Fallout Equestria: Transient

Chapters

Lines In The Sand (II)
Ultra-Violence, And Its Discontents (IV)
Ballistics, Assiduity And Decay (V)
Discovery, Discharges And Remains (VI)
Not That Kind Of Girl (VII)
It's Not You (IIX)
Recoil, Reciprocation and Renascence (IX)
Strange Bedfellows: Part One (X)
To Be Alone With You: Part Two (XI)
Prophecies, Presumption & Pity (XII)
Homecoming (XIII)
The Proud Tower (XIV)
Lapping Upon The Shore (XIVS)
Relief, Remorse & Reaction (XV)
On My Way (XVI)
The Last Crusade (XVII)
Swirling Embers (XVIII)
Emptiness, Form & Change (XX)
The Light Of Hope (XXI)
Catalyst, Combustion And Calm (XXII)
The Conspiracy Of Equals (XXIII)
Icarus Ascending (XXIV)
Paradise (XXV)
Recognition, Redeployment & Redemption (XXVI)
Alas, Babylon (XXVII)
Conjunction, Cartharsis & Contrition (XXIIX)
The Tarnished Knight (XXIX)
The Destroyer (XXX)
The Spark (XXXI)
Steeped In Steel (I)
Grounded, Dust And Death (III)
Why We Fight (XIX)

Lines In The Sand (II)

Lines In The Sand

Walking down the flights of stairs was always a reminder of what we were, and really, what we are. The surface, with its scorching sun and adobe, was more alive. Holes in the earth have always been more quiet. I was born in an adjacent structure, a Stable all the same. The places always felt like they were meant to be whispered in; the idea of having a party or a wastefully fun social gathering felt alien to the place.

I mean to say that Mausoleums are pretty stable.

No, I had business here. Mom had needed some help with the shop on the day of. Books could be gifts, and on ceremony day, people got their relatives gifts. It just happened that this assignment ceremony was also my assignment day. So, I was making my way down into Stable 56 and its office of employment. Basing a critical feature of our society down in a hole made sense. Was it a reasonable fear that we would be driven back down there? I didn’t know, and no one I knew did either.

Stables, bomb shelters built for thousands, were where we came from, plural.

My mind was wandering as the others went about their day. The maintenance staff for these places had a tendency to stay below. They gave my pink coat and side bags a strange look as I passed by. Some people had never wanted to leave these holes, and I couldn’t understand that.

Finally, after fifteen minutes of walking and straining my eyes to look at faded signs, I made it to the office I was looking for. I glanced at it through the glass in the door. The room had a steel desk at its center and an older mare was sitting at it.

Director Of Occupational Assignment said a plaque on her desk.

I rapped on the door three times. She looked at the door.

“Come in,” She said to me, and I did.

“H-hello.” I relied tentatively. She was actually quite pretty.

“What’s your name, honey?”

“Rosetta. My mother runs a bookstore.” I didn’t know why I blurted that out. In fact, she gave me an odd look. I was drying out like a pelt in the sun. She looked to her desktop terminal for a moment before typing out a short message.

“Oh, you were the one who skipped graduation day.” Her voice held an amusement to it. “Afraid of crowds, or recognition?” The mare had softened her voice as she asked.

“Uhh.” My mouth kind of fell open and made noises as my brain stalled. I couldn’t help but think that she was right on both counts.

“You’re not the first and not the last. Really, it’s respite more than anything else, especially if you get to be the bearer of good news.”

“O-okay. Glad to be the receiver of good news?”

“Yep, you’re hearing it from me first, come tomorrow you’re a desert ranger,” She told me with a lackadaisical tone in her voice.

“What?” I said as I shivered. I shifted forward and placed my front hooves on her desk. I was about to either scream at her or cry in her general direction. Before…

“Just joking, how do you feel about studying under Doctor Mildew?” She told me as she placed a hoof on top of one of mine. My lips pursed.

“You’re not lying to me… You’re serious?” I couldn’t believe the mare standing in front of me.

“Yes, I was on the committee that decided you would do well in that position. Cheer up; you don’t get to skip that ceremony without some kind of punishment.”

“So, do I show up at his office tomorrow?”

“Only if you have the slip I’m writing. You do know that Dr. Mildew was there at the ceremony? He wanted to meet you.”

I guess reading through that musty anatomy textbook had payed off with interest. Rosetta was going to be taught medicine. As many problems as the entrance exam had, it’d gotten me somewhere namely, gawking at the head of an important committee. Shit. I looked at my legs. The scratching of a pen on paper caught my attention, but I didn’t look at it.

“Here you go.” I looked back up at her and took the paper with a hoof. As I was sliding it into my right bag she looked at me with a smile. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

I turned around, muttering a thank-you. She enjoyed her job too much.

The walk back up to Paradise Lost was hurried. The people down there were staring at me like I was a parasite under a microscope.

When I made it through the Stable door and into a place touched by the sun, I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t a fan of small places or dark ones. The city above was my home, a mixture of new structures and repaired older ones. Apparently the world ended a century ago, and honestly, I had a hard time believing that sometimes. In Paradise Lost, I could walk a couple feet and a find a bathhouse or drinking fountain. Power flowed in our houses, no one starved, even if potatoes were a little too prevalent in our diet.

I guess the name of the town that existed here before was literally named Paradise. Paradise had been a resort town constructed on the shores of Sall’han, adjacent to a naval base. Interdicting traffic to the enemies of Equestria was a necessity. This place apparently sprung up overnight, and was described as both a tourist trap and a place for sailors to unwind.

As I made my way back home, my mind wandered.

Was I really doctor material? There were twenty in the city. For twelve thousand people, it wasn’t a bad ratio, historically speaking. I had always wondered why our city was named the way that it was. Was it some remembrance for the past? What did we lose?

The war and its exchange of super weapons had turned Equestria to ash, and Zebrica was left worse off, somehow. Well, we stuck with the name our forebearers had come to agreement with.

My walk came to an end as I spotted my mother’s book store. If nothing else, I had something good to tell my mom.

---===*===---

When I made my way to Mildew, the next day I found a teal coloured buck with a military cut to his hair. He promptly asked why exactly I hadn’t been at the ceremony. In his office full of awards, all dated to a few decades back, I answered the question the same way I had with the assignment office mare. His mane was grayed to a snowy complexion and his corrective lenses were scratched and thick. All of this was intimidating to me.

“Damn, you’re a dead ringer for your father, in everything but voice and disposition.” He said this, referring to a father I never knew, and without that pernicious tone to his voice. It was simply a fact to him. Mildew shifted vertically, somehow. “If you think this is going to be easy for you, that any part of this can be slept through, you’re not only dead wrong but you’ll probably going to end up killing someone.” His gray eyes bored into my face. My face shifted towards the floor.

“Gods dammit.” There was a pause after his words.

“You read well, and you can keep the stuff in your head, you aren’t a cocky asshole. I can work with you, so all of it really comes down to you. If you want a job where you’ll get five hours of sleep a night, then you’ve found it.”

“I think I’m one of the better candidates. I really do want to help ponies.”

My voice was low but there was commitment in it.

“Alright, you’re going to learn the trade the same way I did; By watching me, reading a helluva lotta books, and working with patients as they come in.”

“Well, medical schools aren’t really around anymore, so it makes sense. I’ll be happy to help,” I thought out loud, to his minor amusement.

He turned his back before muttering, “You say that now.”

---===*===---

The Healer

I ambled in like I had for the last month, with a loose gait and a lowered neck. Exhaustion was a feeling I had never truly experienced before. I was up at five and asleep by twelve, which was darkly funny. Those medical texts I studied said that sleep was important, and that you should get seven or more hours of it. For the first few days, I felt like death.

My mother, as supportive as always, greeted me warmly when I trotted in. The muscles in my mouth flexed to form a light smile, most of those muscles I could now name. Page Turner always liked it when I smiled. I was the smiling type, so it wasn’t a foreign activity. The smell of cabbage and browned bread perked me up. We had an extra bedroom up top, where Dalliance slept. She could cook, and she pulled in caps for rent. Mom was always more focused on her store, her project of the moment, and ,well, me. The interior of the shop had an ever present smell: Leather, paper, and a just a little rot.

“Rose, dinner is nearly done. You do want to join us, yes?” My mother had an eloquence in her speech that extended to every word she spoke. Her brownish, beige coat and thick glasses gave her an appearance nearly as bookish as the place she ran. Sharp grey eyes and black hair wrapped up in a bun made her appear to be a mercenary librarian, which, was effectively what she was.

“Only if you feed it intravenously,” I said with an exaggerated yawn following shortly behind the statement.

“That’s the spirit! No, If I know you, and I do, you’re starving.” Even so, she walked over to me and gave me a push in the general direction of the table. As I continued to walk under my own power, she snorted. “I hope you act like this to doctor Mildew.”

“Well, he doesn’t satiate my appetite; he just makes it disappear. He doesn’t even require any magic to work that spell.” I sat down at the wooden table set for four. It was big enough for the three of us.

“He is an impressive sack of bones.” She said to me from across the table.

“He’ll only be a sack of bones if he doesn’t eat.” Dalliance said from the kitchen.

She trotted into the room to give me a look over. “Not him, Dally, the doctor he’s learning from. Rosetta is only as emaciated as he normally is.”

“That wasn’t very nice. Bad mare.” Dally said before tapping my mom on the muzzle with the stirring spoon.

“Ooom, smells good.” Page said to her before giving her a light peck on the cheek. They had moments where they forgot that they were alone, or just didn’t care.

“So, uh, I learned how a dialysis machine works, in principal. Word of advice: keep your kidneys intact.” After hearing that, they both looked at me funny before the mercenary librarian rolled her eyes and the mare who had become a second mom to me just shook her head in the general direction of the kitchen. Around them, my desire to sink into the walls disappeared. Comfort can do that to a person. It can make them better.

I followed the instruction. As I was spooning the hot stew into a wooden bowl, I could hear them talking, barely.

“You think we did well? He is going to be a doctor, though I could always tell from his hoofwriting. Do you think that-”

“Yes, yes. If anything you’ve told me about him had a grain of truth in it… he’d be very proud of him. Not that I didn’t help.”

In the moment after hearing that I felt my mouth tighten up and a tenseness in my chest. I felt warm, in that moment all of it made sense. Parents that love you… sometimes you forget that fact, and sometimes they don’t say it out loud enough. Still, in that doorway, I began to cry those periodic tears. My father had died out there. You know, the wasteland. He died of an infectious disease. We had his ashes in an urn.

With a little hesitation, and that low lying joy that comes from realising attachment, I proceeded to grab myself a bowl of the stew, and with a thought, I made a bowl for mom and Dally.

I walked back in to see the two of them looking at their hooves. Laying the bowls down with a finesse I had just started to learn, I gave the two of them that practiced slight smile.

“Thanks,” Dally said to me smoothly as I passed the bowl to her.

“So, do you have a date for Unification Day?” My mom had shifted gears over to my unfinished affairs as quickly as she did anything else.

“Uh, I’ve been really busy,” I said meekly.

Dally shot me a look of sympathy, but Page was a results driven person.

“I know you meet with a lot of the patients before Mildew gets to them; if that isn’t an icebreaker, I don’t know what would be.”

“I don’t think that that’s ethical. If a filly has a broken leg or a buck has a cut that needs stitches… that kind of supercedes my… wants.”

“Well, you have some time, but still.” She gave me her signature expression, her lips pursed, eyes locked on and ears straight up. Then her features softened at a look from Dally.

“We just want you to be happy. You took a risk in becoming Mildew’s apprentice. How hard is it to ask someone if they want go to the soda fountain, or the bar?”

My face clouded. She never understood. I loved her and she loved me, that was never in question. I wasn’t a cut-throat, I just had a hard time with ponies.

“You’ll get over it, everyone likes a doctor,” Dally said after thirty seconds of pregnant silence.

“P-probably.” I said before swallowing a spoonful of stew.

---===*===---

Unification Day

The Salt in the air stayed the same, even on a day when drunk ponies and cynical merchants took to the streets in broad daylight.

It was the look in his eyes that gave him away: Mildew had just told me that I could take a day off to go enjoy the festivities.

I shifted my hooves back and forth, my head had taken its normal ground-facing position. “I’m fine with staying here, Mildew. I’m sure you’ll want a second pair of hooves to operate the stomach pump.”

“First off, you just jinxed us. Second off, you’re what, twenty, and wanting to stay in on today of all days. Third, things are always better in threes.”

I chuckled a little at the ornery doctor. If he didn’t run into mom or Dalliance, then he couldn’t reveal that I’d be lying to them about my activities, or lack of them, today.

“Today isn’t the day for me, alright?” I said with resignation in my voice with a little bit of bite at the end. He wouldn’t ask why, hopefully.

His face looked stony for a second and one of his fore hooves came up to stroke his scraggly facial tufts.

“This is highly unethical, but I have a cure for social phobia. Now, I’ve only found this out through years of being a physician. Have some faith in me.” He said this to me before he turned. His desk was his destination, and I just stood there murmuring about not having social phobia…

It really didn’t matter. He came out from behind his desk with a bottle of brown liquid and a pair of glasses.

“Think of this as more of a pre-game,” He said nonchalantly as he gestured for me to go sit with him at one of the waiting room tables.

“What?”

“You need to get out more. When I was your age I was mainlining- You wouldn’t understand. No, I really just want to get you buzzed enough that you can interact with others the way a regular jackoff would.” He looked at my face for half a second.

He shook his head. A smile then appeared on his face. “Give it a shot.” And then he laughed. Oh, yeah, those were shot glasses that he was filling.

With a little flourish, he finished filling the glasses. He picked his up with his right hoof while I hesitantly did the same. “Bottoms up,” Mildew said before stopping his drink.

“Did I teach you how to transplant a liver yet?” He said suddenly, spinning his glass in his magic on his hoof.

“No.” I said before dumping the liquor down my throat. I gagged loudly. My body thought that I had just swallowed fire.

“Say thank you. I pulled a shampoo bottle out of a stallion's ass for this. Well, he gave me this so that I’d never mention it again, but fuck, it’s Unification Day, and I almost took it to my grave.”

“So that was why he was walking funny. I wrote that he thrown out his back... And that was a week ago.” My volume had crept up. He actually smiled at me.

“That’s the spirit. Soon enough, you’ll be one of few people here close to qualified to remove an appendix.” He clapped me on the shoulder before refilling our glasses.

“Or remove a shampoo bottle and tell about it,” I said a few seconds later. I shook my head in his direction. Mildew was a pretty cool boss, not very scholarly, but cool. His temperament was an alien one to me, but even the alien become commonplace after a while, and what becomes commonplace can be loved.

---===*===---

The night, with its wooping and discord, had dragged on. True story: the table in front of me got more interesting the more I drank. Rubbing a hoof on it was just way better. I couldn’t tell you why, though. All the while, Mildew and I had chatted about whatever floated into our heads. I had learned what he had mainlined, so, so long ago.

Mildew was, for lack of a better word, an interesting fellow, and when he was intoxicated, he was a lot more open to suggestion. I had begun with questions about his life, all the cool shit he had done. The guy had been five when the Unification Day had occurred. To hear him tell it when his blood was cut with ethanol really was something.

“Unification Day, it wasn’t a day just by itself, but they don’t want to have a couple months of awkward dick measuring negotiation commemorated. The best way to describe it is this: Imagine that you’re in a public bathroom and the stalls are full except for one, so you have to piss, and at the stall, you kinda give the other guy’s cock a look. I mean, you don’t wanna be the smallest one there, you know?” I nodded and was happy that not all the lights were on. Bathrooms had always been weird for me.

“And you see that theirs is about as big as yours. So you then look back at your own. Maybe you start talking. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you don’t feel insecure. Basically when the Navy Vault opened up both them and us figured out that neither would win a fight for that fucking water talisman, and so we became friends. I was a little guy at the time but when we started helping them tear apart those hulks to salvage their desalinators and the reactors, I knew we were fine. Honestly, just being able to see that big ball of fire in the sky? That made my childhood. My parents got electric bulbs and a UV emitter in the classroom, that’s it. That’s why all those old timers are crazy as shit, you know?”

“I-I do now,” I slurred out. All told, I downed half a dozen shots of rock gut, Mildew told me later, which is good for a first time, apparently.

“You’re drunk. I’m cuttin’ you off. Goodnight, and drink some water when you get home,” He said to me before waving a hoof in the direction of the door.

“What was my Dad like?” I asked quietly. I think the very words I said sobered me a little.

“Oh, fuck. Ponies can say a lot about you. And they do. Don’t ask!” His voice shifted from that of the cool uncle to that of the long lived physician. “But they can’t say that you don’t ask the hardest questions. Your Dad. Imagine a Stallion who knew what he wanted and would do whatever it required. He was large, brash, and he had more loyalty in him in his left testical than most do in both of theirs. No, really, he had more than they have in their bodies, myself included.” His eyes looked into mine, though they glazed over a bit.

“He died on an expedition into that shit-caked desert to the south. That’s what they say, the elected officials, the bureaucracy. All the well-to-do folks. I learned a long time ago that the rules that those types play by are a lot different than the ones we live by, or are forced down our throats, but, I mean, who cares if a good stallion dies to keep all this peace? All this not-starvation? All of this wonderful medicine?” His orbs focused again in the low light. His spine straightened. The conspiratorial tone and the undertone of anger disappeared, it was like an electrical switch had been flipped.

“You’re a good buck, really, as much shit as I give you. Don’t go digging up someone who died two decades back. What matters is the here and now. You look like you understand,” He said to me, someone with more on his mind than when he had entered. I intentionally made my parting words extra slurred, or maybe it was the Ethanol in my blood. All I know is that I felt like I could do anything. In the next couple days, I could retrieve my father’s medical records. And from there… I didn’t really think about that.

---===*===---

I woke up. The bed I was in belonged to me, and my head felt like it had needles embedded in it, needles that vibrated. Well, instead of getting off of the bed, I lay there for a moment and thought about the night before. Some things were hazy, but I did remember waking up on the kitchen floor. My body had finally finished the first step in breaking down the alcohol in my bloodstream, so I had wandered into my bedroom.

My attempt at sleeping it off was kind of successful… I knew that I had to get some food and water in my system, mostly the water, though.

I cursed under my breath as I made my legs take my weight. The promising physician in me that had hidden itself away spoke to me then. That toxin breakdown you did, it used up a lot of water. Get water in yourself.

And with that thought, I had a plan. As I walked into the kitchen, I saw Dally sitting at the table, writing something down. She looked kind of frantic.

“You cramming for an assignment, or something?” I said to her. Her eyes widened at me. They dilated on the spot. That was curious; she was normally the most laid back pony I knew.

“No, I’m just writing some things down, my boss at the glass plant is gonna need some new employees soon. I think there’s an expansion in the works, you know?”

I nodded at her. There were stranger things than Dalliance speaking like she has a final that she didn’t study for right around the corner. I tried to pick up a glass with my magic. It lifted half an inch before a splitting pain pierced my skull. Hangovers suck. I must have winced just before the glass on the kitchen island came back down with a crash.

“You okay? Did you hit the liquor hard last night, or something?” Dally asked me from her chair. She said it in a halting, joking tone that, for her, masked concern.

“Yes, and yes.” I turned my head to look at her. Was there something going on that I didn’t know about? There was a twitch as I shrugged my shoulders. I walked over to the glass and grasped it with a hoof, the magic field it could project not seeming to be affected by a hangover. I pushed the tap open with the other leg. All it required was for me to bend over the counter. Sometimes I felt that being tall was lucky. As the glass filled, I remembered my training. If you're dealing with dehydration, you should wait and take small drinks.

The glass filled, I started to slowly drink my glass. I didn’t even feel how dry my mouth and throat were until the water touched them. It took a few minutes, but I downed the glass. Dalliance stayed quiet in the other room, which was strange, considering she was the mare that would have conversations with cashiers on the other side of the city.

I needed to pee, so I walked into the bathroom on legs that felt more steady. After I used the toilet, I caught a look of myself in the mirror. I’m not the kind of pony that focuses on their appearance, but seeing my turquoise eyes bloodshot and red mane ruffled made me smile. I look pretty rugged. Taking an inventory of my body didn’t seem to be a bad idea. I swung my head to look at my flank. Yep, my coat was still pink and my mark still showed a open book with a pencil and wrench sitting on it. I turned around and gave my ass a once over. I smiled furtively. I had always suspected that ponies were built to stare at their own asses. I mean, not many creatures can both make glass and turn their heads as close to backward as us.

I still had a dock and black pair of testicles, the right one in the mirror hung lower than the other one. Again, the young doctor in me spoke up.

The one that hangs down is the one making sperm. The other one is hanging around in reserve. Even alone in the bathroom, that fact made my cheeks redden. The thought of having all that sperm just lying around was kind of weird. There were a couple of my tertiary school classmates that I wouldn’t say no to. There was a mare who had taken biology III with me a couple months ago, she had a red mane like me and a pair of hips to write home about. We had been partners in the lab. I could never just ask her for a date or anything. That stallion in Equestrian History with that scar on his face, too, but every word out of his mouth had been painful though. I would have dicked both of them though, or both at the same time.

That mental image had my shaft peeking out. I cleared my mind and thought of differential equations for a minute. I gave myself a minute before exiting the bathroom, shaft back in its sheath. I had reading to do.

Even on a day off, there was always reading to do. Somehow, that didn’t bother me too much. It kept my mind from other things for a while.

Author's Note

Tell me what you liked and what you didn't. For writers, feedback is basically cocaine.

Ultra-Violence, And Its Discontents (IV)

Ultra-Violence, And Its Discontents.

(IV)

The restaurant had a calm to it. I have a pet theory about that. I think that when you know that the next moment is going to involve ponies pissing themselves, you really start to appreciate the serenity of normal existence. The happy, yet empty expression on Reflex’s face was a ruse. He was a better actor than I.

We had been sitting there, waiting for someone to make a move for five minutes. The glances at their weapons had stopped occurring. They must have finally felt confident in their guns’ actual existence. To be fair, small arms were kind of illegal, so the odds of them having any extensive practice with their guns was slim.

It was only as our server came towards us that they made their move. The buck with the bulge on his side raised a hoof, pushing against something right under his hood. I could only see a slim bar slide into place just in front of his muzzle. The fellow beside him had turned his body, going for a pistol in his coat. For an amatuer, going for your mouth-held gun with your mouth makes sense. For someone who’s been trained, the idea of losing sight of an enemy would make them gag, or at least it would for me.

We were in the right; these Arabians were committing a capital offense just by having these weapons in their possession. Arming and aiming them at Rangers? That was a summary execution. Reflex Sight flicked his eyes in their direction.

“Well, you did take me to dinner first,” I said quietly. Lidded eyes and a throaty tone sold it for what it wasn’t.

The mouth-holder steadied himself. I could swear that he was shaking under that loose barding. We took that moment to move our guns closer to our mouths. Our dark little alcove would create a reverberation effect when the waves from the gunshot hit the walls. Ear protection is worth its weight in rage, sometimes.

Reflex was faster than anyone there. His pistol was drawn and aimed in less time than it took for me to get mine free from the holster. His gunshots were rapid. Bullets tore from the gun’s barrel only to slide into the buck with the mouth-gun. His body received three of the five shots spat in his direction. However, this did jack shit to the guy right next to him. Whatever kind of automatic gun he had was pretty powerful. He unloaded the thing, and the rapid but distinct sound of Reflex’s pistol were drowned out by its roar.

Reflex rolled out into the space between the table and his seating. The battle saddle user had no training to compensate for something as simple as hitting the deck, so all of his lead was buried in the wall where Reflex had sat half a second before, and just about everywhere else. I think a scribe would have said that the slugs were buried within a large probability cone; I’d just say that he lacked experience, not that he’d ever get any. The moment that his gun ran dry, he froze. It was like the implications of a finite magazine had never actually occurred to him, or maybe it the chaos that had been let loose in the restaurant had gotten to him. It wasn’t the screams that did it, I doubt that screams of revulsion and surprise were new to him. Ramsgard was a tough place. It was the knowledge that he had caused this, that people were going to have nightmares about this. Having a just cause is good and all, believing in a justification is a nice luxury, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is ready to become a killer.

As I moved my head and pulled the trigger with my tongue, I didn’t really think about what I was doing. Three times my shots disturbed the air, and the fleeing patrons, just a little bit more. He hit the ground, having been injured severely. If he didn’t receive medical attention in the next few minutes, he would surely die.

It was only after I glanced to Reflex that I felt my adrenaline rampage abate. He had a bullet wound, complete with exit hole, through his shoulder, and a series of deep grazes across his barrel.

My brain built a full train of thought as I walked swiftly over to the combatant Reflex had shot. Amid air that reeked of urine and cordite I realized something pretty odd.

“This isn’t even the worst date I’ve had.”

---===*===---

The infirmary wasn’t in the best shape, but honestly, if I held up as well as that place, I’d be pretty well off. Reflex hadn’t been hurt real badly, and an application of healing spells and a couple days off duty would put him right. No, the real surprise was the Arabian that Reflex had shot up. The stallion had left a mess on the floor, but he was breathing, so I’d obtained some help to carry the both of them to the nearest clinic. Getting volunteers is a lot easier when you have a gun between your teeth.

The one that I had shot died on the way to the clinic, but the other was luckier. Feeling Reflex’s blood flow onto me as I carried him was unsettling; being that close to a bleeding friend wasn’t something that I had ever felt. Getting to the nearest infirmary didn’t take that long. That’s why the Arabian had lived, but weirdly, I couldn’t really remember it.

As I waited for the surgeons to finish operating on the Arabian, I sat beside Reflex’s bed. The poor guy had a line of stitches up his side and a bloody hole packed with gauze in his shoulder. He had fallen asleep about halfway through our trip back. It startled me when I heard him clear his throat.

“That was sure was fun, Ice,” he said clearly. There wasn’t that much painkiller in him; Ranger doctors were the ‘tough love conquers all’ kind of ponies.

“You could say that, but you’d be wrong,” I murmured before getting to my hooves.

“Icepick, Icepick, you’ve always had this weird fixation on my health…” he said, pausing for comedic effect. I trotted forward and slugged him in the shoulder. “At least, I thought you did,” he mumbled before whimpering.

“Wrong shoulder, wuss,” I said to him with an unamused tone. He chuckled lightly at the words and my eye roll.

“So you’re fine. I mean, you’d think the one with the flying metal cutie mark would be the one to get hit with flying metal. But no, you just hang around making sure that I don’t die.” He spoke like he was gossiping to another Ranger.

“I just like having you around is all, even if you are the kind of buck to wear sunglasses indoors.”

“Thanks, you’re a better friend than most. But, uh-” He looked down at one of his forelegs before moving it closer to his eyes, wincing in the process. “It’s like, late O'clock. I’ll be fine, go rest. I know I don’t weigh that much, and gunfights don’t really phase you, but you should still try and get some rest.” He really wasn’t wrong, but I still had a job to do. I had saved the Arabian’s life, and I was going to interrogate the fuck.

“You’re probably right. I’ll see you soon, and next time we eat a meal, it’ll be at the Mess hall, where the most dangerous thing is the way they burn the soup,” I joked, turning away.

“I can’t wait. Night, Ice,” he said, a tone of accomplishment glazing his voice. I spun around quickly and pressed my lips to his forehead. For some reason, it seemed like the right thing to do. Getting lined back up with the doorway was accomplished just as quickly, and with a quick flourish of my tail. There were some moments when you wished your body didn’t smell like fear and cordite. Then again, the infirmary reeked of it as well, and it was doing pretty well.

---===*===---

He saw me leave. Letting an injured friend have some peace of mind… That was what mattered in the situation, or one of the things that did. It didn’t take a long time to reach the OR door. Nothing happened for a long time, the only other pony in sight being a knight third rank who refused to acknowledge my existence. I stood beside the door for two hours, before two ponies came into view.

The two mares were wearing uniforms that I had only seen on a few occasions. They were wearing light barding, and they were glancing at me with interest. A tan coloured mare stepped in my direction before looking me in the eyes.

“Knight second class, Icepick, correct?” Her voice was crisp and precise.

“Yeah, what department are you from?” I returned her look and stood just a little straighter. I had a head and half on this mare. The unicorn looked unimpressed. I guess the horn added a little height, and a superiority complex.

“Department of Internal Affairs, or the Constabulary, as you might recognize, would be an accurate enough description. Now, in the purpose of succinctness, my name is Agave Tart. This mare next to me is the head coordinator of our department's counter-terrorism unit.” Agave turned to face her superior.

“Thank you for the introduction, Lieutenant. Now, I have a few questions for our knight.” The older mare recognized the lieutenant before focusing her attention on me.

“Ask away, I’m just waiting for them to get done,” I told her with a hoof briefly pointed at the OR’s door, telling her what a I really meant.

“You have no right to interrogate, Knight. That would be a multifaceted breach of the law. With that out of the way-” I steamed. This breeding bitch. But I held my anger down. “-let me ask what happened. In detail.”

I told my story to the two of them, one listening and watching my face like a bird of prey, the other transcribing my words even as a recorder listened away from one of her barding pockets, ‘to garner the highest possible fidelity’. By the time I recounted the series of events I could feel my adrenaline rush beginning to cut out.

“Thank you knight, I do sympathize with you, if I were a knight, I would want to wring the answers to my prescient queries from the neck of an Arabian. But, alas, the laws we maintain are the laws of old Equestria. In any case, it says that you bypassed your language classes on a technicality.” She finished with a polished sounding speech.

I didn’t enjoy being compared to a barbarian. Then again, she wasn’t really wrong. I did kind of plan on going in there and beating the shit out of him as soon as I was able. Still, the idea held some appeal to me. Who really follows the law when their friend was almost killed. When some asshole fucker who shouldn’t have even had a gun was the one who had done it.

“Icepick, how exactly were you planning on speaking with this stallion?” That question got me. I hadn’t really thought about that, I just felt that it was guaranteed that when you started breaking bones they’d always talk. It wasn’t inconceivable that I could’ve had a translator in there with me.

“I would’ve had a translator in there with me,” I responded about two seconds after her question.

“Yes, I’m sure. If we need any other questions answered, we’ll contact you or your commanding officer. For what it’s worth we’re pleased that you brought this stallion here, it might just be the break we’ve been looking for,” she said before turning to her subordinate.

I stood there for a moment, then shot a look at their armoured security detail. They stayed stock still. I waited for a response for a moment and got nothing from them. However, I did catch an interesting string of words from the subordinate speaking just a little loudly. And as prim as it was, I had no problems making it out.

“The terror cell, this stallion was most certainly a part of it, the weapon of Zebra manufacture is nearly unequivocal!” Funny thing was, as I exited the building whistling nonchalantly, I almost wanted to kiss the pretentious mare.

Well, I would have plenty of chances.

---===*===---

Maintenance was the same as it always was, a lot of technicians fiddling with a lot of cranky arcana-tech. The place smelled like ozone and grease, not exactly a fifty bit perfume, but for the right pony it was familiar, and to a smaller number it was home.

For me it was always a place where I could learn something… while waiting for them to complete a task that they said would be done two days ago. Then again, they weren’t the requisitions department. Those ponies had more ways of being behind schedule than they had forms for you to fill out, which really was a feat of bureaucratic engineering.

I made my way over to the technician in charge of my armour. He had the entire back plate open. The black-coated stallion was practically lying inside the armours torse.

“Hey,” I said simply before lightly rapping the armour with a hoof.

“Knight, right?” He said to me without looking.

“Yes.”

“You mind coming back, I’m kinda replacing the crystal catalyst in this armour’s reactor.” He sounded exasperated, and just a little frightened.

“That sounds important, what’ll happen if you mess up?” I asked, not really convinced that his attitude was warranted, or maybe I just didn’t like the guy.

“Probably nothing, but if something else in the room decides to act up, something that makes a very large, pretty specific, magic field, then we’ll be dead. This reactor will explode with the power of a balefire egg.” He said this to me with a dismissive wave.

Like any person with a bit a curiosity or you know, a healthy fear of death, would instantly be thinking up a string of questions.

“What specific magic field?” I asked, I was a little alarmed, it could be heard.

“Well, if the catalyst isn’t correctly placed and the startup charge from another reactor, either a big one within a couple hundred meters or another armour reactor starter within a few hoof lengths, then the energy generation in the device happens. Just not in a controlled manner. Spark reactors need to be very precise in their energy generation, or else things go wrong. To answer your next question, this isn’t an issue for a properly maintained reactor.” By the end of his explanation he sounded bored, annoyance takes more out of you than an explanation you’ve given dozens of times.

“That’s good, I wouldn’t want to be a walking bomb.”

“Says the mare with the shrapnel cloud cutie mark,” he said simply. Then he laughed loudly, exactly one time. He sounded like a jackal with a dash problem.

“When will it be done?” I glared at the back of his head, even as my tone stayed purely business-casual. He picked himself up and out of the splayed armour. The black stallion gave a mock salute, the saluting hoof covered in an unidentifiable fluid. A smile almost appeared on my face. Jack-hole had smeared it on his forehead.

“The reactors reassembled, so really all I have to do is give the inside a wipe down and replace a couple of servos that weren’t quite up to snuff.” He had lost a little of his attitude. Really, he wasn’t a terrible stallion, he just had a lot on his plate and a little reflective junk on his forehead. I could almost sympathize. Then again, none of his saddle bags smelled like head.

“Estimate?” I said simply, looking slightly down at the short stallion.

“Uh, it’ll be done by…” He was picking his own deadline, that I could believe in. “1430, yeah,” he finished with a flourish of his sticky hoof. I dodged, even if he didn’t really have the reach to get it on me. Even if he knew it was there.

“Thanks a million. I’ll see you soon.” My voice was to the point, but it wasn’t really cold.

I mean, I had learned something.

---===*===---

The time was convenient, mostly because my acting CO had told me to come to her back to her office at 1400. Making my way over there early, 0700 or so, was my normal routine. In my last couple days she hadn’t had anything for me to do that didn’t involve armour. Which was stupid, she hadn’t read through my personnel file all the way. It said in plain equish that I had a technical certification. Down south, the place where I had been from ages 0-13, they had enough Arabian speakers and not enough scribes to run all of their maneframes and sensor arrays. I had been educated for sensor stewardship, so being a knight with computer and network skills made sense. Not that command, by and large, ever utilised my additional skills.

The meeting went mostly as like it usually did, other than her praise for helping Reflex get to safety. That was weird, not that I knew this paladin really well, but getting praise from higher ups is rare.

Knowing that I’d be needed here at 1400, and looking at the time. It still early in the morning, so I decided I’d check on Reflex.

---===*===---

Her office door was closed. It was also unlocked. When I peeked into the room I realized that it wasn’t just the paladin in the room. No, it was the subordinate mare from the night before. Both turned to watch me as I entered. The paladin pointed to a chair in front of me with an outstretched hoof.

“So, you’re telling me that there’s a terror cell operating within the city?” the Paladin asked the operative.

“That’s what he told us, not that that isn’t suspect, as all information is. But, we’re reasonably sure. I even obtained the location,” Agave said to her. She didn’t even glance in my direction.

“Reasonably isn’t good enough. We’re Rangers, not warlords, remember? Not to say that your information won’t be included in the next intelligence briefing that Waters receives.” Paladin Onion Flavouring leaned back in her aged desk chair.

“Is that it then, are we not going to act on that intelligence, for all of her flaws the mare next to me was the one to get that prisoner, at great potential cost. Will we sit on our haunches–” Agave’s exquisite call to action was cut short by Onion’s hoof smacking the desk in front of her.

“Is that the kind of thing you say in the presence of your superiors? I thought that they ran a tighter ship. Now, you saw that mare enter, because you just used her a prop for your impromptu speech. As an intelligent mare, you should wonder why she just now entered, as she is now. I have an assignment for the both of you, regardless of your individual animosities.” I had smiled at every word of hers, until she mentioned working with this pretentious mare.

“What do want us fine mares to do? I mean she has the horn, I’d probably be good for unclogging drains. I’d be up for testing that.” Onion listened to me speak. There was even a twitch in her facial muscles. That meant it was real doozy for her.

“As curious as I am, and as much as I love your comedic attempts, I have to inform you that the task doesn’t involve a drain,” she said. Her bright yellow coat and green eyes fit her well, especially as she insulted the both of us. “It involves both of you, with your respective skills, gathering intelligence. That building you found, you’ll be observing it. I don’t trust my informants right now; until this Arabian was captured we had no idea that these terrorists were as organized as they are. Or supposably are. Honestly, if my statements remain ifs or have to be prefaced when speaking in any official capacity, I’ll scream.”

“I imagine I won’t be wearing my armour for this?” I asked, knowing the answer to my question before I asked it.

“You’re not Reflex, but you’re decent with a service pistol and built like a brick house. You’ll suffice. You'll both be dressing like them, dirty rags and all, so don't bother asking. Now, before you ask any other questions, let me point you towards my underling. His name is Guarana and he has a hell of a lot more energy than I do. Goodbye and goodnight. Oh, and don’t kill each other.” The mare finished her speech, before pulling a flask from one of her desk compartments. When she opened it, I could smell it from the across the desk. It smelled like paint thinner.

The two of us said exactly nothing as we left our chairs and then the room. She shut the door telekinetically. I turned towards her, my face morphing into a sneer. The hallway was empty excluding us.

“I work alone!” I yelled at her.

“N-no,” she responded, with just a hint of stutter. To be fair, my face had shifted in the time it took her to respond. My dopiest grin took the place of the sneer.

“With that out of the way, let’s shake,” I said before extending my right forehoof in her general direction. Everyone deserves at least one slate cleaning.

---===*===---

The two of us made our way into the city by cover of night. We had a stake out position to reach. Our trip was uneventful, like most of the trips into the city. Don’t take this as an indication that most of the city was safe, though. The Rangers didn’t maintain a strict monopoly on violence. Then again, if the crime was committed with a sharpened stick, why bother. Sticks don’t penetrate powered armour.

The place for our observations was picked because it offered high concealment, an effective viewing angle and good cover for our story.

---===*===---

As we walked into the Inn a loud bell rang. The stallion running the counter barked a hello at us. Agave had her head pointed down, it was customary. He looked to the taller pony, which was me. I pointed my head at him, and he could only see my eyes under the thin and poofy cloth I was wearing. I said my rehearsed line, which put a puzzled look on his muzzle. Everything went to plan as Agave spoke up in a formal arabic accented to sound like it came from the south.

He spoke with her for about two minutes before handing her a key as she passed him a number of paper bills.

I pushed ahead of her as her head lowered to the floor, again. I grabbed the key from her and unlocked the door to our room. It was small and had a paper-like screen for a window. But, it was on a latch, and at night we could peer down at the compound from there. The floor of the room was half covered by some shittily spun rugs, with a hay filled sleeping mat lying in the middle of the room. On the bright side the room was actually cool, adobe has that going for it, along with a lot of sound dampening. This building was old, I should mention that. It had a number of shell holes and shrapnel scars. It had been here for the initial sack of the city. The hardwood door was older than me by quite a bit.

“I think that he believed it,” Agave said as she pulled her hood down with a magical tug.

“Do I really look like a southern trader?” I asked, my head turning sideways slightly.

“To wit: My husband is a glorious example of the equity of god, his body didn’t know when to stop growing, and his brain never started.” She said in a low voice, before emitting a single peel of laughter.

“Mare, I never took you for the religious type… good thing you aren’t the funny type,” I said quietly, and with that tinge of fake exuberance. It took her a second to parse the comment. It’s always the ponies that think they’re the smartest person in the room that leave their ego where everyone can see it.

“Knight, you know as well as I do what we think of religion.”

I looked at her with a cocked head. I had better things to do than arguing with her, like napping. I said as such, and she looked oddly pleased. Under the circumstances hot bunking was a the best thing that we could do – and knowing that we were gonna do the spook stuff after dark, it was the least contentious thing in that room.

Lying down on the mat I realized that I would be living a lie, in super close proximity to someone who disliked me, and basically everything I stood for. This wasn’t going to be fun, but if it gave me a shot at the slags that shot Reflex, well, I could stick it out.

---===*===---

The night we arrived was quiet. No-one did anything that even looked odd outside the place. Honestly, the time I spent watching normal Arabians just living their lives felt wrong. Other than learning a couple Arabian curses as I watched the trickle of ponies going home or visiting friends in the middle of the night, it felt like the night was wasted.

We didn’t complain though; for every minute I spent watching old ponies stumble around in the dead of night, I had one spent watching the few wispy clouds drift in and out of the moonlight. All those furtive glances upward add up, is what I’m saying.

It wasn’t till the third day of eating weird food procured by Agave that we spotted something in the last two hours before daylight. It was a single stallion leaving the place.

He was wearing a thick set of clothing and had a pair of heavy looking saddle bags, but other than his late exit it wasn’t that odd. To me.

“He never entered that building,” she said, confusing me.

“Alright, that seems unlikely. Isn’t it more likely that they just came in when we weren’t looking?”

“One of your premises is wrong. We aren’t the only ones watching this place, not even the only rangers watching it. There is another pair set up a block north of here, though their cover is that they’re brothers stopping by for a few days.” There had been an itchy sound to her voice when she’d said that. I let it slide, but I knew at least five ponies that knew their parents; they all turned out alright.

“But there are more out there, spooking the place.” She nodded at that, like I was a foal. “So, how have you stayed up to date, I really hope I haven’t missed morse code smoke symbols?” I grinned at my own joke, I knew several ponies with siblings that wouldn’t do that, so-

“The market has informers, and those that can keep their muzzles shut.”

“Right.” This all made sense, and that was good. The sooner that we knew that this was the place... Well, I’d want to be the one doing the team sent to take the place out, one way or another.

---===*===---

The sound of knocking on the door opened my eyes. I walked my sweaty carcass over to it, lazily. I heard her mutter an arabic phrase. Trotting over to the door, I felt a little uneasy, judging from the level of light in the room it was pretty close to noon.

I still had on my robes, that probably wasn’t helping the whole heat distribution thing out. But anyway, I fished out the key and slid it into the lock. A quick rotation of my head disengaged the lock. Right after that the door pushed open, I moved to my right, and as the door swung towards me I caught a glimpse of a much larger pony. I tensed and had but a second to approach this whole scenario. There would be another arabian holding…

The buck swung his head in my direction, a dagger between his teeth for the record it looked pretty sharp). I stepped forward and leaned my weight on my right foreleg, my left being bound for his windpipe. My hoof made contact with a sound that was far too similar to an apple hitting the ground. Just before I turned my head to face the doorway, I glimpsed his eyes bugging out as he dropped, any plans to attack me forgotten.

The other arabian was standing beside Agave, their own knife pressed against her cloth covered coat, this place was deserted. Ponies here had an attitude of: if it isn’t my business, I’m not going to make it my business. We three were at a standstill.

His mouth was full and I wasn’t expecting help from anyone here. We stood like this for at least ten seconds, watching each other, as he started to walk back into the hall with Agave in tow, a thought popped into my head. When I said that I was completely unable to speak Arabian, that was a lie, but a small one; I knew a couple, memorable phrases.

I stood there inert. I was trying to remember one of those phrases. See, a call for help would have been ignored, that was simple self-preservation on their part…

but not everyone knew that assholes with knives were doing the kinds of things that assholes with knives are prone to doing. So, I had that going for me.

Finally it clicked, I shouted at the top of my lungs an obscenity that can’t even translated, it involves several goats, a virgin filly and a bucket of crotch rot… I think.

Whatever the fuck I said, it brought a lot of heads into the hallway. That was enough distraction for him to look away, when really he should have kept his knife pressed against her throat. He had only been about four meters away, and by the time he looked back I had raced ahead, turned around, and was in the process of planting both of my rear hooves into his pliable fucking skull.

He stood dazed, before Agave drove herself forward and between me and the wall. I let her go. The buck, bloodied and with a broken muzzle streamed forward. I angled my body and jumped out of his stabbing arc. I think his failed stabbing had left his mind blank, even as I turned and struck his muzzle from the side, the side opposite to the knife.

He dove forward to slice my face open, I reared up and dodged the edge of his blade, and with his body over extended and lowered to the ground I had the grounds to drive my body forward and into his from his left side. Before bringing us to the floor I drove a knee into the base of his jaw. I could feel the bone of his inner jaw fracture, the muscle around it bruising instantly, relaxing as his mouth swung open on instinct.

The knife dropped with us.

The stallion was shocked by my coming out on top, but in a few seconds he would be struggling, trying to throw me off. But he was pinned under me, his back legs pressed against the ground at the knee. There isn’t really leverage there. His muscles went all kinds of berzerk before he passed out: I had been pressing the hard edge of a forehoof against his one of his carotid arteries, for enough seconds. For what it was worth, the cover would have been kind of intact, but they knew what we were doing, so it was worth jack fucking shit. Still, it felt good, winning a fight always does... for a little while, at least.

I looked up from the unconscious stallion. Agave had run off, and after thinking that, I was about a half a second from sprinting back into our room. But, then I saw our door slam shut. Agave, looked the other way in the hall before looking in the direction of me.

“Covers blown, we need to leave,” I yelled in her direction.

“I agree, the insurgent in there is immobilized. Also-” She said while telekinetically throwing me my equipment, which amounted to my service pistol. “-let me lock him down.” She moved up to me, before gesturing me to move out of the way. Is she going to shoot him? The flaring light of her horn caught me off guard. A little ball of light struck him on the forehead. It didn’t really look like much, his leg kicked a little, that was it.

“What was that?” I asked with an edge to my voice, unicorn magic was usually the kind of thing that if one told you about theirs, you’d just kind of nod along.

“Paralysis spell, it makes the brain flip the ‘switch’ that normally flips when we sleep. It stops the brain's conscious impulses from moving our bodies. When we’re done with this, I’ll elaborate further.” She said this with a little fluster, like I had pulled out her stocking and was showing everyone. Whatever.

“You’re right, let’s go.” I said, pointing my body towards the exit, she was gonna have to work those stubby legs to keep up with me.

---===*===---

The gate security thought we were arabians up until the point we removed our hoods and spoke a little equestrian. From there we had an emergency meeting with Onion, who basically told us that we were on a clock. We had an hour and a half to prepare, Agave made her way to the security building. There were quite a few on notice, apparently the assault was going to happen in the next forty-eight hours.

Personally I was just getting myself in order, and that involved visiting the repair bay.

---===*==---

“Took ya long enough,” the black-coated stallion said to me as I trotted up to his section of the bay.

“Really wasn’t my choice, but–” I went from looking at him to looking at what he had affixed to my armour. A quad tube rocket system hung off of left side, and the ammo box bolted to the rear of my armour made the entire thing look off. The left side had my customary light machine gun, though he had replaced the ammo box and feed mechanism on that as well.

“Like it?” He looked at me curiously. I normally wouldn’t care, but this buck seemed to have but a lot of effort into this. Still, I had never really been a fan of missile launchers. “I thought that you in particular would like it,” he said before looking at my flank. I had dropped the smelly robes as soon as I had had the option, and had a normal undersuit in my bag so I was walking around like nature intended. I really wasn’t surprised to see his leer staying there. I had kinda ran here, so I was a little sweaty, although this sweet mechanic buck didn’t seem to mind. My brain filled with a images and possibilities.

I cleared them out right as I turned my head to meet his eyes. Maybe later.

“Yeah, it could be pretty useful,” I said quickly, before letting my tone grow just a hint huskier. “But, I’m a little surprised you remembered that the mare who left her armour in here had an explosion on her ass” He looked down, and I bet his cheeks were growing red. But, ya know, his coat was black. “Well, I guess you can answer later. Is it ready?” I said in a more soldiery tone of voice, while pointing my head and a foreleg at my armour.

His head followed my hoof, and he nodded briskly. It was almost like he was embarrassed, or something.

“Last thing, what’s your name? I really don’t want to have to walk into the room full of balefire eggs to hunt you down,” I said as I dropped my bag and pulled out my undersuit. To his credit, he only snuck a couple glances at me as I pulled the suit onto my body.

“Oil Can,” the buck said simply before releasing the clasps holding the armour to its support frame. By the time I had gotten the piece of clothing zipped up he had opened the armour up outward like a clamshell.

I had a single memorable thought as I stepped into it: If it was a clamshell, did that make me a pearl? Judging by the way Oil looked at me, maybe.

I exited through a door to the outside No-one else in the repair bay seemed to notice or care. I was mostly loving the feeling of servos and steel after a week or so of ground pounding. It was like the world was back in order.

---===*===---

We assembled in the courtyard. There were thirty of us in all. About half of us were those security ponies. The regular Knights and Paladins were standing on one side of the yard, the security people on the other. I had missed the initial introductions, but I caught all of the important information. There was going to be a feint attack up one of the main avenues, by the Rangers. Ten or so of us were going up that route. Meanwhile, the main assault was going to be done by the security forces. They were deemed more able to do it without excessive collateral damage.

I didn’t blame them, but the idea of unarmoured personnel going up against firearm equipped insurgents seemed sketchy. I formed up with the group. I would be second in command by rank. Being in the assault force itself, or a good honest feint for the assault was enough.

We marched out of the compound. Maybe I was eager to do my part, or maybe I wanted to give some of these assholes a prostate exam with my armoured hoof… No, it was definitely the second one.

---===*===---

We had made it about three quarters of the way to the intended stopping point, I had my IFF overlay scanning the vicinity, but I didn’t see a damn thing. Damned red thing.

No, like most patrols, especially ones that involves more than a small number of knights, the Arabians crammed themselves inside their homes. Doors were locked, that kept the noise of us breaking a suspected buildings’ door to a minimum. Not a whole lot else.

The noise of servos that weren’t mine told me that Paladin Sonic was walking up to me. “You needn’t be so tense,” the older buck told me. I’m sure that if I had looked behind me I would have seen nods of agreement.

I signalled my own microphone with a thought. I decided not to speak, instead taking a deep breath and a gulp of water from my reservoir.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t right. They would have put up a fight. If, if they hadn’t already moved all the contraband and personnel. I thought I had been angry, but when that pang of powerlessness hit, of not being able to do anything, it was bad. I don’t think it was justice that I wanted, but I wanted something. I had always been able to make things right when I was a kid, all it took were some tough words or a few bruises on them and every once in while, me.

I had just started to feel the adrenaline, when, in the peripheral of my Vision, a mark flicked to red. I was a tenth of a second from yelling a warning.

The big fucking boom from behind me alerted all of them just fine.

I heard screams of pain from the microphones of the injured, that fucker had set off a remote bomb… That realization both pissed me off and worried me. I shoved my words into the choir of injured ponies. “Knight Gumball , you’re in command, if anyone is in shape and not needed for injury care. Come with me!” After that I shut off my radio. I set off at a dead sprint, his IFF marker was still visible. Pushing myself with a combination of adrenaline and magical energy, I knew I could get within range of him.

I could hear my blood pumping through my ears and that was about it as I ran the bastard down. When I turned a corner to a back street, my compass revealed another of them. They were sitting behind a good stack of sandbags on the roof of a three story building, the sighted me by sound before I even realized it. The harsh ping of a high velocity peice of metal being deflected off of your armour always sucks. Someone up there had used something with some power, but that doesn’t mean they had used it well. The other two attempted to wound me with small caliber pistols. I had dropped my rear legs, like I was sitting down for a comfortable chat.

The explosion of the hard fired missile accelerating of my launcher must have surprised one of them, they flashed green in the half second between me activating the mechanism for launch and the explosion. I hadn’t forgotten about the running buck, and as I ran past the remnants of their position I felt another pang of worry. If they ever had the tools, they could probably kick us back to the sea…

There was no-one except me and the pony I was determined to catch. I even felt like I should smack the ‘on’ button for my radio.

“We need assistance, they had the gall to hit us. This is Specialist Agave calling on all Ranger units not currently occupied to converge on the square southwest of the target location!” I had felt like we had been walking into a trap. Sometimes it sucks to be right.

Then, I caught sight of him. The running buck seemed to realize this at the same time his body started to shit out on him. Power armour doesn’t make you the fastest, but when you're putting a lot of the strain on the armour you have staying power when you’re moving. Yeah. He made a last minute dash into another alley. He didn’t, couldn’t shake me.

When I made the same turn he had collapsed onto a pile of trash. He gave me an expression of disgust that slowly shifted to a grin. He spoke a line of Arabic to me, I even recognized one of the words. I realized then that I had no way of telling him to stand down, or even keep his hooves at his side. That train of thought and its tiny pull on my attention was what he wanted. From a stomach pocket he was pulling an object out. Whatever you want to say about him, the bastard kept his eyes trained on me and the rest of his body loose. I was about to tell him to stop doing that when he finished fishing it out, the thing was another half second from being tossed in my general direction. He didn’t have to throw it far.

I fired a long burst from my machine gun. The twenty bullets at point blank range tore threw him, he was dying before my eyes, quickly. I backed away from him, he might have set off an explosive, he had been fond of them. But more than that, I was struck by just how dead he was. Even if he had been shot in an intensive care unit stocked with healing potions and high caliber doctors and nurses, he would have been dead. Not that he was anywhere close. No, he was going to die in a pile of garbage stinking of food remains and feces. He knew it too. That was the fucking clincher. He had enough life in him to look at me with anger, and in the half minute I stood there it changed as the pile was dyed red, his face just looked resigned even as weaker and weaker words exited his muzzle.

I think it was a prayer. Some of it anyway. I had never really seen anyone die quickly enough for them to have no-one they wanted around, yet still have time to know it and make some kind of peace with the universe.

After I watched his eyes close, I turned around. There was too much shit flying to get wrapped up in the life of one insurgent. In the edges of my vision I spotted friendly EFS markers. My knights in sandy armour.

---===*===---

It was over, and I knew I had to say one goodbye. When I opened the door to his hospital room I didn’t expect to see a mare wearing a medical uniform standing beside his cot, a foreleg around his neck, with a foreleg of his around hers and a tail that was lazily wagging behind her. “Be out of here in a weeks, so what’s your barrack number?” Reflex said to the mare hanging off of him.

I stood there in the doorway as he realized my entrance, the nurse answered him, not knowing I was there, or just not caring. “Twenty-Three, west wing, room number forty-five,” she rattled off with a practiced ease, and a long draw with her tail. I wasn’t sure what they had been doing before, but I had several ideas.

This was normal for Reflex – he was a real mare eater, in both senses of the phrase – but I felt a stirring in my gut looking at the two of them. I moved past it before clearing my throat. “So, you wanna hear in gritty detail how it went south, and thanks to me down?” I said to the two ponies, though my eyes were locked onto Reflex’s. With a quick turn, and a brush of her tail past his muzzle she made her way out.

“Knights…” She said with a huff as she walked out, though the position of her tail as she walked out meant that she had given him a view. She had a pretty nice ass. Objectively speaking.

His face kept that lovable smile on it, he had gone from an attractive mare and her showy way of moving to another attractive mare that he was friends with and worried about…. You could never blame him, he did as we all did, just better, and I liked him a little too much for it.

“So, you’re getting out in a week?” I said to him as I trotted up.

“Yep, and back to duty in another,” he said quickly before pulling his wounded frame off of the bed. I shook my head at him before chuckling. I lowered my muzzle to place a single kiss on his lips, and to put a foreleg under his back. It was a closed mouth kiss, but my body told me that I wanted more. I bit my lip and suppressed that idea, with only a flick of my tail giving that idea away. As he broke away I let his body slowly fall back onto the mattress. “I’m glad that you came back all right, even if I wish I could’ve made sure of that myself.”

“We got what we needed,” I said to him, “it’s good that you’re gonna be fine, really, more than fine given it’s you.”

“Kissing up to me,” he said in a neutral tone, “it wouldn’t be the first time, and I really hope it won’t be the last.”

“If my head’s on straight then it won’t be… Really though, I remember you kissing up to me most of those times,” I said before giving his shoulder a gentle rub with a hoof.

“You might be right,” he said in a low voice of rare agreement. He had always been susceptible to a little closeness. “Hey, you promised gritty detail, irregardless of my weakness-”

“-es.” I finished for him.

“Thanks,” he said simply. I stuck my tongue out at him.

I looked at the edge of his bunk, he saw my look and scooted himself far enough for me to lie down. But, not enough for us to not touch. I rolled my eyes before setting myself down beside him, making sure to set up on his withers at least once. From there I told him what had happened up until the death of the runner in the pile of trash.

“Around this time three knights had arrived. Blunt Spade, the pony leading, told me that they had followed the sounds of gunfire. We found the security ponies the same way. The rest of that fight, well, you can read about all the ammunition expenditures and the specifics of who exactly made that building collapse, or that other one…” I said to him, as he sat there looking me in the eyes. He always looked you in the eyes.

“After firing those missiles, and leaving a lotta brass on the ground, we were breaking them. Any who weren’t running for the hills or blending in with the other natives were out of their skulls. The rest of our Knights and Paladins had filtered into the city square in roving packs, dealing with resistance. I attached myself to one of the few security groups that were still fighting. There were five of them. We were holed up in a leather shop. The security pony, Blunt Spade, and I decided to do what this mission had meant to do. We asked command what our orders were now that the resistance had been neutralized.” I said to him. He was listening intently, even as he started stroking my withers lazily.

“Good stuff, so what happened next?” he said before yawning and stretching out his forelegs.

“We made our way to the building. The run over there was tense, but other than a few pot shots we were left alone. The building and the surrounding area was empty; whoever had been there, they were turning sand. This freaked me out, if it was us we would have set the place on fire and smashed everything to pieces. It wasn’t just me, all of us approached it cautiously. I stayed to the side, was ordered to guard the flanks. I was far enough Reflex, I was standing at one of the crossroads…” I let my eyes draw down to the washed but tarnished sheets we were lying on.

“I felt it from the bed. You don’t have to say it,” Reflex said.

“They rigged it,” I said. I had to tell him, I had had to tell someone with my words. Or I thought I needed to. I don’t think I was wrong. It was like pushing an arrow out through your own body, it needed to be done, it didn’t need to be pleasant.

“We’re strong, and we won. As much as they hate it we’re building a better world, Ice.” He moved a hoof to my chin, and lifted my head to look at my eyes.

“This is a war for civilisation. We’re fighting for the genesis of one, and they’re fighting for the right to live their whole lives in the same twenty square kilometers they were born in. To live in a grubby hut, to give birth there, and to die there. I love them, the natives. They can make good food, some strange music and they bond as strongly as we do. After the end they’ll see that.”

“Right,” I said. With a wet noise, I cleared my throat. “Reflex, I’m heading back on a supply boat tonight.” I shifted myself forward, letting my chest rest on his. My eyes slipped closed, there were a couple tears between the lids. I needed him more than he needed me – he knew it- he didn’t abuse it, he was just Reflex. He draped his good foreleg on top of me.

“I was hoping that we would get that night to ourselves,” he said. I snorted air directly into his admittedly nice smelling chest.

“Yeah,” I said. He didn’t speak another word, he just moved that hoof to my mane. As I lay there I knew that I would never be around him like I had been before, we would never be what we had been before. We were older now. We had killed. We had moved on. The buck stroking my mane had become a force to reckoned with, a lucky decade from taking command of this place. He had made himself into someone. He believed in ideas, he told others about them like they were truths.

I couldn’t fall for ideas, I could only fall for ponies. I had only fallen for him.

I didn’t know that then.

In that moment though, I just cracked a smile.

You don’t have to know anything to smile.

I have a pet theory about that…

End Of Chapter Four: Ultra-Violence, And Its Discontents

Ballistics, Assiduity And Decay (V)

Ballistics, Assiduity And Decay.

We stood outside the hospital, not just Wind and I; a large portion of the patients and staff. The winds were bitter, but the tidings had been sweet. Head Wind and I stood in silence. It was companionable, and it was nice to have someone next to me at times like this. His presence was one that lent a bitter-sweet tinge.

Three days had passed since that moment of shock and awe. Our war, our chance for greatness, our chance for an unmarked grave had passed on like so many of us. That bomb had been the tip of a great spear. Before the next revolution of my well worn circle of thought, Head Wind spoke to me.

“So, after we get to that rail depot, where ya goin’?” He had a benighted shade to his voice. His face showed curiosity though, on the patches not obscured by his winter bardings’ hood.

“I believe I’ll spend the night in Nightinham, and take a train to Maidenpool the following morning. My siblings shouldn’t bear the burdens without me.” I said, staring at the unpaved road that our transport would arrive along, and depart from.

My bags were on my back, straps that had a tendency to dig into my coat were held at bay by my own winter barding. I turned my head to look at Wind. Our eyes met; his held concern.

“Where will you be marching off to?” I asked. We had both obtained honourable discharges from the service. At this point, we would be worth more to the empire as civilians. That was the idea, in any case.

“I reckon that I’ll head on to the Imperial City, look for a job there, blow through mosta my back pay, even I know that all those bits will be a lotta pints.” His tail waved lightly behind him, and his right forehoof was scraping the snow covered earth beneath him as he spoke.

We continued to speak, the ice between us having been cracked for that moment; none of it of consequence, all of it nourishing. To an outside observer I must have seemed the reticent one, my expressions and words cast an ashy pallor. But, before we knew it, the vehicle arrived. The vehicle was a large one. It reflected the light of the sun, its aluminium exterior having been completed before the war commenced. During the war, aluminum wasn’t squandered. Even now, the light it reflected was less than pure. Our skies were covered in an elemental imitation of a blackout tarp. The two of us stepped inside the vehicle. By some unstated agreement, our hooves carried us to the rear of the vehicle. As we passed by the fore section I heard the operator mention another being right on his dock. I imagined that this machine could convey two dozen. Then again, there were many fold that number waiting to be led back. And many others would heal in the coming months, or be transferred to a true hospital. I tried not to estimate the number that would perish of wounds that had transpired in a war nearly over, ready to be forgotten by those that had survived.

The upholstery covering my seat and Wind’s had seen better days- then again, what hadn’t? I thought as the machine made a slow circle. My body seeped into the cushions regardless, even as Wind retained a paucity of tenseness. I felt the acceleration as the thing achieved cruising speed. It was going the way it had come, only carrying people it would soon see off. I let out a sigh. The journey would be long, and I was feeling less than vigorous.

As I fell into a light sleep, I felt a rough hoof grasp my own.

---===*===---

When I awoke, it was dark outside, but as I determined with a glance to my right, Head Wind was still awake. He was gazing languidly at the landscape passing by. I looked at my right hoof. His was covering mine. That brought a smile to my face, even as the interior of the vehicle was obscured by the underlit cabin. Most if not all others were asleep in their seats. We were alone in a place filled with dozens.

“Wind, have you slept?” I whispered to him after shifting my head and body so that the distance between us would be lessened.

“No, I reckoned that you’d be awake at some point,” He said simply before his head turned towards mine. “I wanted to talk. And lookin’ around, I see we’re pretty much alone.”

“What do you want our conversation to be centered upon?” His body turned to face mine, barrel and all. I placed a hoof on top of his. My hoof made minute circles on his fetlock.

“I don’t really know, but I haven’t really talked to you in days.” I hadn’t given, truly given him the time of day, in well, days. Whatever name you assign that feeling of replete numbness, it had passed through my hastily erected barriers. I could cast it out for moments, but when I was alone or around him it returned. For this moment, under the roof of a moving transport, connected physically, it relented, yet the spectre of it remained. My lips pursed at his words.

“Alright, question time. Have you kissed a stallion before me?” The idea of conversation in this vein, in this place, was exciting regardless.

“No, I’ve ‘kissed’ stallions before you, but yours had the most dramatic backdrop,” his voice was lowered. Still, it held that deep baritone that was very much his.

“And many mares, I presume?”

“I’ve got the pictures to prove it… somewhere.” He delivered his words with my laugh bisecting them. “My turn, what are you planning on doing after you get the arrangements arranged?” His question arrested my breathing for a brief moment.

“To be completely candid, I haven’t thought about what I’ll do after.” He didn’t laugh at this; he moved his left hoof from between mine, before laying it onto my shoulder. “I imagine I’ll move onward with my studies, and after that device was detonated, I imagine obtaining my doctorate in physics is an intelligent move. Perhaps, I’ll join the faculty at the University of Crystalia. After that? I-I’ve had aspirations of joining the Royal Academy for ages…” my voice had broken as I confessed to him my failings and my dreams were laid bare. He projected this aura of security, I thought, his personal magic. Everyone had one. It was impossible to determine experimentally, and impossible to quantify. It had been left to quack physicians of the physical and metaphysical variety, but in that moment, I knew what my thesis would be. ‘Eureka’, a pegasus might have exclaimed, millennia ago.

“You’re probably gonna head to the city O’ crystal? Doesn’t surprise me one bit. Probably gonna help the ponies with big skulls build a bigger bomb.” His tone was wistful, yet there was an edge of hope to it. The imperial city he was heading to was very much the city of crystal. One term encompassed the surrounding nebula of urban development and industry, and the other implied the city that Sombra had built.

“Nothing has, as of this moment, been determined. Head Wind, where exactly does your interest come from?” I tried not to let my voice chill, but the implications contained within his words were unpleasant. I have never dealt with stains on character well.

“Perm, you know damn well, where my ‘interests lie’. All I want to know is that you’ll consider heading out with me for a pint sometime, us vets should stick together…”

He didn’t sound angry.

“If I move to the city, we should get in touch, if only because a pint sounds nice right about now. The company, on the other hoof...” He chuckled, it was a misdirection.

“Right, because you have room to talk, mister sense-itive and brooding, like a teenage filly, or that blue mare in the story.”

“When I’m talking to the rough and tumble stallion that wants to rut me and play psychotherapist.”

He gave me a focused look before clapping me on the shoulder and laughing.

“How exactly did we become friends again?”

“We were in close proximity, by chance, while we were simultaneously looking for some manner of stimulation,” I finished with a derisive snort. His jest had a definite, though hard to define, cunning to it; However, he never expected me to answer his rhetorical questions.

There was no division between the rear seats. Just a bench that was partitioned by the riders themselves. Knowing this, it wasn’t unexpected that he would let his bulky barrel and thick skull rest against my own. He yawned, a deep husky yawn, his muscles unwound. The mutual comfort reminded me of Trace and I; the chill that traveled down my spine was not unrelated.

“See ya when we pull into the station, or when sun wakes me up.” The oafish pony that I had befriended through convenience, at the beginning, fell asleep against me. I fell asleep again quickly. The last images to pass through my eyes were that of the northern steppe, viewed through chilled glass.

---===*===---

The night had been a cold one, despite it being spring, so the moment of transition from that air and the air inside the shop was of stark contrast. As my eyes took in the sights, vials, books, and myriad other things, I had that feeling of recollection, of familiarity with unfamiliar things. It had a musty smell, of decaying leather and books that had lasted longer than their makers had ever intended. At the front of the store, relative to the entrance, a counter and a register of recent make sat among the other objects, like the universe had let time shift in one forgotten corner of itself.

I had busied myself by reading the cover of a tome by candle and horn light when a feminine voice made itself heard. My ears angled to triangulate. I then carefully placed the book on its shelf and walked towards the counter I had seen minutes ago.

“Hello there!” I heard the mare say just before I could see her.

“Greetings,” I answered simply as I gave the mare a critical look over. She wasn’t yet elderly, but she was mature. I surmised that she was around fifty five years of age, her coat a leafy green. With consideration, the beige mane put up in a bun was a comely contrast. As was the rest of her, comely.

“And the customer enters just as I was closing,” She said with a dour expression. “But, you seem like you are looking for something, and what manner of shopkeep would I be if I didn’t assist?”

“To be truthful, I entered solely so that I wouldn’t seem too eager to see my friend. If my presence forces your shop to stay open, I can’t, in good conscience, stay,” I said as I grabbed my coat from the rack at the front of the store.

“And, to be truthful, I can’t let a young stallion like yourself leave without finding something.” She trotted over to me, her speech was elegant. “Truly, few enough unicorns enter my establishment, and fewer still have any character to them. Most interesting of all is your interest in the arcane, how it fits into yourself. Come sit, tell me a little about yourself, and I’ll do the same.” Her eyes focused on me. Well, why not humour her. Her eyes had a matronly steel in them. The glint of light as she turned her sign around with a tendril of telekinesis also had a bearing in my acceptance. On some level, dealing with another unicorn was always a pleasure.

“Is there a place that we may sit? You have, indeed, intrigued me,” My words issued from a muzzle that had broken into a sly grin. I had learned long ago that the strangest of circumstances could breed the greatest of experiences, if you grant it the chance. That belief renews itself as consistently as the sun rising on the morrow, or caesium-133 transitioning between its ground states.

“I have an office, for all the drearier parts of operating this place.” With that, she gestured with a hoof, and I followed.

The office in the back had a number of older leather backed chairs. I sat at one. By any standard, they were nicer than bar stools. She remained standing.

“Tea? would you partake if it was offered?” She asked simply before glancing over at a stove that had a kettle sitting on it. This place was heated by that stove, which gave credence to the old age of the shop.

“Seeing as this question is far from theoretical, yes, yes I would,” My words flowed softly. Her expression was pleased.

“That’s grand. Now, would you be a dear and fetch me a bag? They’re in that cabinet to your right.” I did as she asked from the chair, it only requiring a few telekinetic actions. The deep blue of the magic manifested and took hold around the box of tea bags, from there it moved swiftly through the air over to her. “Now, that is queer.” She stated simply, seemingly more for herself than to to me.

“What are you referring to?” I asked pointedly. I used mere telekinesis, the universal spell of our race. Her visage turned pensive, before turning to face mine.

“You have never spent much time around unicorns have you, Mr…?” She stood beside the stove, with the kettle just now beginning to emit steam.

“Permittivity, and yes, I hail from Maidenpool. It isn’t exactly known for its unicorn population.” I explained quickly, hoping for an explanation for her earlier exclamation. The kettle had begun screaming. She looked at it before pulling it from the stove, it floated in her green magic.

“To put it simply, nearly all unicorns have a magic that manifests in the colour of their coat. I have never in all of my years come across someone anomalous in this regard. And I presume you have never known the oddity in this?”

“You would be correct.” I said simply, her face became bemused.

“Well, in that case I must ask what your speciality is? Your talent, in other words.”

“I’ve studied physics and have learned a great deal about electrical engineering; those were my scholastic clusters. I know a supplemental spell from the appendix of a book I once owned.” I could for example know if a circuit had current flowing through it.

“A highly rationalistic field, but not necessarily exclusive to the arcane arts. Let me think for a moment, your case is unusual…”The ongoing conversation was baffling. The idea of being skilled at magic, or talented, or even acting in the manner of a ‘proper’ unicorn was deeply odd. It was laughable to me. Incidentally, I had to suppress a chuckle. “Answer me this: have you ever utilized some spell or a burst of magic before, perhaps under duress?”

“If I had I would have said so, but your words are intriguing.

I’m expected to meet friends in a short while, so if it suits you, what are the characteristics of these odd unicorns?” As far as I was concerned this was most likely farce, or a commercial ploy.

“In broadest strokes, he or she exhibits an array of related spells. This isn’t to be confused with those few unicorns that are learned in a bevy of spells, nearly all that they come across…”

“For argument’s sake, if I am of this subset, should I not have a fair chance at learning an electro-magnetic spell?”

“Yes, though I am the farthest thing from an expert in that arcane area, and as far as I’ve read, the magical academy tends to avoid spells of that nature.”

“I apologize for my ignorance, but that has to be some manner of oversight: why would the magical academy not research and experiment on electro-magnetism?” I was ever so slightly flabbergasted, and she realized this. By this point the tea bags were hidden beneath the darkening water; my previous engagements were similarly obscured.

“Your words are exactly the reason why. ‘Research and experimentation’ and other tools of… industrial rationalism aren’t utilized there. You would not be accepted in there, short of displaying some extraordinary talent or having a high birth. In my humblest opinion, they’re the last of the true guilds, and they act as they have for the last thousand years. If they didn’t have a value in terms of arcane enchantments and ceremonial grandeur, they would have been disbanded years ago.” She had spoken the words ‘industrial’ and ‘ceremonial’ with equal distaste; it was dripping from the fringes of her mouth.

“They have a monopoly on magic, on the instruction on anything more impressive than a pub trick?” My mouth was askew at this point.

“With few exceptions, that is an effective summary.” She had removed the tea bags and the steaming cups of liquid were at rest between us. At this, I remembered that I was supposed to meet ponies in a place that was a generous distance away. I lifted the cup carefully before sipping at it.

“I thank you for your time, but I have a previous engagement.” I told her apologetically, before taking a large volume of tea into my mouth.

“Come again sometime. Perhaps you’ll make a breakthrough in the meantime. If nothing else, you are a pony entering this shop, and that very rarely harms.”

I said goodbye as I emptied the last of the tea down my throat, the sensation of warmth it created would be alien compared to the chill of the night time air.

---===*===---

The Steel Sire

I had learned about the pub from the native, even if the native had lived most of his life several miles away. That thought brought a twist to my mouth even as my fur began puff out from the cold, winter barding notwithstanding.

I walked with my head swiveling- even the outskirts of the imperial city were strange to me. They lacked the antiquated audacity of the crystal towers of the city proper, of which I had only ever seen pictures of. But still this place was centuries older than Maidenpool. Maidenpool, a town with an elevated train and a nitrogen fixation facility. It was nearly ten at night, and the streets were nearly dead, aside from a few adolescents doing as adolescents do, and constables employed in stopping them from doing such things. They carried clubs like they had when the cobblestones of the roads had been originally laid, and revolvers that had arrived by a train from a manufactory.

I swung open a set of reinforced wooden doors to find a pub that was lively, and abundantly warm by the work of body and hearth. I entered the place, and other than some of the nearby patrons, there was no recognition of my entrance. My eyes made a survey of the room- there being nothing of immediate, apparent danger- and didn’t see what they were trying to find. In any case, I endeavoured to ask the owner or some such individual for the whereabouts of-

“Took you long enough, at least you had the courtesy to be stabbed the first time.” Trace said from behind me, I let out a breath of air that I hadn’t been aware of holding. She didn’t sound displeased. I turned around just to have her wrap her forelegs around my shoulders her muzzle pleasantly close to mine.

“You should know that there hasn’t been a pony with courtesy in their name in twelve generations,” I told her in my low voice, reserved for secret whispers and messages of wit- this one was both. As soon as I saw her lips moving upward, I pushed forward and locked mine with hers. Elation overrode decorum, but any in the pub would understand; we had fought a war, we deserved this.

I could taste the slightly stale ale that she had drank, not that I could complain. We must of remained like that for at least half a minute. Eventually, I pulled back.

There was a slight turn in her body, I mirrored it as she pointed herself in the direction of one of the tables. I moved to walk with my barrel resting against hers, and I felt her press back. The simplest, most modest display, yet it carried all that we needed to know.

I followed her to a table, I moved to sit down, she didn’t.

“I’m going to get more of that ale,” She said to me.

“Good idea, the taste I got was in no way enough,” I responded. Her muzzle betrayed confusion for a moment, and when it evaporated, a soft frown took its place. I let my eyes drift from place to place in the expansive room. I was going to live in the

nearby vicinity, I thought abstractly. Though the place was lit up with electric bulbs, the light travelled through a haze of smoke. Tobacco and other such things were burned in here, and yet more had gone up in smoke. All the ponies here seemed to be earth ponies, though the differences between them and the crystal ponies were a subject for academic conjecture.

A felt an impact on my shoulder, Trace had struck me.

“Your eyes going all glassy is new; I simply won’t have it,” She told me with vigour. It brought a contented smile to my face.

“Trace, I promise not to let my mind slip into a torpid state,” I raised a hoof into the air.

“You better,” She said cordially, a flash of worry in her eyes. It was a mere flash, but I knew what she was thinking.

“So, how were the final days on the front?” I asked before imbibing the ale set in front of me. It wasn’t defensible.

“They were quiet. To be completely candid, we nearly promoted Permafrost; she would have been the first humour specialist in the service.”

“And the bomb?” I asked quietly. She leaned over the table, to the point that I could smell the perfume she had sprayed on herself.

“I didn’t see the flash, thankfully, but I saw the cloud grow and blow away,” She looked down. “We listened in on one of their comms channels. They sent pegasi in to clear the cloud…” My mind reeled, from what I had read- “The details are sparse, but from what we heard that night. It isn’t good Perm.” She looked up to see my eyes unfocused. “Perm?”

“Yes.” I snapped to attention, pointing my eyes on her face, her beautiful face.

“Where were you when the bomb... did what it was supposed to?”

“I saw the flash.” I told her simply. We lapsed into a wordless reverie, broken only by sips from our cups. On impulse I got out of the the chair and filled up the containers.

When I returned she just looked at me. I forced my muscles to shape a smile. I believe she saw through it, but all the same, she appreciated the thought.

“Perm, has it really been less than a season?” Her expression remained pursed, lips forced together, shoulders taught.

“Less than two months.”

“Perm, when they found you, we thought you were going to die. All of that blood flowing between the boards. That Celestian, I still don’t know how he was cooked. It was like he had been struck by lightning. The examiner said that it wasn’t the stab wound that killed them.” Her voice lowered. She whispered something: I asked for her to repeat. Somehow, I knew what she said. Somehow, I knew that I had lied to the unicorn mare.

“What can make a pony’s heart stop?” I sunk into the chair, uttering a low moan as I did. No-one said a thing.

“Current.”

She looked at me, before extending a hoof to put atop one that I had left on the table. “Everyone but me said it was lightning in a jar, even if we couldn’t find one.” Her eyes locked onto mine, they were steady, even as my hoof shook under hers. Wasn’t it fair that I shook just as they had? All I needed now was a clean cut through the arteries of my neck.

---===*===---

We left that night, we went to her flat, we made love in the dark. She held me in the night. I held her. It was somehow different, like reality had ensued, like all that happened between us before had been some manner of dream. Neither of us had any problems entering the trenches again. Perhaps being close brought our minds back there.

Perhaps we had never really left.

---===*===---

The following morning, I left her flat later than she did. In my bags were all of the possessions I had cared to bring. My morning consisted of trips across this unfamiliar city, calls to administrators and unrelenting evaluation. Evaluation of my credentials, my voice, my posture. A reasoned and politically defensible response to my service and its all too visible effects.

It bore fruit. By mid afternoon, I had a half a dozen suitable lab spaces awaiting approval. The equipment necessary was in large part mundane, and I could obtain it with no substantial issues. It didn’t hurt that the largest technical academy here aside from the royal academy itself had a colleague of mine within its faculty. Tenured, as well.

That left me with a few hours between a fore-planned engagement and a dinner at Trace Line’s flat.

It wasn’t as if the conversation I had had with the shop mare had left my mind. In some way, it had lingered in my mind like a drop of adhesive on your fetlock. It either drove you mad, or quite literally, forced your hoof.

Perhaps it was the possibility that she would critique my plan of action, or truly stand with it. The thought charged my nerves. Still, the fact remained…

---===*===---

“You require my help? That is surprising. I’ll need to think over this matter. Prima facie. the notion is certainly exciting,” Lotus told me over a cup of black. In the shop window, I knew the sun was falling behind the carved stone building, and would soon fall behind the carved stone of the Earth. “Now tell me, what brought this to your mind?”

As she asked that, my face darkened. I had entered quietly, but she had asked me if I was going to buy something on this occasion. I responded that that wouldn’t exactly be the case. The frenetic explanation had been a strange counterpoint to her quiet breathing and silent brewing. She was excited.

“To be truthful, I was reminded when I was speaking with a soldier I had served with. I could give you further detail, and I will no doubt record what I remember for myriad reasons, but listen…” I lost my words as I watched this matronly unicorn mare.

“Laid bare, I used my magic to charge a blade, it was sunk into the barrel of an enemy combatant. It stopped their heart and singed them. I must have forgotten. Do you understand why I desire secrecy, early on, at least?”

“On some level, I do. More to the point, I would be there as a kind of guide, correct? Leading you through the magics you are likely to have substantive control over.” She had a conspiratorial character to her. This was to be desired, as is the desire of those of in their middle age, and beyond, to make a greater mark on the world. She also had a knowledge base that I lacked, and a repository of books of which I could use.

“Yes, I imagine this could end poorly if I attempted it without some manner of guidelines.” I stated plainly.

“I once read of a mare that immolated herself trying to light a fire. She had a flint and metal striker cutie mark. I don’t want that to be your fate.” Somber with a glint of resolve; that was her disposition.

I let her sip at her tea, her chlorophyll tinted magic manipulating the cup deftly. I learned later on that she was a vigorous gardener. Meanwhile, I had pulled a lightbulb from my bag, and lifted it above her head. In short order, my muzzle was clenched, and she looked at me quizzically. The expression intensified.

The filament was alight, and the light fixture in the room was emitting more light than it had before.

There was work to be done, but the spark was there. Purpose was fuel, as it always is.

---===*===---

As the more material preparations came together, I knew I needed to make a proposition, and if not that, then an apology.

I rode a streetcar full of afternoon commuters. It led away from the older commercial districts toward the newer areas. Most of my fellow passengers were reasonably well dressed. There was little conversation in the car. The sounds of city life were obscured by the whirring of the electric engine. I knew that I would leaving at an early stop. I stood at the front of an exit, my body leaned against a pole. Something about an open air streetcar was spectacular, even as it had become mundane to all others. Whizzing by at kilometers per hour along with the feeling of the artificial wind was exciting. It was much better than riding a closed train with only fleeting visions of the interior plains.

And yet, it ended quickly, I stepped off into a part of the city that was past its prime, if it had ever had one. Tenements with clotheslines strung between them were packed together as if they were huddling together for warmth. The buildings were sparse of windows and seemingly crowded with families and individuals. I made my way to a message-laden concrete bench. The letter, smudged and folded, told me that I was in the right part of the city. It wasn’t as if there was a paucity of poverty in Maidenpool, just that poverty wasn’t concentrated. The well-off were neighbors to the not so well-off. The butcher lived beside the lawyer and the lawyer beside the manufactory laborer.

It disturbed me somewhat.

The building I was looking for was off of the main avenue. Grime and refuse coated the back alleys, and small foals played amongst the waste. I knew that it wasn’t healthy, and I knew that the foals were smaller than they should have been, coarser than they should have been. Dirty faces and scowled muzzles greeted me at every corner. I wasn’t alone in making my way in this direction, but I felt alien among them.

I breathed a quiet sigh of relief when I found the named building.

Destination Heights was the name of the housing unit. Someone had painted the sign a deep black. I had a hard time making the name out; the letters were effectively gone, only a light outline was left. I counted on the number of outlines matching the given number of letters more than the shapes themselves.

There was no greeter; only a small office with a mail slit in the door. Water damage from the last decade left stains and mold lingering in the corners of the ceiling. I wondered if the water closets functioned- musky scents mingled with that of worn clothing and less than kempt bodies. The journey to the the third floor was a rapid affair, with an unshakable suspicion that I was being watched. It was too similar to the trenches, and it was without the benefit of knowing what the watchers wanted; there had never been ambiguity with Celestians.

At last, I made it to room three ought nine. I knocked twice with a forehoof.

I heard a groan from the inside of the room. Backing away from the door, I realized that my excitable state came from the knowledge of this meeting more than from any other thing. There was an impulse to trot down the hall the way I came, nerves assuaged.

When the door began to open the impulse evaporated. A large head poked its way out, a metal chain restraining the door’s full range of motion. He got a single look at me before letting out a laugh.

“You look like shit! And I’m the one who’s been livin’ in it.” He said to me before closing the door and releasing the chain. It slid open, and he ushered me in. Before I had drew breath inside the place, he had encased me in an embrace. I softened as he did this. I drew back a step after that; he looked almost abashed.

“That was surprisingly affectionate,” I said simply before walking over to a chair and sitting my barding and bag beside it.

“If you didn’t look like you always needed it, then maybe I’d be a little more restrained.” He replied simply. It mattered little that I was in the presence of a stallion that lived in this place, among these people, I knew that the price of better dwellings weren’t outside the means of a service member.

“Then thank you,” I said simply. I smiled at him and he smiled back. He motioned me to a couch that had seen better… decades?

“Perm, why are ya here?”

“I have a proposition for you.” I said simply as I sat back in the chair.

“You could’ve just said that. I’ll get the rubbers and the…” He said with a laugh.

“Not of that nature.” My voice rang with a tinge of annoyance. I looked him in the eyes before resting a hoof on his shoulder. “Not that I haven’t desired, or missed you.”

My eyes fell to his chest. He was quiet as I spoke. “Wind, I have a project in the works and it has the potential to be a breakthrough, or at least give me some manner of reputation with the Royal Society and their ilk. Would you help me with this? I trust few ponies…”

“That I believe.” He interjected with a jeer and a snort. My face might have flushed at that.

“It would involve a large amount of data collection and analysis. Nothing you couldn’t do, that and having some muscle around would be good.”

“Would it just be the two of us working alone on some experiment?” He asked with neutrality.

“There would be an older mare as well, though she would be there less frequently and in a more advisory role.” I told him frankly.

“Final question: Permittivity, what in the nine hells would we be experimenting on?”

“Magic.” I said firmly, with seriousness in my voice.
“Ah,” he said. “I forgot you were that kind of hornhead too.” He spoke loudly.

I looked at him, mentally smoldering. He just let out another laugh before lightly smacking my shoulder with a foreleg.

---===*===---

I made my way back to my bed later in the day, and as night sat in, after a long period of reading and writing out experiment guides and laying out the apparati I would use, I fell into the sort of rest that comes between two challenging days.

---===*===---

The sun was brighter than it should be, I thought before any other thoughts struck me. I couldn’t remember waking up, and as I looked down at myself, I realized with a shudder: I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t thought to look at myself, to move the cords of muscle in my neck. I was in a body, yet it wasn’t mine. This alien body looked forward again, before stepping forward. They looked to their side and saw another standing a fair distance away, that other was standing beside a campsite of some kind. Strewn alongside the other pony was an assortment of equipment, of which I could recognize some. They had bedrolls lying about, some rifles, and what looked like mortar tubes and some zippered bags. The rest, I had little notion of: large metallic statues(?) had still more bags hanging off of them, even as they were painted in a camouflage that would suit the area they were in. In any case, I moved with the body of the pony I was inhabiting. I could feel a breeze moving under them- her. The genitals were definitely female, and with a little more thought I realized there was a slight dampness around the edges. I had awoken in this odd state just after she had urinated.

“You know that you’re supposed to do that in the armour right, especially on long patrols, Right?” I heard the other pony say in a decidedly male voice, I could make easier sense of that than I could the pony’s thick accent. The female continued her walk back to the site. She didn’t stop to speak to him at a reasonable distance. Instead, she walked parallel to his barrel before brushing her blonde tail against him before grinning at him softly.

“Sorry, Dish. I got up and didn’t want to get in the armour. We have water to spare. The two of us will be just fine.” Her voice wasn’t soft but it was feminine, and it had a slight tinge of throatiness. It was attractive, and to him being close to her, arousing. He looked at her apologetically, with a slight flush to his otherwise blue coat. He moved his hooves on the ground apologetically before looking back at the mare. I only noticed then that she was taller than this stallion. Whatever she was, she was larger than a fair number of males, and then by definition, nearly all females.

Assuming he was not simply a small male.

“I’ll remember next time. Alright, now we have to make our way to the next uplink station by... 0700?” The female said before moving back to the male, and giving him an understanding look and a nuzzle. A nuzzle which she had to bend her neck downward to give.

“You’re not wrong.” He said quickly as his frame softened at her touch. Out of his muzzle came a soft hum of satisfaction. In the next minute or so they broke their touch, and they proceeded to pack up the campsite whilst speaking of some manner of local gossip. As I understood it then, their main operation center was being renovated with new piping and new wiring, and the two were excited by it. New things were interesting to them, an exception to an unspoken rule. The two displayed signs of giddiness in the heat of the morning sun, and at the last bit of metallic refuse was picked up, they exchanged a wary look. The two then opened bags and pulled out a heavy fabric coat, or something that looked like one. The female put hers on, which in her case involved pushing her tail through a slit in the back, and at the last moment using a hoof to unzip a back panel. That gave me pause. The ultimate action action she took was the placement of a band around her left foreleg, it slipped around her forehoof unshorn as it was, before it was in the right place, with a single tap it tightened a part of its length.

Its make was solid. The band of steel had a few buttons, though the text was too small as to be seen from the distance. In the moment that followed, she tapped one of buttons with the side of her opposing foreleg. At that a solid steel set of ‘armour’ opened like the shell of a clam. All except the lowermost section of the legs and the helmet were opened.

The amount of machinery and miniaturization required for this was astounding.

With a practiced ease I- rather, the mare I was inhabiting in this dream- stepped into the suit. A single button press with the end of her snout on the inside of the helmet caused it to close around her. For a moment I feared that my horn would be pressed and crushed by the helmet as it swung up with her neck to a normal posture.

The inside of it was a dazzling display of analog dials and information presented to the mare in the form of a visual overlay. Her only sight came from a slit in the helmet. The thick glass, if it was glass, offered a view of the desert that was shielded from the glare of the sun.

She wriggled a little as the waste receptacle attached itself to her nether regions; judging from the alien sensations, a kind of suction hose had attached itself to her lower orifices.

Her head moved with little physical effort to watch as her companion finished adorning his similar armour. She stepped forward before depressing a bumper with the side of her head.

“So, have you made this route before?” She breathed into the helmet at a conversational volume, and after a moment of listening to the mare breathe I heard a crackling reply.

“N-no,” the stallion responded in a piteous manner. She levered her head once again.

“Then come on, I gotta tell you where all the mines are buried.” She said in a casual tone. “Well, full disclosure, no-one knows where all the mines are buried…”

---===*===---

Some minutes later, I awoke, but unlike every dream I had before, the details of that one remained at the edges of my thoughts. Whatever the dream was, I knew that it wasn’t the normal flight of fancy that the subconscious puts together, and neither was it one of those much avowed lucid dreams. As I drug a lethargic forehoof across my closed eyelids, I wondered what it meant. In all of the literature I had read, they always had some manner of symbolism…

What exactly did a large mare in a desert with a magical suit of armour symbolise?

Discovery, Discharges And Remains (VI)

Discovery, Discharges And Remains.

(VI)

The electric motor whirred faster and faster; the dial that displayed its revolutions per minute had a definite upward trend. I could see Head Wind sitting at the other end of the room, glancing at the dial every five seconds. His mouth moved quickly as he shifted the paper with a forehoof. I felt a numbness descend upon my form, emanating from my horn. I could feel myself weakening like I was overworking muscles yet there was only a feeling of fatigue and weakening in my body. My horn, in comparison, felt like it was being squeezed by a vice. I had been pouring energy into the wires of the electric motor’s circuit.

“I’m going to stop the flow,” I said to Head. As I cut back on the flow, the glow from my horn died little by little, and I could feel that weakness intensify. My rear legs buckled under my own weight. That was par for the course though, as Lotus told it. I was building up magical endurance. It seems a touch of telekinesis or a mote of light isn’t enough to build a reserve of magical energy. Knowing why I was falling to the floor, Head Wind sprinted over to me. I had just made it to the floor in loose pile of equine. I looked up at him, with an absurd effort I flipped myself over. The concrete was cool on my back. I let a slight smile warm my face, even as my extremities angled out and away from their upright positions.

“Permittivity, it’s fuckin’ scary watching you go limp like that,” Head said.

I said nothing to him, I merely let my frame rest.

“Whoever poured this concrete did an admirable job.”

My words earned a quizzical look.

“I can carry you if you want me to,” he said primly.

“If I wanted a strapping young buck to carry me home I would’ve went to the pub with you,” I said. My eyes met his, immediately thereafter the two of us burst out laughing.

“If you’re that much of a lightweight I kinda want to see it with my own eyes. I mean, I’m free tonight, like most nights.” His words had trailed off at the last few words.

“That sounds nice, I did enjoy that place you told me about in the hospital.”
I was feeling fresher by the moment. His body was loosening, his worries about my condition assuaged, he was looking more and more like the stallion I had met in the hospital.

“That place is pretty far away, and I’ve heard about this hole in the wall just a block or three from here,” he said as I pulled myself off of the ground. My legs were better than they had been, and my breathing was approaching normalcy.
I was getting better, the last time I had overexerted myself I had been lying on the floor for half an hour.

I stumbled forward; only by virtue of his position did I not strike the floor.

“Let’s get you into a chair,” he said with a chuckle as I used him as a crutch, a foreleg wrapped around his neck. It was nice feeling his coat against mine.

“Barstool?” I said to him as we walked towards the door. He just winked at me. I shook my head while chuckling.
We made our way out to the street, and I locked up the decrepit building. I felt better now, knowing that I had made progress. The streets were quiet, there were few ponies around this block. This block was mostly under-utilized property built back before the invention of the cable car. Tenement housing now. I thought for a moment, before watching Head Wind kick a rock ahead of him. He was an enigma, I thought before he turned his head to look at me. His eyes were open and inquisitive; I looked away instantly. My mind shot back to that time in the hospital, and on that bus. Leaving him at that station was one of the hardest things I had ever done…
I let my head drift, I could see him in my peripheral vision, he was still leading.
That was for the best.

---===*===---

“And this fucker, he had me on the ground, he kept stomping on my back. I kept yelling at him, telling him to surrender. The fucker never expected me standing up and knocking him on his ass.” A couple of ponies at the bar had started talking to Head Wind and I, so, Head was telling them a story.

“So, you snap his neck?”

“Break his leg?”

“Feed him his own shovel?”

“No,” he responded to the ponies around him. Two mares and a stallion had sat around us. After hearing that we fought these ponies had bought us a round. It was an implicit trade, war stories for beer. “I tackled him. If you hold a pony long enough they’ll give in,” he said with a sudden chill.

“You said you were in the hospital, how did that happen?” a short yellow mare said to us She must have been of age to serve, barely. The ones who won the lottery, I thought to myself. A frown appeared on my face as Head told them the truth.
“I was sitting in my trench, waiting for the Celestians to advance across no-mare’s land,” he leaned forward. “Then me and my mates, we heard howitzers firing. We had a few seconds to hit the deck. Then there was a loud fuckin’ crack and a hail of shrapnel. A second after that, another went off. And again. I could feel metal digging into my coat, and little spurts of blood oozing around the wounds. It kept going.” He paused and took a long drink, slamming his mug down on the countertop. “It ended eventually, but we were all cut up or dead. We gave up that forward trench and they took it. I got a big chunk of steel in my back, they had to drag me out and to the hospital.” He motioned in my direction. “I met this lug in that hospital.” He told them with pride in his voice, along with something else. I couldn’t quite place it in the second I had before the younger mare asked me about my wounds. I felt my lips turn down before I straightened them out. My momentary half sneer wasn’t recognized for what it was. I forced a smile.

“There is zero possibility that you missed the scarring on my muzzle.” I said to them. The mare chuckled at what she thought was a joke. “I received them at the end of a Celestian blade. To preempt the succeeding question: I have more than these scars.”
At that I dropped from the chair and placed a mote of light near my stab wound.

The bare patch of fur stood out. “That must have hurt!” One of the stallions said before calling the bar pony over. “Pick anything over there, I just got paid.” He seemed taken aback by my scars. I balked internally.

“That isn’t necessary.” I said to him simply.

“Yeah, I’ll go half and half with you, Cobble.” They exchanged a look before laughing good naturedly. This was their good act for the week, helping some soldier drown his pain. I stared at them, my eyes focused on their faces.

“Cinnamon rum,” I told the bartender. My eyes hadn’t shifted from their muzzles.

“Rocks?” The bar mare asked quizzically. My head turned left and right slowly.

From behind me I felt Head lay a hoof on my shoulder, he pulled away automatically upon feeling taut muscle. The mare pushed the finished drink to me. I took hold of it with a hoof, brought it to my mouth, tipped it back ever so much, and tasted a drop of it. I dropped off of the stool again. My eyes closed just before giving the four of them a come hither look. The three admirers glanced at each other, surprise written across their faces. Head looked at me gravely. In my mind, I realized why I had ordered this drink in particular.

“We’ll be back in just a moment.”

The three followed me to the door and beyond, making small talk all the while, whispering about what this pony had in mind. My ears registered the mare saying the words horn head just loudly enough.
The streets outside were gravel speckled dirt, though wider than those of the older districts. I cleared my throat.
“The night I received these wounds was a night like this, cloudless, nippy. With me was a stallion by the name of Wool. He is–was an honest stallion, he had a love for his home town. One time he described it to me. Only half a thousand ponies lived there. Most were there to fish the sea for cod, though sometimes the fishers would go further out. A hundred years before his time one of the ships happened to get caught in a storm. A single pony ended up over the deck.” I had gotten their attention. And without thinking my horn was glowing more brightly. “When the ponies made their way back to land they were in a foreign port, far from home. There was a celebration as they survived something many wouldn’t. Yet there was still a tinge of melancholy for that sailor who would never return, who never saw land again. So the captain in the strange port ordered a spiced ale. Or tried to. They had no ale, so he simply got a vessel full of rum, he took it outside.” I stopped for a moment, my breath hitched. My audience was boring holes into me. They were aware that my horn was doubling up on its glow. Whatever warmth the liquor had brought me, I still felt a draft moving through my core, chilling and throwing my stomach into knots.

“For the sailor who never saw home again, he poured the glass into the earth. A final drink for a lost one.” I gave a glance to glass, it was shaking in the magical grip.

I turned it over and the liquor fell onto snow.

“That was sweet,” the mare said after a few seconds of silence. The upended mug showed a hint of fracture. It was a faint noise in my ear.

“No, it was an attempt at reconciliation.” I said to them before dropping my voice.

“I knew that he loved cinnamon, and that he hated field rations. More than anything else he was caught between duty and disillusionment. Weeks ago, his family received a letter delivered by a polished officer informing of them of their son's’ sacrifice.”
The three were quiet for a moment before one of the stallions moved to embrace me. I backed away. Whatever temperament I had attained shattered. Just as the glass did. He backed away into the flank of his companions. These ponies held no comprehension, only unimaginative platitudes, sentiments gleaned osmotically from speakers and dogmas baked indelibly into their minds from birth!

“Are you alright there?” The mare asked. I felt a flush, I was roiling. Warm tears flowed down my cheeks. I gave a glance towards the lone streetlight casting a washed out yellow on this scene. My horn lit up for just a moment. The light flashed like pulsed and lit our faces, making the shadows cast by us starker-just before dying as the filament was immolated by the current passing through it.

I stood there as they balked, I forced the emotion out of my voice to croak a response. “Yes,” I said. In the now darker streets I realized that they couldn’t understand, that I couldn’t understand. What can be understood in a thousand ponies writhing in agony? A hospital wing so replete with festering wounds that the stench taints the entire building? One pony left to pick up the pieces when so many fell to pieces?

“Don’t honour me when there are multitudes more lost than I.”

I cast a mote of blue light and held it ahead of my muzzle. That was the only conclusion I could draw. I only wished understanding, and the chance that it might help them understand. Maybe if they understood, they could prevent the next war.

“Next war,” I said under my breath. My mote expanded and brightened.

I turned and walked inside. The warm air was uncomfortable, the glances from others more so. My horn had discontinued its glow; still, eyes seemed to glance at it more than the radio or the decor, even the barkeep. A rush of hot concern to match the ash laden air shot through me. Legs that had been steady wanted nothing more than to take leave. I ran my eyes throughout the place, looking for the one pony that mattered. After a redundant pass or three I went up to the bar and ordered a double of Imperial, poured over ice of course, to calm me. When she had finished pouring it, with the added touch of a hostile look, I flashed my horn to pick up the liquor. It found its way against my lips.

The radio behind the counter blared music rife with horns and an endless succession of drumbeats. I let the liquor enter my mouth as I let my eyes shut, I tried to let my mind ease, after a few seconds and a thorough swallow, I felt current being induced in the radio. I didn’t want to damage it. My mind’s eye pulled close to it, a simple metal piece wrapped in a dielectric material…
My face soured as I tried something. And just like that the radio turned to static, the antenna wasn’t tuned to the frequency that it had seconds before received. The bar pony turned to it and moved the dial. That solved the problem, the frequency was only slightly altered. The dialectic wrapped antenna had gotten me thinking. Inducing a current in a circuit, what was I doing? Adding energy, increasing the flow of electrical energy.

I was changing the universe, and the altering laws that I had spent so much learning.

The radio went back to static as I quit pouring magic into the air around the antenna. Antennas were covered in a layer of dielectric materials so as to change the permittivity around the antenna, to change the wavelength that would be received. When I focused on the space around the antenna I poured magic into the area, but I restrained myself from charging the brass inside. I let my drink drift towards the table. The strain was more telling than it was with telekinesis or current induction.

Before I gave more thought to the magic I heard a door opening in the back. With a flourish of magic I lifted the last of the liquid in a cradle of telekinesis letting it form into a sphere before throwing it into the recesses of my maw. It burned as I turned my head to watch Head walk inside. He looked at me, his lips were tight on his skull, before clambering onto the stool beside mine.

“You look thoughtful, and knowing you, that isn’t a good thing,” Head said.
“Do you ever wonder what you’ll be remembered for?” My voice was slightly slurred.

He looked me in the eyes, before chuckling for a moment.
“I imagine ponies will remember me as a damnable soldier, damnable drunk, and a solid lay,” he said to me. I let out a huff. He merely smiled at me.

---===*===---

“Perm, you’re coming home with me. That last shot hit you like a brick.”
And so he had my right foreleg over his shoulder. He was taking me with him. I didn’t argue. He felt nearly as warm as I did.

---===*===---

The door opened and we piled in. My eyes caught sight of his bed. I wanted a place to rest badly. It was as if I had ingested a great deal of poison. The truth was, I had only ingested an average amount of poison. I let my magic light up the room, just as he kicked the door behind us. He let go of my foreleg before locking up the door.

“Not the best neighborhood, if I recall,” I said.
“The rent is cheap,” he said before giving me a look of concern. “Perm, something is bothering you.” He stated unequivocally. I had slumped over on the bed, the feeling of the fabric under me was pleasant. It wasn’t as dirty as the sheets in the Maidenpool Inn.
My face warped at that thought. I said nothing as he ambled over to the bed. His bed. I remembered with a spark of cognition. He crawled up beside me before laying a hoof on my shoulder.

“Was it the bar ponies? I mean, I kinda wanted to bring the mare back here.”

I grunted.
“Head, is there any way we can change things, to make them all understand, to avert-”

“Perm, if we had any way to stop war, to show em’ what it’s like, well, we woulda stopped having them a long time ago.” Head said quickly, as if angry at the question posed. “Hell, half the ponies that started this war have fought in em’, so I reckon there ain’t a way to stop em’. It’d be like stoppin’ a damn glacier.”

“The purview of gods, not mares.” I shivered slightly. “I just don’t understand.” I let my tongue loose as his dark shape stayed where it was, the only sign that he was a living pony was the ever present warmth flowing from his hoof. “Why them? Why any of them? Why are we left to pick up the pieces, to bury the dead, to continue living?!” My voice crescendoed across the room and into his flickering ears, following the contours of my visage there was a line of warmth falling across my cheek. It chilled as it flowed.

“I have no fuckin’ clue about that last question, but this here,” he said as he pulled his barrel against mine, tail falling over my rear half. He glanced at me. “None of those ponies that died get any of this.” I rested my head against his neck, he in turned his eyes forward, eyes focusing on the blackened wall. “I know what this is about Perm, I’ve known it for a little while. You’re hurting. You’ve been hurting since the day you learned about your family. You were still you when left that bus, numb, but still you.”

My throat tightened, leaving him behind had been hard. That journey back to Maidenpool, difficult. When I arrived, it had been nothing but reminders of how this war had hurt the Empire, the mote of homefulness I might have felt withered as I viewed the collapsed buildings and shrapnel embedded in the streets, the blackout curtains hanging from most of the flat windows. No-one there truly believed it was over. I watched their eyes dart over me. The sullied great coat telegraphing where I had just came from. There were no thanks given, nor were there any ponies looking for a courageous tale from the front.

They had been on the front. My parents had been on the front, and were rather the worse for wear.

I had lost track of his words. The memories of that triumphant homecoming running through my mind like a like a reel of poorly spliced film, waiting to fall to pieces and ignite...

“Everything in life is a little bittersweet Perm, breathing, fucking, drinking, mourning. But, unless you wanna join them, buck up, live like you want to live!” He had yelled that last bit, the poison in his blood slurring those words. It fit him.
Live for the moment, and leave nothing behind! That was his modus operandi. It rang hollow. I had seen too many lives ended in a moment, leaving no more mark on the world than the blood seeping into it.

It had nearly happened to me. My head pulled itself out of the crook of this stallion I had fallen into, a stirring of magic in my horn illuminated my forehooves splayed before my eyes.

“I–we–almost died out there. We were fortunate and others weren’t, random chance alone prevented us from adding to that places’ stench. It doesn’t matter what they did in their lives. At this moment ,their bodies are decomposing. At best their bones might calcify, their remains might be excavated by some future ponies. The legacy of their forms nothing more than a curiosity, pony turned to stone, pony mummified.” My breath caught for a moment, as I realized the path of my thoughts. Head said nothing.
“Head Wind, Drying Wool, the stallion in whose name I performed a rite of libation, he will be remembered by his siblings and his friends. They will soon be much the same state as he, as we all will be physically. Their children may hear of him, but it will be a shadow of him left behind. Out of living memory, and only bones. I-”

“I know damn well what you’re gonna say, that you want to leave something behind. I’ve seen it in you, seen it since you got back from Maidenhead or wherever you went,” he said.

“I want be do something that will change the world, to do something worthy of mention millennia from now. It’s been done before. This magic is something never seen before. At the very least, it hasn’t been glimpsed by the instruments available to us. And you’ll-”

“I’ll be a fucking footnote. I don’t care. The future ponies, I’ll never meet, why should I worry about whether they’ll read my name. ‘He threw the switches and made sure that the great scientist Permittivity ate food.’ I don’t have any anger at those ponies, it just doesn’t affect me, if I’m dead then why worry? My problem is with you. You’re running yourself into the ground! You look worse now than when I first saw your wounded ass. Permittivity, you’re a smart stallion, smarter than any that I’ve ever met, but you’re blinding yourself. What’s the difference if some random pony, as different from you and I as we are from cave ponies, knows your name? Perm, everything crumbles given time. I poked around in a science magazine once, if I know this then you know this: even stars die.” I felt a dampness around my eyes. Steeling myself I felt his words slough off of my mind.

“I can’t just drown my troubles, I can’t believe that nothing matters. I can’t give up on my legacy.”

“You’re killing yourself! At least I know my liver has another couple decades left.”

“So what? Head Wind, what if I don’t want to live that long? What if I just want this all to end? Head Wind, what if the idea of leaving something behind is the only thing that keeps me from sparking a gas line with my magic?” My eyes bored into his, both of us had adjusted to the dark. He was breathing faster now, his exhalations and mine now took the places of our voices.
I had cleared the air, poisoned it. I had let my words slip out. Emotion boiling over. I hated that I could get like that, that something inside of me had forced itself out.
We’re creatures of memory, though sometimes we forget…

I shook in surprise as I felt that rough pair of lips make contact with my own, it soliciting a reaction just as well as that buried memory, though the reaction was a great deal more pleasant. The feeling of him in that moment was like a charged degaussing coil… it cleared those thoughts from my head. The following moments were an oasis.
I was weary, and only him and Trace could let me rest. Rest being a metaphor in this instance for physical intimacy.

The fabric continued to feel nice under me…

---===*===---

Time passed, as it always seems to.

Head Wind and I, we grew ever more comfortable around one another. Whatever our relationship was… it was pleasant. Trace Line, on the other hoof, had taken to doting on me whenever I was around her. She was the better at telling when something was troubling me. Which was often. This made me detest her company on some level. Head Wind had, our intoxicated dialogue aside, left well enough alone. Perhaps, it was that aspect of him that brought me more frequent moments of levity. But, that part of our reality, like most, are only explained by merely educated guesses, raw conjectures, and heuristic tricks, if we try to explain them at all. Even an inquisitive soul such as mine can only explain parts and pieces of how our lives work.

And that is at a cost. As it is with everything else.

---===*===---

The paper that would make me who I am today had just been accepted for publication by the Journal of New Physics. I stood beside the steel table that had been my desk for the intervening months. In the warehouse there was a chill to the air; I never started the furnace until after the post was read. Whatever malaise I had within myself had been shaken, I thought to myself. All the months of strain and cataloguing, all of the self-imposed exile, all of the acts I had let myself commit.

It was as if Steel had been grafted into my bones. I would be a member of the Royal Society, I would assume a position as someone of unique talents and demonstrated intelligence. I looked up from the letter, the greatcoat draped across my back felt like a sheet of paper. In my moment of private triumph, my body called to me. I dashed over to the water closet. It was in the far rear of the place.

If I had been paying attention I would have heard the sound of a side door being pushed open…

When I exited the restroom, everything was as quiet as it had been before. As I returned to my eratz desk I heard the characteristic groans of the worn door as it gave way to Head Wind’s force. I looked up from the letter, and aimed a sly grin at my assistant.

“Two months,” I said to him as he stepped in from the howling winds.
He shifted his eyes from me to a place slightly behind me. “Perm, who’s that?” Head Wind barked, his eyes widening in fear as he judged the threat of the unknown pony. I turned to face the intruder. It was a she, and I knew exactly who she was.
“Two months to what?” Trace asked with a curious note to her voice.
“My paper’s publication date, New Physics,” I said to her excitedly.

She had heard my ramblings about that journal, among others, and she knew what it meant to me, what it could mean for me. Her eyes opened and the edges of an easy smile crossed her muzzle.

“So, you know her? Did you let her in?” Head Wind said to me as he trotted over to my side. His posture was protective, as always. I knew at that moment that this was going to end poorly. Yet, the feeling of having the only ponies I felt any attachment to together felt magnificent.

Before I could respond in any tactful way I saw Trace’s throat clear. At this moment time slowed to a crawl.
“Yes he knows me, I’m his marefriend? And you are?” She said to him, her wing muscles flexing underneath her fur and feathers.
I turned to face him. Trace angrily huffed in response. Head’s visage twisted in suppressed fury, his body was pulsing as his eyes bored into mine. He could see the truth in them. It had never really been hidden. That might have hurt him the most.

He looked between my eyes and hers, the moment passing at glacial speed.

“Permittivity,” he said finally. “How could you?” He tittered and thrust his chest out. “I don’t give two flying fucks about others, because I’ve been dead inside since my fucking parents died.” He let his voice spill out of his chest, the warm baritone that I had fallen asleep listening to turned to ice in my ears. “So, I’m going to fuck with everyone, because nothing matters to me other than getting into some fucking unicorn circle jerk club!” He said to me, before striking me in the muzzle. The impact sent me to the concrete. When I recovered my wits, I watched him slam the door shut with his rears. He had used enough force to shake instruments on the far side of the room.

As I pulled myself up to my hooves, I felt a trickle of blood flowing out of my right nostril. When I lifted a hoof to staunch the bleeding, I made out the faint sound of tears from behind my desk.

“Trace,” I said softly, penitently, mootly. The pit of my stomach had turned to rock. Perhaps, I was still dazed, I walked towards the desk with unsure steps. My lips quivered as my mind tried to think a way out of this, to seal the cracks, to maintain the bulkheads to prevent the whole enterprise from sinking. But, a captai-

“Is it true?” She said simply from behind the desk her voice monotone.

“What are you referring to, love?” I said as I stopped at the right side of the desk, my voice carrying an affected lilt. The sensation of stone had travelled into my throat, even as my tear ducts dilated in anticipation.

“Being coy was never your strong suit, Permittivity,” she said tonelessly. “So, what is he to you? I know how you work, ‘it doesn’t count as a lie if they never know to ask the right question’.”

I took a deep breath before giving her the truth. I stood there bog still as my diaphragm pushed outward. An involuntary shiver worked itself through my flesh, the feeling of twitching muscle under deep pockets of scar tissue, making every hurt I had incurred in my life known again.

“I met him in the hospital, he was friendly when most others were dying or fatigued nearly to that point. We made friends. He was there when I received the news.
He comforted me. Trace, I never realized what was happening until we had fallen into each other.”

“Just a lapse in judgement that happened once-,” she interjected in between one of my breaths.

“No, he was similiar to me in ways that you can’t be. You made it out of the killing fields unscathed, he nearly died as did I. He suppresses something he gained there. Or lost there. Head Wind drinks beyond moderation, and I wanted to keep an eye on him, he reciprocated. So, I offered him an outlet. Companionship is grand, you should know this well.”

The pleading had bled out of my voice, a numb passivity had taken its place. The ship had sunk. I could feel the cold water well enough.

“Permittivity,” One word. “I can’t stand you right now, this is… I don’t even know what this is... cheating on me with a stallion? Him?” She had restored herself, tempered herself with the anger of betrayal.

“He’s a good stallion. Full of life. You would like him in different circumstances.”

“In different circumstances, what do you mean by that? If you had told him that you had a marefriend, then maybe he would have backed off? Permittivity, you’re making me a hate a pony that didn’t do anything wrong all because I can’t stand hating you! You can’t even make it easy for me to hate that buck.” She had gotten to her hooves and was glaring at me. My head had fallen forward. I couldn’t look this mare in the eyes, the mare that had never done me wrong. Head Wind hadn’t deserved this, and neither did she.

“Trace, I love both of you. I don’t know why I did what I did. I–”

“That’s not how things work Perm, when you open your heart to somepony you expect you’ll have all of them. You know this, or you wouldn’t have hidden this from me, or him. Permittivity, you need help… Help that I can’t give you. Just... get things together and I might–” She paused before looking away. “I don’t know what I want, I don’t know if I can trust you again. I mean, I never even knew you were into stallions, you never even talk about things anymore. All you talk to me about is the damn news, and this work of yours. How do I even know it isn’t all made up?” She had become angry again. If I modeled her anger it would be in the form of a sinusoidal wave.

My head turned to face hers. A path of electrical potential was carved out of the natural spacetime with my magic, in a second a point in the middle of the room was home to an electrical discharge powerful enough to turn air in which the electrons traveled turn to ozone and plasma. There was a crack as displaced atmosphere filled the gap created by the ionized gases.

The flash of light burned both of our retinas. I didn’t lie without cause.

“Trace Line, I wish I could take it all back. But I can’t,-” I had to yell to get her to hear through her ringing ears.

She turned her head back towards me one last time. The fear in her eyes was palpable.
I had caused that. I had caused the people I loved pain and fear.

As she sprinted away, the unfamiliar smell of ozone burning her muzzle, tears flowing once more…

As I imagined Head Wind in his flat numbing himself with poison, feeling used and betrayed by me…

I knew what I had to do, I could fix the root cause.

---===*===---

Everything was in place.

I had written many things: a full write up of my journal with explanatory notes, letters to Head and Trace, and a will.
I walked into the kitchen of my flat. The oven that Trace and I had used to cook many meals on. That would finish my time here. This life had been useful, I had discovered what it felt like to love and to be loved. To serve a grand cause, and to see that grand causes destroy more than they create. I had seen the fate of the world. It was all too similar to mine, and my parents. My siblings had been anything but familial, but being the youngest child whilst being the only unicorn had made me less than favourable to them.

That funeral had been worse than anything I’d ever experienced. Pain of the physical variety, it has a purpose. Stop doing that! Your body says to itself.

Pain of the emotional kind. Why does that exist? It’s a break in the mind itself, you cannot prevent yourself from losing loved ones, so why does it exist? It serves no purpose, or even less than the entire living business. Why?
Ponies fill in the gaps with things: Family, friendship, personal advancement, hedonism and some perverted spirituality. I had these things. They seemed to push the darker thoughts away. Even if I wanted to pull the trigger, even if at times I wanted nothing more than an end to this existence, I could always pull myself from the edge of the abyss with a thought towards the feelings of others. Suicide as a selfish act, that’s what we’re taught to believe. I don’t think that it’s wrong. As a prevention mechanism, it does have an assumption built in. The idea that others will be hurt by your end.

By this point though, I had lost those connections. I had already caused pain in those that I loved. They would be better off without me dragging them down. Permittivity had been a damaged stallion before the war, someone who had thought frequently about the purpose of existence, someone who had pored over all those explanations and found them lacking in the end. I had tried to put a goal in my mind for a while, write this, learn this, graduate from an institute of higher learning. Find out what your name means. I had done all that had been put in my path. I had killed another pony in the defense of my nation-state. I had nearly found peace and a hero's death at the hooves of a celestian blade.

None of it provided a solution, no purpose presented itself with gravity enough to bind me to this place. Nothing within reach was ever worth the cost. No momentary break in the daily degradations could end the pattern. And so, when the die was cast, when I had achieved everything achievable, or just about, I had sabotaged the only relationships I had left. By embracing those that I cared about I had destroyed those embraces. In hindsight it was clear, as it typically is. As I removed the pilot light from the oven, I understood the world clearly.

We’re here because of random chance. We live in a complex universe devoid of inherent meaning. Any accomplishment will in time fade away as civilization turns itself to ash, as it always does. There is no proof of an afterlife, and religion is an unfalsifiable construct… If the only way to derive meaning in life is pleasure, then when that becomes impossible. Then you simply turn on the gas.

You walk back into your living room knowing that a molecule very similar to the paired oxygen you breath is slowly filling the room, slowing binding itself to your lung tissue and ending the slow march of decay that you’ve been caught in since before you were birthed…

It all followed as a matter of course.

The Couch was comfortable as always.

Especially as my mind began to fog.

That was to be expected.

Hypoxia:

My eyelids drooped and my lungs began to fill and empty with rapidity, yet all was calm, I had waited for this.

I had just began to fall into the blackness when a sudden knocking on my door broke the spell for a moment, I coughed for a moment. My oxygen starved brain firing at near random.

That must be Trace or Head! They had forgiven me perhaps. Maybe this had all been a dream these last months. A loose grin mustered itself on my visage. Maybe!

My head was flowing, each thought more of a triumph to complete.

But, by some miracle I made it to the door, where the knocking had increased in volume. It was nearing the intensity of my heart beats, which was quite fast. Not that surprising, I thought to myself as I opened the door.

As my magic made contact with the door it seemed to weaken, my vision was blackening, and the lungs that had carried me since my birth were straining in vain to deliver oxygen to my beligered body.

For whatever reason I wanted to answer that door. From some part of me I summoned the will to overglow my horn to compensate for my weakened magic. I guess that my under-oxygenated brain wanted to see who was knocking.

Curiosity saved me. Living was pain, but not knowing was a death I could never bear.

The door opened in a rush, I poked my head out of the room and into the clear air. It was ambrosia. My lungs continued frenetically as I spied the pony that had knocked. They were a crystal unicorn, an older stallion bespectacled and wearing a tweed coat. I had enough time to register this before my vision blackened completely, the carbon monoxide rendering me unconscious.

Everything was in place, except I.

---===*===---

The first event that registered other than waking was a deep throbbing in my skull. This was a hangover like no other. It being the consequence of an alcoholic binge was seemingly confirmed by the stinking pool of bile that my head was resting upon. With a jerk I pulled my head from the remains of my last meal.

What would have been my last meal, I realized with a start. I was supposed to be dead. The fuzzy memory of an open door and a unicorn stallion was recalled. Who were they?

A sudden bump sent my body upwards a few centimeters. My head darted about, I was riding in a motor carriage. In the seats in front of me sat that same unicorn and an earth pony driver. Through the windows I could see the spires and obsidian of the crystal city.

“Who are you?” I forced out of fatigued respiratory system, which made that same system initiate a coughing fit. My form spoke of the poison that it had been replete with.

“I’m head of the archaeology wing of the Royal Society,” He said with a note of nervous pride.

“Why am I in a motor car at this moment? Why did you arrive at my domicile?” I croaked out.

“We have an understanding with the editorial board of New Physics. Your paper was quite interesting Permittivity, someone of the highest authority wanted to speak to you. So, I merely decided to ask if you wanted to see said person. In person is more discreet than a vulnerable telephone connection. Clearly it was a good choice,” he said with a laugh. “Truly, borrowing that oxygen mask from the nearest fire marshal will be interesting to explain, now won’t it?” On the floorboard of the carriage was a tank of oxygen connected by a rubberized hose to a mask. He had saved my life. Concentrated oxygen was the only treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning. In conjunction with time.

“What aspect of it was interesting? Any unicorn with rudimentary apparati and a cursory knowledge of physics could have written that paper.” I said. My eyes locked onto a mare walking flank to flank with a stallion, they were of middle age and there was a blissful expression plastered on their muzzles. They seemed to take no heed of the cold.

“You’re half right. All will be explained when we arrive,” he told me before turning his head to watch the road ahead.
In the time that I had awoken my breathing had become steadier. And now I had a burning question to occupy my mind. Distraction was good. I felt stronger as my form purged the poison.

---===*===---

This is a bewildering experience, I thought as we ascended the crown jewel of the crystal city. In the elevator beside me was an Imperial Guardspony and Doctor Fetters. The good doctor was wearing a long coat with a tweed jacket below, the guard was wearing a dress uniform. However, the rifle he carried was still quite potent. It was the same rifle I had carried not that long ago.
Doctor Fetters had gotten the two of us to the Guard ponies with haste. This was strange to me, what important pony would like to meet with anyone at this time of night?

The rush felt out of place in the subdued atmosphere of the cold months.

You’ll understand soon enough.

I shuddered as an alien thought entered my brain.

After an eternity the elevator door opened, light spilling into the dark corridor. Fetters trotted out and to the left, and immediately after I heard a heavy switch being thrown; the pathway was lit. He turned around before ushering us forward. This room had been retrofitted with the fluorescents. Their wiring was lining the corners between the ceiling and the wall. Curious I let my eyes close as I felt for the flowing energy. It indeed travelled those bundles. What? In the room immediately ahead something was pulsing with an energy that I had never felt before.

The closest thing it reminded me of was my little trick with the radio, bending the fabric of space-time… But as I felt it with the spell I had gotten my Mark using, it chilled me.

It was with curiosity and a new found apprehension that I stepped into the room.

The room was easily fifty meters in diameter. Hanging from long chains were sodium arc lamps. In the center was a mirror with a frame made of a black crystalline material. My eyes were drawn to it, the quiet in the room seemed to fit its grandeur.

“It pulls the light towards it, doesn’t it?” Fetters said in a hypnotic voice.

“Yes,” I said as I stepped towards out of some need.

“I’ll leave you two be,” Fetters said simply before taking a necklace off and kicking it towards me with a single mechanical movement.

This startled me, this whole roomed was ebbing with an energy that I didn’t need the slightest focus to sense. It was reminiscent of that cataclysmic explosion. Still, I heeded none of the warnings that my instincts gave me. I stopped only when I was a heads length away from the side of it. The frosted glass reflected back the image of a broken pony. My visage was gaunt, and deep valleys of scar tissue spoke of a pony that had been through enough. I had had enough, I thought to myself as a breath left me.

“Can I ever face them again? I just wanted to feel loved, and to feel something in return. This must be a dream, I must be dying in that flat, my starved mind creating some fantasy in its final moments.” My eyes returned to the pony that looked back. There were tears in his eyes, the icy blue orbs had heavy shadows beneath them.

I felt my forelegs lose strength, and in an effort to not meet the floor I pushed my left foreleg against the mirror. Every part of my body was numbed the moment contact was made. When I cried out in surprise the breath exiting my lungs froze before my eyes.

I know what you did just hours ago. I can feel death permeating your whole being. Soul voided, you were in the process of completing the transformation from a living being to a dead one.

“What in the–” I yelled before backing away from the mirror, a staccato heartbeat from galloping from whence I came.

I’m the person you were set to meet. Permittivity, that’s quite the name. Mine is much shorter but quite memorable in its own way. Sombra.

That voice echoing in my mind as if it was an empty valley… It had found what could hold me. Simple curiosity.

“How can that be, you’ve been dead for a millenia?” I asked in shock, somehow knowing that this mirror was the correct object to face whilst speaking.

I never died in the normal sense of the word. I placed my soul into this object before my corporeal form breathed its last. Cycles of slumber and wakefulness have proceeded that re-birth. However, this war, it strengthened me. And I strengthened the empire in kind. This is why I called for you using that peon. You have potential unimagined, you are not the speck of dust in cosmic sand that you think you are. Without hyperbole, I see myself in you. I was once a unicorn of great power, great enough to challenge the gods of this world. Enough to win.

“Until I came to this city I knew the same number of spells as I have hooves, you can’t tell me that I’m some font of magic–”

We cannot choose our parentage, or our homes. You would have under the attention of a mage learned many spells, yet they would have tempered you, blinded you from your true potential. I have peered over your work and examined your life in detail, a soldier, a scholar and a pony lacking the one thing he always desired.

Meaning.

I can give you one. One beyond words on a page, or gold or whatever lusts drive a pony’s loins. I can give you a life worth living. Unique beyond all measure, for there are worlds other than these. And I just happen to be the key.

His words were had been driven into my mind. His rhetoric perfect. His voice charming to the last. I let a hoof move down the frame of the mirror. It was glass. Obsidian, volcanic.

“I don’t understand,” I dropped my hoof to the floor. A floor that I now realized was covered in arcane glyphs beyond my knowledge.

That weapon of immense power, I know that you saw its detonation. The design of the weapon came from a world beyond this one. A dead one but one with weapons such as that. Now, if you desire a place in history, and for there to be a history, you must accede to my demand that you travel to another world.

As he said this I heard the crack of a gunshot from the hall, and a scream of pain shortly thereafter. I tensed as I felt the impulse to take cover behind the mirror.

The time is short, Fetters is giving his life so that my descendants and their blighted imaginations cannot prevent the only plan to save our world. For on the other side, Permittivity, is all that is need to win the next war before the Celestians obtain the same weapons. Your mission is to weaken that world, to prepare it to be brought into the empire.

My thoughts had been upturned yet again. The war that had cost so much had only ended because of some piece of technology brought through some otherworldly gate? This was too much, too much too soon. I let a breath from my lungs as I took in the picture again. My prospects had seemingly gone from suicidal mad mare to a mad mare of a different caliber entirely. Enchanted mirrors that broke the barriers from this world to the next? That I could almost believe, I could feel the power in it. I could also feel the familiarity to the most peculiar spell I could cast. But, the spirit of the first emperor residing in that object, and a plot involving the crown and the future of the world. None of this made sense but as I remembered what I had done not five hours ago… And listened to the sounds of gunfire from the corridor advancing steadily.

“I don’t believe you’ve left me much of a choice.” I said as I gave the mirror a glare. “If half of what you say is true it doesn’t matter. I question your faith in me, but I’ll be steadfast.”

I don’t reveal myself for just anypony. Now bow. His voice once again found purchase from within my mind, it was compelling in a way that nopony had ever been.

It was edged with mirth. But, I did as he requested, the cacophony of gunfire nothing more than a backdrop as my legs lowered with what grace I could muster.

Take that talisman and place it around your neck. That is your connection to this world and more importantly to me. To most ponies like Fetters it does little but provide a reserve of crystal from below. It will give them strength and nourishment. And bind them to me. I deftly pulled it towards me, the blue of my magic reflecting back upon me. My eyes closed as I manipulated it above my head. The talisman found its place hanging in the front of my chest. My eyes opened. Magical energy flowed from my horn draining me as it normally would, however the talisman replenished it. Furthermore, the stallion in the mirror looked resolute and vigorous. The scars remained, the sleeplessness still marked him as well. But in his eyes there was fire where before there had been emptiness.

Rise, Sir Permittivity of Maidenpool, may your victories be numerous and mine. May your glories be yours alone. Now make haste towards them.

I rose to my hooves feeling stronger than I had ever been. I felt that I could do battle with half this tower’s guards and be victorious. Being knighted had been a dream of mine since my colthood, though that aspiration had died alongside many others as adolescence became adulthood. This mirror had known things that I had not considered in decades. I felt an involuntary shudder.

“Tell me how I am to weaken this other world? If they are as strong as you make them out to be?” I said with a note of trepidation in my voice. On the other side of the door I heard the gunfire abate, with loud voices filling the void soon after. They were coming.
With a flash, the mirror’s surface became one of iridescent blue. A sea of possibility rippling with ethereal energy. If I had closed my eyes it still would have been left an impression in my mind. The magical power it exuded becoming something beyond my comprehension. The door handle detached itself from the door as the security ponies breached it.

Our time is short, remember these things, time flows the same here or there. There are places where the boundaries between worlds are porous. You can contact me there. Though there is only one place where things may cross. Lastly, these ponies are strong but irrevocably divided, all that is needed to ease the conquest is to find the destroyer. The catalyst. You will meet them. That I am certain of, though I know not why.

That expressed doubt sent a pang of confidence through me. Omniscient he was not. Though that was balanced by a feeling of near understanding at the mention of a fated meeting. Remember this, your purpose is what drives you, and your purpose is nothing less than what mine was so long ago. From behind me, the sound of a door opening made me stay still.

A stallion ran inside with several others following, they aimed rifles and pistols at my back. At the same time the shimmering became something else. It showed neither my reflection not some space between spaces, rather it showed a pitch black room now illuminated by the same sodium bulbs as this one.

“Stop where you are Celestian!” The first guard yelled at me. “Turn around and keep that horn dark,” He followed with.

This is all an aspect of the plan. Sombra spoke into my mind.

The irregular chunk of obsidian hanging from my neck gave me an idea. It all depended upon the amount of power I could pulse at once. My lungs filled once more. And in a fraction of a second, every light exploded from the sheer power flowing through them. The burst of light gave way to absolute darkness as I lept into the portal. Just before the bullets followed Sombra shut the entrance. One final thought leapt across the void at me.

Two moons hence, it begins. Be ready.

I lit my horn, feeling at once exhilarated and drained by the flurry of emotions I had experienced, alongside the magical strain that I had just bared. In the light of my horn I realized that I had no idea where I was, other than on another world. I had nothing but my wits and a talisman. Under my hooves was a smoothed concrete. Behind me was a circular object hewn of reflective metal with wiring crisscrossing that frame. I looked around, and to that end there was a solid metal door. I walked towards it. I looked to the left and right of it, it seemed to have no obvious locking mechanism.

This could end poorly. I thought to myself before trying my spell once again. There were pathways buried in this door, electromagnets were used in the proper operation of this door. So, this facility would appear to be abandoned. I thought as I gave electrical potential and amperes to the wire coiled around the ferrous bars. As I did this I realized that this door was most likely meant to be remote operated from a safe distance. Which would make sense, if this portal was anything like the portal that Sombra... was.

The door opened as its locking mechanisms were pulled away. And I stepped into a corridor filled with Arabian Ponies who were just as surprised as I was.

There was a shriek from a female and a number of stallions that took up defensive postures.

“Stand where you are Transient!” A stallion said in butchered equestrian.

“I don’t know what’s going on, who are you?” I said in a pleading voice, the confusion written across my muzzle was half manufactured, the fear was purely a facade. Sombra had been a mover of worlds, and he had named me the same. I was going to act like one. To make a life for myself, for myself.

Hello, brave new world.

Not That Kind Of Girl (VII)

Not That Kind Of Girl…

The sun took its damn time going down, but at least we had air moving around us. That made a difference. At least, it made a difference for those of us not wearing armour. Sand passed by the window in a blur, and from behind I could see the tracks being left by us, we wouldn’t be hard to track… Then again, we were the hunters.

I was in the lead vehicle, our behemoth belching unburnt fuel in a plume coming from its exhaust pipe. Inside were eight ponies, five of us wearing armour, sitting in the back of the half track. The Steel hanging above us kept the confines of the vehicle sweltering, the ventilation windows were opened and a little fan was buzzing away inside the vehicle, aimed at the unarmoured ponies. Us knights were cooled by our armour. The drivers? Not so much.

Behind us were two more of these vehicles, one with a thirty millimeter cannon mounted in a turret above it, and the other, a tanker in the rear, filled to the brim with diesel.

I looked to my left (it was against official policy, but all of our helmets were sitting in our laps or the benches beside us). Ironsight was sitting with her back pushing against the steel of the wall. In her hooves were a set of orders, terminal printed, fresh paper too!

“How was the boat ride back?” I said before letting out a yawn. Long rides always put me to sleep.

She stayed as she was, eyes glued to the page, reading glasses perched on the back of her muzzle. “Quieter,” Ironsight said.

“It’s funny,” I said quietly.

“What’s funny, Icepick?” She said with a huff, knowing that she would be hooked by that line. In other words, it wasn’t the first time.

“You didn’t even ask about the two weeks I was gone?”

“Knight, if you want to write a report, make sure to double space it.” She flipped the page of the document with the edge of her hoof.

“Normal ponies ask about those kinds of things,” I said to her scrunched face. “Ravioli, he asked me about why I was gone. Just like AV; tartarus, your brother asked about you! You didn’t even want to know if I ran into him.”

I crossed my forelegs in front of me.

“Icepick, you act irresponsibly, and leave me to pick up the pieces! Not all of us have just enough leeway with command to do the things you do. Not all of us make an effort to give our higher ups a hard time. And I personally try to leave my feelings out of my assignments.” She said to a quiet cabin, the only noise coming from the engine. Everypony in the cabin, excluding us were looking away. It didn’t matter. This was between myself and her. In other words, it wasn’t the first time. Ironsight the angry mare had returned. The muscles in her neck were corded and I’m sure the rest of her looked like a snake about to strike-

“I was going to say that your brother misses you, he’d like you to write him, or ‘get some time, and head over’.” Her face turned neutral, she had mixed feeling about her brother. She’d told me that I was basically him in mare form. I had never figured out whether that was a good thing or not. “Oh and almost forgot!” I looked at her hunched over form, just as encased in armour as mine. It didn’t matter, we were rangers. I scooched over a little closer to her before opening my forelegs and shifting my weight to my hinds. She was giving me a look I knew well. And as I surprise hugged the mare she let out a yelp of surprise as her papers hit the sand dusted floor.

“Blame your brother,” I said before disengaging the startled mare. The tension was broken by now, and the ponies in the cabin laughed at us. And the idea of siblings, knowing one of your breeders was rare, knowing both of your breeders was practically unheard of, and Iron was the only pony I knew that knew her sibling.

I pulled away before she said anything more.

“I always do,” she said flatly. “So, I heard that you pleaded your case to Quesadilla.” She continued on, she wasn’t as angry now. I knew her well enough to defuse her.

“Yeah, she didn’t want to overstep the decision of the elder,” I said to her with smile on my muzzle and a glare at her eyes.

“If it was my decision I’d have you out in the badlands, fixing up antennas, locating machinery, sitting at a desk. Simple, mechanical, service for temperamental mare like you,” she said bluntly, “Then again, knowing you, you’d launch a crusade to let the miners have holidays off. And you know how many they have.”

“That’s your problem right there, you just dismiss things like that, things that aren’t already part of the master plan. For all we know, a dozen days a year off might actually boost productivity.”

“If it was a good idea we would have already implemented it. Icepick, we have the best body of knowledge of anypony in history, a millennia of Equestria's time in the sun to use and preserve.” She locked eyes with every other ranger in the tail end of the carriage in rapid succession. “To use, to preserve.” This was her moment of victory, she felt proud about that statement. I imagined that becoming a motto, plastered across a training manual and memorized by young rangers.

“I’ll drink to it. We’re rangers, after all,” I yelled after a moment of silence. The other four laughed, and Ironsight shook her head while a smile cracked across her muzzle. My smile was forced; I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Well, if you’re buying, Knight.”

“I know a guy, or three if you let me borrow one of these…” I said to her. I was the hookup. Nobody else knew where the stills were out in the desert.

“You could fill out the paperwork for one of the smaller utility vehicles.” She said with a subtle but condescending smile crossing her muzzle. The knight third-class across from us chuckled at that, imagining me in one of them.

“I dunno, I got an image to uphold,” I said.

“What a mural of wasteful theatrics,” she quipped.

“Well, if you read the codex, there is a doctrine called called shock and awe.”

That got a laugh out of everyone.

“If only you could obey orders, then you’d be an example to follow.”

She said in a lowered tone. Then I’d be a ranger. Then I would live up to my purpose.

My smile became forced again.

---===*===---

We came to where our intelligence told us the insurgents would be traveling through, a dry riverbed with a gentle slope on one side and a steeper slope with rocks embedded in the walls. It was approaching midday, so we had at most two hours to get things ready. To the north there was a butte about half a mile down the rough road.

They dropped us off near the ridge, we put our helmets on our heads. To someone who didn’t know what we were, we’d look like pony shaped robots, stronger, faster, not affected by heat or the weight on our backs. The sand coloured camouflage was broken by darker spots and lighter areas. A baker’s dozen military machines setting up an ambush for an enemy that wasn’t prepared for us, that couldn’t handle us when they knew about us, yet they fought on anyway.

Would we do that?

As another explosives specialist and I worked some detonation charges into the rockier side of the slope, I focused on the work. Bore a hole here, shape the putty, shove it in, and work the detonator into the surface. Doing the thing that they got their cutie mark doing helps a pony forget their troubles for a little while, most of the time.

I watched the rest of us set themselves behind a series of rocks on the opposite slope. They’d be boxed in. Our plan.

---===*===---

There were thirty of them walking in each others tracks.The Arabians were wearing loose black robes and they carried a number of empty looking bags. We were to the west of them, in what was to them just a section of riverbed like any other. They didn’t expect the explosive charges to detonate behind them. The boulders and debris rocketed across their backside. We stepped out from behind our positions. I had my machine gun sighted on a number of the armed Arabians as we advanced at them slowly and methodically as one a knight fired up a loudspeaker integrated into their armour.

She yelled at them, I could make out the word for surrender and drop.

I could see most of them tense up, they reminded me of the stallions in the restaurant, compared to us they were wound up like steel cable. All I did was let out a breath as we all waited.

The stallions took turns looking around – they were all stallions – slowly realizing just how fucked they were. The air was crystal clear and as dry as a bone, their cracked lips and sweat soaked barding glistened in the sunlight. A stallion standing near the front of their group gave a shout at our megaphone mare. The Arabians stared at him like he had pissed on a foal. Something else caught my attention, the point stallion for the Arabians had just stomped a hoof on the ground and shouted.

“Fuck,” I said softly into my helmet. I hadn’t pressed the switch to transmit.

Our big fucking trucks had just started up, my head turned to face where they were hidden, the first truck had pushed into the road its engine revving just before the driver shifted gears. Whatever quiet we had trotted into was broken by the noise of exploding diesel. It caused a stir in them. That point stallion turned to them, there were a few hurried words exchanged. All of them seemed to aim their weapons towards us in unison. They had drilled. It was a near simultaneous exchange of fire. Our grenade launchers and machine guns tore up the land around them, riddling groups of them with holes and shrapnel. But as soon as it began we realized this wasn’t going to be bloodless for us. A burst of magical energy smacked into one of the other ponies in the group. It bore into the armours chest, and another ponies rifle bullet was able to penetrate the poor stallions breast plate.

Hiding themselves on the ground, running for a small gulley and using the few rapid fire weapons they had they were able to keep us on our hooves. All the while these Arabians get lucky with high caliber rifle rounds, hitting seals and joints, taking a couple of us to the ground. We actually pulled back to the ridge, exchanging fire with them. When we had some concealment I turned to the nearest pony. Her paladin insignia staring me in the face. I flipped my radio on while looking at her.

“Who the fuck has these kinds of weapons!?” I yelled before moving my body out of cover to fire a burst at an exposed insurgent. He seemed to collapse as a round or two tore into his chest.

“Non-photonic energy weapons were developed and deployed in the Saddle Arabian Desert, according to records,” Ironsight said before sending a three round fusilade of forty mic mics in their general direction. She pulled herself back behind cover just as a battle rifle round struck her breast plate. The behemoth with the cannon was almost in engagement range. Just as I realized this, the rock right to the left of us exploded into pebbles. My heart pumped and I felt that same fear that I had in the restaurant. Or the when Agave had been in trouble.

We weren’t safe.

“They have rifle grenades,” Ironsight said through the radio just as I threw myself into a gallop towards the rocks we had set behind them. My body wasn’t aimed at them, I was just trying to get in the right position to end this. A stallion or two tried to pepper me with magical energy but they couldn’t aim worth a damn. And after an eternity of blood pounding in my skull I had gotten behind the avalanche of stone. At that moment the brass boom of cannon shells being hurled into their positions from their right flank registered in my ears. They had to be on the verge…

Bolting up the pile and jumping onto their side was a risk, but, as they were now caught on all sides by angry rangers. The energy buck saw me and was pulling the gun towards me. I fired a burst. The ammunition tore into him. He was dead as soon as his legs buckled. They were down to almost none. I aimed and sighted with my lips curled into a sneer. These fuckers had hurt us, could have killed us. So I paid them back with interest. I must have shut the radio off soon after. I don’t remember Ironsight telling the rest of them to hold their fire.

I lost myself in that moment. The barrel of my gun was red hot, close to melting under the sheer number of bullets that traveled down it, on their way to end some Insurgents life.

The thing that broke me of that was a scream. “Stop!” He said from behind the body of a pony I had just gunned down. “I surrender!” The arabian was slight of frame even as he cowered behind the corpse. His equestrian was better than any Arabian I had met before.

“Kick your gun away!” I yelled hoarsely. My throat was cracked. The rest of my body felt like steel cable pulled taut by adrenaline and fury.

He pulled himself up from the body, he was a small stallion. My shoulders would have met his eyes. “I don’t have one.” He yelled before slowly moving his forelegs up one at a time to show his lack of a battle saddle.

“Icepick, what the fuck was that?” I heard the voice of Iron from the side of me.

“Well, grab that fuckers handkerchief and tie and bite an end of it, walk out towards those ponies slowly with the end of it dangling towards the ground.” The stallion gave me a look of disgust before doing as I asked. Ironsight has decided that watching this strange buck get that makeshift white flag together was more important than berating me for finishing the fight.

When I heard her speaking in her command voice I realized that my radio was off. With a click I heard the tail end of her orders.

“-And we captured a prisoner. He speaks equestrian, treat him well and have him prepared for interrogation by me. Everypony else clean this place up grab all the weapons and ammunition, anything useable add that to the behemoths, everything else we’ll burn with the bodies. Now get to it.” She finished addressing them before turning to face me. I met her leveled gaze.

“That was nigh suicidal Icepick,” she barked at me. But, it sounded like she was farther away. My ears were ringing after that. It was a miracle that I heard his cries in between the thundering of my gun.

“No, it was the thing that needed to be done. They scarred us. Scarred you. They sure as tartarus scarred me. Fucking terrified us.” I let my eyes drift the field. Holes in the limestone road and our rocky concealment testified to the amount of fire exchanged.

“I-” She tried to speak but I cut her off.

“But, unlike the rest of you, I knew we just needed to corner them like the rats they are. We’re Rangers. Shock and awe is our fucking shtick. Yet these fuckers had us in shock. I saw that and ran at them showed them what a ranger does. What we’re trained from birth to do. To fight and if necessary die. Say what you will about these goat fuckers, but they fight harder than we do and die all the damned time!” I let out a breath before looking her in the eyes. “I knew I could have died. I’m ready to die for the Rangers. Are the rest of us ready to do the same or are they too spoiled in their armour, and too fucking confident that they can’t be touched?” I pointed a hoof at the body of the stallion with the magical energy weapon. “I have no idea where they’re getting those from but as long as they have them, well, we have to be comfortable with rangers around us dying.”

She turned to face me before stepping closer. “Icepick, I lied earlier. I read about the events in Ramsgard. The bombing. That restaurant. Luna damnit, I know what you saw. I know we lost fifty rangers. But you charging right in front of them or to the side, that was you losing control. Brave or not, that wasn’t the thing I ordered. We move together. That’s what rangers do, not getting behind them and blowing through them while exposing yourself to your allies guns. Icepick, you lost it just as much as we did. We stood back waiting for the big gun. You stampeded at them like a crazy mare!” There was a movement in her neck, she wanted me to agree so badly.

“It worked. Now if you want to write me up for another psyche evaluation or demotion do it later, we have a weird stallion to pick at.” I turned toward the Behemoths.

Ironsight said nothing and followed from behind.

She would never write me up.

And, well, soon my rank wouldn’t matter much.

---===*===---

“All I know is where we were next supposed to go!” The captured stallion said to us. Ironsight, A knight stallion and I were watching him wilt under our gazes. And a kick to the side or three. He wallowed on the ground with what was probably a broken rib after I had gotten him with a weak forekick.

“Then fucking tell us!” I yelled at him. “Do it or you’re useless to us!” I said before pulling a service pistol from my reserve holster. I chambered a round with a quick motion of my foreleg. My helmet had been off since the first kick. I had wanted to see him my eyes. I wasn’t a fucking robot. Robots can’t feel anger. Robots can’t feel pain. Robots don’t want to make somebody shit themselves in terror.

“Just continue down this road for another hundred kilometers, then you should be able to see the top of an extractor–” he said, speaking quickly. Trying to save his own skin most likely. I wasn’t feeling very charitable. These fuckers, and I knew in my heart it was more than him, had given these ponies guns. And the fuckers in Ramsgard. The idea that the same raiders that had been terrorizing villages left and right had been given guns by these fucks, it made my head spin? What were they willing to do to make life harder for us?

“That’s alright, you can tell us on the way. You’re coming with us, and in the lead vehicle so if there’s an ambush you’ll be just about the first to die.” I said to him right after dropping my pistol back in its chest holster.

I walked over to the stallion. “You can also tell me where you learned to speak like that? Huh, want some alone time with me?” I said with a lilt.

He just looked terrified in response. I spat into the dirt beside his face. Then I spun around and walked off towards the lead behemoth. From behind me I could hear the stallion pickup the Arabian and load him onto the back of another ranger. He was going to get a look from the medic pony- after all the injured rangers. When I reached the behemoth I sat on my rump and rifled through my right saddlebag lazily. I found what I was looking for, a pack of stress relief. It had only been a few minutes since the end of the fighting. If I was in luck… I shoved the end of it against the side of the barrel of my gun. After a few seconds it lit. I put the filtered side of it against my mouth. My lungs pulled heavily on it, I needed it after that.

He had broken like a twig. He wasn’t fighter, he reminded me of a lot of the rangers. Sheltered. This battle had to have been a wakeup call for this unit. I hoped. The stallion who had taken the shot in the chest wasn’t going to make it. The shot had cracked her sternum, and with that broken any potion was probably going to regrow it wrong, and that would kill her. Probably. Medicine was weird. The medic pony might just try it anyway if the only other option was to let her die of internal hemorrhaging. I let the smoke rest in my lungs for a moment. Healing ponies was harder than hurting them, killing them. Sometimes we were hypocrites. Sometimes we screwed over the Arabians. But, in the end we were bringing them better lives, and these ponies were causing more deaths to the regular Arabian than they were to us. I didn’t understand.

The smoke drifted out of my mouth. I saw Ironsight make her way over to me. She always had a speed to her, the briskness that comes from grasping her own purpose. I took another drag.

“You know that that’s bad for your health right?” Ironsight asked me as she stood in the middle of my vision.

“Always giving me shit for the things I enjoy and patting me on the back about things that I don’t. Never change,” I said before patting the spot next to me. She gave me a questioning look. I patted the sand harder with the forehoof.

“And you’re always asking me to do things I don’t want to do. Please change.” She said with a chuckle as she sat down beside me.

“So, do you think he’s the real deal?” I asked her suddenly. I looked at the thin nub of cigarette I had left, a second or two from burning my lips, and grabbed it by a foreleg. I flicked it off towards the setting sun. A memento to remember us by.

“I have never heard an Arabian who speaks equestrian like that, like they learned it from birth. First language. If that’s possible.”

“So an outside group? Equestrian speaking Arabians that just happen to have a lot of armament? Why now? We’ve been here for a century? If this stallion isn’t just an aberration.” Her voice cast doubt on my theory. But, it was the only thing that seemed to make sense. Some asshole Arabians hiding away, waiting for some moment to fuck with us.

“Well, we were sent out here to arrest arms shipments. And I was given a fair amount of discretion in how to deal with this problem,” she said.

“We have the fuel,” I said with a quick glance at the diesel behemoth parked behind us.

“You’re a bad influence on me. At least my brother knows how to gain rank.”

I gave her a wounded look.

“Look, I tried to be a perfect ranger once. And you know how that ended. What I do now is try to do what’s the best for us, even when the ponies in charge don’t know what benefits us.”

“That’s not your role, the chain of command is there for a reason, Ice,” she said dismissively.

“We tell the Arabians what’s best for them because we know things that they don’t. It’s not that different than me doing what needs to be done, if I know things that the elder doesn’t.”

“So, running after those bandits, you knew more than me?” She asked pointedly, before going for one of my cigarettes. It took her a bit longer for her to light the cigarette off of my hot barrel.

“You’ve never really spent time around natives. I have. You don’t really know how their minds work. You saw those bandits as a minor threat to the amount of grain moving down river that you could report. So not really worth the time. The villagers, they saw them as an end to theirs. It’s all a matter of perspective. It took me a couple rangers and a few days to solve an existential problem to them. Don’t you see?”

Her eyes shifted towards the setting sun. “Yes, I agree about the villages. That’s why I let you go. I don’t know what you see me as, but I have for a long time seen you as a manifestation of my conscience. So, I let you get away with things. Ever since the time–” I cut her off. This pony had been using me to ease her own fucking conscience?

“What the fuck, you’ve been letting me go off and get my ass chewed out doing the things you’re too much of a coward to do?!” I yelled at her. This was new. Somehow this was worse, at least if she didn’t agree, she’d have a reason not to act.

“Icepick, I do what I need to do to rise up in the ranks, and so does Reflex. Someday soon, ponies like us will be in charge, and we’ll be that much stronger; more steel being made, more rangers and maybe even some new arcanotech. Then we’ll be able to help these ponies out more thoroughly.” She said with a huff. Like I was the unreasonable one.

“Always pushing the day that we do what we’ve promised forward,” I said.

“Tell that to me after we’ve crushed these new Arabians that you so fervently believe in,” she said with a smirk.

“Yeah,” I said. At least now I knew we agreed more than I thought we did.

“Well, I have to file a report. See you on the first behemoth.” She looked happier, like she had gotten a secret off of her chest. I resented her a little less now. Maybe we just had different ways of getting what we wanted. Maybe.

It was food for thought at a time where I was anything but starving.

---===*===---

The place our prisoner had pointed out was larger than any of us expected. It was several large buildings, surrounded by large open pit mines that had been largely filled in by drifts of sand, and excavators that were either rusted but still up or rusted and collapsed. We stopped our vehicles on the edge of the place, in a cleared area beside what looked like the administrative section. We stepped out, and decided to sweep the place, since it was night. After that we would meet rendezvous back here and plan an ambush.

The initial EFS scan was clear. We decided to break up into smaller groups than usual to speed things up.

I had three other ponies under my command. An apprentice named Glaive, a mare with two assault rifles modified to be fed from an ammunition belt at her sides and an initiate, Lathe, who had been given his armour for this mission.

“We’ve been given the building in the bottom of that pit,” I said to mygroup. I unlocked the bolt on my machine gun and armed my missiles. It was time to root any of these fuckers out and shut this operation down. If the stallion was lying through his teeth, well…

If he was, we’d make him pay us all back.

---===*===---

It was the furthest building from the vehicles and nearly the closest to the sand pits.

The building we had been sent to look through was nothing more than a mess hall with a kitchen and small staff quarters attached. Our EFS was clear other than the blips of our fellow rangers. So, we took our time, looking through the shelves of expired food, and the like. While we were searching, I spied a terminal sitting under a desk in the living quarters.

When I dusted the thing off I realized that this terminal would probably work. There was no magical event near here. After a brief search, I found it had a reserve battery slot.

“Hey, Lathe, do you remember seeing a spark battery in that kitchen?” I yelled into the wider building.

“Yes, Knight. Let me bring it to you,” he said curtly. Good buck. I heard a crash and a bang before he brought it to me.

Just as he made his way into the room, we heard Glaive say something to us.

“Knight, there is a fallout shelter built into the stock room, steel door. Looks like a bulkhead off of a pre-war ship.”

“Alright, you and Lathe try popping it open. Just try not to break the door or your armour okay, that mostly means you, Lathe…” I said with a shake of my head. This place having a fallout shelter was pretty odd. No-one would waste a balefire bomb here. Only one bomb was detonated at the end of the war and that was to the south. Well, there was a weapon dropped on a small resort town far to the north of us. But, that was across either hundreds of miles of ocean or a similar amount of empty desert.

That was one of those things we only knew about through records and written reports hoofed down to us from old timers decades ago. Still, it’s kinda curious that the zebras would bomb a random coastal city with no military value.

Eh, Zebras were fucking irrational monsters. Willing to turn Equestria to ash. And themselves by doing it.

After a few minutes of frustration I got the corroded battery terminals to connect. Powered on, the terminals apple green glow greeted me. It had no security on it so I found a pony’s log on it. I read the last entry.

Things have pretty much spiraled out of hand, after we lost contact with corporate over the ham we’ve basically just sat here. The last fuel shipment didn’t arrive in all the chaos, and well, it’s getting colder in the day and it’s nearly polar at night. I never expected to freeze to death in the desert… But that’s looking more and more likely every day. All the Arabians left as soon as they saw the clouds travelling over the horizon. Maybe I should have joined them, least they get to die with their families.

I don’t know how long the extra food and water is gonna last us, that fallout shelter had a lot, but well, there are forty ponies left…

I shivered. Usually, there weren’t records of the… end left around.

I heard a quick call from one of the other groups. Their building was clear. Now, I could have said that myself awhile back, but I was curious about this terminal, and Lathe and Glaive were poking and prodding that door. I scrolled to an earlier entry, it even looked uncorrupted.

I gotta give these Arabians credit, they dug out a lot of tunnels by hoof. Big ones. Could probably hide all of us in them. Not that we’re gonna be digging through the dirt by hoof ourselves. Nah, an open pit mine makes a whole lick more sense. Still all those tunnels gotta be useful for something, storage rooms or… What was it that the boss told us to get ready? Fallout shelters. I wonder why we’d need a fallout shelter all the way in Saddle Arabia?

Well, if we just stick some good doors on the tunnel entrances and put some food and battery lights in there, it should be good enough for the boss and corporate.

Oh fuck, gotta go put out another grease fire. These Arabians don’t know how to fry shit.

Oh shit. This could be bad. My thoughts shifted as I heard a gun go off from down the hallway. “To all rangers, they’re in the walls and tunnels.” I spoke just as the trap swung shut. I made back to where Lathe was, the door was open and Glaive was on the ground her head collapsed inward from a rifle shot to her eye slot. My lips curled as I fired a suppressive shot into the corridor. On the left side of the storage room Lathe was keeping his weapons aimed at the entrance. I sprinted over to the other side of the door.

From the radio I heard the call to retreat back towards the vehicles. I knew what I had to do, just like I had early that day.

I rooted through my bags while Lathe looked at me with terror. “They were lucky, now go take these.” I threw him a set of breaching explosives and a remote detonator. “And set them at the entrance of this room, both sides of the door. Wait two minutes and blow them alright?” I said to him as I closed my bags and made damn sure my ammunition belts were going to feed correctly.

I switched my head lamp on, and toggled the automatic light amplification off. I wasn’t making that mistake again.

“What are you going to do, Knight?” He said with fear and confusion playing through his voice.

“The unexpected,” I said to him before I stepped into doorway and fired another burst. The tracers lit up the length of the passage, which wasn’t long. Another thirty feet it branched ran into a perpendicular tunnel. I waited for the rifle pony to pop around the corner. One, Two, Three- and I shredded half his body with my shots.

Then, then I ran forward. Trying to make it to that corner. Trying to save the others.

I continued forward catching some of the Arabians unaware. Others not so much.

Them putting most of their forces near the front made sense. Rushing rangers in close quarters made a lot more sense than attempting it in the open. We weren’t exactly used to close quarters combat. They weren’t.

And as I heard a low rumble following a loud detonation from the tunnel behind me. I knew that I had prevented a pincer movement.

Only now, I had to find a way out.

---===*===---

I was the lone pony in a large room that had empty barrels of potable water and other supplies, along with skeleton covered floors. I poked around the barrels hoping to find a hiding Arabian. After the first three Arabians in those initial tunnels the place had seemed deserted. Only bones and some tracks left in the dust floors. The rock was thick enough to stop our radio transmissions. I hoped that all the rangers made it out, and killed the asshole that had led us here.

This was a good plan on the Arabians part, wait until the occupier thinks that they’re safe by hiding in tunnels that were shielded by EFS. Then attack the units closest to the escape vehicles first. It reminded me-

No, that wasn’t likely. And if I saw him I would kill him. I’d just smash his head and his balls into paste.

In the corner at the edge of my vision I saw movement in one of the adjoining hallways. I turned my body to face them. I stopped in my tracks as when I saw their sprinting from across the room, I might have hit them, probably a fifty-fifty chance if I had fired. But I didn’t. I could see a burnt orange coat on this pony. Weird for an Arabian I thought to myself, but then I saw the horn. My mind froze. I had seen this stallion before. Kind of.

But, by then he had ran past. When I sprinted up to the passage he was already in one of two passages. Of course there was a fucking fork. Whatever, maybe he was a fucking hallucination…

I thought before making my way up one of the forks. These had to run into the surface again, eventually.

---===*===---

I could tell this room was a big one from the echoing my hoof steps created at the entrance. Like all the others it was pitch black. And a ranger head lamp only extended so far. I had a bad feeling about it as I entered. My head was on a swivel.

Then they dropped the flares. Two bright fucking flares ended up right in front of me. After a second of adjustment I realized there were two stallions rushing towards me. Both wearing some pretty nice kit, pre-war ballistic plating and helmets. I turned to face one of them. My gun was pointed at his face. He stopped and just before I turned his face into chunks, I heard a yell. I turned my head on impulse. Standing at the end of the room was a large Insurgent with a very big gun aimed at me.

“Knight, don’t,” He said in a pleading voice. I pulled the trigger before jumping sideways. The first stallion had his face cave in. Before I could aim at the bigger stallion he had fixed his gun on me. Both of us had firearms aimed at the other. And his looked big enough to be a problem. In my peripheral vision the other stallion was now standing with an odd looking rifle aimed at my head. Shit.

“You know that there’s probably about a fifty fifty shot that the bullets from that thing your lackey has will just slide right off of my steel? And if you decide to go for it I’ll make sure you end up like your friend over there.” I said to him. He had spoken in Equestrian, he’d understand.

“So, by your unbiased reckoning, it’s a coin flip that you could kill me and survive his retribution. What would you suggest, Icepick? Take the both of us prisoner? Have us promise to be good little natives and walk along the desert to a holding cell to be tortured by ponies that want nothing more than complete domination of every member of my race?” He finished his rhetorical flourish by laughing.

“Tegarni, I couldn’t recognize you under all those dirty rags. No, I’d let your companion go and take you. Wait here for a larger force. Standard protocol.” I said to him. On an unrelated note, power armour helmets are great for helping you bluff.

“Phug yoo!” The other stallion said with the rifle’s trigger group in his mouth.

“Silt has a wife and three foals. He wants them to live in a world that isn’t dominated by whorish tin cans. He won’t be bought.” Tegarni responded with a chuckle.

“Alright, I’m curious, why do you and him speak differently than the rest of the Arabians?” I said, trying to distract him or make him slip up and give me some valuable information. It’d help to salvage something if he bit bullets.

“That’s an interesting question,” He said before unfocusing his eyes slightly.

“I try.”

“It’s unlikely that he’s one of yours, then. Perhaps the others were correct in that he was truly what he said he was. No, he didn’t feel ignorant.” Tegarni said to himself with a shake of his head. He had a habit of speaking his thoughts aloud when he was thinking deeply.

“What are you talking about?” Tegarni was confusing.

“The orange unicorn, whore.” The buck behind me said with a snort.

“With a brown mane and blue eyes? Speaks funny?” I asked Tegarni. whose muzzle opened up to examine my helmeted face.

“So, you know this stallion?” He asked with anxiousness written across his muzzle. “That’s an acceptable answer for now, when we break you once more you’ll tell us the truth…” His words changed his muzzle. A sly grin broke it up, his white teeth showing through.

He just had to be attractive. Fuck him.

As I started to speak I heard a gunshot from behind me and no impact on the back of my helmet. My head turned to face the stallion behind me; he was dying from a bullet through the throat. The stallion passed out before he hit the ground.

Another shot rang out and I saw the bullet hit the wall behind Tegarni from the edge of my eye slit. My head turned as quickly as it could towards the source of the shots with the rest of my body rotating to… From the doorway the unicorn from before was aiming an equestrian battle rifle at Tegarni, I pointed my gun at him but by then he had pulled the trigger…

Nothing. No click. The primer didn’t go off. I turned my head just enough to catch Tegarni flying around the corner, getting away for the second time. My anger spiralled out of control as I took aim at the stallion. He moved to aim the barrel at me. I looked at his eyes.

He was the stallion I had seen in the mirror. He looked older, though. I didn’t remember seeing scars on his muzzle when I had had those dreams. I aimed the barrel away from him. His gun’s barrel stayed away from my body. A second after that, right as I was about to speak, the gun went off. He dropped it to the ground. Of course the asshole would be saved by a goddess damned hangfire.

“Apologies, I would have warned you, but the situation was fraught,” he said, almost apologetically. His voice was the final thing. He sounded exactly like the stallion from the dreams. As I stood there dumbstruck, he pursed his lips. I shook my head and spoke.

“You let him get away, why didn’t you shoot at him first?” When he heard my voice his eyes opened just a bit wider. He seemed surprised.

“It was a decision made in a fraction of a second, surely you understand? You looked as though you needed the help, gratitude would be appreciated.” The stallion said before lifting the gun the stallion behind me had. He levitated it towards him, he folded the stock quickly before taking the sling on the dropped rifle and clipping it on the other gun. Without missing a beat he opened the other gun’s magazine up before pulling the ammunition out. Was he counting the ammunition in the magazine?

“Thanks!” I said indignantly. Now, I wasn’t going to have much to show for this, left behind in unfamiliar territory. Maybe, going off on my own wasn’t my best plan of action. “What the fuck is your name and why are you here?”

“I could ask the same of you. However, you asked first. Permittivity, I was with these Arabians on a routine scavenging expedition. They just happened to spot your lot coming over the horizon. This was for them a happy accident. It also provided a chance for me to escape their custody. So, in it was also something of a happy accident for me as well.”

I could feel my eye twitch as he spoke casually about this shit show. I didn’t know how many rangers had died here, but in my gut I knew it was way too many. All the while this stallion had simply walked over to the dead stallion’s corpse and was picking through his belongings. I turned to watch the stallion pull the intact armour off of the stallion’s body. It was Equestrian marine combat armour, most of a complete set. This Arabian had some decent kit. Not that it stopped the bullet through the throat, but still.

“Why would they take a prisoner out of their base?” I asked him.

“I wasn’t a prisoner per se, I was more of a curiosity that they wanted to keep an eye on.” He continued stripping the armour off of the body staring down at it. “They don’t meet many ponies from the grasslands. So, they asked me how I got there and told me that they would help me find my way back home.” He snorted. “After I answered some questions. Eventually they realized I wasn’t going to tell them anything worthwhile, so here I am after volunteering to help them strip copper wire.” Permittivity shot me an sardonic look before gesturing at his flank. A reel of uncovered copper wire flanked by twin lightning bolts caught my eye.

“So you know where their base is at?” I said impatiently. Permittivity had dropped his saddlebag on the ground and was putting on the dead stallions armour. Greaves, breastplate, shoulder pauldrons and spine protector. The armour was about the same as the stuff worn by the Ramsgard security ponies.

“If you know where this place is then, yes. I could could give you its position in relation to this mine. Though I wonder how you hope to use it in your current position.” He gestured at the mostly empty room. The room lit entirely by the pulsing light of the flare and my head light. The bodies lying where we had shot them with pools of blood spreading over the chalky ground gave the room a horrible feeling.

“I’ll take the information and get it to Ramsgard.” I said to him.

“You know that he’ll be patrolling the desert for you if you try to get back the way you came? This force wasn’t even supposed to fight, most of the ponies were just the regular natives that the elites send out to dig up scrap materials for. Tegarni just gave them some grenades or rifles or what have you and sent them out to fight you lot.” He seemed angry for a moment as he said that last part.

“So why were you trying to kill him?” I asked, basically conceding the point that a direct approach to Ramsgard or my outpost would end with me dead, and an indirect one would probably have me die of dehydration.

“I may not have understood the dynamics of this new found relationship, but I believe I should get some commiserate answers out of you. Namely, what is your name and why are you alone?” He asked me in between stuffing ammunition and anything else that caught his eye in the saddlebags he wore.

“I-I, fine. I’m Knight Icepick of the Ramsgard Rangers. And I’m alone because I sent the pony that was left with me off to escape, I thought that I could blunt their attack by attacking them where they weren’t expecting it. Running into that waste of sperm was pure chance.” I had kept my eyes on his. He looked surprised again when I said my name. “Back to my questions, you haven’t earned an equal relationship yet. How many of them are left?” The unicorn just chuckled at the crack.

“Yet it seems I have the information you need? Isn’t that true?”

“True enough, but it’s in your own best interest to tell me. I don’t want to get violent with you, but I need to get that information back. So tell me-”

“All that survived left an hour before, Tegarni and his body guards stayed behind to kill the ranger that had stayed behind to kill them. I’d wager that the two of us are the last ponies in this place. Though I’d also wager that when Tegarni makes it back he’ll likely grab the garrison force and reclaim this place… And put our heads on pikes. They’re fond of that. Well... he is.” He said with a shake of his head.

“So, about how long do we have before they get here?” This stallion knew how to drag on with his words. I looked at him again. He liked his own voice.

“If he marches by night and uses stimulants to avoid sleeping himself, most likely before the sun rises tomorrow morning.” He said before looking at me once again. Permittivity’s face softened for a second like he wanted to ask a personally question before he returned to his energetic smugness. “So, the question truly is, do you think we should risk going south towards your compatriots or head off in another direction.”

“They’d probably guess that I’d head south with you. And they could catch up with us, especially if they have vehicles.” My eyes shifted towards the floor. Of course they’d find us if we went south. The rest of the rangers would too far away for my radio to reach them either. My mind was dwelling on this as he spoke up again.

“I do remember something one of the Arabians said while I was inside the facility. It was a snippet of conversation about some transmissions coming from the north-east.”

He finished speaking and continued looking at my eye slit.

“That’s fucking weird, we’ve never heard any radio transmission from up north.” I let the words drop out of my mouth. He seemed to stand taller when I said that.

“You do know that high frequency radio communication does not reflect off of the ionosphere?” He was an annoying buck.

“No, I didn’t. All I knew was that radios have a certain range,” I said to him. He snickered a little under his breath. I wanted to slug him. In the throat. Dream stallion or not, he was an ass.

“Well, that’s true, in certain contexts. In this instance though, we have an opportunity. You have a radio receiver in your armour, correct?”

“You really do like asking questions you know the answer to.” I responded with a huff. He smiled at me. The movement in his face made the scar above his muzzle stand out. Annoying or not, Big name had been in a fight. Or three.

“Isn’t that self-evident?” He said quickly, before speaking again. “So, in principle all that we need to do is triangulate the signal to determine its direction in relation to us. Between this computation machine that the Arabians gifted me,” he lifted a foreleg to show me a good condition… Not-pipbuck. It had a similar size but it wasn’t a pipbuck, different screen and buttons. “And with your exoskeleton’s radio receiver we should be able to determine the position of the broadcaster in short order.”

“Well, assuming this station is a thing, they probably run it on a regular clock schedule. And it’s getting late.” I laughed at him. The brainy stallions that love explaining things to you are the worst.

“Then we should begin.” Permittivity said to me simply. He liked laughing at me, and he didn’t like being laughed at. Self-absorbed prick.

Then again, if I was willing to die for the rangers…

I could put up with an asshole stallion for them.

Probably.

Author's Note

I apologize for the formatting.
Technology isn't my strong suit. So, if you would like there will be a link on the blog post for this chapter.

It's Not You (IIX)

Gunsmoke

I wasn’t expecting a sack of books to be dropped on the desk at that moment. I mean, I was passed out with my face pushed into the scratched wood…

“Do you buy books?” a stallion said to me as I shook the sleep out of me. Good job watching the shop while your mother was out.

“Yes sir, but the prices really depend on the books you’re selling,” I said to him. Under the desk was a sheet for prices for bought book based on condition, hard or paperback and genre. I pulled it out as the stallion started piling books in front of me with his magic.

“Well, I have a couple trashy romances, a history of the Neighponese empire, two manuals both revolving around the salvaging and stripping of captured zebra equipment, and a Daring Do novel,” the stallion told me quickly like he had spent more than a few minutes practicing the list in his head.

“Give me a minute,” I told the stallion as I examined all the books. The romances would sell well… Some ponies loved cliqued romance. Not me though, not me at all!

The rest were in decent condition, and some history or military buffs would probably pay decently for them. “So, how did you get these?”

“I inherited them mostly, with the Neighponese book coming from a stallion that I helped by unlocking a strongbox for him. He enjoyed telling me about the martial prowess of the Neighponese gentry, and their magical blades. After I opened the lock he told me that I should read the book, ‘expand your mind,’ ‘they were the best blades ever made’, ‘most mares don’t appreciate my collection,’ and so on,” the unicorn stallion said with a laugh, his chestnut coat and facial tufts sticking out in my mind for some reason.

“Alright, I can give you thirty bits for the set,” I said to him with my best imitation of my mother’s bargaining face.

“Thirty-five, because I’m a friend,” he said with a chuckle.

“Thirty bits–you didn’t pay for them, you’re already making money…” I said to him, before unintentionally shrugging. He suddenly looked offended.

“I listened to that stallion prattle on for half an hour, that was emotional damage,” he said before starring at me intently. It might have just been my imagination, but I felt a bead of sweat start to pool on my forehead.

“I can’t-my mother needs to make some money off the top of these books.”

“That’s her business, what’s yours young buck? What do you want to do?”

“I’m an apprentice doctor,” I said back to him.

“That’s all, you just want to be a doctor? You don’t want mares or stallions, fountains of champagne?” I looked at him for a long moment, he seemed to be judging me.

“Pretty much, I really just want to help ponies. And being a doctor is a good way to do that,” I said to him.

“You want the best for all ponykind, is that right,” he asked me again.

“As much as anyone should,” I told him flatly.

“And you have humility in there, too. You remind me of someone I once knew,” he said, his smile dampening for a moment, before flaring up once again. “Alright, you master of the mercantile arts. Let me sweeten the deal, I can’t make any guarantees that you’ll be able to do anything with it but…” He pulled another smaller bag out of his jacket. It was a burlap sack like the other bag, but it only held one book judging by the outlines.

“If you add another book, the price I can offer should go up,” I said to him as he pulled the contents out and into the light. “Memory Orbs And You: A Helpful Guide To Your Perfect Self.” I said aloud. It was late in the day, and he was the only one in the store. “How to use orbs to remember all that you want to remember and all that you want to forget” was the subtitle. Then the stallion dropped a metal case that took up most of the bag on the table as well. With a click he popped it open. Inside were ten shining glass orbs, all sitting in a foam liner.

“I’ll give this to you for the low, low price of nothing. If you’ll sell me those books for forty bits,” the stallion said slyly. I looked at the orbs and the case before closing the case and pushing the book towards his side of the table. “Just imagine all the ponies you could help by taking their painful memories away, or just by viewing them yourself. Imagine the perspective you could gain in their lives…”

“There are only ten in the case, and I don’t even know if I could perform the spell?” He snorted.

“Alright, I’ll take the thirty bits for the books, and I’ll come back in a few days, if you can’t handle those spells, then I’ll take it back and you’ve got a good deal. If you have, then you owe me ten bits,” he said before pushing the books over to me.

“A-alright, but that still only leaves me with ten of these things.” I asked him as I counted out the bits we owed him.

“Well, if you can make heads or tails of that book, then I might know a mare who knows a mare’s uncle who can get you some more; besides, I made a bet with dear friend of mine, that I could get something done with these. Shake on it?” He offered his right forehoof. I took it and he moved his leg up and down for a few seconds. “By the way, my name is Low-Key, I provide unique solutions to sensitive problems. But, I really must go.” He said before picking up the offered bits, sticking them in his jacket pocket and trotting off, picking up a battered hat from the hat rack near the front.

I heard the door ding once. He was gone. That stallion was odd. I looked down at the book and the box of orbs.

“I’ll just read the introduction,” I said to myself, as I opened to the first actual page.

That was a lie.

---===*===---

A few days later I was running the desk, Mildew was out doing something; I was to check people over, and to send people to another clinic if it was anything serious. I had already set a bone and diagnosed a case of iron deficiency that day, this wasn’t odd. I had been doing things like that for the last year. I ‘held the fort’ more and more these days. Mildew had been slowing down. He tried to hide it, but I was around the stallion too much for me to write it off as a passing ailment.

In my professional opinion (did I get to call it that yet?), he was suffering from degenerative arthritis. I kept the opinion private.

I had my nose buried in a text about bowel disorders when the bell rang. My head shot up, and I straightened my clothing on my body with a flash of pink telekinesis.

“I was expecting someone older,” a rigid mare said to me from the doorway, her yellow beret made me gasp.

“The doctor is out,” I said after a couple seconds of silence. I had a hard time keeping my eyes on hers. A Desert Ranger in my– in Mildew’s office. She trotted up to the front desk, her stride was long and steady, she moved without wasting any energy. She was a little smaller than most mares, but when she lifted her half of her body on the desk, she could easily look down at me with a sharp smile on her face. This small earth pony was giving me a grin that scared me and excited me in equal measure.

“What does that make you then? If you’re the sexy nurse, you’re missing the hat,” the ranger mare said to me, without a hint of restraint.

“Uh-uh-I’m the apprentice doctor. W-we d-don’t wear hats.” I stuttered out.

“Is that a personal preference or more of an institutional thing?” she said with flat curiosity written across her muzzle. She stared at me for a few seconds. “Nah, I’m just fucking with you!”

“Ha, ha,” I choked out feeling blood rushing to my cheeks. Pink fur please be useful at least once.

“So, I was hoping to talk to Doc Mildew, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the old fart,” she laughed a little before continuing. “If he’s hungover and hiding from the sunlight back there just tell him that Bajada is there to see his decrepit ass.”

“He’s really just at home, he left early. He said that he wasn’t feeling good” I said the mare.

“Well, shit. Guess I’ll get that physical I told the others that I was actually gonna get. I was looking forward to sharing a drink with him back there and catching up.” She said with a sigh.

“I don’t have any visits scheduled, and I can do a basic physical.” I said to her with a nervous smile.

“Don’t sound too excited!” She said before winking at me and flicking her tail as she walked behind the desk and into the office itself.

Okay, there’s a flirty, attractive, mare that you’re going to examine. Just keep it together! I walked in behind her, trying to not stare at her rump. Keep it professional.

We entered the room and she dropped herself onto the patient table. She sat lay down, spreading her forehooves out in front of her. Like a sphinx. Her sandy coat and dark blue mane made the impression fit, even as she stared at me trotting to my desk. Mildew’s desk-

“So, isn’t this where you ask some invasive questions, but it’s okay because you know how veins work or some shit?”

“T-typically.” I said while picking up the stethoscope while trying to bring to mind the normal battery of ‘invasive’ questions. “First, do you have any concerns, questions things like that?”

“Doctor, when I go wee wee it comes out red.” She said to me with eyes wide open. “Nah, I’m healthy as a horse. So, seriously, ask me a fun one?”

“Do you smoke?” I asked.

“Only imported cigars… No, I’m not cool enough to smoke!” She said with a laugh. Her cheeks dimpled when she laughed, and her hazel eyes lit up. Okay, she’s pretty. Really pretty.

“Good, so how much do you drink?” I asked her, if she wasn’t so attractive I’d be annoyed. Which really annoyed me more.

“I binge when socially appropriate. When that’s not going down I like to share a bottle of wine with a cute mare or stallion. And sometimes, though this is pretty rare, I down a bottle whatever is on hoof, alone, and cry.” She faked a quick crying spell. It wasn’t convincing.

“On to exercise: how much physical activity do you do on a weekly basis?” I made sure to note on the form that there she had a really cavalier attitude about the entire thing. Maybe the next psych evaluation would be even more fun for her. “Be serious this time, or I’ll make sure that the stethoscope is extra cold.”

“Welp, he brought out the big guns, better play it straight. Really, in the rangers we run about three miles a day. On a slow one when we’re awaiting deployment. Not to toot my own horn, but, I usually run ten or eleven.”

“Alright, time for the heartbeat check,” I said to her trotting up to her with the sensitive end of the stethoscope being held up by my magic.

“You didn’t ask about my sexual health, how many partners, do I swallow, normal questions.” She said in a critical tone with her head slightly tilted and a frown on her face. I stuttered and got flushed before rolling my eyes at her.

“Y-you can get an STI check with another physician,” I croaked out. Just before I pressed the cold metal end of the device against her chest. She yelped.

“Jerk,” she said before trying to stare a hole in my head. Baja didn’t like to lose anything, I could guess that from the look on her face.

---===*===---

“Come on, it isn’t like you haven’t seen them before right?” Baja said as she opened her hind legs in front of me. “I mean, you have textbooks right?”

“I’ve not really com-” I started saying before she spread herself open with her hooves. Everything looked good…

“I hope that means everything down there is alright, and not that you’re staring.” She said with a chuckle.

“No, I mean yes. I mean, I’m just observing your genitals.” I said with the initial nervousness I had felt returning in full force. I needed a drink to deal with this mare. And she needed about five. No, oh, just thought of sexing her. I really didn’t need to feel a tingle from my sheath. This isn’t the right time body!

Several minutes passed as I watched her and checked boxes that signified her as healthy. She mostly complied with a little bit of flourishes with her tail and hips, but right around the end…

“After this is over, do you wanna get a drink or something, I mean you’ve already seen the goods… and I haven’t seen anything other than some extra blood in your face from it,” she asked just before I told her I was done.

“Uh, you passed,” I told her without looking her in the eyes.

“C’mon, you can tell your friends that you went out with a Ranger,” She said before picking herself off the table and standing beside me as I finished checking all the right boxes. What friends. Who has time for friends. Maybe my mother would like me meeting somepony. I shook my head and felt my mouth turn to sand.

“I-I’m free tomorrow,” I told her. My heart rate had picked up a lot. I hoped it didn’t show.

“Stallions usually are. Eight at that little bar by the beach?” She was talking about a bar right next to the old naval yards, and the mostly reclaimed drydocks.

“Torpedo Juice, really?”

“C’mon, what stalliony stallion doesn’t like seeing a bunch of rusting metal? ‘Sides, what do think that torpedo fuel will do a little mare like me?” She asked with little bit of sing song in her voice.

“Your body weight has to be lower, even adding in muscle mass… Oh,” I said before she locked eyes with me.

“Yeah, you need to get out more,” she said flatly before grabbing the completed form suspended in my magic and trotting out with a swing to her hips. Just before she closed the door she smirked at me and my ogling.

I couldn’t understand what she wanted, was she toying with me? I wasn’t the type to associate with rangers, I was a worrier and a shut in, not an interesting one.

I had no worth stories telling. Not yet.

---===*===---

The sun was still in the sky when I got home that day. When I opened the door to the store, I saw my mom’s head poke up from behind the counter, with a slightly opened muzzle. I trotted in with my neck a little straighter than usual.

“You’re either home really early, or the street lights got a serious upgrade,” Mom said with a yawn.

“It’s the first one,” I said a little distractedly, as I got to the hoof of the stairs.

“You seem like you’re in a hurry, Rose?” She asked as she blinked herself awake.

“I-I’m going out to meet someone,” I said as I took off up the stairs. I dropped my bags on my bed and ran into the bathroom, before checking my watch. Seven O’ clock. No time to shower. Shit. I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror, my mane was messed up. Was it too long? Did I need to dye it? No, she wanted to meet you out there as is, the only difference was nixing the doctor's coat.

Now my mane was managed, mostly. I hopped out of the bathroom and right into mom. “Got your mane brushed, and time off. Who is this pony?”

“I ran into her at the market a couple of days ago,” I told her quickly.

“Oh, that’s nice, what’s her name? What does she do?” She asked with a grin spreading across her face.

“Bajada, she does work out in the outposts. She’s here for a while though, so she asked if I wanted to get dinner,” I spurted out, before looking down at my left foreleg, and the tarnished watch strapped to it.

“Well, you could have had her come here. I make a mean turnip casserole, as you know.” she lowered herself conspicuously.

“I know, I just wanted to meet on, neutral ground. Maybe next time, Mom,” I said with a cringe. She was going to guilt trip me every time she could into bringing Bajada here. If she even wanted to have anything to do with me in the first place, nevermind the second. I shook my head and looked at Page. “I’ve got to go.” I said while pushing myself through the narrow space between her and the doorway.

“Don’t do anything that you don’t want to! And keep your drink covered!” She yelled to me as I practically slide down the stairs.

“I’m not a foal, just, I’ll be fine.” I said as I ran out the door, hearing the bell ding just as the door shut behind me.

---===*===---

I didn’t like all the eyes on me. As I sat at the bar, I kept my eyes on the liquor and the battered hardwood under my forehooves. My little bag of bits hung from my neck. I had half a pint of the house stout in front of me, the other half was sitting in my stomach. Probably should have eaten something bigger than a slice of bread and lettuce. Nah, I could look ponies in the eyes when I had a few in me.

“Ahh,” I yelped as I felt a hoof on my shoulder, my head swung over to the pony-

“You started without me, that’s not very chivalrous,” Bajada said before calling the bar pony over.

“I-I wasn’t sure that you would show up,” I answered as she locked her eyes on shelf in front of her. As the bartender walked over I took a look at the room, half the stallions and lot of the mares had their eyes on her. The small mare had worn her Ranger coat, chevrons and all. A few of them caught my eyes and shot me dirty looks. I turned around real fast.

“Yeah, double straight,” She told the stallion as he dumped whisky into her glass.

“Have you eaten today?” I asked her as she picked up the glass.

“Yeah, lettuce and egg sandwich, ate one for lunch,” she finished just before downing the shot and banging the glass on the counter. “Another!” She yelled at the bar pony.

“So, the weather’s nice,” I said. She watched the bar pony intently as he poured.

“Not too many sandstorms around here,” she said before downing the shot. “So, you wanna go out and eat?”

“If you want to?” My eyes latched onto the mare in front of me, she blew a breath of drink infused air towards me.

“I do,” She said before looking at the bar pony and dropping a silver piece on the counter. “That’s for me and him,” she then looked at the quarter full mug in front of me. I took the hint and downed it quickly. I looked at her for a moment as she watched me.

“What-” I said before a plume of hoppy air forced itself out of my muzzle.

She just laughed.

---===*===---

“So, you just go there to ‘pregame’?” I asked her as we were sitting down in a little restaurant nearby. In front of me was another mug of ale, in front of her was a glass of red wine.

“I just like walking in like I own the place, I mean, if I’m not starting a fight in there that night, the owner loves me,” she said slyly before shoving a bit of salad into her mouth. Why anyone would want a dairy based dressing, I just, didn’t understand.

“R-right,” I said before taking a big bite.

“So, what do you do when you’re not telling ponies to stop being fat and shit?” She said leaning back and putting her forelegs behind her head.

She stared at me as I took a moment to chew and swallow, looking down at my plate mostly. “Sometimes I run my mother’s shop when she’s away,” I told her quietly.

“Oh, C’mon you can’t be this boring, I know your type, you’ve always got something interesting deep down.” She said with a laugh and a snort. She was right, I was a boring stallion, I lived with a parent, and basically read in all of my free time. Then again, I had picked up that one book recently…

“I mean, I came across a book of spells a week ago.” I told her while keeping my eyes on hers for once.

“Oh really, what spells were they? I almost forgot you were a horn head.”

“Memory spells,” I said quietly before eating another bite of food, I watched her eyes widen.

“How the fuck did you get that? That’s primo-illegal shit!” She said before covering her own muzzle with a hoof before looking around at the mostly empty restaurant.

“I didn’t know that,” I yelled at her quietly, my voice going up an octave as my brain went into panic mode. “Some stallion just gave it to me as a trade,” I said as I took a turn to look frantically to see if anyone had heard me.

She leaned forward over the table and brought her muzzle near mine. I flushed at how close she had gotten, just before she put her muzzle near my ear. “I think we’re okay, but you wanna finish this food and go somewhere private?” I nodded just before she whispered a few more words. “I fucking knew it.” Just before she got back into her booth she left a quick kiss on my cheek.

Yep, now my brain was freaking the fuck out. Now my cheeks were more red rose than pink rose, and I wasn’t sure what she wanted to get me alone for. Did she just wanna warn me about the crime I didn’t know I was committing, or did she want a quick fuck from an awkward stallion. “I’ll pay,” I said before pulling out some coins and leaving them on the table.

“Forty percent, you really wanna sleep with me don’t ya?” She said with a smile, where I was starting to sweat bullets… she was already back to teasing me.

“No, I just can’t do math when I’m nervous.” I said before pushing myself out of the chair and trotting out.

When I hit the doorway I looked behind me, she was following me. I knew a block away was the city’s big park. I wasn’t familiar with it, but I remember that it was open at all hours. Remembered from back when I was in school. Lot’s of other ponies had spent time with each other there.

“Where do you wanna go, bad buck?” She asked me with a chuckle as she pulled up beside me. With a flourish she put her right foreleg over my shoulder and pulled herself more onto her hind legs before waving her other foreleg across my field of vision, seeming to point at everything out there. “The world is your oyster,” she said before I shook her off.

“Y-yeah, and you’re the irritating grain of sand,” I told her with my eyes aimed at the street. “So, the park?”

“You don’t wanna bring a tipsy mare back to your place?” Her eyes bored into mine, and she brought her muzzle near mine. I could smell the alcohol in her breath, that and the vinegar dressing.

“No, no, I just don’t want to bother with introductions tonight.” I told her before turning towards the park again. Just as I did this she ran around me and put herself right in front of me.

“C’mon, your roommate has to love me? Or is it you’re afraid of being close to me and a bed?” She asked me with her tail flicking back and forth behind her. I was just tall enough to see the curve of her rear from over her head. Damn.

“Baja, you’re a pretty mare. I don’t know what you see in me. But, I don’t want to mess things up by bringing you home tonight. Please, another time,” I told her before dipping my head and resting it on hers.

“Whatever you’re hiding can’t be that bad, I already know about the other thing. And I’d put money on you being a virgin...”

“I still live with my mother, alright. I don’t want to bring you home to her, I already lied to her about who you are. She doesn’t like soldiers,” I told her simply. My mouth had dried up. All I wanted to do was go home and forget that this mare ever talked to me, ever showed an iota of interest in me. Ever even existed. Now I waited for her to say I was pathetic, to leave a bitter memory. That didn’t happen. She just stood there for a moment, breathing deeply. Her soft mane didn’t move from under my chin.

“The park it is,” she said before pulling away from me. I stood there watching as she turned away, before looking back at me. “I’m gonna ask questions, you better give me the answers,” I nodded at her.

---===*===---

“So this fucker hasn’t shown up yet? He just gave you the book and that was it?”

She said as we walked the deserted park, the moon sat high in the sky watching us like a half-lidded eye. The park smelled earthy, cicadas and crickets chirped, and the hint of salt in the air made it feel like it always had.

“Why is this magic illegal, he told me I could use to help ponies.” My voice stayed low, hers got louder when she got excited. “Take away the memories that hurt them, give them a little bit of blank space for their brains to fill in with something else. I read about it before I even got the book. Confabulation. When your brain makes up some explanation of events, way off from what happened, because brains are really flexible.”

“I’ve heard stories about ponies that got their memories taken, they came out different. Wrong.” She shook her head, her eyes shut for a moment.

“And, when I cut out an appendix that’s swollen and about to fill a pony's chest cavity with bacteria that changes them too. They don’t die. A scalpel is a knife, only when it’s in the right hooves it can heal instead of hurt. If I thought I was going to hurt ponies I never would have picked it up.”

“That’s a lot of confidence, for you,” she said after a breathless second.

“I doubt just about everything, but I don’t think I’ll ever be a bad person. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone, if there was any other choice,” I told her, my eyes opened widely. My chest filled with air, and my body was tingling with anger.

“You really don’t like the idea of hurting ponies, do you?” She asked with her eyes staring into mine. She looked tired.

“It makes me feel sick, I have respect for ponies that can fight for a cause, but, I…” My head shifted towards the cobblestone path we were walking on.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’re being honest with me, not many stallions admit to not wanting to fight. Especially to a Desert Ranger.

“I’m not most stallions. I’m Rosetta, and I’ve learned to live as Rosetta. For better or for worse,” I told her slowly, the emotion and my energy draining out of me. Telling people how I feel has always exhausted me in a way that other things didn’t. Run a mile, I can do it, lift a box with Telekinesis… But, tell someone something I don’t think they want to hear? That will leave me feeling used up for days.

“Yeah, I’m Bajada, and I drink, and sometimes I shoot scorpions and bandits.”

“It’s better than drinking scorpions and shooting drinks,” I chuckled softly. My lips curled into a smile as I met her eyes again, this time, with something approaching familiarity. I felt less awkward around her now. Less uncomfortable, not comfortable.

“I tried that once. Had to have someone inject anti-venom into my ass.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. She looked at me before pushing her muzzle into mine. After a moment, I opened my mouth and threw a leg around her neck hesitantly. She did the same in one practiced motion.

A few seconds later she pulled back and looked at me. “Don’t read too much into that, I don’t pretend to have a good grasp of what I’m feeling at any given time.”

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” I said to her, still holding her close.

“Neither do I,” she said before moving in to kiss me again. I turned my head and kissed her cheek. “Alright, you’re that kinda buck too…” I dropped my foreleg back to the ground. She did the same.

“I don’t know how to respond to this,” I said to her, my voice now flat. She chuckled. The kind of laugh you make when you’re worried someone’s going to ask a question you can’t answer. “I need time Baja. I don’t know if you have that time, or the patience. ”

“No one has time, not really. I don’t want anyone to be lonely-”

“I think I want you, I just don’t know if it’s anything more than a sexual attraction. I don’t just want to fuck you and pretend like I’m okay with it meaning nothing,” I said to her.

“I–okay, I’ll give you a couple days. If you still aren’t sure, then that’s that,” she told me with a shrug.

Maybe that was fine. Wasn’t I worth more than a few days? Was I being the weird one, the one that most people would give a body part to be in the place of? Then again, the idea of me rejecting sex early on would have been alien to me, except for the fact that I liked this mare.

“I’ll show you where I live,” I told her before leading her away.

---===*===---

“And that’s why you don’t try to fry a scorpion with kerosene,” she told me as we rounded the last corner. My home was just a few meters away. The stories she told me were insane, camel spiders, giant scorpions and a pack of camels that they had ran into out there.

“I never would have known that if you hadn’t have told me. They scream and run at you, because the water in their bodies boil and escape…”

“Like a teapot with a stinger, basically,” she told me before bumping me with a foreleg. “You look nervous, is this the place?”

“Y-yes. You can come by tomorrow, if you want. I’ll be home by seven,” I said before moving towards the door I had used so many times. “Or the day after that.” My voice shorted out as she moved up to me. I froze.

“I walked you home, c’mon, don’t you owe me a goodnight kiss or something cheesy like that?”

I looked at her for a moment, she was smirking at me. A second later her cheek was a wet, surprise written on her face, and I was running towards my door, opening it with my magic. “Good night!” I yelled before slamming the door behind me.

Okay, I still wanted to sleep with her, and the fact that she’d still be out there for a few seconds was eating at my will power.

No, I could wait. I wanted someone who loved me, and who I loved. If I had to wait… I could. I turned around and made my way towards the stairs.

---===*===--

I had time.

I lay in bed for long time, waiting for my brain to stop spinning and my dick to shut up about a missed opportunity. In a dark room, it’s hard to tell how much time has passed. There are no markers, no changes other than the thoughts in your head and the rhythm of breath. In those moments, everything seems the same, nothing seems to pass. Time is change. When there is no change, there is no time.

She was right. I didn’t feel like I had time. Because other than superficial changes, the way things went from one month to the next was identical. Same routine.

It had been this way ever since I had left school. I had all the time in world, if you looked at the calendar, or the aging that went on within me. But… that meant nothing for fixing my problems.

Time is defined by change.

Nothing had changed.

She could fix that.

---===*===---

Mom was spending time at a friends flat with Dally, and I was waiting for Bajada to knock on the door. Stir fry was my favourite, and well, if I could do anything it was getting good at exactly one thing.

I finished and plated two servings. Feeding ponies always helped me feel better.

My eyes hovered over the plates, the chunks of tempeh and the broccoli heads popped out of noodles. The little thin bits of carrot were mostly garnish, but a little bit orange gave the dish a contrast that it was otherwise lacking. Was I just her garnish, some pet project, something to keep her occupied.

I shook my head and put a glass of water to my lips. My breath was steady where the rest of me was shaking. I had spent the day at the clinic thinking of how this might play out. And what I wanted out of it. Mildew told me a long time ago, that ponies always had an angle. He didn’t believe in good intentions for anyone but family. Mildew didn’t think that that really counted, a child of yours or a mate would always be helping to carry on some part of you. You could help them out and it would be nothing more than helping yourself. Everything else was angled in some way…

I hadn’t believed him at the time. I stopped tossing and turning last night after I admitted to myself: he might be right.

Every interaction was just a way to get what you wanted. Every happy one was just both ponies using the other successfully. He believed it. Maybe he was right.

The knock on the door jolted me into swallowing what was in my mouth, before setting it down and rushing to the door. I stood in front of it for a second as I undid the deadbolt with a little telekinesis.

She swung the door open instantly and poured inside the door. Baja didn’t even seem to think about the hind leg kick that sealed the door behind her. I let my eyes drift to the neon sign that hung down from the rafters, it was dim. And the last bits of spring sun were peppering the floor underneath the single large window to the right of the door.

“Rosey, I think that book problem is worse than I imagined,” Bajada said to me before wrinkling her nose and shooting me a look of delight. “That actually smells good! Most stallions burn grilled cheese sandwiches and call that a meal.”

“Uhh, follow me,” I told her as I spun around and led her up the stairs.

“Cozy place, is it just you and your momma?” she asked me as we climbed the stairs.

“Yes, except my mom’s best friend lives with us.” My words ambled out, was she going to think that was weird?

“Cool, cool, so what did you cook me? I’m warning you in advance, I can eat a fuckload if I want to.” As we made our way into the kitchen she eyed the food before looking back at me. “That was an innuendo, if you were wondering.”

“G-good to know,” I forced out. Was it getting warm in here or was it just me?

She walked over to one of the plates and grabbed it with her mouth.

“Wearsh da table?” I pointed a hoof towards the dining room, which was even closer to my room. My bed.

“I-I would have picked it up for you,” I said as she laid hers on the table in front of her. My plate was suspended in front of me as I walked over to the table.

“I wanted to see if you actually cleaned your plates, being unicorns and all,” she said as she poked at one of the larger pieces of tempeh with a fork.

I sat down across from her and got a good sized chunk of broccoli on my fork.

“So, I’ve thought a lot today, and last night,” I said before throwing the food into my mouth.

"I don't know what you want out of me, but now I think what I want out of you," I told Baja. "I need a change of pace. Everything is the same. But, you telling me about your adventures is liberating. I like you for a lot of reasons," I rambled out.

“If you want to get of here... I can hook you up," she told me before swallowing a bunch of noodles. "Really, you're in a better position than most. You got a skill, and you don't seem to mind a little isolation.”

“What are you-”

“Out there on the frontier, there’s a little place called Copper Springs. They need a doctor bad, our medics have been doing the job for the time being, but if we have to move…” She shifted her body.

“I don’t even have my certificate yet, I’ve only been training for a year and a half now,” I think that my voice had desperation in it.

“From what you’ve told me and me finding you alone in the office that’s supposed to be ran by Mildew, I think you can pass the exam,” She said before chewing her tempeh. “This is fucking good, by the way.”

“So, pass the exam, get my certification and just leave for a while?” I asked her while biting the inside of my mouth.

“I’m not really an expert on the health care system, but that sounds right?” For a moment her fork stopped moving. Her mouth opened and she rubbed her chin with her other hoof. “Yeah, try that!”

“A-alright,” I said before taking a bite. “That’s a plan.”

I said before I watched her cheeks bulge out from all the noodles she had just stuffed inside her mouth. I basically did the same until the food was out of sight.

---===*===---

We were laying in my bed, crammed against one another, and I was looking at the ceiling. My dick was laying low after his performance, but I kinda wanted another go, the first one had been a little short. Then again, I had gone down on her without her asking, and I didn’t think she had faked her getting off. The taste was kinda weird, vagina and semen all mixed together. Maybe you were supposed to go down on her before you actually fucked?

“Rosey, I heard something a long time ago, and it’s been true every time it needed to be,” she said to me with some resignation in her voice.

“What is it?” I asked before laying a foreleg over her barrel and turning to the side, I was looking in her eyes again.

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

“What do you mean?” I said with a yawn, okay I was a little tired after our fun.

“Why do you wanna leave? You don’t need to have a reason. That’d be fine. but I know you do.” Her voice was warmer than usual.

“I just feel trapped, I know that I’ll be practicing and helping ponies out soon, but, everything just wears me down. It’s always the same. Sometimes I might get a good story…”

“Oh, you’ve got the wandering in your bones. I know the type, I am the type. You can’t stand being in the same place, living the same exact days over and over.” She blew some air in my face.

“I think my dad had it too. He was a Ranger, he just disappeared before I was born. I think that’s why my mom always kept me close. Now though, I can’t fucking stand it. If I live here she’ll always be over my shoulder. Commenting on who I’m with or what I’m doing. I’ll always be second guessing if it’s my decision based on what I want, or if I’m just doing what my mom wants me to do. This thing with you, this whole idea of leaving, is it just me telling her to fuck off?” Somehow I had started crying. “Is everything I fucking do a response to her feelings? What she told me to do?” I had closed my eyes. On my shoulder I could feel a foreleg rest there and a gentle nudge of her cheek on mine.

“I don’t know what kind of wandering you have inside of you,” Bajada said to me. “It might be the kind where you just get an itch if you stay in the same place for too long, with the same people. I have that. The Rangers let me scratch that itch, and get a paycheck. But you, it might just be you want something you don’t have here, or need to run away from something. Maybe when that happens you’ll be happy and you can live wherever, do whatever you love doing.”

I kissed her, and let my foreleg wrap around her. Her lips opened and I felt better for a moment. My penis decided that all of my problems could be pushed forward with just a little more pushing and pulling. My brain wanted to continue and my so did my cock, but I knew this wasn’t the end. I’d be selling myself short if I left it as it was. I was going to get a little more feedback, then have sex again! Compromise!

“So, I should go? If I can?” I asked while she threw my hooves off of her before lifting herself up and over me.

“All I can tell you without guessing my ass off is, if you stay here for me, it isn’t gonna work out like that.” Bajada grabbed my forehooves and one at a time pressed them against her hips before lowering herself against me. I moaned and ground myself against her. Other than a growl from her nothing happened for a second as I fumbled with my magic to align myself. How earth ponies aimed themselves… Like how did evolution?

“Are you leaving soon?” I asked just as she slammed herself onto me and her tongue lolled forward. My eyes shut as we just took in the feeling for a moment.

“Yeah,” Bajada said to me as she picked her hips up and dropped them.

“I think I like you,” I said to her as she looked at me with lidded eyes and a smile.

“Whenever I roll into town, I’d be down for this!” She yelled before giving me a peck on the cheek.

“That’s-” I started and finished saying as she hilted herself on me and made me smack her ass. Okay, I’ll talk later!

That didn’t happen. What did happen was a happy enough ending for one of us, and a warm sleep. By the time I remembered the question I was pretty sure of the answer. That was good enough. I could accept giving a part of myself to this beautiful mare, her having given me a plan. Or the most important part of a plan: the goal.

I didn’t need time.

I felt like I had all the time in the world.

It made no difference, so it was no time.

I needed space.

---===*===---

A month later she left town, went out to meet her unit on the frontier. I said that I would keep in touch, like a lot of people do. She agreed, like a lot of people do. We sent a letter or two to each other. I had sent it. She replied and asked for me to tell where I ended up.

About that: I made my first attempt at the exam and failed by a couple questions, just after she left. The ponies running the test didn’t switch out the test questions more than once a year. But, you had to wait some months before you could take it again… And you couldn’t write down the questions while you were taking it, right?

I decided that passing was worth the cost of self-experimentation. All it took was me recording my memories of the test and replaying the memory a dozen times. It was a lot faster to learn the answers to those questions than to learn all the potential answers… I mean, I wasn’t that far from passing the first time.

By the time I took the test the second time, I could recite the answers to every question on that test in my sleep. I passed. That night, I told her.

---===*===---

We had just finished eating, and Dally was already running water over the pots. I had cooked that night, made my favourite soup. Mom was sitting in the chair a little less lucid than usual; really, the soup was her favourite as well. We both loved mushrooms to the point that it was a personal weakness.

“So, I heard from a friend of mine that you were at the medical office today. Were you checking on something?” she asked with that prying curiousity that irked me.

“No,” I said quietly. I had decided that I was going to tell her about my plans soon. I just–just–didn’t want to right then.

“What were you doing then? You usually don’t wander around for no reason,” She said questioningly. I just picked up my bowl and hers and took them into the kitchen. Page followed me into the kitchen. I passed the bowls to Dally and turned to face my mother.

“I took the Doctor's competency test today. I know I passed.” My voice had a hard edge to it, my jaw muscles locking in place. Chemicals were flowing all over my body, my heart was beating like a steel drum and I couldn’t help but feel that this was the end of something.

“That’s wonderful! Are you going to work at Mildew’s practice or some other place? Or do you not know yet?”

“I asked to be posted in Copper Springs,” I let my expression harden. I couldn’t back down now.

“What?” Her voice was low, shocked. Dalliance looked me in the eyes. I had told her about who Bajada really was. And now she had connected the dots.

“No one wanted that position, those ponies need help.” I looked down as I used the excuse I had prepared. A refuge in altruism. That was me, not willing to look my own mother in the eye.

“When were you planning on telling me?” Her voice cracked as she started tearing up.

“Sometime tonight, or tomorrow night,” I said, my voice staying steady. Cold. A part of me felt like I was twisting a knife in her. Another wanted nothing more than a smirk on my muscle and a feeling of victory. They fought it out, and I was left on the course I had sought.

“And that’s it! Just drop a bomb on me, on your own mother?” I let her speak. “This is just, so far from…”

“What you expected out of me. You never really minded me becoming a doctor. Never minded me being with a random mare who wandered into my life and left just as quickly. I’ve lived in your box, or looked like I was my entire life. Mom, I’ve been drinking. That mare was a desert ranger who just wanted to use me for sex, I was an interesting lay, a little virgin buck who never left his room.” I stopped and shut my eyes tightly. Crying wouldn’t help me, nothing but leaving would.

“You’re going to leave me? Do you even know for how long?” Page asked me suddenly, anger burning through her tears. This was the mother I knew, the one I loved with reservations. The perfect mother, with an asterisk digging into the perfect like a tight collar digs into a dog's throat..

“At least two years, with some holidays and time back in Paradise.” My eyes met hers before continuing. “It was either this way, or no warning at all.” Somehow my legs knew to carry me forward. I wrapped my forelegs around my mother. I looked down at her. At some point in our years together I had gotten taller than her. Somehow this moment made us aware of that. “I never wanted to hurt you. I love you, mom. This is something that I have to do.”

“No one has to do-” she started, between tears. Her diaphragm was contracting, and it made her studder in a way that she never did.

“I–I just, don’t make it harder for either of us. I don’t think I’ll be leaving tomorrow. It’ll be a few weeks, probably.” I said as I grasped for something that would stop her from crying, and let me go. This was the best thing I had. Her tears continued even as I let her go, and walked to into my bedroom. I shut the door hard and fought back my own tears. I threw open my dresser and pulled the bottle wrapped in brown paper to my mouth as I opened the door to my bathroom. I turned the tap on with a hoof and threw the shower curtain open. The cap loosened as my pink magic tore at it like an annoying bolt that needed removing. I stepped into the shower and pushed the bottle back as I opened the tap with a second pulse of telekinesis.

Both liquids hit me at the same time. The cold spray shocked, while the vodka burned my throat, it was like two different persons… The warmth inside, the desire to fight, to change and make a difference… The cold outside, the day to day glances, the sameness of the everyday, the feelings of meaninglessness. It felt unstable. With a huff and a cough I pushed the bottle out of the way. I opened my eyes and shoved my face under the tap. Everything was simmering. The day to day, the cold would pound me into the shape it wanted out of me. I wouldn’t let the outside world bend me into just another part of the whole, the same sickened whole.

I turned the tap to warm and felt my strength return, the bottle floating back over to me. For what it was worth, for what I was worth, I was going to be who I was, and I was going to make the world better at the same time. Most of all, I was going to finding out who I was without this place, and my mother shadowing me.

As I finished the bottle and felt the first tendrils of alcohol slowly seeping into my system, I pulled the curtain, dried off, and ambled to my bed like I was starting to weigh a lot more.

I lay in bed for just a few minutes before the content nothingness of alcohol-aided sleep took me. It wouldn’t be much longer before I was on my own. Before I found out who I was. The other questions that had been in my head recently, or forever, they drew away as my new life came into fruition.

Did I really want to go to Copper Springs, or just leave here?

End of Chapter

Recoil, Reciprocation and Renascence (IX)

The sun had set hours ago. According to the clock on the computation machine it was approaching dawn. There was ample light for most purposes, plenty to aid a march. Every touch of wind across my body forced me to reminisce. When I first arrived, the only atmosphere I felt was decidedly artificial. Beyond that, my first breath of fresh air on this world had been arid and lung searing. That had been three days after my arrival. I had yet to feel the desert night. Somehow, it felt like home. If I closed my eyes and cleared my mind, I could pretend I was back in Maidenpool. Just enjoying a solitary moment. Better days, I thought to myself. Less complicated days, without gravity, days where all that mattered was understanding a maths problem, or memorizing the facts from a long ago battle. Where I could revel in the warmth of the hearth-
“If you don’t have any objections, I think I’ve found a good spot for us to stop,” the mare ahead yelled to me. She pointed with an off-white leg at a dip between several large dunes. We would be out of the line of sight for anyone not looking from directly above us.
“Good thinking!” I yelled back at her. My voice must have been surprising to her. Perhaps the slight lilt to it caught Icepick off guard.
“Thanks,” she said after staring at me though her inequine helmet. My eyes remained locked forward. We walked into the divot. At the bottom she cocked her head at me. “You did grab a tarp and a bed roll in all of that looting, right?” she asked me suddenly.
“Along with many other things I appropriated,” I answered before looking at her metallic form, a lovely silhouette cast by the moonlight. Surprisingly, their moon was identical to ours. “So, how would you suggest we make camp?”
“Well, usually when I’ve done this in the past we’d take two sets of armour, clamshell them, and drape tarps over top with a gap between the bottom of the tarp and the sand.” she explained to me as she shifted her stance. Her shoulders seemed to hunch as she straightened her neck out. With a hoof, she took hold of her helmet and turned it about 45˚degrees before pulling it off of her head.
It was her. That blonde mare from the dreams. Her name and demeanour were already telling, but this – This was the image I remembered. Stuck the following morning in a way that just doesn’t typically happen with dreams. Every time I would wake up from them, all but detailed aspects would wash away. Unless this mare appeared in them. Every time she would look upon a mirror with levity written across her face, or the weight of the world showing in her eyes. Seeing her in the flesh was queer, even in the greys of a waning moon before dawn.
“Is there something in my teeth or what?” she asked me after a moment had passed. Out of her passed a single chuckle, with one pulse of air exiting her nose as it happened.
“Not that I can tell,” I chuckled, “But, we have only your set of armour.”
She then stood stock still and said, “We’ve got rope, and at least two things we can stick in the ground.” I heard the machinery in her armour activate. After a few seconds the armour opened up and she had backed out of it.

She was still large. When she turned to face me our eyes were level. I could make out she was wearing a sort of undersuit as well.

“Good idea,” I said to her simply. I was still wrapping my head around the idea of being around this mare.

“I have those on occasion,” she said as she turned around to rifle through the bags she had attached to the exo-skeleton.

“So drew you to the big desert?” she asked with her rear pointed at me. I needed to sell my cover story to this mare.

“Personal advancement and general curiosity,” I answered as I pulled a large spoon and a bayonet from my bags. They made good tent stakes in a pinch.

“I can kinda understand the curiosity part, but how would you advance personally? Would you get promoted or something?” She was putting an end of the tarp over top the shell of armour, securing it and bending herself over the piece. I let my eyes roam over her body covered in the skin-tight suit that made her rump pop out. This mare was not only extremely attractive but seemed to be host to innumerable strange ideas.
“My dear, the society I come from has a military. However, the fundamental structure isn’t a martial one. My personal advancement would come from knowing things others would not. And from being able to capitalize on that knowledge. And even then, the notoriety wouldn’t be valuable on its own.” I said before chuckling lightly. Her expressions had gone from confused to very confused while I had been talking.
“If I may ask: is everypony in your society a part of a military organisation?” I asked. You were always a charmer Permittivity, of stallions and mares. Though this one could triumph in a contest of hooficuffs with all the stallions I knew, excluding-
“Everypony who’s an equestrian is a Ranger,” Icepick answered, “Even if they’re a janitor, or a teacher.” a bemused expression crossing her lips once more. “So, you’re like Arabians then, you have a chief or something?” she asked me suddenly. I had just attached the corners of the tarp to the stakes.

“Not exactly, we’re lead by a monarch, somepony who can look at the nation as a whole and make honourable long term decisions. However, every pony elects representatives to parliament to draft legislation and take on various functions of governance.” I explained to her the basis of governance in the Empire, hoping that the honesty in my voice would win her over. Though, now that I thought about it, was Sombra going to leave parliament and the rights of a subject intact?

“So, you have a princess like Celestia and Luna?” she asked incredulously. Upon hearing those names I had to steel myself. The Arabians had told me that these warriors were from Equestria, originally. So, they were Celestians. Of a sort.
“Not quite. They’re normal unicorns like me.” This was half true. Sombra had declared that only unicorns of pure blood could hold what had been his throne.
“So, how do you ‘advance’ then?” she asked me as I finished with the stakes.
“I might sell a book about my adventures, which I’m sure to have with you around,” I responded quickly, trying to avoid this topic of conversation. With a start I pointed my eyes at the sky. Some of the constellations were shifted ever so slightly. Was that strange or comforting? What was this world to me? “So, what do you want. How do you wish to advance?”
When I asked her this her eyes shifted downward.

“I’ll do what the Rangers need me to do. I’ll probably get my implant removed for about a year, and have a foal for them,” she paused, “And then, I’ll try to make paladin. Providing a foal for the Rangers will bump up my rank.” Her voice seemed choked, yet at the same time it welled with deliberation.

“What do you mean, a foal for the Rangers? Are you hoping to find a stallion to marry?” I asked, confounded yet again.

“The fuck you talking about? Rangers don’t marry. Only those backwards fucking natives marry.” she hissed at me before lifting a side of the makeshift dwelling. She pulled a bedroll from her back and threw it haphazardly inside.

I gave her a moment as I unbuckled both my bedroll and my saddlebags. I took my bedroll, stooping over as I went inside. It was dark in there, and there was a definite lack of volume. I saw that she had laid hers out parallel to her armour, giving me just enough room to lay mine down in the leftover space. The rest of my clothing fell to the floor, my bags held off in the corner just beyond my tail and hind legs. With a sigh, I set myself down on my makeshift bed. Her bedroll was perhaps ten centimeters from mine. I lit my horn for a moment while I fiddled with the blanket layers.

“I guess it doesn’t matter now, with us being under the tarp.” she said before turning herself over. She eyed my bedroll and the nominal distance between us. At this point I had found the blanket that I wanted, and was about to shimmy under it, when she said, “That gap is a fucking joke. You’re gonna have your ass pressed against the tent when you settle in,” before pulling herself up until she was almost standing. I gave her an odd look before she bit my bedding and dragged it towards her. When it slightly overlapped hers she spat it out. Then she looked at me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Her eyes locked on mine, and after a second she began to laugh too.
“Life is absurd, Icepick. Though that was probably the most absurd thing to happen today,” I said to her when my laughing died down.

“No, the absurd thing was that hangfire. Seriously, what were the odds of that?”
“We would have to look the rate of that ammunitions failure. Did you see the speed at which he galloped out? His testicles must have been pulled into his barrel.”

“Tartarus yeah I did. Still would have been better to see that rifle shot go through his barrel,” she said with regret written across her muzzle. Her eyes were beautiful, with a glacial aspect showing through when the light from my horn danced across them. I drew my eyes away before she noticed.

“Thirsty?” I asked before pulling a water skin from my saddlebags. I had several, but I knew that this journey would be taxing even with ample hydration.

“And now you’re offering a mare a drink? I should have gotten us into bed earlier, then,” she said with a chuckle before grasping the offered skin with a hoof.

“Is this that surprising? I admit, maybe we didn’t get off on the right hoof initially, but have I been unpleasant?” I asked as she took a deep draw from the skin. As I spoke she nearly choked on the water. Icepick let the hoof with the skin fall down.

“It was a joke, to cut tension. And if that was a legitimate question… I mean, I’ve dealt with worse ponies in better circumstances. I’m usually a pretty laid back mare, but being out here away from the Rangers, I-I don’t think I’m at my best. Shit, is anyone themselves when they’re away from the people they spend the most time with?”

“That’s comforting. I suppose you would be less brash and be more forbearing if you had others to keep in mind?” I said, before taking a swig from the skin myself.

“No, fuck no. That’s like asking if you’d be less of a know-it-all stallion that loves the sound of his own voice if you had someone from your barracks with you.” she said before laughing impetuously. She was uncivil where I had been nothing but– Then again, she had helped me get here and not shown any animus when it came to personal proximity…

“I’ll take that as an example and not a personal affront,” I chuckled before letting my horn die. The blankets under my body would hopefully insulate me from the cold sand underneath. The last few hours are quite cold, I reminded myself. “Perhaps you’re striking upon some greater truth. Sometimes we can only rise above ourselves when tasked with a greater purpose.”

“Yeah, an example,” she said before letting out an errant yawn. Magical exoskeleton or not, she was still a mare. Her yawns were just like her voice, lower than most mares but distinctly feminine. “That’s the thing, I’d do anything for the Rangers. Wade into bullets, fight giant scorpions, even tolerate egg heads. But, I don’t think that improves me, it just pushes me. It’s something else, I swear,” she finished wistfully. I turned my head towards the pseudo ceiling above our heads.

“You never knew your father or mother did you?” I asked softly.
“Every male Ranger is my father, and every female Ranger is my mother, my brothers and my sisters” she whispered.

“That’s a blessing and a curse, Icepick. Like everything else,” I murmured. At this time, I was becoming extremely conscious of the fact that we were perhaps just half a leg away from one another.

“Just go to sleep, egg head. And if don’t use my full name every time, aight? It’s Ice to most everypony,” she huffed before rolling over to face me in the near pitch black. Her forelegs were tucked up near her chest like mine were, a bag lying under her head.
“Have a good rest, Icey.” To which she merely snorted once. Soon after I heard a faint snoring emanating throughout our makeshift tent..

Of course she snored.

So had Head Wind.

---===*===---

We made good time, rousing ourselves early in the morn, evenings spent travelling in the cloak of night. All the while, we made idle chit chat, and I revealed nothing that I couldn’t deflect later. She seemed to steer me away from anything personal or organisational. We truly told each other nothing.
On the third night…

---===*===---

“Hey, come look at this!” Icepick yelled to me from the top of dune. It was easier for her, getting up there; that magic armour was a definite advantage. She kept her eyes on me, that damnable visor giving nothing away, as I trotted up the hill. I hadn’t been working so hard to move since I had been in the service of the Empire! Although, now I was in the service of the greatest leader the Empire had ever known. So, as with everything else, everything was the same, and yet different… Strange. When I crested the dune, I looked ahead.

Light and structures caught my eyes, terribly novel to eyes that had seen only sand for so long. I spotted vague outlines of various buildings, including some terribly thin towers, all adorned with lights. One of them stood out from the rest, looking approximately a hundred metres in height. We had found our radio transmitter, and with a spark and flick of my horn, the female voice that I had heard nights ago came crackling through the sand filled speakers.

Icepick glanced at me through her tinted helmet, before turning back to the settlement on the horizon.

“That is a beautiful sight,” I said to her.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, I love me some lightbulbs,” she said. She may have replied but her mind was elsewhere.

“Are you feeling alright?” I let my question hang for a moment, before taking a pull from a bottle.

“I wasn’t really sure if this was real,” she told me blankly. “I mean, they must’ve been here for as long as us, as long as your people, and we never found them.”

“Did you ever really look?” I replied simply, pawing at the ever present sand underneath me.

“No, everything equestrian on this continent except for us was supposed to have been wiped out or starved by the skydark.” Her head shook and I saw her start to remove her helmet before simply dropping it in her bag. “But, there they are.”

“Assumptions can blind anypony,” I let my words hang in the open air. I was only here because I assumed a great many things-

“Got any ideas bout’ how to approach a bunch of ponies that know nothin’ about you?” She gave me a half-hearted smile, I could see that much in the moonlight.

“Approach slowly ,of course. If you have weapons, keep them pointing away from anypony. At the very least, we can speak to them naturally, and they seem friendly enough.” My words seemed to whisk her smile away.

“Yeah, my weapons are kinda bolted to the side of my armour,” she snorted before shooting a glance at her side. The exposed machine gun was rather threatening.
Check that, very much so.

“Then just don’t wear it. You do, after all, have the ability to simply throw a tarp up over and disable it, correct?”

“I- … fuck, that’s not the way us Rangers do things, numbskull. We keep our guns on us in potential hostile territory” She huffed again as she kicked up dust in frustration

“I’m no expert in socialization my dear , but I think the machine gun is better left at the proverbial door.” I said, shooting her an understanding smile.
“These ponies probably have guns you idiot, and I really don’t wanna be shot full of holes. I mean, fuck, I don’t want to be armed with just a shitty-ass piddly pistol,” Icepick told me with exasperation, before giving me a pleading look.
“So, let me be clear. You don’t want to enter the settlement filled with ponies that have food and water, unless you get to carry your fort leveling weapon?”
“Shut up, I just don’t like going without my weapons, Rangers only go without if there are other Rangers around.”
“You told me that not that long ago, you went into a dangerous city multiple times without anything more than that undersuit, and your service pistol.” She snorted at me before moving closer to me. I did the same. Our chests were nearly pressing together as we looked each other in the eyes. Icepick cleared her throat before speaking.
“I don’t know how you know that,” she pressed a forehoof against my chest with some force. “I-I’ve done a lot of stupid shit recently, but now, I want to be prepared, I need to get your useless ass down south, and-” I grasped her hoof with my magic and lightly guided it to the ground. “I know that you’ve done just as much stupid shit as me, I can see it in your eyes. So, don’t fucking test me.”
“Pssh, you talk in your damnable sleep, all manner of lamentations, some curses about wanting a stallion more than he wants you, and desires for revenge for things done to those around you. I don’t want a fight, plainly. You’re a means to end, as I am to you. In this instance the only way to achieve our goal of resupply and hospitality is going to involve you leaving that part of you behind. That superiority you have to feel. These people could be allies, you recognize this! Yet, you clearly can’t accept meeting them on even terms!”
“Fuck you!” she said before stamping her hoof on my chest harder than last time.
“Come on, your death wish will thank me,” I said with a laugh before pushing closer to her. I could hear the servos in her armour click as it was pushed back by me.
“How did you ever get someone to fuck you?” she spat at me our faces only a few centimeters apart. Her breath was warm in the windy desert night.
“My sense of humour helps. I mean, not all of us have an eye candy ass.” I said to her.
“It’s fuckin’ nicer than your nasty face. Looks like you couldn’t snark yourself out of a butcher's’ knife,” Icepick spat out. I kept my face as close to granite as I could.
“You’re a fucking coward, soft from hiding in all that steel. You couldn’t face a fair fight without pissing yourself. That’s where I obtained these scars. I fought someone and they wounded me. I won though; I pushed and found a way to win. If you want some manner of respect from me, then face your fears. There aren’t Rangers here. I’m the closest thing to an ally that you have,” I finished with an edge to my voice. My face was red. There was spittle at the edge of my mouth.
For a moment all I could hear was the wind whistling. She sat on her armoured rump before opening her bag, she pulled an all too familiar paper tube out of a package.
“Celestia fuck, fine, just light this up with your horn,” I took a moment to glare a victory at her. The light from the moon only showed pain. My expression faltered. I had lashed out at her. She had lashed out at me. Somehow, she had decided to bury the matter. As I mulled the matter over Icepick tapped me on the shoulder with a foreleg.
“C’mon, I already know I’m the bigger pony, but this is pushing it.” Icepick said before letting out a sigh. “I’ll say sorry after you say sorry.” Then she snorted before looking away, towards the blinking lights of the settlement, so brazenly broadcasting music and information.
I sat down beside her. Our shoulders pressed into each other, at least, the armour we wore did. With a thought, I ignited the tip of her cigarette.
“Those are bad for your respiration,” I said simply. Icepick turned her head towards me.
“If I didn’t have a death wish, I wouldn’t smoke, would I?” Icepick said before laughing. “You know I’m not going to forget that you said I had a nice ass.”
“It’s merely an objective fact,” I retorted. This mare was insufferable.

“I don’t think word means what you think it means, but I appreciate a compliment.” Her voice was muted, she sounded exhausted. Then again, I was tired as well.

“Well, from a purely functional point of view your large hips would give you an advantage in successfully giving birth.” I let out quietly. She looked me in the eyes, before laughing harder than she had any right to, nearly ending up with her face in the sand. “I’m rolling my eyes at you, just for your information.”
“Celestia, you’re such an egghead. I’m gonna start pitching the tent, do you wanna help, horny?”
I swallowed a bit of anger at that. Being the only unicorn in your class will lead to ample taunting. You won the argument remember? She’s going to help you. And you know now that she’ll respond to reason.

“Yes, Dirty,” I said before grabbing the tent supplies.

---===*===---

We had decided to go into the settlement at noon the next day. Broad daylight is a peaceful way to announce your presence, correct?

The outskirts of the settlement wasn’t very far from the center. The radio towers and other heavier machinery, including railroad tracks were located about a kilometer from the center. The two us spotted the heady exhaust being emitted by heavy diesel generators… But, the majority of the town appeared to be concentrated within a few blocks running alongside a main avenue. There was no pavement, and the wood and brick buildings seemed almost mint. This place had not been here for very long.

Icepick didn’t seem to notice this or care. In her world there was very little that had any age to it. Nothing that she considered a part of her society.

We both walked with our weapons tucked away, my pistol was in one of my saddlebags, and my rifle was strapped to her armour. She was wearing one of the bags her armour normally beared. It was strange to see her walking about in the daylight with only that skin tight suit. My helmet and flak armour was also sitting beside her armour. Icepick had insisted on fairness. Fine. At least I wasn’t sweating through skin tight black fabric…

---===*===---

As we approached, perhaps half a kilometer from the first buildings a sentry spotted us. I threw a glance at Icepick, who glared at me. My shoulders seemed to shrug of their own accord. We slowed and waited for the pony to get to us. As they got close we had a chance to examine them, light clothing, breathable with a loose cap fit to keep the sun out of their eyes. The mare wielded a rifle in her magic. At about ten meters away she stopped, her fur was a light orange and her mane was a bronze hue.

“Who the hell are you folks? There ain’t supposed to be prospectors or surveyors around here!” she yelled at us while pointing the high caliber rifle at us.

“Travelers, looking for rest and succor!” I yelled back at her. The sun was behind us, and the ever present wind was picking up yet again.

“That’s a mighty nice, but you gotta give me more than that,” her voice betrayed vexation at our presence.

“We’re Equestrians just like you, just from farther south,” Icepick spoke up from beside me. “The zebras didn’t drop as many bombs on this continent as we thought they would!”

“I don’t know what you’re smoking out there, but they hit Paradise hard. We only made it because of the stables,” she yelled back. “There weren’t many ponies out here, how’d you survive the big freeze?”

“We had bunkers too, and stores. I’m a Steel Ranger, we were stationed next to the Gilache and the oil deposits!” She yelled back.

“I don’t understand, if yer a Ranger, where’s your big metal suit? And why are there only two of ya?” the mare asked, before watching Icepick glare at me again. I lowered my head for a moment. I had missed critical context, and a potential avenue for first contact.

“I mean, you’d be pretty freaked out if some random pony came waltzing into town wearing powered armour right?” she asked the orange mare. After a few seconds the rifle was, once again, slung over her back. The mare snorted and laughed for a moment.
“Alright, you two are pretty weird, but as long as you don’t do anything crazy, I’m gonna send you to the doc to get yourselves checked out. After that, you can go talk to the sheriff. She’s the one to ask about things, if you’re who you’re saying you are. I don’t get paid enough to deal with crazies wandering the desert, other than shooting at ‘em if they do anything funny.”
“I promise we come with peaceful intentions,” I said to her quickly.
“And you’d tell me anything different?” she said before snorting again. “Just, follow me and don’t wander off. When I hoof you off to the doc, you become his problem.” We both nodded at the mare. “Alright, both of you get in front of me, I don’t mean to get magiced from behind.”
“We can do that, what do you prefer to be called?” I asked the mare behind us.
“You need to learn how to talk right, I can barely understand you.” the mare said quickly, before pausing for a moment, like she was trying to parse my words. It was a simple question. What kind of simpleton can’t name themselves on the spot-
“I tell him that all the time, he just won’t listen.” Icepick spoke up while looking over her shoulder at the mare, a sigh left her lips a second later. “Stallions,” she finished.
“Yep, always so stubborn. Anyway, I think he was asking for my name: Copper Sunrise. And your’s, Miss Ranger?” the mare asked Icepick. It really shouldn’t have surprised me, Icepick had that aura of easy amiability. When she wasn’t wearing that suit she could connect on an interpersonal basis, quickly. Perhaps it was the lack of the armour, the friendliness as a defense mechanism? Or maybe she was always like this, barring some exceptions. In all of our interactions she had always kept a distance, a distrust. Most ponies I had come across held a general distrust of everypony. But, she seemed irritated by my every word, nearly…

Why the animus?

“Icepick, and I, uh, left my armour outside of town. You think the sheriff will let me fetch it?”
“That’s gonna be up to the sheriff, so does your buck-friend have heat stroke or something?” the deputy asked Icepick, as I forged ahead, but remained within hearing distance as the two of them drifted closer. Mares. Celestians. I shook my head and kept my eyes on the settlement proper. We were only a few minutes trot from a building that had a large red cross emblazoned on it.
Icepick was silent for a moment, but I didn’t want to reveal my eavesdropping, so I could only wait for either of them to speak.
“No, he’s been like that for as long as I’ve known him. Still, that’s kinda up to the doctor,” Icepick said. I ground my lower lip between my teeth. I could make the both of them writhe in pain, the obsidian hanging from my neck would empower me to do that. Earth pony or not, you need a functioning nervous system to fight! No, I couldn’t do that. That would jeopardize everything.
My mind was so whirring away in thought that the building seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The stained wood planks of the entrance ramp echoing with my own hoofsteps brought me out of that reverie. In the streets some ponies stopped to stare at me like some kind of unwashed tramp. As I knocked on the wood with a hoof I realized that was what I had become. Battered duster with soiled white cloth wrapped around my head and barrel… At least to them. Soldiers at war are unwashed ponies wrapped in rags. These ponies just didn’t know they were at war yet. Or what war was.
The door swung open in a light pink haze of magic. In front of me was a pink coated unicorn stallion wearing a white lab coat. It showed signs of age. Our eyes met for a moment as we took one another in. His mane was red, his irises were nearly indigo, and under his eyes, bags hung visibly.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said before extending a hoof towards him. His eyes betrayed surprise. “I’m Permittivity.”
“That’s what we in the business call an understatement,” he said before meeting my hoof and giving a firm shake. “Now, are you bleeding anywhere, or feeling sick?”
I shook my head at him, just before I heard the vexing mare escorting us clear her throat.
“It’s just a check up for the both of ‘em; you know, ponies saying crazy things wandering the desert. Have fun,” she said before giving me a withering look.
“May I enter?” I asked quickly. I felt the gaze of Icepick behind me, she most likely wanted this over as quickly as possible.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” he answered with a bemused expression on his face.
I slipped into the foyer, the smell of astringent and rubber in the air unsettled me. Behind me I could hear Icepick walking up the stairs to this place. For a short moment I felt as though I had been here before. I nearly jumped as I felt Icepick brush past me as she followed the doctor. She looked back at me as I stood there.
“C’mon horny, I don’t want you losing your head now,” she said.

“Right, I was merely taking in the moment, the first time I’ve been inside this society’s buildings,” I answered before moving my hooves, and following this mare into a larger room.

“It’s a building, not an art museum,” she said before starting towards the room once more. I shook my head. Hospitals.

The room he entered was filled with metal framed beds, with white sheets that radiated the bleaching they endured. Our examiner took a chair in front of the closest pair of beds.

“Please take a seat, you both look like you need it,” he said.

“As you wish,” I said before sitting on the firm mattress.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Icepick said before dropping her form onto the bed.

“So, you’re both probably happy to be in a place with food and water, but I have to answer some questions. Are either of you hurt?”

“I don’t know about him, but I’m feelin’ fine,” Icepick told the doctor casually. The stallion turned to look at me.

“I’ve had worse,” I said to him.

“You’ve both been sweating? No pounding headaches? No cramps?” the stallion asked, his head looking between the two of us. I was probably more pungent than her, seeping in my own juices.

“I know what heatstroke is. I live in a desert too,” Icepick told him.

“A-alright, well, you both seem sane? I’m just having a hard time believing that other equestrians survived… This is big,” the stallion said to us, a bemused expression across his face. “I’m sorry, my name is Rosetta, I’m the only doctor for about fifty miles.”

“My name is Icepick, and I’m the only Ranger for about four hundred.”
He gave her a strange look, once again. She had the ability baffle even the most astute individuals.

“Ranger?” he asked. Her voice was brusque, it had carried command and contempt; his voice was contemplative, it had carried kindness and sympathy.
“She’s referring to the Steel Rangers, if you were inquiring,” I told him simply.
“Right,” he said before drawing a deep breath. “So, if you didn’t know we existed, how did you find us?”
“We happened to receive some radio transmissions from here. It was chance.” I told the stallion quickly, hoping that I wouldn’t have to elaborate further. I had covered my ‘computer’ with my duster.
“Why were so far into the desert even before you heard the transmissions? Radio transmissions are limited by the curvature of Equis.”
“There was a mining site out there that could pass for a strip mine half it’s age. It just happened to be the location of an ambush-” Icepick said before I cut her off.
“It wasn’t an ambush,” I cut her off.

“Waiting in holes and waiting for us to split off doesn’t count as an ambush for you?!” She was glaring daggers at me.

“No, the Arabians weren’t expecting a Ranger convoy appearing off of the horizon. You have to remember that they use messengers on hoof to convey messages, the news of your expeditionary force wouldn’t have gotten to their until well after your arrival. When I was ushered deep into the tunnels, I didn’t know what was happening for some time. The gunfire alerted me. They were hiding.” I had only heard rumours about the way these Rangers conducted war. They were walking machine guns clad in steel, artillery and the more familiar tools of war utilized on these Natives. There is no honour in war, but we always took as good as we got. For the most part-

“And every time they sneak a bomb into a road, or carry a bomb on their body to kill Rangers? Are we supposed to give them a reprieve?” Icepick asked me, her eyes burning.

“So how long have you been married?” Rosetta asked suddenly.

Icepick cast a sidelong glance at him. I couldn’t help but laugh, as I realized that she didn’t understand.

“She doesn’t quite know what a marriage is, or what married couples are wont to do!” I barked out, as Rosetta gave her a questioning look.

“That isn’t an explanation, asshole,” she said to me. Rosetta just continued to watch Icepick grow ever more vexed as I chuckled.

“Old couples tend to fight a lot, so seeing as you both were fighting in front of a stranger who is also here to evaluate your mental health, it reminded me of some the -less than planned- marriage counseling I’ve done,” Rosetta said, only for her to mouth an aha, and smile at the pink stallion.

At that moment the front door swung open. Rosetta hopped to his hooves.
“Stay here, just make yourselves at home. There’s a faucet in the back corner,” he said to us before walking into the foyer. The door shut. We were alone once again.

“Why do you have to correct me on everything?” she askedas she sat on the bed across from mine.

“Because you are wrong so, so often,” I spoke quietly, compared to her normal volume. If we stayed quiet there was a chance that we could eavesdrop. But she would never think of that, she had the tact of a flaming cinder block thrown through a glass storefront. She stood up and walked towards me, when she got to within a third of meter she thrust her hoof forward and into my chest. I glared at her. She did the same.

“Do you wanna fight? I’m not in my cheater armour right now. Is that fucking fair enough for you?” Her nostrils were flared and her muscles were growing tense. Parts of her mane were plastered to her head, she was sweating like a pig under that tight fabric.
“That wouldn’t further our ends, now would it?” I said just before she pulled her foreleg back and kicked me in the jaw. I reeled backward as the pain hit me like aforementioned cinder block. She had pushed me onto my back, the bed under us squeaking loudly, she pushed a hoof against my muzzle as if daring me to respond. Her muzzle was just above mine. All I could think of was dreams where I had seen through those eyes. “You remind me of someone I once knew.”
Her muzzle betrayed confusion at my words. “He was also an Earth pony that never thought about the ramifications of his act-” And then she struck me again. A solid stomp to my chest…

“Celestia fuck, you don’t know how to shut up,” she said while watching me attempt to regain my breath. I looked at her before knocking her sideways with a bout of telekinesis. There was a clatter as she struck the wooden floor. I worked my body and sat up just as she pulled herself back to her hooves. “Fucking horn head, who’s the cheater now, can’t beat a mare-” she started before I dropped to all fours and swung at her. She deftly dodged me before taking a look at me.

“You may say whatever you like about my person, but don’t begin to belittle me for my race,” I said to her, my lips curling into a sneer. The nodule of bone and mana atop my head lit up. A minute arc of electricity travelled from the tip of my horn to the air inches from her muzzle.

“You know, one time I snapped a unicorn’s horn off? It sounded exactly like breaking a bone, except the screams were louder,” she said quietly, with a smile written across her muzzle.

And with that, the door swung open and Rosetta took a moment to comprehend what had gone on.

“Seriously? Fucking seriously?” he asked us, and seemingly some higher power before pointing to Icepick. “You’re first, go talk to the Sheriff,” he finished before letting out a sigh.

Icepick gave him a look of malice, before turning to me once again as she spun around. Her tail oscillated side to side as she exited the room. “We’ll settle this later. Just telling you in advance, try to be less of an asshole, as hard as that is for you.” She punctuated that with one last look at me. Her eyes gleamed hard in the moment, she was questioning me. Icepick knew something.

Then the door opened, she exited, and shut once again.

“Why?” Rosetta asked me as he closed the distance. I sat myself back onto the mattress, trying to not to wince as I moved. That mare was strong.

“We had a disagreement over manners,” I said as I drug my last water skin out.

“That was some kind of disagreement, most ponies I know don’t punch their friends over manners,” Rosetta said as I stood in front of me.

“We’re allies of convenience,” I told him as he peered at my face, likely-

“First off, how long have you known this mare?” Rosetta asked, quiet concern written across his muzzle. In other days that had been me. I gave a thought to the obsidian pressed against my coat. My goals were larger now.

“Five days,” I answered. That of course was a half truth. Everything I said was a half truth now.

“Why are you fighting with a mare that you barely know? What is there to fight about?” he asked before shaking his head and sighing once again.

“As I understand it, she, she has a blithe disregard of what she’s done, the acts she’s committed. There is no penitence. When I try to correct her, to improve her understanding of events she becomes irate,” I said to him. I was the picture of consternation, I couldn’t tell him how I knew these things.

“Alright, and you know how a person who’s done terrible things should act?” the doctor asked me again.

“Doctor, I apologize for bringing conflict into your town. I’ll be sure not to provoke her-”

“No, there are underlying issues there, Permittivity. But tell me what she’s done. And if you’re worried about the information being used to throw you back in the desert… It won’t happen, I won’t let it happen.” He had cut me off, but he was apologetic about it.
The best way to get someone to believe you in some other regard is to be candid in a trivial matter.

“She’s from an order of warriors. They use their might to enslave the Arabians, and with the smallest hint of rebellion, her order will demolish buildings and kill innocents that happen to be near the rebels. ‘Collateral damage’, these rangers call it. Icepick has the blood of may on her hooves. I could never endure warriors who wouldn’t acknowledge their own acts.” My words fell from my mouth, a torrent that wouldn’t abate. When it was said and done, I merely watched as his mind tried for an angle that would open my ears to his peaceable way of thinking.

“I see. Have you ever thought that she just displays her remorse differently than you? I myself try to make up for every hurt I’ve caused. Anyway, I don’t have that much time to talk right now, but you can find me here later tonight if you want someone who can listen. I can also cook. Just one question. Did you get those wounds recently?”

Did he just offer a dinner to me? Evaluate later.

“Around two months ago. Unlike her, I’ve fought fairly,” I paused. “Thank you Doctor, my life has been trying in that time.” Under my clothing the talisman grew colder. Dramatically colder. Without a thought I removed it from my clothing, letting it freely hang while Rosetta nodded at me.

“Obsidian, I’ve seen it once in person. Did someone give that to you?” the doctor asked.

“Yes, it was a gift.” I let it fall back under my clothing. “Doctor, I imagine you are going to broach the subject of our conflict to Icepick as well. When you do, just bear in mind, she can be a joy. As merry as any choir. Don’t let it fool you, she’s as empty inside as I am. She’s just better at hiding it, to others and herself. I’ve known her long enough to understand that.” My words curled my lips, his wisp of a smile died. His cross glance told me that he was one of those ponies that are convinced the world can be made better without blood and pain. “In any case, even if you have nothing to drink, I would like to talk to another honed mind.”

His eyes flashed in confusion. If he was going to offer a meal, then I would be damned not to accept. Flawed or not, he seemed genuine, and at that point, I would take any kind of genuine. Honesty by association. Sure.

“I-Uh, I’ve got a bottle of rum. Does drinking make you less gloomy?”

“Stranger things have happened.” Our eyes caught. I chuckled heartily.

The door opened and a burly stallion wearing a sun bleached hat glanced around the room before stopping on Rosetta. “Copper’s done with the mare, you can send him in.”

“Alright, thank you,” Rosetta said.

“Well, I take it that’s my queue,” I said as I pulled myself from the bed.

Icepick strode through the door, her head was lower than usual. Interrogation for her must have been tiresome.

For me, it was another opportunity to polish my cover story.

---===*==---

“She told us she was a soldier. Her getting separated from her unit, and making her way here makes a kind of sense. So, what are you?” Copper Jacket asked, he was standing beside the door, sitting in a dirty holster, the mouth grip of an automatic barely in view.

“I’ve served as a soldier, but I left as an explorer. It was random chance, and your radio transmissions that led us here.” I told him earnestly enough.

“Your friend told me that you’re from the western coast of Sall’han? What do plan on doing while you’re here?” The stallion asked with a straight face.

“She’s correct, we’re a modest place of about fifty thousand souls. Personally, I plan on writing notes, and getting to know your people. A book about your society and a viable trade corridor would be worth a great deal, so I intend to capitalize upon that.” I finished with a smile, the stallion was mulling over my words.

“I-I, I’m not really paid enough to deal with this kind of thing. Just, stay out of trouble, I’ll try to get a hold of somepony from the assembly. You don’t have money, do you?” The stallion said with exasperation.

“I have some precious metals, coins that the Arabians use as currency.” Or, at the very least, the higher ranking guards carried some.

“That, that’ll spend good.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “I just never really expected ponies to come ambling from down south. I gotta say though, you seem more…” His lips pursed as he searched for a word that was more diplomatic. This stallion was diplomatic, and had a mind to be friendly.

“Adjusted,” I said with a smile. “Our societies are cut from similar cloth. You marry, you have individual enterprise, and ultimately, a way of life very different than the Rangers.”

“That’s a lot of hearsay, but, I’ll pass it along.” Copper told me with a pursed expression. He was chewing on his lip. “Anyway, you’re welcome to stay for a few days, seeing as the next train to Paradise isn’t due to arrive for another three. Just, if anything changes talk to me. I’m not hard to find.” The stallion stood up, as did I.

“Would there happen to be boarding, an inn or a tavern?” I asked as one of his deputy at the door opened it and spoke to Icepick and Rosetta.

“Just head down the street, it’s the Leaky Spittoon,” Copper said before motioning to his deputy. “About that set of equipment, if you want to keep it closer to the town we have some empty storage containers out near the railroad tracks. Ask one of the ponies out there, they’ll get you some chains and locks worth something.” He was at the door by now, and his deputy had already gone back into the unmitigated heat.

“You wouldn’t approve of Icepick stomping around town in her exoskeleton?” I asked him with certainty.

“That’s a way of putting it,” Copper said as he stepped out. Half a second later and the door was shut once again. I turned around, and Icepick came from the bed filled room. Her eyes were half shut, she was tired. Then again, I was too. Rosetta came in and shut the door behind him.

“You both need to talk,” he said before pointing to a door to the right of the entrance. “I’ve got some chairs in the kitchen, if you two want to sit with me.”

“We were given free enough rein,” I said before walking to the door. Rosetta beamed.

“Tell me you have something stronger than water back there,” Icepick said before coming towards me.

Rosetta laughed at that. “He asked the same thing, Icepick.”

I grasped the door with a tendril of magic before walking into a much cooler room, with a small table sitting a few feet from some rough hewn cupboards and a stove. My legs seemed to move of their own volition. The greatest quality of the chairs were that they had four legs, and a backing. But, I sat in one all the same. And so did Icepick, I saw from the corner of my eye. Rosetta trotted in and closed the door, a single pane of glass in the ceiling lit the room.

“This room is insulated pretty well. I spent some money getting fiberglass put in the walls,” he said, before walking to the front of the table, before leaning over it and giving me a critical look. “In my professional opinion, you’re gonna have a nice bruise.”

“He deserves a broken jaw,” Icepick said.

I turned to face her. “You need-” I started and was cut off by Rosetta.

“You two are so similar it hurts.” My eyes narrowed as I searched his face for answers. “You’re both soldiers, I could see it from the moment I saw you come through the door. I’ve never seen a soldier like a hospital.”

“So what, he’s shot ponies, I’ve shot ponies. That’s a ‘bond’ half of Sall’han shares,” Icepick said.

“You’re both alone,” Rosetta said simply.
“I left my home by choice, she did not, and she airs the grievance every other moment.” My voice rang true, I was here to find the Destroyer, to build a legacy. And she only cared about doing the right thing for her people. But he couldn’t know that, I ought to not know that. This damnable mare, if I didn’t know what she was I could be amicable.
“You’re both fighting because you’re afraid: afraid of the unknown, afraid of fucking up, and most of all, afraid of getting attached. I’ve helped enough ponies to see it in you both, you’ve lost people, so you’ve decided that pushing them away will keep you from dealing with their loss.” He broke his speech and sighed. “The last thing that I could tell right away, you’re both courageous. It takes a certain kind of pony to cross a desert, foes or not. If you can’t see the common ground, then you’re both fucked. That’s my professional opinion, not telling you to tie the knot or sing songs together. I mean, it couldn’t hurt.” He gave us a smile, before pulling two ceramic cups out and filling them from a jug sitting on the table.
Icepick and I, sat in silence for a moment. He just sat the cups before us. The water was down my throat very fast. “I just really don’t want the first Equestrian visitors to Copper Springs, or Paradise to kill each other.”
“I shouldn’t have kicked you,” she said softly, between more conservative sips of her water.
“I shouldn’t have provoked you,” I said as I poured more of the water into my cup.

“I mean, shit, you’re not the worst stallion, even if you’re a shit, at least you can use your brain,” she said before placing her cup on the table. I took that as a hint and poured her some more. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I never could accuse you of cowardice.” As I stopped, Rosetta pulled walked out from behind the table.

“I’m going to grab something, try not to get any fluids on my chairs,” he said with a straight face, and an accusatory tone.

“Fuck you, Doc,” Icepick told him with levity. The only response she got was a wry laugh. He had disappeared into what looked like a bedroom. I let my eyes fall on hers.
She was a pretty mare, I had known her before I had known her. Why though? I was a believer in reason, in causality. All the magic I had ever studied could be understood through those lenses. Here though, I knew just enough to colour my perceptions, to poison my view.

“New beginnings?” I asked softly. Her mouth shifted, her eyes widened.

“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” Icepick said. “Just, if I’m wrong about something, don’t be a dick about it, I’ll try not to push you.”

“You know, he forgot something similar about us-” I told her rhetorically, and was just about to finish my piece.

“They’re nice ponies, and we aren’t,” she finished for me. I laughed, but it wasn’t in anger or to provoke. It was honest laughter. Binding laughter. “I’m still gonna remember that you like my ass.” I just looked away, damn this mare.

“You probably get wet from hearing my accent,” I retorted. She couldn’t meet my eyes for a second. When she looked back: there was denial in her eyes, but her muzzle was caught in that half smile a person makes when an embarrassing truth has been revealed. “It’s alright, it’s only a genetic imperative.”

“I’m gonna hit you again, just telling you in advance,” she said before giving my shoulder the lightest of taps with a foreleg. “Besides, it’d be equally true for you.”

“I never said it wasn’t,” I responded. Now I was smiling too. What are we doing now, flirting?

The door swung open, and Rosetta came back out, sans the doctor’s coat. He trotted up to us, taking in the expressions on our faces. I saw the object floating in front of him. Rosetta came to rest in front of us.

“There we go, two attractive ponies realizing the other has feelings,” he said to us. I let my blank expression come to the fore. “Anyway, here’s a little gift from my people, to both of yours. Good luck with your mission, Paladin. And here’s hoping your notes survive the journey back, Permittivity.” Rosetta dropped the bottle on the table in front of us. It wasn’t rum, it was two dark for that.

“So, if anyone asks why I’m annihilated, I can say it was doctor’s orders?” Icepick asked, missing not a single beat.

“Just try, try, not to cause an international incident? Promise?” He pleaded with her, letting the bottle back into his grip and lifting it up over the table.

“I’m going to operate under the assumption that whatever room I board in, is outside of your jurisdiction.” I said to him.

“I don’t think a place can be an embassy without a flag,” Icepick spit out. The both of us tried our best not to seem surprised. “I’m starting to think that you both think I’m ignorant.”

“No, I’ve just been under the impression you had no exposure to ideas that were anathema to your leaders’ guiding ideology,” I said in response.

Icepick gave both of us a wide eyed look before issuing a shaky chuckle. “I mean, both of you have monogamous relationships as your normal. And I know that they exist, it’s just that they aren’t really a thing where I come from.”

“Our way of organising society has it’s ups and downs too, fuck if I don’t know ponies that wouldn’t be happier living your way,” Rosetta said before letting the bottle rest. “Please, just relax and recuperate you two. Celestia knows you need it.”

My mouth twitched involuntarily. This stallion was kind, he means you no harm, other than possibly wanting to be intimate.

“Thank you Doctor, now I believe we need to find lodging.” I said neutrally, intended or not. He was a Celestian.

“It’s been good, feel free to stop by. If I’m not busy, then I’m good for a conversation.” His words fell on my numbed ears, as I slid the bottle into my saddlebags.

“Will do,” Icepick said.

And within minutes we were out in the dusty streets, but I had coin, and I knew where to go. Things were easy, even as Icepick and I fell into a silence more companionable than usual. We had a lot to mull over, a fair part of it stemming from the pony walking beside us… Still, it was better than sand without end… Or a room slowly filling with poison…

Strange Bedfellows: Part One (X)

Author's Note

Uh, sorry about the time it took to get here. This probably my favourite chapter I've written so far. If you wanna read it with better formatting, I'll throw the link down right here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SVjT6ucH41lZeeZkZtQKRCA4jW3knTvKWgq3yDmzp8M/edit
Well, I hope y'all enjoy, feel free to give me your thoughts.

Strange Bedfellows: Part One (X)

Inside Out (X):

I jammed the key in the lock and turned the handle with my leg. As soon as I felt the door give, I slammed my body into it. I didn’t stop when the door flew outward and smacked against the wall. My eyes fell on what was sitting in the center of the room. A bed! A real fucking bed! With a practiced shrug I let my saddlebags fall to the floor. My legs were already in the process of throwing me onto the thing…
“I’m tired as well, but I would remove my soiled garments before contacting the sheets,” Permittivity said to me as he trotted in behind me. I hated when he was right.

“Fuckin’ unzip me then,” I said as I looked over my shoulder at him. Of course he got flustered by that, the same stallion that had felt up corpses for coins. I turned around and found the zipper on my chest. “Just take over for me,” I said as I drug the zipper down to my stomach. These fucking zippers.

“For the record, you asked for this,” Perm mumbled out before dragging my zipper over my body and all the way past my tail in one clean motion. I let pulled my legs out one by one before letting the whole thing fall to the floor. “Is there a second zipper on there?”

“Yeah, it helps you hook up to parts of the armour,” I let out, my eyes falling halfway to the floor. How did this stallion make things that Rangers knew when they’re foals so awkward to explain? “And before you ask, yes I can take it off myself. It’s just a lot of work.”

“I understand,” he said softly as he magicked his saddlebags off to a tidy corner, before undressing and folding his clothes with that soft blue magic. My legs turned me around and threw me on the bed without asking me. The moment my ass felt the springs give under me, I felt ready to sleep. My body rolled onto my side, letting my head stay pointed at him. He was fiddling with something in his bags. “This room was cheaper than the other one, but I’m sure that-”

“It’s fine, like I said before, we basically slept in the same bed for the last week anyway.” I told him lazily, not that I really cared. I didn’t want to sleep alone. Didn’t want to be alone. With him here, I knew who he was, who he said he was, and he distracted me from the truth. I was in the middle of fucking nowhere, a nigh impassable desert away from everyone I had ever known and I had no idea how to get back. Or how to get them to listen to-

“Enjoy,” he had hopped into the luna sized bed. I flipped over, and there he was, laying on his side, looking at me with a friendly expression. He had one of our water skins, filled from one of their springs, floating in his magic. I grabbed it with my hoof. It tasted great, for the two seconds before it was empty.

“Rationing sucks ass,” I spat out. The empty skin fell on the sheets. His magic picked it up and dropped it on top of his bags. “You’re a show off.”

“That’s hypocrisy, I heard you talking to those ponies at the rail depot about your armour,” Perm took that moment to snicker, even after I gave him a dirty look. I gave him a lot of dirty looks, now that I think about it. “My favourite was when you told them that it was powered by a…”

I let him try to remember. Just lying on my side, my head cocked up to face his. “Spark Reactor,” as I helped him, my eyes just happened to roll.

“- that could explode like a small balefire bomb. And then they backed away.”

“That’s not showing off, that’s communicating a danger,” I finished as I watched him pull the bottle Rosetta gave us into view. Us. When had that happened?

“Altruism was your only motivation, clearly. Nevermind the stallions fawning over the enigmatic mare in the odd armour. That was purely coincidental,” he said as he grasped the bottle in his magic and twisted the cap off with his teeth. At least he could open a bottle the right way.

“Hey, I kept them from seeing you stuff that rifle into your bag!” I defended myself as I got the first whiff coming off of that bottle.
“And I applaud you for that,” Permittivity said before taking a good pull from the bottle. His face lit up as he let it drop down his throat. He looked at me before falling onto his back, his head lying on a pillow. I picked myself up before taking the bottle from him. Whatever, I deserved a fucking drink. He watched me closely as I took a swig. Fuck, this shit was strong. I let him take the bottle again in his magic.
“That doctor guy is alright,” I said as I felt the booze start to play with the food in my stomach. He laughed, before leaning back against the headboard. Perm took the time to drink a bit more. I looked down at him, his legs were splayed. And just under his stomach was his sheath. I swear I only stared for a second. He cleared his throat. “I-I’m just gonna lay down.” Without thinking about it, my body kinda dropped onto the bed. For a second I just enjoyed the feeling of cloth under my body before rolling again.
“I’ll make us even,” Perm said before looking straight at my tits. He stared for a moment, before meeting my eyes again.
“Ha, ha,” I retorted. “You’re so funny, Perm.”
“I really am,” he said with a snicker between each word. “Give it time my dear.”
“Sure,” I said before accepting the bottle from him again. It was weird drinking in this position, but I was talented… And he was a unicorn.
We just laid there for a few minutes. He took a loud breath after another swig before looking at me again.
“You ever thought about what you would be if you weren’t a Ranger?”
“Kind of. When I was a filly I wished I had born before the war. But, there isn’t anything other than being a Ranger. So I grew up.”
“That isn’t an answer,” he said calmly. His eyes flashed wistful for a moment.
“Royal Guard,” I told him. “What the fuck would you be?”
“Professor,” he said to me. “Why a Royal Guard? You’ve seen enough violence to abhor it.”
“Of course you’d like to prattle on to a captive audience. And yes, I hate hurting ponies, I’m not a monster, at least not one like that. It’s just, serving the princesses… Helping ponies in better days. Having a home-” I stopped myself and took the bottle from him.
“A home. I had one once. Twice actually. One was ripped away from me-” He started his spiel but I cut him off. He was so much better when he just shut up. I could look at him as a stallion, not a liar.
“But you fucked up the other one?” Permittivity grimaced as I spoke. He closed up again, and began to pull away. He had gotten onto his back, eyes glued to the ceiling. “We’re friends or something right, sorry,” I said as I placed the bottle on the shaky looking nightstand.
“To be frank with you, I’ve had friends before, family before, and lovers before. I’ve never had an ‘Icepick’ before.” I laughed as he said that.
“I mean, you aren’t exactly the stallion of my dreams…” I said quietly before chuckling to myself. This fucking lying piece of- Perm’s muzzle messed up as he concentrated on my words.
“You’re intoxicated, Icepick,” he said before snorting.
“Shut up,” I said before rolling onto my back. The warmth was hitting me pretty hard now. Every movement I made felt different. “I’m gonna sleep now,” I said with a yawn. It’d been awhile since the last time I’d gotten plastered. And the last time I’d gotten plastered, I’d woken up with a strange buck… But I knew this stallion. I knew that he was trouble, just, not what kind of trouble he was. If I hadn’t known-
“That’s a good idea,” he said before chuckling to himself in a low voice. “Goodnight,” he said quietly. He always slept on his side, this time his head was pointed at mine, and his legs were sticking out to fill the space between us. I stayed as I was for a long time, until, out of nowhere I felt like I was falling for a second. Something in me must have messed up, but it was nice, free fall. I didn’t know what I was doing, other than sleeping in bed with a stallion I barely knew… But I at least knew him better than the rest of these ponies. They all just milled about and talked about wanting things, and ways to get things. They only cared about themselves, and maybe their families. Where was their sense of purpose, of being a part of something greater?
At least Perm seemed driven by something. He might tell ponies he’s in it for the money, but that was a lie. If it was something good, then maybe I could get it out of him. That didn’t feel likely. Maybe it was just that no-one leaves their place, their life, and everything they ever knew easily. Something has to push you. I rolled over on my side, and in the greys of low light I made out his head laying softly on the pillow. He looked like he was already out. I wondered what he was dreaming about? Maybe sex, from what I had seen, he seemed to like stallions, and mares. The image of a big rough stallion plowing him was a nice one… Fuck, why did booze make me horny! I mean, he wasn’t exactly bad looking. His voice was nice, when he wasn’t being annoying. And, he knew how to fight…
Why couldn’t he just be a Ranger, why couldn’t I have met him some other place, some other time? I bit my lip as I felt the last of the booze get into my bloodstream. Did he want me? He likes my looks, I caught him staring a couple times, and he basically told me. I don’t know if that means he wants to fuck- Like everything else, he had to make things complicated and confusing.

He didn’t just want to fuck?!

I yawned and felt my muscles lose some tension, damnit, I should’ve gotten a massage out of him before he passed out. The thought of him standing over me, kneading my shoulders and back with his forehooves and magic… Well, maybe tomorrow night. I looked at him again, he’d go for that. Or maybe that pink doctor, he was worth a look…

---===*===---

“So, you don’t have any new bruises, and Permittivity hasn’t come in with any broken bones-” Rosetta said to me from across the table. He was cooking something, but he was keeping it a secret. “So, the night went well, I take it.”

“I-I mean, yeah, we just kinda drank, talked, and passed the fuck out.” I said to him while I looked away and messed with my mane.

“That’s not quite what I expected, but better than it could have gone. I do have a question though, you said that you’ve only known him for about a week, but you seem like you know each better than that,” Rosetta finished before beaming at me.

“I don’t know about him. Look, do you want the truth? Even if it makes no fucking sense?” I asked him, knowing what he would want. And did it really matter? I needed to tell someone anyway, the weirdness of it had been eating at me for a long time.

“You slept with him didn’t you?” He asked with a smile.

“No!” I pretty much yelled back. “I-I mean, I think we both thought about it-” I also thought about fucking you too, but- “No, it’s weirder than that.” Rosetta turned around to stir something on the stove.

“I’m listening,” he said with a snort.

“So, about a year ago, maybe a year and a half, I had a dream where I walking around a snowy city. All around me were ponies, speaking weird equestrian. There were thousands of them, the city didn’t seem to end. Off in the distance were big towers that looked like they were made of glass. Black glass.” I paused as I recalled that first dream. I had woken up that morning with a splitting headache. And after I tried explaining why it was weird to Ironsight, she had laughed it off.

“That’s a pretty dream. But, how does it involve Permittivity?” He gave me the same look that she had.

“I was getting to that. So, dreams normally skip from bit to bit, no transitions,” he turned to nod at me. I started up again, reassured. “It wasn’t like that, I remember looking from the skyline to the street, and making every step. It was really cold, cold enough that I had a cloth over my mouth to keep the air from hitting my lungs directly. But I didn’t shiver or react to it, the ache and slow loss of sensation felt normal to me. Eventually I made to an apartment building, before throwing open the door with magic… I was a unicorn. That woke me out of it, I figured out I was dreaming.” I took a breath and watched his face, his lips turned as he thought over what I had said.

“That’s pretty impressive, I’ve never had a lucid dream. To be honest though, so far it just sounds like a really weird dream. But dreams are known to be weird. I have to ask, were you reading something about the Crystal Empire before this happened?”

“The Crystal Empire?”

“It was a city of magical crystal in old Equestria, well, north of it. If I remember correctly, it was surrounded by ice and snow. It was also lost for a thousand years, but it reappeared a few years before the war began.” He told me with curiosity in his voice. It was cute. Damn, he was helping me figure this shit out. I smiled at him.

“In some of the other dreams ponies talked about ‘the Empire’ and the ‘Old City’... That doesn’t make any sense though, if it was in old Equestria how could he-” I looked at him, and he just motioned for me to keep going. “Right. When I went up the stairs I spoke for the first time, my voice was his.”

“What?” he said as I hesitated. He was going to think I was mental, and that would mean the only person who didn’t think I had a screw loose would be Permittivity- I leaned over the counter just like Rosetta, before laying my forehooves over his. He looked at me with surprise.
“Promise me?” I asked quietly, he nodded and slipped one of his forehooves out from under mine and place it over mine. “Okay- it was Permittivity’s voice.” I waited for him to say something. He stayed silent, his eyes unfocused and his head dipping towards the floor. “Yeah. Just try to imagine having those dreams for a year, before the person you were dreaming as just fucking appears.”
“So, you’re telling me that he’s from the Crystal Empire, and is lying about it?” He asked as he chewed his lip.
“Listen, I really can’t prove it too you, and I don’t know what the Crystal Empire is or how he got here, but he’s not from here, and I have a hard time believing that he’s lying for a good reason.” As I said this his face lit up. He got about halfway to a smile before it began to reverse.
“You could prove it to me.” Rosetta said quietly.
“How?” I yelled at him. He flinched for a second, before taking a deep breath.
“Have you ever heard of memory magic?”
“Isn’t that something the Ministry of Morale developed?” What was he talking about, why couldn’t stallions just tell things straight?
“Yes. It allows me to go through a ponies memories and view them. So, if you remember these dreams as well as you say, then I could find them-”
“I’ll do it, Doc,” I cut him off and smiled at him as he stared at me in surprise.
“It’s invasive as hell, and it takes hours - and you’ll be unconscious by necessity-”
“Then put me fucking under, I’ve needed to get this off my chest for way too long. And, we might be piece together… Perm,” I told him straight up, anything to figure out what that buck was here for. Because, I- the Rangers still needed him.
“I’ll be looking around in there, I don’t know what I’ll see. This magic was originally created to interrogate prisoners.” It won’t be nice, and this stallion will know all about me. Remember things I have a hard time remembering. I couldn’t see the difference between this and fighting for the Rangers.
“I understand, but I now that I know about this, I’m not gonna stop asking you about it. I thought I was going mental, and that was before this stallion appeared just in time to pull my ass out of the fire.” Before he made me want to kiss him and strangle him at the same time. Just so we’re clear, choking isn’t a sex thing for me.
“Alright,” Rosetta said before smiling at me. “It’ll take some time, and you’ll experience the memories with me, from what I’ve read it will reinforce them.”
“I don’t really see a downside, now are we gonna eat?” My eyes moved over to his pot, which was boiling over. I gave a laugh as I watched him dart over to it.
“That’s your food too!” He huffed at me, even as I saw him smile. I could tell that this was something he liked to do. I mean, he’d invited me and Perm over separately, and together before we left last night.
“Been wondering something: why’d you invite us over?” I asked him just as he got the food under control.
“You both seemed like you needed help, but more than that, you’re both so strange. I don’t even know where to start with you two, at least I didn’t before you told me about these dreams. That only adds to the mystery. Frankly though, I haven’t come across two cavalier ponies that will do anything for a cause, except come to terms with their own feelings. So, I want to help you both-”
“Help me? What part of me needs help?” I chirped to him, trying to keep the feelings in my gut from spilling out. He sighed and faced me again.
“I can’t answer that question, only you can.” I glared at him for a moment, before realizing that he probably wasn’t wrong.
“Between fighting terrorists, and trying to figure out who the fuck Perm is, I haven’t really had the time to diagnose myself.” I said to him. He didn’t say anything, he just looked me in the eyes. My muscles were tensing up under my skin, and my voice was getting closer and closer to yelling. I took stock as I watched him turn around to start dishing out the food. He waved his tail a little as he filled two bowls, and I could just just make out him humming something.
“There’s always going to be something nagging at you, something that’s ‘more’ important. So, are you ever really going to put yourself first?” His voice was still, I had basically came into house and started yelling at him after he suggested that I could use some help. But he didn’t raise his voice to match mine.
“Once Tegarni is gone, once things are figured out, and once things are peaceful again, I’ll be at peace too.” He put the bowl in front of me, and hoofed me a spoon. It was still steaming.
“Hmm,” he hummed as he walked around the island and climbed the seat beside mine. “So, how far back would I have to dig into your memories to find the peace you’re talking about?” He smiled softly, before looking back at his soup.
I groaned before sticking the spoon into the soup. “I, I serve a purpose. I keep the Rangers going. I’ve taken bullets and worse for them. I know that the people in charge aren’t perfect, no group is. I may not agree with everything we do, but what else do I have?” I turned my head to look at him. “We’re the only ones keeping Equestria alive. I don’t need to be happy all the time, no one can be. So I’m fine.”
“I can respect finding meaning in your cause. I do it too, I heal ponies. Hell, I just like making them happy. But, I have dreams of my own, not world changing dreams, pony sized ones. So, the question is, do you have them? Do you repress them because of-”
“Fuck, why do you care? Why are you interested in what I want?” I asked him, with more of that anger leaking out. “How about this: I’ve always dreamed of eating soup cooked by a nice stallion, there, I’m now completely fulfilled and can die happy. Now, can we talk about something else before you going rooting around in my brain?”
He looked down quietly, before picking up his spoon and eating robotically. Rosetta glanced at me every couple of seconds, fleeting glances. I did the same.

When I finished, he sat up and picked up both of our bowls in his magic. I saw him start towards the kitchen again. I had to do something, he didn’t deserve this. Without thinking I got to my hooves as he watched me with a tired look on his face, before I pressed a hoof gently into his side.

“I-I don’t like what you ask, or how you do it, but I appreciate you trying. It just isn’t - what did that mare I talked to this morning call it - right for a first date.” I choked out, while biting my own lip. When I looked at him again, whatever nervousness I had was outdone by this stallion’s face going cherry red. Which is kinda impressive given he had a pink coat. Maybe I didn’t understand-

“Uh, I-I thought you were involved with-” He started and stopped as I pulled myself closer.

“No. I mean, yes, but-”

“-It’s complicated. You learned the word date from a mare in town?” He asked as he tried keep from laughing, but I could see his lips begin to curl, as much he would deny it.

“No, we have dates in the Rangers, gotta have a time for forms and timetables,” I told him as he shifted closer, one of his forelegs moving over my back. My body seemed to push gently against his. “And I’ve been on a date before, it’s just the way she talked about them, as like a game of Stalliongrad Roulette, but instead of dying, you have a tiny chance to meet your special-” He couldn’t help but burst out laughing, even after I stopped talking.

“Who did you talk to? I have to know,” Rosetta asked me with a smile.

“Lemondrop, I think? Blonde mane? Cream coat?” I answered as I leaned into him, my muzzle growing closer and closer to his.

“That sounds about right,” he said as he closed the distance. I had a second to think about what I was doing. I had been wanting a stallion for weeks, and this one seemed right, but what would this stallion want from me? Then, Rosetta pressed his muzzle against mine, and my train of thought was gone. Obliterated. Like three kilos of plastic explosive under a timber bridge obliterated. I gently ran my foreleg on his back as he stayed still and closed his eyes. I could feel his heart beating like he just taken a hit of jet. After a few seconds I pulled away and watched him open his eyes, his cheeks more flushed than any stallion I had ever seen.

“You wanna keep going?” I said as I let my hoof drop to his withers, giving his cutiemark a grope. He let out a half yelp, half moan at that, before lowering his head and running his muzzle against my neck. This was what I had wanted for weeks, I had a stallion alone, and he was into it. My nethers were starting to heat up as I watched him pull his head up again. I could feel my lips pull into a sly half smile, and my eyes half closed.

“Yes,” he said as he put his muzzle next to mine. I took that without reservations, and pushed my mouth against his, my tongue looking to push his lips out of the way. Right before he pushed me back. “But, not right now,” Rosetta told me as he untangled himself from me. I heard him let out a sigh, as I waited for him to explain himself. He had better have a good- “I just met you, and well, I don’t just want to jump into sex.”

I got back to my hooves and stood tall, before looking at him. “O-okay?”

“Don’t get me wrong, right now I’m hanging halfway out of my sheath.” He put a hoof to my shoulder and looked me right in the eyes. “I just, I get attached to people when I fuck. I’m not asking for a commitment, or telling you that I don’t want to sleep with a beautiful mare, I just- we barely know each other. At least you know Perm.” He finished with a sigh.

I just stood there for a minute trying to process what this stallion was telling me. He only wanted to fuck ponies that he felt attached to? What kind of attachment is he looking for? “I-okay?” Rosetta frowned.

“If I’m going to dig into your memories, I’ll give you something too. First mare I ever got with, she was wonderful, fun to be around, she made me feel complete in ways that nothing else can. But, when she needed to leave, she never even looked back. I loved her. She didn’t love me back-” There was a hitch in his breath as he spoke, and I couldn’t let him keep going.

“I think I know what you’re getting at. That pony that makes you feel better, that little pickup you get around them. When they don’t feel it, and your chest starts to feel like you’ve got a brick on it. I guess the feeling isn’t unique to me…” I said to him as I felt a word connect to its meaning.

“You understand,” He said before turning around and angling himself towards his bedroom. He was holding himself a little lower than he was before. “So, you still want me to confirm your prophetic dreams?”

“I wouldn’t call them that,” I said as I took a step towards him.

“He would,” he threw back. I snorted as I thought about that stallion. The one that just happened to be in my dreams. I wondered if he would have turned me down. Would I turn him down?
I followed Rose inside as he flipped on a light with his magic. The room had a bed that could fit two ponies if they didn’t mind touching, a dresser with a mirror attached to the top and a trunk sitting at the front of the bed. A single window with a thick pane of glass was cracked open. Rosetta turned to me before walking over to the bed and sitting down neatly on it. He smiled nervously and spread his legs out just enough for them not to fall asleep. “The actual magic is pretty complicated, but I’m basically going to contact your forehead with my horn. After a few seconds you should fall into a trance as you experience what I choose to view.”

“Okay-but, if you start perving on me after turning me down, I’m gonna be confused, horny, and angry. In that order.” I said with a stern expression before shifting to a smile as I sat down in front of him and made myself comfortable.

“Oh it’s kinda like rewinding a holomovie, so if that happens, well-” I just smiled at him.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Rosetta said before leaning over and touching his horn to my head.

“Uh, nothing’s-” I started to say, just as I saw a burst of light from his horn.

<-=======ooO Ooo=======->

The sun was burning brightly, but it hung low on the horizon, barely above the buildings. The buildings that remained standing. My head dipped towards the ground. The snow that built up on the sidewalk was littered with debris and darkened by ash. Around me ponies went about their business, trotting frantically, their eyes drawn to the clocks they wore on their legs. I merely stood there for what must have been a long time, watching them, even as the winds stole heat from me. Eventually, I drew a deep breath and started towards a large building on the outskirts of what must have been a city.

Various ponies garbed in layers of clothing passed into and out of the building. The front of the building seemed to be supported by dark columns of granite shaped to look similar to crystal. The entrance opened into a large rectangular room heated by a number of hearths that burned in the corners. To the left and the right were separate hallways, and if I continued straight on a poorly lit service corridor awaited me. But, I barely seemed to notice any of it. I came to a stop in center of the room. My eyes scanning for a specific pony. Whenever I happened to stare at a pony that I wasn’t looking for starred back, I just stared them down until they looked away.
“You’re late,” a pony said to him from the rightmost hallway.

“The train did not arrive on schedule,” I said to the pony as soon as I made eye contact with them.

“A shame, though not unexpected given the war.” The pony speaking was a tan stallion with eyes that looked familiar. He looked to be about thirty or so, and was stocky stallion who spoke with the same accent that I did. “But we all make sacrifices, now don’t we?” I felt my horn flow and the scarf I was wearing over my mouth was pulled down to my neck. The other stallion’s eyes widened as I did that.
“Some more than others,” I told him before pausing to watch his reaction. “When did you receive the letter?” I asked him quietly,
“I did not. I was telephoned by the authorities.” The stallion frowned. “I’ll lead you to the director’s office. Petunia and Bullion are waiting along with the lawyer and the wi-”
“I understand,” I spoke tersely. “How have you gotten along?” I asked him as he began to walk, he looked a little annoyed at me cutting him off.
“For the longest time I had to assuage my clients about the course of the war, and the necessity of the taxes imposed on them. I thought that the war was lost when the initial offensive failed to secure Canterlot and the colonies ended hostilities with the Celestians proper. But after that weapon was used on the front, you wouldn’t believe what that did for the futures market. And for someone who deals largely in industrial concerns it was a windfall. I just wish we knew more about it!” As this stallion spoke my face twisted into a grimace. I didn’t know what was going on- This stallion was making money from a war? Maybe? All I knew was, I was inside Perm, and this other stallion was getting giddy about some weapon being used. To make things worse he had the same ‘accent’ as Perm, but thicker.
“It’s good that you’re doing well financially out of… this,” I spoke slowly, and my steps got slower.
“I realize that you’ve been through a great deal Permittivity.” He paused, as they came to a closed door with the lights on inside. I heard him sigh loudly. Before he turned his head to face mine. He placed a hoof on my shoulder. “They would want you to be happy.”
I brushed his hoof off and jerked the door open with my horn. The inside was dully lit with bulbs that made as heat as they did light. It seemed almost intentional, this place needed every bit of warmth that it could get. The ponies under the lights were startled by the door swinging open, and my entrance. Inside were another four ponies, standing around two pedestals set at barrel height, three stallions and one mare. Two of them wore big hats on their heads. The mare got over her surprise the fastest, she narrowed her eyes and curled her lips before forcing a smile as the stallion beside her cleared his throat. From behind me I heard the stallion close the door and stand to the right of me.
“It’s good to see you again, Permittivity,” the stallion said. He was wearing some fancy looking clothing, along with that big hat. Together it reminded me of a picture of Canterlot I had seen in book years ago. “We last met at the reception. If it weren’t for the war, I’d have thought you were making yourself scarce.” The stallion walked around the pedestal to get to me. He extended a forehoof. I hesitated before extending mine. The stallion grasped mine and yanked me forward as he shook my hoof. And maybe I didn’t understand all the customs at play, but I could tell a shit eating grin when I saw one. “But now that Principal brought you here, as much as I would love for you to regale us with tales from the front…”
“Yet, time is of the essence. We must bury the dead from this war, in hopes that we shan’t need bury another. So when is the funeral scheduled?” My eyes scanned each of their eyes quickly. The stallion who was dressed more plainly seemed to be pained, eyes turning downwards as they met mine.
“Brother, I’ve missed your words. Always well spoken, I have no doubt you fought gallantly, nevermind your wounds.” The mare, who I assumed was Petunia, said to the group before joining her stallion beside Perm. I felt my ears flick as Principal said something under his breath.
“I only did what many others did,” I drew in a breath, holding it as I scanned the faces of these ponies.
“Of course,” Bullion said to me.
“So, the will was a simple split of assets. And because of the way it happened no possessions survived. The building was reduced to rubble.” The pony with the big hat who hadn’t said anything yet told the assembled room. “If you would like to look at the will, I have a copy on my person. All told the inheritance will be two thousand-three hundred and four marks a piece. I have cheques prepared for each of you.”
“Thank you, Tort,” the stallion who wasn’t wearing a big hat, and who seemed to be the most resigned took his turn to speak. “Their wills didn’t speak about of a specific funeral arrangement. Our usual package is a closed casket affair in the cemetery outside of the city. All told it would be five-hundred-”
“That isn’t what they wanted. That will was written recently? Perhaps beginning of the war, based off of a standard template?” I asked ‘Tort’ while biting my lip.
“Many of the wills I deal with were completed during the war, and yes, they filled it out a bit of a perfunctory fashion.-”
“I know that they wanted to be buried at Sheifstein.” I said with my lips pressed together.
“That wasn’t corroborated in any fashion,” Tort said to me.
“I’ve been there with them, and so has Principal,” I said flatly. Tort didn’t react. I felt that hoof on my shoulder once again.
“That is true, I’m glad that you brought that to our attention.” Principal said to me, he had a sad smile written across his muzzle. “Back when grandmother was buried. That was thirteen-fourteen years ago…”
“I don’t remember that,” Petunia said with her voice heightened a bit, and with just the smallest hint of sneer. I bit the inside of my cheek when I saw that.
“You wouldn’t, you were lodged with our uncle during that.” I spoke the words, and they sounded almost warm.
“Alright, I’ve dealt with that Cemetery, though it’s been several years. I can get them buried there. Though it will cost a fair bit more, if memory serves,” the Funeral director told me, his muzzle kinda turning up at the thought of the additional work. I saw Bullion turn to Petunia and begin whispering with her. In the silence, Perm let his eyes drift towards the tarp covered platform. His vision lost focus, and he bit his lip again. I couldn’t hear his thoughts…
I tried to make sense of all of this, I had gotten better at understanding their accents, but it all of it was overwhelming. Alien. In the Rangers, you got a service, and your ashes were scattered over the ocean, along with a plaque and a mention in the records. I didn’t really see the point of this, but I had read that back in old Equestria they did this too. They did a lot of weird things though, planting flowers, and using precious metals for currency. So much of it seemed wasteful, maybe I just didn’t understand. Maybe I could ask Permittivity or Rosetta about it. As weird as Perm was, and as much as he lied about things, he could probably help me understand what Old Equestria was like. What was missing in the Rangers…

“I appreciate the thought, Permittivity, but my wife and I are under the weather financially,” Bullion said in that apologetic tone. “We can contribute money for the standard burial. More would jeopardise our livelihood.” I said nothing to this stallion. Though my neck started turning to face Principal before stopping.
“How much would the total be for a burial there? Estimate if you need to.”
“It’s a many years, but it should come out to about three thousand marks, give or take,” The director said to Principal and I.
“So, divided evenly, it would be a thousand marks from each of us,” Principal did the math in his head, math everypony in room did too, but he said it flatly, and with a glance towards his sister.
“It’s what they would have wanted,” I said quietly. “You can contribute however much you’re comfortable with. I’ll contribute the rest.” There was that glare from his sister again, only showing for half a second.
“Petunia, I know that you have a foal on the way. Permittivity and I can split the cost,” the stallion said with a smile, a knowing one. Gregarious. Even it seemed a lot less real when he was looking at her.
I smiled. It wasn’t forced. There was some other talk, and it took a long time. But eventually things were done. Most of the inheritance would be going towards the burial. The two of them were going to buried side by side. And there would be a single headstone; Petunia wanted to get a pony sized one. Permittivity fought against that idea. “They wouldn’t have wanted an ostentatious marker.” It was weird to hear the passion in his voice. Even if I didn’t couldn’t quite visualize it all.
When the meeting business was done, Perm didn’t stay after to chat with anyone. He just left the building quietly. His eyes opened in surprise when Principal rushed out out the door. He didn’t seem like kinda pony to be in a rush, it didn’t really suit him. Maybe it was because of seeing his brother look a little bit ruffled, with his hat sitting a little bit agar on his head, that I stopped in my tracks.

The moment that Principal had seen Perm stop, he resumed his stately movement. “Just going to leave me to the wolves like that, little brother?” he asked to me from about a ponies length away.

“If anyone can handle them, it would be you,” Permittivity said to him. His voice was drained. The sun was almost down, it sat lower in the sky than I had ever seen it before. The colours themselves seemed greyed out. The ash from the smokestacks must have gotten high enough to-

“Permittivity, would you care to have a drink with me?” Principal asked, his voice lowered as well. A just of wind came through as he spoke. It bit through his barding, I could feel my skin prickling once again.

“I’m not smaller than you Principal, we’ve been over this many a time,” I said with a bit of indignation. Perm’s eyes traced over his face, questioning the slight smile that his words had given him.

“Yes, yes, I remember. If you add the horn to your total height then yes we are the same height,” the stallion said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had this discussion.”

I said nothing for a moment. Eyes locked in place, but not focused either. The street lights switched on seemed to bring me back to myself. It must have been three or four seconds. “I’m not sure if the stallion I am now, I don’t know if anyone would want to…” The words died in my mouth. Jaw hanging half way open as I began to shiver.
“You’re my brother, nothing can change that.” The larger stallion closed the distance before bumping his shoulder into mine. “Come hither,” he spoke to me, before starting off in that gait that of his. Then it dawned on me why that seemed familiar, it was the same walk Elder Waters had. I wanted to blink, but I wasn’t in control here.
Permittivity trod after him his hooves dragging with every step. Somehow without having seen my face I knew that I had circles under my eyes. I had walked for a while, and that meeting had taken hours. But I hadn’t felt a pang of hunger yet. Had Perm been eating? I wondered to myself as I seemed to feel his body for the first time. Just talking to ponies had worn him out, his head hung low even as his brother began to hum a tune. The sun disappeared first from the cover of buildings, and then from the horizon itself. He looked back at me frequently, and slowed himself each time he realized I had fallen behind. Perm pushed himself harder on weakened legs each time he did that. I think the tinge of pity on the stallion’s face made him do that. All the same, the same weight in his body drug him down again each time.
Eventually we made it too a squat wooden and brick building with light and the smell of stale beer spilling out from the spaces between the door and the frame.
I spotted an aged sign hanging above the door. The Gilded Net it read, with rough image of a fishing net painted in yellowish gold. I mean, it got the point across to a mostly desert dwelling filly…
Principal opened the door for me, and himself before striding in and hanging his hat on a rack next to the door. At first glance this place could’ve probably seated thirty ponies, at six or seven little tables. But the place was about half full, with the aged bar, smelling of smoke and booze, holding up the ponies that were in here. Old fishing gear, mounted heads and other knickknacks and trophies were adorned the walls on top of peeling wall paper. A nicked wooden floor with a bit of gray snow, and the melt that came from it followed directly from the doorway to the bar. It barely reflected the greasy light coming from a furnace in the far corner. The rest of the light came from a hoof full of large bulbs spreading yellow light around the tavern.
“Two bitters, and whatever meal you’d feed an old friend,” Principal said loudly enough to be heard, but not to be any trouble to the other patrons. to the pony behind the bar, who in turn started pouring beer. The cook poked his head out from a door behind the bar and got a few words from the bar mare.
“Good to see you again Prince, been a while” the mare said with a laugh, one that was some of the other ponies. Perm’s ears flicked towards the noise, as he scanned the ponies near him. The shivering didn’t stop. Even if the room was pretty comfortable with that boiler in the back corner.
“I bought an old face with me, he needs to get him a taste of home,” Principal said back to her as he pulled himself into the nearest stool. I did the same.
My eyes settled on the bar mare as she walked over to us, pushing our beers over to us using her a foreleg. When she got them to us Principal took his up and sipped it a little before sitting it down again. Perm picked his up with a foreleg and pounded a third of it before pulling it away from his lips.
“Have we met before?” the mare asked Permittivity, her muzzle scrunched in thought. Perm said nothing as he felt the warm, bitter taste flow into his empty gut. He wouldn’t look away, but his face remained stony as he gnawed the inside of his mouth again. The skin above and below my muzzle started to itch after she said that. At the same time a deep ache came from my side. I knew the feeling of body knitting itself together, just not like this. Her eyes, their eyes, and the warmth in the room wracked my body with a shiver again. This was a deeper shake, like my muscle was trying to tear itself from my bones. I put my shaking hoof on the mug again and drank as she watched me with a resigned expression. “I don’t remember a shell shocked horn head drinking here before. Ehh, let me get you another one though.” His nostrils flared out slightly and his breath got hot when she said horn head to his face.
“This is my brother. He left for university years ago,” Principal said from my side. His firm hoof came to rest on my shoulder as he spoke. It helped with the shakes, even as those wounds called out to me all the same. I barely felt anything when I was meeting about the burial, my body was numb. Now all of Perm’s pain was flowing back into him. He didn’t even have the cold to get his mind off of it now. To get my mind off of it. I couldn’t hear his thoughts but his body echoed them; I’m not sure how I knew that but I did.
“My father must have ran the place back then,” she said quietly as she put another full glass in front of me. Perm took the hint. The rest of the first glass entered his stomach in first order.
“Permittivity, you haven’t even eaten yet?” Prince said to him with an edge of sternness spilling out.
“It hasn’t been my first priority.”
“Permittivity, I understand why you would feel this way. The war has touched us all,” he said this without moving his hoof. “They took something from us that can never be replaced, never. Regardless, Mother and Father would want you to carry on, they knew that their children could help build a future. And to be perfectly candid: when you left, I never expected you to return- that you survived the Celestians… When I heard that the war had ended, I forgot their end for the day. I was swept up in celebration because my brother had lived. I would see him breathing again, talk to him about inane things again. See him married someday. Perhaps get an in-law that I didn’t want to strike down with a street stone.” Perm cracked a smile at that, before picking up his mug again. “You living brightened me, Permittivity, and as long as know that you survived I can sleep at night.” Principal smiled and there was a twitch at the edge of his face. He was holding back tears. Perm had gotten started on that second mug as he listened to his loved one speak. When his brother stopped, Perm met his eyes.
“I’m a sorry substitute for them. That future is a mirage. You don’t know what I know. I saw things out there. We fought over hills that were more charnel house than Earth. Ponies falling into shell holes the size of this bar filled with shit and piss, leftover gas, and bloated bodies that couldn’t be pulled out.” Perm stopped for a moment. Across the bar some of the ponies had stopped to listen to him. I-He bit his cheek again before polishing off his beer. He didn’t stop, he was a train running downhill with no brakes. I could feel my own tears forming as Perm told these ponies about what he had been through. My own stomach churned as I felt my imagination fill with images of my friends turned to meat and trod upon by fellow Rangers. Of the smirking dick of a stallion that I knew living through this. I wanted to get out of here now. I wanted to breath hyperventilate as I thought about living those memories that he was recollecting for his brother. Fighting back the urge to wretch, I managed to not panic at the realization that if I stayed in here, if my own mind had dreamt of Perm’s waking nightmare and buried it… Rosetta would lead us both into it. There was so much I couldn’t know, things that Permittivity shouldn’t have known.
“As I huddled in shell holes and listened to dying ponies crying out from no-mare’s land, I thought to myself, ‘it couldn’t be worse.’ So, I and others fought and died; some of us making it through the hell that it was. A month ago I was with a friend on a quiet night, on a quiet section of the front. Regardless, he died when some Celestians snuck across to us. It nearly happened to me, Principal.” Perm stopped for a second, his body shaking again. By now the warmth of the beer had began spreading around him. It helped him, it helped me. Numbed and warm in a way we both knew was fake. He picked his story back up just as the food arrived. Some fried potatoes and boiled greens. Looked plain as hell. Still smelled delicious. The cook had taken to standing in the doorway and listening to Perm, the barmare looked away while smoking a hoof made cigarette. Her ears were still pointed towards Perm. Most of the other ponies had stopped speaking, heads turned towards him or looking down at the bar in silence. Between drinks of course, but even that was subdued…
“I remember drawing what I thought was my final breath. Yet I sit here with you, in a city that has felt the same pains. Maidenpool wears wounds from it just as raw as mine. There is no difference now. No-one is safe now. We’re all soldiers now, and just as unable to climb out of the shell holes now as I was then. I can see the doubt on your faces now. We’re not at war now, we won, we have the weapon.” Perm stopped for a moment. Principal looked on with worry as his brother talked about the end of the world. I - Perm was a liar, wherever the fuck he’s from it wasn’t anywhere near here. We had had our bombs dropped. He was worried about something that had happened to my ancestors. The Rangers in Old Equestria must’ve said the same things. Been through the same things. It must’ve fucked him up. Just the way his brother looked at him told me that. Knowing that the world was fucked-
“None of you are simple minded. We all know that the Celestians have always had a material advantage. It’s only a matter of time until they have the same weapon. And when that happens, any little incident, any miscalculation on the parts of either side would make this war look like a border skirmish… and this one was within spitting distance of armageddon.”
“Perm, they might have the weapons soon. But what can be done about it? What solution could anypony have for this problem? In light of this, all you can do is live the fullest life you can. At least until they have the weapon we should be safe. They wouldn’t dare touch us as long as we have them.” Permittivity snorted as his brother tried to comfort him.

“Perhaps the only thing to be done, is to wage that final war before they have the bomb. Burn their cities. Drive them across the ocean.” His eyes began to tear up at the prospect as a nerve was struck inside of him. “The maddening thing is, the only way we could save the future is to burn half the world. To turn right back into the fire. Back into hell-” Everypony watching him had gone from pitying him… to something else. Thousand yard stare, slight shakes, sneers, but from Principal it was a look of disappointment and fear.

“-Destroying millions of lives and changing everything, all in the hopes that the victors may survive. That’s what you’re talking about Permittivity. Somber’s war-” His brother spoke softly, his eyes were wide. His own stare now unfocused.
These weapons sounded like megaspells, they way these ponies were talking about them. And Perm was wanting to use them to against ponies who didn’t have them yet. To fight a war of annihilation. I wanted to hit him for even saying it outloud. At the same time, I understood. He was a wounded pony. I didn’t know what he felt for his parents, but I could understand a bit of what he had been through in that war. I tried to shudder as a thought surfaced. Was I any better? If I could wipe the Insurgents out, roll over them for a thousand years; would I let anything stop me? Just as I tried to shake that thought from my mind. Perm began to laugh, a laugh without any warmth, I felt a smile break across my muzzle. He must’ve looked unhinged.
“That story is a myth, there were was no sun goddess, no moon goddess. Somber merely led a war against the Diarchy to the south! Just a foal’s tale. Trust me when I say magic is nothing like that, ” He took another drink and looked down at his food. He picked up a spoon with his magic and ate a bite.
“Brother, I don’t know what to say.” Another bite. “These are the same stories that we were taught as foals, mother and father-” Perm looked him in the eyes. “-even if they aren’t as falsifiable as shards of pottery or whatever scraps of text survived the dark ages, they’re still parables. Somber destroyed the world that existed before him.”
“In the story, they were fighting to the death and one of them was willing to destroy the world to win. It was a war for survival, fought for every mortal pony. What was lost is a small price for the entire world. Even if there is a grain of truth to that myth. The end of the age of heroes for a world without eternal night, or eternal sun. Whatever the case, it’s all moot. There will be no war. No war until it’s too late.” Perm continued eating as his brother sat there shocked. It was like somepony had lit a flare right in front of his muzzle. After a moment or two, everypony who had been paying attention lost interest. Even if they didn’t seem to quite as cheery or calm as they had been at the start. But Principal had taken the time to drain his glass and motion for another…

<-=======ooO Ooo=======->

“-Happening,” I said without thinking. It felt really good to use my own vocal cords after that experience. My shook my entire body as I watched Rose open his eyes in front of me. His horn was still lightly touching me, and I could feel his breath against my muzzle. After I was pretty sure that I was in control of my body I took a moment to look outside his window. Pretty fucking dark outside.
“Wow,” Rose finally spoke up as he gave me a dumbfounded look. It didn’t really work for a smart stallion. He took a deep breath before shaking his head. “I have so many questions. But we can keep going through your dreams; you said you’ve been having these dreams for about a year?”
“Y-yeah,” I let out. I really didn’t want to go back in. The dreams had lost a lot of their colour. “When I dreamed that, I wasn’t able to think my own thoughts as it happened.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice. That had been claustrophobic, or paraly-
“You felt trapped?” He asked the question, but I could see in his face that it was rhetorical.
“Trapped is an understatement,” I responded. It was late, and whatever that was, it wasn’t sleep.
“It gets the easier the more that you do it. Some memories can actually be relaxing,” Rosetta said before letting out a yawn. Something told me that doing that spell was pretty exhausting. Though there was a glint in his eye as he told me about the good parts of the experience.
“Maybe for you, I mean I personally find rigging explosives up kinda relaxing. But I’m not sure if you’d ever enjoy it like I do.” I half glanced to my own flank as I told him that. Ponies are lucky, we know what we’re here to do pretty early in life. We have our whole lives to get better at it. It just happened that my destiny involved an explosion of shrapnel.
“That would explain your cutie mark,” his eyes glanced over at my flank. Not for the first time though.
“Yeah,” I said simply before looking him in his eyes. My hoof came to rest on his shoulder, something that we both linked to Perm’s brother right after I did it. “He’s a broken pony, I know the type. Hell, like you said, we’re the only ones that can really understand each other. But, I’m worried he’s hiding something. Something you build a set lie to protect isn’t usually good for the ponies you’re deceiving-”
“He’s grieving Icepick, for a lot of things. Things he’s only willing to hint at. As much as I want answers, I’m not gonna try to rip them out of him. I don’t feel like he’s an imminent threat to anyone else. Judging from the memory, I’d be more worried at an attempt at his own life.” He stopped speaking and looked down. The thought of Perm putting a bullet through his brain hurt. Even at his most annoying I wouldn’t want… that.
“I don’t know, Rose, when he talked about using that weapon he seemed a little threatening. You haven’t even seen him fight, Rose. He masks it with technique, but he enjoys it,” Rose’s muzzle barely moved as he listened to me. I could tell that his mind was already set.
“For a pony that just got out of a war and mourning like he is, attaching himself to the idea of another war isn’t surprising. I suspect the fighting is just him enjoying the feeling of adrenaline, of killing, it makes him feel something. Icepick, before anything else, he’s a hurting pony. Even if he’s elusive and his coping mechanisms are in no way healthy.” He stopped for a moment and moved a hoof through my mane. My head pressed into his hoof lightly, all by itself. I just stayed quiet and waited for him to finish. Sometimes that’s all a stallion wants to do.
“Icepick, if you can be brought back from the brink, then he should get a chance too. Frankly, if anypony can help him out, it’s you.” I blew into his face as he said that.
“Part of me wants to help him, that thinks he’s becoming less of an asshole, that’s getting attached to him. Another part knows that he’s hiding something bad. It figures that I’m just getting used to his assholeness, or he’s just acting nicer to get on my good side.”
Rosetta pulled himself closer and nuzzled against my neck as I- Just let my feelings out, spilling my guts like a fucking teenaged filly to her pillow.
“Underneath all that pain and grief, he’s basically a good stallion,” he said before pulling away and moving towards the pillowed end of this bed. With a pull his magic flipped up the sheets and he shimmied his body under them. “I would tell him the same about you. Now, before you ask, we’re both exhausted and this bed can fit two ponies easily.” I was way ahead of him, and was already halfway under the covers.
“Good stallion,” I told him as a yawn was pushing out of my chest. Rose puffed up at being called a good stallion. “Well, goodnight, Rose.”
“G-get some sleep Icepick,” Rosey said, his voice uncertain. How could a bit of flirting still make him nervous. Yet, he could stay professional in the face of a stallion saying balefire could save the world? Ehh, gotta roll with it, Icey. “You know, for the record, this bed could fit three ponies.” He just pretended not to hear me as he flicked off the remaining lights. Whatever, even in the dark I knew he was blushing.
I smiled at that thought. The kind stallion next to me, who had helped me, who had turned down a rut… It was nice being close to a pony I-

Trusted. For some reason.

Maybe I was just getting used to sleeping with a pony next to me. Maybe a part of me liked having stallions I had feelings for sleep with me-

“Wow I’m fucking tired!”

Was the last thought I remember before passing out.

End Of

Strange Bedfellows: Part One (X)

To Be Alone With You: Part Two (XI)

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Prophecies, Presumption & Pity (XII)

Prophecies, Presumption, And Pity (XII)

I jerked awake, and felt agony peppered over my body. The worst was a feeling that throbbed on the inside of my barrel, from the edge of my chest through to a place just behind my ribs. My eyes snapped open and I tried to yell. No sound came out, my lungs didn’t fill with much in the way of air. I noticed a red unicorn stood above me, in between gasps. His horn glowed, and his eyes were sallow. No- He wasn’t red, he was stained-
“Rose-” I managed to say. His eyes opened and his magic ceased.
“Save your strength,” he said firmly, before lighting his horn.
I tried to scream, and my legs jerked as he dug into a wound on my barrel. They were stopped by a pair of restraints. What was going on? My head turned and I saw the forms of ponies laid down on anything that could be found. Many were bandaged, many other looked to be in the process of expiring- The smell of antiseptic, blood and excrement hit me at once. I had been here before…
I retched, covering the ground near my head with the sparse contents of my stomach. Another piece of shrapnel was pulled from my body.
“Sorry,” Rosetta said to me, as I felt ever more lightheaded. There was a chill throughout my body, the only warmth came from the obsidian against my chest. It pulsed with my heartbeats. “I’m so sorry,” he said before pushing a needle into my body. The pain lessened. Time passed, and I laid there wondering if this is what I had wanted all along. Some far away part of myself wondered why I hadn’t expired already. I wasn’t sure how much blood I had lost, but it should have by right kept me unconscious. There had been no transfusion. That was what had saved me last time…
Someone stepped into the room. A tall stallion, kerosene flames reflecting off of his coat. He cleared his throat with a sharpened cough.
“Physician, will he live?” I remembered him. The person Icepick and I had failed to kill. That explained the restraints, he was the kind to take few chances with his own hide.
“I-I believe he’ll pull through,” Rosetta said to him. “The bullet travelled through without hitting any major organs. And I’ve retrieved most of the shrapnel. It’s just, he’s lost so much blood.”

I closed my eyes and lied as still as I could; the painkiller and the exsanguination helped in that regard. The sound of Tegarni’s voice almost made my breath hitch.

“This is a healing poultice, do you know how to use them?” Tegarni said after a few seconds with only the sounds of dying ponies filling the room.

“Healing magic in a bottle, they replace blood and mend tissue,” Rosetta replied, his voice undulating. “And are very rare.”

“I need him to live. He has questions to answer,” I heard him grasp something from a saddle bag. The soft ting of glass being set on the wooden floor followed. The door shut moments later. That stallion had always thought something was queer about my appearance. He was the most skeptical of my story. He had always seen me as an Equestrian, when most of them believed, rightly, that I wasn’t one of these centuries old colonizers.
“I got as much out as I could. I stitched the hole in your diaphragm back up, your abdominal cavity needed some work too. Drink this.” My stomach churned at the thought of something being added to it. And yet when he pressed it to my mouth and slowly poured it down my throat… It was ambrosia- I was having life poured into me. My lungs filled steadily, my wounds knit together and my veins felt more full.
And then it was over. I was better. It was as if I just had days of bedrest and a liter of blood back inside my body. “What happened after the shelling?”
“We surrendered- He saw that I’m a doctor, and told me to save your life-”

“Where’s Icepick?”

“I don’t know. She isn’t in the plaza, she isn’t in here. She’s gone.”

“Good-” I coughed up something warm. “I was worried she’d try to do something romantic, something stupid.” She could make it home. She could live. I was under no illusion that I would live past any convenience for Tegarni. Somehow I was okay with that. Whatever I had set out to do by running into this other world, I think I had accomplished it. I had solved at least one mystery, and fought with all of my being for other ponies. And I was certain I had found what I was sent here to find-

“Like the stunt you pulled?” he said dismissively as he made his way to the other side of the room.

“Yes,” I mouthed under my breath. The crawling at the edge of my vision had returned. “But I lived, again.” At that thought the obsidian pulsed harder. That chunk of glass might’ve made the difference… Once again, I wasn’t allowed to die. I was always living by the grace of someone else. As I laid there, listening to the anguished moans of wounded ponies, and breathing in the smell of those who were expired or close to expiring. I was no-one. Even if I succeeded in subjugating this world, I was just another cog in a game played by forces greater than myself. I could have that statue erected in my honour.

I could play along with the power ruling my home from the shadows, in a bid to protect them all through martial supremacy. That statue could be mine, I could be immortalized. Sombra’s obsidian alighted at that. It was as if there was a piece of that great figure embedded in the glass, pushing me that way, loaning me the strength and power I needed to carry out his orders-

“You aren’t from here, I know it, Tegarni knows it. Icepick told me, she was convinced she was going insane, having dreams through the eyes of a unicorn stallion living in a wildly different place. She thought they were signs of mental illness; visions reminding her of Equestria. The world she was taught to love, but that was always lost to her.” He spoke like anyone past the point of exhaustion did. Numbly and heedless of any consequence. The confidence of mere alcohol is nothing compared to shock of seeing the lives of people you knew and love die without any warning.

“I had no idea, I didn’t mean to make things harder for her,” I sighed and felt my lungs seize for the thousandth time that night.

“Why are you here? I know that you fought in a war, I know you have more magical ability than any unicorn I’ve ever seen. Why would you come here, and try to obscure your origin?” Rosetta asked me before turning back to the Arabian that was under his care. “Well, that’s another one gone.”

“I’m an explorer. I came here to learn about the lot of you, the Arabs, the Rangers and the ponies of Paradise Lost. I don’t want a war. But I fear one has already begun.” I felt my neck muscles lose their battle with gravity. The feeling of being at death’s door was becoming too familiar for comfort-

“Sure- You’re just a normal explorer pony. You just happen to be in the memories of a mare you had never met, and know how to drop bolts of lightning from the sky-” I felt the darkness at the edge of my vision close in once again.

---===*===---

I was awoken with a crash, I there were many Arabs around me. I was sprawled on the ground in a different building, one that had escaped the many ravages of the attack. They must’ve picked me up and dropped me on the ground.
“We meet again, Permittivity, if that is your name.” Tegarni pushed past the his guards to stand above me.
“It is my name, it would make sense to you if you had more than an elementary educat-” I felt the impact from his hoof against my visage. My mouth filled with warmth, I looked up at him after a second. This was going to be my death. He wouldn’t hesitate if he was riled up. I smiled.
“And where exactly did you get your education, I’ve never seen an Equestrian call lightning down from the cloudless sky,” Tegarni snarled at me. He ground his hoof into the ground. He was a physical beast, not a psychological one. There was only so much he could do to me.
“A fine institution, but nothing more than a standard school. I’m just a normal pony, I’m no more magical than you or him,” I said to a stallion standing beside him. My tongue was steeping in the blood, I had always liked the taste of iron. Maybe ferrous things have an attraction to me…
“Then how did you appear in a storage room filled with magical technology? Just tell us the truth, it’ll be less painful that way.” He licked his chops as he mouthed the words. This one was a sadist.
“I was testing equipment to make jumps between magical gateways, the gate misfired, and I was thrust into your midst. From then on I was a prisoner among you until I took the opportunity to escape.” The next strike from him broke skin on the surface of my face. Warmth crawled down my face in a viscous line, turning my burnt orange fur darker in the low light of the room.
“Gateways? You truly expect us to believe the jump between parallel planes of reality could be accomplished by accident?”
“Again, your lack of lateral thinking astounds me. If there is demonstrably more than one universe, one timeline, then the odds of there being an uncountably large number of parallel worlds is also likely. Moreover, if there are a nigh infinite number of them, then the minute odds of an accident become more likely to happen, in at least some instances. You just need to use your-” The next one stuck me in the chest. A solid kick to an area that had just been shot is horrifically painful, I doubled over, and threw up once more.

“You’re no mere technician. You fight like an animal, no-one other than a warrior or a psychopath will skewer a stallion with a length of rebar.” He looked down at me and my dry retching.

“You caught me, I was once a soldier. Corporal Permittivity, Serial Number 111-157-37. That doesn’t make my being in the wrong place at the wrong time any less likely. I’m not an oddity where I come from, we once had a war that would make your little war of liberation look like a tribal honour spat.” This time he didn’t strike me. Tegarni merely rubbed his chin with a hoof.

“That seemed genuine… For some reason I believe you just told me the truth. You spoke plainly, and it looked as if you had a weight lifted from you. Please tell me more, Permittivity was it, if you are indeed not of the Equestrian stock then tell me where your bloodline resides?” He was beside himself. What did it matter, really? There was the power of Sombra, and then there was the role the Destroyer was set to do. He was the Destroyer, he was going to burn and pillage the only ponies who could possibly hold the line against the Imperial army.

“I’m from the northern part of what you would call Equestria, there is no Equestria where I come from. There was a war between my home and the southern states. I was a conscript.”

“There was no war between the Zebra Empire and Equestria in your world?”

“There is no Zebra Empire, and Equestria is merely an ideal of national unification, but there skirmishes and naval conflict between the Celestians vis a vis the Zebrican Freehold.” He was growing ever more surprised as I spoke, I was giving him answers, answers he never expected, honest ones.

“What about Sall’han? Our home, is it free?” Tegarni softened, he was having a harder meeting my eyes. Bearing in mind, I was the injured one. Perhaps he was the more damaged one in his mind. The Destroyer had to be broken, an avatar of the most self-immolation of Equine-kind…

“No, it was taken centuries ago by principalities and kingdoms of the west coast of Equestria. Everyone there speaks Equestrian, a large part of the natives were affected by a plague brought by the colonizers. Millions died.”

“What? That’s-” He looked at me. My heart was pure in that moment. For that single second I understood him. This is why he would damn his people.

“A holocaust. One that wasn’t intentional, but one nonetheless,” I finished saying to silence. Everyone in the circle knew that this was a sacred thing to him, if not to them all. What was power if not the control over others’ lives? That was what I had been sent here to find. It was our mission here, to gain leverage over others. To dominate others, to further the great game. That was what happened here. This stallion desired power. To free his people. But it was still in the service of power. Power was what he wanted-

“Tegarni, sir, there’s been an assault on the perimeter, with a push towards our mortar crews!” A breathless stallion ran up to the circle and yelled this at the solemn commander.

“What? Is it Icepick?” He asked the stallion, who nodded affirmatively. “I’ll lead the counter attack. Crescent Moon is in charge of the garrison duty.Somepony put this stallion under guard in one of these buildings- Don’t let him expire.” I enjoyed being an afterthought. Granted, it was better than having my guts spilled. “Squads three through seven with me,” he barked after a second. The gunshots came closer again. I just hoped she wasn’t doing a suicide run. Or worse, trying to reach me-

“Yes, sir,” what appeared to the lower officers said in response. Many of them moved to follow Tegarni. Just before he left, he took the time to look me in the eyes and speak a single sentence to me.

“I hope you’ve said your goodbyes.”

And then he was gone. Only a fraction of his soldiers remained. One of them, somewhat smaller than the rest came up to me.
“We’re moving you to one of the interior buildings. Any sign of magic or resistance will be met with your death, or worse,” they said. Their voice must have been damaged, I swore it sounded feminine. I was surprised by this even as a pair of stallions hoisted me to my shackled hooves and began to follow me. Behind me were another set of stallions, each of them armed and ready to kill me. The walk was painful, whatever else had happened, I wasn’t going to in top shape without weeks of rest.

Or more of that healing magic. Something inside me craved it, to stop the pain, to be myself again. Perhaps enough of it could make me whole again-

I was kicked in the rear by a stallion. The building ahead of me beckoned. It was a small family home, perhaps three bedrooms. My hooves stepped me through the doorway. Inside was another set of stallion, and that shorter commander. They all looked at me with suspicion, eyeing my horn like it was an avatar of a destructive god. They were almost correct, I suspected. The horn was a false flag though, I was merely a stallion. My token from Sombra, that was the source of many things. Many unnatural things. Things to bend worlds and the ponies that lived within them…

“Do not think that we will let our guards down,” I heard Crescent Moon’s voice from across the room, as I came to rest on the wooden floor. Crescent Moon, under that garb was a mare.

“I would never expect that from a professional military, which you are,” I responded before falling onto my side. It was nigh impossible to sit on my rump while in fetters.

She motioned to the rest of the ponies around us. “A lot us are simply freedom fighters who learn on the battlefield.”

“If I may ask, are you from the research base, Oasis Station? Because you all speak Equestrian, and you’re in charge of the fighting force itself?”

“You’re out of your element asking these things-”

“You called yourselves freedom fighters earlier, but tell me this, where are the ponies who lived in this very house? What gives you the right to impinge upon these ponies lives?”

“I don’t have to answer you.” One of the stallions besides me moved to strike me for talking, she motioned him to stop. “You killed friends of mine, and Icepick has been a terror to Arabians for years. That’s all aside from intelligence you have in your head, intelligence that would mean the end of our fight.”

“You didn’t issue demands or give us a chance to give ourselves up. Your forces just attacked these ponies,” I had to ask her, she seemed less averse to this.

“It wasn’t my choice, and even if you aren’t an Equestrian – that much I believe – I think collateral damage to ponies is within the bounds of war, because this is a war for the very survival of our people. You told Tegarni that in your version of the world, Arabians were culled by a plague and are a minority within our own lands. If that isn’t reason enough to fight against the Rangers with every weapon we have, I don’t know if there is anything to do but fall upon our swords,” Crescent looked at me. In her muffled voice there was a pang of regret. She knew that this was at best a necessary evil. She reminded me of Icepick. Icepick would die for her people, but I don’t think she would ever be able to reveil in the suffering of innocents. Maybe there was a lesson here. Some common Equanity…

“Just don’t cause more pain to these ponies, that’s all I ask. I don’t know you; you’re an enemy, but you seem to have a conscience. It kills a person’s soul, to harm the innocent in pursuit of a goal, no matter how just.” My voice trailed off as I realized what I had been saying. I was a hypocrite. The medallion on my chest buzzed at that thought. A rush of magic flowed through it. My memory of that weapon to end all weapons came back to me, my memories of Maidenpool shelled half to splinters, and the mangled bodies of my parents before they were inturned. “No, no!” Startling everyone in the room with my exclamation was a terrible business. “Get it off of me, please!” I motioned with my magic and tried to pull the amulet out of my clothing. A gunshot was fired that travelled just a few centimeters off of my chest. My magic died as I felt more and more of those visions. The hospital, the trenches. A world set aflame by hundreds of those weapons-

“Are you mad?” Crescent asked me as I felt my skin crawl. This is what would happen again if I didn’t succeed. All of the ponies I had ever known would succumb to a death. There was no other way-

I opened my eyes as I felt a jerk from around my neck. Crescent Moon had wrapped a hoof around the necklace around my neck. She pulled it up and off of my body. My memories ceased playing, but I instantly felt weaker. Darkness swam at the edge of my vision again. Breathing became harder. I felt my muscles deaden.

“What is this?” Crescent Moon asked me as the obsidian hung loosely from her hoof.

“Don’t put it on,” I managed to say before consciousness left me.

---===*===---

I yelled when I felt the cold water splash over my face. My eyes darted around me. Crescent was standing above me, a cup lifted over my form, with her guards around her watching me intently.
“Enough sleeping, tell us what Icepick is planning. Now!” Crescent yelled at me.

“I have no idea. I would have assumed a banzai charge at the weakest point in your lines, but given your questioning, I would assume you’re worried about more than that. She isn’t captured or dead, is she?”

“No, she attacked our lines before running off to the east,” I nearly smiled that that. She could be a very dangerous mare.

“There’s nothing out there, only a few oil derricks to my mind,” I told her before thinking more clearly. “You should know this, there are ponies here that have spent more than a hoof-full of days in this village.” She left the room, leaving me with the guard stallions who were at this point in a state of semi-relaxation. Some of them smoked acrid tobacco, the same kind that the ponies of this town did, many others played games of dice while others merely sat there clutching their weapons, with a glassy look in their eyes. They had fought hard and well, but that didn’t mean they went without losses of friends and ponies they had known for their entire lives. I couldn’t speak their language, I knew little to nothing of their culture or their struggle… I knew this though. Perhaps Sombra had manipulated me in a number of ways, perhaps he had been subtly messing with my mind for a long time. But, the feelings of war, the hell it wreaks on a person… I hadn’t needed manipulation to remember my time at the front. Crescent trotted back in with purpose after a few minutes.

“You were right, there are a few oil derricks out there to the east. Icepick fled there, she’ll be caught soon enough,” I looked at her when she said this. Crescent Moon was probably correct. Tegarni was ruthless, and we were disarmed- I was quite literally in fetters.

“Will we stand trial? Or will it be summary executions? Will you lead many of these town’s ponies off in chains?” I asked in rapid succession, so much so that my lungs were trying to catch up with my words.

“If I have any say in it, you both will be tried and likely imprisoned. You were a guest among us before you escaped,” she said before shaking her head. “I don’t know about Tegarni though, he will given a chance to rectify a mistake he made years ago, a mistake that reminds me of your escape actually. Icepick was once captured in a raid by him, she was knocked unconscious by a grenade blast and captured. Days later, she broke out and killed half a dozen of us, she’s a monster–”

“Do you know what it’s like to be a prisoner? You’ve never been one before. You’ve never been on the edge of dying. You don’t know how it feels to be powerless,” I responded. This wasn't the whole story. I knew there was more here. Maybe I would have a chance to ask her about it, help her make peace. My eyes felt heavy, and moments later I felt a tear drip down the bridge of my nose.

“I don’t fear death, but I will regret it; I know now that I have things to atone for. I was given a chance to help someone heal, some divine purpose, if I were to believe in anything other than enchanted rock.” My eyes locked onto hers. Crescent Moon could hardly meet my eyes.

“As one warrior to another, I promise to protect the innocents as best I can. I’ll try to get a trial, or at least a chance to say goodbye to Icepick. She is the reason for your tears, is that true?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she began to say before we heard an earth shattering explosion. It shook the very foundation of the domicile. Every head in the room looked to the east, I was barely able to glean more than a flash of light from my position. Crescent looked around the room and said a command in Arabian. All the stallions armed, and steeled themselves. Moments later a secondary explosion rocked the room, and a peel of smoke began to drift into the air above the site of the derricks. My mind called back to a conversation I had had a day ago. There were more than just derricks there. There were thousands of barrels of oil stored there too.

A stallion ran into the room with a radio on his back. In his hooves was a crude telephone hoofset. He hoofed it to Crescent Moon, I knew in some part of my mind that the explosion was the best opportunity for me to escape. Not that it was a good one – there were still half a dozen stallions in here, armed and scared, which were not exactly a good combination for an escape.

I managed to pull myself into a sitting position though, bracing my back against the wall behind me. My eyes watched Crescent Moon as she listened to the telephone. Her expression went from worried to dour. The conversation continued and I tried to think if I could possible subdue the guards in the room or make a run for it. Magic wasn’t my forte, and I knew deep down that I had been borrowing a lot of my strength from that obsidian chunk.

“No!” I heard her say into the communication device before dropping it on the floor. She yelled in Arabic at the stallions around her. The stallion carrying the radio set it on the ground with hesitation, before leaving the room with the rest of them, marching out seemingly to try to make some kind of defensive action. As soon as they left the building she ran over to me, desperation written across her face.

“Destroy the radio, please?”

“What?” I asked suddenly. She must be going mad!

“Do it if you want the ponies here to live; we don’t have much time.” If this was a way for them to fake my escape as a way to kill me, well, I didn’t have much of a choice. My horn flared as I put enough charge through the radio to fry the most sensitive elements. I nearly passed out from the exertion, but when I reopened my eyes she was leaning over my legs, a key in her mouth.

Moon unbound my fetters as I tried to realize what was going on. If they wanted to shoot me why were they letting me go? Some kind of sporting chance in their honour code?

“What are you talking about? Do you want a reason to kill me?”

“Do you have a numbness in your skull? Tegarni is going to put this whole town to the sword for the defiance displayed by the oil workers and Icepick. Once he gets back here, the ponies he left under me will join him and follow his orders.”

“I don’t have much reason to trust you, but if you’re telling the truth I have to help.” I didn’t feel like I needed to add that if this was a ploy they could’ve killed me anyway. “Why the change of heart? Did you not realize that Tegarni was a monster until now?”

“We all make mistakes, Permittivity. I’m sure you’ve made your unfair share of them,” she said as she ducked undernearth my forelegs to undo my hind leg fetters. Maybe under other circumstances I would’ve found the position of her under me arousing. But, I didn’t really have the blood to spare. The Fetters fell from my legs and I came to my hooves. My legs were weak and my breathing was heavy, but I knew that I could keep going with the aid of adrenaline. I cast a glance to the open window, and all I could see was a cloud of acrid smoke billowing out from a fiery center.

“Alright, there should be a train stopped a few miles to the north of the town, hopefully you people haven’t noticed it yet,” I said to her. Hey eyes widened and she swore something.

“First she kills three quarters of our fighting men before running off into the desert with the workers, now you’re telling me you were implementing an evacuation plan?”

“If this is a ploy, I will boil your innards before I stop drawing breath,” I added resolutely. “The original plan is back on, then.” My voice wavered as I realized we had basically no ponies left to draw their attention.

“What is that plan?” Moon asked me, suddenly worried.

“We distract your soldiers, while the civilians run to the train. Now, things are more complicated though. I need you to tell your soldiers to go to stay away from the south, and to tell Rosetta–the Doctor–to get all the remaining ponies and run to the south.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to be the distraction.”

---===*===---

I found my guns and equipment lying in a pile in the next room over. This had been their general occupation building. It was roughly in the center of town, and spared by the violence. Now, as I searched through my bags, I realized that I was about to put myself in harms way once again. Maybe the only way I could ever live with myself is by dying for some other pony, some ideal. I was beginning to realize that if I didn’t risk my life for others… That was when I couldn’t live with myself.
“Found them,” I said under my breath as I popped open the hardened plastic. I floated two of the pills into my mouth before swallowing the rest of my water. The next few minutes consisted of me examining my equipment. Everything was intact, though I could see an exit and entry hole bored through my clothing. And then there was the mostly dried blood covering it all. It didn’t matter, maybe it would give me an edge, them seeing a stallion dressed in bloody rags and fighting like a demon.
I felt the stimulants begin to affect me shortly thereafter. My rifle still had a number of magazines, not surprising considering my late entry to the firefight. My magic racked the slide and chambered a round. There was no signal, I only hoped that a rough estimate of ten minutes would be enough time for her to order her fellow Arabians and get Rosetta marching.

---===*===---

I moved on legs that were steeled. I wasn’t sure when the plan was going to start. The question to my mind was this: did I want to try to ambush the surviving elements coming back from the oil explosion? Or did I want to start a firefight to the north western corner of the town?
The wound in my chest ached as I pulled around the corner of the building I had been sticking close to. I spotted a pair of Arabian stallions smoking and guarding a building. The closest one to me saw my form and barked a command when he saw the rifle levitating in my magic beside me. The three round burst from the rifle threw him to the ground, even as the stallion beside him bolted to the other side of the building. As I fell back around the corner and waited for him to return fire, I realized that if Tegarni and the survivors weren’t already going full steam ahead towards the town, they would be now. That was alright though. My magic rifled through my bag and found what it was looking for, lifting it up to my muzzle.. The pin was pulled a second later, and after cooking the high explosive for a moment I tossed it behind the other stallions cover.
My ears rang at the explosion, even from meters away. Splinters and shrapnel shot through the air. It may be that Icepick had the shrapnel cutiemark, but I could toss a bomb if I had to. I turned my head and looked at the house. The stairs were gone, and shrapnel and splinters peppered it and the surrounding buildings. In a moment a home was now marred, perhaps forever. On the bright side, if my ears were ringing from the bomb, everyone and their mother would’ve heard it too. The horrible thing was, all the most defensible buildings in this town were already gone.

I made a snap decision. I ran to the east. The hotel Icepick and I had stayed at was that direction. And it presented a fitting target; get there draw their attention, pop some shots off, and pray…

Good plan, Permittivity!

---===*===---

I had found a few sentries rushing towards my position, and with a bit of luck I was able to put them down. When I made it to the outer eastern perimeter of the village I was truly able to see what had been started by Icepick. A massive column of fire still spewed into the air, probably from an oil well itself set aflame. I knew sunrise wasn’t that far off, but in the mean time it cast a ghastly pale across the town. It didn’t need the help. The streets were empty and full of burned buildings, with cartridges and anything that hadn’t been nailed down from the multitude of homes destroyed. I had seen this before. I had been in the offensive into the northern Celestian lands. We had done this to them, it had been an orgy of violence and looting. I had seen enough of this. The ponies involved changed, the miniature changed. But the substance didn’t. Lives were ruined.
In the course of a few hours I had snuffed out half a dozen lives, and had had mine nearly snuffed out in turn.
My ruminations stopped when I spotted a pair of stallions staggering out from the east. They seemed to be trying to run, but they didn’t have it in them. Haggard and bleeding, I could make out the limping nature of their strides. My body pushed up against the little outbuilding I was huddled against. I raised my rifle before pushing the stock against my shoulder. They were perhaps two hundred meters away. The rifle rocked against my shoulders as I put several rounds into the closer one. My grip loosened as I watched the other stallion bend over his companion. I could only make out his movements as because of the fire burning brightly over the horizon. He rolled his friend over, and checked his breathing. He didn’t run, he just watched as his friend expired from the three or four bullets I had run through him.
I couldn’t watch any more of it. My legs carried me south, inside the outermost edges of the town. I hoped to find Tegarni. Him I could kill without remorse. That other stallion watching as the one pony he had hoped to escape the horror with died… I couldn’t kill him.
Minutes passed, and the deadness of the town that I had spent days examining was only more apparent. I hadn’t heard a single gunshot since then. Only the wind and my pounding heartbeat filled my ears. The uncertainty involved with all of this was eating at me. Obviously there hadn’t been a mass attack on my position, but then again, I hadn’t seen more than those two stallions coming from the east…
I heard the crack of the gunshot as it passed a few centimeters forward of my hoof. I spun around as a follow up shot peppered the air above me. Moments later I was pressed against a building as the shots stopped for the moment. I had been lucky to not be caught out in the absolute open, and luckier still to be fighting opponents that weren’t very drilled at marksmareship. They had been firing from the central square of the town. I was only a single stallion, therefore I could be flanked at any time.
I turned myself around and ran to the other side of the building, peeking around the corner I saw nothing. And so I bolted to the next corner. What I saw inside made my stomach churn. About half a dozen Arabians stood around near the barricade that had been the source of so much fighting. The tallest one stood in the center, unflinching as his subordinates aimed their guns at me. I ducked and primed a grenade with my magic as I waited for the inevitable gunshots.
They never came.
“Permittivity, you’ve made a mess of things,” I heard Tegarni’s voice cross the distance without any kind of strain or difficulty. “But please present yourself. You’ve proved yourself hard to harm, perhaps because of your learned skills, perhaps because of a peculiar piece of volcanic glass you were wearing.” Shit.

The guns weren’t aimed at me when I looked back at the circle. Sitting near Tegarni were a pair of ponies that I could recognize. Rosetta looked wounded and bloodied as he sat there stoically. Next to him sat a seemingly unharmed Crescent Moon. When she turned her head, I saw that she had a blackened eye socket. I don’t how they were captured, but some part of me was pleasantly surprised to see that there weren’t many Arabians left under Tegarni. And it was only two ponies left under them, hopefully the rest got away and were walking towards the train-

“No words for me, none for the Destroyer Of Equestrians? Or have you already given up trying to save their lives? Accepting things as beyond your control has never been your strong suit, but maybe you’ve gotten over it? The number of wonderful things this rock can tell a pony like me- Well, it can change the world. Not that I had no mechanisms to do that before now, but this certainly greases the wheels.” I stepped out into view. My teeth were grinding against one another as I held my rifle, my pistol, and a grenade in my magic.

“Oh, the suicidal hero! He shows his face. Well, I don’t know how you want this to end. There are six of us. And that armour won’t protect these two ponies.”

I had gotten close enough to speak to him comfortably.

“Palaver with me Tegarni. I know this won’t end well for either of us if it comes to blows, because I won’t make the mistake of not shooting you first a second time.”
“So we’re at an Impasse, but let me make an offer. Give yourself up to me. I treated you better than you’ve treated prisoners in the past. Give yourself up to me, and I’ll let these other little ponies go. Even the one who betrayed me,” Tegarni answered after a few seconds. I watched Rosetta’s eyes as Tegarni spoke. There were still fire in them. I knew that he was just as likely to shoot them the moment I disarmed as I was to send enough current through his smarmy form to give his grandchildren blisters. At this point, I think that they would have been content to give their own lives.
“They got away didn’t they, the townsponies,” I said to him. My magic was beginning to strain. Peels of sweat were beginning to run down my face. “If you hadn’t asked Crescent Moon to do that, you still would’ve succeeded, but your hatred and vulgarity led to your failure. Even if I die right now, and so do they, you’ve lost. Icepick knows where your base is. You’ll still lose. Only losers hurt those who are weaker than themselves. There is never a good reason to hurt others like that."
“I know what you came here to do. Now you are just afraid that someone else will have that power,” Tegarni looked at me before laughing. “You brought a god into a world bereft of them, the killer of gods himself, into a world that self-immolated-”
“Sure he did, and he’s also got a pair of wings under that body armour,” I heard a voice yell from behind Tegarni, up walked a number of armed and dirty ponies, and my knight in silver armour. “Now, I heard all of it, and I gotta say, your arithmetic is wrong. Between Permittivity, Me, Axis, and her ‘friends’, we got about twelve guns to your six. So, I’ve got a fair deal for you. You can let Rosetta and the other mare go… Keep your guns on them as you walk away… And we’ll let you leave. Mare’s honour. It’s the best deal you’re gonna get,” Icepick yelled through her armour speaker as the first peel of dawn began to break over the horizon, rapidly outshining the burning well.
“Icepick, my old friend,” Tegarni began, before seeing the light glinting off so many firearms aimed by irate ponies. “I will accept this for now. Just remember, our next meeting will end in blood.”
And so, with tension that would not be replicated for a long time, Tegarni and his surviving cohorts stalked off with their tails between their legs. A number of the oil ponies surrounding us trailed Tegarni ‘till he was far enough away we were sure he wouldn’t circle back. Icepick ran at me as soon as they cleared the nearest buildings. She tossed her helmet off as my legs buckled beneath me. I took a deep breath as I fell to my knees. The pills were wearing off.
“Perm!” she yelled at me before falling to her knees and holding me with her hydraulic gauntlets. “I-I thought you were fucking dead, so don’t you dare die on me now!” Her blue eyes were filled with tears as she tore off my helmet, letting it rest on the sand in the same manner as she had left her own.
“I-I don’t plan on dying,” I told her weakly. “I nearly did Icepick, but unfortunately we both have to live with that kiss-” Icepick cut me off by bending her head down and pressing her lips against mine. My own forelegs held onto her steel shoulders for support as I let my lips open. Her tongue followed instantly. I felt a warmth and comfort I had lacked for so long, something I had denied myself, something I hadn’t deserved for so long. My tongue tried to keep up with hers, but all it did was slide and play alongside hers. It was still nice. We broke apart a few seconds later. She was smiling and I spotted a tear or two going down her muzzle.
“You better not die on me. I plan on getting laid again sometime this decade-” Icepick stopped for a second as she heard a cough from the mare she had called Axis.
“Icepick, I think the stallion deserves a bit of a rest,” Axis, my saviour and newest acquaintance told her in a neutral tone.

“I loved that Icepick, I love that you saved us, and I love you, but I’m barely staying conscious right now,” I told her and her expression shifted.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking-” I laid a hoof on her cheek as I pulled myself back to my hooves, groaning and straining as my muscles fought back against me. I pecker her on the cheek before walking over to Moon and Rose. She had a glassy look in her eyes, the thousand yard stare. Rosetta looked between her and I, in much the same way.

“Permittivity, we did it,” he started before tears formed at the corner of his eyes. “They’re saved. We can go home-”

“Speak for yourself, Colonizer,” Crescent Moon interjected.

I couldn’t help but feel the same.

End Of Chapter Twelve (XII)

Prophecies, Presumption, And Pity.

Author's Note

Sorry it took so long guys. Things have been rough.

Homecoming (XIII)

“Who the fuck is she exactly?” Icepick asked after Crescent spoke.

“The mare that prevented a massacre,” Permittivity replied simply.

“Icepick please, she’s given up a lot to help us,” I told her as she stomped over to us, that other mare following from behind, a worried expression across her face.

“Rose, she attacked an innocent town.” Icepick seemed to seeth while putting a hoof around Permitivitty’s shoulders, keeping him standing.

“Yes, but you’ve done the same. Icepick, we know about the murderer who killed a dozen of us with her bare hooves. The one that leveled a tenement to get at a bombmaker. We know the stories about the wheat-maned killer. So, I ask you, please, don’t be a hypocrite. Let me live the rest of my life, content in the fact I prevented the outright slaughter of innocents.” Icepick snorted at Crescent's words before spitting in the dirt. Permittivity nuzzled into her neck before she went forward. I couldn’t hear what was said but I imagine it was some kind of plea.

Regardless they walked off to a nearby building, probably to find a place for him to rest. That left Moon and that other mare nearby.

“So the townsponies were able to get to the train?” I asked her, knowing the answer but just looking for someone less contentious to talk to.

“They’re probably speeding back to Paradise right now. So, I guess that leaves us waiting for the Rangers to come and pick us up,” the mare said with exhaustion evident in her voice.

“Are you hurt at all?” I asked her, trying to remember my duties as I felt my own eyes droop as the adrenaline started to wear off.

“No doctor, I just really need a bath and a day off. My name is Wellbore Axis, by the way,” she replied before extending a hoof towards me. I shook it and smiled.

“I take it you met Icepick earlier. She’s an interesting mare.” I looked back at Crescent Moon, the mare who had saved us.

“Yes, she is, if a little prejudiced. I think she had the right idea though, she’s probably gonna try to rustle up some breakfast.”

“Crescent Moon, we’re gonna follow Icepick and Perm, and try to find some breakfast; you’ll be safer in a group,” I said to her. She looked up at me, before sighing.

“I may as well get my last meal as a free mare,” Crescent responded and picked herself off of the shrapnel and cordite strewn battlefield.

Moon and I followed Axis as she tracked Icepick and Perm’s hoofsteps through the sand. I mostly kept my eyes on the tall mare, making sure she was alright. I liked to think that I could understand her, but I knew in my heart that my home would always be a train ride away.

Icepick had kicked the door open to the other bed and breakfast in the town. It hung limply off its hinges.

“Our story is that it was already like this, right?” Axis said,nudging my withers with her own lightly.

“I doubt the break in will be the highest of their priorities,” I flatly stated.

“Right, just trying to lighten the mood,” Axis said quietly. I didn’t like the somber tone to her voice.

“I appreciate the effort. These have just been the longest twelve hours of my life,” I forced a smile as she looked at me.

“I feel the same. I’ve had accidents, spooks. Had a drill nearly take my head off before... just never for this long. Made you all shaky, right?”

“Yes, having a gun pointed at my face made me shake a lot-”

“Can the both of you either enter or let me pass?” We both turned to see Moon standing behind us impatiently.

“Sure.”

“Yeah,” we both uttered before walking through the door and realizing that the power was still on. Some tables were turned over, a lot of the chairs had clothing left on them, and some food and drink were still left on the dozen or so tables in the eating and pub area. Icepick and Permittivity were nowhere to be found-.

“There is clearly an additional level to this building,” Crescent told us offhandedly as she nosed through the kitchen cabinets.

“Right,” I said with a yawn. Axis glanced at the Arabian mare trying to make breakfast.

“I’m gonna help her,” Axis said to me before I set off to find the stairs. Moments later I found Icepick and Permittivity behind the restrooms. I hadn’t ever stayed the night here, so it was odd exploring this part of my now empty town. Minutes passed as I tried all the myriad doors in the place. Finally, I came across a door that wasn’t fully shut at the end of the hall.

“You can sleep if you want, I’ll watch over you,” Icepick said lightly.

“I’m just on edge. I took some stimulants; nasty old habit of mine,” I heard Perm say to her, with a chuckle following his words.

“Just try not to take them for fun is all, I’ve seen what they can do to ponies,” Icepick responded gently. I cleared my throat and knocked on the door.

“May I come in? I’d like to check on Perm,” I asked through the door. A few seconds of silence passed before they spoke.

“That’s a good idea,” Icepick said to me through the door. “The door’s not even shut, we’re kinky like that,” she finished and I felt a flush come over my face. Some part of me thought that was absurd. I pushed the door open with my magic and spotted the two of them on the bed, both were stripped down and facing each other. Somehow I knew that moments before they both had their hooves wrapped around one another. Icepick just smiled and spread herself out on the bed, forelegs behind her head. “What’s up doc?”

“Uh, food is being cooked I think?” I made sure not to look at her exposed mound as I walked over to Perm’s side of the bed. It was strange being around these two when they were nude, because they always wore at least some clothing. Even at this time I realized that these two were comfortable around each other now in way they weren’t around others. However, the idea that they didn’t mind me being around them in their vulnerable state, it was pleasant.

“So, how do you feel? I don’t have much experience with healing magic and its effects,” I told Perm, to which he flipped over onto his back. Damnit his sheath was now in sight too.

“Like Tartarus. There’s a deep pain and an itch from the spot where it entered all the way to the exit point. I’m exhausted and waiting for the stimulants I took to wear off. After that, I hope to get ample bed rest for days as my body heals.”

“That’s unfortunate, even if your plan is a good one, ‘though I’d say a week or two of taking it easy would be even better,” I said as I looked over his form. The entry wound was healed over, the only sign of it being a complete lack of fur.

“I wish I had that leisure time. As soon as I can, we need to leave for Ramsgard. We think Tegarni is up to something, something big,” Permittivity said with a sigh before pushing himself onto his side. The patch of missing fur where I had stitched up the exit wound was larger than the entrance wound. Somehow the magic had sealed the wound and done something with the silk stitching. “But that’s for the future, after your armed forces investigate this place and take us back for an interrogation.” He stopped speaking as Icepick pulled herself closer to him, and wrapped a forehoof around his barrel. Her unshorn hoof drifted over his stomach and she looked at me.

“I know it’s odd how the healing magic works. I’ll only have the memories and perhaps some scar tissue on the inside of my barrel, though if I had more of the potion even that would be left as it was ante-injury.” His hoof drifted down to rest on Icepick’s as she pulled her body up against his more fully. Upon the simple white pillow, both of their heads rested. Her nose was lightly pressed into his wavy chocolate mane.“I just wish I had had some of that when I was injured in the past. I think that being without such obvious scars would have spared me some of the trauma.”

“But scars are sexy on stallions,” Icepick said before nuzzling into his neck. Permittivity was silent after that. His muzzle contorted as many emotions fought out inside of him at once. My time was done here, these two were happy as they could be beside one another. Not perfectly happy. There was no such thing. And I wasn’t one to contribute to their happiness in any case.

“She’s not wrong, you look like the wrong pony to mess with,” I said wistfully. “I mean, Icepick doesn’t need the help, that’s before knowing she’s the mare who torched a whole army.” I laughed at that. Neither of them did though. I had hoped I would be able to understand after this. I had tasted the adrenaline, had seen ponies die. But there was still a distance between them and I. Maybe it was some weight on their withers. Perhaps it was psychic damage that occurs when you consciously take a life. Whatever it was, I guess should have been happy that I didn’t have it.

“Rosetta, I’m glad that you helped Perm and I. More than that –you led the ponies here to safety,” Icepick told me after that moment of dwelling in my own head. “After this though, I’m not sure that you should follow us, we’re only going to hurt you.” There it was. I wasn’t cut out for the rough and tumble. That’s why I had moved out here, to prove that I could be a tough pony. I could be like my father.

“I concur; don’t feel obligated to see this through. If I were a sane stallion, I would’ve taken the first chance I had to hang up my guns, clearly that would have benefitted my health, if nothing else.” Perm said, ending with a dry chuckle.

“I-I, I want to see this through. I need to see the pony that put a gun to my head and ruined my town put down. He’s clearly a threat to everypony in all of Sall’han now.”

“He always was Rosetta. I may have been the only pony to see it for a long time, but he always has been. I mean, the public egomaniacal speeches are new, but that’s just an extension of his crazy, not a new form of it.” Icepick said before sniffing a bit. “Damn that smells good.”

“Indeed,” Permittivity added. “I just wonder what Tegarni meant when he said he had the ability to make the world turn.”

“I think they’re cooking pancakes and hashbrowns, that’s what this place serves-usually served,” I caught myself halfway through speaking. I had no idea what Tegarni wanted, but I wanted to stop him. He had killed this town, maybe not all the ponies in it, but he had made a happy enough place into a place that would be picked at by vultures.

“I know what you’re feeling Rosetta,” Permittivity said before resting a hoof on my withers.

“I do too,” Icepick added.

I just looked at his hoof. Maybe I did know what they knew now. The alien feeling of a place changed irrevocably. Not erased, no weapon could do that, just changed in the way only ponies can do. Not withered by entropy and time, not destroyed in a blink by a hurricane or an earthquake. No, the smell of cordite and evacuated bowels, of fire and screams, followed by ashes and quiet.

“This is war,” I said solemnly after a moment.

“Only a taste of war,” Permittivity stated, a hitch in his breath.

“We’ll do to them five times what was done here,” Icepick added. “But you don’t need to be there, you’re better than it.”

“We’ll see,” I said before leaving them.

---===*===---

“How was he?” Axis asked as I walked into the aroma filled kitchen.

“Exhausted,” I responded as I watched her swish around some potatoes in a pan.

“She wear him out that quickly?” Axis shot back with a crooked smile stretched across her muzzle.

“N-no, he was shot remember?” I stuttered back. My mind shifting to back to his sheath and her exposed marehood.

“That ain’t any fun. But yeah, I remember, she wouldn’t stop talking about it. Thinking back, it was probably because of him that she had the idea to blow the tanks and the rig,” Axis said with a look of mixed admiration and dismay on her face.

“She burned dozens of ponies alive because she thought her husband was dead?” Crescent Moon asked, incredulity dripping from her voice.

“Honey, that stallion isn’t her husband,” I looked at Moon’s muzzle as it twisted in shock. “They’re just really sweet on each other,” Axis finished as she dumped a bunch of potatoes onto a plate and flipped one of the pancakes over.

“They weren’t chosen by their families?” Crescent looked at Axis and I, and saw only the beginnings of a smile.

“Permittivity is an orphan, and Icepick never knew her mother, and her father could have been any one of the Rangers, I think,” I told her. She shook her head.

“That explains so much, no wonder they’re lost-” she said while watching Axis flip another pancake.

“They at least have each other, eh, I wish I had a stallion like that,” Axis interrupted her before adding, “Or a mare like that.” She laughed as both of us blanched. “Hey, when you’re stuck out in the fields with a bunch of filthy stallions all day, they rub off on you.”

“You’re depraved,” Crescent Moon said. “You’re also depraved.” She looked at me. “You’re all depraved and decadent.”

“Hey, I like giving ponies the benefit of the doubt, but you gotta concede that you can’t cast judgement till you’ve tried it,” Axis shot back while wiggling her flanks back and forth while raising her eyebrows.

“Don’t call other’s depraved for the little things, and Axis don’t tease her. She’s probably never had an environment for healthy sexual exploration,” I told both of them as I felt my stomach rumble.

“Fine. As an apology, here’s a plate o’food,” Axis said before lifting a plate of pancakes and hashbrowns into the air with her magic. She looked at me for a moment before I picked it up with my own magic.

“Now apologize to her,” I shot back as I set the plate on the counter. I knew that this was breaking all of the health codes. I couldn’t give less of a damn at this point though. Fringe benefits of societal breakdown. When the bullets fly, ponies care less about food poisoning.

“Aye-Aye Doc,” she said to me, adding a mock salute with her dirty spatula.

“Carry out,” I told her in a mock official voice. One that I had heard from Bajada one time when she was talking to a recruit she found in the street. I don’t think I did it any justice. Then again, I was using it for a dad joke.

“How many pancakes do you want Crescent?” I heard her ask as I took another bite. It wasn’t until I had food in front of me that I realized how ravenous I was. I had worked through the whole night, and I hadn’t slept for damn near forty hours. Not that the sleep I had had two nights ago was anything special. Somehow my memory magic had led me to replay Perm’s memories over and over again before I awoke. Maybe using my brain as a conduit to transmit memories changed it.

“-really, they’re made of flour, and you cover them in sugar and butter?” I heard Crescent asking Axis.

“Ayep,” Axis replied.

“And this is a breakfast, not a dessert?” Crescent shot back, curiosity and incredulity dripping from her voice.

“Yeah,” Axis told her quickly, before flipping the nearly done pancake. I looked at her before chuckling a little bit. Equines were still good, essentially. That was something that hadn’t been stripped from me.

“That doesn’t make any sense, it’s a dessert.”

“But it’s not,” Axis told her as before placing a pair of pancakes on a plate. “Here’s your dessert.” She snickered at the Arabian mare. Who in turn, just rolled her jade coloured eyes. Picking up my fork, I watched the tall mare settle against the counter. She must’ve rediscovered her hunger as well. I smiled as she dug into the rich food, my own pile of potatoes grew smaller all the while.

“So Rosetta, what part of Paradise are you from? I’m from dockside.” Axis’s voice was wrought with curiosity. Maybe it was the sheer familiarity of the question, something that was asked around this town all the time.

“I’m from stable side, my father was from dockside though,” I told her simply.

“So what brought you out here? I came out here for the work, obviously, says the filly with the wellbore cutie mark,” I looked at her for a moment.

“I came out here to be myself,” I told her simply. Her false nod was enough to tell me that warranted further explanation. “I knew that if I stayed in Paradise I would never reach my potential.”

“Alright, I believe you,” Axis said to me across the void of communication.

“You make a good pancake,” I told her simply. My stomach attested to the veracity of that statement.

“Thanks, my mom taught me well.” Axis told me simply. There was a smirk of pride on her muzzle.

“What do you mean by Stableside or Dockside?” Crescent asked inquisitively.

“Paradise was founded by two seperate bunkers; one was filled with personnel and sailors from the naval base, and the other was founded by the tourists and people living in the resort town. When they opened up, work was done to resettle the town and get it functioning again. Basically, dockside is the north side of the city, with most of the docks and maritime activity. A lot of those sailors grandchildren still work on the sea and run the desalinators, hence the name dockside,” I told her in as few words as I could.

“I guess it was naive to assume you were from a monolithic society,” Crescent said after a few seconds.

“Nah, we got the stable side softies like him, and the tough ponies like me,” Axis told her before flipping her own pancake onto it’s plate with practiced magic. I just rolled my eyes. She wasn’t quite wrong. Neither was she right.

“Yet you live harmoniously?” Crescent asked with renewed interest.

“Mostly, I mean, everyone over the age of eighteen elects representatives to the council. The council decides the budgets of the Rangers, the health service, and the corp of engineers.” My words struck her like a baton to the knee.

“You’re very different than your people to the south.” Crescent Moon looked away, out the narrow window and into the empty dining room. “You speak the same language, you look the same, you even bring the same technologies to bear on our land…”

“It’s freaky, I know. You’re just as weird to me as Icepick,” Axis told Crescent with a faint note of humour. I heard a growl from Crescent.

“Don’t compare me to her!” she yelled back. Her body tightened and she turned to face Axis.

“You wanna fucking go?” Axis replied, her own body squaring up to fight the other mare. “I’ve been fucking nice to you, so listen to me and get it through your warrior princess mind. You and her are both violent fucking mares, hell bent on being right with yourself. The only difference is the flag you wave and whether you’ve slept with no stallions, or a lot of them.” Crescent sneered in response. “No, I just made you a nice fucking breakfast, don’t ruin it by being sensitive to a few words.” Crescent and I stood there stunned when she finished and just went back to her food.

It was silent as we finished our food. I knew I wasn’t the only pony that had gone through a lot. Minutes passed as the silence continued, until I heard the sounds of other ponies walking in the door. I felt the urge to duck instantly, to hide. With a conscious effort I managed to not do that. To stand tall and to watch as some of the oil ponies came back in.

“We saw some trucks driving in from the north, they’re probably the Rangers,” one of them said to us before loudly sniffing the air. “You make breakfast without us?”

My eyes drifted downwards as I tuned out. We had saved the ponies, yet the town was gone. My thoughts wouldn’t stop circling that notion. Worse still, I would be asked to answer for what happened. I had been the one to talk to the strange ponies upstairs. I hadn’t realized what their appearance had foretold… Even they had been horribly surprised that someone else had crossed the desert. Maybe it was because none of us belonged here. We weren’t desert dwellers, Icepick came from green lands, Permittivity came from cold lands, and I was from a place that had been made green by our own hooves. They had made a journey that was thought impossible, or at the very least pointless.

Now we knew that those blank spots on the maps that we had left myopically unfilled had monsters in them. We had made the same mistakes as our ancestors had. Long ago they had made maps and filled in the unexplored areas with monsters and serpents, to explain why they couldn’t cross the deeper seas. Except, by crossing the sea, invading this other land and setting up shop, our much more recent ancestors had created those monsters. The image of Icepick firing her missile launcher into the bank filled my mind again. A dark thought crossed my mind: Arabians were just the closest threat in the sands beyond, and not even the most dangerous.

Someone tapped me on my withers, I looked over to see Axis giving me a curious expression. “You look you saw a ghost.”

“Only the ghosts of the past,” I told her as the rest of the oil ponies, shuffled in and began to make their own breakfast. I was sure that their pancakes would be inferior to Axis’.

“Yeah, you know what the cure to those are?” Axis watched from the corner of her eye as Crescent slid past her and made her way up the stairs. She probably didn’t want to around the armed rowdy oil ponies.

“Enlighten me?”

“Doing stuff in the now; the present isn’t dead. Set in stone. Whatever words you wanna use. Drinking, working, sleeping-” she pulled herself forward as she starting listing things, pausing as her muzzle ended up next to my ear. It twitched as I heard her take in a deep breath. “-Rutting.”

I balked and she watched me back up a pace while laughing softly. “Damn, Icepick was right,” Axis told me with that same loose grin on her face. Her imperfect teeth were framed by a boxy muzzle for a mare. Her emerald eyes made all of that work though. For the first time I really looked at this mare. She was beautiful through all the sweat and pain she had just endured. Just like a dockside mare, my mom would probably say.

“About what?” I managed to choke out as I felt energy and nervousness return to me for the first time in what felt like years.

“A few things. She’s wrong about a lot too… ” She stopped as everypony in the place heard the deep rumble of a large engine echo off the buildings down the street.

“I see,” I mumbled.

“You don’t know how much she talked about you two.”

“Us two?” I asked.

“You and funny accent,” Axis told me with what started as a laugh before falling to a more somber tone. “I’d be surprised if she didn’t jump his bones up there,” I flushed consciously as I remembered seeing them fully unclothed together up there. “You didn’t walk in on them did you?”

“No!” I paused and looked at the floor. She half smiled, half questioned me. “I’m like ninety-percent sure I didn’t.”

“Ninety?” Her eyes glowed at that, somehow making me squirm by thinking about those two attractive ponies going at it was the funniest thing ever to her.

“Neither of them look flustered, and I would’ve expected Permittivity to show some embarrassment,” I finished and stopped myself before I embarrassed myself with the defensive blubbering. I heard footsteps come around the corner, which I assumed were just the steps of the miners-

“Why would Perm be embarrassed?” Icepick asked me with a yawn.

“Uh,” my mind blanked, it really wasn’t any of my business.

“We were wondering if you jumped his bones up there,” Axis said in a deadpan tone. She looked at us with a confused expression for a moment, before looking at me intently.

“Honestly I’m a little pent up, and you didn’t help matters two nights ago, so the thought crossed my mind. But, he’s hurt and currently sleeping like a rock. Besides, I might just take things a little slower this time around, maybe act a little like the rest of you prudes-” She finished with a slight smile. There was a warmth sloughing off of her…

The stallion of her dreams had lived.

I would’ve just been the latest in a long line of rolls in the hay. I didn’t want that. Icepick was used to using ponies, and being used by them. But she could be better than her.

“Watch who you’re calling a prude! Us oil ponies invented Ponoleum Jelly,” Axis said with a smirk and flick of her tail.

“I’ll give you the benefit of the debauched,” Icepick replied with a smile and a nod towards the other mare. “Rosetta on the other hoof still blushes when giving mares examinations.”

“I was checking you for blisters and sunburns, and yet you kept talking about the cold steel of the speculum while smiling like a wolf! That isn’t a normal examination!” When I met both of their eyes, I realized I was fighting a battle that was already lost. I was the shy, cute stallion. No amount of frontier medicine or living like an ascetic would change that. Though some parts of me blanched at that thought, another wondered if it wasn’t a good thing in a way. It had almost certainly gotten me together with Bajada. Maybe it was time to make peace with it. Having been through a battle, and my entire life had been uprooted by the will of others. I was lucky to be alive, but to realize that I was refuge now… Well, it kinda taught you to not sweat the small stuff.

“I would’ve checked to see if she was in heat, personally,” Axis shot back. Icepick gave her an odd look.

“I have an implant, I don’t get those, and can’t really get knocked up.”

“Lucky mare, I have to take potions to not pop out a foal when I’m in heat,” Axis shrugged before looking back at Icepick with worry in her eyes. “It’s reversible right?”

“Of course, it wouldn’t make sense for the Rangers to sterilize themselves.”

“You only have them to keep the gene pool viable,” I said, piecing it all together.

“Keeping future Rangers from having fifth legs or missing muzzles is kinda the point, and worth it.” Icepick said before looking at the ponies cooking. “I did kinda come down here to eat.”

“I can help ya out, I’d like to show you that if even I can’t shoot worth a damn, I can at least flip flapjacks with the best of them,” Axis replied before motioning Icepick to go over to her.

Rangers seemed to think of things in a scarily pragmatic way. Everything was a means to facilitate the end.

The Resurrection.

They had a different name for it. Icepick had used a different one, the five year plans. The rebirth of industry, the renaissance of science and the repopulation of Equestrians. Those things in a vacuum were laudable goals. It takes a strange kind of pony to say that they would rather not have them. The possibilities swirled out before me. The idea of a military conquest seemed eminently plausible… Paradise wasn’t on a war footing, and we lacked their pre-war armaments, if Icepick’s power armour was anything to go by. Most of our old war material had been bent into plowshares long ago. Our military was a glorified police force compared to theirs. And if the rest of the rangers were anything like Icepick, we wouldn’t last a week, if they went after us today.

But, that would never be their plan. War kills too many, clearly, and they enjoyed the idea of rebuilding Equestria. A war against us would be a dire thing, to be avoided to by their leaders.

“Unification day,” I spoke out loud. I saw a number of the oil ponies look over to me. “I’m just thinking out loud. But I have a question for you all? Do you like the mare in the powered armour?”

“She did more than her fair share to help barbeque those fucking Arabs,” A large sunbaked stallion said to me.

“I mean, she led us out against the rest of those fucks, armour or not, that takes fucking guts,” another said.

“I know you did your part Doc, but you didn’t charge ponies with guns when your gun jammed,” came a voice in the back. I had had a gun pointed at my head many times, but I guess these ponies didn’t believe that required as much valour.

“Would it surprise you all to know that there’s an entire city full of ponies like her?”

“Are they all hot amazons?” A stallion who had been burying his muzzle in a pile of pancakes yelled out. Hoots and hollers rang out among the tired ponies.

“Not all of their mares are as big as her, and they have stallions too, but they’re largely warrior ponies that descend from Equestrians too-” I was cut off by a burly mare wearing stained trousers and smoking.

“You’re saying I can get one of them in stallion too?” Her question was met with even louder laughs, as one of her friends smacked her on the flank. “It was a serious question, if I start walking south, can I get a hot buck with that same accent?”

“I would recommend taking a ship instead, but conceivably yes,” I told the grinning mare. “I would be irresponsible if I didn’t tell you that they don’t really believe in the same things we do,” my words caught their attention. “Southern Rangers don’t vote in elections, their military and their government is the same thing, and well, they treat the Arabs like shit.” For a few seconds the assembled ponies evaluated what I said.

“How many of them are there? And how many Arabs?” The first stallion asked me, his brow furrowed in thought.

“From what she’s told me, they outnumber the Rangers by a lot.” I answered honestly, because the truth would be known eventually, and I needed to know right now where these ponies’ hearts and minds stood.

“I don’t blame them then, if I had a bunch of sword swinging savages who hated my guts outside my window, I wouldn’t hesitate to put them in their place.” The mare from before answered honestly. “Honestly, if the executive council doesn’t vote to go to war against the Arabians after this, I’m gonna see if I can’t join those ponies down south. At least they’re fighting these fuckers.”

“No, no, they’ll vote for war. If they don’t avenge this massacre then we’ll vote in a new council.” That opinion was widely shared if the sense of the room could be believed.

“They’re Equestrians too, and if it comes down to it, we need to support each other.” That too got agreement.

“That’s what I thought,” I said to the assembled ponies, the harbingers of what was to come. I nodded at the pony who had heard me say the words that had begun this whole experiment. Time to ask the important question. “This sounds a lot like what ponies said before unification.”

“Maybe it does, I wasn’t there. But Is that a bad thing?” The mare who had first brought up strong warrior stallions spoke up once again. “I don’t know more than one Southern Ranger, but she seems solid enough. And well, would unifying necessarily be a bad thing? Maybe we shouldn’t jump right into one government, but allying, that’s a reasonable first step. I’m just glad we’re not alone out here.”

“We were taught that we were the last pillar of civilisation,” I said to her, but mostly to myself. “They thought the same thing. We both thought everyone else had perished in the bombs.”

“Has anypony ever tried to cross the ocean again?” Someone spoke up in the back. “How do we know that those first reports weren’t over blown, we know that there were lots of stables, and military bunk-”

“We’ve listened on the radio before, and it’s always been dead silence. Besides, if ponies had rebuilt there, they would’ve made the trip over. We still have the fuel civilisation needs.” And from there the debates continued. I had heard enough, even if the bevy of theories and pre-war history knowledge displayed did reflect well on our education system. They were as intelligent and broadly self-interested as any good democratic constituency could be, needed to be, and yet they didn’t realize the power dynamics involved. Icepick’s cause was something they could be amenable to.

I needed some air after realizing that.

---===*===---

The street smelled of blood, excrement and cordite.

In the face of this, in the face of the war to come… and the deal with the devil we would collectively make. No, that we would vote for.

The brick sailed through one of the few windows that hadn’t been ravaged by the fighting. Under normal circumstances I would’ve paid good money for what I was about to loot, but these were not normal circumstances. My best friends and dearest clients were ponies from another world, figuratively and literally, respectively, my home was a bombed out husk and I knew now that the world of my childhood would never be the same.

My aim was true. The broken brick sailed into the plate glass window of the general store. Behind the counter, at the top of the shelf was a bottle of the same type that I had given Icepick and Permittivity as a present. There was a certain poetry that I would be taking one as I left this place. Some bitter part of me saw thought that if they had never stumbled into our town, we would’ve been left alone… But I pushed those thoughts away as soon as they popped into my conscious mind.

The bottle opened with a rough tug from my telekinesis. As I lifted the bottle up, the brown liquid absorbed the light flowing into the building as the sun rose into the sky. If I had been a more routine alcoholic, this would be a reward for saving all of those ponies, or living through the dangers involved in that. I didn’t believe in rewarding behaviour, because at base I didn’t believe that ponies had a choice in the matters that defined them. Some magical, causality defying spark of magic in the minds of ponies had always seemed odd to me. Moreso that most believed in it. No, I wasn’t rewarding or denying my achievements. Whatever that meant. I was merely calming my nerves, giving euphoria to a brain that sorely needed it.

If anyone could self-medicate, it was the pony who wrote the prescriptions right? Physician heal thyself!

The bottle tipped back in my loosely held magic, and the burning, barely aged liquid tore a swath down the back of my throat. It was exactly what the doctor ordered! I chuckled dryly at my own joke as I started my walk to the outside of the place. Only a block or two away was the inn where everypony else was staying in. Everyone there but Crescent Moon was in company that understood them. And even then, Permittivity knew what it felt like to be an outsider. Her and him shared more than that though, I knew it.

The sounds engine noises became louder and louder, even as I drank and stumbled down the street. My hooves kicked up amble dust in the waxing light. I would venture to guess that it was around nine in the morning by now. And so it was that when I turned the corner to the inn, I saw the large military trucks parked outside of it, slowly guiding the ponies out and into the covered beds.

One of the rangers at the doorway looked at me, before blinking underneath their goggles and face cloth. They began bounding after me, the only thing my mind could pick out about them was the fact that they were rather short. Some part of me picked up on that fact, just as they made it within a pony’s length from me, skidding to a stop and throwing up coarse sand with their booted hooves. With a swipe from their hooves they pulled down the cloth from their face.

Bajada stared back at me.

“You look like shit,” she paused after making that wonderful pronouncement, “but you’re breathing,” before I could say anything in response she pounced on me. Bajada wrapped her hooves around my neck and squeezed as if to make sure I was real. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get here sooner-”

“I’m not even sure you all could’ve turned the tide.”

“Are we talking about me and the rangers? We’re the badasses,” Bajada began to start on one of her stories of valour. By now, I could see through it. She had fought some bandits and the desert itself. She hadn’t gone fetlock to fetlock with an enemy army.

“Those oil ponies deserve medals,” I told her. “But we only made it through this thanks to the help of a few outsiders.”

“Lightning ass and big blondie?” She asked me derisively.

“You don’t know them, hell I barely know them,” I told her. Out of everypony I knew, she was the only one that would voice those same gut instincts that I suppressed. She was a base mare.

She used you.

“But I know that they’re good ponies, and that they did their best in the battle a few hours ago. Can anyone else you know sacrifice themselves to drop a bolt of lightning from the skies? Would anyone else you know try to trap their opponents in a rigged oil field… Would anyone you know sacrifice themselves and their legacy to help ponies that hated them?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? How drunk are you? ”

“Crescent Moon? Didn’t you find her? Second of all, I’m not drunk, yet.”

“No, we didn’t find a Moon, and yeah, sell me some fucking sand, it wafting off your breath like a dockside drunk,” Bajada finished as my mouth fell open. She had slipped the nest. Not that I blamed her. And good luck finding her. I sighed and looked away. Before pulling my bottle from my coat again and taking a pull right in front of her.

“Don’t fucking tell me you’re still blaming me for everything,” Bajada said to me, before pulling the half empty bottle from my magic and smashing it with her booted hoof.

“No. I’ve matured a bit. You’re only a symptom of greater maladies,” I laughed at her as I felt the first of many tears begin to stream down my cheeks. The accumulated sweat and crud began to flow with those same tears. “It’s all fucked, and you don’t even know it yet. None of them realize it yet. None of us anyway,” in my mind Permittivities drunken words called back to me. He understood power. Maybe he was right, and all other morality was nothing more than a fairy tale to let ponies live with themselves, everything that was necessary could be apologized for in the future. After the memories of the dead fade, and the victors write their histories… All the matters is that someone is left alive to write.

It may as well be the strongest.

As Bajada balked at me and the remaining ponies in sight watched as she tensed up like she had been struck, I smiled. I may not have lightning bolts or fancy armour, but I had something I had been given by a stroke of chance. I knew the fulcrum from which this whole thing would lift. The idea that I was a confidant and council to the two transients that already changed so much, and I know would do more than shake things up, well, I would have to guide them. There was a better way. I had been brought up right, and if anyone was built to steer things, to save ponies, it would be me.

No-one else knew what I knew, or could change what others knew- Maybe war was necessary, but I would do anything to limit the suffering… I had to.

Permittivity came to mind again, as did Icepick, they were made for each other, and I was made to shape them into the ponies I knew they could be. It was almost enough to make a rational stallion believe in irrational things-

“-get on the fucking truck before I have to drag you home to your mother personally!” Bajada finally broke through my reverie. Mentioning my mother helped her, the bitch knew what buttons to hit-

“Fuck you, I’ll get on the damn truck, but only for my friends,” my words mollified her, even as I felt that familiar, comfortable warmth fill my form.

“You’re gonna feel really shitty tomorrow,” the mare who had broken my heart said. My smile wavered a little, but only a little.

There was work to be done tomorrow, and what was work without a hangover. Mildew had taught me well. Even if it had taken a little while for me to understand why he was the way he was. The world broke weak ponies. The world broke the good ones.

I refused to be either.

Never Again.

---===*===---

When I entered the truck, I had many eyes on me. There was still ample enough room, and casks of water to drink. I assumed that these ponies knew how to hydrate themselves. Still, I ambled over to Icepick and Perm, who had found the corner nearest the cab to lay down in. They gave me concerned looks.

“Are you worried about Crescent too?”

“Not nearly as much as we’re worried about you-” Permittivity began to speak but Icepick interjected.

“You smell like the inside of a sadness factory that was sprayed with whiskey, Rose. I know you’ve been through a lot, but this isn’t the time to get sloshed.”

“Yeah, tell that to me half an hour ago, and to my harpy of an ex,” I rambled out before smiling broadly. I much preferred the warmth of alcohol to the sober heat that would have surrounded me otherwise.

“Oh, you’re calling me a harpy now, that’s very fucking original!” I heard Bajada yell from the end of the vehicle.

“You what’s not fresh, your rotting cunt!” I yelled back to the astonishment of many ponies. Where had this stallion appeared from? What happened to the doctor? Did he finally snap, hours after the moment of greatest stress?

“She didn’t say fresh.” Axis said flatly from the darkest corner of the truck-bed. She didn’t look at me. Bajada was smoking and didn’t give the slightest shit about my retort. Icepick and Perm were fiddling with the pipbuck attached to his foreleg. I just laid down beside Icepick’s powered armour and waited for my body to fall into an unconscious stupor. The truck began to move. Moments passed and my vision began to swim. I knew I wasn’t going to be conscious for a whole lot longer. Exactly to plan. But something familiar began playing from Permittivity’s Pipbuck.

"Hello ponies of Paradise, it's your host, Disc Jockey! But as much as I want to open today’s broadcast on a lighter note, we have to talk about the subject I told you about at seven. The attack on Copper Springs." It was him. The mudslinger. The Propagandist.

"Well, the stories are filtering through from the first train load of ponies to make it back to Paradise. 'They came out of the desert.' ‘They just killed and killed’ 'The Steel Ranger steel ranger fought for us.'- Wait, a Steel Ranger?” He paused and after an audible shuffle of papers he cleared his throat. “Okay folks, I read over the paper that was teleported onto my desk and yes, it does say Steel Ranger…” He continued on with the news report, focusing on the unprovoked nature of the attack and the way potential political ramifications. Eventually he got made it to the end of his ramblings. “I don’t know what any of it means, even if it is my job to speculate. Every piece of information is still making more questions than answers. All I can say is that these will be dark times. We all know the lessons of history, the old world was destroyed by war. We’re the last city in the world. We have a responsibility to carry the torch of civilization. Finally, as with any news story, if anyone knows something interesting, a perspective left unseen, some detail that only you’ve noticed, you can call us at our number, or visit our offices. Anything that adds colour. And with that, I’m passing the torch to Salient Query.”

“Why is he talking if he doesn’t really know anything yet?” Icepick asked the assembled ponies.

“It’s their business model, the first ponies to get the news out have an advantage, even if the details are scant,” Axis told her before pulling out a hidden cigarete and staring at it.

“So, is does he work for your council?” Icepick asked before motioning for Axis to give her the cigarette. Permittivity snorted and pressing the tip of the it to his horn with his magic. After a brief blue spark and a telekinetic passing of the torch back to Axis Perm turned to say something to Icepick. Before he could though, she gave him a blink and you’d miss it peck on his cheek. The scarred stallion looked down, though I could tell he enjoyed it.

“No, he doesn’t work for the government, he works for a radio company. All they do is get a license and try not to curse to much, or say ridiculously untrue things about ponies and they’re good.” Axis told Icepick before passing the cigarette to her. I would’ve said something about the health effects of tobacco, but that would’ve been hypocritical given I was on the edge between alcohol poisoning and one hell of a hangover.

“That’s really weird, I mean, we have news reports and a station that plays music, but they’re run by a special division of the rangers.” Icepick’s once again seemed so naive, but that was an illusion, if anything she was better at adapting to a changing world than anypony I knew. If anything she was just alien enough to be exotic, and just close enough in demeanor to Paradise ponies to be intriguing.

“Up north we have independent presses of which censorship, especially during times of war, is common. At least that’s what you determine when you compare the illegal press releases to what’s allowed,” Permittivity said to Icepick and Axis, he had gotten over the very public peck and was back to bring some of that same dynamic into the mix. He wasn’t the kind of pony make others laugh, and he was always more distant than Icepick was. Whether that was some inherent quality of his or an side effect of him hiding his true origins was another open question. The two of them together though, between their magical link, similar backgrounds, and their (often volatile) chemistry with one another made each other work. Co-dependency is when you need another pony to make you feel normal, maybe what they had was they needed each other to become their best selves… They were powerful ponies, and they made me question whether there was some grand plan, but I couldn’t forget that they were ponies.

I couldn’t forget that they were driven by hopes and dreams as much as anyone is. Even if they had both snuffed out many people with dreams of their own. They were levers to move the world, I was sure, but I couldn’t forget that they were pones.

That was the last thought I remember before I slipped beneath the surface.

At least, I wouldn’t get car sick on the ride home.

End Of Chapter XIII

Homecoming

Author's Note

Sorry about the wait. It's been rough, but the next chapter is already halfway done, and that one will have a little extra Interlewd...

If you really liked it, feel free to pm me here or on discord.
Sunnydontlook#1132

If you wanna buy me a Kofi, the link is right: https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

The Proud Tower (XIV)

The light of the sun at midday assaulted my eyes as the three of us walked out of the building we had been disarmed and debriefed in. It had been something I was used to. Rangers rarely walked around our bases fully armed, and keeping guns around in private? Well, that increased the odds of suicide by a lot. But walking down the streets of Paradise with Permittivity and Rosetta, I was kind of wishing for at least a service pistol. These weren’t Rangers, as much as they looked like us. Not that I had any reason to distrust them, I had been staying within a small town of them for a few days. It’s just, all these ponies walking around with loose order, all on their own business, not ordered from above…

It reminded me of the Arabs of Ramsgard. The look of the city itself didn’t help that impression. Adobe, and businesses going about without any queues or requisitions. Granted, I hated queues and paperwork, and adobe was honestly the best thing the Arabs ever invented…

Then again, I was bigger than most of these ponies, and other than the odd Ranger of theirs, I was definitely more trained, and without a doubt more experienced than them. And it didn’t hurt that the second most dangerous pony in the city was currently walking with me. Well, more like leaning against me for support. Still, I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that he would fry any fucker that tried to hurt me. I tried not to acknowledge the butterflies in my stomach that thought created. Maybe we were what these ponies called a ‘Power Couple’?

All I knew is that we drew some eyes to us, the filthy unicorn stallions and the large earth pony mare who was wearing strange barding. But, not too many. The wave of refugees and the news of the attack had many ponies preoccupied, so really, we were just a threesome of unfortunate ponies, in a city now filled with them.

“We’re almost there Perm,” Rosetta said from ahead of us. He had mostly walked off being drunk. Now he had a determination to him, each step was just as powerful as the last. Maybe he had just needed a drink and a good nap. Maybe.
“Good.” It was about the extent of his energy. The poor stallion had stayed up for half the trip back, before finally passing out against me. I stayed awake though. I didn’t want to lose him again. About a block later we came to a large plate glass storefront. Behind the mostly clean glass was shelf after shelf of books. There was a closed sign in Equestrian lying loosely on the door.
“This is where your mother lives?” Permittivity asked Rosetta.
“Yep, I’m the son of a Mercenary-Librarian.” Rosetta knocked on the door repeatedly, knocking on the aged wooden door again and again. Maybe a minute passed before it swung outward and slammed into the wall behind it. In the doorway stood a pissed off looking mare, who had the look of someone who had been crying moments before. “Sorry to bother you.” For a moment she eyed the group of us critically, before focusing on the exhausted, whiskey perfumed stallion who had been knocking on the door.
“Rose! I was so worried about you!” She paused and looked back at Perm and me. “Do you know those ponies?”
“Yes mom, they’re friends. And one of them really needs to rest and eat,” Rosetta told her quickly. “Now, I’m asking a lot of you, but treat them like you would me. I have to report to the health office asap.” And without another word, and nothing but a parting wave of his hoof he had left the three of us alone.

“He could never just meet ponies the normal way,” the mare muttered under her breath before forcing a half-smile while looking towards us. “This way, and uh, I apologize in advance for the stairs.”

“Don’t apologize, you weren’t the pony that did this to me,” Permittivity said weakly. As the mare held the door opened, she pursed her lips and asked cleared her throat-

“Who did that to you? I don’t even know your names,” the mare asked as I passed by her. Her eyes crawled over me in an appraising way, a way of looking that I was very familiar with. This mare had more than a little attraction to other mares. Oh shit. Was Rosetta’s mom checking me out? As I met her gaze as it came close to my barding covered ass, I realized that this older mare… had game.

“An Arabian stallion with a high-powered rifle.” Permittivity stopped walking for a moment, before flashing his horn and beginning to lift his duster before deciding better.

“You were there at the attack? They were really Arabs?”

“Yes, and yes. I’m Permittivity by the way, and the mare currently helping me stay upright is Icepick.”

“We’re not from around here,” I added.

“I gathered that,” She laughed nervously before looking at him again. “So what happened to the stallion that shot you?”

“He was either liquified by the warhead on the end of my missile, or he was crushed by the building falling on top of him,” I answered on his behalf, to which he gave me a withering look. What!? I was just being honest.

“Sure. Where did my son get a habit of bringing stray soldiers home?” She asked herself while shaking her head. “I’m Page Turner, by the way. Owner of this fire hazard of a shop.”

“Is the flat upstairs?” Permittivity said with a new spell of exhaustion racking his voice. I could feel his legs beginning to shake.

“Yes, Permit-”

“Perm is fine, everyone else calls me that,” he said as he began to walk up the stairs. “I apologize if that was short of me. I’m in a great deal of discomfort, even if your son did an excellent job of patching me up.”

“He was the one that operated on you?”

“And many others. He did the best he could and saved so many ponies. Your son is a brave stallion, Page Turner. He stared death in the face many times in the last day. Both the death of others en mass, and his own.” She followed us as we rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, Perm and I’s body scraping against the old paint covering the walls.

“Did he smell like a bar because he used alcohol to sterilize things?” she asked as she followed us up and around the corner to the actual flat.

“I wish it were so,” Perm began before I cut him off.

“He dealt with combat badly, and uh, he drank half a bottle of whiskey.” I told her straight up. No use beating around the bush. “I mean, it could’ve been worse. He didn’t, like, jam a syringe of Med-X into his leg…”

“That was not the height of tact Icepick,” Perm angrily whispered to me as we stopped in the middle of her living room. There was a kitchen and a small dining room to the right, and a set of doors down the hall.

“I’m still proud of him,” she said moments later as she passed by the two of us, before starting down the hallway. “So, the elephant in the room. How did you meet him? He’s never mentioned you before?”
“About a week ago, the two of us came out of the desert after following the radio signals that Copper Springs emitted,” Permittivity said before coughing loudly. I hoped he wasn’t getting an infection in his lungs. Or maybe all the smoke he inhaled was doing it to him. I was lucky that my helmet had a respirator.
“And then what happened?” Page Turned asked us, with an edge of irritation directed at Perm.
“He examined the both of us, to make sure we weren’t going to die, and that neither of us were obviously crazy,” I finished for him. “He started talking to us and got to know us pretty quickly. Rosetta made me realize that this windbag of a pony is actually a pretty good stallion.” Perm began to blush as I complimented him. Which led to another coughing fit.
“The spare bedroom is on the right, feel free to lay him down,” Page said to me with a slight smile on her face. Where did that come from? Up until now she had only looked annoyed.
“Thank you again for letting us stay on your son’s behalf,” Perm told her as we made our way down the hall, his magic managing to pull open the door.
“I mean, you’re obviously ponies from a different land, I have to give you a good impression, right?” she responded, but in a tone that told me she was telling herself that too.
The room had a made up double mattress, not too big, not too small, and perfect for holding a healing Permittivity. I helped him over to it and watched him as his blue magic pulled the sheets up. With a gentle push, I laid him down and watched his face lose some of the pain it had been showing.
“Thank you, Icepick. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
“Pssh, I know you would do the same for me. Besides, the moment you kissed me you became mine.” I paused and bit my lips as he looked at me with a new nervousness in his eyes. “That wasn’t weird, right? I’m still getting used to the whole idea of-” I had been standing with my head close to his, kind of leaning over him, but the feeling of magic over my body caught me off guard until I felt his muzzle press against mine. At that moment the magical push stopped, and I felt my entire body relax as he kissed me. Before I knew what I was doing, I lifted my legs and pulled myself up onto the bed, laying atop him as his tongue pushed against my lips. This time I decided to let him in. The feeling of his tongue pushing into my warm muzzle had me gently moan, especially as I felt his fore hooves drift up my body and onto my flanks…

---===*===---

I practically tiptoed into the kitchen, hoping to find an empty room, where I could get a few glasses of water for a sleeping Perm… And a partially dehydrated me. As I rounded the corner, I found my hopes to be in vain.
“How long have you known him?” Page Turner asked me as soon as I stepped into the kitchen.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but that’s a complicated question…” I trailed off and looked her in the eyes, with as much sincerity I could muster.

“Try me.”

“I first met him about a week and a half ago,” I paused and rubbed the back of my neck with a forehoof. “But I’ve had dreams as him for about a year, maybe a bit longer.”

“Yeah, that does sound kinda crazy, but-” she paused and sighed. “-I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. And you didn’t say it, but I saw you cringe like a filly before the belt when he mentioned his injury. You thought he wasn’t gonna make it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I thought he was dead,” I told her simply. Reliving that moment in my head made my voice lose all emotion. It was just flat.

“And you love him right?” she asked me quietly, a tenderness in her voice that I hadn’t heard from her yet.

“Yes,” I answered quietly. It wasn’t quite news to me but telling someone other than him felt weird. Especially a stranger.

“Good, that explains the moans and the bed squeaking,” Page Turner said without breaking her vocal stride. “You’re gonna change the sheets later, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” I laughed nervously. I wasn’t sure how prudish these ponies were compared to Rangers. “Honestly, I was gonna ask if the both of us could use your shower later…”

“You have dried cum between your legs right now, don’t you?” Now Page was smiling viciously. My laugh changed to something approaching a hysteria as she asked me about the stickiness between my legs barely covered up by my tail. “Ehh, I won’t give you any more shit, but I have to ask: was it good?”

“It was our first time, he couldn’t really do much more than lay there and use his magic and hooves. We both smelled like cordite and fire, and I had to be careful not to fuck up his bandages…” She looked at me funny for a second before I finished. “And I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

“By Celestia you’re adorable, even if you sound like a love-struck filly. I can see why my son would like you. You’re just dripping with genuine emotion and spunk.” Page Turner lost her composure as she realized her entendre.

“That and my dynamite ass,” I looked at her critically for a second. “And yes, I saw you staring.”

“Hey, I wanted to see your cutie mark is all!”

“Sure.” I leveled at her.

“So, what the tartarus is your cutie mark?” she asked with exasperation. “Nice subject change,” I told her before snorting. “It’s uh, an expanding shrapnel cloud.”

“I take it your special talent is baking?”

“No, more like barbecuing,” I licked my lips and smiled at her. “Seriously, how is Rosetta your kid? He’s so sweet and becomes as red as a tomato every three seconds.”

“What is it surprising that his mom can quip with a mare half her age?”

“I’m more surprised she hits on mares my age,” I shot back.

“I would never hit on you! For three reasons: first, I know you’re with that stallion sleeping off a bullet and an orgasm; second, you seem straight; third, I’ve seen the way my son looks at you.”

“What?”

“You don’t see it? He has a crush on you, at least.” I nearly slapped myself.

“Fucking hell!” I stomped my hoof and snorted angrily. “I offered to fuck him, and he turned me down, but he has feelings for me?”

“Calm down!” Page Turned said to me, laying a hoof on my shoulder at the same time as she hissed her words. “He probably knew that you and Permittivity were already into each other. Besides, he’s not one for casual stuff.”

“He told me that second thing, and I didn’t even think about the first, I mean, he basically got us together.” I looked down at me hooves and thought about the first conversations I had had with that stallion. The stallion who had slept beside me, who knew the most about Perm besides me. The one who’s town was now gone. I mean, if he… Perm would… Fuck!

“I don’t know you that well. But my mother once told me something, and it’s stuck with me. It will always work out in the end. If it's not alright, it's not the end."

“I wish I believed that. The world ended once. If that doesn’t prove something, I don’t know what else could.”

“The old world was unhealthy in many ways. Its sickness manifested itself in its end. But here, we’ve used our second chance pretty well. We’re not perfect, but everyone has a say in how things are ran. And we’re peaceful, just like Equestria before the war.”

“Peace is all well and good, until war comes to you,” I told her before stepping around to look at the array of cabinets. “Which one has cups?”

“The one closest to the refrigerator.” I ambled over to it, making sure to keep my tail pressed tightly against my rump. “Being quick to jump into a fight isn’t a virtue. War is the great destroyer, every pony in Paradise knows that.”

I took two glasses down and pursed my lips as I began to fill them from the sink. Before long I had them both filled with lukewarm water. I took a sip and thought about what she was saying. “Maybe it is, but so is sitting idly by while barbarians nip at the edges of your territory. [RM1] That’s an even more sure way towards destruction.”

“You are such a soldier,” she told me as I carefully walked out of the kitchen with both glasses held against my chest with my foreleg.

“How would you even know?” I asked with a burst of anger and a flick of my tail. I’m sure she caught a glimpse of my cunt, but I didn’t care. At that moment, I was more annoyed at her naivete than her fillyfooler tendencies.

“Icepick, Rosetta’s father was a Ranger,” Page said sadly as I opened the door with my mouth. I felt a chill run down my spine. That made a lot of sense. Of course she didn’t like soldiers…

---===*===---

Several days went by with a welcome stillness to them. Rosetta had come back the next night exhausted but relieved that his friends and his mother had gotten along well together, and to a long conversation about dropping them off like he had. The person I had really started to like was Dalliance, Page’s… marefriend[RM2] ? Her and I got along. For one thing, when she checked me out, she was a lot subtler about it. Secondly, she knew how to cook. Something, I had never really gotten any practice with.

We were waiting for something to happen in the government of Paradise, for them to actually get a ship over to Ramsgard or something to really confirm our stories. And so, things fell into a kind of rhythm, Rosetta was busy during the days, and nights working at one of the larger hospitals on the other side of the city, Dalliance was gone during the day to work at her job, leaving Perm and I to explore the nearby city. Permittivity and I sleeping in Rosetta’s old bed. Him sleeping on the couch, and Dally and Page passing out together in their bed. I swear they were intentionally loud when they fucked. Probably Page trying to get back at me or something. It didn’t help that the beds had exactly a wall between them…

---===*===---

The sound of knocking on a door assaulted my sleeping ears. I looked over my withers at the door. Behind me was a just as annoyed looking Permittivity, who just happened to have his crotch pressed up against my butt. We liked sleeping like that, and it never ever lead to any fun morning accidents. Nope. I sighed and shared a look with him.

“You’re closer to the door, and you aren’t recovering from any grievous wounds.”

I just groaned loudly and cleared my throat as I dropped onto the floor.

“Coming,” I said to the pony on the other side of the door.

“Yo,” was all Axis said as the door opened.

“What? I was wondering where the fuck you were!” I practically yelled as my discount shield sister tried to dodge my embrace but wasn’t fast enough.

“Icepick, I’m uh, glad to see you too, that’s why I came.” My hug was eventually accepted and reciprocated, the smaller unicorn not quite able to squeeze back like I did. Hey us, Rangers might be an odd bunch, but a tight hug was something we did too. “Hey Perm, how’s the mortal wound doing?”

“Well, according to the resident doctor, I have another five or six decades to live.” I let her go and backed up a little to let her inside, before I walked over to the bed. Letting myself lay on top of the blankets and rest my head on his hips was nice.

“Damn, I should get shot too, sounds like it improves your bill of health.” Axis looked around the room before locating the lonely chair in the room. With a push of magic, she drew the chair to herself and closed the door.

“I actually wouldn’t recommend it, it hurts a lot.” Was all Permittivity said before pulling himself up to a sitting position and wrapping a foreleg around my withers. I was basically sitting in his lap anyway, so I decided to just go the whole distance. That foreleg over came down to rest on my stomach, gently holding me.

“I mean, you didn’t even scream when the bullet hit you?”

“Suffice it to say that the wind in my lungs was knocked out of me.”

“Dammit Perm, I want to like you, but you’re so much less fun than your marefriend,” she paused and cocked her head, appraising the scene before her. “I’m pretty sure you’re together now?”

“Correct, he’s been my patient for the last week,” I looked at her and then shifted my vision to the cubby underneath the desk. “Rosetta even got me a real nurses hat.” I licked my lips as my brain recalled all the fun we’d had with that.

“I take it he brought his own thermometer?” She asked with a completely straight face. Damn she’d be a beast at poker. That gave me another idea…

“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Permittivity said in a completely non-convincing voice. He was doing a pretty good Rosetta impression as he denied what he had very much enjoyed. I elbowed him gently.

“Yeah, he’s a lot less straight laced when you get to know him,” I replied gently diplomatically.

“Anyway, I was gonna ask you if you wanted to go the market with me.” She shrugged and nodded at Perm as well. “You can come too, it’s basically right around the corner.”

“I think I’ll take you up on that, I’m supposed to get some exercise in.”

“I really should go out and see one of these markets, I’ve heard good things about them. Are they like, open air with tents and stuff like in Ramsgard?”

“No, it’s air conditioned, and actually it’s a pre-war shopping pavillion that got put back together,” Axis told us with a smile on her muzzle.

“Does it have ample fans? Effective ventilation?” Permittivity asked with a start, and genuine curiosity. This flat didn’t have more than a window air conditioner because of its construction. But if this prewar building was anything like the way most things were made in Equestria, it would certainly need something more powerful than that.

“You don’t actually know what air conditioning is, do you?” I asked Perm with a smile on my face. He squeezed my stomach gently, pressing against the little bit of belly plush.

“Beg your pardon?”

“He’s from a place that required a lot more heating than cooling, right? Up to the north?” I nudged him with a hoof as he pursed his lips.

“Yes. That avenue of technology is less than necessary where I come from.”

“So, you must be burning up down here, and when you wandered through the desert?”

“Until you’ve nearly frozen to death, you’ll never understand how much easier it is to survive heat.” he squeezed me softly as he mentioned the heat. “Even if some of us would love to share body heat.” I leaned back against his chest and felt his heart speed up.
“Guilty as charged.” It was all I said. It was all I needed to say.
Axis stared intently. The two of us looked back at her gawking.
“What, this porno was just about to get good.” Both of us looked confused, we weren’t being porny, were we? Permittivity coughed softly and before nuzzling my neck. “Okay, this romance paperback was about to get good,” she said loudly.
“Who’s insulting paperbacks in my house?” Page Turner yelled through the walls.
“Certainly not me, ma’am,” Permittivity yelled back.
“I didn’t think it was you, Perm,” Page Turner yelled simply. “You’re a nice- how old are you exactly?”
“I’ll be twenty-four in a few months,” he replied, just as simply.
“I thought you’d be older than Icepick and my son, you always seemed more mature.” At this point Axis and I were exchanging smiles and trying not to laugh.
“I know, ma’am.” Perm yelled back, and at that point I thought it would be the end. I couldn’t let that stand.
“You know, you could come into the room, Page,” I yelled out for the first time.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude Icepick,” was all she scream-replied back before we heard another door shut.
“So, do you wanna get some air?” Axis said after we both took in that revelation.
“I would race you to the street, but I have to help this lug.” I told her as she got up out of the seat, the moment she turned her head though, Permittivity nipped me hard on the back of the neck. I guess I deserved it. Even if I hadn’t been the one insulting paperbacks.

Yeah. I needed some air. This house was making me go mental in new and interesting ways.

“See you at the street then, love birds,” was all that Axis said before leaving the room.
“You know I have a stronger mouth, and yet you started it something you can’t win-” Before I could say anything more he pressed his muzzle against mine. Maybe we were love birds, maybe we belonged in a trashy pre-war romance, but he certainly knew how to turn my brain to mush with just his mouth… After we parted lips I glared at him. If he didn’t also know how to turn me to jelly with his other parts…
“Are you going to let me get dressed?” he said with a smirk as I sat in his lap trying to think about him rationally.

“Fuck you Perm!” I told him as I climbed off him, even as my mouth curled into a smile just as wide as his.

“We don’t have time Icepick, your friend is waiting.” I just sighed and started getting on my saddlebags.

“Honestly, she doesn’t seem like she’d mind watching,” I replied with the most normal tone of voice I could muster. His face lost its composure before mine did, and a few seconds later I laughed. I had won this round of tweaking the other, and with a shake of my ass as a consolation prize to him, I knew I was on the top of the world.

Only later would I realize, I was only halfway to high tide…

---===*===---

Permittivity was walking on his own again pretty well, without you know, drugs. So, when the three of us finally made it to the rebuilt shopping center I was surprised by the size of it. Apparently, ‘Malls’ like this were built all over equestria before the bombs dropped. Glass sides and steel intermixed in a way that was different than anything in Ramsgard. Rangers built in concrete and rebar, Arabians built in Adobe and brick but these ponies built the way that ponies did before the war. They restored the shops and the neon signs, stripped the reactors and desalinators out of their warships…

We would never do that.

The moment we stepped inside the restored air-conditioning made me gasp. How much power would that How many bars of steel, or tons of fertilizer could be made with that much electricity? Inside was an array of things that I would never have seen the rangers making. To the right of us was an electronics store, not selling parts to old world radios and terminals, but selling new radios with phonographs attached.

“Don’t bother, Zephyr is a garbage brand,” Axis said as Perm and I gawked at the electronics store. That was just the main item featured through the windows[3] .`

“Axis, why is the radio that large when you have radios this small?” Permittivity asked her before waving his pipbuck [RM4] covered hoof in the air.

“Well, that Zephyr was manufactured a month or two ago, and your Pipbuck was made like, a hundred years ago at a facility employing magical gemstone etching and enchanting machines.”

“I see, your indigenous manufacturing isn’t as advanced as your pre-apocalyptic antecedents. It’s still impressive that you’ve built yourselves back up to this level.”

“Y-yeah,” Axis paused and shrugged. “I’m not really an expert, but we had examples and us dockside ponies are pretty handy at studying the old tech that was left behind.”

“You use vacuum tubes and earth pony tech don’t you?” I asked her, remembering the tour I had taken of the lorry factory in southern Ramsgard. Simple acidic batteries powered by induction. That and the internal combustion engines of the lorries themselves.

“Obviously. Okay, that was harsh, but, we don’t have an entire trained corps of skilled unicorns and gemstones to burn. And I take it you don’t either.”

“That old world tech is just as far off as it was a century ago,” I said to her.

“Is the main issue the juncture between regular magic and electrical engineering?” Permittivity asked with an expression of extreme curiosity.

“Maybe? I know the raw output of the generator on a set of power armor is electrical current, even if the generator uses an enchantment to operate,” I told him as we all stepped into the electronics store. No one gave us a second glance at this point.

“Customers!” We all heard a stallion say excitedly. “Are you here to buy, or browse? Maybe you’re all more on the fence?”

“I’m looking at phonographs. I’d like to be able to experience your culture’s music at my leisure,” Permittivity spoke up and met his eyes. He was a little taller than the other stallion, a short earth pony wearing a shirt and tie.

“Of course- your culture?” he looked bemusedly back towards Perm before smiling that plaster smile all sales ponies had.

“Yes, the culture of Paradise is indeed foreign to me,” Perm beamed at the other stallion. “But the basics are the same, the language, the phonograph, the telephone.”

“You’re quite funny, even putting on that accent, sir. But I can tell you want a phonograph with a high fidelity,” the sales stallion belted out. I wondered how much this stallion was paid. This wasn’t hard work. I rolled my eyes and threw a leg over Perm’s shoulder.

“He’s with me, we’re the ponies that arrived in Copper Springs, ya know? Wandered out of the desert. Then a few days later the whole place kinda caught on fire…”

“R-really?”

“No, my friends here are practicing for their roles in the community theatre.” Axis played off as the both of us stared at her with wide jaws. “They take their method acting way too seriously.”

“Oh, alright, well I can still get you that record player…”

---===*===---

After we had given Axis’s mail address to the pony and given him a fair few bits we were walking through the rest of the shopping pavilion. There were fountains, restaurants, and-
“A spa is a place where ponies go to relax and get a nice massage.” Axis told me with a smile on her face. “And usually you get an attractive pony to give it to you. There’s a ‘spa’ down by the docks where I usually go when I get home.”
“Oh you didn’t mention that part.” My voice might have taken on a purr as I replied.
“Maybe we can all go there later,” Axis said with a flick of her tail and a shit eating grin. She picked up the pace and locked her head on something across the central square we were walking through. Perm totally had his eyes locked on her ass when she flicked her tail. That didn’t bother me, I knew I had a better butt than her…
Then I saw the thing that Axis was trotting towards. It was a larger than life poster advertising a radio show, the same one we had listened to on the ride here. A silver-coated earth pony, with a wheat-colored mane stood beside a microphone with the number for the frequency.

The news you want, the way you want it.

“He could pass for your father,” Permittivity said after a moment. A smile across his muzzle.
“Nah, he doesn’t swear enough,” I told him instantly.
“I bet his bedroom barely even reeks of sex,” Axis said with another grin, just as she rammed her shoulder into mine softly.
“Hey, that’s mostly his fault,” I shot back, while pointing a hoof at Permittivity.
“I’m not the one that wakes the other up with oral sex,” he said while looking around to make sure no-one could hear him.
“Well, I don’t exactly hear you complaining,” I said simply, smiling at my victory.
“Touché.”
“So, is it normal for ponies who just talk or act funny to be important?”
“I mean, it’s a viable path to fame,” Permittivity said with a strange look on his face.
“It just seems odd to me. We award medals and heap praise on ponies that embody our virtues: being a runner or a physical champion, being brave on the battlefield, even pushing forwards the bounds of what’s possible in technology and industry. But, to be rewarded just for being a witty pony, or just because you’re pretty…” I trailed off and stared at the stallion who embodied the spirit of these ponies.
“Maybe it’s just rewarding different virtues. Wit, beauty, even avarice. Those are things that before the war we celebrated as well.”
“So you’re saying it’s the needs of the society are the main factor in what that society asks of its ponies?”
“I mean yes, but to some societies, the overarching needs of that society is a strange question-”
“Yeah, we don’t really have a ‘master plan’ for our collective efforts. Like, from what I can tell, y’all have a kind of internal prophecy about yourselves. We… Don’t,” Axis said with a hint of judgement in her voice.
“That’s so strange. What do you work for then? What gets you out of bed?” I asked her. The lack of compulsion, the lack of vision. The abandonment of their homeland. It seemed so anemic. Then again, they had families, they lived happily, on balance. They had no serfs, no slaves among them…
“Icepick, that’s a question that everypony has to answer for themselves, that’s the beauty of a place devoted to the individual,” Axis responded, a smile affixed on her muzzle. We both just thought the other was naive.

“I guess,” was all I said as I mulled over her words. An idea occurred to me. These ponies had a lot to learn, but those oil ponies could fight with as much valor as rangers. I also knew that we had as much wit and poetry in our souls as they did. Reflex didn’t inspire ponies just because he was an exceedingly good marksmare. He could joke and speak just as well as the radio stallion…
He wasn’t here though. Only I was. But at least I was getting an idea about how they ticked. They were so similar to us, and so fucking strange at the same time.

Minutes passed, and we set ourselves towards a new destination. Our chatting had died down for the moment, leaving me with my thoughts.

“I wish Reflex was here.” I told my friends as we walked towards the canteen–I mean, food court.

“Are you homesick?” Permittivity asked immediately.

“Not really,” I said earnestly. “I like this place a lot. Ponies living happily, I almost wish I had been born here instead. But Reflex could win you over. He’s everything a ranger should be. Intelligent, brave and he could even make our elders smile when he cracked a joke…”

“Shit Icepick, everypony that you talk to likes you. And honestly the rest of these Rangers don’t sound like could do that,” Axis said with an odd look on her face. “Is it because he’s a higher rank than you or something?”

“Yes, he’s a better ranger than me. He follows orders to the letter, and he’ll be in charge someday.”

“You really don’t understand us, do you? If anypony can win us over, it would be you Icepick.” Permittivity nodded at her statement. Even if his look was more conflicted than hers.

"You fought to save some of us, you're charismatic and well, I know you're fighting for more than just some abstract ideals." Axis shifted her eyes to the stallion beside me.

“Maybe,” I said before shaking my head. “I’m fucking hungry, I’m ready to enjoy the heraldry of a food court.”

“Be prepared for disappointment,” Axis said with a chuckle.

“I always am.”

---===*===---

“Okay folks, I’m here with a very special guest today. Say hello to Knight Second Class Icepick. Or as you may know her, the Steel Ranger.”
“Hey, Frequency, and I guess all the ponies of Paradise.” I said with a hint of nervousness.
“That’s flattering Icepick, but my audience isn’t that big.” He laughed and stared into my eyes. “Alright, first question, why are you wearing normal clothes and not that big suit of steel?”

“There are quite a few reasons for that. First of all, your floor isn’t exactly sturdy enough to hold up the weight of an armored suit. And let me tell you, falling through a story or three of floor isn’t fun. Secondly, I had it taken from me by your customs agency. Not that I mind too much, I can still beat up anypony without my armor.”

“Okay, I can see why they took the metal doom suit from you.” He paused to take a breath, a moment in which I took a sip of water. “So, I know why you came on my show, but tell me in your own words why you came to this musty recording studio?”

“Basically, I’m the only Ranger here right now, and I want you all to know a little about us. I want to make a good first impression.”

“I think you’ve already done that. From the reports, you came up with the plan to lead the Arabians into the oil fields. Which you did by going out alone and having them chase you…”

“Isn’t that what anypony in a set of mostly-bullet-proof armor should do?” I replied in a neutral voice.

“I would be too busy voiding my bowels if I was anywhere near there.” He paused for the audience to laugh before continuing. “So, about those oil fields. Do you feel any remorse for torching eight-hundred thousand bits worth of crude?”

“Honestly, I haven’t been paid in a month and a half, and I have no idea what the conversion rate would be. But uh, I’ll start paying up right after those Arabs pay- in blood preferably.”

“That went rather dark, Icepick. But I’ve heard you’re a lover as well as a fighter?” he asked with a lot of energy, really wanting to change the subject.

“Yeah, I was kinda pissed at the time because, I thought that the stallion of my dreams had just been killed by them. Not to make light of the suffering of the ponies or Copper Springs-”

“No, no, if someone hurt my family, well, that’s a different kind of motivation,” he said with a far-off tone. “But the important thing is that he lived, right?”

“Yes, he did,” I laughed softly and felt the beginning of tears well up in my eyes. “He took a bullet to the chest calling down a lightning bolt down on an Arab position. It was only because of him, that I was able to destroy the bank they were using as a bunker.”

“Do you get a thrill from destroying expensive things?” he asked with a laugh.

“Not any more than anypony else.”

“So, if you could tell anypony listening something, what would it be?”

“I’m not really an ambassador, or a politician. Frankly, before I was separated from the Rangers, I mostly just followed orders and tried to have some fun along the way. But I’ve done some hard thinking in the meantime. To the ponies of Paradise, I want to share with you all a vision of the future. From the moment of birth to our deaths, Rangers and inculcated with a purpose. Our mission is to return to Equestria, and to rebuild her. We’ve had stumbling blocks, we’ve fought wars with the warlords south of us, and we’ve been fighting the Arabians since before the sky was filled with ash. But we’ve always thrown ourselves into the task. Always advancing towards that goal. Five year plan after five year plan. I don’t want to think that you’ve forgotten our shared homeland. In a lot of ways, you’re truer to the spirit of what once was than we are.”

“So, you’re saying we can learn from one another?” he asked me when I paused to take a breath.

“Exactly. I cherish the freedom and happiness that you all have created through great sacrifices of your own. But we all have to remember what state the motherland is in. Even the Rangers of Equestria have forgotten what it means to serve Equestria. We’ve picked up chatter from the few remaining satellites in orbit. Those Rangers aren’t our friends. They’ve grown fat and decadent off of the technology of the old world. They could’ve rebuilt Equestria with the help of the Stable Dwellers, and if they had, then we could be having an entirely different conversation.”

“I’m not saying that I have this point of view, but, why should we spare blood and treasure to rebuild a society an ocean away?”

“Because we’re all Equestrians.”

“Alright, I can dig that. But in the short term, you think we should join you in the war against the Arab tribes?”

“Yes, they attacked you without even a second thought. Because their leader, a bastard named Tegarni, thinks of all Equestrians as monsters to be pushed into the sea.”

“That’s terrifying,” was all that he could say, so I continued.

“We’re already de facto allies. What I’m talking about is a combining of our strengths. You have the numbers and the beating heart of a restored Equestria. We have the lances and the will to make it happen.”

“Are you talking about some kind of political unification now?” There was skepticism in his voice as he questioned my vision.

“Not in our lifetimes, I think. But trade and an effective alliance would make the both of us stronger. We can build all the guns and equipment that you would need to build the army that could beat the Arabs once and for all. And your experienced engineers and industrial strength could improve the lives of every Ranger and Arab living with the floodplains of the Senegral[RM5] .”

“I see. That’s a rather compelling vision. But do you think that your higher-ups ascribe to the same vision?” His words caught me off guard. What would Churned Waters want with these ponies. They had everything we desired, a population that would make selective breeding unnecessary, factories and the beginnings of a railroad network that could span the distance… And in the far future, they had the hulks that could make a new navy.

“Yes. Right now, your council is sending boats down the coast, and they should hit Ramsgard in a few weeks. So, I don’t think the same pressures for unification are there, but I think it would be the height of idiocy for either of us to reject the other’s overtures.”

“I think I agree. Like you said, we’re all Equestrians, and there aren’t many of us left on this continent.”

“Maybe after this war is over, I might just make a few more of us,” I said with a laugh.

“Well, we better get that war wrapped up soon, wouldn’t want to keep you and that lucky stallion waiting.”

“Exactly.”

---===*===---

I exited the studio and took in the salty night air. It had been a week and a half since Perm and I had gotten a phonograph. But I knew he hadn’t been listening to records during the last hour. The studio was only a short walk from the dockyards. It wasn’t cold, per se – the nearby oceans and desert moderated the temperatures a lot, after all – but it did have my coat standing at attention. Minutes later and I was standing at the end of a mostly empty pier. Mooring ropes and crates lay around it. The smell of overripe fish filled the air just as much as the brine did.

A gravid moon cast a glow on the harbor as I fished out a lighter and a smooshed pack of cigarettes. With a flick the lighter came to life, and a second later the tip of my cigarette was the brightest thing before my eyes. I was focused on the horizon. Battered and half sunken vessels sat in the water, rusting guns that could lob a suit of power armor twenty miles perched atop their hulls. Would we ever be able to achieve that again? If you added up every equestrian on the continent, we numbered maybe two-hundred thousand. That was a rounding error compared to the past. I took a deep pull and held it in my lungs, before letting it out. Then again, we could avoid making the mistakes of the past.

The ponies of the past were titans, but also children. They were able to build fleet after fleet of mighty vessels and equip whole armies with magical armor. But in the end, they lost. They weren’t willing or perhaps able to attack when they had the power to wipe their enemies from the field. And we were still paying the price. My cigarette was nearly burned out by now. I took the last pull and dropped it onto the aged pier. I smashed it beneath my hooves and growled. We were going to pull ourselves out of this slump. We would be better than those that came before.
The Equestrians of Sall’han may have regressed, but we hadn’t entered a dark age. I wouldn’t let the last embers of Equestria die. Me, the fuck up, shrapnel flanks, would save Equestria.

I had something else to fight for.

I was going to leave a better world for Permittivity and…

My children?

End Of: The Proud Tower (XIV)

[RM1]R O M E
[RM2]On a more serious note, who the fuck is Dalliance? Has she been introduced already?
You're gonna mention the differences between post war and pre-war electronics, vacuum tubes versus arcanotech transistors
[RM4]Wait, Perm has a PipBuck? Does Perm know?
[RM5]?

Author's Note

I hope you liked it!

If you really liked it, feel free to pm me here or on discord.
Sunnydontlook#1132

If you wanna buy me a Kofi, the link is right: https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

Lapping Upon The Shore (XIVS)

Author's Note

So, basically this got edited before 14. I decided to make it it's own chapter.

In you don't remember the reference... Then realize that this chapter is basically Erotica. Though I contend that it adds something to the characters.

Enjoy!

Lapping Upon The Shore (XIVS)

The room had a made up double mattress, not too big, not too small, and perfect for holding a healing Permittivity. I helped him over to it and watched him as his blue magic pulled the sheets up. With a gentle push, I laid him down and watched his face lose some of the pain it had been showing.

“Thank you, Icepick. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

“Pssh, I know you would do the same for me. Besides, the moment you kissed me you became mine.” I paused and bit my lips as he looked at me with a new nervousness in his eyes. “That wasn’t weird, right? I’m still getting used to the whole idea of-” I had been standing with my head close to his, kind of leaning over him, but the feeling of magic over my body caught me off guard until I felt his muzzle press against mine. At that moment the magical push stopped, and I felt my entire body relax as he kissed me. Before I knew what I was doing, I lifted my legs and pulled myself up onto the bed, laying atop him as his tongue pushed against my lips. This time I decided to let him in. The feeling of his tongue pushing into my warm muzzle had me gently moan, especially as I felt his fore hooves drift up my body and onto my flanks…

What felt like minutes passed as we swapped spit, before stopping to catch our breath. “So, do you regret that first kiss?” I asked him while wearing the same smirk that always drove my superiors crazy. I felt comfortable around him. He hadn’t pushed me away when I showed affection beyond the purely sexual. Perm thanked me for helping him out, here with the bed, and with that save earlier. He wasn’t like other stallions; not too stubborn to admit he needed help, or to admit he had feelings. He made me laugh, he made me question everything and he wanted to help me be a better pony. He also made me want to hit him fairly regularly, but that might have been part of his appeal…

“I’m glad I lived to answer that question,” he said with a smile of his own. I felt him pull up my tail with his magic while he squeezed my flanks. Yep, he wanted me.
“And that answer is?” I asked him as his magic pressed against my marehood and spread me just the slightest bit apart. A slight moan punctuated my question.

“I think you’re the mare of my dreams.”

I felt my stomach go crazy as his eyes bore into mine. I couldn’t respond to that in any other way than to kiss him. Even that was nothing compared to the way he turned my legs to jelly with his teasing magic, his practiced attempts to bring my clit out into the steamy air.

I couldn’t let this unicorn defeat me, so even as he copped a feel and made me lightheaded, I lifted my hips up before pressing back forcefully against his crotch. His eyes opened widely as I felt a telltale hardness down there. Our lips parted and we just looked at each other for a moment. On some level, we both knew that we were on the precipice of taking this relationship somewhere we both wanted it to go. Even some far-off part of me realized that down the line, our foals would definitely have blue eyes. His breathing was a little too heavy, and even if he was hard, I knew I would have to do all the work. It would be enjoyable, but I knew that it wouldn’t be all that a first time could be.

“I-Icepick, would you like to-” he asked with a mixed hesitation and excitedness in his voice, and as I rolled over into the spot next to him and cut him off he seemed relieved. My eyes drifted down to his length. He certainly had enough blood to fill it up.

“Yes, but do really want this to be our first time?” He looked at me strangely. And his member managed to twitch in front of my eyes. Okay, I had to cop a feel. I stuck my hoof out and rubbed against the base of his hard cock. He groaned and smiled an easy smile at me. I did the same, even if my heart was thumping in my chest. Somehow, it was different being next to him. Every look he gave me, every touch and every moan he made drove me crazy.

“Honestly, I thought it would be me asking that kind of question, but perhaps not.” Maybe his cock and his brain were working on different wavelengths because his left forehoof drifted over to my stomach and ran a tight circle around my tits. A drop of pre dripped down his stallionhood as my hind legs opened up. Without missing a beat, he began to run his hoof over the inside of my hind legs before finally lightly pressing up against my pussy…

“Damn, are you pent up too? It’s been like a month and a half for me,” I said as my hoof picked up speed as it rubbed over his cock, and I pressed my body against his. Our heads turned to face each other, almost like that first night in Copper Springs. No, exactly like that night in Copper Springs, just with that sexual tension finally snapping like an over stretched rubber band. I felt my hoof grow wet with his pre, and as even as I spread it over his length I couldn’t keep up. Well, I had to do something. With his eyes glued to mine I brought my coated hoof to my lips and cleaned it. He swallowed hard as his cock twitched and spurted more pre.

“Not nearly as much,” he replied simply, before dipping his head over my neck and nipping at the skin. I moaned and ground my hips up into his hoof. He then moved his head back up to smile at me before bringing his own hoof over to his lips, mimicking me, before lapping at it like a thirsty dog.

It was fucking hot, so I took the opportunity to lock lips with him, and with a rub directly on his cock head, I forced his mouth open. The kiss became sloppier and sloppier as I took control and explored his mouth for the first time. And when I climbed on top of him, leaving my wet cunt to rub against his cock, he gave me the most smoldering look I had ever seen on a pony. He wanted me, and I wanted him, but for the first time in my life, I loved him. And I had a sneaking suspicion that he was falling for me too… And so it was that I lifted my body straight up and with a hoof guided his cockhead against my slit. Less than twelve hours ago, I thought I had lost the stallion of my dreams. Now, as I dropped my hips slowly - I looked down at him as my tongue lolled out of my mouth - I was finally bedding him, and it was exactly as good as I thought it would be.
I remembered the first time I had fallen asleep beside him; his light snoring and his unrelenting smell of stallion, and how I had initially hated him. Now though, he made me believe in fate. In a higher power… And hope. This city… these ponies would never have known about us Rangers without him.

When my hips hit his I took in a deep breath and just enjoyed the feeling of fullness. For a unicorn he packed a punch. He wasn’t the longest guy ever, but he was girthy… And before I had time to think further he drove upwards into me making me fall forwards and brace myself on his chest. Before the ornery stallion could do it again and break every doctor's order in the book, I pulled myself up and dropped onto his length again, my moan echoing across the former room of my friend. I had to thank him for not sleeping with me. The feeling of him pushing against my dripping walls made everything fall away, all the pain, all the alienation, all the doubts about his origin… I loved him. I loved his voice, his eyes that reminded me of pictures of glaciers, I loved that he was brave.

Permittivity groaned as I rode him, my hips slamming into his thighs over and over again as I felt my clit begin to wink out. Through it all, I was lost in his eyes, his scars and the feeling of his heart pounding under my hooves. I was invested in him, it was something that I couldn’t help but love. Endorphins started circulating in a way they hadn’t since Reflex…

And with a tempo that made the bed springs squeak, we continued. Minutes passed with the both of us becoming red in the face and increasingly breathless. His cock spreading me out even as I began to tighten up, my tummy increasingly full of tension, before-

“Icepick!” he moaned as I felt his cock begin to flare inside of me. All his previous stimulation had led to this moment, when I finally felt my clit wink out against his throbbing cock and stay there. I looked into his eyes and saw something I had never seen in them before: bliss. So, when I finally felt those twitches that signaled his end, he rammed himself back in me as hard as his exhausted body could bare. He chose that moment to squeeze my ass and send a touch of electricity through my clit.

“Perm!” I moaned out loud as that tension in my belly became the best orgasm I had ever had. Somewhere in the back of my mind, behind the mess that I had just become, I felt the thick squirts of cum filling my pussy. I fell onto his chest panting and looked down to see the wet white-streaked mess that was our joining. “Really, uh, Perm? That was fucking shocking.” I could feel him breathing heavily, even as his cock began to shrink inside of me. Maybe it wasn’t a fairy tale bedding, but we weren’t exactly a fairy tale couple.

Moments passed, and I rolled off of him and without consulting him, twisted and began licking up and down his dirty shaft, scarfing down my first serving of him. His cute desperate little half-moans filled the air and he got about halfway hard before he managed to sputter out, “P-please Icepick. I probably shouldn’t have rutted once, twice is pushing it in my condition.”

“G-good point,” I replied. I quit my ministrations and moved my head back up towards his, laying a hoof across his body as the afterglow began to hit me in full force. That fucking Arabian had stopped me from getting a second round. Then again, I had probably liquified him… Fair was fair, I suppose.

I gently nuzzled Perm and listened to him breath, even as his breathing became the deep breaths of sleep. Normally I’d hold that against a stallion, but not him. Not now. No, I was as content as I could ever remember being, even in a strange city, in a stranger’s house. My stomach was full of butterflies, and my brain was fuzzy. If these weren’t the signs of being in love I had heard about, that I had felt years ago for Reflex, then I would eat my saddlebag. The disgusting one that still smelled like decomposing head. That same feeling of comfort, that energy flowing through me that made me realize my heart was beating fast… It remained as I watched him sleep. My conundrum of a stallion. The one I would never lose again. Eventually, I yawned and managed to fade to black with my head on the same pillow as the stallion I loved. The same stallion who I had known for a long time, who had saved me, and been saved by me. The stallion that would maybe just stick by me because he loved me back.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

End Of Chapter (XIVS):

Lapping Upon The Shore

Relief, Remorse & Reaction (XV)

The noise from the radio stopped. It hadn’t been the longest interview, but it had accomplished what it had set out to do. Icepick was magnetic. She was humble, yet defiant. She was the mare that would raise a thousand ships.

She was the destroyer.

My legs felt weak as I sat there in a tavern filled with patriotic ponies. Before me was a stout beer. It reminded me of home. Then again, so did the revelry. I had been a student when the war had been declared. We were so innocent. I had sung among the loudest and lost the most in the end. I tipped my glass back and enjoyed the bitterness. No One knew what was coming. It was my burden to bear. A burden that couldn’t change anything. I had found my mark, and I loved her. The mare of my dreams would be the one that damned this world. She was falling in love with it, the freedom, the expression of one’s self. Icepick had pink streaks in her mane and tail.

Even if I told her what was to come, I doubted that anything could be done. Even if all the Rangers and every citizen of Paradise were to take up arms, it would be at most a match for one corp. It would just prolong the inevitable. The question for me was this: should I tell her and risk everything? Or should she find out when the ponies who spoke and thought like me came streaming out of an obsidian mirror?

I took another drink and thought about my mission. I had come here to prepare this place for an invasion. The vaguest of prophecies had been dropped in my lap. I still didn’t know how it was supposed to play out, or my part to play. At this point, all I had done so far is build a legend for my lover, and save her from her enemies at the same rate as she saved me-

“Why do you look so down?” A mare asked me from a few feet away. She had a glass of harder liquor in front of her, and she looked vaguely familiar.

“I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. Or even if there is a right thing to do,” I said quickly, like my guts were spilling out into the smoky room through a massive wound.

“Wait, wait, I know you…” She paused and finished off her drink. “You’re that stallion with the funny accent, the one that got pinged by an Arab and lived.”

“How do you know that?” I asked her, suddenly wary of the other patrons recognizing me.

“Oh, you were being cuddled by the big blonde and getting attention from Rosetta,” She answered without breaking her verbal stride.

“I apologize for only having the barest recollection of you, I was rather indisposed at the time.” The bartender moved by the two of us and filled up our glasses again, with her nodding at him to fill mine.

“I forgive you. I’m Bajada by the way.” She laughed as I downed the first third of my glass in a single gulp.

“Permittivity,” I offered her a forehoof as I tried to remember who this mare was- “You’re Rosetta’s old flame?” She met my hoof and drew it to her lips before leaving a kiss on it. I flushed and looked away as she laughed again.

“Did your knight marefriend not kiss your hoof? I thought y’all were old fashioned?”

“I usually kiss hers,” I looked down as I realized what I had just told this pony.

“Kinky, but uh, I’m mostly just fucking with you. I gotta get that out of my system before they send me out into the desert on a fool’s errand,” Bajada said wistfully, before staring at her glass. “You seem like the only person here who’s immune to the fervor, and you’re not even a Desert Ranger.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I’m only immune because I’ve been through it before.” My words fell out of my mouth, they seemed to dry my throat as they forced themselves past my larynx.

“Pray tell?” She asked simply.

“You don’t want to know. Suffice it to say, I can feel the echoes across time. A peaceful place enticed to throw its blood and treasure into the meat grinder of war for promised glory and riches.”

“Aye, I’ve fought bandits and brigands for a decade. But what she’s talking about is nothing less than declaring war on an entire people, that just doesn’t make strategic sense.” She took a deep drink before throwing the glass down onto the counter, only the thick glass preventing the whole thing from shattering. Her forelegs were shaking.

“It depends on your point of view Bajada,” I took another drink and looked towards the merry ponies drinking away their pay. “Subjugating whole peoples is something empires undertake. Sombra’s attempt at it started the whole war.”

“That’s ancient history, and he lost.” I burst out laughing at that.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Can I smoke?”

“Only if you share.”

---===*===---

“What if I told you that Sombra won? That he was the lesser of two evils, or three technically.” I had to pay attention to the rougher roads of the dockside district.

“I would say you knew shit all about ancient history,” she said before bumping into me.

“Are you alright?”

“No,” she said simply before stopping and dropping to her rump and retrieving a package of cigarettes from her pocket. I lifted one of them to my horn and lit it for her. The small trickle of hot magic felt like a second heartbeat as it passed through my horn. “Thanks.”

“Well, would you ever believe me if I told you I came from a world where Sombra won? Where your gods became elemental forces of destruction?”

“I’m drunk, so go on, your voice is nice.” She took very long pulls as if she wanted to burn her lungs. With a flick, I stole it from her and took a conservative pull of my own.

“Well, what if I told you that we were in roughly the same place you were before the bombs destroyed everything?”

“I would tell you to drink and be merry because once that box is opened, the world is gonna get fucked.”

“But what if there was a little bit of time before the other side finds out how to build the bomb?”

“That would change everything, as soon as we found out the secrets to megaspells, the zebras had already made their own.” A gust of wind cut through our meager clothes as she answered.

“So you’re saying those weapons should be used on them before they have a chance to fire back?”

“You know, you sound like one of my privates asking about a ‘friend’ with weird warts on their dick,” Bajada laughed and pulled out another cigarette, waiting for me to light it. “But I dunno, that’s a helluva question. As a soldier, I say fuck em’. Better one side dies so the other lives. As a mare, I think its a fucked up question.”

“Right,” I said before lighting the cigarette and taking the first hit. This time, I wanted to burn myself, wanted cancer to tear into me already. I had everything I truly wanted here, but I knew it would all be ashes in the wind before long.

“Gimme my cig,” she growled at me, before punching my foreleg. I obliged and stared at the streetlight ahead of me. “Ain’t that your little warmonger?” She said as a large shape drifted into the light. The moment it struck her mane I knew she was right. The new colour made her look a bit jauntier. It fit her well, pure blonde was a little austere for her. She had kissed me when I made that observation. Though, I was nearly sure we used any excuse to lock lips.

“I didn’t expect to see you out here,” I yelled towards Icepick. Her head jerked and she looked at me contemplatively.

“Same,” she said before walking over to Bajada and me.

“You know, if you wanna meet your fan club, you can walk right into that bar,” Bajada said with derision clearly evident in her voice.

“I’m okay, I just want to sleep,” Icepick said without any emotion. She looked and sounded exhausted. I wanted to join her. Some part of me wanted this next month to be enjoyable, even if the taint of what was to come would never be forgotten. What would she do, if she knew the prophecy?
I shivered in my jacket as I picked myself up off of the earth and strode towards Icepick.

“I concur,” I said quietly before coming up beside her. Bajada looked at the two of us, but there was no focus in her eyes. “Goodnight, and thank you for the willing ear.”

“Ehh, I’m drunk and your accent is interesting, so we’re even.” Bajada’s words reminded me of just how foreign I was to this place. Even if sometimes I was reminded so much of home that I forgot for a moment what I had come here to do. I said nothing to either of the mares. Icepick and I trudged home in silence. If anything was the base of our relationship, it was our ability to keep pace with one another, even if that was all we could do.

---===*===---

By the time we next spoke to one another, we had already crawled into bed. It felt like several minutes since the lights had shut off, but in a dark room, it’s rather hard to tell how much time had passed. Icepick rolled over in bed and faced me.
“You havin’ a hard time passing out too?” She asked me simply. Her voice was quiet, with just the slightest hint of vexation. Not at me, at her own mind.
“Yes,” I replied just as softly. With a hint of a smile, I grasped her form in my magic and pulled her into my forelegs.
“We haven’t tried rutting yet…” She asked mischievously, to which I pressed my muzzle to her hornless forehead, kissing my mare softly.
“So, I’ve known you for a decent length of time, and I know what your cutie mark means. My question is: how did you ever manage to obtain a cutie mark involving explosives?” I honestly wanted to know. And perhaps forgetting about the present would be a good thing. Even as my own sheath stirred at her offer.
“It’s sweet that you wanna know more about me,” she responded softly, looking away the whole time. I squeezed her and kissed the tip of her muzzle.
“I’ll tell you mine,” my voice had a gentle singsong quality to it, as much as my weary throat could deliver.

“You know that if you do, there’s a good chance I’ll end up calling you sparky,” Icepick answered with a giggle. I had never heard her giggle before. For a brief moment, it felt like both of our years had melted away. My glare was enough of a reply for her straighten up before kissing the end of my muzzle. “I’m just saying. But uh, I can tell you my cutie mark story.”

“Thank you, I’m quite curious about your past. You don’t really talk about it.” I told her simply, to which she frowned before running her hooves up and down my back softly.

“You realize that you’re like ten times more reticent about your past than I am?” I just smiled at her and nodded for her to continue. “You’re impossible.”

Moments passed as out breaths mingled in the small space, Icepick shuffling around to find the most comfortable way to cuddle.

“Alright so, I was only a late bloomer when it comes to my cutie mark. I was the size of most mares by fourteen, and well, I was barely sixteen when I stopped getting taller… So, I was thirteen when they took my cohort out to the range. I will say the introduction to small arms course was the best part of the Ranger educational experience.”

“They gave firearms to children? How is that responsible?” I asked simply, my mind going back to the first time I touched a gun. I had been twenty.

“There were plenty of range officers, usually. Anyway, if you’ll stop being a gun prude-”

“What?”

“You heard me. It was during the second month, we were being introduced to heavy weapons, pony portable missile launchers and recoilless rifles ya know, big boom booms? Anyway, I was at the end of the line, and my partner was a smaller stallion who hadn’t been paying attention to the notes. Maybe you could say he just wasn’t as good at absorbing the facts. Well, he had the launcher set up on his shoulder and he pulled the trigger. Nothing. He got scared shitless because a recoilless rifle isn’t supposed to not go off. Well, I yelled at him to keep it on his shoulder. I went to the ignition box and reconnected the wires correctly. After that, I pulled the trigger for him and the back of the thing spewed flame. Half of a second later it exploded the target at the end of the range.”

“That’s incredible,” I said quietly.

“Yeah, it turns out that there was a good chance that the warhead would’ve exploded in the tube if I hadn’t reconnected the fuse. But the moment after the thing worked as intended, I had that telltale glow from my ass. And for that’s how I got my shrapnel Cutie mark. I helped an explosive explode.” I snuggled her closer as she finished, throwing some light up with my horn and gently caressing the closest shrapnel covered flank. She sighed and pulled me closer with her hooves, before nuzzling my neck gently.
“That’s an impressive talent, and an exciting story,” I told her softly, just before kissing her forehead. “Mine isn’t nearly as exciting. I was in a classroom as opposed to a firing range.”
“Honey, I’m badass and you’re the egghead, we knew that already,” Icepick said after moving her head from my neck to look me in the eyes. My hornlight died as she kissed me on the lips. A moment passed as we kissed-
“As I was saying, we were doing a unit on electricity, having us rotate magnets around coils of wire connected to light bulbs. When it was my turn to spin it, I felt the electrons flow through the wire. When I focused on the wire my horn started to glow. When that happened, I saw all the current flowing. It was like all the wires were filaments. The ones in the walls were bright, the weak currents created by the magnets were barely lit. I got a little caught up on my first magnet though, spinning it with my horn wasn’t something the teacher took into account. I was the only unicorn in the class. When I burned the lightbulb out he took me aside and sent me to the headmaster.”

“That fucking prick!” Icepick said loudly, looking me in the eyes, and even in the dark, I could tell she was angry on my ten-year-old self’s behalf.

“I only realized later that I had gotten my mark using my magic to view the electricity I was creating, that made up for any punishment.” As I said this, she moved a hoof over to my flank, as if she was feeling the contours of my mark. Or it was purely amourous. It was hard to tell with her sometimes.

“So, electricity must have been pretty new to you all,” Icepick said a moment later, a slight smile on her face. “Earth pony engineering at its finest.”

“I mean, rediscovering the old ways-” She cut me off by pressing a hoof to my mouth. Not the one caressing my mark. Her other one.

“Relax, I know about your origins,” her words were as soft as her expression. “You don’t need to hide from me, stallion of my dreams. Gods, that sounded sugary enough to give me a cavity.” It didn’t matter though, my heart rate shot up and my muscles tensed. She felt it as I did.

“I-I…” The moment had happened, she knew. The stallion of my dreams…

“It’s alright, you probably have really good reasons to hide where you came from, first probably being no-one would believe you if you told them.” Icepick paused and nuzzle me again. “It’s okay Perm. I have to ask though, you uh ever have dreams about me?” I sighed and rubbed her back softly, trying to get my breathing back under control.

“Yes, I had many dreams as the mare in the desert. The mare of my dreams,” I managed to say after a silent moment. My voice was faint. Almost haunted. She would know soon, the real reason why I came. She kissed me on the lips and pulled her chest against mine. Her fur was warm against mine, it felt solid, even if nothing else was.

“Aww, so you felt me eat, piss and masturbate too?” She asked with a laugh.

“Um, yes? I take it the experience is mutual?” I said with a nervous chuckle.

“No wonder we’re so good together, walk in another mare’s horseshoes, that kinda thing. I mean, didn’t you wonder how I knew all the right places on you…” Icepick stopped to think and give me some room to reply. She didn’t see why I was here. She would’ve killed you if she knew that. At least, she would’ve then.

“I just assumed you were that skilled in the… coital arts?” She giggled again at me, before running her hoof along my flanks and withers.

“I mean, I am,” she flashed a predatory grin at me for a split second, “but being there when you fucked that cute Pegasus was pretty instructive.”

“Please don’t mention her.” I turned away. Her hooves drifted over me as I moved.

“Why?” She asked with a tone of nonchalance. I sighed and turned to face her once again. My horn lit up with a pale light, nearly glacial. Perhaps it was some fragment of home resurfacing. Some part of me that could never forget.

“It didn’t end well Icepick. For some time, I thought she was the one.”

“Oh,” Icepick sighed and looked me in the eyes. For what wasn’t the first time, I realized that short of albinism, we would have blue-eye foals. Even if she wasn’t the most tacit mare, she had a good heart. Then again, so did Trace. The mare who I had left without a note. What had happened to her? My mind reeled. It was too much. Whatever that necklace had been doing to me, it had helped me focus on the here and now. But, it was gone. And I was left to pick up the pieces.

“It’s not your fault, you only saw bits and pieces Icepick. Suffice it to say, she loved me and I broke her heart.”

“Why did you do that? What did you do?” Icepick asked tenderly. Her mood had shifted, my big mare was trying to soothe me. I hadn’t talked to anypony about it before. Maybe my communications with the doctor and Sombra counted. No, they really weren’t ponies.

“I wasn’t, aren’t right in the head Icepick. I’ve been unbalanced. What I did was easy to explain though. I came here.” I replied, letting my horn wink out even as my stomach churned. The pain was real. I would’ve preferred another rifle wound at that moment.

“You’re a good buck, and I’m glad you came. I-”

“She probably thinks I’m dead. I just disappeared to her, and to him.”

“What? You didn’t tell them goodbye?” Icepick bit her lips and pulled me closer to her again. I acceded to the contact, but I wasn’t truly in the mood to reciprocate yet.

“It was a short term… Offer. And I wasn’t in the right state of mind to refuse,” I said to her. “I’ll tell you why I wasn’t right in the head if you promise to give me time for how I got here.”

“I promise Perm, just tell me,” Icepick said.

“It’s about something you might not understand. I lost my parents in the war-”

“I know about that, you set up a funeral with your brother. Your taller, bigger brother,” She teased. I didn’t laugh though. The reminder that I hadn’t said anything to him either. It was like a lance through my innards. I wanted to get out of bed and hit the bottle of rum in my bag. I would’ve even liked to see my nephew or niece. I could’ve been a good uncle, maybe help shape them into a pony better than their parents-

“He’s a wonderful pony,” I looked up at her. Would I trade it all back if I had the option? Have one world become a dream. No, if things went the right way, the worlds would intertwine. And maybe this wonderful mare could forgive me. Maybe the Empire would build a mighty fleet to cross the sea… “Not without his flaws, but who lacks those?”

“Not me, not you, maybe Rosetta?” Icepick said with a bitter laugh.

“I was wounded at the time, these scars you see were fresh then, and I had just learned of the super bomb. The bomb that ended the war. The bomb that damned my world.”

“That’s why you said…” She asked softly.

“What did I say? It doesn’t matter what I once said. That world is gone, for me at least. I have nothing left there. At least here, I have had a chance to build something worthwhile. Something that can last. I’d love to be part of your life- for forever Icepick. If you wanted me.”

“I do. Perm, I can’t say that I’ve never felt things for other ponies before- but I know you feel the same.” She stopped and looked away. The pink in her mane seemed to glow in the light. “You can’t just leave your home though, it’s a part of you for better or worse. It made you.”

“You say that having fallen in love with this place. You’ve changed your mane, and your ears all to better fit this place. You can even go home again.”

“I haven’t given up my past. I’m still the soldier mare you met, well, either a year ago or about a month ago. Depending on how you count. And I know you like the ear studs, you’ve always loved my ears. That’s not the point, you devious verbal evader-” I stopped her with a hoof to her lips.

“I tried to protect you, and myself from what transpired in that other place. But, I’ll tell you what I tried to obscure: I committed suicide. I nearly succeeded as well.” I looked her in the eyes, and the moment that I saw a hint of wetness in her eyes, I choked up in sympathy. My own breath hitched as I remembered the smell of the coal gas drifting into my flat. “That world killed me. Rather, it forced to make a decision that would’ve been my last. Is that reason enough to forget it? I want to be a new buck. This world is my chance Icepick. Back where I came from, I was merely a casualty. Here, I’m a hero.” She said nothing to that for a long time. All she did was pull me to her warm chest once again.

“No, you were a brother, a son, and a lover.” Icepick said before letting out a long-held breath. There was a halting quality to her words. All of these concepts were ones that seemed alien to her, but she knew they were important to the ponies of paradise. And through them, she knew me.

“Yes, and I failed on all counts. That world is better off without me.” I said to her before letting out a breath. “Icepick, I nearly died in Copper Springs. And it would’ve been a valiant death. I was ready to die, I regret nothing about that night. I spent time thinking about how you would remember me. And to see you build a funeral pyre out of burning bodies for me, it made me feel… Significant. Now, do you see why I want to forget certain things?”

“I do,” she stared me down, eyes gleaming softly in the darkness. “But we can’t do that. Even if you made mistakes in your life, you can’t just give it all up because they’re painful. Trust me, I know how it is to hate your own past. But we have to recognize it, and maybe, just maybe, refute it. Permittivity, I want the wars to be done. I want to hang up my guns. And most of all, I want you beside me, after it’s all over.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to keep that vision alive. Through all the tumult and strife to come.” I kissed her nose lightly.

“We’ve had enough of that already. I just wanna skip to the happy ending.” I forced a smile onto my muzzle. A second later Icepick relieved me from that duty with a kiss. There was no reply in words.

Eventually, though, my heartbeat matched hers.

---===*===---

“So did you pull anything out of a patient today?” Icepick asked Rosetta from across the table. The stallion changed from pink in the face to red in seconds.
“N-no!” He sputtered at the question as the rest of the table either chuckled or gave her a critical look. I was in the former category.
“Icepick, you know he of all ponies shouldn’t talk about work at the dinner table,” Page Turner said to Icepick, as she sat there chewing on her noodles.
“I mean he saves lives, let’s be mature,” Icepick replied swiftly.
“Yeah, yeah,” Page just rolled her eyes and refused to take the bait. Dalliance looked over at Icepick and winked at her.
“I discovered today that the fuel for your spark reactors is vacuum potential,” I broke the silence a moment later to everyone’s surprise.
“What?” Icepick asked after a moment’s pause.
“Well, I was reading a technical manual on the subject, and it mentioned the process of energy creation wasn’t dependent on converting, or combusting gemstones themselves. The Gemstones are merely used as a way to guide the vacuum energy into a usable form. Although eventually, the process degrades the conduits, hence their need to be replaced.”
“Oh that, yeah. I had my reactor chamber replaced like a month ago. The buck who did it told me that if you don’t have the conduit calibrated correctly and you turn it on, you’ll explode like a few kilos of TNT,” She spoke mostly offhandedly even as she revealed the fact her armor was a walking bomb.
“They miniaturized the technology to that degree?” I asked with considerable consternation.

“How else do you think they powered the walking death suits? Internal combustion?” Page barked, before rolling her eyes at us.

“It’s just impressive page, how far the old world managed to advance in so little time,” I defended myself with an appeal to ancestor worship, which normally would’ve been taken with some degree of reverence, but I misjudged my hosts.

“It’s not really that impressive. Really, it all comes down to necessity and demographics. They are only about two hundred thousand ponies in all the colonies and in the city itself. And we aren’t in the middle of a multi-decade arms race. Equestria was and had millions upon millions of ponies living within her borders. That’s a lotta scientists, engineers and magicians all working to make things better at killing zebras.” Page finished her explanation with a huff. Her eyes showed an understanding of the past that others lacked. Even if she had never been in a war herself, she knew loss.

“I mean, it wasn’t just killing zebras, it was also to kill Arabs, Dragons, Wendigos, and Buffalo,” Icepick added with a dry laugh. “I mean, you have to give them credit for holding on as long as they did. They were stupid in a lot of ways, but they fought half the world and were in the process of winning with one of their hooves tied behind their back.”

“No, that’s nothing to be proud of. War doesn’t lead to anything worth venerating. War leads to dead people and people who wish they were dead,” Page replied to Icepick in a voice that seethed with an undercurrent of anger.

“Well, Pacifism works great when the other side wants to leave you alone, but that isn’t always the case. Like when a bunch of Arabs trash one of your towns.” I put a hoof on Icepick’s shoulder, to which she shrugged it off and stared at Page.

“Sure, let’s start playing the fucking bugles and flying the flag. Let’s start a war against an entire ethnic group, and you know, the ponies that were here first.” Page had met Icepick’s gaze.

“I agree with my mother, I don’t know if a war is the answer for that attack,” Rosetta added softly.

“What? Rosetta, they burned down your home and killed your neighbors!” Icepick stood up from the table and pointed a hoof at him.

“They don’t speak for all Arabs,” he said simply. “Is killing more ponies really the answer?”

“Of course you’d think that momma’s boy that you are,” Icepick nearly yelled.

“Get out!” Page yelled back. “You come here from the desert, and just because you managed to impress a few ponies with a horrific act of violence, you think you deserve to us to fight a war.”

“Okay, well, when the fucking Arabs come here and start to rape and murder you en masse, maybe you’ll change your mind,” Icepick yelled back before looking at me. “Come on Perm, time to spend some of that war loot on a hotel room.”

“Icepick please, everyone please,” I said to the lot of them. The only pony who didn’t look at me like I had betrayed them was Dalliance. And she was busy massaging Page Turner’s neck.

“What Perm? Are you above it all? Above the anger and emotions on display here?” Icepick asked with venom dripping from her voice. “I’ve lost friends, and what amounts to my family to Arabs. That horrific act of violence you talked about, eh, it wasn’t even my plan. I straight up copied something they did to us. It almost got me too, if I hadn’t been off chasing a couple insurgents.”

“So that makes anything you do to them alright?” Page yelled back. “Because that kinda logic makes the whole world burn.”

“The world would’ve been saved if we had just dropped the bomb as soon as we had it, Perm understands that, even if he has to be drunk to admit it.”

“Don’t bring me into this,” I said softly, yet firmly. “I’m your lover, not your yes mare.”

“Whatever Perm, you know I’m right about the war, about the need to fix things once and for all.” Icepick said quickly.

“No, there will be no crusade. The Ponies here don’t really understand the logistics of war, the sacrifices.” Page stopped speaking for a second as she began to lose her composure. A few tears began to stud her cheeks in the artificial light, our meal forgotten. “I know what the cost is. Icepick, you’re a good mare, but you haven’t lost everything to war. The father of Rosetta lost his life fighting a warband of tribal ponies up in the northern wastes.”

Icepick was silent at that. She sat down in her chair and took a sip of water while looking at the table. After a moment she glanced at me, or rather my still healing chest wound. I didn’t have to dig into her mind to realize what she was thinking about.

“I didn’t know,” was all she said before leaning over the table and kissing me on the cheek. “I did it for him, it was a funeral pyre.”

“I see.” Page Turner said after a minute. The room had a lost its tension, in its place was an enervating stillness.

“I’m going to get a breath of fresh air, if you would like to join me Icepick, I would appreciate the company,” I said after a few moments of oppressive silence. I was not comfortable being compared to a dead husband and father of my friend. I may have been suicidal in the past, and a monster at present, what I couldn’t take was the thought that I might leave a psychic scar on ponies close to me.
“I’ll join you,” Icepick said simply.
“You can come back, I spoke out of anger,” Page Turner said to us as we started down the stairs.

“Alright,” I said to them as we made our way out. The streets would be interesting, as they always were here. Maybe they could shift our mood.

Maybe.

---===*===---

It was late. And I was on my way home from the university library. The moon shone brightly in the cloudless sky. There was just enough light to cast a shadow below me. A reminder of my impact on the world. I tried not to think about it, even as my lungs burned.

The walk home was my time to think. I detested it for that reason. Every moment I had to myself was a moment that I wanted less of. For that reason, I started trotting to and from work. Most ponies thought I was for fitness, hell Icepick thought that too.

‘I should have a monopoly on making you sweat.’ She said the first time I came in with moisture on my brow. She didn’t mind though, she had found a job with that pre-war mall. Icepick the security mare. They didn’t give her a gun or anything, in fact, she just stood around wearing a uniform. It was honestly a great way of advertising for them. That and the one time someone attempted to steal a piece of jewelry from the store, she managed to tackle them to the floor. That was fun to read about in the papers-

“Come here,” A familiar voice said in a harsh tone to me as a trotted past an alleyway.

“What?” I asked loudly as I stopped to look into the alleyway. If the streets in this part of the city were poorly lit, that place was like the void between the stars. Before I could say anything further, she treaded lightly into the street itself, checking to see that it was deserted aside from me, and pulled down her hood. The pony standing before me was indeed familiar.

It was Crescent Moon.

I did as she suggested originally and stepped into the dark alleyway. The tension on her face as she went back into hiding was palpable. Why was she here if she had avoided taking the trip with us when she had the chance?

“I needed to talk to someone who could help. And you’re the only one I have anything approaching trust.” She stopped and grabbed my hoof, pulling me further back into the alley.

“Help with what? You understand how dangerous it is for you to be here,” I said as she pulled the both of us behind a dumpster. She sat down and I did the same, my eyes slowly adjusted to the low light as my body realized how close this mare was to me.

“I’m not an imbecile. I know that my life is likely forfeit if I’m discovered.” She was quiet, but the intensity of her words would’ve given any pony concern. “No, it is Tegarni that is the threat.”

“Threat how? He’s already attacked a town looking for Icepick and me,” I replied with curiosity.

“He found a zebra submarine from before the war,” She said tersely.

“One ship is a nuisance, not something to turn the tide of a war,” I answered quickly. That couldn’t be-

“It’s not the vessel, it’s the cargo. There’s a balefire missile still in its launch tube. He’s been trying to get it operational for some time, and it needs to be stopped.” She told me with a sober expression, her eyes piercing mine.

“Why did it take you so long to tell me? I’ve been here for over a month.”

“I made my way back to a base for my people, far to the south. There, my friend, the commander of the base, had just received correspondence from Tegarni. He is within Tegarni’s inner circle, hence the letter. It spoke of the missile and its rough location along off the coast. The submarine is beached on the edge of a rocky outcropping.”

“How was it not found previously?” I asked her incredulously.

“It is in the midst of many navigational hazards, rock outcroppings, and sandbars,” she answered quickly, though the vexation was showing on her face.

“I don’t know what I can do personally,” I answered honestly. I was just one pony. And if balefire was equal to the bomb used on the Celestians, then it could be used to change the world with one stroke.

“You’re an intelligent stallion, think of something, some ponies or some ploy. I’ll join you on whatever undertaking you think will work. For now, though, I’ve spent too much time in this alley. When you need to find me, don’t bother. I’ll find you. Just wear something green on your form at night. That will be the signal you would like to meet.”

“Alright,” I let out a deeply held breath. Well, if I wasn’t stressed before… Was this part of the plan? To let Tegarni destroy Ramsgard or Paradise? That would certainly weaken any resistance. “Why green?”

“It’s uncommon, and I like it. Green is rare here. Green is the color of life, and that is the thing that binds us all together.” She said as she turned to leave the alley. With one an indecipherable look, she threw her hood back onto her head and trotted away.

A stiff breeze seemed to carry her away. This time was always going to be an aberration. This was just a crack in the facade and not even the first at that.

I shivered.

---===*===---

“Hey, you’re home!” Icepick said loudly as I entered the house proper. It was late. Page Turner and Dalliance had likely gone to bed already. With a glance towards the kitchen, I spotted Rosetta making a drink.
“I need to talk to you and Rosetta,” I said solemnly. Her face warped when she heard my words.

“What is it?” She asked immediately, even as I started walking towards the kitchen, and our friend.

“Something of a problem,” I said morosely. Rosetta looked up from his shaker, eyeing the two of us critically. He usually liked to drink alone.

“What’s up?” He asked as he poured his concoction into a glass filled with ice.

“I have news from an unlikely, yet familiar source.” I paused and looked at that glass. I knew from experience that the active ingredient in it was liquor made from a desert plant. It was disgusting. “May I have a sip of that?” My hooves shook slightly as my mind went back to the information I had learned.

“Sure?” He knew as well as I did that I hated his drinks. Icepick stood beside me, placing a hoof on my shoulder and looking at me with concern. Neither of them were perfect ponies, but they were my friends. I drank half the glass and sputtered slightly at the taste. Who would add citrus to liquor?

“So, I was trotting home, after the librarians gave me a series of dirty looks. When I heard a voice from a dark alleyway. I stopped and looked at them. They removed their hood-”

“Who was it?” Icepick asked impatiently. The refrigerator opened with a hiss as she fished out a drink of her own.

“It was Crescent Moon,” I paused and took a deep breath. “She found out about Tegarni’s secret.”

“What? She’s in the city?” Icepick asked angrily, before popping the top off of her beer.

“Yes, but what she told me is worth the risk to her. Tegarni found something from before the war, a zebra submarine, equipped with at least one remaining balefire missile.” The was a silence in the room as I told them this.

“He could destroy Paradise.”

“He could blow up Ramsgard.”

They spoke simultaneously, fresh fear on their faces. I looked at each of them in turn. Icepick’s face was writhing in fear and uncertainty. Rosetta’s face was steeled.

“Yes, so we’re agreed that we need to stop it from becoming operational?” I asked them both. Rosetta nodded immediately. Icepick looked down before meeting my eyes.

“I really don’t trust any Arab. But even if there’s a one percent chance of it being real, that’s too much of a chance for us to ignore it.” Icepick said resolutely.

“The only issue is, well, even if we have her with us there’s four of us. And we have no way of getting to the island…” I stopped talking and thought for a second. “We might have a few more ponies we can recruit. I’d need to talk to that one mare, Bajada.” Rosetta scowled involuntarily.

“We can trust her, and she’d be willing to go out with us on this secret mission. Still, we need a fucking boat.” Rosetta said a moment later.

“Or we could tell the authorities in Paradise, or the Rangers, they’ve got to be here soon,” Icepick said with hesitation in her voice. “Hey, I’m just laying the options out.”

“Well, the biggest issue is, we don’t know where the island is,” I paused to let that sink in. “And frankly, I don’t blame Crescent for not trusting either government with a weapon of that magnitude. At least if we and a small group of ponies attack with some degree of stealth we can destroy the weapon.”

“Can we even do that safely? It’s a balefire bomb.” Rosetta asked pointedly, before knocking back the remains of his drink.

“Hey, if there’s a bomb, I’m the way.” Icepick said before turning herself, and pointing at her flank. “Besides, if I remember anything about Megaspells, it’s that they’re really really hard to trigger. Like, other than the egg itself. Those things are bloody dangerous. Or so I’ve read.” Icepick finished with a grin. Some part of her was utterly confident about the prospect of getting up close and personal with the weapon that destroyed the world.

“Sure,” Rosetta replied warily. Icepick just laughed, with a hint of self-consciousness residing deep inside it. Just another reminder that Icepick was well: the Destroyer.

I shivered again and walked over to the cabinet in search of the bottle of black rum I had bought a few days ago.

“I don’t think we can do anything right now. And honestly, the idea of leaving this place and marching in the direction of danger is terrifying.” I spoke honestly, before taking a straight pull from the half-empty bottle.

“Well, maybe for you pansies,” Icepick spoke with a false confidence. Both of us knew well enough to see through it. “I’m itching for some more action. I was getting bored.” Her hoof on my shoulder drifted down to my chin, she turned my head slightly, before kissing me full on the lips. Her tongue drifted into my mouth. “Damn, you taste like sugar, sugar.”

“It’s the rum,” Rosetta said from his position a meter away. The drink did usually make him less flustered. I passed him the bottle as Icepick looked at me lustily. He took a long pull from the bottle as well. Icepick smiled deviously before moving with lightning speed over to Rosetta. Before we could react she pressed her lips to his. Moments passed as I remembered my own past, and Icepick’s. She had a different way of looking at the world, I thought to myself, even as jealousy and arousal mixed in my mind.

“Not bad,” Icepick said after releasing Rosetta to sputter and back up a few feet and shoot nervous looks at me. She looked at me with a curious expression in her eyes. It would be just like her to ask for permission after the fact. “But nah, you’re naturally sweeter.”

I stood there in silence as Rosetta took another pull, he looked like he had done something wrong. I took the bottle in my magic and drank another sip myself after him. Icepick then stole it and took a drink herself.

“Oh come on, I’ve seen the way you both look at each other. And now it’s basically like you’ve kissed already. I just got to be the lucky middle mare.”

“Uh,” was all Rosetta said as he tried to wrap his mind around this scenario.

“Icepick let’s go to bed,” I said as I wrapped a tendril of magic around her shoulders and applied a bit of pressure.

“Rosetta, we’ll talk about this later, when we’re all a little less fucked up,” I said to him as I nuzzled Icepick and continued guiding her back to the room. I didn’t blame her too much, she was from a different culture. And Rosetta was a great stallion. I sighed and pulled the door open, before laying Icepick on the bed. With a hind leg, I managed to shut the door, just before I myself crawled into bed with my intoxicated marefriend.

“You’re a frisky mare tonight,” I said to her as she pressed her face into my chest. One of her hooves slid over the spot where the knife had been buried in my side. I had to stop myself from shaking in remembrance.

“Yeah, sometimes people have funny reactions when they learn their biggest enemy has a weapon of mass destruction,” Icepick slurred her words. Her meaning was clear.

“Yes, that is a lot of pressure dropped upon us,” I said as I stroked her mane softly. I could feel her warm breath being blown against my chest.

“I mean, it’s all gonna feel like a dream soon,” she said plaintively to me.

“What will?” I asked, knowing the answer in every breeze, in my heart, and being reminded of it with every quiet moment.

“This,” she said simply. I said nothing. My hooves continued to stroke her mane, one of them even drifting over to her ears. There was a soft coo from her when I folded her ear down. “It’ll all be gone, one way or another. The stallion of my dreams, disappearing back into the whirling winds… Desert or tundra, it’s all the same.”

“I won’t disappear,” I said. “I have nothing left in that other world. I’ll fight for this one with everything bit of spirit I have left.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Icepick replied. I blinked my horn to light and bent down. My hinds were nearly poking off of the bed, but my eyes were staring into hers. I saw something I had never expected to see in her eyes. Tears.

“I’ll be as careful as can be. Just because someone is ready to lose their life for something greater doesn’t mean they want to.”

“It doesn’t matter Perm,” she tried to blink away the bits of water in her eyes. “You’re flesh and blood, you’re alive. There’s always a risk in that. Being a pony is dangerous. At least when I’m in my armor, I’m protected. Even if I feel less like a pony than a ghost that’s stayed around for a century to wreak havoc on what’s left.”

“I hate it when you talk about yourself like you’re less than pony.” My reply caught her off guard.

“Not less than, just different.” Icepick huffed slightly. “You’re a pony that was made to adapt to war. I was bred and raised for it. And for some reason, the conditioning stuck Perm. Other’s are cowards, or stupid enough to think they’re actually invincible. They die. Ponies like me, we usually live long enough to breed. At least that’s the way it has been for a century.”

“I-” She cut me off with a hoof.

“I’ll be the last generation of them,” Icepick paused to let out a held breath. “Either Tegarni wipes out Ramsgard, leaving us a shattered shell. Or we manage to beat him, and all the normal ponies here breed with us. We start normal families, and we have the strength to defend ourselves from all comers.”

“Let’s aim for winning then, and living to see the fruits of our labor.”

“It’s not gonna happen that way. But, I would like to live another dream with you. Maybe we could raise some relatively normal foals,” She smiled at me with an ornery grin. “You taste like you could give me some kids.” I choked loudly before chuckling.

“You’re a lewd pony,” I told her simply. “Enough thinking for tonight, it’s clearly not good for us.” My lips met hers moments later. The beer and rum did make her mouth a little sweeter. I hoped she knew she was gonna have to cut that stuff out with a foal in her belly…

Relatively normal. That was the aspiration. Fitting for the two of us.

The Destroyer And The Betrayer.

She wasn’t wrong, it was truly a dream. Even if we shared it.

Well, we had seen dreams become real before…

Author's Note

Sorry about the long wait. The next chapter is nearly ready to be published too though! So you'll have plenty of words to read soon.

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On My Way (XVI)

The knocking on the door was annoying, my head fucking ached, and my hooves were shaky as I unlocked the door with my hooves. What really gave me a migraine was the pony on the other side.

“Hey uh, Icepick,” Wellbore Axis said from behind the door. “Perm let me in.”

“Goddamnit Perm, it’s probably not even nine o’clock,” I yelled out into the house.

“Icepick, it’s noon!” Perm yelled back from the other side of the house.

“Oh shit,” I said in a softer voice. I looked back to Axis, who was standing there with an odd expression on her face.

“I would comment on you two being like an old married couple,” she flashed a shit-eating grin at me. Personally, I didn’t really know how married couples were supposed to work, other than them not fucking a lot apparently. Which I knew Perm and I didn’t have that issue. “But, you should come to the Harbor. Something big just blew in.”

“A piece of driftwood? A fishing boat?”

“No, a flotilla of rangers,” she bit her lip for a moment, “your kind of ranger.”

My yawn died on my lips. I looked at her for any hint of deception. I saw none.

“Let’s go!” I yelled in some kind of jubilation. Even as last night’s conversation filled my mind’s eye.

“Atta girl,” Axis said, just as Permittivity came around the corner wearing his saddlebags and clothes. He forced a smile onto his muzzle in sympathy.

---===*===---

The streets were busy, with a steady clamour of voices and ideas. When ponies recognized me for who I was, they seemed more strained. Their smiles seemed a little more like Perm’s when they met my gaze. All the while, Axis took point, pushing some out of the way with her voice and mollifying others with her resolute attitude.

“Your comrades have caused quite a stir,” Permittivity said from beside me. His coffee must have kicked in, he seemed a little peppier now.

“Well, if they brought in the Ember by itself, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ponies here started spontaneously singing a song ” I replied with a smirk.

“Huh?” He responded to that like a brick being smacked with a mallet.

“Well, first off, the Ember is a pre-war heavy cruiser that we’ve kept maintained. It has those 230-millimetre guns that make the deck shake…” I stopped speaking as Axis and Permy were giving me strange looks. “Or so I’ve heard-”

“That does kinda sound like the biggest ship they have parked out there,” Axis said while rubbing the back of her neck with a hoof. “Is it parked if it’s a boat?” She added, to herself.

“It’s docked,” Permittivity added sweetly. I was starting to think he drank a cup of Shetland Coffee.

“I can totally see Churned sending an honour guard up here,” I said to them as we started walking again.

“Anyone, you particularly want to be in said guard?” Permittivity asked with curiosity thrumming in his voice.

“I’d love to know that my friends are well, alive! Yeah, that would be pretty good,” I answered automatically as the thoughts of coming home a hero flooded my mind. Then the inevitable caveat leapt into my mind. If there’s a home to return to-

“Iron Sight? Perhaps that Agave filly?” Permittivity questioned with a smile on his muzzle. Something about him today seemed very carefree.

“I would love to see Iron. Agave, I guess I could rub my success in her face,” I added with a laugh. Well, if he could be happy, then I could at least try to be happy too.

“I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you as well, they likely thought you were dead given your last actions among them,” Permittivity said with a bit of hesitation.

“Yeah,” I said simply. Being dead in your friend’s eyes isn’t fun. There’s usually a good story in there somewhere though.

And I’m a decent storyteller.

---===*===---

When we arrived, the Desert Rangers and Police had already begun to start controlling the crowds. I muscled my way to the front of the crowds, with Permittivity and Axis at my side, I waited with the rest for the smaller ship to come to the end of the pier. Eventually, a metal walkway extended from the front of the ship, on the side of the ship I spotted a bank of torpedo tubes and a small turret erected on the bow of the ship. It looked like a turret off of a tank, probably 90 millimetres in diameter. I couldn’t make out whether the barrel was rifled. If it was, then I would know for sure it was surplus from the Ursa Major line.

“Knights in shining armour,” Permittivity said in a low voice as the honour guard, just eight ponies descended the ramp and formed a double line at the hoof of the ramp. The stood stock still as one other pony wearing Star-Paladin markings on their armour made their way down. Beside them was a paladin first class. They made it to the bottom of the ramp, before walking past the honour guard and up to the Desert Rangers guarding one of the Paradise Council members. I was maybe twenty meters from them. The steel barricade having been put in place when the crowds were even closer to the pier. Then, they took off their helmets and I gasped.

Reflex and Iron Sight stood there with their helmets strapped to the backs of their armour. I couldn’t hear the words they said, but I was standing with my head and upper body over the barricade.

“Hey Reflex, hey Iron!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. The two of them turned to face me, their jaws dropping in sequence as they met my eyes.

One of the security ponies moved to stop me but Iron shook her head at him. Moments later that same security pony looked at me harshly, before unlatching the metal bars and letting me and Perm through.

“You’re actually alive!” Ironsight tried to keep a serious look on her face as I walked over to the first official contact between our peoples.

“Yep,” I’m the one that got this nice mare to send ships your way,” I added with my first genuine smile of the day.

“Yes, and you responded by sending quite a few of your own vessels here.” The council mare responded. She was one of the more outgoing members of the council here, Blueberry Bonds.

“We came here to send a message,” Reflex started to say, looking her in the eyes, his armoured bulk compared to her light business suit saying something as well. “Neither of us are alone anymore on this savage continent.”

“That’s all well and good, but was sending a battleship necessary?” She huffed slightly as her eyes drifted over to Ember.

“It’s a heavy cruiser,” Permittivity spoke up for the first time. Of course, it was in the most Pedantic way possible. “Battleships don’t carry torpedo tubes.”

“And who are you exactly?” Blueberry said to him, a hint of a suppressed scowl surfacing on her face.

“That is a good question,” Reflex added moments later.

“He’s my boyfriend, and he’s also the one that knows critical intelligence about the Arabs,” I said while looking first at Blueberry critically, and then Reflex curiously.

“Oh well, let me just grab my husband, he has critical intelligence on what the ants are doing to my front yard,” Blueberry said scathingly.

“They burned down one of your towns!” I said loudly enough to rouse the attention of the nearest Desert ranger.

“Yes, so we must go on a crusade to destroy all the myriad bedouin tribes floating through the inhospitable desert,” the councilmare said.

“That won’t be-” I was cut off by Reflex.

“If only they were ants to be crushed by a single stomp of a sabaton,” Reflex said wearily. “Alas, we aren’t that lucky.”

“Ah, the diplomatic warrior,” Blueberry said with a sigh. “Just tell me what you want out of us.”

“I’ve heard that you’re headed by an executive council, we would like to discuss a bilateral trade and immigration treaty with them, everything else can be left for a more formal diplomatic process,” Ironsight said cooly.

“That’s agreeable, we should be able to set up an emergency council meeting tomorrow,” Blueberry told Ironsight courteously enough.

“Are the two of us free to leave our armour and weapons on the ship and tour the city?”

“As the acting representative, I give you that privilege as diplomats. We’re a free people, with nothing to hide from you.” Blueberry finished before turning her back.

“Wait here Icepick, we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Alright, I’ll keep these Desert rangers company,” I said just before the security began to disperse. “Well shit,” I turned to Perm. He was watching my old friends walk back to their small ship.

“That’s a yacht, not a warship,” Permittivity said thoughtfully.

“Why do you say that?” I asked him curiously, before leaning against him, laying my head on his shoulder and sniffing his mane.

“The hull is welded, and the armour plate is riveted to the preexisted hull,” Permittivity said quietly, before rotating his body out of my heads reach.

“I see,” I said quietly. The heady smell of salt in the air made me remember the last time I had been to this pier. The salt must’ve smelled the same to my ancestors crossing the ocean, not knowing they would never go home. It would be horribly ironic if Tegarni managed to balefire bomb Ramsgard…

“What are you thinking about?” Perm said before nuzzling my neck softly.

“Oh, nothing, just the thought of my home city being wiped out by a single enchanted dragon egg.” I paused and let out a deep breath as he looked at me sympathetically. “I’m starting to understand why the ponies in the past were mental. I don’t know how you stay sane knowing everything you love and fight for could be immolated at any time.”

“Yes,” he said simply. Because of course, he would. His world hadn’t yet blown itself up the first time, but they had no idea when their enemies would gain the power of megaspells. “It’s a poison to your mind. Everything becomes justifiable when it takes hold,” he finished just as a cold breeze blew in from the harbour.

“We’ll tell Reflex and Ironsight,” I told him. His lips slipped into a neutral position.

“Would you like to take them out to dinner, something tells me we won’t have the opportunity for fine dining soon. And well, the last of the specie is burning a hole in my saddlebags.”

“That, that sounds great.”

A moment later, as my lover and I stood side by side, my friends walked down the ramp wearing nothing more than light jackets and saddlebags.

---===*===---

“Hello! Are you looking for a specific book? We just got the newest reprint of Daring Do!” Page Turner said to Ironsight as she led the four of us into the bookshop.

“So you’re selling books? New books,” Ironsight said quizzically. Her brother stepped in and smiled at Page.

“Haha, sis, good one.” Perm and I stepped into the room, just watching how these ponies would interact. “Could I look at the book, I’ve only read one of the daring do books, and it was in very poor condition.”

“That’s interesting, sure,” Page said as she levitated out a copy to Reflex, who deftly grabbed it with a hoof and inspected the dust jacket.

“The workmareship on this book is really impressive, it looks as glossy as the pre-war books must have when they were new,” Reflex hoofed it back to her before clearing his throat.

“I’ve read it,” I spoke up as I walked up to my friends. “It’s only got a few places where the ghostwriter had to make up missing words or pages.”

“I take it this is a rare book?” Reflex asked nonchalantly.

“There were only five damaged copies, across multiple additions, left in all of paradise. Hyperion collected all of them, rewrote the missing sections, and then started printing these books a month ago.”

“And Hyperion is a private company?” Ironsight looked rapidly between her brother and Page.

“Yeah, it’s a family business actually. They do this kind of thing all the time, reprinting old books from before the war. I sell a decent amount of the copies they sell to me Wholesale.” Page looked at me now. Who the fuck are these weirdos?

“Hey Page, these are my friends, Ironsight and Reflex Sight,” I looked at her as she realized that these were other rangers. “They’re uh, seeing the sights of the city, I was just gonna come in and say hi, before grabbing your son and taking him out with us on a pub crawl.”

“Are they the diplomats I heard about on the radio?”

“Aye,” I smirked at her before starting towards the stairs.

“Do you want to buy some books?” Page asked the siblings as I climbed the stairs.

“Not at this moment, although I’m quite happy that Equestrian culture is being preserved by your society-” Reflex said as Perm and I made it to the top of the stairs.

Reflex’s notion reflected mine when I had heard of Hyperion, but I had gotten used to thinking of a lot of the economic activity here being directed by private ponies. It wasn’t nearly as foreign to me.

“Well, when you’re looking for a bookseller to buy from, remember me.” Page Turner said with a smile before I heard the noises of Reflex and Iron trotting up the stairs after us.

Moments later I walked into the kitchen, spotting Rosetta and Dalliance chatting over a cup of tea.

“Rosetta, you’re being conscripted into the posse,” I said to him as Perm trotted into the room before fixing himself a glass of water.

“What Posse? What is a posse?” Rosetta said as he eyed the two of us. I heard the Rangers pull up the rear and look into the living room of the apartment.

“A posse is an appoolasanism, sometime they would lynch ponies,” Dalliance said idly.

“It’s never a good sign when Icepick talks about forming a posse,” Ironsight said with a probably faked shiver.

“And uh, who are you two?” Dalliance asked as she got out of her chair and trotted up to the siblings.

“I’m star paladin Reflex Sight.”

“Paladin first class, Ironsight,” my friend added awkwardly as her older brother smiled broadly at Dalliance.

“Ah, well, you kids better stay out of trouble, and don’t lynch anyone unless they deserve it,” Dally finished before going back to the table and sipping her tea.

“So what are we doing exactly?” Rosetta said as he walked over to us. He met Ironsight and Reflex’s eyes in turn. Rosetta and Reflex were about the same height and a little taller than Iron.

“Pub crawl,” I smiled at him and then each of my friends in turn. “After eating at Torpedo Joe’s.”

“I never should have explained the concept of a pub crawl to her,” Permittivity said with a sigh.

---===*===---

I had just washed up in the little fillies room when I came back to the large table we had stolen, in front of us was a basket of chips and a mysterious white sauce that tasted like fat and satisfaction. I spotted another pony who had pulled up a chair and was drinking with the rest of them.

My legs carried me over there steadily enough, I had only had two beers so far, and I went over to my chair. As my ass came down into it, I smiled internally. Still warm. Perm sat to my right, drinking his own dark ale. To my left was Reflex, drinking soda with vodka in it. He was delighted when the bar ponies showed him the small umbrellas for the fruity drinks.

“So uh, potatoes,” I said loudly.

“Indeed,” Permittivity said without looking at me. His eyes kept floating over to the mare who had pulled up.

“Potatoes are better in vodka,” the mare said, as I finally recognized her. It was that bitch from the truck. Rosetta’s ex.

“The best potatoes are grown at the source of the Senegral,” Reflex replied ready to jump in on a story about the time he had taken a gunboat up the river to explore the snow-capped mountains that kept our society fed.

“Aren’t the floodplains of a river the most fertile parts?” Permittivity asked when Reflex took a breath.

“Typically, except large parts of the Sall’hanian range is volcanic, so there’s a large number of volcanic nutrients adding to the fertility of the region,” Reflex said with an edge of annoyance at being interrupted.

“Are the volcanoes at the site of tectonic plates meeting, or a geothermal hotspot,” Perm asked him while staring the other stallion down.

“I am for sending an expedition to find out the answer to that question,” Reflex added quickly.

“And you have trained geologists ready to make observations and take samples on the way?”

“Weight and logistical constraints are eased quite a lot when old world vehicles are available,” Reflex shot back.

“Yeah, that sounds really really interesting boys,” and totally not a dick measuring contest. I reached a hoof across the table and laid one on both of their hooves. Permittivity and Reflex quieted down quite a bit when they touched me.

“Oh shit, look!” I nodded my head at the server, bringing in the beer battered fried fish.

“You had me worried there for a second Icepick,” Reflex said with a laugh as the server put down out plates in front of us.

“Why?” I moved my hooves away from the two stallions and looked at him contemplatively.

“Well, remember all the times we had dates go badly, because of like, guns being aimed at us?” I recalled about twice that this happened. Once had happened pretty recently.

“Yeah, but were those really dates?” I asked aloud. Perm’s smile made me pause though.

“I mean-” He started to say before I pressed a hoof to his lips.

“Not right now, I just want to have a nice dinner,” I looked at Perm who was smiling broadly at the pony he fancied his opponent. “And Perm, please don’t tilt at windmills.” My buck lost his grin at that. He probably regretted explaining that expression about then. I took the moment to look at Rosetta as he slugged back his drink and focused on the potatoes. A faint recollection of me kissing him floated to the surface. Then again, at least Perm liked Rosetta.

“As the lady wishes,” Permittivity said quietly.

“Yeah, what he said,” Reflex mirrored him, even as his sister and Bajada picked up their own volume.

“So, Icepick blew up a whole oil field?” Iron asked her with exasperation written on her muzzle.

“Yeah, and that was before she got on the radio and called for a crusade against the Arabs.” Bajada finished with a belch. Her own portion of fish was already half gone. That girl could teach me half a thing about packing food away. Then again, she had broken Rosetta’s heart. But was I any better? Memories of last night came back to me. I had played with both of my friend’s heads.

“That does sound a lot like her,” Ironsight added with a chuckle.

“You’re laughing about it?” Bajada was a little confused by my friend's reaction.

“Well, she basically said what we would’ve in an official capacity,” Iron admitted as I leaned back in my chair and let my stomach deal with all the protein and starch I stuffed inside it.

“We picked up the radio transmission from our ship,” Ironsight added with a more serious tone. “It’s more amazing that she’s become such a public figure here amongst your public.”

“So, you’re all kinds of okay with your PR being done by a low ranking NCO, who is literally inflammatory.”

“Just look at her, she’s a natural bridge,” I looked over at them and smiled softly.

“Honestly Icepick, I thought you were a goner when you charged into that mine alone,” Ironsight said before looking down at her food. “That wasn’t a smart move by any definition. It was horrible having to order the retreat. We came back with reinforcements, but by that time they were gone, and nothing was left of you other than shell casings.” There was a darkness in her eyes. I had done what Perm had, but worse. I was her friend, and I had acted suicidally. Maybe it took having someone I loved doing the same thing to me, to really understand what the problem with that was, but now I knew. Now I wasn’t alone.

Now I had a real dream to fight for.

“I’m sorry about that,” I looked at her and then over to Perm. “But that’s where I found him. And well, he saved me from Tegarni,” Permittivity flushed as I said that.

“Wait, he was at the battle too?” Ironsight asked with an odd expression on his face.

“Yes, I was in their servitude when your attack began, so I thank you for that Ironsight,” Perm leaned over the table slightly and met her eyes. I was only a bystander as I watched my two greatest allies measure one another up. It wasn’t a competition like it was between Reflex and Perm, no it was more an acknowledgement of the other’s role in my life.

“Yeah, how have things been down south?” I asked with a curious expression on my muzzle.

“The attacks have died down on Ranger facilities and industry,” Ironsight said with a neutral expression.

“That and the shipments to small arms to the rebels have stopped,” Reflex added a moment later.

“I think I know why,” I said with a dark expression on my muzzle.

“They do have ships, marepower, and firepower,” Permittivity said while raising his eyebrows at me. Rosetta looked over at us, though he looked away from Bajada. “We really ought to be talking about this in another place, but the gist is simple. Tegarni has a weapon of great power from before the war, and I know where he’s preparing it.” Permittivity said with resolve.

“How did you learn about this?” Reflex asked, his face caught between fear and disbelief.

“I can’t tell you until you agree to help,” Perm looked Reflex in the eyes. “My contact has more information than I do. But I need an agreement that you’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish this task.”

“Wait, what?” Ironsight asked with a million questions about to spill forth from her lips.

“I agree,” Reflex said, raising a forehoof to his heart and holding it there as he spoke.

“Reflex?” Iron asked as I chuckled. I guess there were some aspects of bucks competing that I could get behind.

“I don’t trust him, or his source, but if there’s even a one percent chance of them being truthful, well, I’m obligated to follow up on that,” Reflex said with a clench in his jaw and a flex of his shoulders.

“Well, we can plan later,” Rosetta spoke up for the first time in ages. “For now, we should just ourselves. Something in the air tells me this might be the last time we’ll be able to for a while.”

“You’re always so doom and gloom,” Bajada replied with a huff of annoyance.

“I’m a realist, Sall’han is a powder keg, Tegarni’s secret weapon or not,” He looked at each of us in turn. His part of the table was filled with empty glasses, he had downed more than his fair share of booze. “The more I learn about it, the more I realize the desert was a good thing.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked him immediately.

“I’m going to help you stop Tegarni, there’s nothing heroic about that stallion. But, you all see that we’ve learned nothing from the past. You Rangers don’t even pretend to be anything more than an occupying army on foreign soil, you live and breath war. And with our help, you’re way closer to rebuilding the same weapons, same economy, the same society that destroyed the world before.”

“No, I don’t believe that,” I said to him. “We’ve learned, if we invent something like the bombs, we’ll use them first.”

“What?” Rosetta gasped and looked me in the eyes. “You think that’s what damned the world? Wow, you and Permittivity do belong together.” He picked up his drink and downed it in a single gulp.

“Rosetta!” I nearly snarled at him. He was such a little fucking hypocrite.

“I’m going home, you can sleep on the couch tonight,” Rosetta said with a huff, walking home with an exaggerated straightness in his steps. Perm started to get out of his chair to go after him. I pressed a hoof to his shoulder and kept him in his seat. As soon as he was out of earshot Bajada met my eyes.

“What is his deal? He sounds like one of those prewar peaceniks, all worried about the corrosive effects of war on a nation’s soul,” Reflex said sardonically and managed to get a laugh out of Bajada.

“Yeah, he’s always been like that. He either has his head in the clouds or drifting down in one of those deep ocean trenches,” Bajada said a moment later.

“You know him personally?” Reflex asked her with a curious smile.

“He thinks he’s an ex of mine,” Bajada paused and smiled a vulture-like smile. “Really though, he was decent lay and a good friend, but he read more into me than I had to give.”

“I see,” Reflex said simply. Iron just chuckled to herself as her brother spoke.

“What is she laughing at?” Bajada asked while Perm polished off his dark beer.

“Are you sure you’ve never met before?” Iron looked at Bajada and her brother in turn.

“Positive,” Reflex answered gruffly.

“Pretty sure,” Bajada said with a laugh.

“Honestly, the only pony here who doesn’t have a good partner is me,” Iron said wistfully. “Then again, I’m a hard mare to please.”

“Maybe he just left,” I suggested with a half smile. My hoof on Permittivity drifted up to his neck.

“That’d be too fucking convenient,” Ironsight said with a wry laugh.

“I mean, I know where he lives, he’s drunk and he’s lonely,” I added half seriously. Iron and Rosetta would be a cute couple, maybe he could help tie together our peoples- And there I was, thinking like a feudal warlord again.

“You’re not a forest nymph, you don’t have the power of sexual prophecy!” Perm spoke up out of nowhere, a smile on his muzzle, but tinged with disappointment.

“I dunno, she could be a nymphomaniac at least,” Iron said with a laugh.

“Hey, just because I actually get laid, doesn’t make me a nympho,” I responded quickly, with just a tad too much defensiveness.

“Sure,” she shook her head but continued smiling. I missed my bitchy best friend a lot. Even if she was a bitch.

“Anyhow, we should probably figure out where to discuss details,” I reminded everyone of the task at hoof, I got a groan from Bajada, a smile from Perm and intense gazes from the Siblings Sight. A table away, a couple looked over at us.

“I guess I’m just low key a part of this gunpowder plot,” Bajada said with even more of a huff.

“If you don’t join it then we’ll let Rosetta play with your memories,” I added with an evil grin. “Besides, it’s more of an anti-gunpowder plot.”

“I guess I’m in then,” Bajada acquiesced with a nervous grin. “My place would be great for this. I get it swept for bugs every weekend.”

“What?” Ironsight asked.

“It’s part of my normal cleaning list: Sweep the floor, clean the litter box, check for bugs.”

“Thank you for being understanding. If you can find some other Rangers willing to fight for us, but also willing to sacrifice, uh… everything, please refer them to me.”

“I get to run HR,” I chirped. Permittivity just shrugged as the rest of the table looked at me like I was crazy.

“This isn’t a company, this is a suicide pact with more steps,” Perm said to them. Somehow, it made everypony lose that look, even as I felt annoyance bubble up at how everyone’s mood had changed.

“Well, with that fuckin’ attitude...” I said punching him in the shoulder.

“And with that act of violence, I’ll go pay the tab,” Permittivity said as he started to get out of his chair. Reflex said before turning and looking over at that eavesdropping couple. He glared at them. They went back to their drinks, heads down. When he looked back at us, he had a smile on his face.

“I’m sure I can get you a diplomatic discount, maybe I’ll offer to mention this place prominently in a report.”

“I can’t say no to that,” Permittivity said with a smile that was covering up bitterness. After they got far enough away, I looked at Bajada and Ironsight.

“Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian,” I said with a shrug.

“Same.”

“Yeah.”

“But guys smell so good, and dicks are nice,” I added a moment later.

“That’s fair,” Ironsight replied.

“Solid points,” Bajada said with a chuckle. “Damn, we talked ourselves out of that fantasy pretty fast.”

“Yeah,” I said while looking at my the two stallions talking to the guy at the bar. Males were a pain, but also a joy. Besides, I’d like to have a dad in the family…

In the future!

---===*===---

“So this is my shithole apartment,” Bajada said to the other four of us. The door opened into a large living room with a couch, a loveseat with a phonograph radio combination in the central position. “Lemme get some background noise going.” With a slick move, she brushed past us, though she ran her tail against the sides of Perm and Reflex. The radio came to life. It was the same stallion that had interviewed me.

“So, she wasn’t kidding when she said they were strong,” He said loudly.

I took a seat close to the phonograph as Bajada went into the small kitchenette near the rear of the main area.

“Really, I expected a tank or something, maybe a big missile parade happening over there. What I didn’t expect was a fucking pre-war battleship steaming in at the head of a fleet. I guess Icepick really thinks they need more toasters or new movies because I think they have the war department handled-”

“You two, that was a power move,” I said to Ironsight and Reflex on the opposite couch. Perm and I were sitting snugly on the loveseat, his warm fur pressing against mine.

“And your radio interview wasn’t a power move too?” Reflex answered in turn. “And your cosmetic decisions, they weren’t politically motivated at all?”

“I mean, shit, you look really nice with pink in your mane and tail,” Iron said before smiling broadly at me. The last round had gotten her pretty damn fucked up. “If I was a little gayer, I’d say you were hot.” Perm only gained an incredulous grin. He seemed half paralyzed.

“Yeah, you do look a lot more exotic now,” Reflex added, somewhat aware of how close he was to his randy sibling. Memories of past-

“She was beautiful before, but now there is a more rebellious aspect to you, some part of you that only now has been allowed to be expressed,” Permittivity added. I let him finish, but the second he was done, I pulled him closer with my forehooves and kissed him deeply. For several seconds…

“Woah, you mackin’ on my loveseat,” Bajada said as she came out of her kitchen with a bottle of rye whiskey in her left hoof. Several small glasses came out with her.

“Yeah, it’s a called a fuckin’ love seat,” I said to her as I let a blushy Permittivity go. I turned to meet her eyes while letting my hoof crawl over his chest and fuzzy stomach. “Besides, you don’t seem like the kinda mare to mind me taking him for a ride on it.”

“Icepick-” Perm tried to interrupt, but Bajada spoke over him.

“Guilty as charged,” she said as she climbed into the seat between the sight siblings. Her smile was massive as she did this. “Though I would make you pay for the cleaning bill.”

“How much is it to Dry Clean a couch?” I asked aloud while smiling deviously at Perm. My hoof drifted a bit further south as I spoke. “Actually Iron, Reflex, these ponies reinvented dry cleaning, and it’s fucking amazing!”

“Cool,” Iron said as she began to look at that bottle sitting on the table in front of her while holding her head up with a foreleg.

“Honestly Icepick, making out with your friend in public, without at least a bottle being spun to spur you on,” Reflex said before making a tisk tisk noise with his mouth. I only had enough time to realize this in my inebriated state before Perm pulled me chest to chest with him on the couch, and stuffed his tongue into my unprepared mouth. Now we had a bit of cover. With a relatively subtle buck of my hips, I managed to grind against his sheath. It worked-

“So you’re both Exhibitionists,” Reflex chuckled before feeling Bajada’s hoof on the back of his withers.

“Please don’t,” Ironsight pleaded with the two other ponies on the couch, before looking at me, and realizing the kind of softcore performance I was already in the middle of. “Celestia fuck, I guess I’ll get the room.” She got up, stumbled slightly to the table, before grabbing the bottle of whiskey and a shot glass.

“Night Iron,” Reflex said with a wave.

“Be careful,” Perm said to her from his position under me. A position he had put himself in, the kinky stallion.

“Try not to get each other pregnant, or catch anything,” she slurred her words before walking towards Bajada’s bedroom. The door shut, and then we heard a thump as she fell onto her bed.

“What’s her hang up?” Bajada said as she looked up at the ceiling with her head in the centre of Reflex’s crotch.

“She’s my sister,” Reflex said with a touch of anger, right before she turned her head over, and starting to nuzzle at his parts.

“Yeah, that would do it,” She said as Perm baulked and I just laughed.

Tonight was gonna be fun!

---===*===---

The sunlight stung my tired eyes as I first came to. I raised my head up from Perm’s chest. We were laying on the loveseat together, me on top of him, the natural way of things. A thin blanket covered our lower parts, though both my crotch and the blanket seemed a bit sticky. But at least it was the dry kinda sticky.

“Rise and shine shrapnel ass,” I looked over to see Bajada sitting on the couch, a cup of coffee lifted up to her lips. Where was- On the floor in front of her slept an exhausted-looking Reflex. She really had worn him out…

“Shush. Do you have a cup for me?” I asked her wearily. Perm stirred below me as well, I picked myself off his chest and went in for a quick peck on the lips.

“No more, please!” He said with a yawn. Just to be thorough, I checked to see if little Permittivity agreed with the Perm with the brain. Aww! I guess I wasn’t waking up the best way.

“No, I made exactly one cup of coffee,” Bajada shot back with a hint of humour in her voice. I bet she had done some recruit training. “Nah, just get a cup yourself, your buck probably wants one too.”

“You don’t mind me opening all your cabinets looking for cups?” I asked her, grinning slightly. Maybe truck bitch was alright.

“I only keep balefire eggs and sex toys in my kitchen cabinets, so go ahead,” Bajada replied before letting out her own yawn.

“Don’t tempt me like that,” I looked her in the face, smiling broadly. “Those are like, my favourite things.”

“Just get your fuckin’ coffee,” She said with a wave of her hoof. On the floor, Reflex began to stir.

“I heard the word coffee,” Reflex said in a zombie-like fashion, instantly starting to hold his head with his hooves. “I need it, I feel like one of those old ponies that try to party with ponies half their age.”

“You’re three years older than me,” I said to Reflex. “Don’t be dramatic, you’re just out of practice.”

“Not all of us have the Excalibur of livers Icepick,” Perm shot back, as he stirred beneath me.

“What he said,” Reflex said as he kicked the blankets off of himself and got to his hooves quickly. Not quickly enough for me to avoid seeing his crotch was sticky like Perm’s. I got to my hooves too and made my way to get the coffee that would rouse the room.

We had had our party in the front, and now with the sober realities of our own mortality, we had to fucking plan a mission for the history books…

---===*===---

“So, we need a ship,” I said to the assembled ponies. We were all on our second cup of joe.

“We have ships,” Reflex answered instantly. “But you’re looking for a specific ship, something fast, something we could sneak out of the harbor without attracting much attention-”

“Because if Crescent Moon can get in and out of this city without attracting attention, I’m sure that Tegarni has spies as well,” Permittivity finished for him.

“Exactly,” Reflex admitted with a grudging respect for Perm.

“So, we’re going for the subtle approach,” Bajada butted in. “I mean, subtle for you guys.”

“Yes, we should aim for an unopposed landing, Rangers aren’t marines, and we lack dedicated landing craft,” Ironsight said to us.

“I mean, if they expect anything, it would be an all guns blazing assault,” I said before grinning. “We use the threat of that as a feint attack.”

“By actually launching a feint attack?” Reflex asked with a glint in his eyes.

“Exactly,” I said to him. We both smiled as our minds got to work planning out the attack.

“I think this is a good avenue of exploration, but we need more intelligence on the island itself, it’s defences both sea facing, and land facing,” Permittivity spoke up and looked at each of us in turn, before looking at Bajada. “Do you have any green clothing, that I could borrow?”

“Sure, I have a desert scarf, is green and black okay?” She asked curiously.

“That should be fine,” Perm looked at the ground for a moment. “I”m not sure when I’ll be back, but I’ll obtain more information from my contact, that I’m certain of.”

“Alright,” Ironsight said as she watched Bajada search around her apartment for that specific article of clothing.

“That’s a signal right?” I asked him straight up.

“Yes, she’s been watching us, me in particular.” He said with some discomfort in his voice. I understood that well. He wished our time here was without interruptions from the outside world. The fact that an Arabian mare had been spying on us for weeks reminded him that we couldn’t just bury our heads in the sand and pretend we had normal lives.

“Who? Who is your contact?” Reflex asked him, a sudden seriousness in his voice.

“The mare that saved Copper Springs,” Permittivity said solemnly, before looking at me. “Well, one of the mares that saved Copper Springs.”

“I wouldn’t call what I did any kind of salvation,” I said quietly. Memories of that night came back to me. The smell was the worst, the smell of burning crude and incinerated fur. Bodies reduced to cooking piles, some of them running out of the burn zone begging to be killed. We obliged them.

Mostly.

“Icepick please, you did what you had to do,” Permittivity said suddenly, before trotting over to me. His hooves held me tightly, as I felt numbness fill my form. Remember why you did it. Remember that you’ll do it again if they hurt him. I clenched my foreleg feeling the muscles bunch up and tighten. You have to work with an Arab to stop the Arabs, don’t think about the thousand ways she could be betraying you. “It’s the Arabian mare that managed to prevent Tegarni’s execution order from being passed on.” I threw a hoof over Perm’s shoulder and pulled him closer to me. We were chest to chest, and I took the moment to nuzzle his neck softly, while breathing deeply and slowly, trying to forget the worst moments. He helped, he reminded me of the good times we had had. The normal moments where the worst thing that could happen was a piss ant robber, or a dinner table discussion gone nuclear.

“Hey, I found it,” Bajada re-entered the room with Ironsight in tow. Hanging around her neck was a checkered green and black bandana.

“They’re having a moment,” Ironsight half whispered to her.

“It’s actually pretty cute,” Bajada said with a chuckle.

“Alright, so you all should go about the rest of the day like merely had a debaucherous night, and a long period of recovery,” Permittivity said before I caught his left ear in my mouth and bit down on it lightly. “Icepick!” He mewled lightly, before stroking my back and pulling me the slightest bit closer.

“Perm, I love you,” I whispered into that same ear. “Be careful, okay?”

“I love you too, with all of my being. And I’ll try to be careful with all this subterfuge,” Perm said to me. He pushed back against me, and I let my forelegs slacken. Before he pulled away, he lit his horn and pushed me against him, his forelegs squeezing my withers. Then he kissed me full on the lips. I moaned gently at his assertiveness, before letting his tongue into my mouth. It felt wonderful as my stallion filled my mouth with his tongue. This stallion could defend himself- most of the time.

And when he can’t, I’ll be there.

---===*===---

“So this is the Swift,” I said as I walked up the gangplank. Reflex looked at me and smiled broadly.

“Fastest ship in the fleet, it was made from a prewar yacht and given a new power plant,” Reflex said well, reflexively.

“Wow, I never knew the naval rebuilding program had moved that far ahead,” I had heard rumours of new ships other than our river gunboats being readied in the ports of Ramsgard, with only rangers to do the repairs.

“Yes, it was part of this five-year plan,” Reflex said wryly. “You did read the pamphlet that came with it last year, right?”

“Shut up Reflex, you know damn well I only read smutty romance novels and old adventure stories,” I said before punching him on the shoulder. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me.

“I also know you’re working on the former, somewhere back in your quarters,” His smile deepened and he chuckled as my face went a little red.

“I only told you that because I was drunk and I had just ridden you dry,” I said in a low voice. “You were also sworn to secrecy.”

“I haven’t told a soul,” Reflex said with a smile and a hoof on my withers. “I-I thought you were gone Icepick,” he said as he led me past the empty decks. This boat had a skeleton crew only right now because most of the crew were off on shore leave. He looked at the ground. “And then I come back and you’ve changed. What happened to the mare who was just looking for fun and excitement? Why him?”

“I’m sorry, I acted impulsively, but in the process, I met the stallion of my dreams, simple as that. He’s not perfect, in fact I know he has a lot of flaws that he tries to cover up. But, he’s a good stallion, and he’s mine. I’m his in return. I want to live a happy life, I want to keep these ponies here safe. What they’ve built here is closer to Equestria than anything we’ll ever make through five-year plans…”

“You always did detest our methods,” Reflex said with a sigh. “You always had such a sense of duty. Now though, you’ve seen what ponies with vastly different circumstances managed to achieve, and you’re comparing us to them. In your mind, we’ve already come up short.” He stomped on the hull beneath us.

“You’re angry that I like these ponies?” I said, my voice growing louder with every second. “Well, fuck you! They’ve built a more advanced economy, with happier ponies, without fucking serfdom.” I said as I leveled my gave at him.

“Well, when the Arabs come knocking on their front door again, guess who will be there to stop them?” Reflex said with a huff, his face was reddening.

“I’ll be there,” I said simply. “Now, let's get back to the task at hoof. We need to storm an island, and a little bit of suppressive fire isn’t going to cut it.” My voice was still tinged with anger at my friend. A friend that didn’t even realize his own hypocrisy.

“You’re right, let’s stay professional.” He took a deep breath and led me further on.

Minutes passed in relative silence as he showed me the ship’s features. Torpedo tubes, Turrets ripped straight off the Ursa Major assembly line, and machine guns galore. Nothing that would seriously disrupt a large, prepared defence…

“What are those?” I asked him as we walked through the small cargo hold of the ship. They looked like missiles for a launcher only longer and thicker, nearly the size of an artillery shell. I hadn’t ever seen them before.

“Well, we had to set sail before we could remove everything we were carrying beforehand. Those are rockets designed to be launched off of the back of trucks.” Reflex said without realizing the implications.
“What did they launch off of exactly?” I asked, my voice dripping with curiosity.

“Basically just railroad rails,” He answered. I began to grin.

“I have an idea,” I said with a laugh. “Hear me out…”

---===*===---

I had gone back to the bookshop, and I was getting nervous. I hadn’t heard anything from Perm today, and neither had anyone in our household…

It was only a few minutes later that I heard a furious knocking on the door, the door that had an obvious closed sign on it. I trotted over to it, ready to clobber whoever decided fucking with me was a good idea. My hooves moved so slowly as I opened the door. The sight on the other side was startling. Permittivity was smiling at me harshly, and on his leg and withers were a pair of dripping wounds. Beside him was a mare wrapped up in a hoodie, despite the weather. She looked fine.

“May we come in? I think I need to get these packed and wrapped,” he said as he began to push past me. I watched him shudder slightly as he limped in. The moment she made it past the door, he threw his horn on and slammed the door shut. For a moment his horn seemed to ripple with energy, electricity coursing over it. The smell of ozone and blood hit my nose as he started towards the stairs.

“Perm, what the fuck happened?” I asked as I started to follow, getting close to Perm, and letting him lean against me.

“Your uh, associates, the rangers discovered Crescent’s true nature,” he said with a sly smile. There was pain in his voice too, but he was hiding it well. “I dissuaded them from trying to hurt her.”

“You didn’t need to do that,” Crescent said with an apologetic tone. “I was fine.”

“There were three of them, and one had a folding knife,” Perm replied as we made it to the front of the stairs.

“And you charged the one with the knife,” She said with a touch of annoyance slipping in. This was the side of Perm that I didn’t really want to encourage. The side that put him in danger. The heroic side.

“It worked, didn’t it? Ponies don’t expect to see a hornhead charging them head-on,” he smiled as he sat down at the dinner table. From the other room came Page and Dally, they saw Perm sitting there dripping blood and didn’t even bat an eye at the random Arab standing there beside him.

“What happened?” Page asked loudly, as Dally ran to get bandaged and alcohol for Perm.

“Oh, the usual, Rangers tried to accost dear Crescent Moon. I got in their way.” Around his neck was that green scarf Bajada had loaned him, it was wet with blood from the shoulder wound. “I must say, that unicorn with the knife had some strong control over that knife. Well, at least until they voided their bowels.”

“Did you kill someone?” Dally asked him. He shook his head and looked at me. I stroked his mane and held his hoof as the unicorns cleaned his wounds for him, he clenched up when the ethanol slipped in between the tears in his flesh.

“Pardon my speech but: I shocked the shit out of him.” Perm shivered a little as he recounted the memory. “I’m glad that I’ve learned to dial back the power well enough to prevent a heart from being stopped.”

“You’re a warrior, but a kind one,” Crescent said as she looked at him. There was remorse written across her features. Of course, he would go out of his way to save the pretty aristocrat.

“I didn’t want to cause a diplomatic incident,” He said softly. I glared at Crescent for a second, before holding his withers and kissing his cheek softly.

“That’s smart of you,” I said before looking at the rest of the ponies. “Seriously? A folding knife?” I sighed and let the wound dressers- dress the wound.

“Crescent Moon, meet Page Turner and Dalliance,” Perm said a moment later.

“Hello!” Dalliance said instantly, attention turning to the darkly coated mare.

“Salutations,” she said simply, before looking down at Perm. There was a spark in her at that moment. Her body tensed before she looked over at me.

“Your people did this to him,” she said sharply. “But I let myself be accosted by them, I was foolish.”

“I know,” I said neutrally. “He’s just like that, jumping into danger without thinking.”

“Oh please,” Page said as she finished packing the shoulder wound with gauze. “You’re both two peas in a fucking pod. You’re both heroic ponies.”

“It’s simple,” Perm said with a smile, “Crescent needed help, both because we need her help, because she helped save the ponies of Paradise, and because it was the right thing to do.” Perm paused and stood up, wounds now tightly bound. The green scarf hung limply below his neck. The specks of blood covering it were darkening as we spoke. He was a hero.

“Can we uh, talk alone,” I said to Dally and Page. They both nodded and left to go back to their bedroom. I hugged Perm tightly the moment the door shut. My face felt hot to the touch, and my eyes felt watery as I closed them tightly.

“I was worried you would lash out at her,” Perm said as held him close.

“No, you’re the one who’s gonna have to make things up to me,” I said with a laugh.

“So, from what Permittivity said before we were attacked, you found us a ship?” I smiled even more broadly at her words. We had a fuckin’ ship.

“Yeah, small, fast, and carrying a few surprises,” I replied before releasing him. He stood up, wincing a little as he moved his right foreleg.

“When do you think we should set off?” Crescent asked with a blush written across her face. Apparently, two ponies sharing a hug and a cheek kiss was risque.

“I’d give Bajada another day to gather some Rangers,” I replied.

“How many ponies do you intend on taking with us?” Crescent asked with an exasperated look on her muzzle.

“Uh, a dozen and a half Steel Rangers, not including me, and whatever desert rangers Bajada can scrape together,” I said with a grin, it was a small army. And it probably had enough firepower to crush whatever forces Tegarni had arrayed against us-

Hopefully…

Author's Note

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The Last Crusade (XVII)

We slipped the mooring lines and drifted out of the harbour, it was around midnight when we did it. I stood on the bow wearing nothing but a fresh jumpsuit, the salty air greeted my nose as I took in the sights. I was leaving again. This city that had sheltered me, adopted me and shaped me, I was leaving it behind.

“We can come back someday,” Permittivity said from behind me. His thick duster had been returned to him, that and the rest of his desert clothing.

“Will it be the same though?” I asked him as he trotted up to me. The two of us stood at the front of the little ship.

“Does anything stay the same?” He said with a soft smile. If anyone could answer that question, it’d be him.

“War,” I answered with a sigh.

“If we play our cards right, maybe there won’t be one,” Permittivity said before putting a hoof on my shoulder. There were fifty ponies on this boat. And yet none other than us wanted to see us pull out of our adopted home. I guess I understood why, the desert rangers were expecting to get home and have it be the same place, more or less. The steel rangers had yet to fall in love with this place. That left the two of us alone, watching the ship slide through the tiny waves that persisted within this natural harbour. I pulled out a smoke and shared it with him, the both of us saying little, just enjoying each other’s company.

“War or not, someday we’re gonna settle down,” I said to him, pulling him the slightest bit closer. The little green and black scarf around his neck tickled mine. Bajada had told him to keep it after he had gotten his blood on it. That had actually been the most pleasant part of getting things done. My friends and the other rangers had gone slightly crazy when I told them that we were following the directions of a former Arab commander. But between Perm and I, we had them settled down.

“When we do, I want a vegetable garden,” Permittivity said with a smile.

“You’re such a dork,” I said with a laugh, before kissing him on the muzzle. “You’re my dork though.”

“I know,” he said simply as he kissed me back. I should’ve been more worried about Crescent moon, and her being on a boat with half of the ponies wanting to kill her for what she used to be. But, between Rosetta and Bajada, they made her a harder target. If anything, I was worried about the coalition itself. Somehow, my words on the radio had inspired those desert rangers to action. That and Bajada’s relationships with them… Yeah, she had definitely fucked at least half of them.

“Where do you wanna settle down?” I asked him wistfully.

“Somewhere warm, perhaps by the ocean?” He answered in that same dreamy tone.

“You know, I’m gonna ride you every night after I get my implant out,” I replied in a husky voice. He nickered and stared into my eyes. His dark blue orbs were filled with doubt-

“I’m going to make you my broodmare, I’m gonna bite your neck and hold your withers-” He said in spite of that doubt.

“Okay, now you have me turned on,” I replied in that same husky voice. My marehood was already starting to drip into the jumpsuit. I was surprised when he held me with his magic and kissed me deeply, all the while, the stars only got brighter as we headed towards destiny.

---===*===---

“How are you holding up?” I asked Rosetta as he looked over the bow. A second later he threw up over the side of the ship. “Okay, not well I can tell.”

“That’s some bedside manner right there,” Rosetta answered just before wiping his mouth off with a hoof.
“I’ve had worse,” I said, looking him in the eyes. “And better.”

“Icepick, I don’t know what your game is, but you’re with Perm. Maybe if he wasn’t around, maybe we could try being something,” He replied with resolution. He didn’t expect me to pull him into a hug a moment later.

“It isn’t that simple,” I said to him. He loosened under my hooves, before giving up and giving me a hug as well.

“I mean isn’t it?” Rosetta said with a shrug.

“Dude, I bought into this love stuff, but I’m not one of those people that believes monogamy is the end all, be all of the relationships,” I said to him with a smile. “Besides, it’s obvious we both like you. And, you like both of us.”

“Hypothetically, and I mean hypothetically,” Rosetta said while looking down at the deck. “Would Perm be okay with some sort of, threesome?”

“Uh,” I said as I lost my smile for a second. “Probably? As I understand it, he kinda had one of those going on before he left for here. It uh, ended badly though.”

“Icepick, what you’re talking about is when someone cheats on another pony, that’s really bad and really different,” Rosetta said before putting his head over the railing again and puking.

“That makes a certain amount of sense,” I said before shrugging. What Perm had done before meeting me really wasn’t my business. What mattered is what he did while we were together.

“Okay, I’ll level with you,” Rosetta said as he pulled himself back off the edge of the ship. “I like you a lot, you’re beautiful, wonderful to talk to and I could see myself staying with you. I think a lot of the same things about Perm. If you could work some of that brusque magic on him and I, I’d try being with both of you.”

“I see,” I said as I realized how weird this might be in practice. It’d be almost like a reverse Harem. Or would that just be a harem? Anyway, multiple stallions to play with would be fun. That and watching them make out and snuggle would be nice-

“I don’t know if I would try to fuck with what you already have. Icepick, you’re a wonderful soul, even if you can’t see it in yourself, so you do you.” Rosetta said before looking out over the black ocean. Beyond the horizon was the land his stomach so desperately wished a return to.

“Well, have a nice night, okay?” I said to him before giving him a kiss on the cheek. He flushed and tensed up when I kissed him.

“You do the same,” he said a moment later. His face was mostly back to normal, but even in the tiny amount of moonlight pouring through the clouds, I saw he was redder in the face.

Good.

---===*===---

“So how are you gonna explain this to Churned Waters?” I asked Reflex as we sat in the small command room of the ship.

“I’ll pull an Icepick, and say that the situation required immediate action,” He said idly, as he stared at a map. The captain of the ship stood at the rudder controls, he watched the sea outside through the reinforced glass windows at the front. They were made using an old pre-war technique that was rediscovered recently. Bulletproof glass, with a simple non-shattering enchantment. It was very expensive and time-consuming to create, I knew that much.

“So, how far are we off from the island?” I asked him, my curiosity drawn by the map. He had hastily added a single dot to the prewar charts. Apparently, this part of the coast was not very often travelled.

“About five days now, it would take the Ember six, and a merchant ship a week,” Reflex added, his voice quivering in quiet admiration for the ship he was sailing.

“How long do you think it’ll take to find a beach and to land on?” My hooves came down hard on the ground as I asked him this. I was nervous about the timing of the whole operation. We would have to coordinate things perfectly, on L day +18 hours, we were going to attack the beached submarine. But we had to maintain radio silence the whole time beforehand. If only one half of the operation went right, then they would be unsupported.

“According to Crescent Moon, there’s a good landing site a few kilometres to the south of the beached submarine,” Reflex said with a slight shudder.

“Well, that’s good,” I said before turning around and starting towards the door. I wanted to inspect my equipment before I had to use it. Maybe I could work out a little too, maybe get Perm all sweaty too…

“Do you really trust her?” Reflex said to me, his tone nervous.

“I trust her because Permittivity does and because she’s someone he’s bled for,” I said to him, meeting his gaze and his question head-on.

“So it was him,” Reflex said with a sigh. “I wasn’t sure if the suspected Arab and the unicorn that charged at a trio of Rangers was them. It makes sense though. He really is brave, I can see why you chose him.”

“Reflex, he’s a great guy, and he is brave. Just like you,” I said to him as I walked back over. “He’s just willing to commit is all, something that never occurred to you in like, a decade of being friends with benefits with me.” He looked up at me and met my soft gaze.

“It just never occurred to me that you wanted something like that. You always seemed so happy just having a good time with me, and other stallions. I didn’t mind sharing such a wonderful mare with the world, but I guess you wanted something more formal…” Reflex was shivering, and his voice was low. Regret was dripping off of him.

“It’s okay, trust me, it feels like Perm and I were set up half the time,” I said, remembering all those dreams of him. It had taken us a long time to admit to the other that we had dreamed of them, but now that we had, we talked about it a lot.

“I can see shades of that. Until I met him, I never realized just how shaken up you were about your life. I think that you’re both good ponies, just stretched and beaten down by your lives,” He said wistfully. My friend then leaned forward and threw his forelegs around me. “He saw that in you, and you saw it in him.”

“He’s like a training partner, just uh, we’re training to be spiritually sound ponies,” I said a moment later.

“Well, I hope it works out between you,” He said before letting me go.

“I hope you find someone too, or multiple someones-” I said as I began to leave once again, the idea of working out did seem nice.

“Thanks, Icepick,” he said simply. I was soon out of the room and heading back to the crew quarters. We still had a few days to prepare. It only made sense to use them well.

---===*===---

“Come on, do another rep!” Ironsight said to me. Permittivity was off doing something else, probably relating to our mission.

“She can’t,” Bajada said as she looked over at me. I was under the weight of one hundred and thirty-five kilos. I had already done three reps.

“Yes, she can!” I said out loud as I pushed my legs up and cleared the top of the cage. This place had a hell of a gym, apparently, the old owner had been into it. When I came down again, I felt my muscles start to buckle under the strain.
“Yeah, she’s burned out,” Bajada said to me before lighting up a cigarette. She smoked way more than me, I only went through like two packs a week. She went through one a day. My muscles were hot and screaming in pain. I eyed Bajada and met her grin with a look of determination, and that same pain.

“No, there’s enough of her left unburned to get the job done. Hey, Icepick, last time you were only able to get to four,” Iron said to me with a stomp of her hooves. I grunted in response, before looking over at the assembled crowd. I had always wanted to be the best ranger, not realizing that was a horrible goal. The old Icepick was weak and waiting to die. Now I had a reason to fucking live!

With sweat streaming down my face, I managed to lift the bar above the safety cage. I met Bajada’s eyes. Her face was now halfway between smug and doubtful. My legs managed to lift one last time, I pushed all the way up to full extension.

“Five!” I yelled loudly as the room cheered at my feat.

“I’ll be damned,” Bajada said with a slightly sheepish grin, before looking through her saddlebags and hoofing over a comb and a small bottle of bourbon to Ironsight.

I was in the middle of getting out of the harness and getting out of the safety cage as Ironsight threw up one hoof and patted me on the shoulder.

“Did you bet on me?” I asked her as I walked out of the cage, legs shaky as hell.

“I’m glad you were up to it, I didn’t wanna trade my favourite playmare,” She whispered in my ear.

“We really need to work out an exchange rate,” I said as I watched Bajada step into the cage. The small mare managing to lift the bar a total of twice before burning out. I was still impressed by her willpower. I clapped the other mare on the shoulder and cheered her on as the assembled curious ponies took their turn on the machine. Most of them lowering the amount of weight on it.

“Wanna go for a run?” Ironsight said with a laugh.

“Fuck you,” I said to her before starting towards my cabin. Apparently, I got one because Perm and I were the reason for the expedition, it was like my entire social status got catapulted. Now I was a leader of ponies.

“Haha, alright, you better rest though, you hear?” Ironsight said to me as I walked out of the room, my jumpsuit soaked through with sweat. I had been working out for an hour before I finished with body lifts.

“I hear,” I said softly as my legs shook underneath me. She sighed and looked over me.

---===*===---

I was still catching my breath when I opened the door to our little cabin. Perm was laying on the bed, reading a book with the lamp on. He looked up at me and smiled.

“Whatcha reading?” I asked him as I laid down beside him. Our bodies were pressed against each other in the small bed.

“Oh, a book on tactics and strategy,” Permittivity said before letting one of his hooves drift down to my hips, giving them a nice squish. “Written by a Von Hoofwits.”

“Yeah, I’ve read that before, he was one of the first ponies to use muskets and cannon, his mercenary army devastated the minotaurs,” I said to him as I clutched his hoof and brought it up to my muzzle. It was nice being close to him. I felt warm, even as my sweaty body wanted nothing more than to sleep beside him. He would keep me safe, he would bleed for me. Even if I didn’t want him to…

“Truly fascinating,” he said with a smile, before putting the book down on the bedside table. He rolled over to face me. “Your world didn’t invent firearms until very recently.”

“Yeah,” I said as I put a hoof on his back and pulled him closer to me. My foreleg felt the stretch and didn’t like it very much. “Ouch.”

“Did you overdo it in the gym?” Perm asked lightly, before moving head closer to mine. Instead of answering him, I put my hoof on the back of his head and pulled him into my waiting lips. His parted for me, and I enjoyed the sensation of our tongues meeting. A few moments later, we caught our breathes even as we heated up.

“Remember when we first laid in that hotel bed together?” He asked me, but before I could say anything he added, “and eyed my sheath like it was the nicest one you had ever seen?” I punched him in the shoulder lightly. It did nothing to get the grin off his face. If anything, he probably had the most resilient shoulders of anyone I knew.

“Yeah, and you stared at my tits like a weaning foal,” I shot back.

“That’s fair, we were both a little horny that night,” he said with a grin.

“You’re always horny,” I said before tapping his horn with a hoof.

“At least I have an excuse,” he replied. I suddenly had a thought. My tone changed as I pondered something close to my heart.

“Perm, do you think our kids would have horns or not?” I said softly. He met my eyes and gently pulled us closer. Those spots that we had stared at were now in contact.

“It depends on you,” he said. “Your genes are the determining factor.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him curiously.

“Well, I’m a unicorn, so my recessive unicorn genes will be passed on regardless. Now, since you’re an earth pony, you have at least one dominant earth pony allele, if you just have one, then we have a fifty percent chance of our foal being a unicorn. If you have double earth pony genes, then we’ll have all earth pony foals. It’s as simple as that,” Permittivity said simply as he played with my mane, twirling it around in a circle with his magic.

“So it all depends on me,” I said. Our eyes met for a moment and he stopped playing with my mane.

“Do you know if you have any unicorns in your lineage?” He asked me swiftly, before realizing who he was asking that question.

“No fucking clue,” I said before pressing my muzzle into the crook of my neck. I didn’t want him to see me cry.

“Icepick?” He asked a moment later. “I’m sorry.” After a few seconds, I lifted my now tear-streaked face from his neck.

“It’s not your fault,” I said simply before the next spasm of tears wracked my tired body. He didn’t say anything, he just pulled me closer before nuzzling me. Minutes later, I looked up at him and saw a look of pain on his face.

“My parents were good ponies, everything I used to do, was for them,” Permittivity said before meeting my eyes. “I’m sure your parents are good ponies, I mean, they made you.”

“That’s why I was so happy to find Paradise,” I said softly. “And why I love that I found you. I want to raise kids the same way your parents did, and I want the old ranger ways to die!” I practically yelled as my words failed to express what I really wanted.

“I’ll help you raise them, as best we can,” Permittivity said in a low voice. He stroked my shoulders softly as I cried it all out. All my pent up emotions, all of my nervousness, all of my self-hatred, it all poured out as we laid together.

Eventually, I passed out. He didn’t leave me as I cried. A part of me died that day, but a new part breathed its first breath too.

He wanted a family too…

---===*===---

It was Crescent Moon who first spotted the land, or if you prefer the island. Well, technically, it was the radar that first spotted it. But, credit should be due where credit is due. We approached the island from the west, whereas the crashed sub was supposed to be on the east side. The side that faced both the zebra and equestrian homelands. The final resting spot of that weapon told a story all its own…

“So is everyone set to land in the small boats?” I asked the assembled ponies, roughly two dozen brave volunteers.

“I’m ready to get on the tropical island, yeah,” Bajada shot back a moment later.

“I bet they have coconuts there,” Reflex added, much to my annoyance.

“Holy shit, you’re possibly right!” Bajada said with a laugh. “Did anyone bring any rum?”

“No, no!” I said loudly to the assembled ponies on deck. “No one is making any tropical themed drinks.” It pained me a lot to say that. I really enjoyed tropical-themed drinks.

“Damn, why did we sign up to do this again,” Permittivity said with a shit-eating grin plastered across his scarred muzzle. A moment later, as I assembled the words to give him shit- “Oh wait!”

That was met by a large peel of laughter from everyone involved. Even if I was a little angry that he got to be the one to undercut the tension with humour. Dammit, that's my job.

“Anyways, we’ll start letting the smaller landing boats off the deck,” I said with a nod to one of the ranger sailors running this pleasure cruise.

And so we climbed into the small motorboats, started their engines and proceeded to land on the shore. It only took a few minutes for the ponies in power armour to drag the boats onto the shore and cover them in camouflage netting. That was the advantage of power armour, it boosted your horsepower a lot.

“So, we’re going to take the straightest path from here to there?” A desert ranger asked, as he held up his own compass and compared it the maps we had passed out last minute.

“Basically, though we should avoid the tops of the ridges closer to the submarine, until, well, we’re ready to attack,” I said to him.

“And how exactly are we gonna attack a likely fortified encampment?” A steel ranger that I wasn’t familiar with asked.

“Simple answer, we play to our strengths,” I looked at the assembled heavily armed ponies. Most of the desert rangers had pre-war flak jackets and ceramic plate carriers. Obviously, the Rangers were wearing our powered armour. “We attack the centre with our power armour, and we send our less armoured ponies in a pincer attack.”

“That makes sense,” someone said as we got our equipment ready to depart.

“Exactly,” I said back, with a nod from both Perm and Reflex, I managed to ready myself for the task ahead.

“Looking at all of you fills me with pride, for the first time in a hundred years equestrians are fighting a common enemy, one who seeks to destroy her. To that, I say take us on!” I said loudly to the assembled ponies. There were cheers, there were grins, and to be fair a few odd looks.

“We’re fighting for the honour of our ancestors today, and for our children’s future, so march hard, and when the fighting begins, remember what you’re fighting for!” I finished with a flourish and a ranger salute. I was met by about forty other salutes. A few minutes later we had assembled our marching column and we were marching into the jungle.

“That was an inspiring speech, short though,” Permittivity said with a look of interest on his muzzle as we walked beside each other. “It was an interesting speech as well. That pan-equestrian nationalism you’re advocating is being served well by this mission.”

“Yeah, I just gotta remind these ponies of not just the present, but also the past and the future,” I said to him before bumping his shoulder with a hoof.

“It is nice to have a future,” Permittivity said wistfully.

“Yeah, and it starts with us getting back to civilisation, you buying me a drink, and me giving you a sloppy bathroom blowjob because I’m so turned on by being around you-”

“I get the picture Icepick, and it is quite a nice one,” Permittivity said with a laugh and a flush in the face.

“I mean, we’re gonna stop and camp in a few hours anyway,” I said to him with a twisted smile. “I’ve always wanted to try Jungle humping.” This time he looked away for a moment, before pulling me closer to him with his magic. I yelped a little as he turned his head to meet mine at the last possible second. I melted into his embrace, and I pushed my tongue forward to meet his. It was a ravenous kiss, the way he held me, the way he explored me.

The way he made me his-

“Permittivity,” I heard a female voice say as we continued the embrace and the kissing.

I looked over and spotted Crescent Moon standing behind us. She was averting her eyes, but I could see her peaking at Perm. Her eyes were drifting over him, imagining him doing things… I could tell because I had done the same thing before. The only difference was: he was mine. A moment later the embrace was broken by Perm. He looked over at her and gave her a slightly embarrassed smile.

“As the kids say: what’s up?” Permittivity said with that same tone he reserved for serious business.

“The other ponies are staring,” Crescent said simply. Perm just laughed nervously, before turning to all the ponies.

“Icepick brings out a lot of passion,” he paused to look at me. “Clearly.”

“Anyhow, let's get started again,” I looked at Perm with a wry grin. “You know, if we kept going, we could probably charge them for the show.” That managed to throw his brain for a loop. He stood there for a few seconds unmoving, only when I tapped him on the shoulder did he come back to the land of the living. He moved closer to me, before whispering in my ear.

“You are such a lewd pony.”

“And you love it,” I replied as we all started walking together again, now significantly further back in the column. It was worth it though. His kisses were fucking golden, almost as golden as when he kissed my neck softly when-

But yeah, we were marching through the jungle now. And we all had little feelings that we were being watched as we stomped our way through the dense foliage…

---===*===---

Nine hours had passed, and well, it would only take us another few hours to make it to the beached submarine. So, we took our time making camp. Steel rangers out of their armour for the first time since we had gotten off the ship mingled with the desert rangers that Bajada managed to bring along. And judging from their interactions, and the way the tents were being filled… Perm and I weren’t the only ones who wanted to try out jungle humping. Which was good, if a bit unplanned.

“So, you ready to sing campfire songs and sharpen our knives?” Bajada asked with a laugh as she helped me set up my tent, meanwhile, Perm and Rosey were busy talking to Reflex and one of the senior Desert Rangers.

“I dunno, but aren’t the males supposed to do the tent pitching?” I asked with a wry smile on my muzzle. The other mare matched my grin.

“If we do this for them, that leaves them more energy for other things,” Bajada said in a low voice, her tail flicking from side to side was the only thing giving away our conversation.

“Good point,” I said as I hefted the fabric up with only my bare hooves.

“So, I gotta thank you for bringing him by my place,” Bajada said a moment later. “Reflex is a pretty interesting pony and a good lay.”

“Yeah…” I said while looking over at where the boys were congregating.

“But, he wasn’t really that into me,” Bajada said wistfully.

“That’s what I always felt from him,” I said simply. The tentpole now stood erect, and now the tent was pitched. I was reminded of the little shelter we built in the desert during the days. Memories of listening to a strange, yet familiar breathing filled my mind. Gazing at him and seeing the years either drain off him as he slept, or caught up to him with extreme prejudice. Getting to actually know him had taken work, but I was glad I had.

“Oh really? I got the impression he was really pining for the one that had gotten away,” Bajada said as she and I took a break and drank from our canteens.

“O-oh,” I replied softly, as I threatened to either spit out my water or go for a hug with the nearest person.

“Yeah, he’s hurting right now,” Bajada said wordlessly. “But then again, so are most of us. Icepick, I know we’re not very good friends. I remember being called that bitch from the truck behind my back. But what I see you having with that stallion is as close to fairytale romance as I’ve ever seen. In fact, it kinda makes me wanna throw up,” She stopped and met my slack-jawed expression. “So, like, don’t take it for granted. You’re both lucky fuckers.”

“Noted,” I said with a strained expression on my face. Was it just fate that most ponies would never find a relationship as fulfilling as the one I had with Permittivity.

“No, no,” Bajada looked at me again. “I mean, that kinda thing is rare, and life is hard. There’s gonna be something that could easily break that kinda love if you don’t protect it. For my parents, it was them losing my older brother. It destroyed them both.”

“That’s why you don’t do romance, isn’t it?” I said solemnly.

“I’m just not a romantic, though having that as an example kinda helps me toe the line,” she admitted. Her eyes bored into mine though. “Maybe if I just magically found the stallion of my dreams…” She said with a longing glance towards Perm, who was probably explaining the operation of a common, yet complex machine.

“Nope, he’s mine blondie!” I chirped before smacking her shoulder lightly.

“Just joking,” she said before turning to me again. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind climbing in bed with both of Y'all, just a test drive…” I flushed at that.

“I’ll uh, take that under advisement,” I said to her before suddenly finding something else to do. Dammit, that mare out lewded me, got me to break. I wasn’t even into mares!

A few feet away, Permittivity was talking to some assembled ponies. Rosetta, Reflex, and a few other ponies all stood around him as he talked about something called a Stirling engine.

“They don’t require the same complexity that a steam or internal combustion engine does,” Permittivity said before looking at me and continuing. “And they can run off of essentially any heat source.”

“I see, that would make sense for certain industrial applications, or household generators,” A steel ranger said with surprise. “I don’t remember anyone before the war designing anything like that. How did you learn about them?”

“I worked on them a lot in the field,” He said before meeting that ranger’s eyes. There was a sparkle of shared recognition between them. It was rather cute to see nerdy boys talking about things like that. “They were used as power generators and heaters for the trenches.”

“I see,” the stallion replied. “I guess we never really had a need for that kind of power supply. We kinda just went from steam boilers to magical power during the war, and then we developed internal combustion tech for use given the amount of crude oil available here.”

“Good point, I think that the parallel development of different technologies is a fascinating sociological phenomenon,” Permittivity said with a broad smile before something turned it into a frown. At this point though, we were all about ready to sleep. There would be no campfire at this site. We were trying to be stealthy, and that involved us waking with the dawn. “Anyhow, we should all get some rest. Tomorrow is the moment of truth.” He walked over to me as the crowd began to disperse. I greeted him with a smile and a brief hug.

“How was the captive audience?” I asked him before breaking the embrace. He tensed up a little at my words.

“They weren’t captives, they have a strong desire to learn, the lot of them!” Permittivity said in a moment of levity, before losing that energy. Perm looked at me a moment later with an enervated expression. Something was draining him.

“I see,” I said to him softly. He looked relieved as he met my eyes. “And I’ll believe you, just this once.” I managed to put a smile on his face. It would be one of the last for a long time…

---===*===---

The final approach was done under dead silence, as we made it to the edge of the forest, and to the zone, they had cleared of foliage. There was a kilometre dead zone where only stumps and grass existed. Out maybe a hundred metres past the beached submarine was the ship they had ridden out on.

“You see that ship?” Permittivity said to me as we both laid low at the outer edges of our safety perimeter.

“Yeah, it’s big,” I said to him.

“It’s in ill repair like it hasn’t seen regular maintenance in decades,” Permittivity said with a harsh smile. “I bet our ship will sink it.”

“That’d be nice,” I said quietly. There had obviously been some efforts to reinforce the site of the submarine. I could see sandbags stacked up in places, with trenches and machine gun muzzles pointing out in all directions. They had built a fortress around the submarine. There were howitzers pointed out toward the ocean. How they had gotten fucking howitzers and machine guns, and the engineering work to use them…

“What the fuck?” Reflex said as he trained his optics on the fortifications.

“What is it? More heavy guns?” I looked over at where his binoculars were pointed. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “What?” There was a pony there, wearing an unfamiliar uniform, but an equestrian for sure. On his back was a stubby looking firearm, with a large drum magazine hanging beneath the barrel.

“Ah,” Permittivity said as he too looked at the pony. “I think that those ponies were the engineers.”

“Oh really? I never would have thought that the fucking Arabs would employ anything other than ambush tactics,” I said out loud. My eyes squinted at the rest of the fort. There were four main machine gun nests. And two big howitzers on the opposite side of the submarine. Between each nest were a number of smaller trenches that ran parallel to the hull of the submarine. Arabs stewed in the fortifications, their bored expressions making me angrier. They must be expecting more of an attack from the ocean.

“We weren’t expecting this kind of fortifications, we weren’t even sure that they would have sentries posted,” Reflex added, unhelpfully.

“I’m surprised it’s as lightly defended as it is,” Permittivity said with a strange expression on his face. “But the logistics of a larger force would be hard to deal with as well, considering we own the seas. I mean, with this level of fortification, it’d be hard to take it without them having time enough to detonate the bomb.”

“You really think they’d do that?” I asked him, knowing the answer.

“If you had decided to send the entire fleet here, yes they would’ve already detonated it,” Permittivity surmised.

“We’re not worth it though, because they could take us on, and have a fair shake of winning,” Reflex Sight replied, his own thoughts troubled.

“Bear in mind, anything short of an anti-Ursa rifle is gonna have a hard time penetrating our armour,” I reminded the other two ponies here.

“Who has the radio gear, we’re gonna need to change our plans a little,” I said simply. There were a few hours before the ship would be here.

“What do you suggest?” Permittivity asked with a curious expression on his muzzle.

“That’s for everypony to hear, you don’t get a sneak peek just because you’re good at hitting all my fun spots,” I said to Perm with a sly grin. He flushed and looked away, before meeting my grin with a grudging one. When I looked over at Reflex, there was a momentary expression of pain on his face. He choked it down a moment later though.

“Let’s leave the rest up to the sentries, c’mon boys,” I said with a flick of my armoured tail as I started back towards the rest of the assembled ponies.

“Yes Ma’am,” Permittivity and Reflex said simultaneously. As I looked back at them, I saw my old friend standing there in his gleaming armour, looking back at me with strength and power flowing from him and the weapons strapped to his body. Permittivity had a far-off look in his eyes as if he was praying. To what, I had no clue. The green and black of the scarf around his neck and the tattered cloth duster on his back made him look like a creature of cloth. He looked so vulnerable compared to Reflex. Maybe that was why I loved him. He was scared, tired and open to things, open to love, open to new ideas. Reflex was nothing like that. He stood resolutely for what he believed was right, all the same things we had been indoctrinated in for our entire lives.

What was I though? I wore the armour that made me a ghost from the past, here to kill the living… Was that my destiny?

---===*===---

It all seemed to happen at once, as the ship got close to it’s assigned location, we gave it new orders. All of us were sitting on the edge of the treeline, waiting for the first show-

With a brilliant cacophony, a barrage of rockets launched off the deck of our ship lighting the air around the rockets brightly. It also revealed the position of our boat. There wasn’t time to just watch the light show though. We had to run!

“Rangers, for Equestria!” I yelled through my helmet loudspeaker and was met with many others yelling the same thing. The burning and shrapnel peppered camp was in front of us.

The treeline was about a kilometre from the edge of the first trench line. It would take a while to get over there, even as us rangers ran at the target. There was no response from the fort for the first few hundred meters, the servos of our armour straining as we pushed it to its limit. The rocket barrage ended as we had made it about halfway there. By that point, a number of the ponies in the trenches and the sub who had survived the bombardment were lining up and starting to fire at us. The darkness was on our side though. The first few ponies to get pinged responded by opening up with their machine guns in loose suppressive bursts.

Beside me in the charge was Ironsight and another ranger by the name or Screw Loose. Screw yelled out and let off a burst of his grenade machine gun, arcing the projectiles up into the air at a forty-five-degree angle. From behind us, about two minutes behind, the rest of the ponies started firing with their limited number of scoped and night vision weapons. The next part of the plan depended on-

With an earth shattering boom, the howitzer inside their encampment went off. However, there wasn’t a whistling in the air from an airburst above us. Instead, there was another loud explosion as the shell sought in vain our ship.

But our ship was already heading out in the other direction, running away as fast as its engine could carry it. It’s rear facing turret fired a parting shot at the fortifications on the other side as quickly as it could. By then, the number of poorly, and not so poorly aimed rifle shots had picked up. The pings and near penetrations of the high powered guns these ponies were armed with starting to make the other rangers a bit nervous. My path had changed slightly as I spotted my target. I was still a hundred meters out of range when I looked back behind me and spotted the shapes of the desert rangers and Perm charging at our backs.

The first machine gun opened up at the opposite corner of the trenches from me. It managed to down one of the rangers nearest to it, I wasn’t sure if the wounds were fatal though. The heavy machine gun rounds were capable of piercing our armour on places other than our breastplates and helmets. So as he began to search for another target, I only hoped that the pony assigned to it…

There was a whoosh of air as a rocket lit up the sky on the other side of the battlefield. It connected to the pillbox within seconds, before the impact fuse blew that entire section of fortifications to sand and tiny fragments of cloth. I pushed myself forward another dozen steps before risking my own target-

Bam!

I watched in horror as the pony who had fired the rocket was struck in the chest with a heavy bullet. The massive cannon of a gun ripped straight into the ranger who had fired, throwing them to the ground. I couldn’t make out much other than a massive bloody hole straight through their breastplate. Beside me, Screwloose fired his grenade launcher again, this time at the gargantuan muzzle flash that had killed our fellow ranger. With another massive shot out and glanced against the curved edge of Screw’s armour.

I had to risk it.

Everyone was counting on me. I was finally facing a real fight. These ponies, the equestrians that had reinforced these ponies, the ones that fought like the one's Perm had fought, they were dangerous. I lined up the shot using my assisted targeting system and fired two consecutive shots at the as of yet unused machine gun nest nearest to me. The first shot fell short, falling into the ground a dozen meters in front of the sandbags.

The second though, it managed to tear apart the entire nest. And I could do nothing but keep going, the running was now a part of me. Even as the metal of the missile tubes cooled in the night air, now rife with bullets, I kept my eyes focused at the enemy. An Arab poked his head out of the trench line, and with an assisted burst from my machine gun, I managed to get that head lined up with at least one bullet. There was another explosion as the howitzer fired again, this time managing to hit nothing at all, other than some water.

As I looked behind me, the other ponies were running at full speed, some of them getting close to us. I spotted Perm running with determination written across his face, the strap on that steel helmet tight around his chin. He still had his gun on his back, not wanting to light himself up with magic. There was another boom as one of those anti-Ursa guns opened up again. The high calibre round throwing Screw Loose to the ground this time. I stopped what I was doing and ran over to him. I didn’t need night vision to see what was wrong with him, he was missing most of his neck. I yelled from within my armour. They were downing us like flies. My heart rate picked up as I realized I was closer and closer to the guy that had just been shot- I couldn’t help but stand beside my dead comrade. His was a death that meant something, at least that was something…

“All rangers, I’ve made it to the trench line!” Ironsight blared into my ears, my attention suddenly shifting back to the battle at hoof. I looked over at that Trench line and decided to run at it. Within the minute, I had jumped over the top of it and landed on top of an Arab. I could hear the sounds of bones breaking over the ambient gunfire. When I climbed off of them, they were already bleeding internally, in shock. I stomped on the Arab’s neck with my sabaton. They stopped breathing.

To my right and my left, the trenches filled with light and fighting as Power Armoured rangers finally made close up contact with the enemy. Machine guns and belt fed assault rifles tore into the enemy, our overwhelming firepower advantage turning the tide. I felt something smack into me, and with a scream of pain, I turned to face whoever had just shot me. There was a prick in my side as I felt my armour dose out a pain reliever and a shot of stimulant.

There was a pony standing there, pulling a bolt back of his rifle, ready to shoot me again. Beside him was a grenade the pin only restrained by his hoof pressing down on it. It didn’t look like a shrapnel grenade, no it looked like it was made to kill things through pressure waves, things like me. I aimed my gun at him just as he fired again, this time the bullet didn’t penetrate my weaker leg armour, it just left a divot in my breastplate.

“Who the fuck are you?!” I yelled as I started to crack off a burst, just before I was able to fire, he threw himself behind a corner of the trench. I turned tail and threw myself to the ground a moment later. The bang from the grenade my ears ring, and the little bit of dirt and debris in the trench was thrown my direction. It rang off my armour as I got up and dusted myself off. He popped his head around the corner and fired again-

“Fuck!” I yelled into my helmet, without activating the loudspeaker. The round from his gun managed to strike my tail segment near my dock. The fucker had sent a round through my fucking tail. Luckily, it only felt like a graze. More morphine travelled into my body as I incurred my second hit. This time I ran straight at him, not even pausing to really turn the corner. I just ran right into the corner of dirt and wooden boards. It didn’t stop me.

He managed to dodge out of the way as I barreled through his cover and came to a stop to the side of him, down the travelling trench another pony aimed one of those submachine guns at me and let off a long burst. The bullets stunned me for a moment as they pinged off my chest and helmet, most of them glancing off the curved surfaces. They were lined up for a returning volley, and they were hit by my own burst. For some reason, they didn’t deal with bullets striking them as well…

I turned to face the other pony who I had chased down, in his hoof was a knife, which he tried to bury in my neck. I ducked backwards and clocked him in the side of the head with my armoured right hoof. He fell to the ground, unconscious or dead. I didn’t care. Out of commission was enough for me. I didn’t have an urge to finish him off. So I didn't.

I started walking down the trench, waiting for someone else to try to shoot me…

---===*===---

“Your leg! Are you okay?” Rosetta asked me as we sat in one of the trenches outside the submarine. Everyone, other than some sentries on the entrance that had been blown open, was collected and waiting for the go-ahead on the final assault.

“It’s fine, it can wait till after the battle,” I said as I looked down at my blood covered leg. There was a solid hole through it and as the first bit of adrenaline died down, I started to feel the ebbing and flowing of pain throughout it.

“No, that’s stupid, you could die,” Rosetta said to me, fire blazing in his eyes.

“How long would it take to pack it with gauze and slap a dressing on it?” I asked him as I started to key the armour opening command with my nose.

“A few minutes,” he said in a modestly insincere voice.

“Alright,” I said as my armour opened up and I stepped out. The moment I put weight on just my leg, I screamed and collapsed. There was a bloody divot in my rear leg.

“Oh fuck,” Rosetta swore as he helped me onto my back. I looked down at my leg again as I sat against the wall of the trench.

“Icepick!” Permittivity said as he saw me hit the ground.

“I’m gonna feel this in the morning,” I said as I strained from the feeling of air travelling through my leg. The open flesh oozing blood the whole time, now that my armour wasn’t holding in the fluid.

“You’re gonna feel this for the rest of your life,” Permittivity said as he watched Rosey begin to sanitize the wound, before jamming gauze into it.

“You would know, wouldn’t you,” I told him as I looked around at the campsite. We had taken a few prisoners as we cleared out the fortifications. Many Arabs, but also some of those Equestrians that had brought the big guns and the trenches. The things that had cost us many lives. All told, we already had twelve casualties, including me. And we hadn’t even taken the Submarine yet.

Permittivity just rolled his eyes before sitting down beside me as Rosetta dressed my wounds. He held his hoof out for me to hold, and I did so, squeezing it tightly as he packed the wound.

“It’ll be okay though,” he said to me softly. “I was more worried about the howitzers firing on us than I was about anything else.” In his magic, he grabbed on the dropped rifles that had been used on us. He cycled the bolt quickly, clearing the chamber with four quick actions. His movements were steady, ingrained.

“How do you know how to do that so well?” I asked him with a little bit of suspicion dripping into my voice. That and pain, there was a lot of pain in my voice.

“You know, you don’t need to participate in this next fight,” he avoided my question and began to load the rifle again. “There’s no shame in staying out of it. It’s going to be loud, and bloody.”

“I’m gonna fight in it, as soon as Rosey finishes binding up my wound. My armour is already healing, and if it’s fine, I’m fine,” I said to him. My words were tinged with pain until Rosetta jammed a needle into my thigh. Within seconds the pain retreated to a dull ache.

“I know better than to argue with you,” Rosetta said as he packed the wound. With a light from his horn and a look of extreme concentration on his muzzle, I began to feel a glow begin to emanate from my leg. All at once, it began to feel better. For a minute all I could feel was warmth and light from my leg, along with a slight itch. All the while Permittivity stared at Rosetta with his jaw hanging open. Several others had the same look on their muzzles. But soon enough, it was over, and as I moved my leg and looked at my dressings, I realized that he had healed me enough for me to get back in my armour. He had saved me a week or a few days of bed rest and pain…

“Rosetta!” I said loudly as I watched him lose his balance. Only Perm’s magic was quick enough to stop the poor doctor from falling to the ground. With a decent amount of magic flowing from him too, he managed to place Rosetta’s heaving and exhausted body against the wall we were sitting against. Him between us, wooden boards and dirt against our backs.

“This feels too familiar for comfort,” Permittivity remarked with a huff. “Are you alright Rosetta?”

“I feel like I ran two marathons,” Rosetta quipped in a painful tone. I twitched my leg and felt the dull ebb become heavier. I turned and looked at my two stallions, before standing up and facing them, they had nowhere to run from my affections. I favoured my other legs and walked over to Perm, still clutching that old style rifle in his hooves. Before pulled him closer to me with a leg, and kissing him on the lips.

“I’m gonna finish the fight Perm, there’s nothing that will stop me from that,” I said before kissing him one last time on the lips. “Thanks to Rosetta,” I said before moving over a little bit and meeting Rosetta’s tired expression with my drug-addled one. “Thank you, sweetie,” my words had barely left my lips before I pushed my head forward the last few centimetres and kissed him on the cheek.

“Wha-” He managed to say as the last of his uncommitted blood flowed to his face, turning just that last bit red.

“Well, I think we should get ready for the last push!” I yelled loudly while turning away from my two boys. I was flushing a little too, but because grey and red don’t look that good together I was anxious to get my helmet back on.

As I stepped back into my armour, I realized the cleaning talisman had done its job. The blood and sweat in the armour had already been churned through for useful materials, and the rest ejected. As I stepped into the steel suit, I realized that for the first time my armour had a part of me in it. I knew there wasn’t that much iron in my blood, but whatever iron had been spilt inside was already working to repair the battle damage.

“Icepick, are you gonna lead the charge?” Reflex said as he watched me step into my armour while limping heavily.

“Well be careful, we’ve already found a secret exit they prepared in the other side of the hull,” Reflex paused and stopped as I waited for the whirring of the armour to stop.

“Have you gotten anything out of the prisoners yet?” I asked him as I put my helmet on, the overpressure system kicking in as I locked my helmet down. My leg felt better in here already, the repaired sections of my armour were holding my leg in place like a brace, and taking the weight of the armour and myself off of the bone and damaged flesh.

“Not really, most of them are hurt, and all of the Equestrians are unconscious,” Reflex replied before throwing his own helmet on and looking at the assembled ponies.

“Half of us are going to the secret entrance, the other half are following Icepick and Permittivity,” He barked to the assembled ponies. Most either saluted or yelled an affirmation. I let my eyes drift over the remaining soldiers under me. They were already scratched and tired, but in each of their eyes was a resolve that didn’t just happen. It was born of years of pushing yourself to be better than you were…

Perm wasn’t smiling though, but he had the most complicated expression on his muzzle of the bunch. I could tell he was worried about me, but he had also avoided my question. It couldn’t be- He suddenly met my eyes, there was a fire in them, but also resignation. Why though? I didn’t have the time to be worried about my for once not wounded buckfriend, I had a balefire bomb to secure.

If only I had gotten through to him then…

---===*===---

“Lay down your guns and you’ll live, now if you fight, you might piss me off,” I yelled into the seemingly empty hole in the hull. My loudspeaker carried those words far and wide through the harmonically designed submarine. There was no reply though-

“Fair enough, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!” I yelled back before throwing myself into the whole and immediately turning to the left, another ranger went in with me, and turned to the right. The tight passageways were hard to manoeuvre in. Still, I could fire my gun at whoever wanted to stand in my way.

It was clear, even as we heard gunfire coming from the other entrance. I looked around and started towards the middle of the hull, where the missiles would be stored. Within moments I had Permittivity by my rear. Other ponies followed me and soon enough we had a little congo line of ponies waiting for me to punch through any defences they had rigged up.

Maybe a minute later I walked around a corner and spotted somepony messing with something, they had enough time to act surprised and attempt to throw whatever they had in their hooves at me, before I unloaded my light machine gun into them. The object they were throwing clattered to the ground beside them, I halted my column with a hoof. With a quick turn, I managed to push Permittivity into the wall and block his body with mine.

Boom!

The grenade exploded, and even from as far away as it was, it threw shrapnel down the hallway at us. I felt tons of it pinging off of my armour. None penetrated me, and not even a scratch was on Permittivity. I smiled at him, forgetting for a second that I was wearing my helmet. When he looked back at me, there was pain in his eyes. My own eyes wandered his body to see if some bit of shrapnel had gotten through…

“I’m fine, just keep going,” he said a moment later, he yelled it actually, the pressure waves from that indoor grenade blast having fucked with the ears of anyone not wearing protection. I just nodded and committed to asking him about it later, when you know, we weren’t in the middle of a battle for a weapon of mass destruction.

We moved on and fought and disarmed traps along the way. With Perm having disarmed some of them by shocking the ignition switch on the bombs and mines. It was slow going, but eventually, we managed to get to the central area where the missiles were stored.

“So this is the place?” I asked the ponies near me. We were all either in concealed firing positions or ready to rush inside and find our cover. I got a nod from a few ponies, and I smiled. It took a minute to ready the breaching charges and set them on the door, but soon enough the entire thing was ready to blow.

With a small detonation, the doors came tumbling down, and as the smoke cleared Perm and I managed to get inside the room and immediately run for cover. We found a small arming station that worked as a small wall. Another two ponies managed to slide into the room, one in power armour, one without. That was just before I saw massive slabs of steel begin to glow with the light of telekinesis. On the other side of the room, a number of sandbag barricades separated unicorns and Arabs from us. They dragged the massive metal steel plates over the entrance of the room and blocked us in.

Permittivity ducked around the cover and fired that rifle he had picked up, the bullet ripped into the wall behind one of the unicorns, and that unicorn stopped throwing their magical weight into moving the slabs. The speed of the aperture closing was slowing, especially when I threw myself around the other side of the arming table and fired a long burst from my gun. Then, from the other side of the metal plates, we heard the sounds of gunfire. Furious gunfire. Those bastards had waited until we were split up.

This stunk of Tegarni, I thought as I got back behind the wall with Permittivity as they returned fire at us. The bullets sinking into the metal of the arming station, thank goodness for the zebra propensity to over-engineer. The other two ponies on our side found a similar bit of cover near the entrance. It was either a rookie mistake to leave these things up, or they just couldn’t move the massive steel tables and racks.

I turned my head to look at Permittivity, he had two guns levitating in his magic, that assault rifle and the bolt action rifle. He met my helmeted gaze. His own helmet gleaming greasily in the weak incandescent lights available within the submarine. I lifted my hoof and waved it three times. He grinned slyly. On three we both popped out and peppered the ponies sitting behind the sandbags. One of them was hit by Perm’s rifle shot and fell to the ground behind them, another was hit by one of my bullets.

We were felling them, as were the other Ranger, who was just standing beside his cover and spilling hot, automatic death all over the opposing side of the building. One of the consoles in the room was hit and began to spark and light up.

There was a hole in the ceiling from the rocket barrage let the moonlight compete with the portable lights in the room. It let me see the high powered rifle shot that ripped into my fellow Rangers leg, my own wound seeming to ache harder in sympathy as another shot rang out and nearly penetrated him from the side. He ducked back and took a breath as his armour dosed him with painkillers. Now we were down to two healthy ponies. There were probably a dozen ponies still left on the other side. And my ammo was nearly out…

Suddenly Perm poked me on the shoulder with a clang. I turned and watched him gesticulate to me before giving up and straight up pointing near the remaining missile.

“What about it?” I yelled at him. He seemed to hear me because he got behind me and hunched down, before miming movement. “Ah.” He was fucking crazy… Then he showed me something a little interesting.

I stepped out into the firing line and let out a long burst that had them getting down, none of the remaining Arabs or Equestrians wanted to get shot like their comrade. Permittivity stood behind me as we both started running at the missile, nearly in the centre and to the right of us. That exposed both of our vulnerable sides, but we had to risk it. As we ran, it felt like time was slowing down as the ponies facing us popped back up and started shooting at us, my form covering Perm’s as he ran parallel to me. We made it a few meters before the first bullet bounced off my steel encased flank.

The other two ponies with us took the moment to crack off some covering shots as we ran. It was only about twenty metres away from us when the shooting from half of the ponies stopped, we had made it to the bomb. And they weren’t willing to shoot at the missile.

That left half with a firing angle at me, one bullet smacked into my left wither, penetrating partially through the armour, before being stopped by the second layer of steel. We made it though, I had tanked the bullet fire for a few seconds and kept my lover safe. As we got behind the bulk of the missile and its launch apparatus, he gave me a look of thanks. I thought he was crazy for a second as I watched him safety and place his guns against the missile.

Then he pulled them out for the second time. A large pouch of steel ball bearings levitated to him in his magic. He pulled two dozen out and began floating them up along the slight curve of the ballistic missile. Then they began to glow brighter, and spark electricity along the line of the balls. Perm’s face was wracked by effort as he overglowed his horn, not once but three times.

And then he threw them at the enemies all at once, though they kept that same line of energy sparking in a line through them. I stepped out of cover and cracked off a burst as I watched Perm’s sphere’s travel over their cover and land behind the ponies who had been shooting at us.

With a loud crack, the electricity arcing between the ball bearings exploded to life, flowing through the air- and whatever conducted electricity better than air. There were screams, loud ones as the burst of electricity shot through the ponies who had been shooting at us. The ponies beside us, took the moment to run at the enemies who were either unconscious or in a great deal of pain.

I did the same. I spared a glance towards my love, even as he dropped to the ground and laid there from the exertion.

Of course, he’d leave all the hard work to me-

---===*===---

The prisoners were bound and the injured were being bandaged by the Desert Ranger in the room, as Permittivity rested near the missile, miraculously or not so miraculously untouched by the fighting. I guess no-one wanted to risk setting the Balefire egg off. I was near the original doorway we had used, and I was helping the other ranger, his leg now bandaged, with the steel slabs…

“Icepick, it’s your old acquaintance, speaking to you from somewhere in the ship, where, it doesn’t truly matter,” A voice began to pour through the loudspeakers set in the wall. It was Tegarni and I turned to look at the nearest speaker. “You see, I wasn’t aware of your plans until it was much too late to do anything. So I concede the prize to you Icepick, one operational Balefire missile. Power enough to shape the destiny of worlds, or so my master has said. The only reason I didn’t activate it was, it only had one target left in its databanks, and none of the descendants of the original crew were helpful enough to reprogram it for us.”

“Yeah, well fuck you and your bomb!” I yelled at the ceiling my blood boiling as my wound began to hurt badly. The adrenaline rush and the medication were beginning to wear off, and I felt just very exhausted. This battle had killed so many, but I had won. We had won. Yet he was the one with the snide tone.

“Ah, but do you know the target that missile was meant to destroy, a century ago?” He asked me rhetorically, even as I watched Permittivity get to his hooves and run towards me. There was that same pain on his face as he watched me. “Our home.”

“What?” I asked loudly as everyone stared at me.

“My master told me, he knows a lot, and I had one of my trusted technicians help me confirm it. Now, do you want to end the Arab threat forever?”
My heart jumped into my throat. Was he lying? He must be! This had to be a trap.

“Icepick no!” Permittivity yelled when he got closer to me. There was fear and revulsion in his eyes.

“Oh, the betrayer! He’s never wanted you to reach your destiny. He always lies, and you’ve accepted part of it, because you love him so dearly,” Tegarni said as Perm came to me before stopping and putting a hoof on my armoured withers.

“I know what he’s trying to do, that necklace he found isn’t just jewellery, it’s poisoned his mind, now he knows nothing but doing his master’s bidding,” Permittivity said to me with wide eyes. Wide, pleading eyes full of sorrow.

“I know the stallion screaming into the loudspeaker sounds crazy, I’m not arguing that but what do you mean?” I asked simply, eyes drifting to the Equestrians that had been captured today, and how familiar Permittivity was with their tactics and weapons…

“Sombra is telling you to destroy your enemy through him, that necklace warps and controls the minds of those who wear it. I know, because he sent me here, and that necklace was mine until I lost it,” Permittivity said solemnly. My eyes reddened and I began to undo my helmet. I wanted him to be able to see the anger and pain in my eyes.

“Oh, so he admits it for the first time! Yes, he was sent here to find you Icepick,” Tegarni added as I threw my helmet onto the steel deck. The loud clunk was the only thing to breach the pregnant silence. I counted to ten in my head and took deep breaths.

“Shut the fuck up Tegarni!” I yelled loudly, to the ceiling before looking at Permittivity. “I’m not sure if I can trust you again, ever, but if you ever loved me, you need to tell me the truth now.”

“To Sombra, you’re the destroyer, the one who will weaken Sall’han enough for him to be able to conquer it, and with the technology and resources of this continent, he’ll be able to beat the Celestians we lost a war too. All I ever wanted, was to have my world survive. That was what kept me alive Icepick. I couldn’t lose everything, I was willing to go to an alien world, and I was willing to die for it. I’ve changed but felt unable to stop it. Sombra’s soul is locked in an invincible soul jar, made of obsidian. And he has a nation of millions to draw on in the invasion to come. We know how to fight too, you’ve been fighting advance units from the Imperial army this entire battle-”

“Wait, so he’s going to invade us through the mirror, and that mirror exits in the centre of their complex? The one with the balefire missile aimed at it? Is he fucking stupid? Why wouldn’t I want to turn the thing into a radioactive crater?” I said loudly and with confusion on my face.

“That’s nothing to him, and it’ll just kill the Arabs, not stop his invasion while killing the core of another army we could use to fight them,” Permittivity said hastily.

“Are you really gonna let the stallion that lied to you this whole time dictate your destiny? Prevent you from doing what you’ve wanted to do this whole time? Stop you from being the best ranger you could be, the one who avenged all the friends you’ve lost to the war?” Tegarni said with a surreal sureness in his tone.

“How do I trigger the missile then?” I asked him, before stepping away from Permittivity.

“Simple, there’s a terminal behind the access panel on that door over there, one of Equestrian design. It’s one that even one with your modest technological skills can utilize,” Tegarni said in catty, snarky voice.

“Okay, if we’re done insulting me, the mare with a balefire missile at her hooves, I mean, nobody else wants it, right? I’m going to get that terminal running before things get serious,” I said loudly before starting the walk over there.

“Icepick, you can’t! It might be a trap, we have no idea whether or not it’ll just detonate the bomb,” Permittivity said as he was hot on my hooves. I suddenly threw my non-injured leg at him, hitting him lightly before he moved into the hit. On the ground, he sat there looking wounded at me. Though on his face was also understanding, he knew why this was happening and he knew he couldn’t really blame me.

“No-one try and stop me!” I yelled at the other ponies, the steel ranger in power armour almost looked like he wanted to try it, but seeing as he was still bleeding, he didn’t seem to want to risk it. The other mare, I had seen her before, she was a fan of mine. If anyone had latched onto the idea of uniting Ramsgard and Paradise… It was her. So, other than Permittivity, who knew better than to try and hurt me, I was free to do what had to be done.

Minutes passed as I rooted through the terminal and figuring out how they mated the tech to the zebra computers. I wanted to be sure of the risks. I saw that the launch door mechanism was already connected to the last remaining spark power in the generator. Both systems reported that they were functional.
The target was apparently what it said it was. The warhead was ready to detonate too. There was a command available in the missile functions. View critical spell. The spell that would be critically amplified using the Megaspell amplifier. I keyed it not knowing what to expect-

It was beautiful. The enchanted egg filled with necromantic energy. It swirled deviously like it was trying to get out. It probably was. Something about it though, it called to me. I was the one with the key. I could unleash something meant to destroy Equestria, but use it against Equestria’s greatest enemy. I kept the terminal window open, flicking to it every couple seconds and staring. It was like the most beautiful abstract painting.

“Don’t do it! Icepick, please be better than everyone thinks. Everyone but me,” Permittivity said from a safe distance away. He had seen my reaction to the balefire egg.

“Oh shut up, I am who I am, and honestly, being known as the destroyer would be pretty cool,” I said to him, scowling at him. Why was he being so whiny? Why wouldn’t he just shock me with his magic, I was wearing a suit largely composed of metal. “I mean, I know I’ll be blowing up a bunch of Arabs.”

I keyed in the final set of commands. Before me was the launch command for the missile. I readied myself to press it, hooves centimetres away…

“Go ahead, it’s all ready to go, shame we can’t watch it detonate. All we’ll find later is the crater…” Tegarni said in a seemingly sincere voice, he sounded like he was crying.

“For Equestria!” I yelled one last time, before-

Before I unloaded my last remaining machine gun rounds into the machine, almost at the same second as I did it, a spark of electricity coursed through me. And the computer that was just being hit by the first few bullets from my gun. The current stopped before I ended up dead, or knocked out…

But damn, it still hurt. As my gun barrel heated up and the last few rounds of belt-fed ammunition shot out, I looked over at him, he was relieved and apologetic now. He honestly looked like he was nearly about to pass out on his hooves from the exertion. I gave him a smile and trotted over to where he was standing. And then I clocked him in the face, softly, well softer than I could have.

As he fell to the ground, I let my body relax as I heard silence from the intercom for a few seconds. I looked up at it and smiled. Before raising a hoof in the air and shooting a glance towards everyone in the room.

“You fucked up! Maybe before I would’ve hit that button and killed thousands, the seeds of Arab resistance. But the only reason I was able to make this attack, to save the twin cities of Equestria was because of an Arab mare!” I paused and looked down at a pained, and yet understandably relieved Permittivity. Whatever else I knew about him, there wasn’t any spark in him left- He was all used up, and to be fair, nearly was I.

And then I heard a gunshot through the intercom. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was over. We had secured a couple dozen prisoners. The bomb was ours. Now though, I understood at least a little of what had kept Permittivity quiet.

I knew what was coming too- “If you ever want to regain my trust, to ever be anything like we were in Paradise, you’re gonna start telling me everything, and-” He picked himself up and walked the remaining distance slowly.

“I’m so sorry,” he said simply. His hooves wrapped around me in a comforting gesture. I met his hug and wrapped my foreleg around his neck.

“I know you are, that’s why you’re getting a second chance, we aren’t playing by baseball rules though,” I squeezed his neck for half a second, just enough to let him know I could’ve broken his neck.

“By the time that necklace was gone, I was already in over my head,” Permittivity said sadly. I didn’t respond in words, in some part of my mind where things were still simple, I knew what would be right. I pressed my lips to his.

He was caught by surprise by the kiss, and when I let him lean over a little as I kissed him, holding him in place as my tongue pressed against his lips before being let in- Moments passed as I let him enjoy the last kiss from me for… Well, the next one would be a long time coming.

He had lied to me a bunch, but when it counted he had done the right thing- Why was he making this so hard on me! Nevermind what he was going through now… I broke the embrace and looked at him.

“I cherish you, I want to grow old with you, and I want us to have that happy ending we talked about- But you’re gonna need to do something to prove your loyalty-” I said slowly, the very words hurting me. The mental burden of what I needed from my boys was heavy, but I was a strong mare.

“Whatever you require will be done, even if it means I have to fight Sombra on my own,” There was a resolve in his voice that felt the same as before. The part of him that was good, the part I loved was still around.

“Well, if it comes down to that, we’ll do it together,” I said simply. He met my eyes and smiled.

“Hopefully whatever test of me you require isn’t too painful,” Permittivity said before rubbing the back of his neck with a hoof. “Just, thank you for just punching me.”

“I hope it isn’t too painful either,” I said before looking into his blue eyes. The eyes I had no doubt in an hour ago. The ones I wanted to see when I looked at my foals. Maybe they still could be…

Maybe-

End Of Chapter XVII: The Last Crusade

Author's Note

This is a big one and a definite end to the second act! Now, we're in the endgame.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter because it was amazing to write. Anyhow, happy Thanksgiving to my US readers, and happy almost December to my international ones!

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Swirling Embers (XVIII)

“What happened in there?” I asked Icepick as she led the column of ponies out of the hull of the long beached ship.

“War,” Icepick said bitterly. “Not all the casualties are easy to see.” At the end of the line was Permittivity, looking just as exhausted as I was. That wasn’t all that was different about him, he looked devastated, but also relieved.

“Well, the ones that are obvious I can take a look at,” I said with a bit of a bite. She only laughed a little before shrugging.

“As for me, I need to deal with the part no-one thought about, well, something I didn’t think about… Also, we need to talk after that. I have a favour to ask of you,” there was a blackness in her voice as she said that last part. Some part of her beyond pain, beyond reassurance, and beyond any guidance from others, that was what I heard speaking to me then.

“What’s the favour,” I said blankly, honestly worried about what she would ask for.

“If I know anything about magic or ponies, then you’ll need your rest if you wanna help me. So until then, don’t worry about it,” Icepick finished, before walking off. The moonlight glinted off of her scarred armour. If nothing else would heal, it would be that hunk of steel and circuitry. What did it say when ponies built things that would outlast them? That we were fleeting, or that we had the power inside of to change the world?

“Alright,” I said as I looked over at the other soldiers. Most had either expired from the wounds they had sustained or barely been scratched. They either needed a necromancer or a fucking bandage. I scowled inwardly. I spun around and started towards our little collection of tents we had carried with us…

---===*===---

“What are you doing?” I heard a familiar voice ask me as I stalked the darkness of the early morning.

“I can’t sleep,” I replied honestly.

“I can’t say I don’t understand,” Bajada said before dropping from her perch above the trench line facing the water.

“What?” I said blearily. Just because I couldn’t sleep, didn’t mean I felt alert.

“Basically, you’re traumatized, and you’re probably wondering what comes next. When you’ve been in a real fight, with real stakes, everything else feels unreal. Sometimes you’ll be standing in the middle of the street and realize that nothing that ponies worry about normally, none of that matters, you become numb to the bullshit, even if that bullshit can land you in trouble,” She said softly, and in that moment, I realized why I had once loved her. There was compassion in her, and she freely gave it.

“So, can I do anything about it? Other than drinking and fucking?” I asked her suddenly, my mind wandering down several dark alleys at once.

“I mean, those things kinda work, until your liver and dick both rot off,” Bajada said with a laugh. “Nah, you’re gonna be dealing with it for the rest of your life. Therapy helps a little though, so don’t lose, like, all hope. Just uh, keep your expectations reasonable.”

“It’s the nightmares I’m scared of most,” I said in a low voice. The next gust of wind felt colder than the last.

“Well, having white noise helps with those,” she said quickly, before looking out over the water. “You’ve got to be shitting me!” Bajada yelled before starting towards the camp. I should’ve followed her immediately. Instead, I leaned against the nearest set of sandbags. The machine gun nest was mostly intact, with the belt of ammunition still inserted in the gun.

I heard the sound of a hatch opening, and I looked away. It was nothing but darkness out there, the moonlight glinting off of nothing at all. But then, on the horizon, I spotted the vaguest outline of something, something big. And then, after straining my eyes, I spotted a second large thing. Ships, big ones…

I followed the open doorways and lights left on inside the ship. When I turned one of the tight corners of the submarine I heard Bajada yelling and a huge crash. I huddled against the wall and crawled forward, for the tenth time in the last few hours, I wished I had taken to carrying a gun. When I finally made it close enough to the room to see inside, I spotted Reflex and Bajada slowly circling the room. Bajada was stuck, and the desk to her left was already sporting a massive hole in it. The steel of the desk was rent apart.

“You know, it all would’ve worked out very nicely if you had just let me take it,” Reflex said with a smile. His helmet was off, and there was already a fresh bruise on his face.

“So you could what? Hold all of Paradise hostage with it?” Bajada shot back before seeing my outline along the wall. Her eyes widened for a second before she caught herself. He hadn’t seemed to notice.

“That’s a good idea, use it for a bloodless annexation,” Reflex said before raising his hoof in the air and stomping down at the ground. “But that’s for the future, now would you like to reconsider your course of action Bajada. I would rather not have the blood of an equestrian on my hooves. So, let’s just say I lock the door behind me as I leave, and you wait to be rescued by Steel Rangers that aren’t in Icepick’s camp.”

“Like fuck, I’m gonna do that,” she said before jumping atop the damaged desk and then jumping through the air and avoiding his attempt to stop her with a hoof. She was behind him and the door was so close. Without thinking, I picked up the desk in my magic and rammed it against him. It threw him slightly off balance, throwing his hind leg buck off. It was only a glancing blow that threw her through the passageway and against the opposite bulkhead. I could see where both of his hooves had connected, her left hind leg was pointing in the wrong direction, and her ribcage was broken.

“You’re fast, but speed only counts for so much in this world,” He said as he looked over at me. “Hello there!” Reflex said with false cheer. He grinned and stepped over to Bajada, who was trying to pull crawl away. I was frozen in place as I watched him stand over her. One of his hooves came down in a stomp and broke her other hind leg. “So, he was the one you talked about being with. The one who loved you. Well, you can sort your relationship out with him-” He paused and lifted his hoof from her leg, before lightly setting it on her back. I grabbed for what I had in my pocket. All I had with me was a thermometer.

“Run! Tell everypony-” Bajada managed to say before his armoured leg crushed her barrel. I threw out my Thermometer with as much force as I could manage. My horn flared like the sun at noon in the dark corridor.

The thermometer struck the back of his head and bounced off. He turned around and looked angry. “That almost hurt, doctor!”

I turned to run and managed to get a head start. In my haze of fear and guilt, I turned the wrong direction and ended up in the sleeping compartment. I hadn’t gotten very far when I heard the sound of steel clanging against steel. The only place that seemed open was a small closet. I threw myself inside without thought and closed the door as quickly as I could without making noise.

Bajada was dead.

He laughed as he came into the room. Then I felt it. There was another pony in this closet. And they were sticky with blood, that smell, I knew all too well… I turned around and realized I couldn’t see the other pony. Maybe they had something better than a thermometer to fight with. I felt around the body, wincing internally. All they had on them was a thin robe and a necklace made of polished glass. I moved as quietly as I could and found a metal device on the ground. The whole time, I could hear his stomping around in the room, looking for me.

Then, I found it. A gun was had fallen to the ground, probably the weapon that he had used on himself. I tried to pick it up with my magic. My horn only sparked a little. Fuck!

A moment later, he smashed open the door as I leaned down to grab it in my mouth, the thought of picking up a dead person’s gun with my mouth nearly making me retch. I turned around and pointed it at him. He didn’t even flinch as he ducked down and threw his hoof out. I jumped back and fired blindly at him. I missed and he charged at me. I ducked to the side and fired, this time I managed to strike him in the leg. It did nothing to him. I was in the corner now. With a wild hoof strike, he smacked the gun out of my mouth, my jaw only unclenching a millisecond before he would’ve broken all of my teeth.

At that moment, I knew I was going to die. I looked him in the eyes and threw my own hoof out. I managed to strike him in the throat, he looked at me with wide eyes and started choking for breath. A moment passed as reflex recovered.

“That actually hurt, doctor,” Reflex said as he looked down at me in his armoured suit. It certainly made him look like more of a stallion than he actually was. Then again, a soldier with years of combat training was going to beat me, the doctor who could barely throw a punch, regardless of the suit.

“Icepick is going to kill you,” I said with my eyes meeting his.

“No, she’ll be court-martialed and shot, because, she’s still naive enough to believe we give a shit about her,” Reflex said with malice in his eyes, and also pain. He swept the latter thing from his face before looking down at the gun I had tried to kill him with. “I give you credit though, I never thought you would have the balls to shoot at me.”

As he aimed his final strike at me, I felt a pulse of something from the body in the corner. The open door let in just enough light for me to see details about the dead pony. He had been an Arab. He had been Tegarni. Something Permittivity had told me came to mind. The stolen necklace, the talisman. That was what I had felt-

“Icepick is going to mourn me more than she ever would mourn you,” I said with a note of finality.

“Maybe,” he winced before looking at me with rage filled eyes. “But your funeral is gonna be first.” Just as he said that I threw everything I had left into my magic, trying to grab for the necklace. The moment my magic touched it, I felt a flush of energy fill me. I didn’t just pull it over his head, I ripped through the cord and pulled it to me, before holding it near my body with my new reserves of magic.

“A trinket? I never took you for that kind of fool,” Reflex looked at me and laughed before winding up a big punch. A final blow. My death. Something in me snapped and I stuck my hoof out, touching the shoulder that was swinging at me. My horn pulsed with light powerful enough to blind both of us. Reflex screamed and looked down at his leg. It came down at an angle and he screamed again before managing to steady himself on his armoured legs. I pressed my hoof to his forehead. My horn pulsed again, and his hind legs buckled beneath him. He fell to the ground, before looking at me with horror in his eyes.

“No more! I’ll call them off!” He yelled at me, fear in his eyes.

“No,” I said simply. I felt powerful in a way I never had before. I was like a child that had run for the first time. “You killed her. You’re going to die.”

“Icepick will die because of you!” He yelled as I lit my horn again, this time remembering to close my eyes. His last leg broke. The bone setting spell cracked the bones in his limbs into about a dozen pieces.

“No. But you will,” I said as I snapped three of his ribs. Then I stopped and watched his face. The pain subsided as his armour injected him with painkillers. But I was a doctor, the spell matrix was designed for battle injuries, not surgical damage.

“That’s a wonderful piece of technology,” I said before grabbing that gun from the floor. I smiled at him. I lifted it in my magic, before pressing against his jaw. The gunshot tore through his lower jaw. He couldn’t speak now. It wasn’t a shame. I picked up the gun one last time, before pulling the magazine out and racking the slide like I had seen Icepick and Permittivity do. I tossed each part to some other part of the room. Before looking down at tear-filled eyes. Blood was spewing from his wound. Maybe a minute passed before he fell into unconsciousness.

It was the painkillers, the things supposed to keep him functioning, that stopped his breathing, not me… I left the room. The talisman was in my inner pocket. Whatever else it was, it let me avenge Bajada. Before I left the bunk room, I closed the door to that closet with my magic.

Two bodies, two villains, both slain by their own actions, lay in that room. No-one would ever find out what happened to them…

---===*===---

“What?” Icepick yelled as I told her what had happened. There were a few lies of omission in my telling.

“We don’t have much time,” I said to her. “Where’s Permittivity?”

“I don’t know where the fuck he is, as long as he’s not around, I can keep my thoughts straight,” she paused and realized she was basically shooting the messenger. “Fuck! Why did that son of a bitch set us up!”

“I don’t know, devotion to duty?” I replied before meeting her gaze.

“He’s always been a true believer,” Icepick said in a tone that told me she was barely keeping herself under control. “Was a true believer. Fuck!”

“What’s the matter?” A bleary-eyed Steel Ranger said from the next tent over.

“Uh, if you can get everyone awake on the double, that’d be great, have them assemble,” Icepick said before looking at that ranger in the eyes. “Long story short, shit is fucked-”

“Alright!” She said before saluting Icepick.

“Find Ironsight,” She said to me, before running off along the opposite way. I nodded at her and started off towards where I thought her tent would be.

---===*===---

“I’m going to disassemble the balefire bomb, and then we’re gonna run into the jungle,” Icepick said to the assembled ponies, some of whom were already off manning the machine gun nests that were left. The remaining howitzer was also being checked off on, by Permittivity and a pair of desert rangers.

“Why are we even worried, I’m sure Churned Waters would just want that kind of bomb destroyed-” A steel ranger stallion said a moment later.

“Reflex said he was going to threaten Paradise with it,” I spoke up. Everyone looked over at me, startled by me speaking up. Or by the mention of their dead commander. Maybe it was both?

“Yeah,” Icepick said as she looked over the mixed crowd of ponies, and Crescent Moon standing off to the side. “For a lasting union, we need to bring our peoples together peacefully. So, we’re gonna play keep away with the bomb, and if they want to get it, they’ll have to get past us, and hunt down two small objects in a fucking massive jungle.”

“How are we getting off this rock? I heard something about more of those Equestrians with the funny accents coming after Paradise,” A desert ranger by the name of Serenity said.

“Honestly, I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure the crew of our ship will stay on our side. After we get out of here, with the parts of the bomb, we’ll head back to Paradise.”

“Can we trust the council of Paradise with the bomb either?” Ironsight said loudly. There was immense pain written across her face, but she kept her head up.

“No,” Icepick said with resolve. “But I don’t see much any other choice, if it was up to me, I’d ram it up the ass of the real enemy, but apparently that isn’t the right thing to do either. Or, honestly, he doesn’t have an ass-”

“Who the fuck is the enemy then? All the Arabs I know have asses!” A steel ranger stallion said. He looked over at Crescent Moon before adding, “No offence, I mean, you have an ass-”

“I understand what you meant, and I’m curious as well as to who we’re fighting,” Crescent Moon said with a slight flush at the stallion’s words.

“His name is Sombra, yes, that Sombra, kinda, it’s complicated,” Icepick said as confusion spread throughout the ranks of the ponies. “As I understand it, those ponies with the guns, tactics and artillery are from another world, a path not taken where Sombra killed the princess a thousand years ago-”

“King Sombra? The dude that enslaved the crystal empire and then made it disappear for a thousand years?” Ironsight asked incredulously.

“Yes, but it isn’t him exactly, it’s his soul that was transferred into an obsidian mirror, a mirror built to cross the spaces between worlds,” Icepick shrugged and met my eyes. “We’ll be learning as much as we can from our source of intel.”

“You mean your boyfriend? He does kinda talk like the prisoners we captured,” Serenity said without any hint of accusation.

“Fuck, I’m not gonna try to hide something that anyone with a brain can figure out. So yes, we’re gonna be asking him many questions. And before anyone asks, he hid his origins from me, and his connection with Sombra, however, when it counted, he spoke up and pushed me to do the right thing. Anyway, we’re short on time, so get everything ready that you can, food, ammunition, equipment, maybe those machine guns if we can carry them,” Icepick finished with a shout. “For Equestria!”

“For Equestria,” the assembled rangers yelled. That was one potential issue taken care of…

“Rosetta, is your magic okay?” Icepick asked as she trotted over to me. “I know it took a lot out of you healing me.”

“I’m not ready to stitch another bullet wound shut with my horn, but if you let me look at your leg, I can probably help it along,” Her eyes opened as I said this.

“Uh, only if you can use your magic to go through Permittivity’s memories too,” Icepick looked down as she said that. “He’s already agreed to it.” She tried to downplay her distaste for the whole thing.

“I can do both,” I said before meeting her eyes. “I’m tired of not being able to do enough, I wasn’t even able to save-”

“I know,” Icepick said before putting an armoured hoof on my shoulder. “Don’t go hurting yourself though, you’re only a pony. Anyway, we’re gonna want to put distance between ourselves and those fuckers before we do anything,” She said before turning herself around and walking to the submarine.

---===*===---

I looked out over the submarine and its remaining fortifications. Whatever secrets lay inside, well, they weren’t long for this world. We were past the treeline now, and the ships were getting to within range to dispatch landing craft. And as much as we wanted to try and make a stand here, to do enough damage to make them rethink the whole thing… We were wounded, exhausted and not at all ready to take on a steel ranger force.

“Just wait till their techs touch the terminals aboard the submarine,” Icepick said with a smile. Something told me she wasn’t all that happy to kill and maim rangers.

“It will send a message to those that wish to take possession of the weapon,” Permittivity agreed, but he was biting his lip. His posture was limp like he was being weighed down by the truth of what he had done.

“What does it make us though?” Icepick said without looking at Permittivity.

“The weaker force,” Permittivity said plainly, “if we wish to stand a chance we need to fight like your enemies because now, you’re an enemy of the Rangers.”

“Your lover is right,” Crescent Moon said darkly. “Even with all the prisoners we took and arms we managed to carry, we’re outgunned and outnumbered. At least we had numbers on our side.”

“For now,” Icepick said with a slight smile. “Once those factories in Paradise get pumping, once we start training more soldiers from raw civilians, we’ll have the advantage.” Her grin grew broader as she imagined the ponies of Paradise giving their all to a war effort they didn’t know existed.

“That’s assuming those fuckers don’t shell the city into rubble and send in the shock troops to secure said rubble,” Serenity said to us. Her own saddlebags were bulging with food and other supplies. She was the highest ranking desert ranger left. The other two higher ranked ponies had either been shot to death or crushed by an armoured sabaton. I shivered as I remembered that moment. And something told me I would never forget it…

“Ehh, if I were them-”

“There are ways around-”
Icepick and Crescent looked at one another, both urging the other to speak first, and both flushing a little.

“No, no, finish what you were gonna say, you helped a lot with the logistics and the trap setting,” Icepick said to the Arab mare.

“I’ve done a lot more than that,” Crescent said with a hint of annoyance, but she seemed to want to make their relationship work. “If I were the ponies of Paradise, I would use their resources and the overconfidence of the Ramsgard flotilla.”

“That was basically what I was going to suggest,” Icepick said with a shrug and a bit of amusement.

“They’ll have to fight like us though, through traps and deception,” Permittivity said.

“It’s just so counterproductive,” I said to the other ponies. All of them looked at me in surprise or waiting for me to say more. “What we need to do is unite all of the ponies in Sall’han, ready them for the war to come.”

“Yeah, and that’s really easy to do!” Icepick replied sardonically, false cheer dripping from her words.

“But not impossible, at least in theory,” I said. “I mean, you’ve already gotten large parts of Paradise behind you.”

“Right,” Icepick said before looking at me curiously. “But their government hasn’t done much to officially support me, and now that the Rangers tried to take the balefire bomb, they might just see me as another one of those warmongers.”

“You aren’t a warmonger though,” Permittivity said. “Far from it.”

“Exactly, we’re the ponies who protected everyone from the greatest threat posed to Sall’han in centuries, well, right until we learned about Sombra and his armies,” I said to the other ponies.
“Yeah, we’re big damn heroes, but that doesn’t make us any better equipped to fight Sombra, or the rangers,” Icepick said with exasperation.

“I mean, we still have a balefire bomb,” Ironsight said before everyone gave her a shooty look.

“And a bunch of prisoners with broken spirits,” Crescent Moon spoke up a moment later.

“They’re good soldiers, members of the first imperial guard division,” Permittivity said with a sad expression. “They’re strangers in a strange land, fighting a war they didn’t even want to be a part of.” The rope bound and disarmed prisoners amounted to about thirty odd Imperials and a dozen Arabs.

“Have you tried to explain to them who they’ve fought for? And who we are?” Icepick asked before looking at Permittivity, the closest thing to a liaison with the Imperials that she had.

“Yes,” Permittivity said with a sigh. “To no avail.”

“Why the fuck is that? Do they want to fight for a soulless monster that’s lived for a thousand years?” Icepick replied to him with an edge of anger.

“Sombra isn’t soulless, and he hasn’t been technically alive,” Permittivity said before seeing Icepick’s expression of annoyance. “I did tell them that we don’t intend to harm the empire.”

“I mean, how the fuck would we?” Icepick spoke up again before looking at him with tired eyes.

“Just see if you can get them to commit to helping us fight the Rangers, promise them freedom once we get back to the mainland,” Icepick said before turning to me.

“How are the wounded doing?” Icepick looked at me hopefully.

“Most of the wounded Rangers are doing well, and the few Arabs and Imperials we captured that were shot to pieces either expired last night or are being carried on the litters we made before leaving the submarine,” I reported to her before giving her a more negative look. “Even if it’s necessary, marching this many wounded ponies isn’t good for anyone.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Icepick said before looking over at Serenity. The yellow mare met her gaze. “How are supplies looking, ammunition and food especially?”

“After looting that camp, lock, stock and barrel, we have food for a few weeks, if we ration it.” Before Icepick could say anything else, Serenity bit her lip and continued. “Our heavy ordinances are scarce, and your light machine guns are down to a few belts a piece. On the bright side, we managed to get three of those heavy machine guns on our backs, and we have more than enough bolt action rifles for our prisoners if we need to arm them.”

“What about the Anti-Armour weapons?” Icepick asked after a few seconds of consideration.

“We recovered both of the rifles capable of piercing powered armour, and we have three dozen shots for them,” Serenity, the pony put in charge of logistics said dourly.

“Those rifles are meant to take down light armoured vehicles,” Permittivity opined. “It’s more surprising that they took them at all-”

“They knew that rangers could be a problem,” Icepick intruded. “Whatever else Sombra is, he’s not stupid. Now the only good part of the whole thing is, we have them now.”

“You-we lost many good ponies to those weapons. I suggest we use the terrain to our advantage and launch harassment attacks, ambushes set to catch patrols, and we employ those weapons to their greatest effect,” Crescent Moon suggested.

“Good idea. Actually, since you’re the best at setting ambushes take whoever you think you need and be ready to launch those attacks,” Icepick said before looking over at the group of ponies walking near her. “After we get deeper into the interior, we’ll have our radio ponies work on establishing communication with our ship.”

“Won’t they be able to pinpoint the location of the transmissions?” Serenity asked in a sour tone. She thought she was the bearer of bad news.

“Not until they encircle the island, and even then, we can put our radios significantly outside our base camp,” Permittivity explained to the desert ranger. “It was a good question though.” His smile wasn’t forced, he had such an easy manner around mares.

“Thank you, I’m just doing my best sir,” Serenity replied a moment later.

“We’d rather learn about an issue as soon as someone realizes it, we don’t shoot the messenger,” Icepick added a second later, with a bemused look at Permittivity and the desert ranger.

“One of the many ways you display wisdom more becoming than your stock,” Crescent said to Icepick, a slight smile visible on her chestnut cheeks.

“What-?” Icepick looked confused and at the beginning stages of anger.

“She’s saying you’re wiser than your fellow rangers,” Permittivity said diplomatically.

“T-thank you,” Icepick said to Crescent after a moment’s thought.

“I wonder what Bajada would’ve said in my place,” Serenity said a few minutes later. If the topic had been anything else, I would’ve been happy to have something to talk about.

“Probably the same things you said, minus the worry about the radio triangulation, and she probably would have brought up something not that important, but interesting,” I said after a moments thought. I still couldn’t believe that she of all ponies wasn’t here anymore. At least I had said something before we buried her. A rifle and helmet were buried alongside her.

“What we call ourselves,” Icepick spoke up slowly. “That’s what she would’ve asked.”

“Good question,” Permittivity said to her. “Having two different cohorts of Rangers is confusing. And if we can add the Imperial Guard prisoners to the ranks, it will become even more confusing if we continue to go by Ranger designations.”

“We already have a de facto command structure,” Icepick said to him. “But make it known that we’re taking suggestions on that issue.”

“Doesn’t it all depend on our goal?” Crescent Moon said to Icepick, the lankier mare managing to meet Icepick’s gaze. “Other than protecting the bomb and defeating the threat to everyone in Sall’han, what is our goal?”

“To bring peace,” Icepick answered instantly.

“Peace can occur under a lot of different circumstances,” Crescent Moon reminded Icepick. “I say that because if we broaden our goals, we might broaden the coalition willing to fight with us.”

“I think that honestly, the only thing all of Sall’han can agree on is not wanting to be conquered by an immortal despot,” Icepick said a moment later.

“As opposed to a mortal one?” Permittivity quipped.

“Churned Waters is at least the devil we know, and he’s willing to listen to reason, especially if we hold a big enough gun to his head,” Icepick said a moment later.

“And what manner of gun are we going to use on him?” Permittivity asked, his expression darkening at her words.
“Not what you think, because, he might call us on it-” Icepick started but was interrupted.

“You aren’t willing to use that weapon on your own people,” Crescent Moon stated.

“Yes, would you be able to?” Icepick asked with a anger dripping from her voice.

“Never,” Crescent Moon said instantly. “Icepick, the only reason I’m willing to help you now, is because you didn’t use the weapon on us. If you were willing to use the weapon-”

“You wouldn’t follow her,” Permittivity jumped in with a harshness to his voice that startled everyone. “Those weapons have killed civilisations stronger and grander than any in Sall’han. It would be the height of arrogance to believe that we can tame such power.”

“Arrogance was Tegarni’s last, middle and nickname,” Icepick added a moment later.

“He was able to craft a vision that many believed in,” Crescent Moon said neutrally. “He squandered many lives.”

“Tegarni left himself open to the control of Sombra because he didn’t believe in anything, just power,” Permittivity said somberly.

“The more power a pony uses from Sombra, the more power Sombra has over them?” I spoke up, my own nervousness at the talisman in my pocket overriding my fear.

“It’s my best guess,” Permittivity answered, “it’s a shame we weren’t able to toss that Talisman into the ocean.”

“Yeah,” I answered simply, my head dipping down slightly as I thought about the power I had used on Reflex. “If we’re going to be here for a while, would you teach me how to fight?”

“Yes.”

“For sure.”

“Indeed.”

“Fuck yeah!”

Everyone answered near simultaneously, and the laughter that followed the similar yet distinctive replies continued for a long time. Maybe, just maybe, if ponies this different could get over their differences, maybe there was hope for all Sall’han…

---===*===---

“Alright, boys,” Icepick said as we all sat on the floor of the tent. Beside me was my bag, which contained a couple memory orbs. Those same orbs given to me by that strange stallion ages ago…

“I understand you have certain abilities,” Permittivity said to me, meeting my eyes and seeming to bore past them.

“Yes,” I replied, before hefting out a memory orb. I was careful not to focus on the orb itself with my magic, or else I would enter it. I had already made that mistake before, twice actually.

“Yeah, Rosey here can peer into a ponies memories, check em’ out,” Icepick added a moment later. “He helped me understand you-”

“He was able to trace back my origins to the Empire, beyond the obsidian mirror,” Permittivity said neutrally. “And now, you need him to ascertain whether I’ve lied about other aspects of my purpose.”

“Yes,” Icepick said while not quite meeting Permittivity’s eyes. “If you want to save what we had-have, then you’ll need to let him in.” Her eyes were watering and she had to look away for a second.

“I understand,” Permittivity said resolutely. “Though I swear by Bajada’s memory that I’m wholly committed to the cause of stopping Sombra.”

“I want to believe you,” Icepick said a moment later. Before throwing herself forward and wrapping her hooves around him. “But I can’t, not after-”

“You’ve changed me Icepick, I’m willing to fight for the slimmest chance of a future, my own future,” He stopped and looked Icepick in the eyes, even as her face became speckled with tears. “That’s why I’ll do it. For our future.”

“Our future, you mean the white picket fence and a coffee maker that gets used every morning? The sound of annoying little shits running around on Hearthswarming Day, but it’s okay because they’re our little shits? A world at peace and a little less fucked up than it used to be?” Icepick said before pressing her neck to his.

“Yes, and I believe in all of that thanks to you,” Permittivity said quietly, before patting her back and squeezing her tightly to him. “But, let’s get this over with.” Permittivity said with resolve overpowering the fear still evident in his voice.

“O-okay,” Icepick said before releasing him. She met my eyes, her expression unreadable. “I’ll be in the room, the whole time.”

“Thank you,” Permittivity said with the voice of someone facing the gallows with a smile on their face.

It didn’t take long to set up everything. Permittivity laid on his back, his head laying on a bound up bedroll. Preparations for mind magic was a lot faster than the preparations for a sterile operating room. Icepick sat beside him, her hoof wrapped around his. She was tense as hell. The orb sat beside me, my magical connection to it maintained by familiarity and concentration.

“Are you ready?” I asked my friends, the same friends who had been with me since my home was destroyed, the same friends who were doing everything they could do to avenge Bajada. Around Perm’s neck was that same scarf that she had given him. Green and black. We were in a green place, our campsite deep in the rainy jungles of this large island. But more than that, we were all united behind a common goal. Our enemy wasn’t even alive, and here we were fighting for the future of our little piece of the world… I’d talk to them about this later.

All I got from the two of them was a series of nods. Permittivity’s smile was pursed. I lit my horn and dived inside…

---===*===---

It was dark in the first memory I jumped into. The process of memory viewing was often random, pushing you along the tides of a person’s brain, sometimes they had things they wanted to show you-

I was in a dingy building, poorly heated, and in front of me was a pair of ponies, one was a pegasus mare, the other a large earth pony stallion. They both looked angry, screaming really. Then the memory started properly. I was on the ground, my face hurt. I had cheated on both of them, and they had found out.

The mare was a comforting sort, turned angry by my actions- Perm’s actions. The stallion was already walking away, our relationship collapsing into nothingness like a black hole. Something about my magic had changed, I was having trouble maintaining distance from the subject. Our consciousness were shifting into some kind of union-

“He’s so big and so angry…” I heard someone say, in the back of my mind.

“He’s like you,” I managed to say to the other voice.

“I know,” Icepick said as she shared the vision too. I guess the contact of him and her locked us all in together. “That mare is soft-spoken, kinda like you.”

“It kinda hurts, doesn’t it?” I said suddenly as we watched the scene play out. Permittivity was alone now. He found the strength to leave the room though, and start walking towards a place with determination… Icepick stayed silent as we felt the pains and cold winds biting into us. It was always so cold inside Perm’s memories. Maybe that was what made him like he was, being from such an icy realm…

“No!” Icepick spoke up again, as she watched Permittivity open up the shoot to his oven, before turning it on. The pilot light wasn’t lit. Permittivity picked himself up and walked into the living room, before sitting down.

“-Then you simply turn on the gas.” A single thought hit the both of us as we smelled the first tang of coal gas entering the living room. It would be a while before we were snuffed out by it. “Maybe I’ll see my parents, my friends, and someday, maybe I’ll make peace with Head Wind and Trace…”

“No!” Icepick yelled in her mind, but there was nothing that could be done. Perm was locked in the past, merely reliving memories. Painful memories. “Stop it!” Icepick yelled in her mind, as I tried in vain to short-circuit the memory.

“I can’t, we’re locked in for the ride,” I said to her. There was no reply but a whimper, and I couldn’t tell if the whimper was from Permittivity in the past, or from Icepick’s captive mind. The pace of thoughts died down as Perm’s lungs started to take in the carbon monoxide.

“Head Wind? Traceline?” Permittivity thought as we all heard the knocking from the door. His eyes opened, and with great effort, he managed to get to his hooves. Walking the few steps required strained every bit of strength that we-he had- “Maybe the mare of my dreams, my Valkyrie?”

“My Valkyrie?” Icepick echoed quietly.

The door opened, and we caught a glimpse of a dapper looking earth stallion… Just before hitting the floor outside the apartment and passing out from the gas.

---===*===---

The moment the memory ended, all three of us started a coughing fit. It lasted for at least half a minute, half a minute of horrible gagging as our lung tried to purge the gas that we thought was in our lungs.

“Do you understand why I don’t talk about them?” Permittivity said as he recovered from the gas.

“You fucking idiot!” Icepick yelled a moment later, her hoof was still clasped in his.

“On which count are you speaking?” Permittivity replied as I finally got my lungs to cooperate.

“Oh, like, all of them!” Icepick responded angrily.

“And yet I found something to anchor myself to, several somethings, though you’re the best of them,” he replied with a sincere looking smile, but both of us knew he was faking it.

“You ready to jump back in?” I finally spoke up.

“I’m not sure,” Icepick admitted. “That was way too intense-”

“Seeing me nearly die by my own hooves?” Permittivity said darkly.

“Yeah, that,” Icepick said with a shake of her head and a shiver that was hard to tell if it was forced.

“You don’t need to be here, I can conduct this by myself,” I said to Icepick.

“I still want to be here-” Icepick shot back but was interrupted.

“-I trust Rosetta, and so do you,” Permittivity butted in. “If it’s as painful to you as it seems, then you should go elsewhere, if I survived it once, I can survive it again.”

“Perm-” Icepick started.

“I don’t want to hurt you, I never wanted to hurt anyone, but if we can avoid adding pain to a life filled with it, then why shouldn’t we?” Permittivity said loudly, before picking himself up and embracing her.

“Because we do things together, that’s the whole point, Perm. We’re both weaker by ourselves. And, I know you would watch all of my painful memories. You’re strong like that, willing to put yourself in harm’s way for others,” Icepick finished before looking at him. “You may be an idiot sometimes, but-”

“I can handle this, Icepick, you’re our leader now, you have more important things to do,” I said to them. My words caused Icepick to stand a bit straighter.

“Alright, if anything else comes up, just tell me,” She said, before meeting Perm’s gaze. Then she kissed him, her lips meeting his as they embraced. I looked away, but I couldn’t help but hear the noises. I noted the double meaning in her words. A few moments later, she was gone, and we were alone.

“Your memories scare me,” I told him, as I realized that until I had met him and Icepick nothing within an order of magnitude of pain and unpleasantness had ever hit me. Excluding my father’s death. But that had happened when I was only a foal. A young foal. Now, I had memories that would make others question my sanity. My morality. My medical credentials.

“I believe in mercy. My past drove me to attempt a merciful end. Do I wish I could take all of those memories away? The time I had to execute young stallions and mares, children really, though I was nearly as young as them, for fighting the ponies occupying their homes. My memories of trodding upon the minced remains of both sides of the bloody conflict. Perhaps.” He paused and pressed a hoof to his heart. “It’s necessary though, you need to know that I’m on your side.”

Someone this broken, this damaged, could they ever be trusted? For all I knew, even if I knew every moment of his past… Could we ever trust someone that warped by their experiences? I met his gaze. I could solve this problem. That stallion who gave me the tools of my peculiar trade, he had equipped me for a different kind of surgery. The removal of cancer, with its own anaesthetic.

“For what it’s worth, I wish I didn’t have to do this,” I said to him.

“I’ve said those words to others many times, and even more times to myself,” Permittivity said before taking a deep breath. His eyes closed. I lit my horn, the glass orb glinting off of my light.

I made the first incision…

Author's Note

This one was put out fast, I hope y'all enjoy the pace of updates!

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
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Emptiness, Form & Change (XX)

Author's Note

Hello, it's been a month since the last chapter, I hope all my readers are happy with the frequency of updates recently!

Another thing, I've put my author's notes at the top for a reason. This chapter contains two sex scenes, and they're pretty explicit. To avoid them, look for ~~o0o0^0o0o~~ that demarks the beginnings and endings of each sex scene. In any case, I hope you all like this chapter, it's a strange one, but it's important to set the tone of the third act, the trials and tribulations ahead.

Enjoy!

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
https://www.patreon.com/Sunnydontlook
https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

Or I do commissions, PM for details.

My discord server: https://discord.gg/aUbtCu

Emptiness, Form & Change (XX)

It had been several days since the Zebras had come to our camp. Instead of them leaving as they had come, several of their tribe had stayed with us. One of those ponies being Zenji. Zenji was an enigma, never saying what you expected her to say, yet staying consistent all the same. At least, that was the impression I had gotten in the small number of interactions I had had with her…

In front of me lay some damaged radio equipment. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it, other than it being obviously not functional. With a spark of my horn, I sent a small amount of current through the obvious pathways. It didn’t flow the way it should have… Then, I noticed where the current was flowing into the casing. A broken piece of plastic coated copper wire was the issue. I could make this piece of machinery whole again.

With a yank of a screwdriver on the seam of the protective plate, I pulled the innards of the device open. This was a radio from the era before the bombs destroyed this world. I didn’t have any understanding of the principals of the amplifier or of the power supply. But I could fix a broken wire. That I was capable of.

Half an hour later, I turned the switch of the radio receiver on. With a small crackle, it started up. The sound of static filled the air of the tent I staying in. I smiled. Hefting the object in my magic, I simultaneously turned it off and started towards the flap of the tent.

I could repair things that electricity permeates, it was my special talent. Everything else was a question left more or less open…

---===*===---

“Today is the day,” I said quietly to myself before walking up to her. She was standing at the edge of the clearing, eyes closed, her breaths were deep, filling her entire lungs. From behind, she looked nearly catatonic. Only the slight expansion of her barrel could be noticed, more like the tides than any living thing should be. “What are you doing?”

“I was meditating. But, I think the path would be better served by teaching you. Tell me, who taught you how to use your magic?” Zenji said quietly. She had stayed there on the forest floor. It was her imitation of a statue that interested me.

“An older unicorn mare in the Imperial City, through her I found out how to channel my magic into the current, and she taught me how to focus and visualize the magic that exists inside me,” I said to her. She got off of the ground and turned to face me.

“Let me guess, she told you to focus on your magic coming from inside you, before imagining it flowing from you outwards, towards your intended target?” Zenji asked immediately. Her eyes curious, but also subdued.

“How did you know?” I asked her, suddenly even more mindful of this mare.

“It’s how the unicorns in Safe Harbor use their magic,” Zenji said.

“So I’m behaving like a normal unicorn,” I said a little self-consciously.

“As far as I’m concerned, yes, you are. You channel magic through yourself, with your intentions and will. In the end, you exhaust yourself because you’re burning your strength to channel the magic that freely exists in our reality. Because magic is a fundamental part of our reality,” she paused and met my affirmative nod. “I believe there is another way. A better way.”

“Isn’t that how all magic is cast, as an intention made a reality by force of individual will?” I asked slightly baffled.

“Not at all,” Zenji said with a light-hearted laugh. “There are as many ways to doing magic as there are colours in the sky at sundown. The way I’m most familiar with is the way Zebras use it. Though I’ve seen Orangutans, Earth Ponies, and Pegasi use their magic as well. All in different ways, but there is overlap. An Earth Pony lifting a tree limb off of their injured friend that they normally could not push aside, nevermind lift on their back is an example of something similar to unicorn spells. They channel magic into themselves and use that magic to improve their physical abilities. Most of the time, it’s a small increase, and it’s not even conscious. There is no intention, it just occurs. Completely the opposite of unicorn magic, with its will and duality between the self and everything else.”

“I see,” my mind was filled with ideas now. This formulation of magical theory was more complete than I had assumed it would be.

“But it gets more complicated than that, there are forms of magic that straddle the bounds of willed magic and unconscious magic. Zebra fetishes and alchemy is an example of using your will and an external channel for magic to flow through and into. Your target and focus are one and the same,” Zenji finished. I looked at her doubtfully.

“Enchantments and potion making are very useful, but they aren’t exactly the alternate power source you promised,” I said to her. In return, she smiled, it was unwavering and just a bit patronizing.

“You’re forgetting one species, the Orangutans. They have a magic all their own, one different from all the other ways I’ve observed. Orangutans function without a focus, precisely because they understand the oneness of all things, the differentiation of self and the visible world fostered by Samsara was first overcome by them,” She paused and beamed at me. “The path was first walked by them in this cycle.”

“You learned about the path from them,” I asked her.

“We learned many things from them: generosity, loving-kindness, and the source of pain at the core of existence. All of those things proved to my ancestors that the path was worth following, even if we ourselves could only walk it haltingly at first,” Zenji met my eyes. “This island was the only place that the sky didn’t darken above. That’s why we came here, all of us. They were a beacon of light in the ash-laden skies.”

“Safe-Harbour,” I whispered to myself.

“Their magic is nothing like yours, or the magic unleashed upon the world by Zebrica and Equestria at the end of the last age. Except for two ways, the magic they use is of a different scale entirely, a megaspell has to be amplified to turn cities to ash, whereas you can barely detect the magic of the Orangutans on a normal scale. That’s the first similarity to other magic that I’ve noticed from them,” Zenji said before looking at me curiously.

“What else is similar to their magic?” I asked.

“Your magic,” she answered casually as if she was talking about the weather or the fortunes of a local sports team she wasn’t actually very keen on.

“I thought that you said unicorn magic was different from all other magic?” I was baffled again.

“The way in which you cast your magic is different, but the way that you use it is very similar to the way they use theirs. That’s why I want to teach you, not just because your cause seems just and your mind is spinning from the path you walk, but also because you use magic differently than all the unicorns I’ve ever crossed paths with before.”

“All I do is cast spells with my horn,” I argued.

“I’ve seen you close your eyes and light your horn so slightly that it barely glows, what were you doing in those moments?” Zenji asked.

“I was watching the current flow,” I said instantaneously.

“You can feel the flowing energy in the world,” Zenji said. “The patterns that create and dissipate the world as we know it, the constant flux of everything.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said breathlessly as this mare expounded her philosophy.

“Don’t dismiss your gift,” she said sharply.

“I don’t, it’s a part of me,” I said simply. “Now what manner of spellcraft do you think I’m capable of? Earth pony strength? Alchemy?”

“The magic of the Orangutans, because they too feel the flowing nature of the world, their magic is based on knowing it, and willing it to flow in an intended direction,” Zenji said in her own flowing way, somehow keeping my mind fixated on her every word. She smiled in that far off way of hers.

“How do they feel the world without a spell?” I asked curiously.

“Through understanding the oneness of themselves and everything else. I myself have only scratched the surface of this power,” her eyes touched the forest floor for a moment. “Even the attachment to the idea of Nirvana is an attachment.”

“That’s a twisted cycle,” I said, hoping that I sounded sympathetic, not sardonic.

“As is the nature of Samsara, but you don’t know what that is.” She sighed and met my eyes. There was tiredness in them that I hadn’t seen before, some insight into the nature of the world that she normally kept out of her mind. My muscles tightened and I met her eyes with a look that mirrored her own.

“Teach me,” I replied.

“As you wish. The first truth of the path is: all of life is ultimately pain…”

---===*===---

The mountains grew larger by the day, as did our knowledge of what was beyond them. We made good time, swinging our machetes and bulldozing through the rough areas with our powered armour, even if that last thing drew the ire of our Zebra guides. In the time between sleeping, eating and marching, I learned more about the Path. It wasn’t a religion like I had suspected, and everything in it was more or less rational. There were no equations, but there were laws governing the way of things.

The things that I had the hardest time believing were the basic precepts of the belief system. All of my life, I had strived to hold onto what I had, and the memories of what I had lost haunted me. Zenji told me the fate of those who craved and obsessed over objects, ideas, even people we had known- In the next life, they were likely to become hungry ghosts…

I tried to live as she suggested, with mindfulness of all things paramount, and loving kindness for everyone. In the simple existence, I was living at that moment, I thought it was possible. Even if I doubted I would be able to live up to the ideals of the path in the heat of a battle or a world torn to shreds by conflict. I didn’t speak to her about those doubts, even as I didn’t push them down when I thought them. The trouble came when I tried to put any of it into practice. Every time I tried to clear my mind and focus on my own breaths, I was flooded by thoughts of the past. The worst were the memories of who I had loved and lost, and those that I was sure I was losing…

---===*===---

“Hey Perm,” I heard Icepick say from the front of my tent. It was late, and the other ponies who normally slept in the tent with me were gone. Off on patrols, or sentry duty. I opened my eyes in the low light of the tent. My breathing exercises weren’t going well anyway. That and I had just been thinking about her.

“Hello Icepick, come in if you desire,” I replied. Within the second she had pushed in the flap, the yellow of her mane and the grey of her coat contrasted subtly against the fabric of the tent.

“Isn’t desire the thing you’re supposed to avoid?” Icepick said with a light laugh. I picked started to pick myself off of the floor, but she shook her head at that.

“Yes, but there isn’t anything wrong with enjoying the positive aspects of life,” I replied to her. She moved over to me with a subtle hesitation in her strides. Some part of me was more attuned to the ponies around me, that at least I had made progress in. But, maybe I would’ve noticed that before-

“Am I one of those positive aspects?” Icepick asked with that forced swagger in her voice. She had spent so long in armour that she had let it sink into her soul. Once I had been the few to see beneath it.

“Without you, I… ” I began but the words slipped out of mind as if my mind was a sieve, something fine enough to let the words flow out, but whole enough to hold in my feelings. She said nothing, only sitting down beside me, her withers and barrel pressing lightly against mine. Even when we had felt nothing but a strange curiosity and a healthy distaste for one another, we had stayed near one another. Now we were separated by our separate occupations. She had a small army to command, meanwhile I was throwing every bit of myself into study…

“We don’t need to say anything to each other, it’s enough to be together for a moment,” Icepick said quietly.

“Those cold desert nights,” my voice was barely above a whisper. Her ears flicked in my direction.

“When we felt like the only ponies in the world,” she abated.

“Lifetimes ago,” I finished for her. In the dark, it’s hard to tell how much time has passed. All I could hear was her breathing and mine, and the washed out noise of the camp.

“Maybe so, but what are we going to do with this life?” Her question was simple but thoughtful. She never needed flourishes and fancy tricks. It just wasn’t her. Icepick was the day to my night. And yet, I couldn’t tolerate the thought of losing her. It was the thought that always filled my mind when I was on the edge of clearing my mind.

“Try to fix our past mistakes,” I said after several drawn-out moments of thought.

“Does it prove her point that I was thinking the same thing?” She said with a hint of humour in her voice. It didn’t undercut her resolve.

“I don’t think it hurts her case,” I said with a hint of a smile on my face.

“What about the next life? After the dust is settled,” Icepick asked softly, a moment later, gravity tore at her words as she spoke them.

“The world is constantly in flux, the dust never really settles-” I started to say before she pressed a hoof to my lips.

“Ponies get tired of war, you should know that more than anyone. We can’t war forever, there aren’t that many of us left,” Icepick paused to let that sink in. “When the battles are only memories and unexploded ordinance, what will you do?”

“I don’t know,” I replied quietly.

“I thought I did, once,” Icepick said a moment later.

“All that is solid is made air,” my words filled the room for a moment, but only for a moment. “All that is air is made solid.”

“You knew all along that it wouldn’t last, that it was a passing phase in our lives, that’s why you always felt so distant, even when you were right beside me.” Icepick said in a low voice. “I thought that I had finally found peace, finally found someone to complete me-”

“The stallion of your dreams, and your time together in Paradise,” I spoke up with neutrality.

“Something like that,” she mused aloud. Her eyes glowed for a moment as she smiled at me. “We never really understood each other until now. We had been in one another, felt one another, and bared our hearts to each other...”

“At first we saw the negative parts, that bred hatred. Then we saw good in each other, and nothing else. Now, we’re nurturing the good in ourselves, while acknowledging the bad,” my voice rose and fell as I spoke. Finally, my eyes were open to the truth of us-

“Maybe this time we’ll get it right,” Icepick said decisively, that faux confidence mixing in with that indomitable spirit of hers.

“All we can do is try,” I said with a hint of humour in my own voice. If you believed the Path, there is no escape from the cycle of birth, pain and death, except to transcend it.

“And if I fail, you’ll be there for me?” She asked, her words fragile in the air.

“Yes-” I was cut off by her lips being pressed against mine. It was a brief kiss, but a powerful one. It reminded me of the kiss we had shared before the battle in Copper Springs.

“That’s all I needed to hear Perm,” she said as she started to get up from the thin mat beneath her. “You can aim for the perfect truth with others, me, I like comforting lies sometimes. Probably one of my fatal flaws actually. And before you ask, yes, I’ll be there for you when you fall. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“That’s all I needed to hear Icepick,” I said to her as she trotted towards the flap of the tent.

“Crescent, Zenji and I are about to have tea and talk about the state of the march. Want to join?”

“Sure.”

---===*===---

One evening, with the sun well on its journey to the horizon, I was a few hundred meters from the camp chopping down a small tree in a clearing. The diseased stumps of several older trees dotted the landscape around the solitary new growth. The sharpened blade of the spade struck the bottom of the tree, barely a sapling really. My magic tore at it over and over, sweat and concentration evident on my face. I was perhaps halfway through the trunk of the tree when I heard the sound of a cracking stick from behind me. Automatically my magic grasped the handle of my pistol from within my holster as I spun around to face what was there-

“Are you going to shoot me?” A female voice said before my eyes focused on them.

“I don’t plan on it,” I said as I flicked the safety on the gun back on. “Why are you out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” I waved the axe once in the air before burying the head of it in the pliable interior of the tree. “But it’s obvious what you’re doing, at least, on the surface.” Crescent Moon’s coat seemed nearly black in the forested twilight.

“I was feeling angry at my failure to clear my mind,” I admitted.

“So you’re taking it out on the smallest tree you could find?” She smiled at me, before looking upwards at the canopy. “I was on my way back to the camp.”

“I see,” I said before meeting her gaze curiously. She had come to within a meter of me. “I wanted a tree I could cut through within a reasonable span of time.”

“I was just walking through this jungle, admiring the beauty of it,” Crescent said with a bit of self-consciousness. “It’s so full of life. And it’s only a short distance from the desert.”

“In the far north of my home, there are forests just as great as these. Snow covered trees, green cones of bristly needles rising into the heavens. Some of those trees have been there for as long as the oldest of these trees,” I said before taking a deep breath.

“They sound beautiful,” Crescent replied in a far off voice. Her eyes were unfocused for a moment. Then all at once, they snapped back into focus, and her entire body tightened up. “It weighs on me sometimes, I can go wherever I want, except home.”

“Maybe someday you’ll be seen as a hero by your people, times change,” I said after a few moments of reflection. Somewhere close enough to be heard, but far enough away to obscure the direction of the noise, a bird began to sing an elaborate song. It too seemed alone.

“And what about you, you’re never going home either,” she said loudly. There was a bitterness in her voice that I hadn’t heard before. “Why is it that those of us who do the right thing, never get to go home?”

“All of us are in this boat, except perhaps the volunteers from Paradise,” I said neutrally.

“I know! It doesn’t make it better,” Crescent yelled the first two words before saying the second half in a tone of deflated resignation. Before I could realize what I was doing, I closed the distance to her and draped my right foreleg over her shoulder. The lanky mare met my eyes, the beginnings of tears forming in them.

“Home is where your heart is, and a heart is a strong thing, it beats your whole life without resting. People who obsess over things that cannot last, or that are gone forever go insane. The insanity of the Steel Rangers is one example, they never accepted that the home of their birth was gone, so they caused great pain in their attempts to recreate it,” I said quietly. There was as much sympathy and understand as I could pack into my words. Instead of replying, she pushed her barrel closer to mine and hooked her foreleg around my neck. At the apex of the embrace she pressed her face to my neck, and without saying a thing, she was racked with sobs. “It’s alright, everyone who knows you, likes you. You’re a kind and hardworking pony.”

“T-thank you,” she said a few moments later. “I just couldn’t hold it in for a moment, I’ll be fine soon.” Her muzzle pulled away from my neck, the new wet spots there indicated what she had done. Our eyes met in that moment. There was a desire there in them, something that she had never had a chance to feel before.

“I know how strong you are, you don’t need to pretend around me,” I said softly, words barely registering in her ears. My exhales tickled her muzzle, as hers did mine. A moment later she closed the remaining distance, and our lips met for the first time. It was a brief kiss and pretty chaste in comparison to many I had experienced in my life.

“T-thank y-you,” she stuttered before looking away. I pulled my foreleg from her shoulder and felt as she did the same. “I don’t know what you did before you met me, but from what I’ve seen, you’re a stallion with a good heart-” I nuzzled her neck gently. She stopped speaking and pulled me closer again with her leg.

“Maybe I am, ponies are complicated creatures,” I said as I pulled my muzzle away and stared into her deep brown eyes, flecked with lighter motes in the irises. “But my heart belongs to someone else, and unless you get her permission, I can’t love you-”

“You know, Icepick isn’t as faithful as you,” she interrupted with a tone of bitterness in her voice. “I saw her walking weirdly, as she came out of her tent, Rosetta was with her. That and the look on her face was pretty happy.”

“I’m going to need to talk to her about that, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I told her with a tinge of anger in my voice. I liked Rosetta, he had been our first real friend, and I couldn’t say that I hadn’t thought about him sexually…

“Please do, I’m sorry I said anything, I’m just angry. I’ve never wanted to be with anyone before, because they always seemed so artificial, wanting to be with me because I came from an important family. And then, the same stallion that helped me save a village, that helped save my home and my life, he’s off limits. It’s agonizing,” she admitted brusquely, her own voice tinged with an anger years in the making.

“Well, if Icepick views our relationship as fluid, but also very deep, then perhaps…” I said. “I need to talk to her badly.”

“I never meant to feel this way,” Crescent admitted.

“It never works that way,” I replied, knowing that experience all too well. “But we should head back to camp, it’s getting dark.”

“Good idea,” she said softly, before sneaking in another thankful peck on my cheek.

“I never took you for the impulsive type,” I said.

“I’ve never had anything to be impulsive about before,” she said with a little laugh. If nothing else, helping her express herself, and keep her from bottling up all her emotions was a good thing…

And helping other ponies was the whole point right?

---===*===---

“Are you busy?” I said as I stood at the opening of Icepick’s tent. I heard a shuffling of hooves inside the tent, and the sound of a throat being cleared.

“Uh, I was about to pass out, but-” Icepick paused before speaking again. “Come on in.”

I slid through the flap and stepped into the dark tent, Icepick was laying on her bed. Her coat shown lightly against the dark fabric of the tent. She patted the bed with a hoof, no insistence in her actions, just a gentle suggestion. I took the suggestion and stepped over to her palette, before setting myself down beside her. I met her eyes and felt our flanks and withers in contact.

“So what’s on your mind Perm?” She asked with a pleasant tone in her voice. That made my question much more difficult, it stayed at the tip of my tongue for a long, painful moment. She watched me curiously as my verbal paralysis finally broke.

“Did you sleep with Rosetta?” I asked simply, no emotion in my voice. There was no pain, no heartache, it was just a question.

“Yes,” Icepick answered a moment later, her words were quiet. She pressed a hoof to my shoulder. I let out a deep breath.

“So, are we just friends now?” I said as thought back to my conversation with her yesterday.

“Only if you want that,” she replied with a heavy sigh. “I-I, I know you like Rosetta, and well, I thought that all of us could-”

“Could what? Be one big happy trio?” I asked her, my inner pain spilling out for the first time.

“Yes,” she paused and met my eyes. There was sincerity in her voice as she said the word. “Isn’t that what you wanted before you came here?”

“No-I, you’re both different than them, and if you wanted that, some relationship with both of us, you should have asked-” I said in a low voice. My anger had dissipated, only disappointment remaining.

“I’m sorry! It just kinda happened, alright! If I didn’t love you, then I wouldn’t feel bad about it,” She replied with notes of anguish and anger lancing out of her words. It wasn’t anger at me, it was anger at herself.

“I understand Icepick, I lied to you about a lot. And I’ll never forgive myself. But-” I was interrupted by her.

“But what? You want to break things off because I made a mistake because I wanted to comfort a friend, someone who just lost a lover and a friend?” There was anger in her voice now, something irrepressible, something burning deep in her spirit.

“Icepick, I-I don’t know what I want-”

“Of course you don’t,” she paused and let out a breath. “You know what? Maybe we have fucking bound souls, maybe we love each other so much that we’ll always cause each other pain. How about this? I know Rosetta doesn’t mind being a second to me, and I’m sure that Crescent Moon is up for a fucking herd relationship, she certainly wants your dick enough to compromise. So let’s cut to the chase. You love me, I love you, we stay together for the goodness of our souls and the good sex. If you want to have a cutesy romance with the Arab mare, go ahead, if I want to get dicked down by Rosetta, I can do that-”

“Let’s try it,” I said brusquely. There was a snarl on my face as I spoke the words, and I could feel my anger brushing up against my willpower. The next moment she grabbed my head in her hooves and kissed me. Her tongue dove into my mouth, pressing my tongue down against the bottom of my jaw. I moaned into her mouth as I lit my horn and started tearing off my clothes.

We broke the kiss as I stood up, the last of my clothing levitating off my form and being dumped on the ground with my magic, Icepick stood up and turned around-

~~o0o0^0o0o~~

“We needed this,” she mewled as I grasped the zipper to her jumpsuit with my teeth and pulled it down a good ways, enough for her marehood to be exposed. Without breaking a stride, I jammed my tongue inside her tight cunt, spreading her folds with my warm, wet muscle. “Perm!” Icepick moaned loudly as I let my tongue explore the rest of her, even if I remembered every part of her.

“Yes, Icepick?” I asked as I backed away from her pert rump, my cock throbbing underneath me.

“I missed this,” she replied huskily. With my horn, I grabbed her zipper and helped her get out of the jumpsuit. The moment all of her hooves were out of the clothing she turned around and smiled at me. Her tail was flicking behind her, and her eyes were aimed below my barrel. I twitched heavily before she went around my flank and pushed with all of her considerable strength. I landed on my side before she grabbed my left hind leg and pulled me onto my rump. There was a funny look on her face as she manipulated me like a ragdoll…

“Don’t worry, you’ll like this,” Icepick said as she watched me relax and let my hind legs splay out along the thin fabric beneath me.

Her legs buckled beneath her, letting her fall forward and rest her chest on the blanket. Icepick smiled deviously, before leaning her head forward and licking up from my sheath all the way to my head. I moaned deeply as she grasped my shaft and started stroking it slowly, before giving my dripping tip a kiss-

“Icepick!” I moaned her name as she dipped below my shaft, letting the hard cock rest on her forehead as she took each of my testicles in her mouth in turn. I let one of my forehooves rest on her head, giving her ears a little stroke as my other forehoof grasped heavily at the makeshift bed. It felt like heaven when she finally took the first few inches of my cock into her wet mouth. She grinned like mad after pulling back, letting my wet cock feel cool in the nighttime air.

“You want more?” She asked with a bat of her eyelashes and a straightening of her mane, the short pink accented mane looking sexy.

“Y-yes,” I groaned before she hungrily inhaled most of my shaft, her tight throat wrapping around my head. The hoof on her head played havoc with that cute mane of hers, and her bobbing motions on my cock only made her look wilder when her eyes met mine. It was a good look on her. I moaned loudly as I felt her lips meet my sheath, the tightness of her throat and the copious saliva dripping down my crotch was all that I could bear in mind as she worked my shaft. Her flicking tail waved across an ass that made most stallions turn their heads to look…

Moments passed as she bobbed her head on my cock, the sounds of the sloppy fellatio filling the tent-

“You close?” She asked as she looked up at me with those same hungry eyes. I nodded at her heavily. Icepick smiled and got to her hooves before turning in place, and flicking her tail to the side. She was dripping wet, and it was coming down her hind legs, making her smell like desire and need. I got to my hooves and walked over to her. She shook her rump in my face, before rubbing her wet tail over my muzzle. My cock twitched at the smell, and I buried my muzzle in her slit for a moment…

“Come on, I want your cock,” She said with a moan as I pulled my muzzle out of her slit, the smell of the ripe juices on my muzzle sending my mind into a frenzy. With a hoof, I smacked her rump hard enough to make her whole ass jiggle. She moaned heavily at that before shaking her reddened rump in my face again. “I know you want me too-” She said before I jumped onto her back, mounting her in one primaeval motion. My forelegs found her withers and held onto her heavily, squeezing her toned body possessively.

“You’re mine,” I breathed heavily into her ear. It twitched as my warm breath struck it.

“I’m yours, and you’re mine,” Icepick said breathily, as she felt my cock touch her sensitive teats. With my magic, I grasped my shaft and bit my lips as I felt it line up with her flower, the head spreading her outermost petals.

“Exactly,” I said before nipping her neck and pushing forward with a buck of my hind legs. The two of us moaned as I slipped half of my cock into her in the first thrust, her legs shaking as she was spread apart. After a moment of taking in the feeling, and waiting for her hind legs to stop shaking, I pulled back, before plunging back in-

“Perm!” Icepick moaned as I hilted my girthy cock inside her pussy. My hips met hers with a juicy smack. I lifted one of my hooves from her withers, before smacking her rump again. She moaned loudly and her velvet walls clenched up around me. I grunted at the sensation before pulling back, that hoof instead drifting down to those sensitive teats hanging in front of her stuffed cunt.

“Yes?” I asked as I pulled out of her, her tail trying to hold me in as she wrapped it around me.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I like it,” She said huskily, her tongue lolling out as she took my cock inside her.

“I’m just giving you what you really want,” I said before nipping her neck again, the taste of sweaty fur somehow spurring me on to buck into her harder.

“C-cock?” She mused aloud. I took the moment to force myself into her hard, the smacking of our bodies together filled the tent, and beyond.

“Not just cock,” I said loudly. “You want someone dangerous, someone, to protect you, someone who fucks you, not the other way around.” She just moaned as I slipped her ear between my teeth and gently tugged on it. Just hard enough for her to grip my cock like a vice-

“Finish inside,” she mewled as her front legs buckled beneath us, the strong mare was reduced to having just her rump in the air as I continued fucking her oversensitive pussy with my cock.

“You want to be bred?” I asked her quietly, whispering into her ears. I backed it up with a smack to her cutie mark, turning the skin beneath her shrapnel mark red, and tweaking her nipples with my magic.

“Yes,” she moaned as I bottomed out in her again. My cock twitched inside her as she admitted her desires. I was close.

“Get ready,” I said breathlessly, as I pushed myself into one last time. My hips smacked hers as my magic pulled on her nipples, my hooves wrapped around her withers and held onto her heavily. Her tail dropped from my back, as her walls clenched up around me, my head flared out like a plug as I felt the first splash of cum travel down my cock, deep into her pussy. She moaned heavily as I nipped her one last time, my teeth driving into her lower neck. I left a mark that time.

“Oooh,” she moaned as she came around my cock, our combined fluids flooding down her crotch and pooling beneath our coupling. I pushed myself forward just an inch as I enjoyed the pleasure of flaring inside a mare, my expanded cockhead squeezed by her writhing walls. I grunted as another pulse of cum shot into her. My mind was blank as I took in the sensations, my horn was dark, and everything was in peace… Moments passed as I felt the last shot of my thick load empty inside of her.

~~o0o0^0o0o~~

“Where did that come from Perm?” Icepick said with a laugh as I pulled out of her and laid down on the moist blankets. Icepick picked herself back up and spun around, before dropping onto the blankets too. The front of her barrel inches from the pool of cum and her own lubricating juices.

“Anger,” I said simply. Breathlessly, I lit my horn and looked into her eyes. There was the steady smile of a good afterglow on her lips, as well as a curiosity in her eyes. “Not just at you, but at myself, and at the world…”

“Well, it was a nice change of pace, even if my half my body is sore right now,” she said with that same smile on her muzzle. My magic grasped a rag laying on a table a few feet away, before bringing it over to us and wiping up the excess cum between us. “So you do still want to breed me?”

“There’s no doubt in my heart of that,” I replied before leaning over and kissing her on the lips softly.

“Well, if we win against Sombra, maybe you’ll get your chance,” she said after we broke the kiss.

“I think we’d both like that,” I said to her as I got up and went over to her, laying down beside her once again. She took the opportunity to lay on her side, her stomach pointed at me. I leaned myself over as well, our eyes meeting as she threw a hoof over my body and pulled me closer to her.

“Things aren’t quite what I imagined they would be,” Icepick said softly. There was pain in her voice. “But maybe we’ll make things work.”

“Are you going to sleep with Rosetta again?” I asked, trying not to let my feelings show.

“Not unless you’re there too,” Icepick replied as I looked into her eyes. They were bright in the tent, even if everything was a shade of grey in the dark of the tent.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “What should I tell Crescent Moon?” Icepick was quiet for a moment, her eyes shut in concentration.

“I’m not sure how I feel about her and you,” she paused and opened her eyes while letting out a hot breath. “I guess fair is fair Perm, if you want to blow off steam with her once, that’s fine. But, for now, keep it to one session. If she’s okay with that, then, pound away-”

I kissed her before she could continue. She opened her mouth and let my tongue push inside. My hoof came down on her back, before sliding down to her right flank. I squeezed at the sore spot on her rump. Icepick moaned into my mouth at that. The make-out continued for a while before we broke away again. She looked down at what had been poking her in the tits-

“Wanna go again?” She asked with a massive smile on her face. I nodded my head before kissing her again…

---===*===---

Light from the sun bombarded the tent, with a crack of it seeping through from underneath the flap. I had slept peacefully for the first time since the ship. I yawned before pulling Icepick closer to me. Her rump was against me, and her bruise covered neck was in front of my eyes. I gently kissed one of the hickeys before squeezing her belly slightly. Thoughts of being a parent filled my mind for a split second. Then it became a torment as I thought of my parents, the same ones I had abandoned in my quest for purpose. They would never get to meet their grandchildren, well, my kids at least. My sister gotten knocked up by a real asshole of a stallion…

“Do you think I should wear a scarf, or just flaunt it?” Icepick said before yawning herself.
“You’re the boss, might as well enjoy the privileges,” I replied softly.

“I’m the boss, except for when you’re feeling dominant,” she said in a sing-song voice before flipping her body over and facing me. “How are you feeling?” She said as she stretched out her legs, before hooking a foreleg around my withers and pulled me to her.

“Exactly,” I replied with another yawn. The smells of cooking fires hit our noses at the same time. “Want to eat breakfast with me?”

“Can we hold hooves under the table?” She said with a smile.

“We can hold hooves above the table if you want,” I replied in a husky voice.

“My little deviant,” Icepick said liltingly.

“My big broodmare,” I replied, my hoof shifting down to her rump. Her breath hitched in her throat.

“N-no,” she said quietly. “C’mon we need to get stuff done today.” I stuck my tongue out at her. Her only reply was snicker as she got to her hooves. I did the same, with feigned reluctance.

And then, we walked into the sunlight together.

---===*===---

“So, have you achieved Nirvana yet?” Zenji asked in a serious tone as she watched me fuck with the hot plate.

“No, not quite,” I answered glumly before sticking my tongue out at her.

“Well, if you figured it out before me, then I would be a little angry, which isn’t part of the path,” she paused and looked down at the guts of the hotplate. It was a pretty simple machine, basically just a heating element, a kill switch for when it got too hot, and an input for a spark battery. Still, this particular thing didn’t want to heat up, so I had to strip out the shorted out heating element and replace it with a spare from a cannibalised hot plate… “I’m just glad I don’t have to repair things like that.”

“No-one can be good at everything,” I replied softly before picking up a piece of solder with my magic, and heating it up by applying a current through it. The warm metal mixture dripped in place to connect the new heating element to the old connectors. I let it cool for a moment and looked over at Zenji. She had taken the moment to sit down on the ground beside the table. The tree stump beneath her rump suited her well. “But no, I’ve been making progress though.”

“How so?” She asked with a blink. I cleared my throat and thought back to the night before. With the aid of a set of earplugs I had managed to trade from a Paradise mare, I had managed to keep the outside world at bay for a short while.

“I was able to clear my head, and focus only on breathing, I think I was in that state for a few minutes,” I told her as I grasped the hotplate with my magic before grasping the cover and shoving it on, before screwing in the four screws that held it in place.

“That’s progress, now I think you’re ready for the next step,” Zenji replied before meeting my eyes with her cocoa coloured irises. “Loving kindness.”

“Explain?” I asked her as I flicked the switch on the hotplate. It began with a slight start, but I could feel the current flowing into the heating element from the battery, it wasn’t hard to do. Only a little magic into my horn was enough to show me what was in front of me. A little more would point out all the current flowing in our little encampment, a picture of the world made from flowing electrons, not the typical vibrations in the air and of light itself. I let out a breath and released my spell.

“There is a level of meditation beyond emptiness, one where you project your innermost feelings to the world, you become a vessel for a loving-kindness towards all things. That is the next step,” she paused and waited for me to take in the full scope of her words. “I will teach you what I can. Truthfully this is the last level that I myself have fully achieved.”

“What’s the level beyond that?” I asked, my curiosity showing as the hotplate warmed visibly. I grasped something from the ground, a kettle filled with water. I took it and placed it on the burner and waited for it to heat up. “Tea?”

“Tea with my protege, sure,” she replied with a mild curtsy. “Now, the final level is that of awareness of the oneness of all things, the true magic comes from that. Sight beyond the reaches of sight, of your soul connecting with the currents that make the world, that’s the final level. I’ve only felt it on occasion, but it is true nirvana. It’s something that the mystics of the Orangutan tribes are able to do, after a decade or more of practice.”

“I don’t have a decade,” I replied coldly.

“It might not take you that long, in fact, you’ve learned very quickly,” Zenji said as she watched me slump in my chair.

“Let’s hope so,” I said quietly. She smiled hopefully. I matched her smile, somehow.

---===*===---

“The gateway,” Zenji said to Icepick and I as we walked reached the edge of the gap between the mountains, even the gateway was still high above the rest of the island.

“If we have to defend the other half of the island, this is where we make our stand,” Icepick said defiantly. Her heavily ladened form was nothing compared to the size of the mountains flanking us. Even then, these were molehills when compared to the mountains in the north of the empire.

“That’s a sad possibility, but yes,” Zenji replied, before looking back at the caravan of ponies following behind us.

“About how far is the lake from here?” I asked after a moment of silence.

“Four days journey, and we’ll encounter streams and other water sources along the way,” Zenji said before stepping forward once. “It’s been years since I’ve been to Safe Harbour. I’m excited to see how things have changed!”

“Well, they have a pretty decent harbour, if our boat captain is to be believed,” I said to Zenji, who looked unsurprised.

“Oh yes, they have many ships, some from before the cataclysm. Most of them have sails now though,” Zenji said happily, she loved the different cultures of the people of the island.

“How many ponies live on the island?” Icepick asked, her demographic curiosity showing up again. You could make the ranger fight rangers, but you couldn’t make her not want to know more about Equestrians living in Sall’han.

“I think they conduct a census in the area around Safe Harbour, but if I were to guess off the top of my head, I’d say in the tens of thousands on the island and around the lake itself,” Zenji said before letting out a deep breath. “Though they aren’t just Equestrians, they’re Arabs too, and there are a lot of intermarried and mixed ponies living in Safe Harbour.”

“I see,” Icepick said, trying to hide her learned revulsion at the idea. “I’ll be happy to learn about their culture, and try to get them to fight for the future of Sall’han.” After a moment of reflection, Icepick added: “Building a Coalition is hard, sometimes it makes me wish for a big unified nation-state like yours.”

“Well, if you want a blueprint for how to make one, the empire is one way, but there are others,” I replied, thinking of the wars of Grimkeep and the extension of imperial citizenship to the tribes and many independent groups of the north.

“Hit me with those?” Icepick asked expectantly.

“Well, the Celestian federation, the enemy we during the great war, they were exactly what their name suggests. A loose federation, with all the member states having a great deal of autonomy but joining together for trade and war,” I said without much emotion. They were different, but I had read a lot about my old enemy. They had only unified a couple decades before the war itself, and then that was before their colonies formed a federation of their own and rebelled…

“That, that could work,” she mused aloud.

“Aye, it did,” I replied back my voice was low and a bit harsher than I expected. “It was a Celestian bayonet that scarred me.”

“They must have been a mighty warrior,” Zenji said quietly, not sure what to say to someone who had fought in a war. Her people had been lucky, lucky until now at least.

“Well, there were two of them, and they paid for it with their lives,” I said to her. She winced at the fact of their deaths, and of my bloodstained hooves. “It was during that fight that I used my electricity magic for the first time. Other than my current sensing spell. I felt their heartbeats stop, and the little bits of current that make a body run, I could feel them stopping in a cascade failure. I had never felt a living being before that moment. Now I feel them everywhere I light my horn, all the lives, trillions of pieces, all flowing and changing as they live.”

“You never felt it before you used your power to kill?” Zenji asked in a startled tone.

“I was on the edge of death when I killed those ponies, I felt the currents in myself as well, it was all a wash, as I bled into the muddy trenches beneath me,” I replied quietly. “I’m not perfect, the further away I am from a pony, and the weaker the current, the less I can feel, the more I have to focus on the tiny eddies and irregularities-”

“So you can’t feel ponies a mile away,” Icepick asked, suddenly very curious about my abilities.

“I cannot, though I can feel generators and high voltage power lines from far away. Once I felt a solar flare, a massive wave of potential released from the surface of the sun, it was blinding, even from the other side of the sun,” I said to the astonished ponies. “That was a few days ago, I think my sensitivity is growing, as I’m starting to feel it whenever I light my horn, not just when I cast my spell.”

“Your eyes are opening to the world,” Zenji said, her face breaking into a smile. “Your path to understanding is a strange one, but I believe you’re making strides, in your meditation and in your magic.”

“Can you feel powered armour?” Icepick asked suddenly, her hoof pressing to my shoulder, even as the ponies behind us were catching up to us.

“It hums with electricity, with potential much more brightly than ponies do-” I replied before getting cut off.

“Have you sensed any ponies wearing it outside our group?” Icepick asked furiously.

“If I had, you would know,” I replied. She sighed and pulled her hoof away.

“Good to hear,” Icepick replied before letting out a deep breath. She mimed wiping sweat from her forehead. “Speaking of your magic, I just thought of something. If you’re trying to imitate the magic of the Orangutans, why don’t you study with one?”

“Very few of them speak Equestrian, and fewer of them still are masters of the path,” Zenji replied.

“Well, are there any Orangutans in Safe Harbour that are masters of the path? I mean, I’m just spitballing here, but if any of them live in the city, they probably speak the language of the ponies living there,” Icepick said as we started walking forward again. When I lit up my spell, with nary a trickle of magic, I felt her body living, pulsing with energy, but also encased in her much brighter power armour. Maybe if I could see the inherent magic of her form, that earth pony magic, maybe she would glow brighter than the metal suit-

“Perhaps, again, it’s been years since I’ve been there,” Zenji said apologetically. She turned to me and met my eyes. “Maybe we’ll find you a teacher there, someone more adept than I am.”

“Don’t think of it like that,” Icepick said before nudging the other mare with an armoured shoulder. “Besides, I’m still looking for those potions we traded for.”

“Our alchemists in Safe Harbour will provide you all with the potions, they have quite the stockpile,” Zenji replied, her eyes focused on the two of us. “I’ll even get you some of those potions you were especially interested in-”

“Well, it’s a good thing that my bones will be stronger then, I’m not sure I could handle her without it,” I said with faux fear in my voice.

“I dunno, I was pretty sore from last time too,” Icepick said with a laugh. Zenji didn’t flush, she just darted her eyes between the two of us.

“All that aforementioned girth?” Zenji said with a smile written deeply across her muzzle.

“I mean, as long as I get to watch, you could experience it yourself,” Icepick said with a flick of her armoured tail. The amorous expression on her face was incredible to behold, even as I flushed and Zenji giggled in reply.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Zenji said before meeting Icepick’s gaze. “Though, I’m already getting that itch scratched by another stallion.”

“Who?” Icepick blurted out immediately. I myself didn’t care too much, but I wasn’t surprised that my teacher had found a source of release. She was a very pretty mare, and exotic to boot. My eyes drifted over to her striped flanks. I would enjoy hitting that-

“Not telling,” Zenji replied in a singsong voice. Her flanks bumped against Icepick’s armoured rump. And with a flick of her tail, she gave me a split second view of her dark petals. “Maybe if you master the next level before we get to the potion shop, I’ll indulge both of you-” Her head shifted over her shoulder and met my gaze. My position behind both of the mares had been an accident, but my ogling had been intentional. Icepick threw a glance back my way when she saw the other girl smiling deviously at me.

“Perm, listen to your dick for once,” Icepick said with a smile. It was the same smile she had given me many times before we fucked. I looked away and forced myself to stay within my sheath.

“Remember, loving-kindness, and compassion for all, because the entire universe is holy, everything divine in one way or another,” Zenji said before turning back to the path ahead of us.

“I’ll try my best,” I replied.

~~o0o0^0o0o~~

That night we camped at the top of the pass, there was less foliage there, and a number of streams flowed through the area. We took the time to restock our potable water, and a couple of us took the time to fish in those little streams. We ate well, as the abundance of this land was still mostly untapped-

“I can’t believe you’re eating that,” Crescent Moon said from behind me. I turned around in place, my mess kit floating in the air and turning with me. I hadn’t known it was her, or I would’ve said something first.

“I can’t believe you wouldn’t, it’s delicious,” I replied. Taking another small bite of the seared fish fillet. “Besides I grew up eating fish occasionally. Maidenpool was a fishing village. At least, it used to be.”

“Well, I guess a certain degree of acculturation would explain the poor taste,” the brown coated mare said before sitting down in the tent beside me. She still stuck her tongue out at the smell, but as I finished scarfing it down, she relented.

“Here, have a mint,” she said after I pulled the last of the meat from the fish with my magic and teeth. She hoofed over a small white tablet, and it smelled minty for sure.

“Why do you want my breath to smell good?” I asked with a sly smile before popping the little delicacy into my mouth. It was indeed minty, and after a moment’s mastication, I let the remains of it and my saliva slip down my throat.

“Well, we’re on the top of a mountain pass, and I’ve decided that I wanted something, even if its a one-time thing,” she replied in a near whisper. My ears twitched and burned at her words, and their meaning. I turned my head towards her and met her auburn eyes, nearly black in the darkness of the tent. But I knew what they looked like in the sunlight-

She kissed me on the lips, letting one of her forelegs drift over my withers, and pulling me closer to her. The lanky but strong mare had me fully in her sway as her tongue pushed into my mouth with an uncharacteristic hunger. I pressed back instantly, fighting against her, throwing my whole being into the kiss. We continued like that for a long time, at least, it felt like a long time. Eventually, though, even strong ponies like us have to breathe eventually.

“I wasn’t sure you wanted a one-time thing,” I asked her breathlessly.

“I wasn’t sure you wanted to waste your ‘hall pass’ on me,” she replied, equally starved of air. “I’m convinced now,” she purred a moment later. Without taking her will into account, I stood up and lit my horn. She relaxed as my magic grasped her body, gently pushing her onto her back, and splaying both of her sets of legs. For the first time, I climbed on top of her, standing above her in a state of vulnerability. She liked it if the flush on her face was any indication…

“I’m going to ravage you,” I replied with a hungry look, my lower half already showing signs of excitement.

“I desire nothing less,” she said with a nod and a flick of her tail. Her hinds remained uncrossed, and without any hesitation, I let my body come down towards hers. Our barrels pressed against each others and my hinds kept her hinds from hiding any part of her treasure from me. My cock spilt out against her stomach and petite teats as I pressed my lips to hers. She met my advances with a fervour born of curiosity and desperation. Her forelegs wrapped around my withers as I explored her mouth with my tongue.

The kiss continued for a long time, and with a light of my horn, I started to tease her body with tendrils of magic. First, her precum soaked teats, then her rapidly moistening slit, before finally finding her winking clit and surrounding it with tingling magic. She moaned loudly at that, and I smiled and broke the kiss, letting the poor mare breath.

“Did you use your electricity on my marehood?” She asked with a shocked expression on her muzzle.

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” I responded, before moving my mouth down to her neck and nipping it softly. She moaned at the attention and held onto me tightly, especially as I switched over to the other side of her neck, enjoying the slight scent of her coat, and the sweat from the journey today.

“I did say to ravage m-me,” her words caught at the last moment as I slid my body backwards slightly. My cockhead pressed over the open and leaking folds of her marehood, her breath hitched when she winked out and it brushed against my head, I spurred her on further by taking that moment to aim at her tunnel with my magic.

“In time, in time,” I replied in a steady tone. I wasn’t a teenage colt, I wanted to draw out this moment, this first time of a dignified mare. I wanted to give her something to remember fondly, even as our first meeting was anything but a fond memory…

“D-don’t tease me,” she said breathlessly, I kissed her on the muzzle, and pushing her lips open at the same time as I slid my head between her folds, and into her virgin tunnel. She moaned into my mouth and gripped me with all of her legs, showing off that latent earth pony strength. I felt my breath pushed out of me as I slid half of my length into her. I stopped and broke the kiss, even as the other half of my cock, ached to be buried in her.

“Good?” I asked her with breathless urgency.

“I’m not made of glass-” She started to say before I jammed the rest of my cock into her. I felt our bodies come together with a slap. Her words died on her lips as her mind reeled from the new sensations, I took the moment to just enjoy her tight walls convulsing around my cock. After a few moments, her eyes uncrossed and her sweaty body breathed steadily.

“I can see why mares enjoy this,” she said with a grunt. I took that moment to pull my hips back until only my head was inside her. “I feel so empty-” She didn’t feel empty for long, as I pushed back inside her. I twitched inside her as her hindlegs curled hard around my flanks, holding me in place, slowing me down a little as I pulled back. The pistoning was a give and a take, with my strong hips doing most of the giving…

“I bet you’re wishing you tried it sooner,” I moaned out, my hot breath playing over her face as she took a deep inhale. I let my head fall to the bottom of her throat, before kissing that spot heavily enough to leave a ring of saliva, and upturned fur.

“Something like t-that,” she managed to say as I rutted her with a sweet rhythm.

“You’re wishing you tried my cock sooner?” I asked her after a moment’s contemplation.

“Yes!” She yelled before I moved my muzzle to her lips and kissed her deeply. My hips were rolling against hers like waves on the edge of a beach, and she was enjoying it immensely if the wetness around my cock and the writhing muscles surrounding my hard member were any indication

She met my tongue, and pressed against me, throwing her hips up against my next thrust. I moaned into her muzzle as she clenched up consciously. My hooves shifted slightly behind me, my sweaty body widening my stance to rut her harder, rut her into the blankets we were laying on. Her eyes widened in pleasure as I drove my length into her in a single moment, and then did it again in basically no time at all. Her cute tongue lolled out of her mouth as I looked down on her pleasure drunk expression.

“You’re a natural,” I moaned as I bucked into her faster and faster slowly losing all semblance of a rhythm. Before she could reply, I surrounded her fattened clit with my magic and gave it a bit of static charge. When my balls bumped into them, there was a shock of surprise from the eclectic electric pleasure.

“And you’re blessed with a divine member,” She moaned as I drove into her again, by now the blankets beneath us were soaked through with our combined juices. I picked up the pace, and continued teasing her clit with my magic, and tweaking her nipples, sometimes grabbing both of our salivas in my magic and applying the cold liquids to them…

“Inside?” I asked plaintively, even as my rutting continued full bore. She looked lost for a second, lost in the sensations and the moment.

“Yes!” She moaned after collecting herself, and I pushed my cock all the way inside her, till our hips met with a wet slap. I held myself there, and let my muzzle descend upon hers, meeting her open mouth with my tongue as I felt myself flare up inside her-

The first shot of cum lanced inside her, painting her insides an immodest shade of white, and the second started to flow out from the sides of her stuffed cunt, leaking even more juices onto the blanket she was going to sleep on tonight. Crescent Moon moaned out loud as I twitched and unloaded in her, the sensations hitting the rest of her body overloading her. She locked up, her entire body tightening around me, including her stuffed cunny. I grunted and felt my hips buck forward futilely, trying to edge out just another millimetre of tight warmth.

A few moments later, her body lost the tension, and my cock stopped flooding her insides with my seed. I looked at her softly, the afterglow of endorphins swimming in my head. Her chocolate eyes, so dark in the blue glow of my hornlight met mine. She lifted her head up the few centimetres between us, before kissing me on the lips, her tongue playing at my opening, even as I felt my cock begin to soften in her.

“Will you sleep beside me tonight?” She asked tentatively.

“I would love to,” I told her as I looked down at her lovely, marked body.

“Besides, we might get a few more uses out of that hall pass tonight, does that seem fair to you?” She inquired. I nodded at her words, before letting out a soft yawn and killing my horn light.

I pulled out of her and felt my legs twitch and shake from the combined efforts of rutting a mare thoroughly, and the day’s march. She patted the bed beside her, and I laid down on my side, looking at her as she turned over and locked eyes with me once again.

~~o0o0^0o0o~~

“Sounds great,” I replied lightly while thinking about this in terms of the future. “You know, Icepick seems open to threesomes, maybe if you asked her for one-”

“Perhaps,” she said roughly. “I don’t really want to play second to someone else’s relationship, that reminds me too much of the concubines of my home,” she finished with a tone of anger that wasn’t aimed at me, but at the home, she couldn’t return to.

“I understand,” I replied. “Though, it wouldn’t be like that, first of all, Icepick aren’t married, and in pony culture, it’s not that uncommon to have groups larger than two who share each other…” My words hung pregnant in the air for a moment.

“We’ll see Permittivity, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you were my first,” she said before laying a foreleg over my withers and pulled me closer to her. I let out a deep breath at the sudden closeness, the intimacy.

“Sleep well,” I said to her as I yawned again, this time with a bit more force.

“You too,” she said quietly. I watched her for a while in the dark, after a little while her breaths became those of someone who was asleep. Soon after, I managed to join her in the realm of dreams.

The Light Of Hope (XXI)

The ponies meeting us were kitted out in a mixture of the old, and the new, old combat armour from before the great war, and barding made of flax and anything that could be made anew here. I watched as they approached, and noted their surprised looks when they spied the many of us who wore the shining power armour of our ancestors. My head turned to the right, beside me was Permittivity looking a little like one of these militia ponies, wearing that battered combat armour and little else in the heat of the jungle.

“They have a lot of guns,” Crescent Moon said from my left, her Arab contingent standing at rough attention behind us. She had made them into a relatively well-drilled fighting force and made them realize that being led by a smart mare was better than being led by an egomaniacal stallion like Tegarni-

“From what I’ve heard, their blacksmiths know how to forge weapons from stock steel, using only hoof tools,” Permittivity replied to her, looking over my back to meet the tall Arab mare’s gaze.

“That can’t possibly be as efficient as a stamped steel mill, or an actual manufactory,” Frostbite spoke up from behind us, his own power armour lending him an air of a knight from the past, the only give away was his accent, a provincial one from the empire of Perm’s land.

“It needn’t be as efficient, they don’t need to supply entire armies with assault rifles and equipment, as it stands, they were the strongest power on the island before you came here,” Zenji said from behind us as well, her naked body, only adorned with a minimal amount of jewellery and a small saddlebag set made a heavy contrast to our heavily laden forms.

“They didn’t need to, before now,” I said with a laugh. “No, but its good to know that they’re self-sufficient in terms of armaments.”

The only pony of standing not here was Rosetta, who was off conducting some treatments of ponies who had gotten ill from the jungle diseases rampant here, mostly Imperials who had no resistance to them. That was okay, this was a formal meeting between the leaders of a resistance group and a governing body of the largest city on the island. The city that we needed help from…

“No pressure guys, but we need to buy a couple of boats from them, at least,” I said to the assembled commanders. Ironsight took that moment to walk over from her position at the head of the group, her helmeted gaze looking at all of us, and none of us at the same time. The single armoured slit of her helmet, so unequine, so unnerving that it must have been intentional, came to rest on me.

“They’ve finished forming up,” she reported to us, as the ponies perhaps fifty metres away stopped moving, their sloppy militia training showing through.

“I can see that,” I said as we stood at the edge of the newly cleared lands. The city of Safe Harbour proper was visible from here, we were just outside the farmlands surrounding the lake, the ones that fed the city. “But thank you, we were just talking about the city itself. It’s an interesting place.”

“From what I can see, they’ve regressed technologically, even with a population equal to that of the Rangers,” She said coldly. There was that Ranger superiority, poking through, even as we watched a free city and its ponies demonstrate their defensive strength.

“I wouldn’t say that they built a lot of good civil infrastructure and taught themselves how to use sailing vessels and pulled barges to transport things up and down the river, besides, we shouldn’t fetishize heavy industry just because it’s heavy industry,” Permittivity replied, his opinion of the place gleamed heavily from his teacher.

“Plumbing is something we don’t have in a lot of Ramsgard, to be fair,” I said without realizing we had been included in the statement. I winced internally as I thought about my speech, and at the conditions of the average Arab living in the city-

“That’s barbaric,” Frostbite said loudly, before shrinking a bit as everyone looked at him.

“He’s not wrong,” Permittivity spoke up a moment later. “Every city and town in the whole of the empire has plumbing and a sewage system, it was part of the great leap forward instituted by the previous Grimkeep.”

“If only they had stuck to making the empire better,” Frostbite responded, a dark tone slipping into his voice.

“Hey, we know why that kinda thing stopped because an asshole spirit from the past living in an obsidian mirror woke up,” I said with a laugh, before bumping my shoulders against Permittivity, with his dour expression, and turning around to bump my shoulder against Frostbite, his face rolling with suppressed anger.

“The more I learn about this Sombra, the more I detest his existence,” Crescent Moon said. “Sending ponies to die in a war for nothing more than imperial ambitions.”

“Our place in the sun,” Permittivity said in a lilting cadence. Frostbite’s eyes widened at the remembrance.

“Well, I just send ponies to die when I want something to drink, or need a toilet unclogged,” I said to the assembled ponies, who laughed or chuckled a little. By now, the welcoming committee, the ponies from Safe Harbour and the militia groups in front of us had formed a small group and were walking towards us. The next couple moments were quiet, with all of us spreading out into something close to a line, and waiting for the delegation to meet us.

Finally, three ponies walked up to us. They managed a dignified pace, and their posture was perfect. So, nothing wrong with them at first blush. The tallest pony was a tan-coated stallion wearing a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, other than that he wore nothing. To his right was a mare wearing a trim and well-pressed uniform. The horn on her head and pistol hanging from a visible holster gave her a firmly dangerous look. The last pony in the trio was a stout looking stallion, barrel-chested and mean looking, wearing a suit even in the musky heat of the ripe jungle air. They got to within three metres of us before the pony in the centre spoke up.

“Welcome to Safe Harbour,” he said simply. “Your reputation precedes you.”

“Our boat does too,” I replied instantly. The ambassador, or whatever he was cracked a half smile at that.

“Ah yes, the gunboat with a functioning spark reactor, you must tell us how you kept it running,” he paused and met my eyes. “That matter can wait though, first of all, my name is executive Blackwood.”

“Commander Icepick, of the-” I turned to look at my assembled commanders and confidantes. “What did we name our group again?”

“The Equine Liberation Army,” Permittivity said.

“The True Equestrian Alliance,” Ironsight said.

“Free Pony Front,” Crescent Moon said. All of them looked at each other for a moment, with looks ranging from annoyance to petty anger. I met each of their eyes and gave them an understanding look.

“Uh, you get the picture-” I started to say before the mare in the uniform cut me off.

“See, I told you, they’re a bunch of unorganized interlopers,” The mare said harshly.

“I dunno, our lines look a lot cleaner than yours, and I bet we fight a whole lot better than your militia,” I replied. “I mean, we’ve only existed as a group for a couple of weeks. So some of the details are a little sketchy, but we have a mission and a flag.”

“What exactly is that mission?” Blackwood asked with a note of curiosity=.

“Fighting the biggest threats to Sall’han, namely the forces allied with King Sombra,” I replied with an unassuming tone.

“What?” Blackwood said with a start. “I know that name, but from ancient history, the unicorn that forced an entire city into the void, before being defeated by Twilight Sparkle.”

“Yeah, ours did,” I said before looking over at Permittivity and Frostbite. “Theirs is the problem.”

“He’s real,” Permittivity replied coldly. “And bent on conquest of your world, and that little strip of ocean won’t stop him.”

“Only force of arms will,” Frostbite added after Perm finished. The two of them said nothing to another, but they were united in purpose.

“Is he still a unicorn with magic? How is he still alive, it’s been millennia since his demise in our world?” Blackwood asked with doubt rippling through his voice.

“If he was just a unicorn stallion, that would be the case, no, he’s a living artefact of the past, an ancient and powerful soul sealed inside an object of great power,” Permittivity spoke up, retelling his brief but informative contact with Sombra.

“How is that possible?” The militia commander demanded of Permittivity.

“I’m an electrician and a soldier, not a dark magician,” Permittivity said simply before continuing. “All I know is: I’ve felt his words in my head, and I’ve seen his power for myself.”

“Alright, assuming all of you devoted individuals are correct. What is your plan to defeat such an entity.” Blackwood asked.

“We fight,” I said to him. I stomped my hoof into the earth in front of me. The power armoured sabaton sunk deeply into the brown dirt. “Stopping him in particular, that’s a problem we’re still working on though.”

“I like your spirit, and if you’re right, I guess this entire balefire blasted rock is in danger,” Blackwood said before sighing and letting his posture slump. “There are rumours that you had a balefire bomb in your possession if that’s true, why didn’t that become your plan A for dealing with him?”

“We’re not the kind of ponies that want to end the world all over again,” Crescent Moon said from behind me. She had spoken up first, she had been the biggest opponent of using that weapon. “For we wish to save it, to liberate Sall’han from the ponies who enslave and use others.”

“Well said,” I responded to Crescent Moon quickly. Whatever our problems with one another were, we agreed on the important things-

“And who would those ponies be?” Blackwood asked curiously.

“The Steel Rangers based in Ramsgard and their Arab slaves,” Crescent Moon said automatically.

“The Arabs hiding in the desert who’ve been using others as pawns in their great game,” I replied, with a look towards Crescent. Before my attention went back to the ponies in front of us.

“The warlords in the south, with their petty despotism and medieval ways,” Ironsight spoke up for the first time with her words.

“That’s a long list of enemies,” Blackwood said.

“Yeah, and there’s like, barely one hundred of them,” The mare in the uniform said derisively.

“Well, we aren’t asking for an alliance, we’re asking for a trade,” I replied while meeting Blackwood’s eyes.

“What’s your offer?” He asked the buck to his side stirring to life as the executive said that.

“We know how to get spark reactors running again,” I said with a grin. “We can teach you this, and get some of your ships humming again. All we need are a couple of ships to transport us to the mainland.”

“You’re certainly straight to the point,” Blackwood said before the stallion beside him cleared his throat.

“We’ll need to hold a vote, until then, this fallow field can be your campsite,” The stallion said.

“Can we enter your city, take liberty leaves?” I asked, wanting them to give my ponies a break.

“If you’re disarmed, yes,” Blackwood said before continuing. “A few miles south there’s a ferry that takes ponies to Safe Harbour, I’ll let them give you a free pass.”

“Good,” I replied. “When will we know your decision?”

“You’re free to stay in Safe Harbour and argue your case,” Blackwood said before turning to the other stallion.

“I concur,” the other stallion said. The two stallions turned around and started walking towards the shore.

“I’ll be watching you,” the militia mare said before turning around with them. A few moments later, as soon as they were out of earshot, I turned and met the eyes of all of my commanders and confidantes.

“Well, that could’ve gone worse,” I said to them.

There was a round of snorts and head shaking at my words. I beamed.

“I’m just glad we’re not trekking through the jungle all day,” Frostbite said with a laugh.

“Trust me, the jungle would prefer it if you weren’t trekking through it too,” Zenji said with one of her more unreadable expressions. That lasted for a few seconds. Then her muzzle broke into a smile.

---===*===---

“This thing is a little too rickety for my tastes,” Ironsight said from behind me. I turned away from the bow of the ship, as much as watching a sail-powered craft slowly slip through the waves towards the large island at the centre of the lake, my old friend took precedence.

“That’s the ranger in you talking,” I said with a laugh. She had left her armour back at camp, as had I. The ferry was filled to the brim with ponies normally, and with a couple of extra additions made it feel very cramped.

“I mean, say what you want about us, but at least we never resorted to ancient technology,” Ironsight said with a huff.

“Fair enough, we only resorted to ancient ways of social organization,” I said with a laugh. “But we can use the fruits of that sordid century.”

“I never took you for an optimist,” She replied after a few moments. The sun was dipping down in the sky, the water reflecting the few sunrays left beautifully.

“I never had a reason to be an optimist before,” I said. “Five-year plans and a twisted society didn’t leave me with much hope for a better future, really. Seeing Paradise, meeting the zebra, and learning about the world, it’s made me hopeful for Sall’han, and maybe, just maybe the world.”

“Why do you assume we’ll win though, why do you assume the forces of freedom and equality will win in the end?” Ironsight asked me tonelessly, her curiosity and exhaustion hiding in the background, barely noticeable.

“Two reasons: first, I see the seeds of a better world everywhere. This city is a peaceful place, but they have things to trade, but they need experienced ponies and fuel to bring them up to Modernity. Both of which exist on the mainland. In Paradise, I see a blossoming trade city with new ships being built or refitted, being sent to re-explore the world. In Ramsgard, I think refineries and factories will build more than enough for all of Sall’han. As for the warlords, I think a unified campaign by some federal army would sort them out pretty quickly. They might be able to stand against Ramsgard, but not Ramsgard, Paradise and Safe Harbour-”

“You’re thinking a couple steps ahead there,” Ironsight cut me off, before pressing a hoof against my shoulder.

“No, this is the world I’ll help build, or die trying, that’s why I’m an optimist now, I have something to believe in, and I believe I’ll live to see it,” I paused and met my oldest friend’s eyes. “And then, when the world is at peace, and the first steps to rebuilding the rest of the world are complete, I can rest.”

“Okay, that kinda enthusiasm and fatalism, that’s the Icepick I grew up with. But honestly, I don’t see you resting well-”

“Well, my rest is another pony’s busy life,” I said.

“I’ve noticed,” Ironsight replied. “It’s almost like you’re a different person after you left, but I know that’s not true. You’ve grown, after losing your old chains. You always wanted to be the greatest ranger, but you never fit in.”

“Something like that,” I said as I looked away, towards the orange semi-circle on the edge of the tree covered horizon.

“No, but what do you want to do with the rest of your life?” She asked and I looked back at her. Her expression was pensive, and deep down I knew she needed guidance on that same question. Was I supposed to be some inspirational figure? Then I realized, to her, I was. I had broken my chains and led many others to do the same.

“I have a few ideas, running for office someplace, maybe running a police department, and popping out a couple of little Icepicks,” I paused and mused for a moment. “But that’s me, I’m my own pony Ironsight. What do you want?” She was silent for a while. The two of us just staring off the edge of the ship.

“I don’t know,” she said sometime later.

“Well, that’s your homework then, figure out what you would like to do,” I said to her after a moment's thought.

“I mean, I’d like to do Frostbite,” Ironsight admitted in a low voice.

“Well, that’s not exactly what I meant, but its a start,” I said before turning to her and meeting her eyes. “He is on the ship with us-”

“I know, my marehood knows, and you know,” she replied.

“Then go for it,” I said with a smile. I patted her on the rump as I turned my head to look at the cabin and the entrance to the lower decks. She baulked and turned a little red at my egging on.

“O-okay,” she said before turning around and walking off. I turned back to the setting sun. Iron had always needed a bit of encouragement, well, maybe she had encouraged me a few times too. And then there were those times we were out in the middle of nowhere, and horny…

I let out a deeply held breath. Maybe we’d break her armour down too.

---===*===---

The city came into view, lit by torches, candles, and little else. Darkness was the state of the city, and it felt medieval, yet there wasn’t the same abject poverty and disrepair that the Arab quarters of Ramsgard displayed. It was like we were seeing the world hundreds of years before, in the peaceful pre-industrialized Equestria of generations prior. At least, my idea of it.

Our ship came into the harbour part of Safe Harbour. The natural depth of the docks were immense and very useful. Soon enough the crew had secured the ship with mooring lines and we were ready to disembark. All told, Ironsight, Permittivity, Frostbite and Zenji had come with me to the city...

The dock was filled with many sizes of ships, some pre-war hulks with sails added to them, and a bunch of newly constructed vessels. We walked together down the pier, and into the part of the city built to service the dock’s activity.

“Ah, Safe Harbour at night, such a pretty sight,” Zenji broke the silence with her words. We were now into the streets, and on the lookout for an inn or anyplace that would rent us some rooms.

“It’s like they built a city based on some half-remembered ideas of how cities are built,” Permittivity said. “Still, it’s impressive that a load of refugees built all this.”

“I mean, there’s obviously a grid system in place,” I said to the other ponies.

“Nothing looks tenement-y either,” Ironsight said a moment later. The warm jungle air still covered us like a sea, but the smell of life and decay that the jungle had was gone. The smell of a city with a plumbing system replaced it.

“Hey, there’s a bar!” I said excitedly, as I looked over at the sign above a building. It looked like it was a place for sailors and other rough living people. Exactly my kind of place. “C’ mon, let's explore this place, maybe make a rousing speech or two!”

“I don’t drink,” Zenji said automatically. “In any case, I have business to attend to early in the morning.”

“Well, see you tomorrow,” I replied. I turned to look at everyone else. “Perm, I know you like a quiet pint.” He shrugged and walked over to me. “Ironsight, they probably have something fruity for you, because we’re right next to a jungle,” I said to her. She flushed slightly at the mention of her drink of choice. I turned to look at Frostbite, the stallion I knew the least-

“I haven’t had a drink in weeks,” Frostbite said.

“Then it’s decided,” I said loudly, before clapping Permittivity and Ironsight on the shoulders. I looked over my shoulder at the earth pony soldier. He smiled slightly at me. I knew it was forced. At that moment, I felt like I understood him.

We walked into the River Snake.

---===*===---

The place wasn’t exactly lively, it was late, and many of the candle and lantern-lit tables were filled with quietly conversing locals. The four of us walked over to the bar, something that these ponies had replicated with their tools and memories. We drew some curious looks, as our saddlebags were out of the ordinary in this place. When we sat down, it was at the end of the bar. Four tall stools had our names on them. I sat with Ironsight in the middle, with Permittivity to my left, and Frostbite to her right. We were sandwiched by the stallions, something that in other contexts would be lewd-

In this context, it was cute. Well, that or the two stallions didn’t want to be anywhere near each other.

“You all on the same tab?” the bartending mare asked us when we finished getting seated.

“I believe so,” Permittivity said in his accented Equestrian.

“Uh, alright,” the pony seemed a bit confused by his words. I remembered the first time I had heard the accent, damn, it had been confusing. “What do you all want to drink?”

“Do you have whiskey?” I asked as I tapped Perm on the shoulder.

“Yeah,” the bar mare said. She was a yellow coated unicorn, wearing an apron. A black mane complimented her appearance. “I take it you both want some,” she said with a salespony smile. Perm and I nodded. The mare looked over at Ironsight and Frostbite.

“Do you have anything sweet?” Ironsight said in a low voice. I could barely contain my laughter.

“Have you ever had a mango before?” The bar mare asked sweetly. My gruff friend moved her head side to side. “Alright, I’ll make you something you’ll like.”

“I’ll have what they’re having,” Frostbite spoke up, and angled his head towards Perm and I.

“Sounds good to me,” the bar mare replied and curtsied slightly.

“Okay, I’m gonna steal a slip from you sister,” I said to Ironsight as she looked at the polished slab of wood beneath our hooves.

“What the fuck is a mango?” she said under her breath, just loudly for me to hear her. I shrugged and turned to look at Permittivity. He was sitting in the seat, but his eyes were periodically drifting over the other ponies in the room. There wasn’t a lot of trust in that pony.

“Here you go,” she hoofed over three glasses filled with a dark amber liquid. I took a sniff and smiled at her. Then she passed a larger glass, with a yellow concoction in it, to Ironsight.

Ironsight looked at it dubiously, before lifting it up and taking a slip. Her face lit up and she set it down, before pushing it a couple centimetres my way. I picked up the concoction and took a small sip. My face broke into a smile as the strange fruity taste lit up my palette.

“Weird, but pleasant,” I said after a swallow. Permittivity looked at the drink before raising a hoof. The barmare looked at him.

“I’d like one of those too,” he said before knocking back his whiskey.

“I didn’t take you for the fruity type?” I asked as I looked at him curiously.

“I’m strange but pleasant as well, so I thought it might be a good fit,” he said before resting a hoof over my shoulder and pulling me just a bit closer to him. I leaned into him, as I too drained my whiskey.

“I want one too,” I said to the barmare, who just took another glass out and started filling the two glasses with a fruity puree and a bunch of rum. A truly liberal dose of rum. When she passed it over to us, Perm and I lifted the glasses with our hooves and took a simultaneous sip. His leg pulled me closer after that, and before I could figure out his devious plan, he pushed his lips against mine. I opened my mouth in surprise, and let his tongue slip inside-

“Tastes just like the fruit,” he said as he pulled away. I flushed a bit at that, and at the stares of the other ponies in the room. Permittivity had either grown bolder recently, or he was already feeling the booze. I had an idea though. I turned around in my barstool, and Perm’s leg fell away. Ironsight had been even more surprised than me by our kiss.

I let my hoof slip over to her section of the bar before leaning against her. She turned and looked at me. Without missing a beat, I slid my muzzle next to her ear.

“You should offer him a taste too,” I whispered into her ear. She shuddered at the thought before turning towards Frostbite.

“Do you wanna try it Frostbite?” She asked quietly. He turned his head and looked at her quizzically for a moment. Before nodding at her softly. She pushed her drink towards him cautiously. A moment later, he picked it up in his hooves and drank a sip.

“Pretty exotic, definitely not something we had at home,” Frostbite said.

“Tell me about your home? I’ve heard it was cold there, but that’s about it,” Ironsight said a moment later. I smiled as I heard her speak. She had a way about her, sometimes she just needed a push.

“Well, my home is in a small farming village in the north of the empire. We only have a few months to grow all the produce we need for a whole year, so we work furiously to get it done. But we have all winter to rest, well, rest compared to the planting and harvesting seasons,” Frostbite said as he lifted a foreleg into the air. It was a meaty leg, strong from military service and agricultural life.

“It shows,” Ironsight said with a light laugh.

“Well, you’re not so bad yourself,” he said as he looked at her muscular legs on the table. She flushed and looked down for a moment. She flexed unconsciously, baring her muscles. Years of training and service had made her into a machine of muscle and tendon.

“T-thanks,” she replied shakily. His eyes found hers again, and an open smile appeared on his muzzle. Something had been warmed up in him.

“You’re quite welcome miss,” he said a moment later. She flushed a little at his words. “Honestly, I’m not sure why you took me with you, I’m not much of a negotiator or a speaker.”

“The reason is simple, you’re trustworthy, you’ve seen things on the other side, and- you’re a symbol for what we’re trying to achieve, for what we are,” I said a moment later, before leaning against Perm’s shoulder. He had already drained half of his mango cocktail. “Besides, you needed a bit of a break. You learned how to use power armour and got your unit ready to fight alongside us while marching with us through the jungle-”

“I just did what needed to be done,” Frostbite said coldly. He looked away before finishing his first drink.

“Well, consider the next couple days your rest period,” I said to him, before looking back at the drink in front of me. I raised it to my lips and imbibed. Permittivity was giving me a strange look when I turned my head.

“We were never like that,” he said simply. I gave him a confused look. “They don’t know anything about each other, and other than a vague attraction, they don’t have any strong feelings about one another. Contrast us, who from the beginning, had feelings to spare about each other.”

“Yeah, and those feelings were a lot of confusion, and a lot of anger at the other pony,” I replied. Before leaning into him as I sat back and watched Frostbite turn back towards Ironsight-

“I guess we’re on leave, what do you want to do tomorrow?” Frostbite asked Iron to which she set her drink down and cleared her throat.

“Uh, we could walk around the city at twilight, maybe eat some of their food, that would be nice,” Ironsight replied after a moment’s thought. She flushed a little at the implication that the two of them would be doing it together.

“That sounds pleasant, I’d accompany you, if you wanted me to,” Frostbite responded before raising a hoof and getting the bar mare’s attention. “I’d like another whiskey.”

“You got it,” she replied as she finished clearing an empty spot on the bar of all the dirty glasses on it. The light flickered slightly as a breeze went through the room as the front door opened.

Several ponies came inside, and they had an air of drunkenness about them. They were young, and all stallions. Without looking around, the group of ponies walked up to the bar, before sitting on the side of the bar right beside Frostbite.

“Company doesn’t sound bad at all,” she replied coyly. Before finishing her drink and looking up slightly to meet the tall earth stallion’s eyes.

“It’s a date,” Frostbite said quickly.

“Who the fuck are you?” The nearest stallion said to him. He was an Arab wearing a scarf around his neck, it looked like it was made from dyed silk, or something similarly expensive.

“A stallion having a drink,” Frostbite said. I leaned back and watched carefully how he would handle this.

“You sound like you’ve been gargling rocks, what the fuck is up with your words,” The Arab stallion replied.

“Rocks are better than the cocks you’ve been polishing,” Frostbite spat out. Instantly the stallion across from him started to move towards him, but one of his friends put a hoof on his shoulder. That was enough to arrest him for the time being.

“You better apologize for that, Haman doesn’t take that shit,” the pony on the other side of the angry Arab said, his rough voice was interestingly accented.

“Or what, he’ll make a fool of himself?” Frostbite shot back. “I’ve been around the block a couple times, there isn’t anything you lot could do to scare me.”

“I would listen to him, and go back to your drinks,” Permittivity said loudly enough to overpower the ambient noise of the bar.

“Another fucking one, did you both crawl out of the same pool of brain damage?” Haman said with a lilt in his voice.

“At least we have electricity where we come from,” Permittivity shot back, before lighting his horn up and sending a pulse of static out at a point a couple of centimetres above his horn.

“Is that little zap supposed to be intimidating?” The stallion behind him said. There was a bluster in his voice, confidence born out of drunkenness and his own limited experience.

“If you knew anything about how Electricity worked, it would be,” Permittivity said in a sardonic voice-

“I don’t know about any of that, but let's not make a mess of the pretty barmare’s place of work,” Frostbite said quickly. And before he had finished speaking his piece Haman nodded his head. There was enough coordination left in him and his four other friends that they felt confident. Well, that and the alcohol in general…

Perm started to get up, and so did Frostbite, and the Barmare let out a sigh of relief. I got out of my chair, I wanted to make sure that Perm and Frost didn’t end up killing any of them. That would be inconvenient for negotiations. Then again, just roughing up some rowdy hooligans would probably just give us some credit as to our veracity…

“Icepick, you don’t need to-” Permittivity started to say.

“I’m just gonna watch, think of me as a referee,” I replied sternly.

“I wouldn’t want to hit a hot mare anyway,” Haman said before kissing his foreleg and throwing it in my general direction. Okay, maybe I’d let the two of them rough him up a bit more than the others- “Except, maybe from behind.”

“Okay, you and I are gonna put em’ up, one on one,” I said as I locked eyes with the flaunty Arab.

“I relish the thought,” he said with a lick of his lips. Ironsight stood up and started towards the door, at the same time as the rest of us. But before she left, she looked back over her shoulder and threw a golden coin of considerable size onto the counter. Apparently, Perm wasn’t the only one willing to shake down a body.

Moments later, all nine of us were outside, with Ironsight standing nearest to the dull gas street lamp. I stood paired off against Haman, his jacket oozing dull reflections. The dark fabric contrasted against his cream coloured coat. If he wasn’t an asshole, he might even be attractive-

“Are you done ogling me?” He said with a bite. I scowled at him. The other six ponies were also paired off, the two imperials, three equestrians or half equestrians, and another Arab stallion were lined up at one another.

Before he could add anything else, I charged at him, before he even had a chance to block me, I had closed the two meters between us, and had lifted a foreleg at just the right second to channel all of my momentum into his chest. He yelled out in pain before sliding backwards on the dirt beneath us. Right as I was letting my leg lower down, he swung his left foreleg up in a high arc, smacking right into my withers. I spun around and got ready to buck him with my hind legs, but he danced out of the way.

Meanwhile, Permittivity and Frostbite had engaged the four stallions. Frostbite had charged straight ahead, deftly dodging the punches and kicks thrown his way, before barrelling into the biggest pony on their side, and tackling him to the earth, before starting to pummel his face in with his forehooves. Perm had taken the opportunity to follow up behind the bigger stallion, and land a couple glancing blows against the ponies trying to engage Frostbite. I could tell that his horn was lit, and the faint smell of ozone and singed hair told me that he was infusing his hoof strikes with a bit of charge.

I spun back around and looked Haman in the eyes. I was gonna have a bruise on my chin thanks to him, then again, I might have cracked his ribs. He smiled wryly, before yelling and running towards me. He looked like he was attempting my move, so at the last moment, I ran forward, and to the right. He slipped past me without so much as knicking my coat.

“I’m faster than you,” I yelled back. As he spun around, still running, and trying to keep his momentum up. I spun around and ran obliquely to him. He readjusted his aim and aimed right at me, but before he could hammer home a blow with his whole weight, I bucked out with both legs while jumping with my other legs. There was a loud thump as he slammed against the ground, even as my legs felt the shock of impacting his withers. I was thrown forward, like a pool ball. Still, I managed to catch myself and look over my shoulder at the poor stallion. He was still conscious, but he was lying on his stomach. His eyes were pained and as I walked around the side of him, before sitting my body down on his back, holding him down with all of my weight.

“Stallions,” I said as I dipped my head near his ears and nipped them.

I had a seat to watch as Permittivity dodged and exchanged blows with the other Arab stallion, his blows were harder and better aimed. Even if the other stallion managed to throw more of them. Finally, Permittivity threw his weight forward into a hook pushing the taller stallion into the dirt. The flash of light that accompanied the stallion’s fall was enough to half blind me.

The other stallion still had the will to fight was in the middle of circling Frostbite, the bigger stallion slowly pulling closer to him. When the other stallion tried to throw a punch, Frostbite pulled the leg closer to himself with his legs. The other stallion lost his balance and canted forward trying to catch himself. That was the moment that Frostbite threw his heavy uppercut, it had resounded with a thunk that I could hear from the top of the defeated stallion beneath me. A moment later all of our adversaries were on the ground, even if all of us were a little bruised and battered.

“You did better than I expected,” I said as I let out a breath and got back to my hooves. I looked down at the battered stallion before raising a hoof and holding it out for him. He met my gaze before letting out a pained breath. “Alright be that way.”

“Who the fuck are you ponies?” Haman asked in a voice that wasn’t far off from a whisper.

“The last, best hope of Sall’han,” Ironsight said as she trotted over.

“You just picked the wrong ponies to fuck with,” I added a moment later before turning around and starting towards to the victorious stallions. “Nice work boys.”

“Thank you,” Frostbite said as he dusted himself off with a hoof. The dirt from the road probably needed a bath to remove, but somehow, it suited him. Permittivity had pulled out a pack of cigarettes he had bought from a store on the way in, before lighting it with a single pinprick of electricity that arced off of his horn. The effervescent blue coloured the night, and for just a moment, I saw the reflection off his irises.

When I walked over to him, he offered the quarter consumed cigarette. I took it in my hoof happily, before taking a long drag on it as I watched the defeated hooligans get off the ground before ambling down the street and towards the rest of their lives.

“I’ve never actually been in a bar fight until this moment,” Permittivity said softly. Ironsight had gone over to Frostbite, and with a cloth from her saddlebag, she was wiping the surface of a break on his face. The stallion winced slightly as she rubbed the sensitive flesh.

“Nothing quite as satisfying, or as clear cut,” I replied as I passed him the burning cigarette.

“Fair enough,” he said quietly. “If only Sombra had a face to be bludgeoned. Or at least a physical form that was vulnerable.”

“Yeah, indestructible things do seem kind of bullshit, and that’s not just because I’m a demo mare,” he pursed his lips at that.

“No, I completely agree, that kind of object stands against the rules of physics and the philosophy of change that the path teaches us. It’s unnatural, truly,” Permittivity said before he took the last drag on the cheap cigarette. With a pulse of magic, he grasped the butt and snuffed it out against the earth beneath us.

“I mean, if it’s unnatural, dark magic keeping the soul of Sombra in the mirror, maybe we could attack that instead?” I questioned before leaning against Permittivity.

“Perhaps, but what would be able to harm a soul torn from its shell and placed in another?” He asked solemnly before sighing.

“Hey, at least it’s a start,” I said before pausing and looking into his eyes. “And tomorrow, we’re going to the potion factory, if anyone would know things about enchantments and how to remove them, it would probably be them.”

“That’s a good point,” Permittivity said quietly. “It’s tomorrow’s problem.” I laughed and bumped his shoulder. I smiled at him, before laying a kiss on his cheek.

When I turned my head, I saw that Ironsight and Frostbite were walking over to us. He was leaning against her, and she was supporting his weight. He was limping when he used his left foreleg. Well, that and her tail was moving back and forth behind her. I could tell she didn’t mind helping him.

“One of those stallions moved at the last second, and I stomped a stone pretty hard,” Frostbite said as they approached us.

“It happens, do you think you need to see a doctor right now?” I asked him as Permittivity eyed the limp.

“If it isn’t better when I get up, I might see a doctor,” Frostbite said.

“Alright, let's go find a hotel!” I nearly yelled before turning towards the street before us.

---===*===---

The door swung open, and Permittivity and I walked into the building. Zenji was with us, even if Frost and Iron were off at the local physician's office. Apparently, Frostbite had hurt himself pretty badly, and Iron had taken it upon herself to help him… For completely altruistic reasons-

A receptionist behind a beautiful desk made of dark wood eyed the three of us, before recognizing the Zebra with us.

“Hello, my name is Zenji. I’d like to speak to Xuaith,” she paused as the secretary stared at her for a moment. “It’s been such a long time.”
“Uh, I'll mention that to him,” the secretary got out of his chair and started towards the door behind him. A hard hat hanging from a hook on the wall behind the opened door was slipped onto his head. Before the door shut behind them, he looked over at all of us before nodding his head at an upholstered bench behind us. “Feel free to sit down, it could be a minute.”

A few minutes later, two ponies entered through the door behind the desk. The receptionist stallion, and a Zebra stallion wearing a thick protective coat and a pair of goggles around his forehead.

“Zenji!” He nearly bellowed as he saw our friend.

“The years have been long, Xuaith,” Zenji said as she hopped up from the bench and walked towards the slightly portly zebra stallion. He responded to her advances by throwing his forelegs around her shoulders and embracing her.

“I was worried I would have to meet you again in the next life,” the large stallion said before looking over at the Permittivity and I. His smile became a look of bemusement.

“Oh don’t be dramatic, neither of us are that old,” Zenji said with a laugh before noticing his interest. “These are my friends, the ponies who want to save the world.”

“I-I, wouldn’t have put it that way,” Permittivity said with a slight hitch in his voice.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I paused and met the zebra stallion’s dark eyes, so full of experience and a life already so full. “We’re trying to save multiple worlds.” I punched Perm’s shoulder lightly before standing up and offering a hoof to the alchemist.

“You’re from the mainland aren’t you?” He smiled at me and took my hoof in his before giving it a firm lift up and down. Then, he looked at Permittivity as he too got up from the bench. “You’re from another plane entirely, and yet you stand before me.”
“Powerful magics brought me here, the same powerful magics we came to ask you about,” Permittivity said in his clearest equestrian. He stood resolutely as he held out his hoof.

“I don’t know what Zenji’s been telling you both, but I’m just as clueless as most on how to bridge the gaps between planes,” he said with a sigh and a half glare at Zenji. She just smiled at him, before pointing at the coat he was wearing.

“I know your area of expertise, and its that area of expertise they came to ask you about,” Zenji said with that same enigmatic smile she always wore when it came time for serious business.

“Enchantments, how do they work?” I asked immediately after she was through speaking.

“That’s a broad question,” he said before lifting a foreleg up and behind his shoulders, gently rubbing there as if we had already caused some muscle tension.

“Specifically, can they be destroyed?” Permittivity asked him after a moment’s thought.

“Yes, anything in the world that can be done, can be undone, with enough will and energy,” Xuaith said calmly. “What do you need disenchanted? A cursed piece of equipment, a painting? Maybe a fetish?”

“A mirror capable of bridging the space between worlds, enchanted with the soul of a magical king long dead, but pulling the strings in my homeland,” Permittivity said with a flourish. Xuaith looked mortified, and his jaw hung open for at least two or three seconds.

“That’s a bit more- impossible,” he said with a dark look on his muzzle. “Then again, I’ve never dabbled in the darkness of soul magic.”

“So, it’s impossible?” I asked immediately, before stomping a hoof against the floor. The noise must have scared him a little, enough to bring him back to reality.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said after coming back to us. “The only thing to ever affect souls themselves, other than knowledge from the stars themselves were the megaspells that destroyed the world.” He paused and met each of our eyes with a pleading look. “And those, those could very well have been told to us by the stars to destroy us.”

“Ghouls,” Zenji said. “The ponies with their souls plastered into their rotting mortal forms, not able to pass on naturally.”

“That’s a moot point, we disassembled the only balefire bomb in Sall’han, and we promised not to use it on a city of millions,” I said to the assembled ponies. The moment I mentioned the fact we had a balefire bomb, Xuaith’s jaw dropped again.

“You mentioned megaspells before? What’s the difference between a megaspell and a balefire bomb?” Permittivity asked us curiously.

“A megaspell is any spell amplified millions or billions of times beyond its original strength, basically,” I replied before looking over at the zebras. “A balefire bomb is just that balefire egg in a special cradle, ready to turn a city into rubble and zombies.”

“She’s correct,” Xuaith said a moment later. “But I think I understand what he’s trying to ask-”

“The raw energy of a megaspell might be enough to disrupt bonds between the soul and the physical object it’s bound to,” Permittivity said. “But I don’t want to immolate the imperial city.”

“I honestly don't know a lot about megaspell construction, it’s a lost art,” Xuaith replied. “But I might not need to know about it, because it sounds like you have a megaspell amplifier in your possession.”

“What about a different kind of spell? Can a megaspell amplifier make anything earth-shatteringly powerful?” Permittivity nodded his head at me as I spoke.

“Exactly! Is there some kind of anti-enchantment spell?” He added a moment later.

“It depends on the kind of enchantment, some arcanotech made by Equestria before the war has a kind of magical circuitry that can be disrupted temporarily, spell matrix is the term. Other blessed or enchanted objects can be stripped of their power by powerful magical fields being applied to them,” Xuaith said before looking over at me. “You seem familiar with the concept of spell matrixes, judging by the look on your face.”

“Are you talking about Spark Grenades?” I asked him excitedly. “They shut down powered armour and terminals, and depending on how close the grenade goes off, it can take a reboot to restart them, or just replacing it because of burn out.”

“You have experience with working arcanotech, that’s fascinating,” Xuaith said with a touch of exuberance.

“They have many suits of powered armour from before the war, but they also would like to improve their bodies themselves,” Zenji added. “How many bone strengthening potions do you have in stock?”

“Not that many,” he admitted. “But that’s because most adults in the city and around the island already have their bones strengthened, along with their vitality improved.” Xuaith took a deep breath before looking back at us.

“So, do you have at least four right now?” I asked him, before looking at Zenji with new eyes. “Are you alchemically enhanced too?” She nodded at my words.

“What else can you improve other than bone strength?” Permittivity asked him as he evaluated the appearance of his teacher too.

“Well, we can make your skin and muscles more resilient, and make your lungs better at processing oxygen, so you could climb mountains and mitigate the thinner air, or breath air with smoke in it with less ill effects,” Xuaith said before looking at the two of us. “I can’t make you fit with these potions, but I can improve your physics by a significant, if not incredible extent.”

“How long does the process take?” My words had a hint of worry in them because honestly, this sounded too good to be true.

“For several days, you’ll be weakened and you’ll be insatiably hungry,” he replied dryly, before meeting both Perm and I’s gazes. “And then, it’ll take a few weeks for you to fully feel the effects of the potion’s improvements.”

“What are the side effects?” Permittivity asked as he flexed his body and thought about the effects of this upgrade.

“You’ll require more calcium and a few other trace elements. And a fair amount more calories, but by and large you’ll have these modifications for the rest of your natural, and probably extended lives. Though getting a new dose every decade or so wouldn’t hurt matters,” he said with a smile.

“You understand the amount of money you could make off of these things?” I asked him before bumping Permittivity in the shoulder. “Even just selling these things to the government of Paradise would be great.”

“I know, and we’ve been searching for new markets for some time, but we’re not financed well enough to go rechart the world, neither us, or the city of Safe Harbour,” Xuaith said before meeting my eyes. “We would, however, love to take some charts from you.”

“I can give you charts and a favourable mention, besides I don’t think it would take much convincing for most people when shown the effects of your potions,” I said to him. “Besides stronger soldiers would be a nice thing to have for the war to come.”

“Tell me more about this villain, what are his plans?” Xuaith asked.

“Well, he wants to conquer and integrate Sall’han into his empire,” I said before putting a hoof to his shoulder. “For all of the bountiful resources and technology here.”

“These potions, they could’ve saved many lives,” Permittivity said darkly. He had told me about the charnel houses of the great war. “Maybe we could’ve broken their lines, could’ve done more than thrown ponies lives away.”

“I see,” Xuaith said before deflating a little. “Have you tried negotiation with him? Perhaps giving him technology and technical aid.”

“He has dreams of an ever-expanding empire, bridged by portals and run by imperial citizens. If he desires it, he won’t stop trying to make it his,” Permittivity said in a low voice.

“Hence why you came to me in the first place,” Xuaith said with a groan.

“Yes, we need to kill a god,” I said with a smile. “Are you up for helping us?”

“I-I, I’ll do my best,” he said with resolve before turning to face the two of us. “Now, lets get those potions in you. It’s better to start the process and then eat a meal.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I replied. My stomach was growling.

“I concur,” Permittivity said. Zenji just chuckled a bit to herself.

“I know just the place!” she exclaimed.

“If you are that excited for it, then I’m on board,” I replied with a wry smile of my own. “Now take us to the potions doctor, we have a restaurant to eat at.”

“Oh, you think you’ll have the energy to walk there and back,” Zenji asked with a smile. “If only it was that easy.”

“How bad is it?” I turned to Xuaith for a moment.

“Imagine your entire muscle mass being used to the fullest extent possible without you yourself dying,” he said before laughing. “I mean, your jaws and body will still work, just realize that for the next three days, you aren’t going to be moving very far.”

“I see. Well, better get it done with now,” I said before turning back to Zenji. “Why’d you bring up the restaurant then?”

“Because I’ll get food from there, and bring it back,” she shot back politely. I snorted loudly and cleared my throat.

“I want the biggest thing they have,” I said.

“I’d love Calamari, if they have it,” Permittivity added a moment later.

“Good choices, very different, but good,” Zenji said before starting towards the door. “See you later.”

After she left, we were left with Xuaith. I met his eyes.

“Are you ready?” He asked.

At once, Permittivity and I said yes. We were lead back into the building, to start the treatment. Maybe these ponies didn’t have electricity- But a lightbulb wouldn’t make my bones stronger…

That was what Perm and I needed, to be stronger.

End Of Chapter XXI: The Light Of Hope

Author's Note

Sorry for the wait, I've just been busy with commissions and other such things. I hope you enjoy this chapter though!
Commissions are open by the way!

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
https://www.patreon.com/Sunnydontlook
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And a new discord server for me to connect with my fans, and well, to hang out in: https://discord.gg/dxfCZzV

Catalyst, Combustion And Calm (XXII)

It was the same as home, with a couple of exceptions. First of all, everyone spoke with an accent very foreign to Maidenpool. Secondly, there was no smell of saltwater in the air. But the feeling of a small town devoted largely to the sea was there. That was the larger truth that superseded all the other little details. It felt like home, and it hurt.

I lifted my head up from the panel of the older vessel we were working on, it had been beached for decades, and most of it was in the process of decay. However, it did have something we needed-

“Permittivity, did you get that manifold off yet?” Marigold asked me as she looked up from her own task.

“Nearly there,” I said as I stooped back under the panel and grasped the metal tubing. With a quick spin of the screws holding it in place, it came free and I pulled it out and got to my hooves. “Got it.”

“Alright, can you come over here and help me with this reaction chamber?” Marigold asked me as the sounds of other parts of the ship being stripped could be heard. We were stripping down the un-salvagable vessels for parts.

“Sure,” I said as I trotted over to where the Earth Pony techie was loosening up the bolts that held a steel sphere in place beneath the flooring. They really didn’t make these reactors easy to get to. With a pulse of magic and a deep breath, I grabbed onto all the other points of connection for the chamber and loosened them. A moment later, her point of contact came loose and I pulled the chamber out of the floor before gently setting it on the decking.

“I’m just glad you’re assigned to my work crew,” Marigold said as she wiped sweat from her forehead, with a foreleg. Her golden coat and light pink mane seemed to glow incandescent in the work lights we had set up.

“Likewise,” I said as I stretched out my legs and felt the deep ache of the potions still being healed day by day. “So what else is salvageable on this tub?”

“The wiring, the steel tubing, and the engine itself,” she said before pausing her list. “But we’re gonna take this reaction chamber up to Privateer, and see if we can’t get that engine purring this afternoon.”

“You just want to be the first crew to get an engine running, aren’t you?” I asked with a laugh as I lifted the heavy reaction chamber up in my magic. As far as I could tell, the chamber would hold a vacuum and the gem catalyst from the Privateer would work with it.

“That bitch Hinges isn’t going to be the first with her old fishing boat,” she said with a triumphant laugh.

“I mean, she has a bigger crew than you,” I replied with a smile on my muzzle.

“But I promised Icepick that I’d buy her a drink if I got access to you,” Marigold said as we exited the engine room of the beached ship. “She also said I’m supposed to leave at least one scratch on you.” I shook my head at that. The Privateer was a short trot away. As soon as we made it to the outside of the craft, Marigold met the gazes of her other work crew members.

“Get that engine stripped down, but after about an hour, feel free to head onto the Pirate,” she said before rapping her hoof on the hull of the ship. “We’re gonna make good on that bet.”

There were a couple of cheers as ponies looked up from their tasks, tools in the hooves and mouths. Regardless, we had to get moving if we wanted to get that engine running before nightfall…

It was good to be at work again...

---===*===---

“Connect the pump,” Marigold said as we stood the reaction chamber up in its proper position. The battery-powered pump activated, and for a few moments, the sounds of loud compression via piston filled the room. “Check the gauge.”

“We’re at vacuum,” I replied with relish. The engine was nearly ready to be started. “Hit the button.” She did. For a few seconds the battery bank we had stacked up in the engine room hummed, but that was it.

“Not enough juice, not enough juice,” Marigold said as she paced the room, thinking hard about what was going wrong.

“So, you’re sure that everything is connected correctly and in working order?” I asked her.

“Yeah, that’s not the issue,” she said with exasperation and exhaustion showing through. “We don’t have enough potential from the batteries to jump-start the reaction chamber.”

“What if I give it a voltage increase?” I asked as I thought about what Icepick had said about these devices in the past.

“That might work, or it might blow us up,” Marigold said as she eyed my horn with interest and a fair amount of fear. “Hold on, I’m going outside for a smoke.”

“I’ll be sitting here, I might have a solution,” I said as I let my legs fall from beneath me. The steel decking was cold on my coat, but I ignored it. Marigold gave me a strange look, before looking wistfully out the door.

“It’s not a big deal. When Hinges gets her boat working, then she can jump start ours,” Marigold said as she passed out the door, her packet of local cigarettes already in her hoof.

I ignored the faint sound of hoofsteps. I cleared my mind of everything except the problem we faced. Not the big problem, but the small one before me. My horn lit up, and even with my eyes closed, I could see. The potential of the batteries, and the slight distortions of the ambient electrical and magnetic fields coming from the reaction chamber. There was energy there, the gem practically hummed with it inside that vacuum chamber. I shut my eyes forcefully, before throwing the switch on the batteries. For a moment, the flux and the potential travelling through the casing made the distortions fluctuate, a deep humming from within the chamber that could only be heard in the radio spectrum-

My horn glowed brighter as I felt the flow from the battery begin to deteriorate. I grasped at the humming distortion, holding it with my horn- And then I deepened it and compressed it around the chamber. With a start, the reaction chamber started up. It began to generate power and sent it back through the battery. With a rip, I pulled the battery line and cut that circuit. When my eyes opened, I could see a faint glowing from the outside of the reaction chamber. It was emitting radiation on all the frequencies, but a fair amount of it was in the visual spectrum.

I stood up and dusted myself off. Maybe I couldn’t affect the weather, but having a clear mind to interact with the fields that made up the universe was nice…

“Holy shit, how’d you do it?” Marigold asked as her second or third cigarette hung from her lips.

“Magic,” I said with a laugh as I tapped the reaction chamber with a hoof. At that moment, a particularly high energy photon leaked through the steel. It entered through my eyes, leaving a bright comet like a trail through my eyes. She wasn’t looking at me, she turned and looked over at the control panel. A dial was in the red, and she was staring at it. Slowly, the dial began to recede back to green.

“Well, we beat Hinges, and the repair talisman is going ham on the ship,” Marigold paused and looked over at me. “We should dump some scrap into it, it might need it at this point.”

“Wait, this tub has a repair talisman?” My surprised question struck her as funny because she burst out laughing as soon as I finished.

“Yeah,” she said as she paused in her laughing. “Basically every ship built in the last few years of the war had one. It didn’t matter how much the price tag of the talisman was, because you were going to save money within a year or two. Maintenance and it’s associated costs are really high, and a talisman isn’t that hard to make. At least, if you have the infrastructure and the production lines already set up.”

“That makes sense,” I said with a smile on my face. The repair dial was already another couple of degrees towards green. “When do we take her out?”

“The repair work should be double checked, but after that, we’ll take her out tomorrow morning,” Marigold said with a deep intake of breath. “Anyhow, you can leave if you want. You won me the bet after all,” Marigold finished and threw a foreleg into the air. I met it as I walked by.

“Thanks, I’ll be here tomorrow morning,” I said as I started towards the door of the Privateer.

She waved goodbye and I climbed out of the ship. Beside her was the old fishing boat that the other crew was working on. I waved at them and they looked back with a bit of annoyance at me and the humming engine of the ship below me. I didn’t blame them.

---===*===---

“Hey,” I said as I opened the door and stepped inside. Icepick was at the cheap wooden desk that the hotel room came with.

“Hey,” she said as she looked over at me. There was a ghost of a smile on her muzzle when she looked at me. I trotted into the room and stripped my work clothes off. The door shut with a quick outreach of my magic. I started towards the bathroom before remembering that this place didn’t have a shower. I let out a groan and dropped myself onto the bed. It creaked and gave in under me. “Did you start one up?” Icepick asked me as she got out of the desk chair and stretched.

“Yes, the Privateer is running and repairing as we speak,” I said as I crawled back towards the pile of pillows laying against the headboard.

“That’s great, I knew we could get a couple of those ships running,” Icepick said as she walked around the side of the bed, before throwing herself sideways onto the mattress. With a hoof, I grasped her and pulled her body towards me. Our faces were close together, and our hind legs drifted nearer by the second. She smiled at me, a tired expression on a tired face. Mine was a mirror image of exhaustion. But, maybe that was okay, we were tired together at least.

“I bet we can get a third of the old vessels running again,” I replied with another yawn following seconds later.

“That’d be nice,” she said quietly as her own foreleg stretched over my tired form and wrapped around my head. Icepick stroked my mane even as she pulled my head the final distance between us. Our lips met in an explosion of sensations, it was always a wonderful feeling kissing her. Kissing my partner, my bound soul.

Maybe an hour passed, maybe a few seconds did, but eventually, our kiss broke. We stared into each other's eyes for a moment, revelling in our mutual infatuation. It was a pleasant feeling, but reality had to break in at some point.

“How long do think it’ll take?” Icepick asked softly.

“Months,” I replied equally quietly.

“We don’t have that long,” Icepick said with a sigh.

“I know,” I said in a low voice. “All of us are going to be inoculated within a fortnight.”

“We still don’t know anything about Paradise, whether they’re still occupied-” Icepick started to say before I put a hoof to her lips.

“Don’t worry about that problem just yet,” I said to her. “I just thought of a way out of our current predicament though. Well, something to get us out of here without feeling guilty.”

“Shoot,” Icepick asked me as my mind spun back to the thought that had filled my mind.

“We build them a power grid, and teach them how to service it and the ships were getting going again,” I replied. She pursed her lips as soon as my proposal exited my mouth.

“How do we build them a grid?” Icepick asked instantly.

“We build it out of spare parts,” I replied, “there’s enough spare wiring and reactors in those ships out there to rig up a basic decentralized grid. Nothing to run industry with, but a couple of streetlights… That we could do.”

“How long would that take?” She asked quietly, wheels turning and grinding in her head.

“A couple of weeks, especially if I get a lot more labour to work with,” I said before letting out another yawn. Just the thought of doing this was making me feel more tired.

“I’ll mention it tomorrow at the meeting,” Icepick said before grinning widely. “Something tells me they’ll be up for it.”

“They’d be beyond stupid not to go for a power grid, even if its a kludge,” I said before leaning forward and bumping my nose against hers. My other hoof drifted down her chest and towards her stomach. It stopped there, running gentle circles around her navel. Icepick smiled at me.

“I might need to reward you for that idea, maybe come up with some sort of medal-” she said with a laugh before I pressed my lips to hers. Moments later I was on top of her, and her hooves were kneading my back. I may have been tired, but not too tired…

---===*===---

“You’re proposing the construction of a power grid for Safe Harbour?” Blackwood said with a bemused tone.

“Yes,” I said resolutely, but not loudly. He met my eyes and searched them for- something. I just met his gaze, before cracking a smile. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy, or cheap, but I can get the project going in a fortnight, and you’ll be in a position to finish all the really time-consuming parts.”

“And what are those time-consuming parts?” Blackwood questioned, as the rest of the council gave him the floor. Icepick stood off to the side, watching my proposal get its spotlight.

“Mostly just wiring individual buildings,” I replied. He looked at me questioningly. “And as a part of the building process, I can teach a number of your ponies about the electrician profession.”

“Why would you want to go through the effort of building us a power grid, what do you want in exchange?” Blackwood questioned.

“Three ships, and a transition away from directly resurrecting and scavenging the ships in the bay,” I smiled at him as he played through my offer.

“You said it would take you two weeks?” Blackwood after a few seconds of evaluation.

“Two weeks to set up the reactors, to get them humming and thrumming,” Icepick said as she walked over to me, before putting a hoof to my shoulder. “Everything else, well, you should be able to do it.”

“Alright, how many labourers do you need?” Blackwood asked.

“How many can you give us?” I replied.

“That is exactly why I trust you both, you have the spirit of the first crews,” Blackwood said as a murmur of voices started up behind him.

“The first crews that settled here?” Icepick asked curiously.

“Indeed, the ones that settled this island, and built the framework that’s lasted us for a hundred years,” The bespectacled stallion stated, before meeting both of our gazes in turn. “It’s ponies like you that push us all forward, that change the world.” He paused and turned around to the other council members. “I propose a resolution to give them the funds and the resources to complete their project, and the exchange of whatever three vessels they want upon completion of the grid.”

“I want the Privateer,” I said to the council members. “It’s a fine vessel, with a powerful reactor and engines.”

“You just want it because of the name,” Icepick said a moment later. She had a smile on her muzzle. “But, if we can strap guns on it, then I have no problem with it.”

“That seems like a fair point,” Blackwood said before taking off his glasses.

“Actually, do you have any large cannon we could borrow,” Icepick asked the council with a pleading smile, she pressed a hoof to my shoulder and I looked at them too.

“You mean automatic cannons, correct?” The military mare from before said. “We have a couple of twenty-millimetre anti-air guns in storage.”

“We could use a couple of those,” Icepick added with a nod towards the mare.

“We’ll think about that particular arms transfer,” Blackwood said with a note of finality. “Thank you for your time Commander Icepick, and Mister Permittivity.”

We walked out of the chamber and into the daylight. I had taken the day off of my work on the ships today, and the two of us had an afternoon free-

“Let’s go get lunch,” Icepick interrupted my thoughts. “That place over there looks interesting.” Her hoof was pointed at a building two blocks away, it had a sign that showed an Orangutan with a wooden bowl in its hands, rice and veggies filled the bowl. As we walked towards it, we could see ponies entering and exiting the place reasonably fast. It must have had a quick turn around.

Opening the door, we spotted the food line and the cashier beside it. It looked like a cafeteria, with ample small tables and chairs that looked just comfortable enough for a short meal. We started towards the line. My eyes lit up as I saw one of the chefs in the back. They were a male Orangutan, and his eyes looked up and saw me. I met his gaze and a moment later he walked away from the dish he was working on. We moved along with the line, and eventually, Icepick noticed him as he got out into the dining room. He waited at one of the tables, with his back to the wall. There were two chairs in front of him. The Orangutan lifted up his right hand and waved two fingers towards the table repeatedly.

I nodded at him as Icepick gave me a strange look. We grabbed our food at the line, two bowls that looked very similar to the one on the sign and I started towards the table with the Orangutan. Icepick shrugged and followed after me. The two of us placed our food on the table and sat down. The Orangutan met our gazes and smiled before clearing his throat-

“I’ve been expecting you two,” he said a moment later as the two of us looked at him, shocked. “Don’t be alarmed, I knew that the two of you were nearby, and Zenji told me you were in town.” His accent was deep, but it was passable equestrian.

“Ah, Zenji’s influence makes itself known once more,” I said with a laugh as I stuck my fork into the bowl of steaming rice.

“You aren’t surprised?” The Orangutan said.

“She’s the kind of pony that knows everyone and is friends with everyone worth being friends with. So do you own this joint?” Icepick responded with her own smile before she ate her first bite of the food.

“Indeed, this is my restaurant,” he said before continuing. “Apologies, my name is Zahn Of Green Leaves.”

“Hello Zahn, may I ask you a question?” I asked him quietly.

“What’s your question?” He replied softly, before taking his arms and crossing them behind his head and leaning back into the cushions behind him.

“Do you know any master’s of the path? I’ve been studying with Zenji as often as I can, but she told me that I might need a more experienced teacher,” I finished and took a deep breath before gazing into his caramel coloured irises. He started to laugh as soon as I finished, loud enough that some of the other patrons looked towards him.

“I might know someone,” he said loudly before laughing some more.

“What’s so funny? I hate missing out on a good joke,” Icepick asked in between large bites of the food in front of her. It was good food.

“Well, framed like that, miss, I have to reveal it to you both,” Zahn said before leaning closer to us and unbinding his hands, leaving his strong arms on the table before us. “I’m Zenji’s teacher.”

My jaw dropped open and he laughed again. I leaned back in my chair and started to laugh along with him. Icepick slid her left foreleg over my shoulder and pulled me closer to her. It was a pleasant feeling.

“So, you taught her everything she knows?” Icepick asked a few seconds later.

“I wouldn’t say that, but I did lead her through the first steps of her journey,” Zahn replied. He looked at the two of us and turned his head slightly. “She wasn’t kidding. You two do indeed have bound souls.”

“Yeah, I believe it,” Icepick said before moving one of her hooves to my chest and gently running it over where I had been stabbed. A moment later that same hoof drifted towards my healed rifle wound. My breaths became slowed, each exhale a reminder of my mortality. Icepick stopped touching my wounds and moved her hoof up to my cheek. A moment later she pulled it away with an unreadable expression on her muzzle.

“Would you be interested in learning to meditate as well?” Zahn asked her softly. The time for laughing was gone.

“Honestly, the thought of clearing my mind for a while does sound pretty pleasant,” Icepick said before letting go of me and turning her body to face his. “How long do you think it would take to learn?”

“It depends,” Zahn and I said simultaneously. She looked at the two of us incredulously, before popping me in the shoulder lightly.

“Alright, I’ll try it along with him, whenever the two of you are set to practice,” Icepick said with curiousity in her voice.

“Well, I’ll tell my kitchen that I’m taking the rest of the day off, I’ll be back in a few minutes until then, eat up!” Zahn said before getting himself out of the chair with exaggerated slowness.

We did as he suggested. And it was good.

---===*===---

Icepick and I sat down on our haunches, the soft mats compressing beneath us. On the wall was an incense burner, light but pungent incense burned from within it. The curtains on the wall were pulled, and only the candles he had set out were providing light.

“Breath in, breath out, count to ten slowly,” Zahn said quietly, hypnotically. There was a richness in his strange voice, a voice that came from vocal cords alien to us equines.

I did as he asked, I forgot everything but the sensation of breath and the simple numbers climbing heavenward in my mind. Both were abstractions of reality, a focus for my mind, just as my horn was a focus for my magic-

“Now onto one-hundred,” Zahn added just as I got to ten. I kept counting, the soft light barely registering in my mind through my eyelids. I reached one hundred and went beyond. Everything was falling away, I was losing myself to the meditation. His voice fell away, the sounds of breathing were lost, and I kept going. Slowly, everything came into focus again, except there were only the shadows of form, and there was no difference between the people around me and the world at large. I took a deep breath and I saw Zahn as a pool of energy, ebbing and flowing, changing before my eyes…

And then I felt it on the horizon, a deeper horizon than my eyes could provide, something only my soul, my inner being could see…

They were out there, humming and living in their mechanical way, also changing and flowing. The Privateer, The Xenophon and all the other ships, and further beyond that, I could see all the suits of armour being worked on, all the life in the jungle and the fields. I glanced up with my sight that wasn’t. In the sky, angry chirps echoed, chemical bonds being broken in time. There were ponies in the sky- They were in distress.

My eyes shot open and I gasped heavily. I looked at Zahn with terror in my eyes, before jumping to my hooves and running out the door.

The destination in my mind was clear, that picture of the world with all its dynamic patterns burning into it-

Even as I knew the world was changing.

---===*===---

I ran towards the docks on legs that were still weak from the tail end of the potion regiment. Ponies looked at me like I was crazy as I ran. I didn’t care.

My lungs burned, my eyes watered, and yet I went forwards, a new reserve of strength revealing itself as I ran. There was an extra bounce in my step, a little extra oxygen with each breath, even as I knew my bones were heavier than they were before. I took a breath and turned the corner, running towards the Privateer.

On the deck stood a very confused Marigold, watching me run onto the ship ramp with a bemused expression on her muzzle.

“Mare, you must really love working on this boat,” She said loudly as I raced towards the controls, and the thing I was searching for.

“Not really, now follow!” I yelled as I raced into the bridge. Marigold sighed loudly enough for me to hear, before following me into the room. My eyes fell upon the surface of the old controls, recently renewed by the repair talisman.

I spotted it, a console and a petite microphone. Without missing a step I went over to it and turned the power dial on it. It started up with a crunch of static as I hit the scan function on it. A moment later, the radio caught something-

“Mayday, mayday, this is flight alpha niner launched from Paradise, Captain Turbocharger speaking, please respond,” A mare’s voice spoke with a crackle from the radio. I grasped the radio microphone and pressed the transmit button.

“Flight Alpha Niner, this is Permittivity from the Privateer speaking,” I replied before adding. “What is your current position and heading.”

“Privateer, are you a ship on the ocean?” The captain asked.

“No, I’m in the middle of the inland sea,” I replied a moment later as I waited for the other person to respond. “What are your bearing and location.”

“We’re roughly twenty miles north of the mountains, and we’re heading towards the ocean on the west side of the island, however, we’re losing fuel quickly, a busted fuel line on our right engine probably,” the mare said with fear in her voice.

“Change your vector, and climb over the mountains, then proceed south,” I said to her, pleading and trying to sound as sincere as possible.

“What?” She yelled into her radio. “Repeat that? Are you telling me to try to reach over the mountain on one engine?”

“Trust me, the moment after you get over those mountains, you’ll see Safe Harbour,” I said with urgency. “If you’re as bad off as you say you are, then you won’t make it to the ocean.” There was a long pause, with only the static of the radio set making it known that it was still on.

“Okay,” the mare said with a note of resignation. “I’ve never been much of a betting mare-” She cut off as she stopped transmitting.

“It’s alright, I’ll stay here and guide you in,” I replied, false confidence edging out a victory in that sentence.

“Thank you Permittivity, are you on the water?” She asked me with her own false confidence starting to show through.

“Yes, I’m docked on the edge of an inland sea, or a big lake, I don’t think there’s a definitive answer on that,” I responded chuckling lightly as I listened to the deep hum of her engines over the radio. One sounded distinctly less functional than the other.

“But it’s big, right?” She asked with a matching nervous chuckle. The throttle of her engines had picked up, she was giving her remaining engine all the fuel it could handle without flooding it. At least the exhaust would be less sooty-

“It is,” I said as I watched the lake outside the window in front of me. Sunlight glinted off of it in the light of the early afternoon. “Once you’re over the mountains, head towards the source of my transmission.”

“Will do,” she replied with stress edging back into her voice. I shrugged loosened my muscles a little. As long as she didn’t ask how I knew to get on the radio, as long as she didn’t ask too many questions right now, she’d get through this…

---===*===---

I got out of the cabin as soon as she spotted the lake. I wanted to see the damaged aircraft land- I was standing on the deck of the ship when I heard the sound of the engine starting up. The only other pony on the ship was Marigold. She leaned out of the bridge and nodded at me. I nodded back as I threw off the mooring lines with my magic, before skidding back to the bridge. We were leaving the shore as quickly as we could-

“Hey, are you gonna go catch that thing?” A familiar voice asked as she ran towards us. We were a few feet away from the dock when she jumped over the edge of the pier. Icepick landed squarely on the deck as a number of other ponies came out to watch the three of us pull away. She waved at the ponies, most of whom were soldiers on our side.

“To answer your question,” I paused and met her eyes. “Yes, we’re gonna find it and tow it back after it lands.”

“That’s a good plan, Marigold’s?” She asked with a laugh as I snorted.

“She took the initiative as I watched the plane come into view,” I said as I watched the dot in the sky become more and more defined as it lost altitude.

“Well, it’s coming down now,” Icepick said as she pointed a foreleg into the sky. I looked up and there it was. I heard the gearing of the engine beneath us change. We were a couple hundred meters from the dock now. She was coming down fast, even with her flaps up-

“Does she know what she’s doing?” Icepick asked as we watched the twin-engined plane descend.

“How did you know it was a she?” I asked curiously. There wasn’t anything we could do other than watch.

“Ehh, lucky guess,” Icepick said before bumping my shoulder with hers. “Well, did you sweet talk her then?”

“I got her to make the right decision,” I said with a note of annoyance.

“Ah, well, I know for a fact she’ll be wet soon,” Icepick added with a laugh.

“Ha, ha. I bet you do wonderfully at the middle school circuit,” I shot back.

“I mean, money is money, but getting someone’s lunch money is even sweeter-” She said before stopping as the plane threw its air brakes on and made contact with the water, the added friction of the water on its belly adding to the resistance substantially.

“She’s good,” I said as I watched the pilot touch down and stop after a few seconds. And then, I ran into the bridge and looked at Marigold, Icepick hot on my hooves. “Start us towards that seaplane.”

“Aye, aye,” she said with a sloppy salute. Icepick entered after me and looked at her as she put the ship into gear.

“If make you a rear admiral, will you shock me?” Icepick asked.

“I would strongly consider it,” I replied. She blinked and opened her mouth again-

“Commodore it is,” She said with a laugh and a soft grasp of my shoulder. Marigold just snorted.

---===*===---

Marigold pulled us up alongside the seaplane, now moving under the slight push of the wind. I launched the first of many ropes, and chains to attach the ship to the rear of the Privateer. A moment after I started the closet door to the cockpit opened up and a ponies face greeted me. Her coat was a light blue, nearly the colour of the sky at midday. She was wearing a coat made from some kind of faux leather with a bunch of extra insulation around the barrel and neck. I met her eyes. Green eyes the colour of jade stared into mine intensely.

“Permittivity?” She yelled before things at her side started to flutter. Wings.

“You’re a pegasus? You could have just escaped if you wanted to,” I yelled back at her, anger seething in my voice.

“Hey, Turbocharger is it? He gets kind of mad like that, but he’s actually pretty nice,” Icepick said as she walked out of the bridge. A moment later the pony flicked her wings out and in one strong wing flap threw herself across the gap between our ships. She landed in one comfortable motion on the deck of the privateer.

“I get that,” the mare said to Icepick before looking back at my enraged expression. “I didn’t want to ruin my pride and joy, even if her fuel tanks are dry and one of her fuel lines are ruined.”

“See she’s pretty reasonable,” Icepick said with a laugh as she offered her hoof to the mare. The pegasus mare, quite a bit shorter than her, took the offered hoof and shook it up and down once.

“You sounded taller on the radio,” Turbo said a moment later.

“I take back what I said,” Icepick replied in a relatively convincing voice.

“Can you tell us where to attach the chains?” I asked her in a neutral voice.

“Yeah, sure,” Turbo said before turning back to Icepick and meeting her gaze. “Oh, and the reason I came here. Paradise is open for business again.”

“What?” Icepick asked immediately. I had a startled look on my own muzzle.

“Well, between a couple of ersatz dive bombers and a bunch of radio-guided speed boats, we kicked the Rangers out of our harbour,” Turbocharger said proudly before kicking up her wings and flying out to one of the wing spars on her plane. She gestured at one of the chains near me. I floated it out to her as Icepick finished picking her jaw off the decking.

“I’m not complaining, even if the rangers aren’t really the biggest threat on the board,” Icepick said as she stroked a chin with her hoof. “Hey, do you think we could catch a ride on this thing to get back there?”

“W-what? What part of out of fuel and a leaking fuel line do you not get?” the pegasus mare yelled as she flew over to the matching wing spar attached to a pontoon. The radial engines were still hot, the air interacting with them was distorted by the heat.

“Well, we can get you some kind of fuel here, and fuel lines don’t seem thathard to replace,” Icepick replied before walking back towards the cabin. I shrugged and continued to help Turbo with her plane.

A few moments later, Icepick rolled out of the cabin with a bottle in her hooves. She held it up in the air as I looked over. The Pegasus and I had finished attaching the tow lines to the aircraft, and Marigold was looking back at us with a bored expression on her muzzle.

“I was gonna save this until the plan got approved, but I feel like right now is a good time to bust it out,” Icepick said as she got closer to the two of us. There was a shift beneath us as the ship started back towards the dock. We could see the crowds starting to come out to the docks to watch as the seaplane was tugged towards them.

“What is it?” I asked before surrounding the bottle with my magic and pulling it towards me gently. Icepick let go of it and walked up to me, she was watching my face as I realized what was in this bottle. It was fifteen year aged rum. Black rum, but aged finely. “T-thank you!” I nearly chirped in surprise as the mare beside me clasped my shoulder before grasping the bottle back in her hoof.

“You wanna crack it open?” Icepick asked as Turbo walked over to the two of us standing on the deck, being watched by a bunch of ponies from Safe Harbor. Without missing a second, I pulled at the top of the cork stopper with my magic. It came off with a quiet pop. Icepick took a look at the bottle before holding it up and dumping a swig of the dark liquor into her gullet. I baulked a bit at the display, but the crowds watching us pull in didn’t seem to care. Fuck it I guess.

I grasped the bottle in my magic and dumped an appreciable amount of the liquor into my mostly full stomach. I smacked my lips audibly as I enjoyed the rich and multifaceted taste of the rum. Turbocharger had gotten to within a meter of us, and the two of us turned to face her. She looked at the bottle with something approaching lust-

“Give the girl a drink, she almost lost her baby,” Icepick said, before laughing heartily. I did as she suggested and passed the bottle over to the pegasus. The Paradise mare lifted the bottle up, letting the sun’s rays pass through the glass twice and the rum once. Then she lifted it back and took a reasonably sized swig of the liquor.

“Thanks, Icepick, maybe you’re not as intimidating as I thought without your armour, but you’re a lot more relaxed than I expected,” Turbocharger said before watching Icepick knock back even more of the fine fluid. Icepick let the bottle float into my hoof before I recapped it.

“Ehh, I’m usually pretty easy-going,” Icepick started to say as she wiped her lips with the side of a forehoof. “But honestly, I’m just getting the fun part of being on a boat with booze and a new acquaintance out of the way. The next part is gonna rely on me being slightly tipsy and really charismatic.” We looked at her strangely, before watching her lift her right foreleg into the air and keep it there. She looked strong in the sunlight, the light glinting off of her blonde locks, and being half-absorbed, half-reflected by her steel grey coat.

“What are you doing? What are you talking about?” I asked as I tapped her on the shoulder, with a bemused expression on my face.

“You’ll see, and hear,” Icepick said in a slightly apprehensive voice.

“So, did you really come out here to stop an Arab from using a balefire bomb?” Turbo asked.

“Yep, but that was yesterday’s news,” Icepick said with a quick turn towards her. The murmuring of the crowd was growing louder as Icepick kept her hoof in the air…

And then, she took a breath and swept her head back and forth along the crowd, meeting many pony’s eyes. The sound of her throat being cleared hit the air as Turbo and I watched her curiously. We were maybe thirty meters from the docks. And we were still going forward. Icepick pumped her hoof in the air once, before starting-

“Ponies of Safe Harbor, I’m happy to be a bearer of good news,” Icepick began in a loud voice, yelling but not shrill. The crowd looked confused, even as their murmuring quieted down. “Today we celebrate the liberation of a city much like yours, a free city! Granted, I already started celebrating as soon as I heard.” There was a laugh from the crowd as they all knew what she was talking about, the visible pulls from the dark liquor bottle echoing through their minds.

“Let me give you a few more details,” Icepick started before dropping her right hoof and placing it over her chest. “The city of Paradise, which had a hostile fleet blockading it and threatening it with its guns, was able to throw off the yoke it had been placed in. They used all of their ingenuity, all of their spirit, and a lot of explosives-” She smiled wryly at that last part, briefly glancing back at her Cutie Mark, before starting up again. “To get their fleet out of their harbour. I must confess that the ponies they were fighting were my old order, the Sall’han Rangers. But, at this point, we as free ponies, the common pony, the common zebra, the common Arab, we must throw off our loyalties to the old order. A new world is coming, something radically different than the isolated, separate old world that was created by the bombs-” She took a deep breath and held her foreleg out in front of her. Her tail swung behind her once, decisively.

“Our struggle is their struggle,” Icepick said before taking a deep breath. “The sad truth though, it’s something harder to swallow than solidarity with our fellow free ponies. The truth is that, as of right now, there is a mechanized, and advanced army and fleet controlled by a power that enslaves and terrorizes their Arab population. And they aren’t even the biggest threat to Sall’han, and the lives of the ponies living here. The biggest threat will come from deeper in the desert, a place where another world crosses over into ours, where an evil being, pulls the strings and threatens to invade us all. Already, agents and equipment from the Empire have been flooding into our world.”

Icepick took that moment to look over at me, before uncorking the bottle and taking another swig from it. I made a choice, I walked up to her, before throwing a foreleg over her broad shoulders. She smiled at me, thanks written into her expression, before looking back at the crowd.

“However, I don’t believe history is written in advance, and I believe that a righteous, popular cause is something that can inspire us all to do what needs to be done. We need guns, ships, and ponies willing to use them.” She paused and looked over to Turbo charger, who had pulled out a cigarette as she watched Icepick speak. “That pony over there, she’s an example of a heroic soul, someone willing to risk danger and capture to get information over to us.”

Icepick loosened herself from my grip and my leg fell towards the decking. I watched as she turned around and started towards the other mare. Turbo gave me a single pleading look, before Icepick got to her. The larger mare picked up her smoking foreleg and lifted it into the air.

“You can be like her, you can do your part in the fight to come, for all of us, for the free ponies of Sall’han!” Icepick said with a note of load finality, before letting go of the other pony as we pulled into our original dock. For a moment there was no response from the crowd-

And then, a single solitary clap of hooves on the pier could be heard. Then, another joined the stomping, another, and then five more, within a few moments a majority of the ponies were whooping and stomping into the deck. The large crowd moved by Icepick’s words.

“Alright, obviously you folks want a little more. Well, I’ll give you my other stump speech, the one I’ve been working on in my free time, the one I planned on giving on the eve of a big battle or something like that-” She stopped and waiting for the crowd to respond. They quieted down, with something like anticipation in their eyes.

“Well, I like you, and I’m gonna spend a little more time in your town,” She began slowly, with that smile taking up her whole face, everything but her eyes, which seemed to burn with an intensity that lit up her whole face. “So, here I go. We stand on the brink of a great battle, a war that will decide which way Sall’han goes. Maybe, what way the world goes. Will it be brought back to the darkness, the deprivation of the past, the dark age engulfing Zebrica, Equestria and most of the old world. Or will we decide that enough is enough, we’ve learned our lesson and we’re ready to march into the future as free ponies!” There was a cheer as the crowd heard her words. “When we take back our future from the forces that want to chain us down, when we lose the bonds that hold us to the past, when we link our hooves and create the world we want to live in, together-” The crowd grew louder, even as the our ship came to a stop and dropped anchor as Marigold went about actually doing what needed to be done on the ship.

“Then we can rest a bit easier, with strong allies at our backs and shared technology and resources making all of our lives better. Do you know what my buckfriend and I our proposing to your council right now? A power grid built from the old spark reactors that you have rusting in your ships right now, something we’ll build with your help and your hooves. Something you can be proud of, something that you can get a whole hell of a lot of value out of. I mean, electric lights and refrigerators are awesome, just trust me on this.” Icepick took a pause to let the ponies listening react to her latest bombshell. The cheers were louder now, and growing in volume.

“My ponies, the ones who choose to fight alongside me, we aren’t just soldiers, we’re technicians, scientists, and workers too. We know how to build as well as how to destroy, and that’s why you should go make your voices heard in the streets, in the taverns, at your job. Tell your leaders that you want Electricity, that you want to support your fellow free ponies, and that nothing will stand in the way of a bright future if we stand together!” Icepick pumped her right leg into the air triumphantly, before letting it slide down to her chest again.

“I’m just one pony, but I’ll fight for what’s right,” she lost her volume for a second, and a note of something approaching a plea entered her voice. “All I can ask each of you, is to do the same.” She finished speaking and looked back at me. The bottle was in front of me, a fair amount of it already imbibed. Still, I grasped it with my magic and started to follow her as she walked towards the edge of the deck, towards the dock. The cheering wasn’t dying down this time, it simply crescendoed upwards, towards participation for everypony on the shore.

Icepick smiled at them all and waved towards the ponies on the edge of the dock. They made a path for her and I, and as I gave a glance behind me, I knew our new Pegasus friend was following behind as well… Even as the crowd started to break up, the stomping and hollers continued unabated-

Whatever else Icepick had done in her life, she had learned how to get ponies fired up. Then again, wasn’t a crowd like a bundle of explosives, waiting for the right trigger? I shook my head and looked at Icepick for a moment. I started to clear my throat, then I saw the exhaustion on her face, the uncertainty-

My little hypotheses could wait. We had a meditation lesson to complete.

---===*===---

“Welcome back,” Zahn said in his deep voice as we trotted into his home. When I scanned his living room as I normally did, I was surprised to see Zenji sitting in one of the chairs, a teacup sitting on a coaster beside her.

“Sorry for ditching you,” Icepick said with a tired tone.

“From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, you had a good reason to leave with haste,” Zahn’s eyes met mine as he said this. I met his gaze, before looking over to Zenji.

“I felt it,” I replied quietly. “The everything, the oneness-”

“You saw the plane, sputtering and in trouble,” Zahn said.

“Yes, that too,” I said with a note of confusion in my voice-

“It was beyond the mountains, beyond sight, beyond the senses available to you normally,” Zahn cut me off with a smile. “Incredible, and this was your first time viewing the unity.”

“What?” I asked him suddenly, trying to remember what exactly I had seen in my mind’s eye as I found the plane. There were life signs, reactors, talismans-

“You saw the world in another way, the truer way,” Zenji said breathlessly.

“I saw everything spewing electromagnetism, and magic,” I started to say before realizing something else. “And the engines of the plane, they looked odd, so I focused on them.”

“So you could’ve watched anything, seen anything with your magic, and you chose to focus on a plane,” Icepick surmised with an open expression as she took a sip of tea. Zenji having hoofed her a cup a few moments ago.

“To answer your question, yes there were lots of ponies I could’ve viewed as abstract fields of energy, but there was only one plane in the air,” I replied as I took a deep breath, I let it out a moment later.

“Fair enough,” Icepick said before taking another sip of her tea. The other mare giggled lightly at our antics.

“Now you’ve reached a level few achieve, but there is more to learn,” Zahn said a moment later.

“Teach me,” I said breathlessly. My eyes were wide as he opened his mouth.

“I’ll try,” Zahn said a moment later. Icepick and Zenji just stood there, drinking their tea and threw a smile my direction when I looked towards them. Icepick winked at that, before pulling Zenji towards her. There was a look of surprise on the stoic zebra as Icepick said something to her. “But enough for today. I need to close down the kitchen.” I looked at my Terminal and saw the time. The sun was certainly on its way down.

“Alright, well, when should we meet next?” I asked quickly, notedly looking away from the conspiring mares.

“I’m free to do whatever I want in my old age,” Zahn said with a grin.

“So, whenever I’m free?” My words were a question, but they came out a little blunter than I intended.

“Knowing how the council is going to vote, you’re going to be busy,” Zahn said with a laugh.

I just shrugged and got to my hooves. I bowed towards Zahn, to which he smiled enigmatically. My horn lit up and I grasped Icepick, pulling her out of the chair and onto her hooves. She shot a look of mild betrayal at me, I ignored it and started towards the door. Zenji took that moment to get up out of her chair gracefully, before walking towards the large Orangutan. They embraced for a moment, before breaking apart, with Zenji following the two of us towards the back entrance of the place. A wooden fire escape lay beyond the door…

---===*===---

“Today, we stand before the people of Safe Harbor, the future laid out before us. It was not in our mandate to electrify the city, nor was it in our mandate to contact the outside world. But we have heard your cries, your pleas, and we have listened,” Blackwood said before stomping his hooves into the fresh lumber of the platform. The microphone in front of him was something unfamiliar to him, yet he clung it like it was his birthright. His voice was proud and strong, something that a head of state should sound like.

“Today we lay the beginning of our future out, we break ground for the next stage in our history. That’s what you’ve decided, and we back you with all of our power,” Blackwood said before clearing his throat. “Tomorrow, we open the doors of a new agency, the electrification service. Anyone with the willingness to aid us, with the time to devote, anyone who dreams of a brighter future-” He broke off and looked sweepingly at the crowd. He lifted his hoof in the air just as Icepick had the day before. “They can join the agency, and be paid for their hard work. Not even our allies in the Equine liberation army, they haven’t done this before, but they’re going to help us build something new. And for that, we should thank them, however, they are few, and we are many. We cannot afford to let this opportunity pass us by-”

I lost interest as he moved away from sweeping rhetoric, and the important phrasing he has used regarding us. Allies. We had another set of ponies willing to back us. And now, we had a name for ourselves, something that had been hard to come to a consensus about. Icepick stood beside me, watching intently. This was a day of celebration, but tomorrow, the real work would begin.

Then again, from the reaction of the crowd, we would have the pony power necessary to accomplish this task. The pay would be good, Blackwood added in the middle of his speech. I smiled as the crowd grew louder…

Now we just needed to get the celebrations over with.

---===*===---

“You ordered more than a thousand wooden poles?” Icepick asked me as I stood on the other side of the desk from her.
“Electrical poles,” I replied softly.

“And a load of transformers for them?” Icepick asked a moment later, exasperation on her face.

“The devil is in the details,” I replied softly, before meeting her eyes. “I never said it would be easy.”

“The council isn’t liking the cost,” Icepick added before leaning back in her chair.

“If they wanted me to cut corners, then they should’ve hired a Celestian,” I shot back with a laugh. “No but seriously, thanks for the speech, there’s enough political pressure on them for them to not back out.”

“The ponies who ran off with all the money,” she said with a snort of her own. She leaned forward over her desk, looking me in the eyes. For a moment I could tell she was distracted by something, then her eyes focused on mine. I stepped forward, Icepick winked at me, before licking her lips-

The door to the room swung open, and Ironsight trotted in with Frostbite in tow. The two ponies had spent more and more time with each other recently. I wondered if the two ponies were into one another

“Uh, Icepick, Perm, a lot of ponies showed up to the recruitment center,” Ironsight said as she trotted into the room, before dropping into a chair in front of the desk. I spared a glance at the silent stallion as he trotted into the room and beside Ironsight.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Icepick said as she leaned back and threw her hinds onto the desk. The chair squeaked as it was leaned backwards.

“There are a thousand ponies out there, at least,” Ironsight said with a note of exasperation in her voice.

“So, go hunt down some more hard hats,” Icepick replied before yawning. She looked at me, before laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked as Icepick’s gave shifted between the three of us.

“We’re gonna bankrupt this town,” Icepick said before laughing louder.

“Probably,” I said as her peels of laughter died down. “So, should I get them started digging post holes?”

“Damn, we really are creating government jobs,” Icepick said a moment later, before nodding. “That’s really all we can do, until we get the parts we need.”

“You’re forgetting the actual, you know, parts of the grid,” Ironsight said with a note of annoyance in her voice.

“Well, salvaging reactors is a little more sensitive than digging holes, we’ll have the trained ponies do that,” Icepick said with a note of concern. “On the other hoof, we could probably send the mob out to gut the wiring from those ships. That’s a good point, and it’s not exactly hard to gut a ship.”

“Are there even enough tools in this city to facilitate a workforce this large?” Frostbite asked with a worried expression on his face.

“Probably,” Icepick said before spinning the chair and taking her hinds off of the desk. “Did you already get their information?”

“We’re working on that,” Ironsight said with a shudder. “Payroll is going to be a bitch. Like, how are we going to keep track of that?”

“Easy, we just pay ponies at the end of each shift,” Icepick said before standing to her hooves and stretching.

“So, we just get a bunch of sacks, fill them with money, and pass them out at the end of the shift?” Ironsight asked, before smiling.

“Do you think we need to be more complex than that?” I asked the ponies in the room before a barrage of shrugs and grins met my eyes.

“Let’s go tell them how this is going to work,” Icepick said as she started towards the door.

“This is going to be a clusterfuck,” Ironsight said with a shake of her head.

“Oh, that was clear from the moment I made that speech,” Icepick replied with a grin on her muzzle. Her head was held high though, and she looked every bit the leader she was.

“On the bright side, my legs better,” Frostbite said as he held open the door for us. Icepick blew out the candles in the room, leaving only the light coming through the window into the room. They had loaned us a floor of an underused government building to use.

“Next time we get in a bar fight, lets not hurt ourselves, alright?” Icepick asked her question with a laugh as we all walked into the hallway.

“Agreed,” I said as I thought about my own fight against those ponies.

“Next time?” Ironsight asked with worry in her voice.

Icepick, Frostbite, and I just laughed.

End Chapter (XXII): Catalyst, Combustion And Calm

Author's Note

Sorry about the delay. I hope you like this chapter anyway!

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
https://www.patreon.com/Sunnydontlook
https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

And a new discord server for me to connect with my fans, and well, to hang out in: https://discord.gg/dxfCZzV

The Conspiracy Of Equals (XXIII)

Author's Note

Hey, it's a been a while. This chapter is a good one, I think and it delves into the pasts and futures of our main characters. It also contains some really explicit sex at the end, so if you wanna skip that, just pretend the chapter ends after the last chapter break!

Anyway, thank you for sticking with this meandering story this far.

Commissions are open by the way!

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
https://www.patreon.com/Sunnydontlook
https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

And a new discord server for me to connect with my fans, and well, to hang out in: https://discord.gg/dxfCZzV

The Conspiracy Of Equals (XXIII)

The sun started its descent down the sky, warming us even as it warned us of the coming darkness. I smiled slightly at it. Permittivity was beside me, and he had a mug of something alcoholic in it. He deserved it. The crowd of ponies below us, they were waiting with bated breath…

And all at once, the lights above the streets came on. They weren’t that bright compared to the setting sun, but they were on-

“Citizens of Safe Harbour, tomorrow we head back to our homes,” I started to say. The microphone hummed like an electric itch at the back of my throat. “It’s with a heavy heart that I say those words. We’ve left a lot of the project behind for you all, you need to electrify your homes, and build the devices to run off of them. But, you were the ones who did most of the heavy lifting, so I’m sure you’ll do a better job wiring your own homes than we could-” I stopped and tapped on the microphone stand. It rang with a single note as the vibrations travelled through it.

The applause began, it was fluid, and it writhed and stretched through the crowd. Eventually, though, the ponies below us stopped stomping and cheering. The lights at the edge of the Plaza grew brighter, as the sun grew dimmer.

“What I want to leave you with is this, we’re stronger together than alone, and a group of ponies set to a task can do anything. They might have the guns, the heavy weapons, and all the soldiers they can get to fight for them. What they don’t have is the spirit to build something better for all of us. When they come, we need to meet them, and try our hardest to break their chains too!”

The cheers crescendoed upwards and spilt over the plaza like a wave at high tide. I smiled at them all, before turning around and walking towards the docks. Blackwood walked over to the vacant podium and started speaking about the continuation of the project. What he didn’t want to add was, the power grid was contingent upon the rest of Sall’han wanting to trade-

“Thank you Icepick, thank you, everyone, for making this dream a reality,” Blackwood began with a nod towards me. I bowed at the attention, before starting towards my rack. Well, my cabin aboard the Privateer.

---===*===---

“I’m so ready to leave,” I said from the bed. Permittivity was standing beside the desk, a glass of amber liquid levitating beside his mouth. I was stretched out and splayed like I was making a sand angel. Everything ached, everything was tired.

“I feel you there,” Permittivity said before taking a sip of his drink. “It’s been a long time since arriving on this island.” He stopped when we heard a knock at the door.

“Come on in,” I said as I watched the door unlock under the effects of Perm’s magic. It slid open a moment later. Two ponies stood abreast beneath the doorway. Ironsight and Frostbite. Perm took the opportunity to limp over to the bed, I could see the exhaustion in every step he took.

“Hey Icepick, Perm,” Ironsight said as she stepped into the room and sat down on the desk chair. Permittivity had sprawled out just like I had, and with a huff of exertion, he had grasped me in his magic and pulled me closer to him. I rewarded him with a nuzzle against his neck and a foreleg draped over his midsection.

“What is it? I’ve been waiting for a quiet moment for like, weeks,” I said with a little too much annoyance showing through.

“I understand that trust me, I want to snuggle up to a nice stallion too,” Ironsight said as Frostbite choked up a little at her words.

“I mean, this bed is pretty big, who says you can’t do both?” I said with a smile just barely concealed.

“Uh sure,” Ironsight said before throwing herself towards the mattress. Landing in a pile of exhausted equine. I looked down at her, and the tentative movements of the stallion she had brought with her. “So, what are we going to do when we reach Paradise?”

“Honestly, we’re going to try to hold the city,” I replied as I pulled the bottle Perm had gotten his drink from closer to me with a hoof.

“What if we can’t?” Ironsight said as Frostbite finally climbed onto the bed. He was sitting on his haunches and Ironsight had hooked her forelegs around his neck, her own body lying on top of his. They looked comfy, but not as comfy as Perm and I. I did catch Frostbite looking down at my nethers, and I flicked my tail subtly to show that I knew he was. His quiet chastened look was enough reward for me.

“Then we sail over to the Rangers, and fight alongside them,” I replied as Perm rolled over my body and lay atop me. That was one way to stop the other stallion from getting an eye full.

“What about the weapon?” Permittivity spoke up as he laid over me.

“When it’s ready, we’ll use it,” I replied in a quiet voice. The megaspell, rechambered for a different spell. I shuddered at the thought of that weapon.

“How long is that supposed to take?” Ironsight asked as she too cuddled a stallion close to her. They were a cute couple-

“We don’t know,” Permittivity said as he bit his lip. The pain must have refocused him. “It’s a forgotten technology, something that only the likes of Sombra and the great empires of the past achieved.”

“So, we’re gonna try to bleed them out? Try to take them to the bargaining table with what we have?” Ironsight said before seeing the expression on Frostbite’s muzzle change.

“Even after our war, with its millions of casualties, we still have millions more trained and seasoned ponies than you,” Frostbite said with a note of fatalism in his voice. “And no, you can’t just get them to switch sides.”

“That’s true, there are lot more ponies in the Empire than there are in Sall’han, but you’re forgetting something important in the war to come,” I met each of my lieutenant's eyes in turn, the cuddly context notwithstanding. “Logistics.”

“You had to drag all of your supplies through a barren desert, all of it coming from a portal at the top of a tall ancient tower. Even if they can subsist and conquer the food producing regions of Sall’han, they still need all their ammunition, arms, fuel and everything else to come through that portal,” Icepick continued.

“Indeed,” Frostbite said after a moment’s thought. “So there’s hope.”

“Exactly,” Icepick said before snorting derisively. “So does that answer your question Ironsight?” The other mare just nodded a little, before nuzzling her stallion’s neck. “So, get the fuck out.”

“Aye, aye,” Frostbite said with a sloppy salute. He grasped the smaller mare and let her climb onto his back, her legs hanging limply off of his sides.

“Bye Icepick, bye Perm,” Ironsight said as she nuzzled into her buckfriend’s neck.

“Toodles,” Permittivity said before shutting the door behind them. He looked back at me, our eyes meeting. “Well, we managed to get two other ponies into our bed.”

“It is kind of impressive, our raw animal magnetism-” I started to say before the stallion on top of me brought his lips to mine.

“You know me better than that,” Permittivity said when we paused to breathe. “I’m electric.”

“Same thing,” I replied with a shit eating grin that didn’t reach my eyes, those orbs were too busy giving away my feelings-

“Nope, they’re equal and separate, perpendicular to one another, actually,” I heard him say before adding- “Besides, Permeability doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

“I mean, it’d be perfect for a long lost brother slash evil twin,” I added after a few seconds consideration.

“I can bend magnetic fields too so it would stand to reason that any battle between us would be well, pointless,” Permittivity said with a laugh. “Not that I have a secret evil twin with mysteriously similar, but also easy to differentiate features-”

“Like a moustache? Maybe a goatee?” He nodded at my words. I rolled my eyes at him.

“Well, we have a busy day tomorrow, we should try to sleep,” He said after a moment or three of silence. I nodded at that and threw a foreleg over his form and snuggled up to him.

Soon enough, the two exhausted ponies were asleep, though only one of them snored. It wasn’t me.

---===*===---

My eyes opened, and I leaned up in my bed. Above me was a chocolate coated mare with a subtle smile on her muzzle, on the bridge of her muzzle was a small pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

“Wake up little one,” she said softly as I yawned, the sound coming out in high register. I smiled back, and a moment later I threw my covers off of my body and dropped to the wooden floor. It was cold against my hooves, and when I looked up at her, I had to tilt my head back a bunch to meet her eyes.

“Is it really morning?” My voice was male but coltish, and there was a curiosity in it that made me sure of who I was living as.

“Yes, and your first day of school is today,” The mare said softly before turning around and looking over her shoulder at me. Her tail was a dark black, almost obsidian. “You need to eat breakfast, your brother is already sitting at the table.”

“Okay Mom,” I heard Permittivity say with a sleepy chirp. “What is school like?”

“Well, you learn about the world, about math and reading, and about the empire-” His mom heard something, her ears spinning towards a door further down the hall. “I’ll be there soon, and I’ll walk the two of you to school.”

“Was I like that when I was a foal?” Little Permittivity asked as his mother opened the door and the sounds of a crying foal assaulted his ears, and by extension mine.

“You’re still a foal,” the mare said with a tired look over her shoulder. “But, yes, you were like that too.”

“I’m not a foal! I’m a colt!” Permittivity said with an exaggerated huff. But then, his- his mother drifted into the room with the crying foal. Young Permittivity started up for the dining room. The smell of freshly cooked food made him move a bit faster. I just laid back in the weird space, imagining myself back in my bed beside the aged up Permittivity and readied myself to enjoy the memories.

When I stepped around the corner I spotted two other ponies in the room, an older colt, but still a colt, with a similar coat to myself- And a much taller stallion, with a cream coloured coat. He looked over at me and smiled, even as he drank from a steaming cup of coffee.

“First day of school, huh?” The older stallion said with a little laugh at the end.

“I still don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” I said in my coltish voice, “I learn stuff all the time, and I can already read-” The older stallion started towards me, his long curly mane hanging down the sides of his head. I could see where Perm got his build from. That stallion was nice looking, tough and built, but kind. There was no cruelty in that stallion’s eyes. He came up to me as I climbed into a chair that was still a little too big for someone my size.

“Well, you’ll get to make new friends, and eventually, you’ll learn new things,” The stallion said as he ambled up to Permittivity, his coffee forgotten. “Besides, every pony needs an education-”

“Especially the ponies living in the big city!” The other colt in the room said. He was a boisterous kid, and he was an earth pony, just like his father, his mother, and sister. I had forgotten that Perm was the only unicorn in the home.

“There are a lot of very smart ponies living in the Imperial City,” the stallion said with a lightness in his voice. “But there are a lot of smart ponies in Maidenpool.”

“There’s a magic school in the big city, it’s been around for longer than you have, right?” The older brother said in an excited tone.

“I’m not that old, and the imperial academy has been around since Sombra, so yes-” The older stallion said as I bit into the butter covered pancake.

“There are unicorns there, doing magic and doing unicorn things! My friend told me,” the brother said and I looked over at the two of them. I lifted up a foreleg and touched the base of my small horn.

“Unicorns are just like us, they don’t do anything Earth ponies don’t do,” the stallion said before glancing over at me and smiling. “Right Permittivity?”

“I think so?” I said with a shrug before looking back towards my older brother.

“But he’s gonna do magic, maybe you’ll even be able to throw fireballs or go back in time!” His father shook his head and looked over at Perm. Perm was looking his father in the eyes, eyes so similar to his own-

“Maybe he will, maybe you’ll be a great mage someday,” the older stallion said as he walked over and ruffled his younger son’s mane. “But I’ll love you if you do, or don’t.”

“But he totally is, he has a magic sounding name!” Perm’s brother said before standing up from the table and starting towards the barding rack.

“No, Permittivity is the property of a material or the immaterial to store electricity,” his father said before looking at a clock on the wall. “Well, enough lessons for you both, you’ve got school to attend-”

---===*===---

I awoke with a start, and soaked in sweat. I turned over in bed and saw Permittivity staring up at the ceiling, eyes open, and breathing heavily.

“You have a weird dream too?” I asked him as I threw off the sheets and met his eyes with my own. The pensive expression on his muzzle could be made out despite the darkness. He turned to look at me, before swallowing heavily.

“What did yours contain?” Permittivity asked as he flipped onto his side before letting out a deeply held breath.

“I saw a memory of yours, back when you were a cute little shit,” I replied softly, forcing my breaths to be consistent.

“You were young too, perhaps too young to truly remember,” he said quietly before opening his mouth again. “You never knew your parents, correct?”

“I’m a ranger, we don’t do that family stuff-” I said with a note of pain in my voice.

“I saw your mother,” Permittivity said.

“W-what?” I said instantly, the words falling out of my mouth like I was on autopilot.

“She unlocked the door to your room, and ambled in, drink on her breath,” he said breathlessly. “She thought you were asleep, but you were just pretending to be asleep, probably out of fear.”

“What did she say!” I nearly yelled as my mind tried to reconcile the story he was telling me with my own story about myself. It was painful like my body was trying to shield me from an even greater wound.

“Not much, she just told you that she loved you, told you that she was your mother, and kissed you on the cheek,” Permittivity spilled out before adding something else. “As she walked away, you looked at her in the dim light. She looked back, and smiled at you.”

“Did she say her name?”

“No.”

For a moment I just laid there, my heart’s pounding finally starting to abate. I blinked and rolled myself closer to Permittivity, before resting my head on his fluffy chest. He looked at me and rested a hoof on my mane, gently rolling the strands of hair with his hoof. His breathing, his heartbeats, they were solid and steady. They grounded me even as I felt my entire being shake, the aftershocks being nearly as bad as the event itself.

“What was your dream?” He asked softly, never stopping his gentle caresses.

“I saw your family,” I said before adding, “Your father seemed nice, and your mother too.”

“They’re great ponies,” Permittivity said with a far off look in his eyes.

“You know, your brother was right about something,” I said wistfully, waiting for him to beg the question.

“Right about the stock market, right about the war’s end?” Perm said with a burst of not quite anger, bitterness perhaps?

“Nothing like that, he was probably eight in your dream,” I said with a little bit of a laugh. “No, he said that you’d be a powerful unicorn, something about you shooting fireballs and travelling back in time-”

“I haven’t done either of those things,” Perm interceded before I pressed a hoof to his lips.

“Well, I’d say shooting lightning is probably better than fireballs,” I said before adding something else. “Travelling to another world is pretty baller too. But that’s not the point, the point is: your dad loved you, and told you as much-”

“I know,” Permittivity said. I just hugged him.

“They’d be proud of you,” I said in a voice barely above the sounds of our breathing. “Not because you’re strong, or powerful, but because your heart is in the right place.” I could see his smile despite the darkness.

“You’re the reason it beats, the reason why I do all of this-” I cut him off.

“You saved me, I saved you, and we’re all tied up in knots because our souls are duct-taped together,” I said before laughing a bit. He joined me.

“Not exactly the words I would’ve used, but yes,” Permittivity said a few moments later.

“I’m just gonna warn you in advance if you die: I’m gonna burn them all, drench them all in steel rain, and stomp their bones into dust,” there was a coldness in my voice as I said those words. It wasn’t a threat per se, but a promise.

“I won’t die then,” he said with a sad smile on his muzzle. “And if they take you from me-”

“They won’t, you’ve always been the squishier of us,” I said with a lilting voice, before letting my hoof drift over to his shoulder. The bullet that had nearly killed him was nearby. But in the darkness, I couldn’t see the scar tissue that would forever mark him. Maybe he preferred it that way.

“Fair point,” he said with a tired-sounding laugh. It was still dark outside, and we were going to have an exhausting homecoming. We needed to sleep.

“Anyway, we should probably pass out again,” I said with a yawn as the adrenaline of the dreams, and the gravity of our conversation wore off.

“Agreed,” Permittivity said before leaning over and kissing me on the lips gently, barely making contact with mine, before laying back and closing his eyes. A few quiet moments later and his breathing had the soft rhythm of sleep. I joined him soon after.

---===*===---

“There’s the welcoming committee,” Marigold said from the deck of the ship, yelling loudly enough for us inside the cabin to hear her. I could see the ships coming out to meet us. Our little flotilla was matched by the ships of Paradise. Eratz gunboats meeting their opposites. There were five of them, training cannons on us, one even had a howitzer attached to the deck.

I nodded at the pony near the radio and had them turn it on, the soft humming of arcanotech only matched by our breathing.

“-Unidentified ships, identify yourselves,” The sound of a tense stallion came from the radio. They had five ships, we had four. We had an actual gunboat though, and they didn’t. Not that it would come to that- I trotted over to the radio before setting the ancient headset over my ears, leaving the exposed microphone beside my mouth.

“This is commander Icepick of the Equine Liberation Army, this flotilla is here to reinforce your position,” I said before letting off the transmit key.

“Uh- Alright, just stay where you are, I’m consulting with my superiors,” the stallion said before cutting off.

I turned and looked at the assembled ponies around me. Rosetta was staring at the ships of Paradise, Permittivity was watching the reactor output decking, Ironsight was outside, giving hints to the gunner aiming the cannon at the opposing flagship. Beside me was a slightly sea-sick Zenji, she paused and smiled at me, a comforting smile in dire times. Maybe she thought these were dire times-

“Commander Icepick, please proceed in an orderly manner to the nearest free docks, do not attempt to leave, do not initiate any hostile actions,” the stallion said breathlessly as I nodded at the navigator of the Privateer. How the flagship of the flotilla had ended up being a hastily repaired yacht, instead of the more heavily armed and armoured Tempest. Well, this boat had bigger captain’s quarters. And I was shacking up with the captain-

“Acknowledged, now you might wanna get the council on the horn, the situation has changed,” I added with a note of humour. If they didn’t understand the understatement, they would soon.

“Welcome back Icepick,” A new voice cut in. It was familiar-

“High Frequency, you are not permitted to use the military channels,” the stallion in the opposing ship said.

“Hey Frequency, it’s been a while,” I replied with a shrug that could be heard through my voice.

“Do you have a quick, easy explanation for how you left with a steel ranger ship in the dead of night, were gone for a month, and then came back with three more ships?” Frequency asked before adding. “Your answer is being sent out to all the fine ponies of Paradise.”

“To put it simply, we set out to do what we meant to, made some friends and allies along the way, and now we’re back here, ready to fight for Paradise!” I answered with a crescendoing volume to my voice.

“We already kicked the rangers to the curb,” Frequency said with confusion in his voice.

“I know, and I wish that was the end of our problems,” I replied, feeling the tension in my voice climb, but trying not to add to it-

“What are you saying?” Frequency asked, his own tones edging into fraught territory.

“Well, there’s an army of extra-dimensional invaders currently setting up to conquer all of Sall’han, and well, Paradise is the crown jewel of Sall’han,” I replied even as Crescent Moon shook her head. I rolled my eyes at her as I waited for a reply.

“I’m glad you’re here then, but could you give us a little more detail about well, all of that?” The stallion sounded like someone who had been given a bad diagnosis by a doctor-

“You’re cleared to enter the port,” the stallion leading the other ships said rapidly. “And please Frequency, wait till we’ve debriefed these ponies before asking questions over the radio.”

“Fine, but you’re going to come to the studio again, and bring your friends, I think there’s a whole show worth of stuff to talk about,” Frequency said before adding, “Alright, I’m done, debrief and park away.”

“Thank you,” the stallion commanding the Paradise flotilla said.

“Alright, we’re heading in,” I said loudly as I nodded at the pilot to gun it. The reactor picked up in output, and the ship lurched ahead.

“Well, I guess we have an interview,” Permittivity said before letting out a long sigh. “At the cost of a high-frequency transmitter giving away our presence here.”

“We’ll never win this struggle being quiet,” I replied before pulling out the last cigarette in my possession. I took my leave of the deck, with Permittivity following me slowly. The sun was still high in the sky, the light reflecting off of the deep blue of the water. It was a beautiful day, in a beautiful place-

“You want the ponies of Paradise behind you,” Permittivity said before lifting the cigarette out from my raised hoof. “Do you have a plan for if they don’t believe you?”

I watched as his arcing current shot out from the tip of his horn towards the tip of the cigarette, a moment later the sickly sweet smell of rich tobacco floated over to my nose. I snatched the lit cigarette from him and took a deep draw, our ships were flowing through and between the defensive formation offered by the Paradise flotilla. It was a great dance, and in the back of my mind, I realized how effective this fleet would be compared to a pre-war monster like the Ember.

“I mean, if they don’t then they’ll fall,” I said simply, before releasing the pent up smoke in my lungs. It scattered and dissolved into the air, just a few molecules in a sea of air that reached up into the void beyond.

“And if that happens, we retreat and continue the fight till the end,” Permittivity said with weariness in his voice. I stepped closer to him and rested a hoof on his shoulder. There was a resounding hoof step behind us, the empty stern of the ship was normally a quiet place. We turned as one to see a solitary stallion walking over to the edge of the deck. He looked exhausted but relieved all at once. There was a brightness in his eyes though-

“Almost home,” Rosetta said. “I had my doubts about ever seeing it again.”

“Well, I know Page and Dalliance are going to be happy to see you!” I said with a joyousness that I didn’t really feel.

“I wonder how Wellbore Axis is doing?” Permittivity asked a moment later, bemusement written across his face.

“She’ll probably be mad she didn’t come when we tell her about everything,” I said before remembering that we had originally left without telling her goodbye. I shivered a bit, remembering how much things had changed.

‘In a world of sand, nothing is solid.’

“Uh-” Permittivity started to say something, probably that thing I realized moments before, but Rosetta beat him to the punch.

“I don’t think I can face them,” Rosetta said in a resounding voice, but not overly loud.

“Why?” I asked him a moment later, worry written across my face. Permittivity wasn’t far behind.

“I did everything they said I shouldn’t, I almost didn’t come back,” he stopped for a moment as his face angled towards the decking. The sounds of waves lapping against the ship were the loudest sound for a long moment.

“But you did,” I said before trotting over to him, and offering him the quarter burned cigarette. He accepted with a touch of his magic, before taking a petite pull from it.

“You’re a strong pony Rosetta,” Permittivity said before watching me take the cigarette back from him. The pony before me was wrought with tension, and I felt a stab of guilt as I realized how little I had spoken to him in the last couple of weeks.

“Thank you,” Rosetta said before leaning over the edge of the railing. His eyes were locked on ships we were passing through. “I might stay on the ship.”

“No. You’re going to see your mother and Dally,” I said instantly. He looked at me, and our eyes met.
“Why? Why do you even care?” Rosetta belted out, not angry, just cooly curious. It wasn’t something I expected from my emotional friend.

“I-” My words fell away as I stood there. Permittivity was looking at me kindly, understanding flowing from him in a way that made me reach out to him with my eyes.

“Not all of us are lucky enough to have families, nevermind have them close enough to reach,” Permittivity said softly, there wasn’t a bite in his words, but his face drew close like something was driving him towards anger.

“I don’t owe them anything,” Rosetta said in a low voice like his own temper was rising underneath the surface.

“It’s not like that at all,” I said before pressing a hoof to his shoulder.

“I’m exactly the kind of stallion they love to hate now,” Rosetta said before shrugging off my hoof and starting towards the interior of the ship. He looked over his shoulder at us, before straightening out and tensing up his body.

“Something is off about him,” Permittivity said as soon as he left earshot.

“Yeah,” I said before turning to face Permittivity. “He’s been hitting the bottle hard, apparently.”

“I don’t think this is a simple case of Alcoholism,” Perm replied before shaking his head and looking out over the ocean we were pulling away from.

“What do you think it is then?” I asked curiosity and weariness in my voice. I had an alternate thought pop into my mind- Jealousy. I didn’t think that was it, I hoped that wasn’t it, but Rosetta’s actions aside, Perm did have a pretty good reason to distrust the pink stallion.

“He’s got a gaping wound in his heart,” Permittivity said in a quiet tone. The quiet understanding he had cultivated in himself, that better nature he had grown and nurtured shining at that moment-
“Bajada,” I said. He had gotten his revenge, and he had lost someone close. Some ponies would be affirmed by revenge, by slowly killing someone who had killed their love. I was one of those ponies. Maybe, maybe he wasn’t.

“He’s been throwing himself into his work, barely sleeping, and well, his impulse control has deteriorated,” Permittivity said with a scowl. There was the anger that had been bubbling up inside him. I understood then why Permittivity was angry, why he was so understanding at the same time. He could throw all the blame for my cheating on the other stallion, the damaged stallion, and also the stallion who had saved him from death…

“I think he’ll come around,” I said after a few moments of silence passed between us. “I can’t imagine he’ll turn his back on his family.”

I heard a single sound, a deep inhalation of air. And then nothing, I looked over at Permittivity, his eyes were icy, staring across the surface of the seemingly endless sea. But, in my heart, I knew the distances between Perm and his remaining family were such that they needed to be described in coordinates with more than four points-

I embraced him and held him tightly to my chest. It wasn’t enough.

“She’s out there, a stone’s throw away, relatively speaking,” Permittivity said a long time later. We were pulling into the bay now, and soon we would be moored to the dock. Back in Paradise, back to save Paradise.

“I know,” I let my words fall where they lay. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what I could say, what I might’ve said if I felt like there was any point. “Let’s go out tonight.”

“Good plan,” he said quietly before lightly pecking my lips. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said before releasing his body and dropping back to the decking. Our cabin wasn’t far. Paradise was right here. At least, it would be for a while.

---===*===---

As we walked down the streets, we drew a lot of gazes, a lot of gaping mouths and quite a few people waving their hooves in the air at us. The six of us were just walking towards the nearest tavern. Zenji drew the greatest amount of attention, her stripes seemingly to glow in the yellow of the streetlights. I could tell that a lot of the attention was drawn to her flanks, at least, a lot of the stallions had their eyes aimed there-

“So this is Paradise,” Zenji half stated, half asked, as we walked down the street. Far up in the sky, the stars twinkled and the moon shone down on us like the great reflector that it was, dragging whole oceans along with it.

“Paradise Lost, technically,” Permittivity said with an apologetic laugh.

“No-one actually calls it that though,” I added a moment later, with a bump against Perm’s withers to boot.

“It’s still odd seeing this many Equestrians just out and about, not drilling or working on a big project,” Ironsight admitted with a shrug. Beside her stood Frostbite, just taking in the lights, sounds and the smells wafting in from hundreds of kitchens and dozens of restaurants.

“You get used to it,” I said, before pausing and looking at Ironsight. “Let me rephrase that, you learn to love it.”

There was an awkward cough from behind me, I turned and looked at Crescent Moon, trailing behind the group and nearly being lost in the crowds. “What do you think about this place, given you’ve spent nearly as much time in it as we have?”

“I think their security sucks,” Crescent Moon said before shrugging heavily.

“That can’t be your only thought,” I replied hastily, not sure why she was avoiding the question.

“It isn't,” she said before stopping in the street and looking at all of us in turn. “This place is a sad reminder of the path not taken. We could’ve built a civilisation as prosperous and equal as this one, but instead the occupation continued, the evil of the steel rangers only became worse over time.”

“I see-” I started to say, understanding her words.

“So, that’s what I think about this Paradise in the middle of the desert, populated by Equestrians lacking the taint of slavery and oppression- But maybe I’m being harsh. These ponies seem to be more like the ones in the stories, the old ones.”

“The old stories?” I asked suddenly, before starting a little as I felt a hoof on my shoulder.

“Remember what we talked about?” Zenji asked in her musical tones. Crescent Moon looked at her strangely.

“The times before the war,” I said quietly. “The millennia of peace.”

“I don’t know about that, but there are stories of great ships crossing the ocean bringing fabrics, alcohol and lots of other things,” Crescent Moon said with a smile. “There were ponies on those ships, and Zebras too.”

“What?” I asked the assembled ponies loudly. I spun around and located the nearest pub. It was a quarter block away, I pointed at it with a hoof and everyone acknowledged my decision. As we started towards it, a chuckle ran through my body. I was leading my group to the nearest source of Ethanol, because fuck, these deep historical discussions were only tolerable with a decent blood alcohol level.

“It’s simple Icepick,” Zenji said, “We were never enemies until we were.”

---===*===---

They had a booth that would fit six equines, and it was currently filled to the brim. I had my back to the cushioned seat, and Permittivity was pressed into my side, with Zenji and Crescent Moon sitting opposite to us, with Ironsight and Frostbite staring into each other's eyes at the end of the booth. I was crammed into the corner, between Perm and the wall. The thing was, I liked the support. I needed it as the two mares told me more about the past I was lied to about. Zenji only drank water and after some prodding a soda-

“So, like, that’s why I like you,” Crescent Moon said from across the small table top. There were quite a few empty drinks in front of her. And her breath smelled like the inside of a whiskey barrel.

“Because I want to be better, and to make the world better?” I asked suddenly, my brain a bit fuzzy from my own drinks.

“Yes, I mean, kinda,” Crescent said before looking pleadingly at the only sober person at the table. Permittivity had that far off look in his eyes, he was contemplating something deep- Probably.

“You’re a compass, someone that others follow because your sense of justice is sound,” Zenji said before a strange look happened upon her face. A moment later she burped loudly, before giving all of us a look of mild betrayal.

“Yeah!” Crescent Moon nearly yelled before looking me in the eyes. “You helped build Safe Harbour’s power grid, you dismantled the bomb, and you’re going to fix the world or die trying!” Everyone at the table looked at the intoxicated Arab and shrugged. It was pretty obvious that the mare was as toasted as she ever had been.

“It hurts, knowing that I was lied to, knowing that for most of history, Ponies were peaceful, that they had families and goals of their own,” I said before feeling Permittivity’s warm embrace. He pulled me closer to him with a foreleg.

“If it makes you feel any better, I was lied to- too!” Crescent Moon said before meeting my eyes. Her hooves pushed forward along the table top before lightly tapping mine. Maybe it was the drink, maybe it was a moment where I wanted as much comfort as I could get, but I held her outstretched hooves in my own. “My teachers told me that the whole of Sall’han was peaceful, and nearly perfect before the Equestrians invaded.”

“That’s ridiculous, you had a dictatorial monarch, with a Harem of hundreds, and squabbling nobles and lords, all unwilling to spend the money to bring your people into the modern age!” I said loudly, angry at the stream of bullshit spewing out of her mouth.

“All true,” Crescent Moon said before taking another long drink of ale. “And the worst part is, those same nobles were the ponies who had access to the research complex. The descendants of those same nobles make the orders for the foot soldiers, sending them into the guns of the Steel Rangers.”

“Who do you think was calling the shots for us? The fucking rich bastards who owned Equestria, they were the ponies that sent us over here. Ironshod firearms, Consolidated Freight, Mercurial Energy, and the list goes on. Half of those companies were owned by nobles or families that bought their way into the nobility!” A surprisingly angry Ironsight said.

“Where did you find that out?” I asked, surprise evident in my voice.

“Icepick, my mom is a high up, she’s seen all the old orders, the intelligence reports and the surveys done back then. We’ve been working on broad orders issued back before Equestria was a radioactive shithole, by those same fuckers that got the homeland bombed,” Ironsight replied, spittle nearly flying from her mouth. I had forgotten about all of that, all of the internal intrigue and political games played from within the Ranger hierarchy.

“The powerful have always played a game all their own, sometimes egregiously, sometimes less so,” Zenji said a moment later.

“The war,” Frostbite said in a low voice.

“Sombra didn’t do it alone,” Permittivity said while looking towards the other stallion. “We were lied to about the war, they told us it would be over in a year and afterwards our honour would be secured.”

“The celebrations, the parades as we left our towns,” Frostbite added a moment later.

“How many of us came back home in coffins,” Permittivity said a moment later.

“We lost our home, and in our heartache, we tried to recreate it using the things we had,” I said quietly. “That’s why my ancestors allowed the Sall’han Rangers to become what they became, a monstrosity.” I took a deep breath and looked at all the assembled ponies. “No more! This is a time of change, and in the new world this war creates, we’ll have no nobles, everyone will be equal under the law, and everyone will be free to pursue their own lives!”

A pony at a table beside ours looked my way as I yelled and smashed my hoof on the table. My blood was up, and the stallion’s gaze made me feel alive. He tapped his friend on the shoulder as I raised myself up on the table.

“You’re a shining example of what a free world can be, how beautiful, how innocent!” I yelled at the stallions looking at me. I looked down as I felt the table shift a little underneath me. Crescent Moon was shakily climbing onto the table, and without thinking about it, I pulled her up with my foreleg. She cradled like it was the only thing holding her up. It probably was.

“What?” The stallion said in confusion.

“See, you’re Equestrians, but you aren’t like, taught to be racist and imperialist at birth,” Crescent Moon yelled out while looking at the stallions. More ponies were looking our way, at the two crazy mares on the table. One of which was an exotic looking Arab mare, the other an amazonian blonde ranger. She looked down at the leg she was holding onto before turning her head up to look at me. “Then, again, this one was racist as fuck, but… She got better.”

“Thanks,” I said blushing slightly at the compliment from someone I respected and who I had treated terribly in the past.

“Her buckfriend helped,” the drunken mare said before looking down at Permittivity and Ironsight. “You know, those invading ponies from the other universe, they do have a hot accent. And they’re not racist, just misguided.”

The stallions at the adjacent tables looked confused, marginally aroused and curious what the rambling intoxicated mare was getting on about. And then, she looked at me, and in the deep brown of her eyes, I could see exactly where her mind was going- I guess it was the right moment to figure out exactly how egalitarian I had become.

I let go of her leg and she started to fall towards the table. Without breaking a stride I grabbed her barrel in my legs and tossed her back to her hooves. In her new position, her head was facing mine, her ass pointed at the opposite table. Her eyes bored into mine, a clear question on her lips. I answered with my own lips. There wasn’t really a difference in kissing between her and Perm, or any other pair of lips. There was a difference in the feelings I had in the moment, I was worried about how everyone would take it, how I would feel about it later, and how it might make things more complicated between her, Perm, and I…

But those were washed aside as her tongue poked at my lips, and as she explored my mouth and met my tongue, I pulled our chests together, hooves drifting over her back and withers. She could play at that game, a realization that struck me when she started touching my body with her hooves. My tongue had let hers explore for a few seconds, but now it was inside her mouth, fighting for control and pleasure. There was a loud gasp from the table behind her, the stallions watching two mares make out heavily in front of them. The restaurant was watching too- A moment later I felt magic pull us apart and push the both of us back into our chairs. It was a blue aura that surrounded us. Even in my drunk state, I knew what that meant-

“You’re both insane,” Ironsight said as she looked at the two of us, now sharing a nervous smile as Crescent Moon pushed her long mane out of the way of her flushed face.
“Indeed,” Permittivity said before looking between us with a look of disagreement, and barely concealed interest.

“I’ve seen worse,” Frostbite said with a hearty laugh. I smiled at the snow white stallion. Ironsight saw my look and protectively clutched her newfound stallion with a hoof.

“H-hey, I’m just happy to be here, with my friends,” I managed to say with an admittedly dopey smile on my face.

“Ah, it’s nice to see such feelings in the air, new sensations, new experiences, and the synthesis of new ideas from our different pasts,” Zenji said with an unreadable smile on her muzzle. There was always something slightly aloof about that mare, some enigmatic element that never left but rarely outshined the rest of her.

“I’ll drink to that,” Crescent Moon said before raising her glass in the air, half consumed drink sloshing around from the slight shaking of her leg.

“No you won’t, you’ve had enough, we’ve all had enough,” Permittivity said with a sober tone that stung like Ice on bare skin. He was acting like an adult, like someone who had responsibilities to the people around him. I wasn’t, I wasn’t cut out for a serious role-

No, one kiss does not a bad leader make. My eyes were drawn to the gentle telekinesis around her glass. She relinquished it with a huff, before sticking her tongue out at Permittivity. He shrugged at her before pulling the glass away.

“I think it’s time for bed,” Permittivity added after his more pressing duty was completed.

“I was getting tired anyway,” Crescent Moon shot back.

“I wholeheartedly believe you,” Permittivity said in a tone that made it clear that was thoroughly not the case.

“I am a little tired,” I admitted. The day had been long, and tomorrow was probably going to be longer.

“Dancing on a table probably didn’t help,” Ironsight quipped. The mare had an odd look in her eyes, even as she held hooves with Ironsight, it was like she was seeing something no-one else could-

“But it was fun!” Crescent Moon shot back and I jumped a little as I felt her hind hooves trail up my own hinds. I looked at her, she turned away just enough that I couldn’t see her eyes. I let one of my forelegs drift underneath the table, before grasping her hind hoof and dragging it up a few centimetres, closer and closer to my nethers.

“Fun to watch,” Frostbite said with a laugh. He was a little toasted himself, but well, that guy needed it more than anyone here.

My moan was barely stifled as her hind leg touched the edge of my cunt. Permittivity’s eyes opened wider, which I wasn’t sure what to make of until I felt a second leg descend down to my spread hinds. He looked away, towards Iron and Frost, but I knew where his attention really was…

“You know, you should get a room,” Ironsight said a moment later. She and Frostbite shared a laugh as Permittivity and Crescent suddenly shifted, pulling their legs away from my surprisingly wet pussy.

“G-good idea,” Permittivity admitted sheepishly. I just smiled at Ironsight, sparing half glances at the two ponies who had been pleasing me moments before. She just rolled her eyes.

---===*===---

“This is your room,” the hotel pony said, his funny hat looked extra funny to my intoxicated brain.

“Thank you,” I said to him. Permittivity was already in the room, and Crescent was walking into it. The moment the two of them were inside, he grasped her with his magic and his hooves, before pulling her into a deep kiss.

“Uh, you’re welcome,” the stallion said while giving the room and its occupants a side glance.

“Good night,” I said in a lilting voice, before leaning forward and giving the stallion a peck on the cheek. He flushed and started towards the relative safety of the front desk.

The door shut loudly, as I kicked it with my hinds. I locked eyes with both of the other ponies, Permittivity and Crescent, the two of them laying on the bed, with Crescent underneath him, her eyes widened as I trotted over to the bed.

“So, it’s been a while since I’ve fucked a mare,” I said loudly, before laying down on the bed beside them. Perm leaned up as Crescent Moon spread her hinds out needily.

“How long has it been since you fucked a mare and a stallion at once?” Permittivity asked with an intoxicated and horny expression on his muzzle. He threw himself backwards with his magic, landing on his back and spreading his legs, cock hard and sticking up in the air.

“Since never,” I admitted. “I’ve only been with girls a couple of times, and it was out of mutual desperation.”

“So nothing’s changed?” Crescent said as she climbed up to me, before leaning down, her legs on mine, her chest pressed against mine-

“Well, I’ve never been with an Arab before,” I said before pressing my lips to hers hungrily. Her gleaming dark mane fell onto my face, and my forelegs grasped at her body again. Her hips bucked against mine, her wetness starting to drip onto mine.

“I’ve never kissed a girl before,” Crescent said as we broke the kiss. Permittivity snorted and his cock twitched at the sight before him, his magic was wrapped around it, the gentle blue contrasting with the tan flesh.

“Have you ever kissed one of those before?” I asked her as Permittivity rolled his eyes, his hips shuddered a bit as he saw into the future. She smiled broadly, reminding me a bit of just how drunk we all were. I shook my head half a degree, it was enough to clear it of that particular wet blanket of a thought-

“No, but if you want to show me how,” Crescent said before giggling a bit. I rolled my eyes about five times, before pushing the lanky mare off of me, and getting to my hooves, before starting towards Permittivity, the lucky bastard of the evening.

“Well, you start by leaning down,” I said to her, looking over my shoulder to see her stumble back to her hooves. Permittivity grinned at me as I bent down, rubbing the base of his shaft with my forehoof. It pulsed in my hoof, and without waiting for her to catch up, I let my head drift down to the head of his cock. I placed a single, wet kiss on the end of if, before dropping my body back down onto the comfy bed. A moment later, I felt the mattress shift beneath me. A hoof joined my own on Perm’s cock. It had a light brown colouration, and before I could think another thought, her wet lips pressed against mine-

“Would you care to do that a few centimetres further forward?” Permittivity asked as the two of us traded touches and caresses with our tongues, even as our hooves jointly stroked his cock, rubbing his pre-cum all over the mottled length.

“Should we?” Crescent Moon asked as we broke our kiss, her face was flushed red, and her tail was flicking back and forth behind her excitedly.

“He did just build a whole electrical grid,” I said with a shrug. And then I leaned forward, letting my tongue trace a straight line up his cock. I felt everything: his balls, churning with seed and aching for release; the dark salty skin of his sheath; his medial ring, which I ran my tongue along from side to side, feeling his cock pulse at the attention and warmth, and finally, his head, with a thick dollop of pre-cum on the top…

Permittivity moaned heavily, before opening his eyes widely, as a second tongue wrapped around his shaft, before doing the same dance mine had-

“Aaaah,” Crescent moaned just as I felt a tendril of magic push into my wet marehood. My moan joined hers as his horn lit up a degree, spreading the two of us out further.

“You’re playing dirty!” I said as I pulled my mouth off of his cock, glaring at him lovingly. I picked myself up off of the mattress, before climbing up and over him. I stood above him, looking down at my mate’s piercing eyes. They met mine, a question hidden in them. Then, a moment later the question was gone, replaced with something different. The magic spreading my pussy out was gone in a flash, but as soon as my mind registered that, I felt a wet tongue press against my folds, searching out my clit…

“I have an even more debauched idea,” Permittivity asked as I felt my legs shake and my tail draw away from my nethers. The sounds of amateur cunnilingus and heavy breathing filled the room, mostly because I was trying to hide how hot being eaten out by a mare was to me-

She was good, really good.

“W-what’s that?” I managed to ask, even as I placed my forelegs on the bed beside Perm’s chest. My forelegs dropped down, and a moment later, his cock was pressed against my pussy, and a moan from Permittivity told me he felt it too. He was warm and hard against me, the girthy instrument that I knew very well… And that tongue, the tongue that had found out the magic of tongue fucking!

“You should ride me, and she should sit on my face,” Permittivity said breathlessly, as I picked that moment to shake my back end, grinding my wetness against his cock. He looked up into my eyes with a stunned and pleased expression.
“Are you up for that?” I asked Crescent even as she lifted my tail up further with a hoof, before jamming her muzzle into my pussy, spreading it out and pushing her tongue into me deeper than before. My body tingled from the overload of pleasure. Somehow, Perm sensed that and decided this was the moment to pull me down into a deep kiss. My mouth was gaping open from the pleasure and his tongue dipped into my mouth to find my tongue, to touch it with his own, to watch my eyes open a degree wider as my brain struggled to make sense of the sensations assaulting me-

And then, she pulled her tongue from my nethers and got to her hooves, suddenly a bit more coordinated. Permittivity pushed his hips up against mine, sending lightning up my body, or maybe he was electrocuting me pleasingly…

My ass got the hint, even if my brain was being slow, and it raised up into the air, Permittivity’s magic spreading my lips out while pointing his cock up at it. I dropped down and felt myself spread out by his thickness. My tongue might have been lolling out, but the moment that I had a mare’s ass put in front of it, I rammed my head forward. Perm’s face was directly beneath her dripping honey pot, and my tongue was pushing deeper into her tunnel.

“Don’t stop, by the stars,” I heard Crescent say as we both attacked her pussy with our tongues. Not that we had forgotten about our own coupling, I was just about to raise myself up and off of him when he pushed me upwards with his hips and his magic. I felt myself clench in surprise and felt him pulse in response, my body getting past his medial ring before running out of upwards momentum, gravity pulled me back down, and my brain short-circuited as his medial ring stretched out my cunt.

“I won’t,” I said with a moan as I took a second to breathe, before diving back into her pussy, my tongue soaking in the juices she was making. Whatever heterosexual inhibitions I had kept until then, they were gone now. Then again, there was a cock inside me at the moment, and it was throbbing inside me. I moaned deeply as something inside me sung. Permittivity had kept pushing himself into me, and all I could do was enjoy the ride, his magic keeping a perfect tempo, and judging by her moans, he was playing with her clit like it was a metronome-
I decided I wanted to take charge, I arrested my bouncing motion on his cock by spreading my hinds out and disrupting his magic. I took a moment to just enjoy the delicious feeling of fullness as he hilted in me, his fat cock stretching me out just perfectly. And then my clit decided to wink out against him, and I practically screamed into Crescent’s pussy. She moaned at the added vibrations and I took that moment to push my body up, practically to the top of his length, before dropping back down and revelling in the friction of his twitching cock and my shuddering walls.

I felt his cock begin to flare, and Crescent’s moans were crescendoing ever upwards-

For a moment my mind went elsewhere. Would diplomatic immunity apply to noise complaints?

As my hips pushed back down on his cock, I decided I didn’t care. Come what may, I would cum!

My clit agreed with me, as it shot out against his base, dripping nectar all over him and the poor sheets. The electricity was arcing up and down my spine, almost in time with my hips. The feeling was amazing even as I heard and felt the coup de grace of Perm’s dirty mind- A tendril of electrical magic drifted up past my spread folds, before burying itself into my ass and spreading out. My mouth gaped open as I tried to breath, the sensation being joined by the feeling of fullness as I fell the last couple of centimetres down his shaft-

“Perm!” Crescent moaned out as she too got an electric tendril in her ass. The gush of girl juice that followed after the moan was enough to set me off, the sheer sexy femininity setting me off. Though, the cock and the magic inside me helped too-

“You asshole!” I said as I felt my pussy and ass clench up around the things inside me, my whole body shaking and shuddering as I came. A moment later I felt the warmth and flaring that told me Perm was about to paint my insides white. Crescent fell onto her side, leaving Perm’s wet muzzle and pussy eating grin staring into my eyes- I clenched up as an aftershock of my orgasm hit me, and that was the moment that he clenched up beneath me, his hooves grabbing at my ass and squeezing hard as his cock pulsed and shot seed deep inside of me.

I leaned down and kissed him as his cum shot into me and over the bed, our friend having pulled herself closer to Perm, one of her hooves rubbing his chest, the other holding her head up to watch his cum begin to drip out of me…

“Warn me next time!” I said as I broke the kiss. He nodded at me, and his eyes warmed up a bit, his smile connecting with the rest of his visage for once. He was happy, I was happy, and it wasn’t just because of the afterglow.

“Next time,” Crescent Murmured as she laid her head down on the pillow to the right of Perm’s. I felt his cock deflating inside me and pulled myself off of it. A small pool of cum dripped out of me as the plug was pulled.

“Sure,” I said in a husky voice, my own muzzle covered in wetness and the smell of horny mare. “I mean if this isn’t just a one-time thing.”

“I’d say it was a successful experiment,” Permittivity murmured before throwing his forelegs out behind his head and pulling the two of us close to him. I laid a foreleg across his stomach and rested my head against his. Behind my eyes, the endorphins were swimming around in my head, and as I felt his seed drip out of me, I felt contentment that I had missed.

“You just want to put a foal in two mares,” Crescent said with a laugh and a kiss on the pleased stallion’s cheek.

“I could think of worse things,” Permittivity said before pulling me a bit closer to him. I could tell we would need a shower tomorrow, and probably a re-evaluation of our relationship. I wasn’t sure what my sober feelings would be towards Crescent Moon, but I knew things would be different…

Now, I knew she liked me. That was odd because I liked her too. And we both liked Permittivity.

“You know, that accent really has helped you get laid,” I said in a low voice. There was a happiness in it, and the cold realizations that came from getting satisfied sexually.

“It worked on me,” Crescent said quietly. There was humour in her voice.

“To be fair, I’m delighted by both of your beautiful voices,” Permittivity said in a voice that told me he was getting close to sleep. I rolled myself onto my side and looked at the two other ponies. I felt a warmth in my chest as I pulled them both closer to me. My own body was ready for sleep. Not that it would be much of a rest. I knew Permittivity had an alarm on his terminal. Still, as I listened to their soft breathing, I felt like it would be enough…

“We’re gonna win,” I said softly.

“We have the just cause,” Crescent said.

“That’s just about all we have,” Permittivity said in a neutral voice.

“It’s enough,” I replied before closing my eyes and focusing on the warmth of the other ponies.

My eyes didn’t open again ‘til morning.

Icarus Ascending (XXIV)

The earth shook as flare shells lit up the sky, and machine guns fired like deathly insects, cutting the air to ribbons at best, at worst tearing into ponies like they were made from thin membranes filled with fluid. Mostly blood, there was so much blood-

I held my weapon in my magic and looked through the glass eyelets of a stifling gasmask. I fired at the advancing ponies, wounding some, dropping others into the earth rended by previous advances, previous attempts to take our positions. Beside me, ponies fired from behind sandbags or huddled in the shell holes that weren’t filled with toxic water.

It was the third day and the tenth mass attack on our position. We were running short on ammunition, grenades and rations. The supply lines were being strained, filled with wounded ponies, and bombarded to Tartarus by their siege guns. I just pulled back the bolt on my rifle and fired another shot into the screaming ponies, chlorine gas floating above the ground held down by its weight. I breathed heavily through the filter and tried to ignore the fact that if there was a crack in my mask, I would drown in my own fluids.

I felt the magazine run dry, and with a grunt, I pulled one of my few remaining stripper clips from my bandolier. I rammed them in with my magic, before taking aim at a lone pony who was limping towards my shell hole, already torn to shreds by their own shrapnel, but still coming, like a corpse that didn’t know its fate already. I pulled the trigger with my magic and they dropped as the bullet passed through their visor. Just another blood-soaked patch of earth, meat and gristle, bone shards and metallic debris worked into the ground by the hooves of the ponies that followed, a great charnel house created by the ambitions of ponies thousands of miles away-

Above my head, a flare lit up the sky anew, throwing the bodies and mud into contrast against the phosphorescent light, and the stars that taunted us mortals with their distance. I pulled the bolt back and took aim once more. It had been days since I had known sleep, and at this point, I couldn’t be sure that what I was shooting at was even real. The rifle bucked in my magic as another young pony was killed. A bullet whizzed by and buried itself into the earth behind me. I blinked and my heart seemed to stop for half a second. Then, I traced the path of the bullet, remembered where the muzzle flash had come from and emptied my magazine in the general direction of that flash. There was no response, I had never seen the pony that had fired at me, and I wasn’t sure that they were dead. Maybe they had seen the error of their ways, maybe a piece of shrapnel from an exploding shell had done them in, maybe their mask had broken and they were dying from exposure to the chemical arms we were utilizing in this war between masters of chemistry and industry-

Then there was another muzzle flash from that location and another bullet impacted the lip of the shell hole I was hiding in. The mud flew up into the air, covering me in it, more of it. Thank you for the camouflage!

I laughed from within my helmet, bloodshot eyes and a body riven with multiple waves of adrenaline buckling under the strain. Suddenly, the sky had another occupant, a pegasus from their lines flying low to the ground. I took aim with my service pistol and managed to clip their wings with one of the smaller bullets. They dipped and crashed into no-mare’s land. They were dead from the fall.

I steeled myself for that same fate. Light seemed to surround me for a moment, my ears rang, and I could feel the bite of small pieces of metal pierce my greatcoat and ring against the meagre protection of my helmet. I had my excuse to leave the hell that was the front and limp into the infirmary.

I was giddy with the possibilities afforded to me by my wounds, minor enough to survive, major enough to get me a hospital bed for a fortnight or two. There was a smile beneath my mask as I ambled, bleeding and exhausted towards the trenches-

---===*===---

I gasped as I awoke. The ships gentle rocking told me that I had just experienced a nightmare or a memory of something pulled from Permittivity’s psyche. The brown coat and blue magic told me that it was the latter. I shivered from the cold sweat soaked into my blanket. I cast it away from me with my reddish-pink magic. There was a comfort in my familiar magic. The necklace I had fashioned out of the talisman gave it a darker hue. That had taken some getting used to.

But change was the only constant in our lives, I realized recently. Among other things.

I took a look at my bedside table. A half full bottle of rum taunted me with its- Numbness. That’s what alcohol did for me now, it wasn’t something to do socially, it was a way to take away the dreams, and the guilt. I shook my head and got to my hooves, before walking over to my bag of clothes. With a touch of magic that had gotten more simple, more dexterous, and just better, I pulled my clothes on.

The door opened on hinges that had recently been revived by the talisman at the ship’s heart. It opened gently and my eyes shot open as the light assaulted them. Ah, the sun, the giver of life, but the enemy of hung over ponies. I shook myself again, and started towards the mess. Ponies were milling about in there, and there was probably a pot of coffee already brewing. That was still a breakfast, right?

---===*===---

“Hey, wanna go get lunch?” Icepick asked me as she trotted into the empty infirmary. I fought myself as I looked at her. She was a pretty pony, and well, I could’ve had her first, but I had been a mistake for her-

“Sure,” I replied, hoping my smile wasn’t as fake as it felt. The third cup of coffee sat on my desk, cooling down.

“Good, I told everyone that I was taking the day off, and well, you seem like you need a bit of decompression time,” Icepick said in a chirpy voice. She wanted me around, even after everything. I still hadn’t seen my family.

“I’m down for it, work has slowed, and everyone is just taking the time to be themselves, while they have the chance,” I said before looking over at her. Icepick was smiling. I managed to smile back.

“I like how you phrased that, time to be themselves,” Icepick replied with a thoughtful look on her face. “Is that the whole point of our movement?”

“Yeah, it is,” I said before walking around my desk, and lifting the last of the coffee to my lips, downing it before sitting it back down. Icepick rolled her eyes at that.

“I could never get that into coffee,” Icepick said with a laugh, before gesturing at the door. It was hanging open. There were other doctors on other ships, and a bunch in the city. I could leave my post. Hiding from life through work was below me. I had done it too much in the past.

“You do, when you’re up for days,” I said half-seriously.

“Ehh, when that kinda thing pops up, my armour normally throws a bunch of stimulants into my system,” She said before starting towards the door.

“That- that makes sense,” I said before shutting off the lights in the empty ships’s infirmary. Damn, I would probably have to leave the little flotilla behind. “I wonder how more times I’ll need to do that.”

“Turn off the lights?” Icepick asked, a little curiosity dripping into her voice.

“I like this little tub,” I said with a laugh. “We’re gonna be leaving it behind soon, I think.”

“Yes, but you don’t need to head into the desert to do battle, not if you want to stay,” Icepick said in a reassuring tone.

“I’m going with you, whatever is out there in the desert, it reeks of destiny,” I said without a note of hesitation.

“Good, but uh, don’t start believing in destiny for the wrong reasons,” She said quietly. “Now, we’re gonna go eat.”

She didn’t understand, she didn’t have the burden I had. My dark desire to suplicate to the enemy I had vowed to fight, or the need to stay true to some shadow of myself-

“I’m already dressed,” I said with a laugh. She laughed along. Things were fine.

---===*===---

“So, how do you like the noodles?” Icepick after she slurped back a bowl of noodles.

“Spicy, but good,” I said. My eyes drifted over the ponies in the restaurant, living their lives without so much as a single dark power taking up space in their mind. The wave of jealousy I felt in that instant was overpowering, I could feel their breaths deep inside myself, and I knew at that moment that I had the power to be a monster. I tried not to let the thoughts show through to my face.

“Exactly! That’s why I love this place,” Icepick said before taking a long swig from her bottle. It was a slightly carbonated beverage, and the second after she drank, a staccato belch left her lips.

“And the drinks?” I asked softly. She raised a hoof to her chin and looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Carbonation is a pretty great technology,” Icepick started, “but I don’t think your alcohol is anywhere near as good as Safe Harbour’s.”

“That’s a subjective judgement,” I said with a laugh.

“Well, it is, but no-pony else has been where I’ve been, or drank what I’ve had the opportunity to drink,” Icepick said before adding. “So, I think my experience is pretty good.”
“All your stuff comes from greenhouses and grain, they’ve got access to charcoal, grain, sugar cane, and chocolate. You don’t, besides, you have radios and hair dye. So it balances out,” She said in a serious tone. There was always such ferocity in her, something that tipped the balance towards engagement with her. That’s why she’d win. I had to hope that it was enough.

“Y-yeah,” I stuttered out as the gulf between the end of her words and the present grew vaster.

“I saw the look on your face, you were either staring into my eyes or at nothing at all,” Icepick said, “I’m flattered if it's the first, and I’m worried if it’s the second.”

“I was just thinking about what you’ve built, how far we’ve come,” I said with a note of admiration in my voice. “We have a fleet, an army, and a movement! We started with nothing. Well, a suit of power armour and a few guns.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have any money, and our fleet is four ships, and three are tubs,” She said with a laugh. “It’s alright to be worried, but I think that last thing is what I’d bank on. If we can get your ponies to really start cranking out the guns and the soldiers, well, we have a chance.”

“I like that tub, thank you very much,” I shot back with a smile on my muzzle. “And I think our chances are pretty good. That interview you did got ponies talking everywhere. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Well, I told him the truth, even when he asked that fucking question,” Icepick explained, edging towards anger at the end.

“To be fair, a lot of ponies would like to have a superweapon,” I said with a shake of my head.

“Yeah, the same weapon that ended the world once before,” Icepick said in a dark voice. “If we make the same mistakes as they did, then what the fuck was the point?”

“No, no, I agree,” I said in a nearly apologetic tone. “It’s just, ponies are scared.

“I know,” she said in a harsh tone before taking another swig of soda. “Ponies of Paradise, they’re good folks, but they aren’t used to being under threat like Rangers or Arabs. Or fuck, Imperials.”

“A hundred years of peaceful isolation will do that,” I said before remembering something from long ago. “Well, not perfectly peaceful. There have been clashes with Arab raiders for decades…”

“Hence your military actually having more than rocks and sticks available?” Icepick asked after a moment’s silence on my part.

“My father was one of the Desert Rangers,” I said.

“Your mom told me that, last time we were here,” Icepick said in a reassuring voice. “He sounds like my kind of stallion.”

“You sound like you want to fuck my dad’s ghost,” I laughed a little, but there was a bitterness in it that rang through, like cheap vodka in a bloody marey.

“Ehh, spectral cocks don’t really do it for me,” Icepick said. “No, but, there’s a martial spirit in you ponies, I just know it.”

“I hope you’re right,” I replied softly.

“Well, you’re a pony of Paradise, so, you’ll be a test case, besides, another gunmare is never a bad thing to have,” She said with a laugh. Her hoof traced out across the table and rested on mine softly. “I’m a good teacher and an average shot.”

“You have a machine gun, just pointing in the nearest cardinal direction of someone is enough to blow them away.”

“You are such a civilian,” was all she said before we got back to finishing our meal. The idea that I was defenceless was odd to me. Maybe it had been true when she’d met me, but with the talisman, I could do more than defend. I could kill. Had killed already. I shivered as I ate a bite.

---===*===---

“Okay, why are we here?” Icepick asked as we got to the door to a familiar building.

“I need to talk to someone,” I said simply. “You can stay out here if you want.”

“Without air conditioning? Fuck that,” she shot back to me before gesturing at the door.

“Fair enough, though, the pony in here is kind of an asshole, so be warned,” I replied as I opened the door with a twist of my telekinesis. For just a moment, the flow of my magic picked up, I felt the power of the talisman strengthen it without my intent. The torque on the handle shot up, and I knew that if I wanted to, I could break it in a single stroke. I fought it down and let out a deep breathe.

“Hey, the next appointment isn’t for half an hour,” I heard a familiar voice call out. He sounded buzzed, at least.

“I’m not your damn Appointment,” I said in a loud voice before stepping into the small clinic.

“Oh, well, shit,” The old purple stallion said as he saw me grinning at him. There was a cup of suspiciously cool coffee beside him, and a pack of cigarettes sitting on the desk beside him. “The pony who bucked my retirement.”

“Like you were ever going to retire, you need the paycheck to pay for your habits,” I shot back as I walked over to the desk. Behind me Icepick pulled herself inside, before shutting the door and looking towards Mildew. Mildew for his part, looked shocked for about half a second, before looking back to me.

“I mean, yeah, but I still wanted to leave this place to you,” he said before picking up his drink in his weakened magic. “And now, you’re planning to get dead before hitting thirty. I mean, I understand that kids are always looking for a grand crusade, but come on.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Icepick said in a neutral tone. “And who the fuck are you?”

“You do sound like the mare on the radio, a real spitfire,” he said while looking at her. “I mean she’s pretty, but there are a lot of pretty mares who stay in Paradise.”

“I-I,” I stuttered a little as the two ponies gave each other appraising looks.

“Spitfire enough to throw down, fun enough to go down, that’s me!” Icepick said with a cautious laugh. “So you know this bag of bones?”

“He taught me how to heal,” my words seemed to leak out. The memories of the harsh training, the sleepless nights, and the times that were good. I shook my head and took a step forward. “Alright, I’m ready to embrace destiny.”

“That’s fuckin’ ominous, has she turned you into some kind of zealot? I was always kind of worried about that with you. It was the same thing that happened to your father,” Mildew said in a worried voice. He rubbed his stubbly chin with a hoof, before pointing at Icepick. “Then again, you might have finally given him some backbone. So good on you if you did.”

“He’s seen some action, and worked his ass off to save ponies left and right,” Icepick said with- with admiration in her voice.

“That, that makes me proud, even if you’re a damn fool to go along with her,” Mildew said. “So, if you’re looking for destiny, you must mean what I think you mean.”
“Yes, my inheritance,” I said.

“You know, I only told you about that because I was drunk and feeling nostalgic, right?” Mildew said with a bitter laugh.

“Oh, yeah, you were really mopey that day, and thoroughly plastered,” I added with a thin smile crossing my muzzle.

“Well, I might as well give it to you, I’m never going to use it,” Mildew said before looking away from the two of us. Icepick coming abreast with me as we spoke.

“What the fuck is it? An inheritance? A deed? A sex toy of immense size?” Icepick asked, her curiosity turning to anger turning to loudness.

“It’s my father’s revolver,” I said patiently, taking my time through every syllable. Her eyes widened and her ears dropped a degree.

“His mother didn’t want it, she hates weapons, violence, the whole shebang,” Mildew said, an explanation to fill the void that my words had left.

“Yeah, Page really doesn’t like soldiers,” Icepick said before adding. “She still warmed up to me after Dally did.”

“Wait, you know Page? And Dalliance?” Mildew acted shocked for a moment before looking back at me. “You should see her. She was equal parts pissed and worried when you left with her.”

“I will,” I said with resolve and guilt wrestling in my conscience. My back straightened up a little, the same way I had seen the soldiers drilling back in Safe Harbour.

“Good, I was gonna have to smack some sense into you if you didn’t,” Mildew said cheerfully. He was kind of a pacifist, but that didn’t extend into whoopin’ territory. And he loved to rend my hide.

“Oh, well, that’s one less thing to keep track of then,” Icepick said before smiling at Mildew. “You’re alright for an old fart.”

“And you’re more thoughtful than you give off,” Mildew shot back.

“Okay, I’m ready to see it,” I said to get the two of them back to the subject at hoof. These two were scarily similar. A little voice in my head told me that was probably why I had never introduced them before.

“Alright, gimme a moment, without a lackey to organize the back, it’s kind of gone to shit,” Mildew admitted.

“Well, damn, get another lackey, there has to be at least another pony who can do the grunt work,” Icepick said as we watched the elderly pony get out of the chair. He walked with a slowness that would have seemed deliberate on anypony with fewer decades weighing them down.

“You see, I don’t just let anypony work for me, and I get a lot less airtime than you,” he said in a slightly envious voice.

“Well, that’s your problem, the radio loves me and I love the radio,” Icepick replied. I just stood there awkwardly, wondering how long it would take him to locate the object of my desires. Except, it wasn’t a desire of mine to hold that weapon, even less to use it. It just felt like the right thing to do.

Destiny is funny like that.

I shivered and the necklace below my clothes chilled a degree. What the fuck? I had felt a voice in my head. It wasn’t my conscience, it was colder, more alien.

“Ah, under the used syringes,” I came back to the present as I heard a heavy thud from the storage area in the back. “Thing’s heavier than I remember, then again, I haven’t touched it in-” He stopped speaking, and Icepick chuckled a bit.

“I don’t need to remind myself of how old I am with a mare around,” he finished gruffly before walking back with a faded green case wrapped in his magic.

“What if I was into older stallions?” Icepick teased, her tongue practically bursting through her cheek.

“Yeah no,” he said as he tossed the case onto the desk. I ran a hoof over the metal case. It had been a darker green than it was now, and the dust left on my appendage was enough to tell me he hadn’t ever played Stalliongrad roulette with it.

“I do have an appointment in a few minutes,” Mildew said before tapping at where a watch would have been if he was the type to wear one. He wasn’t.

“He was trying to be dramatic, besides, you can always make them fill out a form or something while he stares at the family piece,” Icepick said before slamming her hooves down on the desk. “No, but really Rosetta, I’ve got shit to do.”

“You’ve both made your opinions abundantly clear,” I said dryly before pulling open the latches on the case. As it opened, I felt a chill down my spine, but no alien voice echoing in my skull. I could deal with a weird sensation-

Icepick whistled appreciatively. My eyes widened a bit at the sheer size of the gun. It looked like it could down aircraft.

“Yeah, your father used a big gun, as to whether he was compensating for something, I’m not at liberty to answer,” there was a warmth in his voice as he watched me admire the gun.

“Don’t worry, I’ll just ask Page about it,” Icepick said with a laugh and a bump on my shoulder. “Note to self: remember to get a family piece.” I lifted the gun from the case, finding the button to let the cylinder swing out. It was empty. I aimed it at a wall and pulled the hammer back with my magic. It locked into position and with more effort than I would have suspected I dry fired it. There was a satisfying click as it swung down where a percussion cap would have been.

“Honestly, I wasn’t expecting you to know how to do that,” Mildew said with surprise in his voice. I looked at him for a moment. My expression must have darkened as he shrank a little before me-

“He’s used guns,” Icepick said coldly. I looked back towards her before placing the gun in the case and closing it.

“I believe you now,” Mildew said with worry in his voice. “Just remember, violence is a last resort for good ponies. And you’re a good pony Rosetta, okay?”

“I know,” I replied before grasping the case in my magic and turning towards the door. “Don’t count on me coming back to run this place, but don’t rule it out either.”

“Alright,” Mildew said. “I think I understand you a bit better now.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said before seeing the look on Icepick’s face as I said that. She followed me out the door.

“Getting ammunition for that thing is gonna be a bitch,” she said with a laugh. “But, I think we can manage it.” Clearly, she wanted to change the subject. I was fine with that. The heavy weight of the gun was nothing to me at that moment. All the burdens I was carrying were inside me.

“Do you think Perm is going to be jealous?” I asked with a smile. On some level, it was something I felt. It was still a lie. I had scared him. He knew something she didn’t, and it stung. That’s why I didn’t want to see my mother, the guilt of leaving her was only a small part of it. I didn’t want her to realize that she was right. I had been warped by my time away. Maybe not as bad as the hell Permittivity and Icepick had been through, but enough. I had seen enough.

“Of that hoof cannon?” She looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “Not really, not his style. I like it though.”
“Thanks,” I replied as the sun poured down on us, dusty streets full of ponies getting out of work for lunch. “So, want to walk with me back to the ships? I don’t want to show mom that I have this.”

“Good idea,” she said simply. Her mind was already going to other things, bigger things, more important things. The fact that she had gone out with me was a sacrifice on her part. The ponies looking at her as we walked down the street was proof enough of that. She smiled at them and walked with a self-assured swagger. I would never be that pony.

That, at least, I had made peace with.

---===*===---

The door was open, I walked inside. The inside smelled like the written word, but aged. My mother looked up as the bell rang. She looked tired.

“Rosetta?” Page Turner said softly as I walked up to the desk.

“Hi mom,” I said neutrally.

“I’m so glad you’re home!” She said before collecting herself and putting a stern expression on her face.

“I know,” I said softly as I trotted up to her, and behind the desk. The old cash register was forgotten in that moment as I embraced her. “And I’m sorry.” She looked at me when I said that. I could see the betrayal in them, a betrayal that had begun when I moved to Copper Springs.

“The recriminations can wait,” she said softly. “Let’s go eat dinner, and you can tell me about your adventures.”

“Wait you want to know about where I’ve been?” I asked with surprise written in my words.

“Of course, my son is an explorer, I have to enjoy that part of it all,” Page said as she started towards the sign on the door. With a touch of her magic, she flipped it around and locked the door. I smiled at that.

“Well, we found ponies, zebras, Arabs, and Orangutans!” I said in a chirpy voice.

“What’s an Orangutan?” My mom asked.

“Think a big ape, with reddish fur, and strong enough to tear a pony limb from limb,” I replied. “They’re very sweet though, and they saved their island from the darkness that encompassed the world.”

“How ever did they do that?” Page asked as she took the first step up towards our home. Their home. I followed behind her.

“Magic,” I think there was a twinkle in my eye as I said that.

“Right,” she replied with a curious expression.

“If you wanted to know more about their magic, you’d have to ask Perm, I don’t really understand their way of looking at the world, and changing it.”

“How are Perm and Icepick?” She asked as we rounded the top of the stairs. The smell of stew assaulted my nose, reminding me that I had walked a lot on only a lunch and a pot of coffee.

“Well, Icepick is basically a celebrity, and a revolutionary leader, and Perm is doing alright, learning the techniques of the Path,” I replied as I took in the sights and smells of home. A home that hadn’t changed, not yet anyway.

“Oh yeah, all the ponies on the street are talking about the turncoat ranger fighting for us,” my mom said with a smile on her face. “It’s almost enough to forgive her for taking my son on her wild ride.”

“Don’t blame her, I wanted to go, needed to go,” I said softly, but firmly.
“Hey!” Dalliance said as she trotted up to us, her stained apron tied on the front of her gleaming fur. She looked at me happily, before pulling me into a tight hug and giving me a kiss on the cheek. I smiled at her, even as I felt a bit uncomfortable at the attention. “So, you’re an adventurer now! What’s that like?”

“Hot, mostly,” I said as her legs dropped away. There was a thud as they struck the ground.

“Jungles eh,” Dalliance replied with a laugh.

“Jungles indeed,” I shot back before sniffing the air audibly. Dalliance was a good cook.

“Want to eat dinner here?” Page said before walking around me and embracing her lover.

“I would love to,” I replied. There was a sincerity there, and a sadness that I couldn’t quite place. I was happy to be home, even if I might never see it again.

---===*===---

The food was good, and the beer in front of me reminded me of what I had left…

“So, what happened out there, you owe us at least a good adventure tale,” Page said as she waved the pasta wrapped around her fork with a touch of her magic.

“Well, we assaulted the old submarine, and disassembled the balefire bomb in the hold,” I started out by saying. They looked a little shocked at my nonchalance.

“Wait, there’s more there, I see it in your eyes,” Page said with a fork of pasta aimed at me.

“You are my mother, so, I guess I’ll lay it all out. The head ranger with us, Reflex Sight, tried to betray us, to steal the bomb and use it as a bargaining chip, or worse. And when Bajada discovered this, she fought him, and lost. He came after me next, taunting me. I managed the get the upper hoof, and well, I took his life. He fucking deserved it, everything I did to him,” I finished and opened my eyes to see them staring at me with something approaching fear, and on my mother’s face- pain.

“Ranger wearing power armour, how did you do it?” Dalliance asked with curiosity and fear in her voice.

“I discovered something in that fight, some aspect of my magic that I had never realized I had,” I said before dragging over a single flower sitting in a vase. I lifted my hoof and pressed it to the surface of the rose. A single thorn dug into the soft frog of my hoof. I barely felt it. My horn lit brightly, and in a single instant it broke, and dessicated in the florescent light and the light of my darkened magic. It died as quickly as the bones and viscera in Reflex’s legs. My mother let out a shocked gasp as I destroyed a living thing with my magic. I picked up the rose and tossed it into the trash can. I had made my point. I had revealed the power learned from the talisman.

“You killed him with magic?” Dalliance nearly whispered.

“No, I destroyed his legs with my magic. I finished the job with a couple pistol shots. First I blew away his jaw, his ability to speak, to plead. That made the final shots easier,” I let out a deep exhale as I watched my family shrink back, into themselves. Whatever warmth I had been feeling was gone now. I met each of their eyes. “He killed Bajada with his armour, he crushed the life out of her. He treated her like an object, an obstacle to his goals. He was ready to kill everyone in Paradise if he felt like it was the right move. I couldn’t let him live. He was a danger to everyone I love.”

The hoof that touched me wasn’t tentative, Page had gotten up and around the table without me noticing. It was warm, and in that moment I broke again. Just like I had broken him, just like I was likely to break others. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I shut them as hard as the muscles would allow.
“It’s alright baby, it’s okay,” Page said softly as my tears carved salty paths down my rosey cheeks.

“I-I, I’m a killer,” I said softly. It wasn’t a rebuttal to her words, her kind, meaningless words. It was just a statement of fact, like the sky being blue.

“You’re a pony, a good pony, someone who doesn’t need to kill again,” Page said in a reassuring voice. “Just stay with us, heal ponies who need it, live with us until you’re feeling better.”

“No,” I said with a new resolve in my eyes. I turned to look into my mother’s sapphire eyes. There was a pain in them, but also something else. “I need to protect my friends. I’m an asset, I might be the only thing that can stop Sombra. I need to fight them out there, so I can protect my city.”

“You know,” she started before the words died in her mouth. I looked at her deeply, and lifted a hoof to hold hers. And then I stood to my full height and looked at my mother. “You’re the spitting image of your dad, he said those words once.”

“I,” I tried to speak. I couldn’t.

“It makes me so proud, I raised a fighter, even if I didn’t want to. I guess that’s the power of heredity,” she said as she embraced me. I held her back, tightly. New muscles, new strength I had never had before. For a moment the chill pressed against my chest was gone. “I can’t stop you, even if I want to with all of my being. You’re a grown stallion now.”

“I know mom, I want to stay too. I want things to go back to what they were like before-”

“Here comes the but,” Dalliance said in a tone that lacked all surprise. Her beer was in her hoof. And I could almost feel the warmth travelling down her esophagus. I could feel their heartbeats in my mind, if I tried to listen.

“But I can’t, destiny, the future of Sall’han, the whole sordid history of ponykind, it’s out there, and I can’t bury my head in the sand,” I added with a nod at Dalliance. She smiled a sad smile at that.

“Please just, if it’s a lost cause come home, don’t tell me you’re planning to run into your own death,” She pleaded with me. That’s how things had changed. I wasn’t her foal anymore. I was just her son.

“I don’t plan on dying,” I said with a dry chuckle. “I do plan on drinking another beer though. And sleeping in my old bed.”

“I can live with that, even if you’re echoing your father again,” Page said.

History as a great wheel, destiny as a loop, an endless ouroboros of change and continuity. I could feel it in my bones. It didn’t change what had to be done.

---===*===---

I hefted the massive pistol in my magic and took aim at the paper target. It was thirty meters away. I lined up the sights and tried to anticipate the jerk of the pistol-

“That hoof cannon is going to have a huge recoil, but don’t think about it, just fire it and be ready to have to slam back against your hold,” Permittivity said as he watched me aim. Beside him, a rifle of the imperial type, his assault rifle, and a petite semi-automatic pistol sat on the bench.

“Okay,” I said loudly enough to get past his ear plugs. His ears twitched a little as he watched me with pursed lips. The pistol went off with a huge bang. It bucked in my magic, but I caught it. My eyes peered at the paper target. It had a large hole to the right of center mass.

“With that gun, you could kill a bear, so it’ll kill ponies just fine,” Permittivity said from behind me. “But it’s not much use beyond fifty or so meters. So, you’re going to learn to shoot an imperial arms, mark four.”
“Makes sense,” I said as I took aim again, this time I managed to hit a little closer to the center.

“Better, but you’re still jerking the trigger in one motion, it’s a natural impulse, but it’s wrong,” Perm said from beside me.

“Can you show me?” I asked just loudly enough to be heard.

“Sure,” he replied simply, before taking the gun from my magic with his own. His was a gentle magic, it simply overcame my levitation, with not a micro-newton more force than necessary. He took his own aim, carefully adjusting his stance and making certain everything was right-

Bang!

Dead center, where a heart would be if it was a real pony, there was a gaping hole where he had plugged his shot. I whistled before I even realized I was doing it.

“Did you see how I squeezed it in one fluid motion?” He asked me, eyes boring into my own. There was a pedantic edge in them, something I had only seen on him when he was teaching. It suited him.

“I think I did,” I said before taking the gun from him, and plugging a much closer hole to center mass. I sat the gun down and looked at him. There was a weariness about him that I couldn’t shake.

“Much better,” he said before picking up the rifle, and placing it to his shoulder, and biting into the handle with his teeth. He braced the bottom of the gun with a foreleg before grasping the stripper clip with his magic. He inserted it and pulled the bolt back, and forward in a practiced motion. A target a hundred meters away was holed at center mass a moment later. “I’m going to teach you how I was taught. The earth pony way.”

He floated the gun onto the table and waited for me to pick it up. It was heavy in my magic, the weight of steel and wood made into a killing tool. I bit into the handle and felt the smooth wood against my naked shoulder. I could taste his spit on the trigger. It was almost like kissing him-

Crack!

I put a round into the target, the well built iron sights guiding me into accuracy. I racked the bolt back, and slid it forward, feeling the tension and friction in the mechanism. The short barrel of the rifle was manageable. The second shot missed, even as the gun dug into my flesh with the recoil.

I sighed audibly, before I felt a hoof on my own, and a body pressing against mine. He helped me aim, his barrel warm against my own. Something in me was comforted by it, another part was worried by my own reaction. The bolt came back, and forward again. A moment later, I hit the target again, much closer to the center.

“Good,” he said in a lower voice. His words coming into my ears from a lot closer than before. I could feel his breath against me.

“I have a good teacher,” I said in a chirpy voice. I had shared his memories, hollowed out the ones that made him dangerous, the ones that poisoned his soul. And yet, he was still here.

“My father is the best shot I’ve ever known, though he only ever practiced for the town militia,” Perm said in a low register. There was a note of melancholy in them. He still didn’t know that they were dead. I had stripped him of that pain, of that knowledge of reality-

“Huh, I guess some of that got transmitted,” I said with a shrug and a chuckle.

“Something like that,” he said as be backed away, leaving the full weight of the gun on my form.

“I would like to meet him, and your brother,” I said quietly, before sitting the gun down and looking at Permittivity.
“Me too,” he said in a dour voice. His lips were puckered, and a deep melancholy was being barely hemmed in by his steady breathing and the task at hoof. He grasped his rifle, the one he had gotten so long ago, and fired off a series of five shots, perfectly grouped into the hundred meter target. “If not, then I’ll make do. I have family here now.”

“Yes, you do,” I replied before resting a hoof on his shoulder. He was a good friend. And maybe in another life, something more.

---===*===---

I rested my head on the desk before the doorbell rang. I sat up and looked at the pony who had entered. My mind instantly shot back to a moment long ago.

“Hello,” the chipper stallion said. That same oddness to him was there.

“I remember you, you sold me the memory orbs,” I said instantly, and not quite tactfully.

“I did that, and presumably you used them,” he said as he strode up to the desk.

“I did,” I said simply. This stallion stood there with pursed lips for a moment, and a pair of floral patterned saddle bags popped open with a pink magic. “So, what are you here to do? Sell me something odd, but prescient again?”

“I might, I have a couple things in my possession you’d find useful,” he said with a tip of his hat.

“Like?” I asked, curious and wary in the same breath.

“Well, it all comes down to a bet I made ages ago. And I do mean ages, someone as young as you really doesn’t have the frame of reference to understand. But, suffice it to say, it was about the nature of ponies, and the arc of history. I told him that love was more powerful than anything in this world, he said that the power of arms and destruction trumped that. We’re still waiting on the results. But, well, I’m willing to bend things a little to my end, as is he. When you play at our level, the little things don’t matter much normally.”

“O-okay, go on?” I asked him with a bemused expression on my face. If this stallion hadn’t given me something quite powerful before, I would have been a lot less willing to listen to him wax rhapsodic about the power of love.

“Ah, you still don’t understand, but you will,” he started to say before pulling out an object from the bags. It was a thick folder, brimming with aged paper, and a metal cylinder, that reflected the sunlight and fluorescents in the room. “You’re on the right track, all of you, mostly. Even if that necklace you’re wearing is a little less than helpful.”

“What?” I asked, suddenly a lot more wary of the stallion after he mentioned my talisman.

“Even if you can control it, which you probably can’t, it’s still a weapon, a force of death,” The strange stallion said in a low voice.

“We need weapons, every advantage we can get, we’re fighting a monster with the power to conquer worlds,” I said to him.

“All true, but that’s why I’m here,” he said with a flourish and a wry smile. I blinked at him before he patted the objects he had set down. “Not everything is there, but enough is.”

“What?” I asked quietly.

“In there are files on megaspell theory and construction, from a friend. The other thing is a class of spark grenade that will suit well for your purposes,” He said.

“That’s exactly what we need,” I blurted out. He looked smugly at me.

“I know,” he replied. And then he spun around. And started towards the door. “And before you ask, I’m doing this to win the bet. Don’t fail me. Don’t fail ponykind.”

The door shut as I just stared at the documents and the spark grenade.

I had my bags on, and I was out the door before I could even think about all the questions that were plaguing me. The weight of history, of a great game I could only speculate about all weighed down on me. Still, I ran back to the harbour.

---===*===---

“What the fuck?” Icepick, and the rest of the higher ups of our little movement stared at me with a mix of bewilderment and excitement.

“I know right, and I’d obviously look through the stuff to make sure it’s the real thing, but I think it is. And seriously, this guy was weird,” I added with a raise of my eyebrow.

“I’m not even going to ask where he got this stuff from, but I am fucking wondering why?” Icepick said in a bewildered tone.

“Uh, he mentioned a bet?” I said out loud, as the looks grew more concerned, not less.

“I don’t think it was a stallion you spoke to, not really,” Zenji said with the least confused look on her face.

“What?” Icepick asked, turning to her advisor, and friend.

“He seems like a spirit, or an avatar of a greater power,” Zenji said. The room was quiet for a breathless moment. And then, a peel of laughter hit everyone’s ears. As one, we turned to face Ironsight.

“I mean, a little divine intervention never hurt,” she said before laughing even harder. “Goddess, I need a fucking drink.”

“Seconded,” Icepick noted casually.

“Make that three,” Permittivity said darkly. “I’m not sure what powers are interceding on our behalf, I never believed in that kind of thing before. The gods on my world were dead millennia before my time. This however, makes me question my assumptions.”

“Like fuck it does, we might just be able to actually build the weapon required to stop him,” Icepick said before adding. “If we can get it close enough to him.”

“Yeah, he only has like, an army and a fortress,” Ironsight said with another laugh.

“Well, we have allies in high places,” Zenji said with a smile on her face.

“Apparently,” Permittivity replied.

“So what’s the next step now?” I asked the lot of them, and they turned to Icepick as one.

“Well, we either need to get these plans to Xuaith, or get him here,” Icepick said before scratching her head with a hoof. “Suggestions?”

“We have that airplane that we towed here,” Ironsight said.

“Good point, I think I already got it in the repair queue,” Icepick said before looking over at the map pinned on the wall. Paradise, Safe Harbour, Ramsgard, and the fortress were all outlined, with positions and hypothetical troop movements added on in pencil.

“So, who wants to go flying?”

---===*===---

I volunteered for the flight, but I was turned down. Ironsight would go to Safe Harbour, crammed into the back of the plane with a load of fuel for the return journey. Meanwhile, we drilled, and added volunteers from Paradise to our ranks. Bajada would be proud of that. Most of them were untrained ponies who had never fired a weapon in their life. Still, between them and the conscription and recruitment in the city itself, our effective forces were growing quickly, what we didn’t know, was if it would be enough…

“Ponies of Paradise, and of the Equine liberation army, we come in peace, thought that wasn’t in our orders, but fuck orders that tell us to kill fellow equestrians when there’s a greater threat out in the desert,” The radio played its message again. It was on loop, and even as the rapidly assembled ponies on our side stood in the trenches that had been erected outside of Paradise, we looked on with hope as the broadcast began it’s final part. “This is interim commander Phalanx of Ramsgard. Please do not be alarmed.”

“Are you listening to him again?” Icepick asked, she was looking over the outskirts of paradise with a pair of binoculars.

“Well, I’m worried about two strange but good runs of luck, it doesn’t seem to fit with our past,” I replied as I stood there, a rifle on my back, and my pistol weighing down my front right leg. It was a good weight. Now, I could kill at whatever range required killing.

“Yeah, me too, and I don’t even remember a Commander Phalanx,” she added with a snort. “But I mean, they’re waving white flags, and advancing up to us without weapons.”

“I know, I hope none of our guys get itchy trigger tongues,” I said a moment later.

“Me too, that’s why I said that I would kick whoever shot one of those rangers first in their baby making parts,” Icepick said before letting the binoculars settle down on her chest. There was a clank as the steel casing smacked against the steel encasing her. She looked beautiful in the noon time sunlight. And there was a bubbly beverage beside her.

Permittivity was sitting deeper in the city, with our reserves, somewhere along the line, he had gotten a patch sewn onto his sleeve. It meant something along the lines of third in command, and with Ironsight off on her trip to Safe Harbour, in search of the Zebra with the skills required for megaspell engineering, that left him in second place. He had taken his field promotion with grace and dignity, befitting an officer. Maybe. Well, what the fuck did I know.

“Are we gonna greet them?” I asked softly, on the extreme edge of our defences, just behind where our closest howitzers and mortars were trained, Frostbite sat there, with his own rifle in tow. He would hold the line to his last breath. Even as everypony there saw the armoured vehicles and power armoured shock troops lined up opposite to them.

Our ships had been covered in rocket tubes, and they were just about the only thing we had in our favour, other than the sheer number of troops we had, most of them barely trained.

“It would be a shame if we didn’t take that nice, shiny truck out there to greet them,” Icepick said with a laugh. A few minutes later, I sat in the passenger seat of the lightly armoured truck. A driver from the Desert Rangers sat in the driver’s seat. Icepick and the civilians from Paradise sat in the back, languishing in the heat of the tin can.

The drive was short but tense, only a few kilometers from our position, still definitely in range of both sides artillery. If it came to a battle, it would probably be a pyrrhic victory for either side. That was probably why Phalanx, whoever they were, was trying to ally with us.

We got out of our truck and stood there, as another vehicle, a ranger power armour carrier came up. It stopped about ten metres from us, and a moment later two rangers wearing helmets exited. And then, after they stood at the back of the carrier, two more ponies came out. One was a ranger paladin, who exited wearing light armour over her uniform. The other was a pegasus wearing a chest piece and a hat. They nodded at us, before one flew over and the other made the remaining distance at a trot. The Pegasus landed in front of Icepick and I, and the other dignitaries.

“Icepick, the turncoat, fighting for the liberation of all equines,” the pegasus said before turning to me. He looked me over appraisingly.

“I see my reputation precedes me,” Icepick said with a grunt, before meeting his eyes. “So who the fuck are you?” The dignitaries looked shocked at her language.

“I’m Phalanx, the pony who wants to rebuild Sall’han as a free place, and who’s willing to do what must be done,” he said with a bow. “But for right now, I’m a pony who needs diesel, petrol, and rations, in that order.”

“So, you’re plan was to beg the same ponies the rangers tried to annex with a fleet, to give you supplies?” Icepick asked before adding. “You’re bold, I’ll give you that.”

“Bold enough to see that the orders we were given were wrong, morally, and strategically,” he replied sharply, before holding a hoof out and shrugging his shoulders.

“That whole interim commander thing, I take it you did something with the higher ups, I know most of the big wigs back in Ramsgard, and you’re not one of them,” Icepick shot back, waiting for him to tell her that he had them shot, or left them tied up for the desert foxes.

“Oh, they’ve been treated well, ours was a bloodless coup, however, if you want to keep them in Paradise, as a token of good faith, I can have them delivered in a few hours, no silver platters though, that’s more a Paradise thing. Or so I’ve heard,” Phalanx replied smartly. “So, when are we marching to defeat this Sombra character?”

“Are you deferring to her?” One of the councilors of Paradise asked, startled by his question.
“Don’t be offended, rangers aren’t exactly taught to respect civilian authority,” Icepick said with a turn back towards the counselor.

“That’s quite true, however, I respect her, as a former ranger, and a pony of action, a lot more than someone who got voted into office off of rhetoric and a pretty smile,” Phalanx said with a laugh.

“I make a lot of speeches and smile a lot,” Icepick said with a note of humour in her voice.

“Indeed, but again, mare of action, politician,” Phalanx said with a little defensiveness. He had picked his hill to die on, and it was based on a shitty false dichotomy. Whatever, ponies were odd.

“In any case, we’ll need to confer before allowing the exchange of supplies,” One of those politicians said in a dry tone. Whatever else that stallion had seen, one disrespectful pegasus wasn’t going to hurt his feelings.

“I respect that, though allowing some of our ponies to enter the city and refresh themselves before the campaign would be appreciated,” Phalanx said with a nod of his head. “Unarmed, and only a fifth of my ponies at a time of course. Think of it as building a rapport between the different Equestrian tribes.”

“We’ll consider that proposal as well,” the tired sounding counselor said before turning around and walking back towards the vehicle.

“That was fast,” Phalanx said before looking at Icepick with that same cunning gaze he had me. “You’re taller in person.”

“I get that a lot,” Icepick said before moving towards him. The sun beat down on us, and the guards twitched a bit as she moved closer to him. He turned his head towards his guards and gave them a scathing look. “So, what the fuck is your endgame?”

“I beg your pardon?” Phalanx asked as the rest of the councilors watched on, even the one who had turned his back looked over his withers at the two rangers.

“You know, after we kick Sombra back to my boyfriends plane, and hopefully fry his magical ass,” Icepick started, before adding. “Our relationship is going to depend a lot on your answer.”

“You are definitely a mare that goes to the heart of the matter, and with forethought in regards to the future. Which is related to my goals. Only in an ossified and rigid system would a pony such as you would be relegated to the lower ranks,” Phalanx said before taking a deep breathe and watching Icepick for her reaction. She frowned at that, but not deeply, more like an old wound was being opened up for someone else’s benefit. “That’s exactly what I plan to change, to change our system of oppression, and add a dynamism and meritocracy to our home.”

“So, you’re planning on marching back home with your army, and taking Ramsgard?” Icepick asked, having shaken her frown, a kind of curiosity, and perhaps humour was on her face now.

“Well, yes,” he replied smoothly. “I think a well lead army can defeat whatever turgid defense they’ll offer. Even more than that, perhaps, with our victory as an example of what we can do as rangers, it may even be another bloodless transition.”

“You know, I can accept that, just don’t expect a single drop of blood spilled by my ponies for your power play,” Icepick said. “And if I even get a hint of a double cross, your pretty little wings are going to be broken by my hooves.”

“Oh, I’m an intelligent stallion, double crossing a mare of your calibre doesn’t end well, or so I’ve learned,” he said before adding another little stab. “Reflex Sight was exactly the kind of pony who got his position and standing from his heritage, and I know what happened to him.”

“Do you?” I barked out, looking this fucking slug of a pegasus in the eyes.

“Icepick dispatched him, after his plan to steal the Balefire bomb was discovered, and then she rigged the submarine to explode, so that when our retrieval team arrived, it wiped out half of the crew of one of our destroyers.”

Icepick winced when she heard that last part. She hadn’t meant to kill that many ponies, it was a move of desperation on her part to lay those charges. That they had worked, that they had built up her legend as a slayer of ponies who stood against her- The Destroyer. That little voice in her head, that told her she was a monster, it was speaking up at that moment.

Destiny is harder to run from than anyone expects.

“I killed him, with my own hooves, because he was a slimy bully who killed someone I loved,” I yelled out, anger spilling out of myself as much at him, as the voice that had spoken to me again. “And I’d do it again, except I’d break every part of his body except the ones needed to keep him alive, and let him suffer and die for longer.”

“I see-” Phalanx was looking at me with fear behind his eyes, and a smile that tried to cover for his discomfort. Deep down, he was scared of blood and death. Even if he was perfectly willing to order those under his command to theirs.

“No you don’t, and try to understand what it feels like to put someone like him down. As bad as he needed to be put down, he was still a pony. I still feel a part of me died when I killed him, even if I’d do it again in a heartbeat. And I still felt a part of me that died when I killed him, even if I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” I finished, out of breath, the catharsis of threatening this pompous asshole finally draining that killing rage out of me. “At the end of the day we’re talking about thousands of lives. And he was willing to snuff out thousands, in pursuit of his goals. That's why I did it, because this isn’t about personal glory, or being witty and interesting, this is about fighting a monster that wants to take away everything from us. You need to act like that’s the case, if you want any respect from me. From us.”

“Exactly,” Icepick said with a nod, even if she wore a curious expression when she looked at me.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he said in a muted tone. Something in him had been shorn away by my words. Maybe, the idea of a campaign as great fun. Or something similarly juvenile.

“Good talk,” Icepick said before clapping the smaller pegasus on the back softly. But not too softly.

We made our way back to the truck, it was already running. Phalanx gave us an odd look as we sped off, his driver doing the same. Whatever else had happened, at least he seemed a little off balance. That was probably a good thing. Confident ponies are the ones most likely to order something stupid.

“Okay, wanna tell me exactly where that came from?” Icepick asked as soon as we had the door shut on the back of the truck.

“I was shaken by events, but I think I’m getting better,” as I said that, the necklace chilled a great deal. Somehow, it wanted to remind me that I was lying. Or maybe I wasn’t, I had seen my family, I was embracing my destiny, not running from it-

“That was a very sterile way of putting things, and well, you didn’t seem very sterile back there, or well, that other time,” Icepick said with a laugh that was cover for deeper concern. She leaned in and hugged me suddenly, the feeling of her steel against mine, her strength and chilly exterior, encompassing me. Icepick smiled at me, and there was the warmth that kept her going, the dynamo at the heart of everything. I leaned into her, nuzzling into her neck and holding back tears. “You don’t have to go.” She said softly, comfort flowing from her heart to mine.

“And let you have all the fun?” I said in a shaky voice.

“I think you’ve already had enough fun for a lifetime,” she replied. “Then again, so have I. So has Perm.”
“And yet you’re not asking him if he wants to come,” there was a hint of jealousy in my voice. She noticed it instantly.

“The difference is,” Icepick started with a deep breath, her eyes moving away from mine, towards the steel ceiling. “Before I met him, I was broken, a mare going through the motions, hating every moment, loving a pony that didn’t understand the concept. But he changed me, helped me feel normal, feel things that everypony has felt from prehistory to the post-apocalyptic shithole we’re living in now. And he had the same thing happen, slowly, and even if we’ve had our ups and downs, we survived the end of the honeymoon phase, and that’s the thing that makes me want to stay with him forever. We’re two sides of the same fucked up coin, Rosetta.”

“He completes you, and you him,” I said softly. She ruffled my mane with a hoof. I laughed at that.

“Pretty much, probably has something to do with that weirdo you met who gave us the keys to the kingdom,” she sourly, but with a note of wry humour.

“Life is strange: gods, weapons of mass destruction, and a Pegasus with delusions of grandeur,” I replied softly. As the eyes of the politicians in the truck widened a degree.

“And through it all, love is the thing that’s always constant,” Icepick said before adding. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that Stallion in the bookstore. I have a feeling he’s been behind a lot of things, little tweaks in the right direction, pushing us here.”

“Pushing you two together,” I said.

“Maybe,” Icepick said in a quiet tone. “I don’t think it matters too much, I know that we found each other against the odds, and found ourselves in the process. Maybe we’re the hinge point in some master plan. It doesn’t matter. The thing those types never seem to suspect is, us little ponies have plans of our own.”

Author's Note

This was definitely an interesting chapter to write, and well, I hope you all like a Rosetta chapter after a long break for him.

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
https://www.patreon.com/Sunnydontlook
https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

And a new discord server for me to connect with my fans, and well, to hang out in: https://discord.gg/dxfCZzV

Paradise (XXV)

I entered the room, threw open the door with the aid of my armour, feeling the reverberations through the floor as the door struck the wall behind it. My eyes watered a bit as I took in the sight of Permittivity beside at the radio while peering at a map, surrounded by the civilian authorities and Desert Ranger higher-ups. We were deep underground, beneath the city, one of the two stables that the ponies of Paradise had come from. The air was bitter, lifeless, and at that moment, the nectar of the gods. I took a deep breath and advanced towards Permittivity. He barely had time to look at me before I picked him up in an embrace, and pressed my lips to his.

“I take it the meeting went well?” He said after I set him back down, the uniform he wore looking roughed up and tight-fitting around him.

“Well, you aren’t hearing any artillery are you?” I replied.

“I’m very deep underground,” Permittivity shot back. “But no, there aren’t any reports of fighting. So, tell us about this Phalanx?”

The rest of the room seemed to edge a bit closer, their attention on me increasing after the words hit their ears.

“Well, he seems like a pony we can trust for the time being,” I started before adding. “He really seems to like me. Respect me.”

“You’re someone worthy of respect, but that likely isn’t the only reason he’s built you up in his mind,” Permittivity said.

“You’re a symbol,” A stallion spoke up. I turned to him at the same time Permittivity did.

“Huh?” I asked without thinking. He nodded slowly at me.

“You’re one of theirs who left the ranks, fought a war and saved ponies from the enemies of the Rangers, and someone who’s been vocal about wanting a peaceful path for the future. That makes you a potent symbol to anyone in Sall’han, but especially for someone in his position.”
“I’m a symbol now,” I said, trying the words out in my mouth. They tasted acrid, like a bottle of wine turned half to vinegar.

“Indeed,” Permittivity said in a low voice, just before putting his hoof on my shoulder. There was a small clank as his hoof touched the steel pauldron.

“Why do you think you’ve gotten this far?” That same stallion asked, and I wasn’t quite sure if it was rhetorical or not. “You’re in the halls of power, you’re practically a general in your own right. You’ve been a symbol for all that time. It’s just now that you’re starting to see it reflected in others. They’re using it in the same way you have, just to ends that aren’t your own.”

“I don’t like it,” I said simply, honestly.

“That’s understandable, but a bit naive,” the stallion said before meeting both of our gazes. He was a thoughtful looking stallion, well aged, old but still showing a stature and vitality that age hadn’t taken from him. “My name is Elan, and I’ve been used in the same way before. I’ve used my clout, and my name for my own ends too.”

“Any pointers?” I asked in a hesitant voice.

“Be ready for the ponies that will use you, and remember that a word or a speech you make can change the balance, the calculus for them, not just calling them out or denouncing them, but anything you do will change your value,” Elan said with a practiced cadence.

“Thanks, I’ll try to remember that,” I said while rubbing the back of my neck with a hoof, while Permittivity was back to staring at the maps.

“Actually, I was meaning to ask you something,” he started as he heard my reply.

“Shoot, ask away,” I said with a nervous laugh. We were in a room full of ponies, and yet it felt like we were the only two paying attention to our little corner.
“May I come with you? I feel like a counsellor from Paradise is a good thing to have in the campaign to come, someone with the power to make policy and guide things along, especially after the bodies are done being piled up,” he asked softly and made a good argument.

“You know that we’re an independent organization, and the new army being built out of raw recruits are going to be led by Desert Rangers?” I asked, wondering exactly what this stallion intended by going with us.

“I know all of that, and frankly, I’m not very interested in trying my hoof at being a general, but I want to be at the table, to perhaps lend another perspective on things,” he replied softly, hope and exhaustion battling out behind his gaze.

“I don’t have any problem with that,” I said before something hit my brain like a stack of bricks being hurled through plate glass. “You’re the pony that planned the attack on the Rangers. You sent the secret orders by couriers disguised as pizza delivery ponies.”

“I played a part in the liberation of Paradise, and you’re repeating a common mistake that became a legend. The couriers were pizza ponies, I wanted to be lowkey, and feed the brave soldiers who fought on our behalf,” he said with a smile on his face.

“Yeah, you’re coming with us, even if I have to hogtie you and drag you along,” I replied with a bright smile. The dream team was coming together, another smart pony to help me make the right decision was never a bad thing.

“That won’t be necessary, even if the thought of being abducted by a pretty mare isn’t the worst fate I could imagine,” he smiled wryly at that. I flushed and bumped the older stallion on the shoulder.

“Don’t tempt me,” I said with a whisper into his ear while everypony else was in their own heads or distracted.

---===*===---

The next couple weeks went by in a blur of meetings, cocktail parties at the beach with dignitaries and rich ponies who thought giving the turncoat queen some gifts would be worth the money of hosting those parties. And well, the creation of an army from a nucleus of the Desert Rangers. To be fair, it wasn’t as messy as I would have suspected. Their stockpiles of arms and ammunition would have given the Rangers a run for their money. And their Rangers were trained to act as ponies higher in rank than they actually were. So, they already had a trained corp of upper enlisted and officers. That was a pleasant surprise.

There were quite a few pleasant surprises, one was the number of volunteers ticking up steadily as time went on. We had more than enough raw recruits to mould into shape, enough to keep Ironsight and Frostbite busy for months. We didn’t have months, that was the problem. The other pleasant surprise was that Phalanx’s rangers were a wonderful addition to the city. They were respectful, and polite to the ponies of Paradise, especially after Phalanx managed to get them all some bits that would spend in the city-

“Icepick, we have a Pegasus in the lobby that wants to speak with you,” one of my new lieutenants said to me. They looked tired and very caffeinated. The perfect image of a soldier.

“Send them in, make sure to frisk them,” I replied as I studied the reports sitting on the desk. Apparently, those documents Rosetta had been handed were the legit thing. Xuaith was actually making progress designing an armature to unite the spark spell and the amplification chamber. My attention was brought back to the present when I heard the sounds of knocking on the door. Our little office was underground, but the old stable doors had been replaced with more conventional ones in a renovation a decade ago.

“Come in,” I said towards the door. A moment later, my lieutenant opened the door, and let in a pegasus stallion wearing a dark hoodie and a pair of sunglasses.

“You know, you could’ve mentioned that this Pegasus was Phalanx, the leader of the Rangers camped outside,” I said towards the lieutenant, she blanched and made a rapid, apologetic nod.
“I didn’t actually think this would work,” Phalanx said with a laugh. My subordinate stiffened at the sound of his voice, a flare of recognition going off in her mind.

“It really shouldn’t have,” I replied softly. “Just, try better next time. You’re dismissed.” The lieutenant, Heat Pipe left the room, and as the door shut, I thought I could hear the sound of her cursing beautifully.

“So, why are you here? I honestly didn’t expect you to ever wear normal clothes,” I finished just as he trotted up to the front of the desk. He moved the sunglasses off of his face and placed them in a pocket.

“May I sit down?” He said respectfully, even as the grin on his face from the successful ruse stayed glued on.

“Sure, but don’t expect too much of my time,” I said to him as he dropped himself into the chair. It was an old office chair with wheels and padding that had seen better days. Mine was better.

“Well, let me start by saying, I’m not here on a personal basis. I’m a mere courier, tasked with giving you a piece of information,” he said in his sanctimonious way.

“Okay, so it’s not about shaking us down for more money for your troops to blow on shore leave,” I said with a deep exhale.

“Not this time,” he replied in a chirpy voice. “It’s from one of my trusted officers. And I was told not to reveal any more information than that, and a date and time.”

“I mean, sure,” I said before wondering all the questions that came up when the commander of your ally of convenience went all the way to your office on a mission that didn’t seem to make much sense.

“What’s it about?” I asked, staring into his brown eyes. There wasn’t a hint of deception, just nervousness and a bit of apprehension.

“It’s about mending the past, about our collective project,” he said before staring at something on my shelf. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Dark Rum, aged in barrel for a decade, back in Safe Harbour,” I told him before scowling.

“I’ll give you a drink, and I’ll take one too if you tell me who wants to meet with me,” his expression changed. Of course, he’d be the type who loved expensive booze.

“I already told you all I could, just trust me, it’ll be worth your valuable time,” Phalanx said before adding. “The Rusty Torpedo, eight O’clock tomorrow.”

“I have a bad feeling you’re actually an honourable stallion, damn, I like to bribe ponies,” I said with a laugh before standing up and grasping the bottle and the two glasses on the shelf beside it.

“Pardon?” He asked suddenly like I had made a particularly distasteful joke.

“It was a bad joke,” I said as I pulled the bottle and the two glasses to the desk, before pouring out two roughly even portions into the glasses. “Okay, now that you’re here, and we’re both getting evenly sauced, speak your mind.”

He picked up the glass with a hoof and brought the high proof liquor to his lips, before taking a petite, measured taste of the smooth rum. He smiled at the taste and turned to look at me.

“The world is changing Icepick,” he said softly, before taking another drink. I joined him, and pressed my glass against his. The liquid rocked back and forth from within the vessel, and a low chime of glass connecting with glass vibrated the air. “Technology is coming back, as fast as we can design it, and reverse engineer what we brought with us from Equestria. The Arabs are in a state of revolt, and the warlords to the south are growing bolder and bolder every year. They sense the decay, the breakdown of the old order.”

“That’s where you come in, to rebuild the Rangers, and crush the Arabs back into pliant peasants?” I asked in a tone that held no judgement. There was judgement in my mind, waiting for him to tell me exactly what I expected to hear from a conqueror.

“That’s where we come in, the two of us, and the ponies across all of Sall’han. I don’t want to fight another internecine war if it can be helped, and the best step we can take in that regard is to give citizenship to the Arabs under our sphere of control. That and recognize the Arabs outside as a sovereign state. That’s the only humane, and well, practical solution to the problems we face,” he replied quietly like he was telling himself these things to himself as much as me.

“Good answer, better than mine, honestly,” I said in a moment of candour. He smiled at me, softly.

“You’ve had bigger problems on your plate,” he said before taking another sip of the delicious drink. “Besides, working on problems like that, the strategic plans that animate the Ranger juggernaut was my old job.”

“The office of strategic intelligence, no wonder I didn’t recognize you, spooks don’t get a lot of recognition,” I replied, swirling my own drink, before imbibing more of it.

“Indeed, though I can’t say the same for you,” he said darkly before lightening up a smidge. “Would you like to know when I first read your name?”

“Shoot,” I said, before topping off both of our glasses. I scowled at the level in the bottle. Someone needed to invent a bottomless bottle of booze.

“Well, it was a report filed by Ironsight, when you were her Subordinate,” he started before meeting my gaze, and looking hungrily at his topped up glass. “You left on your own accord to go fight some bandits that were harassing farmers living on the fringes of the Senegral. It was one of the first times I was introduced to an alien set of ideas. The idea of protecting the Arab population, instead of subjugating them. They were flagged because of the insubordination, and because the next couple visits by our collection teams were peaceful, and without incident, other than a little bit of hero worship for the mare who had been their protector.”

“Really?” I asked suddenly.

“Indeed, they remember you, the knight in shining armour, the protector.”

“And that’s why you’re using me as a symbol?” I asked softly, with exhaustion in my voice, that I couldn’t remember feeling until that moment.

“You’re using yourself as one, the protector of Sall’han, the leader of the Equine Liberation Army,” he replied before laughing a little, more of a giggle than anything else. “You can’t even imagine the chaos that name gave us spooks, and that was before you managed to call the entire city of Paradise to arms.”

“But I think you’ve got me beat in terms of sheer headache,” I said with a laugh, thinking of the high commands reaction to learning their largest and best-equipped field army had gone rogue.

“Probably, but they had it coming. They wanted us to make an example of this city, to rain fire and steel on it, and raise our flag over the shelled remains,” There was bitterness, anger that flowed out along with his words. “I remember what we were supposed to do. The point of our subjugating, the fear, the heartlessness.”

“Homecoming,” I said with a laugh. It was a bitter sound, like the dream we had shared bad become a dark joke. In a way, it had always been one. That was what made it even more worthy of derision.

“I still believe in it,” Phalanx said with a dark certainty, like he didn’t want to admit that he still believed in anything so whimsical.

“Me too,” I replied, he looked surprised for a moment before smiling broadly. “We’ll do it.”

“If we win this fight, and build a system of trade and alliances that makes this fight worth it,” he replied smartly, before taking another drink.

“The world is changing, but I’m looking forward to it,” I said.

“I look forward to creating a better future, an alliance to make the world again,” he offered his hoof to me at that moment. I held mine out, and we shook, Pegasus and Earth Pony, Equestrians looking to go home. I smiled at him before picking my glass up. He did the same, we clunked them together one last time, before draining the dregs in a single breath. “To friendship.”

“To having a future,” I replied before he left. But not before affixing his sunglasses again, and drifting out the door just as he had come. I stared back down at my reports before lifting my hind legs onto the desk and taking a deep breath.

“Of course he’d be a spook.”

---===*===---

“That sounds odd,” Permittivity said from the edge of the bed. I was putting on a tight-fitting blue dress, with some stockings I had picked up in a store a few blocks away. For some reason, I wanted to dress up. He helped me with his magic, putting on stockings for me as I held a leg out at a time.

“I know right?” I replied as I watched him get out of bed slowly, wearily. We had a room next to my office, an old couples quarter from back when the stable had been in use. It was pleasant, even if the lack of windows and the low hum of the air recyclers was a little unnerving.

“And yet you’re dressing up like it’s a formal affair,” he said with a roll of his eyes as he helped me put another stocking up my legs.

“I dunno, maybe I just like to wear nice things to meetings with strangers,” I shot back.

“I mean, I’m not complaining, you look beautiful in that dress,” he said smartly, before trotting up to me, his horn still glowing, and wrapped his forelegs around my withers. Then, he kissed me.

“You’re a sweet stallion, and you should wear one of those nice jackets,” I said to him, pointing at the closet with a stocking covered leg. He smiled gently, before dragging over a steel grey jacket in his magic. He put it on with a speed that I would never have. Maybe our kids would though-

“Just don’t expect me to wear pants to a dive bar,” he said with a laugh. I smiled back at him.

“Why would I want you to do that? You’re best assets are on display without pants,” he shrugged before helping me with the final stocking. We had almost broken down into a pile of rutting pony when he had helped me put on the panties.

“Good point,” he said before pointing at the time on his little knock off pipbuck. “Don’t we have a meeting in a seedy bar to attend?”

---===*===---

The air smelled like, booze, fatty food and quiet desperation. I stepped inside and for once, no-one seemed to recognize me. I smiled at that. Permittivity was scanning the crowd on my behalf, which kind of brought me to the problem at hoof. We were looking for a pony without any knowledge of what they looked like-

“Icepick, I think that’s her,” I followed his gaze to the bar at the back of the long room. A mare in her forties, wearing a sweat-stained jumpsuit that looked suspiciously like mine sat on a stool, nursing a beer. “She looks like you, but twenty years older.”

I stared at her, the unshorn fetlocks, the bright blonde mane, and the coat just a couple shades darker than mine. My breath caught in my throat. Permittivity had to grab my foreleg and begin to pull me along before my legs started moving and my mind came back to me.

“Hey,” the mare said when we came up to her, picking the two nearest seats. “You’re dressed up pretty nice for a bar.” Was this just a coincidence, her manner was nonchalant, and her words were never what I would have suspected.

“And you’re dressed pretty shitty for Paradise,” I shot back, a little bit of annoyance and nervousness slipping out as anger.

“Fair enough, so what do you drink? I figure I owe you at least that much,” she said as I managed to get my legs to work for a moment. Long enough to climb into the stool. I turned to face her. Her own dark beer was half empty, and a couple of shot glasses orbited it like moons.

“I like that beer,” I said in a low voice as her blue eyes stared into mine. She smiled a little before looking over at Permittivity, just behind me.

“I’ll have one of those as well,” Perm said before nodding at the two of us.

“Sleeping with the enemy, I mean, I understand, he is quite a looker,” the mare said with a laugh, and a glance at Perm and then back to me.

“What the fuck?” I said out loud bringing a couple of extra eyes towards me.

“Language young lady,” she said with a laugh before letting her hoof drift towards my shoulder. “No, but really, it was gonna be awkward however we did this.”

“It’s really you?” I said quietly, not quite believing what was in front of my eyes.

“I mean, we do look a lot alike, I certainly noticed your buck checking me out,” she said before shooting him a look that I had shot him a number of times before. It was eerie seeing someone who looked so much like me. Permittivity coughed before drinking a bit of the beer that had been placed in front of him.

“I-” I tried to say something, but my words caught in my throat.

“It’s okay, I’m only so talkative because I’m drunk,” she replied with a laugh.

“Well, only one way to fix that,” I said as I pulled my beer into my hoof before downing half of it in one chug. I belched loudly and turned to look at my mother. “You could start with your name.”

“I’m Talon, I wear the armour, same as you, and I’m so fucking proud of you,” she said in an avalanche of words. “Goddesses, I’m drunk.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” I replied snarkily, before pressing my hoof to her shoulder tentatively, some part of me worrying that if I touched her, she would disappear again. “So…”

“Before you ask, we aren’t having any grandfoals yet,” Permittivity started before adding. “But we’ve been practising. A lot.”

“That’s such a weird idea, especially if you pop out a unicorn,” Talon said with an odd look on her face. “But it’s a brave new world. I can get used to the idea of a grand foal. Or five.”

“N-no,” I said in a stuttering voice. The two of them were smiling at me, and each other.

“Your stomach will never be the same, and I can blame you for that one, missy,” Talon said before taking another sip of her beer. I did the same, finishing it off and eyeing the bartender, ordering another round with the kind of telepathy that only existed in the halls of the intoxicated.

“The hips make up for it,” Permittivity said slyly. I swatted at his hoof, but he moved it out of the way just in time.

“Perm, stop hitting on my mom, and mom, stop hitting on Perm,” I said in a pleading tone. “It’s really weird.”

“Honey, this entire situation is kinda weird,” Talon said before softening her look. “But it’s what we have, and I’m glad you came.”

“I’m glad too,” I said as I looked at the bar. Another beer was already setting in front of me, and in an instant, I broke. Tears formed at the edges of my eyes-

She wrapped her hooves around me and rested her chin on my shoulder. When I looked up, she was crying too. I felt reassured, even as I felt her tears fall on my dress.

“I’m so, so sorry,” my mother said softly. “I wish I could’ve been there.”

“You were there when you could,” Permittivity said softly, letting his foreleg wrap around me, and touch her lightly. “I had a dream about it.”

“What?” Talon asked, taken a bit aback at the thought.

“Uh, Perm and I have each other's dreams, and sometimes, old memories too,” I said. She still looked confused. “Yeah we don’t know either, it just kinda happened, and it was before we met.”

“That must have been funny to watch,” she said with a laugh. It was a hearty laugh, there wasn’t an atom in it with any bitterness.

“Oh, trust me, it was quite startling,” Permittivity said with a wave of his hoof.

“Mom, he saved me from Tegarni,” I said in a low voice.

“And she saved me from Tegarni, and burned an oil field down when she thought I was gone,” Permittivity said.

“Okay, that’s pretty cute,” Talon said with a laugh. My expression became a frown as she laughed. “Grand romantic gestures and saving each other all the time. I like it.”

“Thank you?” Permittivity said in a bemused tone.

“Oh, you kids are welcome,” Talon said before beaming at me. “No but seriously, keep it up, you’re doing good work. But now that you mention it, I’d be down for taking care of a little shit for you two. I’ll spoil the everloving fuck out of them, that’s what grandmas are for, I think.”

“That’s correct,” Permittivity said with a smile, and a bump on my shoulder.

I teared up again, as the two of them looked at me with a love I had never expected from anyone. I shattered at that moment, all the pressure on me, all the uncertainty, everything began to flow out of me. And then, I felt the embraces from the two of them. My mother and my lover. Two things I never thought I would have.

“It’s okay, we’re here for you,” Permittivity said before pulling me towards him. He kissed my cheek lightly and I looked up at him. His eyes seemed to glow with kindness and affection. I had a family. And I could make it bigger. My heart opened as I remembered all my friends, all my comrades, even the ones who weren’t here anymore. My tears didn’t stop, but they started to die down.

“That’s why we have to win,” I said as I collected myself. A moment passed as the two of them looked at me. I wiped away my tears with the edges of my fetlocks. I stood up and raised my glass. “To victory, for Paradise, for Equestria!”

The ponies in the bar seemed to notice me at that moment, and the second round of cheers broke through the crowd. I smiled as I spun the stool around, and I raised my glass again. I drank heavily as I looked on at the energized crowd. I spotted a fair few Rangers from Phalanx’s army.

“To Homecoming!” I yelled out as Permittivity looked at me, supporting me, and Talon as she added to my words.

“To Homecoming!” The rangers in the crowd replied, and a moment later the Paradise ponies joined in.

“ELA, ELA, ELA!” A group of intoxicated ponies began to cheer from the back of the bar. They were joined by a chorus of other ponies, some less drunk, some sober as a gopher. I smiled at all of them and raised my hoof in the air.

“Thank you, thank you all,” I said as the chorus died down, and the stomping of hooves on the ground ended.

“No, you can thank us by kicking that Sombra guy back to the history books,” A stallion called out. He stood up and pointed at me, Talon and Permittivity.

“Yeah, kick their flanks.”

“Make sure to bring back a flag or something.”

“First Sombra, then, Home.”

I sat back in my seat and let the many demands, many suggestions, and at least one proposition for sex roll over me.

“I got this one,” Talon said with a sly look on her muzzle.

Talon got up and walked in a mostly straight line towards the buzzed stallion looking for a good time. He wasn’t bad looking, tall and broad. Talon waved backwards with a hoof towards Permittivity. And then, she bent down towards him, and grasped his withers with her forelegs, before kissing him deeply and waving her tail like a feline. In the corner of my eye, I noticed a tendril of blue magic holding a folded napkin. It slipped deftly into Talon’s back pocket.

The stallion gasped after the long kiss ended, and the crowd whooped.

“You know, I could always make you a sibling,” she said with a look back at me, the stallion smiling broadly at the implications.

“Just don’t do it here,” I said with a nervous laugh, not quite sure if she was serious or not.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Talon said in a faux outraged voice, before grabbing the lucky stallion by the collar and dragging him up to his hooves. “I’m drunk, happy, and looking to buck a stud half my age. You down?”

He nodded instantly, and eagerly. I smiled and looked away. Well, he might not have gotten under my tail, but my mother had fewer responsibilities, and hopefully an implant-

“Alright, I’m gonna take him back to my place. Goodnight Icepick, Goodnight Perm,” She started before looking back at the stallion she had chosen. “Nice meeting you, keep in touch, if you want to.”

“I know how to reach you,” I said with a smile. “Maybe someday we’ll get a phone line set up or something.”

“That’d be nice,” Talon said before starting the walk out the door. A few moments later, the two of them were gone. The crowd had mostly died down. And that was fine with me. Cheers and whoops were a lot nicer when you knew you wouldn’t have to keep doing them for too long.

“Score one for heredity,” Permittivity said with a laugh. I turned to him and looked into his eyes.

“I mean, we did both grow up in the rangers, so score one for environmental factors too,” I said slowly, a smile growing on my face. He wrapped a hoof around my shoulders and pulled me into his chest.

“Well, that just makes it a wash,” he said quietly. Permittivity bent his head down and kissed me on the forehead. He was so warm, I just wanted to stay against him forever.

“A lot of things end up that way,” I said, before craning my neck a little, and pecking him on the cheek. “But that’s okay. Everything is okay.”

“You know, she never paid for her tab, or ours,” Permittivity said dryly.

“Damnit Mom,” I said loudly, and turning back towards the mostly empty drinks. “At least she’ll have a fun night.” Permittivity had grasped his wallet and was pulling out paper bills, and dropping them on the counter. “Also, what did you slip into her pocket?”

“I slipped her a napkin with Page Turner’s address on it, and a time,” He stopped and raised his eyebrows suggestively. “And, you know, there’s nothing stopping us from having an equally fun night,” Permittivity said before finishing off his beer. I gave him a bump on the shoulder.

“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. He smiled ruefully. His tail started waving behind him. I smiled back. And knocked back the last of my drink.

“Great minds, you know the rest,” Permittivity said before hopping off the bar stool, before holding out a hoof to me. I waved it away and dumped myself onto the floor of the bar. “I’m technically a knight, so the chivalry thing is part of the job.”

“How did that happen? You never really struck me as the heavily armoured, feudal noble type,” I asked, wondering if he was talking out of his ass or if there was a really funny story there.

“Sombra knighted me before I left,” he said softly. “I mean, if we ever build a castle, it would be a little less weird.”

“I’m not complaining, I’ve always wanted to fuck a noble,” I said as he offered his hoof to me again. I took it this time, and together we started walking out of the bar.

“I should’ve mentioned it sooner, clearly,” he said in a bright tone.

“Yeah, you really should’ve mentioned the knighted by an evil deity thing sooner,” I said in a loud voice, a little bit of anger bleeding through. In response, he hooked his tail around mine, intertwining them as his ears dropped down.

“Clearly,” he said simply. I finished the tail wrap, and bumped my shoulder into his.

---===*===---

The walk through the city was quiet, there were ponies around, but they stuck to their little clumps. Their obligations. And so Perm and I started towards the little room we had been given. It was a few minutes into our walk that we spotted something that made Perm grin. There was a couple standing underneath a street life, holding each other and kissing under the yellow light. I stopped and stared, it was pretty romantic, standing in the brightest place-

“We’re going to do that,” Permittivity said before wrapping a hoof around me. His hooves began to tap a little as we waited for the couple to leave our spot. I couldn’t resist, I pulled him closer to me, and we shared a kiss on the spot. His hooves drifted over my dress, grasping at it, pulling me into him.

“Uh, hey,” One of the kissing ponies said to us. They had noticed us.

“Take your time, we can wait for our turn,” I yelled back. Perm took that moment to bury his muzzle into my neck, and nip my flesh enough to make me jump.

“Alright,” the mare with the stallion groping her said. Still, a few moments later they finished and started walking away from us.

“I think that means it's our turn,” Permittivity said before holding my hoof and pulling me towards the center of the pool of light.

I went along with him, looking around the empty streets for voyeurs. There didn’t seem to be any. That was fine with me, as we entered the center of the light. I held Perm, and pulled his muzzle into mine in one graceful motion. He pursed his lips and met mine, a moment later, his hooves drifted down my body, before finding my hips and squeezing them. I moaned into his mouth, and his tongue pressed into my muzzle. He had a hungry look in his eyes.

When we broke the kiss, he still had that look. I think I matched it. I wanted him, and he wanted me. It was a blissful situation. It felt right in a way I couldn’t quite put my fetlock on. Love and lust commingling, adding up to a greater whole.

“Want to retire for the evening?” He asked slyly, as I stared into those bright blue orbs. He was a beautiful stallion, I realized. Not perfect, and scarred by his time on earth, but who wasn’t?

“I don’t think that’s quite the right phrase,” I said smugly. He eyed me before snorting.

“I’ll concede the point, just this once,” Permittivity said as he stood back on his legs. I followed him up, wrapping my tail around his. I’m sure that my tail teased him a little too-

“Very considerate of you, stallion of my dreams,” I smiled at him before pursing my lips. He noticed the change.

“What’s on your mind?” He asked softly, concern and curiosity evident in his voice.

“That stallion, god, spirit or whatever, he sparked our love. It’s a move in a great game of chess. And I don’t like to be a pawn,” I said darkly.

“He might have sparked something, but I can tell the fuel was already there,” he said with a glance at my flank. I flushed a little at that, and bumped my shoulder against his roughly. “As I was saying, a little bit of magic isn’t the reason were together. Besides, in no game of chess are you a pawn. You’re more like a rook, moving forward and damn anyone that gets in your way.”

“I thought you were about to say I’m a queen,” I said. “You’re right though, I think we fell for each other, for each other, with maybe a little push from on high.”

“Exactly,” he said brightly. “Two damaged souls tied together with twine.”

“I didn’t know you were into bondage,” I said in a conspiratorial tone. He visibly winced. I smiled at his discomfort.

“You don’t use twine for bondage, my dear,” he said as he regained his momentum. His tail tugged at mine, and his rump smacked against mine. “You use rope.”

“Something tells me you want me tied up sometime,” I said huskily. He stayed stoic in the face, but I could tell that he was more than a little intrigued by the thought.

“The idea has crossed my mind,” he said. “But, something tells me you want to be tied up, played with until you’re begging for release.” He said in a playful voice, with just a tinge of excitement in it.

“I’m the type who’s willing to try anything once,” I said with a smile and a wink. He flushed, redness colouring his cheeks, even in the dark of the moonlit night. “Maybe I’ve been wanting to try some other things too…”

“L-like what?” He asked, curious and just as flustered. I mean, to be fair, I was feeling it too. All the kissing, all the teasing, it was working its magic on me. I knew if I lifted my tail up, I would feel a cold chill over my nethers. Wetness tended to do that.

“Well, you’re pretty thick, and I wonder what you would feel like in my tailhole,” I said with a smile. He looked like he had died, gone to Valhalla, and returned with a passion for anal.

“I would love to try that with you,” he said honestly. We were getting close to the entrance to the stable. I stopped in my tracks and pulled him into me. I kissed him deeply, watching him through half closed eyes. His scarred muzzle, his well groomed coat, and those lovely eyes. I could stare into them forever. Some part of me knew that this was the pair bonding part of me. Those instincts and chemicals, used for eons to make new little ponies. I didn’t mind.

“You’re beautiful, and everything I’ve ever wanted,” he said as we broke the kiss, just taking the long, lazy moment to hold each other and brace against the cold breezes, the salt in the air from the sea, and the overwhelming odds against us. I nuzzled his neck softly, pressing my muzzle against his collar bone, before placing a little peck against it. He held me tighter, I felt his warmth against mine, his beating heart running like crazy just as mine was.

“And I’m a kick ass politician too, right?” I said with a smirk. He smiled and looked at me.

“You’re certainly trying your hardest to become a queen,” he said softly, letting one of his forehooves gently caress my mane, before poking my ear back up as it dropped.

“What would that make you? A king isn’t a very good piece to be,” I said with a laugh.

“I’d rather be the consort of the queen, it’s much more dignified,” Permittivity said softly, right into my ear. I felt electricity shoot down my spine, and spill out of me.

“You just want to wear garish outfits and participate in palace intrigue,” I shot back. He nodded softly and looked down at himself.

“If I remember correctly, you were the one who wanted to dress up tonight,” He said as he got back to his hooves and started towards the stable entrance. A massive gear of a door was currently sitting open, guarded by a couple of security ponies. We knew them from experience at this point, and they let us through with a greeting and a smile.

The rest of the walk to our quarters passed by in a blur, the old stable was in night mode, with only a bit of light to spoil the feeling of a night stroll. Permittivity was by my side the whole time, feeling him beside me, it reminded me of our meeting and our sojourn through the desert. We had discovered each other back then, and looking back, we were already feeling things for each other. Sleeping beside him, and some early morning snuggles had made that clear…

I knew what we would do, and I was ready for it. My stallion and I. The stallion of my dreams and the destroyer. Somehow, it would all work out. Prophecies, the future, and maybe just our future. He looked at as the door appeared before us. Maybe he was thinking similar thoughts. Ruminations on the future- Well, for a while, I could forget.

---===*===---

The walk was pleasant, the air was drier than usual, and there was a gentle breeze flowing from the desert towards the ocean. I wasn’t dressed up in the late afternoon, and Permittivity was naked as well. The city was bustling around us like a hive of ants. But I had grown to like that part of it. Everyone moving around on their own business, living their own lives as they wished. A little piece of the past, an enclave of normality-

“What was it like?” I asked Permittivity as we crossed a street and were assaulted by the smell of a bakery.

“What was what like?” Perm replied softly.

“Living in a place that wasn’t burned, that was still full of hope?” I asked quietly. “Was it like this city?”

“I was only ever in the north, but yes, with the discovery of science, an ever increasing industry and a world that seemed to grow smaller every year- yes. Ponies who had never known war, who had never felt the ravages of starvation and abject poverty, that was what the empire was like in the years before the war. Paradise is a beautiful city, I see it too,” he finished with a sigh. He was mostly right, compared to his home, or mine this place was an island of peace in a sea of strife. They had been briefly under the guns of the rangers, and had been terrified by the Rangers at their gates. But that wasn’t the same thing. That was a taste of war, of death. I bit my lip and looked over at him.

“Do you think it can stay like this?”

“I think they’ve been very lucky, this world, or any world I’m familiar with is not peaceful. They’re still children playing soldier, and nothing short of real war will change that,” Perm finished abruptly.

“I don’t want that to happen. I want this place to stay innocent, it’s a piece of the past, of a world before the great war, the very thing I was taught from birth to fight for,” I said before pressing a hoof to his shoulder. He stopped moving and met my gaze. There was a pain in his eyes, some great knowledge that couldn’t be imparted. His burden to bear.

“There once was a great queen in a land far away, and long ago. She asked her wisest mares to create something that would make her pleased when she was sad, and sadden her when she was pleased. Soon after they presented her with a mirror inscribed with four words: this too shall pass. That’s what you have to remember, their days of peace were always numbered, but so are the days of war for everyone else. One way or another, there will be peace soon,” Permittivity said with a smile that seemed genuine, but the look in his eyes hadn’t changed.

“There were a thousand years of peace before the war began. Whatever peace we make, it can’t last forever,” I replied as the wind caught my mane and waved it back and forth behind my head. The sky had just begun to change in the east. Blackness would sweep across the land again, and then the sun would rise again.

“I’d be quite content with a millennia of peace, personally,” he snorted as he finished speaking. We began to walk again, as the light turned to a burnt orange in the west. “But I would settle for a lifetime.”

“That, that would be wonderful. All I’ve ever done is fight, or prepare to fight, or learn about the big fights of the past. I’m tired of it,” I said quietly.

“I am too, I’ve been weary of war for a long time now,” he said in a sombre tone. “But I was willing to pick up arms again. Once, for the wrong reasons. And now, for the right ones.”

“At least you weren’t destined to destroy,” I said with a laugh. A laugh that sounded more bitter than I intended to make it.

“We don’t choose to be born, or what our fate will entail. But between you and me, I think we could use some supernatural power on our side,” Permittivity said in a conspiratorial tone. “If I know one thing, it’s this: Sombra believes in the destroyer.”

“Well that’s comforting,” I said with a laugh.

“It’s something, it takes a lot to scare a god, and if he wasn’t exactly scared, he was reverent, very fucking reverent,” Permittivity said before bumping my shoulder.

“You know, I’d be a lot more down with this prophecy if I knew what the fuck was going on,” I said as we crossed the last street before our destination.

“There is a possibility that the vagueness is protective, that if you knew exactly what it meant, you would be worse off,” Perm responded in a curious tone.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said in a tone that was dangerously close to sulking.

“Maybe you’ll feel better when the prophecy is fulfilled?” Perm said with a grin. I rolled my eyes at him and pointed at Page’s bookstore.

“So your advice is to aim myself at whatever I want destroyed and hope that the freaky magic will help me?” I asked him sardonically.

“If you ask me, that’s pretty much what you’ve been doing all along,” Permittivity said with that same shit eating grin.

“Just roll with the freaky magic and eldritch forces, except this time, knowingly, got it,” I said as I pushed open the door. Page was sitting behind the counter, and she smiled at us as we trotted in.

“How have you two been?” Page asked us as we strode into the store.

“Busy,” Permittivity said. “But we’ve been worse. What have you been up to?”

“Same old, same old, except I’ve had a bunch of steel rangers come in here, looking for some of the old prints,” Page Turner said with a laugh. “I just carried them for the history really, but they came in asking for the old books specifically. Something about home, and wanting to know what it was really like.” I had a smile on my face by now. The more they learned, they more they knew about the equestria that was…

“That’s nice, they’re not bad ponies at heart, and the more they learn, the better they’ll be,” I said before trotting over to the counter itself.

“Right, that common heritage is probably why we don’t have Rangers running through the streets, armed to the teeth,” she said with something approaching reproach.

“Y-yeah,” I replied before meeting her gaze. “So, we might have a plus one.”

“Who would that be?” Page asked just as the doorbell rang. The three of us turned towards the door as a mare stepped in. Her dirty blonde mane, and charcoal coat were striking in the dying light of sunset. She smiled at Perm and I, before walking towards us.

“I had a feeling that you two passed me that note,” Talon said nonchalantly as she came to stop in front of the counter.

“I take it she’s your plus one?” Page Turner asked me softly.

“Yeah,” I replied before looking over at Talon. “You hungry?”

“Depends on the cook,” Talon replied with a laugh.

“Dalliance is an excellent cook,” Permittivity said before gesturing at Talon. “This is Talon, Icepick’s-”

“I can see the resemblance,” Page said before extending a hoof towards the other mare. “I take it you’re with the army parked outside the city.”

“I am,” Talon said.

“So, wanna head upstairs folks?” Page asked with a smile. She locked the front door with her magic and spun around.

“That’s what we came here for!” I said as I started to follow her. I glanced over my shoulder at Perm and Talon. The two of them were glancing at one another. “Coming?”

“Yeah,” Talon said before walking up the stairs. She pushed past me and I felt the tension in her form as we touched.

I shrugged and headed up the stairs, letting Perm take up the rear. The two of us reached the apartment at the top with the smell of cooking in the air. Talon was already sitting on the couch in the living room. On the other side of it was Page. They looked relaxed, and I breathed a sigh of relief before dipping into the kitchen to see what was being made. There I saw Dalliance wearing her apron, and Rosetta leaning against the counter, a beer held in his magic. I smiled at him and trotted forward. In my peripheral vision, I saw Permittivity walk into the living room.

“Hey! It’s a while!” Dalliance chirped at me before throwing her forelegs around me.

“Too long, too damn long,” I replied as I squeezed her back firmly.

“I guess being in charge of a whole lotta ponies has that effect,” she said with a laugh and a release of my barrel with her hooves. I let the older mare go, and smiled at her.

“Yeah, if I wasn’t committed to it, I’d let someone else run the whole thing,” I shot back before looking over at Rosetta. He seemed better, brighter and a little more calm than before. Getting over himself and seeing his family had helped him out I guess.

“I wouldn’t say that, you’re enjoying it a little, everyone would,” Dally said before gesturing at the pot.

“What’s in the pot?” I asked as I ambled over the refrigerator. A glow of reddish-pink magic appeared over the handle. A moment later it swung open and a sliced veggies and potatoes greeted me. “Good shit, I see.”

“Thanks, it’s been cooking for a while, it’ll be done pretty soon,” Dally said before turning around and pulling out two beers. She passed me one, and I popped the tap with a spoon. I took a drink as the smell of cooking food slowly filled the room.

“So who’s that cute mare that came up with you and Perm?” Dalliance asked me. I narrowed my eyes at her and coughed.

“That’s my mom,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, makes sense,” Dalliance said with a giggle. “Well, I guess we could saunter over to the next room.”

“Sounds good,” I replied to her and looked over at Rosetta. He shrugged and took another sip of his beer.

“I’ll watch the stew,” he said softly. I tilted my head at that. But his expression remained unchanged, a soft neutrality, a far off look in his eyes. He hadn’t been like that when I met him.

In any case, Dally and I trotted into the living room. Perm was surrounded by the other mares. Talon looked up at the two of us, and she smiled brightly.

“Hello,” Dally said while looking at Talon. The blonde mare blinked and looked over at Page.

“I thought you said you had a kid?” Talon asked.

“I do,” Page replied, and turned to the other mare. “He’s from another relationship.”

“Oh,” Talon said.

“It’s alright, his father died a long time ago,” Page said before looking at Dalliance. “Is it done?”

“Not quite,” Dally said before looking at Perm. “Swap me out.” She looked at him and then the plush, old airchair.

“Fair enough,” Perm said, flushing slightly, and keeping his tail tucked rigidly between his legs. “Where’s Icepick going to sit?”

“I’m sure she’ll figure something out,” Dalliance replied with a laugh. I wiggled my eyebrows at Perm. He blushed brightly at that. The older mare sat with the two mothers and he reclined in the chair. I trotted over and sat myself down on his lap. There was a soft groan from him when I landed.

“So what were you talking about?” I asked as I leaned back against his chest. He was warm, and a moment later I felt him wrap a foreleg around my barrel. His breath hit the back of my neck, tickling it a little, and I felt content.

“The battle to come,” Perm said.

“Fun stuff,” I said with a laugh. Perm grabbed the beer I had sat on the table and took a draw from it.

“So, he’s a spirit stuck in a mirror?” Talon asked, a look of playful disbelief on her muzzle.

“Stuck wouldn’t be the right word,” Permittivity said, before gulping down another bit of my beer. “He put himself in it, or at least, his soul in it. A ploy for immortality.”

“So are we going to blow it up? You have that balefire bomb, if I remember right,” Talon asked us. I coughed and shook my head.

“We disassembled the bomb,” I added. My mother’s face darkened a bit at that. But Page and Dalliance brightened.

“That’s a fucking trump card, why would you-” Talon started to say before I interrupted her.

“It’s the weapon that ended the world,” I said.

“He has them too,” Permittivity added in the silence that followed my words.

There was a sound of hoofsteps in the hallway as Rosetta came into the room. He looked at all of us, before double taking as he saw Talon.

“Hello?” He said to her. She waved at him with a hoof, before looking at Permittivity.

“He has balefire bombs?” Talon asked, her face turning a lighter shade of grey.

“Not exactly, but something equally powerful. At the bottom of everything, the smallest scale, much smaller than the wavelengths of visible light, there are atoms. The war I fought in, it was ended by weapons that utilize the splitting of those atoms, to create explosions that can wipe entire armies from the field,” he looked down. “That’s conjecture, I never learned exactly how these weapons operated, but that’s my educated guess. Suffice it to say that these weapons exist, I’ve seen them with my own eyes.”

“It’s why you came,” Rosetta said softly. The beer in his magic was nearly empty, and he threw his head back and imbibed the remains.

“If he loses here, he’ll still try for the final victory,” Perm said, his body shaking subtly at the thought. “My world will be bathed in fire, just like yours.”

“It won’t happen,” I said. “We’ll kill him.”

“That’s my girl,” Talon said beaming. “What’s the plan though, for fighting a thousand year old god.”

“We didn’t just disarm ourselves,” Rosetta said. “We kept the more dangerous part of the bomb.”

“Megaspells come in different flavours,” I said with a laugh. “We’re going to build the biggest spark grenade ever constructed.”

“Uh, I know you’re a qualified demo mare, but isn’t megaspell engineering a little above your paygrade?” Talon asked.

“We know a girl who knows a guy, and that guy is the most qualified arcane engineer in Sall’han,” I replied sardonically.

“Ah, one of those situations,” Dalliance said with a laugh. “Usually that guy for me is someone good with plumbing.”

“It’s pretty much the same principal,” I said with a laugh. “Networking, right?”

“Final victory,” Rosetta softly. I turned to look at him.

“What does that mean?” I asked Perm.

“In your world, when weapons that could split the heavens were used, both sides had them. Right now, there’s only one power in my world with that titanic power,” Permittivity said darkly. “A holocaust. Submarines driven into harbours on suicide missions. Missiles travelling long ballistic arcs into the Celestian interior. A victorious army marching into our old enemy’s homeland, and raising a flag over the ruins strewn with corpses.”

“Not if I can help it,” Rosetta said. Fire in his eyes, a tension throughout his body. He stomped the ground with a foreleg. “We cut the head off the snake.”

“That might not stop them,” Perm replied. “There were more ponies than Sombra that wanted a war. That want the final victory.”

---===*===---

We ate, we drank, and we enjoyed each other’s company. Through it all, there was a shadow cast over it. Not just the battle to come, that we had control over. The prospect of the deaths of millions to come. A world just like ours, dying just like ours. I smiled, and laughed, and tried to stop myself from thinking about it. Because, what could I do.

I was just a pony.

Author's Note

I had half this chapter written ages ago, but it took me a while to finish it. In any case, I hope you like this update. Things are coming to a close, faster than you'd think. Faster than I expected. I wouldn't be surprised if it's done within a year. Maybe sooner.

If you want to help support my writing, I have a patreon and a ko-fi!
https://www.patreon.com/Sunnydontlook
https://ko-fi.com/sunnydontlook

And a new discord server for me to connect with my fans, and well, to hang out in: https://discord.gg/dxfCZzV

Recognition, Redeployment & Redemption (XXVI)

Author's Note

Sometimes, promises to yourself are the only thing that can keep an idea alive. Sometimes an idea is the only thing that can keep yourself alive.

Recognition, Redeployment & Redemption (XXVI)

I awoke with a start. There was a cold sweat covering my body. I looked at my wrist computer. It was early in the morning, much too early. But I had little faith that I could return to sleep. The room was pitch black, as I turned the screen of the arcanotech back off. Maybe, just maybe meditation could help me. It wasn’t going to hurt to try. A few moments later, I was sitting atop the covers. With an effort, I got my breathing steady, and cleared my head. Slowly, my perception shifted outwards, a trickle at first, Icepick beside me, breathing softly. The bunker I was in, the power pulsing like a beating heart, softly alternating through the wires-

The city came next, sleeping ponies, engines, radios, and the old reactors at the heart of this place. For a good while I felt nothing but the city. It was peaceful. Icepick had been right, this was an innocent place. It reminded me of my home before the war. That recollection had stung at first, until I realized that it was all that I hoped for. All that I had gone through the portal for. A hope for peace. What I had been blind to was the cost.

Still further my perception expanded, on the edges of it, I felt the magic and power of the Orangutans-

My eyes shot open, and my breathing lost its gentle tempo. Without thinking I turned myself around and prodded Icepick with a hoof. She mewled softly and pushed against my foreleg.

“Get up,” I said in a more strained voice than I meant to.

“What’s it?” Icepick slurred sleepily.

“I think they’re coming to us,” I nearly yelled.

“W-what?” Icepick jerked awake. I flipped the light on. The room was bathed in an artificial glow.

“The Imperial Army is on the march,” I said. She scowled.

“How do you know this?” Icepick asked, even as she jumped out of bed, and started throwing on a jumpsuit. “Was it your magic meditation thing?”

I nodded at her and helped her put on the suit. I grabbed a jacket and put it on, and a moment later we were off to the command center.

---===*===---

“So, they’re coming to us?” Phalanx asked me as the rest of the ponies began to filter in.

“That doesn’t surprise me, not really,” Councilor Elan replied to him as Icepick frantically called the airfield in the background.

“Our military doctrine was always focused on the offense, it was only when things became untenable that we ever started fighting defensively,” I said. The stallions looked at me strangely at that. “But I wasn’t sure about it. Seeing them out there, thousands of them, that made me sure.”

“I’m not a big believer in mystical powers,” Phalanx said. Elan met his gaze and chuckled dryly.

“You’re a pegasus, you fly only by the virtue of mystical powers, besides, this is someone that Icepick trusts,” Elan stated before nodding at me.

“The planes will have them spotted if they’re out there soon,” Phalanx said before shrugging noncommittally. “If they’re out there, what are we going to do?”

“Pull your troops into the city, and be ready for the assault,” I said. Phalanx and Elan shared a look. “You need a position that’s defensible, and he needs an army.”

“I’ll need to speak to the council,” Elan said flatly. That wasn’t surprising. Letting an army that was composed of the same ponies that had occupied your city was quite an ask.

“I’ll need to coordinate with my lieutenants about the deployments,” Phalanx stated before shooting a glance at the old councilor. “If your council agrees to it. Of course.”

“They likely will,” Elan said. He shook his head and breathed out a deep sigh. “We thought we had time.”

“You’re going to want to evacuate as many ponies as you can from the city, and ready the bunkers for those that can’t get away,” I said darkly. “The Imperial Army isn’t shy about shelling cities that stand in their way.”

“How exactly do you know this?” Phalanx asked me. There was suspicion in them, even contempt.

“I served in it,” I said dryly. “I made my way through the ruins of cities just like this one. Pulverized and burned, bodies buried beneath their homes. So, I would advise evacuating everyone you can.”

“That’s good information to have,” Elan said before standing up and starting out of the room. “I’m grateful for your help.” He said on his way out.

“You’re the unknown quantity, the stallion that was with her every step of the way. And now you’re telling me that you were a part of that invading army?” Phalanx asked, bristling under his collar.

“I was conscripted into the imperial army, and so were many others. Many soldiers under their command joined us willingly, after being captured and told the truth,” I said with a neutral tone. “That means I know how they’ll fight us. At this point, we’re in this together, and we could use all the help we can get our hooves on.”

“Alright,” he huffed. “So, what are their tactics, other than mass shelling to soften up defences.”

“There will likely be a feint attack to test our defences, then a strong one push towards the center with a larger assault. Then again, they could throw everything into an attack right after the shelling. If nothing major has changed, it’ll be a creeping barrage a few hundred meters ahead of the advancing infantry.”

“What rank were you in their army?” He asked suddenly. I shrugged before responding.

“I was a corporal, which is something equivalent to a junior knight in your organization,” I replied.

“I see,” he said. “What would you propose we do with our armoured forces?”

“Armoured forces? Your power armoured soldiers?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s good,” Phalanx said with a raised eyebrow. “Hey Icepick, I don’t think they know what an Ursa is.”

“What?” Icepick asked before walking over to the table. Whatever she had been doing, was either done or put on hold now.

“A bear? We have several species of bears in the empire,” I replied. Icepick shook her head before cracking a smile.

“Let’s show him,” Icepick said with a laugh. “How many do you have with you?”

“Fifty Ursa three’s, and thirty Ursa four’s,” the pegasus said. “Along with forty self-propelled guns.” Icepick let out a low whistle as a reply. It took a lot to impress her, so I took it as a good sign.

“Are these weapons?” I asked curious.

“Yes-”

“No-”

The two former rangers looked at each other with a scowl. I just stood there and waited for one of them to speak.

“They’re not weapons, because they’re not just meant to do damage,” Icepick spoke first, while meeting my gaze. “Calling them a weapon would be calling my armour a weapon. They’re a weapons platform, and protection for their crew at the same time.”

“That’s semantics, I guess you’ve become a bit of a philosopher in your time away,” Phalanx said as he got up and made towards the door. “Or maybe you’re trying to make the knights seem more chivalrous than they are. In any case, an Ursa is a tracked armoured vehicle equipped with a main gun, and a bevy of other offensive and defensive systems.”

“So, the gun is built into them, as opposed to a suit of powered armour, which has weapons attached to it?” I asked. Both of them blinked at my question.

“Yes,” Phalanx answered.

“So it’s more like a warship,” I said. Icepick smiled at that.

“Funny you should say that, they were originally called land cruisers in the great war,” Icepick said.

“Okay, now I’m deeply curious what these Ursas look like,” I replied.

A few minutes later, we were in the back of a truck. The air was stifling under the canvas roof, but I was excited. I was going to see the future. That was always the odd part of this world, they had already seen the future, and ridden out the worst of it. I was a time traveler, of a sort-

“Whatcha thinking about?” Icepick said with a laugh. “You have that thoughtful look on your muzzle.”

“I’m kind of a time traveller, it’s weird to think about,” I said quietly.
“Because, we have things that are amazingly futuristic to you?” Icepick asked. “I mean, you still don’t know how to use that Pipbuck.”

“Y-yes,” I admitted. Phalanx turned his head towards us. “It’s not just that. Sombra told me something about his abilities, about the worlds open to him. The portal only leads to broken worlds, dead ones, dark worlds.”

“Worlds like ours,” Icepick said in a low voice, before stretching out a hoof and pressing it to my shoulder.

“Exactly, but it took me a long time to understand it, to see the lesson staring me in the face. I was so afraid of my world burning, it blinded me to everything. We had the means to kill ourselves off in the last war. It nearly did me in too. But, seeing your world, what you’ve built, what the pony spirit can do-”

“Was it a good counter argument?” Icepick broke in with a smile. “I mean, we’ve done alright. I have no clue about the homeland, but here we’ve been trying to pull ourselves up. Even if we did a lot of horrible shit in the process. But that might have just been us.”

“Something like that, yes,” I said quietly. “Even from the slag heap, ponies will rise up. If nothing gets in the way, I feel like the stars are our destiny.”

“Being deeply in love probably helped,” Phalanx quipped.

Icepick and I turned to look at him. He had a smirk on his face.

“I mean, it’s nice and all, but I’d probably go soft if I stayed near the both of for long,” Phalanx added a moment later.

“I guess even spooks can appreciate the wholesome things,” Icepick said.

“You give us too little credit,” Phalanx said with a laugh. “I just hope it doesn’t rub off.”

“I mean, it’ll be a few minutes before we get to the training field,” Icepick said with a husky voice, and a slipping of her hoof down my thigh. He balked and looked away.

“That’s not professional,” Phalanx said in a flustered voice.

“You aren’t in the same chain of command,” I said with a laugh, and a wink. “Then again, neither are you and I.” I dragged that last syllable out.

“You would’ve made a good Ranger,” Phalanx said before staring out the window.

“Hey, it’s better than being repressed, I mean, we were all other kinds of repressed, but at least we got laid,” Icepick shot back. Then, she leaned into my neck, and rested her foreleg over my stomach.

“Yes,” Phalanx said with a cough. He met her gaze, and then mine in turn. “They were necessary evils. Now they’re no longer necessary.”

“The sex was fine. Not having a family, not loving each other. That was the issue. Besides, it never had to be,” Icepick replied. “Arabians are ponies too.”

“Yes,” Phalanx said softly.

There was a moment of silence in the back of the vehicle. I looked outside, to the sand passing beneath us. The city of Paradise stood out against the sand and sea around it.

“They will assault her, they will bruise her, but they will not take her,” I said after a moment. Phalanx and Icepick looked at me quizzically, but Icepick quickly noticed where my eyes lay.

“I just hope we can get enough ponies away from the city,” Icepick said quietly.

“I’ve seen enough collateral damage in my lifetime, but most of the cities we took during the early stages of the war lacked bunkers like the stables,” I replied. Maybe there was a note of hope in my words. Paradise had once been covered in invisible embers, and nearly ground to dust once. And yet, they came out of the earth and built again. Lived again. If the ponies lived, then every brick and pipe in the city could be blown to pieces, and they would build again.

“To be fair, at the beginning of your war, the idea of a city killing weapon wasn’t even in your minds,” Icepick said. I glanced at her. My eyes fell upon hers. She was a bright pony, she thought that the world could be better, that she would make it better. If I had ever been that way, someone who could rally others to a vision of the future, of how things ought to be, I had lost it along the way. And yet, I could follow her, I loved her. Just being near her brought a little of that glow into me.

“It quickly entered our minds, experience tends to do that,” I replied.

“I know,” she said softly.

---===*===---

“It’s big,” I said as soon as I laid my eyes upon the vehicle.

“Well, if you want to stuff four ponies in a box, that box has to be pretty big,” Icepick said. “Especially if you want them to actually do things in that box.” Phalanx looked at her, mouth hanging slightly open.

“Do you intentionally say things in such a way that they have sexual undertones?” He asked. There was a flush on his muzzle, and it wasn’t because of the sun burning brightly above us.

“Only when I’m around stallions that get easily flustered,” she shot back, before running a hoof down my side. I blinked and nodded at her, hoping that she wasn’t going to demonstrate what exactly could be done inside one of those tanks…

“I’ve acquired some immunity to it, but that only makes her up the dosage,” I said with a laugh. “They are truly impressive though. An armoured, well armed, fighting vehicle. Tracked as well, that solves the biggest problem with the armoured carriages that were used during our war.”

“Crossing broken ground?” Icepick asked.

“Or fortifications, it’s hard to cross shell holes and trenches with tires,” I replied briefly remembering the first sight of mass armoured carriages at one of the first battles of the Dneipper. They had bogged down and they were no match for high explosive shells. And yet, their ability to poke at our lines rapidly was unexpected.

“So do you think they’ll be effective?” Phalanx asked hesitantly. There was a note of fear in his voice.

“That depends on how they’re used. Our late war doctrine was dramatically different than how we fought in the beginning. Shock troops armed with explosives, and automatic weapons became our main offensive option. And those were only effective when properly covered by a creeping artillery barrage. I doubt that there are enough of these Ursa’s to present an obstacle to a full assault, even grouped together. They’re likely vulnerable to infantry when unsupported even if they’re largely invulnerable to shrapnel,” I said while pursing my lips in thought. “They could function as a mobile pillbox spread throughout our lines, but even then, they could be bypassed locally or swarmed when the other elements of our defense were shredded.”

“That’s not really their strength though. Static defense is something that can be done a lot cheaper with actual static defenses,” Icepick said after a moment.

“Ursa three’s and four’s have a top speed of forty kilometers per hour, that’s their advantage over a pillbox,” Phalanx suggested with a note of pride in his voice.

“That’s all well and good, but they outnumber us by a significant margin. There are what, a regiment of Steel Rangers in our forces. There are at least two divisions of Imperial soldiers marching towards us. That’s a four to one advantage in numbers. If we try to encircle them with fast moving units, they’ll defeat them in detail.”

“You’re sure of that?” Phalanx asked after a moment's hesitation. I nodded and walked over to the chassis of the Ursa. I rapped a forehoof on the angled steel plate.

“Encirclement tactics only work if you have the numbers and troops that are able to execute a coordinated attack,” Icepick said with in a dour tone. “These troops will be better equipped than the company defending the submarine. And I’d put money on them having changed their armament composition.”

“Sombra knows enough about your forces, especially given the time they’ve had to learn from the Arabians. Howitzers, mortars, and heavy machine guns will be more numerous than when we fought the Celestians, and those are effective weapons for fighting rangers, and breaking any kind of attack or static defense line we try to create around the city,” I finished speaking and looked skyward for a moment. I was never one to look for divine inspiration, but I would’ve taken it at that moment.

“These enemies you fought back on your version of Earth, how did they fight you?” Phalanx asked after a moment’s silence. I turned to face him. The well dressed pegasus was hoping for something, any bit of wisdom I could put forward.

“Where would I begin?” I looked towards a tent with a number of ponies furiously working to move their operation. With a hoof I pointed towards them. “They outnumbered us,” I pointed at their supplies, and their maintenance equipment. “They had a larger industrial and resource base.” With a note of finality I glanced at his wings, before tapping my horn lightly with a foreleg. “Finally, the Empire is almost entirely earth ponies, and crystal ponies.”

“Well, we’re not going to win any of those ways. I know you, I know Frostbite and the other defectors, you’re courageous, hardened, and experienced. If we fight fair, we’re going to lose, badly,” Icepick spoke up and nodded at me. “But we’re not going to fight fair. I’ve learned how it is to be the one trying to force a battle, to be on the offense.”

“You’ve learned how to fight a stronger opponent,” I stated numbly. She was the bright spark. I was the pony who knew the odds. I had known them before I made my choice, but now that my death, the death of everything I had fought for was right in front of me-

“I know a bit about it,” Icepick said softly. “But I’m not the one who should be planning this. We have experts on asymmetrical warfare. That’s not all, we may not outgun them, or outnumber them, but there are more ways to a fight than just force.”

“I never thought I’d hear a Steel Ranger say that,” Phalanx said after letting out a long exhale.

“I’m not a steel ranger. Not anymore,” she replied with an edge of anger. “The world moves on, and so did I.”

“The hardest part is letting go,” the words came from my mouth like the sands blowing in the wind. Powerful words, elemental ones, but on their own they shifted only a few grains. I nodded at Icepick even as I remembered the cold winds chilling me to the bones, remembered but distant.

---===*===---

The room was crowded, but it was the most secure place we could all meet. At the conference table sat Icepick, Iron Sight, Elan, Phalanx, Crescent Moon and myself on one side; on the other sat the two highest military officials of Paradise, the High Consul herself, the police chief of the city, and the leader of the cities engineering ministry. When the door shut and the click of it’s locking mechanism echoed through the underground chamber there was a moment of breathless tension in the air.

“Our reconnaissance planes corroborated what you told us this morning,” The high military official of Paradise, and newly titled General, Bright Dawn said from her seat beside the Consul. Her eyes met mine, suspicion evident in them. I stared back into the older mares. My expression was blank, intentionally.

“I would’ve liked to be proven wrong,” I said quietly. My voice carried through the room regardless. “Has the evacuation begun?”

“Yes, as soon as the planes radioed back, we started the process, as we speak as many ships are being readied to carry citizens to Safe Harbor,” Consul Brass Bell answered.

“That’s good, I’ve already told our captains that our flotilla is to escort the ships as best they can, and pack as many ponies as possible aboard,” Icepick said resolutely.

“Thank you,” Brass replied before turning to Phalanx. “Your forces will help defend Paradise?”

“I promised them a fight, it doesn’t matter to them where it’ll be,” the pegasus replied with a confidence that I knew wasn’t reflective of his true thoughts. “But helping our fellow ponies fight the enemy at the gates, with the gates right in front of them, well, that will only make them fight harder.”

“Do you know anything about the disposition of the Ranger fleet? Are they still held up in port?” The newly appointed admiral of the Paradise flotilla asked Phalanx.

“No idea, when we left Ramsgard they were still limping into port, having radioed us as soon as they were within range of our receivers,” Phalanx replied apologetically.

“That’s not what I was hoping for, that heavy cruiser could run through our corvettes and freighters like a hot knife through butter,” Commodore Pear said with a shake of his head.

“We can talk about outside threats, or things beyond our knowledge forever, but it won’t help us with the one a week’s march away,” Ironsight said with a tone of slight annoyance. “What’s our defense strategy for the imminent threat?”

“Defense in depth,” I said after a moment's pregnant silence. “A solid defensive line can be defeated at a single point and bypassed. It was a good idea for a time during the great war, but with advances in artillery volume and accuracy it became all too easy to concentrate enough fire into a small area to crush any defense short of a hardened defense installation.”

“We move like the sands, shifting where they push, and push back where they can’t,” Crescent Moon said approvingly. “The terrain of the city benefits us as defenders. Clearing a city, block by block, room by room is difficult during the best of times, but we won't let them have the best of times.”

“So we give up the city, slowly, yielding areas before they pound the offending building flat?” Brass asked. I nodded at her. “Your city is large, and they’re going to want to keep as much of the infrastructure intact as they can.”

“This sounds like a plan that concedes at the start,” Bright Dawn objected. “What will happen to our Morale? Most of our soldiers are barely going to be able to hold onto their rifles without shitting themselves as is.”

“Giving up ground isn’t the same as losing,” Icepick said before meeting the general’s gaze. “I’ve fought opponents that let us win the battle tactically, but whittle us down strategically.” Icepick looked over at Crescent Moon. “If it were just your troops, your concerns would be more than justified, but they’ll be stiffened by the Liberation Army, and the Free Rangers.”

“What it comes down to is playing to our strengths, and making them fight where they’re weak,” Phalanx said.

“And other than our defensive posture, what exactly are our strengths?” Brass asked Phalanx. Her words were sharp, but the edge wasn’t aimed at him.

“Communication, knowledge of the city, and Steel Rangers,” Phalanx spoke authoritatively. “As well as fighting on the defensive, with thousands of buildings to make them wade through.”

“Communication?” Brass asked as soon as the last word left his mouth. I cleared my throat and looked towards the venerable mare. My foreleg dropped onto the table, and with a rush of magic I surrounded the computer on my foreleg with a bright blue outline.

“Pipbucks, or power armour sets, as well as your numerous small transmitters in the city, are an advantage over the Imperial army. We have yet to develop radio sets small enough to be deployed into the front. Our submarines and surface warships have them-”

“Coordinating defensive reserves, or your mobile units to prevent any significant breakthroughs would slow their progress immensely,” Bright broke in to say. “I can begin requisitioning every pipbuck in the city, and begin equipping every unit commander we can manage with them.”

“That won’t help all that much if it’s all undifferentiated chatter,” Ironsight added. “You’ll need some usage protocols, and a unified command link. Those aren’t that difficult to set up, we have them in our armour sets. But it will take some time to implement and patch into the pipbuck software.”

“Alright, it’s about time I asked a key question,” Icepick broke in aggressively. “This is going to be a destructive, bloody battle. That’s just a given if we fight to defend Paradise. My question is, how many buildings and streets are you willing to rig up to explode preemptively?”

“What kind of question is that?” Bright Dawn asked her, voice raised. Icepick barred her teeth at her and was about to reply when Crescent Moon broke in.

“Icepick is asking an important question, one of the most effective tactics to use against an invading, superior force, are improvised explosives. It will slow them down if even when we leave a building undefended, or a street clear of barricades, there’s a significant chance that any hoofstep or movement will trigger an artillery shell, or a bundle of mining explosives.”

“Exactly, we’re already going to be tearing up half the city, and trading space for casualties on their side,” Icepick said with a deep exhale. “I don’t like the idea of indiscriminate weapons, or of causing collateral damage, but those are things we can use to win this fight.”

“As few as possible, but enough to do the job,” Brass replied. “I’ll leave the particulars the unified command structure. That’s my main proposal, we need to create a clear set of ponies in charge, and delegate tasks and forces for each sector of the city.”

“Agreed,” Phalanx said immediately. “The communications network will be essential for this. I must ask that I retain command of my armoured units. They’re the greatest striking force we have, but they’re fragile as well. I can’t have them sacrificed in vain.”

“So you’re expecting us to let you keep your strongest weapons as a reserve, while we get battered and killed on the front?” Bright asked, her eyes shifting to his, and watching his expression flatten at the question.

“He’ll be devoting plenty of forces to the front, just not all of his armoured vehicles. Ursa’s are offensive weapon systems, not static defenses. Making them crawl through a dangerous and broken city isn’t what they’re good for.” Icepick answered for him. “But that brings us to the final part of the plan. We need to keep enough forces in reserve for the break out-”

“You’ve been telling us the whole time that we can’t beat them in a straight up fight?” Bright objected, before continuing. “Now you’re saying the end of our plan is a break out? To what end, they’ll have the rest of our forces encircled-”

“You’ve never fought a war, you don’t realize how much of a toll we’ll inflict on them, how battered and exhausted they will be. Soldiers in that state are not apt to resist an assault from armour. That’s how we win, we drive two thrusts around the flanks of the Imperial army, meeting up in the rear. From there, they’ll be the encircled army,” I finished speaking, and the room was looking at me for the first time. Peering at me, examining me like I hadn’t been there until that moment. “I have fought a war. I’ve seen armies stand firm, and seen them broken. This is the best plan given the reality of the situation.”

“You’re sure about this?” Belle asked after a moment’s pregnant silence.

“As sure as I’ve been about anything in my life, excepting one thing,” I replied, eyes flicking over to Icepick’s briefly. She had a slight smile on her muzzle. No-one other than Ironsight and I would have seen it for what it was.

“Trust me, you don’t want to ask about that other thing. They aren’t exactly reticent about the whole thing, and she’ll get down right explicit,” Ironsight added after a moment.

“Oh, I see,” Belle said with a glance between Icepick and I.

“Exactly,” Phalanx stated flatly. “In any case I agree with his assessment. This whole plan of action is the best one out of a large number of bad ones.”

“I agree, as much as it pains me to consign most of the city to rubble,” Belle said in a flat voice. There was a vision playing out in her head, the vision of her home burned and battered. Give into the conqueror and save your ponies, but lose independence, or destroy it in the hopes of a free future. It was a choice that had been forced upon many such ponies. The weight of it had never lessened.

“If that’s your command, I will carry it out to the best of my ability,” Bright said after a moment, and a heavy clearing of her throat. I looked upon her face. She didn’t know war. She did know duty, perhaps that would be enough.

“You have my vote, for what it’s worth,” Elan said to us. His weary eyes sweeping across me, Icepick, Iron, and Phalanx.

“Is there a faction in this city that will want to capitulate?” I asked, after a moment.

“Perhaps some will, but most of the civilians will be shunted away, or underground for the duration, goddesses willing,” Belle replied.

“Most of your soldiers are basically civilians,” Icepick said dryly. It wasn’t an attack, merely an observation.

“And you’re worried about their morale? Whether they will surrender?” Bright answered. “I doubt it. Especially if your troops are as good at stiffening the line as you say they are.”

“And the government that stays here? How much are you willing to take? Will you fight until the docks are the front line?” Icepick asked, steel showing through her voice.

“I will, and if we must leave to fight another day, it will be done,” Elan said.

“I concur with him, this city is a peaceful one, but we won’t hesitate to throw them back,” Belle added.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Icepick said simply. Her expression was guarded, worry having gotten through to her, she wouldn’t let it show before them.

---===*===---

“I don’t know what to say,” Rosetta said from his position at the table. He sat across from Icepick and I. The food in front of us was getting cold, forgotten as we told him what we had planned. “They’re really coming. Thousands of them.”

“Yes, but we have some time to prepare at least,” Icepick said before exhaling deeply. “How prepared is the medical service at this moment?”

“I don’t think many are ready to be combat medics,” he said before looking down and then back up at us. “Other than the ranger medics, of course.”

“I’m not surprised, why would you be?” I said after a moment. “We need to move a large amount of equipment and generators over to the harbour area, we’ve already gotten clearance to use those buildings, and the hardened naval facilities. The ones that remain.”

“That’s a start,” Rosetta said. His posture slumped at that. “I assume you’ll want me to be among those front line medics?”

“You are more prepared than most, and more experienced than just about anyone there,” Icepick said. “I know you must be afraid-”

“No,” Rosetta straightened himself. Leveling a glance at the two of us. “I want to fight. I’m tired of picking up the pieces, of staying back and watching others die.”

“You’ll get your chance, the imperial army doesn’t give special immunity to doctors, and artillery is utterly indiscriminate,” I replied. “I know how it feels to want to hurt those who’ve hurt you. The enemy at the gates, the ones who want to destroy everything you hold dear. Just, don’t let it consume you.”

“R-right,” Rosetta said after a moment. Once again, he slumped in his chair. “You two would know about that.”

“That’s a fuckin’ understatement,” Icepick said before letting a foreleg cross the table and touch his shoulder. He looked up at her.

“I just, half the time I feel furious, the other half I feel exhausted,” he admitted softly. There was a pain to him that he hadn’t shown to me, or maybe anyone. “I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“No one does Rose, you’ve been through things that no one should ever have to go through, but so many have. All you can do is focus on doing the best you can. We’re here for you, you understand that right?” Icepick said softly.
“Yes,” he said with a deep exhale. For a moment we didn’t say anything. I knew there was something he wanted to say, I could see it in his eyes, the way they peered at Icepick and I. There was a hunger in them, I had seen it in the eyes of others, a look of desolation at a great wrong. He lost it after a moment.

“You should eat, you’re going to need the fortitude,” I said gently. A hoof pushing his plate a millimeter nearer to him.

"Why, because all the restaurants are shutting down tomorrow?” He asked, not quite meeting my eyes.

“That’s true, but we have a little surprise for you tonight,” I said while nudging Icepick with an elbow.

“We figured you’d enjoy a quiet night with friends, while we have the chance,” Icepick added a moment later. His eyes widened in surprise. We hadn’t quite drifted apart from him, but we had been busy recently. It had been my idea, I hadn’t been liking what I had seen from him. Something in his bearing had changed, a bitterness I hadn’t seen from him before. Losing Bajada had hurt him deeply, and now that he was in familiar surroundings, without the distractions of an expedition, it had seemed to grow in him.

“That sounds wonderful,” he replied quietly.

“Friends help friends, that’s kinda the point,” Icepick said with that bright smile across her muzzle. It was infectious, before I knew it, I smiled as well. It took a moment, but it spread to Rosetta as well. We all had burdens to bear, but they had lightened in that moment. In the back of my mind, I just hoped that they wouldn’t crush us.

---===*===---

“A bit of a step down,” Rosetta said with a laugh as he looked over the small flat we had gotten near the docks. It was near the bottom of a converted warehouse, as the aging brick and tiny window attested to.

“I’ve seen worse, the tenements of the imperial city make this place look luxurious,” I said before dropping onto the bed, it sagged under my weight, with springs decades past their prime protesting loudly. For some reason, the image of a similar flat with a squeaky bed entered my mind. I had felt that kind of Deja Vu a lot lately. With a shake of my head, I looked up to see Icepick dropping her saddlebags gently onto the floor. Rosetta stood awkwardly near the door, before locking it and glancing quizzically at Icepick as she moved towards the single large dresser at the other end of the room.

“It’s better than my quarters back home were, besides, you two are here. That makes this room better than all the other ones, by default,” Icepick replied as she opened the dresser and lifted a dark glass bottle from its hiding place beneath the jump suits and dresses atop it. I smiled at the bottle, but mostly at the mare holding it up.

“Thank you,” Rosetta said before slumping against the door. Whatever steel had been holding it erect was gone now. He breathed heavily as I trotted over to where I kept my bags. The set of aluminum tumblers that I had bought a week ago at a pleasant little shop appeared in my mind. My magic pulled them out without a further thought from me. They gleamed in the reddish light coming from the incandescent bulbs above us. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You already thanked me, so you got the essentials covered,” Icepick said wryly as she uncorked the bottle and took a sip of the dark rum. “Just like the last bottle, except this is the last bottle.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I replied softly, eyeing her with amusement as she stepped closer to me.

“It wasn’t just me drinking it, Phalanx got a taste for it, and after the meeting with the council, he deserved a bottle,” Icepick said a tad defensively. “I mean, deserve isn’t the right word, he got one because he’s useful and luxury gifts are one of the few things powerful people understand.”

“Spoken like a true politician,” Rosetta said as he made his way over to us. The three glasses were almost filled now. The tendril of blue telekinesis connecting my horn to the bottle was almost forgotten. Meditation and practice had gotten my body to the point that it was a nearly frictionless conduit of magic.

Nearly frictionless.

Which was the problem. There didn’t seem to be a way to channel magic through my horn without exhausting myself in the process. A thunderbolt, or a couple dozen immobilizing charges would be all it took to wear me down to nothingness. And yet, I felt closer than ever before to the magic that spanned this world, mine, and perhaps every world. It was an inexhaustible field of energy that gave the void its texture, but I could only poke holes into it like every other unicorn. And I doubted that I would solve the problem that eluded unicorn kind for millenia. The memory of the power flowing through me from the Talisman entered my mind as I watched Rosetta grasp his glass with his own pink tendril.

Knowing what I knew then, I hadn’t realized what it had been doing. It was an object that broke the boundaries between our plane and the magical one. If unicorns tired themselves out with opening and holding the pathway open, then the talisman was a constant tear in the fabric between worlds. With it a normal pony could draw energy through it forever. Well, practically forever.

“Hey, are you awake over there?” Icepick asked before glancing at the still full glass sitting on the table a few centimeters in front of me.

“As much as I ever am,” I replied before grasping the glass with my magic. My tendril and my mouth operated as one unit as I slugged back the burning fluid. “It’s good.”

“Not as good as that Whiskey Rosetta pawned off on us way back when,” Icepick replied before leaning back against the wall. “What was your plan with that, by the way?”

“There wasn’t a plan, I just wanted to give the two of you something nice, maybe something to bond over,” Rosetta hesitantly after a few moments of thought, the drops of rum in the glass being pulled to the sides of the bottle as he gave the glass a rapid rotation with his magic.

“Bonding happened, especially after Perm eyed my tits like he hadn’t seen a pair in years,” Icepick said as she watched Rosetta pour the next rounds of drinks.

“They are nice,” Rosetta said quickly, before realizing what he had said. His eyes met mine, guilt and desire flashing behind them, before looking away.

“They are,” I said simply, before tapping him on the shoulder with a forehoof and smiling at him. Icepick laughed.

“Better than Crescent’s,” Icepick added a second later. Rosetta shifted, a little of that fire coming back into his eyes.

“And yet, you seemed to like touching, tasting and teasing them quite a lot,” I said with a sly laugh, and a gentle bump of a foreleg against Rosetta’s.

“Novelty should never be underestimated, but it has its limits,” Icepick said before pouring herself another drink. “Sometimes you just want something you’ve had before.”

“It’s the nature of ponies to want something they can’t have. Time is a sea of sand, the grains so fine that they can’t be seen or felt. We can only watch as the dunes move around us,” I finished my words with deep exhale.

“Do you really believe that?” Rosetta asked me.

“Have you ever tried to hold onto a moment of time?” I asked him softly.

“I never knew that I wanted to until it was gone,” The pink stallion’s eyes still met mine, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was in another place, or rather, another time. For a moment there was stillness.

“The past is a dream, and I grew up with a whole society that was asleep,” Icepick said bluntly. “I’m awake right now. And if I’m not mistaken, you’re both right in front of me.” She punctuated her words with a shove of her foreleg into my chest, and with a flick of her tail and a turn of her body she did the same to Rosetta. “Don’t be mopey, this is one of those moments we have the luxury of knowing is a piece of the past worth remembering. Don’t waste it thinking about the fleeting nature of existence.”

“Isn’t that what ponies do when they drink?” Rosetta asked her, his dour tone unchanging.

“That’s one thing ponies do when they drink,” I replied smartly, before polishing off my glass in a single instant of fire. “Icepick usually isn’t the mopey type when she’s drinking.”

“Celebrating life, that’s what I do when I drink,” Icepick replied a moment later, her own glass empty again. “That being said, I do keep score. We owed you a good bottle and a thank you Rosetta.” He flushed at her words, he was still a young stallion being praised by a pretty mare. “And I wouldn’t like to call it a favour owed, because I wasn’t exactly requested when it happened the last time. But still, I know how you two are. You’re both kinda obvious about a few things, when you know what to look for.”

I blinked and looked at her, eyebrows furrowed. It wasn’t just me, Rosetta had his eyes trained on hers. For a second I saw through the facade. She knew how to cover herself well, but I knew what to look for as well. There was a twitch at the edge of her smile. It had just been us at the start, and we all had lost so much. We were going to lose more before the end. I knew what she wanted.

“Wha-” Rosetta had enough time for the beginning of a reaction, but she and I were faster than him. He stiffened as the two of us pushed in front of him, our barrels pressed against each other. The hug we gave him relaxed him. Both of us had wrapped a foreleg around him. I left my leg around his withers and pulled him closer to us. Icepick had wrapped her leg around his neck, and pulled his head to ours. He exhaled deeply but haltingly. She kissed him a moment later, a peck on the cheek, before kissing me the same way with the smallest turn of her head.

“I’m confused,” Rosetta added a moment later.
“Sexually or romantically?” Icepick asked in a husky voice, her leg coming down from his neck to stroke his chest lightly.

“Welcome to the club,” I said in a wistful tone. Icepick chuckled as I pressed forward, giving him a kiss on the muzzle. His lips were warm, and I could feel his heartbeat speed up. I didn’t think too much about that one. Most ponies didn’t like knowing that their heartbeats were just like a generator, pulsing with the smallest bit of electricity as the muscle pulsed in their chest.

“It’s a weird club, but we’re weird ponies,” Icepick added after an almost inaudible squeak as I kissed him. “We wouldn’t be here without you. And I know you have feelings for me, and you have feelings for him. He’s not exactly innocent of wanting to fuck the cute pink stallion who has a habit of saving our shot up flanks.”

“Oooh,” Rosetta managed to say after a moment of pieces fitting together in his brain. “So you’ve gone from not believing in romance and monogamy to believing in romance-” She rolled her eyes at him and pressed a hoof softly to his lips.

“You’re not a doctor of the soul Rosetta, and you don’t wear near enough body paint to be a witch doctor,” I said softly. His heartbeat quickened once again. “I don’t know what I want you to be to me. Luckily for me, there’s a good chance that I won’t have to work that out.”

“And that’s why I’m the politician,” Icepick said with a laugh before turning a smile without a twitch at the edges towards Rosetta. “He isn’t wrong though. I always thought the end of the world should have a party attached. You’re invited to that party.” There was a moment where he just stood there, eyes unfocused and his face a mask through shear signal volume. There was a choking sound from deep in his throat and a focusing in his eyes at us.

“You know, you’re exactly the kind of ponies to wander out of a desert,” his eyes shut for a moment and the halting breaths changed. “It took me a while to realize that I’m the same kind of pony.”

“I always knew,” Icepick said before pulling him towards her, my leg falling away as she kissed him deeply, slowly, and desperately.

I turned my back and grabbed another drink from the bottle, the fire of the alcohol a pleasant accompaniment to watching two ponies I love begin the party at the end of the world. I placed the glass back on the dresser and lit my horn brightly, holding onto them and pulling them towards the bed. They noticed, Icepick’s tail flicking up, and Rosetta’s heart picked up its pace. It needed a little more blood pressure now.

She might have known he was like us. He had begun to believe the same thing, the wheels turning in his mind since he had killed for the first time. He wasn’t the same as us yet. What made Icepick and I the same was simple. And he would be in the same boat soon.

We could never go home.

Alas, Babylon (XXVII)

The Scout planes we deployed from the solitary airfield were coming back with bullet holes and shrapnel from flak shells. Permittivity had told us that aircraft weren’t unheard of in their wars. The fact that they were usually at a disadvantage when it came to airpower was made up for with a large amount of anti-aircraft weaponry.

It wasn’t unexpected when the first plane failed to return after a frantic exchange with the intelligence of Paradise. The surprise was when the sounds of guns began to echo through the concrete and adobe buildings of the city. I had just gotten out of a meeting with my special committee. The air was salty but fresh, as it always had been in Paradise. The city itself felt empty without the normal throngs of ponies going about their business, or lack of business. That quiet ended with the downing of the last reconnaissance plane.

If I was the type of pony to pray, I would have at that moment. I didn’t think that the gods would appreciate a last minute conversion. Instead, I took a deep breath and ran towards my armor. The empty streets were anything but crowded, with most of the logistics ponies working near the harbor, fortifying our last line of defense and the final arrow in our quiver. My destination was near the front, a small building that had survived the first destruction of Paradise.

---===*===---

I arrived breathless, my undersuit half soaked in sweat. The mall had become the forward operating base of my command, Paradise, and the newly named Shield of Sall’han. I wasn’t sure if I liked the name all that much, it still had that feeling of superiority and militarism that I had grown to detest. But I knew it wasn’t my choice. I could work with them, but I had no illusions about ever being one of them again.

The sandbags piled over the once broad entrance of the building were a nice touch. There were a lot of sandbags in the city now. A desert city had access to one thing in great quantities. I saluted the six guards positioned at the head of the entrance. Two of them I knew well, an Arabian and an Imperial who had both joined me after the capture of the submarine. Their uniforms were new though. I saluted them with my right foreleg, and nodded at the other four guards.
The inside of the mall was the complete opposite of the city itself. Ponies were using their inside voices, but just barely. Ammunition, maps, and basic supplies were changing hooves at a brisk pace. Some of them looked at me, and some of those that did even seemed to like me. Normally I would’ve taken the time to talk to them, many of whom had never fought before, and none of them had ever fought a battle like this. Myself included.

When I opened the door to our little command center, I met the gaze of the one pony here who had fought a battle like this.

“You know, you didn’t have to run here,” Permittivity said with a laugh and a sardonic smile.

“The trolley isn’t running today, and I didn’t want to miss out on the last laughs,” I said with a lilt in my voice as I walked over to him, before pulling him close to me and giving him a nip on his neck. He had enough bearing to suppress his natural yelp.

“Before you ask, we haven’t received a peep from our ships or the rest of Danurr,” Ironsight said after my allotted three seconds of public affection ended. My face fell slack as I turned to face my friend and lieutenant.

“That fucking sucks, any good news?” I asked as I looked around the table. The high brass of Paradise had left for a compound near the harbor, a place I didn’t know about, other than it existing. I was left with Permittivity, Iron Sight, Frostbite, Zenji, Crescent Moon, and-

“None of the flights over the sea have seen any activity from the Ranger Navy, at least, that’s what the generals have told me,” My mother said from the other end of the table. She wasn’t looking at anyone in particular, her eyes were trained on a copy of a prewar map of the city, with a lot of fresh markings. The cigarette dangling from her muzzle, half burned already, told me that she was stressed. Which was saying something, considering her.

“I don’t know which of those generals deserve the title least,” Frostbite said acerbically.
“I get your point, and it’s really an open question, but like most open questions, it’s irrelevant at this point,” Talon shot back after a long draw from the cigarette.

“I’m just glad they’re out of harm’s way,” Zenji added lightly.

“Out of our way you mean,” Crescent said in a voice that was diplomatic considering her opinion of one of the generals. The one who happened to be self-proclaimed and newly promoted.

“Also true,” the zebra said diplomatically. By this point I had walked around the table and leaned down to look at the map. Not much had changed on it. The pencil marks showing the defense perimeter being the oldest marks of graphite on the paper. The new marks were the dotted lines showing where we would collapse buildings onto the streets for our fallback lines. Notably, the first of our fallback lines were well back from this mall.

“Give me one,” I asked Talon quietly. Where she kept her cigarettes was a mystery to everyone but her.

“I’ll disown you,” she said just as quietly.

“I’ll get a Vasectomy,” I whispered in her ear.

“That’s a low blow,” Talon said after a moment’s contemplation.

“I got it from somewhere,” I said before leaning over slightly and wrapping my right leg around her. “How far did you get on the training?” My eyes had shifted over to Crescent. Who had taken up the most dangerous assignment so far.

“They know what parts of a building really need to be there, and which ones are there for show,” Crescent replied with an edge of exasperation. “I don’t know which ones I’m more scared of: the ones who were smiling, or the ones who weren’t.”

“The latter,” Permittivity said before looking at Zenji. “Any eleventh hour success stories?”

“Out of all the volunteers, some of them seem to lack any sense of smell,” Zenji said before shrugging in the zebra fashion.

“That seems counterproductive for night fighters,” Crescent said before getting a quizzical look from Zenji.

“Normally, yes,” the zebra said before scrunching her nose at some recent memories. “Nightsoil fighters would be more accurate.” I watched Crescent Moon’s face go from confusion to disgust in the blink of an eye.

“It’s a dirty job, but I’d rather have the tunnels under our control, than theirs,” I said with a squeeze of Zenji’s shoulder.

“I always thought the lack of sewer systems in Ranger settlements were because you were cheap, now I realize that you didn’t want to fight pitched battles in literal shitholes,” Crescent Moon said with a heavy sigh, and a glance at the three former Rangers in the room.

“It was both,” Iron replied after looking over from her radio and legal pad. Radio silence had been ordered until after the first barrage. I had made my way over to the chair on the other side of the table from my mom, a cigarette having mysteriously appeared in my shoulder pocket. I slumped into the chair, and put a hoof on the table while my other hoof found the slim tube of tobacco. When I pulled it out, Permittivity had gotten into the chair beside me.

Before I could say anything, he had picked up the cig in his magic and floated it to the tip of his horn. With a momentary flash of light, it was lit, and I had it in my muzzle a moment later. I winked at him and laid a hoof over his.

“What do we do now?” Crescent asked.

“The hardest thing. We wait,” Permittivity said in a voice stripped of any emotion.

We waited together.

---===*===---

The taste of recycled air being pulled through my muzzle was familiar. The feeling of alertness alongside the fear of a violent and near end was familiar too. The mass bombardment was something new. Hundreds of shells bursting in the air above our lines was something I had known to expect, and yet it sent pangs of terror through my body. Our hastily erected trenches were holding together better than I had expected. The other ponies beside me were in a similar state of fear. That was to be expected.

What I didn’t expect was to see Permittivity eyes shut, breathing deeply, and rifle safetied. His calm steadied me. The sun above us was setting, and with it was the advance of the enemy. Everyone had heard the briefings, everyone knew what would be upon us as soon as the artillery moved past us. The routes of escape were already laid and memorized, and the plan was simple. Keep them from the outer lines for as long as we could. The machine guns and mortars were primed and checked as many times as could be done.

The bombardment passed over us and our sandbag curtains held for the most part. We were in the middle of the outer defences. The rear was held with the greenest troops, with Rangers and our own forces sprinkled among them as rebar is added to concrete. That was the hope at least. I ran around the side to our forward trenches, before standing up and taking a look at the field before me. The sounds of the vanguards meeting, gunfire punctuated by louder explosions travelled by me and through me. The familiar weight of the machine gun on my right, and a newly installed grenade launcher on my left gave me teeth, and my armour was a shell that could make most of their shrapnel bounce off.

They moved in groups of less than a dozen, rifles swiping towards the foxholes and grenades hurled into them. I hadn’t seen a force so used to the charnel house, so well versed in mechanical violence. I bent down once more to avoid sight. I turned when I felt a bump on my shoulder. Permittivity, eyes narrowed and brow heavy with sweat managed a smile. He stomped a forehoof into the wall of the trench, before nodding upwards once. I returned the nod and glanced around the rough fortification. The other ponies were watching him as well, they knew that he had done this before.

We heard the crack of rifle shots nearer to us, about as far away as the nearest trench. Then a single ground shaking explosion. He stomped his hoof into the side wall, and we all rose together. The furtive eyes that stared back at us, about a hundred meters away burned into my mind like a flash from an old camera. It dissipated in the haze of aiming my guns. I fired a burst as Permittivity cracked off a series of shots at the nearest Imperial. The other ponies in our trench, conscripts from the city, with sights dialed in at one hundred meters fired rapidly. The group ahead of us fell without getting off more than a few shots. I ducked back down as did the rest.

Our ears rang with the percussion of our guns. Behind us, and to the right a pillbox unleashed a hail of bullets into an unlucky squad. Our own mortars began to sight in on the only places they could hide from our line of sight weapons. If anyone on our side had survived the push of their shock troops, they would be killed by the precisely aimed shells. The plan was three mortar shells in each of our forward foxholes. We had time for two before the counter battery fire erupted from their howitzers.

We were the new frontline, and the attacking troops swarmed forward in fireteams. I rose up without thinking, and fired bursts at the troops moving forward. Several Rangers were doing the same, and our breastplates rang with the cacophony of rifle rounds slamming into them. Our own mortars were putting out a trickle of shells, mostly missing the small fast moving packs. My breathing hitched as I spotted an anti-armour team launch a round into the chest of a Ranger in an adjacent trench. I dropped back behind the sandbag concealment.
Crawling in powered armour is odd, feeling the servos whine at half volume through the steel and composite surrounding me.

Perm stayed where he was as I moved to the end of our sandbag wall. I stood up just in time to see a trio of soldiers trying to flank our trench, one of them holding a grenade and pulling her hoof back to hurl it. My burst severed her leg and riddled her chest. The green soldier beside me fired a shot from his rifle before getting struck by a bullet from the two remaining soldiers. I turned a degree or two and felt the recoil from the gun at my side try to shift me backwards. My locked legs arrested the movement. Before the remaining soldier could be found in my sights, a series of shots dropped the soldier with barely a second between impact and their collapse. I turned to see Permittivity already moving backwards into our escape tunnel. I turned to follow and saw dozens of fireteams swarming forward, despite the mortars and machine guns. The rest of our troops were already moving through the passage.

Before I turned all the way and began my own escape, I fired a dozen grenades in a sweeping arc. The detonations of the small grenades shook the earth as I pushed through the small opening. Communication and escape trenches were an idea Permittivity gave us, and the rest of the Imperials agreed that they were a good idea.

The earth above me shook as our mortars started a desperate counter attack. When we made it to behind our next line, one with pillboxes and firing ports ready to be used. This was the moat. Behind it would be the outskirts of the city, and the real fighting would begin there. I shivered as I realized that our dozen had already been chewed down to nine.

---===*===---

The setting sun covered the flashes of guns. It did nothing for the slugs themselves. I stood in the ruins of a pillbox, the gun itself torn to shreds by a grenade hurled into it from the flank. The thrower had been broken by a punch of my sabaton. Their two friends had gotten dropped by Permittivity as we pushed back to the barricades. Whatever remained of their second wave had to be cleared out before the third arrived under the umbrella of artillery already shaking the earth a few hundred meters ahead of us.

“Pillbox seven is clear,” I barked into the command circuit. A few seconds later the other counter-attack teams said the same about their assignments. The barrage came nearer to us with each breath, each heartbeat. Permittivity was already low to the ground, waiting for the barrage to pass over the remains of the cover over our heads.
The counter-attack was a desperate measure, but it was a measure meant to make them waste as many soldiers as possible on the same line of fortifications. A large amount of our power armour and experienced troops were on the line. My radio crackled as the last report of the line being retaken reached my ears. And then, the shells overcame any other noise. Shells exploded just in front of the line, and then above us as the howitzers traded off minute changes in elevation. Our main saving grace was their limited ammunition. If they had access to a railway line to bring them shells, we would have been shredded. As it was, the casualties from the guns were mounting. A helmet could protect your most vulnerable parts from the steel rain, but ponies have a lot of body exposed to the sky.

The barrage moved past us with just enough time for us to get to the firing ports, and myself to reach the narrow slit of the pillbox. I could see another dispersed wave sprinting towards us. The thunk of the grenade launcher was followed a second later by bursts of light and screams of pain as the nearest group was torn apart. My magical tracking system had already been interpreted by my adrenaline warped brain. My machine gun fired and ripped through the soldier before the rest either hit the sand or were shot by my comrades.

But the disciplined sea of soldiers kept advancing on us. It felt helpless as I watched the positions to our flanks being swarmed and filled with concussions and light from grenades. I answered with another burst from my launcher. It tore through another group, but a section ahead of them fired a trio of rifle grenades at us from one of our fallback trenches. I was spinning around when the grenades chewed at the billbox and filled the air with pressure waves that would have burst my lungs had I not exhaled at the last second. My legs were moving on their own at this point, the fear and death having overwhelmed me.

As I ran down behind the cover of the pillbox towards the fortified houses that was our next line, I looked back to see Permittivity toss a grenade of his own down the nearest escape trench. He didn’t take a moment to watch its effects, he merely pulled his rifle in front of him with that icy blue magic of his before running with me. Maybe half of the soldiers we had attacked with were following our fighting retreat. A few others stood behind shrapnel peppered concealment, firing and reloading with mechanical efficiency. The few that stood to the side of the retreat trenches did much the same, with eyes that seemed only to see the enemy.

“We’re pulling back from the moat, over,” I said into the command frequency breathlessly. A moment later the gunfire to my rear picked up in intensity.

When I made it to the nearest fortified house, I turned around and watched as the surviving ponies sprinted towards us. The suppressing fire from our side kept the heads down of the Imperials who were reaching the edge of the moat. Perm cracked off a few remaining shots blindly, before reaching us and jumping behind our concealment.

When he looked up at me, the last tendrils of light caught on the sweat and scars across his face. I was reminded of the first time we had seen each other. It had been after a bloody battle. I had gotten the better of him at first, with him saving me from enemies hungry for my blood. He didn’t know it was me beneath the helmet.

He knew now. The crooked, forced smile he pushed onto his face was for me. My heart sung in spite of death around us. We had chosen this path, and it was ours to walk. Together.

---===*===---

That line was taken the next day. It was the pattern of things, it was what I had planned. The taste it left in my mouth was still foul. Their advance became more hesitant when the first building fell on them, but still they came. If they hadn’t been my enemy I would have been awed, even as a foe, I respected them.

I had always respected my enemies, that helped you stay alive…

“Fortieth & Resplendence is being shelled,” one of the officers in that area said between shell bursts above their heads. I could hear them through my own ears, and the shaking of the ground beneath my hooves.

The city was being taken, room by room, street by rubble filled street. Where they battered with artillery there was nothing we could do to stop them from occupying what was left in the shelled zones. But they couldn’t do it everywhere. There weren’t enough shells for that.

I was a few blocks away, at the intersection of Piety & thirty-ninth. It was a residential area, with shops interspersed where they had made sense to be placed. Now, it was a battle ground. Small patrols and probing thrusts were being sent our way. We were waiting in ambush, with a parallel group across the street from us. Of our group, one was a Knight who had come with Reflex, Gladius, now working with me. Along with him were an Imperial turncoat who had pledged loyalty to the cause back on the Island, and two dozen conscripts from the city.

We didn’t want to engage the patrol. Our plan was to allow them to pass by us without fighting them, to make them believe that this area was clear, other than a sniper two buildings away. The real target was the larger force that was sure to follow, the force that would occupy all of these buildings and move towards the more solid lines to our rear.

And so, we waited. Time always seemed to crawl by when you were waiting on an enemy, our positions were as concealed as we could get. A basement with the door covered by a stack of cabinets. Still we needed to be quiet. I had my internal radio linked up to a frequency being used by the observers hidden in several adjacent buildings-

The noise of a single shot rang out from above, hopefully striking one of the invaders. Several more answered it, that was the return fire from them. It was muffled from within the basement, but still very much audible.

“Is it time yet?” The most nervous looking of the conscripts whispered loudly. He hadn’t been involved in any of the fighting yet. Everyone else in the room had. The rest of the room glared at him, and he looked grave. I added a shake of my head, slower than the rest. I remembered what my first battle had been like. The stakes had been lower, a few wannabe rebels with makeshift firearms, powered by the trickle of cordite that could be smuggled out of our arms workshops.

The sound of gunfire in anger is different from that of training. Knowing that they’re fired to kill, potentially to kill you, it sets a mind to terror. I wished that he didn’t have to fight, or at least to be able to say some words of encouragement. But the needs of the plan came first.

Another few shots rang out, before dying away. Then the waiting continued, with tension slowly building in the faces and bodies of everyone in the room. I could feel it in my own. My haunches tightened, and my breathing quickened, the adrenaline already starting to release. That wasn’t helpful. Adrenaline wore a pony out, and I needed to be at my best when I did go out guns blazing.

“I know you Icepick, you know how to relieve stress when you’re not in the middle of it, and I love to help you with that when I can. But you’re going to be constantly in battle, recovering from it, or planning for it continuously. That builds up in a pony, and it’s going to hurt you. And I don’t want you to hurt,” Permittivity had said to me a few days before they arrived. I recalled it with a deep breath. “I learned an exercise that helps me when I’m feeling overwhelmed, when I’m feeling the animal reactions to stress. I start by tensing and relaxing the muscles in a leg, starting at a hoof, and moving slowly up-” I started with my right foreleg. Tightening and relaxing the muscles as best I could. Another leg followed, and then it became a rhythm. It took some time, but I couldn’t tell you how long. The blankness in my mind was new to me. Eventually I had worked all the way to my head. “-when you’re finished, open your eyes and let out a deep breath. You should feel better.”

My eyes opened with a twitch of muscles, and a wash of hot breath rebounded off of my helmet. I needed a mint. But aside from that little revelation, I felt better. The stallion of my dreams had helped me once again, even if he was off helping someone else right now. Whatever he had come here for, he was here to help now.

A few minutes later there were a pair of clicks from the radio. The time for waiting was over. I motioned the ponies around me with a wave of my hoof. Trying to make as little noise as we could, the otherformer Ranger and I pushed the heavy set of filing cabinets out of the way of the door. It was noisy, but hopefully not too noisy. We crept through the halls of the building, with the other armoured pony at the rear and myself at the front. It wasn’t a long march to the positions we had scouted out before barricading ourselves. A few of us went over to an adjacent building as quietly and quickly as could be managed.

I wasn’t one of them, my spot was an alley that connected to the street from a fire exit. I was the one who would start the ambush. That was the plan at least.

I had just gotten to the alleyway when the first shots rang out. Cursing in my head I sprinted towards the end of the alley, to throw myself around the corner. The Imperials had spotted one of us, and we weren’t in position yet. They were already leapfrogging forwards into the buildings, tossing grenades and covering each other with rifle fire. A scream echoed out right after another characteristic snap of their rifles. My ears registered a grenade blast in the building we had been hiding in.

Then I turned the corner and instantly lined up one of the covering Imperials in my sights. The bullets arched out and ripped through his torso and tore two of his legs from his body. There was confusion among their ranks at the new danger, with more of the unit scattering into the buildings being fought over.

The other half of the ambush then came into contact with the enemy now inside their building. Gunshots were popping off continually, filling the air with the sound of modern violence, and alerting anyone else nearby that there were enemies to be fought. It might have been heartening, if the number of soldiers we had to spare as reserves was more than a few fireteams. They still had body upon body to fight any significant resistance outside our main defensive line.

All combat was a risk, and my gamble was to catch them unawares and cause just a little more bleeding for them, without losing much in return. As I sprinted into the nearest doorway and caught a glimpse of what was inside, I felt my heart sink and blood boil. The small group of ponies l had been with were massacred by those grenade blasts, and finished off with rifle fire. The imperials had taken up positions around the room, mostly at the windows facing the adjacent building. Several heads turned to me with weapons gripped in their teeth. I was the bigger threat. They were right. The counterweighted rifles unleashed a volley at me. The Imperials were getting better at finding the weak points in powered armour, but these were panic shots aimed at center mass.

The seven rifle rounds struck my heavily armoured chest and either crumbled against it, or ricocheted off of it into the doorway around me. My comrades were dead already, and I wasn’t dreading shrapnel. I swept my body from the left to the right while shooting grenades as fast as the mechanism could pop them out. My ears were overwhelmed by the pressure waves bouncing off of the walls, the sound protection of the armour barely dampening the explosions.

When the debris clinked against my armour, and the dust had settled a bit I turned my body and looked on at the room. Bloody chunks of pony and a red haze of blood filled the air. The remains of enemy and ally alike had turned into the same mix of hellish gore.

I took a deep breath of my cold, recycled air and dashed through a hole in the formerly intact wall. Small pops of gunfire echoed from the building across from me, and in the adjacent building where the Ranger and two others had supposed to have been in the ambush plan. Only the faintest shadows of noise came through my battered ears. Even through the adrenaline haze my head and body ached from the pressure waves that had passed through me.

If the room had been just a bit smaller I would have been gore sealed in a can, not that different from the rest of them. It was a stupid thing to do, impulsive and suicidal. A bit of the old me, the husk of a mare too scared to care about herself. I keyed in a med injection, painkiller and a diluted healing potion all in one syringe. If there was a pinch in my shoulder, I couldn’t feel it around the aura of pain that surrounded me.

And then I was through the busted storefront window of the opposite building. One of the imperials had seen me and fired a shot into the side of my barrel. The bullet impacted just beside one of the hinge sections of the armour. A few centimeters higher and he would have sunk steel filings into my body. The lone sentry left to guard the rear. I spun ninety degrees on my hooves and charged at him. He fired another shot, this one deflecting off my angled neck with only a spark of contact and another sharp noise reverberating up through my battered body. It was the only shot he made before I slammed into him, barely slowed from the impact before he was crushed between me and the wall behind him. I couldn’t hear the noise from it, but several things broke inside his body. His eyes registered shock, then pain, as I backed up a few paces. I hadn’t broken his neck, because he managed to turn his head up at me from the floor where he had fallen.

There was fear and pain in his eyes, a pleading in them that I had seen so many times before. Even if he could surrender, even if we could save his life, I didn’t have the soldiers to guard him or the time. My foreleg raised above his head. I looked away, there was barely resistance as I stomped down through his skull. Magic servos, the heft of steel, body and armament, a bit of flesh and bone stood no chance.

My eyes watching the deeper building spotted three more ponies turn from the hallway they had been spitting fire down, and towards me. This time I let my machine gun work on them, a burst for each of them, suddenly caught by the crossfire I had wanted from the beginning.

The shooting around me had stopped, for now. Between the bodies in the street, and the ones in the other building, we had killed a platoon. We had lost at least a dozen, almost all of my side of the ambush. I approached the survivors of our opposite number. They were better off, with only a few dead, and a few wounded.

The healing potion had gotten my ears working halfway again, even if there was an ever present ringing in them now. My body ached as the other ambush team got their ponies moving, wounded carried on the backs of the shell shocked but healthy comrades. We did need to move.

As I stepped into the street, to cover the retreat of fleeing ambushers, I spotted a pair of ponies step through their own doorway. Gladius, the other Ranger carried a wounded conscript on his back. It was the stallion who had spoken nervously before the ambush. There was a steady trickle of blood from a foreleg that had been shot. In his eyes were pain and the early stages of shock.

He was a lot better than the average from this little skirmish. I shook my head and blinked away incipient tears. There would be time for those later, time for the survivors to heal, time for it all to be forgotten, not even a footnote in the retelling of it all. An insignificant street, just an opportunity to draw just another drop of blood from a monster composed of thousands.

Fuck Sombra. Fuck War. Fuck Me.

---===*===---

“We’re breaking them, blunting their attacks and exhausting them,” I said from the end of the table. My voice sounded weary, and my body ached from combat, little rest, and the weight of my decisions. The war council was being conducted from an underground bunker in the naval base section of the dockyards.

“How do you figure that?” Brass Belle said from the other end of the table. She looked even worse than me, which considering she had spent the whole battle thus far in the bunker we were meeting in was impressive. Her eyes had a burning anger in them, and little else.

“They’re slowing down, in the beginning it was an outright mass attack from all directions. Now they’re being more conservative, and concentrating their forces in a smaller area. We’re still in control of about forty percent of the city, and a few blocks from our final defensive line. That should hold them up for the last stages of the plan to work,” I replied, my muddled mind trying to keep the latest reports all together.

“The final stage of the plan, the double envelopment using the best equipment and troops that we have,” Bright Dawn, the general for Paradise said with an acidic tone. “All while we get churned into meat by them.”

“I’ve seen the hospitals,” Brass added. The haunted look in her eyes made sense now. A terrible, terrible sense. We’ve been bled out as badly as they have, maybe worse.

“I know,” I replied quietly. “If I were to guess the ratio of our attrition, it would be something like 3:2. They’re getting better at defeating our power armoured infantry too. At the beginning, we were nearly invincible against them. They’ve learned our weaknesses. Bringing a building down on us, or keeping a rifle loaded with a grenade ready with every fireteam will take us out. That and overwhelming fire small arms fire against our less armoured sections. But that’s why the reserves are key. If we look like we’re on our last legs, and desperate they’ll be more likely to push harder against us. The more they throw their strength at us, the weaker they’ll be when we counter attack,” my words seemed to mollify Brass. She respected me more than the other commanders. Bright really hadn’t left this bunker, and Phalanx had stayed well behind the front lines.

“How has the special training been going?” Brass asked with a turn towards Phalanx.

“Your troops have taken well to working with the Armoured units, and their ability to fit twice as many in one APC is going to make the difference I think. They’re aching to join the fight though, as are the rest of our reserve. They’ve talked to the units that have fought at the front. They know what to expect, and their ready for whenever we give them the order,” he finished before scratching his chin with the tip of a bronze wing. “I have a suggestion, and it isn’t just because you all believe I’m trying to keep my forces unbloodied.”

“I don’t think that,” I said diplomatically. “You’ve been losing armoured ponies to keep them at bay.”

Bright snorted derisively. She had her own ideas about what was going on.

“The self propelled guns should be used to create a killing field behind their line of retreat when we let them push through the final line, they have enough armour to work as bulwarks, and a heavy machine gun as a support armament,” he said before I interrupted.

“We pull them into a v shaped formation along where they’re likely to push, and make changes as necessary. Using them as pillboxes and as a way to cause maximum disorder and casualties when the counter attack starts,” I smiled at him.

“It’s a risk,” he said, “but I’ll be putting all my skin in the game at the end anyhow. Attacks are always bloody affairs, even against enemies that shouldn’t be able to bite back,” his gaze drifted over to Crescent Moon, quiet for the meeting so far. “Speaking of which, how many have your guerilla sappers taken down?”

“The tunnels beneath the city are contested, they learned that lesson after we turned the mall into a mess of rebar and concrete dust,” it had been occupied by the imperial forces a day after it had been taken. The sewer line that ran beneath it had been lined with a few hundred pounds of explosives and detonated.

“Have we received any reports from the flotilla?” Brass asked a pensive looking Commodore Pear.

“A radio transmission, garbled,” Pear replied. “We couldn’t make much out from it. It means they’re getting closer though.”

“That’s an improvement,” I said. “I want our ships back here.”

“We all do,” Brass said with a momentary glare at Phalanx. It was unstated, but having our ships was a counterweight to him. As he lacked any ships, and having our ships here would be some kind of defense against another attack by the Ranger fleet. That would be the end.

“Is there anything else to be discussed?” Brass asked. Her body slackened at these words. Meetings, reports and endless sources of effort had drained her already. A different administration would have given up at the start, or capitulated already. If she won there would be statues of her erected in the city, if we lost, she’d be wiped away from history like so many other conquered leaders. Unfortunately I had to put a horrifying prospect in front of her, and ask her for help with it.

“We can’t rest after this is over,” I said bluntly. “If we give them another chance, they will send another army at the city. We’ll have no chance of stopping them a second time.”

“What do you propose to do about it then? Why did you even ask us to fight them then-” Brass began, anger and raw fear ringing in every word.

“We go to Sombra and sever the link,” I said. My voice was firm, it had all the command I could muster. All the lives lost here, they had to have a reason. The ponies I had killed, enemy or ally, it couldn’t just be worthless bloodletting. I wouldn’t let it be. “The moment we can, we rush up towards the complex.”

A silence fell across the room. Bright scowled at me, Crescent gaped wide eyed, Phalanx smiled coldly, and Brass was unreadable.

“Just how do you intend to slay him?” Phalanx asked in the pregnant silence.

“Through disenchantment,” I met his smile with one of my own.

“You are a mad one,” he said with a harsh bark of laughter. “Are you going to tell him that he's been a very bad pony, and that he needs to sit in the corner?”

“He isn’t a pony. He’s a magical artefact. We’re going to wipe him like a spell matrix next to a spark grenade. Just because we dismantled the balefire bomb doesn’t mean all the pieces just disappeared,” I stopped speaking and watched Phalanx go white, while Brass did much the same.

“You’re still mad, but it does take a kind of madness to stand against a god,” Phalanx said before nodding at me in an attempt at grace. “If that’s the only chance to rid ourselves of him, then how can I refuse.”

“Your suggestion is noted. However, we have a city to retake, don’t we ponies,” Brass said brusquely, wheels already turning in her mind. She knew the stakes as well as anyone. She also felt the risks in her bones. The leader of a ravaged city had more than enough concerns at the moment.

---===*===---

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Permittivity said quietly. He stood beside the cooking flame, a pot of something hanging above it. He stirred the pot with his magic. I just looked into the flame, the occasional cracks and pops of the wood music to my ears. The fact that we were cooking outside, in a mostly desolate corner of the harbor district, burning up the remains of a broken table didn’t faze me. It was just nice to be with them.

“She’ll come around, you’re right after all,” Rosetta said in a voice that broadcasted confidence. I had a feeling it was mostly for my benefit. He sat on a blanket underneath the overhang of an awning. The building was untouched so far, but the gas lines had been destroyed, hence the open flame. There were many other cooking fires blazing away within eyesight, but there was still enough space behind the lines for privacy. I had insisted on rotating soldiers off the front after a day or two of combat, if it was possible. Fresh soldiers fought better. Exhausted, shell shocked soldiers broke down.

“I hate being the one bringing bad news, it fucking sucks,” I said in an exasperated voice.

“I wouldn’t know how that feels,” Permittivity said sardonically. I rolled my eyes at him, but not without smiling at him. He was exhausted, I was exhausted, and Rosetta was on the brink of breakdown. At the moment though, Perm had decided to cook, while Rosetta laid on his back, languidly drinking from a bottle of spirits. “It’s almost done, I think.” I saw him tap something inside the pot with the ladle. A shrug passed through his withers. Cooking wasn’t something he excelled at.

“Paradise is caught between two wolves. Even if we slay one, we’ll be weakened, bleeding, and ready to be finished off by the other. We’ve already been bloodied, our city half ruined. The granaries and stocks might not hold out until we get the hydroponics and fields running again. We went from a position of being the only power in our part of the world, to a city fighting for it’s life,” Rosetta mused before taking another mouthful of liquor down his throat.

“It’s an apocalypse,” Perm said before quenching the fire with a bucket of sea water. The embers sizzled loudly for a moment, before dying, the only remnant being a scent of ashy, salty water in the air.

“I wouldn’t say that-” I started to say.

“The ancient pegasi created that word, but its meaning has shifted. It meant a revelation. Something that couldn’t have been known before, but impossible to unknow afterwards. That’s the shock of the century to Paradise, but now it knows what’s out there. It won’t be caught unprepared again,” Permittivity finished before lifting the pot up, and starting to fill the bowls he had pulled from his bag.

“It really means we need to slay one wolf, and defang the other,” I said with steel in my voice.

“Those are both easier said than done,” Permittivity said wistfully. He took the bowls carefully in his magic, each with a spoon already set into the steaming stew, before trotting over to us. He sat down beside me, and looked Rosetta in the eyes. “You need to eat, especially after drinking that poison.”

“I’m the doctor here,” Rosetta said in mild annoyance.

“It’s still self-medication, besides you’re looking thin,” Permittivity said in a kind voice.

“He’s right, and we both like your ass the way it was,” I said slyly.

“Oh no, a pair of horny ponies right next to me, and I’m sitting here drunk and defenseless!” Rosetta said before laughing harshly. “Getting fucked by life is my thing, I think.”

“Your thing? It’s our thing,” I barked out a laugh. “I’ve been fucked by life, my whole life. Perm watched his world crumble, friends die, and got his brain broken by the idea that what happened here, would happen there.”

“Such is life,” Permittivity said softly. Far off fires, a bit of hornlight from them, and a half moon cast light over us.

“We’re still here though, and that gives us a chance,” I replied. In the near darkness, with gunshots going off a dozen or so blocks away, my words felt like hollow platitude.

“A chance for absolution,” Perm said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“A chance to set the world right, no matter the cost,” Rosetta said before laughing like the damned.

“No, someone is going to get a happy ending out of this. It’s a chance for it to be us,” I said with a shake of my head. A chill passed through me at their words. I pressed against Perm, feeling his solidity, his warmth against me.

“The light of hope burns within you. You’re my light Icepick,” Permittivity said. I kissed him softly, as the sound of snoring started from a meter away. I felt tears begin to well up in the corners of my eye. “I’m just a fatalist with a conscience.”

“That light is a fire. Before I met you, before I had my own apocalypse, I was going to burn the whole world. It still feels like it’s going that way. A world of corpses, soaked in blood. All I’ve ever done is kill and destroy. At least before I was ordered to do it-” I was letting it all rush out. The words kept spilling from my mouth as my tears began to fall.
“I know what you’re going to say, and it’s wrong. You aren’t a monster, you’re just a mare doing her best. Even the best doesn’t feel like enough. Even a victory is going to leave a bitter taste in your mouth. It’s still better than the alternative. Remember, you aren’t just fighting to save Sal’han, you’re fighting to stop a real monster from killing hundreds of millions,” he went from pressing a hoof gently against my muzzle, to holding me with his other leg. His tail wrapped around mine.

“Fatalist with a conscience is really underselling yourself,” I said a while later. He had just sat there with me, holding me tightly.

“Then it’s good I’ve already sold myself to you,” he said confidently. I looked at him for a moment.

“It was a close thing for a while, I was either gonna fuck you or kill you,” I replied a moment later.

“Oh, I knew,” he said with a grin. “It made the sex even better.” I couldn’t figure out what to say to that, and simply rammed my body against his. When he flipped over, I was already on my hooves. I stood above him. I leered at him. He only rolled his eyes. I leaned down and kissed him softly, my body came to rest on his. A tingle of electricity down my spine and a lighting of his horn told me he was feeling feisty tonight.

I was ready for him, I had always been ready for him.

---===*===---

There was a crackle of static on the radio, before the voices of the line ahead of me reported the assault. I stood there, behind some hastily prepared sandbags, with a group of ponies beside one of the self-propelled guns. It had its cannon aimed nearly horizontally. There was canister shot loaded right now and airburst ammunition for later. It was a nice touch that Bright had given us.

We were laid out at the intersection of a street a few blocks behind the defensive line we planned to let fall. We were the center of the V-shape. In front of us was the center of the defense line. Slightly ahead of us and to the flanks were setups like ours. An SPG and a group of ponies. The docks were a few minutes trot behind us. There really was no falling back from this position.

We wouldn’t fall back from this one, we’d push forward. Behind us, the sounds of powerful diesel engines turning over could be heard against the still somewhat distant gunfire. As the intensity of the gunfire picked up, I looked over at the pony beside me. He had seen the results of combat, and he had killed a Steel Ranger personally. But he hadn’t been in a battle himself before.

“Nervous?” I asked Rosetta as he fiddled with the rifle he had been given. It was one of the service carbines from the Paradise stockpile, with a short barrel and a thirty round magazine. The pink pony looked odd in a set of fatigues and armed to the teeth with magazines and a basic fiber vest. That hoof cannon of a revolver bulged out of the holster on his leg. It had a mouthgrip but I couldn’t imagine actually using it that way.

“Among other things,” he said tersely. The ponies beside us were a ragged mix of Ranger auxiliaries, Paradise conscripts, and the occasional Steel Ranger. “How long do you think it will be.” The attack had commenced at noon, and it had just been a few moments.

“Give it half an hour,” I said while wondering that question myself. The ponies at the line were supposed to inflict as many casualties as possible, before falling back- The sound of artillery booming in the distance, massed volleys of steel rain made me reconsider. “Hopefully.”

“Why can’t we shoot back?” He asked, anger and bemusement filling his voice.

“We need to save the surprise for the attack,” I said. It sounded weak. We might have been able to smash a lot of their guns, and blunt a lot of their attacks if we had shown our hoof earlier. But no, we had to strike when they were confident in victory. When the line that had held them back for a day and a half finally broke in disarray. Turning their triumph around was the way to win the day.

The next few minutes passed as I listened to the radio. We had let the line fall in the center, and our little pockets of resistance were letting our ponies retreat without being massacred. Gunfire drew closer, and I watched as Rosetta’s breath hitched. Ponies began to filter in from the front, breathing hard and wide eyed. The rolling bombardment ended. Our pockets of resistance were falling back too, if they could. When the fleeing ponies came to our lines, we told them to catch their breath and get ready.

And then they came. A wash of soldiers suddenly made aware that there were more than a few pockets in front of them. Our gunfire felled the majority of the first wave, before they began to advance through alleyways and fire at us from behind buildings. When the second group started to add pressure against us, using the same urban tactics they had gotten used to from the continuous battle, we finally showed our hand. Rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, mortars, and those Self-Propelled Guns opened up against them. The buildings they had been hiding behind were blown away. Blown away like so many of Paradise’s other buildings before them. After the first fusilade ended, me and the majority of our soldiers bolted forward over our defenses, running full bore at the shelled shocked enemies. The self-propelled guns were raising their barrels up and readying to hit the enemy howitzers.

I was less worried about that than the remaining Imperials who began to desperately fire at us. I felt a heavy rifle bullet glance off my breastplate. The pony who had shot me was taken down by a soldier slightly to my rear. The regular ponies had learned to take cover behind Rangers whenever possible, and let us do the running. Another set of cracks along our line announced the firing of the self-propelled guns. We wouldn’t have any idea whether they were hitting the mark. It was imperative that we pushed past the area where we had fought them. That area was going to get shelled hard.

As if the universe was reading my thoughts, the booming of their howitzers started up. The shattered Imperial infantry weren’t nearly as scary as their artillery. I ran as fast as my armour could propel me, servos whining as my body lurched from step to step. I couldn’t look behind me, even if I had wanted to. The explosions began to fill the air with shrapnel, and my ears ached from the shells bursting above and behind me. Their third wave was caught between orders to push onwards, and the very reasonable desire to hunker down. I ran past an apartment building, on the corner of the next intersection. A group of Imperials, their heads on a swivel, being screamed at by an officer as they waited behind the building. I was as surprised as they were. The half dozen ponies tried to swivel their bodies to hit my flank. I turned my body while running, managing to only take one bullet on my flank, and the rest on my frontal armour. The moment that one was aligned with my gun, I fired a burst. It was the same with the rest. Burst, aim, burst, aim, and then the last pony had started to run away, making it halfway through the doorway of the building.

She stayed halfway through it. When it was over, I leaned around the corner to see groups of ponies running up the street. Ranger at the front, the unarmoured lagging behind. I didn’t have time to run a tally, but it looked like most of the assault force had managed to get through the barrage. My eyes widened as I saw Rosetta running down the street with three ponies lifted in his magic, their wounds weeping blood onto the street beneath him.

When the other ponies had moved past me, I had time to realize that our guns hadn’t stopped firing. They were laying down a heavy barrage, a near continuous chorus of reverberating booms. I lifted a hoof in the air, and turned the transmission on my radio on.

“Go go go!” My words were hoarse, less of a command, and more of a plea for the rest of the plan to go on. We only had one shot at it. I was the distraction this time. The anvil to someone else’s hammer.

“Armor is rolling out!” A strained voice said between a brief pause in our artillery going off. I pushed my hoof back into the debris strewn street. The sabaton crashed into the pavement. The sun glinted off of the other armoured ponies, rushing forward. I joined them. Defense was never my forte. It felt right to be on the attack again.

But, I knew who I was really aiming for. I wouldn’t stop until he was shattered.

Author's Note

Three months instead of eight! That's an improvement right there. Well, I hope you like this chapter. It's been hard writing a battle on this scale, without retreating to a larger scale depiction. This story is all about the pain and suffering of those in war, so I hope the focus of the chapter feels right for the story.

Chapter 27, I've come a long way. I hope you all follow me to the finish. It's not far off now.

That fact scares me and exhilarates me in equal measure.

Conjunction, Cartharsis & Contrition (XXIIX)

It was time to go. The vehicle's transmission shifted into gear and we began to accelerate. Through the tiny windows, filled with thick bullet-proof glass, I could see the staging ground fall away. We were just behind the lines, at the outskirts of the docks, right beside the ocean. In front of us were the Ursas, their cannons already pointed at whatever positions the enemy had in place before them.

I knew all of this. The ponies in the troop compartment did too. My old recovered armour shifted uncomfortably as I turned to look at the rest of them. They were desert rangers, or some of the few non-support Steel Rangers that didn’t use powered armour. The nearest pony to me pulled a cigarette out of a breast pocket with a tinge of pink magic. It matched her pink coat, even if the bulky combat uniform did not.

“Aw fuck, does anypony have a light?” She asked with annoyance. The rest of the ponies either shook their heads or stared forward impassively. I let out a deep breath and focused on the tip of the tube. A moment later the smell of burning tobacco filled the back of the vehicle. She looked over at me, and saw my horn cease to glow.

“That’s a neat trick stranger,” she said with surprise, and maybe a hint of admiration.

“I’ve been working on it. For a long time I couldn’t confine the current in a small enough area, at least not enough current to cause combustion. But, as they say, practice makes better,” I said this to the surprise of the other ponies in the back. The faint whiff of ozone tingled my nose, and probably the rest of theirs as well.

“You’re one of those turncoats, aren’t you?” She asked, curious and suspicious in equal measure.

“I was the first turncoat, and I helped convince the others when we captured them,” I replied softly. I levitated my own cigarette from a crumpled pack on my foreleg. “I did the right thing, eventually.” I lit my own with a moment of concentration. I took a deep breath and sucked down some of the lovely smoke.

“Ah,” she replied, her curiosity sated. I was just a pony. A pony isn’t that interesting, especially when you were contemplating your own possible death.

And so, for the next few minutes we just drove forwards, and awaited the first contact. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the heartbeats around me. My vision without sight; my window into the world as electricity, had grown so much since it’s first discovery. I had changed a great deal. As I snuffed out the remains of the cigarette into the grated metal floor, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure if it was war and death following me, or if I was following war and death.

My pulse pounded in my skull, the first touches of adrenaline starting to course through me. The weight of the armour, and the weapons carried by me were familiar. It was all familiar. They were no comfort, they were a means to an end. The harsh bark of a cannon and a pattering of machine guns told me that it was time to head into the breach once more.

---===*===---

I ran from one piece of shattered building to another, rifle hanging in my magic ahead of me. The heavy crack of a rifle nearby followed by a piece of my concrete cover being struck told me all that I needed to know. I continued my mad dash, while lowering my head. The pony following me, that unicorn mare with the pink coat, poked her head up above the concrete to belt out a rapid clattering of suppressive fire. I came around the upturned concrete pillar and whipped my gun towards the firing Imperial. They had expected more shots from the top of the pillar. I had flanked them, and they were finished.

My shots went through them, barely slowed down by their body. I sprinted towards their position, breathing hard. I stopped to halt as I felt a twinge of heartbeat from behind another ruined building. Keeping my gun aimed at the corner, I pulled a grenade out, armed it, and tossed it around the corner with another tendril of telekinesis.

They had a few seconds to realize what had just been thrown in front of them. The shrapnel and concussion brought those thoughts to an end. The rest of the fire at the perimeter had ended. We had broken their position, and they had no runners to report that it had happened. I sent a preprogrammed signal through the command network.

I let out a deep breath as I made my way back to the personnel carrier. Out of the ten ponies we had started with, eight still remained. Pink coat nodded at me as I took my seat, sealing the door behind me.

“Good work out there,” she said to me as I sat down heavily. Pulling a canteen from my belt, I sucked down the contents in a single gulp.

“I’ve had practice,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Cotton Candy,” she said with a sigh. The electric blue mane atop her head seemed to fit the name.

“It’s nice to make your acquaintance, despite the circumstances,” I said before putting the canteen back in place.

“You mean the unprovoked invasion of my home? Yeah it kinda sucks. Being exposed to the world, and getting the shit kicked out of us by everyone has been pretty shit in general,” Cotton said dully.

“It had to happen eventually. And this is the beginning of something new, something better than isolated communities scraping by believing they were the last pockets of civilization. No-one can believe that now. The question is, what happens next?” I finished, feeling strange about my words. I didn’t think I was wrong exactly, but it felt odd to see things as positive. To try and mollify someone’s worries, and drive them to action.

“Maybe, I keep wondering if it’ll just be a pyrrhic victory. If we push them out, and someone just swoops in afterwards,” she confided darkly. “Or we could become like them. A military state, devoted to defense and absolute power to our leaders. Sometimes it feels like that’s what the world requires.”

“Icepick would disagree with you. That kind of society is hard, but brittle. It doesn’t take much to shatter it. It requires the illusion of infallibility, and of enemies at the gates, real or imagined. When the necessity of such a system comes apart, then you get what happened to the Steel Rangers. They’re a problem, but their weaknesses are out in plain sight,” I said before pulling out another cigarette. “The Empire is the same, deep down. A power structure always forced to justify its own existence, and weak in all the ways that matter.”

“Not weak on the battlefield, even if I wish it was,” she replied.

“Force of arms is a good crutch for a power, but it can’t solve every problem. It’s that mindset that burned this world, and is set to burn mine. If you want peace, if you want the values of your city to survive, you need to hold onto them with everything you have. And you need to find allies. You already have some, our little army, and Safe Harbour. There will be others,” I saw the eyes of the other ponies in the vehicle staring at me.

“Do you really believe that?” She asked harshly. The eyes of the other’s reflected the same question. It was a good one. I had been the dour one, the pessimist with a conscience for so long-

“You were worrying about the future. I’m thinking about what it will take for us to get a bright future. Better futures are earned, you don’t just stumble into them. Your ancestors earned a better future, through hard work and ingenuity. They worked together to solve their problems, instead of fighting each other for the scraps. You’re going to have to do the same thing, even if it scares you, even if it hurts sometimes,” I looked away and took a drag off of my almost forgotten cigarette. “That’s the pursuit of a better world. A world worth all this blood, blood you didn’t choose to shed.”

“I can see why you switched sides,” Cotton Candy mused, smiling slightly. I had won some ponies over with that.

“I didn’t realize all that by myself. It took someone else for me to see it, and it took me for her to see it. We both switched sides, we both began to believe in a bright future-”

The sound of gunfire outside the truck, some of it impacting the outside cut my words off. A machine gun belted out fire, probably one of their Ursas laying it down. A boom of a cannon firing passed through us.

Outer edge of their flanks reached, everything south has been abandoned or pocketed. Send significant infantry and armour to push them back into the city.

I received the same command circuit message as the ponies in charge of this thrust. Soon after, I could hear muffled commands being sent to the drivers of the truck. We didn’t turn and join the fight to pin the Imperials in place. We had another job.

The truck picked up speed as it blasted along the city's right edge. Through the firing port windows, I could see flashes of gunfire, and units breaking off from our columns, getting into position to box them in.

That wasn’t our destination, our destination was a classic military target. We were going after their baggage train, to really box them in, to force them to give up their arms- To save as many lives as we could. As many as I could. That had always been my mission, it had been my reason for coming here. It was always a noble intention, in my head. Only this time, I knew I wasn’t tempting damnation with the means.

Or so I hoped.

---===*===---

It went perfectly, sliding around the edge of the city and sending parts of our column to complete the encirclement, until it didn’t. The diminished third of our force came to the same defensive trenches that we had built to use against them. They had taken them, and were using them against us. One of their anti-aircraft cannons had taken aim at our front Ursa. It had blown right through the armour, before exploding inside the cabin. There were more than a few of those guns. The column kept moving, and three Ursa main guns answered the emplaced gun. It shattered when one of the shells slammed into it.

We weren’t going to shatter that line directly. These crews had never fought an entrenched position before, especially one with teeth. I heard confusion over my receiver. The worried expressions of the ponies in the truck seemed to be the mood of the whole column, as the whole column began to slow down. Waiting for the Ursas to deal with the opposition. Another huge round of cannon fire followed, and then a reply. Another explosion, and the sound of fuel being set ablaze. I pushed my way to the front of the cabin, telekinetically shoving the backup driver away from the radio set.

“Armoured Column B, disperse and pivot fifty degrees to the right. Accelerate to top speed, and keep heading that way until I rescind the order,” I sent over the unit radio band. Thinking for a moment, I remembered the frequency for our artillery command. I tuned the dial to it, while looking apologetically at the stallion I had basically stolen the radio from. My horn was still glowing, pressing him against the door of the cabin. He wasn’t pleased.

I ordered a confused artillery officer to hit the repurposed defensive line, and the general area of the anti-aircraft guns. When they asked me who I was, I said that I was the acting commander of the Ursa unit. I felt the shift in direction as our truck pivoted, and the sluggish acceleration of the heavy vehicle. Through the much bigger windows of the cabin, I saw the rest of the unit doing the same. Their main guns were still throwing ammunition at the imperial positions, but the gunnery while moving was more suppressive than pinpoint.

I leaned away from the radio console, standing awkwardly between the seats of the driver and official radio operator.

“Sorry about that,” I said apologetically after a moment to breathe. The stallion just stared at me, and my horn sourly. The next volley from their anti-aircraft guns were thorough misses. Apparently keeping our speed high, and our vector askew was a good defensive measure.

The radio barked again, after a crackle of static. “Who is ordering artillery fire without proper identification?” It was Phalanx.

“That would be me, I took command after the lead Ursa was destroyed. I would appreciate it if you conveyed a change in orders to Armoured Unit A. I need them to not charge head on through our first defensive line. You need to send them wide, bypassing it,” I finished speaking with a similar look to the radio operator. I had gotten into his personal space again. When I pulled away, he just got out of his seat and squeezed past me, heading into the rear. I took his chair as I waited. The old line only extended around the outskirts of the city slightly. We had already gotten a fair distance from its bounds. Another set of cannon shots were hurled at us, this time, striking one of the trucks. It went through the vehicle like it was made of tissue paper. I winced in sympathy.

“Permittivity, I almost forgot you were among that contingent. I’ll trust your judgement, orders sent to your opposites. The bombardment is being aimed as we speak. Goddess-Speed,” he finished with one of his flourishes. There were many ways to take power, and to hold it. His was one of the less harmful, but most annoying.

I shook my head and stared to the left, towards their position. If they were sticking with textbook positioning- I could barely make out the group of tents and carriages that would be the command area. That was where the commander of this expedition would be, along with their staff, and all the perks of leadership.

“Change direction, the rear half should turn back towards the line, but cautiously attack and pin their rear guard in place. The forward half should aim towards those concealed tents and trenches,” I was among the forward half. I wanted to be there as we took it.

The discordant, unnatural sound of artillery falling on the enemy positions was familiar. It was a turn about that they had deserved, something that they had received so many times in living memory. I knew that they would weather it better than most, we had gotten good at ducking down in holes. Their guns didn’t have those reflexes, or that ability though. The sooner we could neutralize their artillery, the sooner we could force them to surrender.

The command area loomed ahead of me now, the reduced force barrelling towards it unabated. Until that was, the furthest ahead Ursa was damaged by a mine. I screamed into the radio, ordering a slowing and a dispersal. Up ahead there were who knows how many mines. The crew of the damaged Ursa reported back, with no serious injuries, but a track that would need hours to fix under ideal conditions.

“Stay at range from the complex, but surround it, and fire at it. Conserve ammunition, but blow away any machine gun emplacements,” I said to the unit. They complied, with the Ursa’s forming a semi circle around the complex, which hadn’t done anything hostile at that point. I could feel movement inside the temporary buildings, and underground annexes. “All infantry, prepare to move forward, under cover.”

The five Ursa’s still in position to support the infantry were given an order they hadn’t expected. “Using high explosives, pound a path for the Infantry to advance.”

The sounds of cannons and almost instantaneous detonations shook the cabin, sand and dirt being thrown into the air by the cannon blasts. Every couple of shots were followed by the detonation of a mine. Maybe halfway through the path being created, I ordered all of us out, staying behind the vehicles. I couldn’t even imagine a troop transport with front facing doors.

The dust in the air, combined with a screen of smoke grenades, would give us a decent run at them. It would be a run, the kind of assault that powered armour was built for. All of ours was left back in the city, fighting hard, and dying to give us this chance.

I took a moment to close my eyes and calm my frantic thoughts and adrenaline mad heart. I tried to feel anything ferrous in the earth, creating wide, low powered electric fields- After travelling up the path, I came across one, then several more mines. I radioed one of the Ursa’s, and tried to tell them where they were.

A final series of cannon shots fell upon my ears, the end of a deadly symphony.

“We’re going,” I yelled at the groups of ponies hunkered behind the armoured bulk of the transports. “We’re here to capture them, to make their commanders surrender. If they choose to fight to the death, that’s on them,” I finished before letting out a deep breathe, and leaning around the side of the transport. I gave the order for the smoke to be used, fired from launchers built into the trucks. When it had spread from it’s canisters, I levitated my rifle and steeled myself for what was to come.

The assault couldn’t move in a broad wave, because of the mines, but the distance from our transports, and the end of the mine field was only a few hundred meters. And we had cover from the Ursas.

I fell into the middle of the staggered charge, the acrid smoke burning my lungs, the descending sun still baking my body, and the fear driving itself through every part of me with each heartbeat. A scattering of poorly aimed shots began to issue from the surrounding trenches. There was a scream as one of the Rangers took a shot. I kept my head low, and fired a magazine as I ran. The machine guns on the Ursa’s to our flanks were much better at that. Their storm of lead was enough to turn any serious attempt at slaughtering us to a slaughter for them.

If they had had a hardened position, with concrete and heavy weapons, it wouldn’t have worked. Luck was on our side at that moment, along with Phobos, we had fear on our side-

There was another desperate cry as a pony just ahead and to the right of me was dropped into the churned sand, already colouring the earth beneath her with blood. My heart thudded in my chest, as I cleared the minefield, as the smoke began to thin out. Their tents loomed ahead of me, finely crafted, holding the upper crust of my old home.

I didn’t stop, I angled myself towards a low lying trench, before diving into it, rifle and pistol at the ready, aimed in different directions. I saw no enemy combatants left alive. There were dead and dying ponies, laying where they had fallen. My mind shook, they looked just as my friends and comrades had, worlds away. They were my comrades, in a perverse mirror. A blazing sun, hot windswept fields of death, and I was trodding through them. Killing them-

More ponies filled the forward trenches, still keeping their heads low, breathing hard after their dead sprint. It soon became apparent that there was only a skeleton force left there, as the rest of our force moved forward cautiously, taking the surface of the encampment with no resistance

I was with them, as we stepped into one of the personal tents. For the most part, it looked empty. A field cot stretched out, stripped of all fabric. Some personal possessions, a desk, some pens. I let out a sigh, at least the tent overhead blocked the sun.

“The fuck is that?” she asked. I looked at her, eyes flashing uncertainty. Cotton Candy held her rifle towards a gaping maw to our right. In the farthest corner of the tent sat an unlit tunnel, stretching down into the earth. I gazed into it, feeling a threat emanating from it. It reminded me of him.

“A lair, a deathtrap for whoever tries to enter,” I said a few moments later. I was the only one to step forward, towards the gleaming walls, sparkling with the afternoon sunlight.

It was fused sand, the whole many pony-sized tunnel was made of the stuff. I shuddered to imagine the power required for it, even with the right spell, the right caster. When I attempted to feel through it, to sense the potential ahead, it was like I hit a wall of darkness. My eyes snapped open, and I felt a tugging towards the tunnel. There was something, someone down there. They wanted me to follow, they knew me. I winced and grasped my torch, flicking it on as I started towards the maw, and whatever awaited me.

I felt a hoof on my shoulder. “And you’re just going to trot into it?” Cotton Candy accused. I shifted to look at her, at the rest of the hardened soldiers.

“I’m going down there to kill it,” my words were neutral, like I was discussing the weather. The strap holding my knife seemed to unbutton on their own, the fresh magazine in my rifle wanted to be used, and my horn seemed to be pulsing with energy, sparks lighting off into the air around me.

“Alone?”

“Not by choice,” I replied. I wanted others with me, I wanted Icepick beside me. She had been my talisman, more than his talisman had ever been. I couldn’t rely on her, I didn’t even know if she still drew breath. But somehow I knew that she did. The bond between our souls had deepened, it seemed. It gave me strength.

“Somepony get to a radio, and tell them that the command encampment has been taken,” Cotton Candy yelled out. “I’m not much of a wizard, and I don’t put much stock in that spiritual shit, but that’s a dark hole you’re walking into. I’m not letting anyone walk into there alone.”

“Thank you,” I said as I stepped forward, as I walked into the darkness of the tunnel, only my horn and a sputtering torch as my guide. “Not much of a wizard, what does that mean?” She followed me in, her own weapon floating beside her. The passage was just wide enough for two ponies, and my horn was only a few centimeters from the low ceiling.

“I know a few spells, but I haven’t learned anything more effective than a good rifle,” she said. “Why? Are you worried we need one?”

“I have a feeling that the thing down there is stronger than me,” I admitted. “I’m only effective with a few spells myself. I was only given a few lessons on magic by unicorns, everything else is self-taught.” That wasn’t quite true. I had learned more about magic from Zenji, and the great masters of the path. They weren’t unicorns though, and knew nothing about the specifics of unicorn magic.

“The bombs killed magic kindergarten here too, it takes a skilled unicorn to teach magic, just like it takes a skilled pony to teach foals to read. My aunt was the only unicorn in the family, other than me, and she taught me what she knew. That’s the reason I know what I know,” she finished with a sigh. Memories of a past were bittersweet, even memories of loved ones past. Her horn flared, a pale amber, just like her eyes. I had my own flash of recognition.

“I had someone like that, but she wasn’t family, my family was all earth ponies, most of my home was too. I was the fluke, the aberration, but she never saw me that way,” I finished speaking. The sensitive, motherly unicorn who had given me the first real lessons I had ever received. The one who had seen me for what I could be- My eyes opened, and I glanced at her coat, then her magic.

“What? Did I just grow another horn or something?” She asked, humor covering her nervousness. She could feel the dark magic she was walking into with each step. So could I.

“What are your spells?” I asked bluntly, hoping against hope that she could compliment my own.

“I can create bubbles of energy, small ones that are strong enough to stop a few bullets, or bigger ones that can keep small things out, like air and sand. I can make them stick to things, or repel them. I can make really small ones, and give them a bit of speed, enough to knock a pony down,” She explained. I wasn’t sure how that would compliment my own odd spells. Or spell used in a bunch of different ways. I shook my head, and looked down the passageway, the air dry, but cooling the further down we went.

“Be ready for anything,” I said quietly to her. Her ear twitched from the noise, and perhaps my proximity.

“Sure thing,” she replied in a similar whisper. Our horns had grown softer, our eyes adjusting to the darkness. A minute or so passed, before we could hear the sounds of someone coughing. It was a raspy noise, almost a death rattle.

“Of course, it was always going to be you,” the voice said with a bitter humour to it. It carried through the walls, seeming to travel up our hooves, more than through the air. “The broken one. The spark to light this world ablaze. I am surprised that you are here without her. My master thought you were attached at the hips.”

“Your master can burn in Tartarus,” I yelled back down the tunnel in spite of myself, the grip around my weapons tightened, compressing the sturdy weapons, my horn sparking with energy.

“Oh yes, there’s the rekindled, righteous fury,” the voice rumbled back, sounding more amused than before. “You’re still just a tool. A wind-up toy set against the enemies of your master. Instead of a knight of your homeland, set on a righteous, necessary crusade-”

“He’s with us, and he fights with us. You manipulative fuck!” Cotton Candy belted out, her voice surprising me and her in equal measure.

“You’re correct on both counts, young one. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. He’s been manipulated, violated by those he trusts, and he has inklings of it. There are lacunae in his memory, torn from it to make him a better toy soldier. That isn’t to speak of the other forces bending him to his new course.” I bit my lip until the skin broke, muscles tensing. “He knows the truth of my words in his bones.”

The furthest of my light no longer reflected on the walls ahead. The rumbling, diseased voice was clearer now. Her and I stepped into a room, dark, and cold. Our horns shined like flares, their light reaching the end of the chamber. Several things happened then, as soon as we saw him, we unloaded shots at him, then we were thrown back by a wave of telekinetic pressure. I steadied myself on my hooves, my tail pressed against the jagged wall.

Our bullets had struck against a magic barrier, cast for a moment ahead of him. His horn was crooked, and his eyes seemed to absorb every quanta of light that fell upon them, dark pools that saw nothing, and everything all at once. Cotton Candy hadn’t recovered as gracefully. I grabbed several objects in my own magic, bolts, a grenade, and several spare magazines. In the process I remembered I had left a gas mask in there.

I tilted to the left, running as I unloaded the rest of the magazine at him- it. The shield popped into existence again, blocking the shots, leaving crumpled bullets in front of him.

“You were supposed to be something other than rabble, a pony with potential!” The voice echoed off the walls, slamming into my ears as heavily as the gunshots had. With my magic, I fired the pistol at him, while releasing the pin on my grenade. When I reached the wall, I kicked off of it, while hurling my bolts at him, the grenade I held for the second it took for the bolts to reach him.

In that moment, I released a pattern of potential between myself, and each bolt as they flew at him at different angles and velocities. The electricity arced through the air, just a bit slower than lightspeed, going from one bolt to another, before traveling through the final bolt, now a meter off from the right of him. It plowed through the air at him-

A crack of shots happened just as the energy struck his flank. The barrier he had intended to place between the electricity and himself had to flick right to block Cotton’s fusilade. I hurled the grenade on a low arc, planning on bouncing it up and into his face. His shield tilted enough to catch it, but it wavered as the shrapnel slammed into it. It glowed brightly, as the explosion reverberated through the chamber. For a moment, everything was quiet. My magazine shifted into my rifle, as my magic slammed the bolt back on instinct.

“That’s much better! You even burned me,” my eyes narrowed as my nose picked up on the smell of burnt flesh, vaporized hair, and ozone. His side was blackened, flesh cracked and smoldering. There was blood pooling at his hooves, a fragment of shrapnel having dug itself into his foreleg. That shield had failed, just enough to let metal pass through him. “Now let me show you what a true wizard can do!” I canted to the side as he cast a ball of necromantic magic at me. It struck the wall behind me, shattering its surface. I unloaded a burst at him, as I frantically thought about what I could do against him-

“Your power comes from him, I fight using my own magic! ” I screamed back. As those black pools gazed back a spark of magic flowed from Cotton Candy, a ball of magic thrown at him as fast as a rifle shot. The bolt struck his shield, but it didn’t deflect, it stuck to the shield. She hurled another at him, as I arced electricity in the air around him. Another weaker shield popped up, blocking the flurry of weaker arcs. He launched another bolt, this time at Cotton. It struck the third of hers. They collapsed into nothing, creating a bright flash. I fired both of my weapons at him, slamming into the wavering shield.

“Through him, I become more than mere flesh and bone, I become one with god!” The creature’s horn glowed redoubled, an overglow pouring from it as his shield strengthened, even with two magic membranes sticking through it. She rolled to her hooves and added her own fire against it. Another shot building in front of her horn.

I arced again, using the fallen bolts to chain a stream of electricity into the shield. It held, with another layer of light adding to the fluorescence of his horn. I felt the waves of exhaustion, the friction of channeling magic through my horn. Even if the two of us could keep this thing busy, he would wear us down. We were just unicorns, not devotees of a dark god. But he was still mortal, and we were in an enclosed space. My eyes were already burning from the new gas floating in ever greater quantities in the chamber.

My horn took on an over glow as I tore the air around him into something different. I ducked as another blast of necromantic magic travelled over my prone body. I rolled to the side, watching as another one of his slower bolts struck Cotton’s sticky membranes. Again, the opposed magic annihilated, blinding me again.

“Run,” I yelled in the short time. My magic pulling the trigger and emptying my magazines at him. The shield seemed stronger than it had been at the start, his true power showing itself. Cotton gave me a terrified look as she ran through the chamber. I grasped my salvation in my weakening magic, pulling it to my face, and sealing the claustrophobic mask over my muzzle just in time to catch a bemused glance from my opponent.

“I wouldn’t debase myself by using poison gas,” he spoke in those same rumbling tones, that sardonic tone reaffixing itself as he thought he had defeated me. I pulled myself back to my hooves with effort. My horn seemed to go dark compared to his.

“I would,” I yelled, my own lips twisting into a grin as I charged the whole room, sweeping up everything in it with an electrical charge. Then I started running at an angle, as I concentrated the field and pushed it right down his muzzle. He looked surprised as the ozone was forced into his lungs. I kept my horn at it’s intensity, keeping the air near him full of the toxic gas. There was an attempt to cast another shot of magic at me, but I switched directions and the weak magic just turned the wall behind where I had been to hot sand. Those eyes gleamed, turning bloodshot, his intake of breath laboured, and his exhales bloody. It was his last spell, his horn growing dark, as I ran at him. My pistol barked, reloaded, sending a magazine's worth of shots into his body, blood and flesh exploding from the impacts. He dropped to the floor, a single gasping breath being forced from into his destroyed lungs.

Finally I stood above him, my own lungs protected by the mask. I stared into those black pools, seeing someone like I had been, dying like I should have many times before. My knife sliced into his throat, severing half of it. For another moment those eyes stared into mine. And then, it was over, only blood seeping into the warped sand beneath us. That and the ozone that flowed out of his dying body.

Before I left, I felt something calling towards me. A piece of darkest obsidian, something that made this creature’s pale imitations look all the more pitiful. I had cut the cord with my knife, not even feeling the object's presence until its owner's heart had stopped beating. I kicked it away from him, until it struck the wall a half dozen meters away. Then, I drew in the deepest breath I could through the mask. My horn glowed brightly, as it collected charge around it like a capacitor bank. I had learned something from Cotton and this poor soul. Unicorns didn’t have to cast a spell instantly. They could build a spell, build energy within themselves, before pushing it out with every bit of control they could muster.

When my bolt sailed down from my blindingly bright horn, it snapped the molecules of the air, shattering them as it bore into the obsidian. For the half second my bolt shot into the talisman, it seemed to gulp it down, like those eyes sucking down light-

A crack sounded from the talisman, as it shattered into pieces, the pieces melting into the melted sand they sat above. Magic blasted out from the cursed object, magic that carried through me, making my soul ring like a struck bell.

And then it was over, my head felt like it had been stepped on by an elephant, as well as being compressed by pressure waves from the battle. My horn flickered and sparked as the last of the energy flowed back into the aether from which it had been drawn.

I breathed heavily, before forcing my battered, flickering magic to strap my weapons back in place. The path back was dark, only my torch lighting the path ahead. My mind reeled, that creature's words echoing through my head. When I stepped back into the light of the sun, I had buried my questions for later. I had where those Lacunae had come from, and who had taken them.

“You’re alive!” Cotton Candy said to me as I stepped back into the tent. The other ponies still around looked at me with something approaching awe. I tore the mask from my face, the action sending waves of nausea and pain through my head.

“Can someone give me a light?” I asked after taking a fresh breath of air.

---===*===---

The sun was setting when I rode the truck back into the shattered outskirts of Paradise. My heart felt weary as I looked upon another city laid to waste by war. Cotton Candy drove this time, as I sat in the passenger seat, watching the dark blues of night fill the sky from the east.

“I don’t understand you, when we were fighting for this victory, you were bright, telling us about that future you believe in,” Cotton asked me, my dour mood radiating off of me like heat from molten slag.

“Does this look like victory?” I asked.

“It’s a start,” she replied softly. “We won the battle, you slayed the monster.”

“I could have been one of those monsters,” I said darkly. “I could’ve been so much worse.”

“But you aren’t. I meant what I said. You fought a battle for a home that isn’t yours, against your own people. That thing was a monster, a mouthpiece for something that shouldn’t be,” Cotton replied, before pulling a lighter from her jacket with a tendril of amber magic. I nodded at her, as she lit a cigarette for me, and for her. “Listen, I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’ve been through. I can only tell you what I’ve seen. I see a stallion who’s always ready to fight on, even if you hate fighting.”

“I do what must be done,” I said quietly, feeling those words ring through my mind. I had thought them so many times before, given up parts of myself in the name of those words. “I always have.” A memory flashed back into my mind. One of those times had been a suicide attempt, flooding my lungs with poison gas. I had thought it needed to be done. The memory stung, I had been saved by a creature like the one in the lair. What needed to be done shifted once again. Being that spark to burn a world once more-

The bleating of the vehicle’s horn brought me back to the present. There wasn’t anything in front of us, just a relatively undamaged road, cutting between broken buildings.

“I know that look, I’ve seen it on ponies, and I’ve seen it in the mirror,” Cotton Candy said after her own heavy exhale. “I don’t know what that thing shook loose in your head, but don’t let it break you. We need good ponies if we’re going to get that bright future.”

“I think I was broken a long time ago,” I said. “I know why I needed to be fixed, but it makes me furious, that which he cut out of me… I don’t even know what all he took from me.”

“Who?” Cotton blurted out, her horn lighting up, crackling with energy as her heart rate shot up.

“It’s not your burden,” I barked back. My mind screaming at the violation, at the empty spaces in itself, now laid bare. For a tense minute nothing more was said. I gazed out the window, watching weary Imperials being disarmed and marched away. “I don’t know all the details, and I’m not sure what I’ll do. I just know, it has to be my own choice, my own act.”

“I saw you choose to go down there, I saw how scared you were. That was your choice,” the unicorn mare said, before putting a hoof on my shoulder. It was a comfort. A comfort I needed. The rest of the journey was silent, just two weary ponies travelling through a ruined city, headlights on.

---===*===---

I stepped into the tent, the smell of wounded and dying ponies suffocating in its intensity. I had seen this scene so many times, I had been here more times than I wanted to remember- if I could even remember all of those times. My old wounds seemed to ache in remembrance of those times. I blinked and stepped through the cots and less wounded ponies. My eyes laid upon someone who had saved my life once. His eyes were flushed and red, his movements slow. He stood above a mare who had been shot twice in the withers, now wrapped in bandages and blue from blood loss that she might or might not survive-

Before I could get any closer, a blur of grey and blonde nearly knocked me off my hooves. I barely managed to stay upright, and was blindsided by the kiss that Icepick forced upon me. I grabbed her with my hooves, holding her tightly, but resisting the kiss.

“What’s up with you?” She asked me as soon as the kiss broke. My face was stuck in a rigid frown, even as my eyes bored into hers, searchingly.

“We’re in a hospital,” I stated flatly.

“Yeah, but this whole city is a charnel house,” she said defensively. “And that’s a deflection, there’s something up with you.” I exhaled deeply, before glancing at the nearest exit. I let go of her, and started towards it, trying to keep myself under control. Even then, I cast an acid glance at Rosetta, who had moved onto the next pony that needed a dose of healing magic.

When I had pushed through the tent flaps, I used my aching magic to grab a cigarette, and light it with a brief immolation of the tip. Icepick followed me out, right on my heels, eyes wide.

“I fought one of Sombra’s avatars,” I nearly spit out as I exhaled a deep drag of smoke. “I killed it, a magical wastrel, aided by a talisman.”

“That’s good, you slayed a monster-” she started to say before I stomped a hoof into the intact asphalt beneath me.

“He-it told me things, it told me what he had done to me,” I replied sharply. She looked away, deflating before me. She had known. Of course she had known. “So it’s true. I had a feeling before, a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Memories seeming to lead to nowhere, like I had lost something.”

“We had to be sure-” Icepick started to say.

“I was with you, I was going to stop you from triggering the missile, but even after that,” I forced myself to stop from screaming. “You let him play doctor in my brain, then let him play doctor with you.” I had lost the battle. My voice echoed off the walls, hoarse with anger, filled with the deepest anger. “What did he take from me? He didn’t take the pain away, I still remember the fields of death, I still remember losing those that I had loved!”

“Y-your parents, your lovers, the things that broke you,” she said after a moment’s reflection. Her eyes were meeting mine again. Sorrow and remorse filled them, as tears began to form in the corner of her eyes.

“So you thought it was your right to maim my memory? To make me into your toy soldier?” I screamed at her, my heart shattering before her. “Well, you won your battle, you won your allies.”

“I-I,” she started to say something but stopped herself. Her tear filled gaze falling upon mine. A tinge of pain filled me, for hurting her. That just made me more resolute.

“I always had my doubts, I’m not a pony who believes in prophecy. But now I know something else,” I said, my anger having boiled away the volume, leaving only the venom. “Goodnight, destroyer.”

I started walking, feeling glances all over me. I didn’t care.

“I’m sorry,” she said meekly, her voice nasal from the tears.

“I’m sure you are,” I replied softly.

---===*===---

I found her sitting by herself, nursing a bottle with a price sticker still on it. I cleared my throat before walking towards her. An empty steel drum filled with broken furniture sat blazing away in front of Crescent Moon. We were at the outskirts of the docks. Only a few meters from the ocean. It’s rolling blackness was comforting. The moon was a crescent sitting above us, bouncing a little light onto us little ponies. The stars, which had been outshone by the city lights, were now twinkling above, oblivious to the plight of mere ponies.

“I don’t know if I can go any further, if I can keep killing in anyone’s name,” I said after she had turned to look at me. I sat down on the ground beside her heavily, like a tree worn with illness, finally collapsing under its own weight.

“I know how you feel, after seeing so many die,” she said before taking another gulp of liquor down her throat.

“They violated me… I can’t remember my own parent’s death. I can’t remember the ponies I loved before coming here,” I said in a muted tone. The anger had washed over me in the time it had taken to get here. Only a void remained. An emptiness I thought I had cast out of myself.

“I’m so sorry,” Crescent said after a long, painful pause. Her words were slightly slurred, her sorrow was reaching out across the space between us. “I don’t even know what to say. I’ve lost so many ponies, lost my home.”

“You did your part, you did the right things, but it can turn to ashes in your mouth so easily,” I said before grabbing the bottle in my magic, roughly, horn sparking, crackling with the energy of my emotions. “Maybe it always does.”

“Traditionally, it’s sand in your mouth here,” she said with the ghost of a smile on her muzzle. “But I get your point. Even if we win, it always seems bitter. But we still need to win, we still need to try for that better world. You helped those ponies in Safe Harbour. You didn’t ask for anything in exchange. That was a good work, something you wanted to do for them, just because you could, and it was right to do.” She looked at me, pressing a hoof to my chest. It was warm against me. She was warmth at the moment when I needed it the most. “You give me hope. I try to be a better person, even if it’s cost me everything.” She stopped for a moment before looking me dead in the eyes. “Maybe that’s the price of admission.”

“What is a hero without sacrifice? If the right thing, and the easiest thing were the same-” I started to say, feeling the salty air from the sea wash over me. I felt tears welling up as another fragment of the past came back to me. Like a levee whose height had been reached by the water it was meant to keep out, those hidden memories lapped over me in waves.

“So you think you’re a hero?” She asked, her eyes focusing on mine. “I do too. You inspired me, you led me onto this path. That makes you a hero to me.”

“But-” I started to object, but she pressed on.

“When you act on your own, when you do what you think is right, you’re as heroic as they come. So, just ask yourself, what do you think is right?” She finished before pulling her bottle nearer.

“I need to finish what we’ve started. What I began, before I was changed against my will,” I shut my eyes and winced at that realization. They might not have trusted me, they might have violated me, but I had found the right path. Their trespasses wouldn’t be forgotten, but I had made tresspasses of my own. My eyes opened once more. “After that, I don’t know.”

“No-one does,” Crescent replied with a bitter laugh of her own. She was one of us, a pony without a home, scarred by her own acts, and those of others. I shifted to be closer, before wrapping my forelegs around her. “Those who think they know are fools, delusional fools. But you aren’t a fool. I know you want something better for this place, and I know you’ll fight to your last spark for it.”

For some time, I just held her, watching the waves lap at the decaying piers. When I closed my eyes, and focused on my heartbeat, I felt the solace of her words. My sight without sight shifted outwards, first feeling the ripples of current flowing through Crescent Moon, then further. The presences in the twice broken city blinking through my mind in a flash. All of them felt the same, all of their differences stripped away, just living creatures living through folly and pain.

I wasn’t alone. I had ponies to protect. I still had work to do.

Author's Note

Another chapter out, and quickly! I hope you all enjoy this chapter. It's a shift in perspective in more ways than one.

The next chapter is already partly written. I feel like the steam for the end of the story is picking up. For better or for worse.

The Tarnished Knight (XXIX)

The light of the sun battered down on me as I walked into the camp, the surviving armoured vehicles painted to match the sand being worked on, maintained by the small legion of ponies assigned to maintain the tools of war. I wasn’t there to admire the vehicles that had made our victory possible. I did however see many more eyes watching me as I walked past. They weren’t eyes cast towards me in mockery-

“How’d it go monster slayer?” I looked away from the squat cinderblock building that was my destination, and met the gaze of a now familiar figure. Talon smiled at me, but it looked like it could crack with the slightest nudge.

“Monster slayer?” I asked the mare, my mind reeling at being known for that. She paused and looked confused for a moment. Before stepping forward and putting her muzzle near my ear.

“You really don’t know? They’ve been talking about it all over, spread through the grapevine. Well, I don’t know if I believe everything that pink mare says. But I believe my drivers, and the Rangers that picked through that camp,” Talon finished whispering, all while my mind was caught between what she was saying, and how she was saying it. An attractive mare breathing over my sensitive ears, close to me.

“It was a difficult battle, but I just did what needed to be done,” I replied flatly, flushing at the praise and her proximity. “Just like everyone else.”

“Humble too, damn… she bagged a good one,” Talon replied a moment later. “Speaking of, where is Icepick?” I winced visibly at her question. Her expression changed, worry clouding over what had been exhausted pride.

“I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to her since dusk yesterday,” I said flatly, trying to betray no emotion. Talon gazed at me, wondering what had happened, but knowing that I would evade any such questions.

“I see,” she replied in a clip voice of her own. That bright yellow mane glinted in the sunlight, so reminiscent of her daughter. “So what are you doing here?”

“I wish to be commissioned by Phalanx,” I said while not meeting her gaze. Her surprise was easy to read, a step backwards and a bemused expression sweeping over her muzzle as she heard my words. “I have my reasons. Now unless you have further need of me-”

“Why?” She asked, her tone stark and serious. Talon sounded so much like Icepick the night before. This mare deserved an answer, maybe she could make her daughter understand. Their relationship was new, but maybe she could help resolve my irrational guilt. I pointed a hoof, and glanced back towards the empty piers a ways off. I wasn’t as angry now, and I didn’t want others to learn of what Icepick had done to me. That was just a courtesy, or so I told myself.

When she and I had gotten far enough away from any other ponies, I stopped, feeling battered wooden blanks holding my weight. I turned around and met her gaze.

“I don’t think I can be around her anymore, or him. I can’t trust myself, I was ready to beat that pink-coated stallion into a bloody pulp. That’s why I’m asking to join you. I can tell you why, but I guarantee you don’t want to know,” I finished with a deep exhale. The words had just slipped out of my muzzle, syllable by syllable, passion overriding tact.

“I need to know,” she managed to say after a pregnant pause. My muzzle twisted into a small, bitter smile.

“Rosetta violated me, changed me to fit their ends. He tore memories from my mind, to which only fragments and hints remain. Icepick let him, she kept the secret between them. I don’t even care about the sex they had, I had accepted that, and gotten even there. But this is so much worse. I wouldn’t do what they did to anyone-” My words had gone off the rails again, my voice wavering in volume as I felt those black feelings of betrayal sweep over me again.

“Who told you this?” She asked softly, pressing a hoof to my shoulder. I felt her touch, and it held me together for the moment. If this mare had ever sounded motherly, it was then. Another shock flowed from that moment, a memory I had repressed on my own.
The last time I had seen my own mother, her coat the same colour of the summer sky. That last brief summer before the blood. She had bid me goodbye with tears in her eyes, held by my father, his own coat a dark yellow. It was the last time I had seen them, the last time before I had to bury them.

“Permittivity!” She nearly shouted at me. I had been caught in a reverie, my eyes unfocused at the here and now.

“Sombra’s monster told me, he was a mouthpiece for him, a tool. But he showed me that I was just as much a tool,” I said breathlessly. “I didn’t want to listen to it. But his words were true, their pain igniting the suspicions and worries already in my mind.”

“Icepick told you the truth when you confronted her with it?” She had pulled herself closer to me. One foreleg became two as she held me firmly.

“Y-yes, and she felt guilty about it, truly guilty. That was the worst part, knowing that she was sorry, but knowing she had done it anyways,” I said in a low voice. My heart was beating furiously in my chest, and tears were so close to being shed. For a long time she just held me, saying nothing, just comforting a pony she hardly knew.

“I’m going to speak to her,” she said in a strong voice. “Do you think it was her idea?”

“I know it wasn’t, I know that the good doctor came up with that treatment plan-” I was twitching, shivering in anger as I thought about the pony I had once called a friend.

“Okay. I wish we had more time to think about this, to give you time to sort your feelings out. But I know what the plan calls for next, I know you understand. If you need a place away from them, I can help you. If Phalanx needs convincing, I can do that too,” Talon looked out towards the sea. “I will always love her, because she’s my foal. I loved her even when the smart thing to do was forget her. Feelings don’t work that way. Anyone who tried to cut my memories of her out of my mind would be a dead pony.”

“You’ve got more restraint than me,” she said a moment after the rest of her words.

“I’ve made too many mistakes to pretend to be righteous, I’ve hurt too many to want to do it on a whim. I thought that she had forgiven me, I thought that kind of pain was over,” I managed to say as the levee broke. Tears broke away from my ducts, salty and warm on my face.

“Forgiveness is the hardest thing in the world to do, and the thing the world always needs more of,” she released me, before turning around.

“I think she’s lost a good one,” I heard her say angrily, beneath her breath. Her steps pounding down the pier. I let my legs buckle, the weight overwhelming me, only the eternal sea beside me. The tears flowed into it, just another drop of water added to it. Just another broken heart in a world full of them.

---===*===---

The door to the office swung open under the grasp of my telekinesis. I stepped inside and heard the sound of a chair turning to face me. Phalanx cleared his throat before nodding at a similar chair in front of the desk. I took the chair, sitting down in it swiftly.

“You requested to speak with me personally?” Phalanx asked politely while gazing at me. There was apprehension, and curiosity warring in his visage.

“Yes, I’m here to offer you something,” I replied in a warm tone. Whatever charm I had, it needed to be used here. “What is it you lack the most?”

“There are many things I wish I had more of,” the pegasus stallion said with a slight fluttering of his wings. He hadn’t expected that. The more I could keep him off balance, the better. “Fuel, spare parts, medicine, et cetera. The list is long, and I doubt you have a few thousand liters of diesel stuffed in those saddlebags.”

“That would be some impressive magic, magic that I lack,” I replied with a smile, while rocking back in the seat a bit. I pulled my forelegs over my chest, before pushing one forward onto the desk. “You need several things that I can give you.”

“And what would those be?” He asked, trying not to show his curiosity. I could feel his heartbeat speed up though, along with his breathing.

“A capable officer, a respected stallion, and someone who has diplomatic ties to every faction in this part of Sall’han,” I finished and locked my eyes onto his. “All I ask for is a seat at any important table, and a commission in your army.”

“I thought you were content being a consort-” he started to say before I cut him off.

“If I ever was, I’m not now,” I paused to let him chew that over. “If you truly wish to come out of this on top, you’re going to need to be on good terms with all the external powers. I gave Safe Harbour electricity, I fought with the ponies of Paradise, and I’m a close friend of the only Arabian leader with us. Icepick is your counterweight, someone with little direct control over ponies, but a thorn in your side if you cross her. I know her better than anyone, I know her secrets.”

“She crossed you, didn’t she?” He finally said, a harsh bark of laughter echoing through the small room. I glared at him, my own breathing picking up, my muscles tensing as my body prepared for violence. “That answers that question, and tells me it’s a sore spot. As to your proposal, I think you’re right about her being my real enemy. She’s a dangerous mare-”

“More dangerous than you can even imagine,” I interjected. “When you play with her, you play with fire. I’m the closest thing to fire you have.”

“Yes you are, you’re dangerous. But everything with power is dangerous, and power itself is very dangerous,” an insincere smile crossed his face. “Let me ask you one more question: would you kill her if it was necessary?” My face became stony as the thought sunk into my mind. Imagining that, imagining hurting Icepick-

“Yes,” I said cooly. I hadn’t lied, if it was necessary, I could do it. I had been prepared to light her up when she was standing before the launch terminal in that submarine. She was the destroyer, that fact needed no more proof. I loved her though. Someone had bound our souls and she had won my heart. If he had asked ‘would you kill her if I asked you to’, that would have been a different answer.

He wasn’t qualified for his position if he couldn’t ask the right questions...

“I know that Talon respects you, and so do my subordinates. Welcome aboard outsider,” Phalanx replied before sticking a foreleg out towards me. As I reached out and grasped his hoof with mine my mind was filled with a single question.

Does a devil ever consider the possibility that they’ve made a deal with something worse?

---===*===---

“I’d like to speak to them,” I said to the guards standing before one of the warehouses at the edge of the city. They looked at me closely for a moment, before the light of recognition shone through their eyes. A fair number of the captured Imperials were being kept in the warehouses that remained. Disarmed and dispirited or so I had heard. This warehouse in particular held the surviving officers and higher enlisted.

“Sure, Slayer,” the younger stallion to the right said. His older companion, a mare with a steely gaze, rolled her eyes at him.

“What business do you have with them?” She asked me a moment later, that gaze turning on me. My own face was curled into a confident smile, like it was my turn in the sunlight. It was a sham, it was just another weapon in my arsenal. But if it needed to be used, then it would be.

“I wish to speak with them, interrogate them, and see what their general disposition is. I know that they’ve been unharmed, and treated well. I have a great respect for the laws of war, and anyone who upholds them,” I replied swiftly, that smile unwavering until I mentioned the laws of war. It shifted to something more solemn, more honest. I did mean what was said.
“There isn’t a set of procedures for this, we didn’t expect anyone would want to see them, other than as an interrogator. We’ll watch you closely, but I don’t see any reason to deny you,” She finished with a huff. There was a hint of disquiet in her words, even if her younger subordinate had a glint of worship in his eyes.

“I’ll be on my best behaviour, corporal,” I replied as my magic grasped the door, opening it swiftly. The two ponies couldn’t help but stare at my horn, and the outline of sparking blue fire around it. It reminded me of my past, of being the only unicorn in kilometers. I flashed that same smile towards them, as I walked between them. “Thank you for doing your duty once more. Guard duty is dull, and sometimes dangerous, but as necessary as any other duty.”

The stallion smiled back, his rifle swinging about his chest. I could tell he had been a conscript just days ago. But I could see the action behind his eyes. The mare was the same with a guarded, haunted look in hers. The door shut softly, and I was left in a corridor, nearly bereft of ponies. I greeted the guard mare carrying her rifle in a pink haze of magic.

“I would like to speak to them,” I said as her eyes traced up and down me.

“Sure, but I better not hear any screams, or I’ll put a bullet in you,” she said simply. It was a threat, but it was the kind of threat I could understand. The kind of threat that was necessary sometimes.

“I’m not the type to harm prisoners of war,” I said flatly, emphasizing my accent a bit more.

“Good. They’re all locked in the upper floors, with the exception of the attempted escapees. I have those down here, where I can watch them closely,” she replied in a curious tone. I nodded at her, before asking for directions. I learned about the procedures, and who held the sentry point up the stairs. Before I left, I thanked her for her thankless duty.

---===*===---

The door slid open, and I was surrounded by ponies wearing dirty uniforms, all of their tired eyes falling upon me. I met each of their gazes in turn, my eyes steady, expression stolid. The nearest ponies to me, with rank insignia still sewn onto their uniforms gave me a critical look.

“I wish that the battle we fought hadn’t happened,” I said loudly enough to be heard through the room. “But the past is unchanging, and nothing we can do will ever bring back those that were lost.”

“Why are you here, Traitor?” A non-commissioned officer lashed out at me. I kept my hooves spread apart, my stance neutral, as I glanced at her.

“To talk about the future. I haven’t forgotten my home, and I’ve regretted every action I’ve taken against you all. But you know that your mission was wrong, you either know, or heard rumours about who was really in charge,” I paused to let them recall the monster in question. “I fought that avatar of Sombra. I came out on top.”

“It’s true then! It was him in the tower!” A male voice shouted.

“That presence you felt, the cold mind that seemed to peer into your soul, it was the remains of Sombra. He doesn’t dwell within a body, he doesn’t have a beating heart, but he does hold power over many. That’s why I fought my comrades. That’s why I’m speaking to you all,” I spoke in fearful tones, regret tinging every syllable.

“Why should we trust you?” that same scarred mare asked me.

“Is there anyone else left to trust?” I asked softly. “I’m just a stallion who has seen too much pointless bloodshed. I’ve committed too much of it, and received it in turn. In that, I’m just like you all.” There was a pause, followed by quiet murmuring. “I fought the Celestians, I lost family and friends to them. A pointless war of Imperial ambition. That war’s bloodshed allowed Sombra to awaken. Whatever you think about the leaders who got us into that war, their ambition pales in comparison to Sombra’s. He has no qualms about burning our world just like this one. He thinks of nothing but ruling, even if his domain is nothing but ashes and bones. Your bones, my bones, and every single creature that dares to stand against him.”

“Why are you telling us this?” a middle-aged stallion who still bore the marks of a major asked me. “We lost. These ponies fought us like animals for days, fighting us for every inch of this blasted city. But that was just a trap, they wanted us to overextend, to throw everything against an enemy that looked beaten. Was that your plan? To grind us into dust, before driving over us with that shining armour, and those tracked monstrosities?”

“I aided in the plan, I agreed to it because any other plan would have failed. You all know how dearly victories are bought. This one was no exception. I made damn sure you would be treated well, in accordance with the laws of war. I can make no promises at this moment, but I wanted to reassure you about that,” I said before casting a glance at many of their faces in turn. “That’s why I’m telling you this. That’s one of the reasons. The other reason is simple, I want you all to rise to the occasion, and to fight one last battle. When that will happen, and what happens after is unknown to me. Some of that is up to you.”

“This world is going to be your home, it’s already become mine. What you choose to do with your lives will be up to you. I wish that you make the right decisions, I hope that we’ll all get to set down our arms. That moment has yet to arrive, but I dream of it. I know you do too,” I finished with a deep draw of breath.

“What is this final battle you speak of? It can’t be against Sombra, they won’t allow us to be alongside them, they definitely won’t arm us for that,” that same tired major asked me. I locked my eyes onto his.

“It will be the battle for Sall’han, to decide what kind of peace reigns over this land. I hope that you’ll fight alongside me when the moment comes. But perhaps the Imperial army will defeat us, and rescue you from internment. I don’t think so, and I hope for victory, but if it is to be my fate, I hope you remember my words,” I let my eyes drift away from them. Towards the west, towards my destiny.

“Thank you,” the same young stallion who had spoken about Sombra said to me. There were many thankless tasks, many things that needed to be done.

Sometimes one thank you means the world.

---===*===---

The door to the conference room swung shut, with quite a few sentries standing outside. I was seated already, across the table from Icepick, and between Phalanx and Talon to my right and left, respectively. The other ponies in the room had met with us before, Brass Belle, the commander of Paradise Defense Force, and the commander of their nascent navy. Icepick sat beside Ironsight, and Crescent Moon.

In the room, there was a tension that could be cut with a knife, exhaustion weighed upon every face in the room, along with a giddiness at the unexpected victory. It was unexpected to everyone but Icepick, she accepted it as a matter of course, a victory bought at great cost-

“We won here, but our victory, and our sacrifices mean nothing if another army marches down in a month. Sombra already knows we won, and he’s already building defences and assembling forces. He also knows that the same issues that plagued his assault on Paradise will affect us just as badly, if not more so. Supply lines are an issue at the best of times. These are not the best of times,” Icepick opened with force and foresight as she tended to. It was a sentiment I agreed with, something I would have to fight to make happen. Her eyes briefly met mine, before turning away like she had been burned. I felt an ache after the moment passed.

It was her fault. She had dug this hole, and any forgiveness from me would have to be earned.

“I don’t want to shoot the messenger, but my ponies are tired. Our supplies are running thin, and we-we’ve lost so much,” Belle said.

“So be it,” I said flatly. Eyes turned towards me, someone who had spoken rarely in these meetings. “I will march towards that citadel myself if needed. I don’t think I’ll be alone though. I suggest we ask for volunteers from the ponies of Paradise, but not too many. If we intend to make this plan of attack succeed we need to move swiftly. We have enough surviving Ursas and APCs to transport a fairly large assault force. Especially if we have ponies riding atop the vehicles themselves.”

“Do you think that will be enough?” Belle asked me, her face a mask of indefinite worry, and a wriggling tendril of hope.

“The population of the research station and its bunkers is mostly civilian, and largely the descendents of the Arabians that came across it. I’m the exception among them, as was Tegarni. I have no clue about the Imperials that are surely ready there. But it’s not really meant to withstand an aggressive and coordinated attack,” Crescent Moon replied, her own voice steady.

“It’s a mess of interlinking tunnels, bunkers, storage areas, and scientific instrumentation. I believe the intention for it was to test Megaspells and other dangerous experiments in the truly desolate wilderness to the west. But that hardly matters, I know where the gateway is, and we know how to break it. And it isn’t even in one of the more inaccessible areas,” I said to the assembled ponies.

“So we should expect close quarters combat, and a large number of non-combatants?” Icepick asked, her eyes widening.

“Yes,” Crescent said. Her voice was resigned, the same way that most of us were. For a moment her eyes met mine, the meaning clear.

“A bloodbath in the making,” I said what most had been thinking.

“If it could be done some other way…” Crescent said, leaving the question hanging unanswered.

“We’ll do our best, and I’ll keep thinking of other ways-” Icepick said to her, before glancing at me. Our eyes met once more, and I couldn’t help but smile slightly. I knew she would try to spare them. I also knew how much intentions mattered in times of war. “-to get the job done.”

“So what do you require then?” Brass Belle asked, she seemed happier now that we weren’t going to ask for the whole battered army she wanted to keep close.

“Fuel, ammunition, food, and spare parts if you have them,” I answered the question before Phalanx even opened his mouth. “I believe that all of our weaponry uses the same pre-war specifications?”

“He’s right,” Icepick said with a plaintive sigh. “We blew through most of our stockpiles, and I know how thirsty those Ursas are. I don’t know how much you can spare but any would be helpful.” By this point, Belle was shooting a look at her staff.

“We’ll have to figure out how much was expended, and how much we deem a safe margin. But I can make my ponies work day and night until it's done. My bean counters didn’t have to fight, so they can afford to lose some sleep. As to the fuel, our refineries to the north have stayed in operation, and are unmolested. I guarantee we can top you off in that regard. If you need spare parts, you’re going to have to talk to my logisticians, and make very clear what could be used in place of a specific part,” Brass Belle trailed off, looking away for a moment, before composing herself and meeting each of our eyes in turn. With a deep intake of breath she began again.

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you all for saving my city. I didn’t believe the threat was real until it was here, and when it arrived I thought all hope was lost. I’m happy to be proven wrong. I have no idea how your battle with Sombra will end. I worry that he’ll send another army here in a month- But I hope to be proven wrong again, please prove me wrong.”

“We will,” Icepick and I said the same thing, at the same time. I scowled inwardly at that. I didn’t like the idea that she and I were linked that strongly. In the corner of my eye, I could see a twisting of her brave face. It could have just been a momentary twitch, a coincidence to anyone else.

I knew better.

---===*===---

Before I could leave, Talon eyed me and gestured at herself. I gave her a bemused look, but I hung back as the other ponies left. The other ponies except for Icepick. The door shut, leaving the three of us alone in the now deathly quiet room.

“Alright kids, we have business to discuss,” Talon said with a dark peel of laughter. I glanced from her, to her daughter. Icepick held herself in a defensive posture, tense and unnerved.

“The weapon is nearly ready, I just got a report on that from Zenji. It’s not much larger than the megaspell amplifier itself. It’s also supposed to work, though we don’t have another weapon to test. The other important thing is that it shouldn’t be dangerous to living things. It will spark anything using magical circuitry though, at least, that’s what our resident megaspell expert says,” Icepick finished speaking, her eyes had been on Talon, instead of me. I couldn’t help but watch her. I wasn’t at fault- this time.

“It’ll fry all of the magical circuitry near it-” Talon began to ask before Icepick interjected.

“No, not fry, spark. If the intensity of the megaspell was set to the original specifications of the spark grenade, it would burn them out to the point that only scrap remained. But the charge has been modified to emit a pulse of magic that should tear certain kinds of enchantments apart. No-one I talked to about it has ever come across a soul jar enchantment before, but according to the Thaumic Theory, it should be an almost elemental enchantment,” Icepick said before taking a breath.

“Magic is a flowing force, and so is electricity, the patterns that matter in the universe can be manipulated and set to a purpose that we desire, but you’re saying Sombra changes matter at an atomic level? He intertwined his soul with the matter of the Mirror?” I asked her, my breath hitching in my throat.

“That’s what I was told, if you have questions like that, you’re better off talking to someone who knows the details. Apparently it’s a magical technique that existed in ancient Zebrica. A way to keep a soul in this plane that protects it and the object that the soul is bound to. I did ask if the Balefire bomb could break it,” Icepick said, waiting a moment, and flicking her eyes towards mine. “He wasn’t sure if it could break the magical bonds. So, even if we had the parts for that suicide mission, it might not do the job in any case.”

“Well, if he’s mostly sure about it’s efficacy, then that’s good enough for me. How close do we need to get the weapon to Sombra?” I asked, trying my hardest to stay composed.

“The closer the better, it might not work through a ton of shielding. Rock, and concrete are good shielding against a brute force magical pulse. So that means we’re going to have to get into those tunnels,” she said with a sour expression on her muzzle.

“What is he like?” Talon asked me in a soft voice. It was a genuine question, from a pony who had made many mistakes in her life, many bad choices. Like mother, like daughter. I still felt a shiver down my spine as I recalled our short meeting.

“I had just tried to kill myself with carbon monoxide, so my mind wasn’t muddled when I arrived at the top of the crystal spire. Even then, I could feel a vast poisonous presence as I got closer. He spoke to me from inside my skull, and gave me one of his Talismans. When he gave me it, it seemed to rejuvenate me, and give me more power than I could have imagined before,” I looked away from Talon. I took another deep breath and looked at Icepick.

“I didn’t know what I was sensing at the time. I think I do now. The gateway he’s inhabiting is a tear in the fabric of the universe, it has to be, so it can join itself to another tear. But that barrier between worlds is the same barrier that magic has to pierce. When I light my horn and create an electrical charge, I’m channeling magic across that barrier, through my horn. I have limits, but with a ready made tear, there is no barrier-” I was cut off by Icepick.

“He has limitless power then?” She asked, her muzzle twisted in vexation.

“He may have access to it, whether he can directly cast spells is another matter. I have a hunch that he can only corrupt crystal, and the minds of those that can’t resist him. He can warp those who wish to serve him. That I’ve seen. It isn’t pretty,” I finished having left my eyes on hers. “I don’t know how many ponies he can convert, or how many talismans he has at his disposal. If there are more than a few, and if they’re stronger when near him…”

“That just gives everyone else a chance to kill a monster,” Talon said jovially. “I want to bag one myself.”

“They’re like nothing you’ve ever imagined, and fight like the demons they are. The one I fought must have been a powerful wizard even before his transformation. I couldn’t fight him on his own terms-”

“That’s why we fight them our way, if they can survive being blown to bloody chunks, I’ll be more scared of them,” Icepick interjected, anger covering her own trepidation.

“If brute force isn’t working, you need to use more brute force,” I said before shaking my head. “The stallion I fought was able to absorb shot after shot, bullet, or magical bolt. The only hit I managed to get off on him was lucky. I cooked his flank, but that didn’t slow the creature down.” I took a deep breath before continuing. “I thought I was going to die. I nearly did. I only managed to slay the creature with a dirty trick that would only work in that situation.”

“Tell us the weakness?” Talon asked me, while giving her haughty daughter a side eye.

“I created ozone by running current through the air around him. Then I forced the deadly gas down his throat with a tightening magnetic field. Whatever else they are, they can still be killed, even if a non-lethal blow seems to do little to them,” I finished speaking before leaning back in my chair.

“Could we just flood the whole complex with that gas?” Icepick asked, her eyes gleaming in the flickering light. Talon looked like she was about to speak, but she saw me straighten and glare at Icepick.

“First off, I can’t make that much ozone. It took a lot out of me, I’m still recovering from the strain. Second, all the Imperial troops are issued gas masks that can defeat most poison gases. Third, it would be a heinous act,” I had leaned over the table, eyes boring into hers. She met the gaze, before a smile that held no warmth surfaced on her muzzle.

“I was just playing Discord’s advocate. You’re right, even if we could do it, it would only harm the ponies without protection. I need to know one more thing. Permittivity, are you still with us?” Icepick asked.

“If it’s us, as in, the coalition to destroy Sombra then yes. If you’re asking me if I’m still in your thrall, then no,” I said simply. There was malice in my words, but she deserved it. She took it like a kick to the stomach.

“I never wanted you to be my thrall, I just wanted to help you-”

“I’m sure you thought that way. I’m sure Sombra started out that way too. Changing ponies into tools is something you have in common,” I said my piece without fire, but my eyes were burning holes into her. I stood up and started walking out of the room.

“I deserved that. I was terrified by what you were a harbinger of. I wanted to solve a potential problem, and I was blind to how you had changed. I was told that you would be better, that you wouldn’t miss what you had lost. I’m sorry Perm, I hurt the person I care for the most-” She hadn’t turned around, her voice spilled out of her, cracking with sorrow. It was in her voice. It was in my heart. I felt her emotions, or at least, a shadow of them inside myself. I stopped in my tracks.

“I believe you. I love you too. The difference between us is that you hurt me in spite of my actions. I hurt you before I knew you, by carrying on a lie. Those aren’t the same,” I went over to Icepick. She hadn’t turned yet, her face hidden by her position, and the loose locks of her golden mane. “But you know that, don’t you? Guilt is more painful than a thousand lashes. That guilt is the difference between Sombra, and yourself.”

Talon had stood up, moving towards the door. She wanted to give us space. When the door shut, Icepick spun the chair around to face me.

“If it was anyone else, I would spit in your face. But I know you Perm. You know guilt, you’ve had it poison your soul before-” her tears had slowed, but her eyes were red and puffy. I stood just before her, muzzle to muzzle. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my face again.

“I don’t know if it got down into my soul, but it led to me gassing myself. It led me here, and it’s led me down the right path, in the end,” I said darkly.

“In the end…” Icepick asked, before leaving me to answer. I lit my horn, and pulled out my handkerchief from a pocket on my chest. She didn’t balk as I dabbed up the tears on her cheeks.

“If it’s the end, I can die for a cause I believe in. I can die redeeming myself. Compared to all the other ends a pony can have, it’s better than most. If it isn’t my end, then I hope I’ll stay on the right path. If we succeed, this place is going to need leaders-”

“I don’t want you to die,” she said simply, and sincerely. I finished my dabbing and returned the cloth to its pocket. “But neither do you. That’s why you buddied up to Phalanx, isn’t it. It wasn’t just to spite me. You want to be in a position of power when we beat Sombra.”

My eyes must have given away the answer, as her face cracked into a wry smile. I matched it with one of my own.

“He’s weak, power hungry, and worse, he’s vain. When the right moment comes, I don’t think anyone will stop me from doing what needs to be done. Talon is a much better leader, and ponies are actually loyal to her,” my words were quiet, conspiratorial, but I wasn’t pleased with myself at the subterfuge.

“The right path, eh?” She actually laughed at that. “I agree though. He’s as much a threat to Sall’han as the Rangers back in Ramsgard. Are you going to try and assume control of the army he commands?”

“I’m not stupid Icepick, even if they respect me. Even if they trust in my abilities, I’m not one of them. You’d have a better chance at leading them than I would. I just want to be close to him. I want him to think I’m a competent subordinate, someone to trust with the petty little details,” my words slipped out like a sled down a steep hill. It wasn’t pretty, but we don’t live in a pretty world. If anyone could understand me, it was her. The Destroyer.

Before I could think my next thought, she kissed me. I felt her lips against me own, and a foreleg of hers wrap around my shoulder. I melted at that. I could feel her heartbeat, and my own thumping in our chests. That shadow of her feelings had blossomed into a photo negative of my own swirling thoughts. I wanted her, and she wanted me. I had made so many mistakes, but so had she.

“Goddesses, why are you sexy when you’re morally ambiguous?” She asked me, her face flushing at her words. Her eyes opened wider and she looked distracted for a moment. A moment later, she focused again on me. “What the fuck is that?”

“I could ask you the same question. My guess is the same one that Rosetta told us when we met him. We’re two sides of the same coin Icepick, a battered, blackened coin. We’re bad people trying to do the right thing. But we both understand that the right thing, and the moral thing are often at odds with each other,” she pressed a hoof to my muzzle at that.

“I have a bad feeling you’re right, maybe that’s why we need each other,” her eyes widened once again. A light of recognition shining through those sea blue orbs. “You-”

“Yes, I think that the bond has gotten stronger. I sense bits and pieces of your feelings. Especially if they’re strong,” I said softly. Her ear twitched as my breath lapped against it.

“Fuck, it’s like every time we get used to something weird, it just gets weirder. How long have you been feeling it?” Her tone was bouncing between novelty and aggravation.

“I felt it during the final assault. I drew strength from it. I could tell your heart was still beating, it’s stronger when we’re nearby,” I admitted. “I think I have it in my heart to forgive you. It’s going to take time.”

“What about-” she started to ask about him. My eyes narrowed, before I took one of her hooves in mine.

“That’s up to him, I won’t hurt him though. Even if I want to,” I replied my words shaded with delight in the last sentence. “Icepick, I just want rest. I want the killing to end.”

“So do I,” she said softly. Her gaze had moved past me, her eyes were focused on something far away. “Even if we beat Sombra. I don’t think we can stop the killing. We’re just ponies, Perm.”

“Sombra was just a pony once. He slayed our old gods. He may not feel guilt, he may not have a beating heart. But I’m sure he can still fear death,” I smiled wryly.

“Because of who I am?” she asked, a shiver passing through her body as she asked.

“Because of who we are,” I said before waving a hoof in an all encompassing gesture.

---===*===---

A week after the battle for Paradise had been decided, we set off into the sea of sand. We left behind a city in ruins, a people battered yet victorious. The flotilla arrived back in Paradise two days before we set off. Residents of the city, volunteers from Safe Harbour, and a significant stock of supplies to help the refugees in their own city.

When we bid farewell to the city, it seemed the whole living population of Paradise waved us goodbye. Brass Belle made a speech, thanking us for defending their city. It was left unsaid that the victory was pyrrhic for the city itself. It was left unsaid that they would be nearly defenseless against a Ranger attack if one was sent at them.

It was said that the sacrifices made there would be remembered. It was said that the city would rebuild. And she said that she believed in our victory against Sombra.

I wasn’t sure if she believed that last part herself, but she had given us as much ammunition, fuel, water and rations as we could manage. That was in addition to the small number of working trucks and volunteers from Paradise itself.

In the light of the setting sun we set out, several thousand ponies united in purpose. It would’ve been beautiful if not for the purpose itself. We were the hammer of Sall’han: we were going to smash Sombra, or die trying.

Author's Note

Just over a month between the last chapter and this one, it feels good. I must confess that the fumes of being close to the end have pushed me further and faster than before. The next chapter is already being worked on, and I hope you're excited to read the end of their journey. Don't worry, there will be an epilogue.

A decent length one, because writing a massive story and giving your characters a five second post ending moment is pretty shitty to me.

The Destroyer (XXX)

I watched the desert roll by from the cabin of the vanguard. Our forces had spaced themselves out in multiple columns, with a wall of armoured vehicles on every outer edge. In the centre of our formation, our unarmoured vehicles, tankers, and especially ammunition hauliers plodded along. It was evening, the fourth day of travel through the vast emptiness of the desert to the west of Paradise. We had passed the furthest outposts of Paradise, two days ago. They were emptied of any supplies.

It was odd travelling in the path laid out by the Imperial army. Their garbage, their presence was left in their wake. But those minute traces would be swallowed by the sand shortly. Maybe some archaeologist might find them centuries from now. That wasn’t any of my concern. My concerns were focused on our target, and the defences it surely held.

All of us in the force knew that time wasn’t on our side. And so we pushed our vehicles, and ourselves as hard as we could. It was a matter of deathly necessity. But at least we weren’t going to be worn out by a forced march like the armies of old had often been. I glanced at the clock buried in the dashboard of the transport. It was nearly dusk.

I stepped out of the cabin and entered the passenger compartment. Between the sleeping soldiers, and boxes of supplies crammed anywhere they could be fit, it was a tight squeeze as I moved to the exit door. How ponies could sleep in a rolling, bucking transport with a shitty suspension was beyond me. Then again, I had exempted myself from night watches. Compared to the commanding officers I myself had dealt with, it wasn’t an egregious insult to the soldiers.

Then again, I had fought with them every step of the way. That counted for something.

I had only been by the back door for a few minutes before I felt the APC slow down, then stop completely. I opened the armoured hatch and stepped out into the cooling desert air. In the west, the sky remained lit. As the light came around the curve of the Earth, it shifted colour from its normal blue to a brilliant orange that faded as you looked towards the east.

I leaned against the side of the vehicle and lit a cigarette. The rest of the army was slowing down as well. We were in a flat rocky patch of desert, the Ursa’s and APC’s assumed a loose semicircle around the other vehicles, our moving formation rearranged to become a condensed fortification.

I watched, as I put the cigarette out against the armoured side, my lips dropped the butt into the sand. A last smoky exhale issued from my lungs. The vehicle close behind me was carrying Permittivity and a group of soldiers. Their rear hatch had opened, and the occupants spilt out, ready to stretch their legs and eat something warm.

I was one of them, I wanted warm food, and my legs needed a stroll. Perm stepped around the side of his transport. I could feel a bit of warmth and affection as he spotted me. I had left my armour in the transport, and the black jumpsuit stuck out compared to the mostly sand-coloured uniforms of the other troops. Some rangers were walking around in their armour, but that was doctrine. You wanted a fair portion of your soldiers wearing their armour at all times.

“How much farther?” I asked Perm as we closed the distance between one another.

“You ask me that every evening. It’ll be a while.” he said before looking over his shoulder at a pony I hadn’t made note of before. “Icepick, meet Cotton Candy. Cotton Candy, Icepick.” The unicorn mare had a bright blue coat and a pink mane. She fit the name, even if I had only ever seen pictures of cotton candy.

“Hi,” I said with a bemused expression.

“Howdy,” she replied, before shooting a glance at Perm. I did the same.

“She’s the mare who helped me slay the monster,” he added after a moment of us staring at him.

“Oh!” I said before looking upon the mare with new eyes. She didn’t look all that impressive, but that kind of courage wasn’t a tattoo. Her own eyes were guarded as she looked back. “I know how Perm killed it, but I would like to know more about them in general. I know you both unloaded at him-”

“Small arms were ineffective at anything but keeping his shield pointed at us. Maybe a larger number of them could break the shield, but it would have to be a lot. I was able to bury my bolts in his shield though, that seemed to weaken it,” she interrupted me before catching her own breath.

“Magical bolts?” I asked, my eyes shooting to Permittivity for a second, then back to her. Her horn lit up, her magic the same colour as her red eyes. Just like Permittivity. The moment after that, a large blob of red began to build over her horn. It seemed to writhe and glow on its own, a mass of eldritch energy being melded and shaped by the concentrating mare.

There was a woosh as she discharged it, flinging the mass of energy into the sand a dozen meters away. It shattered on the sand, before melting the sand and shrinking in size and intensity. The orb was as bright as a flare, as it left a mark in the sand.

“Those,” Permittivity said with a smile crossing his face. “I think the interaction between her bolts and his shield spell kept the bolts charged and radiating. That really surprised the creature.”

“So magic is more effective against them, than conventional arms?” I asked them. Perm shrugged his shoulders and Cotton did much the same.

“Maybe, but we don’t exactly have a unit of spell casters,” Perm replied sourly. “I think our best tactic against them is heavy weapons. Even if they have shields that can withstand a missile fired at them, I doubt that it will prevent them from being slammed backwards or broken by the blast wave.”

“That’s a dangerous proposition, in a series of tunnels. Blastwaves, and back blasts are dangerous on the surface-” I started to say.

“I have a feeling that their magical attacks won’t be stopped by your armour. Overwhelming force is the only way to beat them. That and out-thinking them, but I have a feeling that will be difficult so close to Sombra,” Permittivity interjected.
I felt a chill from Perm as he remembered his desperate battle against the monster. I stepped closer to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Thank you for telling me, I don’t look forward to facing these things, but I think we can handle it. Like you said before, they can bleed, and they can die. That’s all that matters,” I said before glancing at Cotton Candy. She was still stiffly standing, her eyes gleaming in the fading light. “I’m starving, how about you two?”

“I could eat,” Cotton Candy said, and Perm nodded earnestly at me.

“Then we’ll eat,” I said before starting towards the best of the mess wagons.

As we walked, I saw the eyes of many ponies following us. One pair didn’t just watch, they glowered. Standing beside an armoured transport Rosetta had his eyes focused on Permittivity, his stance wide, holster open. Perm noticed this, his own gaze meeting the pink stallions. A moment later, Rosetta stepped away, but not before pulling a metal flask from his coat pocket and flipping open the top.

“Remember when we drove for a night and day, and thought we’d practically reached the end of the world?” I spun away from that mess, and faced Ironsight, who had trotted out from her own vehicle. Frostbite stood beside her, his normally hard eyes softened as he watched her reminisce with me.

“We were barely mares on that assignment. I had to stop looking out the windows because it made me sick,” I answered with a wry smile on my face. “If I remember correctly you got mad at me because I wouldn’t stop hitting on that knight you liked.”

“Don’t remind me of that!” Ironsight said before slapping her hoof on my withers.

“He was an asshole anyway,” I said with a shrug. The mess wagon was cooking now, the smell of casserole and bread was pouring out of the windows.

“I remember the first time I left Maidenpool. I watched the countryside roll by from the window of a train,” he stopped speaking before letting out a single weighty breath. I stepped closer to him. “Gone, gone, everyone gone to the other shore.” I heard him say under his breath, barely louder than a whisper.

“This is the farthest I’ve ever gone from Paradise,” Candy said quietly.

“To miss this beauty, this stunning landscape,” I said while shaking my head.

“This landscape was our shield for a century, it protected us against those that would have made us slaves,” Crescent Moon walked into our little group, her chestnut brown coat seeming to slip into the darkness to the east. “Once I would have died to protect the location of my home. That time has passed.”

“Slavery, serfdom, and empire will meet their end. When Sombra is shattered, only the chains of bondage are left to be broken,” Permittivity stated, his words ringing in each of our ears.

“Shatter the empires, break the chains,” Cotton Candy spoke softly. “And let harmony reign again.”

“A chance at a new beginning, a chance to do things right this time,” Frostbite added a moment later.

“Only if we have the strength to seize it,” Permittivity and I spoke simultaneously.

The reactions were mixed: Ironsight, Crescent and Cotton’s mouths gaped in surprise. Frostbite stepped backwards a pace, his eyes shooting from Perm to me. Perm briefly looked skyward, before looking me in the eyes. I leaned forwards and threw a leg over his shoulder.

“Everyone, I give you my other half,” I said before waving theatrically with my other forelimb. I could feel the blush even if I couldn’t see it on his muzzle. I hadn’t known he would say those words.

“The bond grows stronger,” Zenji said from behind the two of us. A mess kit plate filled with casserole held in her foreleg. “I’ve never heard of a soul bond this strong. No pony magic has ever created one like this before.”

“Who did, then?” Candy asked the zebra mare, who did her best three legged shrug.

“Not a pony, apparently,” I replied with a shake of my head. “But, I’m actually going to eat now.”

---===*===---

My belly was full, and the clear skies of Sall’han filled my gaze. The fire was an unimpressive affair. A bit of petrol, and a stack of empty wooden ration boxes blazed away a few meters away. It kept the cold at bay.

“They’re pretty aren’t they,” Zenji asked. My head tilted down, Permittivity was laying on his back beside me. She had sat down in front of us.

“They’re identical to my own, and just as far away,” he said quietly.

“How far away?” I asked, absentmindedly. I was looking at my favourite, the north star. “I know they’re as big as the sun.”

“Some are much larger. Most of the stars you see are much bigger, much brighter, and burn so much quicker than our star. Most of the stars that actually exist are a lot smaller. They’ll burn for trillions of years. As for how far away they are, do you both know about the speed of light?”

“It’s instantaneous, that’s why we could send a signal from here to Equestria without any delay,” I replied.

“That’s not true, light goes the speed it does because that’s the speed that anything without mass travels at, and the speed that anything with mass can never reach. That speed is a little under three-hundred thousand kilometers per second,” Permittivity chuckled as my eyes widened. Zenji had shifted her gaze towards him.

“They’re made of fire?” Zenji asked, just as our own fire cracked as a glass bottle exploded in the heat of it.

“Kind of, we know they’re made of the same stuff as everything else. The most popular theory is that, in their core hydrogen is fused into helium. It’s like a balefire bomb going off for billions of years, a battle between gravity, which wants to smoosh it all down to size, and that constant explosion,” he said before looking back at me. “The closest stars are light years away.”

“It takes years for light to reach them?” I asked.

“At least,” he said. “I was friends with an astronomer once, once you got a few drinks into him, he wouldn’t shut up.”

“I can see how you’d get along,” I said while he took a breath.

“Like you have any room to talk,” he shot back and I laughed softly.

“I know I don’t,” I said before sitting up. “Zenji, what do you think about prophecies?”

“Most of them are made up for the benefit of the person making them, some have a bit of truth in them, and a few are entirely correct, but never in the way that people imagine,” she said after a few seconds of thought. The stars above continued their enigmatic twinkling. The wind blew through our camp, and the crackling of the fire continued.

“So you don’t put much stock in them?” I asked as Perm levitated a bottle of something out of his nearby saddlebag.

“This isn’t an idle question, I know which prophecy you’re referring to,” her tone was chiding. “You certainly didn’t fabricate it for your own benefit. And I know there are forces acting through you, and Permittivity. So, if it’s any of those it’s of the last variety.”

“Icepick, she’s too polite to say it, but she doesn’t know. I don’t know, Sombra doesn’t know. That’s the thing about the future, it hasn’t happened yet,” he said before opening the bottle with his magic and taking a drink.

“So you don’t believe it?” I asked him, a hint of hope edging into my voice.

“I believe what I see, and I’ve seen a trail of destruction follow you everywhere we’ve gone-” he passed the bottle to me with his magic. “But destruction is a part of the universe. Those stars up there, the big ones explode with a power that we can’t even conceive of. But without those acts of destruction, we wouldn’t exist. When they explode, new elements are created-”

“I get it. Something to sweep away the old world, something to leave room for something new to grow. Maybe that would be more comforting to someone who didn't live their life in a world that had been immolated before I was born. I look at Paradise, it’s been destroyed. It wasn’t an act of renewal, it’s a tragedy,” I said to them, searching their faces for comfort. All I could see in their eyes was the firelight reflected back at me.

“Life is tragic, they’re intertwined as tightly as you are to one another. Life always ends the same way, in death. Cities are built to be destroyed…” She placed a foreleg on my shoulder, as I listened, the fire held my gaze. I had always been fascinated by it, but now it had my rapt attention. “Everything is Icepick. What you did was save the important part of the city, it’s people. They’re free to rebuild their city, the way they want to. You aren’t a bomb or a cursed talisman, you’re a pony. Prophecy or no prophecy, it doesn’t change what you’ve done. It doesn’t change what you need to do,” Zenji said.

“Destroy him,” I said in a distracted voice. “Destroy him so our little world has a chance.”

“I believe in that more than prophecy passed down to us by a stone demon,” Zenji said softly. “You should too.”

---===*===---

The fires spread from building to building, the dry air feeding the spreading flames. I couldn’t move. I was just a pair of eyes watching the air distort where the heat was great. It had begun with a spark of lightning, and now everything was turning to ash. The city was empty of ponies, there were no screams, no frantic running down ash choked streets, there was just the shell of a place, burning brightly in the dark night.

“This is your past, your present, and your future,” a voice echoed through my mind. I tried to turn my head, but nothing happened.

“You’ve got too much blood on your hooves to be anything but a monster. You enjoy it, the killing, the excitement of seeing who lives or dies. You enjoy making that choice,” the voice had grown closer. The words sounded like they were being whispered into my ear. I wanted to scream, it wasn’t true! But I couldn’t, all I could do is stare into the tendrils of the nearest fire. The wooden building collapsed into its foundation with a crash.

“I’ve seen your heart, I’ve seen your future. One is full of fire, the other blood,” the voice said softly, sweetly. “I had a future just like that once, I thought that I could control the flames, I thought that I could lead the world to a better plan-” the voice changed, from a non-descript whisper to a raspy baritone. The other buildings began to collapse, their smoldering remains sinking into the earth where they had stood. “There is no controlling the flames, there is no better plan.”

“I thought I was using the power for myself. But power like ours, it uses us,” the voice lessened in volume. In the corner of my eye, I saw the smoky outline of a stallion slowly walking towards the flames.

“I just wanted to save my people. But that’s the thing about fires, once they’ve been lit, either the fire starves, or it keeps burning,” the outline of a stallion said with his back turned towards me. “It’s beautiful, as endings should be. And everything ends Icepick, even me.”

I snapped free, it felt like I had been banging my head against a brick wall, but as soon as I felt the change, I felt the rest of my body too. I stood up, feeling the heat in the air press on me. “Your end is near.”

“Perhaps,” he said before turning around and looking into my eyes. His form sharpened, a charcoal coat and a silver mane falling down his neck. A pair of eyes the colour of liquid steel staring into mine. “The fire is already set, if you kill me, it will engulf everything.”

“So be it!” I spit out, advancing on the dark coated unicorn. He stood where he had been, watching like a wolf as I advanced on him.

“You say that now,” he said softly. His lips pursed, his eyes closing a moment later. A glow from his horn flashed out, the dark of his magic pulling in the firelight. “I remember speaking those same words.”

“Fuck-” I yelled at him before it all faded out of my mind in an instant.

“Icepick?” Perm asked in a concerned voice, looking down at me. The fire was gone, burned out, it was just him standing above me, moonlight leaving him a dark outline.

“Huh?” I asked, half-awake. Half of my mind was still working on names to call Sombra.

“Well, you woke me up after yelling something in your sleep,” he said poking me on the chest with a foreleg. “Was it another nightmare?”

“No-yes, err.” I felt a chill as the wind blew past above me. Why hadn’t I fallen asleep in a tent. “He found me.” His face contorted at that.

“Let’s get you somewhere warm,” he said after a long exhale, offering me a hoof. I took it and stood back on my hooves.

“Not too warm please,” I said in a low voice.

“I know just the place then,” Permittivity said pointing his head towards one of the outer transports. I pushed up to be beside him, my hooves pushing into the loose sand beneath me. The wind cut through my exposed side like a knife. Before long he had lit his horn, and pulled a worn set of keys from a pouch on his jacket.

The back hatch of the transport opened, and no-one stirred on the inside. When we had both stepped in, he shut the door and locked it. It was dark inside, with the small windows along the walls letting in the only light. But most of all it was warm and secluded. I leaned against the hatch door, while staring at Perms ass as he pulled some blankets from a crate before sitting them on the floor. His tail shook and bobbed as he worked on making a nest for us.

I was glad he had given me another chance, even if I knew it hurt him like nothing else I had done. He had his failings, but so did I. Then my mind flew back to the start of the dream-

A tendril of blue lightning had parted the air with the crack of a bomb. The coil of wire, flanked by lightning bolts, it stared right at me. I took in a rough breath before looking skyward. Only painted metal caught my eyes, but still, I knew that there were questions to ask, but no-one to answer them.

“Here you go,” he said before spinning around, catching my eyes are their odd orientation. “What did he say?”

I slumped onto the nest and rolled over, my back resting over the steel plate underneath me. Perm looked me over, before settling down beside me. His normally placid eyes finding mine, burning with concern and love for me. I could feel that in my being, I knew it was true.

“It wasn’t as much what he said, it was what I saw,” I replied softly. The vision of fire running amok swam in my head. His heart sung in his chest, that protective love spooling out of his inner being. He drew a bit closer, his hind legs splayed out ahead of him, his lap open. I felt a gentle tug around my head lifting it, before being settled across his lap. He was warm, he was gentle, and I needed him at that moment. “Everything was on fire, a city burning, no ponies in the street, just ash and heat.” I paused as I felt my heart leap in my chest again as the memories filled my mind again. I shut my eyes and shivered despite myself.

Perm just started to stroke my mane. I exhaled, before wrapping a foreleg around his nearest thigh. When I squeezed him he felt real. It helped.

“For a long time, it was just fire. Then he told me that I would cause this, that I would burn the world if I stopped him,” I threw the words from my mouth, in a panic, the words flitting through my mind as I recalled them. “But he wasn’t just gloating, or trying to scare me. He sounded genuine - sympathetic even.”

“Sympathetic? Sombra?” he asked. His hoof touched my ear and it flicked, my muscles began to relax.

“He sounded sad for me? He didn’t seem afraid of me, more afraid for me,” I replied before letting out a soft coo as he massaged my neck, gently pressing into the muscle with his hooves, before sending small amounts of current through his hooves. It felt amazing, and before I knew it, he had pulled me away from his lap, before setting me on my stomach.

“Maybe you’re reading too much into it,” Perm murmured into my ears as he himself shifted to laying across me. It felt like a kick when he planted his right foreleg on my withers. I mewled at that, melting under his touch. “He’s a rock with delusions of grandeur, I don’t think something like that can feel anything for living ponies. It’s just a mind game.”

“A-alright,” I replied just before he leaned down and nipped my ear between his teeth. I shut my eyes and enjoyed the massage, feeling my body warm up in more ways than one. A few minutes later, when he started on my lower back, something popped back into my mind. “In the dream, you started the fire.”

“Huh?” he said before roughly kneading a knot near my spine. “You said you were alone with Sombra.”

“I was, but right at the beginning, a flash of blue lightning stretched from the clouds to the city. It was the spark. You’re the spark Permittivity,” I said before looking up at him. His lips were pursed, his hooves static on my back.

“I believe you,” he said simply. I flicked my tail up and tapped him on the thigh. “Whether it means anything is another question entirely. None of it makes sense.” He let out a loud exhale, hot breath tickling my ears.

“I hope it stays that way,” I said while biting my cheek. “Maybe that’s the part we've been missing. You’re a part of it. Without you, I wouldn’t have made it out of that mine,” I said as his hooves drifted down further. The way his practiced hooves and magic worked on my flanks, it sent waves of pleasure and pain right up my spine. I felt my tail flick on it’s own, heat building between my legs as he continued to melt me with his ministrations.

“I do like to feel included,” he said with a husky laugh. His left foreleg grabbed hold of my tail, pulling it askew while his other hoof smacked my ass without any warning. I moaned hard as he lifted my ass with his magic, I had just managed to get my hind legs steady beneath me before Perm had unzipped my jumpsuit. “You’re already soaked Icepick. I think you want some attention, don’t you?”

“Yes!” I said in my own husky tone. He didn’t have to hold my tail any longer, now it was flagged to the right, and staying like that. Perm answered me by pulling my cheeks apart with his hooves, then licking around the edges of my pussy. I shuddered under his touch as his tongue pressed against my outer folds while avoiding my clit.

“That’s what I thought,” Perm said before moving his tongue to my pussy itself, slowly pushing it inside. I winked in his face, before shuddering again as he thickened his tongue inside me. “Good girl,” he said after I yelled. His tongue wrapped around my clit as it winked out. I could feel that familiar knot begin to tighten in my stomach, each movement of his tongue against me sending sensations bolting up my body.

“More please,” I moaned as he rammed his tongue inside me again. Then he smacked my ass with his hoof again. The sound of it echoing inside the vehicle. That was his queue to back away from my winking clit, and for him to lavish attention everywhere else. I started to pant as he nipped my inner thigh, his magic holding me up more than my hind legs at this point.

“Fuck me already!” I pleaded just before he grasped my clit in his magic, then electrifying it and jamming his whole tongue deep inside me. I felt myself clench around his tongue as my cries echoed in the tight confines of the APC. I fell away from the sensations assaulting me, just taking in each pinprick of sensation as it came. As I came-

Then I felt his magic pull my rump up to it’s natural height, my hinds locking in place beneath me. The sensation of warm fur pressing against my rump brought me back to the moment. I was still breathing hard as I felt the throbbing tip of his cock press against me. His weight shifted forward as I stretched around his length. I shut my eyes as the tip forced itself in.

“Fuck,” he said as he slid himself inside me. I moaned softly when he hilted himself in me, resting for a moment. I raised my forelegs, pushing up against his weight and mine. The change in angle was perfect, he was almost touching my cervix. His cock throbbed inside me, leaking into my dripping pussy.

And then he pulled back, I tightened around him, trying in vain to keep him where I wanted him. A second later, he buried himself again. There was a slap as his hips met mine. My clit winked out, pressing into his cock. My voice cracked as he worked himself in and out of me.

“Icepick!” He moaned into my ears, his hot breath tickling them, I bent my neck towards him. As he hilted in me, I could feel that shadow of his feelings, the affection and lust- it matched my own. It was like two separate oceans, finally mixing and spilling over into one another. His forelegs smacked down on my ass, his cock pulsing with unsated lust. It was my lust too-

“Don’t stop,” I moaned as he bit my neck, claiming me. His forelegs clamped down on my barrel as he picked up the pace, my hips moving in time with his. Every slap of his hips sent a pulse of pleasure as his cock stretched me around it. Before long, I yelped as his flaring cock pressed against my back wall. It twitched and bucked as it was pounded into me. I felt that sea of mounting pleasure as my clit moulded around him.

“Please, Perm!” He obliged, his cock pistoning furiously inside me. And then, the levee finally broke, my walls trying to milk him with all of their worth, but he knew me intimately. He knew I could stand being shot at, exploded and even negotiate if I had to. He also knew I became a mewling mess if he fucked me through my orgasm.

And so he did, his thrusts like clockwork as I moaned like a mare in heat. That clockwork broke down when my forelegs collapsed beneath our weight. He lost his rhythm as his heartbeat sped up, as his lungs worked overtime to keep his legs and cock supplied with blood- I could certainly feel the latter, as my sensitive pussy spasmed and clenched around him. The flare at the tip was rock hard, all of him was, as he hilted himself with a final thrust. He bit down on my neck hard enough to stress the skin, before letting out a husky moan of his own.

The flood of cum that followed was bigger than normal, as he just kept pumping rope after rope into me. My legs buckled, and his cock slipped out just in time to spurt a line of cum across my ass. It felt hot and sticky as it dripped out of me. If I had been in heat, he would’ve knocked me up, a voice inside me suggested with a flash of warmth and affection for the stallion beside me.

Perm stumbled for a second, his eyes locked on my painted rump for a moment, before shifting those lovely eyes to mine. I had rolled over, my body sprawled out and sweaty. He took that moment to get beside me, a foreleg covering my own, our heads on the same folded up blanket conscripted as a pillow.

“I love you,” he said in a sleepy voice. I yawned out of sympathy. I glanced down at my crotch. I was still oozing his cum.

“I love you too,” I said before giving a peck on the muzzle. “It’s kind of a waste, isn’t it?”

“Huh,” he said before glancing between my legs. “Oh? I reckon it is.”

“So you would?” I didn’t need to add more detail. I felt another rush of warmth from him, and I swear, a twitch from his sheath.

“I’d love to, once this is under control,” at this, he had waved his foreleg around, indicating everything. “You really want to be bred, don’t you?”

“I-I it sounds fun,” I admitted with a blush that was lost on him in the dark.

“Breeding is fun, what follows is less so. But you know that, and I’d help every step of the way,” he said with a soft chuckle.

“Yeah, you won’t be getting off easy. You’re the only reason I’m even considering it!” I said before grabbing his head with a forehoof and pulling him into a much deeper kiss. When we broke off, his eyes were half lidded and I could feel my conscious mind begin to slip beneath the waves.

“Sweet dreams, love,” he murmured sensually before shutting his eyes. A moment later he was out, his face unmoored from his pain, his scarred muzzle the only sense of what he had been through. The stallion of my dreams, in the land of dreams.

In the land of dreams…

---===*===---

I caught the shape of the mesas over the horizon, the final land mark before we reached the bunker complex. They were black stones in the desert, it was impossible to miss them in the sea of sand. They were beautiful, the Mesa’s, from tiny protrusions just big enough to see against the glare of midday, but some were grand pillars of stone, the ground around them worn into sand by time beyond comprehension. I would have been gawking like an old-world tourist if my destiny didn’t lay in a valley between the bases of the largest formations. Still-

“Why didn’t you tell me about these?” I asked aloud. Awe was creeping into my voice, I had never seen anything like these. Permittivity and Crescent Moon turned to face me at exactly the same time, Perm standing in the passenger seat of the vehicle, Moon directly beside me, squeezed into the small cabin.

“It didn’t seem important at the time,” Perm said in a voice that told me he had other things on his mind.

“Because it’s our place, it’s been ours for longer than anyone can remember. We’ve found tombs, standing stones, and altars out here. Some of them have writing carved into them, but it’s nothing we can understand. But what can be understood, I saw in one of them, a tomb built into the walls of a Mesa. I knew it was ancient when I saw art of a Minotaur embracing an Arabian,” she paused, her hazel eyes locking with mine. “Besides, you never would have believed me before you saw them yourself.”

“That old, huh,” I said before scrunching my nose up in concentration. “Are you sure they weren’t trying to stab each other?”

“The closest thing to a weapon in the painting was a necklace wrapped around the Minotaurs neck,” she said, her own confusion evident. The Arabian mare had never met a Minotaur, but those wounds of history never seem to close. That thought left me biting my lip, thinking about the great sweep of history that little ponies like me were caught up in.

“I wonder if thousands of years from now, the idea of an Equestrian and an Arabian embracing will seem just as-”

“Unbelievable,” Crescent Moon finished for me, the hint of a smile on her muzzle.

“Exactly,” I said as I physically drooped, my spine slackening as I let out a deeply held breath. That was the kindling, that was what stood ready to burn the world once more. The cycle of blood repaid with more blood. Another fine layer of ash for archaeologists to date, another bloody empire rising on the backs of the weak. The vision of it danced in my mind, another attempt to swallow the world.

It would end in the same way, the conqueror gasping for air as the world choked them to death.
“They ruled over us for hundreds of years, using us as slaves or worse, and it was only with the other subject races that we managed to push them back to their mountain citadels,” Crescent Moon said, another line in the dirge coalescing in my mind. “If they hadn’t the walls or stores, there would be no more Minotaurs.” The flames wrapped around me, everything I touched a single spark away from immolation.

“The answer depends on us,” Permittivity said in his matter of fact voice. “The future depends on us, it always has.”

“I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t think we could live together in Harmony. I wouldn’t have helped your blonde butt one iota if I believed you wanted to see us in chains,” Crescent Moon slid a bit closer to me before pressing her forehoof into my chest. The slender Arabian mare stood eye to eye with me. I felt the phantom fire cross the gap between us, I watched as it enveloped her then melted away as she pulled me into an embrace. I shook my head and tried to slow my breathing.

She felt me go slack in her forelegs, my whole body relaxing as my mind shut down. I told myself that it was a trick of the light, or Sombra’s words warping my perceptions. It was no glamour. It had felt as real as Perm’s body against mine, as real as every memory I could recall in that terrible moment.

---===*===---

I stood at the edge of a great forest, with strange trees covered in green needles, with hard fruit growing from the branches, and littering the forest floor. When I walked up to one of the trees, I picked one of the odd droppings up. It was hard, and I knew instantly I couldn’t eat it. On a deeper level, I realized trying to eat here would be a waste of time.

“Here,” I heard a mischievous voice from behind me. The strange spikey fruit became a glob of pudding in my hoof. I turned around, sending the pudding flying off my hoof, mostly. I could hear a squish when I slammed my forelegs into the ground. It wasn’t him. I felt myself relax for maybe a tenth of a second, before the reality, or really, the unreality of the situation registered.

Before me stood an old stallion, his eyes sunken, but his lips were upturned in a genuine smile.

“Where am I?” I asked as I stepped back, my back aimed at the tree.

“Physically, you’re being examined by Rosetta, as Permittivity watches him like a hawk,” he said in a matter of fact voice. “He hasn’t tried to open him with his own scalpel yet-”

“Get me back there, whoever the fuck you are!” I yelled at him, my words accented by lighting crackling down from the suddenly overcast sky. The thunderclap resounded through the forest, followed by a flurry of birds taking flight.

“Not yet,” he said simply, before gesturing with a hoof towards the deeper forest. A peel of smoke was rising into the sky, growing thicker with every second.

“Who gave you the right?” I asked him, my muscles tightening inside this illusion.

“Some would say I did, others would say that the big mare in the sky did. Once upon a time I even believed the former,” he said before deflating, looking ancient for a moment. Crescent Moon was right, you just knew.

“I’m getting really fucking tired of being pulled into dream worlds by old stallions with delusions of godhood,” I stomped my hooves, my glare at it’s most venomous.

“Delusional? That’s quite possible but delusional about who I am, I don’t think so,” the stallion met my eyes straight on. “I’m the mysterious benefactor, and I’m sorry about what I had to do.”

“You…” I drew a blank as I tried to take it all in.

“Before you ask, I had nothing to do with choosing you. If someone chose you at all, they’re above my paygrade,” he admitted with a shrug.

“So what’s your angle? And make it quick, there’s exactly one stallion I want in my dreams, and it isn’t you,” I said, my voice straining to stay civil with whoever this was.

“I need you to shatter Sombra, and I want you to light the fire,” he answered as the heat from the forest fire began to feel less pleasant, and more like sticking my hoof in an oven. I trotted forwards, keeping my distance from him, and making some distance between myself and the inferno.

“I don’t want to burn the world!” I yelled at him loud enough to make my throat ache. Not that it mattered, ash continued to fill the air around me, the crack of great old trees finally succumbing to fire and gravity filled my mind. I shut my eyes and fell to the ground.

“If you wanted to, you wouldn’t be the right one to wield the power,” he said in something close to reassurance. “It was true of the others, and it’s true for you. They still lit the fire, because it had to be done.”

“Why?” I asked as I sucked down another gulp of sizzling air. I heard a snap from somewhere and felt a drop of water plop down on the end of my muzzle. I stared at it for what seemed like an eternity before feeling dozens more fall on me. Those dozens became hundreds, and when I next looked at the forest, it was over.

What remained was moist ash and the blackened spines of so many once beautiful giants. The clouds were gone, and in the tops of some of those trees, I spotted birds. I felt compelled to get back to my hooves.

“Go on, pick one up, I guarantee I won’t turn it to pudding in your hooves,” he said before sitting down in the grass, the light of a new dawn rising behind him only made him look older, more worn. “They’re called pinecones by the way.”

I did as he asked, stepping cautiously towards the edge of what had been forest moments ago. I spotted the brown of a pine cone caught under a blackened branch.

Except as I pulled it from beneath its prison, I saw that the once sealed, hard exterior had opened. As I brought closer to my face, a seed dropped from it, plopping down in the midst of the carnage.

“That’s why,” I felt a hoof on my shoulder, a friendly pat. I didn’t recoil, my head just turned to watch him. As the sun rose behind us, he just surveyed the scene. I did the same, thinking about this whole experience. “Credit to your partner, he told you the same thing. But he doesn't know anything about special effects.”

“Is that why you-” I started to ask before he waved a hoof.

“Changed the game? Used super glue on your souls? Left room for another?” He cracked that smile one last time. His tired eyes met mine, a glimmer of hope in them. “I wanted to die having stirred things up again, and maybe, just maybe, get to see things end happily for once. Pity, it will also be my last.”

“But-” I tried to say more, but as I did the unreality shattered. For a split second, I was floating beside a skinny monster, made entirely of mismatched parts.

“Don’t try to be a hero Icepick. Be yourself. The Destroyers that mistake the metaphor for the real job are always the ones who try to be heroes,” the voice warped in my mind as the forest scene flickered in and out of the infinite blackness…

---===*===---

“There’s nothing wrong with her!” Rosetta yelled nearby. My eyes shot open to survey the scene. Permittivity was standing to my right, his eyes fixed on Rosetta. Talon, and Ironsight stood at the foot of the bed looking worried.

“I’m not so sure,” I croaked out through the dryness of my throat.

“What happened?” Crescent Moon asked, worry and guilt spilling out with her words. She was behind me, she must have felt awful.

“Your friend took me on a field trip,” I said to Rosetta with a shake of my head and a glance at the canteen hanging from his neck. “Give me that,” I said before grasping the canteen and yanking it over his head. I didn’t give half a fuck about the way their faces lit up when I said that. They could wait until after I had slaked my thirst.

“My friend?” Rosetta asked, confusion playing over his enervated face.

“Our mysterious benefactor, he showed me something I needed to see,” I looked at each of them in turn. “I’m the destroyer, I’m here to start the fire that clears away the old, so the new can be born.” When I said this, when I believed it, that was when I saw them all in a new light. An orange halo around each of them, all except from Perm and Rosetta. Perm was radiant, a flickering blue light seemed to come from deep inside of him. When he pressed a hoof into my shoulder I felt it tingle where he touched me.

When I looked at Rosetta, my eyes widened in surprise, his form seemed to draw the firelight in. His eyes met mine, concern written across his face. I shook my head and thought of that rain falling over the forest.

“Are you sure you didn’t accidentally eat some funky bread?” Talon asked me from behind the thin membrane of my eyelids. I opened them again and looked into hers.

“Deathly sure,” I said before tearing away the few medical devices strapped to my body. The halos had retreated, everything was back to normal, except when I blinked my eyes I could see a glint of it over them. It was like seeing the corona of the sun during an eclipse, mixed with the kind of after image you felt after looking at the sun during a clear day.

“You’ve been asleep for two days, that isn’t normal,” Talon said, watching me with guarded eyes. Somehow, she had switched from scared. Ironsight on the other hoof had just gotten that bored look in her eyes. Like she had somewhere more important to be. Who had been keeping things rolling in my sleep?

“I’m not normal anymore, if I ever was,” I said with detachment “But who’s been running things?” I don’t know if I would have said that before. Maybe I had just been in denial before, it’s normally the delusional that believe they have a special purpose. But these weren’t normal times. I would have to be delusional to deny what I was now.

“You’re normal enough for me,” Perm said before offering me a hoof. I took it, my heart speeding up in my chest as he pulled me off the bed, and into an embrace. “To answer your question, it’s been me and Talon yanking Phalanx along, Ironsight has kept your armoured soldiers in good spirits, and been working on something she wants to show you when she can. You’re the best at making speeches, and being our moral center-”

“Permittivity, I know that I’m the general, not the general staff.” I said before nuzzling his neck softly. He scoffed at my words but I felt the warmth inside him as we touched. I took another second to enjoy his scent, the feeling of his heart beating beside mine, before turning towards the others. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t start the party without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Permittivity said as he leaned down and propped his muzzle on my head. I could feel him relax as he said those words. He was happy for me to be back, for so many reasons. I snorted at him but shifted my eyes as I heard Rosetta clear his throat.

“Did he say he was sorry?” Rosetta asked me softly.

“He did, but I don’t know why,” I replied. Rose just looked skyward for a long moment. The next moment he was trotting away like we weren’t even there. He knew why- “That fucking bastard!” I yelled before stomping into the yielding sand. Crescent Moon bolted towards the door to follow him.

“Rosetta?” Perm asked, my unexpected fury overcoming his distaste for the pink stallion.

“No! The fucker that gave Rosetta the orbs and the knowledge on how to use them,” I said as I felt my anger leave me. He wouldn’t have done that for fun, or would he?

“I see,” Perm’s face blanked. Even I couldn’t read it, but his heart was bubbling with mixed emotions. So was mine. “That fucking bastard indeed.”

“Icepick, we were so-” Talon started to say before her voice cracked. “I thought I had lost you again.” Dislodging myself from the stallion I was wrapped up in, I walked over to her, one of the few mares who could meet my eyes without looking up. My forelegs seemed to wrap around her all on their own.

“If I’d had a say in the matter, I would have put a cocoon around myself. Then at least you all would have understood what was going on,” I hugged her tightly once more, before dropping back to my hooves. “Not that I knew either, I’m still processing it myself.”

“I wasn’t worried, I’ve seen you sleep something off how many times?” Ironsight said before punching my shoulder. “Everyone else though, they’re still shitting their pants.” I rolled my eyes at her before sliding back over to my mom.

“I know you have smokes, I need one after that,” I said to her with a sigh of exasperation.

“If you think that’s hard, try pushing a four kilo foal out of you,” she said before passing me a half empty pack. Before I could say anything Permittivity had one of the little cylinders burning at one end. I pulled it between my teeth, and took a hard draw.

“Talon, you know how she is about competition,” Perm interjected.

“You’re on old mare,” I said before locking a foreleg around Perm’s neck, and swinging my tail over his flank as possessively as I could. “If I push a unicorn out, I win right?”

“If they’re anything like you, have fun getting poked from the inside every hour they’re awake,” Talon stuck her tongue out at that. I turned to look at Perm, he gulped audibly.

“The idea of you in heat scares me-” I stopped his words with my mouth. His heart shuddering in his chest, and he leaned into me.

“That’s not all,” I whispered into his ear as he caught his breath after the kiss. I felt a spicier version of his normal affection reflecting back into me. I resisted the urge to just pounce on him.

“Icepick, I know your tail only moves like that when you're thinking about getting railed, but remember what I said about ponies shitting their pants in worry?” Ironsight knew how to throw cold water on my desires. She’d had a lot of practice.

“How far are we from-” I was cut off by her sharp tongue.

“Only a day’s travel away,” she said before throwing open the door flap, letting me see the centerpiece of this camp. A roaring fire cast shadow ponies into our tent.

“ Perfect time, as usual,” I said with a laugh.

“And the stage is set,” Perm whispered in my ear. “She’s right about your tail by the way.”

I responded by stepping forward and flicking him across the nose with the base of my tail. As I came towards the fire, I felt the eyes of hundreds, then thousands fall on me. It warmed me and scared me, but it was my element. I understood that now.

I found a wooden crate, waiting to be immolated. I stood atop it and I waited for a long moment, my breath frozen in my chest.

But when I saw Perm walking confidently up to me with all my friends in tow, I took a deep breath of fire warmed air. My eyes found a turncoat Arabian that I had spoken to a few times. He would be the one my eyes stayed on, even as thousands of others watched with the same unspoken questions.

“Sorry about that folks, I know I missed a few watches,” I said in the loud but clear voice I slipped into when I spoke to a crowd. For a second, there was only silence, but when one pony laughed, the silence was shattered.

“I have something to say, something you all deserve to hear, if you’ll listen,” I said after the laughter had died down. “I never expected to have an army listen to my words. I never expected to be anything more than a bully in a suit of power armour. But here we are, expectations be damned,” I looked over to the west. “Tomorrow we make history. Tonight, we leave our pasts behind us. Tomorrow will mark the start of a new age. Tonight we become the flames that clear away the old one. When the chains melt, when the tyrants are only ash, then we can build a world of peace, harmony and freedom.” A silence settled over the crowd. When I judged it was time, I continued.

“I know it sounds impossible, it sounds like a dream. But if I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that dreams matter. Your dreams matter, because in the new world, everyone matters. Arab, Zebra, Pony and Orangutan, we’re all more alike than different. I dream of a world where we focus on that, instead of our differences,” I paused to take a breath. Their eyes were still on me, and the Arab I had left my eyes on had met mine. “In each of you, I see the strength to change the world. In each of you I place my hopes for the future. I know I can’t do it alone.”

The Arab stallion was pushing through the crowd, growing closer to me, but I kept my eyes on his. He wore nothing but cloth, an imperial rifle hanging from his withers.

“What’s your name?” I asked him just as he pushed past the rest.

“Pleasant Breeze,” he said softly. He seemed nervous. I mean, I would have been if roles were reversed. I smiled at him and waved him closer. He was a bit taller than I was, and maybe a bit older. His coat was a light brown, the colour of tea mixed with milk.

“What kind of world would you like to leave behind?” I asked him, before pressing a hoof to his shoulder.

“I dream of a future where the children can’t understand why their parent’s once killed one another,” he seemed quiet to my ears. But the crowd must have heard him.

“Will you fight for that future?” I asked him, my mane blowing in the breeze.

“I have been, with every breath, every pull of the trigger,” he replied, a proud face staring back at me. Slowly, I began to feel a warmth come from his withers. When I blinked my eyes, the whole of his form glowed like incandescent steel. This time, I was ready. I stepped back onto my milk crate, letting him stand beside me.

“Will you fight for your dreams? Will you fight for the new world we’ll create, together?” I yelled my question at them, eyes sweeping through the mass of people. With a roar the people answered. In that moment, I felt their fire sweep over me, the whole mass growing brighter with each passing second. I snuck a glance at Permittivity. His iridescent blue made him stand out, but I could tell he felt a bit of what was overwhelming me. He nodded once at me, a flicker of pride and affection reflected back at me.

I shut my eyes and basked in the feeling, the thousand candles burning with the light of hope. I had become the destroyer of worlds, I accepted it now. All I had to do now was actually destroy the old world, starting with an immortal piece of furniture.

As I watched Pleasant Breeze trot back into the crowd, I couldn’t help but remember the number of ponies I had already killed. I had been the destroyer all along. Everyone had seen it but me. They followed me not in spite of it, but because of it.

Well, the match was lit now. It was only a matter of time before the whole forest went up. If they could trust me, I could trust them. I didn’t have much of a choice now.

And so, I watched the dance of a thousand flames with a smile on my face.

Author's Note

Sorry about the delay there. The next chapter is being worked on, but it's difficult

Being close to the end of a FoE story is strange

The Spark (XXXI)

The weapon sat strapped into one of the seats of the APC. It was about the size of a bushel, and that was with the protective casing that had been made for it. Standing a few meters away from it, I felt tightly wound magic straining to escape confinement. But I wasn’t worried. The magic I felt was orders of magnitude beyond anything a single caster could produce. That was the Mega part of the megaspell, but without a spell to amplify, the energy would stay trapped in the device. The other component was a specially modified spark grenade, that was then mated with the spell armature.

“And that’s the plan,” I heard Icepick say. I hadn’t listened to the final retelling. Every detail of it was burned into my mind already. I knew that there was only one way into the complex. I knew that the cost of admission could only be paid in blood. And I knew that it would be paid. “I know we can do it!”

The crowded tent erupted at her words. I expected it at this point. The bulk of the army was following her, even if almost all of them were under the de jure command of Phalanx or the officers from Paradise. At least that’s what I gathered from watching them.

A thought drifted into my mind as I watched. A quick look towards Phalanx told me he saw the loyalty in their eyes. His ego blinded him to the realization that their loyalty was to anyone but him. Every conversation I had with the stallion told me he thought he had the upper hoof. On paper he was correct. His contingent was the strongest part of the army, almost entirely armoured and equipped with heavy weapons.

His contingent was also the army that had mutinied following Icepick’s example. And yet, he thought using me to assassinate Icepick would be his path to becoming High Elder. Still, the buffoon was dangerous, and he would be as long as he continued to draw breath.

“Are you ready?” Icepick asked me softly. She nuzzled against my neck, the words were vulnerable, real. Icepick could play the fearless leader, but it was an act, the character she thought they wanted, the one they needed. I knew better.

“I’m ready if you are, my love,” I whispered into her ear. When she kissed me half a second later, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be our last.

---===*===---

I watched from a prone position atop a nearby ridge as two dozen Ursa’s and mechanized artillery formed a semi-circle around the thick metal door. The door faced outwards from the volcanic rock the complex had been excavated from. Rock was difficult to breach, and a ten-centimetre thick steel door would have required more time and ordinance than we had.

Icepick was watching the vehicles manoeuvre just as I was her armour gleaming in the bright light of midday. But there had been a few alterations to the armour I had grown so accustomed to seeing. Her armaments had been changed to two Imperial heavy machine guns. The thirteen-millimetre projectiles had the best chance of breaking through magical shields.

However, that wasn’t the thing that most caught my eye. She had taken it upon herself to repaint her armour in secret. I had caught her working at the edge of the camp last night, applying solvent to the battered desert camouflage pattern. After realizing I had discovered the project, she readily accepted the help. She wouldn’t have slept a wink last night if I hadn’t helped. And she was the important one after all.

Icepick had chosen a crimson red and light orange to paint her armour. Alternating patches of red and orange danced across her armour without any recognizable pattern. We also left large swathes of the armour naked, and those patches of polished steel were blinding in the light of the midday sun. Light, fire and blood. She had embraced her role, and doing a bit of painting was the least onerous aspect of it.

As the final Ursa rolled into position, I could tell that Icepick had more eyes on her than anyone else. The last command before the assault began was hers to give.

“Fire!” I heard her voice over the radio on my foreleg, half a second before the sounds of artillery fire drowned everything else out. My eyes stayed glued to the doorway. As I peered into the dust thrown up by the impacts, the question of whether or not we’d be able to breach the complex at all was anything but settled. When the doorway became visible again, everyone could see that the door itself was unharmed, but the reinforced concrete around the door was definitely damaged. I thought I could see some steel reinforcement exposed.

I felt a vicious smile spread across my face as I waited for the next salvo. It was weird to see howitzers firing at point blank range, but watching the impact of each high explosive shell, I knew that their overwhelming fire would have no bearing on the rest of the battle. Sombra knew it too.

---===*===---

After an hour of fire, there was a final crash as the door fell towards the interior, the tortured mechanisms finally giving way to the onslaught. The soldiers gathered around the doorway waited nervously for their comrades to fire their flare launchers into the complex. My own rifle was pointed at the darkness beyond where the sunshine fell.

Icepick stood closer to the entrance, behind a wall of sandbags. She was with the volunteers for the first push. If I had thought there was a chance that she would have stayed back during the first wave, I would have begged her to stay. I hadn’t tried.

“Go, go!” I heard her voice over the radio just as the flares landed inside the dark passages. The flash of light seemed to surprise the newly visible defenders, who then fell to the Ursa mounted machine gun fire pouring down the passage. Many more had added their own small arms fire to the fusilade. But my fire hadn’t been among theirs. I had taken off towards the entrance, just behind the vanguard, just behind Icepick.

As I sprinted over the remains of the once-mighty doorway, the sound of weapons fire washed over me. The light of the flares being overwhelmed by muzzle flashes. The corridor opened into a central chamber, with several branching pathways, two to our left, and one to our right.

That was a key part of the plan, and the biggest vulnerability of the complex. If you took the entrance it would cut the complex in half. More importantly, the split was between the research wing and the residential wing. As I reached the nearest passage, I watched a flurry of glowing goop strike the armoured ranger firing into the passage. The green magic ate through their armour and into their body. The stallion beneath wailed in agony before collapsing. There was nothing I could do for them, I realized as I hugged the wall right beside the doorway.

Icepick was firing into the corridor now, the barrels of her weapons already glowing with the heat of fire. There was a shiver down my spine as I realized Icepick could have been their target. When I stuck my head out, I saw the thrall making more of the good while protected by a shield identical to the shield of the other thrall. I watched it get pulled earthward the moment it was created, before a tendril of telekinesis caught it in the air. I had never seen magical constructs affected by gravity before. It told me something important, just as it launched three more of the globs. They travelled most of the way to Icepick before I caught them in my magic. The creature tried to overpower my grip, but I shut my eyes and held onto them with everything I had.

I felt Icepick’s fury as she swept her guns towards it. The dual cannons fired, sending their heavy slugs directly into the thrall's magical shield. The impacts drove it backwards with each impact, its horn struggling to break my grip and maintain its shield against the onslaught. It held for another dozen hits, before shattering entirely. Her guns didn’t let up. The magical thrall was torn to chunks of blackened flesh by the rounds. The rest of the initial defense crumbled as we secured every passage. Each wing had a wide freight passage, and a smaller hallway.

Most of the assault would pour into the research wing, with Phalanx commanding a small force meant to secure the passages leading out of the habitation wing. When I examined the bodies of the defenders on that side, they were Arabs to a mare.

It wasn’t a big surprise, we suspected that Sombra would position his forces solely to defend himself. That left the Arabian ponies to defend themselves and their families. I had no doubt that they would fight with every fibre of their being. It wouldn’t make a difference though, Icepick had ordered them to push to the entrance of the atrium before stopping. There would be enough blood spilled today, we would not add the blood of civilians.

---===*===---

We fought our way into the research wing itself. There, the passages branched into half a dozen, across several levels. Each doorway was a potentially deadly threat and a complete waste of time. Icepick was still at the head of the assault, trading fire with Imperial soldiers and the warped husks of powerful mages. More of the abominations had pushed forward, each of them holding up our force for a time.

If it had been an open field of battle, there would have been more potent ways of destroying the thralls: artillery, missiles, and attacking from multiple directions. All of those options had been taken from us. That left us with battering down the defences of the Thralls with every bullet we could put into them.

So the assault moved forward, metre by metre, as our forces replaced those that fell, and attempted to save those that were merely wounded. I knew Rosetta was pouring every bit of strength he had into saving lives. I felt relief knowing someone as good as him was overseeing triage. That relief wasn’t enough to extinguish my anger at him. I didn’t think that anything could.

I shattered the door hinges with a surge of telekinetic energy, before tossing the door inside with a clatter. The soldiers beside me rushed inside, clearing the corners of the room with practised movements. I stepped inside with my pistol and rifle floating at each side. I was moments away from moving to the next room when I heard a muffled scream. I turned towards the noise and stopped in my tracks. A Paradise trooper was pointing her gun right at the restrained stallion’s skull. His body was covered in bruises, and the look of desperate fear in his eyes filled me with rage.

“Sir what do we-” The trooper began to ask as my horn blinded everyone else in the room. The ropes restraining him were ripped away in one stroke. The stallion gasped loudly as he took his first breath without a gag in his mouth.

“Perm?” He asked breathlessly. Principal, my older brother. My only real family still among the living. Traces of memory flooded my mind. Rosetta had almost taken him from me. He had almost made us strangers. Rage boiled up inside me as I watched my brother move limbs sore from being strapped to a table like a sacrificial lamb.

“It’s me, Principal,” I said softly. He looked upon me as if I were a ghost.

“I- we- thought you were dead,” Principal’s body shook as he struggled to make sense of his surroundings. “I’ve never been happier to be wrong.”

“I never thought I would see you again, I wasn’t myself when I left-” I started to explain, to try and explain all that had happened.

“There’s no time for a proper reunion now brother,” the battered stallion said before losing his voice to a coughing fit that sounded too wet for my liking. “There’s a trap laid ahead of the portal.” As soon as his words processed in my mind, my foreleg was already raising my radio to my muzzle.

“All forces advancing towards the Portal, halt!” I yelled into the radio.

“Sir?” I heard the confusion in the voice of the officer.

“You heard him, hold fast,” I heard Icepick yell over the open mic a second later.

“That one sounds like a real battleaxe,” Principal said with a dry chuckle as soon as the radio went dead. I offered him my canteen, and watched as he drank greedy mouthful after greedy mouthful. As soon as I thought he had all of it down his esophagus I replied.

“She’s practically your sister in law,” I smiled as I watched surprise then embarrassment flash across on his face. He looked just as I remembered. With a start I remembered that my whole time in Sall’han could be counted in months. It felt so much longer.

“I-I see,” Principal managed to get out. “I overheard one of the soldiers talking. They were told plainly that if they got too close to Sombra’s chamber, it would kill them. Painfully.” As he spoke I heard the sound of someone stepping inside the room softly.

“He would do such a thing,” Zenji said bitterly. She sounded angrier than I had ever seen her. “Sombra has cast one of the darkest spells possible. He’s created a soul vacuum.”

“Soul vacuum?” I asked.

“A soul vacuum can only be created by separating souls from their bodies and then absorbing them. The ritual creates a voida over the site, a void that will pull a person’s soul right from their body. It’s a legendary, vile magic, one thought to be lost,” Zenji took a breath. Then we heard the servos of powered armour whirr as it ran towards us.

“Why’d you tell us to stop?” Icepick asked as she plowed through the open doorway. My brother stared wide eyed at Icepick in her painted armour. He went stiffer than a board when she returned his gaze. “And who’s that?”

“He’s my brother, and he’s terrified of the steel monster that just stomped into the room,” I said chiddingly. “Could you-”

The hiss of her helmet's seal disengaging was followed by her removing the helmet and locking it to her breastplate. Icepick’s eyes flashed with recognition when she looked at him again.

“I remember now. You comforted him as best you could when he came back to Maidenpool,” Icepick said. His eyes were saucers as he stared at her. “Okay Perm, I know you wouldn’t have stopped the advance just for him-”

“Sombra has laid a trap before us, one that would have killed hundreds had we advanced,” Zenji cut Icepick off before exhaling deeply. Her brief explanation of soul vacuums hit Icepick like a ton of bricks.

“He wants me to fill the moat with corpses,” Icepick whispered so quietly that only I could hear. She would do anything to save her world. But I knew that this would change her forever.

“Is there anything we can do to bypass it?” I asked with as much false hope as I could muster. Her face slackened, and I saw despair in her eyes for the first time.

“A debt of souls can only be paid in souls,” Zenji said darkly. Then I saw her mouth gape open and her eyes fall upon Icepick and I. “Unless-”

“Unless what?” Icepick asked just before me.

“Unless that was his plan all along,” Zenji replied in a distracted voice. “Icepick, Permittivity, what was the first thing I told you both?”

“You told us our souls are intertwined,” I said.

“I finally know why,” Zenji said. “When we first met your souls were attached and attuned in a way I had never seen before. But your souls were still separate entities deep inside yourselves. Now I can’t tell where one soul begins and the other ends. A soul void traps single souls because it was created with single souls. I don’t think it can trap your common soul.”

“That’s why he did it,” Icepick shouted, her armoured hoof stomping into the concrete with a crash. “Our love is the key to beating him. All our feelings, all of the time we spent together, and it was all just a means to an end.” Her words were flat.

“No Icepick, love is never just a means to an end, and it isn’t real love if it is,” I said softly, as I raised a forehoof to cradle her chin. For a moment I only stared into the depths of her eyes. “If I’m sure about one thing, it’s that our love is real.” Then, she kissed me like she had only once before. It felt like our first desperate kiss. It might be our last desperate kiss, part of me thought darkly.

“If there was any doubt,” she whispered in my ear after breaking the kiss.

“Not one,” I whispered back. I thought for a moment that she would pull me in for one more kiss, but she just shook her head half a degree as her expression changed back to the dauntless leader. The fire she’d built up inside herself roared back to life.

---===*===---

“Like you have a better idea,” Icepick asked me pointedly as I stared at the utility wagon sagging under the weight of it’s cargo.

“I wish I did,” I said with a shake of my head. The heavily armoured weapon looked absurd aboard its delivery vehicle.

“Do you think this will void the warranty?” Icepick asked. I snorted in spite of myself.

“We’ll deal with that crisis when this one is done and dusted,” I said with my tongue pressed hard against my cheek.

“And here I thought I was supposed to be the inspirational one,” she said with a laugh of her own. A moment later she hefted her helmet over her head, before locking it in place. I followed her through the door, and past the ponies held up behind the soul void. They stayed quiet, with only a few muted words of encouragement. The portal chamber was only connected to the complex through the freight passage.

So Icepick and I pushed ahead of where the last holdouts had been captured. After several paces I felt frozen tendrils reach deep inside me. My vision began to darken as they touched my soul. Like a switch being flipped, everything became darkness. I was a point of light hanging in the infinite void. There was no pain, no sense of anything but the cold wrapping around my being.

Then I felt another point of light beside mine. The other point drew closer and closer before connecting with mine. Instantly the two points became one. Then the point went from bone cold, to incandescence in one pregnant moment. The tendrils were set alight by the heat and an eruption of blue lightning around the point. I felt them recoil in terror just before I saw through my own eyes again.

My heart was pounding in my chest, and there was a sheen of sweat covering my body. I looked desperately at Icepick. The armour continued to make its many small noises, but it stayed motionless before my eyes. As I tried to process the possibility that the trap had gotten her, but not me, I heard a rumble from within the plating.

“We lived, fuck you Sombra!” Icepick yelled through her speaker.

“Ah yes, the destroyer,” I heard without hearing. It was the same voice that I had heard the night of my egress. Sombra. “And the traitor who fell for you. I must say, the compound soul trick isn’t one I would have thought of using.”

“Sombra might have, he was alive once, he probably loved once,” I spoke as evenly as I could. “But you aren’t a living creature. You’re just a hungry ghost that thinks it was once a great king.”

Icepick chuckled through her helmet, but there was no humour in it. I knew what it meant, I felt it reflected back in the depths of my mind. There was nothing short of death that would stop her. Then I felt the magical distortions of a shield in a doorway ahead. “Right door!”

She twisted in place and aimed both of her weapons at the doorway, half a second later the thrall threw itself forward into the hallway. It launched a flurry of magical bolts through it’s shield. These were less powerful than some of the other offensive spells I had witnessed, but there were several times more than those others.

I felt super heated air pass by my left side, and above where my head had been. I pulled my gun above line of sight and emptied my magazine in his general direction, at the same time as Icepick opened up with her heavier cannons. The impacts drove the creature backwards and away from the doorway, but aside from the momentum transfer, the shield held as the next volley lanced out from it.

I felt the charge from the spells spooling up that time, it felt eerily similar to my own lightning spells. It was electromagnetic energy, but instead of electrical energy created and directed by warping spacetime itself, it was a single frequency of light with the energy required to ionize the air. When one of the pulses struck Icepick in the foreleg, it didn’t rip the leg off, or even penetrate straight through like a high velocity projectile, it vaporized a chunk of the outer coating. She was being heated and ablated through her armour.

Icepick’s cannons continued to batter the shield, it failed to stop every cannon round, yet the Thrall remained upright, empty black eyes focused on her. My fire ceased as I realized my rifle rounds wouldn’t scratch the shields on that thing. I watched in horror as pieces of her armour began to glow incandescent.

Then I realized this creature left itself open to a counterattack. Everytime it fired one of those overpowered sunbeams it left an electrically conductive plasma in the wake of every pulse. With a breath of cordite laden air, I started to warp the space around my horn by channeling every watt of power I could into the spell. The air above my horn grew heavy with potential, like a capacitor bank just before discharge. Just as I felt my control of the roiling energy begin to slip, I felt a channel form as one last beam struck Icepick.

At the last moment I remembered to close my eyes. The lightning still glowed through my eyelids. My eyes opened to see the thrall standing where it had been, shield shattered, and its eyes blank. Black blood dripped from the huge rends in its body opened by the cannon shots. I couldn’t feel any other thralls nearby. Then again, I hadn’t felt that one until it was right on top of us.

“They really are soulless,” Icepick said from just behind me. I turned to face her. Bits of her armour had been vapourized, others had been heated and refrozen. Her breast plate had been hit the worst, but it was also the thickest. It glowed the deep red of incandescence.

“I knew that as soon as I laid eyes upon one,” I said as I emptied my canteen onto the hot spots and watched as it steamed up instantly. Her armour was working in overdrive to cool down, and it would keep her from being cooked by the steel around her.

She had been burned by the attacks, but it wasn’t going to stop her. I lit my horn to pull the wagon towards us as we moved ahead. My overpowered spell had taken a lot from me. I was just a pony, afterall.

“I was hoping to cook more of your flesh,” Sombra’s lilting voice echoed in our heads as he taunted us. “I can feel your hatred burning hotter than ever Destroyer. That fire has always been a part of you, but now it’s roaring inside you. Do you think that victory against me will extinguish it?” Sombra laughed heartily, but it was the laugh of the damned.

“And there’s the rub, if you win, the cycle will continue as it always has. I was just like you once Icepick. I was consumed by terrible purpose. I was blind to the suffering I caused as I rebuilt the world in my image-”

“I won’t let you become him, not as long as I draw breath,” I yelled at Icepick. It was enough to make his voice in our skulls’ stop.

“I know you will Perm. Because you’re the spark that set my heart alight,” Icepick said as she started forward aggressively. I knew we were getting closer to him. His cold dead magic overshadowed everything: the soul vacuum, my own magic, and even the magical potential within the megaspell. Everything except for her. She was an inferno of roiling magic, she was the bright light in the sea of darkness.

“There it is,” I said scant moments later.

At the end of the hallway, a heavy steel door hung open. My eyes caught movement just inside the doorway. Icepick shoved me aside just as a long skewer of ice flew through the air where I had been. Her cannon rounds slammed into the steel of the door, throwing it backwards, and revealing the caster. Another shaft of Ice flew towards me, but Icepick strode right into it. It didn’t scratch her breastplate. I rolled behind her as the thrall cast another spell. It created a thick sheet of ice that broke while absorbing the energy of the impacts, before letting the slugs drop harmlessly through the reforming barrier.

Of course he’d save the thrall with the best barrier for stopping kinetic weapons for last. I got back to my hooves just in time to see another horn poke around the doorway. It fired a sphere of superheated plasma on a direct path for Icepick, I created an electric field ahead of Icepick, pulling the ionized gas into the nearest wall. Its containment cracked as it contacted the concrete, burning the concrete as it dissipated.

I grasped a grenade with my telekinesis, letting it cook for three long seconds, before tossing it towards the doorway. It went off in the threshold, knocking the ice mage and the plasma caster away from the doorway.

Icepick sprinted forwards, and I followed, knowing that a grenade would do little to them. We were only a meter away from the doorway when a plasma bolt rounded the corner. The Icewall was just behind the bolt. I formed an electric barrier just in front of Icepick. The bolt reflected off of my field, before sinking into the Icewall of the other Thrall. The Icewall melted away at the touch of the bolt.

The wall shook from the impacts of the shots Icepick poured into it, and I felt the distortions as the other Thrall charged its next spell. I had to attack, I had to even the odds. I couldn’t win with defense alone- The ice would stop any fast moving projectile, and the other thrall would continue to cast spells from behind its cover.

In that warped place, in those brief moments that stretched into eons, a memory resurfaced in my mind. My knife buried in the chest of a Celestian soldier, and the smell of cooking flesh.

I pulled it from its scabbard, while sending as much current through the steel as I could. It had just begun to glow red when I felt the next bolt travel over the ice shield. I didn’t have the strength to restrain the bolt. I could only change where it struck her. The bolt glanced against her breastplate, eating into the steel and ceramic of her armour. She roared in pain, even as she kept her weapons firing.

My lips curled into a feral grin as I drove the superheated knife into the ice. The blade slid through the ice, with the handle shattering the barrier behind the blade. When the blade made it through the Ice, I felt a tendril of magic try in vain to resist the blade. The momentum of the blade sent it straight through the eye socket of the Thrall. This was the close bloody work of hoof to hoof fighting. There wasn’t any room for mercy.

So I jammed the knife down to the hilt before twisting it viciously. There was a splash as the ice turned to water in an instant. I tore the knife from its skull as the remaining Thrall cast it’s own magical shield. It was formed just before Icepick’s bullets struck home. Without a millisecond of hesitation she took off sprinting towards it guns blazing.

I followed just behind her as the creature created another envelope of plasma. Icepick’s guns stopped, their ammunition supply finally exhausted. It didn’t even phase her as she accelerated as hard as her armour allowed. She got up to full speed just as he cast his bolt. I trapped the bolt with electric fields as she crashed into the Thrall. Icepick crushed the Thrall between its shield and the concrete wall behind it. Then the shield broke as the horn casting it was shattered.

I took a deep breath as the plasma bolt evaporated into the cordite scented air. The thrall twitched as it lay broken on the ground. It's dark eyes flickering between us as Icepick picked herself up. Without saying a word I levitated my pistol above its head, and squeezed the trigger.

“What in the fuck?” Icepick said while looking up. I gasped when I followed her gaze.

Instead of the concrete ceiling I remembered there was an eldritch tunnel suspended above. Black obsidian walls that seemed to contract and expand like a lung connected this chamber to Sombra’s throne room. I shivered as I looked down upon the crystal mirror suspended upside down above me. This must have been how he had gotten an army into Sall’han. I forced my attention back to our target. Looking into the Sall’han gateway I saw a shifting kaleidoscope of barely contained energy.

“You don’t have to be a transient Permittivity, you can come home,” Sombra said into my mind.

“I’m already home,” I said through gritted teeth as I sprinted into the hallway.

“Do I look like I know what a draconequus is?” Icepick said with a shake of her head. “Hurry, this guy is supernaturally obnoxious!”

I pulled the wagon into the room, before letting the creaking cart coast into the room before stopping in front of Icepick. I parted my lips to speak before reconsidering. There wasn’t anything I needed to say. So I stood beside Icepick as she began priming the weapon. It wasn’t a lengthy sequence, but it was necessary. The actual trigger was just a light switch welded to the back of the bomb.

“Those inbred unicorns have been a disappointment to a mare. The problem with most mages is their limited repertoires. Some unicorns are born with greater potential. Some unicorns need only the right guidance to reach their potential. Now if you had asked the right questions, if you had fought him before...” Sombra’s words exploded like bombs in my mind.

“It’s ready, but I think it needs to be inside the portal to destroy -” Icepick’s amplified voice cut off abruptly. Her armour was frozen, and the last flickers of a disruption spell played out over the outer surface.

“I like that spell. It’s a shame none of the others could cast it,” Rosetta said from just inside the room. Around his neck was the talisman Sombra had given me. “But I love this form. It’s young, strong, and versatile.”

“Y-you did it to me. You made him alter me,” I seethed as I watched the pink stallion waltz into the room. His eyes were still bright. Which meant his soul was still in there. For a moment I wondered how he had survived the soul vacuum. Then the moment was over, and I only saw Sombra in front of me.

“I only whispered to him that he should help you,” Rosetta said before sneering at me. “And I wasn’t the one to give him the orbs.”

I whipped my rifle towards him and fired. The shots that would have perforated him were stopped by a shimmering ebony barrier. “Did you seriously expect that to work?” Sombra asked with Rosetta’s voice. I didn’t answer him with words. I started to push the weapon towards the gateway.

I had just gotten the wheels rolling when I saw Rosetta swing a long tendril of fire at me. I managed to side step it before ducking down as a fusillade of magic missiles passed above my head. I cracked off a burst from my rifle but I had to release the cart. Rosetta blocked the bullets nonchalantly before glancing down at his own foreleg. The pistol holstered there was a large calibre revolver.
He drew the weapon just like we had practiced. Then he fired twice.

The shots slammed into my chest, the soft lead of the bullets flattening out against the ceramic of the plate beneath my clothing. The force of the impacts knocked me down and forced every molecule of air from my lungs. I almost felt relieved when I felt the cold concrete beneath me.

I looked up just in time to see Rosetta press the gun barrel against my forehead.

“These weapons lack the theatrics of magical combat, but I see why they dominate. I wouldn’t have awoken if it wasn’t for their power. I didn’t start the war Permittivity, but I did end it. Just as I’ll end you- ” Rosetta said with approval. I felt Icepick growing more angry by the second. Her muscles were warmed up from straining against the armour. But now she’d stopped struggling, it was like she was waiting for something. I caught my breath enough to laugh weakly. “Why are you laughing? Did your fragile mind finally break under the strain?”

“I started my journey here, and it’s going to end here. Even I can see the irony in that,” I said with a genuine smile on my face. “But that’s hardly the only irony at play.”

“Of course,” Sombra said in Rosetta’s voice. “The greatest irony is Discord binding this one’s soul to both of yours. Whatever his plan was, it failed.” His grin reminded me of a cat playing with a mouse just before playing with it’s entrails.

“That is pretty ironic,” I said while preparing a spell in my head without letting a drop of magic flow through my horn. I knew that if he felt the magic flowing he’d fire. But if something could draw his attention away. “But it’s not the most ironic thing.”

“Okay I’ll bite, what is the greatest irony?” Sombra asked. Icepick strained against the armour with everything she had.

“You’ll see,” I said just as Icepick slammed into the wagon, pushing forward despite the weight of her frozen armour and the cart.

Rosetta’s mouth gaped open as he watched her do the impossible. My horn became a blinding blue light as I threw everything I had left into the spell. The electricity travelled from my forehead, and through the gun before arcing into Rosetta’s chest. He collapsed onto the cold concrete, his muscles writhing uselessly as he lay there unmoving. I smelled burnt fur tinged with ozone in the air. I wasn’t sure if I had killed him, or just knocked him out for a long time. I couldn’t feel the minute electrical impulses of a heartbeat in that sea of powerful magic. It didn’t matter right now. We had our opening.

“Told you,” I said to Sombra with a smile of my own. The response was impossible to miss. The tunnel above my head started to shake, and his chamber looked like it was trying to pull away. “The real Sombra was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a coward.” I guessed that having connected the two gateways so completely it would take some time to pull them apart.

Icepick had shown me the emergency armour release before. So, I got to my hooves and trotted up to her. My horn sparked uselessly as I tried to turn the release with it. Giving up on my magic, I leaned over her armour before grabbing the handle with my teeth. My neck muscles burned as I forced the handle to turn. When it turned all the way, I heard the distinctive sound of movement inside the suit. I decided to walk around to the front of the armour. I also felt Icepick staring a hole into my head as she waited.

As the back of the armour opened up I pulled her helmet off with my hooves, before dropping it on the floor.

“It took you long enough,” Icepick said with a look of total relief on her face. I just snorted as she climbed out of her inert armour.

“You can thank him for that,” I nodded my head towards Rosetta’s crumbled form. I didn’t want to look at him myself. My feelings about him were muddled, but I realized something in that moment. I didn’t want him dead.

“Is he-” Icepick started to ask before I interjected.

“We have a job to do,” I said firmly. I pressed my barrel against the cart and started to push. The passage above our heads started to crack. As well as the surface of the portal growing more chaotic by the second.

“He’ll be the last to die because of him,” Icepick added her strength to mine and the cart moved forward, the wheels squealing in protest. There was a high pitched whine in the air as we pushed the weapon halfway into the gateway. It probably wasn’t safe to jam an armed megaspell into an active gateway.

I looked up and saw the other half of the cart sticking out of the crystal mirror. Icepick laid her hoof on the trigger. I saw her hesitating to set it off. So I leaned forward and kissed her deeply. My hoof joined hers as we flipped the switch together.

“Perm, perm, perm,” I awoke to Icepick poking my chest with each utterance of my name. I opened my eyes and saw her standing above me. Above our heads was the concrete ceiling complete with buzzing fluorescent tubes. I turned my head to stare at the portal. Half of the wagon and it’s payload sat there perfectly bifurcated.

“I don’t feel the soul vacuum anymore,” I said as I moved to get up. I drew in a sharp breath as a lance of pain shot through my chest. “Fuck, I forgot that he shot me twice-” I turned my head to look at Rosetta.

“He’s breathing, I checked,” Icepick said before offering me a hoof. I took it and got painfully to my hooves. “That cursed talisman turned to sand as soon as I tried pulling it off.”

“Good riddance,” I said softly before walking over to Rosetta and looking down at him. “I wonder what Sombra tempted him with.”

“We’ll ask him when he’s ready to talk,” Icepick replied wearily. “Now help me get this oaf on my back.”

---===*===---

“Hey everypony, the soul trap is gone, Sombra is gone, and I’d really appreciate it if someone else could carry Rosetta!” Icepick yelled at the ponies waiting for us outside of the soul trap.

It was darkly funny watching ponies decide whether to believe her or not. Eventually Talon broke away from the rest and stepped towards us. Ironsight followed behind her.

“What happened to your armour?” Talon asked with a puzzled look. Icepick nodded up at Rosetta’s limp form.

“He was possessed by Sombra. He sparked me from behind. So it's laying in the portal chamber, with it’s emergency release pulled,” Icepick said before gesturing for one of the two power armoured mares to turn around.

“Why didn’t he get his soul sucked out with a straw?” Ironsight asked Icepick as she pulled up alongside her. “Can you magic him over Perm?”

“His soul is tied in with ours now, thanks to Discord. I would help but I’m burnt out from fighting Sombra and his thralls,” I said with a shrug.

“I got you,” A familiar voice said as she trotted up to us. Icepick sighed deeply when Cotton Candy lifted him onto Ironsight’s back. “It’s the least I can do for the ponies that killed Sombra.”

“Candy stop, you’re going to make her blush,” I said before chuckling at Icepick’s baleful look. “Can you take him to the field hospital?” Ironsight nodded at me before picking up her pace a bit.

“I think I deserve a smoke,” Icepick said in a low voice. A dozen hooves instantly reached into their pockets. Cotton Candy was the closest and she hoofed over the cigarette gratefully.

“Don’t look at me I’m burnt out,” I said when Icepick glanced at me.

“Does someone want to light me up?” She asked, and again, everyone with a lighter offered. As Icepick got her smoke lit I trotted over to Talon.

“Do you want to meet my brother?” I asked the older mare softly. Her eyes lit up like diamonds.

“You have a brother? He’s here?” Talon asked with excitement I had never seen before.

“Yes, and yes,” my voice was subdued but it had a levity missing since the train took me from Maidenpool. It would also give Icepick a chance to escape the crowd of adoring soldiers. “We both need some air.”

“We’re going topside, can you lovely ponies let us through?” I asked with my voice raised against the clamour of conversation. The mass of ponies moved aside as I offered Icepick my hoof. “Thank you.” I could feel the sense of palpable relief flow through her as she took my hoof.

“It warmed my heart to see you all waiting for us, I just wanted to make that clear before I go,” Icepick managed to say without her voice breaking. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Then she turned her head and we walked back through the blood soaked passages. I had walked out of this complex once before, but a part of me knew that I wouldn’t step foot in these passages ever again. It was a pleasant thought.

“What’s got you smiling like that? There are a lot of good reasons, but I’m curious about which one,” Icepick asked. I snorted derisively.

“It’s not what you’d expect. I’m smiling because I never have to see this place again,” I replied.

“I feel that. It begs a question though,” Icepick said with a smile to match. “Where do you want to go? After we sort things out.”

It struck me that I hadn’t thought about what I wanted to do after Sall’han was at peace. I had ideas and plans for making that peace in the absence of Sombra. Then I looked back at Icepick.

“I want to go where you go,” I said with utter conviction. I felt affection and consternation flare up inside her at my words.

“Okay, let me rephrase that. What do you want to do after all of this?”

“I think you’re asking me this question because you don’t know what you want to do after this,” I stuck my tongue out at her before continuing. “We did make one plan for afterwards. I’m hurt you don’t remember.”

“No- wait what plan?” Now she was downright flustered as she aimed those beautiful eyes at me like a weapon. I mean they are weapons. They certainly got me right in the heart.

“It was that lovely planning session we had in the APC a few nights ago,” I raised an eyebrow at her as the meaning finally struck her. “If I remember correctly, it was your idea.”

“I-I remember now,” Icepick replied after a moment to collect herself. “That’s seriously the closest thing to a plan either of us has made?”

“Yes, as far as I can remember,” I said with a bit of extra emphasis on the last word.

“We’re gonna talk about this later, when we’re not in earshot of-” She cut herself off before nodding slightly in the direction of Talon. Thankfully she didn’t seem to notice my glance at her.

“Good call,” I said with complete agreement. Icepick had spent enough time around Page Turner and Rosetta to know how parents felt about grandchildren. Talon would be way worse.

---===*===---

“I didn’t know you had a twin,” Principal said as Talon walked in behind Icepick. He was lying on the standard issue Steel Ranger field bed. Talon smiled broadly at that.

“Thank you, but I’m her mother,” Talon replied. “I’m old enough to realize that you should take a compliment if one is offered.”

“You wear those years well,” Principal said in his sweetest voice.

“I know,” Talon answered before flashing a feral smile his way. “I can tell you’ve never fought before. So what did you do in the empire?” He looked abashed at her bluntness.

“I operated a bank branch,” Principal admitted to her.

“What’s a bank?” Talon asked a moment later.

“Are you joking?” Principal asked slowly, his eyes darting between her advanced armour and her apparently serious question.

“She isn’t,” I said to him before turning to Talon. “He took money from ponies for safekeeping and then gave that money to others on the promise of more money in exchange for that money.”

“How is that a job?” She asked incredulously. I couldn’t help myself, I burst out laughing. He shot me a dirty look in return.

“It’s a lot of work actually,” Principal said defensively.

“That’s exactly what a banker would say,” I teased.

“Former banker now,” he said with a deep sigh. “I hadn’t even realized until this moment.”

“We’ll find you something to do,” Icepick said in an upbeat tone.
“Maybe even a real job,” Talon prodded.

And so it went on. By the time we had said our goodbyes the sun had set behind the great mesas. We had heard the sounds of festivities begun in earnest. Soldiers from all sides were taking this opportunity to get drunk and revel in our victory. It only took a moment for the closest ponies to recognize us.

“C’mon over, have a drink!” An intoxicated ursa driver said with a steel cup held precariously in her magic.

“Thanks for offering knight!” Talon said from behind us. She winked at us as she passed in front of us. I subtly grasped Icepick’s hoof and tugged in the general direction of escape. I didn’t need to tug again.

----===*===---

The two of us were almost out of the camp when a dark shape materialized from behind a parked half-track. I lit my horn instinctively and was surprised to see Crescent Moon staring back at me, eyes turned to slits because of my light.

“Did you have to surprise us like that?” I almost shouted at her. If I’d been attentive to heartbeats, I would’ve felt her presence, but I hadn’t been concentrating on them.

“I did not. However, you both look like you’re going for a low profile at the moment,” I could hear the smile in her voice better than I could see it.

“You got us there,” Icepick admitted before meeting the other mare’s gaze. “So how are negotiations going?”

“They’re going,” Crescent said with a bit of forced cheer. Icepick and I both felt the undertones in her words. I shot a glance at Icepick, and saw her biting her lip. “Would you like to see one of those ancient catacombs? You’ve definitely earned it in my book.”

“I’d love to. Please lead the way,” Icepick replied with a bit of haste. I felt discomfort roiling in Icepick as Crescent turned towards the nearest butte erupting out of the sands. A pregnant silence fell upon us as the true purpose of our journey became clear.

---===*===---

“How old is this place?” Icepick asked as we passed through the entrance of the cave.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Crescent Moon answered from ahead of us. An electric torch blazed ahead of her, strapped to her withers.

“I guess archeology died with the bombs,” I said resignedly. The passage through was tight, with barely enough clearance for us to shimmy through in places.

“That’s not entirely true. We have a number of books written by Equestrian Archeologists in our stable, and we’ve applied some of their techniques to the sites. We know that some of the sites are much older than others. This one appears to date back to before the Minotaur conquest. It’s the one I mentioned to you before,” Crescent said as we turned a corner and her light flashed over a complex series of glyphs painted above our heads.

“Have you translated these?” Icepick asked as she strode up to the shapes written in startling carbon black.

“Where would we start? We have no points of comparison between our modern languages and these glyphs. We don’t even know if this is a language. Though it shows some similarities to the script left behind by the primordial river civilizations,” Crescent Moon seemed resigned to the mystery as she led us further into the cave system.

“How old are those civilizations?” I asked as my eyes tried to take in every line and curve of the ancient work. The two mares stopped and looked at one another quickly, before turning to me.

“The Equestrian diaspora is much closer to us in time than those civilizations were to the diaspora,” Icepick answered. I was taken momentarily aback by that description. The Equestrian diaspora happened in my timeline, way before our apparent divergence. My people had settled the north at least a thousand years before the duel between Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon.

“That’s incredible,” I said as I followed behind them.

“It’s actually quite credible Perm,” Crescent replied liltingly. “But we don’t know much about those ponies, other than their pottery style and a few buried ruins.”

“When were those excavations conducted?” I asked automatically. The cave seemed to grow several degrees colder as Crescent Moon cleared her throat.

“During the initial occupation, and with the participation of the Arabian aristocracy. It was one of many gifts,” her voice reached absolute zero at the last word. “The bunker was set aside for those same nobles after the majority of the scientists working here left for Equestria. Those few scientists became teachers and students for my ancestors.”

The passage widened out a few meters ahead, and I lit a flare with a twist of telekinesis that left me clenching my jaw in pain.

“It’s huge!” Icepick exclaimed as the bright yellow light from the flare fell upon every corner of the chamber. The ceiling was suspended at least six meters above our head, and I could have fit a half dozen Ursa’s in here with room to spare.

“Look there,” Crescent Moon said while pointing a hoof at a mural running across a whole wall. It depicted groups of Arabians living life millenia ago. There were other creatures illustrated on the wall. Camels, Gryphons, Water Buffalo, and even Minotaurs. One of them showed a merry gathering, hundreds of distinct shapes danced around a firepit, with stars glittering above their heads. It could’ve been the scene we left behind, plus or minus a few millennia.

So I lost myself examining the murals. Some of them were clearly depicting things that had taken place. Others were incomprehensible symbols or images of creatures long dead.

“Holy shit,” Icepick exclaimed from the other side of the wall. She was looking up at a red painted symbol. It had five straight segments branching off from a roughly square core. Underneath that symbol, a smaller version of it hung at eye level. “Those are hoofprints!”

“Pawprints would be the right word, I think,” Crescent Moon said while peering at the red imprints. “But that’s not why I brought you here-”

“I was wondering when you were going to speak your mind,” Icepick said darkly.

“I thought I’d let you enjoy this gift for a moment,” She said with emphasis on the word gift. I pursed my lips and watched her true emotions come to the surface. “The negotiations with my people are just a way to drop your guard and buy time for Phalanx.”

“Buy time for what?” Icepick asked.

“How did you learn about this?” My throat suddenly felt bone dry.

“I had a bug planted in his command vehicle, and learned about his plan to become the Elder of Ramsgard. He’s obtained support among a lot of the highly placed Steel Rangers by promising positions of power in his new regime. Phalanx believes that he can use my people as a wedge issue, to pull apart the coalition and win the loyalty of the Equestrian Supremacists among us,” Crescent took in a deep breath and I saw the abject terror lurking behind her eyes. “I helped you both because it was the right thing to do. I never expected help in return. Now I’m asking for your help, and praying that I made the right decision…”

Her voice cracked and she looked away from us. When she looked at us again there were tears glistening on her cheeks. I stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug. I felt her shake with those silent tears.

“He wants to claim victory over you. He wants to bring the survivors back to Ramsgard in chains,” Icepick said acerbically. “I won’t let that happen. I won’t let this chance for peace get strangled in the cradle.” Her eyes were locked on the ancient images of peaceful co-existence.

The flare flickered as a silence fell upon us. Crescent collected herself before patting my withers. She wanted to stand on her own. I released her and backed away from the mares. Crescent stood gracefully, before clearing her throat.

“Prove it then!” Crescent challenged loudly. Despite her tone and volume, I saw hope in her eyes and a ghost of a smile on her lips. Icepick and I shared a glance.

“We will,” Icepick answered resolutely. They shared a long look with one another before Icepick looked away. She wore a confident grin for Crescent Moon. After another immeasurable interval, Crescent let out a deep breath and visibly relaxed. I felt Icepick’s true feelings through my own. She was determined to fulfill her promise to Crescent, but that wasn’t what I felt radiating from her.

“It’s time to face the true enemy,” I caught Icepick’s eyes with my own. Her sapphire eyes weren’t full of fire, no, they were an inferno. “It’s time to come home.”

Author's Note

It's a bit rough, but it's done. This was a difficult chapter to write, and I've had some difficulties in my own life during this drought. I intend to finish the next chapter a lot faster. If you want to pre-read the next chapter or help me finish Transient, write in the comments. I'll see it.

We're in the end game now.

Steeped In Steel (I)

Steeped In Steel

Someone -I forgot their name almost as soon as I learned it- had decided that Equestria needed another front. We had been sent out here to set up watch over those who set up derricks and storage facilities. That nasty black crap that leaked out of the ground… the locals would have given it to us… I think. But if you have an army resting on their laurels, and weakened governments to topple, why ask for mineral rights?

Resource extraction. Even as the world darkened, as crops died and fields went fallow for want of planters. That aspect didn’t die with the rest. We didn’t die with the rest. As I, Icepick, Knight Second Class, watched the native Saddle Arabians bring their “resource compensation” to our lorries, I let my thoughts wander. This was the third settlement on this patrol that had been attacked by raiders in the last two months.

A look to the east or west would give the impression that these people were living in a golden sea. However, if you looked to the north, you’d see the Gilache River, nevermind the gunboat I had ridden on. The boat was a poor excuse for a warship, but rockets and mortars would tear their hovels into the same sand they were surrounded by in only minutes. We wouldn’t do that. We only asked for ten percent of their grain, and if the people who harried them showed themselves, we wouldn’t hesitate to meet them in the field. As sure as clockwork, the wind tore across the town. Gritty sand would erode anything in time. I turned my face to look at my fellow Knight who, was barking orders to the villagers.

“Ironsight, did they tell you anything we didn’t already know about the raiders?” My voice got her attention. Nearly two meters of steel turned to face me. Ironsight had barked a final word of Arabic to the village leader. The leader gave a negative reply before hurrying back into his home of dirt. Tonight would be cold, and it’d be windy- I could feel it in my bones.

“He said that they came out of the glare of the sun, and apparently, they were packing some heat along with the normal blades and bows.” She replied slowly. She wasn’t a bad knight, hell, by how she was moving up the chain of command, she might have been better than me, but she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the people we supposedly protected. I still counted her as a friend; another mare about the same age as me, with a hot brother. Maybe I didn’t know what a friend was.

Ehh, It’s whatever. That was my motto.

“Did he give a direction?” The sun was nearly down. Light amplification and that huge reflector people called the moon would be enough if I got the information I needed.

“To the southwest, towards the mesa. The tracks were in the sand. You can’t be thinkin-”

“They’ve been fucking with these people for too long. We can’t just sit on our armoured asses taking things because they can’t stop us.” I cut her off. She could rationalize burning this village down and selling the occupants as chattel, and all it would take was a whisper from a higher-up. I was a lot of things, am a lot of things. “Sandstorm and Darude, they’ll go with me. They were a day behind us right?”

“Fuck, Icepick, get it through your skull. You’re not going to find them. Sand rats know how to hide, especially at night.”

“Was that a yes?” I glared through a bullet-proof visor.

“Ice, I love you like a sister, better than my sister, actually. Just give it up. All the desert holds is plenty of sand to sink into, and it doesn’t help that you're as dense as you are.”

“File the reports. Two knights and an initiate aren’t a huge paper pile, or a huge loss.” I said before turning around. It didn’t matter that my Knight Third Class and my initiate were both as green as the Everfree.

The crunch of sand compacting under me was better than hearing her talk. You could always count on sand to be slippery. I didn’t want the last ember of Equestria to be the same. At the end of that day, I realized that I was protecting those who extracted life from the river bank, and, with any luck, I’d be extracting blood from thieves.

War, war never changes. They say. I say: It’s whatever.

---===*===---

A Promise Kept...

The march back to our headquarters was an actual march.

By the time we made it back to where the gunboat had stopped, the village was in the throes of its evening activity. When the sun went down, they laid on their mattresses. The Sallish people gave us strange looks as we entered; they hadn’t expected us to survive. The three of us, with partially depleted spark reactors and lighter bags walked to their well at the center of the housing. All three of us wanted that water- we had ran dry on our way back. I let them decide who got the first taste.

So, as we entered, the masses of farmers decided we were a spectacle. A mirage made into life, perhaps. The one who had spoken to Ironsight before I left came to me. My mind reeled with the effort of thinking coherently after losing so much water; the tongue through which I would normally speak was thick and uncooperative even as I swished it around my mouth.

I shifted my weight to my right side and pulled the hook and loop on a flap open. With a single, jerky motion I dropped the Raider leader’s head onto the ground. Those who saw it first yelled something excitedly. It wasn’t the reluctant tone that had accompanied the entire exchange with them a week back. No, the tone was pleasant, pleasant surprise. Honestly, the smell of it would have overpowered me if not for the rebreather in the suit. I couldn’t speak their language, but the recognizable skull of a foe is as universal as communication gets.

“Ice, they’re calling you the oathkeeper. And Sandstorm and I: we’re the swords of the oathkeeper,” Darude the Knight said from behind me. I turned to face him. In his hoof was a canteen. The grab was automatic, same as the motion to remove my helmet. Water: best thing in the world for not dying. I could hear Initiate Sandstorm talking with that same leader in words that were incredibly incomprehensible to me.

“Darude, don’t let Sand lie to them. We both know you’re the sheath and he’s the sword. I can kinda hear it some - all - nights.” I relied after swallowing more than the recommended amount of water.

“Knowing you, not knowing you knowing you, you probably rub one out when you hear us.” His voice cracked as he said this. He really wasn’t wrong. If it wasn’t windy in the desert, the sound carried pretty well.

“It’s mostly you making the noise.” Out of the two stallions, he was the bottom and the moaner. It was hot. Not the only reason I chose them to go along and not just because they didn’t mind if I voyeured a little. Darude carried a HUD integrated scoped rifle.

“You wanna keep that title, right? We had an oath.” He said in a high pitched tone for humour's sake. I moved right past him, letting my armoured tail drag along his side as I passed by.

---===*===---

As the night wore on, I found myself asleep on a bed of straw next to an open fire with a smoke hole. They had fed me some black bread and cheese, along with some watered beer. These people had hidden away a lot of their total stored food away when we came. Now, after a single enemy of the people had rolled in the dirt… they were treating us. The three of us were given enough provisions to make it back to the river mouth.

All for a fight that had been won with ease. A few slugs aimed at their band’s leadership was enough to bring them to the brink of surrender. A few more slugs were enough to carry out the field executions. The bit where we sawed the head off of a pony had been done with one of their own utility knives. Obsidian blades could cut deeply and quickly. I had taken it from the leader. A leather sheath strapped to my barrel kept it within reach.

After pulling it out, I just looked at it. The way it became more transparent near the edges caught my eye every time I saw it. Transparency was what it was because of the thickness of the night glass. If I could find a mirror of this stuff… would it reflect?

The blade was rough, the fire next to me was hot, and the feeling of loneliness was palpable. It was a genuine march, a Warrior’s March.

And never let anyone tell you otherwise: we are what we do.

---===*===---

Our trek back to our base took a long enough that we were eating crumbs near the end. Otherwise, there were no issues; just hot days which we slept through, and nights in which the three of us could have been the last people around. I could hear the two of them talking about how they’d explain their choice to go with me, and how they would brag about fighting the sand and those that hid in it. They didn’t mind when I got a half mile ahead of them. In those moments I could believe that I was just a mare walking beside a river, with the only two things in the world being the waters and the moon above.

Only two things worth a damn, anyway.

Every night, the strangest of thoughts would get their time to shine. On the night before we made it back, the strangest of them took hold.

Go back to that village. In the recycled atmosphere of the helmet, the tip of my tongue exited my mouth. The train of thought that had led to the idea had derailed and was lost. The logistics of that plan swarmed my head. All I would have had to do was get rid of my armour, bury my equipment, and avoid my subordinates…

For about two minutes, my mind was in turmoil. It was attractive. I could leave the Rangers behind and live day by day, eating what I made. Bedding a stallion every night. My armour and its servos had stopped their noise as I stood there on the river bank. But for all the beauty of that plan, the holes in it could be driven through with a lorry. Soon enough, the incessant noise of my armor moving itself, with me inside, could be heard once again.

---===*===---

The Elder of the base requested my presence, immediately. Neither of those things surprised me. I had had ample time to think about what I would say. Ramguard, a place that had been both a Zebra and Equestrian naval base, now served gunboats and a handful of merchant craft that had been refitted by the Rangers. It was now a base for the Rangers and was one of the larger cities in southern Sall’han. Elder Churned Waters was a busy stallion. That he was taking the time to talk with me was telling; these words would have weight.

It had been three years since I had been inside the office. At least, this time, I had arrived without a mental health evaluation between arriving at the base and his office door. The flanking guards didn’t seem to notice me. I had arrived there and promptly given my equipment to maintenance. For all intents and purposes, nothing had changed for me, yet.

The whisper of a well-maintained automatic door was all the warning I had before a Paladin walked out with a pensive expression on his face. I walked in and sat in the chair. Elder Waters stared straight at me the entire way. His throat cleared with aplomb.

“And so the intrepid Knight returns.” He said, his voice high and sanctimonious.

“Yeah, it’s almost like the tub wasn’t waiting for me.”

“Icepick, I heard that you took the raider leader’s head to the village. Pray-tell, is that true?” Fatherly; that was the way he had always been described. There was truth in it.

“I did what I had to do to show that my words weren’t empty.” The fact that I couldn’t speak their language is irrelevant. There was defiance in my voice. He looked at me and my defensive posture for a good long moment. It seemed to stretch even as I gazed at his patchy mane, burn marks, and, as a last resort, his eyes.

“You likely know this, but my mother was the General in command here when the bombs erased Equestria. Some say it was hereditary that I became the Elder here. Of those people, some think that my mother and her example led me. Others contend that I got this position only as a matter of my mother’s meddling. Personally, I think the others were willing to put stock in my character because of her. Knight Icepick, do you understand the lesson in that?”

“For argument’s sake, let’s assume that I don’t.” He rolled his eyes at that.

“I give those under my command a great deal of latitude, and I put a great deal of effort into keeping judgements of character purely based on that person’s merit. Not their background. With you Icepick, that’s hard. We, by which I mean people who have a modicum of empathy, have a hard time looking at you in that light. If you had never gone through what you had… if you had gone up the chain like others…”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one who calls the other on their excuses, Elder? ‘We have to meet our challenges in the present, not dwell on the past!’ That’s what you said to me the last time you spoke with me in this place. At the end of the day, my issue isn’t with you. No, you’re a good stallion. Our issue is with those that are content to sit in a climate-controlled bunker while the people who feed us die from bandits.”

“Icepick, just because you made one expedition into the sands and lived to tell about it doesn’t make it responsible.” He said firmly, patronisingly.

“I was barely prepared for it, and yet I had the head of the bandit stinking up my saddle bags. We have responsibilities. We have a codex. ‘We are the ember of the Equestria that was. What we fought for, we now are.’ Would any royal guard look at an Appaloosan bandit and let them go?”

“Villages, and their villagers, are only out there to avoid us. If they wanted aid, they could live on a sanctioned plot of land, paying their taxes and getting access to all the resources of Ramguard or Hyderbahn. They choose to live on the outskirts of civilisation.”

“Any yet we take our leave of their produce.” He rolled his eyes at me.

“We provide that last bonfire of civilisation. We make it possible for those people living out there to have a market to sell crops at. Without the Rangers, there is nothing.”

“They don’t get a choice in the matter; the least we can do is provide basic security.” At that, he looked down and drummed his hooves on the oaken desk.

“Icepick, because I respect you, and because in spite of it all, I’ve been impressed by the strength of will you’ve shown in the last three years; however, you cannot continue to act so tempestuously. If I had to choose someone in this base to be a chaplain or poet, or anything that involved a dearth of personal ambition, I would choose you in a heartbeat, but we are the last organisation that has both a logistical framework and a code of conduct. Maybe, when you’re my age, and we’re on our thirtieth five year plan, we can secure the entire length of the Senegral. There is no lack of work to be done, Knight.”

I sat there in that deteriorating chair and wondered what exactly I would say if there were no consequences for speaking. There was no way for him to understand. To him, we were the means to an end that anyone would fight for. The restoration of Equestria on foreign soil would require work. Maybe he never realized that what he and his predecessors were building wasn’t Equestria. Maybe he couldn’t. In that case, my words were better left unsaid. With a deep breath, I let the issue lie.

“Alright, what kind of punitive action do you have in mind?” I said with a feeling of defeat. I think my acquiescence made its way into my voice.

“If I’ve changed your mind, if you truly understand the duties of the Rangers and our place in this brave new world, then I can’t think of anything punishment would accomplish. Life is hard for everyone, Icepick. You personally should know that all too well. Now, if that has been settled I have an entire stack of reports detailing the expenses involved with raising that new steel plant.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about that, ‘Ya gotta hav’ steel ta mak’ it!’ Or something like that.” I said as I got up. My voice had a lilt to it. It masked the grinding of my teeth. Being in this room reminded me of that time too much all by itself. His mentioning of it wasn’t an aid.

“No more personal crusades, Icepick… Next time will require punitive action. Don’t make me order that.”

“Right, alright, have a nice afternoon, Waters.” I said to him as the door closed smoothly. Time to go find your CO, Ice. Maybe she’ll be nice.

---===*===---

My armour was going to be in maintenance for a couple days. I was stuck here and not at my actual post. Command saw a Ranger without armour as a liability more than anything else. Honestly, the more time I could put between my apology to Ironsight, the better I felt. Politics were going to make me apologize. I needed to keep the wheels greased, and even though we were technically the same rank… Her mother and brother gave her a certain weight that I wouldn’t of had even if I didn’t ‘misuse the discretion afforded to me’. Oh, fuck, I hated those people that could quote the codex at me for hours without seeing the hypocrisy involved with our organization's application of it.

I had always found a weird sense of contentment when I found a place where I could be alone in a complex of thousands. More often than not, ponies liked to use the bathrooms in or around their personal quarters, so they often left ones next to communal chambers open.

Maybe that was why I had taken a moment to look over the base’s library. I had learned a lot there. Unstructured time in the Rangers is a rarity, especially as a young Initiate. Reading anything and everything that wasn’t a goddess-damned manual was a relief valve. Well, that wasn’t the only way to blow off steam; honestly, the Rangers aren’t that opposed to sex. The codex is pretty liberal in that regard. Same sex, hetero, anything under the sun as long as new Rangers get made. ‘Through the furnace of the loins we are made.’ Those words were said by one of my sex-ed instructors.

All of it came down to the issues of having a small gene pool. The number of Rangers and Equestrians altogether was less than twenty thousand. We’re given a list of others that we can breed with. It was a way to relieve the pressure for ponies that wanted to know their offspring. Even then, the numbers that just took the fertilized zygote and ran with their partner was higher than the former. Really, I, like most Rangers, didn’t know my parents. The cycle perpetuates itself. Is it that hard to give your child to the organisation as long as you went through the same process and came out the way you did? Anonymised, Atomised. Good for the Rangers.

Most of my friends didn’t keep lovers for long. The impulse to breed can be satiated at about any time. Mares have IUDs, and the Rangers keep the population free from STDs with routine screenings and medical care. Equality in bed, and in arms; that was our motto.

It always gave me a weird feeling when I realized that I could already have a number of foals and not know it. I stepped out of the bathroom with that thought in my mind.

And it just so happened that I just happened to run into an old… friend. Paladin Reflex and I might have been called old flames in another time or place.

He had just exited the Knights workshop. He looked agitated. I decided to chance it and caught up to him.

“Hey, Reflex!” I said cheerily to him. His body turned at once towards me. He wasn’t the largest stallion; I had about fifteen centimeters of height on him, and I’m only a little taller than most stallions. Still, he was well built, and had the jaw of a pre-war sports star.

“Is that you, Ice?” He asked, knowing damn well what the answer was. I just ambled forward and gave the now-smiling stallion a hug. Reflex and I, we had history; he had been my bunkmate when we were both in training. He returned it and squeezed me.

“What you been up to, Ice?” He asked me casually after we broke the embrace. He was wearing his carbon-grey undersuit and had a pair of sunglasses on his brow. His short green mane and turquoise coat looked really good under the fluorescents. He had always been a good looking buck. Today was not an exception.

“I’ve been, uh, leading troops into the desert. I have a bag that smells like head and uh…” I shrugged my shoulders. He was looking at me with incredulity. “Do you wanna get dinner tonight, if you’re free?”

“Sure, you wanna slum it tonight?” He asked me quickly, he was never one to miss a beat.

“Okay, I’m happy to be surprised.”

“I gotta get you back for that surprise tackle,” His voice was joking and quite pleasant. He was the closest thing to a... I don’t know. I liked to hear his voice and see his face, it made me smile, made me warm and in more ways than a purely sexual one.

Yeah, we’d have a good night, I needed to fuck someone, it had been a while.

It didn’t matter, I smiled back; my misgivings could wait. We walked together for a little while until we got to his office. In that time, he told me about a greasy spoon he had found on a training patrol in Ramsgard, the city outside the base. Officers could leave, and I was technically on leave, as well, so we made a plan. Spending time in the city was usually pleasant. We entered his office and closed the door. He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and ordered me out, playfully. Just before I got left, he told me to be back here by eight.

That meant I was going to be here at ten after eight.

---===*===---

I had met him next to his office in a suit of utility barding. I had my mane back in a bun, and it was brushed. He had given me a look of consideration before taking my hoof and kissing it. I glared at him, and he led me out and away.

We had spent the walk there complaining about things. I had told him how his sister was doing, and he had told me about the ongoing efforts in the city.

The smell of Ramsguard always took a few days to get used to. Somehow, the combination of salt from the sea, unwashed bodies, and a large market that always seemed open could never leave your mind when you walked in the city. This city, the first city made since the bombs fell, was full of traders and craftsponies and an omnipresent stink of desperation. Having this outside your window can make you feel superior; maybe that’s why they built it. This thought felt out of place in my peaceful walk with Reflex beside me.

For better or worse, the place was growing. Ramsguard had recently had a census. Thirty thousand people in the city, not including the Ranger base. He was talking to me about this.

“This is the first place that’s rebounded. The cities to the south they’re still ruled by warlords and produce nothing. Here, we have wells for water and food shipments from all over the Senegral, and in this city we have people recycling steel and making things. An Arabian here has a life expectancy ten years longer than one further south. Ice, do you see what we’re accomplishing here?” He finished his speech with a flourish and a wink.

“I’m glad that this place is making things, and I’m glad that people here are protected, but can you not see that that the food in part is stolen? Where exactly did you get that statistic from?” He took my words in stride and responded with words that could have comforted Water’s as he went to sleep.

“Don’t you think that when those people living out on the fringe need to find a new hoe or plow they’ll be happily surprised when they can just trade for one?”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” I said to him coyly.

His expression changed to one of contentedness, he had won me over, or at least thought that he had. And just seeing that look on his face was nice. It made me feel strangely warm, even as the heat of the day bled away. Being around him in particular brought it on. This silly, silly buck that wanted the best for the Rangers and its people because he believed that the Rangers were the best for the people.

The rest of the walk consisted of small talk and the kind of gossip that permeates any organisation.

Even if I didn’t like the city I was walking through and the looks we received, the night air always felt nice to me. Eventually, we did come to an adobe structure that was bigger than the buildings around it. Reflex grinned at me from the doorway. I rolled my eyes at him and entered.

This place smelled really good. Somehow, the building had kept that hidden. Somehow, Reflex’s smile didn’t tear the muscles in his face. The place was filled with mud-brick benches and a bunch of Arabians just waiting to give us looks of disgust. I trailed him as he found an empty table in a corner of the place. The dining room had two entrances; the one we had came in from, and another just two or three meters from our table. Reflex was a lot of things; none of those things made him complacent in Ramsguard.

We sat down opposite to each other. He held a hoof up in the air. I looked at him curiously. I saw someone from the counter at the front come to us. Reflex let his hoof come down on the table between us. The mare that came over to us had a paper pad in her mouth and a pencil in a strap on her clothing. Her face was long and otherwise not pleased.

“I’ll order for you.” He told me quickly. Before looking at her and speaking in rapid fire arabian. I let my eyes close for a second as I felt inadequate once again. How can I be critical of an organisation's treatment of a people when I can’t even speak their language? On impulse I reached out with a hoof of mine and laid it on his. It felt nice feeling his body under mine, comforting in an alien place, which was funny, considering he was the one who dragged me out here.

After that little bit of speaking, the mare walked off and we were free to talk. It had been a different evening than I had expected, but wasn’t that usually a good thing?

---===*===---

Unleavened bread is good, and the things these people could do with greens made the cafeteria anywhere in Rangerland taste like bunk. I had to admit that Reflex had good taste in food. There had been a lull in our conversation when the food arrived, rightly so.

“So, how exactly did you find this place?” I asked him as he finished cramming the last of the food down his gullet.

“Ice, when we take initiates on patrols we take them through the safest sections of Ramsguard. When one of them asked what Arabians ate and another responded by saying that they ate shit, I set the record straight. I asked an arabian about a place to eat, they told me about this place. I had the pony who responded with the shit comment put on latrine duty for a month, and the one who had asked the question and the others come here with me. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be good, just that they wouldn’t literally be eating feces but you know what they say about pleasant surprises.”

“They’re rare... And pleasant?” I said to him before letting out a solitary laugh.

“Hah, you still have that same sense of humor. Don’t worry, I won’t let the others know that you’re not a pessimist under that shell.”

I laughed loudly enough to draw the attention of the other patrons.

It was only luck that had me look at the pair of ponies that entered from the entrance we had come from. Both were males, and both were wearing the thicker clothing that most put on when the sun came down. Their walk was stilted, and it put me on edge. Their eyes scanned around before touching our alcove and then suddenly looking away.

“Reflex, those guys are freaking me out. Don’t look at them, just follow my line of sight.” I didn’t see his face. My head was sitting in such a way that I looked nearly asleep while keeping them in my peripheral vision. In that vision I saw them walk over to an alcove adjacent to ours. I thought I caught a bulge on one of their sides. Both of them had hoods laying around their necks.

“Do you think that they’re armed?” Reflex asked me. I yawned and turned to face him.

“One looks like he is, and the other is probably armed as well,” I whispered to him.

He then pushed his lips against mine. I opened my mouth. We pulled our bodies over the table and angled them so that one of our sides couldn’t be seen by the possible attackers. He pulled out a service pistol and laid in on the table obscured by our bodies. I had mine in a thigh holster. He seemed to read my mind. The hoof that had gone for his gun was now pulled up and around my neck. From their point of view, it might have looked like I was about to rub one out in front of them.

No, I pulled my piece from its place. We had a single shot at this, especially considering the way one of them glanced at his side again and again. Both of us simultaneously bent down and grabbed our pistols. Mouth-held or not, we were both good shots. All we were waiting for was a chance to rock and roll.

Author's Note

Hey guys, it feels weird posting things on this site again. And well, to any reader who made it this far, thank you for giving this story and by extension me the time of day.

Grounded, Dust And Death (III)

Grounded, Dust And Death.

It was a chilly day. The fifth day of the fifth month. Progress had been slow for them. And yet, they came regardless. The screech of an aircraft passing overhead had many of us cursing. I wasn’t one of them. I swallowed what came in the tin can. We’d been waiting for the next advance.

I had never expected this to happen. Hunkered down with others from the entire empire. Yes, the wind was bitter, but the intermittent sound of artillery chilled us more. When the shells began to explode near us, we knew that it’d be better underground. And so we went under. Under in this case meant a system of tunnels built under our entrenched position. They were a defense that had held. That could be said for the upjumped holes. Waiting in those holes was a normality. In the last week we had been under bombardment roughly forty hours.

The moments of combat were a blessing.

The warming of your blood is a compensation, even if warm blood is soon spilled.

This was the war that had dragged on. It started with the nation to the south and their war; Celestians, sun worshipers with their gold encrusted idols. Our ruler Grimkeep the fifth had decided that the winds were on our side as the Celestians were bleeding in a war with their rebellious colony a continent away. Sall’han, an arid place, which had been their prized rose, became their thorn.

How else could it have gone? It was obvious in hindsight… Celestians are a lot of things. But they have a memory that’s nearly as good as ours. The colony and the homeland settled their differences quickly. The Crystal throne had menaced them in the past.

The Treaty Of Redress, was unexpected.

The combined powers of the Sun had us pushed into our own lands. We could bleed them, but they were not stopping. The radios would speak of our heroic underwater boats tearing into their food supplies and munition factories. And apparently the Freehold of Zebrica had declared for us. All of it seemed for nought from the trenches. From inside someone spoke to me.

“You think they’ll go over the top today Perm?” A buck by the name of Ruby had broken my thoughts. I turned my head, feeling the weight of my helmet in the process, to look into his eyes.

“The bombardment usually precedes an advance. Did you and Gallant repair that machine gun?”

“Shit, I need to check with him. Supply is going to shit. Losing Diamond…”

Clouded Diamond. The only person out here that had any sway with the logistic corp. He had been outside replacing the barrel of one of the company’s water cooled machine guns. The shot had came from the trench a mile away. Maybe if we had seen a glint… No. Its was the price we paid. Anyone here could pay it at any time. We all knew it, but to see it on our doorstep.

“Just be ready, get warm. It’s something those idolaters up there won’t have.”

“Yeah.” He said before walking over to his blankets.

I made it for our radio station. Upon entering, Trace gave me a lukewarm smile. To be fair, it was a better than the expression rest of us had. We ambled up to each other, her steps bouncy even after all of this. What would it require to put a stop to it? My face contorted from the images that train of thought created.

She nuzzled my neck, she always felt warm.

“They’re pushing again aren’t they?” Her voice had a song like quality to it. Her wings and burnt orange coat sealed the deal, everyone who knew her called her Sunny.

For some reason we had gotten along. Her parents had been servants of the state. There aren’t many pegasi in the north. Couriers and weather controllers are well valued even today. It hadn’t many years since the displacement. A century ago the north had been engulfed by the remains of the Crystal Empire. Their great leader had died a long while before that, but the majority of his heirs had little ambition. Grimkeep the first of his name.

In my readings he had always been a great one. Even as his older siblings wasted resources on trivialities, he had quietly plotted. As accidents piled up and various foreign entities killed all of those above him on the line of succession. There were accusations made but nothing was ever proven. After his older sister died from a Stomach illness he took the crystal throne.

That led to a militarisation, a solid decade of it. In the north of Equus a series of brief, nearly bloodless shows of force gave him territory that would have made Sombra salivate. His offer had been simple, honorary Crystal citizenship with all of it’s benefits and duties. He was a fair enough stallion, or so the books said. He took the rest of us and raised us up to civilisation. Brought us steam and learning, the printing press. Things that the Sunny south had had for a century or more. The books told us that as Grimkeep the first passed on, he had told us that the only way forward was to disavow the parlour tricks that had dominated us after the break up of the three tribes.

History had proven him correct. Factories in every city, a furnace in every home and a railway junction everywhere that mattered. Through knowledge we had prospered. Through trade with the south we had found the world was more than happy to trade with us, more than weary to have us as anything more than a scattered series of mineral extraction zones.

Blood is Iron and Iron is our blood.

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” I said to my Bunkmate.

“You’re shivering. Ahh, Perm you’ve got to let me look at that wound.” She wasn’t really bunkmate, we had no bunks down below; however we shared both a pile of blankets and a common cranny. A pressure wave pushed through us then. The shelling wasn’t going to be one of those short feint attacks. They meant to collapse our positions. The not-so-funny joke was on them. We built well.

Well enough.

“Okay, I have a minute.” I said to her in a near monotone. I wanted sleep more than almost anything.

And so as she told me about the things spewing out of the radio, we walked down a recessed room. There in a secluded corner we had ended up.

I had met her back in basic after a conscription tore me out of Maidenpool.

We had found each other because we were both outsiders. The fiftieth infantry regiment had no else from Maidenpool, and no other pegasus. I was happy I had found her. She could be a nuisance, but she knew more about circuitry and electrical arcana then I had ever met. Funny, considering my glyph was an errant spark. I liked talking to her about any number of things. As a soldier on a front, we were both well acquainted with tedium.

So, as we made to lay down she grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me down. She smiled at me. “I wanted to sleep. I don’t want to die tired.”

She dropped herself onto me with aplomb. “You are ridiculous, I hope you know that.”

“Regardless. Now mirror, how does my face look?” I said to the person using me like a bed of straw.

“A mirror without light isn’t very useful?” She bent down and locked lips with me. Her front legs stroked down my coat. I pulled a blanket from the pile with my telekinesis, it was draped on the both of us. My horn continued to glow. The depredations of the tunnel seemed to dim. She was the silver lining for this entire venture.

As she let her weight drop onto me, we both sighed contentedly.

Soon thereafter, with our bodies warmed and dry we passed out.

---===*===---

The trenches were quiet at 0300. The Barrages, for all of their intensity, had stopped the week past. So the Celestians had learned their blooded lesson. Our trenches were assaulted less than our cities. The entire western seaboard had had the guns of Celestian fleet turned on them. Every radio broadcast, they weren’t hesitant to tell us in graphic detail the depredation of the enemy. In Maidenpool, an ammunition manufactory had been hit, a water treatment plant turned into a hole in the ground, and- the broadcaster had teared up when uttering this - a kindergarten.

There were other places that had been struck by seaborne artillery and the bombing raids had been a constant in this conflict. But your home is your home. My parents lived there; they drank from the tap like anyone else. For them, water from a tap was a kind of practical witchcraft. They had killed children, many children. When my thoughts drifted in those lonely nights, my thoughts returned to a single notion.

We were safer here in our holes than they were in their homes.

Safer; more safe.

My rifle was slung over my right shoulder. It shifted laterally as I made my patrol with Drying Wool. We were from entirely different sides of the empire, and yet there was a companionable silence hanging in the air between us. That night, the moon was black.

Hours passed and our bodies tired. After Wool heard something, we stiffened and searched the area. The both us observed a normal section of trench. After conferring with each other, he spoke to me supererogatorily.

“You have my prayers,” he said pensively, without looking at me.

I locked eyes with him, a question on the verge of being said spread my lips.

“We see you sitting with us in the main room, you aren’t there there. Permittivity, I worry about the person who stands beside me. Maidenpool is big, what you’re afraid of…” He stopped. His hooves received a lengthy, piercing glare.

I looked at him, my face stony, for a good number of seconds.

“Thank you,” I said in a dour tone. I didn’t want to hurt him. He was a good buck, and a better soldier than I ever was. But, for me, certain subjects were charged. Some conferred a charge that hurt, and one or two would kill.

I started up again. The trench was life and life didn’t stop when an obstacle appeared; except, of course, in the case of death. Wool followed. Time passed and we came to the edge of our patrol route, and doubled back.

---===*===---

Maybe, if I had been faster, maybe if our ears had been angled the right way, if I hadn’t had my attention fixed on the letters I had sent back home and the subsequent lack of response, maybe. We had made it to a Tee in the trench where the furthermost line connected to a utility trench that led to our regiment’s living quarters. The trenches weren’t built to any specification; the section we were standing in was a meter and a half wide.

I remember, distinctly, the crunch of a booted hoof striking a snow covered plank. It came from the utility trench to our right. Wool turned to face the noise and was stabbed in the throat with a combat knife. He saved my life, even as his life spurted out in time with his dying hearts beats. My rifle and I spun to face it. In the corner of my eyes I saw the iridescent glow of telekinesis coming from the utility trench. The magic user was frantically trying to pull their knife out of Wool’s meaty neck. So, with the mechanical precision born of training, the clasp of my rifle’s sheath was opened. Finally, they freed their knife as I leveled my rifle at them.

The sound of the rifle was deafening, the muzzle flash was blinding, and the scream of pain they made as the rifle round tore through the center of their chest was left unseen and unheard. I had time to cycle the bolt of the rifle before a dark silhouette lunged at me from behind the shot pony.

Their weight caused me to hit the wall of the trench at speed. I tried to break their head with the heavy butt of my rifle, only for them to catch it with a hoof swipe. I had a half second to bring my head down. White hot pain slipped through the chemicals my body was releasing. A line just under my jaw was leaking blood. None of this stopped the large earth pony from slashing at me again with his blade. I attempted to sidestep, only to have him cut into the top of my muzzle.

He placed his rear leg in my way, and the moment of instability when I ran into it was enough for him to lunge once more. The lance of pain this brought was different from the other slashes, I didn’t know then what he had done. My eyes closed.I lit my horn, brightly.

The blue light was a nova in that trench. In that moment, I knew I had to act. In the moment before I seized the blade of the pony I had shot, I observed the length of blade embedded in my side. That could be my death. The thought was passing, like a commentary on the merit of aluminum siding; decidedly trivial, and that too passed. The knife on the ground found itself encased in my magic before being forced into his neck.

Something in me snapped; a wall built in my head broke, the gas contained expanded beyond its containment, my telekinesis shifted. The chilled blade now had electrical potential flowing through it for a fraction of a fraction of second, before the blood and gristle of the body shorted the circuit. My wounded face warped into a blood-soaked sneer. I looked down at the bodies with the aid of a softer horn glow. The shot pony had been a mare, and the one who had stabbed me was male. His heart had stopped after the electricity permeated his flesh. I could see it in the way his body lay.

Cooked flesh is easier to pull blades from, I learned that day. It was a brutal slash to the dying mare’s throat that ended her life. I do not regret it.

I forced myself deeper into the utility trench, my blood leaving a trail any hunter could have followed, any vexed butcher, any spectre of death.

I collapsed a dozen meters from the sight of the fight. As a consequence of the solitary gunshot, a trio of drowsy ponies found my body blood-covered and going into shock. One of them had medical training.

The consequent being that I lived.

---===*===---

Waking up after a session of violent bloodletting is never pleasant. To be fair, the same is true for all grievous injury. In this case I could feel thin lines of dulled pain on my muscle and on my chin, and a deep fissure in my side. So that’s what it feels to have a cavity packed with gauze. Everything around me was dulled. I could tell that I was drugged.

With an effort I turned my head in a sweeping arc. I was in a wide corridor lying on a thin cot, a thin cot that was seemingly replicated several dozen times in both directions. On those cots ponies were being cared for as best as they could be. Seeing, the sheer number of ponies in discomfort and various degrees of dismemberment would have been sobering, in any other mental state. In a detached way I noted the intravenous fluid mix I was being given. Sometime later I theorized that the tube was the way this feeling of liquid bliss was entering me. And enhancing my existence.

I made eye contact with a nurse pony after an indefinite amount of time. She made her way to me through the crowded medical station before stopping in front of me.

“How are you feeling… Permit…” She asked this with an apologetic tone.

“You can just call me Perm,” I simplified this matter with just a couple words.

She looked at me appraisingly for a moment. I would later learn that my name was written on a sheet of pertinent medical information at the front of my bed.

“Well, how are you feeling Perm?”

“Honestly, I’ve seen better days. Not recently, mind you,” I stated to the nurse. I wasn’t lying to the mare. The recovery from the knife wounds was a good deal better than receiving the wounds.

“Alright, that is good to hear. The next meal is another two hours. And let me answer your next question for you: you have been unconscious for just about two days.”

She ended her statement with a false cheeriness that I could sense even in my novel mental state. She had obviously had a hard day, the wear was evident in her eyes and her face. If she had been better rested she would have been quite pretty. As it stood I had one slightly odd request.

“Miss, are there any periodicals that I could read?” I asked of the mare. A mare that could have used some of the substance flowing through my veins.

“Tomorrow I believe I could find a newspaper for you, most of the morning issues we received have already been employed. However, could a penny dreadful sate your hunger?” She said to me before glancing down at the list of pertinent information and curiously, my face.

“You previously stated that a meal would be served two hours hence; why would I eat a book?” I said confused tone.

The mare uttered a slight chuckle, her bunned hair reminded me of Trace- nothing else did the two mares share. Tracy was a lightly coated and dark maned pegasus, with a rambunctious demeanor. This mare was a dutiful earth mare whose colour scheme reminded me of the ashy skies in The Imperial City.

“No, in all seriousness, I would quite enjoy perusing such a book. On another note, how ravaged is my face? I’ve seen you glance at it as often as I have watched you look at the other patients’ missing limbs.”

“Perm, it is worse now than it will be. That said, the scars on the bridge of your muzzle and under your jaw will stay with you. As of this moment I am watching your wounds, like a hawk, for any sign of infection.”

“I expected as much. Well, in any case, thank you for telling me the truth.”

She turned away from me, to shield her face from my eyes. This was before telling me in a strained voice that I was welcome. The matter of the book was left unsaid, though its effects would be at least as pronounced as my altered visage.

---===*===---

An hour later, an hour before my next meal. I might add, superfluously, the nurse had brought me that book. I gave her a quizzical look. Apparently, her definition of a penny dreadful was different than mine. This book was old. There was no crude cover art on the front, only a hardcover and a title written in flowing script.

Arcana Magicea

“Thank you, miss?”

“Sallow Smile. Now have a good read, but let your body rest. You need it more than you think, you soldiers always do.” The mare left in much the same way as she did before. Some part of me hoped that assisting me would leaven her spirits. There would be no confirmation, one way or the other.

The book, I opened with a tendril of blue magic. It was not a surprise to me that the text in the book was tiny, and the words themselves arcane. But, those were the easier things to infer from the title. The foreword was by a professor of cultural studies. It was a compilation and translation of folk tales and questionable historical documents.

As a book it wasn’t that old, no, it seemed to be an old text book for this mare’s class.

“The spear in the stone?” I said to myself. Neither of the wounded earth ponies beside me noticed my words.

---===*===---

All told, I spent a fortnight in that hospital. Sallow Smile and I had a couple good laughs and a similar number of serious conversations. Many of those conversations were somber. She came from the other side of the empire, just as Drying Wool had. The stallion laying on the cot to the immediate right of me I also got to know. He had taken a touch of shrapnel to his barrel and neck. Head Wind was his name, a large stallion with the kind of musculature sculpturists would die to get their hooves on. Not to say that he was a pretty stallion, quite the opposite, in fact. His demeanor was coarse and he wasn’t on the friendliest terms with Smile. But he was a veteran and he was a person who was in a convenient location. The large earth pony and I got on as well as could be hoped.

In a turn of events that I had not predicted, he was interested in the book as well. If only for the entertainment value, it had illustrations. The nurses saw no problem in both of us sitting together after meals, reading the book. To be more truthful, I read it out loud for us both. I wasn’t sure if he was literate, and I wasn’t going to ask. No, it was pleasant just having someone being next to you. It helped keep me distracted from all of my lingering doubts. One of the first things I had done upon waking had been taking some stationary and writing a letter to Trace, and one to my parents. Throughout my stay, I’d received nothing. Well, nothing except the roundabout attention of someone who socially wouldn’t be caught dead reading about the fairies and forest gods of yore.

So, on a colder night than usual, the two of us were sitting on my cot. The light wasn’t the best, and I knew for a fact that he hadn’t bathed in the time that I had known him. We were enjoying what was the third tale enclosed in the book.

“So that buck’s cock just up and disappeared? I mean I heard about it falling off after gettin’ smelly like and green, but…” He leaned over to me, practically speaking into my ear, before chuckling loudly. It was an odd sensation, his breath was blazing against my ear. That same ear twitched before I made it lie down.

“I would assume that it fell off and he just didn’t notice. Also, that is the most horrid thing that I have ever heard. Though, I think the magical disappearing cock is the worst that I have ever read.” I said, bumping shoulders with what had become my institutional best friend. ‘

“The best thing I ever read was a sign that said: ‘Hawt Mare n’ mores’.” His serious expression in the incandescent lighting gave way under my sly one.

“I assume, because it is you that I’m talking about, that you went inside such an establishment. Pray tell, what was the ‘ n’ mores’?”

He stared at me for a right second before speaking.

“That was a griffon, she had the biggest damn shanks on her. And the noises she made were gooder than a turkey dinner.” Something about that boast seemed off, but honestly the confirmation that he could read was sufficiently novel. At that moment I read nothing into it.

“Well, my carnal conquerer of a comrade, do you wish to start the next story?” I asked him, both to change the subject, and well, to obtain the information. It was getting to be around midnight, and sleeping does spur healing. And healing was slowly creating and removing the itch on the inside of my chest cavity and on the bridge of my muzzle. The blade, for all the pain it caused, had avoided my lungs.

“I’m just gonna assume that first part was a nice thing. And yeah, starting something doesn’t mean it gon’ get done in that sitting. As much as I enjoy your company sitting like this, it’s doing a number on my ass.” He said to me quickly before continuing. “Actually,” he said before laying on his back with his rear legs laying off the end of my cot. “This works, just uh, sit back too.” So I did as requested. It was comfortable, physically, but the both of us had our heads and barrels pointed up and down at the book being held between our bodies. That space, being very small, led to the book being balanced on the ends of both of our ribcages.

“The Monster Of The Iron Hills, And Its End.”

“It just told us the ending, right in the title! And don’t even get me started if it’s one of those stories where a big buck with lots of meat on im’ hacks a monster to death. But, doesn’t go on to rut the shit out of the mare locked in with monster!”

“Only a single story was similar to what you described. In any case, virtue isn’t something to sneer at. Chivalrous, you are not.”

“Yeah, yeah, the last mare I fucked said the same thing. But her voice was a tad bit shriller than yours.” I just looked at him, disparagingly. I turned the page to an see an illustration of this story's’ protagonist. She was an average sized cerulean blue mare with a mane and horn the colour of ivory. A set of iron reinforced leather armour adorned her body.

“I take it back, I can take another speech about virtues if I getta see more of that flank!” He said to me in a hurried tone. He had this odd propensity to suddenly gain energy, though it was usually precipitated by sexual stimuli. I merely chuckled and moved the book up for a moment. A lightning-like dart of my eyes, and I had my answer.

“Good, good, I was wondering,” I said under my breath. The book slid back into place between us. So, in that next second, he lightly tapped my back leg with his.

“I ain’t a whore, iffin you wanna see the goods, pay me or dine me.” He said to me in a harsh manner; However, there was a softness in it, a playful softness.

“Whore or not, I needed to check your blood flow, you did enjoy the image of the mare. Unless, you would rather have Smiles check that to see if it still works. You wouldn’t want it to fall off…” He kicked me again. And this time he had the contrary expression.

“It works, trust me. If you have to check, I guess you could. I can’t fault a horny buck like yourself.”

I felt a flush as he said this. I was more than a little glad that the most powerful light source in the hall at night was my horn. It was that touch of huskiness in his voice that caused my blood flow to shift. Some part of my mind insisted this had been some completely normal teasing between bucks, but it wasn’t quite up to snuff. I killed my horn light and turned to him.

“Oh, no it just disappeared. My horn. Now you're the horniest buck in this bed!” I said with vehemence that was only half falsity.

He slunk out of bed, his weight lifting on the bed made the entire cot recoil. He outweighed me, that was for sure, and his sheath was objectively handsome. I had a number of strange thoughts that night. My normal trains of thought being redirected to foreign rails; exotic rails and somewhat frightening ones as well. He began to snore in his own cot almost immediately. That certainly didn’t help allay any of those thoughts.

---===*===---

We did not speak of that interaction, but we did resume what had been our routine. Consuming food, reading the story with the attractive mare protagonist, and speaking in amicable terms. Though there were others around us, we mostly stayed together. Sallow called us each others’ shadows. It was a strange fortnight. I think that the novelty of a situation is an indicator for how long it feels. In that hospital, reading that long yet enthralling series of tales, it was as if time itself had stopped. It behaved in that manner for at least the first week and a half.

Three things tore me from this warped sense of time. The first was something I had dreaded even before arriving in this place. This was an answer to the question that, likely, led to me spending time in this place. I had spent every moment of Mail Call in the throes of hope and dread, this event reminded me of that quantum mechanics thought experiment. Graphene’s Goose. It involved a box with a goose inside. If an electron spin detector registered a positive spin, it would release a deadly gas into the chamber. If it was a negative spin, then it would be left unreleased. The confounding thing is that from the outside there would be no way to know either way. Graphene had invented it as a way to show how absurd the predictions of quantum mechanics were when applied to a real world scenario. Everytime mail call was announced, I felt like an experimenter staring at the sealed box.

When the mail pony came by and hoofed me a letter, I could feel my diaphragm contract, I looked at the letter for a moment. It was enough time for my mind to become a dusted chalkboard, rapidly being filled with possibilities, all of them being more horrific than the last.

I felt a wave of surprise when a hoof softly impacted my shoulder. Head Wind had placed it there, which was the first time he had displayed our rapport like that. The mail pony had as many letters to deliver as I had worries plaguing my mind. I was sitting on the end of my cot and Wind had come up behind me, leaving a foreleg on my bed to support himself. His breathing was audible from behind me, the wet rasp present in his baritone was nearly as comforting as his hoof on my fur.

“Come on mate, if ya don’t start breathin’ again, I’m gonna pull that paper out and read it myself, mostly on account of me bein’ curious and you not being awake.” He said this in his conversational tone. If I wasn’t familiar with this stallion, I would have taken offense.

“That implies that you can read multiple sentences without having a stroke,” I said this before turning my body to face Head Wind. I unconsciously laid my other hoof on his. It was shaking, even as my voice stayed as placid as a frozen lake.

“We both know that I can read just fine when I’m stroking. Now open the letter, Perm,” he spoke the last line with a dour, tender tone. He was guilt tripping me into facing the truth.

I pulled the letter onto my lap with a single flash of telekinetic force. I opened the letter with the bread knife I kept close to my bed.

It was a letter from the city of Maidenpool. It said, in effect, that my parents had died in their apartment. It had been struck by naval artillery. There were condolences and there was an attached apology for not getting this information to me sooner. Apparently, the indiscriminate shelling had built up quite a backlog of unidentified bodies.

At the very least, the Celestians had the decency to leave their teeth in identifiable shape. The shaking had become my very own earth quake, as if the earth itself was swallowing me up, as it had my parents. In that moment I could have killed a city of Celestians. In that moment, I wanted to storm the enemy positions with a knife in my teeth and a feeling of invincibility granted by faith in a just creator.

I had made several surveys of this hospital. It had nearly three thousand patients, and was covered in a light dusting of snow, and I knew that I could leave if I desired it. A one-man crusade was the only right course of action to my mind.

I moved to get up. I felt the pressure on my shoulder increase. Wind was keeping me down. And on some level, that was enough to keep me sedate. If I wanted to leave, I needed to do it without causing a scene.

“Mate, you always talk about thinking. It’s your thing, you scrawny son of a camel. Don’t stop doing it!”

His voice had a cold intensity to it. He had put my problems onto himself. He was expending effort on my bettering my existence, or at the very least, preventing me from worsening it. I had only known him for less than a fortnight; this was absurd, every part of it. I wanted to go out and die, to find something to die for, because as I stared into the abyss of my future life, I could see nothing worth living for.

My lungs released the air that had been trapped in their lower sections for a painful epoch. As I did this, the pressure on my shoulder diminished.

My jaw was clenched, the muscles in my body were flush with blood and ready to move. Every part of me was waiting to avenge. Every part of me was equally impotent. Every part was equally unable to change what had happened.

My healing wounds felt warm, comforted by the adrenaline and the endorphins released by my brain.

“I hear ya, if ya wanna go outside, with me, I’m ready,” He said with rapidity. If I was going to make a break for it, he was going to be the one that stopped me. Ergo, he wanted to stop me doing something that I would regret. At some future point.

With limbs that felt like live wires, I moved off of the bed in a controlled, borderline graceful motion. A single continuous telekinetic tendril positioned my coat over my body. It was thick and it stank. It would work. He followed in my wake, and, at this point, we were cleared to leave the place for walks, short ones, at least. In the span of time it took me to walk to the nearest exit with my Earth Pony guardian, the odor of decay struck me as I trotted past the F-Wing of this field hospital. This place was a place of decay. The exit called to me. Outside the air was chilled, but at the very least, it was lively.

---===*===---

Perhaps a kilometer from the hospital, a hill was visible. Normally, it was the kind of hill that was made to be crested, just large enough to be impressive from the bottom and with a steepness that emboldened you rather than intimidated. I had made my way up to the top of it on two occasions, Head Wind accompanying me on both.

Some might find it odd for patients to do this kind of strenuous activity. All I can say is this; the first time we had hated it, and only finished because of the kind of free floating competition two companions have between them. The second time was considerably easier. Letting two wounded soldiers take charge of what would be called physical therapy actually worked, in this instance. Just because something is within your operational purview does not mean that you will truly treat it as such. No, the staff had greater issues on their minds.

The two of us had maintained a sheet of silence between the two of us as we made our way there. An unspoken agreement was made as we walked south, towards the hill, and to the front, where we had both bled. With legs that were impelled by raw emotion, I had taken the lead. Even then, I spared a glance behind me every so often. His pace was mechanical and calculated, in comparison. Every time I let my eyes fall on him, his met them. From the slight distortion in the shape of his left cheek I could tell that he had the inner flesh of it between his molars.

As we came to the foot of the hill path, I stopped and turned towards him.

“What would you have me do, oh great determiner of others’ lives?” I barked at him, my voice cracking with desperate intensity.

“Just climb the damn hill. Then we’ll have a little chat. Just the two of us,” He said simply, with a less affected accent than usual. The idea that I had cracked this boisterous stallion’s veneer stung me.

The trip to the top seemed to be of minute duration, and accomplished with greater ease than any before. My skin, under a layer of sweaty insulation, was achieving a new equilibrium with the outside air. The odd gust of wind bit into my face. But, even as these sensations registered, my mind only gave them the smallest of attentions. A mental image of my mother sitting peaceably with father in the room as the sirens went off couldn’t leave my mind’s eye. My parents were similar in that they paid little mind to something that seemed improbable. It would have been quick, I desperately hoped. Concussion waves acted in that manner. They were affable, a fine way to die, even if they had a habit of nudging your funeral in the closed casket direction. The notion that their building had collapsed and left them buried alive, or anything analogous, it was sealed from my conscious mind like a battleship taking on water; the flooding sections were separated by bulkheads. What was drowning inside said sections, I couldn’t know. The reasons manifold, as always.

For reasons I could only guess at, he had fallen significantly behind. In hindsight, I believe he was thinking about his words before he said them.

So, there was a moment where I was alone, king of the hill, the coniferous trees dusted with so much snow, my oh-so-static subjects. Like the rear segment of a compass needle, my eyes were drawn to the south. Somewhere out there, hordes of Celestians sharpened their blades.

Even if I had lost something, there was still country and in country, there was hope. War was hell, but only the most naive among us thought it was going to be like the stories in that book. No, in war, the innocents always suffer the most, and fighters leave what they once were as a matter of course, of necessity.

This war, I could live with. I could die for it.

My internal monologue ended as I heard the crunch of snow from behind me.

“Perm, I’ve seen ponies act like this before. It don’t end well. I feel like camel shit, making you open that letter. Can ya tell me what was in it?”

“My parents were killed in an artillery bombardment,” I said without looking at him. Somehow, that rage had cooled. I knew now that I could wait until the hospital truly cleared me. My voice was monotone, softened yet containing a core of steel.

“Fuck. Permittivity, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Shit, I knew that it wasn’t something like your cat dying or some shit, but fuck.”

“You were right, even if you didn’t know what precipitated… this,” as I finished the statement my eyes drifted down my chest all the way to the hooves sunk into the snow. I didn’t expect what happened in the next moment. The sound of him approaching wasn’t surprising, in and of itself it was like the sun being slowly occluded by the earth to my left. Anger and fatalism was cast aside by the feeling of Head Wind’s muzzle pressing against my neck. The gesture cleared my head of definite dark thoughts and replaced them with many muddled ones. These weren’t cast of black ice, these thoughts had a tinge of connection.

“Hey, I gotta have a certain somepony finish that story, ya know, the one with the real-ly ruttable ass…” His voice was husky, yet reaching. This stallion had become my friend, my fellow knight of the cafeteria table. Without truly thinking, I pushed my neck against him before tapping my flank against his.

“Wind, thank you for keeping an eye on me, well, keeping an eye on everything but my rump,” I stopped my speech as I tried to form the right sentence.

“Awe, but that’s your best feature,” he said lightly. He had pressed his side and shoulder against me. So, we had come to another unspoken agreement. We would speak of this taboo attraction in jesting euphemisms, for the most part. It was better for us this way. We were both deeply comfortable with each other and very unsettled by the way ponies would see us, how our internalized moral senses were pushing against the very idea. In my case, I was grasping for anything that could distract me from my second newest revelation. The poison.

“No, don’t lie, what drew you in was my comely visage.” My head turned as I said this. He was taller than me by a slight margin, but his head was lowered.

“Can I say anything that’d help?” This entire situation felt off, he had followed me as I bled off enough emotion to transmogrify an inconsolable rage into a brittle numbness.

“Neither of us wronged the other… T-thank you,” I said with a stutter. In the back of my eyes I could feel muscles tensing; I knew the crucial damn was at risk. There was a silent period, of some duration. That magnetic attraction eventually pulled vision to the south. I remembered the night that had sent me here. The sight of Wool being wounded mortally flashed before me, and the vision of arcing energy seemed to burn itself onto my retinas once again. If I died now, or soon, I would fail to discover what that flash of power was, what killing someone who only had the same nationality of my parents would feel like, or, strangest of all… what this male beside me had between us.

If either of us had looked up at the right moment, we would have seen a glint. A poor mare’s comet, a harbinger, Number three.

“Permittivity, I give a shit about you,” He said tenderly. At that, I turned to face him. There was no time like the present.

“That heartens me, and scares me, yet-” I threw a fore leg around his neck. Really, there shouldn’t be a difference- I impelled my head forward-there was. His lips felt chapped, but taut. His form stiffened. But, after a second or two, it slackened, just before he drew up one of his legs and wrapped it around my neck. My tongue, randily pressed against his closed mouth, as if his lips were a guarded castle and my tongue was an invaders’ ram. He relented as I let out a noise of gratification. As my wet appendage entered his maw, he returned my noise with a lusty moan.

It was different, that couldn’t be denied; it was also equally erotic.

After a right minute of kisses and brusque caresses, we broke away. The need for oxygen isn’t a social more; able to be subverted, but required to live. For reasons unknown, the visibility of our mixing exhales was arousing.

“N’ mores?” I said in the manner of a question. It wasn’t. The large stallion tittered as he shifted his weight between his thick legs.

My impulsivity was something I tended to suppress, and so there was a moment where my blue tinted orbs drifted away from my-companion-to the south that called. I let a deep breath out of my chest as I felt him place his head against my cheek. I knew in that moment that he would find out first hoof how sensitive my ears were; they could be used as a barbaric lever to manipulate me, Trace had used them that way.

I thought without realizing the gravity of said thought. The noise of Wind pulling in air told me he was on the precipice of speech. But out in the farthest background a blinding light made itself known. In my memory, I remember that the wind was blowing south, later I would learn exactly how important that was.

Head Wind spotted this aberration as quickly as I did. My jaw was making its way towards my hooves at a laudable pace, whereas Wind continued that intake of breath.

It wasn’t brighter than a thousand suns at this distance, but it was a fierce competitor with the setting sun to our left. It was like a boisterous cousin of our home star decided decided it would be our guest. The noise was indescribable, like the earth was itself being played by the instruments of ponykind.

“If that was ours, there will be peace in our time, if it was theirs…” There was nothing else to say as we watched the beginning of a new age. Our personal heat was forgotten for a time. In the dying light of both stars, we lost ourselves. As we meandered our way back into the oppressive dark, I could feel something change inside.

The what of it was as obscured as that mad torch’s mechanics.

But, oddly, the why was all too evident.

Why We Fight (XIX)

The motes of light swirled continuously as they had for a century. Necrotic green mixed with a black that reminded me of the night sky. I was staring into the balefire egg again. Something about it was beautiful, but I knew it was a deadly, almost malevolent object. It was once birthed by a creature of legend, a dragon. What did it say when the villain’s master plan was for a pony to use a weapon like this? I didn’t know, but as I forced myself to look away from it, I knew that I shouldn’t spend time around it.

“Icepick?” Crescent Moon said politely enough as she walked into the tent where we were storing some of our munitions, including it.

“Y-yeah?” I said as I turned to face her. My armour was sitting in a central area, being worked on by some of the rangers that had the skills required to check over the auto repair protocols.

“I’ve been talking to some of the Arab prisoners,” Crescent Moon said before pausing to look at it too.

“It’s too beautiful,” I said to her. She shook her head and looked back at me.

“I think it’s watching us,” Crescent said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Let’s leave this tent.” I didn’t argue the point.

Moments later, we closed the tent flap and stood in the cooling evening air. Activity surrounded the camp, hunting parties had ventured out, and construction parties were busy felling trees with makeshift tools. She met my gaze again, the lanky Arab mare not having to look up to do so.

“They told me something very important-”

“Which is?” I interrupted her, it was almost like she loved to have the optimal dramatic effect.

“Those defences pointed at the jungle weren’t made for us,” she said pointedly.

“Who were they for? And why haven’t the Imperials talked to Permittivity about them?” I asked, wondering why the fuck I hadn’t heard about this earlier.

“I don’t think they trust him, truly. And as to who those enemies are, I’m not sure, because they aren’t sure. All I know is that the patrols sent into the jungle were likely to not come out again. Only one survivor ever emerged from the jungle, and they spoke only of ghosts attacking them. They expired shortly after making it back to camp, multiple stab wounds and lacerations covering their body,” Crescent finished and looked at me with a tinge of fear in her eyes.

“Ghosts huh,” I said before smiling slightly. “Well, I guess it’s good we’re already on high alert and have sentries posted out in the jungle… Oh, fuck!” I said before starting towards our makeshift communication station.

“What’s the status of our forward sentry post?” I yelled at the watch standing ranger.

“Uh, I was just about to tell you, they haven’t reported back in an hour,” the watchstander said to me.

“Celestia fuck!” I paused and thought this out. “Is anyone ready to go search for them?!” Many hooves raised into the air. Ironsight was among them.

“Okay, we’re gonna take six ponies, myself included,” I said quickly, before starting towards my armour.

“Three Steelies, three camos?” Serenity said, before meeting Ironsight’s gaze. “C’mon it’s a good way to differentiate…”

“She isn’t wrong!” I said as I keyed the opening to my armour and stepped inside, my helmet was on top of a tree stump a meter away, and moments later I felt the hiss of the overpressure system. My leg ached a little as my pressure was stuffed into the wounded flesh. I bit my lip and turned around, quickly testing the actuators. They were solid.

“Let’s go!”

---===*===---

The walk through the jungle was tense, everyone had their heads on a swivel as we watched for ponies in power armour stomping out of the foliage. That or those ghosts that the Arabian garrison believed in. My missile launcher was fully stocked, and I still had a full belt loaded in my gun.

Eventually, we made our way to the little outpost, one of the camos with us had been switching off positions with the ponies up here. The first thing we noticed was the lack of violence, there was no blood, no shell casings and everything was methodically taken… It was like we had never been there.

I was standing in the middle of the small clearing smoking a cigarette when a beam of sunlight caught something interesting. At first, I thought it was just a small feather from one of the many, annoying birds on this island. Then I noticed the small wooden shaft attached to it. Fletching…

“Hey Serenity, come over here?” I said to the unicorn ranger.

“What is it Icepick?” She asked naturally. I just pointed to the small dart. Within the second she had picked it up with her magic and was examining it in the small streams of light that made it through the foliage.

“Some kind of dart?” She said after a moment’s examination.

“Yeah, and it wouldn’t do very much damage on its own, it has to be coated with something,” I explained to myself, as much as to her.

“That’s not a steel ranger tactic,” Serenity said ruefully.

“I mean, the fact that half of the forest isn’t on fire pretty much rules out the Steel Rangers penetrating this far into the jungle,” I said with a laugh.

“Hey Icepick, look at this?” Ironsight said from the opposite side of the clearing. I trotted over briskly, before staring at the lichen covered ground. There were hoofprints, but they didn’t look like anything I had ever seen before. There were oddly shaped claw marks alongside a flat surface that pressed heavily into the mud.

“What the fuck made those?” I asked aloud, and the collective shrug that followed from everyone didn’t help matters much.

“No clue, but from the looks of it, those darts wouldn’t pierce armour,” Serenity said before looking at me. “Probably why they didn’t try attacking us.”

“We’ll have to keep someone in full armour at all times out here,” I said doubtfully.

“We aren’t abandoning the post?” Serenity asked questioningly.

“I mean, we could just keep going further into the jungle, towards the mountains,” I said with a contemplative look on my face.

“We did make contact with our ship,” Ironsight said curiously.

“Yeah,” I said, before thinking of something. “We could meet up with them on the south side of the island.”

“That’s a hell of a march,” Ironsight said.

“What if they break our codes?” Serenity also questioned.

“We have a couple of single-use cyphers ready to use in those instances,” Ironsight said to my relief.

“Good shit,” I said before looking down at the ground, a few meters further on. “Follow me, I’m curious about something.”

“By your command,” Ironsight said with a half laugh. “Mare, I can’t believe I took a pay cut and a demotion to join your company.”

“I haven’t been paid in months, and I have a feeling I’ll never get that back pay. For obvious reasons,” I said before meeting the eyes of all the other rangers, Camo or Steely. “But we’re fighting for what we believe in, so that’s a kind of benefit package.”

“I mean, it all comes down to belief in an afterlife, and the value judgements that stem from that,” Serenity said quickly. “If there is such a thing, then fighting for a just cause is kinda worth it. If not-”

“-Then you’re making your life mean something, that’s one hell of a luxury. A luxury not many ponies get,” Ironsight finished for her, a hint of anger sliding through her defences. I needed to talk to her later. She was in a lot of pain, but she was holding it down for all she was worth. That wasn’t healthy either… but it was the ranger way.

The silence that followed was tense. Within a few minutes, we were ready to make our way back, but my mind was elsewhere. I needed to make a decision, whether to go deeper in or re-establish the outpost and plan for a delaying action. That and Permittivity…

---===*===---

“So there are massive creatures with blowguns out there in the jungle,” I said to the assembled ponies. Nearer to the Arabs was Crescent Moon, translating my findings into Arabic. One of them exclaimed and pointed out at the jungle.

“What’s he saying? That they’re out there?” I asked Crescent who smiled wryly.

“Icepick, you have to see the forest for the trees,” the mare paused and looked critically. “That’s the expression correct?” One of the Camos nodded at her. “He’s saying that they’re supposed to climb the trees, and live in them as well.”

“That’s a good insight, and I believe he’s probably right,” I said loudly before turning to face the other assembled ponies. “Watch the trees especially, and if you get hit with a dart, please scream to let us know. Anyway, just to let you all know, we’ve contacted our ship and they’ve been able to evade detection so far,” I finished hopefully.

“So when is our pick up?” A steel ranger asked.

“That has yet to be determined,” I answered honestly. “Any other questions?” I waited probably ten seconds, before looking back at the ponies. “We’re gonna find out what happened to our outpost. For Equestria!”

“For Equestria!” A chorus of replies met my ears. I had them under control for the moment. We needed to dispose of the bomb and leave this damn Island.

“We need to try to talk to them,” I heard a tired voice say from behind me. I spun around and faced the pony I had the strongest feelings for, they were also the most conflicted. There was a neutral expression on his muzzle, but his eyes were tired.

“To the big stompy things that took our people?” I asked while tilting my head to the side in disbelief.

“This is their home, and we’re the heavily armed ponies that have massive suits of steel,” Permittivity answered softly.

“Granted,” I said before looking at the ground for a second. “But what’s your plan?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Permittivity said before pointing at one of the trees to the right of us. “We plant three stakes of different lengths, put a helmet on each of them-”

“To symbolize the lost Rangers,” I said to him brightly.

“And we line them up so that the tallest stakes shadow covers the two shorter stakes. From there, we send a single pony in powered armour at the time when the sundial strikes the appropriate time,” he finished his simple plan at the same time as I realized the biggest problem.

“What if they don’t want to talk? What if they can’t?”

“Then we’ve lost some steel helmets and a little bit of time,” Permittivity answered quickly. His eyes met mine. There was a pleading element to them. He wanted to do this, wanted to help out. He would do whatever he could.

“Alright, go find a ranger volunteer and a clearing not too far from here,” I said before smiling slightly at him. “I’m pretty sure this won’t work, but I’m hopeful that it will. Thank you Permittivity.”

I turned around and started back towards my tent. I needed to convince captain Rapids that staying anchored to some of the shoals to the south was a good idea…

---===*===---

“Ma’am, I’m ready to fight, and so are they,” An imperial named Frostbite said to me. He absentmindedly smashed a mosquito on his neck, a bad mistake on its part. Frostbite gestured to the ponies standing behind him.

“Why?” I asked simply, before pulling out one of my last remaining cigarettes. I had an appearance to keep up.

“We want to go home,” he said simply. “But going home with that monster pulling the strings, I’m not sure if we could live with ourselves, knowing that.”

“Even if you have to fight other Imperials?” I asked after listening and finishing my long drag.

“Ma’am, I’ve fought a lot of ponies, killed a lot too. At least I’ll be doing it for a good reason this time,” Frostbite said. His white coat gleamed in the motes of sunlight spilling through the canopy. Perm was off doing something else, but I didn’t need his assistance with this. It was my judgement call.

“You’re now a Paladin or something, basically a sergeant I think was the old word for it,” I said to him, before looking at the ponies lined up behind him. “I need a couple of volunteers to learn the ropes of powered armour because we have three spare sets.” I didn’t need to explain why we had spare sets of armour. Everyone with a functional brain stem could figure that out. Fittingly, one of the ponies with their hooves in the air was Frostbite. His dark mane framed his face as I met his eyes. Everyone that had been touched by the war had that in their eyes.

“May I choose the other ponies who receive the training? I’d like to put them at the core of our small units?” Frostbite asked me formally. I think half the reason these ponies volunteered is that a command structure made them feel more comfortable than not. I didn’t mind that at all.

“That’s a good idea, though the bigger the pony the better the results in the powered armour, making it fit I mean,” I said to him, before looking over at the group of ponies with odd accents, literal strangers in a strange land.

“I’ll remember that,” Frostbite said.

“Volunteers, move out,” He said before the whole group turned to the right and marched off organically.

---===*===---

I found her at the edge of the camp, there was a piece of bread in her hooves. She was absentmindedly gnawing on it while staring into the darkness of the jungle before her. It was about time for everyone to hit their racks… Something told me she couldn’t sleep.

“How do you deal with it?” Ironsight said quietly.

“Deal with what?” I asked her.

“With someone who lied to you,” she paused and met my eyes in the near darkness. “Someone close.”

“In my case, it was a little easier, because he admitted the truth at the last moment that he could’ve made a difference,” I said sadly.

“I’m sure that he would’ve rationalized it after the fact, whatever he was going to do,” Ironsight replied. “I found his body before we cleared the submarine. It was in a janitor’s closet, alongside an Arabian with a portable intercom.”

“You found Tegarni?” My voice went up a few decibels as he was brought up.

“Yes, and he had shot himself in the chest, but not aimed at his heart. I saw it on his face, he died in agony,” Ironsight said nearly emotionlessly. “My brother died in the same way, at least, before his armour administered enough painkiller to well, kill all his pain.”

“What?” I asked suddenly.

“It’s a bug that became a feature...” Ironsight spoke quietly. There was little emotion in her voice as she explained why a ranger that was mortally wounded would get finished off by the drugs in the suit.

“Why did no-one ever mention that to me?” I asked Ironsight, suddenly worried about the microinjectors and combat drugs in my own armour.

“It can’t really be triggered by much short of deathly injuries, things that you aren’t walking away from anyway, and if the injury is much worse than what Reflex had done to him, well, the drugs aren’t going to affect a corpse very much,” Ironsight stopped and looked at the crushed leaves beneath her hooves. “There are ways to override it if you think the pony can be saved. There was no saving Reflex, somehow that unicorn friend of yours managed to put the barrel of a pistol right up against his jaw. The base of it, with all the muscle and bone.”

“Celestia fuck,” I said aloud. The image of that was enough to make me feel a pang of sympathy for the stallion I had loved.

“I don’t know what kind of doctor would do that to someone,” she said with a note of finality. “I don’t know how he was able to get that gun aimed at him like that, it was perfectly aimed and with someone like that, I know they aren’t a marksmare.”

“I-I, thank you for telling me this stuff, as much as it hurt to,” I said to her.

“It’s good that someone else knows now, especially someone who knew him well,” She said before starting towards her own tent. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t leave my mind.

Not well enough.

---===*===---

“The armour will do most of the work, it’s a change for sure, but you’ll learn to love it,” I said to the three ponies stomping around the outskirts of the camp. My own armour was helping my movements along, though the helmets for each of us were currently sitting on a convenient tree stump a few metres away.

“It’s weird only doing the first third of a movement,” Frostbite said with a fair amount of sweat dripping down his face.

“Damn, the only mare to hear that was me,” I said with a smile. He was a rather big and attractive stallion…

“What did you say?” Frostbite said a moment later, a blush apparent on his face. Maybe he thought he misheard.

“Damn, it should be more like a quarter of the movement,” I lied and smiled internally. The more time I spent around these ponies, the more I realized Perm was both strange to them, and just like them in other ways. They were strong, hard-working earth ponies, mostly. But most of them had signs of combat fatigue. They had seen too much, been pushed too hard…

“Alright, I’ll keep working on it,” Frostbite said with an affirmative tone of voice. “Did you hear that Blizzard, Mooring?”

“Icepick, we succeeded,” I heard a voice from behind me. As I turned around, I met Permittivity’s smiling face. That had been happening more and more often now, I guess not having those lies pressing down on him helped more than I thought.

“You did? Who was the one who made contact? What did they say about our ponies?” I asked excitedly, without making any attempt to hide it. Having those three ponies back would be great for morale, and make me feel a lot better about putting them out there to get captured in the first place. It was honestly a blessing, especially since those stakes had been out there for five days straight.

“It was Ironsight, she volunteered for the job today,” Permittivity said before becoming more pensive. “She wanted to tell the story once, instead of eight different times.”

“That’s understandable,” I said quickly. “Let’s go find her and Crescent.” I finished before grabbing my helmet off the stump and stowing it in my saddlebag.

We took off a moment later, Permittivity leading me towards something important. He was trying so hard to be better, to make up for what he did. I tried to gather my thoughts and focus, but he consumed them. We had taken to sleeping in separate tents, without even asking each other. In fact, we had barely talked about our relationship since he had gotten his memories checked out.

A few moments later, we were in front of my tent. I opened the flap for Permittivity, and we both had to adjust to the relative lack of light within. Standing there in the middle of it was Ironsight. She met each of our eyes in turn as we stepped inside.

“First impressions?” I asked her quickly, mindful of the fact Crescent wasn’t here yet, and neither was Rosetta. He had been sent to fetch her.

“They’re fucking big,” Ironsight’s eyes were wide. “And there were three of them.” As she finished saying that, two ponies entered into the tent. Crescent Moon moved gracefully inside, and Rosetta brought up the rear.

“How large are they?” Crescent asked as she walked in.

“The one who signed at me was the biggest, he had these weird cheek extensions on his face, and the two behind him were a bit smaller,” she said before looking at each of us in turn, “They walked on their fists, and they stood on their hind legs. Well, their leg, legs. Which ended in hands like a griffon. But they were as big as earth pony stallions, and their front legs were as wide as our powered armour legs.”

“Fuck!” I said before managing to force a confident smile on my face. “Big outlines though, pretty easy to hit.”

“We shouldn’t be thinking about violence towards them,” Permittivity said quietly beside me.

“I know, it’s just, we gotta remember all of our options,” I said with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

“Anyway, when the biggest one got about two meters away, he pointed at the sun before looking me in the eyes,” Ironsight stopped speaking for a minute. “Then he pointed at the stakes and made a circling motion with his fingers. After that, he met my eyes again before walking away.”

“Did you see where they went?” I asked.

“Yeah, until the jungle ate them up,” Ironsight said with a bite of her lip.

“Progress is progress, we have to bear that in mind,” Permittivity said to everyone as we all realized what would happen in little less than twenty-four hours.

“Okay, we’re gonna approach these unknown, large creatures that took three of our people, and many more Arabs, diplomatically,” I said to the assembled ponies. “Any suggestions?”

“One pony needs to stay in sealed armour,” Ironsight said instantly.

“I should come, perhaps they’ve learned some Arabic from the captured Arabs,” Crescent Moon added. She was level headed, and I was beginning to start to rely on her for a lot of things.

“I’ll come along because I look a lot less threatening than I actually am,” Permittivity said with the shadow of a grin on his muzzle.

“Any more than four is likely to spook them,” Rosetta stated.

“Those are all fair points. Crescent, Iron, Perm, you’re coming with me to the meeting tomorrow,” I finished before letting out a deeply held breath. “For now, focus on getting rested for tomorrow.”

“Can I get a look at your leg again, I should check it’s progress,” Rosetta said as everyone else took their leave.

“Sure, let me just step out of my armour-” I said before realizing Permittivity hadn’t quite left yet. He was standing near the opening of the tent, staring back into the room… Staring at me.

“I’ll be checking over what the sappers have done at the edge of our encampment,” Permittivity said before pausing. “I’ll see you later Icepick, and you too Rose.” I knew he wanted to say something else. But, I wasn’t going to force him to. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to hear what was on the tip of his tongue.
It didn’t matter, he was out the door a moment later.

“How are you two?” Rosetta asked hesitantly as I keyed in the commands to open my armour up.

“I’m honestly not sure, I’ve just been so busy since well… Since we left the ship,” I said to him as I stepped over to the little bed I had been sleeping in for the last week. I laid down on my back and spread my hind legs. I could still see the healing tissue and the bandages still wrapped around it.

“Alright, so have you been redressing the wound,” Rosetta said as he leaned over me. His magic gently tugging at the bandage while also grabbing his own set of dressings. When he floated out the medical alcohol, I automatically winced.

“Oh come on, be a mare, as my teacher used to say,” his magic floated over the potent solvent and spread some of it inside my remaining wound.

“If you just wanted to cause me pain, I have a tail hole that hasn’t been used in a while!” I said to him as I felt the sensation of burning that was the evil twin of every good drink I’d ever had.

“U-uh,” his mouth slipped open after he heard my joke. “You know, anal sex doesn’t have to hurt-”

“Of course you would know that,” I said a moment later as I noticed his mood had shifted. My own face was flushing at my coarse joke.

“Not personally,” Rosetta said softly, before dabbing at my wound with a piece of sterile gauze.

“How do you know then?” I asked, somewhat flustered and a little curious.

“When I ran through Perm’s memories, I became intimately familiar with the sensations,” He said before looking away. That would do it. My mind instantly went to what Perm must have taken… Was it just me or was it hot in this tent?

“H-hot,” I admitted with a stutter. Then he looked at me with curiosity and hope bubbling up in his eyes.

“It kinda was,” he said quietly, as he finished packing the wound. “Icepick?” He asked after a moment of silence as we both realized the situation we were in.

“Honestly, the only thing that really makes us compatible is our insatiable libidos, Perm’s like that too…” I said with a smile plastered across my muzzle. I had my favourite healer and confidante, and here we were mutually horny and close…

“He keeps that a bit closer to his barrel than you do,” he replied softly. Without saying anything, he lowered his chest and leaned over me. Our muzzles came closer and closer to each other, our breaths somehow hotter and wetter than the musky jungle air.

“Now more than our barrels are close,” I spoke softly into the tiny space between us.

“I can always get closer,” he said with a smile on his muzzle. It was like he was glowing, like he had found himself finally, finally grown more confident in his own fur.

“I’d like that,” I said just before he pressed his lips to mine. His warm lips met mine, not hesitantly like before, but just forcefully enough to show his commitment to the act. My tongue pressed against his lips, pressing insistently, as he slid himself over my body, letting his barrel rest over mine. And then I felt it against my hind leg. He shifted over a little as I spread my hinds out for him.

“I can tell,” Rosetta said as my hooves started to drift down his back, caressing him, holding him. “Just- do you love Perm?”

“With at least three-quarters of my heart,” I replied as we stared into each other’s eyes.

“Are you sure you want to do this then?” Rosetta asked with a mix of hesitation and excitement in his voice.

“You’ve been through his memories, if you think he’d have a problem with it, you would know,” I said before pressing my lips against his insistently. One of my hooves squeezed his butt, and he gasped cutely at that particular bit of attention.

“Honestly, I think his biggest problem would be him not being a part of it,” he said before letting one of his hooves trace down my body, getting closer and closer to-

“Aaa!” I moaned gently as he touched me, even as I knew his hardness was pressed up against my lower stomach. I managed to get my voice back under control. “Next time, we’ll have to tell him.”

“Yeah, this time is a punishment for him lying to us,” he said huskily. His hoof wasn’t exactly dry, even if I wasn’t quite ready for him to fuck me. “Then again, we can always not tell him about this-”

“No, I won’t lie to him about this, we’re still-” I paused and thought about what Bajada had said to me. “I still love him, I just know he would understand.” There was a look of shock on his face, though he immediately tried to hide it.

“I understand,” he said before starting to pull back. I wondered what he was doing for about half a second before a line of kisses and attention followed his mouth down my chest and stomach. My hooves shifted to his head, giving his ears a little poke and prod as he drew closer to the really good places…

---===*===---

The four of us were ready way before we needed to be. I had my helmet strapped into my saddlebags, Iron had hers on, and Crescent just wore light barding. Permittivity, he was wearing his chest plate and gauntlets underneath a reduced set of desert clothing. Around his neck was that same checkered black and green scarf Bajada had given him. I hadn’t wanted to guess why he kept wearing it, but I knew that if I tried to ask him about it, he’d downplay the real reason…

“Is everyone ready to be diplomats?” I asked the assembled ponies.

“Around you, I always have to be diplomatic,” Permittivity said a moment later. I just laughed and nodded at him. It seems he was in a good mood, which again, seemed to be happening more frequently.

“Everyone else?” My words were met with a noncommittal nod from Ironsight and-

“Of course, this is what I left my home for,” Crescent Moon said proudly. Her eyes met Perm’s for a second, maybe scolding him for making that joke earlier, maybe trying to make a point of connection between them. If anyone hadn’t noticed the relative coldness of Perm and I to each other after the battle of the Submarine, it wouldn’t have passed by her. Whether that meant she wanted to well… Permittivity said nothing for a long moment, it was like he was trying to remember something that was on the tip of his tongue.

“My people believed that leaving our homes and our lives for a grand adventure was a wonderful thing. When it first began, it was easy to fill the armies,” Permittivity said with a far off look in his eyes.

“That didn’t last,” I said.

“Considering I was conscripted…” he finished with a haunted tone. Whatever us knowing the truth about him did, it didn’t fill the deep wounds in him.

The walk to the stakes was silent, whatever we had needed to say to each other had been said previously. That and we wanted to keep our attention focused on the jungle itself. Something about the dense foliage and just the abundance of life weirded us out. At best some of us were used to dense cities, concrete and brick labyrinths, not life boosted by abundant rains and sunlight. A few minutes before the sundial aligned, we arrived in the small clearing and noticed that our contacts weren’t there.

“Well, I guess we wait,” I said to the other ponies. “You know, I have to wonder, why didn’t this island get used as a lumber yard, if nothing else.”

“If I were to guess, I’d say that it was the distance from either Ramsgard or Paradise,” Permittivity answered swiftly. “The need for lumber wasn’t very high for either society, given the abundance of other fuel sources and building materials.”

“Nevermind the economic explanation, obviously this place is inhabited and those inhabitants are a significant danger,” Crescent seconded with that fast mind of hers.

“To ponies other than Steel Rangers,” Ironsight added brusquely.

“Yes, but your mines and your foundries beat to the drums of war,” Crescent Moon said. “You have no use for wood.”

“And Paradise wasn’t about to create a colony for the purpose of gathering wood for luxury items,” Permittivity said a moment later. “It’d be an expensive project.”

“That all makes sense, and it’s good enough for me-” I lost my train of thought as I spotted something moving into view. At the other edge of the clearing, a quadruped looked at us with something like curiosity. They looked like a smaller earth pony, less broad in the withers and barrel, but covered from head to tail in black and white stripes. There was an actual zebra in front of me.

A moment later as all of us, except maybe Perm, were baulking at the presence of the unfamiliar zebra, the Jungle came alive. Two dozen of those fist walking creatures came to the edge of the clearing, forming a nearly perfect circle.

“What are-” I began to ask the zebra as he came into the centre of the clearing.

“Silence,” The Zebra cut off in harsh but understandable Equestrian.

A moment later, three more of the creatures came into the clearing. One was the largest, and he had large cheeks on his face. A few seconds passed before we heard the sounds of unfamiliar words being exchanged between the zebra and the creature.

“You mean to speak about the prisoners,” the zebra said while shooting a glance at the three stakes.

“Yes, we’d like them back,” I said simply. He whinnied in response like I was some kind of world-class comedian.

“Why should we give them back? You trample on our forest, cut down our trees and hunt mercilessly,” the zebra spat out.

“We do what we need to survive, our fight isn’t with you, our fight is with those that want to use the Balefire bomb,” As soon as I said those last two words his eyes opened in fear. Before he said anything to us, he turned to the creatures and started speaking quickly in that mutual language of theirs. Maybe a minute passed, but his expression stayed the same. I was getting a bit nervous. If all of those creatures rushed us, I doubt we’d win in that straight up fight.

“You have one of the weapons?” He asked with a mix of awe and anger.

“Back at our camp, in pieces,” I answered slowly.

“You attacked the underwater boat to get it?” He asked.

“We did because the ponies occupying it were planning on using the bomb,” I said to him. “We don’t want the weapon, we want it destroyed.”

The silence that followed my words was pregnant with tension. But after that silence, the clipped tones of their common language hit our ears. I looked back to the other ponies with me. Crescent was listening intently to the words being exchanged, Permittivity was eying the circle of creatures, and Ironsight was just staring in the general direction of the Zebra. Her helmet blocked all insight into her mind.

“We trade the egg for ponies,” The zebra said.

“And you won’t bother us as we march to the opposite coast?” I asked him immediately. Safe passage through their territory would be a great thing.

“Other coast?” He asked. “The pony island?”

“What pony island? We have a boat, we just need to get to it, and get home,” I answered abruptly. He had a dumbfounded look on his muzzle as I spoke. He turned to the creature beside him. They spoke a few excited words to one another before turning to us. The creature beside him smiled, as did the zebra.

“You have much to learn about our island,” the zebra stallion said with a smirk.

“First things first, how did Zebras get here?” I asked instantly.

“The underwater boat,” the zebra said. My lips pursed in thought.

“Where are the other ponies? Are they peaceful?” He met my eyes, before smiling broadly.

“The other ponies live on an island at the head of the great river,” he paused and pointed a hoof vaguely south. “They don’t kill like the ones who took the underwater boat, but they do other things.”

“Thank you for the information,” I said to him. “I take it you learned Equestrian from the other ponies on the island.”

“Yes,” he said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. “We trade with them, so some of us speak your language.”

“Good to know, now let me return the favour,” I said before clearing my throat. “There are a bunch of ponies with magic armour, coming to take the bomb, we set a trap for them, but it likely only slowed them down.” He took the news silently. There was a flash of resentment in his eyes before he stuffed it back down. Without showing any more emotion he turned to the creature beside him. I could see anger blossom on the face of the creature. His teeth were bared, with fangs that looked a little too sharp to be herbivorous.

“We need to think about this,” The zebra said.

“Two things,” I said before waiting for his attention to land on me fully. “What’s your name? And what’s the name of well, them?”

“Xibatsu is my name, and they call themselves Orangutans,” He finished before turning his back on us, with the rest of the Orangutans doing the same. They started walking into the denser jungle around us at a steady clip.

“Where will you meet us for the exchange?” I asked him. He didn’t stop or turn his head.

“Your camp.”

---===*===---

“So, that was informative,” Permittivity said as we started towards our camp.

“Yes, now we have a destination, for us and the ship,” Crescent Moon said a second later.

“We don’t know if the river is navigable, or if those ponies will be as ‘peaceful’ as the Zebras and Orangutans,” Ironsight said.

“He did call it the Great River, that does imply a certain size,” Permittivity said.

“That doesn’t mean it has a large width,” Ironsight said neutrally. “Or any girth,” she was grinning by now. Permittivity looked shocked at the idea. Crescent was blushing and trying to hide it. Apparently, she got the joke.

“I-I don’t have that problem, if that’s what you’re implying,” Permittivity nearly yelled. If he was stuttering in mixed company, Crescent had a healthy red to her chestnut cheeks.

“Sure,” Ironsight goaded from the inside of that opaque helmet.

“No, he’s pretty girthy,” I said impartially. Permittivity stared smugly at Ironsight. Crescent Moon was watching Permittivity walk with a reinforced swagger, her face betraying her interest and embarrassment. I met her eyes and got her attention before glaring at her. She looked away, suddenly much more worried about attacks from our right flank…

“For once, I think everything is going to go alright,” I said a moment later. “We have a destination and the beginnings of a plan.”

“I think we’re one step closer to our goal,” Crescent Moon stated softly. I glanced at her and saw that her blush was nearly gone.

“Which one?” I asked her.

“You were as diplomatic as anyone could’ve been with the Zebra and Orangutans,” she said to me, to which everyone else nodded in agreement. “And so, we’re a little bit closer to beating Sombra.” I smiled at her, even as I knew how little a few Apes and zebras would be worth in the fight against a nation of millions.

“It’s a start,” Permittivity said.

“I’m honestly just surprised you didn’t make any threats or ultimatums,” Ironsight said neutrally, her helmet speakers making her words lose some of their original tone.

“I’ve learned some things since then,” I said with a glance at the jungle floor I was trodding over.

“Good,” Ironsight said. “A leader needs to never stop growing.”

“Yeah, something like that,” I responded. We were nearly at camp, and we had good news for once. I made myself look more triumphant than I felt. Because that’s what they followed me for. I had to look like a winner, even if I felt like I was barely keeping up with the events around me. “It helps to have good ponies around me. You’ve all helped a lot. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Ironsight said.

“I’m always at your service,” Permittivity answered.

“The more I get to know you, the more I think I made the right decision in helping you,” Crescent Moon replied last, with a note of contentment in her voice.

I smiled at each of them in turn. I didn’t have to force it.

---===*===---

With the rest of the day, we started our march south, towards the mountains and hopefully a port for our ship to pick us up. We abandoned the fixed defences and trenches we had begun to build in the Jungle. It wasn’t a hard sell, because everyone there, even the imperials, had realized that we were explorers now. Adventure and knowledge were our fruits, even as our original food and spare parts were beginning to run dry… It was the next morning, about ten in the morning when we heard the calls from the sentries. Not an attack warning, but a warning nonetheless.

I marched out wearing my barding and ran into Permittivity, he had a book levitating beside him. He was wearing an even more stripped down of his desert get up. There was no lack of moisture in the air around us, so the protective cloth layer was gone, only the green and black bandana hung loosely around his throat. Below that was only the body armour that had been with us since our escape from Tegarni-

“Do you think it’s them?” He asked me suddenly, breaking my mind out of the memories that I didn’t necessarily want to remember.

“Well, given there’s no shooting, it’s pretty likely,” I said to him as ponies milled about around us, frantically trying to make the base look more presentable.

“Good point,” he admitted a moment later. “How many do you think there are?” Permittivity asked me just before we came around the side of one of the larger tents. Standing on the other side of the loose demarcation line of our camp were perhaps, two dozen zebras. Many of them had melee weapons that looked to be fashioned out of repurposed metal and hard jungle wood. Others had rifles that rivalled our older assault rifles, the ones out of the pre-war stockpiles that had been remanufactured and rebuilt a couple dozen times.

“Does that answer your question?” I said with a laugh. Out on the edges of the group were a few solitary looking Orangutans.

“That really comes down to epistemology, as do most things in the end,” Permittivity said with the closest thing to a giggle that I had ever heard from him. My smile deepened. It was nice to see him happy. I guess rare things usually have a higher value…

“You’re a dweeb,” I said to him quickly before getting my muzzle right up to his ear. “You’re still my dweeb,” I whispered in his ear before I nipped him behind the ear lightly.

“D-duly n-noted!” He said in a low voice as he tried to figure out whether or not other ponies had seen me bite him.

By now, Ironsight and Crescent Moon had noticed Perm and I’s presence at the edge of the meeting place. Crescent Moon met my eyes respectfully, before smiling slightly at Permittivity. Ironsight didn’t even meet his gaze, her helmet visor stayed locked on me as she trotted up. Because she was wearing her armour, and I wasn’t, it was one of those rare situations where she looked down at me. Physically, I mean.

“They’re here, and they already showed us that they have the prisoners,” Ironsight stated matter of factly.

“Good, well, I guess we should help get those three-” I started to say before Ironsight cut me off.

“Icepick, they’re giving us all the prisoners,” Iron said in a comically subdued tone.

“Yes! All the Arabs that were captured from Tegarni’s forces are going to be given to us,” Crescent Moon said excitedly. “I thought that they had all perished.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure that Icepick wants another set of prisoners to watch,” Ironsight replied instantly as if to deflate the other mare’s expectations.

“Can you get them to fight against Rangers?” I asked thoughfully.

“It will be a challenge, but I believe so,” Crescent Moon said.

“We’ll take them,” I said to Ironsight.

“Tell them that,” she replied a moment later. Ironsight turned and started towards the Zebras chatting with some of the Steelies and Camos. I took that as a good sign. Permittivity and I started towards the group at the same time, curiosity and nervousness hitting us both pretty hard.

“I will,” I said to her without a hint of hesitation.

“Oh hey Icepick, Perm. We’re uh, talking about the exchange,” Rosetta said over his shoulder as he stood before a pair of Zebras, a mare and a stallion. They wore no clothes, but a string of beads were interwoven into their manes. The stallion was familiar, the mare was not. And kinda hot.

“Icepick, your leader?” The mare said in near perfect Equestrian. Over her shoulders were a pair of saddlebags woven from some rough material, burlap or flax. “I think you were right, Xaibatsu.”

“That’s my name, and my current occupation,” I said quickly, before meeting her eyes. “What do you feel?”

“I can sense two souls bound together, across the illusions of distance and desire,” the mare said softly but surely.

“Distance isn’t an illusion, and neither is the pain suffered by ponies,” Permittivity said without biting back any of his own anger at the suppositions this mare threw out as easy truths.

“You of all ponies here should know that the boundaries between the realms can be breached, the worlds stacked on top of one another like the paper in a book. As to the pain experienced by individuals, it all passes, coming into existence like bubbles in a stream, always fated to pop down the line,” the mare said before realizing something important. “I’m Zenji, the shaman of our little tribe.”

“The only time I’ve ever seen the edges between worlds breached was through the use of powerful magic,” Permittivity nearly growled. “I’ve seen many such momentary lives end in great suffering, for no good reason. You mean to tell us that there is some moral arc to the universe, some cosmic justice waiting to be brought forth through personal rightness.”

“You’ve lived a very different life than I have, your ideas of the world coloured by the things you’ve seen. That much is apparent. But we aren’t here to debate the nature of the universe. No, I wanted to tell you of your nature in this life. I thought you should both know that your souls are intertwined.”

“How do you know?” I asked her.

“I noticed it from the moment I saw the two of you,” she took a moment to meet both of our gazes, even as the other ponies around began to pay attention to her. “It’s in every gaze, every smile, every conscious exhale. You don’t realize it, but you know one another nearly as well as you do yourself.”

“Oh, trust me we’re intimately familiar with each other,” I said to her. “That doesn’t mean we’re any different than the other ponies here. Lot’s of them have found others to support them.”

“Yes, but they’ve never lived as each other,” Zenji replied. “But, we are here to collect the evil of our ancestors, the spark that burned the old world to ash.”

“The balefire egg,” I stated in a flat voice. “Can someone grab that thing, without like, looking into it too much.”

“Ah, it’s refreshing to see someone treating objects like that with the proper respect,” Zenji said.

“I just find it really, really creepy. It feels alive,” I said to her quickly, and a little self-consciously. I really didn’t want everyone to see how superstitious I was about an explosive. But for some reason, her attitude assuaged my fears and loosened my tongue.

“That’s because it is,” she said automatically. There was no attempt to play up the knowledge, just a straight up statement of fact.

“What? How?” I started to ask before she interrupted me.

“Balefire eggs are created by enchanting fertilized dragon eggs. The fire within the soul of a dragon is the explosive,” Zenji laid out that truth casually, even as my jaw hung open.

“That soul has been trapped in there for a century,” Permittivity managed to say after a few seconds of silence.

“That’s why we must destroy it,” Zenji exclaimed.

“Good fucking riddance,” I said loudly.

“Then the exchange is on,” Xaibatsu said with something approaching a smile.

“Exactly,” I replied merrily. Maybe we were doing better, we were becoming allies of the zebras, not murdering them… Some part of me took hope from that, even as I knew our enemies wouldn’t be idle.

---===*===---

“So this is our little tent city,” I said to Zenji and Xaibatsu as we walked through the interior of our camp. “Over there is our mess, and beyond that is the training grounds.”

“You continue to drill even as you march?” Zenji asked suddenly. “Aren’t you all exhausted by the setting up of your camp and the march itself.”

“Well, kind of, our powered armour allows us to carry a lot of equipment without overburdening all of our troops, that and the knowledge of who our enemies are is a great motivator,” I said to the Zebras. Permittivity stood silently at my side. He didn’t seem cold as much as exhausted by the proceedings. Still, he was by my side. Maybe he was drawing strength from my presence, maybe-

“I wish our ancestors would have left us something that useful,” Xaibatsu complained loudly, but with an edge of amusement.

“They left us the rules of alchemy and a knowledge of what was lost. That’s plenty enough to my mind,” Zenji replied to him somewhat sternly.

“Alchemy? The transmutation of metals?” Permivitty perked up at the mention of something so anti-scientific.

“Oh, that kind of Alchemy was practised by the ponies of Equestria in centuries past. Our Alchemy is based on trial and error, to make potions and fetishes that improve our lives. It’s all rather simple spells, nothing like the talismans to build Golems or anything of that sort,” Zenji said with a smile and a giggle. “Trust me, if I knew how to turn lead into gold, I would be wearing something a lot more pretty.”

“But you’re nude,” I said with mock surprise.

“Exactly,” she replied with a slight curtsy.

“Are you willing to trade these potions?” I asked her after a moment’s pause. We were nearly to my tent by this point.

“Very willing, where do you think we get most of our metal tools and weapon parts?” Zenji chuckled at Perm and I as we stood there stunned for a moment.

“Well, we have a lot of spare weapons, if you’re looking to increase your firepower,” I said quickly, before meeting Zenji’s eyes. “But what exactly are you willing to sell us?”

“Some of our most popular brews are ones to heal the soul or increase your libido, but I assume you want something more useful to warriors,” she said with that infectious smile on her muzzle. If Perm had gravity to him, then she had levity.

“I like the idea of both those things-” I began before Permittivity coughed loudly.

“She doesn’t need libido enhancement,” Permittivity said just loudly enough for the two zebras to hear. Both of them broke into grins at his admission.

“No, I just want you to be able to keep up!” I said loudly, before clocking him in the shoulder softly. And then, before he could reply, I pressed my lips to his. It was the first time we had kissed in a while. As soon as he realized what was happening, he pushed himself into the kiss, hungrily opening his mouth and waiting for his counter-attack. It was a well-practised dance, but rarely had he been so passionate. He was almost needy in his caresses. I didn’t mind him taking more initiative when it came to the pleasures of the flesh, I mean, a girl doesn’t always wanna ride…

“Our other popular product is a bone strengthening brew,” Zenji said from behind us. She didn’t seem to be fazed by our sudden passionate kiss.

“That isn’t a euphemism, just so you’re both aware,” Xaibatsu said automatically, as he looked away from us.

“Oh come on, they’re enjoying each other,” Zenji said sternly to her co-leader. “Who are we to snuff out the embers of love suddenly blazing before us?”

“Zenji, you may walk the path, but not everyone else does,” Xaibatsu said suddenly.

“That’s true in a way, many don’t even know the path’s outline, but we all walk it, in this life or the next,” Zenji said resolutely. I broke the kiss and turned around to face the two Zebras, hopefully without my muzzle bright red. I knew my impulsiveness was gonna bite me in the ass someday, but Perm looked like he needed a kiss. That and I wanted one too-

“What’s this path you’re both referring to?” Permittivity spoke up before I did, seemingly unfazed by the kiss we had shared. Damn, that was usually my schtick.

“The path is a way of living that helps people reach nirvana, or true understanding of the world,” Zenji answered in a chirpy voice. “I’d be happy to teach anyone here the path.”

“As much as Perm is intrigued by new metaphysical concepts, why don’t we scale back to the question of the hour: how many guns do you want?” I added that last part slyly enough, and less than subtle wink at Xaibatsu. He just smiled broadly at my words or my look.

“She’s like me, she likes to get to the meat of the matter,” the large zebra stallion bellowed, before chuckling loudly enough to draw outside glances to us, for the second time.

“As with any leader, she needs to keep her eyes on the conventional world and all of its infinite detail,” Zenji said. “I would like to speak to her on other matters though.”

“Sure,” I said to her brightly. I had a fair amount of interest in what a Zebra shaman could tell me, especially considering her impressive cold read of Perm and I’s relationship. “Perm, why don’t you give Xaibatsu a demonstration of the Imperial rifles?”

“If it saves me from arguing about the size of the universe, and our place in it, I will,” Permittivity finished with a slight glower towards the Zebra mare.

“I would be happy to instruct you some other time,” Zenji said to Permittivity. “You know a great deal about the causes of things, like the non-living forces of the universe.”

“Unless you can teach me how to use my magic better, I’m not interested in wasting my time,” Permittivity said. He turned his back and started towards the practice range.

“That really depends how you define better. Magic of all kinds is based on intention, and the control of your intentions is one of the steps along the path,” Zenji paused to take a breath. Permittivity was looking over his shoulder at the mare, eyes projecting a cold fire to them. “I can’t help you become stronger than you are when your emotions, your attachments in the Samsara are fueling your magic, however, things of this world are as fleeting as the magic fueled by them. Without understanding the true nature of the world, without being freed from Samsara-”

“You can teach me how to use my magic without exhausting myself?” Permittivity asked excitedly. There was doubt in him too.

“Through understanding the universe, the essential transience of all things, you can use your intentions made manifest differently. Enlightenment is a gateway to many things, one of which is an understanding of magic itself,” Zenji said finished with a smile.

“You need to teach me this power,” Permittivity said simply.

“Permittivity, you’re an intelligent person, but you have much to learn. I will, however, attempt to teach you,” she said with a note of finality. She turned to her companion. “Xaibatsu, you should go with him, learn what you can about their equipment.”

He spoke something in their native tongue back to her, before he left with Permittivity. I turned to face the odd Zebra mare.

“Does this feel kinda weird to you too?” I asked the mare before me. Even as I started towards my tent.

“In what way?” She asked after a moment’s thought.

“It’s just, our ancestors destroyed the world, and now we’re having a pleasant conversation,” I finished just as I held the tent flap open.

“That’s true, but we are not our ancestors, they lived different lives, different forces and pressures made them who they were. Their time is over, they are gone now, whether by balefire, starvation or old age. It’s the nature of all things,” Zenji said as she entered the tent. Her eyes opened slightly upon seeing the single sleeping roll laid out on the ground.

“What would you say to someone who wanted to restore Equestria or Zebrica,” I asked softly, mindful of what others had told me all my life.

“They are foolish, what once was, cannot be again. Something new can take its place, something composed of ponies or zebras that believe they have resurrected their past, but even if the invisible fires started a century ago are snuffed out, nothing ever exists in a vacuum. The forces acting on the world that built Equestria and Zebrica are no more. New forces act on us because the world has moved on.”

“Can those past ideas be used to help the present?” I asked her, wary of her answer, yet wanting to listen all the same.

“Yes, because the remembrance of the past is a force all its own, our attachments to ideas can be used to build great things, to motivate masses of people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. Therein lies the danger though, as with all attachments, without realizing the transient nature of the world, they can cause great harm. But you knew that already. The past weighs heavily on your shoulders,” Zenji finished.

“I’ve been told all my life that fighting to rebuild Equestria in Sall’han is a Ranger’s duty. Now, I know it’s wrong, impossible really. But the remembrance of Equestria, our homeland unites my ponies,” I said to her loudly, even as I felt my own emotions begin to boil over.

“An interesting quandary,” she started. “Equestria as an idea is strange, at least given your understanding of it. For a thousand years, ponies lived in peace with one another, and with the Zebras nearby. Both the government of the Freehold and the one that created the Steel Rangers you trace your ancestry through wanted to suppress the truth. The truth of co-existence. For as long as my great grandfather could learn himself, through the archives or the shared memory of our tribe, zebras lived among ponies, and ponies among zebras. So, to answer your original question, we aren’t our ancestors, but all the same, most of our ancestors had no qualms with one another. It was the loss of the path, greed and attachment to evil ideas that destroyed the world.”

“I’ve never heard of that?!” I nearly yelled as I remembered my history lessons, themselves far in the haze of my past.

“Why would any group so attached to an idea want to tell their underlings about it in detail, details are tricky things because there’s always a contradiction. People who focus on the pure idea within their minds, blind themselves to their other senses to keep that idea pure,” She said with resolve. Where had this mare come from? Why was I listening to her? Because she spoke the truth and pulled no punches.

“That makes a terrible amount of sense,” I said before letting my eyes drift back towards her. “I know it’s the burden I placed on myself, but what would your advice be?”

“It’s simple, but simple does not mean easy. Be open to new information, because ignorance of the conventional world is not virtuous. I think you’re more than capable of doing it, or else you wouldn't be leading a nascent movement. Secondly, remember what it is you’re fighting for. I take it your enemies believe in restoring a peculiar version of Equestria, one that existed for a brief while, if at all. If your clarion call is the memory of Equestria, learn what it truly was, and what it might have been if the ponies that lived it hadn’t embraced greed and causing suffering.”

“When I say: for Equestria! I need to remember that the Equestria worth fighting for didn’t hate zebras or arabs, because Equestria was created when three separate tribes became one. Being Equestrian didn’t mean that we were better than others…” I trailed off as I realized what I was thinking. The Rangers had it so wrong, so willfully wrong. “What if ponies don’t believe in it?”

“Then you might fail in your goals, but without a compelling vision that includes rather than excludes, you are doomed just the same. You can only do what you can do, with right intention and goodwill for all in your heart,” Zenji paused and met my gaze. With a graceful hoof, she raised my chin up a degree. “Just as I can’t promise your love greater power, I can’t you promise you victory.”

“Can anyone?” I asked quietly a few seconds later.

“Yes. But they would be lying. The forces that make the world what it is are beyond the control of anyone. Be they god, or pony,” She said before laughing slightly.

“If no-one can promise me victory, then no-one can promise me defeat,” I said defiantly. Not to her, but to the heavens, to Churned Waters, to Sombra, and most importantly, to myself.

Her eyes held neither hope nor despair. But, there was an encouraging smile on her face. She knew what she had done, helping me realize what I was fighting for. Perhaps we knew something forgotten had been born again. And, Zenji was more aware of the cycle than me.

In truth though, the world had just turned, even if neither of us knew it yet.

Author's Note

This was a fun one! I hope my readers like the way things are headed!

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