Colonel Hoffman stretched and yawned, spreading out into the shape of a star on his bed before he rolled onto his side. The sheets rustled as he shifted around.

Captain Tuckett was already out of the bed. Hoffman watched her pull her shirt over her head before struggling to slip her wings through the holes, as she normally did.

She had cut openings into all of her shirts to make room for her wings, and holes in her pants for her long, silky tail. Everything in her wardrobe had been altered. He visited her room enough times to know. There was no going back to being fully human without a lot of sewing afterwards.

“You like being a pony, don’t you?” Colonel Hoffman asked, sliding out of bed. He was behind Tuckett in an instant and lay his chin atop her head. His snout nuzzled her mane before he playfully nipped at her fuzzy ear.

“Stop it!” she laughed while trying to pull away, but Hoffman wrapped his arms around her from behind.

“Oh no you don’t!” Colonel Hoffman said, lifting her up. She faked a struggle to break free, laughing all the while as he walked her back over to the bed and tossed her down. She rolled to the side before he could pounce on her, and with a flap of her wings she was up to the ceiling.

“Oh, nu feff,” Colonel Hoffman said through a faceful of bedsheets. He rolled over and looked up at her, his grin matching hers.

“And yes, I like being a pony because I can do this,” Captain Tuckett said, flipping upside down mid air yet somehow able to fly with her magic half-pony powers. She hovered close and kissed him on the lips before breaking away.

Colonel Hoffman sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“How long do you think it’ll take General Beckett to find out I was the one who sabotaged the Manehattan nuke?”

Captain Tuckett clicked her tongue.

“I’m sure he already knows,” she said, spinning back upright and landing. “I’m glad Valery was able to warn Canterlot. I made some friends there when I was infiltrating the royal guard.” She looked away, frowning. “Some of them would have transferred to Cloudsdale.”

“What is the General’s endgame?” Colonel Hoffman asked with a groan, shaking his head. “We knew Equestria wasn’t hostile—they don’t even execute any spies they capture—so why go nuclear over Valery asking for peace?”

Tuckett snorted an angry, bitter laugh.

“Have you seen the General’s office?” she asked rhetorically. Of course Colonel Hoffman knew what it looked like. He had played chess with the insufferable bastard. “It's a shrine to warfare. I imagine that he thinks because President Eden was killed, it's now total war with Equestria, and he can give America a solid win against a foreign power after the Resource Wars and the Great War. His rank pins are doing the thinking his brain should be doing.”

“You and I both know that they won’t surrender, not after what we did,” Colonel Hoffman said. He sighed heavily and reached for the radio on the nightstand.

“You know we’re not supposed to listen to the radio since Eden went off the air,” Tuckett said with a sardonic grin. “General’s orders.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Colonel Hoffman said, turning the radio on. It was already set to Enclave Radio.

“—like to thank you all for the opportunity and chance to be your President,” Abigail Jacklyn’s voice came over loud and clear. “But one person should not have all the power. Please hold your applause for my presidential address until after Vice President Autumn finishes his speech.”

Colonel Hoffman and Captain Tucket shared a look.

“She’s honestly trying to restore the republic, isn’t she?” Colonel Hoffman asked.

“It’s Applejack,” Tuckett said, gesturing to the radio. “If you had ever gone to Equestria, you’d learn quickly that her honesty is as legendary as ol' Honest Abe's.”

Maybe it was time for SOCOM to pledge their loyalty back to the Enclave. It was just a matter of waiting to see how the assault on Ponyville went.

<>~<>~<>

Twilight walked through the mulched patch of forest that she and Luna had bombarded with twenty or more mortar shells. Her mind was foggy as adrenaline wore off and exhaustion crept back in.

Twilight occasionally flew over craters to avoid tripping into them. Gryphons lay in mangled heaps in and around the blast holes. More than one had their organs and entrails blown up into the tree branches. The hanging pieces were like grotesque Hearth's Warming Eve decorations, bringing back unpleasant memories of the raider decor in Springvale Elementary.

Twilight hadn’t known what to expect on the other side of the barrage, but it hadn't been… this.

And instead of drugged up lunatics, she was the one who had done it. The gryphons were the enemy, yet Twilight couldn’t stop the tightness in her chest and the overwhelming sense of dread over the pointless loss. A weight pressed down onto her shoulders with the force of a ursa major. They weren’t even proper SOCOM, just gryphons who were used as puppets.

They were people, and she had brutally killed them.

“Looks like they weren’t trained how to space out in a barrage,” Electrum scoffed as she walked up to Twilight’s side. Electrum and Deathclaw Joe had arrived to help Twilight and several royal guards look for any survivors. So far, there weren’t any. “If any ran off, they won’t have time to attack civilians if they’re too busy trying to hide from Celestia, Luna, and half a battalion of pissed off guards.”

“I don’t understand why they would attack a hospital,” Twilight growled as she pointed through the trees and to the hospital beyond, flaring her nostrils. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

Deathclaw Joe hummed.

“Sometimes humans don’t make the logical choice,” he said, “or they take the choices that seem best at the time.” He rolled a gryphon onto their back, then prodded them with a hoof. They coughed alongside a blue bar appearing on Twilight’s new compass. The large alicorn chuckled dryly before he bellowed in his deep voice. “Medics, we got a live one!”

The gryphon’s cough was like an ice bucket to Twilight's fury. Her attention magnetized to the one survivor on the ground. Twilight teleported over and stared down at the wounded gryphon, who turned out to be female. Blood oozed from rents in her combat armor. She hadn’t even been issued power armor like the ones who had attacked the School of Friendship.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Twilight apologized to the wheezing gryphon. The light was almost gone from the gryphon's eyes as she stared up at Twilight, the deep blue fading into oceans of hopelessness as death approached.

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said again, in Gryphic this time. She had to look away from the dying woman, or her heart would tear in two forever. As she did, she spotted Daniel approaching at a trot. His horn glowed as he juggled to both remove the helmet off the stricken gryphon and levitate a gurney behind him. An earth pony mare followed behind in a doctor’s coat and rubber boots. Smatterings of blood smeared across her attire. Her bright orange saddlebags were decorated with the symbol of a red phoenix with outstretched wings gripping a roll of gauze with one foot, and a scalpel in the other.

Daniel set the gurney down and crouched by the gryphon. His hooves cradled her head to keep it elevated. He used his telekinesis to strip the gryphon out of the rest of her armor so the paramedic mare could assess her wounds. Even if the gryphon was an enemy of Equestria, the battle for Ponyville was over, and they deserved fair treatment.

Daniel looked up from the gryphon.

“Hey, Twi, you okay?” he asked in a wavering voice like he was just as okay as she was.

“Y-yeah,” Twilight replied, her voice hitching in the back of her throat with a hiccup. Her gaze returned to the gryphon as she moaned in pain, tears rolling from her eyes.

Fucking damnit, it was a person laying on the ground. WHY DID IT HAVE TO COME TO THIS!?

Deathclaw Joe gently wrapped a wing over Twilight, his deep voice carrying a rumble despite his attempt to whisper. “Hey, I think you’re blocking his light. Let’s take a few steps away and give the medics space to work.”

Twilight managed to tear her attention away from the gryphon in time to catch Daniel and Deathclaw Joe share a knowing nod.

Twilight could see on their faces that they knew she was three seconds from breaking down. She needed to leave, so she did. She passed Daniel, still under the wing of Deathclaw Joe. They had to search for more injured survivors anyway.

“You don’t need to do this,” Deathclaw Joe whispered. “Go get some sleep, or a drink, or go spend time with loved ones. It’ll help.”

Deathclaw Joe was right. Someone who had killed as many people as he had would know. Maybe Celestia knew how to cope with being a killer as well? Was guilt from ancient wars the reason why Celestia had strived for peace so fiercely that it ended up being a detriment to Equestria at times?

“Can–” Twilight cut herself off with a snotty sniff, and wiped her runny nose with a foreleg. She was worse off than she thought. “Can we go to the hospital? I want to see Pinkie Pie.”

“Sure,” Deathclaw Joe said. He guided Twilight out of the treeline, Electrum following along. “I think I saw Fluttershy and her crew fly that way, too.”

Twilight wiped away another glob of snot. The fresh air past the forest was good. Getting away from the bodies was better. It helped her think and process what she wanted to say without sniffling… too much.

“Thanks,” was all she could lamely come up with.

Deathclaw Joe didn’t respond with words. He nodded and let Twilight free from under his wing. Part of her wanted to be back under what felt like both a warm blanket and a shield. It made her feel safer, but another part of her was glad to be free from it. Deathclaw Joe being protective of her in front of Daniel, even with Daniel’s approval, didn’t sit right with her.

They entered the hospital, and it was an instantaneous sensory overload to Twilight’s tired, emotionally beleaguered brain. The lobby lights were somehow both annoyingly bright, yet too dim to see all of the lobby clearly.

Ponies who weren’t too sick to their stomachs or too injured to talk spoke loudly over each other, blending with the occasional gut-churning sound of one radiation-sick evacuee or another vomiting into a bucket.

There were too many ponies to count. Seats and couches were used like beds, while several yoga mats, mattresses, and sleeping bags occupied most of the floor space as ponies waited for proper housing and treatment.

Then there was the smell. The air was choked with the clawing pang of expulsions from the radiation-sick victims. There was a dull pink pegasus stallion sitting nearby on a chair reading a magazine. His feathers had fallen away alongside several patches of fur, revealing raw, boiled-looking red muscle underneath that was turning gray and necrotic, adding to the smell in the air.

The early stages of ghoulification, if Twilight had to guess from what little she knew from Gob and fighting feral ghouls. The poor stallion was just sitting around in a waiting room. Equestria hadn’t been prepared for multiple full-scale disasters at once.

“So,” Electrum said slowly, her voice low and conspiratorial. “Why doesn’t Equestria simply use ghoul pegasi to turn off the machines in Cloudsdale?”

Twilight gasped and spun to glare daggers into her eyes.

“Are you insane?” Twilight hissed, her tiredness and apathy gone as she gestured towards the ghoulifying stallion. “We’re not going to force anyone back to where their loved ones died and caused them extreme physical mutation.”

Electrum held up a hoof and smiled gently.

“If you ever feel sorry for yourself for what you have to do on the battlefield,” Electrum said. “Remember that SOCOM wouldn’t hesitate to use them for a second. Equestria is choosing the harder option to spare people suffering.”

The white paramedic mare pushed a gurney carrying a guard mare wearing a neckbrace through the hospital entrance. Daniel followed afterwards with the gryphon from earlier. They passed by without a word, wheeling the two deeper into the hospital.

Electrum chuckled. “You even give your enemies medical treatment.”

Seeing the lobby full of people that she had saved, and hearing what Electrum had to say, Twilight’s conscience eased up on her for what she’d done.

“Hey, Electrum,” Twilight called, “I’m trying to wrap my head around why SOCOM would give away power armor and energy weapons.”

What better person to ask the logic of a group than one of their former members?

“Oh that’s easy,” Electrum said, nodding. “SOCOM uses ballistic weaponry, but we still have a lot of energy weapons stockpiled. We never use them since you can’t suppress them, and the lightshow they make means they become their own tracers, which isn’t always a good thing. As for the power armor, the devil-horned suits are an East Coast design. It's made to be easier to mass produce at the cost of protection over the older version of the Advanced Power Armor Mark 2, so the new stuff is easier to replace while we keep the older and better suits for ourselves.”

“There was a woman named Sergeant Dornan who wore an old set,” Twilight said, smiling. “It had been her father’s and she broke the speaker in her helmet from shout—”

Twilight was cut off as a scroll appeared above her head, which she caught and unfurled in the same motion with her telekinesis. It was from Grand General Tempest Shadow. Twilight’s eyes widened as she read the scroll’s contents.

Princess Twilight,

I have a mission that I need your magical talents for while my soldiers are busy searching in and around Ponyville for those gryphons. A guard outpost at the Gates of Tartarus hasn’t reported in today. We dispatched a wagon with supplies earlier, but they too have failed to report in. I do not wish to cause alarm, but with the nature of our underhanded enemy, nothing can be ruled out.

Due to how remote the outpost is, it could simply be the ponies there having issues with their equipment and the sky-wagon taking shelter due to bad weather, but I would like to know rather than have a SOCOM-backed jailbreak to deal with on top of everything else.

We have a tracking talisman on the supply wagon, and with your abilities as an alicorn, as well as your wasteland combat experience, you are perfectly suited for this task of finding the missing wagon while also checking up on the outpost, and defending yourself if there is indeed trouble. Please come to the castle so we can give you a map of the flight path. If you are unable, I understand and will send a unicorn on a pegasus-drawn chariot, but I have a higher faith in your capabilities to see this through.

Grand General Tempest Shadow

Twilight frowned. Never a chance to catch a break.

“You okay, Twilight?” Electrum asked.

“No, I just got a mission to do,” Twilight said. She looked at Deathclaw Joe. “Do you want to come along?”

Deathclaw Joe shook his head before nodding towards Fluttershy, who Twilight only just realized was in the room. Twilight couldn’t blame herself for missing her. She looked just like a hospital nurse with the green smock, white cloth mask, rubber boots, and lime green plastic shower caps over her short mane and cropped tail. The only markings that she wasn’t an actual nurse were the white armbands sewn onto the smock with bold black lettering proclaiming her as ‘VOLUNTEER’.

“If I’m going to be a ruler in this land,” Deathclaw Joe said, “I need to learn how to be as gentle and kind as Fluttershy. I want to volunteer around the hospital, and from the look of this lobby they need all the help they can get.” He nudged his head towards the door. “And if there is another hidden wave that descends on this place, I will be here to protect these people alongside Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy.”

That won Twilight over. She nodded, then looked at Electrum, who smiled and chuckled.

“After what we went through together in the Dunwich building, I’ll always have your back when you ask, Princess.”

It was settled, then. With Daniel and Fluttershy busy doing medical work, Pinkie Pie and Deathclaw Joe on guard duty at the hospital, that didn’t leave many options on companions to take.

All that was left was to get a sky chariot and the flight path of the supply wagon. After seeing if Daniel was available. She still needed to learn how VATS worked. It could come in useful if she ran into trouble on her mission.

<>~<>~<>

Once Twilight and Electrum had departed, Deathclaw Joe slowly approached Fluttershy, feeling clumsy and uncoordinated as he weaved around the various mats and bedding set up in the hospital lobby.

So many ponies were sick and injured with radiation poisoning, their bodies practically consumed by lesions and rad burns. It was a window back into The Pitt. His stomach clenched, and a larger than comfortable part of himself wanted to leave like a coward and flee from the reminders surrounding him.

But the people here needed something to hope for, and all the help they could get. He could provide at least a little help for his soon-to-be adoptive kingdom. It was the right thing to do.

Despite his large size, horn, and wings, nopony paid him much attention outside of the occasional mutter or two. Deathclaw Joe figured that a male alicorn walking around wasn’t the strangest occurrence to happen to them in the last few days. Most of the ponies in the lobby had survived a close encounter with a nuclear weapon.

He reached Fluttershy, who had her side to him. She didn’t notice his approach as she tilted a bottle of water gently to a mare’s lips, who only had gauze-wrapped stumps in place of her back legs.

He waited patiently, watching Fluttershy take care of another. It reminded him of Samantha when she acted as one of the New Horde’s midwives when she wasn’t the one who was giving birth. Gentle, kind, and better than him at being civilized.

When Fluttershy was done, he politely coughed to catch her attention. The tall, teal-eyed pegasus mare regarded him with a sidelong glance and a scowl. He could already feel the fury radiating from her cold look.

“I don’t want to take much of your time, but is this a good time to talk?” Deathclaw Joe asked as quietly as his deep voice could manage.

Fluttershy’s scowl softened as she turned towards Deathclaw Joe, then walked past him.

“Come on, let’s talk outside,” Fluttershy said with more than a little bit of ire. She didn’t budge her head. She simply prowled testily towards the doors, her body coiled like a spring. He knew she would punch him at a moment’s notice.

Yet he still followed, and once they were through the doors and several paces away from them, he spoke.

“I’m sor—”

SMACK

Fluttershy had suddenly spun around to face him, the back of her gloved forehoof whipping across Deathclaw Joe’s cheek hard enough it stumbled him.

“Owwww,” Deathclaw Joe said, slowly turning his head back to the mare boldly staring up at him. Her glare could only be described as ‘atomic’. “I deserved that.”

“You deserve a lot more,” Fluttershy growled, pulling down her cloth mask with a wing. “You murdered everyone in those tunnels who you deemed unsavable.”

Deathclaw Joe’s features hardened. Of course he had. He had already saved the ones that wanted saving. He told Fluttershy as much. “Listen, I gave every metro raider a chance to walk away from their old lives and join the New Horde. I accepted them as long as they were willing to put down the needle and have some decency. I’m not here to fight you, I just want to talk.”

His requirements for joining the gang weren’t even stringent. She herself had passed and was part of the New Horde in his eyes. Her nose was still in the middle of healing from where he had broken it with a punch that could have easily killed her if he had put a little more force into it.

“Yeah, you think you did the right thing,” Fluttershy said as she ground a hoof against her forehead, scowling again. “You told desperate addicts to quit cold turkey and abandon all of their friends who couldn’t put down the needle like they could—friends they could have run with as part of a gang for years—all for a new group that would throw them out if they relapsed. But I’ve worked with addicts before, and it's not something that most people can just give up with the clap of their hooves, but they aren’t lesser people for having fallen into that position. You had the right idea, but the way you went about it was flawed, and that’s why I’m so pissed off with you.”

She threw her forehooves into the air before she punctuated every other word with a wild gesture, not allowing him a moment to speak.

“And something that Twilight or Celestia doesn’t see is that you are a fucking hypocrite,” Fluttershy seethed, jabbing a hoof painfully into his chest. It still surprised him how strong she was. “Your gang was nice enough to be let into the towns, so you bought and supplied the chems to the junkies you supposedly wanted to stay off the stuff. Your gang directly profited off the addictions of those around you.”

Deathclaw Joe backstepped, tail and ears folding down as the truth cut deeper than the whip marks on his back. Fluttershy was… well, she was right. He hadn’t considered the fact that, maybe, asking addicts to immediately quit because of the New Horde’s strict no-chem policy turned away those that could have been saved if they were weaned off their addictions. Or maybe he had, and just never bothered to change how things were done.

She was also right about the profiteering, but it was more nuanced than that. If the raider gangs around him didn’t get their fix, what lengths would they have gone to get it? It was a way of controlling the more violent gangs while benefiting the New Horde with an income.

That didn’t make it any less wrong, at least to an Equestrain’s eyes. And some humans’, too. Samantha had already brought up the hypocrisy of being anti-drug drug dealers. The New Horde needed to be better. He needed to be better. Setting better examples and working to build a better world was the only way the Capital Wasteland would ever be a place he would want to raise his children.

“You’re right,” Deathclaw Joe said softly. And she was right, for the most part. It was Fluttershy’s turn to backstep, her jaw dropping. Deathclaw Joe wasn’t an unreasonable tyrant. He could admit when he was wrong.

He sat on the ground, then lay on his stomach so his head was closer to being even height with Fluttershy so she didn’t have to crane her neck looking up at him.

“You’re right that I messed up and killed a lot of people that may not have deserved it because they were mixed in with those who absolutely did, and I was too stubborn to make a plan that could have spared more people.” He shook his head slowly. “But I had my reasons. You met Samantha, right? I trusted you to watch over my family.”

“Yes,” Fluttershy said flatly as she nodded. The look in her eyes was hard and analytical, like she was searching for any flaw in what he was about to say. She had a reason to mistrust anything he said. He had trusted her to watch over his family, and as she did so in good faith, he had violated her trust by going through with a plan that he knew from his other Equestrian New Horde members would decimate the spirit of the kindest mare in Equestria.

“Did she ever tell you why I have two wives? Or her relationship with my other wife, Lisa?” Deathclaw Joe asked. Fluttershy shook her head, expression still firm. “Samantha was one of the New Horde’s midwives, even all the way back during our start over fifteen years ago. She loves bringing kids into this world, either helping other mothers or being a mother herself.”

“Ah, that last part I did know,” Fluttershy said politely as her expression softened. “Hades, Odin, and Silver are all hers, and you two have an agreement that you name the boys while she names the girls.” She chuckled. “Your plan for the baby coming up is Horus, while Samantha wants to name her Rosanne, because Samantha doesn’t like the names you’ve read in your old books.”

Deathclaw Joe chuckled mirthfully. Hades had been absolute hell to give birth to. Samantha’s belly had been so swollen before Hades was born, everyone thought that she was due for twins. It took nearly thirteen hours of labor for Hades to come out, and it took several years before Samantha was ready to have more children. Even Samantha’s overabundant love of them didn’t counter her fear of another difficult birth.

Fluttershy had spoken and listened to his people. Truly listened and committed it to memory. That was nice to know, but Deathclaw Joe’s mirth drained faster than a Nuka~Cola down a parched man’s throat.

“Lisa may not seem like the type, but we tried for children,” Deathclaw Joe said, his voice strained. He hated telling the story, but Fluttershy needed to know why he did what he did. “Both times were miscarriages, and the second time we nearly lost Lisa. Samantha was there both times.” Deathclaw Joe paused as Fluttershy gasped, throwing her hooves over her mouth to hide her shock. “Samantha and Lisa have always been friends. She saw how much pain and grief Lisa was suffering through, so she asked Lisa if she could have a baby with me, but give the child to her to raise as her own.”

Samantha’s heart was as big as his entire body. To go through nine months of pregnancy, only to give up her child to another woman. Deathclaw Joe didn’t know if he could have made the choice if he was in Samantha’s shoes.

“Samantha wanted to be a surrogate mother,” Fluttershy said slowly, dropping her hooves away from her face. Shock still lingered in her expression. “I’ve thought about being a surrogate mother once or twice, before I met Discord. Then I started thinking about being an actual mother. What changed it from Samantha being a surrogate to her being your second wife?”

Deathclaw Joe slumped his shoulders with a heavy sigh.

“Lisa didn’t feel that it was right to rob Samantha of a child that Samantha would always love more than her, since it would be biologically hers,” Deathclaw Joe said. “And following my own decrees that I had set down, my heir had to be the child of my wife. If I broke my own rules or changed them so soon after making them, I would have undermined my own legitimacy as a leader. Thankfully, I hadn’t made any laws against polygamy. Celestia isn’t my first marriage of convenience.”

But he had come to deeply love Samantha and all of the kids. He also still loved Lisa, even if she was unable to bear him an heir. His wives weren’t property or factories to make his children. After what Deathclaw Joe had gone through in The Pitt, he would never treat anyone like a slave.

Even the time Lisa had innocently asked to be tied up for sex had been too far.

“So how does this all tie into betraying everyone at the Knock?” Fluttershy asked, though her tone was far softer and less accusatory. She wanted to know why, now that she had the context.

“Because Equestria is a country with modern medicine and magic. Lisa has the best chance of bringing a child to term here, if she still wants to, and with Samantha being so close to having our next child, a real hospital is a lot better than midwives around a fur bed. I wanted to make sure that I could earn my people’s way into Equestria, even if it meant betraying all the other metro gangs.”

Which he had to admit, wasn’t the smartest move. Hey, Princesses, we're totally civilized. Here is a table full of the corpses of your enemies. Do you take severed heads in place of passports? Stupid. Just stupid.

By some miracle it had still worked, but even if it hadn’t, clearing out the other metro gangs had always been one plan out of a handful. There was a precedent for why the pregnant women and children never attended Knocks.

“I still hate what you did, and I’m not going to entirely forgive you for it, I can’t,” Fluttershy said. “But you have a child on the way, I can understand that you’re under pressure.”

That was all Deathclaw Joe was looking for. To at least get things squared away with Fluttershy and tell his side of the story. He was desperate to get his people into Equestria.

Samantha had survived three child births already. She was lucky. Deathclaw Joe had unfortunately overseen funerals for women who didn’t survive their first.

The Grim Reaper only needed to get lucky once.

<>~<>~<>

Twilight had a perfect view of the scarred landscape as she flew high through the sky, pulling a lightly armored royal-guard wagon, with Electrum as her sole passenger.

The lands surrounding the dark mountain holding the Gates of Tartarus were a churned, gravelly mess. Wild and ancient magic had stripped the land unnaturally barren, sterilizing the environment into a state of perpetual lifelessness. The only signs that life had once existed in the Tartaran Badlands were ancient thicketts populated by desiccated, hollow trees with leaves as brown as aged paper, if they had any leaves at all. It was the same story with the bushes at the trees’ bases.

Volcanic vents shrouded a majority of the Badlands in a thin layer of sulfurous smog, which Twilight was thankful she could fly over. The thick rolling banks gave the ghastly ground below a primordial soup-like appearance that was unpleasant to look at. It was most likely worse to be in.

“So I’ve been thinking about our mission,” Electrum said out of the blue, surprising Twilight. She had been silent over most of the trip.

“Do you think SOCOM has something to do with the missing wagon and the outpost not checking in?” Twilight asked as she inclined her head back, trying to balance watching the flight ahead, but keeping an eye on her passenger as well.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Electrum said, shaking her head. “Nuclear weapons are far more controllable than formerly imprisoned megalomaniacs. Springing the prisoners in Tartarus has a large chance to backfire if someone like Tirek gets their way to Earth. Starswirl the Bearded was telling me earlier that there have been strange occurrences out this way. We think the random portals aren’t so random. They’re attracted to places with lots of metal, or lots of magic.”

“Like the Metro Tunnels, or the anomaly in the Everfree?” Twilight asked. Or the wild magic that had stripped the Tartaran Plains barren.

“Exactly,” Electrum said, “but Princess Celestia pulling you back with that spell has thrown a wrench into things. Starswirl needs more time to collect data. He wants to launch an expedition into the Everfree and potentially close the anomaly. If we do that, we might be able to use the teleportation device I stole as a basis for a spell to find where SOCOM is hiding the mobile portal to this world since it uses similar enchantments.”

Twilight had to do a double take. She had failed to talk to Starswirl lately with so much else on her plate. That was incredible news.

“I don’t know what to say,” Twilight said. “If we find their portal we can stop them before they have a chance to bomb more of our cities.”

“I know, right?” Electrum smiled. “And I think Equestria will be ready for it. Have you seen the Cutie Mark Crusaders recently?”.

“I’ve been busy, but I want to,” Twilight said, wondering how the Cutie Mark Crusaders had any relation to Equestrian military readiness. Twilight couldn’t dwell on the thought too hard, her attention split between the conversation, flying, and occasionally glancing at the map held in her magic. The talisman tracking spell was still active from her last casting. The tiny red dot on the paper hadn’t moved an inch. They were getting close. “Why do you ask?”

“You really need to see the vehicle designs that they cooked up,” Electrum said, whistling. “I never expected girls that young to know so much about blueprint drafting and material science. I wouldn’t be surprised if they invented a recipe for composite armor by the time I see them again.”

“They tried a little bit of everything to get their cutie marks,” Twilight chuckled as she looked back at her passenger. Electrum rolled her eyes, and Twilight continued. “Speaking of, have you ever thought about removing the tattoos on your flank to see if you have a real cutie mark underneath?”

Electrum squirmed in her seat, tugging at the collars of her Enclave uniform and trench coat.

“So, are we there yet?” Electrum asked, pitching her voice to sound as fillyish as possible.

Twilight looked back at the map. They were.

<>~<>~<>

Gravel crunched under the wheels of the sky chariot as Twilight landed. Thick, curling volcanic smoke swirled around her, filling her nose with the scent of burning sulfur.

“The lost wagon should be somewhere in that thicket,” Twilight said, unhooking herself from the sky chariot as Electrum jumped out. She had her pistol raised in her copper-colored magic and scanned the treeline for any threats.

“Did you see the crash from above?” Electrum asked.

“Who says it was a crash?” Twilight replied as she, too, drew her pistol. The thick smoke made it hard to see farther than ten hooves in front of her. They had to be careful as they both approached the edge of the desiccated trees and bushes.

“Fair,” Electrum said, sticking close to Twilight’s side. “I don’t see any… wait, ten o’clock.”

Twilight glanced at her PipBoy.

“That’s not right, it’s—” Twilight started, but Electrum facehoofed and telekinetically turned Twilight’s head to face a direction slightly left of their landing site. Narrowing her eyes, Twilight could see that the missing wagon had been pulled into the treeline. “Right, military speak.”

Then Twilight noticed the three blue bars on her compass, just in time for two ponies wearing cobbled-together armor to step out the scraggly underbrush. Their brown leather and rusted spikes had blended in easily with the dead bushes and smoke.

The damage to their mottled, mangy hides and their attire made it clear that they were raiders. They fit right in with the environment. The area around Tartarus was remarkably similar to the Capital Wasteland.

“Well lookie here, another wagon of loot,” the first raider said, a brown unicorn mare with a bruised eye socket swollen shut. Her barding covered so little that it showed her flanks, revealing a cutie mark of a spike impaling a skull. She levitated a hoof-long piece of rebar sharpened to a point at the far end, while the grip was wrapped with duct tape. Dried blood coated the long shiv. “We didn’t even have to lure them in with fake cries for help this time. Dumbasses are just begging for it.”

The second raider, an earth pony stallion, laughed maniacally. He wore raider garb over a poorly-fitting set of battered and dark colored royal guard armor, which Twilight’s stomach rolled as she realized it had been painted ruddy-brown with dirt, gravel dust, and blood. An equestrian 10mm SMG was clenched in his teeth, which he spoke around the mouth grip of. “Drop the weapons and raise your tails.”

Both of the blue compass pips turned red.

Then the third blue bar turned red as a third raider exited the brush. She was so big that Twilight could have easily mistaken the yak’s yellow-green furred body for a mossy rock if she wasn’t stomping towards them through the fog. Then again, most rocks weren’t armed with miniguns. The weapon was fixed to one side, the ammunition backpack on the other, and a long flexible metal belt linked the two over her broad back. The helmeted severed heads of guard ponies hung by ropes like grotesque golden earrings from each of her two massive curved horns.

“Haha, stupid ponies no sneak up on super mutant and friends,” she laughed through her bite on the rein leading to the trigger of her minigun. Her voice was almost as deep as Deathclaw Joe’s.

Teleporting away wasn’t an option. The raiders needed to be stopped, and with the severed heads dangling from the super mutant-yak’s horns, Twilight decided that going lethal was her only option.

Unfortunately, it was three against two, and their opponents had far better weapons.

Twilight needed an edge. Thankfully, she had recently acquired one.

The world slowed to a crawl as she activated VATS with a thought, the targeting system lighting up the yak in a purple outline. Twilight selected the yak’s head, then tried to cue up three more shots for good measure, but couldn't manage all four shots as the Analytical Power bar in the corner of her vision drained with each command.

Twilight hoped three would be enough as the shots rang out. The slowness of VATS let her watch them in detail.

The first shot grazed the yak’s scalp, the pain causing the ex-super mutant to spit out the trigger rein. The second shot put a hole into her right ear, while the third pierced the yak's right eye. The lead slug penetrated through her thin orbital bone and buried into her brain.

The world sped back up before the yak collapsed to the ground as suddenly as a dropped stone. Legs limply folding under her.

"Fu—" the stallion with the SMG started to yell, but the rest of the curse died on his lips as Electrum shot his breastplate twice, failing to penetrate, before her third shot tore open his throat like a coyote biting into carrion.

Rebar mare was quick to recover from the sudden turn of the tables. She lanced her shiv out like a dagger, the pointed tip glancing off Twilight's armored shoulder. Electrum blasted her in the chest and face in the same manner as the last pony.

The brutal fight had only lasted seconds.

“That was some good shooting,” Electrum said, before she quizzically tilted her head to Twilight’s Pip-Boy. “VATS?”

“Y-yeah, Daniel made sure to teach me before we left the hospital,” Twilight said, panting slightly. She checked her compass, but there were no other bars, red or blue, outside of Electrum. “Let’s hurry up and recover the bodies.”

“What bodies?” Electrum asked, before Twilight pointed at the two severed heads hanging from the yak’s horns.

Those heads had to have come from somewhere.

<>~<>~<>

Twilight wiped the vomit off her lips with a foreleg.

The fog-like smoke had miraculously been kept out by the thickly clustered dead bushes, allowing her to see everything in the small raider camp.

One guard pony hung from a nearby tree. He had been stripped of his armor and uniform, decapitated, dewinged, and all of his legs hacked off. They had also castrated him.

The mare had been treated similarly, only her corpse lay on one of the three sleeping bags that surrounded a small fire pit ringed with stones. Charred leg bones lay in the pit, while an entire severed leg was speared through on a spit like a rotisserie. Tin cans and trash from the wagon’s supplies littered the ground.

“Not even radroaches live this dirty,” Electrum growled, kicking an empty tin can that had once held diced peaches. She produced a knife from under her tan greatcoat, and levitated it to the rope holding the stallion. “I’ll cut him down. Are you good to catch him?”

Twilight forced a nod, wiping her mouth again, before she steeled herself and wrapped the body in telekinesis.

<>~<>~<>

It didn’t take long before they were airborne again, only this time it was with the lost supply wagon. The raiders hadn’t left much. It only meant that Twilight could carry what remained by herself when the wagons were normally rated for a team of two when loaded.

Twilight could hear Electrum rummaging through the crates in the back as she looked through the supplies. Twilight didn’t mind her snooping, she would have done the same to distract herself if she had to sit in the back of a wagon with two mutilated corpses shoved into sleeping bags.

“So the sun’s going down again, Princess Celestia must be done looking for the gryphons,” Twilight said, trying to restart a conversation after stepping on the sore subject earlier and to help distract Electrum from the corpses.

“Yeah,” Electrum said without much enthusiasm. “It is. It’s strange seeing a sunset at midnight.”

Twilight checked the time. Electrum was close, it was twelve thirty a.m.

“So, do you know what SOCOM’s endgame for Equestria is?” Twilight asked.

Electrum snorted.

“SOCOM’s great plan is only the purview of the highest of higher ups,” Electrum said bitterly. “Doesn't help that the damn organization is a soup of every federal agency and special forces group the pre-war government could throw into it. The original pre-Enclave SOCOM, JSOC, CIA, DIA, FBI, BADTFL, and other equally tongue-tying acronyms that maybe meant something two centuries ago.”

Twilight only understood one name out of the alphabet soup Electrum had spat out. Or if she had recognized any others outside of the Defense Intelligence Agency, her tired brain didn't register it. She’d been up since six a.m. yesterday, so, over eighteen hours?

It was getting hard to keep track of time, even with a Pip-Boy.

“Wouldn’t an organization based on that many different departments get doctrinally confused?” Twilight asked, yawning. “Even Equestrian history is filled with groups not getting along. If the Enclave threw every group’s ideology into a blender, how does it function with so many competing founding principles?”

“That’s the thing, I think it was supposed to be dysfunctional.” Electrum gave a laugh as dry as the gravelly ground below them. Twilight looked back to see her face was set into a scowl as she continued on, waving a foreleg as she explained. “SOCOM’s byzantine bureaucracy and over compartmentalization keeps us so disorganized that we would never try and plot a coup against the president. It makes us the best secret police to watch the rest of the Enclave because our loyalty is as unquestioning as our lack of ability to function together without higher micromanagement.”

So without President Eden, General Beckett was flailing around with a dysfunctional mess of an agency. Was he acting on pre-existing orders, or ad-libbing to apocalyptic levels?

“How do you get anything done that isn’t spying on your own?” Twilight groaned. The whole system of setting up a self-defeating agency to run internal security was just asinine and wasteful. “I thought that SOCOM built the portals, right?”

Or at least the prototype teleportation device.

“Yes and no,” Electrum replied. “The portals were built pre-war. It was only about five, maybe six years ago that some old automated systems in Virtual Strategic Solutions picked up energy readings coming from the first portal in this world. President Eden sent us the data, and we used the energy readings off that data to learn how to work with magic. The second portal into Equestria had been disenchanted until we fixed it. It took years of studying what President Eden had sent us to do so.”

A large magical event five or six years ago… Twilight had to think a little longer than she would have if she was well-rested before she got it.

“That was around the time when Princess Luna returned,” Twilight said with a jolt. “Could you have detected when my friends and I used the Elements of Harmony for the first time?”

They had cured Princess Luna of Nightmare Moon’s hold over her in the Castle of the Two Sisters. Right in the middle of the Everfree Forest, which meant it was close to the portal cave.

“That lines up with what we cross-referenced from the journal you published,” Electrum said.

Interesting. Twilight scratched her mane, dwelling on what Electrum had said. The secret, movable portal made in response to Princess Celestia finding the first had had to be re-enchanted. Was it for security reasons, or something deeper?

“Do you know why SOCOM’s portal had been disenchanted?”

If it had stayed active, the Enclave, or at least SOCOM, could have run around Equestria for the last two centuries. But that wasn’t the case.

“I’m not sure,” Electrum said, far more serious and heavy. She may have been thinking what Twilight was thinking. Things weren’t adding up. “We only moved into that facility after the destruction of the Poseidon oil rig out west, but before then, no idea.”

“I see,” Twilight said. That line of inquiry had been followed to its conclusion. “So Princess Celestia finally told me the truth about some things.” They had talked for nearly an hour and a half after their spat. “Like the fact that SOCOM’s been infiltrating Equestria for around two years now, and the ESS agents have been running in circles trying to find them.”

The fact that any captured SOCOM agents didn’t know the whereabouts or objectives of other agents was a testament to the fact that they had a valid reason for all of the compartmentalization, which frustrated Twilight. Teams were supposed to work together.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve done it successfully,” Electrum said, letting out a friendly chuckle. “Several field agents had already flipped sides before I decided to join Equestria. Not a hard choice when most of us have had more chances to participate in actual democracy in Equestria than we ever have in the Enclave. The first time I ever voted was for Mayor Mare’s reelection in Ponyville. Before then, my right to vote existed only in Enclave propaganda.”

Princess Celestia had also filled Twilight in on the eight field agents who’d turned themselves into the ESS voluntarily. The betrayal of so many agents had turned the secret war hot as ESS and SOCOM agents fought each other in the shadows, with everything being covered up from the public eye.

And it wasn’t just SOCOM who had loyalty issues. Three ESS agents had been apprehended as they tried contacting SOCOM. The war Twilight hadn’t known about was a whole snake pit of secrets, lies, money, and changing allegiances.

Twilight wished she was back in her room with Daniel. She wanted to curl up in bed with him and ask him about his day and de-stress.

Was a single normal day so much to ask for?

<>~<>~<>

The sun had almost set for the second time, but it allowed Twilight enough light to clearly see the imposing edifice that was the Gates of Tartarus.

Two massive, solid black stone doors etched with glowing magenta and blood red runes. Framing the doors were a spiked crown of conical rocks that vented volcanic steam, shrouding the doors a constant halo of caustic, sulfur-yellow smog.

A tall and extensive palisade had been erected in a horseshoe shape in front of the doors, incorporating the mountain as the backside of the fortification. Three evenly spaced guard towers allowed the golden armored ponies manning them a reprieve from the smoke, and the height advantage to watch far out into the smoggy wasteland.

As Twilight drew closer to the outpost, Twilight balked at the sight of the Equestrian flag hanging upside down on the flagpole. While Twilight wasn’t a military mare, she knew enough to know that it was a sign of distress. However the activity in the camp wasn’t agitated or alarmed.

Then Twilight saw the massive hole in the wall, pushed in from the exterior. The wall had brought down a fourth tower atop two of the ten tents within the outpost’s boundary.

One of the damaged tents had a radio mast outside of it, which was canted and heavily bent.

“I see ponies outside the wall,” Electrum said, leaning over the edge of the wagon to jab a hoof towards the ground.

Twilight spotted the ponies as Electrum pointed them out. She turned the wagon and descended towards them to ask what was going on. As she flew down, she noticed an officer wearing a steel gray uniform that blended in with the fog and gravel was busy overlooking the three royal guards digging large holes near the breach in the wall. The officer spotted the wagon and ran towards their landing spot.

The orange unicorn stallion that greeted them had a sergeant’s triple chevron pinned to the epaulets of his gray dress uniform. It was clean and professional, unlike the armor and uniforms of the sweaty guards who had kept on digging despite the officer leaving the mound of dirt and gravel that he had been standing atop of to watch them.

“Thank Celestia,” the Sergeant said. His nametag read Pepper. “What unit are you—” Sergeant Pepper cut himself off with a choking snort as he noticed Twilight’s horn, then he jittered between deciding on saluting or bowing, only to end up with doing both. “Apologies for the state of the outpost, Princess.”

“What the hay happened here?” Twilight asked urgently.

The stallion rose from his saluting-bow and turned around to glare at the three digging.

“Alright, you three, take a thirty minute break!” The Sergeant barked. “Then I need you back here to fill those holes in and move them five meters to the left of where they are now! Move it, maggots!” The three stallions scrambled out the hole to go take their break while Sergeant Pepper looked back to Twilight, serious and grim.

“Those three idiots were playing a game of keepaway with Cerberus too close to the wall. The dead trees around here make for poor palisade material, so Cerberus went right through it and knocked down a tower in the process. It took out one of the barracks tents and the comms tent, but thankfully there was no one inside, and the tower guard was a pegasus. The tower missed Comms Officer Sine Wave by only two feet when it crashed down onto the radio she was about to use for the daily report.”

“Talk about timing,” Electrum said skeptically as she hopped out the wagon. Her eyes narrowed at the Sergeant, who quickly shifted towards the back of the wagon.

“Yes,” the Sergeant said nonchalantly as he levitated out a crate, passing it to Electrum. “Please take this to the supply tent, ma’am. It’s the tall and wide one towards the middle of camp.”

Electrum frowned as she took the crate and walked away with it, going slower than Twilight knew was normal for her during their trek through the woods near the hospital.

Something was up.

Sergeant Pepper sighed and turned to Twilight.

“So, does the sun coming back up have anything to do with the Princess of Friendship bringing us our supplies so late?” Sergeant Pepper asked as he levitated out one of the sleeping bags… from the wrong side. The mutilated corpse and severed head of the guard stallion landed between him and Twilight.

Sergeant Pepper didn’t flinch, even as the head rolled between his hooves.

“Raiders?” He asked with an almost annoyed sigh.

“About two miles away from here, and the sooner I can report it the better.” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes at Sergeant Pepper. “How badly damaged is your radio?”

“You’d have to talk to Specialist Sine Wave about that, she’s the Comms Officer, so she’d be able to tell you if the radio is salvageable.”

Twilight nodded. Hopefully her repair spell was up to snuff. She had a human infiltrator to report.

“Please do not panic, Princess,” Sergeant Pepper whispered as he swept the corpse back into the sleeping bag with his magic, “but are you aware that the mare you arrived with is a very dangerous human? My real name is Jeremy Phillips, and I know who she really is.”

Or maybe not.

“I do know,” Twilight said. “Are you with SOCOM?”

Phillips started to nod, stopped, then shook his head.

“Not after watching the mushroom clouds.”

<>~<>~<>

The interior of the radio tent wasn’t as bad as Twilight had first thought it would be as she entered the half-collapsed canvas shack.

The fallen tower had ripped through the backside of the tent like a heavy stone through wet parchment. A corner of it had split the radio table in half and knocked the radio onto the dirt floor.

It was about the size of a filing cabinet if it was laying on its side, with an etched metal body covered in gemstones, copper wire, screws, buttons, and carry handles. Several of the screws had sheared apart upon impact to expose the delicate internals of the device. A dozen or so wafer-thin wooden planks lie within, many engraved with runes that had the shallow channels filled in with easily enchantable material like melted gold or exotic alchemical alloys.

In a way, it was Equestria’s version of circuit boards, but for both magic and electric currents. The largest of the boards had a several-inch-long crack running most of the length, almost bisecting it.

Twilight’s ears flicked as Specialist Sine Wave and Electrum entered the tent. Sine Wave was a dark blue unicorn mare with a silver mane and tail, and her cutie mark was a gold colored wave graph.

“And here it is, Princess,” Sine Wave said with a defeated sigh. “I’ve tried repairing it, but my MOS is operating the radio, not repairing this level of catastrophic damage. I was hoping the supply wagon could send the message that we needed a replacement."

Twilight scrunched her face. The radio operator didn't know a repair spell?

“What does MOS mean?” Twilight asked, turning to face Sine Wave, unfamiliar with the military term.

It was Electrum who answered.

“Military Occupation Specialty,” Electrum said heatidly. She quickly joined Twilight’s side. “Okay, so who in this outpost isn’t from SOCOM? I recognized Sergeant Peppers as Jeremy, but I don’t recognize you.”

“Sergeant Pepper is a human?” Sine Wave asked, before shaking her head and glaring daggers at Electrum. “And just call me Sine Wave. I haven’t officially changed to the Equestrian side yet, but I’m certainly not staying with SOCOM. Something’s changed with your father, Valery.”

“I figured that out around the point when he fucking shot me,” Electrum cursed, glaring back at Sine Wave.

Twilight tensed, her horn practically twitching with the anticipation to grab her gun. Any wrong move on Sine Wave’s part, and she was a dead mare.

Sine Wave and Electrum’s glaring contest ended with Sine Wave blinking first and sighing.

“If General Beckett tried to kill his only daughter, then that’s it. Nothing is sacred anymore in SOCOM. I made the right choice to leave.”

Electrum shifted from hoof to hoof, her posture as tense as an angry feline’s.

“Yeah, in his infinite wisdom, he decided to go nuclear. I don’t think General Beckett wants a peaceful resolution,” Electrum said, her voice trembling with rage. “He’s gone genocidal.”

A blood vessel was about to burst in Twilight.

“Okay,” she said in tranquil fury as she looked at Sine Wave, “you may be a major security risk, but we can deal with that later. I’ll let the ESS know about you and Sergeant Pepper and we can get you two officially on Equestria’s side, and more importantly, away from Tartarus. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to have a crack at the radio so we can hurry up and leave. I’ve been up for eighteen or nineteen hours at this point, and it's been a rollercoaster of one hectic event to another.”

Making a list of everything that had happened to her in just eighteen hours would fill multiple scrolls. Twilight was desperate for a break.

Sine Wave and Electrum made no move to stop her, so Twilight aimed her horn at the radio, then tensed as she recalled the last time she had tried to repair a magical device.

Was it going to explode? Well, with how things had been going… probably.

With a heavy sigh, she furrowed her brow and cast her repair spell anyways. The radio was already scrap parts as it was. There was no harm in at least trying to fix it.

To Twilight’s amazement, there was no Equestria-shattering kaboom as she concentrated on mending the cracks in the circuit boards. Then she moved on to resetting gems into the correct position before she ended with placing the knocked-off panel back on, then fusing the snapped screws back together.

Once Twilight had finished the repairs, she stepped back and let out a sigh of relief. All that was left was to see if it worked.

Eager to see if that was the case, Sine Wave levitated over a cable and plugged it into the radio. The gemstones lit up with their dazzling array of colors like Hearth's Warming lights. Once they tested to see if it could transmit, it would be a quick flight back to the castle to hopefully get some sleep before Cadance’s arrival.

After Twilight had another bath with Daniel, of course. Getting into fights was not conducive to her cleanliness.

“Well, it’s got power,” Sine Wave said. “Hopefully the bent antenna outside isn’t too much of an issue.” The radio warbled with static as she manipulated a series of dials. Then Twilight’s ears flicked at an unfamiliar mare’s voice.

“—we are willing to negotiate and are waiting for a reply. Use your normal report channel. Message repeats.” The mare said calmly and professionally. “This is Captain Miranda Tuckett of SOCOM. We have relieved our commanding officer of his duties and have him in our custody. Agent Wave, I know none of us want to die for General Beckett’s pointless war, and many of us who were under his command believe that peace is an option with the Equestrians. Please, if you are hearing this, find a way to contact Princess Twilight Sparkle, we wish to end this war and we are willing to negotiate and are waiting for a reply. Use your normal report channel. Message repeats.”

Twilight listened to the looping message several times, analyzing the words to try and discern if it was some sort of trap.

If it was true that SOCOM wanted a ceasefire, then that changed everything. Maybe she would get a break after all.

<>~<>~<>

General Hoffman had decided that the meeting with Princess Twilight should be discreet, out of the way somewhere in Equestria, and not involve a lot of personnel. Simply turn over former General Clyde Beckett and be done with him as a way to make some progress on reparations with Equestria.

They were in the Marejave desert, which had enough caves to keep relocating their portal for decades if necessary.

General Hoffman squirmed in his uniform as he adjusted it with a hoof. He had lucked out and became a pegasi, and the thoughts of flying lessons with Captain Tuckett were a pleasurable distraction from the tension in the air.

He had spent too long in a bunker. The open desert was making him tense.

The SOCOM delegation consisted of him, Captain Tuckett, the six troopers who had helped storm Beckett’s office, and a heavily bound and gagged Beckett. All ponies as well.

Of course, because Beckett had decided to start a war, the Equestrian delegation consisted of a pissed off sun goddess, her student, and Beckett’s own daughter—who he had shot the last time he’d seen her—teleporting in at least a full company of heavily armed royal guards to the meeting, who quickly surrounded them.

General Hoffman shoved Beckett off the back of the wagon. The bound, gagged, and blindfolded unicorn stallion landed with a solid thud onto the Marejave desert sand.

Princess Celestia, Princess Sparkle, and Electrum all looked down at the squirming former general, their expressions a mix of disgust and anger. So much pain and misery had been caused on both sides because of Beckett’s ego.

Electrum was the first one to look back to Hoffman.

“So, Dad’s been deposed,” Electrum said as Princess Celestia picked up Beckett in her magic and threw him into a waiting cage which had also been teleported to the meeting. “What are you going to do now that you’ve taken his place?”

The over one-hundred royal guards in attendance had expressions which begged him to try and make the wrong move.

“Do better,” General Hoffman said plainly. “I’m going to try and do better.”

President Abigail certainly was trying to do better. President Eden had never shared power, and choosing Colonel Autumn—a man that Hoffman respected—as vice president had been the turning point.

And for many in the Capital Wasteland, the Enclave’s arrival had been a turning point for them as well. According to Galaxy News Radio, the town of Megaton had already joined the New Enclave States. And according to Three Dog, an elderly man had been spotted dancing atop the roof of his house while waving an American flag and singing the national anthem.

The mental image brought a smile to General Hoffman.

The Capital Wasteland was far from perfect, there were still obstacles to deal with like impure water, raiders, Talon Company and agents still loyal to Beckett, the Outcasts rejecting an alliance with the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave, as well as the super mutants. But with General Beckett out of the picture, a full scale war was unlikely.

The Capital Wasteland and Equestria could breathe a little easier, and with any luck, it would last.

But a pessimistic, nagging part of General Hoffman’s mind reminded him of the one universal law that every soldier knew.

Murphy's First Law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

It was only a matter of where, when, and how much of a clusterfuck it would be.

Author's Note

(6/30/2023, editor took a look at the chapter. Edits applied)

The short break for mental health and the lack of a looming deadline really helped with making this chapter. Chapters may be more infrequent in the future but I hope the quality increase will be worth the wait. Trying to force out a chapter a week was heavily stressful on myself and my editors.

Hope you all enjoyed this newest (and longest so far) chapter. If you have any theories on how Murphy's Law is going to muck up the peace, I'd love to hear them below. I may not respond to every comment but I read and appreciate them all. It's you the readers who have made it this far that I make this story for, and I hope you all have a wonderful day.