The planet Nibiru loomed low upon the horizon, the edges of its rust-red continents shimmering in the morning light. At the edge of an old road that snaked across the Canterlot Wasteland, a troop of shambling figures advanced upon an old minivan, long since abandoned and stripped.
When the man inside heard the first clang against the van's exterior, he snapped fully awake and scrambled up, nearly hitting his head on the low ceiling. He had taken care to cover the windows with tarps when he made the van his temporary camp, so whatever was outside must have smelled him, or heard his breathing. Of all the things capable of doing that, not one was something that did not terrify him.
In a matter of seconds, the blows against the exterior grew more numerous and heavy. The man fumbled in the dark for his guitar, gripped it tight under one arm, found the rear double-doors’ handle, and burst into the ruddy light, narrowly missing the groping hands of two of the attackers. He bolted a few meters and turned, holding the guitar at the ready. As his eyes adjusted to the light, the features of his enemies grew apparent: red eyes, septic flesh, permanent glowing grins.
Techno-zombies.
On a good day, he might have managed to fight ten of them off. Here, he counted twenty. He considered running, but knew he would tire long before they did. And if they had his scent, there was no chance of going to ground again.
He turned the guitar all the way up, aimed it, and with his one long thumbnail, thrashed out the melody of Iron Mare's "Anatidaephobia."
The sonic blast bowled over the first line of zombies. It should have melted their faces off. The guitarist realized he had choked—flubbed the last couple of chords. The enemy were quick to recover, rising in seconds and resuming their advance. Despite the sweat breaking out on his palms, he adjusted his grip on the neck and tried to think of the heaviest riff he knew. His mind chose this moment to go blank. Thin grey arms reached out to seize him...
From the sky there came an eardrum-piercing screech, and an inhumanly large winged shape swooped down from out of the sun. It seized two of the frontmost zombies, twirled upward through the air, and dropped them into the midst of their fellows. As these struggled to reorient themselves, the shape touched down between them and the human, clapping its wings and clawing at the air with long, monstrous fingers.
"Run, puny fools!" it screeched. "Run, or I'll eat you!"
The enemy halted, paused, and as one turned and began marching away.
Techno-zombies felt no fear, but were capable, to a point, of judging the credibility of a verbal threat. The guitarist was sure their retreat had been wise.
He knew this creature. Her name was Sunset Shimmer.
She turned and approached him, and he could not help but feel small before her form—easily ten feet of red skin, black eyes, huge bat-wings, fangs, fire, and brimstone. Her clothes were an ugly mess of leather, vulcanized rubber, and metal studs. A chunk of boilerplate was riveted directly onto her rib cage, over the place where her stainless steel heart had been implanted.
She stopped before him, and there was a pregnant pause. The guitarist did not remember exactly how long ago they had last spoken, but had only been partly successful in forgetting the conversation.
"Hey," Sunset said at last.
"Hey," Flash Sentry said.
"Got a smoke?" she said.
"Got a light?" he said.
* * *
Flash was not a small man, but he found himself more than eclipsed by Sunset as they sat side by side at the broken-off edge of a ruined highway overpass. In the Wasteland, a single human could not risk staying in the open for long, and Flash could not remember the last time he had been able to properly watch a sunrise.
In this calm moment, it was easy to see the humanity behind her inhuman shape, for she sat cross-legged like a normal woman, and assumed an expression of simple contentment as she took in the last of the cosmic display. Flash's second-to-last cigarette looked almost comically tiny in her long, clawed fingers, but she held it with surprising deftness.
"Been a while," he said at last.
"Yeah," she said, almost casually enough to be disarming.
"Thanks for saving my ass."
"Well, long as I'm like this, I might as well help people."
Flash took a long drag, using it as an excuse for silence as he tried to detect any hint of an edge in her tone. To his relief, there was none.
"No progress?" he said as delicately as he could.
"No point."
"Well..." Flash chose his words one by one. "...Someday, when all this is over..."
"Yeah." Her eyes narrowed just a little. "One way or another."
Sunset looked out across the wasteland, and Flash followed her gaze. In the distance, the steep cone of Canter Peak—Flash refused to call it Mount Dazzle—marked the sirens' nearest stronghold. From this angle, he could just see the south face, where their leader had ordered her likeness carved hundreds of feet high in the solid rock. It was generally supposed that her resources for vanity projects had run out, as the incomplete image appeared to be wading waist-deep in the natural stone. In such a state, the statue's expression seemed more one of grumpiness than of cold command. Flash thought it suited her.
He began to take another drag, but saw his last cigarette was already down to the filter. He snuffed it against the bare stone, and wondered how long it would take to find more.
"How is everyone?" Flash said, mentally bracing himself.
"Pinkie's dead." There was a slight crack on the second word. "Last year."
Flash studied his feet and tried to imagine her, of all people, permanently stopping for any reason. He found he could not, and worse, did not feel as badly about it as he should. He decided that grief would arrive when reality fully sank in—at least, he hoped it would.
He should say something, but what?
"Sorry to..."
"'Sorry' is only for when something is your fault." This time, a little snappishness found its way into Sunset's voice.
"I mean, I'm sorry I never got to say goodbye," he said.
"You did say goodbye."
"It was the wrong kind." Another moment of silence followed before Flash ventured to ask, "How about the others?"
"Twilight is fine." Sunset doused the last of her cigarette. "She's holding them... holding us together."
"I knew she would. I mean, knew you would all stick by each other."
"Yeah, well, some of us prefer it to the alternative."
There it was. Despite his mental preparation, Flash cringed inwardly. He would have to rise to his own defense—a hateful necessity, given the circumstances.
"That's not fair." He tried to look her in the eyes, but these were insistently focused on the horizon. "You don't know what it's like. Their song gets into your head, and whatever they want seems like the most reasonable thing in the world. You can't consider anything else, and... you don't even want to."
"That isn't what I meant," Sunset said.
"Think I should have stuck around?" Flash hoped this did not come across as flippant. "I was pretty sure no one was going to trust me after that. Not that I blame anyone."
"You could have done something to prove your loyalty again."
Flash noticed that Sunset's cigarette had burned all the way down, leaving a long tail of ash.
"But you all suspected it," he said. "Suspected the second time they took control of me wasn't really the second time. That I was doing their work from the start, and they were just waiting for the right time to activate their sleeper agent."
"How do you know that wasn't the case?" she said.
"I didn't."
Sunset made neither sound nor sign in response. This either meant she was angry, or simply mulling things over. Flash mentally prayed for the latter.
But how long could one stay angry--at someone else, or at oneself? If Flash had been in control of himself at the Battle of the Bands, could he have somehow broken the stalemate that had escalated into a seemingly endless war and turned Canterlot into the Wasteland?
Probably not.
"Well," Sunset said at last, "for what it's worth, I'm happy you're still alive—hanging in there and everything."
"I appreciate that." And he did. "I get by, but take it from me: The road sucks. I call myself a wanderer so I don't have to say I'm a hobo."
Sunset gave a little half-suppressed chuckle. "I don't remember you being a joker."
"I like to think I've built some character over the years. Sometimes out here, your sense of humor is all that keeps you going. Sometimes I wonder..."
"Wonder what?"
"It's like..." On impulse, Flash scrambled to his feet, heedless of the sheer drop before him, and spoke aloud not only to Sunset, but to the world at large. "Is there anything worth saving in this world anymore? Any chance at redemption for anyone?"
In answer, there was only the dry wind, whistling in their ears.
"Well..." Sunset finally noticed her now-extinguished cigarette, and flicked it away. "A self-imposed exile and a she-demon are talking things over rationally for the first time in years. That's gotta mean something."
"True," Flash said. "And hey, Nibiru didn't crash into the earth like we all thought it would, so that's something else."
Sunset made a sound that was half chuckle, half derisive snort. "Summoning it was the biggest mistake the sirens ever made. Second biggest was Mount Dazzle, there."
"Canter Peak, you mean," Flash said, prudently retreating a little from the ledge. "Someday, when all this is over, I hope I'm still alive just so I can help demolish that ugly statue."
"Cool. Me too. I'll fly you up there on my back, and we can beat the rush."
This time, they both found cause to smile, if only a little.
But then Sunset's face fell. "Oh man, there I go getting my hopes up again. Hell, I'd give the statue-wrecking a miss if I could just get back in my old body and lead a quiet life, but I don't know..."
"Do you mean the human body," Flash said, "or the one with four legs, a horn, and hair all over?"
He turned to her with as serious an expression as he could make, and she stared back, expressionless. Recalling the scene later, each would claim that the other had started laughing first, but regardless, they soon found themselves doubled over and clutching at their sides. Flash only checked himself when his convulsions threatened to send him over the cliff's edge.
At last, as the giggles subsided enough for words to sneak past, Sunset said, "Actually, I've been two-legged for so long, I think I prefer it..."
No sooner had she said this than a greyish blur appeared from the corner of Flash's vision, and with a hideous screech, leapt through the air and latched itself between Sunset's shoulders.
With a scream to match that of her attacker, the demoness flung herself from the cliff and twisted through the air above, clawing in vain as the thing on her back dug its six spiny limbs deeper in. Flash recognized it as one of the sirens' hunter-killer drones—part monkey, part insect, part machine. It was only half as large as a man, but more bloodthirsty than any human being.
He scrambled back, groping for his guitar as Sunset tumbled up and down through the air, a few times missing the ground by inches. Awkwardly, he picked it up by the neck, slung the strap over his head, and aimed the small but powerful amp in the body. There was no way he could knock the monster off with finesse, but if he could stun both combatants, he knew which would better recover from the fall. He raised his hand high and brought it down on the strings with all his might. As a particularly loud, ugly power chord blasted into the air, there was a painful snapping sensation from his right thumb.
The soundwave swatted the combatants from the air, and they plummeted to earth some fifty feet from the cliff's base. Shouldering the guitar, Flash selected a place where the cliff was jagged and not so sheer, and made a scrambling descent. He leapt the last meter to the ground and sprinted to where the drone lay waving its four yet-unbroken limbs, trying to right itself. Flash stopped a yard away and took aim again, but this time only the flesh of his thumb touched the strings. He had hit the last chord improperly, and where his thumbnail-pick had been, there was now a jagged, bloody edge. There were picks in his rucksack, but that was at the cliff top.
In a choice borne of split-second panic, he gripped his beloved guitar like a battleaxe, and brought one, two, three crushing blows down on the creature's head. With the last, the guitar's body broke from the neck, yanking the strings away and twisting it from Flash's hands as it fell. The drone twitched, hissed, and fell silent. A trickle of oily green ichor oozed from its split braincase.
Panting and clutching his injured thumb, Flash stared down at the thing at his feet, disinclined to turn his back. A moan of pain reminded him of Sunset, who had now wobbled to her feet, and was holding her head in her talons. For a moment, Flash feared the soundwave had deafened her.
"You okay?" he said, hurrying over.
"Got a smoke?" she said.
"Fresh out."
"Well, shit."
Flash's relief was short-lived, for now he noticed a dribble of blood running from a gash in Sunset's side, below the armpit.
"Hey," he said, indicating the wound. "There's some bandages in my rucksack." He was too rattled to say more.
A little later, Sunset sat cross-legged on what had once been a road, holding still as Flash taped down the last crude patch. She was lucky: The drone had only been able to dig into three places, and had not touched anything vital. Her flesh was leathery, and if she felt much pain, she did not show it.
He surveyed his kit, and frowned. He was close to having to tear up shirts for bandages, and none of his were clean enough. His last roll of surgical tape had perhaps a foot remaining. He could not help reflecting that a wanderer might die—or kill—for a good supply of either.
"Alright, I think you're good," he said.
Tentatively, Sunset rose to her feet and flexed her limbs, but stopped with her wings only half spread, wincing in obvious pain. "Great," she said, folding them. "Now we gotta walk back." She surveyed the landscape a moment before choosing a direction and taking a few long strides in the manner of someone setting out on a journey. But she had only covered a few yards before turning back toward a somewhat bemused human.
"Well, come on," she said. "It's not that far. We'll start fresh, once you're fresh."
"Once I'm...?"
"You need about three showers, Flash."
Though not short-legged, Flash found himself trotting to keep up with Sunset's loping strides. Judging by landmarks and the positions of Nibiru and the sun, they were heading away from the no-man's-land that separated human and siren territory. Most people would prefer to go this way, but the farther they went, the more troubled Flash's expression grew.
"Hey," Sunset said at last. "Sorry about your guitar."
"It happens," Flash said, though he privately felt a little pang of loss. So much for another piece of the old world. "Actually, I was thinking about what I should say when we get back."
"Anything, as long as it's genuine."
"Easy for you to say. "
"It's really not. I've been there."
Yes—that was true. Flash mentally kicked himself. A few years in the Wasteland, and you started to forget others' problems.
He looked up at Sunset with an explanation in mind, but froze mid-stride and stared. Sunset was a little way ahead before she noticed she was walking alone.
"What's up?" she said, looking back.
"Nothing. Forget it." Flash hurried to catch up, avoiding her eyes. He felt rotten about telling a half-truth, but anything else would have come across as more than a little strange.
For in the corner of his eye, just for a fraction of a second, he thought he had seen Sunset's human face.
