By the time the group of four had cleaned themselves up and left the abandoned warehouse and started plodding along the streets of Ponyville, night had fallen. Trigger was paler than usual, his face affixed with a tight frown and wide eyes. Ember led the group onward, keeping her tentacles to herself and her third eye rotating this way and that.

Yet even having three eyes did not seem to help in her case; as the quartet trotted on, they noticed that the streets were oddly empty. That didn't slow them down; if anything, they merely quickened their pace. It took them a good half-hour before anypony spoke up.

"Where are we going?" Patient piped up as they passed Sugarcube Corner.

Ember gestured ahead with a tentacle. "This way," she replied cryptically.

“Yeah, that’s helpful,” Trigger remarked in a snarky tone.

“Shut up and follow her,” Distrance hissed with a sour look. With that, they plodded along, and it took them a little over twenty minutes to reach a train station. The Friendship Express was parked in the station, and a group of six ponies were assembled before the boarding car. At least two were looking away from the car in question, giving the impression that they were waiting for someone.

Ember continued on, but Patient, Distrance, and Trigger all halted before they got within five feet of the station. A pair of red eyes, framed by a blue hat and some red bangs, stared at them with a look of indifference. Next to that pair was a set of blue eyes, framed by more blue hair and a white face. "Oh, this ought to be fun…" Patient groaned as he made to follow after Ember, if only to get a better look.

Shining Armor gave Ember a wan smile and hoofed over a small brown satchel as she gave him the video camera. "Well, good news and bad news… good news, Griffonstone's newest town of Asgard is reopening its first tourist attractions. Even better, you got some new friends coming with you," Shining reported as Patient, Distrance, and Trigger trotted up and took another set of brown satchels for themselves.

"Bad news?" Trigger piped up, opening his bag to find a carton of cigarettes atop a pile of bits.

“It’s been turned into… a housing reverie for the resident alicorns…” Shining deadpanned, his smile fading. "Think of it as a ghetto, if you will."

"Ergo, we have a whole few city blocks to clear out," Rekka piped up, causing the trio of stallions to turn to him. They raised brows when they saw a massive cannon-looking thing that was painted in vibrant red strapped to his right foreleg; it had to have weighed a good five to ten pounds by itself. That, and it stretched from his hoof right to the barrel, with a trigger sticking out to point at his left foreleg.

Patient groaned quietly with his mouth shut in exasperation before sighing. "Fantastic, more dead alicorns. At least they ain’t communists, else I’d break their wings and have pegasi throw them from high altitudes." His eyes focused on Rekka's odd accoutrement. "How the fuck does he carry that thing? And what is it?" he wondered.

Rekka noticed Patient leering at him and smiled, before lifting his strapped leg and pointing it right at Patient with such ease it almost seemed as if he were carrying a very heavily modified stick. That revealed that the odd object had a grey muzzle, with an even stranger yellow orb settled above a hole of some sort. Shining turned to Rekka and snarked, "Put the blaster down; no firing at co-workers."

Rekka sighed and lowered his armed leg, but made no effort to argue.

“So, uh... what now?” Trigger piped up, which made Shining gesture to the train.

"All aboard, you lot. No use letting red-and-black monsters live a day longer," Shining snarked. Sighing, and making their satchels vanish in flashes of light, Patient and his group boarded first, followed by Rekka and the ponies accompanying him. Distrance looked at said other ponies, only to find that they too were armed, and that two of them didn't quite fit the bill of 'pony.'

One was a gold-coated earth stallion with a short brown mane and eyes matching in color, the latter of which were framed by round-rimmed glasses. The second was a lilac unicorn mare sporting a blue mane and eyes, capped off with her horn being wrapped in bandages. The third was a hippogryph mare with tufted ears, a chest laden with dull orange feathers that cascaded down to grey talons, and a light purple coat where feathers weren't prominent.

Slit pupils hovering before deep amethyst eyes stared back at him, framed by a wild mane of yet more purple. The last was a hippogryph stallion, with teal feathers, a light green coat, teal claws, and a messy green mane cascading over the right side of his face. All four smiled rather serenely at Distrance, who decided to smile back, if only to be polite for once.

"I would advise you to watch where you're going," Rekka snarked, prompting Distrance to turn just in time to run into and then trip over a seat. The group paused as he got up to find themselves in a seat-and-table-laden car, ornately decorated with flower motifs. Ember was the first to claim a table.

“Who’re these guys?” Patient asked Ember, taking a seat beside her.

He turned to the other four, noticing a crossbow of gold on the earth stallion's foreleg and a purple boomerang with blue teeth on the withers of the bandaged unicorn, and one that stretched from the back of her head to the dock of her tail. He paused before finding a sword of some sort strapped in a scabbard of the hippogryph stallion, and a grey yo-yo with a purple center wrapped around the tarsus of the female hippogryph.

"Oh, them?" Ember replied, turning to Patient with a smile on her face. "I'd introduce them m'self, but I'm not very fluent in Neighponese. At most, I can only pronounce their names." She used a tentacle to gesture to Rekka. "Ask him, and he'll take care of the rest; he's the only one of them who can also speak and understand Winglish."

Patient turned to Rekka and paled a little. “Does one of them at least know Coltic? I can speak that,” he queried sincerely.

Rekka shook his head at that. "No, unless one of them—" His gaze averted to the earth pony, who smiled back as his glasses caught light and made the expression seem a little more demonic in nature, "—has been taking classes without me knowing."

Patient swallowed a lump before turning to the earth stallion and asking, "A allwch chi siarad Cymraeg?"

Do you speak this language?

The earth stallion's grin widened. "Ydw," he replied with a nod.

Yes.

"Hai," the lilac mare piped up.

"Yes," Rekka finished, now himself smiling.

Patient pursed his lips and let off a low whistle of amazement. "Beth yw eich enwau?" he pressed.

What are your names?

"Tenmei," the brown stallion replied.

The blue mare shifted for a bit before answering, "Koto."

The two hippogryphs merely exchanged glances, before they caught onto what was going on and they turned back to Patient. "Yuuki," the female answered.

The male hippogryph leaned back and assumed a small frown that gave the impression that he was fast getting bored. "Nagare," he finished with a tone of disinterest and a wave of his talon.

Patient turned to Tenmei. “Eich acen swnio'n gyfarwydd. Saesneg?”

Your accent sounds familiar. Manex?

Tenmei kept on smiling with amusement. “Yr Alban.”

Trottish.

“Close!” Patient chuckled before clearing his throat. “Roeddwn yn agos.”

"Damn, should've gotten the popcorn…" Distrance remarked as Patient and Tenmei continued to exchange banter amongst themselves in their strange bout of moonspeak.

Ember nudged Trigger with a tentacle to the shoulder. "You're still forking dough over, sniper-colt," she jeered.

“Fuck…” Trigger cursed under his breath, right as Shining came over and sat next to him. In that same instant the train shifted, before the rhythmic sound of wheels turning on tracks filled the air with an accompanying hollow and piercing whistle.

"Already paid for dinner tonight, so unless you two are betting something, there's no need to fork bits over," Shining stated, causing Ember to deflate with his utterance. "Besides, dinner should be here soon." A door at the southern end of the car opened, revealing a pony and a trolley standing on the other side.

That pony and trolley covered with steaming plates, all wrapped in tin foil, was pushed slowly through the walkway as the unicorn hostess quickly gave each pony and hippogryph their own meal with magic. Patient slipped her a tip and proceeded to munch on his toasted spinach and kale sammich.

“Where do you know these guys from?” He turned to Ember as he asked in a quieter tone.

"Rekka told me," Ember replied, taking a bite out of a piece of salmon. "Though I had to ask first, since they were yodeling at red-and-black ponies in their native tongue at the time."

Patient nodded in understanding. “At least their native tongue doesn’t sound like you’re trying to slaughter a goat,” he tried to joke. “Fuckin’ nips.”

"Hontōni ima?" Koto snarked from her table, making Patient turn to her to find her brow raised.

"Really now?" Rekka translated.

“Yes really, ching chong.” Patient shot back with a wry smile.

Koto's brow rose higher, and she took a few seconds to eat a roll of sushi—a roll that had what looked suspiciously like a piece of raw fish stuck in the middle. "Anata wa tashikadesu ka?" she asked the very instant she finished chewing and swallowed.

"Ya sure?" Rekka piped up again.

Patient's smile wavered a little as Koto lifted a hoof and reached for her oversized boomerang.

“B-beth mae'r uf-uffern” Patient somewhat angrily managed, preparing a spell on the tip of his horn.

”W-what the h-hell?”

Koto tilted her head, and a grin formed on her muzzle. "Baka," she hissed, lifting her raised hoof higher before dropping it to gesture to Shining. Patient's horn stopped glowing then and there, and he flinched as he felt Shining turn to glare at him.

“Shame she doesn’t like him. She’s a cutie,” Trigger muttered as he turned to Distrance.

Koto immediately turned to Trigger, gestured to Rekka, and promptly added, "Sudeni koibito ga ite, kare wa soko ni iru."

"She and I are lovers," Rekka translated once more before he popped a piece of crisped kelp into his mouth. When he finished the bit of food, he added in a rather smug tone, "You put your hooves on her, you can expect a three-foot boomerang wedged up your ass sideways."

“HA! Wrecked!” Distrance laughed heartily as Trigger crossed his forelegs and huffed indignantly.

"Let's save the banter for tomorrow. Right now, let's eat and rest up," Ember piped up, garnering the attention of everyone else with her utterance.

"You heard the Beholder, let's chow and snooze," Shining agreed with a hearty nod.

“What did he just call you?” Patient asked once more, turning to Ember.

"It's the nickname I got after my accident, but before I was brought into the wholesale slaughter of red-and-black ponies," Ember replied with a shrug. She gestured to her third eye and added, "A guard said 'beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,' and then it stuck."

“Hmph,” was her answer. With that, Patient finished the rest of his sandwich and wiped his face with a napkin. “Strangely fitting."

*********

The sun rose over Equestria and the surrounding lands, just as it always had, showering the faces of everyone in the train with bright rays the next morning. Trigger was the first one woken up by this, and his first response was to breathe heavily through his nose and flip open his satchel, using a hoof to cradle his carton of cigarettes like it was a newborn. He looked around to find several beds, arrayed in bundles of two. In a few moments, everyone else woke one by one, including Patient and Ember.

“I hate these beds,” Patient could hear Distrance mumble as the nurse shifted in his uncomfortable cushions.

"Kyō wa nan'yōbidesuka?"" Yuuki piped up, yawning widely to Patient's left. He turned to her just in time to get a good glimpse of sharp, feline front teeth paired with flat back molars.

"Assday," Rekka snarked as he crawled out of his bed and stretched.

Shining had woken up by now, as he got out of his bed and started to stretch. "I've never heard of an 'Assday' before. Care to enlighten me?" he queried, garnering a look and a sheepish grin from Rekka.

"Something I said because I could," Rekka replied, his grin widening.

"Anyone else feel like they got a good dose of charlie horse?" Ember groaned, stumbling out of her bed only to then faceplant on the floor as she tripped on one of her own tentacles. "Because right now, every single one of my limbs hurts."

"Chārī-san wa mada watashi no tame ni kite imasen," Nagare answered as he crawled out and spread his wings as wide as they could go.

Patient stared off into the distance, lifting a hoof to his face and instantly noticing the bags under his eyes as he tried to think about the coffee he’d be drinking as soon as he got off the train. His face was kinda numb and his eyes kinda burned.

“Mornings,” he muttered to himself. “If there isn’t any coffee in Asgard, I’m going to kill myself,” he stated, slightly louder. Before he could banter any further, he felt the train lurch and slowly come to a stop, and everyone heard the telltale screech of wheels that ceased spinning grating upon tracks.

"And so it begins…" Rekka grumbled as a loud whistle pierced the air just seconds later. "I hope Asgard didn't become a complete shithole…"

Author's Note

Beginning of Arc 2