. “Do the rest of you concur with Private Falling Skies? You are all granted permission to speak freely.”

There was another moment’s hesitation, but they all shouted “Sir, yes, sir!”

All save Firefly, who said nothing, instead looking around at the other recruits in disgust.

“No!” Firefly shouted after the other recruits had spoken their minds. “Surprise is worth more than any of you! She’s more valuable than entire regiment of any of you miserable excuses for soldiers!”

The commander smiled genuinely now, and simply said the worst thing he possibly could have spoken.

“I concur.”

What?! I mentally gasped. But...they were right! I was a danger! I shouldn’t even be here at all, but it wasn’t as if Firefly or I had had a choice in the matter. After all, military service was voluntary unless you were drafted. It was not, however, voluntary for wards of the state. Orphans always became soldiers, whether they liked it or not.

“In order to explain to you why Private Surprise has been allowed to stay within this regiment, I believe a little demonstration is in order,” Commander Archangel said. “Private Surprise, please step forward.”

Limbs shaking, I did so.

The commander trotted towards me and reached into the pocket of his dull gray officer’s uniform. I winced, fearing the worst. He withdrew exactly what I had feared, but rather than shoot me with it, he placed the pistol he had drawn into my hoof. Grinning darkly, he stepped back.

I had to admit, I had not been expecting that. The pistol was a low-caliber magical energy weapon that nonetheless packed quite a bit of punch for its model due to all the customization jammed into it. The midmorning sunlight gleamed off of the carefully-polished metal casing, the rubber grip showed none of the wear and tear found on most standard-issue weapons, and the magical energy that powered the device crackled from within the green battery shell.

All in all, it was a rather impressive piece of arcane technology. According to the old stories that surrounded Commander Archangel like the miasma of fear we recruits felt in his presence, this was the same energy pistol he had used to fell countless enemies of the Enclave down on the ground. It was lightweight yet still sturdy, old but well cared for, and despite only holding six shots per battery rather than the thirty rounds allowed by more modern firearms, it packed more voltage per shot than anything the mass-produced grunt weapons could manage.

It even had a name. Engraved on the barrel of the weapon in lavish, curling script was the single word Excalibur.

“Private Surprise,” the commander said, breaking me out of my shocked study of the weapon. “I hereby grant you permission to fire upon Private Falling Skies. You will not be punished for the action, nor will any member of the regiment be permitted to hold it against you, lest they answer to me.”

What?!

Falling Skies’ eyes suddenly grew very wide.

“But, sir, you can’t be—” he tried to stammer.

“I am completely serious, and don’t even think of fleeing, lest I shoot you myself,” Commander Archangel cut him off, not even sparing him a glance. Instead, his intense gaze was focused solely on me, an almost eager look in his sharp eyes. “Anytime you wish, Private Surprise.”

I looked down at the gun and then back up at Falling Skies, then back and up once again.

It would be so easy... I thought. Falling Skies was far from the first pony to look down on me for my condition. I knew he would far from be the last. It wasn’t just snickers behind my back or insults to my face, either. I’d never really dealt with Falling Skies before this incident, but there had always been trouble when it came to my interactions with the other recruits. A foreleg tripping me as I practiced hoofwork during a drill, somepony tainting my broth with laxatives, even coming to blows with me once or twice, even if the commanding officers always broke it up. Who’s to say Falling Skies wasn’t one of those ponies? Who’s to say he doesn’t really deserve this?

“Go on Surprise, you can do it!” encouraged a voice that sounded eerily familiar. I looked around for the speaker, only to see a new pony stepping out from behind my possible target. She was clad in a white coat, bore a cutie mark of three violet balloons, and wore a frizzy burst of golden curls on her head and hindquarters. Her eyes were a pale purple, and they were brimming with eagerness and mirth. Her voice was incredibly high-pitched, almost squeaky.

I was looking at myself.

“Just fire at the bastard!” I encouraged myself, though the words weren’t coming out of my lips. “He made a mockery of you, he hurt you—well, he probably did! Go on, you can do it! Show these punks what you’re really made of!”

“No,” I said flatly. “No! You’re not real! Get out of here!”

The other ponies looked around, wondering who I was addressing, as my gaze was focused on an empty patch of cloud. However, I didn’t break eye contact with the other me, even when her irises turned blood red. Veins popped into definition in the whites of her eyes, which themselves darkened to a deep black. Her wings began losing feathers, revealing leathery bat wings underneath, while her coat began shedding and leaving only a piebald skin laced with scars.

“Shoot. Him. Now!” roared the other me—or whatever she was now. “SHOOT HIM!!”

“NO!” I shouted right back. I threw Excalibur to the ground, and the other me vanished.

I was breathing heavily now, but I began chuckling to myself. The chuckles grew into a giggle which became a laugh. I had done it. I hadn’t shot him. I wasn’t some low snake in the grass who sought revenge the first chance she got, and I had proved it.

I had wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to so much. But I hadn’t.

I sighed deeply as my laughter died down.

“That, recruits, is why Private Surprise has been allowed to remain in this regiment,” Commander Archangel told them, his dark smile having shifted to genuine approval. He strode forward and picked up Excalibur, holstering the energy pistol. “Privates, you may return to your ranks.”

We did so. Falling Skies let out a low sigh of relief. He glanced at me sidelong, seeming uncertain. I looked straight ahead, trying not to make eye contact, pretending I didn’t notice.

However, he whispered “Thanks.”

My eyes widened.

“Y-you’re welcome,” I said quietly.

“Now, does anypony else have any complaints about other recruits...” Commander Archangel inquired. “...Or can we stop being self-serving asses and get back to serving our glorious Enclave like we’re supposed to be doing?”

Satisfied with our silence, he announced “Very good. Report to your stations.”

. . .

“I’m proud of you, Surprise,” Firefly said, patting me on the back as the line broke up and the recruits began dispersing. “I would’ve had trouble not putting a hole in that punk myself.”

I smiled sheepishly and said “I really wanted to. I’m sure my, uh, ‘outburst’ made that clear.”

“But you didn’t,” Firefly said, smiling all the wider. “And you resisted a hallucination. That’s progress, Surprise! That’s great!”

“You’re right,” I realized. “Maybe I can force myself to ignore them.”

“That’s the spirit,” Firefly agreed. “Just take it slow and steady, but don’t give up, and everything will be fine. I’ll be here with you every step of the way.”

I nodded and thanked her. I don’t know what I would do without Firefly, and I hoped I never had to find out.

Most of the recruits were taking wing and headed towards the training grounds over where the Cloud Nine’s recreational facilities used to be. However, Firefly and I were trotting over to the armory. She had a long day ahead of her of decoding encrypted messages the Enclave picked up from groundside transmissions, while I was scheduled, as usual, to head over to the depths of the main building.

I had always found it rather odd that the Enclave spent so much time fretting over groundside signals, especially when Firefly’s skills could’ve been put to so much better use. After all, even if she was an Intelligence Officer, she was also the top of the class in hoof-to-hoof combat. She deserved to be down on the ground herself, taking care of threats head-on.

I, on the other hoof, was probably right where I deserved to be.

We arrived at the armory, picked up our uniforms and equipment, and parted ways. Firefly, dressed in her dull gray Intelligence Officer’s uniform, zoomed off towards the Intelligence Bunker, a renovated sauna. Meanwhile, I trotted back into the Cloud Nine Resort. While Firefly would spend her day bored out of her mind (as she never ceased to tell me after such days) pouring over data at a terminal, I was assigned to a more hooves-on set of tasks.

Wearing my maintenance smocks, I met up with the few others assigned to so menial a job in the hotel lobby. We never spoke much, as even down in the depths of the hotel we weren’t often together, but at least these few ponies knew me relatively well enough to rarely smirk or scoff at me behind my back.

One of the others pressed the call button on what used to be the hotel’s elevator, and the cloud doors opened onto an empty shaft. The elevator itself had long been scrapped, being deemed an outdated luxury that hardly had any utility at a military base. In a way, I saw the military’s point, as I never saw the point of a lift for ponies who could fly anyway. I supposed that the rich prewar ponies who had vacationed here were simply rich enough (or lazy enough) to avoid flying should they not want to do so.

I shivered a little as the other ponies leapt down into the darkness of the elevator shaft, using their wings to slow their descent. I waited a bit, trying not to look directly at the darkness until the lights flickered on to chase it away. Sighing with relief, I hopped down after the others, fanning my wings out to slow myself into a gentle downward spiral.

Unlike the rest of the hotel, the maintenance levels in the basement and subbasement were mostly composed of metal, all enchanted to float in the clouds. My hooves clanged on the cool, hard surface as I landed, each step making a dull dinging sound as I trotted out into the basement. The others had already left, taking their assignments from the waiting bulletin board and departing to whatever machines needed the most attention. Before the war, most of these machines had supposedly been largely automated, but two centuries of near-continual operation had left them pretty needy.

Searching for the paper with my name on it, my eyes lazily scanned the numerous other bulletins taped or pinned to the board. Many were notes left by other maintenance ponies requesting additional parts for certain machines, or warnings of areas that had become unsafe and needed a more specialized crew to repair. A few were even gambling notices, some ponies betting others ration tickets on whether or not one machine would break down again before another.

However, one message in particular caught my eye—

Hey, Stormbreaker, I read, recognizing the hoofwriting as the pony in charge of the storage wing. Remember that old lockbox we could never get open? I brought down one of my buddies from Weapons Management and paid him a few rations to blow the damn thing open. Not much inside, unfortunately, but the others and I were going to divide them up and see if anypony topside might be willing to trade for ‘em. I get first pick since I wasted a full week’s worth of rations to open the blasted thing, though I doubt it’ll be worth it. Who knows, though? I know some ponies like that prewar stuff—or maybe they’ll be worth something at a pawn shop the next time we’re on leave from the base. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know, just in case something in there does turn out to be valuable.

I raised an eyebrow at that. Not because I hadn’t been invited, mind you—I was never invited to anything, so that part hadn’t exactly been a surprise—but because I was well acquainted with the lockbox in question. Truth be told, it served as my table when I took my lunchbreak, as most of the others went back up to the cafeteria to eat. I never ventured up because Firefly was usually too busy for lunch, and I wasn’t about to eat alone.

Even though the box certainly wasn’t mine, I couldn’t help but wonder what was inside it. After all, I’d been eating over it for years, so I felt I was entitled at least a peek before the others looted it. Besides, it wasn’t like it was theirs either.

Finally finding my work assignment, I sighed as I saw I was set to repair some of the internal wiring on the surge generator. Out of all the machines down here, this one would require the most attention. I might not even get a lunchbreak if things proved dicey, and that’s when I was betting the others would divide up their findings from the box, if they hadn’t done so already.

Oh, well. It wasn’t like it was that big of a deal anyway. I wasn’t losing anything, after all.

Sighing in spite of myself, I started to trot off towards the surge generator...before backtrotting and rereading the note. Surely the generator could wait a few more minutes, right?

Grinning guiltily, I hurried off towards the storage wing, praying to Luna on high that nopony would catch me. Thankfully, nopony did, and I slipped inside the room with the lockbox undetected.

The box was right where I’d left it, sitting next to the smaller box I used as a chair. The room was literally littered with boxes in all sizes and shapes, most of them emptied long ago by earlier generations of Primum Mobile soldiers. It was a wonder this box hadn’t been broken into or at least lock-picked ages ago.

Feeling slightly giddy, as much for knowing I was doing something I really shouldn’t as for getting to see what the others would never have bothered to inform me about, I carefully removed the blasted lock. The metal was burnt and twisted from the energy weapon used to ‘unlock’ it, and judging by the damage, I guessed it to be at least an energy rifle. Either the pony who’d been brought down here as a locksmith had had nothing smaller on him or, far more likely, this lock was a lot stronger than I had assumed it would be.

Lifting the lid, I looked in to see a hodge-podge of assorted junk. My face fell slightly, not knowing why I had expected to find anything better. I stuck in a hoof and began sorting through the pile, finding all manner of trinkets and doodads from before the Great War. I wondered how they had all found their way down here; there seemed to be no relation between the items, so perhaps it was a lost-and-found box? If that was the case, though, what was it doing down in the basement and not up behind the front desk? I would have thought that the box would’ve been opened long ago when the hotel was renovated into the base had it been in plain sight.

There was a snow globe, a moth-eaten fancy hat, a music box, and a couple of bags of prewar money (now worthless, as everything in the Enclave was bought and sold via ration tickets regardless of whether or not you were on a base). That was it? I had to admit, I was a little disappointed.

Picking up the snow globe, I saw two miniature pegasi posed on sticks inside, wings outstretched as if they were flying around one another. Though the figures were unidentifiable due to most of their paint having chipped away, the inscription read Winter Wrap-Up, and was dated just a year before the beginning of the Great War if I remembered my history lessons correctly. The bits were familiar sights, as many things in the Enclave were still adorned with the insignia of a sun and moon, representing Equestria’s dual-monarchy before Celestia had abdicated.

Curious and hoping that at least the music box might hold an interesting tune, if it still played at all after two centuries, I opened the box to see the same two pegasi on raised stands. They slowly spun around each other as a soft, melancholic tune played. The paint on the tiny models was also mostly chipped away, though I could see more details on these relatively larger versions. They were both mares, one with a long, sweeping mane and a tail that looked so lengthy it had to have dragged along the ground whenever she walked. The other pony had a shorter and slightly more jagged mane and tail, and thin grooves lined her hair as if to create six separate sections. There was something familiar about the shapes, but without colors or even cutie marks, it was impossible to recognize them.

The tune was even less familiar, as a soft, whispery voice sang “Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to rest your sleepy head, hush now, quiet now, it’s time to go to bed...”

Sighing again, I closed the music box and placed it back inside. The hat was hardly of any interest, so I didn’t even bother picking it up.

“Dashie?” asked a soft, whispery voice. I’d just heard it from the music box, but now the box was closed, and the voice was coming from behind me. I jumped, whirling around to see...no, that was impossible—though she looked far older and more weary than any of her depictions in the history books or the old war posters that had still adorned some of the streets of my childhood town, the pony standing before me was unmistakably the mare in charge of the Ministry of Peace, back when there had been one. “Dashie, is that you?”

From her cream-colored coat to her pink mane and elongated tail, Ministry Mare Fluttershy stood before me. Her face was wrinkled, and stripes of gray ran through her hair. Even her coat was slightly faded. Still, it was definitely her, as if a wartime propaganda poster had come to life. She was even wearing her official Ministry Mare attire, clad in a leafy-green suit that was both businesslike and decidedly feminine. A matching fancy hat rested on her head, identical to the one in the lockbox save for it looking fresh and untouched rather than moth-eaten and old. One key difference, however, was the butterfly pendant pinned to the hat, made out of polished silver and pink gemstones, like a geological recreation of her cutie mark.

“F-Fluttershy?” I said, taking a step backward and bumping into the lockbox. I was still so startled to see Fluttershy that it took me a moment to realize that the voice I spoke with was not my own. It was slightly lower, and decidedly scratchy. “Wait, is that... is that me? Why do I sound so weird?”

“Oh, Dashie!” Fluttershy cried, darting forward and wrapping her forelegs around me as she sobbed into my shoulder. “I thought you were... that you...”

“There, there...” I said, patting her shoulder uncertainly with my own foreleg. My...blue foreleg?! I pulled away from her and looked down at myself to see that my white coat was indeed gone, replaced with a lithe, sleek cyan. Looking up, I could see the wispy bangs of a rainbow mane rather than my familiar golden curls. “What’s going on?!”

This was bad. It was a hallucination, it had to be, and I knew that. Furthermore, it wasn’t terrifying, just strange, and I normally would have been able to deal with that just fine. Strange beat horrifically nightmarish anyday, and the storage room was well-lit anyway.

But I’d never actually become one of my own hallucinations. They were always an external force, something I witnessed or experienced, never partook in as a fully-integrated element. It really was getting worse. What if I started acting like Rainbow Dash—because who else could I be—as well as seeing myself as her? I had acted like the businesspony back up in the lobby, but then I hadn’t known I was doing so, and I had been observing the hallucination as a detached entity. But if I was in one directly now, if I was one now...

“I thought that you were dead!” Fluttershy wept. After another deep sob, which sounded surprising come from such a famously meek pony, she looked up at me with a small smile. Her eyes were still streaming, but an element of profound relief had entered them as well. “But you’re okay! Of course you are, I should have known better than to think that... that horrid pony... could get you!”

“What are you talking about?!” I demanded in my scratchy voice, edging out of the way of the lockbox and continuing to back away, as if by moving further from the imaginary Fluttershy I could become less of the imaginary Rainbow Dash. “What’s going on?”

“You must be in shock,” Fluttershy said, looking concerned but still relieved. “I know I would be. I don’t know what I’d do if somepony tried to assassinate me. And somepony Princess Luna appointed! We have to tell the princess right away before she can try anything else!”

“She?” I echoed, racking my brain for any recollection of an assassination attempt on Rainbow Dash. If I remembered correctly, there had been several—on each Ministry Mare, actually—but they were always small-scale things that had never really amounted to anything. I definitely didn’t remember anything about an attempt by somepony the princess had personally trusted, though.

And why would I? I thought, shaking my head to try and dispel the false happening. This isn’t real! All of this is just made up! How could I remember something like that if it’s just a hallucination?

“That horrid mare,” Fluttershy repeated. “She had it in for you ever since you beat her at the Wonderbolt Academy. I don’t know why the princess ever appointed her.”

I tried to think of who she could possibly be referring to, but nothing came to mind. The Enclave had been sure to paint Rainbow Dash in a rather unappealing light when it came to the history books, and I had never really paid all that much attention to history anyway. Anypony who had wronged her during the Great War would probably have been praised as a hero, but I still couldn’t think of who that could be.

Seeing my blank look, Fluttershy said “Lightning Dust? You remember, don’t you? The pony who’s always in the news, telling everypony how horrible your ministry is for the war effort? The one Princess Luna appointed to be mayor of the city you created, not her?”

“The city I created?” I echoed again. Rainbow Dash had never created a city, had she? The only thing I ever remembered learning that the Ministry of Awesome had done was set up the SPP Towers that now enabled the Enclave to control the cloud cover...and killing countless pegasi in her aerial attacks against the Zebra Empire. Besides, who would have had time to make a city in the middle of a global war, anyway? I remembered that there had been plenty of cities rebuilt after zebra bombings, but no new cities were built, were there?

Unless...

“You mean New Cloudsdale?” I asked. It hadn’t exactly been new if it had been built to replace the Old Cloudsdale—at least, I didn’t think so—but I knew for certain that Rainbow Dash had had nothing to do with it. Come to think of it, hadn’t the textbooks all said that this ‘Lightning Dust’ was the chief architect of New Cloudsdale? That was all I could remember about that name, and I wasn’t entirely sure about that.

Even then, New Cloudsdale was just a memorial, a small-scale publicity stunt to boost pegasi morale after the bombing of the original cloud city... right? It had never actually amounted to anything.

“Don’t call it that, Dashie, please don’t call it that!” Fluttershy pleaded. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to think of it as her city too! That’s what she always called it. Did she brainwash you?”

I didn’t know what to say, and so I didn’t say anything.

“It’s name is Hurricane!” Fluttershy almost shouted. “You named it that. You built it. It’s your city, not hers!”

“Stop it!” I shouted in my unbearably scratchy voice. I couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re not real! None of this is real. Leave me alone, please! I just want to live a normal life, I just want to be normal!”

“Oh, Dashie...” Fluttershy said even more softly than usual. Her eyes were welling up with tears again. “I can see how hard this was for you. I know we’re all so busy right now, but I just want you to know that if you ever need my help, if there’s ever anything I can do... please let me know.”

She looked so sad, so horribly, terribly sorrowful, that I was afraid saying anything against her wishes would break her. Even if she was just a hallucination, I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I simply nodded, still looking uncertain and hopelessly confused, but it seemed to do the trick.

“Thank you, Dashie,” she said, giving me one final hug. “Here, please take this—it’s a communicator on a secure network. I asked Twilight to make it for me. I have one just like it, and you can use it to talk to me whenever you need to.  Just press the jewel in the center and I’ll hear you.”

Fluttershy reached into a pocket in her suit and pulled out a butterfly pendant identical to the one pinned to her hat. She placed it in my hoof and I hesitantly took it. It was indeed beautiful to look at, though it definitely didn’t look like anything other than a piece of expensive jewelry.

I looked up, supposing it would be polite to thank her, but she was gone. Looking down again, I saw that the communicator, if it had even been that, was gone as well. My hoof was empty, and it was white now. Golden curls hung down over my forehead rather than rainbow streaks.

“Hello?” a voice called out. “Is somepony in there?”

“Y-yes?” I said, my familiar high-pitched squeaky voice a comfort to my ears.

“Oh, it’s just you, Surprise,” said the voice as a stallion opened the door and walked into the storage room. “I thought I heard someone having a conversation in here. Were you... having an ‘episode’ again?”

“I must have been,” I said, nodding. “I’m sorry, I hope I wasn’t bothering you—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the surge generator?” he cut me off, cocking his head and narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “What are you doing in here?”

“Oh, I, uh, I just saw that you all opened this lockbox and—”

“And you were trying to see if you could get first pick?” he interrupted again, walking forward and looking inside. He seemed satisfied that I hadn’t taken anything yet. “You know Tempest called first pick, since he convinced his friend to open it. If you wanted to get something, you could’ve waited till we were all here.”

“Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry,” I said. Then, against my better judgement, I couldn’t help but add—a little sorely, no less—“Nopony invited me.”

“It’s not like we would have kicked you out if you did come,” he said. “Besides, this wasn’t exactly a secret either.”

He was still eying me suspiciously, as if I was a thief caught in the act. It wasn’t my box, but it wasn’t his either, and I couldn’t help but feel a little insulted at his insinuation. Besides, if anypony had any claim to this box, I did! I was the one who ate on it every day!

Frowning but seeming to take pity on me, he said “Did you see anything you liked?”

“Not really,” I admitted. Then, remembering the hat, I looked back inside. It was faded, ripped, and torn, but it definitely looked identical to the one Fluttershy had worn in my hallucination. I had seen the old hat before I imagined Fluttershy wearing it, so I knew there was no real connection, but it was still eerie to me.

“The hat catch your eye?” he asked, reaching in and holding it out to me. “Tell you what—it’s probably the most worthless piece of junk in here, so I doubt Tempest would mind if you took it. How about you take it and I’ll pretend I never saw you shirking your duties at the surge generator?”

I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted it, but if it meant he wouldn’t report me...

“Sure...thanks,” I said, taking the hat and shoving it into one of the pockets of my uniform. He nodded and I headed out, trotting off quickly towards the surge generator.

For some reason, I noticed, the hat seemed heavier in my pocket than I would have expected.

I thankfully didn’t see anypony else on my way to the surge generator. I doubt I could have explained my way out of not being at my post again, much less convince the others not to report me. The other maintenance crew members might have been more tolerant of me than most, but we certainly weren’t friends either.

Opening the large, thick door to the room holding the surge generator, I slipped inside and closed it behind me. Turning, I looked up at the immense machine that was responsible for powering virtually everything on the base, as well as what shocked me out of sleep every morning.

Despite how annoying it could be for that last key reason, I had to admit that it was indeed an impressive sight. It was roughly the shape of an egg, though it was as tall as the hotel’s first story and as wide at the middle as a vertibuck aircraft. The entirety of its egg-shaped portion was made of special crystal, supposedly imported from the Crystal Empire during the war. Mostly transparent, you could see lightning crackling about inside its core, zapping out from a central sphere of brilliant luminance to strike at the clear sides as if trying to break free. A loud crack accompanied each burst of compressed lightning, though the crystal walls absorbed most of the sound to prevent it from being as deafening as close exposure to the thunder would normally have been.

At the top and bottom of the crystal container were large metal cables that anchored the generator in place between the ceiling and the floor. These tubes would branch out into wires that ran throughout the entirety of the base, supplying the electricity to wherever it was needed. Most of them did, anyway. A few wires actually supplied power to the generator from a collection of solar panels stationed outside the base, near the cloud crops. The sunlight absorbed by those panels was channeled here, where special enchantments converted the energy into cloud-compatible electricity.

According to my work assignment for the day, one or more of these wires was damaged, and I would have to track the wires—all the way to the solar panels if I had to—in order to find where the problem was. I would have much rather started outside, but breaks like this almost always happened nearer to the surge generator than further due to its violent power output. Unfortunately, we only knew that because it happened so often.

Trotting over to the supply closet, I unrolled some spare lengths of wires from the spool of extras and slipped on my protective rubber hoof-guards. Slinging the extra wiring across my back, I walked over to the section of the floor directly over the wires leading to the outside and opened the cover. A flurry of sparks wafted up from inside, but after they winked out of existence, taking a few singed hairs from my coat with them, I saw that the wires for this section appeared to be undamaged.

Closing the door, I repeated the process, only to get the same result, as expected. Like I said, this sort of work could take a while.

I had worked my way down to the last section of wiring before everything would start to move outside—which would require me to crawl through the cramped and claustrophobic maintenance tunnels leading through the wall—when I unveiled the problem. Two brands of frayed wire tips greeted me, emitting more sparks than the amount usually exhausted to prevent overloading the system. A huge surge of power must have barreled through here and proved too much for the old wiring, which must have already been worn thin by who knew how many years of other such bursts.

Careful to make sure only my rubber-protected hooves touched the frayed ends, and doing a double-check to make sure I wasn’t wearing any metal (even though all of our maintenance smocks were carefully designed to exempt any such components), I clamped my front hooves around one end of wiring and began trying to yank them out.

They were stubborn and stuck fast, and I had to brace my hind legs against the side of the opening before they began to budge. Even still, they refused to move more than a few inches, so I had to resort to flapping my wings as hard as I could, pulling myself backwards.

I grit my teeth, as much to try and ignore the pain of the random sparks singing my coat as from the exertion of pulling out the wires. They were coming out, slowly but surely.

Almost there... I thought. Come on, just a little further...

The sparks were leaping out faster now, and were far more numerous and frenzied. That had to mean the wires were on the verge of popping out. My coat was going to be missing a few patches of fur after this, but at least I was almost done...with this side. The sparks were flying everywhere, landing on my hind legs, my wings, a few even drifting up to my nose and ears. I prayed my mane didn’t catch fire, and I instinctively closed my eyes lest any drift too close for comfort.

It must have been just after I closed my eyes that a spark drifted into my pocket. I assume that’s what happened, because that would be the only explanation for what happened next.

A white-hot jolt of pure raging agony surged through me, my muscles feeling as if they had been pumped full of nitroglycerin and then shot through with a round of blasts from a heavy-duty energy weapon.

The next thing I knew, I was up against something hard, my back feeling like it had been snapped in two. Spots swam before my eyes, and a static scream filled my ears. Every inch of my body was twitching or jerking involuntarily, and I couldn’t stop writhing even after I’d fallen to the ground from...wherever it was I’d been thrown.

Stop it, Surprise! I told myself, fighting to form coherent thought through the blanket of pain. You can fight this!

With a monumental effort, I rose to a sitting position, though my muscles were still spasming. I tried my best to breathe softly, in and out, in and out, without allowing my jaw to lock up or become stuck open. Slowly, the spots stopped dancing in my vision, and my jerks came less suddenly and forcefully. I strained every muscle to simply stand still, and at last they did.

A static scream still played about my ears, however. Actually, now that I thought about it...

I raised my hooves to my ears and covered them, and the screaming stopped. Taking them out, it returned. Whatever it was, for once it wasn’t coming from inside my head, which was quite a relief. After an electrocution like that, who knows what might have happened to my brain.

Where was that noise coming from, though? I looked around, but saw nothing. Come to think of it, why had I been shocked? I was wearing my rubber guards, and I wasn’t wearing any metal...or was I? What else could have triggered a shock like that?

I ran my hooves over my body and through my mane and tail, but came up with nothing. I pulled out my pockets, all empty save the crumpled, old hat, which fell the floor with a loud metallic thunk.

Oh...

I picked up the hat and shook it a bit. There was definitely something heavier than fabric in here, though light enough that I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I set the hat down and routed around in it, my hoof finding something hard hidden underneath the top of the fabric. Searching for an opening, I found the tag and yanked at it, pulling back a hidden pocket. Upending the hat, a small object fell out, shining in the light of the surge generator.

I recognized it. I had never seen it, at least, not in reality...but I recognized it.

“That’s not possible,” I breathed, picking up the butterfly pendant. Its silver frame was dull, having lost its careful polish centuries ago, and its jewels needed a hardy scrub to remove the dust and grime, but it was unmistakably the pendant the imaginary Fluttershy had given to me. Er, Rainbow Dash.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

And yet...here it was. Incorporating something into my hallucination from something I’d already seen was perfectly plausible. Hallucinating something so detailed that I had never known existed was certainly not.

What’s more, the static screaming seemed to be coming from the pendant. I held the object up to my ear, and the scream became louder by tenfold. I covered it with a hoof, and the scream became a soft whisper.

“...H...” it whispered.

What?!

“...Hu...Hur...Hurricane...” it spoke. The voice was barely audible over the blaring white noise, but I was certain I could hear it. I could make out the words, but even with the white noise, there seemed to be something off about the voice. “...Hurricane to Equestrian airspace... Do you copy...?”

Remembering my hallucination, I still wasn’t quite believing this was at all possible. Maybe I had been knocked totally senseless by the shock? But if so, how else could I have been shocked if not for this piece of metal?

Experimentally, I pressed the tiny jewel in the center of the pendant.

“H-hello?” I said quietly. “Can you hear me?”

“...Contact... received...” it spoke. What was it with that voice? There was no enunciation on any syllable. It was flat far beyond any natural monotone. It had to be synthetic, machine-generated. “...Request... confirmation code...”

Confirmation code? I didn’t know any codes besides my personal passwords, and those had all been randomly generated by the Enclave for my locker combination and such when I had been drafted. If this was real...and by now, I suppose it had to be... then it was something prewar.

Suddenly, I was very, very frightened. If my hallucination had foreseen this little machine, then how much else of it had been true? If this communicator belonged to Fluttershy, then how had it come to be here? Was this hotel really one of Rainbow Dash’s safehouses? How much more did that infamous multicolored mare have a hoof in this? And what was Hurricane?

I knew one thing for certain, at least. This was bigger than me. I couldn’t handle this on my own.

I slipped the pendant, which had thankfully stopped screaming, into my pocket. Trotting back over to the wiring, my stomach fell when I saw that though I had indeed pulled the broken wiring away from one side of the damaged section, the other side was still in place, though it wasn’t sparking.

Gulping, I turned nervously around to see just what it was I had slammed into after my electrocution. A Surprise-shaped silhouette had been left in the side of the surge generator, a spiderweb of cracks emanating out from it.

“Uh-oh,” I said simply.

Bolting through the door as fast as I could and not even bothering to slam it shut again, I spread my wings and flew as best I could in the small hallways. Skirting around the final corner to the lobby, I slammed my hoof onto the alarm button. A blaring siren began wailing through the maintenance section, a sound that likely hadn’t been heard since the final day of the Great War.

Hitting the call button for the elevator, I tapped my hoof in frantic impatience as the doors slowly slid open. I could the worried shouts of the other maintenance ponies calling to one another as they rushed to the lobby.

The doors finally slid open, and I stood back as the other ponies raced out of the various hallways and up the elevator shaft. None of them so much as spared me a glance, but I counted them all the same. Satisfied that everypony had made it up and out, I hurried after them. I tried to ignore the deafening thunderclaps growing louder and louder, echoing throughout the hallways of the basement as they competed with the siren and eventually won.

Up on the ground floor, a second set of sirens were blaring. The thunder wasn’t as evident up here, but I could still hear it, and it was still growing. What’s worse, the lighting was flickering, and I could hear various appliances going haywire in the kitchen. Everywhere, ponies were rushing past me, flying out of the elevator shaft from the upper floors or scrambling out of the cafeteria. Others I could see flying out of their windows.

I quickly followed them out, the lights beginning to quit their flickering, instead growing brighter and brighter until they burst apart in a shower of sparks. I even think I heard some explosions from the kitchen, though I prayed my ears still hadn’t quite healed from my shock.

Once outside, I took wing, following the others as we sped to the designated emergency meetup area. Ponies were fleeing the other buildings too, and I only hoped the surge protectors had disrupted connection between the minor buildings and the main generator before everything went critical.

Seeing Firefly’s pink form dashing out of the Intelligence Bunker and looking around wildly as she called out my name, I shouted back to her, nearly slamming into her.

“Surprise, what’s going on?” she asked frantically. “Are you alright? Who pulled the alarm? Are we under attack? Is it another dragon?”

I simply grimaced and pleaded “Come on!” as I pulled her hooves with my own, flapping my wings as hard as I could. Looking even more concerned than she had, she followed, but she didn’t give up.

“Surprise, what’s—”

KRA-KOOOOM!!

We were suddenly thrust forward, tumbling head or tail with countless other pegasi as a massive thunderclap rolled over the clouds and nearly deafened us even as it almost shook our bones to dust. The sky and the clouds took turns somersaulting over each other before the clouds won whatever sick game the two were playing, rising up to engulf us both.

I struggled to free myself from the clouds, spitting out a mouthful of the fluffiness before looking around frantically for Firefly. Her rear and hind legs were almost sticking up out of some clouds a few feet away, her hooves kicking about almost comically. Many other pegasi were in a similar circumstance, though I could see that plenty had made it beyond the dropoff and were now circling just beyond the cloud cover, riding the thermals above the ocean.

Many were shouting, or screaming, or something. In fact, almost everypony I could see were moving their mouths...but I couldn’t hear anything. I tried to say something myself, and though I could feel my jaw muscles moving, I couldn’t hear my voice, high-pitched and squeaky or low and scratchy or otherwise.

Great. On top of overloading the surge generator, of course I had to go and blow out my eardrums too...wait, the base!

Dreading what I would see, I looked over my shoulder to see that the base... wasn’t there anymore. The Cloud Nine Resort, which had stood for over two centuries, was gone. In its place was a dissipating mass of cloudstuff strewn every which way, forming little hills in a circular pattern around an exposed foundation of jagged, blackened metal. Some the cloudstuff drifted free on the breeze, and some of it seemed to have been vaporized by the explosion entirely.

The surge generator itself, or what I could see of it, was nothing more than a fine crystal dust shimmering through the sunlight as it rained down like a transparent snowfall.

“...Surprise...”

I... I couldn’t believe it.

“...Surprise...!”

I’d blown it up! I’d blown up the Primum Mobile Military Base!

“Surprise!”

After the orphanage, it had been the only home Firefly and I had ever known. Sure, it hadn’t been the best of places, but it was food, water, and shelter, and that’s what counted, right? Oh, princesses, I’d just destroyed it all! And not just for me, for everypony! All because I had been too stupid, too useless to—

“SURPRISE!!” shouted Firefly’s voice as her hoof smacked the back of my head.

“What?!” I gasped, whirling around to see her standing beside me, concern flooding her eyes. “Are you alright? Oh, Firefly, I’m so, so sorry...”

“I’m fine, Surprise,” she said soothingly. “Are you alright? And wait, what do you mean, ‘you’re sorry’?”

The tears welling up in my eyes must have said it all.

“Oh, Surprise...” Firefly breathed, her eyes widening. “Whatever you do, don’t say anything—maybe they won’t—”

“She’s over here, Commander!”

For the first time in my life, I wished that clouds weren’t substantial to pegasi. Then I could have simply fallen through the cloud cover and plummeted straight on down to the ground. It would have been preferable to what I knew was coming.

I heard two ponies alighting behind me.

“That’s her, Commander Archangel, sir,” said a familiar voice. I recognized it as the stallion who had ‘caught’ me routing through the lockbox. “She was in charge of repairing the surge generator.”

“Are you certain nothing else could have caused this?” inquired the quiet, infinitely terrifying voice of the commander.

“I’m certain, sir,” he replied, his voice quivering with anger. “Nothing but the surge generator had that much raw power to discharge.”

“I see,” Commander Archangel responded. “Private Surprise, please turn around.”

My eyes glued to my hooves, I did as I was instructed.

“Look me in the eyes when I am speaking to you, private,” the commander ordered ever-so-softly.

I did so, though he and everything behind him was a blur of color through my tears.

“Would you please explain to me what happened, private?” he asked. His voice was emotionless. I couldn’t discern anything from it beyond the question itself. That was almost more terrifying than his all-too-familiar anger had ever been.

I hesitated.

“It wasn’t her fault, sir!” Firefly spoke up. “Honest, it wasn’t! She was—”

“Under most circumstances, I would strip you of your rank for interrupting me, Private Firefly” Commander Archangel said quietly. “Given the current situation, however, I shall overlook your insubordination as a result of shock. Interrupt me again, however, and I will break your neck with my bare hooves. Then I will strip you of your rank. Is that understood?”

Knowing Firefly, she’d risk it if she thought I could be spared. I couldn’t let that happen. Not now, of all times.

“It was my fault, Commander,” I said shakily, trying to swallow my tears but hardly able to speak at all. “I was repairing some damaged wiring in the surge generator, and... and...”

“And what, Private Surprise?” he prompted.

Firefly’s eyes darted from the commander to me and back again. Her lips twitched.

“I allowed a metal object to come into contact with the energy of the surge generator,” I said. “I was electrocuted and knocked back into the generator. I broke it. The fault is mine.”

“I see,” the commander said, though for once in my life, it sounded like he didn’t. If at all possible, he sounded... uncertain. I hadn’t known his vocal chords were even capable of such a tone.

“But Surprise, you never make a mistake when you’re running maintenance,” Firefly said, sounding uncertain herself, though for different reasons. If anything, she sounded like she was wrestling with whether or not to feel like this was all some big mistake and I was an innocent victim, or if she had been...betrayed. If I had wanted to fall through the clouds earlier, I wished for it now.

“Is this true, Private Freezing Rain?” the commander asked the stallion, not taking his eyes off of me.

“She... does have a perfect record, sir,” Freezing Rain admitted. It was true, too. Even he, the head of the Maintenance Division, had a few reprimands on his record for past fallacies. Still, I hardly thought that mattered given the size of my one mistake.

“Then what, pray tell, caused you to slip up this time, Private Surprise?” Commander Archangel asked. His usual tone was beginning to creep back into his voice now.

Firefly looked at me with a similar questioning gaze.

“I didn’t know I had metal on me, sir,” I replied. “One of the lockboxes in storage—the other maintenance ponies—that is, the others and I, sir—we opened it and were planning to divide up the contents. We knew it was against regulation, sir, but we foalishly thought it wouldn’t cause any harm. I chose an old hat, not realizing there was a piece of metal hidden inside it.”

“So it was an accident,” Commander Archangel breathed. What? Had he suspected me of sabotaging the generator? He sounded... relieved. “Though I had thought the storage wing was all catalogued long ago. What is it that you found, exactly?”

“Sir, how could that be relevant—” Freezing Rain tried to say.

The commander simply made a sound like a bone breaking. Given any other circumstances, it would have been impressive to hear a set of wizened, old vocal chords pull that off. Understandably, all it did for Freezing Rain was silence him and turn his coat pale.

Hesitantly, not any more certain how it could be relevant than Freezing Rain had been, I removed the hat from my pocket and pulled out the pendant. I placed it in Commander Archangel’s outstretched hoof.

I scanned his eyes for any sign or recognition, but saw none. He apparently didn’t know what it was anymore than I did, save for what my hallucination had supplied me, and that was far more confusing than anything he could possibly think about it.

On impulse, I reached out and pressed the jewel in the center of the pendant.

“Hurricane to Equestrian airspace,” the synthetic voice spoke, clearly and crisply, having lost the static feedback entirely. “Do you copy?”

“Hurricane?” Commande Archangel echoed. “Yes, we copy. Who is this?”

“Contact received,” the voice repeated, just as it had earlier. “Request confirmation code.”

Commander Archangel squinted his eyes as he scrutinized the pendant, which only served to make his wrinkly face appear as if it was eating itself.

“This is Commander Archangel of the Primum Mobile Military Base, Enclave Airspace,” the commander intoned. “You are hereby ordered to identify yourself.”

“Contact received. Request confirmation code.”

“The damn thing must be fully automated,” the commander murmured to himself. Then, turning his attention to me and the hat I was holding, making me wince just at the feel of his gaze, though his eyes remained unreadable, he said “Private Surprise, this is the hat in which you found this device?”

I nodded.

“Interesting,” he murmured. “Private Surprise, if you will accompany me to the officer’s barracks, I believe we have something to report to the general.”

Freezing Rain looked at the commander as if the thunderclap of the explosion had only just now deafened him. He glanced at me angrily and then at the commander again, biting his lip before saying “Commander, what about—”

Freezing Rain was on the ground, writhing in pain with the commander’s hoof on a pressure point before anypony could react. He simply nodded to me and took wing. I followed, Firefly close behind me. I was worried about her as Commander Archangel hadn’t technically invited her, but I knew better than to tell her not to accompany me. I only hoped the general wouldn’t blame her for my mistake as well.

The officer’s barracks wasn’t exactly that much to look at. It was identical to so many of the other minor buildings on the base that, if not for the fact that it stood relatively by itself, it would be indistinguishable from the rest. It flew the same flag of the Enclave as the other buildings and was just as unassuming as them as well.

Nevertheless, my knees were quaking as we touched down outside it. Out of all the buildings on the base, I dreaded this one above all else. I’d never even been this close to it, and all of my own volition.

The commander knocked three times on the door before entering, even though I knew he bunked here like every other commanding officer. I shakily followed him inside, feeling like I would collapse at any moment. I had no more tears to shed—if anything, I felt horribly dry. My mouth was so parched I doubted I’d be able to speak when the inevitable questions came, not that I could have really answered them anyway.

Whatever happened next, I knew this was it. Whether I was kicked out of the military and left to starve on the streets of the nearest cloud city, as I had no other skills, or I was banished to the ground below without any supplies, I was done for. Who knew? They might even kill me on the spot, or at the very least set up a public execution. Maybe I’d receive the whip before my wings were clipped and I was hung from the gallows.

“General Firmament?” Commander Archangel called as he knocked thrice more, this time upon the door to the office of the highest-ranking officer on the base. I vaguely wondered if I should take a look around the barracks before I met with the general, or as I should probably start addressing him, my executioner. After all, it very well may be the last thing I ever saw, and I’d never seen the inside of the officer’s barracks. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, considering how short my lifetime was looking to become.

My eyes darted around the room, which only showed me a few more office doors to lower-ranking officers and a hallway leading to the individual rooms of the officers. All in all, it was a pretty bland last sight. I would have at least expected a few medals for valor in battle or something. The room was, however, almost entirely spotless.

“LUNA DAMMIT, ARCHANGEL!” shouted a voice I’d only ever heard through the base’s loudspeakers on rare occasions. “WHAT THE PRINCESSES-DAMNED HELL IS GOING ON?!”

“I’ll take that to mean that we may enter, sir?” the commander asked.

“I WAS TAKING A CALL FROM HIGH COUNCILMEMBER FORNAX FOR LUNA’S SAKE!” the General roared. “I WAS THIS MOTHERBUCKING CLOSE TO GETTING HIM TO TRANSFER ME TO A BASE THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS, AND THEN THE WHOLE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK SHITS ITSELF!”

Commander Archangel pushed the door open and walked inside, beckoning for me to do the same. He didn’t so much as glance at Firefly, but he wasn’t dropping her to the ground, so I assumed that was a good thing.

I nearly stumbled over my own hooves as I made my way inside to see General Firmament himself fuming at his desk, eyes glued to his terminal screen as he repeatedly slammed the call button on his personal communications device with a hoof. He was almost as old in appearance as the commander, though he was far more...present. His massive girth strained his already plus-sized uniform, and his handlebar mustache was longer on either side than any facial hair I’d seen on any other stallion—and it still barely concealed his drooping jowls and wrinkled face.

The only thing tiny about him were his eyes, squashed into his bloated face behind a pair of miniscule spectacles. It was a wonder he was a pegasus at all; I’d never actually seen him fly, and given the size of his wings compared to the rest of him, I was seriously beginning to doubt the physical possibility of such.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, ARCHANGEL?!” the General demanded, still not looking up from his terminal. “I’LL RIP THE MOTHERBUCKING WINGS OFF OF WHOEVER DARED TO BUCK UP THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL OF MY LIFE!”

I vaguely considered whether or not I shouldn’t just make a run for it. There was no way General Firmament himself would catch me. Commander Archangel was another matter entirely, though, if one of them didn’t just try to shoot me first. I’d seen Excalibur up close, and I knew it could certainly do the trick with a well-aimed shot. I idly wondered if General Firmament’s weapon of choice had a name as well.

Come to think of it, I didn’t actually see one...

...oh.

When the General finally turned his attention away from his terminal monitor to look at us, he had to shift the entirety of his bulk to do so. The resulting motion sent his fat rippling just enough to show me what he had ‘concealed’ in the area most ponies would use to store a holster.

Unlike Commander Archangel, or any of the other high-ranking officers on the base, General Firmament didn’t wield an energy pistol. Truth be told, his gargantuan hooves were probably far too large to even handle so tiny a weapon.

No, General Firmament’s weapon of choice was a high-caliber shoulder-mounted energy cannon. If I hadn’t used the surge generator to blow up the Cloud Nine Resort, that weapon certainly would have done the trick for me with a few-marked shots.

“WELL, ARCHANGEL?!” the General bellowed. “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! WHO THE HELL IS RESPONSIBLE?! IS IT THEM?!”

He pointed a hammy hoof at Firefly and I. I was rather surprised at myself that I didn’t faint.

“It’s a pleasure to see you as well, General Firmament,” Commander Archangel murmured. Then, speaking louder, he said “No, General Firmament. These two are not responsible for disrupting your call.”

What?! But.... but I was! Wasn’t I? What was going on here?

“As I told you the last time this happened, the officer’s barracks possesses an emergency backup power supply,” the commander informed him. “Our spark generators would have kicked on the moment the surge generator was incapacitated.”

“THE SURGE GENERATOR IS OFFLINE?!” the General nearly gagged. “WHY?! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! AND WHY THE HELL WAS MY CALL CANCELLED?!”

“I assume, just like last time, it was because High Councilmember Fornax had his secretary hang up on you,” the commander sighed, rubbing his temple with a hoof. “And, speaking of High Councilmember Fornax, I have need of him immediately. May I use your line?”

“WHY THE HELL SHOULD I—”

“I’ll stop feeding you sugarcubes if you don’t,” the commander said simply, as softly and coolly as ever.

The General’s eyes widened to an impossibly large scale.

“NO, PLEASE! I’LL DO ANYTHING, I’LL—”

“Just wear your headphones like a good little general and I’ll feed you later,” the commander promised. The General complied, picking out a pair of headphones from underneath his desk and putting them on, muttering softly to himself as I heard a faint drone begin to play, muffled by his great ears.

What in the world?

I looked back at Firefly to see if she had any idea what was going on. She kept looking between the general and the commander, her face full of disgust and a degree of horror I’d never witnessed. I supposed that for such an athletic pegasus as Firefly, seeing somepony so, well, fat had to be rather unnerving. Or perhaps it was simply the odd dynamic between two ponies who were supposed to hold positions of power that were obviously the reverse of what was on display. That couldn’t have computed well with her Intelligence Officer’s sense of logic.

“I do apologize for General Firmament,” the commander said to us nonchalantly as he turned the terminal monitor to face our way, tapping the call button. “He can be so finicky at times, though he is useful in his own way, I suppose. After all, only generals are granted direct lines to the High Council.”

After a few moments, the screen flashed to life, showing the black-and-white face of a young mare sitting at a desk in front of the official seal of the Enclave’s governing body. She looked furious, and the instant the sound came online she began shouting “General Firmament, if this is another transfer request I will be forced to—”

“Good afternoon, Stardust,” the commander said curtly. “Is Fornax available?”

“Oh, Commander Archangel!” gasped the mare, presumably Stardust and presumably Fornax’s secretary. “I’m so sorry, I thought it was that insufferable oaf again. Yes, I’ll alert him right away.”

The commander nodded as the young mare typed away at her own terminal. The screen flickered, and the face of a middle-aged stallion who was looking a bit pudgier than normal (but who was still a speck of dust compared to the planetoid that was Firmament) filled the screen. He was dressed better than anypony I’d ever seen, and he had every reason to be. Even here, way out on the edge of Enclave Airspace, High Councilmember Fornax was well-known. How could he not be? He was currently leading the election campaign for Chief Councilmember.

I had never expected to meet General Firmament in all my time on the base, but I had never in a million years thought I would see a High Councilmember, even through a telecommunications link, in all my life in the Enclave. Surely my accidental crime wasn’t so horrific that the central government of the whole aerial pegasus nation was getting involved!

What was going on?!

It seemed Fornax shared my sentiment.

“Commander Archangel?” he inquired, his gruff voice emanating from the terminal’s connected speaker-box a split-second behind the movement of his lips. “What is the meaning of this? You know this line is to be kept closed except—”

“—In cases of extreme danger or extreme interest to the Enclave,” Commander Archangel interrupted. I gasped, unable to help myself. Finding out the commander somehow held sway over the general was one thing, but interrupting a High Councilmember? Did he have a deathwish? “I know your specifications all too well, Fornax. Why else would I call you save for such a reason?”

“Then...what is this reason?” Fornax inquired, actually sounding concerned. “Is something happening groundside? You’re too far south for Red Eye’s forces to be a problem, and the alicorns have never had any interest in the Neigh’Orleans ruins anyway, not since their initial communications attempt failed at... no, surely you don’t mean—”

“I do,” Commander Archangel cut him off again. “Truth be told, it’s probably a fluke, a useless lead, just like all the others. But I didn’t station myself here for forty years and manage to prove all those leads false without being thorough, now did I?”

“So this isn’t about—”

“I didn’t say that,” the commander continued. “In fact, it most certainly is. There is a very, very small chance that this is the real thing, the one I’ve been waiting for. And, if it is, and if you hold up your end of the deal, you will finally have all that I promised and more. The catch is, though, that we simply won’t know without further investigation. Do I have your support in this matter?”

The High Councilmember looked uncertain for a moment, licking his lips. The commander looked on, as unreadable as ever, before raising an eyebrow. A smile split Fornax’s slightly pudgy face, and he nodded vigorously.

“Excellent,” Commander Archangel said, smiling ever-so-slightly. “Then you know what to do. Nopony can know about this. All communications between Primum Mobile and the inner Enclave Airspace go dark, save for this line, until I give the all-clear. Blame it on a surge generator explosion, tell the press there was a training accident, make something up, I don’t care. Just make sure that I am not bothered. Give me a few days to investigate and, if all goes well, the skies won’t be quite so dark anymore.”

“Let’s hope there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then,” Fornax said quietly, though I could tell that he was barely containing his own excitement.

The screen went dark, and Commander Archangel led us out of the General’s office, not bothering to tell him to take off his headphones. Almost eerily, he simply continued to sit there, mumbling softly to himself, rocking ever-so-slightly in his straining chair.

“...C-commander Archangel?” I said meekly as we trotted back outside, wincing as I saw the ruins of the Cloud Nine once again. Most of the pegasi were still near the dropoff, many flying in circles out over the ocean. A few were checking the rubble of the basement, probably out of curiosity more than anything, until they saw the commander and instantly zoomed back to the dropoff. “I-if I may a-ask, what was that all about? And w-what about...”

I couldn’t finish.

“The destruction of the Primum Mobile Military Base’s recruit barracks is inconsequential at the moment,” he replied, not looking back at me, instead trotted off towards the dropoff. I noticed that he kept feeling his pocket, as if to make sure that the pendant was still there. “Should my investigation for High Councilmember Fornax turn up nothing of interest, as expected, then you will be court-martialled, tried for ineptitude at an inner-airspace base, and most-likely be dishonorably discharged from the Enclave’s armed forces. If that happens, then... I apologize, Surprise, but there’s nothing I can do.”

I nearly stumbled over my own hooves, and only Firefly’s quick reflexes caught me before I face-planted in the clouds again. I was so shocked that even though I noticed the commander’s sincere apology, my brain didn’t register it for the impossible oddity it was.

“Should my investigation go as I hope, however,” he continued. “Well...let’s just say that things should be better for you. However, you are not to speak of what you saw in General Firmament’s office to anypony, least of all the other recruits. Is that understood?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” I managed to squeak out.

“Excellent,” he approved before spreading his wings and hurrying his pace to the dropoff.

I tried to follow him, but my wings refused to work properly, and I fell face-first into the clouds all the same.

“Surprise, are you alright?” Firefly asked, though from the tone of her voice she already knew the answer. I simply shook my head, my whole body shaking as if I was freezing. “Don’t worry, Surprise. We’ll get through this. We’ll find a way. We always do.”

“But I... I...” I stammered. “I could get bucked out of the military! I can’t do anything else, and I could hardly do anything here! Who’s going to hire a crazy homeless orphan with no skills?! And worst of all, I won’t have you!”

“Yes, you will, Surprise,” Firefly said softly. I looked up, turning to her, shaking my head vigorously. “No, you can’t stop me. I’ll be there for you, Surprise, whenever you need me. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s what I’ll always do.”

“But you’re good at being in the military,” I protested. “You have a home here, a future. I’m not letting you give that up because of me!”

“Then we’ll just have to find a way to get you to stay as well,” she said, smiling softly. “Commander Archangel said that if his investigation goes as he hopes, then things will be better. All we have to do is make sure he finds what he’s looking for.”

I nodded, still shaking slightly, but able to see a sliver of hope. I didn’t know what was going on, but Firefly was right. I couldn’t give up yet.

She gave me a firm hug and I returned it, my shaking finally stopping. Helping me up, she took wing, and I followed her over to the gathering of other recruits. Firefly soared out over the ocean before landing near the back of the crowd, and I followed suit, feeling the warmth of the thermals and the scent of the sea carry me effortlessly higher before touching down.

“...It is for that reason that the Primum Mobile Military Base will be going into lockdown immediately,” Commander Archangel was saying, his quiet voice almost as loud as that of an ordinary pony having a casual conversation. Everypony in the regiment was dead silent, and it carried perfectly. “Due to damages caused by the surge generator malfunction, communications with the inner airspace have gone dark. The nearest base is too far to send replacement materials for repairs that we could easily scavenge from the ruins below. It is for this reason that General Firmament has ordered me to send a special team of carefully-selected operatives groundside to secure an alternative source of long-term power. In the meantime, all skyside resources will be devoted to the assistance of this team, and all machinery will be operated on a strictly as-needed basis to conserve fuel for backup generators. Are there any questions?”

Every recruit had been here long enough to know that there was no asking of questions after a Commander Archangel debriefing.

“Very good,” he said. “You are to rendezvous with your assigned emergency teams immediately. You are dismissed.”

The other pegasi began to murmur amongst themselves as they took wing. I looked at Firefly, as technically she was supposed to be reporting to the Intelligence Bunker with the rest of her team, but she simply smiled and shook her head.

The only ponies left at the dropoff besides Firefly and I were the other maintenance ponies and Commander Archangel, the former of which didn’t really have a place to meet up any longer. They were all huddled around Freezing Rain, and with the other background conversations gone, I could easily hear what they were discussing.

“There was no malfunction, I tell you!” he was whispering incredibly loudly. Firefly tried to steer me away from the group, who was even now shooting glances in my direction. I watched my hooves to avoid making eye contact. “It was all her, the crazy one! I don’t know why the commander’s covering for her, but I intend to find out.”

I shuddered, thankful when we finally left earshot. When I raised my eyes from my hooves, I saw that we were approaching Commander Archangel. He was standing at the very rim of the dropoff, gazing out across the sea. It was hardly noon, and the horizon was virtually empty. It was like looking into eternity.

“Why are we seeing him again?” I whispered to Firefly. In truth, I suppose I should have been at ease to see him. After all, he had had every reason to expel me or worse the moment he found out what was going on. He was covering for me, and I didn’t know why any more than Freezing Rain did. I should have been grateful, and a large part of me was, but at the same time I also couldn’t help but wonder why.

“Commander Archangel?” Firefly spoke up, calling out to the elderly officer without answering me. “I would like to submit a complaint. The Maintenance Division is harboring ill will towards Surprise.”

“But they deserve to!” I protested. “Please, Firefly, don’t get mixed up in this. You’ve done so much for me already.”

“That she has,” Commander Archangel observed without looking away from the horizon. “Such loyalty is immensely admirable. You have my respect, Private Firefly. As for the Maintenance Division, you needn’t worry. I’ll be keeping them much too busy with maintaining the emergency spark generators for them to be able to give Private Surprise any trouble.”

“But sir,” Firefly went on. “If Surprise is working with them, I can’t help but fear for her safety should one of them—”

“Surprise won’t be working with the Maintenance Division any longer,” Commander Archangel interrupted. His eyes were still scanning the horizon, though for what I couldn’t guess. “I am transferring her into a specialized squadron immediately. You as well, Private Firefly. We’ll need ponies like you two if we’re to find what we’re looking for.”

“You mean... we’re going to be sent groundside?” I gasped. This was... I didn’t know what to say. This was the exact opposite of reprimanding me. If anything, this was the biggest promotion I possibly could have received. I still hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on, but I decided that for now it wouldn’t be wise to question my good fortune. “You want Firefly and I to find a replacement surge generator?”

“There will be a few others, but you two shall be in charge of the operation,” the commander agreed. “And yes, they will be under the impression that you are attempting to locate and secure a replacement power source. However—and this is beyond confidential, privates; the following information could very well cost you your lives should it become compromised—I want you looking for something else instead.

“The power supply is inconsequential,” he continued. “Nay, scratch that. The power supply is your cover story. Even if you find a suitable replacement, destroy it. Ignore it. I don’t care. Just stay on the ground as long as you have to until you either locate what we’re looking for or determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that it does not exist.”

“What is that, sir?” Firefly inquired.

“Weren’t you paying attention earlier, Private Firefly?” Commander Archangel said, finally breaking his gaze on the horizon. “Hurricane is out there. All it requests is an access code. If you find it, we find Hurricane.”

Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

“Hurricane?” Firefly asked me in a hissed whisper. I didn’t know why she was keeping her voice down—we were the only two ponies in the armory—but she kept nervously glancing around, as if somepony were hiding among the racks of energy rifles and suits of power armor hanging down from the ceiling. “What’s Hurricane? What’s going on, Surprise?”

“I was hoping you would know,” I admitted as I trotted around the narrow hallways, Firefly close on my tail, while I looked for the supplies designated by the mission dosiere. Firefly was supposed to be doing the same, but she’d hardly glanced at the bundle of papers Commander Archangel had typed up for her. If anything, she regarded them as if they were poisoned or something. “I think it has something to do with New Cloudsdale, but that’s all I know.”

“You mean the old prewar pegasus war memorial?” she asked, and I nodded.

I wasn’t certain what I was looking for, but I had to admit, I was getting a little giddy. I’d never been this far back in the armory, only ever being allowed to use the training uniforms during basic drills that everypony on the base endured, and basic power armor when I was sent on menial groundside missions. Back here, however, were the more specialized pieces of equipment. It was amazing how diverse some of it all was.

There were the average suits of Enclave power armor, complete with full-coverings, computerized helmets, wing-guards, built-in energy weapons, and scorpion-like stinger tails. Next, however, came the multiple varieties of energy weapons you could switch out with the standard gear, including everything from low-calibur energy rifles to cannons that fired explosive rounds and even plasma grenade launchers.

After that were the more exotic suits, such as the ultra-sleek Greased Lightning models designed for speed. Only the swiftest of pegasi ever got to wear them, and their miniature under-wing jet turbines allowed for them to fly all the faster. They weren’t much for weaponry, relying mainly on built-in retractable blades charged with electricity, as firearms could disrupt aerodynamics. Nevertheless, they were renowned for their near-instant lethality.

The most intimidating model had to be the Dragonhides. Huge and only modeled for the strongest and largest of pegasi, these hardy suits were slow and hardly maneuverable or agile, but they could more than take the punches dealt to them. According to the specifications I’d heard one of the other recruits boasting, the suits could survive virtually anything short of a balefire egg and up. Furthermore, many of them were equipped with balefire egg launchers, gatling energy blasters, or missile launchers.

“I thought that was just some publicity stunt in central Equestria,” Firefly noted, bringing me back to the present moment. “I had the same history class you did, though all I can remember is that it was supposed to be something to convince taxpayers that the Ministry of Awesome was worth their money, though it backfired spectacularly. Isn’t that what you remember?”

I nodded again, working my way further back into the facility. This was untrod territory for me; I’d never even seen much of this equipment in use. It was a wonder it was even here at all; Primum Mobile was a small military base, and we never saw any action. The only reason the base was here was to coordinate signals between other bases, as well as provide support should a ‘threat to the Enclave arrive from the southern seas.’ Seeing as all that lay across the southern sea was the Zebra Empire, which was now just as much of an irradiated wasteland as the Equestria below the cloud cover, that was about as likely as a magical wave of sunshine and rainbows making the world a nice place to live again.

“If I’m remembering correctly, that memorial was supposed to tour Equestria to boost morale,” Firefly went on, trying to piece together the puzzle. I could tell this was nagging at her analytical brain. “But it was just a footnote in our textbooks. They never even told us where the damn thing was when the bombs fell. It was probably destroyed two-hundred years ago.”

“You got me,” I said, not really paying attention, my eyes wide as they roved the goodies hidden back here. I couldn’t even guess the function of most of these odd-looking weapons, much less think what they were called. The suits were even stranger. One was covered in electrodes, looking like it would make the wearer a miniature mobile lightning storm. Another was a bright, garish pink, bearing exaggerated feminine curves. Emblazoned across its side was the name The Romantic. What in the world could that thing be used for? I could hardly imagine a fetish-based armor being useful in battle. “Have you taken a look at the gear you’ll be using yet?”

“And that still doesn’t explain why Commander Archangel insists on calling New Cloudsdale ‘Hurricane’,” Firefly went on, ignoring my question. “Or why he won’t just tell us what’s going on. He doesn’t trust us, Surprise, not fully. I’d like to know what he has planned before agreeing to be a part of it.”

“It’s the only way I won’t be expelled from the military, though,” I pointed out, a touch apologetically. “I know it’s fishy, and I understand if you’d rather not be a part of it—”

“Of course I’m going to be a part of it,” she asserted. “You are, and that means I will be too. I just wish I had more information.”

“That would be nice,” I agreed sincerely.

I’d reached the back of the armory by now. Each suit looked unique. Checking my dossier again, I finally located the serial number of my designated apparel for the mission and unhooked it from its hanger, laying it on the ground. Truth be told, it didn’t look like a suit of armor at all, though it had some strategically-placed segments composed of overlapping metal components and mechanical paraphernalia. Most of it, however, was a thin, silvery-whitish material that felt smooth to the touch, laced with a hexagon pattern. The helmet was the most armor-like thing about it, but it looked far too specialized to have stopped anything larger than a low-caliber bullet.

“What is this thing?” I wondered aloud. I usually just wore the standard power armor when I was sent groundside, which wasn’t often, and it had always been fine against the crazy swamp survivors and mutants we’d run into every once in a while. I was neither a decent shot nor a reliable hoof-to-hoof combatant, so I usually just maintained the others’ suits and tried not to get riddled with holes. Truth be told, I was pretty good at dodging enemy projectiles, though I wasn’t sure how noble such a talent seemed, especially when ‘enemy projectiles’ were broken-down prewar guns and slow-moving venom spat from blind carnivorous plants who couldn’t move.

As most of the suits I’d seen tailored themselves to a pony’s strengths, I assumed that mine would as well, even though I didn’t know how a suit could be tailored to maintenance. I knew for certain that this suit was definitely not anything like my maintenance smocks. Truth be told, maintenance wasn’t exactly my talent, it was just the only thing I could reliably do that was useful to the military, so I don’t know why I had expected the suit to match that anyway.

“It looks vaguely familiar,” Firefly observed, reaching out to feel it with a hoof as she scrutinized the hexagon pattern. “Wait a minute... this looks eerily like a zebra stealth cloak. You remember those pictures from the training manual?”

I saw her point, though it was definitely of Equestrian make. I carefully slipped it on, trying not to break the fabric, which felt fragile. Much to my surprise, however, the stuff stretched quite far and still resumed its original shape. The suit was cool against my skin, allowing plenty of air to pass through the fibers.

Next, I put the helmet on, stuffing my poofy mane underneath it. My tail wasn’t concealed at all, instead simply hanging out the back. I found that an odd design choice, but gasped as something at the base of the my spine extended itself into a long, snaky apparatus which coiled around my tail. The odd mechanical arm ended in a small metal claw rather than the standard scorpion tail, and I was wondering what utility it could provide. Maybe it was used for scratching the enemy or something?

As I was examining the secondary tail wrapped around my natural golden curls, a list of data began scrolling past my visor as the internal computer booted itself up.

Heart Rate: normal

Body Temperature: normal

Nutrition Level: normal

Anxiety Level: normal

General Health: normal

Next came a rather surprising bit of information:

New user detected. Scanning DNA for user confirmation. DNA approved by Enclave local intelligence. User identified as Private Surprise. Good afternoon, Private Surprise. Whom may I hide you from today?

“Are you... are you an AI?” I asked. I’d never met an actual artificial intelligence. Despite having worked with machines for years, the idea of them having thoughts of their own was still a bit startling. To think that I might be wearing one such machine, well... I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

Negative. I am a Class-I experimental prototype stealth suit. Preprogrammed responses will answer any questions you may have that I have been calibrated to handle.

I supposed that was a relief. Not that I was opposed to AIs, mind you, I just thought it best to work my way up to them. A pseudo-AI would be more than sufficient for now. Still, I was confused; I’d never been trained as a stealth operative. Why, then, had the commander assigned me such a suit?

I looked back at the dossier and flipped through it, quickly scanning over the various mission parameters, locations Firefly and I were to investigate while groundside, and other such minutia. At the very end of the documents, though, was a hoof-written note I had overlooked earlier:

Private Surprise,

I hope the stealth suit fits, and that it serves you well.

As you know, the ground is a dangerous place for a pegasus, and for this reason each pegasus is equipped with the equipment best suited for their particular strengths and weaknesses. However, I am sorry to admit that the military has done a disservice to you. Like so many others lost in the hopelessly naive ‘one size fits all’ mentality utilized by much of the Enclave, your true potential was never recognized for what it was, much less given a chance to flourish.

However, in an attempt to remedy this fallacy, I thought it wise to forego the standard armor so many of our underestimated recruits are placed within, never given a proper chance to discover their own unique abilities. Because of the military’s narrow-minded thinking, though, I never had the chance to learn the nature of your unique abilities any more than you did, nor do I know for certain that this suit will help you find them.

Nevertheless, I’ve witnessed in you a particular attention to detail and careful precision that many others lack, something I feel would be fitting for a stealth suit, regardless of your experience with this equipment. After all, bar one mistake, you do hold a perfect maintenance record, do you not? At the very least, as I know you are not a strong combatant, the suit should help you stay hidden from the major dangers of the Wasteland while your companion Firefly takes care of them, though in time I feel that you will grow to be just as much a capable force as she.

I would have presented you with this opportunity sooner, but contrary to what you may think, never before have I wielded as much influence over the base as I do now, and even my current control comes with a large risk. It is for this reason that I urge you and Firefly to locate the access code for Hurricane with the utmost speed.

As for learning to use the suit, it is largely self-explanatory, and I have no doubt that you will come to master it over the course of your mission.

Good luck,

Commander Archangel

This was perhaps the most confusing thing that had happened thus far. I’d never known the commander as a very warm pony. He had been fair to me, to be sure, but he had also been just as rough on me as any other officer. He was neither one to look down upon me for my condition, for which I was very grateful, or one to provide me with special consideration for the shortcomings my conditions caused, for which I had mixed feelings, though I knew I deserved no special treatment.

However, this letter, it almost made it seem like... he wanted me to succeed in the mission. Not just to gain whatever it was that he was after, but for my own sake. Why would he do that? Out of all the recruits on the base, I was most assuredly the least deserving of his special consideration.

“Stealth suit?” I asked aloud, somewhat awkwardly. “Um, how do I use you?”

Moving your facial muscles in the imitation of speaking your question without actually vocalizing it is all that is necessary to contact me, I read as the words began scrolling across the suit’s visor. You do not need to make actual sound, lest the purpose of my creation be negated. As for the user’s manual, I have been programmed to encourage a hooves-on approach to instruction. I can provide you with the necessary information as the appropriate circumstances arise.

Oh. Well, that was better than reading a lengthy manual, I suppose. I knew Commander Archangel wanted to get this mission done as quickly as possible, so it would probably be best to learn on the way.

“Firefly?” I inquired, wondering where she’d gotten to. While I had been conversing with the suit and going over the letter, she seemed to have vanished. “Did you find your equipment? Where are you?”

I trotted back towards the front of the armory, turning the last corner before the entryway when I nearly bumped into a pony I’d never seen. She had an odd, almost-sky-blue coat and a shockingly yellow and orange mane and tail. Her body was lithe and sleek, almost as fit as Rainbow Dash’s had appeared when I’d been her, though rather than anything Dash would have been caught dead in, this pegasus was wearing a very professional-looking dark-blue suit.

What would a pony wearing a suit be doing on the base, much less in the armory? Any visiting officer would wear their uniforms, so unless she was a businesspony of some kind—

Oh.

I wondered who it would be this time, and nervously, if it would follow the trend and be worse than last time. I stood my ground, planted my hooves, and stared at the mare who couldn’t possibly be real. Concentrating intently, I began muttering “You aren’t real, you aren’t real, you aren’t real...”

I tried my hardest to make her disappear, but she didn’t. Instead, she spoke.

“It’s about time you showed up,” she grumbled.

I refused to reply. If I acknowledged she was there, then it would just give the hallucination more power.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” snapped another voice, making me jump. A gryphon walked out from the other end of the room. She was an impressive figure, with sleek feathers, wickedly sharp claws, and the glossy fur of a lioness. This was all offset somewhat by a sinister scar that slashed across her face, marking out an eye and even going so far as to have made a cruel line in her beak. “I didn’t kill her. You’re pissed. Get over it.”

“Excuse me?” the mare said, sounding immensely offended. “Do you have any idea what I could do to you? I could have every pegasus in the city out for your blood! I could have Princess Luna herself sentence you to execution! I could have the entirety of the princesses-damned Equestrian military on the lookout for you, to be exterminated with extreme prejudice! And that’s if I’m feeling merciful!”

The gryphon merely rolled her eyes, as if she’d heard the schpeel all before.

“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!” the mare raged, stomping her hoof. “I’M THE LORD MAYOR OF THE MOST POWERFUL CITY THIS WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN, AND I WILL BE TREATED WITH RESPECT!”

She was breathing heavily now, her shoulders heaving, looking like she was about to fly into a frenzied attack at any moment. I knew she wasn’t real, but I still took a step back.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid my doctor has me on a special eye-treatment program,” the gryphon said, smirking and still avoiding making eye-contact. “I’m not supposed to look at any ugly-ass Rainbow Dash wannabes. It upsets my fragile constitution.”

The mare looked like she was about to throw herself at the gryphon. I didn’t think that would be the best idea—on top of the fact that the gryphon didn’t look at all concerned, she was wearing battle armor and was covered in weapons. Grenades hung from a bandolier and a knife was just waiting in its sheath. An early version of an energy pistol was securely snug in a holster on her other hip.

However, before the mare could react, the gryphon reached forward and gently placed a claw on the mare’s lips.

“Shush,” she said simply. “I also have an ear condition. I’m not supposed to listen to too much bullshit. I think I’ve already had my quota for the day.”

With that, the gryphon turned around and began walking off, swatting the mare’s nose with her tail as she did so.

“I had thought you might want to be reasonable and pay me for my troubles,” the gryphon said, not bothering to look back. “But I see that isn’t going to happen. I guess if somepony ever gives me a contract for your head, I’ll do it for free. Well, at least I’ll give them a discount.”

“Don’t you dare walk away from me—”

“Smell you later, Lightning Dust,” the gryphon said dismissively as she began to disappear around the corner of the nearest weapons shelf.

Lightning Dust? I mentally echoed. Hadn’t that been the pony who Fluttershy had said tried to assassinate Rainbow Dash? I suppose that gryphon had to be the assassin.

This was getting too surreal. My hallucinations had never built on each other. It was like they were becoming a continuous narrative.

“If that’s the way you want to do it, Gilda, then fine,” the mare snapped before a wicked smile crept across her features. “I wonder if Gisella will feel the same way.”

Gilda froze.

“What did you just say?” she asked.

“She’s such a lovely girl, really,” Lightning Dust continued, her smile simply growing. “So kind, so sweet. I don’t know how on earth you two can be sisters.”

“What are you playing at?” Gilda asked, the sneer gone from her voice. If anything, she sounded a touch fearful. She backtracked and looked at Lightning Dust’s face, eyes narrowed as they scanned her for any sign of bluff. “Gisella’s back in the gryphon lands. Your jurisdiction hardly extends beyond your own precious cesspool in the sky.”

“She was in the gryphon lands,” Lightning Dust corrected. “Studying meteorology at the nation’s top university, wasn’t she? Such a bright girl, always the top of her class. All the professors love her, or so I hear.”

“Cut the shit,” Gilda said lowly. “Tell me what angle you’re playing or so help me I’ll—

“Or you’ll what, Gilda?” Lightning Dust laughed. “Kill me? I have no doubt you could. You’d make it slow and painful, every second a lifetime of agony until I begged for death. But of course, then Gisella would wish she was lucky enough to have so merciful a fate.”

“Don’t you dare threaten my sister—”

“Threaten her?” Lightning Dust scoffed. “I don’t know what you mean. If anything, I’ve been nothing but a benefactor to the poor girl. And poor is quite the accurate word, is it not? So bright, yet unable to afford even the local university. Such a wonderful coincidence that the top school in the country started offering scholarships for her field the moment she needed them most.”

Gilda’s eyes widened.

“That’s right, you miserable pile of feathers and furballs,” Lightning Dust spat. “The headmaster of Gisella’s precious school was quite pleased to receive an anonymous donation on the simple condition that a lone gryphon could gain entry. Gisella was just as pleased to be invited on a study abroad program to dear old Equestria’s primary weather research station. In fact, as we speak, she’s helping some scientists of mine develop a sturdier, lighter cloudstuff for New Cloudsdale’s defenses.”

“If you hurt her, they’ll have to redefine torture after I’m through with you,” Gilda threatened, though her voice was unsteady.

“I have no intention of doing so, unless you want me to, of course,” Lightning Dust assured. “Is that what you want, Gilda? Is it? I didn’t think so. Unless I think you’re changing your mind, you will do exactly as I say. Is that clear? And don’t even think of trying to ‘rescue’ Gisella. She knows all too well that her study team is working on classified technology. She understands that such matters need to be kept discrete, including her location. You’ll never find her.”

“If you want me to kill Dash, then fine,” Gilda sighed after a tense moment. “But I’m not doing this unless you give me some kind of guarantee that you won’t just kill Gisella when I’m done to cover your tracks. I want insurance.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands,” Lightning Dust chuckled. “But you needn’t worry anyway. Gisella will prove quite useful to me. After the study program, I’ll grant her an internship. If all goes well, and I feel it should, I’ll even let her be a part of my official weather innovation team. It’ll be the life she always wanted and more. All you have to do is give it to her. Who could be a better big sister than someone who makes their little sister’s dreams come true? Oh, sorry; you couldn’t do that—I’m the one doing that. You’ll just be helping me along the way. Do we have an understanding?”

“...Fine,” Gilda grumbled. “But I need time to plan. Dash will be tightening up her security now. Getting in a hit will be even harder.”

“You needn’t worry about removing Dash in the traditional way,” Lightning Dust said, shaking her head. “I’ve realized you’re far too incompetent to take out a simple government figure. You’ll be doing other, more discrete jobs for me.

“We won’t be killing Dash, oh, no,” Lightning Dust continued, a wild, hungry gleam in her eye. “We’re going to destroy her in another way. By the time I’m done with her reputation, with her life, the very ponies she’s protecting are going to want to tear her to shreds themselves. Dash is going to be the most hated pony in Equestria, and she’s going to have to live through every moment of it. For the rest of her life, little Dashie is going to have to face the fact that no matter what good she does, no matter who she saves, everypony will look down on her as the biggest buckup in Equestrian history.”

For the first time, Gilda actually looked a little...eager. Did she actually have a grudge against Rainbow Dash as well? I had thought her assassination attempt was just a matter of business. Blood money. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

“When do we start?” Gilda inquired.

“As soon as we get Surprise to snap out of it,” Lightning Dust said, turning to look me sympathetically in the eye. “Come on, Surprise, fight it! This is isn’t real!”

“Huh?” I said, shaking my head as the images of the two figures began to blur. When I looked back up, Firefly was standing before me, looking worried. “No, not again! I tried to fight it this time, Firefly, I really did! I just couldn’t break free...”

“I believe you, Surprise,” Firefly said. “We’ll just have to try harder next time. Ready to go?”

I nodded, and she led me out the door.

As we walked towards the edge of the base, where Commander Archangel had instructed the team to meet up before leaving for the ground, I took in Firefly’s own armor. It was far bulkier than the stealth suit, being a fully-fledged suit of power armor, and it was even slightly bulkier than the standard suit of armor. Plenty of antennae stuck out from her back, and what looked like a mechanical arm was folded at the base of her neck, connected to some sort of panel lying against her spine. There were even plenty of removable panels, though I couldn’t guess their purpose. However, the most impressive feature I could see were the tiny rocket-like jumpjets jutting out from the sides of her limbs, giving her the extra boost she needed to fly despite the unusually heavy weight of the armor.

“Do you like it?” Firefly asked, noticing my puzzled gaze. “It’s a little less agile than I would have liked, but it makes up for it with other features.”

“What’s it built for?” I inquired. The stealth suit was obviously for quick movements and discretion, just as the Dragonhide models were built for heavy firefights and the Greased Lightning models were made for speed. However, I hadn’t the slightest idea what Firefly’s suit was meant to do.

“Data management,” she replied proudly. “I have an entire intelligence bunker’s worth of processing power at my disposal. It’s essentially a wearable maneframe.”

To prove her point, she slipped on her helmet. The visor flashed, and I saw data running across it in reverse, showing her the suit’s options. She must have selected one, as the antennae on her back started to twitch and dance with crackles of electricity. One of the panels in the front clicked open and she pulled out a retractable wire, the end of it connected to a device that I’d seen used to connect terminals to other machinery. She released it and the device snapped back into place, the panel closing automatically as the antennae retracted and the suit resumed its normal appearance.

Finally, the mechanical arm on her spine unfolded, taking the panel off of her back and revealing it to be a flat monitor. Streams of data appeared on its screen, presenting many more options than could fit on a visor. I assumed that it would be invaluable when managing multiple terminals at once.

“Pretty neat, huh?” she said excitedly. “I’m a one-mare data division with this thing.”

I nodded. It was indeed impressive.

As we trotted past the end of the base’s perimeter, I couldn’t help but notice the ponies flying about shooting me dark glances. They’d always done something of the sort, but before now they’d tried to be discrete about it. If not for Commander Archangel’s interest in me, I knew for certain they’d be acting on the impulses behind those glares. The worst part was that I didn’t blame them.

The other members the commander had selected for our team were already waiting for us, each standing in a circle around the drop point. The drop point itself was a large metal disc set into the clouds, a crack running through its center to allow the two panels to slide to the side and reveal a clear passage through the cloud cover. From there, it would be a straight drop to the ground. The Enclave had been using them for centuries to bypass swimming through the thick cloudstuff, which was difficult given its density and the double-edged sword that came with it being substantial to pegasi.

None of the other pegasi looked up at us as we arrived and took our places by the drop point. Their communication links pinged as their suits connected with the central network broadcasted by Firefly’s suit, and each checked in with an unenthusiastic “Present.”

I could tell this was going to be a rather awkward mission.

Firefly looked at me as if asking if I wanted to say anything. I quickly shook my head vigorously.

“I understand that many of you may have a problem with Surprise,” Firefly spoke through the com link. I felt relieved and infinitely grateful that she was addressing this issue. I didn’t know how much good it would do, but hopefully it would at least make them slightly less frightening to work with. It probably would have worked too, if Firefly hadn’t still been in adoptive big sister defense mode. “However, she and I are in charge, and you are to follow our orders without question, as per Commander Archangel’s instructions. Those of you who don’t, know that I will report you to him when we return. Those of you who plan on taking out your aggravation concerning the loss of the main building on Surprise, know that if I find one scratch on her, I’ll rip you all to shreds.”

I groaned, and Firefly shot me what I knew she hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Everypony ready?” Firefly inquired. The others gave an unemotional affirmative, and I squeaked out my own confirmation. “Then let’s be down and back as quickly as possible. If you read the mission dossier, you’ll know we’re headed to the local SPP Tower, northwest of the Neigh’Orleans ruins. If you didn’t read the dossier, then I feel I should remind you that it’s on the edge of Blackmarsh, so we shouldn’t have to deal with too many groundsider tribals or the mutant flora and fauna.”

She announced a few commands into her suit and the door in the clouds began to slide open with a groan. Warm air wafted up through the opening, and Firefly leapt forward and downward with me hot on her hooves. The others were quick to follow, and we spread out into a formation.

We were currently just over the heart of Blackmarsh, the irradiated swampland covering the coast. Looking back, I could see the ruins of Neigh’Orleans resting on the very edge of the marshy growth, the sea sparkling just beyond it. Sunlight streamed out over the water, but the cloud cover ended just beyond the Neigh’Orleans harbors, ensuring that the dead city and everything further inland had been cloaked in shadow for the last two centuries.

I idly wondered if we’d be headed into the city, and thought it likely if the SPP Tower proved fruitless. There were precious few other locations of interest in Blackmarsh, especially any that could have withstood two-hundred years of water, rust, and overgrown plantlife.

I’d never been to the city, and despite my fear of what bloodthirsty survivors and who knew what else called the ruins home, I found myself more than a little excited to finally get a chance to explore it. I gave it another glance, marveling at how an entire metropolis had been built below sea level right on the coast, with nothing but three immense dams to keep out the sea. Even after all this time, even after the balefire strike that had destroyed the city at the end of the Great War, the dams still stood, their automated mechanics still running.

“Evasive maneuvers!” Firefly shouted through our com link. I looked around just in time to see a humongous, roiling green ball of fire rocketing towards us. Others soon joined the first, bursting out from beneath the canopies of the Blackmarsh.

My wings clapped to my sides and I dropped out of the trajectory of the first shot, watching it soar over where I had just been, singing the air with a crackling hunger and leaving a wispy trail like a comet tail. I could feel its heat wash over me, and I knew that if I had been any closer my blood probably would’ve started boiling. It was a wonder my suit hadn’t melted on my flesh.

“Where the buck did these things come from?!” one of the other pegasi shouted into the com system. Everywhere I looked, I saw our squadron rolling about, narrowly dodging the fireballs as more and more began zooming up towards us. One had been easy enough to dodge, but they were coming in scores now.

I spread out my wings, shuddering as I struggled to breathe, thanking Luna a thousand times over that I hadn’t been burned alive.

Wait, where was Firefly?!

I looked around frantically, riding the updraft over one fireball and narrowly rolling to the side of another as I searched the burning skies for my one and only friend. I couldn’t even see all of the other fliers, though the data in my visor read that we were all still accounted for—

A piercing scream flooded my earpieces, filling my brain with a white-hot horror. The data rearranged itself to read that we were now one squadmate less.

The numbers began dropping in droves. One mare was flying just in front of me, having just dodged one fireball only to have inadvertently ducked into the path of another. It was too close for her to flee, and I heard her scream louder than the first when the flames consumed her. Her body briefly darkened into a shadow in the heart of the blast before dissolving into so many pieces of ash that quickly evaporated.

I nearly choked, my blood running cold despite the heat all around.

No, no, no! I mentally shouted. This isn’t supposed to be happening! Firefly, where are you?!

The screams were deafening now, all around and constant. I knew it wouldn’t be long until my voice joined the awful cacophony. I wasn’t any better a flier than I was a marskpony or any other number of things that it was good to be when you were in the military. I was a maintenance pony, for crying out loud, and I was only moderate at that job at best!

I didn’t want to die. Not like this, not without Firefly, not without ever having conquered my hallucinations. If I wanted to do any of those things, I’d have to make it out of here the same as Firefly.

“Suit!” I mouthed. It would have been a shout if I had said it, but somehow I slipped into simply mouthing the words. “Do something stealthy! Hide me from the attack, do something!”

Initiating thermal camouflage, the suit informed me. I wasn’t disappearing or anything, as I could still see my hooves outstretched in front of me, but the hexagons patterning my suit began changing colors. They darkened to a red before darkening further to a bright green, flickering like the fireballs. I didn’t know what good that would do, but I intended to find out.

Another fireball was headed straight towards me, and I dropped beneath it, only to roll out of the way of the one coming directly behind and below it. Seeing an opening in the firestorm, I shot sideways as fast as my wings could carry me.

I scanned the ground for the next barrage of fireballs, but...it didn’t come. They were still firing, but as I continued to swoop downward towards the base of the SPP Tower, none of them shot right up towards me. What in the world?

Wait a moment... they had been targeting us specifically. In the confusion of the attack, I had either not thought of it or just assumed that the shots were fired at us in a haphazard way. If you fire enough shots, you’re bound to hit something—even I knew that.

However, there must have been a pinpoint precision to the artillery. The number of teammates my visor displayed as still alive had dropped to just two, not including myself, and I prayed desperately that one of them was Firefly. However, a squadron of Enclave soldiers could easily have dodged a barrage of random shots.

The fireballs had been planned. There was a pattern, I realized—they must have been fired so precisely that dodging one would send you into the path of another. We had been herded into the fire.

So why had I escaped?

At the moment, I didn’t really care. The fireballs weren’t targeting me specifically, so I strayed as far from the general line of fire as I dared while still sticking close enough to spot any other pegasi.

I didn’t see anypony.

“Suit, locate Firefly!” I commanded silently.

Communications/positioning system for Private Firefly is offline, I read. What?! No, no, no no no no—

“Suit, find somepony, anypony!” I ordered. Maybe her communications link or identification system had been damaged. Maybe she was still out there. Maybe I could still—no, I had to still be able to find her!

My visor was fogging over as my eyes moistened, though thankfully the suit began venting the helmet to clear the obscuration.

Communications/positioning system for Private Firefly and Private Falling Skies are offline, it told me.

“That’s not possible!” I snarled, checking my teammate count. It still read there were two others left. How could it know that if it couldn’t contact them?! “You know they’re alive, so tell me where they are! Message them! Do something!”

Elevated anxiety level detected, the suit read. Would you like an injection of soothing chemicals?

“No! Tell me where Firefly is!”

Suddenly, my teammate counter switched from ‘2’ to ‘1/0.’ What did that even mean?!

I asked the suit, barely able to form the words. I felt I was going to crash into the canopy any moment now.

One teammate assured alive, it read. One teammate condition is unknown.

I looked back up towards the sky, wondering if I should abandon the mission entirely. Firefly, if she was alive—and she had to be, she just had to—would meet me up there, right? Or would she want to rendezvous at the first objective? Oh, how I wished I had read the mission dossier beyond the equipment specifications!

I was far closer to the SPP Tower than the cloud gate now. For all I knew, the cloud gate might have been vaporized by a stray fireball.

Tears in my eyes, I sped ahead over the canopy towards the white tower.

It reared up before me, piercing the cloud cover. It was featureless and dull, save for a few points higher up where panels had fallen out over the years, though they were few and far between. The control center for the tower would be at the base, and as soon as I reached the monolithic construction, I circled it before crashing through the canopy surrounding its lower levels. Tree branches snapped and oily, slimy leaves slapped me in the face as I tried to make my way down. Twigs scraped at my hide, and I knew I was drawing blood, but at the moment I just couldn’t make myself care.

I touched down on the gooey, muddy bottom of Blackmarsh. Much of the swamp was usually covered in at least a foot of murky, muddy water, and you never knew where it would suddenly drop off into deeper depths. This close to the edge of the swamp, though, the terrain had evened out to merely muddy ground.

My limbs were shaking, and my breaths were coming in rushed, haggard wheezes. The stealth suit offered more ‘soothing chemicals,’ but I rejected them yet again, folding my wings and rushing forward through the undergrowth. The plants whacked me in the face with their low-hanging branches and oozing leaves, almost as if they were consciously trying to keep me from my goal, but I pressed forward anyway, each hit only serving to drive me into a more frenzied determination.

I finally saw the Tower through a gap in the foliage and leapt through it, though my hind leg caught a root that couldn’t have possibly been there a moment ago and sent me tumbling onto a muddy clearing.

Wait, what? The Blackmarsh had grown unimpeded for over two centuries. What could have cleared it away?

I looked up, mud dripping from my chin and belly to see a barren path stretching out to either side of me. Many of the limbs and shrubs lining the path looked mangled, sliced, or even burned. If the plants of the swamp weren’t so naturally moist and the air so damp, the fires that had caused such burns would likely still be burning. What plant matter was left in the clearing had been squashed into the mud by something...heavy. Every few inches, a large indentation had been pressed into the mud. Each indentation was deep and perfectly rectangular, and each were spaced with a mechanical precision.

I gulped as I realized I was looking at the tracks of some sort of vehicle, and a large—no, scratch that—a huge one at that. Maybe even more than one.

Looking up, I saw that even the canopy had been stripped away. Looking back at the cleared stretches, I realized the new path was just as wide as it was tall.

“Stealth suit?” I mouthed. “Are there any other ponies in the area?”

Activating Eyes-Forward Sparkle, the suit told me. A little green bar appeared in the bottom left of my visor, indicating a swarm of ponies—or something—up ahead. All of the tick marks were red. Some places were even so full of hostiles that they merged together to create solid walls of crimson. I detect that your anxiety level has increased again. Would you like an injection of soothing chemicals?

“No!” I silently spat. “Just help me find Firefly!”

Teammate firefly communications and location systems are still offline, the suit said. Additionally, your anxiety level has exceeded safety parameters. As per my programming, I am overriding your rejection command and initiating soothing chemical injection.

“What?!” I gasped, still only moving my mouth. “No, don’t you dare—”

I winced as I felt a sharp pain just below my shoulders, followed by an overpowering numbing sensation. My legs wobbled and I nearly collapsed before feeling resumed and I regained control. Suddenly, I felt really giddy. I giggled, then slapped a hoof over my mouth. For some reason, I found this even funnier than whatever had sparked my last giggle, and I began laughing mutedly under my hoof.

“This. Isn’t. Funny!” I guffawed, unable to control it any longer. I hoped desperately that nopony was close enough to hear me. What was the point of this anyway?! If this was supposed to be a stealth suit, then why inject the wearer with something that made them laugh uncontrollably?! This was no time to be laughing! I had to find Firefly and—

Firefly, I realized. Suddenly, my mood became much more somber, though my limbs still felt lighter than usual and there was a tickling buzz in my belly. Looking up the path, I saw they led straight to the SPP Tower, and I leapt back into the underbrush.

“Suit, don’t do that again!” I reprimanded it, though I knew the moment I had spoken that it wouldn’t do any good considering the suit wasn’t intelligent anyway, artificial or otherwise. It would follow its programming regardless of what I said. I sighed while I galloped as quickly as I could towards the Tower, silently cursing whoever had thought to include laughing juice in a stealth suit. “And I want you to hide me, if you can. There are hostiles ahead. Do something.”

What is the nature of your camouflage needs? it asked. Thermal? Radar? Mechanical? Biological? Other?

“Biological,” I told it.

Initiating background blending spell, it assured me. You are advised to avoid direct contact with hostiles. This suit cannot protect you from being sighted, though it can cause capture to become less likely.

I glanced down at myself as I sped through the undergrowth, ducking under the branches and leaves as best I could but still getting slapped plenty of times. It was like the plants were trying to hit me. I still looked the same as ever, so my suit definitely didn’t turn invisible or anything. I didn’t know what good that made it, but it would have to do.

I nearly galloped straight out of the underbrush, skidding to a halt just before the plantlife abruptly stopped. It was sliced and charred like it had been at the path, and I could see that beyond it the land was muddy and downtrodden with those immense tire tracks. Now, however, I could see their source.

Truly massive vehicles were parked at the base of the SPP Tower, their humongous chassis resting on six wheels, each tire at least a story tall. The cockpits of the things were high up near the front of the vehicles, their tinted windows revealing nothing of whoever was driving them. Unless you were a pegasus, you’d have to make use of the tall ladders built into the sides of the massive machines, the metal rungs leading down from the cab doors to just above the ground, though looking closer revealed that the bottom half was retractable. They must have risen up when the vehicles weren’t parked.

What was most interesting about the vehicles, though, were the insignias painted on the cockpit doors and the flat, elevated beds resting on the back two sets of wheels—or rather, what those flat beds carried. If I remembered history class again, and this would take a lot of remembering, the emblem was an anvil. I hadn’t read about those since the early days of my education, back when they still taught ancient history rather than just wartime history and historical military strategies. The anvil was being struck by a wide pony hoof, and sparks flew from the point of impact.

The flat beds of the vehicles held large, metal barrels nearly as wide and large as the truck beds themselves, and many were still smoking, green sparks wafting out and intermingling with the dark vapors. The barrels of the cannons, as I didn’t know what else they could have been, ended in large conflagrations of complicated machinery. They even had cockpits of their own.

So this was who had been firing at my squadron. Who had murdered my squadron, save two and myself. But who were they? And why were they here? They couldn’t have been here because of...could they? That was too much of a coincidence for my liking, but I couldn’t ignore it.

Keeping to the fringes of the undergrowth, I crept as silently as I could—meaning I broke every grounded branch and twig and ruffled every bunch of leaves present—around the exterior of the muddy circle surrounding the Tower. I couldn’t see inside the trucks, so I couldn’t tell if anypony was watching, and thus I didn’t dare break cover just yet. Speaking of which, were they all inside the vehicles? Shouldn’t there be guards posted outside so that nopony stole them?

When I had crept around to the other side of the Tower, hot, sweaty, muddy, and covered in slime dripped from the trees, I finally saw the ponies who had needlessly shot down my squad. A raised staircase led up from the muddy ground of what had once been a landing pad for aircraft to the entrance to the Tower. At the top of the staircase were two ponies encased in metal, wearing the thickest, bulkiest, most intimidating power armor I’d ever seen. They dwarfed even the Dragonhide models, and each was so loaded with weaponry it was a wonder the ponies inside could walk at all. If not for the built in hydraulics, they probably couldn’t have.

Giving them a careful look, I couldn’t see wings or horns on either of them. Were these the infamous Steel Rangers I’d heard about? The pseudo-military force of earth ponies wearing wartime armor who hoarded technology across the Wasteland? They’d given the Enclave plenty of trouble in the past, being one of the few genuine threats to the pegasus nation’s interests on the ground. Thankfully, we didn’t have many interests on the ground to begin with, meaning that so far our clashes had been few and far between. Nevertheless, even way out at Primum Mobile, every soldier knew they were a force to be messed with. Still, I had never expected even Steel Rangers to have that much weaponry.

Despite every inch of their hides being covered in interlocking metal components or weaponry that looked like it could level a small fortress all on its own, I spotted the anvil insignia on each of them as well. What was that? It certainly didn’t look like the Steel Ranger emblem we’d learned to fear at the military academies, or any variation thereof designating an individual group somewhere in the Wasteland. But if they weren’t Steel Rangers, then who were these ponies? Some rogue faction?

Other ponies were talking to each other beyond the questionable Steel Rangers, an earth pony wearing robes conversing with... was that a pegasus?

What was going on?!

I didn’t recognize the pegasus’ coat colors, and his armor was unfamiliar to me anyway. He wasn’t from Primum Mobile, and he didn’t even look Enclave at all. I supposed he could have been a Dashite, the legendary exiles from the sky, but something about that armor of his just didn’t support that theory. It definitely wasn’t any kind I’d ever seen, though it was decidedly of Equestrian make. I didn’t know if it was meant to be his cutie mark, but on the pegasus’ flank was an insignia that appeared to be a pair of wings made out of swords. That was definitely not an Enclave symbol.

“Suit, can you pick up what they’re saying?” I inquired.

Negative, it told me. I am not equipped with long-range listening devices.

I swore, pondering what I was going to do now. I dared not simply go out and ask, as the tick marks on my EFS were still a brilliant red. Furthermore, whoever those earth ponies were, they had enough firepower to kill me several times over.

Sighing with more frustration, I backtracked into the undergrowth as I saw the pegasi and the earth pony enter the double doors leading into the Tower. I didn’t know how that was possible either—every one of the SPP Towers was supposed to be in the Enclave’s control, meaning only we had the codes to access and enter them—but having seen so many impossible things already, I didn’t question it. The doors closed behind them as I crept back around to my original position.

I checked my EFS again as I tried to formulate a plan, even though logistics and strategy had always been Firefly’s forte. Was still Firefly’s forte. She wasn’t dead yet. She couldn’t be.

The red tick marks were all clustered together directly ahead, though as the EFS told me there were enemies more than it gave me an accurate indication of where those enemies were, I was pretty helpless as to guessing whether they were all inside the Tower or some were still in the machines outside. For all I knew, one might be lounging in an artillery cockpit and blow me to the planet’s core the moment I crept out from cover.

I sat down, resting my frenzied muscles, the buzz from the happy juice having almost entirely died down by this point. I scanned the tower, wondering if I should make a break for one of the panels missing in the upper levels. I doubted it; I had no guarantee that the openings actually led into the Tower and not just a blockade of pipes, wires, and secondary exteriors.

Looking back down, I spotted something I hadn’t earlier. There was a small, shed-sized building attached to the side of the Tower. It must have been obscured by the tires of one of the vehicles before, and I hadn’t been looking from the right angle.

I don’t know how long I waited before I finally took action. I kept glancing at the clouds, wondering if Firefly had done the smart thing and returned to base, even though I knew that she probably wouldn’t have. She would have met at the mission objective, even if the trip killed her, which I knew it hadn’t.

I sighed again and muttered “Buck it.”

I raced out of the underbrush, galloping as fast as I could towards the tower. I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish; I had no idea if there was even a door in the side of the shed-protrusion, much less that it would open. I had no way of knowing if Firefly was in there. My EFS certainly hadn’t pointed out friendlies anytime soon.

But I had to try. I couldn’t go home without Firefly. If she really was dead, I might as well not go back at all.

The vehicles closest to me began emitting a loud, blaring siren’s wail as I galloped towards the Tower. I heard the two earth ponies in power armor shouting to one another on the other side of the massive structure, but I didn’t stop.

WARNING! You have been detected by a mechanical source! Initiating mechanical camouflage.

The sirens suddenly quieted, but the earth ponies kept coming. I could hear the clanking of their armor, the squelch of the mud as their hooves smashed the earth.

I nearly ran into the side of the Tower, praising Luna, Celestia, and whatever other goddesses might be up there in pony heaven that there was, in fact, a door. I yanked it open and darted inside, slamming it closed behind me.

“Why would the alarm stop?” I heard one of the earth ponies ask outside as their armor clunked closer. “They’re not supposed to stop even if whoever has the balls to trespass on us flees.”

“Must be a mechanical failure,” the other answered, sounding much older than the first.

“Our machines don’t get mechanical failures,” the other pony snapped. “We’re the forgemasters of the gods, remember?”

“At ease, soldier,” the other chuckled. “You’ll learn soon enough that even our machines can break down. Just radio it into the Guildmaster. It’s probably nothing, but he’ll want to add it into his report.”

I heard their hooves clanking again, and I tensed up in the darkness of the tiny building, only to hear their hoofsteps grow fainter. They must have been returning to the front doors. I sighed with relief.

Once I was sure they were gone, though I knew I shouldn’t have bothered since the suit responded to silent facial expressions anyway, I mouthed “Suit, can you give me some light?”

Negative, it replied. However, I am capable of providing night-vision. Initiating.

The darkness shifted into an eerie green, showing me a small room with only a lonely terminal, a crate whose lock had been cast aside, and another door leading into the Tower itself. Was it really that easy to get inside?

I tried opening the second door, and much to my surprise and delight, it complied. However, my face fell when I saw that on the other side of the door was an even larger barrier, this one made of steel. Thick metal bars were laid across it, each ends of them disappearing into the walls of the wholly-metal interior of the tiny room beyond the shed-like structure.

Of course, Firefly was also nowhere in sight.

I tried not to let my eyes moisten, refusing to believe that she had perished. Not yet. Not when the teammate counter read that there was at least one other pony left.

Turning to the terminal, I made a frustrated expression. I couldn’t hack at all. Once again, that was Firefly’s thing. It was all somepony else’s thing. When I really thought about it, what good was I? Just a crazy pegasus with no talent worthy of the military. According to the pegasi who had run the orphanage in which Firefly and I had grown up, the purple trio of balloons I bore for a cutie mark meant that I had an active imagination...probably because they couldn’t imagine somepony like me being a party-throwing, fantastically fun pony like Pinkie Pie had been, even though she had born a very similar cutie mark. That was true, but I’d stopped seeing that as a blessing ever since my hallucinations had started, back when I was still learning to read and write. All they did was bring me grief.

“You think you’re worthless?” asked a high-pitched voice, almost as high-pitched as my own. I looked up, startled, to see that the dull green of the nightvision had been replaced with garish colors. Every inch of the interior of the tiny room was now painted with bright, swerving, haphazard strokes of paint, much of which was still dripping. I nearly jumped out of my stealth suit when I turned to see that the painter, mid-brushstroke, was none other than a certain pink pony with an all-too-familiar cutie mark. Her mane was laced with gray streaks, and the veins in her eye were almost creepily defined, but she was unmistakably Pinkie Pie. “Why would you think that? Besides, I thought my pretty painting would cheer you up!”

“I’m really not in the mood, brain,” I said agitatedly. “Can’t you leave me alone for one day? My only friend in the world may be dead, the rest of squad save one is dead, and I’m too useless to do anything about it!”

“Oh, I get it,” Pinkie Pie said, giving me a consoling smile. She sat her paintbrush down in a can of the stuff that adorned the walls, stepped over to me, and sat down next to me. Wait a moment, how had she gotten so many different colors out of a single can of paint? Oh, well. It was a hallucination. It didn’t have to make sense. “This is about Lightning Dust again, isn’t it?”

She put a foreleg around my shoulder even as I tried to turn away from her.

“I know she’s nothing but a Meanie McMeanerson,” Pinkie Pie said. “And she’s always telling the media how you’re wasting taxpayer dollars and killing the nation’s children in the air force and making one big mistake after another and—”

I shot her a dark look. If this was how Pinkie Pie consoled her friends, then it was no wonder she had always been portrayed as crazy in history class. Wasn’t she supposed to have had a drug addiction too? Maybe she was hyped on happy juice of her own.

“Oh, uh, not helping,” she realized sheepishly. “Well, I suppose there is something I can do to help...”

“Pinkie Pie, I told you nopony has time for parties anymore,” were the words that came out of my mouth in an all-too-familiar scratchy voice, even though I had been planning on telling her to buzz off to wherever hallucinations came from. I imagined that if I looked down, I’d see Rainbow Dash’s body instead of my own, so I didn’t bother. “And no, you can’t try and use your ministry to get rid of Dust for me. You know as well as I do that she’s paid off everypony with power in Hurricane, including the Morale officials.”

“I wasn’t going to do either of those things, silly!” Pinkie Pie giggled. She removed her foreleg from my shoulders, raised it high into the air, and promptly smacked me across the face.

“Ouch!” I gasped, rubbing my face. If it hadn’t been real, the pain had certainly felt real, even though in reality I was supposed to be wearing a helmet. I realized that even if I hadn’t been forced into the role of Rainbow Dash, I’d have said the same thing. “What was that for?”

“For getting you off your mopey blue butt!” Pinkie Pie cheered, leaping up, doing a mid-air somersault, and landing perfectly in front me. Somehow, she also seemed to be wearing a cheerleader’s uniform now, complete with pom-poms. What? How had she done that?! “You’re Rainbow Dash! The fastest pegasus in the history of the universe! You tried to buck a dragon in the face! You stood up to the goddess of darkness and chaos incarnate! You’re the best, most splendiferous, most awesomely spectacular fighter in all of Equestria, and everypony knows it! Luna knows it. Even Lightning Dust knows it. Best of all, your friends know it. The only pony who doesn’t know it is you!”

“But I haven’t.... I mean, the war is still going on!” Rainbow Dash’s voice protested from my mouth. “We’re still no closer to winning than we were when all of this started. I really thought that Hurricane could help end that. I thought I could finally do something more than giving us a little ground at the cost of a bunch of good ponies’ lives. But then... she had to go and steal it all from me! I’m the one who made the damn city, and that... that bitch is doing the exact opposite of what I wanted! Why did Luna ever put her in charge of my city in the first place?!”

“Dashie, I know how hard this has been for you,” Pinkie Pie said. “It hasn’t been easy for the rest of us either. We don’t agree with a lot of what Luna is doing, but that doesn’t mean we should give up.”

Rainbow Dash, or myself, or whatever sort of twisted, mixed-up metaphysical role I played in this crazy hallucination, must have not looked convinced.

“Do you wanna know a secret?” Pinkie Pie suddenly whispered conspiratorially. Her eyes shifted from side to side, as if she was afraid somepony would overhear her. “It’s helped me get through a lot of tough times myself. Especially when Luna is being a meanie pants.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“No matter how powerful Luna thinks she is...” Pinkie whispered, leaning closer. Her mane tickled my ear. “...she’ll never be as strong as we are. And she knows it. She’s afraid of us.”

“What?!” Rainbow’s voice gasped. “Pinkie, that’s... that’s traitor-talk!”

“But it’s true!” Pinkie giggled, almost maniacally. “We beat her once, back when she was even stronger than she is now. We can beat her again if we have to. The only reason she’s always trying to keep us apart and do all these meanie-weanie things to us is because she’s afraid we’ll take her kingdom from her.”

“But we used the Elements of Harmony to do that,” Rainbow pointed out. “Besides, Luna may be a big pain in the ass sometimes, but she’s not evil anymore.”

“True and true,” Pinkie agreed, nodding her head rapidly and sending her pink curls bouncing about. “But the moment she starts being bad for Equestria again, wouldn’t it be our duty to kindly and peacefully remove her from power? Besides, we may be just little itsy-bitsy ponies while she’s got godlike powers, but... the Elements gave up on her. They gave up on Celestia too, remember. They chose us. And if the most powerful force in the universe chose a bunch of short-lived equines over cosmically superpowered immortal goddesses, then what can she do to stop us?”

“I...never thought of it like that,” Rainbow Dash admitted.

“Just think, Dash,” Pinkie said encouragingly. “A goddess is afraid of you. You’re stronger than her, craftier than her. And if you can beat her, then who can stand in your way? If a few ordinary ponies can save the world countless times, then anything is possible.”

“I guess you’re right,” Dash said, a touch of warmth having returned to her voice. “Thanks, Pinkie.”

“No problemo, Dashie!” Pinkie said, smiling. “Just remember, if you ever feel blue again—well, bluer than normal—contact me on your terminal. My ministry taps all the wires, so I’ll erase any data about our calls. We can make fun of moonbutt all we want and she’ll never catch us!”

“We don’t have to make fun of her, exactly,” Rainbow said. “But I get your meaning. Thanks, Pinkie.”

Pinkie smiled wider than anypony I’ve ever seen before smacking me upside the head again.

“Ouch!” I gasped once more, but when I looked back, Pinkie was gone, and the dark interior of the building was a dull green again. My voice had also resumed its usual high-pitch. “Wait a moment...”

I was in darkness. I was in darkness, and I’d had a hallucination...but it hadn’t been nightmarishly horrific. It had been a little weird, to be sure, but even though the two ponies, one of which was a hated criminal in Enclave history, had been speaking what could have been considered treason against Princess Luna...the whole thing was oddly reassuring.

Curious, I instructed the suit to turn off the nightvision. Instantly, I felt a tickle along my foreleg, which grew into a rush of pins and needles culminating in the screaming white noise of an army of spiders that—

I turned the night-vision back on, and the hallucination ended instantly. This green filter hadn’t kept the hallucinations out altogether, but it had kept away the bad ones. Even though I was in darkness, since I could see, it was almost as if I wasn’t in darkness at all. This beat a nightlight anyday!

Smiling slightly at this realization, even if I was still internally wrestling with what might have happened to Firefly whether I admitted it to myself or not, I turned to look at the terminal. On impulse, I reached forward and pulled down the keyboard. Navigating to the password select screen, I scanned for any string of letters that might possibly look like they would open the door into the facility. Who knew? Maybe Firefly was in there.

After all, if a few ordinary ponies could save the world countless times, even if they couldn’t save it in the very end, then anything was possible.

My eyes froze when I saw one particular possible password. It could very well have just been a random word—it was a common enough word—but still, it was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

Firefly.

I highlighted the word and hit enter, and the terminal accepted the password.

That’s still not proof, I warned myself. Don’t get your hopes up, Surprise, it could have just been a lucky guess—

Surprise... I read. My heart skipped a beat.

“YES!” I shouted, clamping my hooves on my mouth the moment the word escape my lips. The guards were probably too far away to hear me, but I didn’t want to take any chances, not when I was this close. Not when I knew she was alive.

Surprise,

I hope you’re reading this. I’ll never forgive myself if I let you—

I can’t even type that word.

If you’re reading this, then you can find me inside. I changed the password to my name, so I know only you can follow me in through the emergency access tunnel. I’ll see you in there, and good luck.

Don’t let them catch you.

Firefly

Nearly crying tears of joy, I scrolled down to the disengage lock option for the massive steel door behind me. The terminal warned me that the door would lock itself once I closed the door again, and I’d have to unlock it once more from the inside. I hit enter, and I turned to see the metal bars across the door sliding into the walls.

Firefly was alive. She’d snuck into a building full of ponies who had taken out nearly our entire squad, ponies who clearly outmatched us. She hadn’t done the smart thing and returned to base for reinforcements. But she was alive. I could live with that.

I raided the hooflocker to find a few grenades and some healing potions, all of which I pocketed. I was never good with explosives, but they might be useful to Firefly. Then again, if they would have been, she would have taken them herself...had she left them for me? I decided not to dwell on it too much and slipped into the small cave-like area in what I presumed was the foundation of the Tower.

The thick metal door hissed closed behind me, and I could hear the steel bars slide back into place. There was another terminal by the door, though I didn’t bother to check it. I was certain Firefly would have already rigged it for our escape.

Making sure the stealth suit was still doing whatever it did to keep me hidden, I trotted down the hallway of what must have been some sort of basement for the tower. Or at least, the first level of it.

Doors lined the hallway, and the smoking remains of a few blasted wires and mechanical apparatuses hung from the ceiling. I wondered what they once were and what had destroyed them, but I had more pressing matters to attend to.

A map I found on the wall informed me that the tower was quite deep. It also informed me that all of the important data that might have the access code to Hurricane would be on the bottommost level. Great.

A barely-audible sound reached my ears. A quiet, mechanical hum, it seemed to be coming from the middle of the hall, nestled between alternating doors and large, solid panels of wall. The source of the noise in question was a pair of metal doors slid closed, doors that could only lead to an elevator.

Panicking, I galloped to the double doors, nearly sliding on my hooves past the doors when I tried to stop. If Firefly was already in the Tower, I reasoned, then she was likely already some levels lower. If the elevator was descending, then it must be carrying the ponies I’d see outside down to the bottom level.

Or was it ascending?

I tried the ‘Open Doors’ button, realizing too late that it would of course not work when the elevator was in use.

I could hear it drawing closer, whether it was coming from down below or up above. Frantic, I tried my best to pry apart the doors with my bare hooves. If it was descending, then maybe I could do something to stop it, sabotage the cables somehow. My attempts went about as well as I had expected, though. This had been a government facility during the Great War; why had I thought my puny pony hooves might be able to break open its technology?

There was a ding, and I nearly leapt out of my skin as the door began to slide open. The elevator must have recognized the ‘Open Doors’ command as ‘Stop at This Floor.’ I looked to either side of the hallway, but there was nowhere to hide. If I tried one of the doors, assuming it wasn’t simply locked, whoever was inside would hear the door close by the time I entered.

Acting on instinct, I rapidly flapped my wings, my adrenaline pumping. I scrambled up the wall, my forelegs and hind legs stretching out to squeeze myself between one wall of the hallway and the other. I was elongated as far as my body could stretch, my wings flared out to keep my balance. The elevator door fully opened beneath me, and the ponies I had seen entering the building earlier stuck their heads outside. If they looked up, I was done for.

“Suit!” I mouthed in what would have been a shout if I’d made use of my vocal chords. “Hide me! Make me invisible!”

I am not capable of total invisibility, the suit informed me. You would require a Stealth Buck for such a task.

“What?!” I silently shouted as the ponies, one pegasus and one earth pony, walked out of the elevator and stood back to back, looking down either end of the hallway. I recognized them as the ponies I’d seen enter the Tower.

One, the pegasus, had his wingtip outstretched on the exterior elevator controls, keeping the doors open. Their eyes scanned the hallway intently, as if whoever had made their elevator stop would materialize out of thin air. If my stealth suit could actually turn invisible as I’d thought it would, then I might have been able to do just that, not that I would have. “What good is a stealth suit if you’re visible the whole time?!”

I am capable of total invisibility from mechanical means of detection, including cameras, robotic interfaces, and radar, it told me. For biological camouflage, I am programmed and optimized with an experimental background cloaking spell. This spell is currently engaged.

“It’s probably just a mechanical failure,” the earth pony said, breaking me free from my silent conversation with the stealth suit. His voice was old and hoarse, but still quite strong. He himself looked rather elderly, though he still bore some impressive musculature beneath his ornate silver robes. I noticed that they were emblazoned with the same anvil insignia as the massive vehicles outside. The stallion himself was a bold green color, though his rather frazzled mane and tail were a snowy white. “It’s a miracle these towers have remained standing this long, given all they’ve had to live through. Besides, they weren’t of earth pony make, which makes it even more impressive.”

“I haven’t lived this long on assumptions,” the pegasus replied curtly. His coat was a deep crimson color, and his yellow eyes, though sharp and alert, were slightly lidded, almost as if he was bored. His voice was even, and though he wasn’t as large or muscular as the earth pony, he had a definite strength about him. His frame was lean, wiry, and lithe. He was fully dressed with power armor, save for a missing helmet. What’s more, it definitely wasn’t Enclave. Truth be told, I wasn’t even entirely certain it was Equestrian. I’d also never seen magical energy weapons like the kind he was wearing on either side of him. Squinting, I could just make out a line of curling text etched into the weaponry, reading Eye of the Storm. “Make sure the elevator doesn’t close on us, would you, Hephaestus?”

“Certainly, Red, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t just continue onwards,” said the earth pony, apparently Hephaestus. “The sooner we have the data from the central maneframe, the sooner we can make plans for what it portends.”

“All will be meaningless if neither of us live to return to the city,” countered the pegasus. His name was Red? It seemed horribly simple. I assumed it was short for something, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what. Still, my mind conjured bloody ideas of what his name might be. Red Dagger? Red Baron? Bloody Red Bloodiness of Death and Gore That All Happens to Be Red?

The pegasus removed his wing from the ‘Open Door’ button, and Hephaestus moved to press it himself. I thanked Luna a thousand times over that neither of them had looked up yet.

‘Red’ began trotting briskly down the hallway, his ears alert and swiveling. When he encountered the first door, he tested it to find it locked. He looked unperturbed, and I heard a whirring noise. Looking down at his energy weapons, I saw the power-focusing gemstones on the ends of the weapons’ barrels light up as electricity crackled around them. Wait, electricity? Not mystical energy?

KRA-KOOM!!

I winced, nearly gasping as the crack of thunder filled the hallway. Spots swam before my eyes, and when they cleared, I saw that the door was gone. Little wisps of smoke were rising from the power-focusing gems of Red’s weapons.

That’s not a magical energy weapon, I realized. I didn’t know what it was, to be honest, but I knew one thing for sure—it hadn’t fired magic. It had just unleashed thunderbolts.

Red darted inside, his eyes a little more alive now, as if he was finally beginning to enjoy himself.

“There won’t be anything in there but old files and ancient weather reports,” Hephaestus called out to his pegasus companion. “That’s all these old rooms contain.”

“Unless somepony is using them to hide,” Red called back.

“Wouldn’t you be able to detect them on your Eyes-Forward Sparkle?”

“There are some enemies that even the EFS cannot detect,” Red replied, and I heard him trotting back towards the hallway. If he just happened to turn right to look at his friend, then he’d spot me. I’d be done for. There was no way I could survive a strike from a thunderbolt, not in this thin, flimsy suit. I doubted anything short of Dragonhide armor could withstand such. “And you would know all about the EFS’ design flaws, wouldn’t you? They weren’t made by earth ponies either, after all.”

Red’s shadow fell out of the charred and blasted doorframe.

It was now or never. Tensing up and praying to Luna this would work, I dropped down behind Hephaestus—amazingly, my hooves didn’t make a sound when they touched the floor—and slipped inside the elevator. I slammed my hoof onto the internal ‘Close Doors’ button, but the elevator doors refused to budge. The elevator must have been programmed not to override one button’s commands in favor of those of another.

I gulped. Not because of what I feared would come next, but because of what I knew would come next, and how utterly stupid I was for doing it. Scratch that, how utterly imbecilic I was for allowing myself to get caught up in this situation in the first place.

I darted my front half out of the elevator, placed my front hooves on Hephaestus’ rump, and gave him a shove. The elderly earth pony stumbled forward and tumbled to the floor, startled, as Red stepped out into the hallway and saw us. His eyes locked with mine.

They didn’t look surprised, or even angry. Certainly not fearful, as his caution of a murderous intruder might suggest. He looked mildly amused, as if I was doing him the courtesy of alleviating a fraction of his boredom.

My head just barely managed to hastily retreat back into the elevator before a spray of thunderbolts fired over the fallen form of Hephaestus and incinerated the other end of the hallway, singing the end of my mane. I pounded the Close Doors button and kept hitting the Bottom Floor button as fast as I could.

The elevator doors closed just before a resounding pounding assaulted them from the hallway. I could hear somepony trying to pry them apart, but they had as much luck as I had. As the elevator began its descent, I heard Hephaestus’ voice say “It’s no use trying to open them, Red. If they’ve survived this long, they’ll survive a little longer, even if they aren’t of earth pony make.”

I sighed with relief, my body shaking, as I slumped against the back wall of the elevator. Now to find Firefly, hopefully before those two and their associates could reach the bottom via any existing stairwells, and—

I was flung off the floor, hitting the ceiling as the elevator began dropping like a room-sized bullet. I picked myself off the ceiling and hugged the wall, seeing cracks appear in the elevator’s roof as the panels groaned inward, blackening even as thin crackles of electricity danced along them. That red pegasus must have opened the doors after all and blasted the elevator’s cables, and now he was after the elevator as well!

I didn’t know what to do, but whatever I did need to do, I needed to decide quickly—if the number of buttons marked ‘Basement Levels’ was any indication, it was a long way down. I wouldn’t survive the elevator’s embrace with the ground. I couldn’t very well escape the dropping death capsule either, though. I couldn’t exit through the side doors for risk of being cut in half by a passing room, and that was only if I could somehow manage to open the doors anyway. If I went up, though, that battle saddle would scramble my atoms. Going underneath the elevator was the most suicidal idea of all.

All of these thoughts raced through my mind in the space of a second, and each seemed as horrible as the last. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know—

Another blast of lightning burst through the ceiling, breaking straight through the floor. If I had been in the middle of the falling room, the elevator would be sporting a new shade of red paint. I looked up through the hole, seeing Red darting down after me, his wings pulled in tight. The focusing gems on his gun barrels were charging once more.

His eyes, however, actually looked fully and purely amused. He wasn’t just enjoying this. He was having fun.

My eyes widened as I realized there was really no way out of this. I was about to die, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Tears welled up in my eyes. Firefly would be heartbroken. I would never have overcome my mental instability. And, most of all, I really just didn’t want to die.

“Then don’t,” whispered a familiar voice, one I’d recently been hearing coming from my own mouth. It was high, scratchy, and most all, lethally determined. “Show him why he shouldn’t dare to make you desperate.”

My eyes narrowed as a rush of adrenaline raced through my being. Quicker than I could realize what I was doing, I whipped out a grenade from a pocket, yanked out the trigger with my teeth, and tossed the deadly metal apple up through the hole in the ceiling. Red’s eyes widened and his wings flared before flapping rapidly, knocking him back into the wall of the elevator shaft. He pushed off, as much in the direction of up as he could, before flying back towards Hephaestus.

The grenade exploded, creating dust everywhere as the metal casing of the wall and chunks of the concrete underneath were torn to shreds by fire and force.

I leapt up through the hole, spreading my own wings and slowing my descent, though I still allowed myself to glide downwards as much as I could in the narrow confines. Praise Luna for all those years of practice gliding down the elevator shaft to the maintenance department.

The elevator sped down beneath me, at last coming to a crash at the very bottom and flattening itself in a horrific crunch of metal. Sparks erupted everywhere as the mechanical and electrical components of the machine were crushed.

I... had done it! I couldn’t believe it! I had actually—

“Don’t celebrate just yet!” the scratchy voice warned, breaking me out of the euphoric stupor of not having died long enough to realize my mane and tail were standing on end, as were the fine hairs of my coat. I had lived in the Cloud Nine Resort long enough to know what that meant.

Darting to the side and scraping against the wall, I narrowly dodged another bolt of lightning. It carried straight through the still-dispersing smoke of the grenade, further pulverizing the ruined remains of the elevator car.

Red came diving through the smoke, his battle saddle already sparking again.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?!” I yelled up at him as I yanked out another grenade, pulled out the trigger, and threw it up at him. Really, why wouldn’t he? He had attacked me first! All I had been trying to do was run away.

This time, however, Red didn’t stop his descent. Instead, his wings pulled in tighter, and he rocketed downwards before striking out a hoof, catching the grenade and throwing it back at me. He stopped as quickly as he could, smirking as he watched the grenade continue its fall towards me.

My eyes widened and I pushed off the wall much like he had done, only I shot downwards. I pulled in my wings, angling myself to be as aerodynamic as possible, my heart pounding.

The grenade exploded close, way too close. I could feel the heat on my backside and tail as the flames burst out against the elevator shaft. The force of the explosion knocked me forward like somepony swatting a fly, and the sharp, shredded remains of the elevator car rose up faster than I could slow down.

I realigned myself, flipping around and flaring my wings. I flapped as hard as I could to slow myself while I grabbed onto the sides of the shaft, my hooves burning as sparks flew up from my suit.

WARNING! Stealth suit at 25% damage! Recommend repairs immediately.

“I’m a little busy right now!” I silently spat, finally slowing to a stop before slowly dropping the last few stories to the bottom floor. I winced as I looked at my hooves. The metal components were hot to the touch, heavily scuffed and slightly discolored. I didn’t like the looks of that.

I reached out to try and pry open the last doors, but I gasped in pain at the heat when my hooves touched the metal. I had a bad feeling that the damage didn’t stop at just the suit.

But how was I going to get inside if I couldn’t even touch the doors?! I hadn’t been able to open them with fully operational hooves; I suppose I had just hoped this adrenaline could help me. It certainly did me no good, though, if I couldn’t touch the blasted things! Putting the pressure on my hooves necessary to pry them open, even if I could have, was out of the question.

The air began to charge again, and I angrily looked up through the clearing smoke. This guy just wouldn’t give up, would he? But what could I do now?!

I pulled out another grenade, wincing at the touch, but able to stand it due to the lack of pressure. It was the second-to-last one. That made prospects even worse. Unless...

Before I could reason my way out of it, I yanked out the grenade’s trigger placed it at the edge of the elevator door, and zoomed back up. I pulled out and activated the final grenade as well, though I held onto it even as Red emerged from the smoke of the last explosion, still rocketing down towards me. However, I angled myself so that he couldn’t see it until the last moment.

I threw the grenade up and halted, trying my best to hover in place. I sincerely hoped that I was far enough above the bottom floor to escape that explosion, and I prayed for the same being true of the one about to come from above. Truth be told, I was probably going to die either way. The odds of making it out of this were infinitesimal. Still, just like I imagined a certain blue pony would have done, I wasn’t giving up without a fight.

Just as before, Red zoomed down towards the grenade, reaching out a hoof to grab it. I prayed I’d timed it right. I prayed he wouldn’t catch on. I prayed a lot of things, each more unlikely to actually happen than the last, but that didn’t stop me from praying.

A blast rocked the shaft from the bottom, a wall of fire rising up towards us. At the same time, another fiery flower blossomed above, right as Red reached it. The twin fires, one above and one below, rose up and down to greet me. I hovered and closed my eyes, waiting for the flames.

They never came.

Unbearable heat washed over me instead, and it felt like I was being squished between two mountains of solidified air. The wind was knocked out of me, and I tumbled every which way, losing my orientation on up and down. It was only when I began plummeting that I realized which way was which, and I flapped as hard as I could to regain some semblance of flight, gasping for air as I did so.

I finally righted myself, dropping down to see that the bottom floor’s elevator doors had indeed been blown inwards. I grinned in spite of myself as I swooped through them, the world wobbling in my vision but becoming steadier all the time. I tried to ignore the debris—and other such things—that fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft behind me.

I felt giddy.

This time, I had done it. There was no way somepony could survive a grenade at such close range.

The shock hit me in the face when I realized what I’d just done. I had killed another pony. Not just that, I’d blown him to bits. The most horrific thing about it, though, was not the horrible guilt and horror that I felt because of doing so. Rather, it was the lack of just that.

I had encountered plenty of ponies on my groundside missions, of course, but when conflicts arose it was always the others who had dealt with the situation while I hid. I had just been there to work on their weapons and armor. Sure, I had felt bad for the other ponies, but at the same time, I had never pulled the trigger.

This time, I had done the killing, but I didn’t feel like a murderer. I felt...cold. Sure, I had killed Red, but only because if I hadn’t, he would have killed me. There was literally no other way I could see the situation having played out.

I had never thought killing made you a monster, at least in self-defense, but did feeling as calm about it as I now was make me monstrous? Even at that thought, I couldn’t work up the nerve to feel that it did, which just reinforced the feeling that was nevertheless bland and meaningless.

Maybe that’s just the way it is, I thought, shocked at myself for thinking that. It was so surreal that the oddest thing about killing another pony was how mundane it felt. When I met up with Firefly, I really, really hoped she didn’t think I was a monster for feeling nothing. I mean, I had done the only thing I could have, right? What else could I have done but let myself be killed? Even if others would think that that would have been the nobler choice, I couldn’t bring myself to imagine I would have acted any differently. I had wanted to live, he had wanted me to die, and that’s all there was to it.

Wait a moment—Firefly!

I looked around the room I had entered, finding it to be a large circular space filled with all manner of machinery. They were old and rusted, but still running, each quietly humming as their engines worked, their gears turned, their lights blinked. I could see data streaming on dusty old terminal monitors. One monitor in particular, however, just beyond and above a bulky appliance whose purpose I couldn’t  guess, was free of dust. Wide circular sweeps had cleared it, as if a hoof had recently wiped away the grime.

A shock of electric blue mane rose from behind the bulky appliance, followed by an all-too-familiar hot-pink face.

“Surprise?” Firefly asked, wearing my namesake on her face. “Was that explosion... did you do that?”

“Yes...” I admitted sheepishly, as if I had done something wrong. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off now, but I knew we were still far from safe. “I had to use those grenades you left me to open the door. The elevator wasn’t exactly working. It’s a long story, but that’s not important right now—we have to get out of here! They’re coming!”

“I hadn’t thought you had it in you to use explosives, though I’m glad you used the ones I left you in spite of that” Firefly said, sounding impressed. “But we can’t leave yet. I’m still downloading the data.”

“But—”

“We have a mission to complete,” she cut me off, her eyes pleading.

“Who cares about the mission?!” I said, landing on the metal floor. I winced as my hooves made contact with the ground and pain lanced through my legs, but I remained on the ground. The pain was less than it had been, but still agonizing. I had a feeling I’d be flying a lot more than walking for the near future, but I had to rest sometime. “All of our squad is dead or missing, I was nearly vaporized by some stallion with a lightning battle saddle on my way down here, and I had to kill him with a grenade!”

“You think it was easy for me to get down here?” Firefly shot back, surprising me. “There was a whole internal security system I had to override, and I still had to take out plenty of turrets that I didn’t realize were on a hidden backup system.”

She stepped out from behind the bulky machine to reveal that her armor was covered in harsh dents from what could only have been bullets. I couldn’t imagine how painful that must have been and must still be. I could repair damage like that given the proper tools and time, but for the moment that inverted metal must have been digging into her sides.

“And that’s why we have to finish the mission,” Firefly continued. “We can’t let everypony have died in vain. Their deaths have to mean something!”

“What does that matter if we die too?” I demanded.

“This is bigger than anything we imagined,” Firefly insisted. “Those ponies who shot us down? They’re not anywhere in Primum Mobile’s records. Who are they, and what are they after? Why did they come to the Tower at the exact same time we did? Something is going on, Surprise, something that could be a legitimate threat to the Enclave. If we don’t figure out what, then who knows what could happen to everypony above the clouds? Our squadmates died trying to serve the Enclave, and if we have to die trying to protect it, then what better deaths could we have?”

“I... never thought of it like that,” I admitted. “You really think this could hurt more ponies?”

She nodded her head firmly.

“Then I’ll help you,” I asserted. Her face lit up with a smile. “But we need a plan. We still fail our mission if we can’t live long enough to get the information to Commander Archangel.”

She nodded again, and walked back to the terminal. Walking carefully over to her, wincing with every step even though the pain was lessening a bit—I suppose I could walk well enough—I saw that a cable was connecting her armor to the terminal. DOWNLOAD IN PROGRESS flashed on the screen in bright green letters against the black backdrop while scores of ones and zeroes fled across the monitor.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked. She frowned at my question, concern in her eyes. I could tell this must be hard for her; usually she was the one helping me.

“I don’t know how long the download will take,” she said, glancing back at the terminal. “But I need you to stall whoever is coming down here until it’s finished. I’ll turn my communication link back online so I can tell you when it’s ready. Then I can wipe the data so they’ll get nothing and we can escape.”

“Turn your com link back on?” I echoed. “I didn’t know you could turn it off.”

“Of course,” she said. “Weren’t you unable to locate me earlier? I had to scramble my readouts so the gunners couldn’t track me as easily. That’s the only way I could escape them with this bulky armor. They must have been tracking us from the moment we dropped below the cloud cover; that attack was too well coordinated to have been line-of-sight firing.”

“You scared me to death,” I said as I walked towards the only other doorway in the room. Opening it, I found the stairwell, leading all the way up countless flights. “I thought you might have been one of the ones they got.”

“Sorry to have frightened you,” she said sincerely. “But you did the same thing. I couldn’t get you on my radar either. You must have used your stealth suit to evade detection, right?”

I supposed that was true, and I nodded, not really caring how she had escaped as long as she had. I was so relieved I thought I might collapse, but there would be a time for that later. Right now, I had some ponies to stall. I only hoped they weren’t as intent on killing me as Red had been.

Static buzzed in my ear briefly after I closed the door quietly behind me, and Firefly’s voice confirmed that our com links were reestablished.

“Suit?” I mouthed as I climbed the stairs. My hooves were feeling much better now, though they still stung a little with every step, and I thought I better conserve my wing energy while I could. I noticed that even though the hoof-coverings were damaged, they still didn’t make a sound despite being metal on metal. “How are you holding up?”

Damage remains at 25%, it told me. I recommend repairing me immediately.

“I will as soon as we get back to the base,” I silently promised it. “But first we have to stall some hostiles. What do you recommend?”

Analyzing situation...zero hostiles detected. Hostiles are either beyond EFS range or are utilizing cloaking techniques. Analyzing most likely situation...I recommend tactical assassination or incapacitation techniques, on which I will instruct you on an as-needed basis.

“Let’s go for incapacitation,” I told it. Even if I surprisingly didn’t feel as bad as I thought I should for killing Red, I didn’t fancy killing more ponies unless I absolutely had to.

A single red tick mark popped up on my visor, moving around erratically. I assumed that was because whoever they were would be moving down the stairwell as fast as they could, and the EFS couldn’t gauge vertical distance, only horizontal.

Why only one, though? I had expected a whole herd of hostile ponies.

Regardless, I had to think of a way to deal with this one. I didn’t want to keep ascending the stairs, as there was no way of knowing when I might just run into them. There weren’t a whole lot of places to hide in the stairwell, either.

Looking around, I finally looked up, supposing that the best place to hide would be right below the hostile. I leapt up, using my wings to give my hop an extra push before pushing all four hooves into the bottom of the overhanging underside of the above staircase. There was an opening in the middle of the stairwell, which divided the alternating sets of stairs. It let one see straight up or down, and it was just wide enough for a pony to fit through. It was much narrower than the elevator shaft had been, so nopony could have flown through it, but I hoped that one leap up would work.

I waited as the tick mark continued to dart about, until finally I heard the clanging of hooves on metal. When the top of the staircase I was under began to vibrate with the hoofsteps, I pushed off of one side with my hooves and used my wings to push me up and over the side of the stairs, kicking out my hind legs and knocking the pony into the wall. I caught him completely off guard, and the wind escaped from his lungs as he hit the stone.

He was another pegasus, wearing power armor like Red, but much less ornate and obviously of a lesser quality. Still, I didn’t recognize the make or model. The armor was all blue like the clear sky, with streaks of lightning-colored gold outlining certain features. I only hoped his energy weapons were energy weapons and not thunderbolt-guns.

He turned to try and get a look at me but I scrambled onto his back, holding his armored head in my forelegs, not letting him see me. Getting his wind back, he began bucking about, trying to throw me off. His wings tried to stretch, but I kept them clamped to his sides with my hind legs.

“General!” she shouted. “I’ve encountered a hostile! They’re near the bottom floor! General? General?!”

Now that I was in action, my heart was pumping furiously again, though I admit I had no idea what to do next.

“Suit?!” I silently exclaimed. “How do I—”

A cartoonishly outlined yet still transparent three-step diagram appeared on my visor, illustrating the proper way to execute something called a ‘sleeper hold.’ I followed them, gripping the pony’s neck as tightly as I could and compressing it to try and starve his brain of oxygen. His bucking became fiercer and more frantic. He tried slamming me into the wall, but I held on as best I could. Finally, his motions became less active, growing sluggish until he finally collapsed.

Breathing heavily from my own exertion, I climbed off of him. Placing an ear on his helmet, I heard soft breathing inside, though he remained motionless. I sighed with relief, having not had to kill him.

Still, that only took care of one pony, and I was certain more would come. I assumed this one had just been an advance scout.

My fears were confirmed when a voice came crackling through the stallion’s own communications link. I had to lean down and press my ear to his helmet again to hear it.

“Canary?” the voice called out through a backwash of static. “Canary, do you copy? What’s your status?”

Rising and retreating a few steps, I whispered “Firefly, can you hear me?”

“Copy,” she responded. “How’s the situation?”

“I incapacitated an advance scout,” I told her. “But there’s more coming. I can’t take them all if they come all at once.”

She was silent for a moment before answering with an eerily gleeful tone.

“Wait a moment,” she said. “I have an idea. Just stand still for a few seconds, and... yes! I used your suit to hack into the scout’s armor. Now I have access to their com link from my end. Let’s see if we can scare them away. Oh, and try not to freak out, Surprise. This is going to sound weird, but I have to keep you linked into their com system in order to relay it to them.”

Sound weird? What was she talking about? I recognized her voice and knew what she was up to. How could Firefly frighten me?

A blaring static assaulted my ears, and I winced as an intense dread welled up in the pit of my stomach. My head began pounding, my vision pulsing as the light seemed to dim and then flare, over and over again. And then came the voices...

I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but it was some sort of low, rhythmic chanting. It wasn’t gibberish or some other language, either; I just couldn’t make it out amidst all the static, though it sounded creepily familiar. The voices grew louder, becoming more coherent. At last, I could understand them.

“...We are the Yellow Ones... we feast upon the flesh of the living... we will drain your souls of light and joy... we will erase your very existence from the planes of reality... we will—”

“Shut it off!” I heard an unfamiliar voice wail. “What the buck is that?! Shut it off! Shut it off! SHUT IT OFF!”

“Canary?” called the first voice to contact the mare I had incapacitated. “Canary! Can you hear me! What in the name of Luna is that? Canary!”

“SHUT IT—”

The static abruptly cut off, and with it the dread. I shook, my thoughts swimming in a sea of liquid darkness. I could taste blood. What was that?!

“Surprise, are you okay?” Firefly asked. “Can you hear me? They killed their com link, so it must have worked. Surprise?”

“I’m okay,” I said weakly. “But... who...”

“It’s an old audio file I found down here,” she explained. “It nearly drove me mad the first time I heard it. It was rigged to play through the loudspeakers of the room whenever somepony opened the door. If my armor couldn’t cancel noise on command, I’d have lost it.”

“But...what was it?” I wondered, my legs still shaking.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Whoever set it up did so after the balefire strike. It’s not part of the Tower system; it was all jury-rigged from scraps. Whoever did it must be long gone.”

I certainly hoped so. There was no way in Tartarus I ever wanted to run into whoever had been behind that.

“Anyway, that should buy us some time,” Firefly said. “I think the download is almost—there! It’s done! Come back down and we’ll use the elevator shaft to get out of here.”

I gave an affirmative and hurried back down to the bottom floor. Firefly was waiting for me, having put her helmet back on. The terminal had stopped spewing data, and in fact now looked dead.

Seeing my glance at the terminal, Firefly said with pride that “I wiped all the data and reworked its circuits to overload the next time somepony turns it on. It’ll explode in their faces.”

I wasn’t entirely sure that last part was necessary, but overkill was the least of my concerns right now.

I galloped over to the elevator shaft, spread my wings, and flapped hard. Firefly was hot on my tail, rising up after me with the use of her jumpjets and furiously flapping wings. I imagined it must be frustrating to her to be the one tailing me rather than the other way around, as she was by far the faster and more athletic pegasus. It just went to show how bulky her data management armor really was.

It was a long way up, but we reached the level of the emergency exit without incident. I was terrified that at any moment a flock of pegasi would plummet down towards us from the darkest, highest reaches of the elevator shaft to avenge Red’s death. However, nothing of the sort happened. We didn’t even hear anypony on the other sides of the elevator doors as we ascended the levels. Perhaps they had all just given up and left? I highly doubted that, but we couldn’t hear any activity at all.

Finally reaching the emergency exit level, we left the elevator shaft and hurried down the hallway where I had first encountered Red and Hephaestus. The elderly earth pony was nowhere to be found, thankfully, even though I wasn’t really certain what threat he could have possessed save for signaling the others of his party. I saw Firefly’s shock as we passed by the archive room whose door Red had blown to bits with his lightning guns.

Firefly accessed the terminal and opened the thick metal door for us, and we slipped inside the small shed-like extension to the Tower. This was all going so well. I could hardly believe it. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t put my hoof on it...

Maybe nothing was wrong? It wasn’t impossible to imagine we would actually make it out of here. We’d made it this far, after all. I allowed myself to think of returning to the base, having completed our mission. We had sustained heavy losses, and that would eat away at my brain for ages to come, but I still had Firefly. If I had lost her... I didn’t want to think about that. But I hadn’t. Maybe that meant this whole ordeal would soon be over as well.

I checked my EFS, which was completely devoid of tick marks, red or otherwise, save for the one noting the friendly presence of Firefly right beside me. It seemed, despite how unlikely it had sounded, that the other ponies really had left.

I cautiously opened the door and, seeing nothing but the empty Blackmarsh outside, stepped out. Even the massive vehicles and their impossibly huge guns had left, leaving nothing but those deep tire tracks in the downtrodden mud and crushed plant-matter.

Firefly followed me, and we trotted out into the mud, looking around in disbelief.

“Why would they all leave like that?” Firefly asked, voicing my thoughts.

“I have no idea,” I breathed with relief. “But I don’t plan on sticking around to find out. Ready to head back cloudside?”

“Actually, we have to—”

A small, spherical object appeared in the air about a dozen yards away, zooming towards us. It landed before we could react, burying itself halfway in the mud at our hooves. It was an all-too-familiar shape, looking almost identical to the weapons I had used to escape Red. However, rather than green, this one was a dark blue, emblazoned with a crescent moon insignia against a splotchy black backdrop. In the moment before it exploded, I vaguely recognized it as an official seal of Equestria, modelled after Princess Luna’s cutie mark.

The sphere exploded, and a light blue gas washed over us.

WARNING! my suit told me, the bright red letters flashing across my visor. Foreign gaseous compound detected! Unable to filter!

The world spun, and shapes began to lose their outlines, splitting into doubles of themselves as everything swirled around and began to darken. I collapsed, and I heard Firefly do the same beside me.

Just before the darkness overcame my vision and plunged my mind into oblivion, a shimmer appeared in the air from where the grenade had materialized. The shimmer coalesced into the form of a pony, a pegasus in power armor similar to Red’s, but not as ornate and lacking the Eye of the Storm lightning gun.

“I have the hostiles secured,” the pegasus spoke, looking us over. “How do you want me to proceed, Guildmaster Hephaestus?”

Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

When I awoke, the world was a blur. Sickly dark-green shapes with outlines that melted into one another rushed past me, and even after I blinked a few times they didn’t become any clearer. If anything, they added splotches of red and pink that only made the miasma of color more confusing. The sounds accompanying them weren’t much better, being little more than the grumbling rumble of something mechanical. Sweet scents mixed with gasoline, magical fuel, and the omnipresent sticky humidity of the perpetual summer which blanketed the area...assuming, of course, I was even still in the general area of Primum Mobile.

I slowly rose, surprised to find that I could do so. Wherever I was, why hadn’t I been bound and gagged? The last thing I remembered was being knocked out by those crazy ponies at the SPP Tower, so I assumed they had captured me, but at the moment it certainly didn’t look like that. I looked around me, trying to make sense of things through the throbbing in my head and saw that I had actually been bound and gagged, even though my legs were free and my mouth was unhindered from hyperventilating at the sight I saw below me.

I nearly leapt back while an intense dread the likes of which I’d never experienced welled up in the depths of my stomach, if not my soul. I was looking down at what appeared to be my own body, which was battered and bruised, its stealth suit caked with mud, blood, dust, and burn marks.

But if that was me, then who—what—was I? Where was I? What in the world was going on?!

I glanced down at whatever body I was occupying, but saw myself just as I always had been, wearing the same badly-damaged stealth suit around a badly-damaged pegasus body. Then there were two of me?

That dread came rushing up my spine as I surmised that probably wasn’t the case.

I looked up. Instead of the cloud cover I had expected to see, I saw a clear sky painted a bright, burning crimson, as if the air itself had been set aflame.There were bright lights in it as well, brighter than any stars I had ever seen. They left trails like comets yet never seemed to be getting any closer. It was like watching a meteor shower frozen in time, the falling stars immobile yet burning all the same.

“Is this...” I gulped, glancing back at the Surprise that wasn’t me. “Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?”

Taking another look up at the burning sky, I was guessing this wasn’t pony heaven either.

“No...” I whispered to myself, my eyes, or whatever ghostly substitute I now had for eyes, welling up with tears. “I don’t want to go to Tartarus...”

But then again...if this was hell, then what was my body doing here with me? That didn’t make any sense...perhaps this was some sort of purgatory?

I looked around once more, spotting Firefly’s own battered and scuffed body in her data management armor, also bound and gagged a few yards away. We both appeared to be on some sort of wide metal platform, bumping and shifting as if we were moving over uneven ground. Looking back at the blur of colors beyond the side of the platform, I assumed this was because we were moving, probably through the Blackmarsh.

Ahead of the platform was some sort of raised, thick pillar, and then...oh. Atop the pillar was one of those gigantic green-fire-shooting cannons. Beyond it was a humongous construct that must have been the cockpit of one of the massive trucks, the back of which I assumed I was now riding within. But where was the siding? The trucks had had large boxed-in beds behind them, most likely to prevent whatever they were carrying, like the cannons, from falling out.

“Surprise?” asked a familiar voice, and I looked over to see a sight that nearly made me leap up into the air, and I was quite surprised it didn’t make me vomit then and there. A second Firefly was rising up out of the first, the new one identical to the body still prone on the ground but moving free from it as I was. She looked around in confusion before taking a look down at her own form and having much the same reaction I had. “Celestia’s  sun—what’s happening?!”

“I wish I knew,” I said weakly. “Look up.”

The new Firefly did just that, her eyes widening further at the burning sky and the immobile falling stars. Then she began to squint, looking from one unidentified flying object to the next.

“That trajectory pattern...it looks familiar...” Firefly noted. “And notice how the heads of the objects aren’t really burning; it’s only the space around them, as if the air is on fire...”

I looked up and saw that she was, as usual, correct. Also as usual, though, I still didn’t see how that added bit of weirdness made anything clearer. I still didn’t understand what was going on.

Seeing my confusion, Firefly looked grim as she said “Those aren’t meteors, or comets, or anything natural. Those are megaspell warheads—balefire bombs, most likely having just re-entered the atmosphere.”

“But that’s impossible,” I breathed, my heartbeat quickening further. “There can’t be that many unfired balefire bombs left in the world. And they aren’t even falling! They’re just sitting there in the sky...with burning trails...none of this makes any sense...”

“That seems to sum up the last twenty-four hours expertly,” Firefly said with a wry smile.

She walked over to sit beside me as we watched the blur of plant life that was the Blackmarsh start to peter out and fade away. Open marshland started to replace it, mixes of murky water and scrub, so closely intermingling at times as to be indistinguishable. Shanty shacks began to appear as well, dotting the watery area on ramshackle stilts, many having collapsed long ago but a few still standing tall. Perhaps some had even been built after the apocalypse.

More sturdy buildings began to crop up, though these had definitely been built before the end of the Great War, or perhaps even during it, and it certainly showed. Collapsed or at least cracked concrete structures, worn brick and mortar, rusted steel and shattered glass dominated the scenery. It seemed we were entering the ruins of Neigh’Orleans, or whatever equivalent existed in this limbo world.

I suppose we should have considered, or maybe even tried, to fly away. However, there was no Primum Mobile Military Base overhead to which to return, much less a cloudcover. The best thing to do seemed to be to simply wait and see where we were being taken. Moreover, neither of us seemed to want to leave our bodies, even if we truly were dead. There was no way to take our pulses, as our hooves passed through slumped doppelgängers, and their armor prevented us from seeing any possible rise and fall in our chests.

We didn’t even really speak all that much. I suppose we were just so utterly out of our depth that we didn’t know what to say.

As the giant vehicle began to move further into the city, taking a rather circuitous route towards...wherever we were going...we saw more and more of Neigh’Orleans, far more than either of us ever had. It was a rather sad sight, quite honestly. Many of the buildings had a more classical feel, having been built in a style that was outdated long before the Great War had even started, or so Firefly said. Pictures of other cities I’d seen back in the orphanage’s history classes were usually in an Art Deco style, with big, bold designs meant to invoke feelings of sturdiness and strength.

Neigh’Orleans, on the other hoof, had an earlier feel to it. The designs were more elaborate, but also more carefree, almost lackadaisical. Elaborate swoops and curlicues appeared in the metalwork in certain fences,  a style Firefly called “wrought iron.” Buildings were also narrower than what I had expected, tightly pressed together, leaving little if any room between them, which even then created myriad alleyways and tiny cobblestone streets.

As the truck turned down the wider roads, avoiding many of the main pathways, I saw that much of the city was at least partially flooded. Alleyways and even whole buildings would disappear into murky water, other structures only half-submerged, though the rest of the city seemed relatively dry.

Stranger still  was the utter lack of ponies. There didn’t even appear to be any wildlife, mutant or otherwise. No ghouls, no crazed survivalist ponies, no monstrosities, nothing.  The only signs of life here were the occasional aquatic plants or algae growths which populated the city’s watery areas.

Surprisingly enough, that was far from the strangest thing—some buildings seemed to have disappeared altogether rather than just collapsed. In certain places where by all rights it looked like there should have been some sort of structure, there was nothing. In other places, shadows were cast despite there being nothing to cast them, and in other places still there were bizarre constructs that didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the city all.

There were many statues, for one thing, that didn’t look like anything anypony I knew about from before the Great War would have made, and all in places no statue should have been. They were ponies, mostly, but all of them were in poses of horrid anguish, faces contorted with pain as they crawled away from unseen monsters or hid their faces from invisible sights. Many littered the streets, cracked and covered in ash or mud, but still there, still disturbing to behold.

The strangest thing of all, though, were the shadows that moved. Pony-sized black shapes darted between the larger darknesses cast by big buildings or the things that weren’t there. They raced along the ground, two-dimensional carpets of blackness that contorted and writhed, changing shape as they moved silently along. Sometimes they were pony silhouettes, but most often they were not, instead taking on nightmarish shapes. Luckily for us, though, they didn’t seem to be interested in bothering us. In fact, it was almost as if they didn’t even notice the truck was there.

When the truck finally stopped, we seemed to be nearer to the heart of the city, where buildings were much, much taller. Though they retained their classic feel, many of these approached skyscraper height, with a few towers actually doing just that—and then some. The place at which we stopped, however, was another of those empty spaces where a building should be but wasn’t. It was wedged between two towers, one windowless and composed of cracked concrete with burn marks on one side, the other a tower of steel and glass with shattered windows all up its sides.

As the truck slowed to a stop, the wind began to pick up. It almost seemed to be tugging at my ghostly mane and tail, lightly at first but soon picking up speed. I turned and saw Firefly was being affected by something very similar, though she was being pulled in a different direction. I tried to call out to her, to ask what was happening, or perhaps to demand some sort of normality in this horrific nightmare my life had become, but the wind stole away my words. Firefly lost her grip on the side of the truck and flew back towards her body, which she melted into, becoming one with it once more. My own inanimate doppelgänger was doing the same to me, and darkness quickly swallowed all awareness as I disappeared into my own flesh.

I blinked a few times, quite surprised to find out that I could. I looked around uncertainly, my movements limited, my hooves bound and my mouth gagged. What?

I tried to look up, but saw only the cloudy sky overhead. Gone were the scarlet blaze and the frozen-falling warheads. All around me rose cold steel walls, rusted and chipped, covered in posters, some faded and some looking like they had been freshly printed, not that I knew how dirtsiders could have done such a thing. The ones I could make out were fairly similar to what I would imagine that upstart earth pony in power armor would have said in a propaganda rally—pictures of powerful earth ponies planting trees, building machines, stomping on other tribes, with taglines like “The earth is our domain!” and “ Slaves no longer—We will be the masters now!” Each poster, old or new, all bore that same logo of a hoof striking sparks on an anvil, with the words “Guild of Iron” underneath it.

Who were these ponies? Some fanatical offshoot of the Brotherhood of Steel? I knew even the Brotherhood wasn’t exclusively made up of earth ponies, though; why the tribalist extremism?

“Good, the airheads are awake,” came another familiar voice, one I was much less happy to hear. Turning my head, I saw the upstart power-armored rookie watching us through his visor, his superior hopping down off the back of the truck bed and talking to somepony I couldn’t see. “Get up, you two—Guildmaster Hephaestus will want a word with you.”

Despite the scorn in his voice, I couldn’t help but hear a touch of jealousy in it. I supposed he really did believe in all these propaganda posters. For all I knew, he could have decorated the truck with them himself. I assumed that meeting his leader—and if this was the same Hephaestus as earlier, what else could he be?—would be akin to a fanatical Enclave recruit meeting a High Councilmember...which, admittedly, I had done myself, now that I thought about it, not that I had wanted to do so.

The rookie trotted heavily over to us, the pistons and hydraulics in his power armor hissing as they allowed the impossibly heavy suit to move, and he extended a hoof. A blade popped out of the side of it and he slit my bindings. I winced at how close he came to slicing more than just rough cloth. He turned to Firefly and repeated the process, and as he did, he spoke.

“You two are now prisoners of the Guild of Iron. Your technology now belongs to us, and if we so much as think you’re going to pull any tricks, we’ll electrocute you both alive with your own suits. Got that?”

Could they really do that? I certainly didn’t want to find out, and so I nodded hurriedly. Firefly merely narrowed her eyes and stood up, remaining silent.

“Good,” the earth pony said, apparently taking our silence for compliance. “Follow me.”

He leapt off the back of the truck and clanked heavily to the broken pavement, probably adding a few new cracks in the process. I walked over and did the same, noting that I could stretch my wings. They were sore from the bindings, but the fact that they hadn’t remained bound was what worried me. If this ‘Guild of Iron’ was that confident about killing us before we could escape, I didn’t want to risk simply seeing if I could fly away.

Looking around, we seemed to be in the heart of the Neigh’Orleans ruins, deeper than any Primum Mobile operative had, to my knowledge, ever ventured. I suppose I should have found that significant, but I was simply terrified. I had always wanted to explore the depths of the ruins, sure, but not as a prisoner! Like every other pegasus at Primum Mobile, I had never thought the city ruins ever contained any organized force, just the same mutant monsters and crazy survivalists as the Blackmarsh.

Red Eye’s slave pits were far to the northeast, the Goddess and her alicorn armies even farther away than that, and any other threats also scattered across the Equestrian Wasteland. They all had one thing in common—they were far, far away. Neigh’Orleans was supposed to be as remote and harmless as you could get in the post-apocalypse. Now I was seriously beginning to doubt that once-vaunted truth.

The Guild of Iron rookie stopped to talk to his superior, the older earth pony. Whoever the older earth pony had been speaking to must have slipped away, as I saw no sign of them. While they conversed, I looked up at the towering skyscrapers gracing downtown Neigh’Orleans, marveling at the fact that they hadn’t collapsed even two-hundred years after a balefire strike. Given my suit’s rad-counter, we weren’t even all that far from the impact crater.

The downtown area was dominated by two immensely tall towers, one of steel and glass—or rather, mostly steel with bits of shattered glass sticking to it—and one of windowless concrete...wait a moment...

I followed the towers down to the space where they would have met, finding them separated by several hundred yards, in which rested a colossal dome of some sort. My eyes kept roving between the two skyscrapers, my mind screaming at me that the space between them should have been empty.

I glanced at Firefly, and saw a similar look of confusion on her face. But...why? It had just been a dream, right? My dream, to be exact...you couldn’t share dreams, could you?

Firefly saw my look and seemed about to say something when the rookie called back to us “Come on, you two. The Guildmaster’s ready for interrogations.”

I really wondered how happy this pony was going to be to see me, considering I’d killed his friend. I gulped, wondering if he’d try to return the favor, concluding it would be fairly likely he’d try. Possibly through extensive “interrogations.”  I gulped again.

We were marched up to the dome, and  as we were herded through the doors, guarded on either side by more earth ponies in ridiculously overpowered armor, I could just make out something etched into the side of the wall: MegaDome: Home of the Neigh’Orleans Fighting Fish.

The doors opened of their own accord, sliding to the side as we approached, surprising me yet again. I had always thought that Neigh’Orleans was without power. Then again, perhaps these ponies simply had some generators.

The inside was quite a surprise. Ponies of all sorts, not just earth ponies, but unicorns and even a few pegasi were jostling around each other, all wearing t-shirts or sports coats or even jerseys, nearly all of them bearing an image of a pony with a fish tail and the words “Go Fighting Fish!”

I had to admit, this is not what I had expected when entering the facility.

“Move along,” instructed the armored earth pony behind us, roughly pushing me forward into the crowd. Firefly kept pace with me, looking straight ahead, seemingly unperturbed by the oddness of it all. Actually, looking at her, she didn’t even flinch when one of the new ponies dashed right in front of her, his tail inches from her face. I had to stop altogether to avoid him running into me as he galloped by, shouting back to his friends “Come on! They’ll start the kickoff any minute!”

I was beginning to get a sinking feeling about this, even moreso than earlier.

As we moved through the crowd, or what I was seeing as a crowd but what I was beginning to suspect more and more was an empty lobby, I heard other snippets of conversation.

“What do you mean season tickets are more than a hundred bits?!”

“Mommy, can I get a foam hoof?”

“Lemme get an order of nachos, extra cheese!”

One of the ponies even bumped into me, and I nearly toppled over, feeling the full bulk of his weight before he disappeared back into the crowd. Firefly saw me stumble and glanced concernedly at me, but I waved her off. I would be fine. Out of all of my hallucinations, this was actually one of the more pleasant ones. A milling throng of excited sports fans was almost nice to see, as was imagining what the stadium would’ve been like in its heyday.

As much as I knew the ponies weren’t really there, my subconscious couldn’t seem to grasp that fact, and so I had to weave my way through the crowd as if they were real rather than just walk through them like a ghost. I’m sure it looked rather awkward to the average viewer, but I could feel the prewar ponies bump, shove, and squish against me, so I didn’t have much choice.

Eventually we made it through the crowd and walked out of the lobby to see a whole stadium’s worth of screaming, cheering ponies under a bright, clear blue sky. Grass, actual live, green, unmutated grass blanketed the vast expanse of space in the middle of the ascending seats. There were white stripes of it in certain areas, and even numbers painted on. Goal posts stood at either end, and the burliest, most muscular ponies I’d ever seen were getting into some sort of series of formations at opposing ends of the field.

There were even a few fans down here on the field, sitting in special boxes, and looking a fair bit wealthier than the common sports fan. It baffled me that ponies would pay so much just to see a sport—something that, as far as I knew, hadn’t actually existed for the last two centuries. Even in the Enclave airspace above, where civilization persisted, ponies didn’t watch sports. If they watched anything at all, it was military parades and wargames, all of which were merely meant to bolster the military itself, and that was a purely practical purpose. After the apocalypse, there was no time for games for  their own sake—everything had to have a purpose centered around survival.

It was hard to think of a time when such hadn’t been the case, but seeing it all here before me, and knowing a little from the old history textbooks, I knew the world hadn’t always been a radioactive deathtrap. Maybe back then they would have even had ways to cure my schizophrenia.

I suddenly experienced a brief moment of hatred towards life in this era.

The rookie was leading us to one of the ground level boxes, and again I heard snippets of conversation as we passed the wealthy ponies. Not all of them even seemed to want to be here, again making me wonder why anypony would have bothered with sports at all.

“I know it’s a status symbol to be here, dear, but do we really have to sit this close to those sweaty meat-slabs?” hissed a pony with a monocle to his mistress.

“What if one of the players runs into us? Have you seen the size of those things? They’d flatten us, and ruin my dress!” shrieked a mare with a dress probably worth enough bits to feed a prewar third-world country.

“I know you hate sports, princess, but with everything I’ve been doing for you lately, the least you could do is sit and bear it for one afternoon,” sighed a young earth pony stallion who was patterned with a most unusual pinto coat—brown splotches trading off for white patches. That caught my eye, actually. Most ponies’ coats were a solid color, so to see one that was mixed-and-matched like that was surprisingly striking. He wore an eyepatch and a bandana around his neck, almost making him look like some sort of pirate, though the Fighting Fish jersey he was wearing offset that a bit.

The mare beside him, apparently his ‘princess,’ looked sullen. She herself was a unicorn with a dark blue coat with a light-blue mane and tail, and seemed to have a thing for silver jewelry. Her mane was done up in a ponytail, and for some reason she looked just the slightest bit familiar. On a whim, I slowed down to listen to their conversation.

“Please don’t call me that, Pip,” the mare sulked. “It’s Moonbeam, remember? And with all I’ve had to do lately, being with you is the one time I can relax a bit. You don’t know what it’s like, having the whole country weighing down your withers.”

“Maybe if you let me help you, I could ease up that weight a bit?” Pip said, raising an eyebrow—er, the only eyebrow he had. “Maybe if I was allowed to do my part, I could help end this war a little faster—”

“NO!” Moonbeam all but shouted, drawing a few angry stares from those around her. There was something in that voice that made it seem as if it was seeping into my core, vibrating  my very bones. “You don’t know what it’s like on the front lines, if anything happened to you I’d—”

“Move it along,” the earth pony superior snapped from behind me, shoving me forward with his armored hoof once more. “You don’t want to keep the Guildmaster waiting. Trust me, it isn’t a pretty sight.”

I was frustrated at not being able to hear the rest of the ponies’ conversation. I knew the sight of that mare would nag at me for some time yet. And who was that she was with? Pip and Moonbeam, Pip and Moonbeam... I didn’t know why, but I was going to have to remember those names and see if Firefly knew anything about them when we had the chance. They must have been important historical figures, though I couldn’t imagine who.

We eventually entered a box that was actually closed off from the rest of the field, possessing its own roof and, apparently, soundproof walls and windows. I wondered what the purpose of that was when you were trying to watch a hoofball game, but I chalked it up to just one more thing I didn’t understand about the past.

There was a table with some refreshments, a few luxury chairs, and nothing else save for the single other occupant, the same powerfully-built yet elderly earth pony I’d seen back at the SPP Tower. He was facing away from us, looking out one of the side windows, almost as if he was seeing the same thing I was. He waved his hoof without looking back, motioning the rookie away as he started to come close. The rookie nodded, bowed, and left, leaving only the senior armored earth pony with us. The door shut.

“Good evening,” the Guildmaster said, still without turning around. I wondered what he was really looking at, because right now he seemed intent on the hoofball game outside. “I suppose I should say ‘Good afternoon,’ but it’s late afternoon, and ‘evening’ sounds more appropriate to this type of encounter, doesn’t it?”

He waited for a response, though nopony spoke.

“Not the talkative type, I see,” Hephaestus said. “I suppose I should have expected as much. Pegasi always did prefer to speak with action rather than words. The same often goes for earth ponies, quite honestly. Leave the intellectual prattle to the unicorns, why don’t we?”

“What do you want with us...sir?” Firefly spoke at last, and I silently thanked her for doing what I could not.

“Quite honestly, my dear, I want information,” he replied, still not turning around. What was he looking at? By the way Firefly was craning her neck to try and get a better view, I assumed she was thinking the same thing. “No, don’t think I’m going to interrogate you about your precious Enclave in the sky—I have no interest in antiquated tribal-imperialist political factions.”

That caught me off-guard. If we were the tribal imperialists, then what was he?

“No, I want to know how two young pegasi with minimal knowledge of the Equestrian Wasteland were able to get past the strongest military on the southeastern seaboard, not to mention how one of you was able to actually defeat the most cunning and efficient warrior I’ve ever known.”

He finally stepped away from whatever it was he had been looking at and turned to face us, causing Firefly to gasp. I only saw some burly athlete ponies wrestling for a ball outside, wondering why this hallucination was lasting so much longer than the others and getting more than a little worried because of it. Then, however, the glass seemed to mist over, like somepony had breathed on it, and lines began to form in the fogged glass.

Other things were beginning to fade too. The sunlit field outside was fading into darkness lit by only a few distant lights, and grimy filth began to coat the interior of the booth. The chairs became motheaten, the lights shattered, and the windows scratched.

I sighed in relief. I may have still been a prisoner, but at least I was back in reality.

My relief was quickly cut short by the sight of what Hephaestus had been looking at. The window had been replaced, the etchings having morphed into a large terminal screen with design schematics for the respective power armor and stealth suit of Firefly and I. A large command prompt blinked quietly at the top of the screen, reading ‘Terminate Y/N?’

I gulped, supposing they hadn’t been bluffing about hacking our suits.

“But that’s impossible!” Firefly gasped, her mouth hanging open. “Our security systems are the best in the sky!”

“Which means little on the ground,” Hephaestus chuckled. “Besides, we’ve had access to the arcane technology that led to the Enclave’s modern machinery for ages, and we’ve been improving upon them and other technologies since the day the Guild was founded. This sort of code is child’s play.”

“Who are you?” Firefly demanded. “How does the Enclave not know about you?”

“You’re in no position to be asking questions, miss...Firefly, is it? That’s what your suits’ coding tells me, anyway,” Hephaestus said, looking mildly amused at Firefly’s shock. “Instead, why don’t we find out who you two are. You’re Firefly and Surprise, both privates, one a maintenance technician and the other an intelligence officer. You hail from the Primum Mobile Military Base almost directly above us, which for all intents and purposes is less of a military base than it is a weather outpost. Am I right so far?”

Firefly’s look must have been all the answer he needed. I merely tried not to meet his eyes.

“What the code doesn’t tell me is how somepony of your rank and skills could have outsmarted and defeated ponies who face greater threats on a daily basis,” Hephaestus went on. “That just doesn’t happen, not in the Equestrian Wasteland, unless a few select conditions are in place. Which means, quite simply, that you two are either very, very lucky, or very, very unlucky. Which one, however, is something only time will tell, and I intend to find out.”

Firefly and I said nothing, but Hephaestus walked closer to us, looking us each in the eye in turn. To Firefly, he said “You were able to manipulate technology on a level I’ve never seen outside of my own guild. Imagine what you could do with the proper training?”

To me, he said “You, however, present a far more interesting problem. You’re not charismatic, you’re not a fighter, and you’re not even particularly wise, but you are agile and clever, and that makes you very dangerous. I reason that I can put an end to that danger here and now, just to be on the safe side, or I can turn it to my advantage. With proper training, you too could be of much use to me.”

He took a step back and resumed his position. The fluorescent lights above painted dots of white in his calm, stoic eyes as he folded his hooves in front of his mouth. Not a word passed his lips for a long moment. His eyes flicked between us every so often, his gaze drilling into us like a hot welding laser.

“You want us to work for you, and betray the Enclave?” Firefly asked at last. Her voice was hard, as was her gaze.

“Think of it more as a mandatory opportunity to expand your horizons,” Hephaestus said with a dry chuckle. He nodded to the guard who had escorted us here and said “Take Miss Firefly here to the Technology Division, and notify the Warwing Council. They’ll be all-too-eager to meet the pony who defeated their Lord General.”

The guard nodded and turned to leave, looking back when he saw Firefly wasn’t accompanying him. He gestured for her to follow him, but she merely planted her hooves and shook her head.

“I’m staying with Surprise,” she said. “We stick together.”

“I’m afraid that’s quite impossible,” Hephaestus said, shaking his head. “As admirable as your camaraderie is, I’m afraid I have different jobs planned for each of you. You can either do as I say or allow me to electrocute you both right this instant.”

Firefly glared at him, almost looking like she was daring him to try, but at last she turned to look sorrowfully at me. As much as I didn’t want to be separated from Firefly, I didn’t want the both of us to die either. I nodded at her, giving a weak smile.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “We’ll see each other again—trust me.”

She grit her teeth but nodded and turned to follow the guard outside.

I turned back to see Hephaestus had returned to facing the oversized terminal screen, his back to me. If I had had a knife, it would have been so easy to just...but no. I had killed in the heat of battle, but only because at that precise moment it was literally either him or me. Hephaestus may be threatening our lives, but I wasn’t sure I could kill a pony in cold blood like that...or at least lukewarm blood, considering the blood he already had on his hooves from murdering my entire squadron.

Commander Archangel must be expecting a report soon, but I doubted Firefly would be able to send him one. Even if she could, I highly doubted he could spare any more soldiers for a rescue party, least of all this deep inside the city, outnumbered by hostile forces. I gulped. This was not going to be a fun experience. But I kept telling myself I would get out of it. I had to. I wasn’t cured yet, and I wasn’t about to die with hallucinations muddling up my brain. And I certainly wasn’t going to leave Firefly here with these tech-zealots.

Maybe some information would help me know who exactly I was dealing with, starting with who these ponies actually were. Just who were the Guild of Iron? I was very eager to know if they were indeed an offshoot of the Brotherhood of Steel, and if so, why they broke off from the main organization.

However, just as I opened my mouth, Hephaestus cut me off by saying “Your friend shouldn’t be able to hear us now, so I think it’s time we had a little chat.”

Huh? Uh-oh...I did not like the sound of that...

He turned to me again, his body angled so that I could see his hoof poised over the red button, eyes narrowed.

“What is the Enclave testing?” he said. “How much do they know, and when did they learn of it? How are they getting intel?”

What in the world was he talking about?

“Um...sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I’m not sure—” I stammered.

“Don’t play stupid with me,” he said sharply, shaking his head. “You’re obviously far too good at the role to force it, unlike your friend. You’re also obviously the weaker of the two, whatever the Warwings tell me you did to their precious Lord General. I can see it in your eyes. You’re scared to be down here. Scratch that, you’re downright terrified, especially of me. So why don’t we make this simple and cut the games—tell me what you know, and I’ll let you go free. Refuse to cooperate, and I’ll hoof you over to the Warwings. They’re clamoring for you even as we speak, and my ambassadors can only delay them for so long.”

I ignored the insult—can’t argue with facts, after all, even if calling me ‘stupid’ next to Firefly’s intelligence seemed a bit harsh to me.

“But sir, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. The Enclave isn’t testing anything, at least, not that I know of. Like you said, Primum Mobile is a weather-monitoring facility more than anything else.”

I felt like I was rambling a bit, but I didn’t really know what else to do.

Hephaestus sighed again, rubbing his temple with a hoof, the other firmly remaining over top of the red button.

“Lying to me won’t do you any good, and your friend even less,” he said. “Your military didn’t even attempt to conceal the blast heard emanating from the cloudcover earlier today, and it could be heard with the unaided ear. Our monitors nearly fried at the sound, which shook the windows of the downtown ruins. What was the Enclave testing, and why here? Was it some sort of new super-explosive? Synchronized cannonfire? Sonic weaponry?”

Oh...I got a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with my present circumstances. He was talking about the explosion of the Cloud Nine Resort. He had to be. Adding to that sinking feeling, however, was the fact that I highly doubted he was going to believe the truth. But then again, what else did I have?

“It wasn’t a weapon,” I said with a mixture of fear and sheepishness. “It was, well, um... the base exploded. There was...an accident with the main power generator. The only reason my team was sent dirtside—groundside, I mean—was to secure a new power source.”

Hephaestus began to chuckle, which turned into a laugh, which became an outright guffaw.

“You honestly expect me to believe that?!” he asked, leaving the control panel and trotting right up to me, his face inches from my own. “You think I’m going to believe that the only Enclave force for hundreds of miles explodes the same day we intercept a signal from Hurricane?”

“You know about Hurricane?” I gasped.

“Of course I do!” he shouted in my face, his breath rancid. “Earlier today we detected an signal that utilized a magical encryption that was only ever used on a single piece of Equestrian technology. We know your government contacted the city. What I want to know is how you received the means to do so. If the Enclave had the means of contacting Hurricane, why wait until now to bring the city home?”

He must think we’ve already accessed it directly, I realized. He didn’t know we still needed an access code. He may have detected the signal, but he didn’t know what it said. If he knew this much about Hurricane already, though, did that mean he had the access code? Somehow I didn’t think so. Besides, even if he did, letting him know that’s all that was needed didn’t seem like a good idea. He might very well have it secured it before we did.

“I...I don’t know,” I said, though he must have seen in my eyes that now he was getting somewhere. “Sir,” I hastily added,  not that it did much good.

He raised a burly hoof to strike me, and I flinched, closing my eyes, but the blow never came.

“No, no...” he said to himself, lowering his hoof. “Violence is for your race, not mine. We each have our place, and I will not stray from the boundaries. I have others all too willing to make you talk. If you won’t tell me what the Enclave knows about Hurricane or their new weapon, which I assume they’ll be using to try and take the city from any opposition, I’ll let you speak to them directly.”

Hephaestus walked back over to his terminal and pressed a button—not the big red one, thank the princesses. A voice crackled over a speaker, asking “Are you ready, Guildmaster?”

He gave his affirmation, and the door was almost immediately opened by a pair of pegasi wearing that non-Enclave power armor, all pale blues and bright yellows.

“You will accompany the Warwings to meet the Council,” Hephaestus instructed me. “You won’t be harmed, at least not until you arrive. Try to escape, however, and I’ll forget my tribe’s role for just a moment and electrocute both you and your friend.”

I nodded shakily, following the other pegasi as they marched out into the field and took wing, flying up into the darkness of the MegaDome. I had to fly hard to keep up with them, even in their bulkier armor. Looking down, I couldn’t see more than a few scattered lights throughout the great space, showing precious little but dead grass, rusted or missing seats, and even a few piles of miscellaneous scrap.

Looking up, I realized that I didn’t know where we were going, as the ceiling of the dome was fast approaching. However, much to my surprise, a hole began widening in the very top of the dome, panels moving aside to allow us a way out. Even after seeing their trucks and giant cannons, these dirtsider ponies continued to impress me with their accomplishments, especially given the two centuries of technological stagnation and decay that followed the devastation of the apocalypse.

The pegasus guards remained silent as we flew up out of the dome and up higher and higher all the way to the top of the shattered-glass and rusted-steel skyscraper. The higher we went, the lower my stomach sank, nervous of where I was going and what these ponies would do to me when I got there. Peering in the windows as we ascended, I could see little but dusty darkness, collapsed walls, and even a bit of plant life, though every once in a while, I thought I caught sight of glinting shapes that looked suspiciously like eyes. For the first time ever, I found myself hoping that I was hallucinating again.

The top of the skyscraper seemed to have been renovated, unlike its lower levels. Some of the topmost levels actually had repaired glass, reinforced with internal metal wires in a hexagon pattern. Inside them I glimpsed crates overflowing with ammunition, spare power armor parts, and plenty of stores of food. These ponies seemed to be even better off than Primum Mobile! I hadn’t seen stores like that since, well, ever. Even back at the orphanage in the inner airspace, rations were scarce. Where were these ponies getting all of their stock?

The roof of the skyscraper was adorned with a myriad of large weapons, several of which looked like they could poke holes in a Raptor, and most of which could certainly send a Vertibuck falling to the earth as a flaming wreck. They didn’t look like they belonged on a rooftop, so I assumed these ponies had to have moved them here after the Great War, but if so, how could they possibly have moved them? The guns looked like they belonged bolted to the deck of a warship, not poking over the side of what had probably been an office building two centuries previously.

The guards landed in the area between the cannons, which was surprisingly spacious. The ponies sitting in the gun cockpits turned to watch me as I touched down with my jailers, snickering amongst themselves when they weren’t glaring daggers at me outright. A few, most frighteningly of all, actually looked a little in awe.

“That’s the nag who offed Red Spot?” I heard one of them scoff.

“Can you imagine the shit his soul must be dealing with in Valhalla? Done for by a little bitch like that!”

“She doesn’t look like she could swat a horsefly.”

“She can swat my horsefly anytime!” was the immediate retort from another gunner.  A few others laughed as they saw my discomfort at that last statement. I sincerely hoped that wasn’t the coercion tactic Hephaestus had meant. I unintentionally squeezed my haunches together just in case, which only served to make them laugh harder.

My breaths were coming more unevenly and far more  hurriedly now. A cold fire was simultaneously burning and freezing away in my stomach. I wanted Firefly with me now more than ever. I didn’t care if she did kill all these ponies on my account, at least she would spare me from...that...

I tried to focus solely on finding a way out of this situation, or at the very least, surviving long enough to do so later. To that end, I scanned the rooftop for any means of escape, but the gunponies were all looking at me now, catcalling or sneering or simply silently glaring.

In the center of the rooftop was a small building with a door that I supposed led to the levels below us, and atop the building was a long, thin, needle-like antennae. Beside it, however, was a table where an old terminal sat connected to an odd device I’d never seen. It had crystalline protrusions poking out of it at odd angles, and even the screen, or what I assumed was the screen, looked more like a shiny stone than glass.

One of the guards kept her weapons trained on me while the other began typing away at the terminal as the machine beside it started sparking and spitting static. The crystalline protrusions emitted a soft, pulsing glow which soon quickened its pace to become a steady stream of bright light.

I squinted as I realized the light was bending. It swirled around itself, merging with other beams and widening or concentrating until it finally began to work itself into some sort of construct. The vaguest outlines of pony-shaped light-blobs began to appear, which then became increasingly more distinct until I could make out individual details.

“Holograms,” I murmured. Never in my life had I thought I would see something so rare.

Four transparent pegasi sat in front of me, each wearing what appeared to be some sort of robes, though the folded cloth hung over their bodies in unusual ways, draped over them more like silken strings than a single sheet of fabric. Golden pendants held the sheets together, and each pony wore a wreath of golden leaves on their heads.

I also noticed that each pony was quite old, far older than even Hephaestus. They looked like they could have been from Commander Archangels’ generation.

One of the ponies opened his mouth and began speaking in a hoarse whisper, his words indecipherable. It took me a moment to realize he was speaking some other language. He glared at me as he spoke, but the others were nodding their heads, so I assumed he wasn’t talking to me. Even with the odd language, though, his words came out about a split-second behind the movements of his lips, broadcasted from the machine projecting the holograms.

After a moment of conversing amongst themselves, one of them stepped forward, his see-through hooves looking as if they were walking on the rooftop. He stopped inches from me, and I leaned back uncomfortably, as if he was really there.

“This can’t possibly be her,” he wheezed in Equestrian. “Hephaestus has to be up to some trick.”

“Hephaestus is always up to something in your mind,” said one of the others, a wrinkly old mare, as she rolled her eyes. “Have you ever considered the fact that he hasn’t betrayed us in all the years our two houses have been allies?”

“He hasn’t exactly been the most helpful when he could bolster his own house instead, now has he?” retorted another.

“I don’t like Hephaestus anymore than the rest of you, but what could he gain from lying about who killed our greatest warrior? Besides, our own scouts confirmed it. Red Spot has been defeated.”

“Those scouts could have easily been paid off.”

“Not everything is a conspiracy!”

I watched as the elderly ponies bickered amongst themselves, almost seeming to have forgotten I was even there. I glanced at the two guards, one of which was watching the sky as if she was bored. The other was leaning against the side of the entrance building, his visor lifted and a lit cigarette in his mouth. The other pegasi seemed to have mostly gone back to whatever they were doing at their gun posts, but a few still watched the proceeding with mild amusement, when they weren’t looking at me with a leer that sent shivers up my spine.

Whatever was going on, my captors suddenly seemed much less inclined to think it was a serious matter. I could have made a dash for it, but I didn’t want to test whether or not both guards had slow reflexes. As it was, though, they looked bored enough that I half-wondered if they’d even care whether or not I left.

The ponies in the holograms had resorted to shouting at each other in that other tongue. They almost looked on the verge of blows, and despite how comical elderly ponies fighting would have otherwise seemed, I knew that these ponies could still order my death at a moment’s notice.

“Well why don’t we just ask her?” one of the Council said at last. “She obviously isn’t one of ours, so she has to be Enclave, and Hephaestus couldn’t have gotten ahold of an Enclave pony unless what he claims is true.”

The other ponies eventually grumbled their agreement, and the first old equine turned to me once again and asked “Did you kill Red Spot?”

My skin felt cold, but I could feel sweat as well.

“Y...yes?” I said at last. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to kill him, but he was going to kill me, so—”

“Quit your yammering,” he spat. “Honestly, you Enclave are a disgrace to the pegasus tribe. Of course you tried to kill him when he was out for your blood. That’s how how a battle works.”

“You mean...” I stammered. “You aren’t mad?”

“We’re furious,” the wrinkly mare chuckled humorlessly. “Our top warrior struck down by an incompetent excuse for a pegasus? How could our house be brought to any greater shame? Not to mention the trouble we’ll have with the Law.”

“The Law?” I echoed.

“The Law of the noble house of Hippoi Athanatoi states that any high-ranking warrior’s post may be claimed by any pegasus worthy enough to strike down that warrior in honorable combat,” said the first pony. “Which means you are now eligible for the title of Lord General.”

What?! I wasn’t about to work for these ponies (not if I could help it, anyway), but to think they wanted me to be their new ‘top warrior?’ Well, maybe not wanted, per se, but were considering making me so anyway...

“Hippoi Athanatoi?” I said wonderingly and shakily, trying to get a little bit of a grip on what was going on. “I thought you were the Warwings. And...what if I, er, decline?”

“How dare you use that name in our presence?!” spat one of the Council. “That is a moniker spoken by uncultured brutes too ignorant to grasp the true nature of our house. We are the Hippoi Athanatoi. Not the ‘Warwings’.”

“Additionally...noncompliance with the Law is not permitted,” continued a different Councilpony. “Those who break the Law are to be put to death.”

Oh. In that case, maybe being Lord General wouldn’t be so bad after all...

“However,” the wrinkly mare spoke, giving a smile that was almost a snarl. “The occupation of a Lord General is always vulnerable. The title can be taken at any time by another pegasus in honorable single-combat.”

Suddenly the other pegasi on the rooftop were looking very interested in the proceedings. The smoking guard spit out his cigarette and crushed it beneath a hoof. Every eye of the gunponies was now once again on me and the holograms.

“Formal challenges are not necessary to those outside of our house,” said the last of the Council. She added, a little too jovially, that “Those of our house, however, know how to initiate such a challenge for the ownership of a title, and challenges cannot be declined. Keeping this in mind, we wish you luck, our new Lord General. You shall need it.”

The holograms winked out all at once.

The two guards, the closest to me on the rooftop, nearly climbed over top of one another in their race to get to me first, and the gunponies weren’t far behind them. The mare, however, put a hind hoof over the eye of the stallion and bucked backward as she vaulted over his head. There was a sickening crunch as the stallion was pushed backwards into the entry building, and the mare placed a hoof on my chest, making me flinch despite it being nothing but the barest of brushes.

“I challenge thee to single combat,” she said, grinning wide enough as to seem unnatural.

She then promptly smacked me across the face.

I fell to the ground, barely picking myself up in time to leap out of the way of a blast from her battle saddle. The magical energy shot sizzled as it scorched the rooftop, sending chunks of smoldering concrete flying, scratching me as I leapt into the air, spreading my wings.

Another energy blast whooshed by underneath me, and I could feel the heat through my stealth suit. I dropped down just in time to avoid another blast that rocketed over my head, veering over the side of the rooftop as I did so.

I all but fell, flapping my wings as hard as I could to aid gravity, weaving a serpentine path and praying to the goddesses above that one stray blast wouldn’t strike me down. One shot would have  probably been all it would have taken to liquefy me; I doubted a suit this flimsy could take much of a hit.

“Suit, can’t you do anything to hide me?!” I hissed, not even bothering to mouth the words this time. “Take me off her radar or something?”

Initiating nullification of Eyes-Forward-Sparkle and targeting detection magics, the suit told me.

The blasts suddenly became more erratic. I breathed a sigh of relief, but only a small one.

I needed a weapon, and I needed one fast. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any grenades left. Even if I had, I supposed they would have been confiscated. All I had was a stealth suit that couldn’t turn invisible and a prehensile tail, the purpose of which I still didn’t fully understand.

“Come on, think, Surprise, think!” I muttered to myself, my heart racing. Just my luck that the same day I was lucky enough to defeat one crazy pegasus trying to kill me I’d be thrown into the same situation all over again!

I darted far to the side just as one of the magical energy blasts came way too close for comfort, and I nearly slammed into the side of the building. A few inches closer and I’d have been skewered on those shards of broken glass and rusted, broken steel girders.

Wait a moment...

I flew out, far from the building, picking up speed, going as fast as my wings would carry me. As I leveled out, the blasts came closer, but that was a calculated risk. Turning at the last moment, something I could do much more easily than the other mare could in her bulky power armor, I tucked my wings in close as I darted through a hole in the side of one of the windows, the barest tips of the glass shards scratching along my suit. I could feel the flesh give way underneath it, and my suit scolded me for compromising both it and my own damage threshold further, but that was the least of my worries.

I had only moments to take in the ruins of whatever room I’d found myself in, which appeared to be the rotted office of some bygone corporate drone, before my forward inertia sent me flying out the front door. I nearly crashed into a pile of collapsed cubicle walls, planting my hooves on the moldy carpet and skidding into a turn.

I heard the crash of the guard following behind me, bursting straight through the glass with her bulkier, harder armor.

I had to think fast. If I could just find a place to hide in here, her EFS couldn’t help her spot me. My gaze darted about the place, though I saw nothing but a few uncollapsed cubicles and plenty more offices ringing the structure.

Picking a nearby office at random, I slipped inside, flattening myself against the wall just beside the door, which had fallen off its hinges who knew how long ago. I tried my best to quiet my breathing, to lower my heart rate. This suit may have been good against artificial means of detection, but I was sure she could still hear me if she came too close.

I heard the mare crash into the pile of collapsed cubicle walls, probably knocking against some buried terminals and whatnot underneath it. There was a series of loud curses as she fought her way out of the pile, and a few moments of silence.

“Coward!” she shouted. “Come out and face me like a true pegasus!”

I hardly thought fighting a pony who was essentially unarmed and far less protected while she had a fancy suit of power armor and a battle saddle made me the coward here, but I held my tongue. Goading me out was just what she wanted.

A sound of magic being fired was quickly followed by the sound of cubicles melting into piles of goop. I could hear derelict terminals sparking as they exploded, and even the crackles of what I assumed was the beginning of a fire. More blasts began to cause more distant explosions; I assumed she must be firing at random, hoping to liquefy wherever I was hiding by pure chance.

I sincerely hoped that if she fired at the wall I was hiding behind it would hold up, but I sincerely doubted it. Even so, though, what choice did I have but to wait and slip away when she’d given up and moved to a different area, or perhaps outside again? I hated that my survival strategy depended purely on dumb luck, which I didn’t seem to have all that much of, but I supposed there was nothing I could do about that.

According to my own EFS, the mare was flying about the floor behind me erratically, probably zigzagging all over the place and destroying anything that caught her eye.

“Suit, how do I do that stealthy take-down maneuver thing again?” I mouthed, wondering if maybe I could sneak up behind her when she was vaporizing somewhere else.

Such action is not recommended at this time, the suit told me. Hostile is exceeding safety parameters for said offensive tactic.

“Then what should I do?!” I mouthed, though the frantic quality of the question was probably lost due to it being silent.

Analyzing options...No options found. Recommend improvisation.

What?!

I scanned the room for any sort of weapon. I’d settle for some CEO’s mounted set of prized golf clubs at this point, but the office was bare. Most of everything that had been mounted to the walls, from plaques to diplomas, had fallen to the floor long ago, their glass casings shattered and the documents within unreadable from fading and years of rodents nibbling at them. The desk was covered in similarly useless piles of paper, a charred skeleton slumped over in the chair behind it, and a few bookshelves on the walls, each of which contained not a single book. Instead, the shelves were decorated with a cornucopia of knickknacks which had probably been just as useless two centuries ago as they were now.

I mean, for crying out loud, who keeps a ship in a bottle in their office? What was the point of a ship in a bottle? At the very least, maybe I could throw it at the guard and it would distract her long enough for me to flee to another floor and hide there.

I scooped the ornament off the shelf and held it at the ready, just in case she poked her head in here.

The crackles of fire outside were growing, but that wasn’t too concerning just yet. I could dash outside the shattered window of this office at any time. Being liquefied was a far more pressing concern.

I held up the bottle, wondering just how thick the glass was, and if I wouldn’t be better off simply punching her with a bare hoof. The glass was pitiably thin, and it was a wonder it hadn’t already collapsed from the weight of accumulated dust. The ship inside was no better, a dilapidated old model of an antique sailing vessel with the name HMS Surprise.

That...was an eerie coincidence.

Something seemed to be dripping out of the ship’s tiny portholes as well, some sort of dark blue liquid that quickly filled up the bottom of the bottle. The ship began floating, and if I looked carefully, I could even see tiny waves on the surface of the mock-ocean.

“Not now...” I groaned quietly. “Of all times, why does it have to happen now?”

The liquid began spilling out of the bottle, and I dropped it as I felt the cold drops and sea spray wash over my hooves. Too late I realized my mistake, but I fumbled catching it and the bottle crashed to the floor, shattering and setting the tiny ocean free. It continued to expand, forming a small puddle around my hooves which quickly grew further, seeping into the hallway and lapping at the edges of the office.

But the guard couldn’t have heard it over the growing blaze outside, could she? Not unless she had been on this side of the building, close to this room.

“Come out, come out, chicken!” the mare cackled madly, her voice close.

I could have cried, but I merely snarled even as a powerful dread welled up in my stomach.

The tiny ocean was rising, already a few inches up my legs. It lapped against my fetlocks, and my hooves felt cold and wet. I could even see tiny dark shapes moving about underneath it, as if tiny sea creatures were swimming around me.

“There you are!” the mare exclaimed. I jerked my gaze away from the imaginary fish to see the guard poking her head in my office, a dark grin playing about her mouth. “Tell Red Spot thanks when you see him, you little whore!”

She made to leap into the room, and I could already hear her battle saddle charging.

Then, however...something odd happened.

A shadow fell across the guard before a huge, slimy green thing slammed into her from outside the office, plunging her under the water as she screamed. I stood there for a moment, eyes wide.

I knew what I had just seen wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been. She should be standing right where had been, already having blasted me into dissociated molecules. I may be hallucinating, but she should have still had killed me by now in reality, and I highly doubted my hallucination could carry on after death. If it did, I was probably in Tartarus.

I looked around me, seeing the dilapidated, ruined office and the rundown cubicles beyond it, gray sky outside the shattered window. This still looked an awful lot like the living world, even if an imaginary ocean was lapping against my knees. I felt neither horrible pain nor the fires of Tartarus, so this couldn’t be perdition...could it?

Then what in the world was going on? Had I hallucinated the whole thing, ship in a bottle and the guard finding me as well? Was she still out there searching for me?

I peeked inside the main area of the floor, seeing the fire slowly being put out by the rising tiny ocean. The guard was nowhere in sight, and the sound of magical energy blasts had vanished.

“This doesn’t make any sense...” I said aloud, still quietly just in case the guard was still around here after all. Even if she had just tripped rather than been plunged underwater, why wasn’t she rising back out of the water, ready to blast me in the process?

My thoughts were interrupted by a dark shadow falling across me as well, and I leapt out of it just in time to hear a splashing sound. Turning to look at the space where I had just been, I saw only a green mass submerging back into the water.

However, another green thing was rising across the room, a long, thick, writhing nightmare covered in slick skin and tiny sucking mouths. I’d seen something like that only once in my life, in a tiny illustration of the sorts of animals they used to put on display before the Great War. This thing before me looked like one of the arms of some probably-extinct creature called an octopus, only much, much bigger—and I was pretty sure the octopus suction cups I’d seen in the old picture didn’t have needle-like teeth inside them, or a screeching shriek pelting out of them.

I had maybe a split second to think all this before the tentacle shot across the room towards me. I knew it wasn’t real, it couldn’t possibly be, but as always my subconscious could never distinguish between my hallucination and reality. A deep, primeval fear crawled up my insides and I spread my wings, leaping backwards out of the way.

I turned and flew back into the main room, cursing myself for not dodging the tentacle and flying outside. I cursed myself again for not simply turning and letting the thing pass through me like the nightmare it was. If that guard was still around here outside the parameters of my lucid daydream, then now I was a sitting duck.

I dodged to the side again as the tentacle came rushing out of the office and lashing out at me, just barely missing me before pulling itself back under the still-rising ocean. I darted off in the direction of another office, glimpsing the broken window beyond it, but another tentacle rose in front of it.

Before I could think, my instincts turned me around and I flew back into the heart of the room. All around me, other tentacles were rising out of the murky pseudo-water, writhing, screaming, hungry.

I hated to think what they might be attached to under the water.

The swaying, fleshy lashes surged towards me, sending the water splashing and spraying and pelting against me in waves. I couldn’t see a way out, and they were closing on me quickly. Already, images of those screaming mouths ripping chunks out of me were filling my mind, and my breathing was verging on an all-out panic attack.

I looked around for a weapon, any sort of weapon, but saw only the burnt and half-submerged remains of office supplies, small desks, and cubicle walls. Nearest me was an exploded terminal, and I caught sight of a particularly large shard of glass that must have been blasted outwards from its monitor screen.

Concentrating as hard as I could, adrenaline helping to focus my thoughts, I thought-commanded my suit’s mechanical tail to reach out and grab the shard with its tiny metal fingers, brandishing it like a dagger.

“This isn’t real, Surprise,” I repeated endlessly to myself as the tentacles rushed towards me. “This isn’t real! You don’t have to fight them, just ignore them and they’ll go away—they’re not real!”

The fear eating away at the back half of my brain begged to differ, but I tried my best to simply stand still and to not act, to do nothing. I could make this, I could force myself to see that this wasn’t real!

The first tentacle fell on me, thwacking me like a whiplash as tiny, needle-filled mouths tore at my wings and back, ripping out bits of me, trailing blood. I cried out, shrieking, horrified, but I grit my teeth.

“THIS ISN’T REAL!!” I wailed, but the tentacle simply reared back and repeated its attack, quickly followed by the others.

I knew this wasn’t real.

It couldn’t be.

But it felt real, and in that instant, I couldn’t convince my brain that it wasn’t. The fear of a slow, horrible death flashed through my brain like a string of barbed wire, and I acted without another thought. I spun in a circle, ripping my body away from the grip of the mouths, tearing my flesh off of their hungry teeth. My mechanical tail whipped out and sliced at the tentacles with the glass shard, tearing great, wide gashes in their fleshy surfaces. A dark slimy gunk spewed out, and the building itself seemed to shake with a bellow more ancient than I could fathom, but I continued to spin.

I flared out my wings, blood splattering off of them and mixing with that of the monstrosity as I leapt into the air, using my wings to propel me in a tight circle, flying around as fast as I could in the confined space of the flesh-walls.

My mind was full of pain, which was quickly mutating into something else—something deeper, darker, redder. I was angry. I was enraged, hatred bubbling up at the thought of the horrible curse I’d lived with every day of my life, the thought of my inability to tell the difference between reality and hallucination.   I was really, truly furious now—how could I not be, when I couldn’t even properly live the grey purgatory that was life in the wasteland?  How could I not be angry that my mind couldn’t tell the difference between the blind oblivion of reality and the twisted facade of its own creations? In that moment, all the hurt, all the guilt, all the anger I had borne silently for years came racing to the front of my mind in a tidal wave of black rage.

I screamed, letting out a furious cry as I sped faster and faster, my shard-dagger slicing up the tentacles into slimy chunks. The tops began to fall off, the wide gashes in their flesh spewing out everything inside them, from the dark green blood to shiny-black entrails and a gooey white cartilage-like framework. The tentacles collapsed, nothing more left in them to fight, but still I spun. My attackers slumped, emitting a hissing steam, and I didn’t stop slicing at them and screaming and crying until there was nothing left to distinguish what had once been blood and what had once been anything else.

I finally collapsed, sobbing, in the middle of them all. I was covered in the green goop, my own scarlet mixing with the bilous ichor.

“Why can’t you all just leave me alone?!” I wailed.

The tentacles seemed to be shrinking now, though the goop wasn’t melting off of me. The water of the fake ocean was receding, and the electrical fires of the blasted terminals were returning.

As the hallucination faded, I sat there crying, choking softly on my own tears. I closed my eyes, letting the pulsating darkness behind my eyelids block out the world for few moments.

When I opened them, I didn’t immediately understand what I was seeing.

In the middle of the destroyed office floor I saw the burnt and smoldering remnants of what had once been cubicles smoking underneath the fire of flaming terminal parts, sparks flying out from the oddly-colored fires as the magic which had powered the ancient machines faded away. The heat was almost unbearable and becoming hotter by the moment, and I realized that if I didn’t leave soon the fire would consume me as well.

It was a wonder it hadn’t reached me already, quite honestly, and I looked at my immediate surroundings to see why. There was a circular area, in the center of which I sat, untouched by the flames. It was irregular like every other surface of the office-ruin, though far more destroyed. It was also covered in chunks of something purple and red, a crimson liquid dousing everything. Snaky entrails, all the slicked red color of natural blood, lay scattered about. There even seemed to be some metal components, all a pale blue with bright yellow designs. Whitish bones I could actually recognize as belonging to...

No...

No.

No.

NO!!

I looked up, seeing some of the red gunk splattering the ceiling. Some of it was dripping down, and occasionally a meatier chunk would fall to splat on the ground.

I recognized it, of course, or at least what it—what she—had once been. How could I not? I was the same thing.

And somehow I hadn’t just killed her, not even in self defense. When I’d ‘defeated’ Red Spot, I had blown him up with a grenade, but only because he had planned to blast me with concentrated lightning. It had been an equivalent exchange, all things considered, and I just happened to be lucky enough to have outsmarted him, tricked him into allowing me to deliver first.

This...this was not that. This was something entirely different. This was something impossible. There was no way a weakling like me could do that to a power-armored soldier with just a shard of glass from an old terminal.

But I had.

I hadn’t killed her.

I’d eviscerated her.

I spread my wings, sending out splats of blood as I did so, and leapt into the air. It felt like every atom inside me was imploding at the same time as I rushed outside a shattered window, feeling the warm breeze rushing in from the sea. I wasn’t looking where I was going. I was hardly even thinking, and so I ran straight into another pony who happened to be hovering outside the floor.

“Whoa, there, you can’t leave yet!” guffawed the voice of one of the ponies I’d heard on the rooftop. I bounced off of him and hovered a few feet away, looking at him with blank, glazed eyes. I didn’t know what to think anymore, what to feel, other than that horrific, otherworldly wrongness. “Sourbloom in there is sure to want to finish you off—I’m surprised you gave her the slip, and...”

His eyes widened as he actually took me in. I looked down to see what he was seeing—a small pegasus mare in a tight suit, covered in blood and...meatier bits. Though some of it was my own, very little of it was.

He began screaming, as did the other ponies hovering around me. They must have been trying to watch the fight without getting directly involved, but I suppose they hadn’t been able to see much.

I’d left a red smear where I’d bumped into the gunpony stallion, and he frantically tried to wipe it off, backtracking away from me as he did so. All of the ponies were widening the circle around me, gasping or hyperventilating or screaming and unable to stop.

“She’s one of them!” the gunpony shrieked. “Her eyes! She’s one of the Yellow Ones!”

The other pegasi flew up and away, shooting back up to the rooftop. In some still-functioning part of my mind, I supposed that I should leave before they aimed those cannons at me.

I dropped, angling myself so that I flew down along the side of the skyscraper. I figured that they couldn’t fire straight down, and if I made it to the ground level I could hide in the rambling ruins of the other buildings before they could locate me. Rescuing Firefly could come later, assuming I didn’t fly into a frenzy and slaughter her as well.

Could I do that? I didn’t want to think about it, but like the other mare I had just ended, I could think about little else.

As I flew down, I glimpsed my reflection in a few of the windows that weren’t entirely shattered. I looked much like I had expected, just as I had when I looked down at myself, only now I could see my face and mane. My once-golden curls were matted with gunky redness and my eyes themselves were bloodshot.

However, my irises and pupils were no longer pale rings of violet surrounding dark pools of inky blackness. Unlike any shade I’d ever seen them as, even in a hallucination, even when I’d been the magenta-eyed Rainbow Dash, both my irises and pupils were indistinguishable as a uniform bright, sickly yellow. Red capillaries snaked from the edges of my eyes, reaching for the glowing orbs in the center like ancient ponies worshipping the sun. These weren’t the eyes of a pony. These were something out of a nightmare.

This didn’t feel like a hallucination. Other ponies had seen this, after all, and that had never happened. Then what was it? My mind swirled with desperate attempts to surmise logical explanations, but logic seemed to be about the furthest thing from me right now. Logic seemed a world away, on another plane of existence.

Radiation-induced mutation? No, I hadn’t been exposed to very many rads, not here, not ever.

Some innate pegasus magic welling up inside me? That sounded even more unlikely than the radiation theory.

Maybe...maybe I was one of these Yellow Ones, or whatever they were called. Maybe there was a whole subspecies of ponies like me, ponies cursed with a madness that ate away at their minds until there was more madness than pony, and then only madness, and then...a monster.

I began to cackle madly. All my life I’d been thought of as a monster, in some form or fashion. The other soldiers at Primum Mobile had thought I was too unstable to use a weapon. The other children at the orphanage had bullied me mercilessly, and even though I was an easy target because I could neither defend myself nor even know what was really going on at any given moment, in the moments of clarity I did receive there was always a fear in their eyes.

I’d even thought I might be some sort of mistake. But I’d never thought of myself as a monster. I’d never seen myself through the eyes of other ponies.

Until now. Now, I saw exactly what they were seeing. A dangerous, unstable, inequine freak.

Maybe I really was a monster.

Tears began to flow as I plummeted to the earth below, unable to stop shrieking with laughter. I didn’t know what was so funny. I...didn’t...I didn’t know...

And then I did know.

Ha.

Hahaha.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Life was the joke. Gallows humor. I just happened to be one of its punchlines.

I spread my wings at the last possible moment, feeling a bracing chill wash over me as I swooped through the air and into the buildings below. An explosion decimated a smaller building to my right, but I didn’t so much as spare it a glance. Multicolored clouds of smoke crashed over me like a gaseous tidal wave, and I could feel my suit sizzling under the heat, sparks of every color dancing in the air. I couldn’t tell if it was the gunponies above firing their cannons at me, or just another hallucination—after all, what explosions were multicolored? Then again, though, after today, reality had begun to become so strange that it and my lucid daydreams almost seemed to be blending together. I wasn’t sure if I could tell the difference anymore. Maybe I never could. Maybe my whole life was one big hallucination. Maybe nothing had ever been real. Not me, not Commander Archangel, not Hephaestus, not Lord General Red Spot, not the soldiers who had tried to make my life even more horrible than it already was, not the bullies at the orphanage.

In a way, it was freeing. If I wasn’t real—if nothing was real—then nothing good or bad really mattered. I wasn’t a monster anymore than I was an angel.

Nothing and nopony being real...it had a comfort to it, almost. Not me, not Firefly, not...

No...not Firefly. She...had she been a hallucination this whole time as well? She couldn’t be! She had always been there for me, in and out of hallucinations. In fact, the only time my world had any consistency, she had been there to lend a helping hoof. She had to be real. She just had to be.

And yet...wasn’t it strange that she had always been there when nopony else had been? How she had virtually never left my side, been just the friend I needed? What if...what if I had created her because I needed some sort of support, some sort of mental anchor, lest I be completely pulled away by the maddening tide of my own mind?

“No,” I whispered to myself as another rainbow explosion obliterated a row of shops to my left. Again, I didn’t so much as spare it a glance, though I did begin to weave in and out of buildings in a zigzag pattern. “She has to be real. She has to!”

At that moment, I truly didn’t know the truth of anything, save one. Whether or not she was real, whether or not I believed her to be real, I needed Firefly to be real. I clung to that one desperate shred of hope. I couldn’t prove it, not yet. But I needed it. I hoped. I cried. I prayed.

Soon enough, the explosions stopped tearing up parts of downtown Neigh’Orleans. I must have been too far out of range, or perhaps they had lost me in the maze of urban ruins, or perhaps my mind was just too exhausted to cook up any more hallucinations, at least for the moment.

I sped over flooded districts, seeing my reflection race over the top of murky water littered with algae and sickly-red floating flowers. Dark shapes moved in the depths, and I thought I saw the glints of eyes more than once. It was amazing to me that something could live down there in the irradiated water at all, but I supposed mutants would feel right at home.

The taller buildings were beginning to thin out, and the resulting shorter structures seemed much older than the skyscrapers had been. At last, I landed on the roof of one such structure, an old tavern with the name The Prancing Pony emblazoned on the sign hanging outside its boarded-up door, complete with a stylized illustration of a pony looking drunk and merry.

I sat there, breathing slowly, catching my breath, blood still dripping off of me. Looking down, I could see that most of the scarlet liquid had either dripped off in my flight or dried, caking the suit and staining much of it a dark red. I looked absolutely filthy. Memories of the cold showers in the Cloud Nine Resort were actually starting to make me feel nostalgic.

I scraped off as much mud and blood and other such gunk as I could, though the tangles in my mane and tail were almost impossible to manage. Having finally caught my breath, I mouthed “Stealth suit, I want you to locate Firefly.”

Locating... it told me. Firefly located.

A transparent map appeared in my visor, overlaying the image of the city. A blinking light showed Firefly as being right where I had left her, in the MegaDome at the heart of downtown.

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and letting the air slowly seep into my lungs before exhaling. My heartbeat had finally slowed, and for the first time all day, my head felt at least reasonably clear.

I had to rescue Firefly. I didn’t know what we’d do then, but we couldn’t continue this search for the Hurricane access code. There were only two of us against a city infested with earth pony tech zealots and mysterious pegasus warriors. We were lucky to have survived this long, but we certainly couldn’t take on these two factions as well as whatever else might be lurking in these swampy ruins.

Maybe we should return to Primum Mobile. Surely Commander Archangel, as strange and frightening as he was, would understand that two pegasi couldn’t take on a city of enemies equipped with resources even the Enclave often had to do without. Or maybe, considering the punishment for failure, we should just flee the Enclave altogether. We couldn’t hide anywhere else above the cloudcover where the government wouldn’t eventually find us, declare us deserters, and exile us to the ground anyway, so why not go ahead and stay here? It was hell down here, to be sure, but if Firefly and I found some remote spot far away from this city and any other known terrors, maybe we could live peacefully.

I wanted to believe it, wanted so very much, and so I told myself it was possible. I truly wasn’t sure if it was, but I had to cling onto some hope.

The only problem was how to rescue Firefly. I could evade the Guild’s detection technologies with the stealth suit, but one slip-up and I’d be pelted full of so many holes there wouldn’t be a pony left at all. I definitely couldn’t go in guns blazing, seeing as how I didn’t have a weapon in the first place, and certainly not one that could stand up to antiaircraft artillery and ridiculously destructive power armor. I supposed I could always give myself up to be at least somewhat close to her, but after that stunt with the guard pegasus, they’d probably gun me down the moment they saw me.

In fact, I was surprised they hadn’t electrocuted me through my suit yet. Perhaps I was out of range for their transmitters. My eyes widened, though, as I realized that Firefly was still perfectly within their range. Would they have done away with her because of my actions?

“No, please, no...” I whispered, looking up at the cloud cover and at whatever princess goddesses may be looking down from above.

I quickly tried to think of a reason they wouldn’t electrocute Firefly, but thank the goddesses I realized that they would have nothing to gain from doing so. After all, Hephaestus had said himself that she could prove useful to the Guild of Iron. Even if these ponies killed without a second thought, thus far it seemed that they only did so when they truly thought they could gain something. It was a cold, calculating logic, but at least there was some order to it.

That didn’t solve the problem of them abstaining from electrocuting me, though. I was rather surprised they hadn’t done so already, so I guessed it meant I was indeed out of their transmitter range. I had little doubt that the moment I re-entered that range, I’d be cooked. I could simply leave my stealth suit behind, I supposed, but that would leave me even more defenseless than I already was.

As much as I hated to admit it, I needed weapons, or at least some sturdier armor, before I even thought about rescuing Firefly. I wanted to just rush in there and snatch her away this instant, but that would essentially be suicide. I’d probably never even see the MegaDome before the ‘terminate’ function kicked in, and if I left the stealth suit behind, I may be taken out by some mutant monster even earlier.

Unless, that is, I experienced another impossibly lethal episode of insane viciousness, but I refused to think about that. It had happened, and I couldn’t change that. As much as it made me think I was a monster after all, and probably always would, I reasoned that if a hallucination attacked me again I wouldn’t fight it. I couldn’t kill anypony in reality if I wasn’t doing anything in a lucid nightmare either, right?

I sincerely, desperately hoped so.

In fact, I wondered if my eyes were even still yellow. Perhaps that had just been a bit of the hallucination which had lingered on, but hopefully had faded away by now? Somehow I had the feeling that such wasn’t the case, but I trotted over to the side of the rooftop and looked at my reflection in the grimy window of a neighboring structure.

As expected, my eyes were still a sickly yellow, glowing faintly. I sighed, but couldn’t help but crack a sad smile. If you ignored the origins of this new look and the general freakiness of it, you could almost make it look silly. Sure, I had eyes glowing like some sort of supernatural monster, but sticking one’s tongue out and blowing a razzberry could make just about any face seem comical.

Bringing up my electronic map of Neigh’Orleans again, I marked the distance I currently was from the MegaDome and mentally filed away the number for later. I had no idea how broadly they could transmit a signal, so I thought it best if I stayed at least as far away from their stronghold as I was now until I could figure out a way around it.

That left the problem of where I would actually find a weapon or substitute armor or something that could help me. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t even fly too high—those cannons atop the office building might not miss me again.

I sulked. This was not going to be pleasant. In fact, this was going to be next to impossible. Where was I even supposed to start looking?!

As a shadow fell on me, I realized that wherever I was going, I better get there quickly. The shade cast by the taller buildings was lengthening. Checking my suit’s clock told me it was late afternoon already. It would be dark soon, and I did not want to be out here when the sun finally set.

I walked over to the side of the building and hopped off, gliding down to the cobblestone road. One end of the street dipped into that murky water, and so I set off in the other direction, my eyes nervously scanning for any potential threats. The sounds of insect chirps blanketed the city like a slightly subdued version of the Blackmarsh, and every once in a while I could hear splashes in the myriad nearby submerged areas.

Most of the shops and other such buildings still above water were boarded up, so I didn’t have any shelter but the rooftops if things turned ugly. That’d be fine if I encountered any mutant wildlife, but it’d be another problem entirely if I ran into anypony nasty with a gun.

However, strangely enough, the ruins were eerily devoid of life. The mutants were either avoiding me or absent, as were any crazed survivalist ponies. The absence of the latter was both a pleasant surprise and a haze of uneasiness. As poorly maintained as their weapons usually were and as bad a shot as they could be, survivalist ponies were unpredictable. At least you would know that the mutants would always try to eat you.

Had the Guild of Iron and the Warwings or Hippo Anti-Poise or whatever they were really called cleared the ruins of such life? If they had, on the one hoof it meant I didn’t have to deal with them. On the other, it meant these ponies were even more effective at extermination than I had thought.

I decided to look at the situation positively, at least for now. The ruins were difficult enough to navigate even without things trying to kill me. I had to keep one eye constantly on my electronic map, minimized in the bottom corner of my visor, to make sure I didn’t stray any closer to the MegaDome than I had been. At the same time, this meant that I had to keep doubling back when the streets and alleyways stopped in dead ends, or drowned in that murky water, or covered piles of rubble covered in glowing-green mushrooms that send my rad-counter ticking like crazy.

I would have normally just flown over these obstacles, but I didn’t want to risk being spotted above the rooftops. One lucky shot was all it would take; as I’d already seen, those rooftop cannons could obliterate an entire small building.

Sometimes I did actually hear gunfire, but those instances were few and far between. Thankfully they sounded distant, as they usually sounded like a multitude of heavy artillery. I supposed they were just the two factions on patrol, but I had no way of knowing. For all I knew, a brigade of pegasi patrollers could swoop overhead at any moment and simply spot me from above before dropping bombs on me.

I gulped, praying that wouldn’t happen.

As the sun finally began to set, I was beginning to rethink my happiness at not running into any crazy survivalist dirtsiders. As bad as their weapons may have been, they would have been something, and perhaps I could have traded them something for one. Or, as I had nothing with which to trade, I could possibly just steal one. This stealth suit had to be good for things like that, right? And surely they could afford to miss a single gun...

“Oh, this is hopeless!” I huffed at last. Even if I did find a weapon, what was a two-hundred year old shotgun or a rusty old pistol going to do against a small army of overpowered fanatics?! I might as well just ditch my stealth suit and try to sneak in without it...against all of their detection technologies...

I felt like crying. Firefly was so close, and yet she felt an impossibly far distance away.

The shadow of the derelict old shops lining this street—Neigh’Orleans seemed to have had a lot of shops, I was noticing—finally covered the street entirely. Looking up, I saw the last scarlet hues of dusk beginning to fade out.

Whatever I was going to do, as much as I hated to put it off, it was going to have to wait till morning. I might not have seen any enemies so far, but running into them at night would be far worse than running into them in the day would have been. Besides, soldiers on extended missions to the Blackmarsh had always reported that the local mutants were more active at night.

I looked around for somewhere I could use as a shelter and finally spotted a storefront that wasn’t completely boarded up. Or rather, its windows were still covered in planks, but the door was unbarred. The remnants of what had once barred the door were scattered around it, evidence of somepony who, I hoped long ago, had once probably used the place for the same purpose I intended.

Trotting over to it, I found the door locked. Great. Of course.

Curious, I looked through my saddlebags for anything I might be able to pick the lock. I was no master at lockpicking, but every once in a while back in the basement of Cloud Nine, I had had to unlock doors accidentally—or perhaps not so accidentally—that had been closed on me. I might be able to do this, if I had enough time and I didn’t accidentally break the ancient lock.

I found nothing of use, precious little of anything, really. Harrumphing, I looked around for any scraps of metal but saw none. Wait, my mechanical tail-thing had tiny metal finger-like appendages. Perhaps it could do something?

I mentally willed the tail around, shocked to see that it was still tightly clenching the shard from the terminal screen, the one I had used to...to...

No. Not thinking about that.

I thought-commanded the claw to drop the shard, and it clattered to the cobblestones, amazingly not shattering. It was amazing it hadn’t shattered back during—back when that had happened—but I supposed it was just one more thing to be unexplained. They were beginning to pile up.

I made the claw close two of its three fingers, making it stick out its third. Carefully, I placed the claw inside the lock to the shop door and very, very slowly located its inner mechanisms, manipulating them as gently as I could.

With a click, the door unlocked, and I breathed a sigh of relief. At last, something was going right. I pushed the door open, catching sight of the terminal screen shard as I did so.

I bit my lip. I should have just left it where it was, or better yet, smashed it underhoof so that it could never do...that...to anypony ever again. At the very least, I could throw it as far away as I could, hopefully so I could never find it again even if I tried.

But as horrible as the shard seemed, it was my only weapon out here. It was certainly not enough to face up to the guards at the MegaDome, who could shoot me out of the sky from who knew how far away, but in close-range combat it just might save my life from somepony or something sneaking up on me while I slept. And if it was a mutant, and I did go all impossibly destructively crazy again, then I wouldn’t actually be killing anything with intelligence, right?

I sighed, spat on the ground, and picked up the shard again. I brought it close to my face, glaring at it as if to tell it how much I hated it, but for now it would have to do. However, as I looked closely, I saw something that I was pretty certain hadn’t been a part of the screen when it was assembled in a prewar factory.

The shard was covered in tiny etchings, bizarre symbols I had never seen and didn’t understand. They made me uneasy to look at.

A thought struck me. Had these appeared because of whatever I had done back at the skyscraper, delving into some monstrous hidden part of me? Or...perhaps, just maybe...what had happened had happened because these symbols were already there? They looked vaguely like runes, the sort of which I had only ever glimpsed in textbooks on ancient history, far before Equestria had even been founded. Maybe this wasn’t my fault after all...maybe somepony, somehow, had long ago etched these things into the screen and the pegasus guard and I had just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when it happened.

It was a small hope, but as I was increasingly beginning to realize, hope was just about all I had at this point. I clung to it like a lifeline.

Knowing that, I really should have destroyed it then and there or thrown it away. But it was my only weapon...

I gulped, hoping I wouldn’t regret this, and gripped the shard tightly in my claw.

Pressing the door open with a hoof, I walked inside the shop, re-locking the door behind me. It was covered in dust, though in some places more than others. In fact, what looked suspiciously like a trail of hoofprints lead to the back of the shop, behind the counter, and up a flight of stairs. They didn’t lead back out again, however.

I unintentionally gripped my shard more tightly. Even the hoofprints were covered with dust, so whoever had been here must have used this place as a shelter long, long ago, right? Even if they had never left, they must be dead by now. As sickening as that thought was, they couldn’t be a threat to me now...at least in theory.

But I had to be sure. If this was a safe place, I had to use it, but if not, I had to know.

Activating every bit of the stealth suit I knew about, I carefully and quietly followed the hoofsteps towards the back of the shop. The shop itself seemed to have been some sort of bookseller, but not the likes of which I’d ever read about back in history class. These books looked like they had been ancient even before the Great War, and many of them bore strange symbols on the covers, though none of which quite matched the etchings or strangeness of those on the terminal shard.

Whatever kinds of books these were, though, I didn’t have time to investigate, not yet. Raising the shard over my head just in case I had to use it—to threaten, hopefully not stab, but certainly not eviscerate—I walked past the open counter and ascended the stairs. There was a door at the top, and I carefully pushed it open, cursing the deafening creaking noise.

I hung back in the stairwell, but saw nothing and nopony on the other side of the doorway. There were plenty more bookshelves up here, but also a few homey amenities, such as a sink and a bed, even a pile of blankets or clothes, and a table complete with a refrigerator and an oven. The slightly-ajar door in the back of the room led to a tiny bathroom.

There wasn’t anypony in here, though, not even a body. The hoofprints led to the pile of rags, which...oh...

Stepping into the room with my makeshift weapon at the ready, I walked forward and reached out the claw to poke the slumped form. It didn’t move. I cautiously pushed a little harder, rolling it over, and nearly shrieked. An emaciated pony face, barely flesh anymore, clung to a skull that almost seemed shrunken.

I stared at the body for a few moments, shard still ready to attack, the rational part of my mind trying to convince the rest of me that he was dead, and he couldn’t hurt me. Slowly, for once, the rational side began to gain ground.

As gruesome as this was, he looked to have been dead for some time. Not as dead as some of the charred skeletons I’d seen in the few dirtside missions I’d been on, but he was certainly gone. In fact...he might even have some supplies on him. I felt guilty for doing this, but then again, he certainly wasn’t going to be needing anything anymore.

I sat the shard down and used the claw to search around his pockets for anything useful. I found a few bottlecaps, those remnants of the prewar world that the Enclave had told us dirtsiders used for currency. That could be useful, I supposed, if I ever found somepony willing to sell me anything, though I had no idea how much these few caps would be worth. There was some food and drink as well, a few bottles of Sparkle Cola, a healing potion, some RadAway, a piece of rotted meat that was probably of suspicious quality even when this pony had been alive, and a few small boxes of something called Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

Not exactly the healthiest of meals, I thought, but it was far better than nothing. I sat the Sugar Bombs aside from the rest and caught sight of something else—the pony wasn’t exactly as big as I had once thought. He was resting on a duffel bag, just as grimy and patched as the rags he wore. I pulled it out from under him, wincing as the body toppled off behind it, and eagerly looked inside. Perhaps this was where he kept the real necessities.

Apparently not. There was some sort of ramshackle...thing that looked like a cross between a hypodermic needle injector and a pistol, a vial of bright, bubbly green liquid strapped into the main body of the device and a gun barrel full of tiny, thin needles instead of bullets. What in the world was this supposed to be? Some kind of doctor’s dream to live a double life as a gunslinger?

There was an inscription on the side of the device, which I was hesitant to call an actual weapon, which read Forget-Me-Not. That was...suspicious, but I stowed it away in my saddlebags for later. Who knew? It might prove useful eventually.

Other than that, though, all the duffel bag contained were more of those weird books. Looking around at the bookshelves, I could even see the places where this pony must have grabbed them. What was so important about these weird tomes? Were they spellbooks? Code ciphers? And why these books over the hundreds of others that must be in the shop?

I was really starting to get annoyed with how little I understood about this crazy place. Rather unceremoniously, I tried my best to finagle the body into a corner and threw the blanket from the bed over top of it. I wouldn’t need anything to keep me warm during the night anyway; it was hot enough as it was.

With that, I hopped on the bed and managed to open one of the boxes of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. I had no qualms about eating two-hundred year old food; the prewar Equestrians might not have been able to make everything last, namely themselves, but we’d learned from military debriefings that the preservation spells on sealed food items were indeed built to last. Though not exactly the most tasty or sanitary, at least you were unlikely to die from eating something once sold in a grocery store and now found in its ruins. Most of the time, anyway.

I inhaled the scent of the Sugar Bombs, and instantly my mouth began salivating. I’d eat just about anything right now, but these snacks smelled far better than they had any right to smell. I dug my snout into the box and munched hungrily, relishing the surprisingly untarnished taste of chocolate, sugar, and about two-dozen different kinds of magically-enhanced synthetic preservatives.

I tore through the other boxes as well, and was still left feeling hungry afterwards, but far better off than when I had started. My eyelids were growing heavy as well, and so I stretched, yawned, and curled up on the bed.

Then, feeling a little paranoid but preferring to be safe rather than sorry, I rose and wedged the chair at the kitchen table up against the bedroom door, making sure to lock it in the process. Satisfied, I curled back up on the bed.

The lights of this place had burnt out long ago, so I hadn’t even tried the light switches, meaning that the room had grown darker and darker as the sun finally dove behind the horizon. I had my stealth suit’s night vision mode to prevent any nasty darkness-induced hallucinations, though, so for the first time ever I wasn’t all that worried about falling to sleep without a nightlight.

The row of windows of the place overlooked the street, but the shades had been drawn and the windows themselves were completely boarded up, so I doubted I had much to worry about there. All in all, this was probably about as safe as I could get in these ruins, with my being all alone. I missed Firefly terribly, and it was almost a physical ache being separate from her, but I promised myself that somehow I would find a way to rescue her. I wasn’t going to let her go without a fight, at the very least, and even if I never did free her I’d die trying.

Trying to keep that determination up and running even as darkness overtook my consciousness, trying not to let tears seep through my closed eyes, I drifted off to sleep.

. . .

When I awoke, I yawned and stretched, looking around. The room looked much the same as it had, but something felt...off. I couldn’t put my hoof on it, but it was almost as if I was being watched.

Sliding off the bed, I trotted over to the windows, where the red light of dawn was seeping in between the boards and the blinds. I squinted through the small openings, wondering if I might actually see somepony watching me and shivering at the thought. In retrospect, I wish that had actually been the case rather than what I did see.

The street below was barren, and the other shops and buildings lining it were just as derelict and ruined as ever. The sky above, though, was a burning crimson, like the unholy offspring of blood and hellfire. Falling stars that I knew weren’t really falling stars burned motionless in the air, miles above us.

No, this couldn’t be real. This was impossible.

I turned back to look at the room, realizing what I had missed earlier. The strange symbols on the spines of the books had changed into legible Equestrian, though none of the titles made them any less frightening. They had names like Alchemical Secrets of the Shadow-Ghasts and Existential Erasure Runes and Blood Magic for Beginners.

Most frightening of all, though, was the thing sitting in the place where the dead pony’s body once was. It looked exactly like him, though it was still in the position it had been when I first found the corpse, rather than slumped in the corner. Its expression horrified beyond all reason, a perfect likeness of the dead pony lay hunched over the duffel bag in the form of a stone statue.

“...pony hungry tasty flesh sweet blood dark dreams eat eat eat...”

I whirled around at the horrid screech of a voice to see a nightmarish pony-shaped shadow seeping in under the doorway.