Xenophobia

Chapter 17

“Do you know what we need here, Wing Commander?”

“N-No, My Lord.”

“Music.” Claws snapped in the night, and Wing Commander Sho’ani suddenly found herself on her hind legs, gripping a violin between her dark, perforated hooves. “Play for your soldiers, Commander.”

“B-Bu, My Lo—”

The breath in her lungs was stolen from her, and Sho’ani cowered as the forest erupted in flickering, angry light. The beautiful moon, her only familiar comfort from home, suddenly appeared in the sky… only to begin bleeding where it hung, dousing the night with the life-blood of ponies and gryphons. Twin spotlights—the insane eyes of a god—appeared before her, glaring hilarious death into her own blue, compound eyes.

“Play.”

“Yes, Sir.” Holding the instrument as best she could, Sho’ani began to quickly rub bow against strings, screeching out a horrible, perverted melody of searing noise: the sound of a dying grub crying its last. Her brethren whimpered, their pain and fear nipping at the back of the Commander’s consciousness. Their Queen was dead; they could feel it.

And now they were bound to the will of a mad god—Mother’s last order.

The Wing Commander played, and her brothers and sisters cringed. Claws ran along her carapace, and she shivered, trying not to listen to the contented sigh of the Spirit of Chaos as he curled next to her.

“Lovely. Truly lovely, my dear.” He paused, stroking his goatee with a lion’s paw—a normally neutral gesture made sinister beneath the unholy stream of moonlight leaking through the canopy above. Beyond them, past the edge of their unnerving hiding place, lay a small village. It was getting rather late, and few windows remained lit in the darkness.

Though, half the town looked deserted anyway: visiting the capitol for their “Royal Wedding.”

How many weren’t coming back?

How many were drained dry? So much love for her people, and none of it went to her battalion: none but the residual feeling, felt through the all-mind. How many lay dead in the streets? Victimized and beaten and forced to love them until they breathed no more? How many?

How many would die tonight?

Sho’ani didn’t know, and as she finished raping the soft night with her violin, she couldn’t help but be afraid.

“Go. Take them all and bring them back to me… alive.”

The battalion moved as one, wings buzzing quietly as changeling after changeling lifted into the night air. Sho’ani moved to follow, but was stopped: frozen by a claw lightly tickling between her wings.

“Ah-ah-ah!” the mad one tutted. “Not so fast.” She could feel the smile on his muzzle as it hovered beside her ear, just out of her field of vision. It didn’t matter, though. She was too scared to look, anyway. “Do you know what we need, here?”

Terrified, pleading futilely for help from her siblings, Wing Commander Sho’ani shook her head.

The moon disappeared, plunging the forest back into darkness. Hidden by the night, the beast snorted, caressing her flank with his dancing, brushing claws:

“Music.”

Jerry was clutching the vacuum suits like Big Mac with Twilight's old doll. Scootaloo had actually seen him with it once on her way back to the CMC clubhouse for the night. He was way out in the orchard, just... sleeping with it pressed to his barrel. As weird as it was, She kept it to herself. She didn't want to ruin the reputation of Applebloom's big brother. He was... well, he was pretty cool for a big, boring farm-colt.

Pretty strong, too.

Not that she watched him or anything. Gross.

Scootaloo sat quietly—she'd given up trying to talk to Jer after five minutes of silence—but she wasn't bored: far from it, actually. Her friend was alive. Both of her friends were alive, and it was the most freeing feeling in the world just seeing them... being alive... doing “alive” things.

She was happy that she didn't have to be alone.

Sure, the orange pegasus had been rather concerned when Jer had collapsed earlier—not afraid: Scoots was never afraid. But looking at him now, smiling and looking around the room, holding a space suit in his lap while occasionally chuckling at the snoring princess on the bed above him, it was almost like he had never been hurt at all. The smell of blood was an illusion, along with the bruises, the torn ear, the leaking leg—all inconsequential. Scootaloo smiled: he was even bobbing his head a little bit, listening to something only he could hear.

“Hey,” she laughed, getting up and moving closer to her foster parent, “Jerry?”

“Mmm?”

“What'cha listening to?”

After a few seconds of quiet, Gerald was able to tear his gaze from the suit in his lap and smile warmly at her. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?” He tilted his head toward the small bedside table nearby. “Radio’s over there. Get it down and bring ‘er over here for me and I’ll set you up.”

It took her nearly a minute to get the rectangular machine—like a cereal box with nuts and bolts inside—down: what, with the fluttering and the lugging and, unfortunately, the crashing. When she finally did carry the device back to Jer, cradling it between her wings, she had worked up quite a sweat, and was breathing rather heavily… like a hardened athlete, so she told herself.

She also told herself whatever her human was listening to was the reason for his inane giggling, and not her little mishap leaping from the bed.

Scootaloo had a measure of pride and dignity to keep intact—she playfully glared at Gerald—unlike some ponies.

Upon entering the human’s reach, Jer carefully lifted the radio from her back. He turned it in his hands, the blackened fingers on his right brushing across a plethora of knobs and dials. Scootaloo frowned at the magic burn, perversely reminded of sunblock and a midday meeting in Applebloom’s tree-house: the day she was given a… well, proper wasn’t the right word… a more suitable home. Blaring noise quickly brushed those thoughts away, however, and the orange pegasus held her breath, scuttling closer to her human. He fiddled senselessly with several bits jutting from the device’s plastic front, but the sandpapery sound only got louder. Finally, Jer gripped the largest dial betwixt two of his burnt fingers, rotating it ever so slightly to the left. Almost immediately, a mare’s voice rose out of the piercing buzz. Light and sweet, she sang to the sound of a light tapping. Like cups on a wooden table.

Carefully, Jer set the radio down in front of himself, putting the mesmerizing rectangle between himself and Scootaloo. The pegasus didn’t mind: she was too busy staring at the device in front of her.

“That’s… That’s a human mare’s voice?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Scootaloo saw Jer nod: “A woman, yes. Probably dead, now.” The orange filly looked up, casting her human a confused look. He was smiling, back to patting the white synthetics folded in his lap. “It’s an old broadcast: way older than me. Earth radio. In a few decades it’ll cut out…” His lips twitched, and he blinked slowly, turning to look down on her with something like pride in his expression: a sort of forced, manic pride. “But it’ll come back. Yeah… Yeah it will.”

In front of her, the radio continued to spit another voice: a stalli—no, a man now.

“Sounds hot, huh? Told you, Mikes.” Raucous laughter belted through the speaker, answered by another, deeper voice.

“You sure did, man. I hope the listeners out there enjoyed that—heh, smokin’—song as much as we did. We’ll be playing it again as soon as we recover from… well, that first one.”

“Right on—Right on—Right on!”

Scoots giggled: they sounded like a pair of dumb colts outside the Mare’s Locker Room. Somehow, she found herself eyeing the radio again, half-listening to the men spouting things about a “riot” being “put down”: whatever that meant. She wondered at all the dials. Some of them were for show, right? I mean they couldn’t all be useful, right?

“You want it?”

“H-Huh?” Scootaloo sputtered, looking up from the radio in surprise. Jer smiled crookedly down at her, and tilted his head in the direction of the crackling thing.

“Don’t exactly need it anymore—though, Ray may want it for the drive back—and I can’t see us needing it too much when we take off, so…” He winked at her and coughed, hand coming away flecked with mucus and blood. “S’yours.”

Humans made funny noises when you tackled them in perfect health: Jerry, however, was not in perfect health. The sound he made when she leapt into his lap—squeaking out a quick “Awesome!”—was one of pain, but when Scootaloo winced and looked up at him, he just kept smiling. A hand ran through her dirty mane, and she sighed: “Thanks, Da—” The fingers brushing against her scalp faltered, and Scootaloo froze. “Er… Jer… Thanks, Jer…” Slowly, the human’s hand fell away, and when she once again looked up to see if he was okay, he simply stared through her: lost somewhere she couldn’t follow. And… And soon he—they—would truly leave, abandoning her for the stars; for the hated moon.

They didn’t even try to hide it.

She felt a small wave of nausea and hunched away.

After that, things were quiet for awhile… aside from the odd, human music of course.

Scootaloo slowly relaxed into her human’s lap, putting aside her verbal slip and choosing to, instead, enjoy the feeling of companionship and safety. The radio sputtered away, and the general murmur outside the door simply faded into the background. Jer shifted once or twice, adjusting his leg under him. The little pegasus wrinkled her snout at the metallic smell; it wasn’t like the odor she’d grown used to—savored, more like—back in Ponyville at all. A ripe smell: a wound open to the air.

She remembered how he got it—glinting steel and breaking glass—and blinked.

“… irst I was tearing off your blouse: now you’re living in my house. What happened to just messin’ rou-ound?~”

“Hey Jerry?” she asked, covering her muzzle with a foreleg while he shifted his leg again. The human grunted something inarticulate, and she continued. “I saw you fall.”

“Mhmm?”

The door rattled across the room and soon stood open, a nervous-looking unicorn trotting in with that pink Princess and Raymond following close behind. Door remaining open as they trailed inside, Scootaloo could see several ponies sitting in the hall—some familiar, others unknown—each craning to catch a glimpse of the humans’ room. Slowly, it began to creak closed.

“How’d you survive? That was like, a billion hooves of open air!”

Scootaloo felt Jer chuckle, the erratic rising and falling of his chest making her wobble in his lap. He sighed and was silent a moment, and when she looked up at him, he was staring out the doorway, toward the ponies beyond, a smirk twitching at the corner of his lips.

“Well, obviously it was Pride Parade over there who saved my sorry ass from splattering all over the street,” he finally answered, inclining his head toward the half-open door.

Pride Parade…

Rainbow Dash?!

Snapping her gaze back out the slowly closing door, Scootaloo caught a glimpse of light blue coat, rimmed with every color of the rainbow. She was out the door in ten seconds flat, skirting past a tumbling ball of pink and a stoic mountain of white just as the room closed behind her.

Mommy wasn’t home.

Dinky Doo knew that for a fact, and, unlike most fillies her age, she didn’t relish in it. That was not to say she didn’t enjoy the company of Sparkler or her Auntie Roseluck, or that she loved her mother more than any of the other fillies in town. No… she just didn’t like it when Mommy had to leave. Seven to eight o’clock was their time—the time out of the day when Mommy wasn’t working, or cleaning, or cooking, and Dinky wasn’t in bed. They would play games together, or maybe Mommy would help her with her homework—at least, the stuff she remembered. Sometimes, when she drank a little of that grape juice from the top shelf of the pantry, she would even talk about Daddy.

It was 7:15 according to the clock, and Dinky missed her mother.

“Sparkler?”

Silence met the young unicorn as she clip-clopped around her—their—humble home. The creaky floorboard by the stairs groaned comfortingly under her light purple hoof, and Dinky peeked down the steps to the first floor. A short hallway led in either direction: one, to the kitchen; the other, the living room and front door. “Sparkler? Wanna play a game?” She descended, skipping the last two risers with a short hop. “Sparkler?”

“In the kitchen, Dinky!” a soft voice called—her sister since two years ago. She was a lot older than Dinky, practically all grown up, but that didn’t mean much to the little unicorn. Sparkler was so nice—most of the time—and when she wasn’t Dinky just waited for Mommy to come home, waited for seven o’clock…

Taking a left at the foot of the stairs, Dinky followed the dim lamplight into the kitchen where Sparkler sat, poring over a schoolbook. Her darker, purple-streaked mane looked almost blue in the dim light, and the glares cast on the window behind her made the night outside seem opaque and impenetrable. She was pretty. Dinky had always admired her sister for how pretty she was: a kind of adolescent beauty that made the colts who lived down the street stammer when she looked at them with her rich, purple eyes, or stare at her cutie mark—a triad of finely cut diamonds—when she walked by. Sparkler never noticed, of course, but Dinky did, and the younger unicorn never really understood the staring. She was pretty sure the attention was a good thing, though. Dinky hoped to be as pretty as her foster sister one day… but she apparently needed a pretty cutie mark first.

“Sparkler?”

The mare at the table shuddered and straightened up, closing her book—An Oral History of Saddle Arabia—before turning to face her younger sibling. Sparkler grunted and gave Dinky a strained smile: “I hate History.” Dinky giggled.

“But I thought you were gonna study it at the Uneighversity!”

Sparkler rolled her eyes, snorting to herself as her smile relaxed into something warm and inviting. “I think I’m beginning to change my mind about that. It’s way too much reading for me.” Dinky snorted back, sticking out her tongue at her older sibling:

“I flike fffreading!” she proclaimed through a muzzle-full of tongue, and Sparkler’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh yeah?” She quickly got to her hooves, and Dinky retracted her tongue nearly as quickly. “Like reading do you? Well what about… TICKLING!”

Dinky squealed and took off around the kitchen table, Sparkler clattering right behind her. Skidding on the rough, wooden floor, the younger unicorn rounded the table, passing counter, sink and drawer before finding herself careening toward the back door.

“See if you can catch me now, Sparkler!” she shouted, laughing as she put some of her magic training to the test. Her horn glowed softly, and the doorknob turned on its own, giving Dinky ample time to pull open the wooden panel and plunge into the back alley before Sparkler… caught her…

There was a pony on the ground.

Stumbling over her own hooves, Dinky sprawled on the back stoop, sliding to the edge of the top stair. Eyes wide, Dinky froze on her belly, staring at the pony in the alley. She was lithe, like a mare, and had a dark mane that swirled and matted awkwardly around her spiral horn—the tip encased in some sort of crusty, green goop. The same greenish ooze was spread across her body, the frame of the clearly adolescent pony constricted in a thick layer of the hard-looking substance. Her eyes were a deep purple, staring right at her above a thin, elegant muzzle, marred and forced shut by another layer of ooze. Dinky could hear her, and though she was muffled, the little unicorn knew she was screaming.

Eyes trailing lower, Dinky felt the breath leave her muzzle, and though she wanted to scream, she couldn’t, even as the slow hoofsteps coming from the kitchen behind her ceased, and a dark silhouette blotted out the dying lamplight.

Bordered by green crust and drying blood on the struggling mare’s flank: a triad of diamonds.

Rainbow Dash was confused… in a deliriously happy sense, of course.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The filly wrapped around her barrel, nearly cracking her ribs with the force of her tiny embrace, was shouting incessantly about her “heroism” and “awesome-ism” just like she had in the old days—was it really only a few weeks ago?—and Rainbow could barely hear herself think over the jubilant commotion.

“U-Uh… you’re welcome, Scoots,” Rainbow stuttered, a huge smile slowly forming on her haggard face, “but, uh, what exactly did I do?” The orange filly loosened her grip and looked up at her with glistening eyes, smiling.

“You saved Da—Jerry…” The filly paused, coughing awkwardly into her hooves before continuing. “You saved Ray and Jer when they were thrown through that window. Thank you.”

Rainbow’s stomach lurched, and, looking toward the now closed hospital room, she felt her momentary high begin to subside. “Who… Who told you that?” Scootaloo chuckled, shifting her underdeveloped wings before replying:

“Jerry told me: just now.”

Rainbow blinked, staring at the closed door across the hall. Muffled voices could be heard inside, but the words melded together and became meaningless—two aliens, a doctor, and a bride.
Why? Why did Jer lie to her? The multi-hued mare knew for a fact that she had nothing to do with the survival of either human: how they did it was a complete mystery to Rainbow, but Jer pinned it on her! Why? It couldn’t have been for Dash’s sake, right? So far, it was only obvious that he cared for the filly… so he only would have lied to make her feel better, right? Getting Scootaloo to forgive her? Did this mean he cared for the both of them?

A moment passed, and Scootaloo finally let go. Hoof accidentally brushing Rainbow’s left wing—hiding a knife amongst its downy feathers—she sat back on her haunches, looking up at her expectantly.

“Well?”

Rainbow started, looking down on the smiling filly with wide eyes.

“How’dja do it?”

That phrase: so familiar… Something inside Rainbow clicked, and she forgot all about humans and knives and blood. Rainbow forgot, but only so she could do what she did best…

“Well, you know Squirt, Queen Chrysalis was obviously no match for me.”

… tell a damned good story.

“Time Turner? I thought you went up to Canterlot for the wedding!”

The night was young, and Cloud Kicker had a stallion at her door—a handsome, foreign one at that. Smirking at the thought, the blonde pegasus glanced at the clock on the shelf to her left. It was a quarter to eight. A quick glance up at the night sky confirmed the anomaly she’d noticed just about an hour ago: the moon had yet to be risen, and not even the stars twinkled in the inky blackness. It was almost June, and the moon cycle was still in full swing… there wasn’t a new moon scheduled for that night was there?

“Y-Yes, well, I was supposed to take the train this morning, but I was held up at the station by an old mare with a limp, then…”

Cloud tore her eyes away from the space oddity and smiled, forgetting about moons and stars and schedules and instead allowing her eyes to wander toward Time Turner’s flank while he rambled.

“… o I was left without a ticket, halfway across the station from the departing train, when that nice stallion—Macintosh, I thought his name was—asked me If I had any idea how to get into…”

“His accent is soooo cute!” Cloud internally squealed, trying and failing to crush a few less than flattering images that kept cropping up in her mind’s eye. “I really should ask him to one of those new movie houses sometime…”

“… and when I woke up, it was dark, and your house was the closest one with any lights on, so I was wondering if you might have some ice? Or perhaps—”

A shriek pierced the night air, cutting the eloquent—and apparently injured—stallion mid-sentence. It rose to a shaky crescendo before being suddenly cut off, leaving the two ponies in silence. The light-purple pegasus shuddered, quickly stepping out the door to stand next to Time Turner, who had turned in the general direction of the frightened, young voice. A few lights turned on across the street, but other than that, nopony else left their homes. A little shakily, Cloud Kicker spoke:

“That… That sounded a little like Ditzy’s kid…”

“I’m ssssure it wasss nothing.”

Cloud froze, slowly turning her gaze toward the brown earth pony beside her. His expression was that of indifference, and when he noticed her looking at him, he turned and flashed her a toothy grin. “Yesss?”

“W-What happened to your accent?”

“Th-That’s Princess Luna!”

“Yes, Honey,” Cadance assured her fiancée before turning back to Raymond. “You should leave tonight.”

The human nodded, watching the unicorn healer to his left closely and a certain pink mare to his right even more closely. “When?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Celestia?”

“Recovering quickly. She accepts your pardon, but I’m not sure that will stay so if you’re still in the city by morning. But she’s not who you need to worry about.”

“Luna?”

“When she wakes up…” Cadance paused, looking toward Gerald as he grunted and thrashed on the hospital floor. Raymond strengthened his grip on the man’s shoulder, grimacing. “She will wake up, correct?” The healer nodded, probably trying to remain concentrated on the task at hand: purging the small infection that had developed from Jer’s wounded thigh. “When she wakes up, it would be best you weren’t within her immediate magical range.”

“You kidnapped a Princess?!”

“Yes, Captain Armor. We did.” Raymond was worried. Apparently, magically purging a patient’s bloodstream of harmful bacteria was supposed to take a few days—they were rushing the process to get it done in just a few hours. Judging from his partner’s struggling, accelerating such a delicate procedure was excruciating. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the Guard Captain turned toward his wife-to-be.

“And you’re okay with this?” he whispered, perhaps thinking he was out of earshot.

“No,” the princess answered, “but that doesn’t matter right now. The city is safe, and you’re with me: that’s all I care about.” Cadance paused, and Ray forced himself not to shudder when he felt her eyes on him. “Princess Luna is relatively unharmed, but the outlanders who saved us are in pain. The least we can do is get them home… focus on mustering the Guard to pursue the changelings.”

“Pursue and crush, Princess? Or just pursue?” Raymond frowned, but in the end he simply didn’t care, turning his attention away from their hushed conversation. The changelings were routed, their Queen dead by Jer’s hands. In truth, killing them off probably wasn’t necessary—they would die out on their own.

A quick scan of the Badlands from orbit probably wouldn’t hurt, though…

“Ray?” Schaffer looked up from his friend, meeting the sky-blue eyes of the earth pony holding the shoulder across from him. “I really, really, really don’t like this.”

Raymond nodded. “Need to leave the city. Can’t be helped.”

“Then I’m going with you,” she pushed. The human simply shrugged:

“Ms. Pie, I’m not—”

“It would probably be for the best,” Shining interrupted, stepping forward to aid in holding down Gerald’s left thigh. “We don’t know if there are any changelings still hiding out there. An… assassination… would completely destroy what little morale the city has left.”

Grunting quietly, Raymond nodded his grudging assent. He glanced at the healer—should’ve asked her name—her brow furrowed in concentration, breathing ragged and throaty. She’d been at it for roughly an hour, and she was obviously exhausted, but she refused to stop.

When Raymond had asked for volunteers he certainly hadn’t expected such enthusiasm.

Jer swung right, and the taller human almost collided with Pinkie, instead getting a brief face-full of wispy pink mane: it had been hanging limply over her eyes since the beginning of the procedure. The mare didn’t seem to notice, leaning close to Gerald’s right ear and whispering quietly. Ray couldn’t hear her, but he assumed it was encouragement of some sort. He didn’t think Jer could quite hear her either. He glanced down at his thrashing friend, scanning the rest of his injuries—the ear had reconnected rather easily, but he still had several broken ribs and his right hand remained burnt: dull black rising from healthy, pink flesh. Eyes screwed shut, Raymond’s fellow human clenched his creaking jaw, hissing and tensing and trying to rise as the burning itch spread beneath his skin, and his sergeant could feel the feedback pulsing through his forearms as he pressed him back down to the hospital floor.

For the fourth time, he lamented the diminished size of pony beds.

“I’ll… I’ll go inform the Elements,” Cadance quietly mumbled, blanching and cantering from the room as Gerald began to painfully wheeze to… someone.

“No… Nononono, ha! I-I can’t shovel all of it by myself!”

The door shut quickly behind her.

“Jesus, Dulce th-that’s coooold—h-hate when people do that. Don’t do that.”

Feeling a hoof on his shoulder, Raymond met the haggard, blue eyes of the Captain of the Guard. He appeared to be struggling with something, glancing at Gerald as he writhed, Pinkie trying to calm him. Finally, he spoke, voice just loud enough to hear over the injured man’s mutterings:

“I never thanked you for saving Cadance and I from that… thing—”

“Hello, darlin’!” Jer arched his back, spine popping as he thrust his waist into the air. His words came out strained and pleading: “How… How about a-a little kiss?”

“—so, thank you… for everything.”

Ray simply nodded, looking away. The human had already decided that Armor was a nice enough pony, but the Captain knew the real reason the humans were there, so why thank them? Watching Jer writhe, Raymond couldn’t help but feel angry with the stallion. Fucking prick couldn’t even keep track of his own fiancée: lost her to a bug and the whole city paid for it. He paid for it. Jer paid for it. Shining Armor was a good pony, but Ray needed to be angry at someone—he glanced at the still form of the alicorn on the bed—and he was the only conscious one around who even remotely deserved it.

“Don’t go… please jus’ wait awhile. I’m a-almost finished!”

Pinkie was crying, and Ray frowned, remembering the tears of another: days ago. Struggling to smile in a reassuring fashion, Schaffer let go of his friend just long enough to pat her on the head. She looked up for a moment, thanking him with her wavering eyes, but the tears didn’t cease and the human reluctantly let it go, choosing instead to get a feel for Jer’s condition. He directed his gaze toward the healer.

“Do you know what’s going on in there?”

The healer groaned, gritting her pearly teeth and briefly making eye contact with him: maroon eyes, like fanned embers. “S’just memory feedback. Probably.” Shuddering, the mare began to ease off of her magic, and Jer’s struggles slowed. “He’ll sleep… sleep for at least sixteen hours—*wheeze*—but the infection should b-be gone.” With a soft popping sound, the healer’s magic imploded, and she slumped to her haunches, breathing heavily. Reaching out, Ray squeezed her foreleg in thanks before releasing his hold on the human below him. Shining Armor did the same for Jer’s thigh, but Pinkie refused to let go, remaining at his shoulder, staring vacantly at him.

Gerald muttered quietly: “Fine… M’fine. It’s only a b-bruise…”

A small twitch at the corner of the pink mare’s mouth lifted some weight from the taller human’s shoulders, and he turned toward the bed. Ms. Pie would be fine…

Grey tarp rustled on green hospital sheets.

… and so would the Night Princess.

“When you’ve rested, gather staff to treat the Princess,” Armor gently commanded, patting the healer on her withers. “Then give your name to Sergeant Flare at the door: an invitation of sorts, if you’re interested.”

The healer wheezed, and Ray listened: “Med-Brigade?”

“Guard’s always looking for capable hoo—”

“No thank you, Captain,” the mare interrupted. “I’m not much for toting metal, protective or…”—she glanced at the rifle leaning against the bed—“or otherwise.” Shining nodded, and Raymond didn’t take the time to gauge his mood. Slinging his rifle back on his shoulder from where it lay at the foot of the hospital bed, Ray made his way to the door to check on Cadenza’s progress when the mare herself quickly slipped inside, opening the heavy door with naught but a whisper of wood on linoleum.

She quickly scanned the room, and, noticing the resting healer, met Ray’s eye:

“They agreed to leave the city. Honesty has them gathering outside beside your vehicle… we’ve sent a courier after Generosity and she should be here soon.” Silently connecting names to titles, Ray nodded. Turning away, he moved to try and lift Gerald from his place on the floor, but a blue aura quickly formed around the prone human, lifting him off the ground and detaching Pinkie with a surprised squeak.

“I’ll handle it,” Shining interjected quietly, stepping up to the floating human and laying him carefully on his back. His horn winked out, but it seemed the guardspony was able to hold Jer’s full weight with little assistance. He met Raymond’s gaze, eyes begging to be of help. “Just lead the way.” Ray nodded, and, turning toward the door, he grabbed the three vacuum suits that lay half-folded on the floor and began the trek to the jeep. Shining, Cadance, and Pinkie followed quietly behind, but the healer stayed: he saw her out of the corner of his eye, sitting up, staring at the sleeping blue alicorn.

Everyone had a long night ahead of them.

“Things that Go Bump in the Night, by Misty Marshes.” There was a cough, and the rustle of paper—the turning of thin, crackling pages. “Pinwheel, never one to squeal in fright, asked: ‘Why do you hide from the deep, dark night’?”

Two pairs of beady, blue eyes gazed through the bars of their wooden prison, watching and listening intently to the evening ritual. Orange, blocky hooves tapped on the nursery floor, but the small sounds did little to detract from the nightly performance: the sacred Bedtime Story…

“Her brother, young Spade, who shivered and swayed, gave answer ‘neath his silken covers, buried down out of sight: ‘There are things outside in that deep dark night—things that skitter and bump and probably bite’.” The orange one cleared his throat, shuffling at the foot of the crib. His audience pawed at their shared bedding anxiously, and brittle paper scratched and shuffled. “’They’re out there, big sis, and they’re restless tonight! Hide with me quick, and wait for the light!’

“‘Silly young foal, fear not for my soul,’ the filly admonished with glee. ‘Now throw off those covers and sneak past our mother to dance in the darkness with me!’”

Metal clanged and crashed in the kitchen below, muffled by the sturdy wood flooring of the second floor. Shrieking ballooned up the stairs—“Carrot! Carrot, the foals!”—but was quickly silenced. A dull thump shuddered the bakery.

The orange one sniffled—turned the page.

“But Jade fell asleep: he heard not a peep, and his sister went outside to play. When he opened his eyes, sun high ‘mongst clear skies, he smiled at the bright, shining day.

“‘Sister!’ he cried as he flung front doors wide, ‘Where are you? Where are you, I say? The darkness has fled, the beasts surely fed, and I’m ready to frolic and play!’ Undisturbed by the silence, (Jade being a might dense), he trotted away from his home: a high hedge standing in place of a fence. Down past the hedge there was a small ledge: a deep highway, a brook, or a ditch. Prancing through trees, Jade sprained both his knees, and down the gully his body did pitch.”

Heavy hoofsteps made their way up the stairs, and the blue one entered, form blurry in heavy, sleep-drowned eyes. She took her place next to the orange one, and the ritual continued unimpeded:

“Squirming in grime, Jade cringed at the crime: the small body he met in that place. Twisted and slashed, bones broken and smashed, Pinwheel lay with her brother—one little body… minus the face.”

Quietly, the ritual ended, pages creaking as the archaic storybook was finally shut. The two small foals—barely old enough to crawl, really—lay snoozing in their crib, breathing quietly. The orange storyteller looked grim, glancing at his blue companion as they were both consumed in verdant, green flame: burning away fur, skin, and muscle until only chitin remained.

“The bakers?”

Translucent wings buzzed, tips brushing against the storytellers’ black hide. The second—formerly blue and somewhat overweight—changeling, glancing at her counterpart, answered indignantly: “Taken care of. What else?”

The first simply stared down at the sleeping foals, expression stiff: unreadable. “What of the grubs?” His squad-mate glanced inside the little, wooden prison before her and softened, again brushing him with her wings.

“There is a room in the tower: somepony else lives here.”

Compound eyes never leaving the sleeping pony children, the storyteller slowly nodded. His partner felt him prepare to say something else, but a muffled crash from the rooms below cut him off. Both changelings quickly slinked out of the nursery to investigate—like oil flowing ‘cross a moonlit sea.

Neither looked back. Neither returned.

The humans’ vehicle was like a royal carriage… but infinitely less comfortable. Considering Fluttershy’s gripping phobia of heights, that really was saying something. Hunched against the cold, sticky upholstery of the reverse side of the back seats, the yellow pegasus flinched at every bump and shudder as the four-wheeled monstrosity careened down the mountain road. Her dirty, pink mane whipped in the wind, getting in her eyes and blocking out the speeding landscape to the right and the jagged cliffs to the left.

“… Hell! Hell i—zzzzt—for children!”

Lowering her ears, Fluttershy tried to block out the scratchy music streaming from the machine attached to the front of the jeep—a whisper in the black, blustery night—and scooted closer to the mound of odds and ends piled in the bed of the metal monster. Armor plating, a pair of helmets, heavy, grooved balls of metal, what appeared to be a saddlebag made for bipeds—all tied down in a hasty bundle. On the other side of the cache of odds and ends, the awkward pegasus could just barely make out Gerald: curled in on himself in sleep. She knew that he had been hurt, but he seemed… stable… at the moment. Pinkie lay quietly next to him—breathing steadily, eyes closed—but Fluttershy knew she was awake. The pink mare kept peeking at the biped lying next to her, blue eyes blinking open for several moments before settling back down once more.

A porcelain hoof settled around Fluttershy’s withers and she had to consciously force herself not to flinch—Rarity hated scaring her. The mussed-up unicorn had crawled over a few minutes prior, desperate for stability in the back of the rumbling, rocking machine, and had, after giving Fluttershy a reassuring mile, immediately began watching the green stallion sitting further to the rear, a yard or so away from a grim, lavender unicorn. Looking at the hoof looped around her, then back at the distant, frowning mare, Fluttershy wondered if she even noticed the contact: whether or not it was a simple, automatic gesture.

Following Rarity’s gaze, the shivering pegasus, too, began watching the stallion. She didn’t know his name, but she did remember how they met. A stream of cursing and angry sounds in the background—pleading and blood—holding another stallion in his hooves.

“Wake up! C’mon… j-just please wake up!”—A loud 'bang' in the background, and silence—“Do something! Somepony do something!”

He had looked right at her, crying for his friend and pleading with anypony who would listen. Looked right at her…

Now he just sat on his haunches, staring vacantly at the odd, metallic tubing swiveling and bumping along with the jeep… looking at nothing.

Fluttershy should have cried—should be crying—but she couldn’t.

She didn’t know why, though, and that feeling—that of deep, yawning emptiness—frightened her.

The stars were missing. She didn’t remember when she noticed… like she just knew. Deep, black nothingness stretched above into infinity—empty as her lost soul. Why didn’t she cry? The last animal she had taken in, a badly injured Chipmunk, had slipped away after three days of constant care—died happy and comforted—and she had sobbed for what seemed like an eternity, stopped by a timely visit from Rarity on their usual spa day.

Chuckle—that had been the yellow stallion’s name: Hearty Chuckle—died violently, blinded, confused, and alone.

Why didn’t she cry?

Shivering in the wind, Fluttershy huddled closer to her porcelain friend, tearing her quivering eyes away from the thick blackness above. Rainbow was up there somewhere… alongside a cadre of Night Guards. Cadance said they were there for protection—the pegasus glanced toward the front of the vehicle, to the stony creature sitting at the wheel, Applejack in the seat to his right, hat off, sitting just as stiffly. Had the Princess been purposefully vague? Fluttershy didn’t like the thought, cold as it was, to reside within her, but her mind kept drifting back to the sound of Gerald’s weapon, Chrysalis’ screams, the warm, green blood flecked on her coat.

They saved her life, and the lives of her friends… but…

So many died; Chrysalis murdered—she didn’t see it but she knew it happened. It was wrong. She knew it was wrong everything was so wrong and she needed to say something be angry feel betrayed cry why couldn’t she cry and scream and stop being so… so…
Fluttershy was so afraid. She was afraid of Gerald, and Raymond—especially Raymond—and the Guards. She was afraid of Applejack… and Pinkie… She was afraid for the fillies sleeping in the middle seat, for Spike, just a baby… for herself…
The night sped by. They were almost off the mountain, now.

Rainbow Dash was cold, and that, in turn, made her rather unhappy. Lamenting the loss of her multi-hued—and, more importantly, layered—dress, the blue pegasus sped down the mountain, unseasonable icy wind blustering around her. She was following the bouncing forward lamps on the humans’ vehicle, and the flapping of a dozen or so wings to either side reminded her that she wasn’t alone: Night Guard—some thestrals and one or two keen-eyed pegasi speeding alongside her.

She had almost dropped out of the sky when they’d shown up—startled, not scared, obviously—and they hadn’t come within more than a few yards of her since. Honestly, that was fine by her. She wasn’t racist or anything—used to be best friends with a gryphon!—but those thestrals… well, they were a bit on the creepy side. What, with the fangs and all that unnaturalness.

Clenching Jer’s knife a bit tighter in her muzzle, the decidedly not racist, soon-to-be Wonderbolt shivered as another gust of chilling wind rolled by. Angling downward, she intended to try to land on the rocketing, metal cart before it reached the foot of the mountain, but a sudden updraft pushed her back. Rainbow banked left, but quickly straightened when she made contact with one of the cold, jostling weights that shared the sky with her. Suppressing a girlish squeal, Dash darted a few feet away from the flying stallion, meeting his shining, yellow eyes only briefly before looking away: the unusual, feline slits burned into her retinas.

The dark stallion eyed her warily, glancing at the weapon she held in her mouth. This continued until the Element of Loyalty, tired of feeling his strange eyes on her, spat Jer’s knife into her hooves and spoke, practically shouting over the wind:

“What’re you lookin’ at, bub?”

Freakish eyes widening ever-so-slightly, the bat-pony hesitated to respond, gaze darting from the knife in Rainbow’s hooves to the bouncing vehicle below and back again. When he finally did speak, it wasn’t a shout, but, somehow, Dash heard him:

“That knife… it doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

Rainbow scoffed, glaring at him. “How would you know?”

The guard glided slightly closer, and the rainbow pegasus had to force herself not to flinch away. He squinted in the moonlight, looking carefully at Jer’s weapon. “That is no pony weapon…” he trailed off, dipping a wing pointedly at the jeep speeding down the mountainside. “I was simply curious—meant no disrespect to you, ma’am.”

Eyeing the guard carefully, the Element of Loyalty slowly nodded, angry frown shrinking into a more neutral expression. She looked forward again, following the road ahead with her eyes as they flew on. After a few seconds, she spoke again.

“It’s Jer’s knife, not mine.”

A moment’s silence, broken only by the wind and flapping of dark, leathery wings.

“Is it true what they say? That they murdered Chrysalis? Tortured her?”

Word traveled fast… Rainbow looked down at the metal chassis careening below her, squinting to try and make out any shapes in the gloom.

“Jerry killed her, yes.”

The guard flapped beside her, his mouth a hard, rigid line. “I… the torture?”

Trying ever so hard not to really think about what she saw that afternoon, but reluctant to leave the guard with so little information—free to spread amongst the ranks, grow, and expand into something terrible—Dash continued to the best of her ability. “There… there was screaming—mostly Jer yelling—and… he killed another changeling in front of her… he just wanted to know where they lived…” The pegasus shook her head. “They didn’t… well, they didn’t torture her.”

“Why?”

Rainbow looked at the guard, frowning again. “What do you mean, ‘why?’” The thestral met her gaze, yellow feline eyes looking straight into her.

“Why did they need to know where they lived?” Scoffing, Rainbow stuttered something about better defense, but the guard simply shook his fanged head. “Think about it, ma’am.”

Breaking her gaze from that of her unnatural wing-pony, Dash grit her teeth, suddenly angry with the thrice-damned thestral beside her. “Do the Princesses pay you to think, huh? Because they sure as Tartarus don’t pay me to!” Rainbow banked hard, flipping over the stoic guard’s back, just short of clipping his leathery wings. “I don’t need to think about it!” she spat in his ear. “They saved my bucking life, my best friends, all of Canterlot—” Calling upon all the venom in her wiry body, the famous weather manager beset the thestral with her best imitation of Fluttershy’s stare. “—and even you.”

Meeting her scowl with a peculiarly calm gaze, the guard smiled, pointed fangs glinting in the moonlight. “That’s where you’re wrong, Miss,” he chuckled, grin widening slightly, lips dried and splitting in the blustering wind. “Thinking is one of many, many things I am paid to do.”

The violin.

Oh Spirits, the violin.

Feathers and scales and fur slid through the air, slowly twisting and undulating like a worm on mescaline. Sorrowful chords split the silent Everfree night, squeaking and crying as Sho’ani stood, frozen, watching as the pile of bodies grew before her. Changelings flitted amongst the gnarled trees in twos and threes, carrying bundles of resin and flesh. Breathing bundles: twitching and shuddering to the sonorous wails of the violin.

A contented hum tickled the Commander’s ears, and she had to force herself not to flinch as a mad god slithered across her flanks. “Your soldiers are quite… capable, my dear Commander.” The mournful instrument squealed, and her master tutted. The violin swung briefly through Sho’ani’s peripheral vision before disappearing, continuing its mournful chorus. “Nearly seventy ponies in just under four hours. Impressive.”

Choking out a reply as best she could, the Wing-Commander acknowledged the callous creature for his praise, praying to Chrysalis—or what was left of her—for it to disappear. Poof. Gone. Silent.

No more violin. No more.

The last of her changelings buzzed through the treetops, having scoured the town for any more hiding equines, and joined the remaining formation next to the mound of sleeping bodies. They remained stock-still, compound eyes staring past her, looking to the floating, swirling Discord. He just kept playing, the wretched melody gnawing at what remained of Sho’ani’s already strained sanity.

After what seemed like hours, the blood moon above seemingly frozen in the empty, black sky, the musician spoke.

“Do you”—hacking giggles and squeaking strings interrupted his question, but he quickly recovered. “Heh, d’you know what?” Several changelings in the formation shifted on their hooves, and, feeling the air shift behind her, Wing-Commander Sho’ani stiffly stepped to the side. The amused god, single fang glinting in the moonlight as he smiled in genuine happiness, quickly filled the void she left behind. “You all deserve a reward! Something worthy of your… ahem… discretion.”

Hesitant grins spread amongst the troops and many relaxed where they stood, glancing in relief at their fellows. Sho’ani desperately wanted to join them, but all she could do was stare on in silent horror as many of her comrades’ pride began to override their fear.

“I have one more task for you all,” Discord continued, still smiling disarmingly. “There is a small cavern nearby—a short walk, I promise—that will make the perfect storage place for these lovely captives.” With a small flourish and a snap, wooden signs sprouted from the ground, large, comical arrows pointing deeper into the forest. “Bring them there, and you will be relieved of duty.”

Moving quickly, the platoon split back into infiltrator groups, and the buzzing of wings filled the air, drowning out the excited chatter of her changelings as they began lifting bodies… but not the violin.
No, the violin could not be silenced, and as Discord continued to play, lightly brushing—scales, fur, feathers—against her chitin, Sho’ani would have sold her soul just to be able to scream.

It was wrong. All wrong.

Twilight lay quietly beneath the lazily swinging barrel of the humans’ cannon, a massive frown creasing her purple brow. The bouncing vehicle had reached the foot of the mountain hours ago and the familiar rolling countryside surrounding Ponyville would be upon them in a matter of moments, but the Element of Magic didn’t care. She had put as much distance between herself and the inequine creatures that had saved their lives as she could, but the memory of Chrysalis’ murder kept resurfacing.

She had begged for mercy.

For the lives of her… children.

Gerald and Raymond, they… they just didn’t care: just killed her on the spot.

And now they knew where the rest would be hiding.

What’s to say they wouldn’t simply finish what they started?

An entire race destroyed.

And it’s all your fault!

A single, unbidden tear formed at the corner of her eye, and Twilight quickly blinked it away. For nearly four hours she had turned the battle over in her mind, as if manipulating the event with her magic, and no matter how she tried, she found nothing that she could have done to prevent the humans’ bloody rampage. The same rampage that saved her life and the lives of her friends.

Without them, Chrysalis would have won. Canterlot would have been drained, her friends and family killed.

But it was still wrong. So, so wrong.

None of her friends would listen. They didn’t want to:

Applejack clung to Raymond like a life preserver, Pinkie doing the same to Jer.

Rarity just smiled hesitantly and remained silent, wiping at the blood that had crusted onto her white coat.

Fluttershy was blank.

Rainbow… she listened, but the green blood long dried onto the blade she hid under her wing told Twilight exactly where her loyalty lay: with their lives, and not with the law.

The Griffonia Convention, the Sanctions at Geneighva, and the Prance Peace Accords—all so much useless parchment.
Twilight didn’t know what to do. She needed somepony to listen to her: anypony.

Suddenly, apple trees began to whip by on either side of the speeding jeep, and a dark farmhouse appeared on the horizon, flanked by an empty barn. Sweet Apple Acres… and there was a light on in one of the top-floor windows.

An idea began to form, and tormented as she was, Twilight immediately latched onto it. Briefly charging her horn, she disappeared in a bright flash of purple mana.

The local farm-colt was going to have a long night ahead of him.

Six ponies and a dragon lay sleeping, hidden from the burning stars above by a thick layer of titanium sheeting.

Seven dreamers.

Applejack watched them from the top of the ship’s ramp, her Stetson casting deep purple shadows in the moonlight. She watched them huff contentedly, snuggling into the stiff, coarse blankets of the Duckling’s pullout mattress and felt immense, near-unshakeable relief. Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Fluttershy, Rarity: everypony made it back from the destroyed capitol in—relatively—one piece. If it weren’t for the cold, numb feeling creeping down her haunches, she would have joined them: joined the quiet union of steady breaths and twitching limbs.
But she had done something terrible. Despite the relief, despite the safety and warmth of the small fire burning in the small clearing below, she felt cold. She had done a bad thing and hadn’t cared in the slightest. That terrible knowledge alone was enough to send shivers down her usually rather dependable spine.

Twilight had left them. Not for good, but for the night. She had teleported off the back of the humans’ jeep just as they had passed Sweet Apple Acres, and when Rainbow had gone to check on her she had been in the farmhouse—Macintosh’ bedroom to be exact—rambling about the Equestrian Moral Code of Conduct to her near-catatonic brother. With Rainbow’s pledge to check on them every hour, Raymond had decided not to intervene, deeming the lavender unicorn safe in the hooves of the pony who had carried him safely out of the Everfree just a few days ago.
A muffled thump reverberated towards the front of the ship, and, quiet as a breath on the wind, the tall, bulky shape of their protector tiptoed his way toward her. Acknowledged with a slight tilt of the head, Applejack watched as Raymond shuffled past her, cradling a small, metallic brick in his arms. He descended the ramp with it, heading steadily toward the guttering campfire and its two stoic sentinels: one asleep two steps from the grave, the other far too grave to sleep. Still numb with… something… the farm mare followed.

Raymond stepped over the fallen log that had served so reliably as a bench for the past week and sat next to a deep green unicorn, leaning his back against the stripped, rotting wood. The unicorn—Cymbal, if Applejack remembered correctly—spared the reclining human a brief glance before gazing back into the dying fire, hoof brushing the reflective blanket lying next to him with a soft crackle. Beneath the blanket lay Mr. Hanes, breathing steadily, much like Raymond had the day they’d arrived on their little planet. He’d been Fuss-Bucket, then. The farm mare snorted, allowing herself a small smile at the memory of the odd joke the shorter alien had played.

Stepping weakly, Applejack made her way around the fallen log and took a seat next to Raymond: furthest from the slumbering madman she couldn’t help but respect far more than she feared. She watched as the scarred human fiddled with the brick, sliding a small panel along its surface back and forth. He frowned in concentration, and the farmer found his expression fascinating. She stared at his lined face as it contorted into a grimace, trying to forget the growing numbness in her barrel that frightened her so. It wasn’t until the device in his grip suddenly exploded with light that she succeeded.

In less than an instant the guttering flames of the humans’ campfire were overwhelmed by steady, artificial light, dancing across what was left of the canopy above. The two ponies who bore witness to the event flinched, staring in awe at the extraordinary lightshow. Streams of color and shape flowed from the metallic device still clutched in Ray’s calloused palms, coalescing into a growing sphere of greens, browns and copious blues. Smiling contentedly—the first smile Applejack had seen since the train station—Ray gently set the device down in front of the dying fire, letting the floating image grow and grow until it dwarfed even him.

A globe hung in the still, night air, spinning lazily on a tilted axis. Brown clumps—landmasses slowly grinding ‘cross a mighty sea—formed from the swirling mass of color, separated into continents, and grew mountains, cityscapes, and dark, winding rivers. The sphere darkened, and sparkling pinpoints of light rose from the twilit earth, covering nearly every spec of visible land, before it brightened once more, repeating in an endless cycle.

White, brown, and yellow cloud-layers spread out from the rotating planetoid, joined by blocky, symmetrical structures of gray metal and shining plate that orbited the glowing orb that had suddenly appeared in the center of camp. It hung, plump and beautiful, above the dying fire, the occasional flicker or shift the only things reminding its silent audience of its artificiality.

Cymbal, wrested from his stupor by the extraordinary sight, stood and took a step toward the image: now nearly triple his size. He reached out a hoof and brushed through the fuzzy cloud layer and into an ocean. Calmly pulling his limb back, he asked the question that had been rattling around inside Applejack’s own head since the lightshow began: “So this is…?”

Raymond simply nodded, gazing fondly upon the planet he had summoned, eyes glistening. His smile wavered briefly, but ultimately held.
The errant flapping of wings did little to disturb the moment, even when Rainbow Dash came bursting through the canopy.

“AJ! You’re never gonna believe… believe… whoa.” Mesmerized by the revolving sphere, she circled the camp, looking at the anomaly from every angle. “What?”

“Quiet down, Sugarcube,” Applejack hissed, glancing back toward the open hatch of the humans’ ship. “You’ll wake somepony up.” There was a rustle of reflective blanketing, and one of the few non-ponies in camp spoke up.

“Too late,” groaned a raspy, tired voice. Immediately, Cymbal and Rainbow were on either side of the now conscious Gerald, the green unicorn putting a soft hoof on the human’s shoulder.

“You okay, Boss?”

“M’fine. Fine. Just… oh.”

Slowly, as if afraid he would suddenly fall apart at the seams, Jer sat up on his elbows, blinking at the planet revolving above him. “Damn, Ray. Didn’t know you still had this.” The taller human didn’t reply, choosing instead to look over his recently awoken comrade.

“You look like shit.”

Jer glanced down at himself before returning his gaze to the floating globe. “I feel like it.” He paused, looking down at the silver brick from which the image had emerged. “What… What else do you have on there?”

Giving a small shrug, Ray leaned forward and touched a small indent in the metallic projector, and the image quickly shifted. Gone was the planet the two humans so desperately wished to return to: replaced by silently lapping waves on a blackened beach. Clouds heavy with moisture hung in the air, and the pockmarked sand stretched off into the distance, curving into an enormous peninsula atop of which lay a ruined cityscape unlike anything built in Equestria. Smoke billowed in great plumes from shattered buildings whilst enormous flying machines—Applejack glanced at the ship resting peacefully behind her with newfound respect—drifted purposefully over the wreckage, occasionally setting down… only to rise back up, burdened with some form of debris or another.

“Where is thi—” Cymbal began, only to be startled into silence by the appearance of an enormous, human face—a male—that blocked the rest of the panorama from view. Curly, ginger locks tumbled across his pale, furrowed brow, eyes squinting in concentration as he worked on something Applejack couldn’t see. His thin lips stretched into a frustrated grimace, before they began to move in a facsimile of speech, like the mouth of a stallion left mute in the aftermath of a terrible accident.

“Sound still work?” Gerald rasped from his spot in the dirt, eyes never having left the image since it changed. Raymond leaned forward, prodding several similar indents in the metal. There was a low crackle, and then a reedy voice began emanating from the device, syncing with the moving lips floating above:

“—ow how to work this damned thing?”

Another voice—raspy and familiar—answered: “It’s on now, Adolf. See the red light?” The grimacing face turned away, looking at someone out of the picture.

“Ey, fuck you, Jer!” he shouted, smiling and thumbing his nose as he pulled away to reveal a group of humans in heavy cloth garments and armor plating standing on the beachhead. “I’m a fucking ginger and you latch onto the German thing? Where do you get off, you damned mick?”

Standing at the edge of the pack of bipeds, weapon nestled against a plated shoulder, a slightly younger Corporal Hanes smirked under the shadow of his helmet visor and winked. “With you bending over like that, I’m getting off right now.” Several whistles and catcalls sounded from the group of warriors, seven total including the red-haired one who was swaggering back toward the others, a salacious sway in his hips and his middle-most fingers pointing skyward in some strange salute. Applejack could pick out a few more feminine voices from the crowd, but she had difficulty determining genders through the thick armor plating, heavy cloth, and dark grime that covered their faces.

Reaching the front of the small assembly, the red-haired man snatched a proffered helmet from another tall, dark-skinned soldier. He quickly set the protective cover on his head, patting the taller man on the shoulder plate and receiving a playful punch in return. He finally turned to the only warrior not facing the five-being audience, holding a small object out to him in mock reverence.

“Care to do the honors, Sarge?” he asked, chuckling to himself whilst the others chatted quietly amongst themselves. The sergeant, abandoning his silent watch of the city beyond, turned and revealed himself to be none other than Raymond, except…

“So that’s what he looked like when he had both’a his eyes…” Applejack mused, glancing at the scarred human seated next to her. He watched the suspended moment in his life without expression, absentmindedly tracing the burns that crisscrossed his right cheek. “He looks so much older, now.”

Younger Raymond took the object from his redheaded squad mate, holding it at his waist with a thumb lightly touching a small button on its side. The rest of the group immediately quieted down and lined up as if for a picture until another voice, clearly female, broke the silence:

“Dammit, Schlosser! The light’s flashing! You set the damned thing to video!” The exclamation came too late, though, for younger Raymond had already raised the small device in his hand and pressed the button, and the floating image quickly faded into an amorphous cloud of blackness.

“You didn’t keep the footage from the entire campaign, did you?” Gerald coughed, sitting up straighter and leaning on the log. Rainbow landed next to him, a worried look on her face. She whispered something in his ear and he waved her off. “I never took you for a nostalgic, Sarge.” There was a glint of metal in the moonlight, and Rainbow was holding Jer’s knife in her wing. She offered it to him, the silvery metal still splashed with green blood. He looked down at the weapon, then at the pegasus fidgeting next to him. “I thought I lost this…” Lifting the blade carefully from her feathers, Gerald turned it over in his hands and admired the green crust coating its edges. “I’m glad it came of some use to you.” Slipping the knife safely into his boot, the grey-eyed man began to pat Rainbow between the ears. She returned the gesture with a small smile, but her eyes seemed far off, perhaps reliving those few moments in the courthouse… the lives she’d snuffed out in the chaos. Applejack could empathize—was empathizing. Leaving his hand to scratch her ears, Jer gave the pegasus a reassuring smile before turning back to the lights shifting and changing above the clearing. A new scene was forming.

The sound of tapping drums, clashing cymbals, and light, jaunty strings emanated from the metal brick as a human form quickly stepped back, changing the enormous floating brown and grey mass into a ruined chamber. Thick, mucus-colored growths spread across ruined wallpaper as if vomited by a foal, and clouds of dust danced back and forth in the waning, orange light that streamed through the damaged walls of whatever building in which the witnessed scene took place. The biped, now revealed to be the same soldier who precluded the last recording, turned on his heel, stepping aside to reveal the source of the cacophonous music—Ray shifted forward, pressing something on the projector that quieted the noise.

Gerald Hanes and three other armored humans stood in the center of the small room, broken and shattered instruments strewn about their feet as they played their loud, discordant melody. Jer strummed on what looked to be a mandolin—missing two strings—while a large man with dark, brownish skin played a more intact guitar to his left. Behind them, a smaller, softer figure beat on a dilapidated pair of drums with the ferocity of an angry manticore, and a squat, helmetless man quickly scuttled back and forth along a keyboard set on a cinderblock and a bucket.

Several voices—one more familiar than the others—began to sing lustily over the sounds of crashing instruments. Something about a rose “tattoo”, perhaps the same kind of body art Applebloom had told her about.

This continued for some time: the occasional bipedal shape drifting into the image or thrown rocks disturbing the throbbing music. One of the worn-out drums being mauled by the feminine biped finally caved, and was kicked out of the way as everyone continued to wail in their the strange, throaty chorus.

A steady drone slowly rose above the music and shouting, and dust began to whip around the small room. The storm of flying grit and needling whine quickly put an end to whatever obscene concert had been taking place, and the younger Jer simply tossed his instrument out of the picture, raising an arm to protect his face from the airborne debris. Faint shouts could be heard over the incessant, undulant hum, but Applejack had to strain to make out what was being said:

“—arge got Gateway on the COM. Our ride’s here! Get a—“

Suddenly, the view shifted and the whole room spun. A scowling face—the red-head—passed by before being replaced by half a shattered doorframe and the shining hull of a smaller version of Jer and Ray’s ship. Several humans were jogging up the vehicle’s lowered ramp while jets of white-hot flame sputtered from holes on its underside, spitting molten paving and chunks of concrete every which way. The view shook once, twice, and the craft got steadily closer and louder until the image, mercifully, went black.

Almost immediately the image greyed and expanded, revealing an enormous chamber filled to the brim with metallic boxes, tubes, and several more ships all in a row. Humans in thin, fluorescent jumpsuits scurried around the resting machines: making adjustments to various machinery and stacks of cargo. A hulking, yellow metal suit clanked into view, securing a long, white tube to one of the ship’s wings with its striped claws while several other un-armored humans supervised. The view jostled, and the image panned toward a small group of humans in greenish clothes—some lightly bandaged in mauve-stained gauze—who appeared to be watching something that Applejack was all too familiar with: hoof-wrestling.

“Come on, Guajardo! I’ve got half a share riding on this!”

“On him?”

“Pfft. No way, man. I bet the greenhorn that he’d get his wrist broken.”

Two men sat across from one another, elbows tensed on a metallic crate as one man struggled to budged the arm of the other. The man on the left, Guajardo from the cheering and the pointing, strained with all his might, wheezing angrily through his teeth at his opponent who merely sat there, staring neutrally with dull, blue eyes.

“What happened to ‘I’ve got him this time, guys: you just watch’ eh? What happened?”

“Fuck you, Schlosser!” the straining man panted, “I was drunk!”

“You still are, technically,” the stoic man across from him drawled, steady gaze never leaving Guajardo’s sweating brow, “the composition of your sweat indicates that you are still in a state of moderate inebriation.”

“Yeah! You tell him, Blane!”

“You can do that science-y shit to me all night long, corpsman!” a heavily slurred feminine voice shouted from the background, “Beat his ass!”

Jer giggled to himself, smiling at the image above them: “Blane got all the techie pussy.”

“Blane wasn’t human, Jer.”

“He was more human than you, Sir,” the shorter man countered, “Android or no, I miss the bastard.”

“Android?” Cymbal shifted in his spot next to Jer, looking quizzically at the floating memory, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“He always preferred the term ‘Artificial Human’,” Jer mumbled wistfully. In the moving picture above, Blane began to slowly push back against his tired opponent much to the enjoyment of the crowd. Guajardo crowed and cussed, but to no avail. Applejack felt sorry for the man. It was obvious that he was no match for the “an-droyd”. “He’s not really alive, y’see… Well, that depends on your definition of the word ‘alive’.” Jer shifted and closed his eyes. Slowly, he rasped on: “He was made in a factory somewhere. Sol model, probably. Good man. Saved our asses more times than I can count.”

“That’s…” Cymbal began, squinting closely at the image. “That’s terrifying.”

“Mmm?”

“He looks just like one of you. How can you tell the difference?”

Gerald opened his eyes and shot a crooked grin in the direction of the staring musician. “How do you tell the difference between a pony and a changeling?” Cymbal fell silent, and gave a short nod. The green pony continued to stare up at the moving picture even as the match was broken up by a stern, feminine figure.

“All right, gentlemen. On your feet,” she shouted, storming across the room between metal monsters and enormous storage containers. “Orders just came in. We’re headed planetside.” Reaching the contested crate in just a few short strides, she boxed the two wrestlers in each ear and gave Guajardo a shove. “Break it up, ladies. Sarge wants you in the ready room in full combat gear on-the-fucking-double.” Both men nodded, giving one another a look of mutual understanding, and quickly stood. The jeering and catcalling died down soon afterward, and a familiar figure strode over, growing larger as he approached the center of the screen. Before the image disappeared completely, another voice spoke up:

“Where we headed, Oakes?”

The woman—that’s what Ray called them, Applejack recalled—paused, answering as the image began to fade. “We’ve got final sweep duty through a little city in New Mexico: should be a cakewalk. Now lets get a mo—”

Gone was the strange cargo hold, replaced by the shakey image of stands of trees lining a single, poorly-paved road. Heavily armored humans walked cautiously down the center, weapons pointed every which way, but Applejack paid little attention to the new story playing out in the air. She was listening to Gerald and Ray, and thinking about that… woman.

“God damn, man,” the shorter human muttered as he lay back down. “Myra was one hell of a hardass.”

“And you weren’t?”

She had an interesting form… thinner than both Jer and Raymond, but round at the flanks and upper barrel. Applejack glanced down at herself, then at Raymond.

Well… at least Ah have one thing goin’ for me.

“You know what I mean, Ray.”

The camp was relatively silent for a moment, aside from the trudging of recorded footsteps and quiet banter of ghosts.

“She had a thing for you, ya know.”

Applejack immediately turned to look at Gerald—that little bit of Rarity squirming its way into her head—and was surprised to see that he wasn’t fazed by the comment in the slightest. The man simply sighed and gave a somber grin, not paying attention to the rainbow pegasus that hunched a little closer to his side.

“Yeah? And our young Private Schlosser tried to get a holovid of you in the shower. Everybody was starved for something.” Alarmed, AJ turned back to Raymond only to find his same, stony expression. He shrugged, turning back to the new display above the fire pit. The moving lights cast flickering shadows over his scarred face. Applejack felt the sudden urge to just reach out and trace them with her hoof, but managed to suppress the odd impulse. She settled for moving just a bit closer to her bipedal friend while he was riveted by the “holovidamajig”.

“Private. Might I suggest stowing the recorder for now?” a familiar, dour voice proposed.

“Lighten up, Blane. It’s a final sweep: this place has been baited, bombed, and signed in fucking triplicate. Besides, Jer’s gonna be in medical for at least a month. Might as well have something to entertain him while he’s stuck up there.”

At the mention of his name Jer perked up, looking more closely at the swirling images with a wide smile. AJ couldn’t help but be dismayed by how quickly it disappeared.

“When you said you kept all the footage”—the picture showed rows upon rows of squat, abandoned homes—“I guess you weren’t kidding.”

“Schlosser! Check those two over there! Take Blane and Lanz with you!” the distant, buzzing voice young Sgt. Schaffer shouted. The view shifted dramatically and the entryway of one of the less pristine homes grew steadily closer.

“You got my six, Mr. Roboto?”

“I really must insist that you take this more seriously. Final sweeps should be completed with the utmost care to ensure proper—“

“Oh, come off it Blane. Leave the kid alone. I’m going round back, so just wait a few seconds will ya?”

Gerald glanced at the ponies around him, briefly making eye contact with Applejack before turning to his partner: “I think you oughta turn that off, Ray.” Immediately, Rainbow was standing up and strutting toward the recording with all the bravado she could muster.

“Oh c’mon, Jer: don’t baby us. AJ, Cymbal, and I aren’t scared that eas—“

Suddenly a midnight shape sprung through the decayed doorway, and the recording was all flashing teeth, ebony spines, and electronic screams. Dash was cowering beneath Jer’s slight frame even as the image flipped and spun to the ground—recording device dropped in the struggle—to reveal a skeletal, black nightmare tearing the arm off of the red-maned human they had become so acquainted with that night. Blood sprayed as the severed limb was flung away, but, horrified though she was, Applejack couldn’t turn away. It was enormous, and… and sharp.
Another figure quickly entered the frame, dodging the creature’s thrashing tail and lifting it off of the screaming private. It was Blane. He stood there, lifting the monster above his head with both arms, shouting something over and over...

The last thing AJ saw before burying her face in Raymond’s shoulder was a flash of ebony tail and a terrible gout of unnatural, white ichor spewing from Blane’s chest. As she pressed her snout deep into Ray’s armpit—just make it stop oh please—the only thing she could think was that she knew exactly what Gerald meant before when he was talking to Cymbal about the changelings. Oh goddesses she knew.

AJ felt Ray lean forward and, afraid he was about to leave her, she scrambled to grab him with her hooves. He didn’t get up, however, and instead there was a short ‘click’ and the screaming and gurgling that had once been filling the farm pony’s ears faded and stopped.

Silence descended on the clearing, and Applejack finally removed herself from Ray’s underarm to peek about the clearing. It was nearly pitch black aside from the deep orange glow of the coals. Rainbow had yet to leave her hiding place, while Gerald and Cymbal just sat, staring resolutely at the place where the recording used to be. There was terror in the drummer’s eyes—well hidden, but there—and AJ could only assume she had the same look. Finally turning to Raymond, she gave an embarrassed smile, rubbing her hooves in the dirt. Before she could apologize, however, he gave her a nod and turned his attention to the dying fire.

Jer was the first to break the silence:

“Real or no, Blane was a good man.”

A blue flash lit up the south end of camp—a moth, probably—and the stars were beginning to dim in the east. Soon, they would sleep… and perhaps an unlucky few would dream.

“Real or no…”

Deep beneath the forest floor, the night was still young, and the nightmare had just begun. Slowly drifting awake from her fitful slumber, Dinky Doo opened her eyes to a world shrouded in darkness. Blood pounding in her skull, the tiny unicorn tried to move her hooves but found them pinned tightly to her sides. She had no idea where she was or what was happening and she wanted her mommy. Where was she?

Grunting through the stiff, smelly gag covering her snout, Dinky concentrated all of her magical might into the tip of her horn and shone her own wavering light into the darkness. What she saw chilled her to the very core…

She was upside down—that much she knew—and trapped in some strange underground cave. Like the Caverns beneath Canterlot she had visited on a school trip—Mommy hadn’t been able to afford the one yesterday—it was full of stalactites and stalagmites. Except these ones weren’t pointy for some reason. They were kinda oval-shaped. Like the teats on Ms. Daisy. Mommy didn’t like it when I say that word. Said it was a ‘bad word,’ but it makes Sparkler giggle every time… Where are they? Where’s my Mommy? It wasn’t the locale that scared her, however: it was the company.

Dinky wasn’t alone.

Ponies of every shape and size, many of whom she knew from around town, lined the walls. Almost every inch of the cave was crowded with bodies hung every which way from the walls to the ceiling. She didn’t know how far the cave extended—her little light only shone so far—but it seemed like the whole town was down there with her. She saw Mr. Cake just across from her, surrounded by his neighbors: his eyes were wild, and he strained against his gooey green bonds in vain. He looked at Dinky. Looked her straight in the eyes, and though she could not hear him Dinky knew his terror.

Wh-Where?

There was a low rumble and dirt began cascading from the cave ceiling, getting in the young mare’s eyes. Distracted, her light quickly flickering out, Dinky could only watch as dim starlight streamed into the cavern, followed quickly by jagged shapes on translucent, buzzing wings. Carrying more struggling ponies, countless insect-like monsters—she knew they were monsters, like from those stories Sparkler used to hide under her mattress—attached them to any empty space they could find on the walls next to their semi-conscious neighbors. That wasn’t the end though. No. Another figure slithered into the cavern with them.

Scales, fur, and feathers swam through what remained of the celestial lights above, capped with a pair of mismatched antlers and two blood-red eyes. The creature Dinky knew all too well drifted down to the dirt floor of the cave, surveying the bustling chamber. She quickly closed her eyes when his gaze grew to close to her own. Holding her breath, Dinky listened to her own heart pound for nearly half a minute before daring to reopen them… only to find herself staring into the bleeding eyes of the mad god himself. He was upside down, just like her, and he was smiling. A voice invaded her mind, screaming in a thousand voices in a thousand languages. Screaming one sentence:

“Now isn’t this fun?”

Dinky wanted to scream. She wanted her mommy.

“My Lord?”

The question broke through the terrible cries that rattled and shook the poor foal deep within her bones, and she swore she saw a flicker of annoyance cross the demonic eyes of her captor before he turned away.

“Lieutenant?” There was a hesitant cough, and the rasping voice from before continued:

“We have finisssshed. All townsssfolk accounted for.”

The God of Chaos quickly straightened, tail flicking in what could only be excitement. “Excellent!” he crooned, lifting himself up in the air once again with his mismatched wings, “You have done all that I have asked of you. Now, I think, you deserve some compensation.” He swept a paw across the cave. “Inside each of these lovely sacs are your rewards. There’s plenty for everyone.” The assembled monsters looked at one another, chittering in what Dinky guessed was confusion. Her head hurt so much it felt like it would explode, but she had to watch. She was compelled. “C’mon, don’t be shy! You deserve it!”

One of the creatures, the lieutenant that had been talking before, carefully approached one of the eggs, and, emboldened by their superior, many others followed suit. When it got close to the stalactite—a sack, apparently?—it opened all on its own as if by magic and the bug thing froze, flinching and squinting its opaque, blue eyes in terror. When nothing happened it reopened its eyes and looked within. Dinky watched, entranced, as it leaned closer and closer to the opening, until, like a thunderclap, a yellowish shape launched from inside, connecting with the monster’s face with a sickening ‘thwap’.

It was then Dinky learned that a monster could scream.

Screeching and wailing, the insects made a beeline for the entrance, but as quickly as it had appeared the tunnel to the world above disappeared, plunging them all—monster and pony alike—back into darkness.

Dinky’s head was on fire now, but she knew she had to see what was happening to understand why she was there. She needed to know. With one final effort, she flared her horn and tried to make sense of the impossible chaos around her. Before she could make any noteworthy observations, however, she caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye.

One of the hundreds of sacs strewn about the cave had opened, but this one was different: special.

It was hers.

Staring into the liquid darkness of the object’s interior, Dinky had never been more afraid in her entire life. A tear formed in the corner of her eye.

Dinky wanted her mommy.

A light shone on the top floor of the Apple Homestead, but Winona didn’t notice it. She couldn’t. Her eyes were clouded with blood and haze, and no matter how much she swiped with her paws more seeped through. She was bleeding everywhere, and everything was so heavy. It was nearly impossible to move the weight was so bad.

She had crawled to the barn from the orchard—a grueling five hundred paws—and was sure she had left a part of herself along the way. All she knew was that it was dark, and that the time had almost come.

The time.

Winona turned her misty eyes to the heavens, knowing full well that the Watcher wasn’t patrolling the darkened skies like she was supposed to: an unnatural night for an unnatural event. Something stirred in Winona’s insides, and she yipped in pain, spitting blood from her dirt-caked jaws.

The time had come.

Yes.

The time had come for something grand.