Everything is air-droppable at least once.

While Daisy and Tofu ran through their checks on the mechanical workings of the ‘Mailmare’, my attention was drawn across the barn by the squeals of old metal.

Both Ping and Happy grunted as they shifted the heavy barn doors along their rusty metal tracks. Slowly, but surely, they began to slide open, revealing that this whole old barn had been placed inside one of the large hangars along the airfield. And if that hadn’t been amazing enough, I almost couldn’t believe what was just sitting there outside the doors.

An alien, yet instantly recognizable skycraft sat parked before us. It’s wide, egg-like body, oversized landing gear, and twin tail configuration was only missing the small skycraft that had originally been bolted between them. That specific craft was sitting just above the ground, held in a sling of straps and wire by one of the gantry cranes that hung above in the oversized hangar.

“You have a beholder here?” The words slipped from my muzzle as they usually did, and instantly drew the attention of Bluebell.

“Yeah?” She responded, turning around slowly as I could see the confusion flood over her. “It landed here a couple weeks or so after the clouds game down, I think?” Glancing back over her shoulder at the odd skycraft, she paused as it looked like a thought struck her. “Why? Have you seen it before?”

“Hey, Night?” Happy heaved as he shoved the old barn door back as far as it could go. “Ain’t this the same one that was up at Fort Mac?”

“That’s what I’d wondered, Happy.” I answered, again watching as our words gave Bluebell more than a bit of an unexpected jolt.

“Yeah, that’s where… wait, you all came from that far up north?” Bluebell’s rotten muzzle spread into such a wide grin that I was afraid the skin around it was going to start ripping from the strain. “Tell me, how long were you up there? I need to know if you met somepony specific, or maybe the descendants of one.”

“Woah, we were only there for a couple days on the way up, and a couple on the way back.” Happy waved his hoof, doing his best to douse the spark of interest that had seemingly lit a bonfire under Bluebell. “And it was mostly for business, not for a social call.”

“I don’t care.” She huffed as she spun around and locked her eyes on mine. “Did you meet any of the Bow-wing family up there? Does anypony there still remember a pony named Marigold Bow-wing?” Her voice cracked as her boney legs started to shake slightly. “She was a pegasus pilot, like me. Or… maybe the descendants of a stallion named Jack Screw?” She let out a short laugh that trailed off. “He’d… he’d always had an interest in her.”

Our silence to those names came with a dimming of the sparkle in her eyes, and even though I tried to think back to when we were there, I couldn't recall hearing those names at all around the old military base. Then again, like Happy had said, we didn’t have much time to socialize up there. Eventually, her legs gave out and she sat down hard on the old barn floor.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we met anypony like that.” I said, looking over to Happy. As expected, he shook his head with a note of disappointment weighing on him.

“Why not ask the crew of the craft that arrived from there?” Ping offered, pointing back to the Beholder.

“They were killed by raiders outside the base a few days after they arrived.” Bluebell sighed and hung her head. “Those fucking rangers wouldn’t trust me to talk to the pilots before letting them out into the city. No, to them I’m just a monster, some mindless wasteland monster. I… I’m still a pony goddess damnit.”

“I’m sorry, Blue.” Daisy meekly called up as she stepped around the wing of the Mailmare. “If it helps, I know you aren’t a monster.”

“It’s not your fault, Daisy.” Bluebell snorted as her wing shifted across her back. “It’s just what the Rangers do. Hell, they didn’t even let you join until they had their little war.” Again, from between her feathers, she produced another cigarette, which she easily slipped into her muzzle. “And even now! I hear the way some of them still talk about you.”

“Things are different now though!” Daisy tried her best to sound optimistic, sharing a soft smile as she looked back at Tofu and I. “Not perfect, but better.” She paused as she watched Bluebell pull out her lighter again and light up her smoke. “Still, I’m sorry about your friend.”

“I understand that you and Marigold Bow-wing were the best of friends back during the war.” Ping offered his own, well practiced soft smile to the ghoul. “But it is unlikely, even as a ghoul, that she has survived this long.”

“Ping, buddy…” Happy dragged his wooden hoof down his face with a grunt. “Did you have to point that out to her?”

“No, he’s right.” She nodded before taking a long initial draw off of her cigarette. “It’s my fault. I should have moved on from her a long time ago.” They were the best of friends? She should have moved on? “Just forget I mentioned anything.”

“That guy Jack you’d mentioned… he wasn’t the only one who had feelings for her.” I sat down as her eyes lifted and I could see a familiar kind of pain sitting behind them. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

“You know, remind me a little of her.” She smiled and breathed out another ring of smoke toward me. “You’re a pegasus willing to take risks for others. That’s a rare trait to find in the wastes.” Her smile weakened, and she turned her head to look at anything else but me right now. “So, why don’t we get you in the air and over to your friend? Okay?”

I’d seen plenty of ponies in the wastes who’d lost their loves for one reason or another. But for some reason, this one hit me differently. It wasn’t just because of how long ago Bluebell had fallen for this other mare, or that she’d obviously never gotten to profess it to her. It was the fact that even now, two centuries later, she still held out hope that this Marigold was still out there.

That was love on a scale that I could only hope I never had to measure up to.

“Alright, you comfortable inside there?” Daisy’s voice filtered into my mind.

Her voice barely beat out the shrill whine of the spooling engine not inches away from my cramped hooves. It was bad enough to know that a centimeter of steel casing was all that kept me from being sucked into an arcane turbine. But the rattling that came from somewhere under the skin of the Mailmare? It filled my mind with a dozen other terrifying prospects for how this could all go wrong.

“I’ll be fine as soon as I’m in the air.” I thought back, trying to push away the fear clawing at my mind. “Can you hoof the radio over to Bluebell?”

“If you’re looking for a guarantee this thing gets off the ground, I don’t know what to tell you.” Bluebell’s flat tone did little to help alleviate my concerns, but I guess the honesty was nice at least.

“No, my question is about once I’m up there.” I thought back as the metal against my hindhoof felt like it was starting to freeze. It wasn’t like I could feel the cold, but I’ve had my skin freeze to enough metal on this trip to know what it felt like by touch alone. At about the same time, the engine reached a steady high pitched whine, and I felt a small bump as Daisy and Tofu secured the rocket to it’s launch mount. “How exactly do I get out of here when I’m in the city?”

“Oh, that’s all done on this end.” Bluebell’s dismissive tone was somewhat interrupted by a jarring alarm sound on her end of the radio. She let out a grunt as it sounded like she hit something, and the alarm died. “Just sit back and try not to move too much in there. Shifting the center of mass during launch could prove for a very short flight.”

“Don’t worry, Night.” Ping’s voice filtered into my mind with his normal, unnaturally cheery demeanor, “If the technical specifications are correct, you should be over Hispano’s position only a minute and twenty six seconds after you launch.” From the fact that nopony just asked how he was on the radio, I was assuming this was a private conversation.

“I’m going to be pretty focused on finding Hispano, Ping.” I offered to him as I tried to fight the urge to pull my hoof away from the absolutely frigid plate behind me. “So I’m going to need you to talk to and keep Buck in the loop. But make sure he knows that without the Remora, he’s safest staying on the Inuvik.”

“Enough chit chatting. If you want to launch before we lose light, then now’s the time.” Bluebell’s voice came through my head again as it sounded like she grabbed the mic from Ping. Guess it wasn’t a private call after all... “We’ve got green across the board on our end, so you best get ready!”

The engine under my hooves spooled up higher. The constant whine that had permeated the air quickly turned into a near roar. The whole of the rocketplane shook and rattled more with every second, as if it were trying to throw itself apart. It was hard to know if the takeoff had just been that rough on the old machine, or if after all these years it was still barely holding itself together.

“Launch RPMs achieved! Clamp stress at launch levels!” Bluebell called out into my mind. “Countdown! Three! Two! One!”

Wait, you mean I hadn’t already launched!?

A slam of metal not unlike the seat release on the Dizzitron met my ears. My whole body was forcibly slammed backwards down into the bottom of the cramped box. Every bit of my body was compressed into itself. It was hard, but I fought against the feelings of lightheadedness dragging me towards passing out.

For the others, it must have only been seconds. But for me, the G-forces on my body felt like they stayed around for ages. Even my augment fuzzed and nearly died for a moment, but with it as my only distraction I focused on it. I watched the altimeter in it raise all the way up to a thousand meters, and my flying speed rocket up to four hundred and eighty knots.

As the Mailmare leveled out in it’s flight, and the forces of acceleration lessened, something surprising happened. The rattling around me quieted until it all but stopped, leaving me with just the roar of the engine, and the sound of the rain whipping across the skin of the skycraft. I could feel a slight sway as the rocket encountered a bit of turbulence here and there, but it was almost less than what I could feel on the Arcturus on your average day. Amazingly, for as rough as the launch had been, once it was flying, it was an incredibly smooth flight profile.

Even cramped in this dark, tiny, cold space, I closed my eyes and smiled as wide a smile as ever. Maybe it was the adrenalin, or maybe Hispano’s daring antics had rubbed off on me. Either way, I never wanted this feeling to end. With one final shake from the skycraft, everything fell into place in my mind, and I could imagine myself gliding silently through the skies on my own. It was almost perfect...

“Not to trouble you up there.” Bluebell’s voice crackled over the radio with more than a note of concern to it. “But we’ve got a red light here on the turbopump. How’s the engine looking on your end?”

Blinking and scrunching up my muzzle, I noticed that in my moment of quiet perfection, things had gotten a bit too quiet up here. All I could hear now was the pelting of the rain across the skycraft.

“Yeah…” I cringed as my mind ripped me out of my flying fantasy and stuck me back into what I’m sure was going to become a nightmare. “I don’t think it’s running anymore.” Now I know it hadn’t been even a minute yet…

As soon as I’d thought that, I could feel a new force coming into play. One that I never enjoyed the feeling of. And that was gravity tipping the nose of the mailmare down as it started to fall.

“Sorry, only got forty eight seconds out of her… opening the cargo hatch! Hold on!” Bluebell’s nearly panic-filled voice came through right before rattling came back through the whole craft.

A set of sharp bangs under me felt like it tore the skin right off my back, but I also found myself falling through the rain filled air. Reflexively I flared my wings as soon as they were free of that cramped compartment, and I tried to reorient myself. Thanks to the speed the mailmare had reached, my wings caught enough air to help me get somewhat stable, but without thinking I put myself right into the wake of the out of control skycraft.

My world tumbled end over end as I flapped my wings and looked around frantically for something to focus on. The last rays of shimmering, dim sunlight bounced off what remained of the wet glass windows of the skyscrapers here, making it hard to see anything at all. The air was getting thicker every moment I tumbled, and it might be only moments before I either hit the ground, or even a building.

A sharp blast tore through the city ahead of me as the mailmare slammed into one of the closely huddled skyscrapers. The blast made me stiffen up, and I knew there was no time left if I didn’t want to become the next smear on one of the buildings here. Commit to a direction, Night!

“Shit, the Mailmare just went unresponsive!" Bluebell shouted into my head. “What happened up there?”

“I’m a bit fucking busy!” I managed to yell out as I finally found something to focus my efforts on.

Using that focus, I flared my wings out straight, and felt the cold air whip against my side. Closing my right eye, I focused only on the instruments in my augment. The world slowly stopped spinning, and I leveled myself out… albeit upside down. The looming dark form of one of the outer skyscrapers in the city planted itself right in front of me.

Knowing it wasn’t going to be kind enough to move out of the way, I twerked my wings and snapped my tail to the side.

I put my whole body into rolling and diving down. Sure I’d lose some altitude, but it was better than losing my life! My body cut through the air and rain like a hot knife as I skimmed just above the pitted and broken glass covered face of the skyscraper. With another whip of my tail, I pulled my forehoof forward and used it to point me between a close pair of skyscrapers ahead. As I lined myself up, I pulled straight and found that the two skyscrapers were joined by more ahead. A row of them hugged a street just wide enough for me to fly through, though it was going to be a tight squeeze flying this fast.

My wings strained to stay stiff at the speed I’d gotten going, and they bowed as they pulled me onto a gliding path. The wrecks of dozens of old motorwagons and skybusses on the old road between the buildings sped under me as I dove headlong into the narrow steel canyon. A dozen or so light poles reached up like rusty hooves, trying to trip me up. But with an average of maybe a meter of clearance on each side of me, I could finally take a breath, and my beating heart could finally have a slight break.

Okay, I’m not dead. That’s a good step one, Night! Now, you just need to find Hispano. But first, to get back to the lingering question on the radio...

“The mailmare’s gone. Hit a building.” I called out as I kept my ears on a swivel. “Thanks for the ride. I’m going to look for Hispano, so I’m going radio silent.”

The problem was, I had no idea where I’d been dumped at in the city, or if I was even close to her. Though, thanks to my dive, I was hopeful that I’d built up enough speed that I could traverse my way nearly across the whole scrunched up city at least once without a problem. Almost on cue, the sounds of autocannon fire echoed through the steel canyon I flew through.

I knew that sound, and it had to be Suiza. It sounded like paced shots, like Hispano was trying to conserve ammo, but I could tell she was close. Perking my ears again, I tried to figure out where exactly it was coming from, but… it bounced off too many buildings here. Don’t worry, Hispano, just hold out a little bit longer...

A flash of movement caught my attention from a few city blocks ahead, and my augment helped me focus on it.

My eye vibrated as it zoomed in on a pile of rubble in a particularly clear intersection. It seemed there was a wider gap between a few of the buildings up there. A set of three mangy looking ponies sat huddled under a large piece of concrete rubble. Each of them had some sort of firearm in their hooves, and the largest of the bunch stepped out for a moment to fire a shotgun toward the sky.

His shotgun blast was answered with another shot from Suiza, which cracked a big chunk of the rubble right off next to him. The three huddled up close under it again as I watched a green flash swoop down into view for a single moment. With it, came the most maddening cackle of pure delightful glee that I’d ever heard come from Hispano.

“Go on, hide all you want!” Her jubilant, excited tone echoed over the rain in the darkening city. “It just makes the hunt more fun!”

“Hispano!” I called out without thinking. Blinking, I really shouldn’t have been surprised when all three of the huddled ponies turned their guns on me. “Shit!” I yelped and aimed myself right at them. “Fire!”

My scream was followed by a burst of rounds from my underslung subgun. With a blinding flash and a buzzing of reports, half the magazine was expended. Dirt and bits of rubble burst from around and beside the three ponies, but none of my rounds seemed to find a home in them.

Thankfully, the larger of the three tossed his shotgun down and wrapped his hooves around his associates.

“Oh fuck this shit!” He shouted as he yanked them out from their cover and got them all to clamber onto the street. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

With an impressive speed, he ducked, weaved, and all but tore through the rubble filled street with a near reckless abandon. Which… left his two friends scrambling to keep pace. To be fair, if I was in their position, I’d probably have done the same. Unfortunately for them, while they had plenty of cover they could’ve still taken shelter under, they couldn’t take it with them.

“I have you now!” Hispano’s shriek of glee echoed between the skyscrapers only moments before another burst of rounds spat from her sister. Each cracking round blast a section of rubble closer to the ponies trailing behind.

The pony lagging behind the most let out a scream as one of the rounds exploded next to him. It tore through a skybus’s side, splaying his leg and side clean open. The pony tumbled down into the soupy mud that coated most of the street, coming to an unmoving stop muzzle down in a puddle. His friend just ahead of him screeched to a halt, turning back to see what had happened, only to have his head evaporate into a fine red mist that all too quickly bled away with the falling rain.

I flared my wings hard, curving my body up to try to bleed off the rest of the speed I’d had from my quick flight through the last few blocks. Beating my wings hard as I slowed, I came to a near hover above the rubble the three ponies had taken cover on. Carefully, I lowered myself onto it and looked up to try to find Hispano.

“Damnit, Night!” Hispano spoke right into my ear from behind me. Her voice was startling enough that it made my legs lock up. With a wobble, I nearly slipped and slid down the pile of rebar spikes sitting at the bottom of the concrete slab. “Woah there!” Her talon reached out and firmly grasped around my forehoof before it could slide too far. With a worried smile, she looked over me from behind her rain drenched flight goggles and lowered herself down to perch on the slab as well. “Didn’t we talk about how it was getting old that I keep surprising you?”

“Thank Celestia.” I sighed and wrapped my hoof around her. She hesitated slightly as I pulled her into a hug, but gave me a pat on the back all the same. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Of course I’m alright.” She huffed, pulling away from my sharply. “I had this all covered, ya know. You ruined my raider hunt.” Setting Suiza down against her side, she took a moment to pull her soaked leather flight cap off and wring it out. “I’m not some damsel in distress you need to run and save all the time. Where did you even come from anyway?” As she plopped it back over her head with a slight squelch, she scrunched up her muzzle at me. “Wait, was that crashing sound a minute ago from you?”

“Yes, but that’s not important right now.” I get that I ruined her fun, but I think Solomon was a good enough reason to rain on her parade. “I needed to come find you.”

“Let me guess…” She groaned and used a talon to wipe the water off the lenses of her goggles. “You ran into trouble where you were, and you need my help with some bullshit. That about right?”

“Solomon is alive.” I spoke as flatly as I could. “He’s in this city, right now.”

As my words washed over her, she locked up a bit. In fact, I’d say that for a moment, it almost looked like she went a bit pale. But with a sharp shiver, she reached over and grabbed Suiza in her talons again.

“Yeah, because of course he is.” She spat as she got to work stripping Suiza’s drum mag off. Carefully she tucked it away into her soaked saddlebag before wrestling out the smaller, five round magazine. “Because just like you, he’s gotta be a constant pain in the flank, doesn’t he!” With a click of the mag into Suiza, she made sure the bolt was set and hefted her up onto her shoulder. “So then let me rephrase then. You’ve already got everyone onboard for some elaborate plan to kill him, right? And you’re all just waiting on me.”

“No!” I snapped at her with more frustration than I really should have. “There’s no plan because he was supposed to be fucking dead!” I took a risk in balancing on my hindlegs, but I really think the emphasis of flailing my forehoof in the air was necessary to convey just how fucked things were. “So I came to find you because we can’t afford to be split up right now!”

“Sure, you ‘came’ for me.” She snorted and used a talon to tame my flailing forehoof. “Next you’ll be telling me that the Remora isn’t on it’s way here with Buck to scoop us up and take us back to the ship.”

“The Remora is still back at the airbase, along with Happy, Tofu, and Ping.” Again, my words probably had more bite than intended, but she was acting like a prissy, entitled little filly right now! “Oh, and Buck? Buck’s still on the Inuvik because it’s safe there. Unlike here, out in the middle of the fucking open.”

“You… didn’t go to him?” Hispano scrunched up her beak as she blinked at me with the most dumbfounded look across her face. “You came here… first.”

Before I could answer that, the air was filled with a tormented scream that came from the same direction that last raider had fled in. It wasn’t a scream of shock, or fear. What echoed through the darkening, rainy city was a scream of pure agony that was almost instantly cut short. Hispano shifted uneasily on her hindlegs, moving so she could raise Suiza up to point just past my muzzle.

“Do you have any friends out here with you?” I lowered my voice to a whisper that I’m sure barely carried through the rain. She shook her head slowly. “You think… somepony’s coming for us?”

“No, not somepony.” Hispano answered as she shifted her talon, making sure to keep Suiza steady. “If it’s who I think it is, if it’s him, then Solomon’s the least of our problems right now.”

The pile of rubble at the intersection a block down shifted. A gritty, terrible grinding sound cut through the air, like two piles of stone scraping together. In the failing light of day that peeked through the narrow steel canyons of the city, the silhouette of a hellhound like figure clambered to the top of the pile.

As big as Buck, the jet black dog stood on two thick hind legs, and had forearms that ended in larger, more jagged claws than any dog I’d ever laid eyes on. The last light of day reflected off of a thousand facets across his entire body, almost making him sparkle, but somehow made it harder to define his form. The only thing that was one hundred percent clear to me, was the pair of rage filled, glowing purple eyes that had set themselves on Hispano and I.

“It… it is him. Midnight.” Hispano muttered in what sounded like disbelief. “I never thought I’d ever see… we should go.” Lowering Suiza, she flared her wings out hard. “Like, now.” Looking back at her, now I knew she’d gone pale.

With her reaction, I didn’t need to know who this Midnight was to know we shouldn’t stay to find out. I flared my wings as well, and the both of us took flight. Hammering my wings through the thick, waterlogged air kept my ascent slower than Hispano’s, but even so, she didn’t let herself get too far ahead of me.

My body locked up as Midnight let out a piercing howl. It was loud enough I wanted to cover my ear, and the tone of it was so striking that it made my augment fuzz out for the duration of it. I almost couldn’t help myself but look back at the dog, only to see that he was swiftly making his way towards us. The knife-like claws on him gored the asphalt as he sprinted on all fours, and even his whipping spear like tail cleaved entire sections of steel from the motorwagon wrecks he simply happened to graze.

“You need to climb faster, Night!” Hispano snapped at me as she fumbled to bring Suiza up.

I was already flapping at a rate that was making me heave and gasp, and I knew there wasn’t a way I could go any faster. Shifting myself, I figured I’d settle for the next best thing, and try to make Midnight go slower. Timing my flaps, I paused with one particularly hard one to line myself up with him.

Fire.

My thought ended with another hard burst of rounds from my subgun. The flashes from the high rate of fire were more pronounced as the last of the daylight faded, nearly blinding me from the reports. As I focused on flapping again however, I found that Midnight hadn’t been slowed at all.

“My turn.” Hispano muttered as she hovered next to me and finally got Suiza readied.

If my subgun had been like turning on a flashlight late at night, Suiza was like turning on Celestia’s glorious fucking sun. My hearing dissolved into nothing but ringing as Hispano emptied the fresh magazine in about a half a second. Midnight let out a reverberating roar as he was blasted with the explosive rounds, stumbling and coming to a sliding halt on the muddy pavement.

Both Hispano and I blinked as we stared at his jet black form. Slowly, but surely, he picked himself up from the ground and gave the same sort of shake to his fur that Buck did when he got wet. It ended in a sharp shaking of his head, which he then brought up to look at Hispano and I. I swear than in that moment, the rage I’d seen in him had somehow grown into the scariest thing I’d seen on any wasteland creature.

With a guttural growl, he lowered himself down to the pavement. Deep in my mind, I knew what he was doing. My mind was thrown back to my fight with Rosie in the Wreck room, and I knew what was coming.

“Up, up!” I barely got out as the both of us redoubled on flapping for our lives.

Sure enough, like a coiled spring, Midnight launched himself up into the air at us. A bolt of fear spiked through me as I knew from the corner of my eye he was aiming for me. But still I flapped harder than ever and uttered a prayer to Celestia that I could make it high enough in time. Closing my eyes, I waited for the inevitable…

Midnight let out a roar of frustration as he slammed back down onto the ground below us. The hit was hard enough that it sent cracks running through the muddy pavement, and again sounded like somepony just cracked two stones together.

“Shit, I knew he was tough, but…” Hispano gasped and fumbled to get her sister slung over herself again. “Rockdog or not, nothing has ever shrugged off my sister like that.” Before I could even ask, she had dropped to a hover next to me and wrapped a talon around my muzzle. “No time to answer questions. Give me one of your grenades.”

“What?” I managed to mutter out from around her talons between gasping breaths through my nose. “In midair?”

Hispano rolled her eyes as she mercifully pulled her talon from my muzzle. Gasping and heaving while just trying to stay airborne and hovering, I didn’t have any strength to stop her as her talon shifted down under me. With a sharp click, one of the grenades in my harness disappeared from my augmented flight overlay.

“Okay.” Hispano’s glee filled smile widened as she looked at the small apple shaped explosive. “Let’s see if you’re tougher than this.”

With a graceful shift, she pirouetted through the air next to me. I recognized what she was doing, and had seen her do the same thing when we’d saved my dad. With a quick twist of her body, she rotated over and put everybit of pent up energy in her behind her toss.

The grenade shot through the air like a cannonball, and looked like it would hit Midnight right between the eyes. However, the massive dog simply opened it’s jagged, literally razor-filled muzzle and caught it like a ball. There wasn’t a moment that passed before the blast that he didn’t keep his eyes trained on us.

The sharp bang from the grenade again left my hearing as nothing but a sharp ringing, but it turned the ground below us into a cloud of dust and steam. Hot bits of shrapnel streaked through the air up at us like little bullets. Hispano let out a muffled cry as a few bits punched into her hind paws and side. From the medical warning that flashed up in my vision, I’m sure I got my fair share as well.

Of course, the ringing in my ears was taking its sweet time to fade, but thanks to the rain, the cloud below dissipated quickly. Even though I was getting tired of gasping for breath, I fought to beat my wings all the same until I could see what remained of Midnight. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to wait long.

Midnight still stood exactly as he had been before the blast, and as the smoke cleared from his head, I’m certain his rage filled eyes never left us.

“Fuck me!” Hispano’s voice barely beat back the ringing as she flailed with all the frustration I’d had earlier. “What do we need? A fucking tank!?”

Yeah, some help from Cordite or the tank ghouls right now would be really nice…

While Hispano’s shout hadn’t beat out the ringing, Midnight’s renewed roar from below us sure did. The both of us watched as he tore sideways across the street towards one of the concrete behemoths we hovered between. I blinked with a profound sense of awe as without even slowing himself down, Midnight dug his claws into the concrete facade and began to climb up it.

“Hispano, we need to go!” I gasped and snapped my tail around. With a stiffer than usual twist, I got myself facing westward and flapped hard to get some speed that direction. The lights of the boats parked down at the waterfront had become the brightest thing on the horizon, and were all I needed to see to know that that was where we needed to be. “Get to the harbor!”

“For once today, I agree, Dum Dum!” Hispano gasped as she likewise spun herself and took off with me.

The sounds of rending stone behind us picked up right up until the moment it didn’t. The snarl Midnight let out as he lept at me nearly made me lock up. The feeling of his claw shearing off the longer hairs of my flowing, regrown tail? Now that made me lock up.

Reflexively, I glanced down as he passed through the air under me. It had been hard to really tell earlier, but from this close, I understood why his form had been so hard to pick out. Midnight didn’t have fur in the normal sense, nor did he seem to have a body either.

Sure he looked like a hellhound, but this ‘dog’ was actually made entirely out of something like stone or obsidian. The sharp facets and jagged bits of him were from that stone being chipped and carved into a razor-like consistency. The only thing that seemed natural on him, were the pair of rage filled purple eyes that looked at me like I was the one thing in this world that he needed to remove.

“What the fuck…” The words slipped out of my muzzle as he went crashing down to the street below. Redoubling my efforts to flap my wings, I focused on gaining speed this time rather than altitude.

Again, it was an unnervingly short period of time before the sounds of Midnight’s claws on the buildings behind us filtered through the air.

“What are we doing, dum dum?” Hispano called down from above me with a certain level of panic that didn’t feel characteristic of her. “Are we leading him to downtown? Because that seems like a really bad idea.”

Fuck, she’s right. Fuck, what was I thinking? Okay, Night, it’s just another problem to solve, that’s all! Just think…

Another roar from Midnight startled me, and instinctively I tucked my wings in as I torqued them. I spun to the side, rolling twice before I flared my wings again, only to have my right wing nearly scrape against the boarded up windows of the building we were flying past. Even as I panicked from my near hit of the building, my heart could beat that much slower when I heard Midnight come crashing down into the street again.

Glancing ahead, I noticed that like the street I’d found Hispano on, there was another wider intersection coming up in the next block. While we couldn’t exactly lead Midnight down to the water, maybe there was a hope we could get him lost in the maze of streets before ducking into where the Mailmare crashed. If we could get there fast enough, I bet we could wait him out and then head for the waterfront once the coast was clear.

“Hispano, we’re taking the next left!” I called up to her and put myself into a shallow dive.

“Got it!” Hispano squawked back as she did her best to keep pace.

I tweaked my wings and pulled my forehoof ahead of myself, letting it guide me toward the edge of the building at the corner. Still in a shallow dive, I’d picked up enough speed that with another twist of my wings, I managed to get myself sitting sideways for the turn. I could feel the air shift as I cut around the building’s edge maybe a few hoofs lengths away from it before I pulled myself to turn.

It was a wider turn than I’d have liked to have taken, ending up with me once again almost leveling out with my wingtip against the skyscrapers on this streetside. However, with the speed we’d kept up, Midnight’s clawing had fallen behind a bit. Okay, so, now to widen the lead.

Glancing ahead, I let my eye drift from dark street corner to street corner. With a flash, my augment brightened my vision, and I could almost see like it was daylight again. An overlay highlighted the edges and rough shapes of the buildings, and an arrow pointing left popped up over the intersection two blocks ahead.

“Woah, that’s cool.” I couldn’t help but laugh as I kept flapping hard to gain some altitude. “Left again... in two blocks!” I panted hard as I forced my wings to gain every bit of altitude I could. I know this sucks and that I was going to feel this tomorrow, but the drive to not be torn to ribbons was a fairly powerful one.

“We planning… on tiring him out by… flying in circles?” Hispano panted as well as she struggled to keep up with the speed I’d gained in my shallow dive. “Cause I think… we’ll lose that contest… first.”

“Trust me!” I called back as I followed the same pattern as with the last turn.

I again lowered myself into a shallow dive and shifted onto my side for the turn. The rain whipped over me hard as both Hispano and I passed under a makeshift skybridge that somepony had built between the buildings at the corner. I’d barely straightened out again as the overlay in my vision refreshed, moving the arrow only one block ahead.

Midnight’s roar echoed through the buildings behind us, though again it was hard to tell how far away he was. All I knew for certain was that he was on the last street we’d been on and angrier than ever. So as much as it sucked, we were going to have to make this turn.

“Turn right ahead!” I called back to Hispano again, getting a frustrated groan from her in response.

The air under me shifted, and either out of annoyance or just pure damn effort to keep up, Hispano had gone into a dive early, and was pulling ahead. Smiling, I did the same and effortlessly matched her pace. Right before the turn when I pulled ahead of her, she looked up at me with a smirk and rolled her eyes before turning on her side as well.

We pulled ourselves around the edge of the building at quite a good clip. Good enough that I figured that maybe we could just take another right up ahead and scream right toward the waterfront. However, the numerous flashing warnings that came up in my vision put an end to that.

While some of the other streets had wire strung between the closely situated buildings, this one had what looked like densely woven nets.

There were so many that my augment couldn’t even highlight them all before Hispano and I slammed right into a few of them. In an instant, the nets stole all of our speed and bound themselves around us. However, while they’d stole our forward speed, the few snaps from their mount points did little to arrest our vertical speed.

Both Hispano and I let out sharp cries as we crashed down into the middle of a trash filled, muddy street.

“Fucking damnit!” Hispano shouted as she flailed and tried to tear the netting off of her. “What the fuck is this shit!?”

I did the same, but whoever had made it had woven it out of old powerlines. The only thing that was going to free us was something like Galina’s old Autotalon, or…

The sound of rending concrete and rage filled howling was growing ever closer.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! We were so fucked unless we could get out of these nets!

The sound of metal on stone came from beside Hispano, and both of us shifted ourself slightly to see the metal sewer cover had been pushed back. From inside the hole, a flash of silver shot up and came down on Hispano’s net. She let out a sharp cry as a set of hooks dug into her net and, in an instant, she was dragged over and down into the sewer.

Her scream was cut off as she disappeared down the hole, and I couldn’t really process the fact that she was just… gone.

Midnight’s roar shocked me back to turning my attention up the road, and I just knew he was going to come around the corner any second to find the most perfectly helpless victim waiting for him. I looked at the readout in my augmented vision and realized that… at least I still had a grenade. If it came to it, then maybe…

My augment fuzzed and the overlay disappeared, dropping me back into darkness. Something hard came down onto my flank as a whimper escaped my lips. With a tug, it felt like something bit me, and with a disorienting yank, I was pulled sharply across the road until I slipped over the lip of the open sewerhole.

The second I was inside, I heard Midnight give one final rage filled howl before a figure above me shifted. A weak magical aura lit up the sewer pipe, and a bloated looking ghoul carefully moved the sewer cover back over us, sealing us in. As soon as he had, he flicked on a flashlight and pointed it at me.

The bright light was blinding, and I moved to cover my eyes from it. As I did, I let out another whimper, but no sound came from my muzzle. Pausing, I perked my ears, but found a familiar kind of silence in the air. The ghoul had cast a silencing spell. Smart.

The air around me shifted, and I was lowered silently down the access tube further into the sewer. I took a deep breath, which let me tell you, was a horrible mistake. The stench of rot and bile got more prevalent with every moment. Even only halfway down, it was thick enough that I could swear that I could feel the stench coatmy skin.

It wasn’t until then that I’d gotten to glance over my shoulder and look down. Below, I could see the light of a flickering fire, as well as another bloated looking ghoul working a winch system that both my net and Hispano’s were currently hooked into.

While I was happy to see that Hispano hadn’t met some grizzly fate when she’d been dragged down and silenced, I don’t think I deserved the flat glare she was shooting up at me. Hey, we were alive, alright? Well, at least for now we were. Now, we just had to see what kind of ghouls these ponies were. The ‘save your ass from a monster because it’s the right thing to do’ kind, or the ‘save your ass from a monster because that’s the tastiest part of you’.

No, come on now, Night. Name one ghoul who’d tried to eat you.

Glancing at the bloated ghoul lowering us down, my mind was thrown back to the bloated electrical-fog ghouls back at Destruction bay. Reflexively, I gripped my forehoof up around my half-eaten ear and cringed. Yeah, okay, well at least these ghouls still seem sane.

With what felt like a pop from the inside of my ears, the sounds of flowing water filled the air.

“Huh, y’all don’t look like a couple bags of pigeons.” The ghoul mare below us called up with the normal sort of gravel-in-a-blender type of voice. “And here ah’d gotten my hopes up we’d caught somethin’ special.”

“Nope!” The ghoul above us let out a rattling laugh as he climbed down the hoofholds alongside Hispano and I. The remains of a wet dark green coat jiggled and sloshed with each shift of his body, but he was in remarkable shape other than the bloat. “Just a couple who were lucky we yanked em’ in when we did.” As soon as he’d reached the bottom, he took over for the ghoul mare. His horn lit up weakly again, this time lowering both Hispano and I down onto the wet concrete softly. “These two were almost dinner for Midnight!”

“Lucky indeed then.” The mare nodded and offered a bony smile to me. From above, her teal coat had seemed bloated, but mostly intact. From on the ground, she was missing almost every bit of skin and muscle from her lower jaw, neck, and hooves. Okay, not so much a smile, as just showing me what was left of her face…

Looking around, the sewer down here was fairly well lit for being two hundred years old. The roaring water we’d heard was from the torrent of muddy stormwater currently flowing through a pony-wide channel that split the round tunnel. Down both ends, more pairs of ghouls sat spaced out at each of the entrances. Most of them had rope and pulley setups just like these two, and more than a few were working on tying fresh nets together from spools of old power cable.

“Thanks for saving us, but… do you mind?” Hispano grumbled as she kicked at her netting sharply.

“Oh, right.” The ghoul stallion laughed and used his horn to slip a single bit of cable out from around the top of both our nets. With a flop, the nets around us just seemed to come apart and drop onto the concrete. “There you go, sorry about the delay.” With a smile, the ghoul held his hoof out to Hispano, who only deadpanned at it.

“Thank you for your help.” I offered as I pushed myself back up to a sitting position. Lifting my forehoof, I extended it out to the stallion and found he was happy enough to take it. The moment his bloated hoof touched mine however, I cringed at how soppy and squishy he felt. “I’m Night Flight, and this is Hispano.” Not going to lie, it was… unnerving.

“Heh, and don’t worry, I’m not offended.” He pulled his hoof back and looked at it. “It just happens to our kind when living in this sort of climate. The name’s Lucky Trawler.” With a nod to the ghoul, he smirked. “And that’s my better half, Fyke.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen your kind before.” I did my best to offer him a kind smile and tried to change the topic to anything more comfortable than my memories of Destruction Bay right now. “So! Not that I’m complaining, but why do you have nets strung up between the buildings?”

“Why don’t you tell us why you were messin’ with Midnight?” Fyke snorted as she sat down on top of what looked like had once been an old milk crate with chicken wire strung across it’s opening. Now that I looked, most ghouls down here had boxes like that. All of them empty. “Don’t y’all know that rockdog is fuckin’ crazy?” There was that term again.

“Rockdog?” The word slipped from my muzzle like always. “Is that the local type of hellhound?”

“Nah, there’s just one of ‘im.” Fyke snorted as she dug around in a bag next to her and produced a well polished old tobacco pipe. “You mean y’all never heard ‘a Midnight before?”

“We’re new to the city.” I smiled before Hispano put a talon on my shoulder.

“Some of us are new to Seaddle.” She grumbled and planted herself down next to me. “Because I know it’s going to bug you, here’s the thing. Story goes that he was just another diamond dog during the war before Zeb-tek did something to him. An experiment that replaced his heart with some arcane whos-a-whatsit that turned his skin to stone and filled him with nothing but pain and rage.”

“What they did took his mind away.” Trawler spoke up as he walked over and sat down. “The poor mutt only has the basic instinct to hunt his territory from dusk to dawn.” Tilting his head over, his horn gave out a dim glow before a small flame sprouted from it. Carefully, Fyke lit her pipe and plopped it right into her muzzle. “Plus, he’s always more aggressive on the days when those tin can soldiers use their loud toy to wake him up early. Like I said, you two are lucky we caught you.”

“About that...” Hispano cooed as she got Suiza slung correctly over herself again. “So, what exactly do you have nets up for? Can’t be for just catching fliers like us.”

“Like we said.” Fyke took a long draw off of her pipe that only ended up leaking out from under her jaw and neckline. “Y’all ain’t pigeons.”

“Yuck.” Hispano stuck her tongue out and immediately froze as I’m sure it didn’t make the smell of this place any better. “You ghouls catch radpigeons? Why? They’re full of disease, and they aren’t particularly friendly if you corner them. Can’t be to keep them as pets...”

“Simple.” Fyke shrugged and again took another long draw from her pipe. “They’re good eatin’.”

They just… they eat them?

“That’s fucking gross.” Hispano sternly pointed at the two of them. “Not judging, just… gross.”

“Ta’ each their own.” Fyke gave out a laugh that Trawler joined in on. “But seein’ as y’all probably aren’t wantin’ to keep us company long, if ya take the tunnel a bit east, y’all should hit tha’ Underground in no time at all.”

“The underground?” There goes my muzzle again, just letting shit slip out! I really thought I’d had a better handle on it recently…

“I’ll fill you in on the way.” Hispano sighed and yanked me up onto my hooves again. “Thanks for saving us. Have fun with your…” she paused, stifling half a gag. “Pigeons.”

“Glad to have helped!” Trawler gave a wave as Hispano pushed me to move. “Stay out of the streets in the upper city after sundown now, you hear?”

“Come on, Night.” Hispano sighed as we got up to a trotting pace. Passing a few of the other ghoul pairs, we received our fair share of odd looks, but Hispano made sure they didn’t look at us for long. “I’ve… admittedly never been to the underground. Mostly ‘cause of the smell.”

I looked over to her to find just the barest hint of a smile crawling across her beak.

“But…” She cooed softly. “Maybe now that we’re here, we can explore it together, and salvage a bit of our day off. I’ve heard stories of some really cool places down here.” An excited giggle slipped out from her, and to be honest, it was something I hadn’t realized I’d needed to hear right now. “Of course it won’t take all that long. But I was thinking, when we leave, we could head up to that brothel Happy likes. I really need to do something tonight to release all this stress.”

“Wait…” I nearly tripped at that. “Happy only mentioned that on the ride to the airfield.”

“To you maybe.” Hispano again rolled her eyes and nudged me. “I think you already knew that it was only a matter of time before he felt like going again. And… well, from the fact he spent his entire time on the trip north in the place, I made an educated guess he would have brought it up first chance he could with you.” Celestia, why does that have to sound exactly like how Happy acted? “So… what did you tell him when he asked?”

“I said… okay?” I cringed hard. Why did I have to say that we’d go? Oh right, because I guess I enjoy torturing myself…

“There may be hope for you yet!” Hispano squeaked with excitement as behind her eyes, I could already see a dozen plans for the night being drawn up. “But first, since we’re here and all, can we please explore a bit down here?”

I didn’t really know what to say. Solomon was somewhere in the city above, but probably wouldn’t come after us until tomorrow. Buck was safe on the Inuvik, if alone. And while I felt like leaving Happy, Tofu, and Ping in the hooves of the Rangers, at the very least I knew they wouldn’t be in danger. Still, I should try and reach out.

“Hey, Happy?” I thought out through my augment. “Hispano and I are safe in the Underground part of Seaddle.” Glancing over at Hispano, her beak only stretched into a wider smile as she waited for an answer from me. “Happy? Tofu? Daisy? Is anypony there?”

I wasn’t sure if it was because we were too far underground for the signal to reach, or if it was being blocked for some reason. For now though, it seemed like we were on our own. Given that the plan was still to meet up with Happy and the others at the bar, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to spend some time here with Hispano.

“Okay, sounds like a plan, but...” I finally answered her, hanging on that as I noticed that she was still bleeding from the shrapnel we took from my grenade. “Maybe first we should get ourselves patched up.” Thankfully, she smiled and nodded. To be honest, spending a bit of time alone was all she’d wanted to do today, and now that I was here with her? Well, I guess she couldn’t complain, and really neither could I. “So, while we do that, what exactly have you heard about this place?”

Author's Note

As always, I've got to profess my thanks to TheFurryRailFan for all his help in going over these chapters. I know it's been one hell of a ride, and that it's gone on longer than first planned, but thanks for sticking with me the whole way. I swear we're getting closer to the end!

And of course, a huge thanks to Kkat for creating FoE in the first place!