Fallout Equestria x Wild Arms: Trigger to Tomorrow

Chapters

Chapter 2: Into the Wilderness
Chapter 3: Scenery Called 'Everyday'
Chapter 4: Facing the Ancient Ruins
Chapter 5: Feeling the Bonds
Chapter 6: Odessa
Chapter 7: Remorse and Promise
Chapter 8: When the Heart Ignites
Chapter 9: In a Cold Sleep
Chapter 10: The Unknown Stable
Chapter 12: From Anxiety to Impatience
Chapter 13: Impatience Leading to Trouble
Chapter 15: Shrine of Flames
Chapter 17: The End of the Beginning (Part 1 of 2)
Chapter 18: The End of the Beginning (Part 2 of 2)
Chapter 19: Parting, Bonds, Setting Out
Chapter 20: Determination
Chapter 21: Skull City
Chapter 22: From Dusk 'til Dawn
Chapter 23: Complication
Chapter 24: Wild Bunch
Chapter 25: Black as Sin, Red as Blood
Chapter 26: The Shining Spear Pierces the Darkness
Chapter 27: Understanding the Vastness of the World
Chapter 28: The Sweet Candy
Chapter 29: The Calm During the Storm
Chapter 30: The New Canterlot Republic
Chapter 32: Healing the Scar
Chapter 33: Only Because It's Important Does it Easily Break
Chapter 34: From Beyond
Chapter 35: Persephone
Chapter 36: Flying in the Midst of the Storm
Chapter 37: Demon Spear
Chapter 1: A Colt Meets a Filly and ARMs
Chapter 11: Only You Can Cross Your Own Barriers
Chapter 14: Dangerous Eyes
Chapter 16: The Power That Supports the World
Chapter 31: The Scars of Leftover Memories

Chapter 2: Into the Wilderness

Chieftain Hard Tack’s hoof smashed into my jaw with enough force to rattle teeth and plant me firmly on my backside, ears ringing and brain quite convinced it was going to be enjoying a minor concussion for the rest of the day. While I sat there feeling the warmth of a trail of blood trickling from my nostrils and soaking the front of my muzzle the Chieftain stood over me glowering with her amber eyes practically glowing with rage.

“Ten seconds flat. That’s how long you have to explain to me why I shouldn’t banish you from this village.”

To my credit it didn’t take me more than one of my allotted ten seconds to get my legs under me and face my tribe’s Chieftain with something resembling pride; or at least as much pride as someone with blood still dribbling from their nose and possibly a cocked eye from being dazed can manage. I don’t think my voice quavered at all; though don’t quote me on that.

“Banishment only has ever happened if the crime was really, really bad. Like, murder bad. And far as I know I haven’t murdered anypony. Seriously Chief, hit me all you want, I deserve it for getting Trailblaze mixed up in all this, but you’d need most the tribe howling for my blood to justify banishment. Far as I know only about half the ponies around here don’t like me enough to throw a party if I got kicked out.”

Hard Tack was scowling, “That was more than ten seconds. Damned the ancestors themselves if you sure as shit aren’t making me wish you had done something bad enough to warrant banishment. You’re nearly a full grown stallion Longwalk! You can’t be doing this kind of thing anymore! It was cute the first dozen times you wandered where you shouldn’t or questioned one of our laws, but it’s gotten well past due that you grow up! I may not banish you, buck, but you’re going to be paying for this stunt nonetheless.”

“Mother, you shouldn’t forget me, I broke the law too,” Trailblaze said. She’d been standing next to me, though up until now she’d had trouble getting a word in edgewise.

We were inside the Chieftain’s tent, the large circular affair made of interlaced patches of gecko hide, the top open to let both pale daylight in and let smoke from the fire pit in the center out. Most of the tribe had gathered outside, having witnessed the spectacle of me, Trailblaze, and Arcaidia being escorted into the village. My mother, Sand Storm, had led the procession. It had been her search party that found us as we’d crossed back over Ghost Ridge. She hadn’t spoken more words to me than were needed to confirm that I was alright and to get the gist of the story of what had happened. My mother had kept her peace and not asked any questions about Arcadia. I think she understood just by observation that me and Trailblaze didn’t really know much and that, in the end, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She didn’t yell at me or anything, but had had that faint look of disappointment I’d gotten used to by now and found far more painful any of the hitting or yelling I was getting from the Chieftain. She’d returned to our tent after delivering me and Trailblaze to the Chieftain, telling me that we’d ‘have a talk’ once Hard Tack had decided my punishment. In cases of tribal law being breached only the Chieftain was given right to decree punishment, so my mother was stuck waiting until this was over with.

Arcaidia, far as I knew, was still outside the tent, being watched closely by a circle of spear armed hunters. The unicorn, last I’d seen her, had been giving the village an openly fascinated examination, ignoring the pointy spears and unfriendly gazes leveled at her from my tribesmates as she tried to chat with them in her own language. I just hoped she didn’t cause any kind of ruckus until I could think of a way to convince the Chieftain to let her stay for a little while. I didn’t like the thought of her being kicked out of the village and into the vast wasteland on her own one bit.

Hard Tack had fixed her daughter with a stare sharp enough to break skin, “Oh don’t think I’ve forgotten your part in this! You’re even worse than he is sometimes! At least when Longwalk does something stupid we can attest it to bad blood, but you’re blood of the Chieftain! You cannot afford to act so foalishly.”

The Chieftain likely didn’t notice it or if she did she didn’t care, but my blue mane bristled a bit at her words. ‘Bad blood’ she said. It’s not like I had any choice in who my father was. There have been very few incidents of our tribe having any dealings with outsiders. Those few incidents usually resulted in violence. Outsiders were not allowed near the village; an ironclad rule, and one enforced in blood. I don’t know how my mother managed to spend any time at all with an outsider or how their time together resulted in me. I never had the courage to ask her about the details and my mother had never offered them. I usually tried very, very hard not to think about it. It made my blood boil whenever it was brought up though and it was even worse when my tribesmates tried to use my ‘bad blood’ as the excuse for my behavior, like it was somehow expected of me to cause trouble.

“It isn’t her fault,” I said heatedly, “She was just trying to do her…her duty as blood of the Chieftain! Is it not the task of the Chieftain to protect all under the tribe? Even when they do something stupid? Trailblaze was only doing what she had to in order to protect a fellow tribesmate. It is not her fault that tribesmate just happened to be doing something so dangerous.”

The Chieftain rounded on me, her ire towards Trailblaze momentary forgotten, which was what I wanted. As she took a menacing step towards me I couldn’t help but remind myself this pony’s cutie mark happened to be a hoof making a punching motion. She really did have a mean right hoof, and I did like having all my teeth firmly in my mouth. Perhaps keeping her attention on me wasn’t the brightest of ideas, but again, not the brightest colt in my tribe.

At around forty years the Chieftain was a mare of stone hard lean muscle. She shared her daughter’s light chocolate brown coat and black mane, though it was shot through with long streaks of white and was decorated with an assortment of gecko claws and teeth. Though not particularly tall that didn’t put the slightest damper on the menace and raw presence she could exude with a look and I felt myself feeling like a colt barely having learned how to walk under the harsh gaze she threw my way.

“Don’t even try to confuse this issue, buck! Point is Trailblaze should’ve dragged you back to the village the second she heard what you were planning to do. She didn’t.”

She looked away darkly, muttering “…She’s too fond of you by half…”

As if she hadn’t even realized she’d said that she was back to glaring at me and Trailblaze both.

“The two of you have caused this tribe far too much headache for me to just let this go with a slap on the hoof. Every time Longwalk gets into trouble you’re there right next to him Trailblaze!”

“Because somepony has to keep an eye on him,” Trailblaze said, though I could tell from the slight tremble in her legs she was terrified talking back to her mother, “Nopony else here seems to care if something happens to him. I do.”

“Trail-“I began, wanting to cut this off before it got worse. No such luck there.

“That’s the problem!” roared Hard Tack, cutting my words off “You care too much and it makes you blind to your actual duty; ensuring the tribe’s laws are adhered to! These laws exist to protect us, and have for over two centuries! If you care so much for this idiot colt then keep him out of trouble instead of following him into it! But you’ve made it clear again and again that you can’t keep a proper head around him.”

She snorted, air huffing in and out through her nostrils in anger. I’d seen the Chieftain get angry plenty of times before, but I‘d never quite seen her eyes get quite that…bloodshot. And were those veins throbbing on her forehead and neck? How long had Hard Tack been keeping this bottled in?

“This cannot continue and as Chieftain it is within my right and power to ensure it doesn’t. Trailblaze, you are henceforth forbidden from associating with this buck.”

I stared at the Chieftain with my jaw slightly gaping, I heard Trailblaze draw in a sharp breath.

“Waitwhat?”

“Mother! You can’t do that! I can ‘associate’ with whomever I damned well want!”

Hard Tack stomped a hoof on the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dirt, “I’m Chieftain. Kind of gives me leeway to make such decrees, and since Longwalk’s antics have earned him few friends among us besides you I doubt many in the tribe will object to this.”

“But, how?” I stammered “I mean we see each other every day. The village isn’t big enough for us to just not see each other!”

“Hmph, you do not have to speak to each other to live in the same village. You will not hunt together, spend time together, eat together, or do anything other than merely pass each other by and speak to one another only when absolutely needed to perform some task you’ve been given.”

“For how long?” I asked, feeling like I was slipping down a slope towards a cliff with nothing to grab onto to stop myself.

“For as long as I damned well deem it necessary!”

That’s not fair, I wanted to say but didn’t bother. I knew exactly how much the Chieftain was likely to care about that particular line of argument. I wracked my brain trying to think of something to turn this around. The idea of not even being able to talk to Trailblaze on a regular basis was causing a numbing chill in my chest. This was going far worse than I’d hoped and we hadn’t even gotten to the part about Arcaidia.

“Fine,” I said firmly, getting a blink from the Chieftain and a look of wide eyed shock from Trailblaze.

“Long, no, you can’t just accept this!”

I lowered my head a bit, feeling a hot burst of shame at the tone of desperation in Trailblaze’s voice. I didn’t want this to get any worse though and if we kept arguing with the Chieftain like this it would be even harder to talk calmly to her about Arcaidia. I just had to rest my hopes on the notion that this ‘decree’ was something that Hard Tact would be willing to reconsider when in a simmered down and better mood. Maybe give it a few months, behave and don’t break any more tribe laws and she’d be willing to let me and Trailblaze...be friends again.

“The Chieftain knows what’s best,” I choked out the words, blinking rapidly to keep the tears back, “I’m…I’m really sorry Trailblaze, for all this. I should have listened to you, back there in the forest.”

Trailblaze just shook her head, “No you shouldn’t have. We found Arcaidia because you pushed forward.”

I blinked, hearing the gratitude in her voice and realizing it was directed at the blue unicorn. I knew I was grateful to Arcaidia for saving Trailblaze’s life and always would owe her a debt for that. I hadn’t occurred to me until then that Trailblaze was feeling the same thing. It made me smile and want to hug her, but I had to smother that feeling. I would have to smother any feelings like that for a long time. I wanted to scream; instead I focused my attention back on Hard Tact as the Chieftain’s face became a hard mask.

“Arcaidia?” the Chieftain asked, “Is that the name of that…unicorn? I am still having trouble believing the story you two have told me of her. Emerging from some strange silver object embedded in a cave? Powerful magic? Longwalk you say she even gave you this spear?”

She gestured with her head at the spear in question, which was laying propped up against one of the support poles for the tent. I’d been asked to hand it over before going into the Chieftain’s tent and she’d given it a few curious looks but otherwise had not asked much about it until now. It had actually been rather hard for me to give it up when asked and now I felt an odd tingling in my mouth when I looked at the spear and urge to go over and pick it up. I pushed the feeling aside.

“Yes,” I said, nodding, and a little glad for the change of subject, my mind now bent on how to convince the Chieftain to allow Arcaidia to either remain in the village as a guest or at least receive some supplies and an escort to the next nearest village, “Without that spear I couldn’t have helped Trailblaze. I don’t really know what it is though.”

“It sounds like you don’t know anything at all about this unicorn or the items she carries,” Hard Tact said with not a small hint of sarcasm, “I am wondering if there is any reason at all not to cast her out of our tribe’s village as soon as we’re done with this conversation.

“Perhaps as a show of gratitude for saving the lives of two of your tribe, including your daughter?” I offered, regaining some of my fire. I’d gone into this knowing I was going to be punished for breaking the law. I hadn’t known how personal that punishment was going to be, but I knew it’d been coming. As for Arcaidia, I was damned if I was going to let her be treated as just another outsider! Not a chance. I owed her.

For a change of pace it seemed like my words had been chosen right and I saw the Chieftain’s steel expression softly slightly, “I am grateful for my daughter’s life, though it should not have been put in such danger in the first place. But as I have told you before Longwalk, so many times I’m getting quite tired of trying to count; our laws exist for a reason. Outsiders bring nothing but pain to our tribe. The world outside this valley is one of terror, suffering, and death. For us to survive as we have we must remain apart from the wasteland beyond. Part of that means not allowing any outsider entry to our land. This Arcaidia is even more unusual than what is normal for an outsider; her origin, her powers, her very language are all foreign to us! What if she has enemies seeking her? What if she carries dark intentions we do not know of, hiding behind an exterior of innocence? You told me yourself that she destroyed those large golden gekos with nothing but ice conjured from her horn! Do you expect me to trust somepony with such power to remain among my people when at any moment she may decide to turn such power upon us?”

“If she was going to do that don’t you think she’d already be doing it instead of trying to talk off our hunter’s ears,” I replied, “I may not be able to speak her tongue by I’ve seen her ‘intentions’ clearly enough. She could have killed those gekos and just left me and Trailblaze to die and you and the tribe would have been none the wiser for it. Instead she gave me a weapon to save Trailblaze, and then healed her of what would have been fatal wounds.”

“Mother,” Trailblaze added, “I can’t think of anything she’d want with our tribe. I don’t think she even knows where she is, let alone have any bad intentions towards us.”

Hard Tack’s eyes were narrow slits but she was at least listening, and her voice wasn’t nearly as shouty, “I will…consent to her remaining with us for one night. However on the morrow she will be sent away,” her voice raised as I opened my mouth to protest, “I will hear no more of this! Our provisions are dangerously low, but she may have enough to last her a day or so. I will not risk more than that.”

Her voice lowered to a whisper and I’m not sure either me or Trailblaze were meant to hear her say, “I will not risk it.”

I didn’t like this, but at least Arcaidia would be allowed a night to rest and would be given some food and water. Honestly I wasn’t sure the unicorn wanted to stay here exactly, or if she wanted to go, or what at all Arcaidia was after. I just felt a need to ensure she was treated well. Not being immediately cast out into the wasteland with no provisions at all seemed to be the best I was going to argue out the Chieftain. It wasn’t much, but it’d have to be enough. With a look at Trailblaze I wondered just what I should do. On any normal morning like this was around the time when me and her would be going out to hunt, or taking care of some daily chores after breakfast. Now…

Hard Tack was looking at us and sighed, “Trailblaze, Whetstone’s hunting party shall be leaving soon for the south forest. You should join them. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the extra pair of eyes. Longwalk, I’m certain your mother wants to talk to you now. The unicorn can stay with the two of you for the night.”

“Mother,” Trailblaze began, “Perhaps for just one more day Longwalk and I can-“

“No. This is ended. I may, in time, if he can show he knows how to behave like an adult member of the tribe, consent to the two of you being…together…at some time in the future. For now my decree remains. Now go, both of you.”

As we both hung our heads, turning to leave the tent, I paused and glanced back at the silver spear, Gramzanber, and wondered what the Chieftain planned to do with it. One look at her though showed that asking wasn’t a very good idea at all and I tried to hide the strange stab of loss that crept around me as I thought about leaving the spear behind as me and Trailblaze left the tent.

Outside we found Arcaidia right where we left her; making the hunters guarding her very nervous as she chattered at them in her odd language. I recognized that one of the hunters, a gray mare with a thickly braided black mane, was actually trying to not smile at the cheerful blue unicorn. Whetstone was probably one of the nicer ponies in the tribe, or at least she was one of the ones that never brought up my ‘bad blood’ and treated me like I was normal. I think she was more bemused by Arcaidia than nervous about her. Unlike the other hunters she didn’t have her spear drawn in her mouth, ready to strike.

“Hey Whetstone,” I called “Is the great outsider menace threatening all these big tough hunters with cheerful smiles? Quick, somepony stop her before she does something crazy, like continue acting friendly!”

I imagined my words were not the most wisely chosen ones ever as I got plenty of glares from most of the hunters. Whetstone just shook her head, looking silly as she tried very hard to appear serious and failed at it by crackling a small smirk.

“Woah there Longwalk, first let me see how many teeth you still have.”

I blinked, exchanged a look with Trailblaze, who rolled her shoulders in a shrug, and I smiled wide as I could at Whetstone. Another hunter, a big burly brown buck with his mane tied in a tight top knot, joined Whetstone in peering at my teeth. The buck sighed in disappointment and Whetstone nudged him with her hoof.

“Ha! Told ya Cliff. All still there. Knew the Chieftain would go easy on him. C’mon, cough up the powder!”

The buck, Cliffscale, grumbled as he duck into a pouch on his gecko hide barding and handed over a small bag of healing powder over to Whestone, who accepted it with a grin.

“Glad to see you both care so much for his well being,” Trailblaze muttered, her ears flat against the back of her head and her tail twitching. Whetstone gave her a small apologetic look. Somewhere in the background I saw Arcaidia pause in her poking at one of the hunter’s cutie marks, much to the chagrin of said hunter, to look up over at our talking and I saw the unicorn filly’s eyes practically light up.

“Longwalk ren Trailblaze! Tu dol holshala vi gala!”

Arcaidia trotted up, right past the leveled spears of hunters as if the sharp deadly instruments weren’t even registering to her as a threat. Which they probably weren’t, I imagined. She looked between the two of us, smiling her bright smile, and excitedly started chirping words that I couldn’t even begin to follow. I really, really needed to figure out some way to communicate with her. She was gesturing around the village, then raised her hoof with the Pip-Buck (really do need to figure out where I heard that term before) and shook it excitedly at my face.

“Okay, okay! I get that you’re really happy about…something. Look Arcaidia can you focus for a sec? I need to try to explain something to you and that won’t be easy given I’m going to have to either pantomime this or draw you some pictures in the dirt.”

As I tried to calm Arcaidia down by placing a hoof calmly on her shoulder and making patting gesture, and pointing at the ground as I sat back on my haunches, rather hoping she get the idea to do the same, I heard Whetstone and Trailblaze talking off to the side.

“Mother says I should go hunt with you and your party today.”

“Hm? Sounds good, it’s been awhile since you and I were together on a hunt. You’re usually off keeping watch on our resident troublebuck,” Whetstone’s tone suddenly changed, lowering and becoming tinged with concern, “Trail, what is it? What did your mother do for punishment…?”

I didn’t hear what Trailblaze said but it’s not like I didn’t know. Whetstone took in a sharp breath and I heard her say something sharply under her breath but I didn’t catch what it was. Then the gray mare said loudly, I think intentionally so I’d hear it easily.

“Right then, morning light is wasting bucks and fillies! Village is in dire need of food so we’re going to hit up the southwest dunes to see what we can rustle up! Trail’s comin’ with us today. No, no need to keep an eye on our new guest, Longwalk looks like he’s got her covered. Right Long?”

“Eeyup,” I said over my shoulder, “I’ll make sure she doesn’t unleash too much friendliness upon our unsuspecting village while you all are out doing hunt-like stuff.”

“See? So let’s get those spears pointed elsewhere and move out.”

Some of the hunters grumbled, giving me and Arcadia dark looks as they went by. Cliffscale just gave a confused shake of his head at me as he trotted by. Trailblaze and Whetstone followed walking side by side. Whetstone cast a look at me that contained equal measure apology and worry. I figure she’ d get the whole story out of Trailblaze during the hunt. I appreciated that she was concerned though I think it was more for Trailblaze than me; which I was fine with. I knew I could trust Whetstone would be there as a friend for Trailblaze while we waited for Hard Tack to cool her head on this whole damned ‘no associating ‘ thing.

Trailblaze looked back at me just once before the hunting party vanished among the village tents.

Now it was just me, Arcaidia, and a half dozen village onlookers who would have rather gawked at the oddity of the unicorn in their midst rather than go about their daily business. Fine, they could watch while I awkwardly went about trying to communicate with Arcaidia that she’d be leaving tomorrow morning, like it or not, and that she was staying we me and my mother at our tent tonight.

That took…awhile.

Arcaidia was certainly a smart pony; I was just a slow and clumsy one. It took quite a bit of utterly failed attempts at pantomime and about a dozen tries at scraping appropriate pictures in the dirt to get the basic idea across to her that I wanted her to follow me to my tent. From the look she gave me I was half certain I’d just accidentally propositioned her.

“Right then, so just follow me then and I’ll take you to my tent, er, but just so you can sleep there and meet my mom,” I said while pointing at her with one hoof while canting me head in the rough direction of where me and my mother’s tent was, off by the edge of the south end of the village.

Arcaidia was still giving me a look that suggested a fair portion of my meaning was very much lost in translation but she nodded and began trotting after me as I began walking. I watched her as she came up alongside me, my eyes sliding almost against my will towards her flanks. It wasn’t like I was interested, I just realized that me and her had something interesting in common. I hadn’t noticed earlier due to the dress she wore, but as she walked the short cut fabric would shift, occasionally revealing the bare azure flank beneath.

She didn’t have a cutie mark either.

“And here I thought I was the only one at my age who couldn’t figure out what he was good at,” I commented, smiling softly.

Her eyes blinked, and then followed to where my own gaze had landed. I saw momentary confusion on her regal features that was rapidly replaced by dawning wide-eyed realization. I watched as she shook her head and planted a hoof to her face, muttering under her breath. The words were of course nothing I could understand but the tone sounded…frustrated.

She recovered quickly though and next thing I knew she was speaking rapidly while making a waving gesture with one hoof. I would have found it odd that she kept talking as if I understood what she said if not for the fact that I’d been doing the same thing myself. Sometimes it just helped to talk, no matter that you couldn’t be understood. I certainly didn’t mind; she had an energetic chiming voice that was easy to listen to.

It didn’t take long for us to get to my tent, the village wasn’t exactly large. The tribe’s tents varied in size, often getting expanded as family’s grew with additional ‘rooms’ being added onto one another. The silver gecko hide was stripped and faded to gray under years of wind and sand but the small tent me and my mother shared was sturdy and well patched. I saw my mother’s spear planted in the ground just outside the entrance flap alongside another that I recognized due to the pair of white feathers tied to the end of it.

What’s Hawker doing here? I wondered as I paused just outside, my ears flicking as I tilted my head towards the entrance to listen. Arcaidia, frowning, came up beside me. I heard my mother’s voice, her tone oddly low and quiet. Why was she speaking as if she didn’t want anypony hearing?

“…to do with them. She isn’t even a pegasus…”

Hawker’s voice was louder and my ears pricked up as I noticed the sound of fear undercutting the words of the stallion who was the tribe’s self-proclaimed ‘facilitator of trade’. Considering the tribe didn’t have anypony to trade with besides themselves that wouldn’t have seemed all that impressive but Hawker had a knack for getting his hooves on items one villager wanted in exchange for items another villager wanted.

“It won’t matter Sand Storm! Ancestors, did you think you’d have your fun with one of them and that’d be that? Because of you, they know where we live, and because of that, they watch. Our new visitor isn’t going to go unnoticed.”

Now I heard my mother’s voice rise, the harsh roil of anger entering her voice akin to the coming of the same kind of storm that was her namesake.

“Fun? You know damned well that it was more than that Hawker. You were his friend too! You can’t believe he’d break his word to us now can you?”

“We don’t even know if he’s still alive. His word only matters as long as he’s around to make it stick. If, in the, what, twelve years since you last saw him, that he died, or lost his authority? What then? They’d have no reason not to come in and take what they want.”

I kept leaning in closer and closer to the entrance flap to the tent, straining to hear, practically willing my ears to spontaneously grow in size so I could get more of the conversation. I didn’t even notice Arcaidia moving until she was already brushing past me and into the tent. I got out half a “Waitasec!” trying to stop her before I stumbled in behind Arcaidia and was left standing next to her and looking at the very surprised pair of ponies looking back at us.

My mother shared my light tan coat but her long straight mane was a dark shade of violet, the long bangs held back by a red bandanna that was, as far as I knew, the only one of its kind in the village. Her amber eyes went from surprised to that hard ‘mother disapproves’ look I’d gotten quite used to over the years.

Next to her tall and athletic form Hawker’s compact build made him look almost chubby, though I knew the gray earthy pony with the shorted braided mane of black was solid muscle. His trading skill aside Hawker had taught me the finer points of hoof fighting when I was little. For the small fee of doing chores for him and acting as his eyes and ears in figuring out who needed what around the village.

“Longwalk,” my mother said with that tone only a mother revving up for a scolding could pull off. I smiled at her sheepishly, putting on my most friendly and innocent face.

“Hi mom. Look, I brought a guest!”

“I noticed,” she said dryly, only sparing Arcaidia a slight glance before turning to face Hawker.

“We’ll finish our talk in the morning Hawk. I need to speak with my son now.”

“Ah, of course. We’ll catch up later Sand Storm. Longwalk I hope the Chief wasn’t too hard on you. Nothing wrong with a little healthy curiosity I always say, as long as you can make it pay off.”

The gray stallion paused only once in leaving the tent to bow his head to Arcaidia, a gesture she returned with a smile. When he was gone we were left with a very awkward silence that dragged out for almost a minute as the three of us, myself, my mother, and Arcaidia, were left starting at each other. My mother broke the silence with a heavy sigh as she went over to one of the piles of matting made from the tasteless clumps of dry grass that still grew all over the region. Not the height of comfort but hey, you work with what you got, right?

“Sit down Long, you might as well tell me what happened with Hard Tack.”

I did so, sitting down opposite my mother as Arcaidia sat next to me. My mother’s expression only went from dark to worse as I told her what had transpired, first the way me and Trailblaze found Arcaidia, adding details I’d kept out before, and then of the conversation with the Chieftain. My mother spat and stomped her hoof on the ground, making me start and Arcaidia blink.

“That hard headed idiot! Does she really think keeping you and Trailblaze apart is going to fix anything? She doesn’t get that ponies don’t just stop feeling things because they’re inconvenient. Then or now.”

“I-its not that bad mom,” I lied, “I almost got Trailblaze killed yesterday. Without Arcaidia, I would have. Maybe she shouldn’t be around me so much anymore.”

“Horseapples! The two of you have been together since you were foals. Hard Tack herself was the one who thought you needed somepony to play with, since so many of the other foals kept their distance from you because of…”

“Because of my father,” I said, letting that hang in the air.

My father the ‘outsider’, whose blood marked me as different. It wasn’t like I was brutalized or horribly mistreated, it was just like my mother said; many of my tribe just kept a certain distance between myself and them. Emotionally if not physically. Only a few exceptions like Hawker, Trailblaze, and Whetstone had gotten to know me, taken the time to see past the heritage. My mother looked at me and I saw an all too familiar expression, one of remembrance. She’d never actually said it straight to my face but I suspected I looked a lot like my father. I knew from the way she looked at me that she remembered him fondly, but it just left me feeling uncomfortable. Honestly though I was surprised to hear it was the Chieftain who’d come up with the idea of Trailblaze and I playing together all those years ago.

“Yes, your father. I think Hard Tack at the time was trying to make up for…well, it doesn’t matter now. Whatever she felt then certainly doesn’t seem to count now,” my mother said heatedly, “I’ll talk with her tomorrow. You ought to be punished for breaking the law, but keeping you from your friend is ridiculous.”

“Mom, please don’t. I’m grateful you’d be willing to try, but I’d rather the Chieftain just be given the chance to simmer down on her own. Arguing with her now will just make things worse for both me and Trailblaze.”

A part of me, well honestly more than just a part, wanted nothing more than for my mother to not just convince the Chieftain that this idea of me and Trailblaze staying apart was wrong but to give Hard Tack a few knocks upside the head besides. But I had the distinct feeling that the Chieftain was right; while my mother might make a scene there just weren’t enough other folk in the tribe who would back her on this. Most of the tribe thought I was a troublemaker, which let’s face it, I was, and that the Chieftain’s daughter shouldn’t have been spending so much time around me anyway. The best thing to do here was to quietly endure this until the situation cooled off.

Besides I needed to tell my mother about Arcaidia, who was being very patient as she sat watching me and mom talk, her silver eyes filled with curiosity. Probably wondering what we were talking about, perhaps trying to pick apart our language and figure it out?

My mother had a firm set to her jaw as if she’d swallowed something that wasn’t particularly appealing, “I still don’t like this. What were you even thinking going beyond Ghost Ridge anyway? Last month it was north beyond the canyon, now this. Why do you always feel this need to go where you know you should not Longwalk?”

I shifted uncomfortably, rolling my shoulders in a shrug, “I don’t know. I just do. You know this mom. I get an itch in my hooves when I know there’s someplace I haven’t been and I don’t know I just can’t help it, I want to check it out. I usually can think of a good reason to compliment the curiosity though; like today, I wanted to see what was beyond Ghost Ridge just for the hay of it, yeah, but there was also the chance of finding new game to hunt. Village is on hard times, so I figured a new source of food would make everypony happier.”

“It would, and dangerous as these golden geckos you ran across are there’s a strong chance Stone Crack will convince Hard Tack that hunting in the forest beyond Ghost Ridge might be worthwhile. We could use the meat.”

At the mention of food my stomach decided to make its own opinion on our current activities known, gurgling out the stomachese equivalent of ‘less talking now, breakfast please’. It was actually getting onto late morning and I hadn’t eaten since the previous evening. My mother huffed out a laugh.

“I suppose it’s no surprise the two of you are hungry,” she said as she got up and went to go get a fire going in the cooking pit, “So about Arcaidia what did the Chieftain decide about her?”

I hung my head, still not at all happy about that particular matter, “She’s to be sent away tomorrow. She’ll stay with us today, be allowed to rest, and be given some provisions when she leaves. But that’s it. Heh, who knew that the lives of two of our tribe comes at the cheap price of some food and barely a thank you besides that?”

As my mother set up three spits over the pit dug in the center of the cent below where a hole in the roof could be opened to let smoke out she used some flint and dry grass to get some old brush and logs burning. Arcaidia seemed fascinated by the proceedings, watching the fire get lit with a curious expression. Her expression changed when my mother got out some stripes of cured gecko meat and put them on the spits to cook; a look of horrified disgust. I cocked an eyebrow at her.

“What’s the matter Arcaidia?”

“Estu ren boro? Boro!? Dol vi sevisril.”

I glanced at my mother who was cracking a small grin. Catching my look my mother said, “I don’t think she likes meat.”

“Doesn’t like meat? Why? Meat is food.” Already the cooking gecko meat was filling the tent with a pleasant aroma that was making my mouth water. Sure we didn’t just eat gecko meat; we had some small fruits and roots we could grow near the river bank. But gecko meat was the staple of the diet.

Arcaidia was looking at the cooking meat with a look that suggested she had very different thoughts on the matter than me. I watched as her horn glowed and from her saddled bags one of those odd silver discs emerged. My eyes widened as the silver ripped with unseen force with an odd crackling sound and I realized the object wasn’t solid silver but instead was merely wrapped in a thin silver material. Inside the wrapping was an odd beige…thing? It looked roughly the consistency of dry mud and about as appetizing. I just watched in horrified disgust of my own as Arcaidia bit into the weird mud-like thing and started chewing with obvious relish. To my horror I saw white…goopy stuff was inside the thing she was eating. It looked absolutely awful. Arcaidia grinned at me and the thing floated towards me, a clear offer.

“Ugh! No, get your weird white goopy filled mud thing away from me! I’ll stick to meat, an actual food, thank you very much.”

Arcaidia ‘humphed’ at me and turned her nose up, looking away from the cook pit pointedly while taking another bite of her horrible looking meal. I heard my mother chuckling and I gave her a plaintive look.

“What? Whatever that is it isn’t food!”

“Oh Longwalk, that’s just a snack cake. Crème filled,” she sighed, “Your father used to share his with…me…”

Yay, welcome back awkward silence, we missed you!

By the time we were done eating it was well past noon. Normally I’d be neck deep in chores by now, and my mother knew it. She wasted no time in putting me to work sharpening spear heads and curing a batch of gecko hide from the previous day’s hunting efforts. Arcaidia watched me with half an eye as I worked, focusing most of her attention on fiddling with the Pip-Buck she wore. I was deathly curious about the device. I suddenly remembered my intent to ask around the village about where I’d heard the term before, and since my mother was at hoof, cleaning up after the meal, I decided to start with her.

“Mom, question,” I said and she glanced over her shoulder at me, “Do you know what a Pip-Buck is?”

I saw a guarded look cross her face as she turned her gaze towards where Arcaidia was sitting, oblivious to our conversation for the moment.

“I do. So you’ve taken a closer look at what your unicorn friend there is wearing.”

“Yeah, I just don’t know what it is. I thought I’d heard the name before I just couldn’t remember where from.”

“Me, most likely,” my mother admitted, coming over to sit next to me as I finished up the last of the spearheads, “Aside from Hawker I’m the only one in the tribe who knows much about technology from before the Great Fire.”

I mulled that over for a second. I knew vaguely of the notion of ‘technology’, of fantastic machines built through combinations of earth pony ingenuity and unicorn magic from the civilization that existed before the coming of the wasteland. The tribe of Shady Stream didn’t use any such devices. We lived simply. Part of the tribe’s creed of keeping outsiders at bay also resulted in next to no technology from the past coming into our lives. So how did my mother, or Hawker for that matter, know anything about it?

“You learned about technology from my father,” I concluded, thinking back to the conversation I’d overheard between my mother and Hawker “Somehow you and Hawker both made friends with an outsider without the rest of the tribe getting in the way…”

“Do you want to know what happened?” my mother ventured after an uncomfortable silence.

For sixteen years I’d never asked about my father. I hadn’t wanted to know. What good would knowing the details do me? I wouldn’t change the fact that most of the tribe treated me and my mother like shadows. It was easier to not know. I was, sad to admit, afraid to know. If I knew the details then…well…I might actually find out that he and my mother had good reason to come together, that they actually loved each other, and that my tribe were a bunch of ignorant and judgmental asses for insisting on keeping outsiders at bay, for preventing my mother from being happy. If I learned the truth I couldn’t just let things be, I knew I’d be too angry at my own tribe and I’d probably do something stupid again, this time worse enough to get both me and my mother actually banished. It was just simpler to not know then, to just let my father be a formless image in my head I could ignore.

My mother was still looking at me, and I couldn’t hold her earnest gaze, instead looking away as I said softly, “You don’t have to tell me mom. I…it doesn’t matter. Besides, you’ve never offered to tell me before, why start now?”

It was just meant to be a deflecting question, to get her off the topic, but my mother’s eyes didn’t leave me and if anything her voice gained a tone of seriousness to it I hadn’t heard before.

“I’m sorry I never have, Longwalk. There is a lot about your father you deserve to know and I feel the coward for not telling you earlier in your life. Now? Now with what you and Trailblaze have discovered and brought to our tribe it may be more important than ever that you know.”

I blinked, my gaze pulled over to the blue unicorn who was still fiddling with her Pip-Buck.

“Arcaidia? What does she have to do with my father?”

“I don’t think she specifically has anything to do with him,” my mother said, “But when he was here, he was searching for something for his people. Something they were willing to kill everypony in our tribe to get if they’d found it here. Only your father’s influence among his tribe was enough to convince them to leave our home in peace…that and the fact that what they were looking for wasn’t here. But it is possible that Arcaidia might be seen as a sign that what they sought is actually here. You claim you found her in a ‘pod’ that may have fallen into that cave from the sky. Your father mentioned several times to me that what he sought was something that fell from the stars. I hadn’t taken the notion seriously until today.”

“Hawker said something about our tribe still being watched?” I asked, suddenly feeling very nervous. Arcaidia’s pod had certainly looked like something not of this world, “Our hunters are always out and about, how could anypony be watching us without us finding them?”

“Understand this, my son, our tribe’s lack of technology does not make us pure, it makes us vulnerable. For your father’s people remaining hidden from our hunters while maintaining watch upon us would be as easy as one of our hunters sneaking up on an old blind gecko. They have ways to make themselves invisible, when they are not simply flying too high for us to see them.”

“Flying?...wait…” my eyes widened, “Are you saying father was a pegasus!?”

“As it so happens, yes.”

I found myself craning my neck to look at my back, just to make sure there weren’t any wings there I’d somehow missed over the past sixteen years.

“Are you sure?” I asked my mother straight-faced.

My mother smiled wryly, her face gaining a faint tint of red, “I’m pretty sure I got a close enough look at his wings on several occasions to make sure they were real. “

“No details please,” I said.

“From what I understand,” my mother continued, “It was not uncommon for ponies of different breeds to have foals. The foals of such unions were purebreds of one of the parent breeds, or even from the breed of the grandparents generation. At least that is what your father told me when I learned I was pregnant and was wondering what our foal would be like.”

I shook my head, trying to process all of this. I’d assumed that whatever had happened between my mother and father had been some kind of fluke, a random fling, or even something worse, non-consensual. I’d had an easy time harboring resentment towards my father because it’d been easy to imagine that there had been nothing special between him and my mother; that it had been lust, not love, that had brought me into this world.

“It sounds like you two were together for awhile…”

“I left the tribe for a time to travel with him, me and Hawker both.”

Okay, that was new information. I had known my mother’s affair with an outsider had been a serious scandal in the tribe, but I hadn’t known she’d actually left the tribe back then! I was starting to reconsider my stance on not asking for details. This was starting to sound like there was a lot more to this story than I’d have guessed. But I had to understand just what had Hawker so worried first.

“Right, so, dad’s a pegasus, I don’t have wings; sucks to be me. But again, why was Hawker so upset over Arcaidia?”

“He’s worried that your father’s tribe will see her presence here as a sign that what they were seeking all those years ago may actually be here and that your father’s influence with them in the intervening time has waned enough that they will come back in force. If that were the case we would likely be exterminated.”

“But…why…? We’re not a threat are we?”

“Your father’s tribe could teach ours magnitudes about paranoia and intolerance of those outside their tribe. As much as we loath outsiders here his tribe’s view of us ‘dirt ponies’ put us on a similar level as vermin. Your father was a very rare exception. Luckily he also happened to have great rank among his tribe, enough that his affair with me and his friendship with Hawker were seen as,” she suddenly adopted an odd accent I couldn’t begin to imagine my father using “Ah’ceptable liberties ‘fer a’ rankin’ offisah.”

“…Did he actually talk like that?” I asked incredulously.

My mother flicked my ear with her hoof, “Don’t make fun. I thought his accent was cute.”

The moment of levity passed quickly as I thought about what my mother had said.

“So the Chieftain really is right after all,” I said sourly, “Arcaidia staying here would put the tribe in danger.”

My mother’s face was sympathetic as she looked over to Arcaidia, “Perhaps. I personally don’t think your father’s tribe will come. Their interest was in lost technology. From what I see of her she has nothing more advanced than what they already had. The Pip-Buck itself is uncommon technology in the wasteland, but among your father’s tribe it was a fairly common tool.”

“What is my father’s tribe exactly? Do they have a name?”

“They called themselves 'Odessa’. Don't think I ever actually asked your father what the word meant. They had no permanent home, but rather moved from place to place; a tribe of nomads. I never got the details but I think they were being hunted by others, some old enemy from a war fought a long time ago. Me and Hawker never saw the bulk of his tribe, we merely accompanied him on a journey to one of his ‘research stations’ up north to help excavate something called a ‘Stable’. That’s when me and him got close to each other.”

“What was his name?” I asked finally, deciding that, like it or not, I needed to know at least this much about the stallion that sired me.

“Winter Sun,” my mother said with a tone tinged with longing, “Colonel Winter Sun.”

“What’s a colonel?” I asked, but before my mother could respond Arcaidia made a loud noise that was something between a ‘squee’ and a cheer as she turned a knob on her Pip-Buck and suddenly the tent was filled with unfamiliar music. I’d heard my tribe’s own music in the form of drums and chants on special occasions like births and weddings, or just whenever some of the tribe felt like getting drunk and having fun, but this was something entirely different.

I had no idea what could make music like what I was hearing. The notes were like someone had solidified the wind and was making it sing for them, long chiming notes that echoed in mind and heart. The tune was a slow and sorrowful thing, each note speaking of a lonely soul seeking the warmth of others. I stood enraptured by it while Arcaidia bounced up to me and my mother, talking excitedly and waving the Pip-Buck at us.

“Estu vol vianna ren gival! Esru dol sevina dol ARM vi revial! Persephone vi gival!”

I shook my head out of the faint daze the music pouring from the PipBuck had put me in to notice that Arcaidia was trying to show something on the PipBuck’s screen to me. Curiously I peered at the pale blue screen, trying to focus past the small cascade of emotions the music was dredging up from inside me. On the screen was a series of shaded forms and lines, with a grid-like layer over it. The shapes made no sense at first until I noticed a square amid a valley shaped form that was marked ‘Aborigine Village’. A map? Not far from that square was another one that was labeled ‘Escape Pod Landing Site’. It didn’t take me long to judge from the corresponding topography that that marked the location me and Trailblaze had found Arcaidia. Escape pod? What the hay was an escape pod? A pod to escape from what?

Seemingly guessing that I had figured out what I was looking at Arcaidia fiddled with some of the knobs on the PipBuck with the magical glow of her horn and I watched fascinated as the map zoomed out, showing…a lot of black. Okay so only the area around the village and the land we’d passed through between here and the cave we’d found her in showed up on Arcaidia’s map. But now that it had zoomed out I couldn’t help but notice a long dotted line that originated from where we were in the village and zipped off to the south west. A very long distance to the south west. I was no topographic expert but judging from the extent to which Arcaidia had to zoom the map out the chevron looking marker the dotted line ended at had to be weeks worth of travel from where we were.

Arcaidia was tapping the screen with her hoof, right on top of the chevron, then flipped a switch and the music went away. I felt my ears droop in disappointment as that sad yet compelling tune went away. Then she flipped the switch and the tune came back, and she pointed at the chevron at the end of the dotted line again.

My mother peeked over my shoulder, “She must be trying to say the music is coming from that location. I’m surprised. Pip-Bucks normally can’t pick up transmissions from that kind of distance.”

“Transwhatnow?” I asked, brow furrowing in confusion.

“Think of it like sounds that we normally can’t hear that certain items can make and send into the sky that other items like the Pip-Buck can hear,” my mother said with a wave of her hoof, “That music is coming from far away, but that Pip-Buck can hear it and play it for us.”

I shook my head in wonderment, “Amazing.”

“That’s only a tiny part of what Pip-Bucks can do. I’d really like to know where Arcaidia got this one from.”

As we’d been speaking Arcaidia had gathered up her saddle bags and came over to me and gripped my mane with her teeth and started pulling me towards the exit of the tent.

“Waitwhat? Arcaidia what are you-?”

“Eval! Estu vi Arcaidia eval ren survitae!”

I felt something on my tail, halting my progress, and looked back to see my mother had put her hoof down on my tail and was giving Arcaidia a hard look as she cleared her throat loudly.

“Sorry young lady but you’re not just dragging my son off.”

Arcaidia met my mother’s stare with one of her own and for a second I thought the two mares were about to get into a tug-o-war with me. Arcaidia wasn’t letting go of my mane and my mother’s hoof was still firmly pressed down on my tail. I gulped and quickly started talking, trying to diffuse the situation before it got out of control.

“Okay no, mom, I’m not going anywhere quite yet. Arcaidia,” I waved my hoof in front of her eyes to get her to look at me instead of glaring at my mother, and then I pointed at her Pip-Buck, then at where she held my mane with her teeth and gave her a questioning shrug, “Why are you trying to drag me out of my tent?”

She met my gaze with her own, her expression softening as she slowly released my mane and brought her Pip-Buck up to my face, flipping a knob that switched what was on the screen. Instead of a map there was now a simple list labeled ‘Objectives’. There was only one.

‘Find Persephone.’

“Persephone? Who, or what is that?” I asked, wondering not for the first time why it was this Pip-Buck and the information it displayed was in my language but Arcaidia apparently had no knowledge of how to speak it. Arcaidia eyes went downcast, her voice going quiet as she pointed between my mother and me.

“Longwalk,” hoof at me, then at my mother “Longwalk dol sevina.”

Then she pointed at herself, “Arcaidia,” then her hoof went to the word ‘Persephone’ “Persephone vi Arcaidia dol sevina.”

It took me a moment to piece together what she was saying, but it was obvious enough that even my generally slow mind was able to get it. I put a hoof on Arcaidia’s shoulder, nodding my understanding and hoping I was giving her a reassuring look.

“I get it. Persephone is family. You have to go to her.”

I had still hadn’t the faintest clue who this filly really was or why she’d been in a pod that may or may not have fallen out of the sky, or why she’d have a family member sending out ‘transmissions’ of sad music from half a world away that she had to get to. The language barrier between us was keeping an entire army of questions from being asked, but two things were pretty clear.

Arcaidia was leaving to go find this Persephone, one way or another, and that she wanted me to come with her.

I’d have questioned why she seemed set on my coming along but really, if I was a stranger stuck in the middle of nowhere with a long journey across a hostile wasteland ahead of me I might be asking one of the only friendly ponies I’d met if they wanted to come along too. Okay so maybe Arcaidia wasn’t exactly asking but instead was trying to bodily drag me along, but I got the impression she wasn’t really…well…used to asking for anything. Her social skills seemed erratic at best.

And honestly I wasn’t that opposed to the notion.

I’d spent most of my life trying to explore places away from the village. Like I’d told my mother it was just an impulse I had to indulge sometimes otherwise I felt like I’d go just a little stir crazy. I won’t say the idea of leaving my home behind wasn’t something that made a nervous tingle crawl over my spine. Everypony I ever knew lived here, and while I could count the number of ponies in my tribe who I could call friends using just my limbs there was still a hard edge of fear that accompanied the idea of just…walking away from it all. But there was temptation too. I’d looked at the horizons beyond my village for most of my life with a sense of longing and curiosity. I’d just never had the courage or reason enough to start walking towards that horizon and not look back.

Now I had a reason staring me right in the face with two silver eyes that seemed to be begging me to come with her.

“Longwalk,” my mother’s voice was firm, not exactly angry, but I could hear the strain in it, “Are you serious about leaving…?”

I wanted to hit myself at the hurt in her voice, and the worry I saw in her eyes. I looked away, not able to look my mother in the eye, instead choosing to find a pebble on the ground to be of extreme interest.

“I-I don’t know. Arcaidia…I owe her. I owe her everything mom. If she hadn’t tossed me that spear then Trailblaze would have been killed by the geckos. Then she saved both of us from the rest of the geckos with her power. Then she healed Trailblaze’s wounds! Mom, I should have died out there. Trailblaze should have died out there. Because I was stupid, and curious, and didn’t listen to my friend when she said we should turn back. If not for Arcaidia…everything would be different right now. How can I turn my back on her now that she’s asking for my help? I couldn’t even convince the Chieftain to give her more than a day’s worth of food before she’s going to get sent out into the wasteland. She’s strong, sure, but who knows what she’ll run into out there! I can’t leave the pony who saved the life of my friend hanging!”

“I know more about what she’s likely to face out there than you do,” my mother said gravely, “Longwalk, you have no idea just how dangerous the world is outside our valley. Even your father’s people with all of their technology had to struggle to maintain even a small outpost. Starvation and monsters will be the least of the dangers you’d face. At least those threats are obvious and have simple solutions. Worse than those are the ponies you’ll meet out there…”

I didn’t understand what my mother was getting at. How could ponies be worse than monsters like the golden geckos? I could tell my mother was being serious though. Was I really willing to do this? Run off into the unknown wilderness alongside a mare I hardly knew and couldn’t even speak to on a journey to a vague location potentially hundreds of miles away for no reason better than I felt I owed her? Could I walk away from the only home I knew, my mother, and my dearest friend? Worse, what if Trailblaze wanted to come? She’s barely escaped death yesterday. On a journey like the one Arcaidia was about to embark on was there any way I could feel comfortable brining along Trailblaze? She was actually better suited to such a journey than I was. Trailblaze was the superior hunter, tracker, and was faster and tougher than I was. But I’d still worry about her safety and feel a lot less concerned if I knew she was back with the tribe. I’d miss her presence, but I was already facing not being able to talk to her even if I stayed.

I took a deep breath and slowly raised my head to meet my mother’s gaze.

“I understand. I’m not making this decision lightly mom. Honestly I’m scared,” I looked back at Arcaidia, who had silently watched me and my mother’s exchange anxiously, “But I’m going. It’s not like I’ll never be back. I’ll escort Arcaidia to find this Persephone pony and once that’s done I’ll come back. I promise. I just need to help her. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t, after all she’s done for me already.”

I couldn’t bring myself to look back at my mother, afraid of what I might see; sadness or anger.

So when she wrapped her hooves around me and hugged me from behind, and I felt her muzzle nuzzling my head, I was frozen with surprise. Her voice was filled with both resignation and warmth at the same time.

“Guess you’re your mother’s son after all. I couldn’t let your father leave without me either.”

I felt my face burn and imagined there was some red there. It’d been awhile since my mother had hugged me like this.

“So you’re okay with this?” I asked hesitantly.

“Okay? No. But even if forbid you from going I know I’d just wake up the next morning with you gone anyway. I’d rather give you my blessing and help you prepare rather than waste time trying to stop you. Besides it isn’t me you should be worried about, it’s Trailblaze. You know she’s going to want to go with you two, right. Hard Tact will have every hunter in the tribe track you down and drag you back if you let her.”

“I know, I know. I’m not looking forward to telling her I’m leaving. She’s got a stronger hoof than her mother,” I said, rubbing my jaw where Hard Tact had hit me earlier. I’d have to figure out a way to break this to Trailblaze gently, or at the very least make it sound like a good idea instead of an impulsive and potentially suicidal one.

“I suggest sleeping on it,” my mother said, letting go of me, “It’ll take me at least the rest of the day to get a few things ready for you. I’m not letting my only son walk out into the wasteland without some preparation. I’ll need to talk to Hawker and get a few things from him anyway. You can spend the rest of the day figuring out what you’ll need to say to Trailblaze.”

“What about the Chieftain? She’ll need to know-“

“Not a good idea. Better you just quietly leave with Arcaidia early in the morning. I don’t think Hard Tack will do anything if you’re already long gone by the time she finds out, but if you come to her with this directly…I’m not sure how she’ll react. I’ll bring Trailblaze to the edge of the village in the morning so you can say goodbye to her.”

With that my mother left the tent, heading over to Hawker’s tent to have her talk with him. Arcaidia was still giving me an anxious look, waiting for some kind of indication from me on what my decision was. I smiled at her and approached, putting out my hoof like when I had offered to her back in the cave for a shake. Recognizing the gesture she put out her own hoof and I wrapped my arm with hers and shook it firmly, widening my smile and nodding at her Pip-Buck.

“I’m with you,” I said simply and even though she didn’t understand the words I figured the meaning got across by the way she made the cheerful ‘squee’ noise and hugged me.

I hugged her back, letting my nervousness at my decision fade away. I had no idea what lay ahead of me, but I was glad I wasn’t going to be alone on it. No matter what this mysterious filly’s past was or what her purpose in this journey turned out to be, I was going to help her on it. The simple rightness of the decision seeped into my heart and melted away the doubt I’d been feeling.

I just hoped Trailblaze would understand.

The day went by and night fell. I had only seen Trailblaze once during the day, late in the evening at the tribe’s communal meal. Breakfast was usually had among families in their tents, but the tribe always shared dinner together around the large bonfire pits in the center of the village. She’d been with Whetstone and a few other hunters and our eyes had met as I’d passed by to get a slice of roasted gecko. We’d instinctively moved to say hello but Whetstone had put a hoof on Trailblaze’s shoulder, and while giving me an apologetic look and a tilt of her head towards where the Chieftain sat nearby, glaring at us, shook her head. I had sighed, nodding to Whetstone and with a heavy set to my shoulders and giving Trailblaze a small shake of my head.

It hurt, seeing her own pained expression which had quickly become frustrated anger as she kicked the dirt and sat to eat while giving her mother a spear filled glare of her own.

Dinner had gone by. Arcaidia had drifted in only to be given a barrage of cold stares from the majority of the tribe and my mother had to lead her away back to our tent. The tribe was over their awe of the unicorn and was in full stonewalling mode. The gecko I was eating lost its taste as I sat alone, getting my own share of unpleasant looks, save for Hawker who was giving me a knowing and measuring nod when I’d looked over at him.

Back at my tent my mother had given me a set of saddlebags to fit onto my gecko hide barding, filled with items she’d gotten from Hawker. They were mostly food and waterskins, enough for at least a week of travel. The rest of the supplies were simple things; some doses of healing powder, a gecko claw knife, a woven grass mat to keep myself warm with at night, and oddly a small bag filled with small metal clanking chip-like things.

“What’re these?” I’d asked, examining the faded metallic circular objects.

“They’re called caps,” my mother replied, “Don’t ask why but those little things are all over the wasteland and are used for trade. Me and Hawker didn’t have many left over by the time we got back to the tribe, and Hawker, selfish buck, didn’t want to part with even this many. Use them when you need them and keep an eye out for more.”

Her voice was cracking a bit and I could see her holding back tears. I think it was really only now sinking in with her that I was leaving the tribe and that it wasn’t exactly clear when I was coming back. I was the same, only just barely feeling the gravity of what I was about to do and trying to keep from crying in front of my mother. A buck just can’t be seen doing that. It’s not cool to cry in front of your mom. I was dangerously close to being very uncool when I hugged her before we both turned in for the night. Arcaidia was given her own grass mat to sleep on between me and my mother.

I hadn’t been able to sleep at all. My mind was roiling with scattered thoughts of what I was about to do and what I was going to say to Trailblaze.

So I was still half awake when the tent flap rustled loudly and I saw Trailblaze come in hurriedly, looking behind her. I raised my head, seeing the frantic look in her eyes.

“Trailblaze what-“ before I could get further she rushed up to me and put a hoof to my mouth.

“Shh! Wake up Arcaidia. You have to get her out of here. They’re going to kill her!”

Okay, fully awake now! I got up on unsteady hooves, suddenly realizing how much it sucked not being able to sleep when it was actually time to move and your body remembered it was supposed to be tired. Trailblaze’s tail was swishing erratically as she kept looking back at the tent entrance nervously while I went and quickly shook Arcaidia awake.

I froze as I found the end of that odd tube-like device she’d had sheathed on her fore hoof suddenly shoved into my face. Arcaidia’s silver eyes were stone cold lethal intent for a second in the darkness before she realized who she was pointing her tube-thingy (some kind of weapon?) at and quickly put it away, looking embarrassed as she stood. My mother stirred at all the commotion and raised her head.

“Longwalk, what’s happening?”

Trailblaze answered, not looking away from the entrance to our tent, “My mother is going to have Arcaidia killed. I overheard her talking with Stone Crack and a few other hunters outside our tent about it. I snuck out to warn you. You have to get Arcaidia away now. I don’t think we have more than a few minutes.”

“Why?” I asked in dumbfounded shock, “She agreed to let Arcaidia go!”

“It doesn’t matter now,” my mother said, quickly gathering up my barding and saddlebags and shoving them over to me before she went to the flap of the tent and reached out to grip her spear in her teeth, looking back at me.

“Get your things together and follow me. We need to put some distance between us and the village.”

Arcaidia nudged my side with her nose and gave me a grim look. Apparently she needed no prodding and was able to figure out enough of what was happening to not question it. She already had floated her saddlebags and dress on and helped me with mine while my mother and Trailblaze kept a lookout. I felt lightheaded. This was happening too fast! Why in the world would the Chieftain want to kill Arcaidia? My mother was right though, for now the reasons didn’t matter, what mattered was getting away and keeping Arcaidia safe.

The second I got my barding on we snuck out into the dark of early morning. The village was silent. I couldn’t see or hear anything beyond the ponies immediately around me. If Hard Tack and some hunters were coming this way they were being quiet enough about it for them to be all but invisible.

My mother started off one way but Arcaidia suddenly moved forward and tapped her flank. When my mother looked back Arcaidia raised her PipBuck and gestured her head to the south, whereas we’d been about to head west.

“What is she going on about?” Trailblaze asked in a quiet whisper and my mother shook her head, grinning ruefully.

“I forgot Pip-Bucks had that feature. Eyes Forward Sparkle. Arcaidia knows where danger is before we can see it. We should follow her.”

I had no idea what my mother was on about but since she knew more about Pip-Bucks than I did I just went along with it. So we stealthily made our way south, winding between the clusters of tents without making a sound. I kept looking behind us, expecting every shadow to resolve into a hunter, spear ready to bear down on Arcaidia’s back. I didn’t have a spear of my own, just the knife in my saddlebag. Even if I did draw it, could I use it? Could I bring myself to use a weapon on my own tribe to protect Arcaidia?

Somehow I felt a sudden stab of longing for the silver spear, Gramzanber. It wasn’t just some idle passing sensation but rather a almost palpable feeling of need to have the grip of that weapon in my mouth. The feeling felt…foreign. Strange, like it wasn’t even coming from me.

“Wait, is she leading us where I think she is?” Trailblaze said as I suddenly noticed Arcaidia had changed our route to swing to the east and then back north…right towards the Chieftain’s tent.

“She is,” my mother replied, “Now be quiet, I think I know what she’s doing.”

Well that was good because I certainly didn’t and me and Trailblaze exchanged nervous looks as Arcaidia, with seeming growing confidence led us in a wide circle that brought us right to the entrance to the Chieftain’s tent. The tent was dark and to my surprise it didn’t look like anypony was home. That probably meant that she and whatever hunters she’d gathered had already arrived at me and my mother’s tent, only to find it empty.

Arcaidia wasted no time, sticking her head in the tent and I both heard the faint chiming sound and frosty blue glow of her horn. In seconds the silver spear Gramzanber was levitated out of the tent and floated right over to me. Arcaidia was giving me a solemn look and to my shock actually bowed slightly as she floated the spear before me.

“Estu dol ARM, soval.”

Was she really risking all of us getting caught, risking her life, just to give me this spear!? Was she crazy!? We ought to be getting away from here as fast as possible! With any given moment possibly leading to us getting caught I quickly grabbed the spear in my mouth, and though I was feeling a stab of anger at Arcaidia for putting her life in danger for something so trivial as a weapon I couldn’t deny that I felt a flood of…not relief exactly, but relaxed familiarity as my teeth wrapped around the haft of the spear.

“Great, now that we’ve wasted minutes with that can we go now?” Trailblaze said.

Arcaidia took the lead again, only briefly shooting Trailblaze a cross look, and we began heading south, towards where the stream was. We got past the last of the tents and were almost to the wet banks of the stream when a commotion rose from the village. Voices were shouting and though I couldn’t make out the words I could hear the general tone of alarm and anger in them. The village was quickly waking up and above the din I think I could hear Chieftain Hard Tack rousing the tribe to arms. Apparently the time for a quiet kill in the night was over. Now she was just going to rouse the entire tribe to hunt us down.

“Fast time is now!” I said and my mother nodded, rushing up ahead of Arcaidia.

“Sorry filly, but E.F.S won’t help now. Follow!”

Arcaidia seemed a bit dejected but she didn’t complain as my mother broke out into a gallop, me and Trailblaze brining up the rear. We ran hard into the night, hitting the banks of the stream and crossing it. It wasn’t deep and I was worried for a moment the splashing would attract attention, but by now there was enough shouting among the villagers as many tried to figure out what was going on that I doubted anypony could hear us by now.

Across the stream my mother took us on a course to the west. The night was gradually getting lighter but I still could barely see anything in front of me. The dark walls of the valley began to slowly recede and after ten of fifteen minutes of straight galloping I realized that we were quickly reaching the end of the valley. East had been Ghost Ridge, but west I’d rarely explored towards, knowing only that within a mile or two the valley ended and became a vast and open desert. A desert we were now getting to the boundary of.

Ahead something loomed, a patch of spindly darkness that evoked at first images in my mind of some monster lined with jagged spines. But soon that shadow resolved into a tightly clustered copse of black dry, leafless trees. My mother slowed to a canter and then stopped before the trees; turning to us we all stopped next to her, catching our breath. I planted Gramzanber in the ground, sucking in sweet breaths of cool early morning air.

“Whew…been awhile since I’ve run like that,” my mother said, looking back towards the valley where our village was, “It won’t take them long to find our trail and catch up. Longwalk, if you and Arcaidia are going, this is where we part ways.”

“What? But mother, what if Hard Tack decides to hurt you!?”

“Hmph, I can handle Hard Tack, even if she tries to play a little rough. Besides, one of us needs to stay behind and stall to buy you time.”

“Wait,” Trailblaze said, trotted up between me and my mother, “Why are you talking like Longwalk is going with Arcaidia? I warned you so she could get away, but Longwalk is staying…” she looked over at me, “You’re staying right?”

“Trailblaze I…” I lowered my head, “I’m going with Arcaidia.”

Silence was the only thing that met my words. I nervously shuffled my hooves.

“I was going to tell you at dinner, but I couldn’t find a way to get you alone. Mom was going to then get you this morning so I could say goodbye before we left but then this happened and I’m really, really sorry but I have to help Arcaidia for saving your life and-“

A hoof met my jaw and I was looking up at the black sky. Yup, I was right, her hoof was stronger than her mother’s. I slowly pulled myself back onto my hooves as Trailblaze growled at me.

“You…you…idiot! You were just gonna say ‘goodbye’ and run off like that, like its nothing!? Do you really think I’d let you run off without me?”

“Trail, I have no idea where me and Arcaidia are really going except that it’s really far away and somewhere to the south! It’s going to be dangerous.”

“Like that’s every stopped you before. I don’t remember you complaining every other time I’ve followed you somewhere dangerous.”

“This is different! We’re not talking a short walk beyond next hill; we’re talking traveling over hundreds of miles of monster infested wasteland.”

“Which is exactly why you need me to come with you! You won’t make it without my help!”

“Look you two,” my mother interjected, “You don’t have time to argue about this. Trailblaze, what do you think your mother will do if you go with him?”

Trailblaze winced, her frame slumping as the wind got taken out of her argument.

“She…she’d never stop coming after us.” my closest friend admitted in a quiet, pained voice.

“That’s right. If you go with my son, Hard Tack will never stop hunting for you and there’d be no telling what she’d do to Longwalk when she caught up with you both,” my mother came up to Trailblaze and wrapped a hoof around her, pulling her close, and saying softly “I know you care for my son. I would’ve gladly fought with your mother to see that you two eventually got a chance to be together.”

“I-it’s not like that,” Trailblaze began.

“Heh, if you say so. But right now if you want to protect my son the best thing to do is help me keep your mother from trying to follow him and Arcaidia. Between the two of us we can probably convince her to abandon whatever madness has caused her to decide that killing Arcaidia was a good idea.”

“I don’t know about that. When I heard her talking to the hunters she was making it sound like Arcaidia’s death was the only way to protect the tribe. She sounded scared.”

“Even if we can’t convince her to stop,” my mother said with a hard look in her eye, “We can stall them for as long as we can.”

She sighed and looked between me and Trailblaze, “Trailblaze, Longwalk, say what you need to say to each other."

"Longwalk, I…” she hesitated, I could see her struggling for words, “I should have told you about your father a long time ago. There’s still a lot I want to say, but now there’s no time. Just know I love you. I’ll make sure that, when you get back, the tribe will accept you back. You have my word on that. Until that day, take care of yourself.”

My mother turned away from me then trotted a short distance away, facing the village. I wasn’t sure if that was because she wanted to give me and Trailblaze some space or if she didn’t want me to see the tears that had been swimming in her eyes. I was barely holding back my own as I looked at Trailblaze.

“I’m sorry Trail, I want to stay. But I owe Arcaidia so much for your life; I can’t let her do this alone.”

“I know. I like that about you. Stupidly loyal. Must have rubbed off on me. Uh, sorry about the face…”

I rubbed my cheek, which was swelling up, “Yeah, remind me when I get back to never make you angry again. I like my jawbones nice and intact.”

An awkward moment of silence passed between us. Suddenly Trailblaze moved up to me and brushed her neck up against mine. I leaned into the gesture, eyes closing.

“Don’t die out there, Longwalk. Please.”

“Not at the top of my to-do list. Promise.”

She pulled back from me and Trailblaze rubbed a hoof over her face, trying to hide her own tears. I wasn’t bothering, feeling the wetness on my own face. Trailblaze suddenly rounded on Arcaidia.

“You. You take care of him you hear me!? He’d better come back without a single hair of his mane harmed or I swear there isn’t a place in this world I won’t be able to find you.”

Arcaidia actually grinned at Trailblaze’s vehement tone and trotted up to her, the blue unicorn and brown earth pony just a few feet apart. Arcaidia bowed before Trailblaze in an elegant gesture and when she rose she pointed a hoof at her eye, then at me, and then at the eye cutie mark on Trailblaze’s flank. She then slammed her hoof to her chest and gave a solid nod. The meaning was clear; she’d be keeping an eye on me.

Traiblaze returned the nod, “Good…good…” she looked back towards the village, “Alright, get going you two. If we drag this out any longer I’m either going to start crying or my mother will show up. Either one would be bad. So go.”

She trotted up to join my mother, the two most important mares in my life standing side by side with their backs turned to me, ready to stall the rest of my tribe that was out for the blood of Arcaidia so that me and the unicorn filly could escape. There was a lot more I wanted to say to both of them, but I understood; our time was up. For a moment I just stood there, trying to burn the image of my mother and Trailblaze into my mind. I wanted to remember this. I didn’t know where things were going to go from here but I knew that chances were things were going to be hard. I’d need an image to remember to help me through those hard moments. I couldn’t think of anything better than this.

Finally with a final intake of breath I turned and fixed Arcaidia with as determined a gaze as I could muster. Her own silver eyes met mine and the biting early morning wind blew across us, sending her silver mane churning through the air. The horizon was lightening and somewhere in that seemingly eternal distance, perhaps through a minute break in the everlasting cloud cover of the wasteland, I thought there might have been a single glint of genuine sunlight.

I took up Gramzanber in my teeth and began to gallop away from that dark copse of trees, Arcaidia following behind me.

We ran into the light of morning, cold air burning in my lungs.

I didn’t look back.

Footnote: Level up!

Perk Added -Travel Light : While wearing light or no armor you run 10% faster

Chapter 3: Scenery Called 'Everyday'

Chapter 3: Scenery Called ‘Everyday’

It was late morning by the time I felt comfortable enough to let myself and Arcaidia rest for a bit. We’d covered quite a distance in the hours we’d been running, though granted ‘running’ was a loose term more synonymous to ‘haggard trotting’ in my case. I really needed to work on my endurance. We’d followed the rough course of the stream for a time, until I realized that the stream had become little more than a muddy trail through the bleak desert. At that point I just picked a direction vaguely leading towards the west.

I didn’t have an immediate destination in mind. I knew Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck marker was quite a distance to the south west, but for now I just wanted to put distance between us and the village. I wasn’t entirely convinced my mother and Trailblaze would be able to keep Hard Tact from sending hunters after us.

We sat for a moment on the baked rocky ground, catching our breath. Arcaidia had removed one of the silver metal flasks from her saddlebags and was drinking from it, though the liquid didn’t look like water from what I could see, but rather was some kind of tinged blue substance. I shook my head, not feeling like questioning this filly’s odd habits when it came to food and drink. I did follow her example though and sat down Gramzanber long enough to pull out one of the water skins from my own saddlebags and upended some of the life-giving water into my parched throat.

Knowing I’d need to ration the precious substance out here in the wastes I didn’t drink too much and put the waterskin away. I looked east towards the valley where my village resided, the valley little more than a faint outline in the distance, looking small next to the rise of mountains further east and a little to the north. To the west was little more than a long flat plain of barren dirt dotted with small outcroppings of rock and yellow bristly bushes…but I could tell the land slopped a little to the west and that there was a rise of hills to the north west. There was also a faint glimmer of something just a little south of those hills. I couldn’t make it out at this distance, but it seemed as good a location to aim for as any for now.

My mother had told me that, back when she and Hawker had traveled away from the village with my father, that there had been a settlement out in these parts. Saddlespring. Maybe if I got on top of those hills to the west I’d get a good enough view to spot it?

It was hard to keep thoughts of my mother and Trailblaze from filling my mind as I grabbed up Gramzanber again and with a look to Arcaidia canted my head towards the distant hills. As we got going again, this time at an easier pace, I kept my eyes focused on the hills and tried not to think. That didn’t last long. I kept worrying about what might have happened. I didn’t think the Chieftain would go so far as to hurt my mother or Trailblaze, but then I hadn’t thought she’d go so far as to try and kill Arcaidia. Why had Hard Tack decided to go so far? Had she be intending to do it from the start and had just lied to my face when she’d said Arcaidia could go? Or had something happened that day that had changed her mind? Chances were I wouldn’t ever find out. Assuming I managed to get back to the village some day and was welcome back I somehow doubted I’d get any answers if I asked the Chieftain.

Other thoughts also bounced around in my mind like hyperactive geckos. I was still trying to come to grips with all I’d heard about my father and wondering about all the missing parts of the story my mother hadn’t had time to tell me. Was he even still alive? My mother hadn’t seemed to know. Why had his people, this Odessa, been so interested in our valley anyway? Did I have to worry about my father’s tribe coming after Arcaidia? Hawker had at least sounded like he’d considered Odessa a serious threat, even though I’d never even heard of them until yesterday. I occasionally glanced up at the brooding cloud covered sky as if expecting to see a bunch of pegasi suddenly wheeling down upon us, but the sky remained empty.

Without the adrenaline of our flight from the village coursing through me I was left now with a growing dull exhaustion filling my limbs. Yet despite that and the heavy thoughts I was having I couldn’t deny that my steps were light and I was feeling a growing energy in me the further me and Arcaidia walked.

Whatever the circumstances of it all, I was now out in the world, free to explore to my heart’s content. Well, not entirely, I had to get Arcaidia to where she was going. But I was sure she wouldn’t mind me taking a few detours here and there if we found something interesting to check out. Probably. Maybe if I asked nicely…?

Admittedly it just felt good, having all this open space stretching out around me. Tired as I was the sight was uplifting, if you could get over the overall emptiness of it all. I hadn’t seen any sign of another living creature and it wasn’t hard to imagine that me and Arcaidia were the only two ponies for miles.

Arcaidia for her part wasn’t being all that chatty. In fact she still had a determined and serious look on her young features, every now and then looking behind us and checking her Pip-Buck’s screen. I wondered if she was using that Eyes Forward Something to watch for danger. How did that even work anyway? My mother had seemed to think it gave Arcaidia some kind of sixth sense. How did a piece of metal around your leg do that?

After maybe little over an hour of walking I heard something. The hills had loomed closer ahead and I could now tell that glimmer I saw was light bouncing off some kind of metallic object standing over what appeared to be an oddly flat bridge looking structure that spanned between two of the lower hills. The sound I heard was a weird popping noise, mixed with sharper echoing cracks that reminded me of the few times I’d heard thunder. What was making them? There were a lot of the softer popping sounds and they were getting louder the closer me and Arcaidia got to the hills.

“Hmph,” Arcaidia blew out a huff of air as her ears twitched and put a hoof out to halt me, “Esru vi elrei ren tevian.”

I stopped as she raised her Pip-Buck in front of her as she used her horn’s magic to levitate out an object from her saddlebags; the small, thin rectangular object. I watched with interest as she floated the small rectangle to her Pip-Buck and inserted it into the device via a tiny slot beneath the screen. Then her horn began to glow with a brighter shade of blue and her eyes narrowed with concentration.

I wanted to ask what she was doing but 1) She wouldn’t understand, 2) Even if she did I couldn’t understand her answer, and 3) I was guessing interrupting a unicorn while she’s trying to cast her crazy horn-magic would be hazardous to my health.

I watched as Arcaidia’s horn grew an overlay of additional blue glow and then in the air around the tip of the horn a circle of light began to form. Within that circle dozens upon dozens of intricate symbols took shape, crossing over and through one another until there was an entire circle shaped crest woven with a dense pattern of symbols around her horn. Then in an instant the crest collapsed into the horn and there was a brief flash of light and I felt a pressure on me and a ringing in my ears. I saw a faint distortion, barely visible, blast out from around Arcaidia and into the air.

Arcaidia cracked the tension from her neck and smiled in satisfaction as she looked at her Pip-Buck, then showed it to me.

She’d toggled to the map and I noticed that where before there had been nothing but black around us save for the path we’d taken from the village there was now a wide circle of space around our location that was now filled in. Filled in with detail. I could even make out the hills less than half a mile east of us now, and the strange snake-like winding line that crossed through them. The line had a marking on it ‘Highway 89’. The filled in map area also had another marking another few miles to the south and east, right on that line, marked ‘Saddlespring’.

I grinned. I was starting to like magic. As unnerving as it was the way it just seemed to be able to treat the rules of reality as mild suggestions magic certainly was convenient to have. Never mind how her Pip-Buck seemed to know how to properly label things; this was going to make exploring way easier. Still, that didn’t really help explain what all that popping and cracking noise was all about.

Arcaidia appeared to have more of a clue than I however as I watched her look off towards the sounds with a scrutinizing gaze. She apparently didn’t like whatever she was seeing because I saw her float out that tube looking device she had sheathed on her foreleg. I could only guess it was some kind of weapon from the way she’d shoved it in my face last night when I’d startled her awake, though I couldn’t see how. It wasn’t heavy looking enough to make a good bludgeon and honestly looked so fragile that it’d break after one or two good swings. The way she floated it next to her head with the longer tube end pointing out and the curving end the other way reminded me of the way I might point a spear if I could use wacky horn magic to float one. She was clearly pointing it…though what it could possibly do just by being pointed at somepony completely eluded me.

With a grim and determined look Arcaidia began trotting at a brisk pace towards the popping noises and with Gramzanber clenched tightly in my teeth, I followed.

In less than ten minutes we’d gotten close enough to the hills to see clearly what we were dealing with.

It baffled me as much as it frightened me.

A long stretch of smooth stone, cracked and fractured with weather and time, snaked along and between the hills, littered amongst it the rusted red ruins of what I could only guess were some form of ancient conveyance of various sizes. At one point this wide stone path, larger than any game trail I’d ever come across, made its way up one hill and across the span to the next formed a bridge, complete with old rusted metal railings. Over the mid-point of this bridge was a set of metal scaffolds that were holding up large rectangular plates, faded green and stained brown and red with rust, but even as faded as they were I could make out faint white lettering. Sings of an old world highway. This had to be part of the Highway 89 Arcaidia’s map revealing spell had shown!

What was the source of my confusion and fear was the battle taking place on this bridge.

Though me and Arcaidia were approaching from the east end of the bridge we could still get a pretty clear view of things. A half dozen armed and armored ponies were using the old rusted out wreckage of old world wagons as makeshift barricades, protectively surrounding a dozen more unarmed ponies all huddled together tightly in a mass. The armed ponies were wielding various metal tubes, some mounted in wood, others just completely metal…and apparently it was these strange weapons that were making all the noise. Small ones would make loud popping noises rapidly and I could see small metal casings of something flying out of slides in the metal as they fired. The larger weapons with their metal tubes mounted in wood stocks made much larger cracking sounds that echoed across the hills. The six ponies firing mostly just gripped their weapons in their mouths but I saw one weapon that was floating in mid-air amid a blood red glow.

This weapon was massive, easily twice the size of the other ‘longarms’ as I was mentally labeling them. More distinctive than that, this one had a huge blade attached to its firing end. The pony wielding this weapon was obviously a unicorn, her black horn surrounded by a red luminescence identical to the one around her weapon. Her black coat was partially covered by a crimson leather jacket and I saw her mane was a startling bright and icy shade of blue, much lighter than my own, tied back in a tail. This unicorn was in the center of things, bellowing orders to the other fighting ponies in a harsh and uncompromising tone between deafening shots fired from her weapon.

“Get your ass to the west side Gutter! Tint, back him up, now! Don’t let none of these freaks through to harm the merchandise!”

The ‘freaks’ in question were creatures unlike any I’d have conjured up in my most unpleasant nightmares, even worse than the things I’d seen the one time I’d fallen for one of my tribemate’s pranks and eaten some Dreamcap mushrooms.

They looked like floating crimson and orange balls of flesh, shaped like a mass if undulating pony faces. The faces contracted and expanded as they screamed shrilly with mouths filled with over sized teeth. The screams issuing from their many mouths pierced right into me with a feeling of utter wrongness. These floating nightmares were fundamentally wrong on every natural level that I understood things. For a moment I was too stunned, just standing there with my spear loosely hanging in my jaw to think, to actually notice just how many of the things there were.

There had to be somewhere near two dozen boxing in the ponies on the bridge, floating in and biting at the defenders. I watched as one bright green earth pony stallion fired three or four shots into one of the floating horrors, causing it to shudder and erratically squirm in the air as brackish orange blood spurted out of it in streams and the creature deflated into a little more than a wet flap of dead skin, only for another two of the monsters to float in and begin tearing into the earth pony’s hide with their many mouths. Now shrill pony cries joined the unearthly shrieks of the monsters.

Arcaidia was the one who snapped me out of my fear induced stupor by flicking my face with her tail and giving me a hard look before she pointed her tube looking weapon, which I now noticed bore a faint resemblance to the weapons the ponies on the bridge were using, and fired.

A brilliant silver streak of light flew from the tip of her weapon like a bolt of lightning and struck one of the monsters. It shuddered and didn’t even have time to shriek before it’s from turned black and in seconds evaporated into charred ash.

Arcaidia didn’t stop there, immediately firing upon another creature while advancing at a gallop, her horn already forming a magical crest around it that flashed into a cone shaped burst of ice that caught two more of the floating monstrosities in its area, causing them to shrivel and shatter into gory chunks.

Galvanized by her actions I managed to shove down the fear that had taken hold of my mind and focused. It didn’t matter what these things were, they were dangerous and hurting ponies! Don’t let their completely crime-against-nature existence stop you from doing your part Longwalk, get in there! Teeth clenched I charged in, heart hammering in my chest like it was trying to escape my rib cage.

I aimed for the fallen green earth pony stallion, who was still kicking and thrashing as the two monsters gnawed on him, one on his hind legs, another on his back. I wove through the rusted wreaks of wagons and vaulted over some kind of small metal mesh cart and with a thrust of my head aimed Gramzanber at the monster on the stallion’s back. The weapon was still cool to the touch in my mouth and despite my frayed nerves there was still that calming feel of rightness to the weapon’s grip.

I didn’t strike solid in the center mass like I’d aimed for but did manage to spear a gash across the monster’s side, slicing open one of its many faces in a burst of orange blood. Oh dear sweet ancestors the smell! How could anything smell so wrong!? It was a sour and tangy odor mixed in with a hard sulfuric scent that burned both eyes and nose just to be this close to it. The monster screamed and this close the sound shook my eardrums and vibrated in my bones. Suddenly it was off the stallion and on me, its many faces spinning around and taking turns biting at me as I scrambled back away from it.

Planting my back hooves firmly I reared up and thrust Gramzanber down at the thing as it floated right at my face. The broad silver spear punctured the thing clean through this time and I found myself getting sprayed by the nasty smelling orange blood. Even as the thing deflated and became little more than a thin strip of face shaped flesh I was retching onto the street adding my own sour smelling bile to the blood covering the ground and myself.

I loud cracking popping sound and I looked up to see the green earth pony had managed to get his own weapon around and plugged the monster that had been chewing on his leg. He got unsteadily to his feet, his own blood pouring from the thick bite marks on his leg and back, but he gave me an appreciative nod as he turned to begin firing on the other creatures.

Arcaidia had waded into the middle of the fray, no fear on her face but rather that frozen stone cold ‘kitten drowning’ look, eyes like glass as she turned her weapon this way and that, sending silver lines of death into the mass of monsters. She supplemented this with occasional blasts of ice every time a few of the beasts tried to converge on her with screaming faces and snapping teeth. I felt amazement and not a little nervousness seeing her stride into these things like a veteran hunter killing baby geckos.

Perhaps Hard Tack’s fear of Arcaidia hadn’t been all that crazy? If she suspected this was what Arcaidia could do it was little wonder the Chieftain had wanted to ambush her in the night rather than face her in an open fight during the day. The whole tribe might have been wiped out if Arcaidia had been made an enemy. It didn’t’ justify Hard Tack’s actions but I was starting to understand it.

Snapping myself out of the musing I rushed to join her. Just by herself she’d made quite the dent in the force of monsters attacking from the bridge’s east side, but I could still hear the sounds of the pony weapon’s firing on the other side of the bridge, alongside the very loud thunderous boom of the large weapon the black unicorn mare in charge was using.

So intent was I on getting to Arcaidia’s side that I didn’t even see one of the monsters lurking beneath the lip of a broken hole in part of the bridge. It floated up with frightening speed and I turned to see twisted pony faces with their screeching mouths open wide to rip into my flesh. I didn’t have enough time to turn to bring Gramzanber’s over sized blade to bear to protect myself.

The thing’s teeth, blunt as they were, were still agonizing as they tore into my shoulder. The thing’s many faces snapped and wailed as they gnawed on me, my gecko hide barding only offering minimal protection from the surprising strength in their jaws. I managed to keep on my feet and tried to buck the thing off but it was latched on firmly and I screamed as I felt those sawing blunt teeth dig into my skin.

There was burst of orange blood right in my face as multiple holes appeared in the creature. It shuddered and with a wheezing sound it deflated, letting go of my and floating about randomly before slapping wetly to the ground.

“Dun wush un,” the green stallion said as he hobbled up next to me, his weapon’s barrel still smoking. I wasn’t sure why he had such trouble speaking clearly around the weapon he had in his mouth. Did he not know the right way to sound out words while his mouth was full? It was a basic skill all the hunters in my tribe learned early on; we needed to if we wanted to talk to each other on long hunts.

I watched curiously as he used his tongue to push something on the weapon and a metal slab fell out of one end of it, leaving a hole in the weapon. He then pulled a similar looking metal slab from a pocket on his leather barding and slapped it into the spot the other had been. I took note of the small rounded metal bits that seemed to be tucked into the slab, which I realized was hollow. Was that what the weapon was firing? What a weird weapon…though seeing the results I couldn’t deny the effectiveness.

Not sure what the stallion had said to me due to his mangled words I just shrugged and said with perfectly clarity around Gramzanber’s haft in my teeth, “Thanks for the save.”

I took brief stock of myself. The monster’s teeth had left bleeding red marks through my barding but thankfully the wounds weren’t deep. Hurt like hell but otherwise I think the golden geckos had done a worse number on me.

The stallion gave me an odd look as I turned to start running back into the fight. Arcaidia had leapt up upon one of the rusted hulks of wagon and was sending a concentrated blast of ice from her horn at a trio of the monsters that were rushing past another pony, a gray earth pony mare who was firing off loud blasts from a two-barreled weapon much larger than the one the green stallion had been using. The monsters looked like they were making for the cluster of terrified ponies the armed ponies were trying to protect.

I rushed towards Arcaidia, hoping to catch up to the monsters in time if Arcaidia’s spell failed to stop them. Her ice shards speared into the things and two of them popped in frozen chunks. The third which had been at the edge of Arcaidia’s spell made a sharp turn and floated up into the air, coming right at Arcaidia with a shrill chorus of screams issuing from its many mouths. I saw Arcaidia turn to face it with her horn flaring once more to cast a spell…but the glow of her horn suddenly fizzled and faded away. I once again saw the look of surprise on Arcaidia’s face as her magic failed her and saw the wobble of her legs as the strain of her failed casting caused her to stumble. The glow even faded from around her weapon, the device clattering to the ground.

The creature dove in at her and I galloped to intercept it, though it was clear I wouldn’t get close enough in time. So with little other choice and hoping the unbalanced looking spear would fly as true as it had the first time I’d used it I dug my hooves into the ground and used the momentum of my run to help my head fling Gramzanber with far more force than if I’d tried this standing still. To my surprise the over sized spear not only left my mouth with a light ease I felt in my mind a sense of acknowledgement; as if the spear sensed what I wanted and was practically leaping from me to strike at my target.

I saw the silver spear soar through the air and its serrated blade impaled the beast that had been less than a hoof length from burying its teeth into Arcaidia. The thing burst like an overfilled waterskin and washed a rain of orange foul smelling blood over the ground, and unfortunately, Arcaidia. I winced, hoping she wouldn’t mind the unpleasant shower. I mean, saving her ought to balance out that, right? From the way she snapped out of her fatigue and grimaced at the horrible smelling blood coating her, shaking her mane to try and get some of it off, and then glared at me, I think she considered the cost of helping her a little too high.

“Sorry,” I said with a grin I hopped was apologetic looking instead of amused.

As I went to retrieve Gramzanber from the corpse of the monster I noticed the sound of the fighting had died down quite a bit. There didn’t seem to be any monsters left on this side of the bridge and as I took up Gramzanber once more, after making sure to find a part of the half to grip that didn’t have any of the monster’s blood on it. I jumped up onto the top of the wreckage Arcaidia was on and we both looked over to the west side of the bridge.

When me and Arcaidia had arrived on the scene we’d taken enough pressure off the east end that the pony guards had rallied around their black unicorn mare leader and they had worked to devastating effect on the monsters pushing in from the west end of the bridge. The fight was all but wrapped up as me and Arcaidia watched, my unicorn companion chugging one of her potions of blue magic restoring liquid.

While the black unicorn mare was impressive, wielding her bladed longarm with equal lethality at range or close quarters, her allies weren’t without skill.

She wasn’t the only unicorn, for one, a beige unicorn stallion with a sharp blonde mane and a scar over his left eye was levitating numerous small pointed throwing knives around his body as he bobbed and wove through the monsters. The knives flew about in a dizzying pattern, doing little damage as individual attacks, but cutting so many dozens of wounds in the monsters that they quickly deflated in seeping piles under the unicorn’s assault.

Another pony, a massive brown earth pony stallion with a ragged black mane and beard who was wearing a dark leather wide brimmed hat moved among the monsters like a hulk, usually not even trying to dodge the things that tried to gnaw on him. With slow but heavy bucks this stallion would send one monster flying with a wet smack into some jagged wreckage while taking aim with a truly gigantic mouth held weapon with what looked like a revolving cylinder to store its ammo instead of the clips I’d seen earlier. With each massive boom of this weapon a monster popped.

If those two and their leader alone wouldn’t have been enough the other ponies, while less impressive and distinctive than them, were more than holding their own. Within another minute the last monster fell in a spray of orange blood as the black unicorn mare speared it with her weapon’s mounted blade and she then kicked the body off the bridge with a forehoof and spat after it.

“And good damned riddance! Goddess buck my butt with the sun and moon both I hate Balloons! Shard I thought you said this road was supposed to be clear!”

The blonde unicorn, whose knives were floating back into numerous sheathes across his simple white cloth barding, looked abashed.

“I’m sorry boss, the reports said it was when I last checked ‘em. Guess these Balloons nested here in the last week or so. Ain’t uncommon.”

“Tch! I know that, still a damned pain in the ass! Brickhouse, keep watch for any more coming while I check on the merchandise.”

“Sure thing boss!” the giant brown earth pony stallion said and cracked his neck, ignoring the various bite wounds all over his massive form as he took up a watchful position on top of the largest of the rusted out wagons.

As the black unicorn mare trotted over to the center of the bridge where the mass of frightened ponies she and her companions had been guarding she finally took note of me and Arcaidia standing on top of one of the wreaked wagons and gave us an appraising look.

“So you two are the ones that took the heat off our tails? I’ll give you a proper thank you in a sec, but business first.”

With that she turned to the group of ponies her companions had been protecting and in a harsh tone filled with authority barked out, “Alright stop cowering and line up! Now!”

As the ponies began to slowly obey and formed up into a line I blinked. I hadn’t really looked at them until now and was seeing details I’d simply missed during the fight. There were about two dozen ponies altogether, mares and stallions both, and were of various ages with the youngest being a little younger than me and Arcaidia while the oldest looked to be in their late forties. No elderly and none very young. None wore barding, but to a pony each one had a leather collar around their neck with a strange block shaped device attached to it…and around their hind hooves were metal shackles.

“What is this?” I asked with heavy apprehension.

“This must be your first encounter with slavers,” came a voice next to me and I turned to see the green earth pony stallion I’d saved and who had saved me standing nearby, looking at me sadly, “Take my advice buck, just go with the flow on this and don’t question it or Crossfire won’t hesitate to add you to the stock. I wouldn’t want to see that happen to you after you helped me out.”

Slavers? I didn’t quite understand the term and my brain tried to process the concept while seeing all of these ponies in collars and shackles being examined by the black unicorn mare like she was looking over a piece of meat she was about to cook. These ponies were being looked upon as property; being held captive against their will.

“Are they prisoners?”

“Pretty much,” the green stallion replied, frowning at me, “You’ve never even seen a slave before?”

“Never even heard the term until now. Did they do something wrong? This is…punishment?”

The green earth pony’s frown went from bafflement at me to, of all things, pity. He laughed, not a small amount of bitterness in his voice, “For some of them. For others they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Doesn’t matter now. Now, they’re property of the Skull City Labor Guild, to be sold to anypony with the caps for them.”

As his words and their meaning sunk in my mother’s words echoed in my mind.

‘Starvation and monsters will be the least of the dangers you’d face. At least those threats are obvious and have simple solutions. Worse than those are the ponies you’ll meet out there…’

“Is this, um, common?” I asked the green stallion, staring as the shackled ponies, the slaves, trying to keep my voice calm. I was feeling anything but calm. I must not have been doing a very good job at keeping my anger out of my tone because the green stallion lowered his own voice and fixed me with a nervous look.

“Common enough that you don’t want to do anything stupid, buck. You wouldn’t be the first to take issue with the slave trade in these parts. It ain’t going anywhere just because you disapprove.”

“But how does this even…why would anypony even think about doing this to other ponies?”

The green stallion merely shook his head and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that his cutie mark was a pair of manacles. There were ponies out here whose talent involved capturing and selling ponies!? How does one even discover that as their special talent when their young?

“Look, let’s start over for a moment,” the green stallion said, “My name’s Iron Wrought, you?”

“Um, Longwalk,” I was trying to reconcile this stallion’s apparently friendly demeanor with his profession and it wasn’t working.

“Alright, Longwalk, here’s the deal,” Iron Wrought said as the black unicorn mare finished checking the slaves, apparently satisfied that none of them were injured in the fight, and began trotting over to us, “You need to keep a lid on it for now. You don’t got much choice here, alright? Last thing you want to do is make an enemy of Crossfire or the Skull City Labor Guild.”

“Well ain’t you folks all chatty?” said the unicorn mare, Crossfire I was guessing, as she came up to us, her weapon still casually floating in its blood red glow by her side. She looked me over and I returned the favor.

Up close she was athletic and carried herself with a smooth grace that contrasted sharply with her rugged appearance. Her red leather jacket was faded and her black coat was dusty, but this just added to her presence of well traveled competence rather than made her look simply worn. Her mane was surprisingly well kept, though the light blue strands were unruly towards the ends of the tail she had it tied back in. This close I saw her eyes were a golden yellow in color. With all the subtlety I could muster, which probably wasn’t much, I glanced at her flank and noted her cutie mark. Was that a…vegetable of some kind? I didn’t recognize what it was but it was beige, round-ish, with a twisty bit on top, and looked layered. The cutie mark didn’t seem to fit her at all but who was I to question with my blank flank?

Our sizing up of each other lasted only a few moments before she cast a quick glance at Arcaidia, who’d been busy cleaning the monster gunk off of her with her horn’s telekinetic magic.

“So what’s a blank flanked tribal buck and a filly who looks like she belongs in some high class dinner party doing at the edge of civilized territory, jumping into a fight between hard working honest slavers and a nest of Balloons?”

I frowned. Those things were called Balloons? What kind of ridiculous name was that? Setting that aside the first part of what she had said bothered me.

“How do you know I’m from a tribe?”

The mare chuckled, “Buck you couldn’t be looking more tribal if you tied feathers into your mane and put on warpaint.”

I got the impression I ought to feel insulted by that but didn’t say anything as she looked over Gramzanber, eyeing it appreciatively.

“Nice spear you got there, don’t look like tribal make to me. What Ruin did you lift that from?”

“It was a gift from a friend,” I said simply, jumping down from the top of the wreckage I’d been standing on and setting Gramzanber against the rusted heap, wanting to talk to this mare without having to sound out my words around the haft. I really did need to work out some kind of harness to carry the awkwardly sized weapon in so I didn’t have to hold in my mouth all the time, “But to your question, we were just passing by and saw ponies in trouble. Helping was just the right thing to do.”

This earned a loud bark of a laugh from the mare, “Well ain’t you just the heroic type? Almost sad to see that ponies like you are still around. Don’t worry I’m sure the Wasteland will cure you of that heroic streak right quick; either by you getting smarter or getting deader. Never mind about the spear I suppose, I’m more surprised to see your friend their carrying a starblaster. Ain’t seen one of those in years.”

My eyes flicked over to Arcaidia’s weapon which she hadn’t put away. She was looking at the slaves I noticed, though her expression was hard to read. I couldn’t tell if she was angry about it like I was or…something else.

“Starblaster?” I asked, returning my attention to the black unicorn, “What is that?”

“Never you mind that. Just some weapon some ponyfolk think is from up there,” she pointed a hoof up at the sky, “Load of Brahmin shit if you ask me. Probably just some advanced magic energy gun the folks from the old Ministries cooked up towards the end of the war. Things sure do kill efficiently. Your friend’s lucky to have one. Now then, let’s get some intros in, so we can get back to business.”

She puffed out her chest a bit and pointed to herself, practically striking a pose that made me raise an eyebrow.

“Crossfire is the name. Number one gun of the Skull City Drifters Guild.”

“Okay…I’m Longwalk. My friend here is Arcaidia.”

“Arcadia Del Chevail Del Luminariaso Dol Graza Venti Veruni Halastra Mi Surta,” Arcaidia declared proudly when she realized I was introducing her.

Crossfire looked at her, then at me, then back to her, “So Arcaidia it is then.”

Arcaidia deflated dejectedly and kicked a piece of scrap metal off the wreaked wagon with a snort.

“So what were those things?” I asked, gesturing at one of the flap of skins that had once been one of the monsters.

“What these? Just Balloons,” Crossfire said with a disgusted look on her face, “Almost as bad a pest as raiders. Nopony knows what they really are, but most figure they’re some kind of mutated leftover from one of the old labs that got blasted when the balefire bombs hit. Me, I think they’re more likely something that got let loose from one of the Ruins. You only get the damned things in this area and you only get Ruins in this area too, so makes sense to me.”

“Ruins?”

“Look I don’t really feel like twenty questions. When we get to Saddlespring feel free to bug the locals with all the questions you want, but I got cargo to move, otherwise I don’t get paid. And I hate not getting paid. Thanks for the assist in any case. Now then…”

She turned her attention to Iron Wrought, her eyes gazing at his wounds.

“Look kind of shredded there Iron. Can you keep up?” there was a hard and cold quality to her voice that suddenly set my mane standing on end as she slowly and subtlety moved the barrel of her weapon towards the green stallion.

Iron Wrought swallowed loudly and said quickly, “Yes. I’ll keep up. No slowing you down Crossfire, you have my word.”

The coldness abruptly left Crossfire’s voice as she smiled and said cheerfully, “Excellent! Get going and scout the road ahead then. Not much further to Saddlespring but I don’t want any more nasty surprises between here and there, understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” Iron Wrought said and gave me one last look before he quickly hobbled away across the bridge going west, forcing himself to move quickly despite the clear pain he was in.

“We’ll go with him,” I said as I moved quickly to follow the green stallion, grabbing up Gramzanber in my teeth and gesturing for Arcaidia to follow. She did so after taking a moment to sheath her ‘starblaster’ in its fore leg holster.

“Suit yourself,” Crossfire said over her shoulder as she trotted back towards her slaves and gathered slaver ponies, “Alright bucks and fillies, we’re moving out. Tint, Shard, you got rear guard. Gutter you get on the left of the cargo, Brickhouse you got the right. Let’s get them moving, there’s caps to be made!”

I didn’t like this. Just being chatty at all with the slaver boss was making me feel not just uncomfortable but…wrong. I caught a look at one of the slave ponies over my shoulder as I looked back. She was an earth pony mare with a white coat that was stained brown with grim, a ragged black mane covering one of her brown eyes. Her other eye caught my look and saw the plea there; the moment of desperation as the young mare probably not much older than me seemed to be calling out for help, hoping that since I wasn’t one of her captors I might do something.

I also saw the resigned and pained loss of hope on her face as she looked down and started moving with the other slaves under the direction of her captors when it was clear I wasn’t about to come to the rescue.

Shame and confusion warred inside me as I trotted as fast as I could without breaking into an outright gallop after Iron Wrought, Arcaidia keeping pace at my side.

I wanted to help those slaves; I couldn’t deny that. I didn’t want to just leave them in the capture of these ponies who were going to sell them like pieces of meat to be used for who knew what kind of labor.

I also knew that if me and Arcaidia tried to take on these salvers there was a good chance either of us or both might get killed. Arcaidia was powerful enough that she could probably get half of them before being taken down…and me, I was only just starting to learn how to handle myself in a real fight. Against those strange weapons most these slavers used I’d probably get dropped pretty quick.

…which meant if I did want to free the slaves I’d need a plan; one that didn’t involve just trying to take on the whole slaver crew at once.

To figure that out I needed time to think.

At least for now Crossfire didn’t seem to see me and Arcaidia as much of a threat and was grateful enough for our help that she didn’t mind us tagging along to this Saddlespring place. Maybe by the time we got there I’d have figured something out. It also would give me time to talk more with Iron Wrought. He seemed like the friendliest of the bunch, though that might just have to do with the fact that I’d saved his flank in the fight. Whatever the reason I could probably get more information out of him than I could any of the others.

It was painfully clear my ignorance of this wasteland was something I needed to rectify, fast.

Saddlespring was an impressive settlement, though honestly I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting exactly given that my only frame of reference was Shady Stream.

The town consisted of nearly a score of sturdy looking buildings made from looked like a combination of worked stone and salvaged metal scraps from old world structures and vehicles. Surrounding the town was a wall forged from welded debris and piles of stone situated around the partially intact walls of what was probably once larger buildings from before the Great Fire that scorched most of them to the ground. I could see a sizable gate forged of rusted metal and bracketed by tall towers from where pony’s armed with more of those long barreled weapons that I now knew to be called ‘guns’ stood watch.

Iron Wrought had been proven to be an incredibly useful source of information for the hours we’d trekked ahead of the slaver caravan. Well, he had after I’d gotten Arcaidia to use some of her nifty telekinetic magic to clean off the Balloon gunk that had covered me and made me smell less than stellar. He’d seemed anxious about answering too many questions at first but after I’d convinced Arcaidia via the power of pantomime to heal the green stallion’s injuries he’d opened upon considerably and for the duration of the journey to Saddlespring had been bringing me up to speed on all manner of Wasteland lore.

Yes, apparently it was Wasteland with a capitol W now.

Specifically this region was part of the Skull City Wastes, a territory comprising of the city formerly known as Detrot and the surrounding settlements, apparently a couple hundred square miles of happily irradiated Wasteland chalk full of suburban ruins, blasted desert, and monster infested hills. When I asked why it was called Skull City now instead of Detrot Iron Wrought just told me I’d understand if I ever went there.

Skull City itself was somewhere north of here, amid the shattered remains of countless suburbs and outlying farming communities that had once dotted the countryside. The Guilds of the city controlled, or at least had some stake in, most of the small settlements that had managed to stay alive in the area and there were few ponies that didn’t pay some manner of tribute to one of the Guilds if they weren’t full on affiliated members. When I tried to press on just how many Guilds there were Iron Wrought just said, “A lot” and left it at that.

He hadn’t said much about the rest of the world, but gave me a general idea that things were essentially like this almost everywhere; dark, ruined, and filled with things that would be glad to eat me or wear my skull as a hat, probably both. Almost everywhere. He spoke with a great deal of bitterness about the “NCR pooftas” to the southwest who had the “easy life’.

Apparently some time ago, Iron Wrought wasn’t specific as to just how long, there was a region around the Equestrian heartland that had been made more livable. Iron Wrought was vague on the details, but I got the gist of it; there was a war between a slaver empire, a whole mess of pegasi called the Enclave, and a band of freedom fighters headed up by some legendary mare most people knew as the Lightbringer. War ended with the slaver empire shattered, the Enclave decimated, and a lot of the Wasteland between the cities of Manehattan and Canterlot free to develop into country claiming to be the New Canterlot Republic. Apparently it helped that through methods still not known to those outside the NCR the land itself had been cleansed of something called ‘radiation’ and made fertile for growing crops, on top of this Lightbringer character ending up with some kind of direct control over the land’s weather patterns.

Basically it’d made the NCR the most livable and prosperous land in the known world for the past decade or so.
Only problem was that while the heartland of Equestria was fixed a lot of the rest of the world was still a screwed up Wasteland and the NRC wasn’t keen on letting the multitudes still living outside their boarders into the country. Apparently they weren’t that prosperous and were having issues with keeping their own population fed, even with the land being fertile again.

Iron Wrought wouldn’t give me more details when I pressed. I got the impression from the way he narrowed his eyes at me that it was a sore subject and that I shouldn’t bring it up around any of the locals in the Skull City Wastes.

I was fine with that. It was just if judging by what I’d seen on Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck this Persephone pony she was supposed to find was probably located somewhere down in NCR territory. I’d need to know about them eventually since I’d heading that way, but I let that subject drop for now.

Not like there weren’t plenty of other things I had to ask him.

He got me educated quickly on the subject of guns, since they seemed to be the ubiquitous weapon type just about anypony with half a brain used in the Wasteland. They were everywhere and they were damned good at what they did, which was put holes in things. The bigger the gun, the bigger the hole. Barrel end got pointed at thing you want hole to go into, pull trigger with your tongue if an earth pony or pegasus, with magic if a unicorn, simple as pie.

I didn’t know what pie was or how it was simple but I was taking Iron Wrought’s word at this.

After seeing them in action I gathered I wanted to avoid getting shot by one in any case. I doubted I’d be trying to use a gun any time soon. I didn’t have nifty unicorn magic to float one about and those mouth grips looked like they’d make aiming awkward.

Granted I had no room to talk about awkward weapons given my spear with the stupid-big blade, but so far it’d been doing good by me. Still, learning how to take cover was going to be going to the top of my priority list pretty soon, especially since I was still heavily contemplating how to free all those slaves. Which would make a lot of ponies angry who all had guns.

Weapon talk aside Iron Wrought had also filled me in on another thing that’d been tickling at my brain.

“What the hay is a Drifter? Crossfire called herself a member of the Drifters Guild.”

Iron Wrought sighed and I could almost hear him thinking ‘ignorant tribal’ as he explained, “They’re one of those Guilds that run Skull City. The Drifter’s Guild hire out its members for just about any task a petitioner needs done and has a way to pay for. Mercenaries basically. Just with a higher pedigree because Drifter’s got a rep for only taking the best into their Guild…”

He gave a small frown as he looked back at the slaver caravan, a hundred or so yards behind us, “Not cheap to hire them either. And Crossfire’s team is one of their top rankers. Not number one like she boasts; but still in the top tier.”

“You sound like that confuses you?” I asked, more than a little confused myself, but then this was a lot of information I was getting shoved at my brainpan all at once and I was having a hard time keeping it all straight.

“Yeah it does. It’d cost a lot of caps to hire Crossfire and her team to help guard this caravan. I just don’t know why the Labor Guild would put up that kind of money for what’s basically a pretty mild, low-danger meat run.”

“Low danger? You call getting swarmed by a bunch of freaky many-faced screaming flying monsters low-danger!?”

“Balloons weren’t supposed to be there, and weren’t last time our scouts ran a check through the route. That’s just a fluke I’m guessing. Honestly we probably would’ve made it even without you and your ice machine coming to the rescue.”

“Ice machine?”

Iron Wrought jutted a chin at Arcaidia, who was busy ignoring our conversation and looking incredible bored as she alternated between staring out across the Wasteland and watching the screen of her Pip-Buck, for what I couldn’t begin to guess.

“Anyway,” Iron Wrought went on “Balloons are nasty, but are probably one of the least threatening things you’ll run into out here. Pop like, well, Balloons, with just one good shot. A raider pack is more dangerous, especially if it’s from the Hounds or the Bursters…bastards got their hooves on some heavy ordinance, but they usually keep to their usual haunts north of Skull City. Which brings me to my point; there’s no reason to bring in a heavy hitter like Crossfire for a route like this. Don’t make any sense.”

It was well over my head too, and honestly I had no real desire to think too much on the reasons these Guilds did anything. I liked the sound of them less and less the more I heard. Still I was curious about one point.

“So Crossfire isn’t with you slavers, she’s just been hired to escort you?”

I noticed the way Iron Wrought frowned at me and I realized that the word ‘slaver’ had left my mouth with a tone that made the word sound synonymous with ‘groin parasite’.

“No, she’s not with us slavers. She makes her caps by taking on any job she wants. Like maybe murdering a family that won’t leave their home because one of the Guilds wants the building for a new shop. Far cleaner and higher paying way to make a living than slaving, right?”

“Look Iron Wrought I didn’t mean that-“

“Yes, you did. Look I get it. To a lot of ponies slavers are scum. Outside of a few circles most ponies hate us, fear us, want to kill us, or all of the above. But I’d rather be hated and feared and have the caps to feed my family than be morally clean, but watch my son starve and my wife sell her body on the street to put one measly piece of hay on the table! Besides…” he glanced at his flank, specifically at his cutie mark, “It’s what I’m good at.”

“There’s no other way you can make caps? Like, seriously nothing else?” I asked and immediately regretted it from the mix of anger and shame on the slaver’s face.

“I don’t need to be lectured by a blank flanked buck who’s so damned ignorant he didn’t even know what a gun was until I told him! If I could make enough caps by doing something else I’d be doing it! I don’t…fuck why am I even talking to you about this? No more questions.”

After that Iron Wrought clammed up and I honestly didn’t try to pry further, mired in my own thoughts. We were just coming up on the gates of Saddlespring and I still hadn’t come up with anything resembling a plan of action concerning how I was going to go about freeing the slaves beyond ‘wait until nightfall then…do something’. I’ll admit the plan needed a little refining…okay, a lot of refining. I was working on it, but every time I got to the part that actually involved freeing the captured ponies my brain got tangled in a mass of problems I had no solutions for. How was I going to keep track of where Crossfire took the ponies once I was in town? How would I sneak past whatever guards would be keeping watch over them once night fell? What if they were locked inside a building I had no way of breaking into? How was I going to get those shackles and collars off of them and for that matter what was that weird block shaped thing on the collars anyway? What would I do if I got caught? Would Arcaidia be willing to help me with this? And finally, assuming I somehow got over all the previous problems and somehow freed all the slaves…where would I take them? What would stop Crossfire and her gang from just recapturing everypony?

Yeah so…I wasn’t all that confident of my chances and was in a complete mental lock when Arcaidia nudged me with her hip and I blinked, looking about.

“Huh?”

Arcaidia jutted her chin up and I looked. We were right in front of the gates to Saddlesrping, a impressive (to me) structure consisting of what appeared to be the hulls of several large metal wagons welded together but kept on heavy wheels so they could be rolled aside to allow entry. This ‘gate’ was flanked by two tall towers of piled concrete and worked sheet metal, and ponies stood atop both towers and on top of the wagon gate itself; all heavily armed. One of them, a dark purple stallion with a short yellow mane and wielding a unpleasantly large gun with multiple barrels arranged in a circular pattern attacked to some sort of saddle on his side, was looking right at me.

“You deaf?” he called down in a gravely and displeased voice, “I asked your name and purpose for being here!”

I glanced at Iron Wrought who shrugged and said in a low voice, “I already told them I’m with the Labor Guild and that we got a caravan coming in, but since you’re not with us they want to know why you’re here.”

“You could have just told them we were with you,” I whispered back. Iron Wrought gave me a cold look.

“Thought you wouldn’t want to be lumped together with a bunch of slavers,” he said plainly.

Well…crap, he had me there. I sighed and looked up at the guard who’d addressed me and saw him tapping a hoof impatiently, that oversized gun of his (seriously, what gun needs that many barrels?) still pointed at me.

“Me and my friend here,” I pointed a hoof at Arcaidia, “are just travelers looking for a place to rest, get some supplies, and information.”

“That right? You got caps to buy any of that with? We don’t allow freeloaders or tourists into our fine town, buck, so you better prove you’re bringing in something of worth.”

I blinked, wondering what he was talking about for a second before my brain pony smacked me upside the head and waved a little billboard in front of my eyes that read ‘he’s talking about those things mom gave us you doofus!’. Oh, right, those little round metal things. Caps. I planted Gramzanber in the ground to free up my mouth and reached into my saddlebags and pulled out the small sack containing said caps and jingled it, hoping however many were in there they’d be impressive enough to the guard.

“I got caps.”

The guard peered at me, and I began to get a little nervous as the seconds dragged out. I noticed he eyed my spear suspiciously. Guess I couldn’t blame him. I was starting to realize just how out of place Gramzanber was in the Wasteland. It was oversized for a spear, made out of silver metal, and I was still stuck carrying the thing around in my mouth most the time. In a world where guns were the most common weapon (second only to harsh language) Gramzanber probably made a lot of ponies curious. Problem was I had no answers for any curious pony as I know about as much as they did; next to nothing.

But it wasn’t the spear the guard questioned, it was Arcaidia. He pointed his gun at her and asked, “What’s with her? She’s awfully quiet over there.”

On cue Arcaidia, seeing the attention of the guards on her, smiled brightly and drew herself up to her full height of almost to my shoulders and proclaimed in a loud chiming voice.

“Esru vi Arcaidia! Esru dol armatage ren vira solva!”

She gestured at me dramatically and then stood on her hind legs and waved her arms around as if to encompass the whole Wasteland around us.

“Esri dol galvai fernus ren tuvai ventili! Mas, di tuvai ventili!”

Going back down to all fours Arcaidia then grinned happily up at the guards as if her words just explained everything they needed to know. Which for all I knew they did. Did I mention I really needed to find some way to learn this filly’s lingo or teach her mine?

The guard looked at her, then looked at me, then back her, then back to me.

“The fuck?” he asked.

“Indeed,” I said.

“She from Prance or something?”

I doubted the guard noticed my confusion, “Maybe? I don’t know. She’s just…not from around here. Look I don’t know what she’s saying most the time but she’s harmless and she’s with me.”

Most of that statement was true. Arcaidia was harmless in as much that she didn’t seem to murder things at random and was very friendly to ponies that I’d seen. But I didn’t want to think about what might happen if we had to fight a bunch of ponies. I’d already seen what Arcaidia could do to geckos and freaky Wasteland monsters. The thought of ponicicles turned my stomach. I wasn’t at all sure Arcaidia would hold back or even hesitate if we had to fight other ponies. She was…unpredictable like that.

The guard with the too-many-freakin’-barrels gun finally let out a sigh and said, “Fine you can enter. Welcome to Saddlespring. Talk to Copper Shell on the other side of the gate if you need directions anywhere. Just one rule; don’t cause trouble. Enjoy your stay.”

As the massive wagon gates began to slowly roll aside I turned to Iron Wrought, who was looking back the way we’d come. In the distance I could just make out the collection of shapes on the road that would be the slaver caravan.

“Look, um,” I stumbled over the words, “Thanks for talking to me and answering my stupid questions earlier. I…I’m sorry about what I said. I can’t get my head around what you have to do for a living, but I get that you think you got to do it. So, um…take care of yourself.”

Iron Wrought glowered at me for a moment before turning his eyes away from me and said, apparently with some effort “You seem like a good pony, Longwalk. That’ll get you killed out here. Take this advice; find a way into the NCR if you can. Only place in the bucking world where ponies like you can have a life.”

“Sounded to me like you didn’t care for the NCR,” I said.

“I don’t. Hate them. They have everything other ponies in the Wasteland don’t and still have the gall to claim that they’re ‘saving Equestria’ or some load of shit like that. Where was their beloved ‘Lightbringer’ when my father was butchered by a Drifter because he wouldn’t give up his business, and my mother sold to the Labor Guild to pay off his debts? Where was their famous ‘Applejacks Rangers’ when my trade caravan was hit by raiders and I lost my friends, my trade, and only survived because I hid under my best friend’s corpse? Down south, keeping them and theirs safe, that’s where. Now I make a living trading ponies because it’s the only way I’ll ever get enough caps to pay my own damned debts and keep my family safe, because I can’t rely on any other pony to do it but me.”

He shook his head, making a small bitter sound that might have been a laugh, or maybe a sob, I couldn’t tell which, “I’m waiting here until the caravan gets here. You might as well go in and do whatever you need to do. I’ll be at the tavern tonight getting hammered into a drunken comma, if you feel like joining me. Might as well, since I doubt I’ll be seeing you again after this and much as you piss me off you’re still better company than the ponies I work for.”

I could only nod slowly, still absorbing his words, “Sure. I’ll see you then.”

Never mind that tonight I was actually very likely going to be trying to free his livelihood from bondage and possibly getting myself killed in the process, but no need to tell him that, right? Was it wrong that I was actually considering the drawbacks of freeing the slaves? Shouldn’t something like that be a no-brainer in the right/wrong department? Free innocent ponies from bondage = good. But now I had this irritating feeling that if I went through with this I’d end up harming this pony I kind of liked and who had gone out of his way to educate my ignorant flank. What if Iron Wrought was the one who caught me trying the free the slaves? Could I hurt him, or even kill him, if I had to? That was not one of the questions I ever thought of having to ask myself when I decided to help Arcaidia on her quest.

As I left Iron Wrought at the gates and alongside Arcaidia trotted on into the settlement of Saddlespring I was left with the uncomfortable certainty that I was going to need to come up with an answer to those questions before nightfall.

Copper Shell had been a shockingly friendly and helpful earth pony mare with a rust colored coat, a matching mane, and a map for a cutie mark. She’d gladly informed me of where I could purchase supplies and get a room for the night for me and my marefriend. I tried to correct her on the ‘marefriend’ bit but the guard had just snickered and winked at me as me and Arcaidia went on our way.

I wasn’t completely prepared for Saddlespring and if I could have seen myself probably would have rolled my eyes at how much I was gawking. But hey, tribal buck less than a day into the Wasteland, I hadn’t really seen an actual town before and on the inside Saddlespring was a busy and noisy place. Dozens of ponies were moving about the town. I was shocked at how many unicorns there were and even more so at the handful of flying ponies with wings I saw darting about the streets. Actual peagsi! I had to resist the urge to stare in open fascination at them. Spending so long around just earth ponies was making it hard not to. They were just so…agile, and elegant, flitting about on those delicate feathered wings. The unicorns were impressive too and it seemed everywhere I looked a unicorn was casually using their magic to float objects around for any casual reason; like that mare in the window stringing up laundry between two buildings.

We passed by a particularly loud building with a sign outside of it that said “Frisky’s Stop n’ Drop Saloon” and I paused to listen to the sound of music coming from inside. It was perky and fast paced, coming from an instrument that to my shock sounded a lot like the one that had been picked up by Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck from Persephone’s signal. Only where Persephone’s tune had been slow and sorrowful this was…cheerful, made me want to literally shake a leg. I thought about going in but I’d be coming here later anyway to meet up with Iron Wrought and needed to get to buying some supplies first.

Copper Shell had said the town had a market on the south west end that would have everything I needed.

The town was bisected by the main road leading in from the gate but the road split into a T-section at the foot of a large concrete building with a partially collapsed roof that had been rebuilt into a small watch tower. The building had a surly looking pair of guards standing outside its doors and the sign above read “Saddlespring Sherriff’s Station”. I didn’t know what a ‘Sherriff’ was but judging from the guards it had to be some kind of authority figure.

I could see to my left down the T-section that there was a wide open space alongside the town’s wall where a dozen or so tent stalls were set up and the place was crowded with ponies examining items on display in the stalls and talking with the ponies inside the tents. Marketplace? Marketplace.

I got about halfway to the tents, shopping list already forming up in my mind, when I realized Arcaidia suddenly wasn’t following me. I turned my head about trying to spot the little blue unicorn. It was harder than I would’ve thought, mostly because I was so used to seeing just brown or black ponies from my tribe, I wasn’t used to looking through crowds of ponies who had far brighter and wider spectrum of coats. There were a number of blue ponies about…but none with the long silver mane of my companion.

Where had she gotten off to?

“Arcaidia?” I called out, getting a few glances from the ponies around me, but no response.

Then I spotted her. She was trotting up to a gathering crowd of ponies who were clustered near the entrance to the market. Before the crowd a wooden stage was set up with a colorful banner spanning between two poles sporting words that while I recognized as Equestrian were written in such a weird flowing script I couldn’t begin to read them. As I cantered up to catch up with Arcaidia I heard a voice from the stage and looked up.

“Come one, come all, bucks, fillies, foals of all ages, to the wondrous and most dazzling display of magic in the Skull City Wastes, all performed by the one and only Mighty and Mysterious Mirage!”

The pony on stage was a mare whose coat was so white it was almost blinding, with a curly mane that sported bright streaks of soft pink through its otherwise light brown coloring. She was wearing a dark purple dress with white lace that matched the color of her eyes, and covered her from neck to flank save for slits along the back that let her wings out. A pegasus? And she was planning on doing magic?

The peagsus mare wasn’t flying but lightly stepped about the stage in flourishing movements as she addressed her crowd from one end to the other with her voice somehow managing to sound soft even as it carried loud enough to be heard over the buzz of the nearby market.

“Now then for my first feat of improbably magical illusion behold this can!”

She held up a simple rusted and bent tin can, “Observe that the inside is quite empty and it is indeed an intact can, much as any you might find off the street. Now then, if somepony from the crowd would be so kind as to lend the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage a single bottle cap! Rest assured it shall be returned, and perhaps then some!”

It didn’t take long for one of the ponies in the crowd to toss up a bottle cap, which Mirage caught in her teeth deftly, then stood on her hind legs and tossed the cap into the air and caught it with ease on the tip of her hoof, balancing the cap on its end.

“Behold my little ponies as I the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage break the laws of physics and economics to turn one cap,” she tossed the cap into the air, and with speed and agility I found myself boggling at also tossed the can into the air so that the cap *plinked* into the can in mid-air, which she then shot up into the air herself to catch, “Into many!”

Landing back on the stage with the can caught between her fore hooves Mirage shook the can, and while at first there was just the sound of one cap bouncing about within I soon perked my ears up as I heard the sound of more. In seconds Mirage upended the can and at least ten caps spilled out into her waiting hoof.

The crowd cheered and stomped their hooves in applause and I found myself joining them. That was pretty cool and I honestly had no idea how she did it. Mirage was grinning from ear to ear as she dipped her head in a bow, floating over to the pony that lent her the cap and depositing all of them to the surprised audience member.

“A small token of the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage’s appreciation for helping her, o’ lovely assistant! Now, for Mirage’s next trick of incredible mind defying enchantment she will require a volunteer from the crowd to join her upon the stage!”

Hooves went up into the air and I found mine was one of them. I couldn’t help myself, I was caught up in the mood and was eager to just see more of the show, my shopping trip forgotten. I did notice Arcaidia nearby was watching the pegasus on stage with open curiosity, her head cocked slightly. Then with no warning she simply pushed right to the front of the crowd, earning a series of irritated looks from the ponies she pushed past, and jumped right up onto the stage next to Mirage amid gasps from the crowd.

“What the-?” Mirage’s eyes went wide as Arcaidia walked right up to her and began looking over the pegasus with plain disregard for personal space. To Mirage’s credit she recovered her composure quickly and seeing the shifting mood of the crowd to this display quickly adapted for the sake of the show.

“Well it seems the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage has her volunteer! Quite the inquisitive filly isn’t she folks? Well then miss, shall…we…what are you doing?”

“Arcaidia what are you doing?” I found myself saying as I watched the unicorn wave a hoof over Mirage’s head, Arcaidia’s face drawn up in a puzzled frown.

Mirage blinked, then smiled and laughed as she took a step back from Arcaidia and said, “Ah, you wonder if I might not be a unicorn cloaked in illusion, my lovely assistant? Seeking a horn that is hidden by invisibility spells perhaps? As you just felt though, Mirage is no unicorn! Her illusions are truly the stuff of mystery for she is but a humble pegasus, blessed with mighty wings, but no horn for the casting of spells. But the show must go on and it is time for the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage to begin her next trick! Now, lovely assistant, behold these cards!”

From within a fold of her dress Mirage removed a pack of small rectangular paper objects and she fanned them out before the crowd. I was impressed and fascinated by the dexterous way the pegasus was able to balance the cards on her two fore hooves as she hovered a little off the ground with graceful flaps of her wings. My brain couldn’t fathom how she was keeping aloft with them or how she was managing such easy control of so many tiny objects with her hooves.

“As you can all see it is a normal deck of playing cards, all numbers, suits, and faces, including the two jokers!”

I had no idea what she was talking about but I could tell the small rectangular cards had all sorts of numbers and symbols on them. Mirage, after ensuring the crowd had gotten a good look at the deck, turned to Arcaidia and displayed the fanned out deck of cards to the blue unicorn.

“Now then, Mirage would like you to pick a card from the pile.”

Arcaidia looked at the cards in front of her and arched an eyebrow at the pegasus.

“Qui? Estu dol bal?”

Mirage coughed and I could feel tension in the crowd, a few murmurs of disapproval rising up from the gathered ponies who were getting impatient.

“A card, my lovely young assistant. Pick any card at all,” Mirage pushed the cards a bit closer to Arcaidia and put on a wide, perhaps a little too wide, a smile.

Arcaidia still looked skeptical but apparently grasped the situation and with a suspicious look at the pegasus (still looking at her forehead for a horn that wasn’t there it seemed) leaned down and took a card in her mouth, removing it.

“Excellent! Now, show the crowd the card you have chosen but do not show the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage!”

As Mirage looked away, covering her eyes with one arm dramatically Arcaidia just stood there dumbly for a second then glanced at the crowd, who were all staring at her expectantly. I don’t think Arcaidia actually had any clue what was going on, but turning to the crowd everypony could see the card she’d chosen. I didn’t quite get what these ‘cards’ were supposed to be for but I could tell the one Arcaidia had in her mouth had the number six on it and a red shaped heart pattern at each corner of the card.

Mirage, still looking away, held out the pile of cards and said, “Now then, place the card back within the pile if you would.”

Arcaidia did so with only a little hesitance, her silver eyes regarding Mirage with clear dubiousness. The pegasus for her part immediately lifted into the air once the card was back in the pile and began a rapid and dizzying shuffling of the cards, flipping them about from one hoof to the other in such a remarkable display of hoof coordination the crowd cheered just from the physical display alone; never mind whatever magic trick Mirage was intending.

“Now then, lovely assistant and fillies and gentlecolts of the crowd! With a little Abra and a little Kadabra-“ she flipped once more in the air, the cards dancing between her hooves, “is this the card that was chosen?”

She fanned the entire deck of cards out for the whole crowd to see and there were gasps and more cheers. Arcaidia just looked confused.

The entire deck of cards was sixes and hearts. I’m not sure about anypony else in the crowd but my own little brain pony had exploded. I was sure the deck had a whole bunch of different numbers and symbols before! How had they all turned to the same card Arcaidia picked!? Mirage hadn’t even seen what card had been picked! Magic! I joined in the cheering and hoof stomping applause. I noticed amid the applause that more than a few caps were being tossed into a bucket that had been set up on the front of the stage labeled “tips”. I tossed a few myself, more than happy. I honestly hadn’t felt entertained like this in some time and it was good to forget the problems that had been weighing me down. Seemed only fair to pay a few caps for the pegasus mare’s show.

Mirage was bowing her head to the crowd, smiling brightly, the cards having been deftly tucked away back into her dress, “Now now, dear and lovely ponies, the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage has not yet begun to amaze you with feats of magic beyond imagination this day! Next I will-gah!”

Mirage yelped as Arcaidia went right behind the pegasus and lifted up the hem of the Mirage’s dress, peering within.

“Wh-what do ya think yer doin’!?” Suddenly Mirage’s voice changed to a odd drawling accent as she rounded on the unicorn filly, “That ain’t fer fillies to be stickin’ their noses inta…er…*cough* I, I mean the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage appreciates the admiration of her fans but must request her lovely assistant respect her personal space!“

Arcaidia, frowning, advanced on Mirage and the pegasus floated up into the air to avoid being accosted again. The crowd was buzzing with outrage at Arcaidia’s interruption of the show, and I no longer could bring myself to just watch. I planted Gramzanber in the ground and with more than a few quick apologies I managed to push my way through the crowd and jumped up on stage just in time to bump Arcaidia with my flank to distract her from trying to drag Mirage to the ground with her magic.

“Arcaidia stop!” I yelled, shoving my face right into hers, practically going nose-to-nose, “What’s gotten into you? Stop molesting random pegasuses…pegasen…”

“Pegasi,” Mirage said as she floated above me, warily watching Arcaidia, “Is this unicorn a friend of yours?”

Arcaidia was trying to get around me so she could get a clear line of sight on Mirage but I kept moving my head to get in her way, “Yes,” I said back to Mirage, “Really sorry for this miss Mirage, I don’t know what’s come over her. She’s usually…”usually what? More stable than this? Honestly I had no idea what Arcaidia was ‘usually’ like and since I’d met her I could only honestly describe the filly as odd. This more recent display of oddness was actually pretty par for the course as I knew it.

“…less forward than this,” I settled on, “I’ll get her out of your hair in a sec and you can get on with your show. Again I’m really sorry for this.”

“Oh no need for apologies at all good gentlecolt,” Mirage said, regaining her composure once again, “The Mighty and Mysterious Mirage often has to improvise with unusual or unruly audience members. Fear not, the show is far from ruined! Though I may have to ask that you be so kind as to escort your friend off the stage so that the show may continue?”

“On it,” I said as I locked Arcaidia with as hard a gaze as I could manage. She match me pound for pound in…gazeness? She certainly didn’t like that I was getting between her and Mirage. She waved a hoof at the still hovering pegasus.

“Estu ren borcha vi surti ren solva? Vi surti dol bruhir!”

“Arcaidia, I don’t know what you got against this fine showmare but leave it be. We’ve been distracted long enough and got shopping to do anyway.”

I jingled the bag of caps I had and nodded my head towards the market for emphasis. Arcaidia narrowed her eyes at me, and then slowly turned her gaze towards Mirage. The unicorn filly pointed a hoof at her eye, then jabbed that hoof at Mirage. Mirage just shrugged her wings with a bemused look as I led Arcaidia off the stage. A number of displeased stares and grumbles from the crowd accompanied us as I retrieved Gramzanber and with a mopey Arcaidia in tow began trotting towards the market.

Great, we were here for all of half an hour and had already managed to make a scene and earn the ire of a portion of the town.

Here was hoping our shopping in the marketplace went smoother.

As it happens we managed to get through our shopping without offending any of the locals or getting into a fight, so things were looking up.

Arcaidia had been sulky the entire time I wandered about the stalls of the open market, trying to pick out stuff I thought we’d need for the long trip south to where the marker on Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck said we needed to go. Food and water was at the top of my list but I also knew we’d need other things; blankets for keeping warm, good flint for getting cook fires going, that kind of thing. Nothing was cheap, and the caps my mother had given me were quickly getting used up. There’d been little over two hundred when I’d first counted them up and I had thought that a lot, but they weren’t lasting long. By the end of it I was down to half that amount but I’d gotten most of what I thought we’d need, and had taken care of a personal bit of business too.

“You want something rigged up to stow that spear eh?” the gray coated unicorn stallion with a scraggly white mane and a strap of leather as a cuite mark asked as he peered at Gramzanber clutched in my mouth.

“Yes,” I said, holding up the spear so the unicorn could get a better look, “I can talk easy enough while carrying it like this, but it gets painful after awhile and I need some way to carry it easier.”

The unicorn put a hoof to his chin and examined my gecko hide barding.

“Yeah I’m seein’ how that thing could be a problem to lug around in your gob all the time. Must got quite a jaw to be doin’ it like you have. Tell you what buck’o, your barding there’s a bit beat up too, so how about I give you a two-fer-one deal? Fifty caps gets you not only a new harness on your back to stow your spear but I’ll fix up and reinforce that barding with some decent radscorpion chitin?”

I had no idea what a ‘radscorpion’ was, let alone if its chitin was any good for armor, but it sounded impressive. I also was clueless if that was pricey or a bargain and Arcaidia wasn’t being any help so I found myself nodding in agreement and before long I had my barding off, giving it over to the vendor. After about twenty minutes of waiting and watching Arcaidia poke around the nearby stalls the gray unicorn stallion returned my barding to me.

The shoulder’s, chest, and forelegs had been fitted with gray shell-like bits that the unicorn informed me were cured radscorpion chitin plates; almost good as metal armor he claimed. On the left flank of the barding a series of thick leather straps were arranged that the unicorn showed me could fit around Gramzanber’s blade and then be tightened to then hold the haft in place on my side. Whenever I needed to draw the spear I’d just need to take a second to loosen the straps. It might be a little inconvenient in the middle of a fight, but the unicorn told me it wasn’t all that different from having to holster or un-holster a gun. My gun was just bigger. And didn’t fire bullets. And wasn’t a gun.

After trying the barding on and ‘holstering’ Gramzanber in its new spot on my side I tried moving about. The chitin plates didn’t feel too out of place and I felt comfortable knowing if one of those freakin’ Balloons got a hold of me again I’d have a little extra protection. Gramzanber was a little awkward holstered like it was and I’d have to keep an eye out that the haft didn’t knock anything over, but it didn’t seem any more problematic than if I was carrying one of those big ‘rifle’ firearms I’d seen or something like Crossfire’s massive weapon. It’d do, and I was happy with the purchase.

So, heavier of amenities but lighter on caps me and Arcaidia left the market place thankfully without incident and made our way back towards the center of town. We passed by Mirage’s stage on the way and I saw that the place was empty, the pegasus’ show apparently over. I made a mental note to find her again sometime before I left town, assuming I was still alive after whatever ill conceived slave rescue I was planning for that night, and apologize more properly to her about Arcaidia’s behavior. I hoped the show had gone on without a further hitch after we’d left.

Arcaidia was still being quiet and not talking to me, though I couldn’t fathom why, as we reached the T-section of Saddlespring’s main road. I was about to try breaking the ice and talking to her to get her out of her grumpy state when I heard the crack of a gunshot and a scream.

On the road down towards the end opposite the marketplace I saw a haggard looking white earth pony mare stumble and fall, blood pouring from the ruin of her left back leg. Her black mane was a mess and her eyes were filled with tears as she struggled to crawl as blood pooled from the gaping hole in her leg.

Instinctively I rushed to her, and Arcaidia was right next to me. As I knelt and rushed to pull out one of the healing powders I had in my saddlebags I noticed the mare had a collar around her neck, a collar with a familiar block shaped device on it.

This was one of the slaves! In fact it was the same one that had looked at me with such pleading eyes earlier that day on the bridge. Noticing there weren’t any shackles on her legs I wondered how she could have gotten away from her captors but questions would have to wait.

“Hold on, just stay still and I’ll-“ I began to say but the mare just sobbed.

“Too late…I couldn’t…just needed an excuse to end it…”

Before I could answer that there was a sharp appreciative whistle and the voice of a mare that I recognized as belonging to Crossfire. The black unicorn was strolling up casually as if she was out for a leisure stroll, her massive bladed rifle hanging in the air beside her in its blood red glow.

“Hooowhee, now that just wasn’t smart of you at all was it now missy? Where’d you think you could go even if you could magically outrun my bullets, eh? That collar on your neck would’ve exploded that pretty head clean off the second you got too far. Lucky you I’m being paid to keep you alive.”

“Kill me…” the mare said as she looked up at me, her eyes suddenly desperate as they had been back on the bridge, “I won’t go back. Just kill me-“

The butt of Crossfire’s rifle snaked forward and smacked the mare upside the head and she fell unconscious with her eyes rolling up. I was still holding the healing powder in my mouth, too shocked by the turn of events and from the bizarre plea the mare had given me to even think, let alone act. Crossfire came up and leaned her head down, her yellow eyes regarding me as her mouth twisted with a wry grin.

“Oh, hey it’s you. Mr. Hero. Heh, don’t think I needed any help recapturing our little runaway here, but I appreciate the effort. Oh, that stuff meant to heal her leg? Never you mind that, we ‘civilized’ folk got better methods than you tribals for taking care of hurts like this.”

As if to prove her point she floated out a vial of purple liquid and upended it down the throat of the unconscious mare. I watched in fascination as the bullet hole through her leg began to close, though hardly all the way, and I could tell the bone was getting set in an unnatural way even as it mended. Crossfire smiled thinly and made a ‘tut tut’ sound.

“That’s too bad, that leg will hurt something fierce healing up all wrong like that. Poor thing will have to spend the rest of her working life feeling that pain in her leg. Well, whatever. Brickhouse, get your flank over here and carry this piece of cargo back to the Ruins!”

From the crowd of ponies that had gathered to watch the scene the massive brown earth pony with the big leather hat came galloping up, other ponies diving to make way for his lumbering frame.

“You got it boss! Can’t figure how she got out though. Iron had them manacles checked solid!”

“Hmph, well, I’ll be having a chat with Iron Wrought about that once we’re back to the Ruins,” Crossfire said as Brickhouse lifted the white slave mare onto his back like she weighted little more than a foal, “Assuming he ain’t already drunk himself into unconsciousness.”

As she and the big stallion turned to leave I found myself dropping the healing powder I’d forgotten was still in my mouth and calling out, “Wait!”

Crossfire looked over her shoulder at me, yellow eyes somehow both amused and deadly at the same time.

“Where are you taking her?” I found myself asking, though I don’t think my brain was actually doing anything resembling thinking. I was on pure reactionary autopilot now.

“What business is it of yours Mr. Hero?” Crossfire asked jokingly, “You looking for a piece of flank you can get it easier than trying to play rescuer to a suicidal slave.”

“That’s not it. You said ‘Ruins’,” my brain apparently now decided to chip in and give me a plan, though it was a thin and vaguely formed one at best, “And you thought my spear was from one of those Ruins. I want to know what these Ruins are. Might be…profitable.”

Maybe the mercenary would buy that my interests were purely greed-based. Never mind I’d pretty much admitted to her in our last encounter to being fully willing to jump into mortal danger simply because it seemed like the right thing to do. My brain needed to give me better plans!

Crossfire snorted out a laugh that suggested she didn’t believe me, but more importantly, didn’t care.

“Ain’t a secret Saddlespring discovered it’s got a Ruin underneath it. Made the town boom like crazy this past year. Problem is buck, if you plan on exploring it, the Ruin is owned by the Labor Guild. Nothing in there you got any right to claim salvage to and it’s the Labor Guild’s ponies that get to do the excavating. You looking for places to get rich and/or dead in go looking somewhere else.”

With that the black unicorn left with her goliath of a companion, the unconscious slave mare on his back. I stared after them, and then my gaze dropped to the pool of blood that had soaked into the dirt road. That mare had seemed so desperate to either escape or die. Perhaps to her one was synonymous with the other. What could those slaves be being subjected to that would drive them to that? Why did none of the ponies around here seem to even notice or care that other ponies were being treated horribly within the confines of their own town!?

Arcaidia stood beside me, looking at me with concern, her earlier grumpiness forgotten as she poked at me neck with her muzzle.

“Estu vi goval Longwalk?”

“Yeah,” I replied, not at all knowing what she said but understanding the meaning in her concerned tone, “I’m okay. I just…”

I just had no idea what I was going to do.

Footnote: Level up!

Perk Added – Heave Ho!: You sure got a talent for tossing! Thrown weapons gain 50% velocity and range.

Chapter 4: Facing the Ancient Ruins

Chapter 4: Facing the Ancient Ruins

I walked slowly towards the entrance to “Frisky’s Stop n’ Drop Saloon”, my mind a mire of tangling thoughts. The inside of the saloon wasn’t too crowded, a few tables taken up by locals eating or playing some sort of game involving those cards I’d seen Mirage use in her show. The place was built inside one of the blasted stone pre-war buildings but a fair bit of cleaning up had been done to make the interior look pleasant if not new, with various bits and pieces of pre-war decor covering the worst cracks in the walls. A bright yellow earth pony mare with her black hair tied up in a bun was playing that same cheery music I’d heard when I’d passed by the saloon earlier, the instrument she sat before looking like a large bulky wood cabinet with a set of white and black keys arranged on a lip before it. I’d never seen a piano before and couldn’t imagine how the thing was producing those beautiful and bouncy notes. If I’d been in a better mood the music would be entrancing. However at that moment my head was too muddled for me to do more than give the instrument and its player a brief glance before I headed for what I figured was the main counter.

Arcaidia strolled in right behind me, her silver eyes curiously taking in the room. We were getting some stares back from the local ponies, most of their looks guarded at best, a few that looked like they might have been at Mirage’s show openly looking sour at our arrival. A few disgruntled locals I could live with though, leaving town without trying to do something for those slaves wasn’t.

Me and Arcaidia had essentially what we’d come to town for; supplies. Well, supplies and information, but we were here at the saloon to take care of that second bit. I didn’t know what a ‘saloon’ was specifically but it was clearly a gathering place for this tribe, er, town…community? Was that the right term? Semantics aside I figured if I wanted to get an idea of how me and Arcaidia could most easily make our way south to the NCR this was as good a spot as any to ask.

Once that was taken care of we technically didn’t have any reason to stay.

Save for the fact that I rather desperately wanted to find some way to rescue the slaves from bondage.

Some ponies might have questioned my motivations for this. It’s not like I knew any of the slaves personally. I didn’t owe them any debts. There wasn’t any profit or material gain involved in the prospect of rescuing them. In fact it entailed a ridiculous amount of risk both to myself and Arcaidia, the mare to whom I actually did owe a debt I was trying to repay. Why put that at risk for complete strangers who, as terrible as their circumstances seemed, didn’t have anything to do with me?
Simple; because it felt right.

Not exactly a complicated or well thought out reason, but I didn’t have anything else motivating me beyond a simple instinctual belief that trying to free those slaves was the right thing to do. I might have been easier to just forget about them and walk away from here with Arcaidia and proceed on our journey, staying focused on the goal of getting her to her destination and finding Persephone. But if I did that I think I’d also be walking away from some essential part of myself, a spark that made me, well, me.

So while it was stupid of me, and probably suicidal, I was resolved to do it.

I still needed a plan though. A good one. One that involved well thought out and detailed sets of actions with carefully thought through contingencies to guarantee a high degree of success…

…Crap I was so doomed.

Thing was, I knew next to nothing about what I was dealing with, so any plans basically involved such a high number of unknowns that it was likely to fall apart like a poorly staked tent under a mildly stiff breeze. I didn’t know how many guards there would be at the Ruins in addition to Crossfire and her team. I had no clue where the slaves were specifically being kept and how I could get them out of their shackles or their collars…and hadn’t Crossfire said something about exploding heads before? I was sure she had. Great, now I had to figure out what that was all about otherwise rescuing the slaves might not even matter due to premature head explosions!

Argh, why did this have to be so complicated!?

“Well don’t ya just look like ya swallowed a’ sour grape? What’s troublin’ ya, hun?”

I jumped slightly. Apparently the rest of the world fell away when my brain got into a wrestling match with itself and my body goes on autopilot. I hadn’t even noticed that I’d been standing at the long wood counter that ran across one end of the saloon for several minutes. Arcaidia had wandered off to harass the piano player, poking her nose around the instrument and excitedly asking the yellow mare rapid fire questions that the piano player could only look completely baffled at.

As for me, I was staring at the mare who spoke. She was standing on the other end of the counter, her forelegs propped up on it while she rested her chin between her hooves. It took me a second to recognize the mane of light brown streaked with pink, the white coat, and violet eyes. Not to mention the wings.

“Y-you’re her! The Mighty and Mysterious Mirage!”

The pegasus mare smiled and shook her head, “No need fer callin’ me that here. That’s just mah stage name. Call me B.B, if ya please Mr…?”

“Oh, um, Longwalk,” I said while wondering what ‘B.B’ could possibly refer to. Then I realized she’d asked me a question and I found myself looking away from her searching violet eyes, “Anyway its nothing. Just, um, got a lot on my mind.”

“Must be, to space ya out like that. No worries I won’t be pryin’ if ya don’t wanna talk about it. So what’s yer pleasure, hun? Drink, food, or a spot to rest?”

I considered briefly before replying, “All of the above, plus some information, if you’re willing to answer a few questions.”

Mirage, er, B.B nodded slowly and flapped her wings so she was floating high enough in the air to easily reach a set of clean-ish cups sitting atop a shelf and brought it down, “It’s 4 caps fer a’ full meal, and ‘nother 10 fer a room, though if yer sharin’ with the filly we got a bigger ‘commadation fer 15. Questions are free, hun, long as I like the questions an’ ya don’t get pushy if I don’t wanna answer.”

“Fair enough,” I said as I got into my meager supply of remaining caps and counted out enough for a meal for me and Arcaidia and one of the basic rooms. I figure we could manage with limited space and since I wasn’t actually planning on staying the whole night (suicidal slave rescue attempts were on the itinerary after all) I saw no reason to pay out any more caps than I had to. Food and rest were going to be a necessity though. I was only now starting to pay attention to just how hungry and exhausted my body was. I hadn’t slept since leaving my village, and had only sparingly paused for food during the walk to Saddlespring after the fight on the bridge.

B.B scooped up my caps and gave me an appraising look, “Not much fer barterin’ are ya? Most folks woulda at least tried to argue down the cost of the room.”

I cocked my head, “Well, I…uh, the price is the price, right? How am I supposed to argue about it?”

“Ya don’t got trade where yer from? Nothin’ merchant folk love more than arguing about price. Well prices here are fair enough to start, but I could tell just lookin’ at ya that yer a bit of a greenhorn, no offence meant. I mean, how much did ya pay fer somepony to slap radscorpion plates on yer barding?”

“…Fifty caps?”

B.B sighed, shaking her head, “See, that’s what I mean. Ya got swindled there. Radscorp’s got hard bodies, sure, but ain’t nopony like to use ‘em fer armor. Know why?”

I shook my head. Quite obviously I did not know why.

“Hardened leather’s tougher n’ easier to get ahold of, also more flexible like and easier to repair. Ya coulda bought a good set o’ leather fer half what ya got charged fer them radscorp plates.”

I felt my head sulk down as I said, “Oh.”

B.B smiled as she went over to a keg under one of the counters and poured a foamy brown liquid from a nozzle on the keg’s side into the cup she’d grabbed earlier. She slid the cup to me and I looked at it, wondering what it was made out of. The cup was white, like bone, but felt smooth to the touch. Weird.

“Don’t be frettin’ Longwalk,” B.B said as I tried taking a sip of the liquid, which was shockingly sweet and carried with it a flavorful aftertaste I couldn’t begin to place but made my tongue do little leaps of joy “Ye just got ta learn not to take things at face value is all when yer buyin’ or sellin’.”

“Does that logic apply to ponies as well?” I found myself asking before my brain pony could kick me upside the head and stop me.

B.B was staring at me and I could tell the mood in the room had just gotten about 20% frostier.

Even Arcaidia noticed the sudden shift in atmosphere as many of the saloon’s patrons fixed iron hard gazes on me and the room went unpleasantly silent. Arcaidia quickly trotted over to me, her own face going from questioning to pre-‘kitten drowning’ in a few seconds as she stood beside me.

“Now what would ya be askin’ somethin’ like that?” B.B said softly.

I realized I needed to clear this up very, very quickly, otherwise I might not even get a chance at rescuing the slaves.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out that way. I’ve…had to adjust to a few things I’m not used to seeing. Ponies as…as property is one of those things. I don’t know what to make of that. Sorry if I offended you.”

B.B blinked, and then the tension seemed to melt away from her, “Oh so that’s what it is. Thought ye were askin’ if we sold ponies here in Saddlespring, on account of them damned Labor Guild ponies.”

As she spoke the other patrons seemed to relax a bit as well, most of them going back to their card games. It was almost as if they’d been waiting to hear if B.B was going to give the word to have me and Arcaidia thrown out or not, and now that she was giving the ‘all clear’ they just pretended like nothing happened.

“No, I’m about as far from interested in buying other ponies as is conceivably possible, and probably then some. But if Saddlespring doesn’t like slavery then why is the Labor Guild even here?”

B.B looked away, her ears flattening and her tail swishing in agitation, “It’s not like we want them snakes in our town. It’s complicated like. Short version is this; Prospector’s Guild found that Ruin in our town, and we sold the rights to salvage it to ‘em. Then they turn around and sold them rights to the Labor Guild. Next thing we know we got Labor Guild goons in our town tellin’ us to stay outta their way while they move in bushels of slaves to excavate the Ruin, an’ we got no say in stoppin’ them cause they own the rights to the Ruin. We try to push ‘em out they can get the other Guilds to cut trade with us. Saddlespring could live fer awhile on its own, but without the Water Guild brinin’ in fresh water or the Mechanics Guild comin’ in to fix our generators when they break down, Saddlesrping get’s ta hurtin’ fast, you see?”

I wasn’t sure I did. It sounded, like she said all ‘complicated like’. It was as if these Guilds just seemed to own and control every important commodity in the Skull City Waste, and any community that wanted to survive for long had to play by whatever rules they came up with. It gave me a sinking feeling in my gut to think about it. Taking on Crossfire and her team was terrifying enough of a prospect, but freeing those slaves, assuming I pulled it off, sounded like I’d be openly going against one of this area’s major powers.

Well look at it this way Longwalk. I thought to myself, Things can’t get much worse from here, right?

Someday down the road I’d learn never to think that. At the time I was still in my naïve stage, so cut me some slack.

“I’m sorry to have brought it up, didn’t know that’s how it was,” I said, then glanced at my drink, then at Arcaidia, who gave me a quizzical raise of her eyebrow. She been keeping quiet, letting me and B.B talk. I wondered if she was as hungry as I was.

“So, B.B, about them meals?”

“Oh, no problem hun, let me get those fixed up fer ya and yer filly-friend.”

As B.B began to fly off towards a door behind the counter that I could only assume led to some kind of cooking area I noticed Arcaidia eyeing the pegasus. The unicorn’s silver eyes went wide and she stood on her haunches, pointing a hoof.

“Estu ren bruhir!”

“You’re just now noticing who she is?” I asked, putting a hoof on Arcaidia’s shoulder “Look, can we just have a quiet meal? Please?”

I tried giving Arcaidia what I hoped was my most charming and convincing smile/dopey eyes combo. It worked on mom when I needed to convince her that I really had gotten all my chores done. Most of the time. Okay so not really, but still, it was the effort that counted!

Arcaidia gave me a sour look, but after a moment settled down and, flipping some of her long silver hair out of her face said, “Mata mata, esru vi pulvosh ren solva. Estu ren bruhir hashai.”

Before long B.B returned, bearing two small metal trays balanced easily on her two forehooves and set them before us, then went about getting a cup filled with some of that sweet tasting foamy brown liquid for Arcaidia. I blinked at the food in front of me, curious.

Green. Green and leafy. I looked at my brain pony and it shrugged at me. Great; what was I supposed to do with green food? Eat it I suppose. I was encouraged by the fact that Arcaidia, for her part, had immediately dug into the tray of green leafy stuff with apparent relish and only giving B.B a brief narrowed eyed look before nodding her head in grudging thanks.

B.B just seemed to find Arcaidia’s attitude amusing and gave me a look, noticing the way I was poking a hoof at the arrangement of green stuff as if it might attack me, “What? Ya never seen a’ proper salad before? Can’t blame ya, me an my pa’s saloon is one the only places outside a’ Skull City that affords fresh-ish greens from the Farming Guild.”

I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised there was no meat. When I’d been buying food at the market most the vendors had given me weird looks when I’d asked if they had any meat. The food provisions I’d purchased were instead lots of stuff packaged up in boxes or metal cans that the vendors had assured me that despite being ‘pre-war’ food was more than edible after two centuries. Since all the ponies around here were still alive and apparently didn’t have much else to eat I could only believe that the food was survivable if not tasty. This green stuff was new on me. A salad, huh? Well, you only live once, right?

My first nibble left me not knowing what to think. The taste was…just weird. Not as satisfying as meat’s salty goodness and it wasn’t bland like the roots the tribe had grown to go into our stews. The salad had a lot of different leafy stuff in it plus some things B.B told me were chopped onions. As I chewed it down in every larger mouthfuls I found that the taste was something I could get used to, though I thought it would be better if I could mix in some chunks of gecko meat. My stomach didn’t complain at having food in it though and before long Arcaidia and I were both finished.

“Thanks, that was pretty good actually, even if there was no meat,” I said, suppressing a burp. B.B gave me an odd look but smiled anyway and took the trays, setting them on the back counter.

“Yer welcome, I think. Now then, ya said somethin’ ‘bout havin’ questions?”

“Yeah, just a couple,” I tapped a hoof to my chin, pondering which to start with. Guess I’d get the simple one out of the way first, “Exactly where is the Ruin in town?”

The pegasus’ frowned slightly but said, “North west end a’ town, just follow the road to the right past the Sherrif’s station then hang left at the wall an’ keep goin’. Can’t miss it, Labor Guild’s got tents set up all over the building the Ruin entrance was found in.”

“Got it. Um, are there a lot of Labor Guild ponies there?”

“Now why’d ya wanna be knowin’ about that?” B.B asked.

“I...” I needed a reason that wouldn’t give away what I intended to do. Much as B.B made it clear the Labor Guild wasn’t exactly welcome in Saddlespring it was equally clear the townsfolk wouldn’t take to anypony who’d upset the status quo, given their town’s prosperity would be at risk if they were perceived to be going against the Labor Guild.

“I know a pony who works for them,” true statement, “I was just curious if I’d have a hard time finding him. I didn’t know how big their operation was here.”

“Funny, ya say ya got no love for slavery, yet ya got a pal who works for the Guild?”

“I just met him today, but he’s been one of the only ponies willing to help me get my bearings out here. With my stunning lack of knowledge I can’t afford to be picky about who I take help from.”

A soft laugh escaped from her, “Can’t argue that I reckon. Fine, ya shouldn’t have any trouble findin’ yer slaver buddy; they only got about a dozen ponies there, plus a few of them Followers of the Apocalypse folk.”

“Followers of the what now?”

“Oh, weird bunch from down south. Bringin’ medical aid and food to the needy and whatnot. Don’t know what ponyfolk like that are doin’ with the Labor Guild; don’t seem to jive with their mission statement of bringin’ relief to the downtrodden, but one of their doc’s is there at the camp. She visited my pa the other day.”

“Huh, why’s that?”

“Don’t rightly know, pa talked to her in private and didn’t tell me what it was about. Pa owns this here saloon but he’s also the local doc. Might be they were talkin’ medicine.”

While that was something I would file away in the back of my mind as ‘interesting’ it didn’t really figure into my plan. Overall the news was good though, there wouldn’t be as many ponies at the camp to contend with as I’d feared, though still more than enough to be a serious problem and to make any kind of direct approach a bad idea. If this Followers doctor really espoused to a philosophy of helping ponies in need maybe I’d have a possible ally? Doubtful, if she was already working with the Labor Guild for whatever reasons, but this would go so much smoother if I had a pony on the inside who could help me.

“Well, thanks for the info B.B, I just go one last question,” I said “What’s the best way for a pony to get to the NCR from here.”

The pegasus chortled, “NCR? That’s no small trip. There ain’t no direct route from here at least. Most travel to the south is done either ships comin’ outta Port Needle or what few caravans are nutty ‘nough to try crossin’ the Bleach.”

“…The Bleach?” I was starting to feel like my only purpose in life was to repeat what other ponies told me but in question format.I wondered if there would eventually come a day where every conversation I had didn't involve me needing to ask questions ever other sentence just to understand what was being talked about.Maybe I ought to look into reading books? I heard those are informative.

“Massive desert to the south, cuts right ‘tween the coast all the way to the mountains to the west. It’s what separates our neck of the woods from the heartland of Equestria. Used to be easier to travel, years back, but last I’d say three years or so the desert’s gotten…rough. I hear only safe way to cross is by sand steamer, an’ only one of those still workin’ is owned by the Mechanics Guild, so good luck gettin’ across that way. But even if ya did get across to the NCR border it wouldn’t do ya much good. Borders closed, has been fer awhile.”

Well, not exactly what I’d been hoping to hear but it was better to know now than if me and Arcaidia found out after getting there. I was curious about why the NCR’s border was closed down and also wanted to ask about the location of Port Needle, since that sounded like the best bet we had of getting to the NCR at all, but a sudden and epic yawn escaped me before I could get the words out and I remembered how tired I was. If I was serious about going to the Labor Guild’s camp tonight I’d need rest.

B.B was more than happy to show me and Arcaidia to our room, which was up a set of stairs on the building’s second floor. As we passed down a hallway to the room I noticed a poster on the wall, a bit more colorful and vibrant than a lot of the faded and torn posters that had been part of the main floor’s decorations. This poster depicted a blue unicorn mare, her light azure coat and silver hair immediately striking me as familiar. She wore a purple cap and odd pointy hat with a wide brim and was shown standing up on two legs on a stage; forelegs spread out around her like she was waving to a massive crowd. Bursts of colors around her, like small explosions of light, drew attention to colorful wording across the top of the poster.

‘The Greatest Magic Show in Equestria; Behold the Great and Powerful Trixie!’

“Hey B.B, what’s this? Looks familiar.”

B.B’s white face went a tad red as she grinned, stepping up to the poster, “That there’s a poster mah pa found during his Drifter days. Don’t rightly know who she was, but I always liked this poster an’ its part of what inspired mah show. Things’re pretty dreary ‘round these parts, so I like entertainin’ folks when pa doesn’t need me workin’ the saloon. Ya know, brighten up folks day with some honest entertainment. I tried findin’ out who Trixie was, but there ain’t much mention of her in any of the books my pa’s got. Not any, in fact. It’s a shame, would a’ liked to know who she was.”

I was still looking at the poster, wondering what it was about this Trixie that was bugging me as familiar. Then Arcaidia bumped me with her flank, apparently wanting to get to our room, and I looked over at her about to apologize for staring at the poster. Then it hit me.

“Hey…hey B.B, don’t you think Arcaidia kind of looks that pony in the poster?”

B.B blinked, and took a closer look at Arcaidia. The blue unicorn filly stared between us, clearly bewildered as to why we were both suddenly so interested in her, but she did seem to preen under the attention, straightening her neck and trying to stand tall and look regal.

“Ya know what, there is kinda a resemblance there. Eye color’s wrong, and the hairs longer, but I’m seein’ what ya mean. Well, guess it wouldn’t be the first time somepony looked like ‘nother. Ain’t that weird.”

“Esvu vi mas saevil?” Arcaidia said and her tone was that of mild indignation.

“Sorry Arcaidia, didn’t meant to stare,” I said, then nodded towards the room, “Let’s head in. Thanks again B.B for all the help.”

“Tch, ain’t done nothin’ special, just talked to ya some. It ain’t like I gave ya free room and board.”

“Believe me after the day I’ve had a friendly talk has been plenty to be thankful for.”

The room was small and sparse, with only one old mattress pushed into one corner and a broken down dresser in the other. But it was dry, mostly clean, and the mattress looked like heaven compared to the ground I was used to sleeping on, though I had every intention of letting Arcaidia use it. Once we were settled Arcaidia poked her head out the room’s one window, looking outside up at the gray overcast sky. I didn’t know what she was looking for exactly but she seemed pensive.

As I pulled out the straw mat from my saddlebags and laid it out alongside the room’s mattress Arcaidia turned to me and raised her Pip-Buck, pointing the screen in my direction. I came over and looked. It was displaying the Objective’s screen and to my surprise there were several additional items on the list:

‘Find Persephone’

‘Discover the secret of the pegasus witch’

‘Learn language of natives’

‘Protect Longwalk from himself’

I could only wonder at how these objectives were even getting added to the Pip-Buck, but Arcaidia’s serious expression forestalled my thoughts on that matter as she turned to face me.

“Longwalk, esru di vor ren vilshi goval? Mas…di mas.”

“Arcaidia I don’t know what you’re trying to say here,” I could tell she was upset about something, and that became even more clear as she poked my chest with one of her dainty hooves, then grabbed my mane with her teeth and dragged me over to the window.

“Vilshi golval, nes?” she said as she pointed. I looked out and in the direction she was pointing I saw what was probably the Ruin and the Labor Guild’s camp. Several large white rectangular tents were nestled around the base of a crumbled building, a rough fence of metal looped around the affair. I could see a few ponies by an open part in the fence, though I couldn’t make out from this distance if they were armed it stood to reason that they would be.

“That’s…Arcaidia, you know what I’m planning to do?”

Arcaidia looked at me for a long moment before nodding slowly.

“You can understand what I’m saying?”

Her lips pursed and she began to look confused, nodding again, but in the exact way she had before. Okay so she didn’t understand my words. She was just good at reading my body language then? It wasn’t like I’d been doing a good job hiding my feelings about the slaves and chances were for a perceptive and aware pony my intentions were pretty easy to see. Which wasn’t good. That meant Crossfire probably was expecting me to pull something tonight.

That didn’t change that I was going to do it. Arcaidia wasn’t going to change that either, though I had to admit she had far more pull with me than anypony else right now and if she’d really insisted upon stopping me…I’d feel real bad about doing it anyway. I was here because I owed her, but I’d already decided that walking away wasn’t an option. If she understood my language I would have tried to explain that to her, explain that I was sorry about putting ponies I didn’t even know before the obligation I had to help her on her quest, but that I needed to do this. That if I didn’t do this I think I’d be losing a part of myself I wasn’t ready to sacrifice just, even for all I owed her.

Arcaidia kept looking at me intently, maybe waiting for me to say something more, but I could only stand there and hope she could read the determination on my face. After a few moments she let out a sigh and prodded me once more with her hoof, this time in a supportive manner on the shoulder.

“Trailblaze ren vir. Esru ren ri varo. Matta,” she straightened and stuck out her hoof, mirroring the way I did it when offering a hoofshake. I smiled and wrapped my hoof around hers.

“I’m…with…you,” she said slowly and deliberately, as if picking out each word by memory. Which she was as I realized she was repeating what I’d told her back in Shady Stream when I’d decided to help her find Persephone. My smile deepened, despite a part of me suddenly being more than little nervous about our chances of pulling this off. If something went wrong and she got hurt…

“Thank you Arcaidia. Just, don’t do anything crazy to protect me from myself, alright? Now let’s get some rest, we got a long night ahead of us.”

In the dark of night the Labor Guild’s camp was lit up by several bright lamps hanging periodically from the fence. I could also see that at least one of the tents was lit up from the inside, the largest of the bunch. That might be where they were keeping the slaves but some part of me doubted they’d bother keeping the slave’s tent well lit, assuming they were even in one of the tents. I hadn’t seen any of them yet.

Me and Arcaidia were both lying down amid the rubble of one of the broken down buildings along the street near the Labor Guild camp. We’d quietly snuck out of the saloon not long ago, sometime in what I guessed was the dead middle of the night. I’d only gone downstairs into the saloon’s common room once earlier when evening had first set in to look for Iron Wrought; remembering I’d said I’d meet the stallion there for a drink. He hadn’t been there. That worried me some; he hadn’t seemed like the type to say he’d be somewhere and not be, but then what did I know? I’d only met him today.

Following B.B’s directions we had swiftly trotted down the street, passing the Sheriff's office and turning left at the wall, passing by an old dry fountain and a blue box tucked into the corner of an alley. Down the street we’d seen the lights of the camp and moved off into this ruined building, climbing up broken pieces of concrete to peek out and get a look at our target.

The building the camp was built around was marginally more intact than the one we were in and I could see that the entrance was a large blasted hole in the side where a pair of lamps had been hung over. That part was oddly unguarded. Looking I also took note that while there were still two guards at the open part of the fence there didn’t seem to be any patrols and the camp was mostly quiet. That was either very encouraging…or something to be worried about.

Well, we’d need to get in there to get anything done. Looking to Arcaidia I got her attention with a tap.

“Hey, if we get to the fence do you think you could freeze it so we can break through?” I asked, pantomiming her spell with my ‘ffzzzzwhoosh’, but then clapping a hoof over my mouth and making a ‘shhh’ sound, hoping she’d get that I was curious if she could do the spell in a quiet manner.

She responded by tapping her horn to a nearby metal spar and with only a slight glow of magic and next to no sound slowly turned the spar to ice, then broke it off. I grinned. Okay, so we might have a way in, we just needed to sneak up to a side of the fence the guards couldn’t easily see. This was going to be eas-

*Ka-chink*

Oh…that was the sound of a very large gun chambering a round.

“So, enjoying the crisp night air?”

I wheeled around, teeth going for the straps securing Gramzanber to my side. Before I could even get the first strap loose though there was a loud crack and a sharp searing pain in my ear as Crossfire’s bullet tore the tip off my right ear. I felt hot blood trickle down the side of the ear as Crossfire calmly kept her smoking gun pointed square at me head.

The black unicorn mare herself was standing in the center of the ruined building, her massive bayonet rifle wrapped in the crimson glow of her magic as she regarded me and Arcaidia with a cocky grin.

“In case you’re wondering, I didn’t miss, buck. That was just a warning shot.”

Arcaidia growled and turned, her horn already glowing, but rather abruptly she paused as several small knives covered in a yellow aura appeared under her throat, having floated up there from the shadows to our left.

“Looks like you were right boss,” said Shard as he emerged from hiding, “Now I owe Brickhouse some caps.”

The pony in question poked his head out from behind a ruined wall on the opposite side of the building, “So that mean I can come out now? We done hiding?”

“Yes, Brickhouse, you can come out now,” drawled Crossfire with a roll of her eyes, “Thanks for following instructions and not jumping the gun. Wanted these two to get nice and comfy after all.”

“How did you know we were here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm and level, nice and confident sounding. Which I wasn’t. Damn my ear stung! Oh, and me and Arcaidia seemed fairly screwed. Crossfire and her team had us dead to rights at the moment.

“Buck, hate to break it to you, but you suck at sneaking. Spotted you coming up the road long before you heading into this building. Been keeping an eye out for you since you didn’t do much of a job hiding your bleeding heart earlier today. Figured you’d be paying us a visit tonight.”

“I thought we were being pretty stealthy. We crouched down and everything!”

“…you do know there’s more to stealth than just crouching, right?”

“Hey, it always worked on the geckos I hunted!”

Crossfire shook her head in apparent disbelief at my lack of proper stealth techniques (as if she was some kind of expert! Oh, wait she got the drop on us, so I guess she probably was) and said, “Well I ain’t no gecko. Now then, you got any particularly convincing reason I shouldn’t riddle the two of you with bullets? I’m curious to hear what you can come up with and could use a laugh.”

“…My stunning good looks?”

“You’re a six out of ten at best, buck, and that’s me being generous,” Crossfire snorted, “And even if you were a straight ten hot piece of flank you still wouldn’t rate more than a bullet to the brain for even thinking of getting between me and getting paid. This job’s being pain in my flank as is without idiots like you trying to pull some half baked slave rescue.”

“Pain in the flank? Like what, more of your ‘property’ escape?” I asked, not so much because I was curious but because I needed to keep her talking to buy myself time to think of a way out of this. I sneaked a sidelong glance at Arcaidia. Shard still had some of his knives gripped in his yellow glow of magic, their blades pressed firmly against her throat. She was giving him a concentrated dose of the ‘kitten drowning ‘ look as if she could turn him into a chunk of ice by sheer will alone. Shard for his part didn’t look all that comfortable, the unicorn stallion’s expression sullen.

Crossfire had her yellow eyes narrowed at me and I could almost see her weighting the wroth of bothering to answer my question as opposed to just pulling the trigger. At length she said, “No, after a friendly ‘chat’ with Iron Wrought I made it clear there wasn’t going to be any more slaves getting out of their shackles. Nah, my problem is that the Labor Guild’s paid me to keep those slaves alive while they excavate the Ruin, but the damned place is a deathtrap. Even me and my team can’t save those slaves from their own incompetence! Lost three just this first afternoon. That’s three hundred caps I ain’t getting paid and we haven’t even cleared the top level yet.”

I felt something akin to a spark going off in my head. Ideeeeeaaa! Probably not a good one, but I would take whatever my brain could throw me at this juncture. Arcaidia and my lives depending on whatever fast talk prowess I could muster. So I started talking. Fast.

“Labor Guild wants whatever’s in that Ruin, right? They got no reason to care who gets it for them, slaves, you, or let’s say, me.”

“Now hold on a second-“

Keep talking, convince her. It was hard to concentrate past the burning pain in my ear but at least it felt like the bleeding had stopped.

“Look you want caps. That’s you’re thing, right? Getting paid? You just said yourself you’re losing slaves in this Ruin, which costs you caps. If somepony else was willing to take all the risk and go into that Ruin to excavate it then that just saves you a whole lot of trouble, right?”

“…It might. What’s your game, buck? You volunteering to go into the Ruin? That won’t make them slaves any more free.”

“No, but it will keep them from being killed down there. Look I’m done lying. You’re right, my plan was to try and bust those slaves out of that camp. You caught me, sucks on my part. But if me and Arcaidia go into the Ruin and manage to clear it out of…what’s in there exactly?”

“Traps, mostly. Some kind of critters too, like to hide in the dark and drag the slaves off. That’s how we lost one.”

“Right, so we go in, clear the traps, the critters, and make sure the place is safe. In exchange you let me and Arcaidia here walk, just like you said I ought to have done in the first place. The slaves are still slaves, but they’re less dead. And you get paid.”

“Assuming you two live.”

“If we don’t, so what? You’re just back to where you started. Even if we’re killed down there we might soften things up for you some. It’s a win-win for you no matter what happens to us.”

“Unless you find something down there you could use against me, or found a passage in the Ruin that leads out of town.”

Crap, why did everypony have to be smarter than me and figure out my intentions like that? Well, I was already galloping down this hill, might as well see it through.

“What are the chances of that versus the likelihood of us dying to traps and critters you just admitted to having trouble with yourself Miss ‘number one gun of the Drifter’s Guild’?”

“I ain’t having trouble with them!” Crossfire snarled, “It’s those dumb ass slaves that are getting killed.”

“Right, but my point still stands that the chances of me and Arcaidia surviving down there and finding an escape route is way lower than the chance of us getting killed, so you don’t have much to lose by letting us try.”

There was a long pause before Crossfire barked out a harsh but amused laugh, “You, buck, are a complete idiot. But an idiot with a pair. My better judgment says I ought to just kill you before you cause me any more of a headache, but I’ll admit you got me curious to see if you can pull this off. But we’re going to do this my way, with a few stipulations for my entertainment and assurance. Move.”

She flicked her tail to indicate me and Arcaidia needed to start walking. Arcaidia gave me a questioning look and I just shook my head and motioned for her to follow me as I started walking. Crossfire and her team kept a close eye on eyes, her weapon never for a second pointed anywhere other than my skull and Shard’s knives never straying from Arcaidia’s neck as we exited the crumbled building and headed over across the street to the camp.

The Labor Guild slavers guarding the fence entrance gave our party a surprised look but Crossfire was quick to explain that we were her prisoners and that this wasn’t any of their business. The guards seemed less than pleased but were either too scared of Crossfire to question her or were simply under orders to let the Drifter do as she wanted.

We were led into the central tent, the one that was still lit up, and I blinked my eyes as they adjusted to the sudden change in lighting. Inside was…not quite what I was expecting.

A table took up most the center of the tent but the edges of it were stuffed with metal machines, many of which had screens and buttons on them. Some metal cabinet looking things with flashing lights on them were arranged in one corner of the room, and another machine was churning out graphs of paper while making strange noises. There were three ponies in the tent as we entered, two of which were at the table going over what appeared to be stacks of notes while the third was at one of the machines with the screens, poking at the buttons with soft glows of green telekinetic magic.

The unicorn at the screen raised her head as we entered. She was a bright vibrant pink mare with a short and neat cut lime green mane. She wore a clean looking white coat that covered most of her body and had a pair of thin rimed black glasses perched on her nose.

“Oh my what’s all this now?” she asked in a shocked town as Crossfire marched me and Arcaidida inside.

“Brickhouse,” Crossfire said to the massive brown stallion, “Get back outside and keep watch. Just in case this buck got any of the townsfolk on his side. I don’t want any more surprises.”

“Again I ask, what’s all this now?” the pink unicorn mare asked as she came up to us, adjusting her glasses as she peered at me and Arcaidia, “Miss Crossfire? Explain?”

Crossfire grimaced, her tone filled with annoyance, “Cool it Dr. Lemon Slice, these two ponies were about to interfere with our operation here. As you know the Labor Guild’s hired me and given me full authority as a temporary Overseer to ensure this little excavation goes smoothly. Instead of disposing of these two I thought I’d put them to work instead, going into the Ruin.”

Hey, that was my idea! My poorly thought out and possibly going to get me and Arcaidia killed idea! Honestly it wasn’t getting me any closer to rescuing the slaves, but that wasn’t the point. The plan was buying me time.

“Oh my, well that is unfortunate,” Dr. Lemon Slice said, giving me and Arcaidia a pitying look, “This Ruin has proven to be quite dangerous. If the data we were getting wasn’t so valuable I’d be questioning the cost in lives. Truly unfortunate. Hmm, so you will be sending these two into the Ruin? By themselves?”

Crossfire smiled, and it was a smile I didn’t like one tiny bit.

“Not exactly. You remember the slave that tried to escape today? The one whose leg you treated?”

“Why yes, poor thing, her bone wasn’t set properly. You really shouldn’t expose a wounded subject to healing potions without ensuring the proper precautions are taken first. Healing potions really are meant just for dealing with minor flesh wounds-“

“Yeah, yeah. Look why don’t you go fetch her from the pen. I think she’ll be joining our brave little heroes here inside the Ruin.”

“What?” the doctor and I said both at the same time. Crossfire looked at me coldly.

“I think you’ll perform better if there’s somepony down there whose life is going to depend on you. She’s also my insurance you’ll be coming back up willingly if you do happen to find another way out of there. You see those explosive collars around those slaves necks are pretty advanced pieces of tech. They can be programmed to explode under certain conditions, like distance from the detonator…or on a time limit.”

“Miss Crossfire I really must object to this-“

“Objected noted doc, and rejected. Remember you’re here as a guest of the Labor Guild after you got your sorry flank kicked out of the Followers of whateverthefuck. You have no authority here and your job is to tell us what tech is worthwhile to the Labor Guild and which isn’t.”

“Well…very well…speaking of which, young colt, that spear of yours, where did you acquire it?”

“Doc, not now. Go get the slave.”

“But that spear bears a striking resemblance to artifacts found in other Ruins. At least the metal is made from does. Surely it would be prudent for us to study it. It may help with a theory I’ve been working on.”

“I’m going to kind of need it in the Ruin,” I said, suddenly quite uncomfortable with the attention on my spear. Gramzanber had been getting more than a few odd looks while I’d been going about Saddlespring. At the market there had even been a few offers by the vendors to take it off my hooves for what had sounded like a large sum of caps to my inexperienced ears; but the spear wasn’t up for sale. Arcaidia had given it to me to save Trailblaze. I might not have at first felt a lot of attachment to it but now that I had it for awhile…I didn’t feel like parting with it.

“Hm, I suppose an examination can wait until-*gasp* Oh my, is that a starblaster you have there young lady?”

I heard Crossfire groan as she face hoofed. The doctor was now in front of Arcaidia in the blink of an eye, excitedly peering at the weapon holstered on my friend’s foreleg.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had an opportunity to see one up close! Oh you must allow me to study it!“

Crossfire trotted forward and shoved her face right up in front of the doctors, eyes boring into the pink unicorn.
“Slave. Now.”

“But a real starblaster? If it’s functional I really must examine it. Who knows when I’ll get another chance!? The technology of those weapons is ludicrously beyond Equestrian standard!”

“Ugh, fine, take the damned thing then, but you study it later. Go get the slave.”

Arcaidia snarled out the begging’s of what was probably a protest as the doctor gleefully began to float out the starblaster, but Shard pressed his knives in firmly against her neck, drawing only the smallest well of blood, and Arcaidia went silent. If looks were capable of dealing death though I think most of the room would be a glacier by this point. The doctor, near salivating, floated the starblaster to a locker and locked the weapon inside, turning around only to face Crossfire’s extremely annoyed visage.

The doctor, taking the hint, morosely left, giving my spear final longing parting look. The two other ponies at the table had been staring at us the whole time but quickly went back to their work after a harsh glare from Crossfire. The black unicorn mare was muttering to herself as she leaned up against the table, bayonet rifle still floating by my head, as she snorted out a sigh.

“Fucking scientists.”

“I take it you two don’t get along?” I ventured.

“Buck, shut up, or I’ll be rapidly reconsidering this plan of yours. I like caps, but I like not being pissed off even more.”

Right, I suppose that’s me not talking now. Really would it kill this mare to try being a little more sociable? Was being a cap grubbing mercenary that much of a satisfying lifestyle? But then she was the one with the gun and I was the prisoner about to be kicked into some ancient deathtrap Ruin, on my own suggestion no less. Who was I to question the direction her life was taking? Besides I could use the time to start thinking of yet another plan to try and turn this around.

So it was those collars that made the slave’s heads explode. And they could do it via something called a ‘detonator’. Right, so if I could get my hooves on this detonator then maybe I could turn the collars off? Seemed logical enough that Crossfire would have the detonator on her, probably tucked into that red jacket of hers. How could I get it?

My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion outside the tent. I heard a loud feminine voice shouting. Within moments the tent flap opened and the place got crowded as multiple ponies came in to join the party. First was Dr. Lemon Slice and a Labor Guild guard armed with what I understood now as a ‘shotgun’ leading the white earth pony mare slave, whose shackles had been removed I noted, her eyes downcast as she walked with a heavy limp. Behind them came Brickhouse, the large stallion carrying another pony in his mouth by her hair.

Her light brown hair streaked with pink. Her wings flapped furiously to get free of Brickhouse’s iron teeth but to no avail. She twisted aorud and struck the stallion several times in the face but he didn’t even blink at her punches.

“Dangnabbit let go a’ me ye damned big oaf!”

B.B kept wailing on the stallion but to little affect. For his part Brickhouse actually looked embarrassed as he gave Crossfire an apologetic look and said, “Found something boss.”

“I see that, “Crossfire replied dryly and came up and casually lifted her bayonet rifle so the large blade was pressed firmly up under B.B’s chin. The pegasus stiffened and ceased her struggling as her violet eyes turned to regard Crossfire.

“Calmed down now? Good,” Crossfire said with a self-satisfied smirk, “Now then my little filly, who are you and what are you doing here? And remember, lying is bad.”

B.B’s eyes flicked to me but almost as quickly went back to Crossfire as she said, “I ain’t nopony. I just work at the saloon an’ was out fer a walk is all.”

Crossfire sighed and pulled her bayonet away from B.B’s neck and took a step back, “Oh, well if that’s the case I suppose I ought to just let you go then. Simple misunderstanding, right?”

I saw the rifle wheel around the felt my teeth grind as the stock of the rifle smacked B.B across the face hard enough to split her lip. As blood dripped from her chin the pegasus’ eyes unfocused In the daze from the blow.

“Let’s try this again,” Crossfire said, this time raising her rifle to press the tip of the bayonet against B.B’s temple, “Why were you outside the camp?”

“Miss Crossfire is this necessary?” Dr. Lemon Slice said plaintively, “She’s obviously just a local. They all know that the camp is off limits. Beating the poor filly isn’t going to-“

“I don’t remember asking for your opinion doctor. Now kindly shut your trap.”

Crossfire put a bit of pressure on her weapon and the tip poked at the side of B.B’s head until a small trickle of blood welled up to mar her white coat.

“Now answer my question filly, and the truth this time.”

B.B was clearly trying hard to keep fear from showing on her face as her wide eyes looked at the weapon pressed against her head, but she took a deep breath, saying “I already told ya. My name’s B.B, I work at the saloon, I was out fer a walk. I might a’ walked a little close to the fence but I was just peekin’ at the Ruin. Then yer walkin’ tank her snatches me up and drags me in here! I ain’t done nothin’ wrong!”

Crossfire leaned in close to B.B, their eyes only inches apart.

“I got a talent for sniffing out lies, filly. You know this buck, I can see it in the way you keep flicking over little glances at him. You’re here for him I’m guessing.”

“Just let her go Crossfire,” I said, “We might have met earlier today but so what? It’s not as if she would have come out here to help me after knowing me for less than a day. She’s not even armed.”

“That true?” Crossfire asked Brickhouse as she pulled her weapon away from B.B’s head slightly “You searched her for weapons Brickhouse?”

The big stallion nodded his head, B.B bobbing up and down with the motion and Crossfire, “Eyup. She don’t have anything on her beside that fancy dress.”

Crossfire regarded B.B carefully for a second, then shook her head, “Nope, not buying it. You got the look of a troublemaker and you keep looking at Mr. Hero here like your trying not to. So fuck it, you get to go into the Ruin with them. Have fun.”

“What? No, Crossfire, she’ll get killed down there!” I shouted. I was already pissed off she was forcing the slave mare to go with me and Arcaidia, but there was no reason to send B.B down as well! Risking my own life and Arcaidia’s was bad enough, but B.B was completely uninvolved in this. There was no reason her life needed to be put in danger just because I decided to develop a hero-complex.

“Not my problem,” Crossfire retorted, “Hey, now you get a free lesson in taking jobs in the Wasteland. It’s called ‘Escort Missions Suck’. Learned it early on in my career.”

I opened my mouth to protest further but B.B cut me off.

“Its fine Longwalk,” she said, dropping all pretense of not knowing me, “I figured ya were doin’ somethin’ foalish when I spotted ya sneakin’ out of the saloon. Was gonna try an’ stop ya but, well, guess that plans down the crapper now.”

She narrowed her eyes at Crossfire, “Mah pa’s gonna wonder where I went though.”

“Oh no, the local inn keeper and bartender will come looking for his daughter? How terrifying.”

“I ought ta’ mention mah pa’s name is Doc Sunday.”

That seemed to give Crossfire pause.

“Seriously? Doc Sunday? You don’t look anything like him. What you take after your mother?”

“Adopted,” B.B replied coolly.

“Heh, not saying I buy what you’re saying but if it’s true…well good, if Doc Sunday really is your old buck and decides to come after you then that’ll be a great chance for me to boost my reputation. Isn’t everyday you get a shot at claiming you took down one of the Drifter Guild’s former legends.”

B.B groaned, “Ah crap, I forgot, pa always told me I shouldn’t go droppin’ his name ta other Drifters on account a’ his rep.”

“Right, now that that’s settled, we just got one last bit of business to take care of before I shove you lot into the Ruin. Doctor, I want you to adjust the parameters on that slave’s collar.”

The slave mare in question had been very quietly standing next to Arcaidia, who’d barely given the slave mare a glance and was still trying to apparently destroy eveypony in the room besides me with her icy glare. Shard still had Arcaidia’s neck practically covered in pointy knives and was looking more and more uncomfortable as the proceedings went on. The slave mare started a bit as she was brought up and looked about the room fearfully. Dr. Lemon Slice looked at Crossfire with plain displeasure on her face.

“If you insist it is necessary. What adjustments do you want me to make?”

“Adjust the detonator frequency to key into a different detonator than the primary and set the radius for detonation for, oh, let’s say, thirty meters instead of one hundred. Then activate the detonation timer so it will also go off after four hours. Just about the time we have until sunrise I’d say.”

As the doctor went about making the changes by apparently adjusting some knobs on the side of the collar I just blinked at Crossfire.

“What ‘s the point of all that? Why even send her down there with us!?”

“Like I said, I think you’ll perform better under pressure. More than that though it’s a guarantee that even if you find an escape route down there you’ll have a reason to come back here. In four hours that collar will go off one way or another unless I have the doctor shut off the timer. As for the detonator change, I can’t have her go into the ruins if the proximity detonator is keyed into mine. That place is bigger than a hundred meters. Rather than make her leash longer I figured I’d just give her a newer, but shorter leash that you can hold onto. Don’t get any bright ideas, you won’t be able to disable the bomb with the detonator I’m going to give you; that feature will be disabled. It’ll just mean you’ll be the center point for the thirty meter proximity. Oh, and if you feel like you could always press the red button to blow up her head, if you’re feeling tired of trying to protect her.”

“You’re…sick.”

“Sick? Buck if I were sick I’d be putting exploding collars on all of you. As it happens I’m just fond of a little insurance. Believe it or not, buck, I’m kind of hoping for you to succeed down there. It’ll save me a lot of trouble and a lot of caps. I didn’t take this job because I like working for the Labor Guild or get pleasure out of working slaves to death. I took it because they threw enough caps my way to make it worth my while. That’s another free lesson I’ll give you on the Wasteland; Caps are King. You got enough caps, you can do anything. You live through this you’d best remember that.”

I think I was scowling. I didn’t want her ‘advise’ and I sure as hell didn’t buy that she wasn’t getting some kind of messed up pleasure out of this whole situation. In fact I was pretty sure she was enjoying the idea of us dying down there immensely.

When Dr. Lemon Slice finished with the slave mare’s collar she floated over to me a small black plastic device shaped somewhat like a cylinder with a covered top-cap that she explained to me had the trigger detonator and that I ought not uncover it lest I accidentally push the button beneath. She reassured me that as long as I stayed within thirty meters (I had to get her to explain to me what a ‘meter’ was; hey my tribe didn’t use the metric system, alright?) of the collar that the mare would be just fine, and that even if she went outside thirty meters the collar wouldn’t explode immediately, that there was a ten second delay in which the collar would beep in warning before detonation.

I tucked the detonator into my saddlebags and gave the doctor a small nod of thanks. I didn’t exactly see her as blameless for any of this, after all she was willingly working with the Labor Guild and was party to what was going on here; but at least she seemed genuinely concerned for us. Brownie points there I guess. Of course it would have been nice if ‘concern’ translated to ‘help’ but once her job was done the good doctor went back to her work, standing very intentionally on the opposite side of the tent from Crossfire.

In short order myself, Arcaidia, B.B, and the as of yet unnamed slave mare were marched out of the tent and across the camp. The camp was still quiet, most of the ponies sound asleep save for the guards at the entrance, who were casting curious looks towards our procession but not saying anything. Crossfire kept her weapon pointed at me while Shard divided his knives between Arcaidia and B.B. Brickhouse took up the rear, occasionally jostling the slave mare when her steps faltered.

Before long we found ourselves being led inside the large stone building the camp had been built around. The building’s room had looked partially collapsed by on the inside I could see the bottom floor was entirely intact. The area was wide and filled with old rotted out wood crates and rusted barrels, some of which I noticed were leaking small trails of some green faintly glowing goo.

“The hay is that…?” I asked nopony in particular.

“Waste from one of the old pre-war factories,” answered Shard, somewhat to my surprise. Crossfire seemed to do most the talking for the trio, “Whatever town Saddlespring used to be before the balefire bombs fell it had a lot of warehouses to store crap byproducts the factories in the region produced before it could be dumped in the mountains. Not too dangerous unless you spend a lot of time hanging out next to it, in which case suck down a RadAway if you got one.”

“Radwhat?”

“Shard, no need to explain every little thing about Wasteland basics to them,” Crossfire said sharply.

“He’s talkin’ ‘bout RadAway, nifty drug that flushes rads outta yer system,” B.B explained, though I still had no idea what they were talking about. What were 'rads' and how could they get into my 'system'? I was going to assume this was just more of that Wasteland common knowledge stuff that was going over my head. Talk about geko hunting techniques or how to read weather patterns based off the wind and I've got you covered...mostly...okay so I wasn't all that good at that stuff either, but at least I knew what it was. I still had a lot to learn about the way things were in the wider world beyond my tribe's valley.

“Hole. In. Now,” Crossfire said, facehoofing as she led us to a sizeable hole in the center of the warehouse that looked like it had collapsed in on itself. The drop was almost completely sheer but some industrious ponies had built a wood plank and metal beam cross-way that ran in a circle around the hole, leading down. Crossfire was at the top of this, gesturing with her gun.

“What are you waiting for, get on in. You’ll find the entrance to the Ruin proper down there. Me and my team will just camp out up here and wait to hear from you on this.”

She floated over to me a small boxy object with a weird rubber antenna coming out the top. I gripped the thing in my mouth and gave her a raised eyebrow.

“It’s a radio. Won’t work if you get too deep, but the doctor suspects this Ruin doesn’t go that far down. You manage to actually clear it, or find whatever’s at the bottom, then you call us on that.”

“I understand,” actually I didn’t, but I figured it had to be like Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck somehow, those transmission things mom told me about. Rather than ask any more questions I just put the ‘radio’ away in my saddlebags and started making my way past Crossfire down the walkway, giving the black unicorn one last look that I hope told her ‘this isn’t over’ before following the winding path into the dark.

The four of us stood at the bottom of the walkway, a circular stone pit whose walls were smooth slate gray stone for the most part. At points though the stone seemed to have worn away to reveal bronze colored metal beneath. The bottom of the pit was lit by more of the lamps like the ones I'd seen up in the camp, and the light illuminated a big archway in the wall of the pit. Beyond that dim light though was nothing but darkness. Rubble was strewn all over the floor, apparently from the collapsed warehouse floor above.

The first thing I did once we were all safely down was turn to face the slave mare, who had stopped at the foot of the walkway, giving the dark archway a frightened look. I slowly approached her and said softly, “I’m sorry. Crossfire just put you here to get under my skin. We’ll get you out of this, just stay close to me, alright? Oh, my name’s Longwalk, what’s yours?”

“I…” the mare seemed to hesitate to take her eyes off the dark archway to look at me, “...Shale. My name is Shale.”

Shale? Like the crumbly rocks? Now that I looked I saw that her cutie mark was a pile of broken, thin rocks, of the same name. Beneath the cutie mark I also noticed a burned scar, in the shape of the letters L and G.

“Did the Labor Guild do that?”

Shale looked away, “Of course they did. They got me when I was a filly, before I got my cutie mark. Sold to them by my parents to pay for their…addictions. I’ve been a slave most my life. I’m so tired of it. I tried to end it today…”

“When you were running away? I remember. How did you get your shackles off before?”

“I…I don’t know how. We were leaving the Ruin after the day was done and Bristle got taken by those," a fearful glance at the archway “things in the Ruin. One of the slavers checked our shackles and collars before we got put in the pen but…but as we were being filed in I noticed my shackles had come loose all of a sudden so I…I ran. I knew I’d probably be killed and that even if I got away my collar would explode but I didn’t care. I’d had enough. If I died that was just as good as escaping…”

So her shackles had just…come off? After being examined? I knew Iron Wrought was the pony who was in charge of keeping the slaves shackled so logically it must have been him that loosed Shale’s. But why would he do that? If I saw him again I’d have to ask.

“Now why’d ya wanna do somethin’ crazy like goin’ an’ dyin’?” B.B said abruptly, coming up. Arcaidia in the meantime was examining the archway intently and I noticed she was looking more nervous than I was used to seeing.

Shale gave B.B a wide eyed look, “It’s not like I want to die! I just…all I have to look forward to if I live through this task is just another one, which may be even worse. I never know who is going to own me from day to day or what they’ll make me do! I’ve done this for years, just being a piece of meat to whatever pony has caps! I’d rather die on my own terms than die on those of another pony, and definitely not in there.” she pointed a hoof at the arch.

I looked back at it, curious at what could be in there despite my growing fear. I had to shove that fear down though, because I needed to reassure Shale. She’d already been in there and any information she had would help us all make it out alive. It wasn’t just my life on the line; Arcaidia, B.B, and Shale were all here because of my decisions to try to rescue the slaves. I needed to find some way for all of us to get out of this alive. I met Shale’s eyes with my own, her brown orbs wide and fearful.

“Shale, listen, I won’t let you die. And I’m not going to let you stay a slave either. I will find a way to free you and the others.”

“How…? You can’t promise that.”

“Please just trust me. I…won’t promise it’s a sure thing this will all work out, but I will promise I’ll do everything I can! I won’t abandon you.”

The earth pony mare’s head sulked and she sank to her belly, her eyes being covered by falls of her thick black hair.

“Why do you even care?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“Look hun,” said B.B, floating over Shale with quick flaps of her wings and putting her forehooves round the slave mare, “I haven’t known Longwalk more than a’ day, but I got a feelin’ he’s a decent sort. If I hadn’t thought that I wouldn’t a’ come after ‘im. I don’t think he’s lyin’ when he says he’ll do all he can fer ya. So c’mon, we ain’t got a lot of time if we’re gonna deal with this Ruin 'fore morning.”

Right, the time limit! We had less than four hours. I gave B.B a thankful smile as she got Shale to hooves.

“B.B, if you just stick close to Shale and you two stay behind us, me and Arcaidia will take the lead. Anything attacks, let us deal with it.”

“*ahem* What’re ya talkin’ about, like I’d just let the two of ya take all the risk?” B.B landed in front of me, eyeing me, “I can take care a’ mahself. My pa taught me how to twirl a six-iron after all.”

“A what? Nevermind, I’m assuming a gun of some sort. But I thought you were searched and didn’t have any weapons?”

B.B chuckled and her voice suddenly adopted her Mirage accent, “As if the Mighty and Mysterious Mirage would have her skills in prestidigitation and sleight of hoof be outdone by such a clumsy buffoon. Behold.”

She hiked up the hem of her dress and quickly flourished out a small leather bundle so quickly I wasn’t even sure where she’d pulled it from. Unpacking the bundle she revealed two leather straps just large enough to each hold one of the weapons carefully attached to them. They looked like the big revolver Brickhouse used, only much smaller, with a short stubby barrel. The weapons lacked the normal mouth grips but instead had a series of slips in the metal that secured the guns to the leather straps. I was confused about what this set up was all about until B.B wrapped the straps around her forehooves and tied them there, so that each of her hooves had one of the mounted weapons attached to it.

“Mah pa made these fer me,” B.B said, “So I could dual wield despite not bein’ a unicorn like him. I ain’t near as good as he is but I’ll hold mah own and make sure no critters get at Shale.”

“Speaking of those things, Shale, do you have any idea what we’ll be dealing with?” I asked, feeling a bit more confident now that I knew at least three of the group could fight.

Shale trembled visibly as she said, “We could barely see them when they attacked. They moved so fast, and moved on the ceiling and walls as much as the ground. And there was so much noise after that black unicorn and the other guards started shooting I just covered my head and couldn’t see much. I saw one of the things as they took Bristle, dragged her along the ceiling and into a hole. It had huge claws, and glowing white eyes. I heard Bristle scream and scream, it echoed everywhere.”

When it became clear that was all she had I surpassed a gulp and nodded my head, “Okay then, fast freaky big-clawed ceiling crawlers. Sounds…manageable.”

Wow, I was bad at sounding confident. I ought to leave the pep talks to B.B, she seemed to have a talent for it. Clearly my own cutie mark when I got it would not involve inspirational speeches. I turned to Arcaidia to see if she was still examining the archway and noticed she had this look on her face as if she was feeling sick to her stomach.

“Arcaidia, are you alright?”

The blue unicorn looked back at me and I could see her muster herself and shake off whatever was bothering her as she stood straighter and took in then let out a long breath.

“Estu mas shinral dol solva. Esru di venro ren borvar…Elw.”

Huh? Elw? That last word had sounded off. Not like the other ones she always spouted off, which involved a whole lot of v and r sounds. Elw didn’t really fit, and the hard way she said it made it sound like it was with a capitol emphasis. I walked up to her, B.B following behind in the air with quick flaps of her wings, Shale cautiously walking next to the pegasus.

“She know somethin’ we don’t?” B.B asked.

I could only shrug, “Probably a lot of things I’m guessing. I only understand a word or two of what she says. But I think she recognizes something about this Ruin.”

“Well that ain’t much good ta us if she can’t tell us ‘bout it, so we might as well get in there.”

With more than a little trepidation we all went through the archway and into the room beyond. Within was a wide circular chamber that still had lamps like the ones outside illuminating it, but not as many and flickering shadows crawled along the walls. The air felt cooler in here and also drier, and I felt my mane standing on end from a unpleasant feeling that I was being watched. I unstrapped Gramzanber from my side and let the feeling of the spear’s grip in my teeth fill me with some small comfort.

“Shale, how far did the excavation get before you ran into traps and those…things?”

“Into the hallways beyond those openings,” she said, nodding towards the two open passages that led out of this room, one to the right, another to the left. “Inside those hallways we began to move away rubble, but when we did these turret things appeared from the ceiling. They shot beams that burned two of us before the guards destroyed them. We got a little further, to a chamber beyond the hall that had multiple doors, but then those monsters attacked.”

So they hadn’t really gotten all that far at all. It was good to know what kind of traps we’d face. Turrets that shot fire that came down from the ceiling, eh?

“B.B, keep an eye on the ceiling while we move. You see anything pop out; warn us so we can take cover.”

“Got it.”

The chamber we were in was essentially empty, but I was taking note of several unusual parts about it. One, the entire affair was made out of that bronze metal I saw through the stone outside, and now that I could see it more clearly there were strange geometric patterns of criss-crossing lines ingrained in the metal. The very center of the room had a complex circle in it that had even more complex and more distinct lines that now that I was looking at them bore a resemblance to the crests that appeared whenever Arcaidia cast a spell.

The unicorn in question had walked out to the center of the room, her eyes looking about with clear nervousness and distaste. I don’t think I’d ever seen her this agitated before. After looking between the two passages Arcaidia abruptly turned to us and pointed to the passage at the right, “Vhir val!”

She trotted over to the passage way and the rest of us followed, B.B hovering in the air and flying backwards to watch our backs while I kept eyeing any moving shadow expecting at any moment for one of them to leap at us. Arcaidia led the way into the hallway beyond the passage and I immediately noticed the downward curve of the hallway as it curved off ahead of us. It wasn’t steep, but it was clear that we were heading down as well as in a long curve.

Shale pointed out the broken and charred remains of some kind of machinery in the ceiling, the spot where the first trap had appeared. On the floor were two black and burned corpses of ponies. I swallowed. I’d never actually seen the body of a pony before. I felt my stomach roiling and I tried taking a deep breath of air to calm myself.

Mistake. The smell hit me full force and I had to drop Gramzanber to keep from hurling all over my own weapon. B.B gave me a comforting pat on the back as I lost the salad from the saloon.

“Ya alright there?”

I waved a hoof, “I…I will be…dammit why did the Labor Guild leave them here!?”

“They ain’t folk who care much fer doin’ work they don’t got to. They got slaves fer that,” B.B said, her eyes casting a sad look at the burned remains of the two slave ponies. I gathered myself and picked up Gramzanber.

Arcaidia was waiting for us, having passed by the bodies without even glancing at them. We caught up with her and continued onward, the tension in my body growing with every step. Before we could get far though I felt a strange warmth on my hoof and I looked down to see that for a second bright green light flowed along some of the geometric lines on the metal floor and spread out so fast to the walls and ceiling that it seemed to happen instantly.

“What the-?” I began but heard a soft *schnck* sound and B.B voice shouting.

“Trap, cover!”

Unfortunately there really wasn’t much cover to be had as two disc-shaped devices extended down from the ceiling and turned towards us. I threw myself between the turrets and Shale as bright orange beams lanced out of the devices. One hit my leg and burned clean through the radscorpion chitin and the gecko hide beneath and seared deep into flesh and muscle. I screamed past Gramzanber’s haft and dropped to the floor. Ancestors spirits line up and buck me with boulders did that hurt!

I rolled on the ground, trying to stay mobile as I heard the sharp snapping sound of the turrets firing again, filling the air with a tangy smell to mix with that of burned flesh. Heat seared by back from a glancing hit as my roll brought me to the wall. As I tried to get up, grinding my teeth to try and focus past the pain I heard a duo of loud gun shots that went off in a rapid staccato burst that were amplified by the confined spaces to the point that my ears began to ring.

B.B floated in the air, bobbing left and right as her forehooves pumped like she was punching the air. With each movement a complex set of cords on her bracers would flex with her movements and automatically pull the triggers on her revolvers. The pegagus’ shots were accurate, but didn’t seem to be doing much as the turrets sparked from bullets bouncing off them, but whatever kind of metal they were made from it seemed the guns weren’t strong enough to do any real damage.

It was enough though to draw their attention to B.B and the pegaus had to flit about as orange beams of fire seared their way past her.

“Shale, run!” I shouted, and the slave pony, fear drenching her eyes, nodded and while ducking her head galloped down the hallway past the turrets while they were busy firing at B.B.

Where was Arcaidia? Some ice magic would be very useful right about now! As if my thoughts were a summoning I heard the distinct sound of her icicle spell going off…but it was happening down the hallway, past the curve where I could see. She must have run into another trap up ahead! Damn! I thought Shale had said this part of the halls had already been cleared? No time to think, B.B couldn’t dodge forever.

Forcing myself to my hooves I hobbled towards the turrets. As I did so one of them turned towards me and I knew I wouldn’t have room or time to dodge so I just did what I seemed to be good at; I hurled Gramzanber. The turret fired at the same time and my chest exploded with pain as the beam burned right into me. I gasped and collapsed, trying to draw in breaths past what felt like fire in my lungs. Despite the near blinding pain I heard the sound of tearing metal and a small explosion. Gramzanber had struck the turret and cut into it, causing the thing to pop in a small ball of orange light. The spear clattered to the ground.

Meanwhile B.B, seeing me injured, dove for me, the orange beams of the other turret singing her tails as she flew. With pure momentum she reached down and grabbed me, her wings flapping so fast they were leaving after-images as she flew us both down the hall. We were almost around the curve of the hall enough to be out of range of the turret when one of the beam hit B.B in her right wing. With a cry the pegasus twirled out of the air, dropping me, and hitting the wall with a dull thud.

We were out of range of the turret, but both me and B.B were badly injured. I still was having trouble breathing and my chest felt like I’d been stabbed. Then I felt a cool feeling wash over me, like water pouring its way through my skin. I looked up to see Arcaidia looking down at me, her horn’s blue glow covering me.

Behind her there were another pair of turrets, but both were encased in ice. Beyond that I saw a metal door Shale was by, curled up in as tight a ball as the earth pony could manage. For a moment I just concentrated on breathing as Arcaidia’s healing magic did its thing. She stopped shortly, though, and turned her attention to B.B, who was lying on her back, groaning. My wounds still hurt and I was having trouble putting weight on my burned leg but I’d rather Arcaidia take care of B.B anyway.

I was about to hobble over to Shale to check on her when I remembered I’d left Gramzanber dropped in the hallway behind us with the remaining active turret. I cursed under my breath, winced at the pain the action caused, and put the spear out of my mind while I went up to Shale.

“You…okay…?” I breathed out slowly. She was shaking but nodded.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. There shouldn’t have been more. There weren’t before.”

“Its…fine. Long as we’re…all okay…” damn maybe Arcaidia should have spent a bit more time on me, my lungs still felt like they were burning from the inside out. I chanced a look down at myself and saw a black burned hole in my barding, and charred flesh beneath that, indented inward. A similar wound was on my left leg, just below the knee. Hell, we were barely one room into this place!

“B.B? How you doing?”

“Oooow,” the pegasus groaned in reply.

After a minute or two under Arcaidia’s healing glow B.B was able to stand, though still looking dazed. She flexed her wing experimentally and grimaced in pain. The healing spell had taken care of some of the burn, but much like mine the wound was still charred. I could only imagine how sensitive a pegasus’ wings might be and how much that must be hurting for B.B. I hobbled up to her.

“Thanks for the save.”

“T’wernt nothin’. Be nice if yer unicorn friend could’a takin’ things a bit slower though. Might not have gotten’ caught with our flanks exposed.”

Arcaidia didn’t respond save to look between us and giving me a tilt of her head she said, “Dol ARM?”

Right, Gramzanber. I looked at her abashed as I pointed with my hoof back down the hall and grinned sheepishly.

“I…uh…dropped it?”

Arcaidia frowned at me and with a sigh turned and heading back down the hall, pausing at the curve and peeking her head around just briefly and snapping it back just as an orange beam lanced down past her. She gave me a look. I shrugged. What did she want me to do? Jump out and distract the thing? Another shot like before and my corpse would be joining the two poor slaves in being counted among this place’s permanent residents.

“Well dangnabit, guess we can’t just leave that shiny lookin’ poker a’ yer’s behind can we?” B.B said as she joined Arcaidia at the curve of the hallway, “Hey Arcaidia, get ready with that freezin’ number.”

I was about to ask what B.B was doing when she shucked off her violet dress.

I blinked. She was…striking. White like Shale, but something about the combination of that stark white with her bright brown mane and tail, both streaked with pink. I shook my head, then found myself drawn to the spot of red on her flank. Her cutie mark was…what was that? It was some kind of plant, but not one I’d ever seen. It had a green stem but the main part of it was a collection of petals so bright red it was like looking at a burst of fresh blood. In fact I think that was blood as the cutie mark showed a few drops of the red liquid falling off the petals to form a pool that seemed to be…nurturing the stem.

She had her dress grasped in her mouth but B.B noticed me looking at her and a pained look crossed her face as she spoke around the mouthful of dress, “Ah’ll ‘splain lutur.”

With a deep breath she turned and gave Arcaidia a look, jutting her chin towards the hall where the turret was and pointing a hoof at her dress, then at Arcaidia’s horn. The unicorn’s suspicious expression slowly turned into one of understanding as she nodded and her horn began to glow with its tell-tale frosty hue.

With that B.B tossed her dress down the hallway around the curve and there was a snapping sound as a orange beam struck the garment, causing it to go ablaze. In that same moment of distraction Arcaidia jumped around the corner and with a blue flash of one of her magical crests a blast of icicle shards flew down the hallway, soon followed by silence. No orange beams of fire came after that. With a satisfied smile Arcaidia gestured for me to go retrieve me spear.

I gratefully did so, grabbing up Gramzanber back up in my mouth. I limped back to my companions.

“So…I think those things are activated by stepping on certain spots. Maybe that’s why the slaves missed those ones last time. We need to take this slow. I don’t think we can keep this up if we got to deal with fire death thingies every hallway. B.B, how’s the wing?”

She flexed it again, wincing, “I think I can still fly, but I ain’t gonna be doin’ anything fancy, or carryin’ ‘nother pony anytime soon.”

“Good enough, I just need you to take the lead, staying in the air. Keep watch for any weird symbols on the ground.”

I didn’t like having to put her in front and I intended to be right behind her as we moved, being alert for any spots on the ground that looked off. If I could have remembered exactly where I had stepped to activate the turrets I would have gone to examine it, but after the hectic fight I had no clue where I’d been when it had started.

“Sounds like a’ plan. Damn shame my six-iron’s weren’t doin’ nothin’ to them things,” B.B said as she retrieved bullets from a small bandolier that had been slung underneath her barrel, another thing she apparently was able to keep hidden beneath her dress. She used her mouth to load the bullets into the cylinders of her revolvers after flicking them open with little twists of her wrists. I found myself looking at her cutie mark again. She saw this and sighed, closing the snapping the cylinders closed on her guns.

“If you gotta’ ask Longwalk, wait ‘till we’re outta here. It ain’t…somethin’ I talk ‘bout much anymore.”

“Huh? Oh, I, um, I wasn’t going to ask. I don’t even know what that is.”

“Not surprisen’, roses ain’t exactly common in the Wasteland.”

We got moving again, this time with B.B flying slowly ahead of us, with me following close. Shale was right behind me and after a little pantomiming and receiving a slightly miffed look from the unicorn Arcaidia took up the rear. So far the periodic lamps that the Labor Guild’s ponies had set up down here for the excavation had been providing enough light to see by, but as we came to the metal door and slide it open Shale spoke up.

“C-careful, this is the room those things attacked us in. We didn’t have time to set up any lights.”

As she spoke I saw that she was correct, the room beyond was pitch black beyond a small pool of light from the last lamp in the hallway.

“So, uh…anypony got a light?”

“Try askin’ her,” B.B said with a gesture at Arcaidia, “She’s the one with both a’ glowy horn and a’ Pip-Buck that oughta’ have a’ light on it.”

“Arcaidia?” I looked to the unicorn and tilted my head towards the dark room. She looked at the three of us as if we were particularly slow children and her horn began to emanate its blue glow. Inside of a few moments a pair of the lamps in the hallway had been removed from the hooks they’d been set up on and floated over to us, one attaching to my saddlebags and the other to Arcaidia’s. Me, B.B, and Shale all exchanged looks.

“That works too,” I said, “Thanks Arcaidia.”

“Danku,” she said, taking in a steadying breath as she gave a nervous glance at the way we’d come. I wish I knew what it was about this place that had her so on edge. I mean, besides the obvious mortal peril. Arcaidia had never shown much fear before, even waltzing into the middle of those Balloon things without any apparent hesitation. It was clear she was far more used to life threatening situations than I was. Yet this place was obviously making her uncomfortable in a way normal danger didn’t.

“Okay, in we go, slow and careful.”

B.B flew in first, though I was right on her heels. The room we entered was shaped like a triangle, with our entryway at the narrow tip and the room widening out before us. Here the ceiling of metal had caved in partially with rock and dirt from above breaking through to cover the upper left corner of the room. Alongside either wall, what wasn’t covered by fallen rock, was lined with cylindrical containers.

As we cautiously moved into the room I whispered to Shale, “Was there any kind of warning signs before these creatures attack? A sound, a smell, anything?”

The white earth pony mare’s head shook as she fearfully looked about, every step she took seeming to take more and more effort for her, “N-none. We were trying to clear the rubble, watching for any more of those turrets…then they were just there, tearing into us.”

Great. Looking about the area I saw only one more metal door, on the far wall on the right side. If there was a similar door on the left it was covered by the rocks and dirt from the collapsed portion of the ceiling. I didn’t see any way anything could get in here except for the entryway behind us. If these things did attack the slave crew and Crossfire’s team, where had they come in from?

As we reached the center of the room Arcaidia paused, and growled, her eyes suddenly focused on the left corner of the room where the rubble was thickest.

“Ya seein’ somethin’ gal?” B.B raised her gun-equipped forearms, tensing. I put myself between that far corner of the room and Shale as Arcaidia stalked to the right, her horn beginning to glow in preparation for casting.

I for a moment wondered what it was Arcaidia was seeing, as I couldn’t spot anything over there. Then I remembered! That, er, what was it called? Eyes Something Something? E.F.S! Her Pip-Buck could help her sense danger!

The second I recalled that was the second they attacked. They came right out of the rubble, as if the rocks and dirt were no more a barrier than water. The speed at which the black spindly shapes burst from the wall of debris was shocking, and there was practically no time to react before one of the dark shapes was bowling me over to the ground. Even as I felt multiple sharp dagger-like claws ripping into my flanks I heard the sharp retorts of B.B revolvers, Shale’s shriek of terror, and Arcaidia’s ice spell going off.

I rolled, trying to get my legs into position to buck this thing off me, whatever it was. I could barely see anything at the moment, and the creature was incredibly strong and agile. It twisted with me, digging its claws further into my flank past the barding like it was barely even there. Desperate I kicked out with one of my forehooves. I couldn’t get Gramzanber around for a good angle to stab, not without risking hitting myself.

My hoof contacted something cold and hard and the thing seemed stunned for a second, a second I used to my advantage to coil my back legs and buck with all my strength. I felt the thing fly off me and I righted myself just in time to see it leap to its own clawed feet as if my buck had only mildly annoyed it. In the flickering light of the lamp on my saddlebags I caught only a vague hint of a quarapedal thing, with long spindle legs ending in stupid-long claws of bronze…metal? The thing had a oversized front section, like a diamond shaped shell, with a small bulbous head with what might have been a single white eye. I couldn’t see much more than that because the thing instantly leaped up onto the ceiling and with its claws striking sparks on the metal surface skittered towards me.

I backed up, or tried to. My flanks had been so badly savaged the pain caused one of my bag legs to spasm and I fell back. The thing let go of the ceiling and came down at me and I rolled aside, angling Gramzanber to try and slash at it. With agility beyond freakish it twisted in mid-air away from the silver spear’s blade and landed on the ground beside me. I suddenly found myself having to hold the thing at bay with both my forelegs and the haft of Gramzanber as both sets of its claws raked at my face.

I couldn’t tell how the others were doing but I heard B.B swearing up a storm between bouts of gunfire and Arcaidia talking fast in her own language as the room was filled with the chill of her icicles. I didn’t hear Shale screaming anymore though, which scared me to my core. With renewed vigor born of fear for the slave mare I shoved hard with my head, forcing the thing back. As strong as it was the thing was lightweight. I’d wrestled hunters in my tribe that outweighed this thing three to one. With a thrust of my head I sent the creature skidding back.

I knew it would recover just as fast as before so I didn’t waste a second, charging forward…well, hobbling forward quickly. The thing had just gotten back to its feet when I hit it full force with Gramzanber’s tip…which then proceeded to bounce off whatever it had for a skin. In fact based off the sparks I saw I was guessing this thing was mostly made out of metal. Shit. Double shit with a side order screwed. How was I supposed to kill this thing if my spear just-, oh wait was that blood?

Okay so maybe I hadn’t skewered the monster as I’d hoped but I could see a green brackish substance oozing from a gash made in its bronze metal hide. But the wound was hardly slowing it down as it skittered to my left and lashed out at my side with one of its massive claws. I shuffled back in an ungainly fashion, its claws tearing into my barding and scoring the flesh beneath, but not near as deep if I hadn’t moved. I responded by trying to feint with Gramzanber’s tip, intending to fake a thrust I could then turn into a cutting motion when it dodged, but again my wounded leg twitched and send bolts of searing pain through me. My feint turned into a trip and I hit the ground. In the same instant I felt the thing tear at my back.

I was pretty sure that scream of pain was mine, but too much adrenaline was making me not notice a lot of details. As the thing tried to get at my soft gooey center past my barding, which wasn’t doing much to help at this point as it was borderline shredded to tatters, I forced my legs to get up under me. Now the thing was latched to my back as I stood, and with pure blind fear born adrenaline I galloped toward the wall of cylindrical containers. With a sideways leap and shoved my back, and the thing, into the wall. There was a crunch that might have been either me or the monster, no real way to be sure which, and I rolled away, my whole body a latticework of pain and bleeding.

I felt the thing stirring next to me and saw it on the ground, one of its legs bent at an awkward angle from me shoving it into the wall. Knowing that if I let it back up to have another go at me I wasn’t going to be able to take another beating like that I reared up on my hind legs, praying my wounded legs would obey me. The pain was a raw white fire in my mind, and tears streamed from my eyes from it as I brought Gramzanber down on the creature with my whole body weight behind it this time.

The spear’s tip caught the thing at the base where its small bulbous head attached to the rest of its body. Orange sparks and arcs of light danced around the thing’s body and up my spear as I hit and I felt a pressure in my chest and an incredible force hurl me away from the creature as light filled the room and a cracking sound like lightning.

I felt my body hit the ground, and for just a second everything was numb rather than just incredibly painful and my nostrils were filled with the smell of something acidic and smoky. I tried moving but it seemed my body wasn’t having any of that nonsense. Movement was for ponies who didn’t get horribly injured, apparently.

I felt something grab my tail and I didn’t even have the strength to lift my head to see who or what was dragging me into the darkness before I blacked out.

Footnote: Level up!

Perk Added – Intense Training (Endurance): You’re recent experiences have done wonders for your stamina. Too bad you didn’t take this earlier, could’ve used the extra HP.

Chapter 5: Feeling the Bonds

Chapter 5: Feeling the Bonds

Consciousness returned to me with the sensation of something cold being jabbed into my mouth and a syrupy liquid pouring into my throat.

Given the last thing I remembered was being dragged away by some unseen force in the middle of a deadly battle my reaction of immediately kicking my legs out and scrambling away while simultaneously spitting out whatever was in my mouth could not have been seen as entirely inappropriate. There was a feminine squeak of surprise and pain as my leg hit something soft. As I accidentally inhaled some of the liquid in my mouth and went about the process of coughing and hacking on the floor my eyes fluttered open and I saw where I was.

The only light source was the lamp that could only assume had been on my saddlebags, but had been removed and set in the middle of the spacious square shaped room. Shale was sitting a few paces away from me, rubbing her snout and looking at me with a mixture of relief and ruefulness. Lying on the ground at her hooves was a small vial, a few drops of purple liquid spattered on the ground from its open top.

“S-sorry,” she said, “I didn’t know what else I should do and you were bleeding so much…” she crinkled her snout as if testing to see if it were broken.

I blinked, still trying to clear my lungs of that liquid, and slowly rolled to my hooves. My whole body ached. Lancing pain from dozens of cuts on my flank and back made every movement burn. As I took stock of the room we were in I noticed that one of the metal doors had a small trail of blood leading from it to the spot I’d been laying in a moment ago.

Looking to Shale I hung my head a bit, “You okay? I didn’t mean to hit you, just kind of freaked out there.”

Shale nodded, her soft voice barely above a whisper, though the quiet confines of the room made it sound much louder, “Yes. I’ve taken far worse hits from displeased masters.”

Wow, cheery thought. I licked my lips, trying to get rid of the aftertaste of whatever that liquid was, a faint sour and fruity taste.

“What the hay were you feeding me anyway?”

“A healing potion,” Shale pointed a hoof over towards the far wall, “I found a couple in that medical kit.”

Medical kit? I looked and finally was able to take in several odd features about this room, the most prominent of which were the five pony skeletons scattered about. Each skeleton looked pretty old, though I wasn’t an expert so by my standards any skeleton would look old. They wore different tattered, decaying clothes, and looking at the details I could tell two had the skeletal remains of wings and one had a horn. So, two pegasi, one unicorn, two earth ponies. There wasn’t just their skeletons here either I saw pieces of old gear lying around as well including weapons, rotted saddlebags, a strange box shaped device with a screen on it that reminded me of a larger bulkier looking Pip-Buck, and of course the medical kit Shale was pointing out, a small yellow metal box with three faded pink…winged insect things.

“Well that’s convenient,” I said, wondering what a healing potion was exactly but hey, it wasn’t exactly a complicated concept to wrap my head around. Potion, that heals. Healing potion. Guess that fight had messed me up more than-…The fight!?

“Shale! What happened!? Where are Arcaidia and B.B!?”

The slave mare shrunk away from my sudden intensity as I had rounded on her and practically shouted in her face. I immediately backed off, shaking my head, “Sorry. Just…uh…what happened?”

It took her a second to respond as she looked at me with wide-eyed apprehension.

“Those things attacked us and I threw myself in a corner to hide. B.B was flying all over the place, shooting and shooting. Arcaidia managed to freeze one of them I think, but there was so much happening at once and I was mostly looking at you. You…you got really hurt fighting one, and then when you stabbed it the thing just…exploded with orange light. You got thrown across the room and didn’t get back up! You’re body was…kinda smoking a bit. B.B got the door open while she had to reload and shouted at me to get you so…so I did. I ran over and grabbed you by the tail and dragged you to the door. Then she just told me to run, to take you and run. I did and I heard her shooting, I thought she and Arcaidia were following us but I didn’t look back. I followed the hallway but there were suddenly a bunch of turns and split off so I just picked a direction and kept running while dragging you. Once I found this room I shut the door and waited. Then I noticed how much you were bleeding! I was scared you’d die if I didn’t do something and luckily there were those dead ponies and one had a med-kit so I started feeding you healing potions. Then you woke up and punched me in the face and…yeah, here we are.”

I stared at her for a moment, then immediately turned towards the door, “We have go find them.”

I got about two steps before Shale gripped my tail with her teeth and halted me. For such a seemingly thin mare she was shockingly strong.

“You can’t go! Those things will kill us!”

“But B.B and Arcaidia are both still out there!”

Shale let go of my tail just long enough to fix me with a desperate stare, “You’re still hurt. Healing potions only do so much and besides, you don’t have your weapon!”

I blinked. And looked around. She was right, Gramzanber was nowhere to be seen.

Well…shit.

That tore it, next chance I got I was getting some kind of tether for that spear and tying it to me so I didn’t keep losing it! It was probably back in the room where we’d fought those…I was getting tired of thinking of them as ‘those things’ so decided to name them Tunnelers. Seemed to fit given the bastards had come right out of the rubble like that.

Minus Granzamber my combat effectiveness had just dropped considerably, though I still had my hooves to work with, though given my current condition getting hoof-to-claw with more Tunnelers was not a tempting prospect, and I’d be next to useless if we ran into more turrets. I knew I still had a couple of healing powders from my tribe in my saddlebags, but the powder would only work to heal my wounds if I also had time to rest, so right now they’d do little good. Also still needed a weapon.

My eyes glanced over at the few guns scattered next to the skeletal ponies. None of them looked like they were in remarkable condition and from what little Iron Wrought had told me about firearms the condition of them mattered a lot when it came to performance. I knew next to nothing about how to actually fire a gun, but if they were the only weapons available I was willing to give them a shot (no, the pun was not intended. Yes, I know it was bad regardless).

“Shale,” I began, adopting as calm a tone as I could manage while feeling anything but, “We can’t wait here. I don’t know how long I was out but you’re on a time limit so there’s no point staying here. We need to go find Arcaidia and B.B.”

As I spoke I trotted (well, moved at a pace that was faster than walking but slower than what I would prefer if I weren’t still covered in injuries) over to the largest of the guns I saw and began to dust it off. The weapon was some sort of rifle with a clip and a harness that was mostly decayed to nothing. It was attached to a metal rod that looked like it ended with a bit designed to be bitten down on. Weird.

Shale watched me and I heard her heave out a sigh, “You’re wasting your time. That assault rifle’s battle saddle is wreaked and it isn’t designed to be used with a normal mouth grip.”

She went to a different gun and kicked it over to me, the small matte black pistol skidding along the ground. I noticed she was limping, favoring one of her back legs.

“Use that. It’s a 10mm. It’ll probably break after a few shots though. None of these guns are in good shape.”

I looked at her, head tilting to one side, “How do you know so much about guns?”

“I don’t,” she said, a little too quickly and I saw her nervously scrap the ground with one hoof, “This is common knowledge. Things everypony who lives long enough in the Wasteland knows, even if they’ve spent most of those lives being slaves. Why do you know so little? I figured you were from a tribe, but even most tribes I hear about know what guns are and how to use them.”

“My tribe just didn’t use any of this technology stuff,” I said with a shrug, then immediately regretted the motion as pain shot through me. I really needed to learn how to not let monstrous things with giant claws and fangs play hugs with me.

“Can’t imagine how you all survived for so long,” she said as she rubbed one of her back legs her expression drawn up in pain as she sat down.

I found myself ignoring the gun and instead going over to her.

“Did you get hurt in the fight?”

“No, this is from getting shot before,” she said, flexing her back left leg gingerly, “Didn’t heal right and its hurt since. Wasn’t too bad though until I had to drag you here.”

Suddenly my desire to go charging out to go track down Arcaidia and B.B seemed a lot less heroic and a lot more idiotically short sighted. Neither of us were anywhere near one hundred percent condition right now and as far as I could tell Shale wasn’t any kind of fighter, knowledgeable as she was, and the only weapons available were borderline falling apart and weren’t even of a type I had any skill in using. If I did run out there it was very likely both of us would die the second we encountered anything tougher than a flea. It didn’t help that I was also thinking that the only reason her leg was so bad right now was because she had to carry my heavy flank to save it.

I sat next to her, and was a little surprised when she leaned against me.

“We can rest for a little while then, until your leg is feeling better and we’ve come up with a plan. Sorry I was trying to rush ahead like that. I’m just worried about my friends.”

“Friends…” Shale seemed to be testing the word, like she didn’t quite know if she liked the sound of it or not, “Is that what they are to you? One of them said herself she just met you today, and the other it doesn’t look you can understand a thing she says or even know anything about her except her name. What makes you three friends, exactly?”

Well that was an odd question to suddenly bring up. Her dark brown eyes were giving me a very serious look however and it was clear she wasn’t asking this out of idle boredom. How could I answer it though? I never really bothered to think about things like that. To me somepony was my friend if they were willing to spend more than five minutes talking to me and didn’t try to kill me on sight. Not exactly heavy criteria I know but I was figuring that from what I’d seen of the Wasteland so far if I didn’t have such light prerequisites for friendship then I was going to be pretty damned friendless before long.

“I don’t know. I just see them that way. Guess I’m not a hard pony to befriend. Does it seem weird that I’d be willing to call either of them friends even though I haven’t known them long?”

“…Yes. Yes it does. What’s weirder is that they seem to act like they see you as a friend too. B.B…she didn’t even hesitate to tell me to run off with you while she stayed behind with Arcaidia. Seriously, what kind of pony puts their life at risk like that for a pony she just met?”

A good one? Really what did Shale expect me to say here? I couldn’t speak for B.B but I knew that if our positions had been reversed and it had been her injured and unconscious I also wouldn’t have hesitated to tell Shale to take B.B to safety while I stayed behind to fight. It was just common sense to do that for your comrades…right?

“I doubt I can answer you in any way that’ll make sense Shale. I might not know B.B well at all, and Arcaidia is a complete mystery to me, but they’re both putting their lives on the line alongside me. That’s enough for me to see them as friends and risk all I’ve got to help them. It’s really as simple as that.”

“Then what about me?” she asked quietly, “Why help me? I never risked my life for you. I never did a thing to warrant you trying to save me.”

“Well, first off, you did risk your life when you dragged me away from the fight and then poured magic heal-y stuff down my throat. Second off, I was planning to rescue all of the slaves, you included.”

“But that’s not normal! Normal, sane ponies don’t try to help entire groups of slaves they don’t know. Maybe if you had a family member or a close friend captured and put into bondage I’d get it, but you don’t know any of us. You don’t know me. How do you even know I’m a pony worth saving?”

“That’s ridiculous. How could you not be worth saving?” I asked, getting more uncomfortable with this conversation the longer it went on. Really, why was she so hung up on this?

“I…I just don’t get you,” she said and laid down, head turned away from me.

After it was clear she wasn’t going to say anything more I took a moment to compose myself and said, “Well, in any case you rest, I’m going to see what else is in this room that we can use.”

She barley murmured an accent to that as I got up and began walking around the room. I figured between the time we’d taken to get to the ambush by the Tunnelers plus the ten or so minutes I’d probably been unconscious and the equal amount of time me and Shale had just spent talking we’d been in the Ruin about an hour. Which left three to ‘clear out’ the place and give Crossfire the call over the radio she’d given me and get Shale’s collar deactivated. I’d be nice if we could find some way to get it off or deactivate it early. I hated the thought of that time limit ticking away the remaining seconds of her life. I couldn’t think of anything though. Maybe B.B would have some ideas. She seemed pretty smart. She was certainly worldlier than me and had more experience with dealing with this kind of thing. I didn’t have the slightest clue how these collars were even supposed to explode, or how the detonators worked. Technology was just weird like that; all complicated and such.

Speaking of technology…that big boxy Pip-Buck wannabe was set up next to another similar but much larger looking device that was taking up much of the wall opposite the door we’d entered. There was another door on the left side of the room, larger than the one we came in from by a sizeable margin. The big device on the wall looked like some kind of big black window with a wide console beneath it covered in etched geometric patterns. It was clear this thing was part of the Ruin itself while the over sized Pip-Buck thing was a piece of more ‘modern’ technology that had been set up here, probably by the skeleton ponies.

It suddenly struck me as noteworthy and very odd that there were pony skeletons in this Ruin. Hadn’t this place been recently discovered? I faintly recalled it being mentioned this place had only been uncovered about a year ago. So…what were the bodies of ponies from clearly a much longer time ago doing in here? Now that my mind was focused on this my awareness of certain details in the room expanded and sharpened. Looking around I noticed shell casings from the guns littering the floor, and in some points on the metal wall were graze marks and dents from what were probably bullets. There had clearly been a fire-fight in here. Was it against the Tunnelers? No Tunneler bodies to be seen, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, as the critters might drag off their dead.

As I examined one of the skeletons, a pegasus body slumped up against the wall by the big Pip-Buck looking device I realized with a bit of shock that there was a hole right between its eyes. This pegasus had been shot, not clawed or bitten. Another odd thing, the pegasus was wearing a device on its head, a black metal headband of some sort that had in its center a circular port that contained a small onyx black orb. What was that supposed to be, a weird fashion statement? I removed the headband, finding it cold to the touch and with a shrug slipped it into my saddlebags. Hey, never know, might be worth something. The dead certainly wouldn’t need it.

After rooting around the other skeletons I found little that seemed of value beyond some ammo for the guns, most of which I’d piled into my saddlebags, leaving the 10mm pistol near the top so I could get to it quickly if I needed to. Too bad none of these ponies had any kind of melee weapon. Within the pockets of one of the bulky earth pony skeleton’s rotted jacket I found a few odd objects; four round metal things that had tiny stems poking up from their tops. Two were a faded dull green and another two were steel gray with white bands around them. I shrugged and added the weird objects to my growing collection of junk in my saddlebags.

Inside the medical kit I found a few interesting looking things. Shale had obviously already used the healing potions on me, but I found a pair of syringes of something labeled Med-X, whatever that was supposed to be, and an even more mysterious bottle of small tablets labeled Buck. I’d ask Shale what those were when I woke her later, I supposed. The rest of the kit contained various bits of what I could only assume were medical equipment; tweezers, bandages, a small bottle labeled as anti-septic alcohol, and some rubber tubing. I took the whole kit and placed it in my saddlebags, figuring it’d be useful even if I knew next to nothing about medicine.

Finally I took a closer look at the device that reminded me of a Pip-Buck. Granted it only reminded me of a Pip-Buck in the sense that it had a screen and buttons on it. Hey, give me a break, it’d be awhile before I learned proper terms for things here in the Wasteland, so a normal everyday terminal to you was a oversized Pip-Buck knock off to me. Either way I comprehended that the screen was meant to display stuff and the buttons were what made it do that, so I began to, in my ignorant tribal fashion, hit random buttons with my hooves in hopes of getting a response.

Nothing happened for a second, and then the screen went to what appeared to be an already prepped page of words that I could only surmise had been what was up on the screen before it shut off however many decades, or even centuries ago.

//////Command Prompt=TRANS.EXE//////

>Files Decryption Process=Complete

>Transmitter Status=Operational

>Transmission Destination Status=

Canterlot/invalid, no signal
Ponyville/invalid, no signal
Appleoosa/invalid, no signal
Manehattan/valid, signal strength 36%
Trottingham/invalid, no signal
Stalliongrad/invalid, no signal
New Saddle/invalid, no signal
Neigh Orleans/invalid, no signal
Hoofington/invalid, no signal
Detrot/valid, signal strength 81%
Flankorage/valid, signal strength 13%
Fillydelphia/invalid, no signal
Marelin/invalid, no signal
Paradise/invalid, no signal
Tramplevania/invalid, no signal
Gryphus/valid, signal strength 20%

>Execute Transmission? Y/N

Well okay then, that made a whole lot of not sense. I briefly considered waking Shale to ask her if she had any idea what all this was about but I didn’t want to interrupt what little rest she could get her hooves on. I’d just have to figure this out myself. Or not. Really I could just walk away from this thing and pretend I hadn’t seen it. That would probably have been the smart thing to do. Do you recall when I mentioned not being the brightest colt in my tribe? You’ll probably get very tired of me brining that up but unfortunately it remains applicable for some time to come.

So rather than turn the device off and go do something more constructive getting a little rest myself I decided to see what would happen if I pressed the corresponding ‘Y’ on the keyboard that matched what I saw on the screen. The screen didn’t do anything for a second, just remained the same, before abruptly going black then springing into a stream of incomprehensible symbols and letters that scrolled by far too fast to me to make heads or tails of it. There was a sparking sound from some of the cables connecting the device to the larger console of the Ruin. Then the device’s screen exploded. In my face.

I was lucky none of the glass got in my eyes and that the worst of it was just a few minor cuts and a nasty burn on my muzzle as I flopped back on my back from both the shock and force of the exploding monitor. Shale jumped to her feet at the sound, looking around wildly while seemingly trying to run in every direction at once and only succeeding at having a spastic fit where she stood, turning every which way before finally settling her eyes on me and the exploded terminal which now smelt of smoke and burned electronics.

“Uh…sorry?” I said with a sheepish look, “I don’t think me and technology mix well.”

She took a few slow, deep breaths, either to calm her fear or possibly a desire to hit me, I couldn’t quite tell which from her expression, and sat back down.

“I’d ask if you found anything on that terminal before you somehow made it blow up by proximity, but I probably don’t want to know. Nothing good is usually on those things. Lots of depressing letters from two hundred years ago, or cryptic messages no longer relevant to anypony.”

“So I take it exploding isn’t what they normally do?”

“No, no its not. Must be a talent you have.”

“I hope not. I don’t want an exploding, what, terminal you called it, for a cutie mark.”

“Beats having rocks as one,” she said, looking back at her own flank.

I hesitated a moment before asking, “Do you mind if I ask how you got your cutie mark?”

“It’s fine, it’s just not a very interesting story,” Shale paused, looking away, though not in any apparent discomfort, she just seemed to be collecting her thoughts.

“I was, I don’t know, nine, maybe ten years old? I’d been a slave for a few years then, working a quarry in the west mountains for some mining group that hired out Labor Guild slaves to help meet their quotas. I was still too young to do a lot of heavy work, but I could break up the smaller, useless rocks and carry them out of the way of the bigger ponies so they could get at the good ore. We worked in teams, chain-gangs, all shackled together.”

I restrained myself from commenting, though a part of me wanted to growl out something less than flattering about the Labor Guild. The more I learned about this organization and its practices the less I understood why ponies allowed it to keep existing. I kept my thoughts to myself though and let Shale continue her story.

“There was a really tiny unicorn pony…Goddess I don’t even remember if it was a colt or a filly, but I remember the name was Cue Tip. Anyway, Cue Tip got sick, a hacking cough pretty common to mining slaves. We all knew it was only a matter of time before Cue Tip died. You get the Cough it’s pretty much done for you. But even so I was tired of watching ponies die, so I worked extra hard to take Cue Tip’s share of the rock breaking, let him, or her, rest while I did double the work load. I did that for days, trying, hoping, that Cue Tip would get better. He, yeah I think he was a colt, didn’t. He died. But it was weird; I remember when they came to carry off his body the little guy was smiling, all peaceful looking. I like to think he wasn’t in too much pain. Anyway, the next day I was filled with a lot of…bad feelings, and I went at my rock breaking like I never had before. By the end of it some other slave had to point out the new busted up rocks on my flank. Heh, a pretty useless cutie mark, but it fits, I’m a pretty useless mare.”

“The hay you are,” I said, staring at her like I was seeing her for the first time, “You put yourself at risk to help a pony that needed you. There’s nothing useless about that.”

“It doesn’t matter, don’t you get it? Cue Tip died anyway, and it didn’t matter how angry I got, I was still a slave and he was still dead! I could break every rock in this damned world and it wouldn’t change a thing. I couldn’t change a thing.”

The bitterness in her voice was painful to hear, made worse by the fact that I really had nothing I could say to refute what she was saying. This mare had gone through far worse than I had in my life; a life I was starting to comprehend was a lot more sheltered than I had thought. I still couldn’t stand seeing the way her shoulders slumped as if under a heavy weight, eyes downcast. I found myself going right up in front of her and pressing my face close to hers, forcing some eye contact.

“You did what was right. I don’t know what else you, or anypony, could have done.”

She laughed but it was a desiccated, humorless sound, “Look, I get what you’re trying to do, and its…sweet, but you don’t have to bother. I accepted a long time ago that this world pretty much sucks and nopony is going to make a difference in it. I just want to live in as much a non-sucking manner as I can for as long as possible. Which, given our current situation, probably isn’t going to be very long.”

I hesitated briefly before putting a hoof on her shoulder, “We’ll make it out of here. We just have to find Arcaidia and B.B, figure out how to take care of all the monsters and traps down here, and then get Crossfire to shut off your collar before the next three hours are up.”

“Gee, that’s all?”

“…Okay so it sounded easier in my head before I actually said it out loud. Still, not dead yet, so we got something going our way.”

I backed up a few steps and tried to strike what I hoped was a confident and heroic-ish pose, flexing one of my forelegs.

“Don’t worry, I’ll figure out a foal-proof plan of action, don’t you worry my little pony!”

Shale snorted, “Little? You’re probably younger than I am.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s find out. Sixteen years. You?”

“Ha, I’m a year older than you.”

“What!? But, you’re…you’re so tiny compared to me!”

“Which has to do with what exactly?”

“Well it’s just all the mares in my tribe are pretty tall, most of them are taller than me…and you’re so short…so I kinda assumed you were younger…wow, I just shoved my hoof down my throat didn’t I?”

“Just a tad,” she said with a small smile.

There was a brief moment there where we both were able to forget how dangerous our circumstances were, where neither of us were trapped in a deadly underground Ruin, one of us with a bomb collar stuck around her neck with the timer ticking down, and instead were just a pair of ponies shooting the breeze like it was a normal day. It felt good. Too bad the moment passed the second we both heard the gunshots.

The sounds were dulled by the door but they were unmistakable, and coming from the direction of the big doors on the side of the room to the left of the one we’d entered from. From the small double *pap-pap* of the shots I realized it was likely B.B and her dual pistols. Me and Shale exchanged looks. I could see the fear in her eyes and honestly I was just as scared. I was scared that either of us would die down here. I was scared that B.B was right now fighting for her life and could die before we could get there to help her. If I let myself think about it all that fear would’ve paralyzed me. Good thing I suck at thinking. Action time now!

I quickly snatched up the lamp and secured it to my saddlebags. That done I reached into the saddlebags and pulled out the 10mm pistol, awkwardly gripping it in my mouth and trying to figure out where the trigger was with my tongue. The whole thing felt just weird. Far too light, not the same comfortingly heavy weight and heft of Gramzanber. The pistol had weird sights too, or maybe that was just because I wasn’t used to them, but I swear I couldn’t figure how anypony aimed these things. As I got the pistol out Shale had come over to my other saddlebag and gotten one of the old rusted guns out herself, a short double barreled thing that I recalled Iron Wrought explaining was a ‘shotgun’. She loaded it as we went to the door we heard the shooting coming from and with some effort forced the metal thing to slide open.

Beyond was a spiraling hallway that curved downward at a fairly sharp angle. As me and Shale did our best to run as fast as our wounds would allow I started to get a little dizzy from the constant turn of the hallway. B.B’s gunshots were getting louder though, if a bit more sporadic.

“Hang on B.B, we’re coming!” I found myself shouting, hoping the pegasus mare might be able to hear us over the distance and the sound of gunfire. I wanted her to know help was on the way.

Within a minute the spiraling hallway ended in a opening that led out onto what seemed to be a ledge that extended along the walls of a large chamber to the left and right. To either side of the spot me and Shale entered from there were metal ramps that led down to the main floor. Everything was dark save for the pool of light cast by my lamp and another similar light I saw bobbing about in the darkness across the room, where there were also flashes from B.B’s guns as they fired.

“B.B! Over here!” I shouted, heading for one of the ramps, but paused as Shale bumped me with her flank . The white mare pointed with a hoof into the dark of the chamber and I squinted to see what she was trying to point out.

Down there, barely visible through glow cast by B.B’s lamp, I saw at least a dozen shapes moving. Even with the poor lighting I could still make out the spindly and scuttling forms of Tunneler’s, their clawed limbs making grating clacking sounds as they scurried about the room. The ceiling was high enough that B.B didn’t seem to be in immediate danger, but I could tell the Tunneler’s were going for the walls and a series of what appeared to be pillars situated in the center of the main chamber. With their claws the things were easily clambering up the pillars and walls, obviously trying to get closer to the pegasus gun-mare as she darted about. For B.B’s part I couldn’t tell if her shots were doing much damage but they seemed to hit with enough impact that if she hit a limb a Tunneler would fall. So far she was keeping them at bay but it wouldn’t be long before a few got onto the ceiling and could drop on her and there was no telling how much ammo she had left.

Still, Shale’s warning was clear; we’d be dead ourselves if we just rushed down there with our meager weapons.

“We need to distract them, give B.B a chance to get clear,” I said, figuring if nothing else once B.B got to us we could retreat back to the room with all the skeletons.

Shale nodded her accent, not bothering to try to talk like I did around the grip of her shotgun. I aimed as best I could into the moving shadows below and tightened my tongue around the trigger at the same time Shale opened fire. The 10mm pistol kicked in my mouth and I was shocked at how much force the tiny weapon produced, rattling my teeth and almost causing me to drop the gun.

How did anypony ever get used to firing these things!? Disoriented I shook my head and tried to aim again, tightening my teeth around the grip and tonguing the trigger once more. Properly braced the pistol’s recoil wasn’t quite as bad but I was pretty sure I still hadn’t hit a thing and was only succeeding in making my mouth sore. Luckily the plan didn’t call for accuracy or dealing any damage to the Tunnelers, we just needed to get their attention enough that B.B could find a window to fly over to us. Shale’s shotgun blasts were much louder than the 10mm’s small pops, and the mare had to reload after only two shots, but she seemed far more comfortable with her weapon than I was with mine. Even at the distance we were shooting at I noticed one of her blasts managed to knock a Tunneler from one of the pillars.

Slowly the small horde of creatures faltered in their attempts to climb up at the pegasus and regrouped as they realized something else was in the chamber now, shooting at them. Distantly I heard B.B shout something at us but I couldn’t make it out over the ringing in my ears from the gunshots. She wasn’t flying towards us though. She was waving her arms at us, gesturing wildly behind her. What was she trying to say?

Shale bumped me again as she finished reloading and with one hoof pointed my head from where it had been looking down into the mass of Tunnelers who were now making their way towards us and pointed it towards the far wall where B.B was. It was then I noticed a familiar blue glow emanating from inside what looked like an open passageway into a room that was on the second floor of the chamber. That was Arcaidia’s magic, but I couldn’t see the unicorn herself. She must be doing something in that room. Now seeing B.B hovering by that passageway I realized the pegasus must have been defending it, not keeping the Tunneler’s away from her, but keeping them from the passageway and Arcaidia, and from the way the pegasus was pointing at us and then at the passage it was pretty clear she wanted us to come to her. But how? The only way across that I saw was to go down the ramps and into the cluster of Tunnelers, which was a bad idea on every conceivable level.

Shale was once again the more perceptive pony than I as she darted off to the right, firing off her shotgun into the grouping Tunneler’s below who were scampering towards the ramp up to our ledge. I followed her without any hesitation, figuring she must see something in the flickering gloom that I didn’t. We hobble-ran along the ledge, which seemed to extend all the way to the wall to the right, and I pulled the trigger on the 10mm over and over again, gradually getting used to the kick of the gun. I think I may have even hit one of the Tunneler’s though it was hard to tell in the crap lighting. Before long there was only a dull click from the 10mm as it ran out of ammo. As I fumbled over trying to remember how Iron Wrought had gone about reloading his gun and trying to duplicate the procedure with one of the only 10mm sized ‘clips’ I’d scavenged from the skeletons I bumped into Shale.

She’d stopped at the wall where I saw there were large grooves that were cut into the metal that ran the length of the room. Wedged into these grooves was a square platform large enough to fit about four ponies. Situated in the middle of the platform was a small pedestal with a large green gem embedded in it, carved with geometric symbols identical to the many we’d seen running all over the walls and floor in this Ruin.

“What is this?” I asked , then swore as I dropped the clip I was trying to slip into my gun. Really, how was it these things became the most common weapon of use in the modern age!? They were impossible to work with! All these little switches, slides, and triggers, with only tiny little sights you could barely see to aim something that kicked you square in the jaw and deafened you every time you fired it!? Any pony who relied upon guns was officially insane in my book; which at this moment seemed to comprise 99% of the world’s population but dammnit I was going to stick to good old fashioned pointy sticks and blunt force trauma! At least I didn’t suck at those.

“Gus git un!” Shale mouthed unintelligibly around her own firearm as she got on the platform and blasted the lead Tunneler that had gotten up on the ledge with us. I did as she said as I scooped up the clip I’d dropped and managed to slam the thing into the 10mm. I wasn’t sure what the plan was but we were about to have half a dozen of these things swarming us if we didn’t move soon, and it looked like we’d just perched ourselves on a dead end.

However Shale’s gambit was clear as soon as I began firing to slow down the Tunnelers and she flung herself to the pedestal in the middle of the platform and began banging on it with her hooves. I was confused as to what she was trying to do but any questions were forestalled by the fact that the large green crystal lit up like a torch upon Shale’s contact with it and with hum that filled the air with a soft vibration the platform began to rapidly move along the grooves in the wall! The platform was carrying us across the chamber, moving seemingly on its own! I almost let out a whoop of joy, but was interrupted by something slamming into my back, knocking me off my hooves and causing my 10mm to slip from my mouth. I heard it go over the edge and clatter to the chamber below, but that was the least of my problems as Tunneler claws began to do what Tunneler’s seemed to do best and that was treat me like a cat treats a scratching post.

But I had learned a bit from my last encounter with these things and was familiar with how they moved and with the fact that despite their ridiculous strength they were lightweight. I immediately rolled even as the claws cut new furrows in my already wounded hide and coiled my hind legs against the Tunneler’s belly.

“Get. Off. Me!” I shouted as I bucked for all I was worth. The Tunneler let out a high pitched whine as it was sent sailing into the black to plummet to the chamber floor a good ten meters down.

The platform was halfway across the chamber now, too far for any of the other Tunnelers to make the jump their comrade had just moments before. I watched as they began scuttling along the wall though, making quick progress to catch up. Shale was suddenly at my side, looking at me with concern as I got to my hooves. I gave her a nod to indicate I was okay, despite the three new long lines of bleeding red along my hindquarters. She returned the nod and concentrated then on the Tunnelers on the wall coming after us, firing off one, two shotguns blasts and going to reload…only to groan in frustration as she found she had no more shells left. She kept the shotgun in her mouth though, apparently determined to use the thing as a bludgeon if she had to. She’d certainly gotten a lot more stout in a short span of time; I wondered if our talk had anything to do with why.

“We should be okay,” I said, watching the Tunnelers, “They’re not moving quick enough to catch up with us.”

Immediately upon completing my sentence there was a grinding sound and the entire platform shook and I was almost sent sprawling, only barely managing to remain standing as the platform ground to a halt. I looked over the side to see that the metal grooves we’d been moving along had been damaged by a part of the wall that had collapsed, leaving an entire mound of dirt and rock blocking our path. I wanted to scream in frustration but before I could B.B was suddenly there, hovering beside the platform with her wings beating so fast and furious it was creating a slight buzzing sound. As she punched out with her hooves, her dual pistols firing off shots at the advancing Tunnelers, I heard her shout to me.

“Git yer flank movin’ down the debris pile, now! Arcaidia’s down the passage tryin’ ta git a’ door open. Ah’ll hold these buggers off!”

Part of me wanted to argue with her, to tell her she’d better be right behind us, but Shale was already leaping onto the debris pile and making her way haphazardly down to the chamber below, and the Tunnelers would be on us in seconds. B.B could fly, so I guess she had the advantage here and there was no time to argue. I jumped after Shale, my wounds burning in protest from the awkward and fast climb down the piles of rock and dirt to the metal floor. I tripped a little at the bottom as loose rocks fell out from under my legs, sending me sprawling and my saddlebags fell off, scattering the stuff I’d gathered from the skeleton room.

As I shakily got back up I found Shale staring at the pile of stuff I gathered, eyes wide in shock. She spat out her shotgun, which clattered to the floor, and she looked at me with disbelief.

“You have grenades!? Why the hell haven’t you used them yet!?”

Gre-wha? Apparently my blank expression told her clearly I had no idea what a ‘grenade’ was and she made a sound of pure aggravation as she went over and snatched up one of the weird round objects with the stems I’d found. She pulled the stem out with her teeth and then yelled out to B.B.

“Frag out! Back away!”

Frag…what? What the hay kind of phrase was that? And why did B.B only take a brief look down at us before gasping and flying away at full speed? And why did Shale just lob the metal thing at the Tunneler’s gathering on the platform and scampering down the wall at us? It was just a tiny metal…thing, what was it going to-

BOOM!

A concussive explosion of noise caused me to stagger and blinked at the charred smoking section of wall where the platform was now broken away from the wall and crashed to the ground amid a hail of Tunneler parts that both bled strange brackish white blood and sparked with orange arcs of light. At least three of the things had been blown to bits by the blast and the others had immediately shrieked and backed away from the blast zone. I stared, dumbfounded. I was suddenly very glad I’d decided not to fiddle around with these ‘grenades’ when I’d found them and just put them in my saddlebags…though the knowledge that I’d just been carrying around something that dangerous gave my spine a cold tingly feeling.

There was no time for contemplation however as Shale snatched up another grenade and tossed it to me, which I managed to catch in my mouth with some trepidation, but had gathered that as long as the stem was still in there they wouldn’t explode.

“Pull the stem, toss, and boom,” she said, explaining what I’d more or less figured out by now, but hey, good to have confirmation. The mare then grabbed my saddlebags and scooped in as much of my stuff as she could as we began hobbling towards the ramps at the far end of the chamber that would lead us up to the room where Arcaidia was supposedly trying to unlock a door. As we ran I kept whipping my head about, trying to look at all the of the room at once. The Tunnelers were regrouping fast and B.B was flying above us, sending shots at them to try and take out a few while they were still disoriented.

Now I could get a much better look at this main chamber and noticed several things about it all at once. First, the pillars. There were four of them all arranged in a square formation, all about equal distance apart. Along their sides were the same kind of metal grooves the platform had been moving along, only much larger and vertical. In the very center of the floor was what appeared to be a slight dip in the floor, the middle of which was split by a small barely noticeable line. It was a square dip that each pillar stood at the corner off…and realizing that it made it clearer that this was some kind of door in the ground. What could it possibly be for?

No time to think about it. Shale and I reached the ramp and ran right up to the ledge that led to the passage where I could still see Arcaidia’s soft blue glow emanating from. As we got to the ledge I heard B.B shouting behind me.

“Longwalk, ya got ‘nother frag? If ya do ye might wanna use it!”

Her warning was just in time. The Tunnelers had gotten their wits about them pretty quick and were surging after us. They apparently had learned from the previous grenade and weren’t bunched together either, but were coming at us in singles and pairs from the wall, the ground, and the ceiling all at once. I tried to pick a spot that was between two of the largest groups coming at us and like I’d seen Shale I held the grenade in my hoof and pulled the stem with my teeth, waiting a second to judge my throw. Guns I was absolutely hopeless with, but when it came to throwing something and making sure it was on target I was much more in my element. I threw the grenade at just what I predicted to me the right moment to catch two clumps of the bastards, not noticing that the grenade I threw wasn’t the same faded green that Shale had used but instead was one of the gray ones with the white strip.

The grenade exploded much the same way as its cousin did, only this bang was twice as loud and was accompanied by a white flash of light so bright I felt like one of my ancestor spirits had decided to pull down the sun and stick it in my eye.

I heard B.B curse in a very un-ladylike manner and Shale go, “Oops. Didn’t know that was a flash-bang.”

Something ran into me and I almost instinctively began to buck until I noticed what had run into me was warm, feathery, and pony-shaped. I helped B.B up as I also got back to my hooves and shook my head, trying to clear the ringing in my ears. My eyesight gradually returned and I blinked away spots, letting my eyes readjust to the gloom. I heard distant shrieks and peered into the black and to my surprise saw that they were scattered about the far end of the chamber, as far away from us as possible, and apparently going nuts. Some were scraping wildly at the walls as if trying to burrow through the metal, while others just flung themselves about at random, even going so far as to attack each other. Had just the one ‘flash-bang’ grenade done this? I couldn’t fathom how, but at that moment I could live with the mystery.

I looked at Shale, who appeared just as confused as I was. B.B next to me was breathing heavily and now that I was close to her and there was no immediate danger I was able to get a good look at her.

She was better off than me, but still I saw numerous small cuts and scrapes on her white hide and the wing that had been shot by one of the turrets earlier was drooping down lower than the other and twitching. I felt a stab of guilt at her state. I had to make sure we all got out of this mess so I could properly make it up to them for getting them all involved in the first place. B.B must’ve caught my look because she rolled her eyes at me and gave me a playful shove with her hoof.

“Don’t ya be givin’ me them guilty eyes now! Me an’ Arcaidia are right as rain, an’ I might add seem to have done a fine sight better than the two of ya. Now how ‘bout givin’ over ‘nother of them flash-bangers an’ I’ll scatter them critters again when they get their act together. That way you two can go see if Arcaidia’s got that there door open.”

Shale was the one who tossed over the last flash bang grenade, though I fished out the remaining regular one and gave B.B a hard nod, “Just glad you’re safe.”

“Safe’s when we’re all outta here. But, yeah, I’m glad you two are alright. Was kinda getting’ worried when we lost track o’ ya back there.”

There was a brief moment where the blue glow of magic from inside the passageway behind us intensified and I heard Arcaidia saying something in her language that sounded curt and less than happy. I trotted down the passage, Shale next to me. It wasn’t a long passage, barley a dozen paces, and it opened up to a small circular room that seemed to only serve as a entry chamber for the large metal door Arcaidia was at. The little blue unicorn filly was only bearing minor injuries from what I could tell, her blue and silver dress torn in places and a little red staining it from small cuts here and there. Otherwise she mostly appeared fatigued, her shoulders set in a slump and her coat slick with sweat.

The door she was in front of appeared heftier, thicker somehow, than others I’d seen, and was laced with glowing geometric patterns of green and orange light that became more dense and complex the closer they got to a central circular point in the middle of the door. This point actually glowed a fierce bright blue, the same color as Arcaidia’s horn. As I watched that blue glow as seeming to spread to the other patterns on the door, the geometric patterns bleeding to blue and shifting in shape…but at the same time the green and orange patterns would seem to try and push back and reclaim parts that had already turned blue. Arcaidia’s horn pulsed with a intense field of blue light as her silver eyes bored into the door with the utmost concentration.

“Estu shival vici! Vici di survir! Survir!...Grrrr! Shival Elw, esru di burmor dol venti mesri!”

Most of that was said in a tone I imagined boarded on acidic. She didn’t even notice me and Shale enter the room behind her and Shale gave me a questioning look. I leaned over and whispered, “We’d better not distract her.”

My sentence was punctuated by the flash of light and loud cacophony of B.B setting off the second and final flash-bang grenade. The Tunnelers must have gotten frisky again. Arcaidia’s aura of magic seemed to flicker for an instant and start to fade and the unicorn grunted in plain strain to keep her magic up. I watched as one of those small vials of glowing blue liquid she used to replace her magic floated out of her saddlebags and the filly chugged it like a champion, practically inhaling the liquid. As that vial clattered to the floor I noted there was another empty one down there already. How many had she used so far? Actually, more important, how many did she have left? I have some faint memory of her putting a bunch in her saddlebags but I couldn’t remember how many. Her aura became intense once more, flashing even brighter ice blue than it had when I’d first seen her use the strange potion; which made sense as then she’d only sipped it, this time she’d downed the whole thing.

Bolstered thusly Arcaidia’s struggle with the door took on a rapid shift as more and more of the geometric lines faded from orange or green to the unicorn’s intense blue.

“Longwalk, grenade if ya please!” B.B called and I turned to go running back to the big chamber in time to see the Tunneler’s had been sent into a confused frenzy by the flash-bang like before, though this time I also noted that they’d managed to clump together pretty tightly in an attempt to scramble away.

B.B grinned at me as she dropped into her smooth Mirage accent, “Mayhaps my lovely assistant would like to deposit an explosive payload amid our distracted audience so they might disappear with nary a trace?”

“My pleasure, Mighty and Mysterious Mirage,” I grinned back as I took a moment to judge the distance and timing. I wasn’t at all familiar with these grenades yet, and the lighting was still piss poor dark, but I think I had a grasp on the basics. With more confidence than I had the first time I tossed one I pulled the stem and reared up on my hind legs, pulling my right forearm back. Wait a second…now! I swung and sent the small metal orb flying into the black right towards the clump of shifting shadows that was the Tunnelers. Moments later there was a satisfying explosion and smaller flash of light as the fragmentation grenade went off. The shrieks that followed indicated we hadn’t gotten all of the Tunnelers but there were clearly fewer moving shadows than there had been before. Just not nearly enough for my liking. And now we were out of grenades.

Still, I was almost starting to feel like things were going our way.

Which is probably why it was then that the turrets decided to drop down from the ceiling at either corner of the large chamber and began to fire lances of orange energy at us, one passing so close to the front of my muzzle that I felt nose hairs burning off.

B.B flew into the passageway in an awkwardly dipping dive, her injured wing apparently losing a lot of its strength in the last few minutes of fighting, and I was right behind her with a leaping dive of my own. I was a little late though as one of the orange beams of light burned a hole clean through my right hind leg. I’d gotten partially in cover but ended up sprawled on the ground, as trying to get up only resulted in monstrous pain to shoot through my leg. Before I knew it both B.B and Shale were there, dragging me further into the passageway and away from the scything beams of orange light. One of those beams clipped Shale on the shoulder, burning a deep red furrow of burned flesh there and she screamed past teeth that were clenched around my mane as she dragged me despite the wound.

Once Shale, B.B, and myself were in the circular room with Arcaidia we were effectively out of the turret’s line of fire. I just hoped no more would spontaneously decided to pop up in here. This room was so small with no cover we’d be dead in seconds if there were. Upon completion of that thought, however, I looked up at the ceiling and almost freaked out upon seeing the two turrets up there…then sighted in relief as I saw they were already frozen solid in ice. Arcaidia must have cleared the room when she and B.B first got here.

“Hey Longwalk can ya stand?” B.B asked as she stood over me, peering down at my wounded leg with her plain worry etched on her features. I grit my teeth and managed to get up, if only because I didn’t even try to put any weight on my burned through limb.

“For the moment,” I said while mustering as much of a confident smile as I could. She didn’t quite look like she believed me but nodded her head.

“Right , guess ya’ll be wantin’ this then,” she said as she went over to the wall by the door and tossed something my way with a flick of her leg.

I caught the object almost by rote reflex, and was instantly filled with a feeling of rightness at the feel of the familiar metal haft.

“Gramzanber! Yes, I shall never lose you again!” bets are open on how long that promise would actually last. Like I said, tether, as soon as I could. I tried to contain my enthusiasm though as my current state didn’t lend well to leaping for joy.

“Figured ya’d be wantin’ that back,” B.B said as she went over to the opening towards the big chamber, slowly reloading her revolvers, “An’ since I’m runnin’ low on bullets we might be relyin’ more on yer pig-sticker ‘fore long.”

“Well, might have more bullets for you,” I said as I gestured at Shale, who still had my saddlebags, “Picked up a bunch from some skeletons a floor up. Feel free to take a look.”

“Skeletons? Like…pony skeletons,” B.B asked with an incredulous frown, “That don’t figure none. Nopony’s been in here ‘cept us and the Labor Guild.”

I shrugged, “Don’t ask me, I don’t know. They were in a room on the top floor, and had a bunch of old guns and bullets, and those grenade things…oh, and some medical stuff. What’s Buck and Med-X anyway?”

B.B’s eyes went a little wide, “Were there any healing potions?”

“There were,” Shale said before I could answer, “But I needed to use them to keep Longwalk alive,” her eyes shifted to me, “He didn’t say he found Buck and Med-X though.”

“What? I don’t even know what those are, I just found them. Are they useful?”

“In small doses,” B.B said, “Hate to suggest it but ya might wanna hold onta the Buck at least, an’ take the Med-X right now. Med-X dulls pain. The Buck’s a’ steroid, an’ a’ real powerful one ta’ boot. We get swamped by them critters yer might wanna take ‘em. Make ya hit like a’ huge-enourmous-snarlin’-all-grown-up-dragon! Fer a’ few minutes. Then the rush wears off an’ ye get as weak as a newborn bouncing baby bunny. Addictive though, so take it only as a last resort. Med-X is addictive too, but not as bad as Buck.”

I took that information in thoughtfully. Sounded a lot like the various powders my tribe made out of the few plants that grew around our valley, the healing powder being the most common. If taken too often it was hard to resist the urge to partake regularly, especially the healing powder itself which had certain properties beyond its medical application. If you smoked the fumes of the burned powder one could see all manner of visions and it was said to open the mind to the song of the ancestor spirits. I hadn’t tried it myself but I knew a lot of the elder ponies in the tribe indulged, some claiming the smoke helped with the aches and pain of old age. Didn’t sound like these drugs were really that much different. I briefly considered trying to apply some of the healing powder doses I had, but we weren’t anywhere near a spot we could rest for awhile so the powder could take full effect, what with the Tunnelers still remaining out there and possibly even now getting ready to come after us again.

“So, uh, how do I take this Mex-X stuff?” I asked.

Shale reached into my saddlebags and pulled out the small syringe and came up to me, removing a cap that revealed a tiny needle. I shrunk away and the slave mare gave me a raised eyebrow.

“Really? You’ve been clawed to near death by horrible monsters and keep going, but hesitate at the sight of a little needle?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not that little of a needle,” I said lamely and hung my head, “Just do it quick, please?”

“I’ll be gentle,” she said with a wink and as I asked she was quick about finding a spot on one of my forelegs to insert the needle. The moment the syringe was emptied into me I felt a wave of incredible cool relief flood me, like cold water slipping between my muscles and bones. It was like a hoof simply waved over my body and snatched away the piled upon pain that had been wracking my wounded body. I felt like I could start capering about in a dance that very moment.

“Wow…that stuff is…wow…” yes, I was quite the wordsmith.

“Don’t git too fond a’ it,” warned B.B, giving me a serious look, “Remember what I said ‘bout it bein’ addictive. Use it only when ya gotta.”

“Mmhmm,” I replied vaguely while flexing my wounded leg, testing to see if I could put some weight on it. While I still felt a faint sensation of pain there, which probably spoke volumes of how bad the leg was, I found I could reliably put weight on it again. Fantastic, now I might actually be useful in a fight! Well, less useless anyway. Maybe if I took that Buck stuff…?

My train of thought was interrupted by a flash of blue and a cry of both elation and exhaustion from Arcaidia. The door had turned completely blue now, its various sigils and geometric patterns glowing with the unicorn’s frosty hue. With a grating sound unlike any of the other doors we’d opened so far in the Ruin this one slowly slide itself open by breaking into half a dozen parts that pulled into different parts of the wall. Arcaidia looked back at us with a tired by happy grin, which I readily returned.

“Ta-da,” she said and I blinked, wondering if that was her language or if she was imitating something she’d heard from another pony. Either way it made me chuckle, despite the still very dangerous circumstances we were in.

“Alright ladies, I’ll go in first. If you hear me scream, close the door,” I said, half jokingly, and trotted through the opened way and into the room behind. Despite my bravado I was tense in every muscle, ready to dive right back out the first sign of danger.

As it happened this room, while larger than the one we just came from, was a fraction of the size of the big chamber with the door in the bottom. This room was different, however, in that it had a very high ceiling, one that might lead all the way back up to the surface if I was guessing right. There was also a large circle in the center of the room that was filled with the most densely compact series of symbols and geometric patterns’ yet, though they were all dark, not at all glowing. To the left of the room a rectangular alcove contained what looked like a similar platform to the one me and Shale had used in the previous chamber. On the opposite side from that was another of those big boxy devices like the one the exploded terminal had been hooked up to. Only this device was easily twice the size, and had attached to it a raised disc of bronze metal that was either a platform to stand on, or maybe a shelf to put something on, I couldn’t figure what.

The others shuffled in behind me when it became apparent nothing was trying to kill me. As they entered though the shrieks of the Tunneler’s could be heard behind us, rapidly getting closer. Guess they’d gotten over the damage we’d done with the grenades and were now eager to resume the busy business of murdering us.

“Dang nabbit,” B.B said as she winced, hovering erratically into the air so she could aim both her guns, “We can’t take ‘nother scrap with them buggers!”

“And these guns are next to useless,” said Shale as she ruffled through my saddlebags and pulled out another of the guns we’d salvaged, a pistol that was even smaller than the 10mm I’d been using and looked to be in even worse condition.

“Matta matta, estu volshae mas. Esru vi reviri dol sartriv,” said Arcaidia as she approached the entryway we’d come through, brushing past both pegasus and earth pony mares.

She floated out another of those vials of blue magic restoring liquid and eyed it wistfully. She looked back at me with a sad smile and shook the vial.

“Ti dol,” she said and flipped open her own saddlebag, showing that there weren’t any more of those vials inside.

“That’s your last one…” I realized aloud, and found myself wondering if she entirely relied on those vials of liquid to sustain her magic or if it would restore itself naturally if she had time to rest. She looked so…haggard, with her eyes now sunken, her silver hair disheveled, and I could now see how her whole body slumped just a little as if having trouble keeping itself upright. I imagined she must have been casting nearly non-stop since we’d gotten separated, her magic her only weapon at the moment. Yet she was still going, still pushing herself, much as any of us…maybe more.

With a lady-like flip of her mane Arcaidia concentrated on the open door and her horn glowed blue. The door closed much the same as it had opened. Arcaidia wasn’t taking chances, though, and all of us watched as the unicorn filly shot out a stream of ice that she aimed around the edges of the doors, creating a seal of ice around the frame. When she was done she took a small sip of from the vial and tucked what was left back into her saddlebags. Before long we heard loud scraping sounds from the other side of the door, but thankfully this whole room was intact, with no parts having collapsed to let the bare earth inside. These things wouldn’t be digging their way in too soon.

“Well, now that we’ve trapped ourselves in here what happens now?” asked Shale as she sat back on her haunches, taking in deep breaths.

“We keep going,” I said, “Has to be a way to move forward somewhere in here. Maybe we can find more weapons like those grenades in other rooms?”

“Still can’t believe ya found those,” said B.B as she landed and slowly walked over to Shale, “Mind if I take a peek through them bags, see what else ya’ll found?”

Shale shrugged off my saddlebags without a word and made a gesture for B.B to help herself. As the pegaus began rooting about in my bags I turned my head to watch as Arcaidia slowly paced around the room, her silver eyes keenly taking in the surroundings. She carefully avoided the large circle of symbols in the center of the room and paid only a cursory glance at the platform in the alcove. She reserved most of her attention for the device built into the far wall and it was that she approached.

“Hmm, aha!” B.B said triumphantly, pulling out a box of ammunition, “Somepony liked their .357 bullets ta come in armor piercing flavor!”

“Armor piercing?” I asked.

“Yup. Pierces armor.”

“Right, dumb question.”

“Nah, yer still learnin’, better to ask questions…hey…what are you doin’ wit a’ Recollector?”

B.B pulled out the weird black headband thing with the black orb in it and I gave her a flat expression, “I have no idea what a Recollector is, if that is one. One of the skeletons had that on its head. Do you know what it’s for?”

“I do,” the pegaus mare said while holding the headband as if it was a gift she wasn’t sure she wanted to receive, “They’re magical doohickeys that let non-unicorn ponies peek inta’ Memory Orbs. An’ ‘fore ya ask, a’ Memory Orbs a’ magical whatsit that stores memories a’ ponies. Recollector can also record yer memory as yer wearin’ it. Bet that pony ya lifted this from was recordin’ their trip down here…”

She considered the item, then tucked it back into my saddlebags, “Best ta’ leave it fer now. I’m mighty curious, mind, why or how anypony was even down here…but Memory Orbs take as long ta view ‘em as took ta’ make ‘em, so there’d be no tellin’ how long anypony who put that thing on would be in la-la land.”

“La-la land? What, you saying if I put that on I’d…dream the ponies memories?”

“Sorta. It’s like ye’d be that pony, only along fer the ride though, only seein’ the memory, not affectin’ it.”

I shook my head in wonderment, “That’s just…weird. Who would of thought of making something like that?”

B.B tapped a hoof to her chin, “Don’t quite recall readin’ who all was responsible-like fer makin’ the things in any of mah pa’s books. Figure I had ta be one o’ the Ministries though, probably the Ministry o’ Arcane Science if I was ta stab a’ guess.”

“Dare I even ask what these Ministries are? I remember Crossfire mentioning them before,” I said, recalling the Drifter mare’s words, having thought that Arcaidia’s starblaster was a Ministry creation.

B.B chuckled, “Only if ya wanna’ long history lesson. Not like they matter at all today; the Ministries died wit Equestria, ‘long wit most o’ the ponies what died when the bombs fell. Ya run inta their gear or leftovers of their facilities a lot in the Wasteland, but that’s all yer ever like ta see of the Ministries anymore. But short version o’ what they where’s goes like this; them Ministries were set up by Princess Luna ta ‘elp her run the country durin’ the war, each one in charge a’ somethin’ different, like tech development or keepin’ the country’s moral high. Why don’t ya’ sit yerself down an’ let me at that med-kit. I’ll get ya’ patched while we talk.”

I sat as she bade me as the pegasus snagged the med-kit out of my saddlebags and floated over. She went to quick work, starting with the burned hole in my leg, giving it a wary eye as she got out alcohol and bandages.

“Yer a right mess. Long as the Med-X hold’s ye’ll be alright but we gotta get outta here and get this leg looked at by mah pa. He showed me the basic o’ treatin’ ills an’ scratches, but this’ll take a more practiced hoof ta’ make right as rain.”

As she worked on me B.B finished giving me the rundown on the Ministries, though honestly it probably would’ve taken half the time if I hadn’t had to keep asking questions to fill out the massive gaps in my knowledge about this war she mentioned. As I knew it according to my tribe’s legends the Great Fire rained down upon the world as a result of a horrible war that drove all of ponykind to the brink of madness and extinction, but the legends were quite vague on who the war was against and exactly what the fighting was all about; mentioning only striped demons of unrivaled evil from a far away land as the culprits of the war. B.B filled me in on more than just the Ministries that this Princess Luna character created, but on the general gist of the war itself. The ‘stripped demons’ in question were a race of creatures called zebras, similar in shape to ponies but vastly different in culture. The reasons for the war B.B said had something to do with a resource crisis in the country of Equestria that prompted strained relations with the zebras, who apparently had this ‘coal’ in great abundance that Equestria needed. Once fighting between the two races broke out things just got more and more intense and out of hoof until, eventually, both sides ended up unleashing powerful magic; megaspells of balefire that wiped out entire cities and huge swaths of countryside all over the world…turning it into the Wasteland of today.

I didn’t get a lot of what B.B was talking about, most of it going over my head. I’d never even heard of Equestria, apparently the largest and most influential country of ponykind in the world during that time, or it’s Princess. Or Princesses’ as it were. B.B did mention the name of Celestia, Luna’s elder sister. She didn’t mention exactly why Luna ended up in charge of the country during the war, though I wasn’t sure if that was because she didn’t know or if she just decided to skip that detail. She also had this weird habit of interchanging the term Goddess with Princess, often referring to Luna as either or. I didn’t question that either. My tribe’s beliefs revolved around the notion that upon death our souls joined with their ancestors in the everafter and that those spirits where what looked over those who still dwelled in the living world, safeguarding us from harm. I’d never heard the term Goddess before, and even my relatively slow mind found that odd. After all it was pretty clear my tribe was descended from survivors of this war B.B was talking about, so it would stand to reason that if there was some kind of living pair of Goddess/Princess sisters that we would have carried the tale of them and the worship of them with us. But nope, not a single tribal legend so much as breathed a hint of any such ponies…which you’d think they’d stand out a lot of a tribe’s mythology given according to B.B they were gigantic hyper-magical unicorn/pegasus ponies. Alicorns, the term was, it seemed.

By the time B.B was done with treating me my leg was covered in a dense wrap of bandage gauze and most of the deeper lacerations from the Tunneler’s claws had been cleaned and bandaged as well. The Med-X dose was still going strong but B.B told me it’d run its course in less than an hour, which meant we’d need to get going again soon. While she’d been working me and we’d been talking Shale had found a corner of the room to rest in and get off her own bad leg while Arcaidia had kept fiddling with that big device.

“Hey Shale,” I called, “Do you want the other Med-X dose for your leg? I mean, it’s still hurting, right?”

“Its fine,” she said, only barely glancing our way without even raising her head from where it’d been resting on her crossed forelegs, “It’s not that bad right now and we might need that dose later.”

“Alright…” I said, not really liking that she was just enduring the pain on her own but I wasn’t about to force her to take the drug. I looked over at B.B and the pegasus didn’t even have to ask, she just nodded and floated over towards the slave mare, med-kit tucked under one hoof, to see what she could do.

Meanwhile I trotted over to see what had been occupying Arcaidia’s attention. The unicorn filly was so intent on the device before her she barely noticed my approach and started a little when I tapped her on the shoulder. She gave me a small grin though, her silver eyes twinkling as she gestured at the device.

“Estu ren di vira sila val, ren solva. Esru dol Elw vi racim vecinni qui volishar.”

As she spoke she touched several points on the device’s console, causing blue energy to flow between geometric points and patterns along the bronze metal surface. Whatever she did it looked like she was reenacting her control of the door, though with markedly less strain than she had on the door itself. The device hummed with a faint noise of energy and I stared with blank fascination as the large black glassy surface I thought might have been a window of some sort lit up just like the screen of the terminal had, only much larger. On the screen I saw beautifully intricate and curved text I couldn’t begin to read flow across the screen. Arcaidia puffed up her chest proudly, though I couldn’t be sure exactly what she was doing to the device except make it work, which I supposed was impressive enough given this was supposed to be an ancient and unexplored Ruin nopony had been in…well, except the dead ponies those skeleton’s had belonged to.

“Siv, dol,” Arcaidia pointed one hoof while her horn glowed with a blue magic aura, causing a circular point on the console to brighten up and extend a misty light to the pedestal that had been hanging above the console. On that pedestal abruptly appeared a shape that made me jump back at its rapid ghostly appearance. The shape was a series of lines and blocks, all surrounding a large central…pillar? No, column…wait a sec…

“It’s a map,” I said, realizing that what I was seeing was indeed a three dimensional ghostly image of what had to be the very Ruin we were in. I recognized the details of the large chamber we’d fought the Tunnelers in, with its four pillars, and the spiral walkway me and Shale had used to come down to it, and the room we were in now…which now that I looked at it the map had four bright white dots blinking inside it. Talk about useful! With this we might actually find a way out of here! Looking the map over I realized that the entire Ruin actually didn’t consist of all that many rooms. Indeed the structure of the Ruin was actually quite simple. The top floor was the most complex, at least in that it had the most rooms consisting of about a dozen square rooms all arranged in two triangular shaped patterns that branched from the main entrance chamber, all connected by four way corridors. Of those rooms four had spiraling walkways that went down to this next level we were on, which mostly consisted of long hallways surrounding that four pillared chamber, occasionally dotted by small side rooms like the one we were now in. That big room with the four pillars was a central point to a huge column-like room that continued both up and down from that main room, which what looked to be a much larger chamber at the bottom of the shaft. The lift in our room actually led right down to a circular room that looked to be an entrance chamber to that massive central chamber.

“Ha, if we just take the lift down we’d just be one room away from the bottom of this place and finding whatever it is the Labor Guild wants found down here. We could be done with this place within the hour!”

My exuberance brought the attention of B.B and Shale, who both walked over to see what I was talking about. Shale had a strange splint on her leg now, made from the broken off stock of the trashed assault rifle with the battle saddle that couldn’t be used. I gave B.B a thankful smile, which the pegasus returned, though her eyes were mostly fixated on the map.

“Well ain’t that just a’ sight an’ a’ half. How’d yer unicorn pal pull off getting’ that thing ta work?”

I shrugged, “I dunno, same way she got the door to open I figure.”

B.B cast a sideways glance at Arcaidia, who was looking at all of us expectantly, like a teacher waiting for her students to grasp the day’s lesson.

“She sure got a’ way with Ruins don’t she?” the pegasus mare said with a quizzical raise of her eyebrow, “Guess it don’t matter none, long as she’s makin’ it work fer us.”

“*ahem* Esru dim alai, ren bruhir?” Arcaidia said with what looked like a challenging look at B.B, to which the pegasus just waved a hoof.

“Oh don’t get yer tail ina twist, I wasn’t ‘cussin’ ya o’ nothin’. Carry on.”

Seemingly understanding that the matter was dropped Arcaidia turned her gaze to the map and manipulated some of the symbols on the console, causing the map to change color before our eyes. From frosty blue the rooms suddenly became bright green…well, most of them. Two rooms were instead a harsh haze of orange, the same color of the beams the turrets had fired at us. I frowned, looking between the map and Arcaidia. Arcaidia for her part waved her hoof through the rooms on the map that were green.

“Vira.”

She then waved her hoof through the two orange rooms. They were the circular antechamber where the lift would take us, and the room beyond, the central chamber to which this whole facility seemed to be built around and our final destination.

“Mas.”

I scratched my head with one hoof, not sure what she was trying to get at, but Shale piped in quickly.

“I can’t be sure, but if this terminal is anything like the terminals we ponies use normally then they can be used to access systems attached to whatever facility they’re in. If you’re in a old run down Robronco or Stable Tech building one of the easiest ways to get past the security robots or turrets is to find a terminal that shuts them down…I…I think that’s what your friend just did.”

“Huh?” I said. B.B though was nodding her head as if she understood perfectly.

“Ah’ see! No matter how alien the Ruin, it’s still a’ facility like any other. Ya hack the terminal, yer in the clear. Arcaidia probably just saved our flanks the trouble o’ dealin’ with any more turrets. Might be them critters won’t be a problem either!”

“How? What? Somepony explain to the dumb tribal, please?” I asked, still not getting what they were talking about.

“Longwalk, hun, them critters were cybernetic.”

Blank stare from me. B.B sighed and rubbed a hoof to her forehead.

“They weren’t all flesh n’ blood, they had mechanical bits in ‘em! Remember when ya stabbed the one an’ got fried? Ya must’ve hit somethin’ electrical in there. They’re part robot. Which means they’re probably not critters that wandered in here, but were part of the Ruin’s security system. Which Arcaidia, if we’re guessin’ right here, just shut down.”

“Except for those two rooms,” Shale said quietly, nodding at the two orange rooms.

Okay, now my brain pony was finally getting up to speed, and glad for it because if what my companions were saying was true this job had just become a lot easier on us. Well, barring whatever was waiting for us in the final two rooms. I took a deep breath, calming my buzzing nerves. We were so close; we’d just need to take these last rooms carefully and with any luck I could be calling Crossfire down here soon and getting Shale’s collar turned off. Assuming the Drifter would keep to her end of the bargain. I wasn’t sure she would. She didn’t exactly exude ‘trustworthy’ as a trait. Right now I didn’t see many other options. It wasn’t as if we could just take Shale’s collar off on our own. I imagined the thing was rigged to blow if you just tried to unhook it or cut it off. I’d guessed by now that the blocky part on the collar was the part that went boom, and I noticed there were little wires there connecting that part to the collar itself. Maybe a pony who knew about explosives would know a way to disarm the thing, but far as I knew none of my companions were experts. B.B at least would have said something if she was. Arcaidia might have skills like that though…why hadn’t I tried asking her already? I suppose the thought hadn’t even struck me until that moment.

“Um, right then before we go charging off down into whatever’s waiting for us down there I want us to do two things,” I said to everypony. My companions looked at me, B.B expectantly, Shale little nervously, and Arcaidia with attentiveness (which I found odd given she didn’t know a thing I’d be saying).

“First, we need to confirm the security is off. I’ll just poke my head out into the chamber we came from and see if-“

“No need fer that,” B.B said while pointing one wing tip at the door, “Ya notice anythin’ odd? Them critters aren’t poundin’ on the door no more. I noticed that just a little while ago an’ was wonderin’ why, but now we know. I’m bettin’ them things are either dropped or just wanderin’ around all peaceful like now.”

“Alright. I’d still rather confirm that, but I’ll take that as a safe sign at least,” I said, “Then, two, I want to see if we can get Shale’s bomb collar off now.”

“What?” the white earth pony mare said with a small gulp, “But these collars can’t come off unless the detonator they’re keyed to signals the deactivation. Anything else will make them explode!”

“There has to be a way to shut it off without the detonator, otherwise what does the Labor Guild do when they lose a detonator or it breaks? Those collars have to come off sometime, right? Even if for no other reason than to use on a new slave after the current one dies from overwork,” I had a distasteful feeling in my gut from my own cold reasoning but it made sense. There logically had to be a way to get a collar off without the detonator triggering a deactivation signal otherwise the Labor Guild would lose collars every time a detonator malfunctioned or went missing. Even if you could key in a new detonator like how doctor Lemon Slice did there would never be a guarantee you’d have a spare detonator on hoof to do that with.

“He’s right,” said B.B “I figure there is a’ way, but we don’t got a way to pull it off. I don’t know much ‘bout explosive’s, but I know the bomb’s got a trigger that the detonator activates. I’m bettin’ a Labor Guild Overseer would know a’ way to turn that trigger off so even if ya take the collar off by hoof it won’t blow. We don’t got the same know-how, but we do got a way to maybe shut the trigger down ‘fore it can cause the bomb to go off.”

“What way?” I asked at the same time Shale did.

B.B pointed a hoof a Arcaidia, “Her.”

“Do I have to say ‘huh?’ again or will you explain this one to us without prompt.”

“She’s got some quick freezin’ magic in her horn that ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at,” said B.B “If ya can figure a’ way to explain it she might be able to freeze the part a’ the bomb that’s the trigger. She does it fast enough it won’t blow an’ we can get the collar off.”

I looked to Shale worriedly, “That sounds like it might work, but it’s your call Shale. What do you think?”

“I…I think it sounds crazy. I mean, Arcaidia doesn’t even speak our language. How are you going to explain to her that you want her to freeze a specific part of the collar? Even if she does, its, what, fifty-fifty at best that it’ll get the collar off instead of just causing it to explode?”

“I’m not going to force you. I just wanted to see if there was a way we could get that collar off you. I might have to consider taking on Crossfire sometime soon if she decides to turn against the deal we made and I don’t want her to keep using you as her hostage. I still mean to find a way to free you and the other slaves, this is a good first step to doing that. This is your choice though, I won’t push it if you think the risk is too much.”

Honestly I was as concerned as she was. The last thing I wanted was to risk Shale’s life any more than I already had by getting her involved in this. That collar was a threat to all of us though and getting it off of her would be like removing a sword from over our heads. Not to mention if it worked it might provide proof of a way I could use to get the collars off the other slaves too, assuming I could figure out some way to get to them after this.

Shale was quiet for a long couple of minutes and I could see clearly written on her face as she went from shaken and fearful to gradually calm and resolved.

“…alright…do it.”

We all exchanged looks and I went about trying to pantomime to Arcaidia what we wanted. The unicorn filly was once more almost freakishly adept at figuring out my gestures, and more to the point, I think she understood enough about what Shale was and what the bomb collar was that she had an easy enough time grasping what we were doing and why. I did not, however, that while she understood, she didn’t seem nearly as…invested as the rest of us. She had an aloof stance and expression as she approached Shale and bent her horn towards the bomb collar, touching the tip to the boxy device on its side.

All of us held our collective breath. Shale’s eyes closed as Arcaidia’s horn flashed blue and the room’s temperature dropped noticeably. Only in that moment did my brain pony kick me, saying that if something did go wrong and the bomb went off, Arcaidia was as likely to be injured or killed as anypony else, being that close. Too late, either way.

Seconds passed. Then a few more. One of Shale’s eyes opened. I wasn’t sure if it was me or B.B who let out a shuddering sigh.

“Did it work…?” I found myself asking.

There was a crackling sound and Arcaidia stood aside, her mouth gripping in it the bomb collar which had slid off Shale’s neck at the joint where the block of explosive and its trigger met the leather of the collar. The explosive seemed intact, but the wiring and part of the device at the base was frosted over and the strap itself had cracked apart. Arcaidia tossed the bomb collar to me with casual grace and I fumbled with catching it, giving her a glare even as I smiled at her.

“Ancestors above Arcaidia, don’t just toss these things at ponies!”

“…it’s off…” Shale murmured.

“Shit, that there was right nerve whrackin’,” B.B said, wiping her brow, then blushed, “Pardon my Prench.”

“…It’s off. I…” Shale suddenly threw herself at Arcaidia.

The unicorn filly braced as if about to receive an attack and was soon stuck with a rather bewildered look on her face as the small whit earth pony wrapped herself around Arcaidia in a tight hug, tears beading in her eyes.

“Thank you. I never thought I would…not after…I’d given up on ever getting that thing off me after what I’d done.”

“What ya done?” B.B asked, looking at Shale with curiosity. Shale was so busy apparently trying to hug Arcaidia to death that either she didn’t hear B.B or didn’t care. I wasn’t sure I much cared either, since whatever she meant it didn’t seem to matter right now. Arcaidia awkwardly returned Shale’s hug while giving me a strange look over the slave (ex-slave) mare’s shoulder, like she didn’t quite understand.

Shale let Arcaidia go rather quickly after another moment and took a few hasty steps back, shaking her head as if trying to clear out a fog as she stammered out, “S-sorry, I just, I don’t think any of you get what you just did. I…give me another minute and I’ll be good, just need to collect myself.”

“That’s fine, take a minute then. We got time now,” I said as I tucked the bomb collar into my saddlebag.

B.B floated over to me, hovering above the saddlebags and leaning her head down towards me to whisper, “Be careful wit that thing, might still be able ta blow if ya hit the detonator, or if the time limit runs out. The trigger froze, but it might melt, or might be a’ back-up trigger fer the remote detonator.”

“Hm? Oh, sure, I’ll be careful. If it can still explode, might be we can use it later then, and we still got at least two hours left on the time limit,” I said, but I tucked the bomb collar close to the top of my things in the saddlebags just in case I needed to get rid of it quickly. B.B hovered closer, her eyes shifting warily towards where Shale had gone over to one of the walls and was leaning her head against it, apparently talking to herself under her breath.

“An’ I’m wonderin’ what she meant by ‘what I done’.”

“I don’t see that it means anything. Even if it did, it’s not really our business, right? Let’s just focus on getting those last two rooms cleared and getting out of here. Crossfire’s not going to like we popped that collar off, and we’ll have to figure something out about what to do about her and the rest of the slaves.”

“Still plannin’ on rescuing them all? Fine, wasn’t figurin’ ya’d give up on on that. Don’t know what we’re gonna do though. I might be able to do fer one of her goons, and Arcaidia could maybe match the other if she ta’ top off with more o’ her juice…but that’s still leave Crossfire herself. Way I heard talk goes she’s one of the Drifter Guild’s best. An’ weren’t not ‘xactly in top shape here.”

“I’ll…think of something. Maybe something in one of those last two rooms can help us? Or maybe Arcaidia can trip the security system back on when we call Crossfire down? That’d certainly put a twist in her mane I bet.”

B.B nodded thoughtfully, “That…ain’t half bad an idea. Yer right though, we’ll figure that part out once we got the Ruin sorted out. Just…keep an’ eye on that Shale. Somethin’ is buggin’ me ‘bout her. She was all shakin’ like a leaf when we first got here, but now she’s actin’ like she’s used to this kind a’ stuff. She was a crack toss with that grenade before, an’ knows more ‘bout how ta’ fight then she’s lettin’ on.”

“If you say so. I trust her. I know she could have easily let me die back when I was wounded, but she didn’t. That’s enough for me.”

B.B gave me a look that was tinged with just a hint of sadness, “Ain’t bad ta’ trust others, just sayin’ keep an’ eye out fer trouble. Want us all to make it outta here alive.”

“So do I B.B.”

A few minutes later Shale had apparently gotten herself under control. I could understand her being emotionally out of it. We’d all been having one hell of a day, her most of all considering the recent near brush with possible exploding death and abruptly new gained freedom. We lined up in front of the lift that would lead us down to the first of the two final rooms. B.B had loaded her pistols with the new armor piercing ammo and strung up the bandoliers strapped around her barrel with the new rounds. Shale had acquired one of the remaining most functional looking guns we’d salvaged from the skeletons, a 10mm weapon that was bulkier than the pistol and she referred to as an ‘SMG’. What ammo we had for it she’d loaded into the weapon’s under slung clip and the rest had been dumped into my saddlebags. She, rather cleverly I thought, tied the smaller pistol, a 9mm, into her tail as a backup weapon for when the SMG ran out of ammo. Arcaidia took a final sip from her flask of blue liquid, which was down to half full, and that was all the prep work she apparently needed.

For my part I was feeling more aches and pains in my body as the Med-X began to wear thin in my blood, but I was otherwise as ready as I was going to get with Gramzanber clutched tightly in my teeth and my saddlebags tied firmly to my back. With one last confirming look to my companions we all nodded to each other and advanced as one onto the lift. Arcaidia’s horn glowed brightly and I still had the lamp secured to my saddlebags to provide light as Shale hit the green crystal, same as with the previous lift.

With barely a sound the platform descended quickly into the dark.

The lift brought us to the bottom within minutes, the shaft disappearing above us into the ceiling of this new chamber. Despite being just a fraction of the size of the main chamber on the map this antechamber was still cavernous and wide beyond any of the other rooms we’d come across thus far. As I looked around at the wide blackness around us, our light casting barely a small island of illumination into the shadows around us I realized with some shock that the platform we were on was actually floating in mid-air, descending down on nothing. The notion of flight sent a small thrill through me at the same time it sent a feeling of intense gut twisting terror. B.B, next to me, grinned.

“Relax, ain’t no more than ‘nother ten meters or so ta’ the ground. Even if ya fell ye’d probably live with just a few broken bones.”

“Oh, swell,” I said, then blinked, “How can you tell how high we are, its pitch black in here?”

As the platform touched down on the ground B.B lifted off with her wings, staying low due to her injuries but apparently more comfortable now that she’d had time to rest off of them.

“Just a’ sense pegasi got. We can feel the sky an’ ground sorta’. Like a’, I don’t know, pegasense.”

“Pegasense?”

“Ya heard me.”

Advancing into the gloom I got a better sense of the chamber around us. It was indeed quite large, but now that I was peering into the blackness I could make out the far walls, if just barely. I knew from what I’d seen on the map that this place was like one big rectangle, with a large raised staircase going up like the steps of a pyramid on the far end, where an open entryway would lead to the final room. This big open space here was, unfortunately, the most ideal spot to lay a final trap or ambush, given the almost total lack of cover anypony entering from the lift would receive. I was tensed like a coiled gecko as we walked, or in B.B’s case flew, towards where we could barely make out the stairs.

When a sound like bubbling water filled the air I reared around at the sound, ready to charge, run, or throw myself between my companions and harm as needed against whatever monster or trap sprung itself at us…instead what I faced was a ghost.

It was a translucent orange image of a creature much like a pony in shape, with forelegs and hindquarters of an equine nature and a body and head very pony-like in form. Its hooves were marked by large tufts of fur, however, and its tail was thin and whip-like, with barely any fur to cover it. More than that its body was covered in what appeared to be…not stripes, exactly, but white spotting. Its mane was short and dark, and from the shape of its features I think it was a stallion. Its ears were even longer than a normal ponies, and also like its hooves, covered with tufts of fur. Its eyes were regarding us with cold displeasure.

Next to me Arcaidia growled, loudly.

“Elw…Shoval!”

To my surprise then the ghostly image spoke in a language I understood, Equestrian as I now knew the term was.

“No intrusion upon this sacred ground shall be tolerated; least of all by those who would invade the sanctity of Filgaia. The children of Odoryuk will resist the corrupting violations of Veruni and Hyadean alike until our dying breaths. You shall not have the Roaring Metal that sleeps within this tomb. Let our sentinel be the herald of your passing, trespassers.”

…What? Did any of that make even the slightest bit of sense? Well, the threat was obvious enough, but the rest sounded more like our ghostly friend had dipped too much into the healing powder. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to question him (it?) further as the image vanished immediately after its overly dramatic speech and we all heard the grinding of metal moving from across the room opposite the stairs.

“Longwalk,” Shale said, nudging me with her muzzle and nodding her head towards the stairs, “I think we just got cut off.”

I looked to see that in the distance where the entryway into the next room would be at the top of the stairs there was a clear glowing orange field of light. The hay was that? Some kind of barrier.

“Least of our problems,” shouted B.B as she aimed her pistols downrange the opposite way, “We got somethin’ big comin’ our way!”

I heard it well before I saw it. The ground shook with every step the thing took as it emerged from the shadows and into the light cast by my lamp and Arcaidia’s horn, which now glowed brighter than I’d ever seen it as the unicorn filly’s eyes went to full bore ‘kitten drowning’ coldness. The creature was easily ten times the size and mass of a pony. A hulking turtle-like body, black and granite gray, housed four powerfully muscled limbs that ended in talons as large as my foreleg. Its head was a bestial pointed muzzle of glowing orange eyes and a maw lined with teeth that shone with an almost metallic sheen. In fact they might well have been metal. The thing’s main body was covered in a shell of hardened metallic bronze coated in spikes, four of which were massive and also glowed with orange light. Behind the thing I could see a barbed tail swishing about aggressively.

The monster lumbered towards us as if it knew we weren’t even a threat. Then it paused and sniffed the air. I felt a strange pulse of pressure in my head and Gramzanber became cold in my mouth. The monstrosity before us fixated its eyes right on me in that moment.

“Oh shit…” I breathed just as the thing let out a roar that was somehow both bellowing and shrill at the same time, and then began to charge right at me.

“Everypony get away, it’s after me!” I shouted, turning to run, with the thought that I’d try to get to the stairs. Perhaps the uneven terrain would trip the thing up if it tried to come up after me.

B.B climbed straight up and didn’t even hesitate to start opening up with a rapid barrage of shots that I could see striking the creature’s head and body with bursts of sparks. If the armor piercing rounds were doing any good it was impossible to tell as the thing barreled forward and I wasn’t exactly taking long to look over my shoulder as I galloped for the stairs. I heard the fast repeating cracks of what I could only assume was Shale opening fire with the SMG. Hopefully she’d gotten out of the beast’s path before she started shooting. I heard nothing from Arcaidia at first, which worried me, but I couldn’t take the time to slow down and look back.

I kept the pace on and my legs burned, the wounded one beginning to scream in raw pain at me as the Med-X finally began to burn away from my system. I was almost to the stairs but I heard the monsters thunderous steps right on my flank. A flare of molten pain in my wounded leg caused a spasm through my whole hindquarters that sent my sprawling to the floor, tumbling end over end. I managed to keep Gramzanber clenched tight in my mouth though and though I knew the monster was going to be on me in seconds I still tried to bring the spear up to brace it; hoping if nothing else to get in one solid lancing strike on it before it annihilated me.

I saw it was indeed bounding in on me with massive strides. Yet there was also a chill in the air and I saw the faint flickers of frost drift through the light of the lamp. I heard a crackling sound along the ground and glanced down to see the metal floor icing over before me.

“Longwalk, colval!” Arcaidia’s voice shouted somewhere to my right.

I don’t think I even thought about it before throwing myself to the side as the creature landed on the ice patch and promptly tripped, its massive form doing an almost exact parody of my own tumbling fall just moments earlier. I skidded just barely out of the way of its body as it barreled past me. Grunting past the horrible pain in my leg I got up looked to where Arcaidia’s voice had come from. The unicorn had circled around towards the wall, and now she advanced on the fallen beast, her horn an azure beacon in the dark.

“It’s getting’ back up! Hit it hard,” B.B shouted from above, the pegasus having flown in a high arc. Shale appeared out of the gloom soon after, SMG already aiming for the monster as it tried to right itself.

As my two gun armed companions opened up on the beast’s exposed underbelly and Arcaidia sent a cone of icicle shards towards its head I was left to try to get at it past its flailing limbs. The monster roared as it began to get back to its right side up but it wasn’t moving too quick about it. I charged in despite the pain in my legs. As I got in close I saw that B.B’s shots were at least getting through the thing’s metallic hide, leaving small holes that oozed brackish white blood. Shale’s 10mm rounds weren’t seeming to do much more than scratch it though.

In close I decided to try for doing some damaging to one of those nasty talon tipped arms. The creature wasn’t looking right at me this time so its flailing was wild, but I could feel the raw power in the swipes as I ducked one and felt the whoosh of air tug at my mane. I stabbed up and in with Gramzanber and felt the spear’s blade bite into hard flesh. The shock went through my whole body from the momentum of the blow but I was glad to see I left a deep gash in the thing’s leg as I pulled back.

The creature finally got all four of its limbs under it and bellowed once more and at this close range the sound nearly deafened me. I don’t think we’d actually manage do a lot of harm to it with our attacks so far but at least Arcaidia had showed me how we might be able to win.

“Arcaidia!” I called and when the unicorn looked me way I pointed with my spear at the ice she’d created on the floor, “Again!”

She nodded and I turned to run and get some distance from the creature as I called to B.B and Shale, “You two, scatter and wait until Arcaidia and I trip it up, then hit it again with all you’ve got! I think we can wear it d-“

I wasn’t able to finish my sentence as the creature took one look at me running away and Arcaidia skulking off to the side, her horn glowing, and instead of coming after me it rounded on her and charged the unicorn. Shit! Why did this thing have to be smart!?

Arcaidia’s eyes went wide but she reacted fast, her horn flashing as a crest of symbols encircled it then imploded in as her spell took effect. Instead of a cone of icicles this time a wall of ice formed up from the ground in front of her, easily several hooflengths thick and twice as tall as she was. The creature didn’t stop though and rammed its head clean through the wall and into Arcaidia. The wall had seemed to slow it just enough that she didn’t go flying far, and didn’t rag-doll all over the chamber’s floor. She even rather fast for the hit she just took staggered to her feet, though I could see from the look on her face she was in a state of shock.

Had she even gotten injured by anything serious up to this pint, beyond a few scratches? The unicorn filly, though, despite her small size, seemed like she hadn’t broken anything from the blow.

The monster though was more than willing to take advantage of her stunned state and raised a huge clawed hand to swipe at her. Only B.B’s timely dive, revolvers blazing so fast it sounded almost like all of her shots were made as one, distracted the beast from landing the blow and instead swipe at the pegasus mare. B.B swerved in the air, avoiding the blow, but her injured wing twitched and I heard her yell in pain as she plummeted from the air and skidded along the ground. I shouted her name as I ran forward.

The beast was bearing down on her, its maw opening, but it snapped its head up at me as I shouted a tribal warcry, thrusting Gramzanber right at its snout. The thing caught my spear right in its teeth and for a second I could almost imagine a satisfied and smug look in its eyes as it shook its head about fiercely, shaking me with it. I kept my teeth firmly around Gramzanber’s haft though, despite the thing’s wild shaking, and finally it let go of Gramzanber and sent me flying.

This is gonna hurt, I thought as I watched the metal floor rush up to meet me. I lost the air in my lungs but not my spear as I hit with a hefty smack. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton that was on fire and I saw white spots in my vision. I barely could feel the even ground beneath me as my mind swam and I staggered to my hooves. I heard more of B.B’s revolver’s shooting though, so she had to be okay, and the snapping bursting sound of Arcaidia’s magic going off. They must have been distracting to monster to keep it from finishing me off.

As I stumbled up I felt something warm next to me rummage into my saddlebags. My vision cleared and I saw Shale there, her SMG on the ground as she used her mouth to get out a syringe of Med-X, which she didn’t even slow a beat to jab into me and inject the cool pain relieving drug into my system. She then went right back into the saddlebags and got out the bottle of pills labeled Buck and opened the top, dumping a pill into my hoof.

“Take it, now,” she said, with a lot more command than I’d heard her since I’d met her…what, less than a day ago? I was too dazed from my injuries and light headed from the Med-X to really question her and honestly from what I’d been told, right now, the Buck would help. I popped the pill and took up Gramzanber again.

“You ought to stay back if you’re out of ammo,” I told her as I felt a fire spread through my body that started with my belly and reached my limbs in seconds. Suddenly between the Med-X and Buck I didn’t even feel a twinge of pain, only an echoing hammering sound in my ears that I think was my heartbeat. I fixated my eyes on the monster, which was alternating between trying to lash out at the shakily flying B.B and the constantly galloping Arcaidia as both mares circled it, keeping it off balance.

And keeping it from noticing me charging up on it like a deranged madpony hoped up on adrenaline and drugs.

Wait, that wasn’t really an analogy was it?

I didn’t even try to slow down from a full gallop as I reached the monster’s side and drove Gramzanber straight into one of its hind legs after ducking under its swishing tail. The creature’s roar turned high pitched as white blood blossomed from the deep wound I’d struck it and it kicked out with the leg I’d stabbed. I think it managed to graze me as I side-stepped, but right now I could barely feel anything beyond the fire in my veins. As it rounded to face me the monster roared right in my face and while I’d like to call it bravery, it was really just the drugs that had me roaring back as I reared up and whipped my head to slash at the thing’s face. Gramzanber tore a furrow in its hardened skin and in return it snapped its jaws at me. I’d figured out though that the wide blade of my spear made for a decent shield as well and actually managed to get the broad side of Gramzanber between me and the monster’s mouth, the teeth scraping along the spear’s blade. Though I’d avoided the teeth the raw kinetic force behind the bite still sent me staggering back.

A claw came at my head and I ducked it, only to have another one coming at me at an even lower angle. The thing was focusing all of its attention on me now. I slashed with Gramzanber to meet the lower blow and the blade bit into the thing’s clawed paw, but even so the strength of the thing crashed into me all the same and I went skidding on my back across the floor, a fresh flow of blood pouring from a gash across my chest. I didn’t feel the pain though and it was a surreal moment, seeing the open flesh on me, the blood pouring out, but not feeling anything beyond the pounding of my own heart and a fiery need to just keep stabbing and slashing this thing.

I got up to resume my attack despite my wounds but then B.B was landing in front of me, her injured wing folding up against her side and her face a mask of pain and concentration.

“Don’t get yerself killed yet ya daft buck,” the pegasus yelled at me as she extended her hoofs and fired into the monster’s face, which caused it to shake his head in disorientation. More icicle shards came in from the darkness and slammed into the thing’s head, causing it to roar, this time in clear pain. I couldn’t see Arcaidia clearly but the glow of her horn was there, flickering in the far end of the room. She seemed more than happy to keep some distance between herself and the monster as long as there was something else to keep its attention. Smart pony.

As muddled by exhaustion and drugs as my mind was I grasped that B.B didn’t want me charging straight in again and getting torn up, so instead I nodded to her and said in ragged gasps, “We circle it. Can’t turn fast. Keep it off balance.”

The pegasus mare nodded and we split up, her going right, me going left. The monster snarled at us as we moved to start circling it and to my surprise it suddenly pulled its head and arms inside the turtle-like shell that composed its main body. Me and B.B stopped, giving each other questioning looks. The beast was just sitting there, its limbs and head tucked into those dark holes in its body. Experimentally I tried charging it and stabbing at the shell itself. While Gramzanber had been able to wound the more fleshy bits on its head and legs it could barely scratch this shell.

“The hell’s it doin’?” I heard B.B ask as she floated around it, taking a few pot shots herself before using the moment to reload.

I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I began to slash at its shell furiously, hoping to get in a lucky hit.

“B.B! Longwalk! Get away from it!”

That was Shale, she was standing near where the lift was, having taken out the 9mm pistol from her tail but not bothering to shoot. She was just pointing up at the top of its shell. I looked up and I think B.B must’ve seen it too because I heard her curse, then pardon herself for cursing. The thing’s spines, the four main ones on its back, they were starting to pulse with an ever brighter orange light.

I heard the sound of hoofbeats and saw Arcaidia was also trying to get more distance from the creature, running to catch up to where the rest of us were at. I was suddenly struck with the feeling we really oughtn’t clump together though.

“Scatter,” I shouted out hoarsely. Just as we all began to do so the spines on the monster’s shell crackled and I saw arcs of orange energy leap between the spines, forming a circle between them. Then from that circle a storm of bolts like lances of lightning struck out all over the room, randomly tearing about the air and filling it with the smell of sharp ozone.

I dove for the ground, and as I did so I heard the distinct groan of metal bending and shredding above our heads and the scream of a mare. I looked towards the sound and felt the fire of the Buck begin to die as I saw B.B tumbling out of the air from where she’d tried to spring away from the group, her form smoking.

No.

I didn’t know if she was dead or alive but she didn’t move when she hit the ground. I tried to get up and start moving towards where she’d fallen a few dozen paces from me but the Buck had run its course and abruptly the fiery strength in my limbs had turn to cold pudding, leaving weakness in its wake. I could barely stand, let alone walk. Then I heard that horrible grinding metal sound again and turned me gaze towards the ceiling.

The monster’s energy attack had ripped large rents in the roof of the chamber and I recalled that in several spots of the Ruin the metal walls had given way to the rock and dirt beyond. As the whole room shook I realized part of the ceiling, specifically the part I was under, was about to collapse. I tried to run but my legs weren’t obeying me much anymore. The Med-X was still going strong, I still barely noticed any pain, but I was now weak as a newborn foal and my attempts at walking had turned into more of a crawl. There was a wrenching groan followed by a snap so loud it vibrated in my bones, then I heard more than saw the rocks and dirt tumbling from the ceiling down towards me. I shoved with all my little remaining strength to try and get away but only got a pace or two for my efforts.

Then Shale was there, teeth around my mane, dragging me with strength born from a lifetime of hard labor and rock breaking. There was a crash and I abruptly stopped, the sound of falling debris loud enough to drown out all other sound for a few seconds. I felt dirt caking my body but I was uncrushed and unburied. I looked around to see that Shale had just barley managed to drag me clear of the collapse. We were right next to B.B now, the pegasus’ body charred but I saw she was breathing, if only in shallow gasps, and her eyes were closed.

I tried to stand but found I could barely get my hindquarters under me and looked back. My tail had been trapped under one of the larger rocks that had fallen down from the ceiling. Next to me Shale was breathing hard and looking out towards the center of the chamber. The collapse hadn’t touched the monster, which was now exposing its head and legs once more, uncurling and standing back up with almost casual slowness. I felt like I could almost read its posture; it was certain it had won, that we were broken and all it had to do now was finish us off.

I turned my head, looking for Arcaidia. I saw the unicorn nearby, guzzling down the last of her magic restoring juice as she strode out to face the monster alone from the other side of the collapse.

“Arcaidia! Wait!” I shouted, and she only briefly turned her head to look at me, and shook her head. She knew B.B was down, I was all but spent, and Shale didn’t have any weapons to hurt it with. So she was going to go try and face the thing alone. I couldn’t allow that.

Gramzanber was at my hooves but even as I moved to pick it up with my teeth Shale moved the spear way with her own hoof and then kicked it even further back. I stared up at her, eyes wide.

“Shale, what are you-“

“If you try to fight anymore you’ll die,” Shale said bluntly, her eyes boring into mine, “I’m not going to let you do that.”

She looked at B.B’s fallen form, then to where Arcaidia was even now sending a blast of ice shards into the monster as it almost in boredom backhanded the unicorn and knocked her out of the way as it advanced towards where we were.

“I won’t let you or anypony else die for me,” she said as she ripped my saddlebags off and quickly got into them, pulling out two objects. The bomb collar and its detonator.

“This ought to still be able to go off if the detonator own trigger is tripped,” she said as she nudged the detonator to me, “Just get the timing right. We’ll only have the one chance.”

Her plan dawned on me and I stared at her, “No. Shale, no, let me do it! I’ll do it, please!”

“No time, it’s coming,” she said as the monster, seeming to perceive a threat, growled deeply and began to ready itself to charge. She looked at me, her fear clear in her swimming brown eyes, but at the same moment, she smiled in what I could only describe as…contentment, “Wish me luck.”

With that she reared up and broke out into a full gallop straight for the monster.

The creature seemed to pause then, as if surprised that this small, insignificant looking little pony was daring to charge straight at it, with no apparent weapon, and no obvious hope of victory. It began to meet Shale’s charge with an almost contemptuous snort.

I watched in wide eyed horror, detonator at my hooves, as Shale and the beast got closer and closer, the bomb collar dangling from Shale’s teeth as she ran. The two met, the monster’s mouth opening wide to try and swallow the mare whole. With agility I never would have imagined the slave mare rolled, tossing the bomb collar with incredible precision. The bomb collar went right into the gullet of the beast as its jaws snapped shut on empty air. Shale, beneath the thing, rolled to her feet and ran out from between its hind legs while shouting at the top of her lungs, “NOW!”

I broke from my shock just long enough to stab my hoof down on the detonator trigger.

Despite the fact that the trigger in the collar itself had been frozen, allowing the collar to come free, B.B had been right, there had been a back up trigger for the remote detonator to still work. There was a dull thump sound and the creature’s eyes bugged out. Then those eyes popped like small bugs and the top portion of its head erupted in a gout of white blood and crackling orange energy.

I almost cheered.

Then I saw its whole body spasm wildly in its death throes. I saw one of its hind legs as it kicked out randomly. I saw Shale get caught by the raking kick, her white form tumbling through the air from the brutal blow that sent an arc of crimson soaring from her into the blackness. I saw her land in a heap, red coating her and bits that weren’t blood trailing from her middle.

Silence reigned in the chamber. Then it was broken.

“Shale!”

A tugged and tore like mad at my tail, trying to free it from the rock. B.B, Arcaidia, Shale, all of them were down, all of them were dying. I needed to be free. Like a flash of light the thought of the gecko claw knife my mother had given my struck through my mind and I dove into my saddlebags, tearing out the knife in question and scattering most the rest. I turned about and cut viciously into the hairs of my tail. In seconds I’d cut myself free. I staggered to my hooves and dropped the knife, going for the mid-kit. With that clasped firmly in my mouth I was struck with who to run to first. B.B was at my feet, unconscious, burned. I couldn’t see Arcaidia, wherever the monster’s back swing had sent her. Shale was so far away I couldn’t even tell how bad it was, though I knew it was…bad.

With a torn look at B.B and tears streaming down my face I ran past the pegasus, past the corpse of the monster, and staggered up to the fallen earth pony mare.

I stared. She’d been opened up right in the middle of her barrel, a long, deep trio of slices from the monster’s claws. Blood had already formed a pool around her and I saw the entrails that were snaking out of the wounds. I would have thought her dead if not for the small rise and fall of her chest.

My heart was beating a thousand paces a minute in me, my mind a mess of panic and fear. I dropped the med-kit and desperately began to pull out the contents. Damn it all B.B was the one with medical knowledge! I should have tried to wake her up first! Wait, that might have made it worse…think Longwalk, think! You have to save them. These mares, they’ve all been injured because of you. Because you were weak and couldn’t think of a good plan, and had to go off trying to act like you were a hero in the first place!

“Uggghn…esru dir virul….”

I looked up as Arcaidia walked out of the shadows, shaking her head and wiping some blood off her chin. The unicorn took one look at me, then down at Shale, and I saw a cold resignation in her eyes.

“Shivol.”

“Arcaidia, please tell me you have enough magic left to perform your healing spell,” I said as I tried to get Shale’s guts back into her body and staunch the flow of blood with a roll of bandages, but they just became dark crimson as fast as I could put them to the wounds. I needed a way to close them! To stop all this blood!

Arcaidia frowned, her head turning towards where B.B was still unconscious by the collapsed piles of rock. She then examined Shale, her eyes softening as they looked up to me finally. The blue unicorn let out a small sigh and shook her head, holing up one hoof, and pointing at B.B, then at Shale, and then looked at me expectantly.

“What…? What does that mean!?”

Arcaidia hung her head and pointed to where she’d dropped the now empty vial of liquid that had held her magic restoring potion. She then repeated the raising of one hoof, then gesturing at B.B, then at Shale.

Realization crept up on me and I felt my mouth go dry, “You can only heal one of them. You only have enough magic left for one.”

There was a slow nod from Arcaidia as she looked at me with a sympathetic, subdued look. She wanted me to choose, and the urgency in her eyes told me I didn’t have a lot of time to decide. How the hell was I supposed to make a choice like that!? Neither one of them deserved to die down here in this hole! Either one had saved my life more than once, and both were only down here because of my stupid decision! I could have just walked away from all this. Slept through the night at my inn room and left Saddelspring with Arcaidia and continued our journey without trying to rescue any slaves. Shale would still be a slave but at least she’d be alive, and B.B would still be tending the bar for her father and doing magic shows on the side, neither the worse off for having never met the likes of me. Now both were dying in a dark forsaken hole in the ground and…and…I had to choose which one of them got to live.

It wasn’t a choice. Either way, somepony who didn’t deserve it died. That didn’t work for me. There had to be a way. You’re not the brightest colt in your tribe Longwalk, but you’re not a complete idiot all the time. Think of something! What do you need to keep these two mares alive? Medical knowledge and medical equipment. You have medical equipment, limited as it is. You don’t have medical knowledge…but B.B does! B.B knows medicine. Have Arcaidia heal her, then she can fix Shale!

“B.B!” I said and pointed and Arcaidia didn’t waste a second, galloping over to the pegasus and enshrouding her in a blanket of intense blue light as her horn formed a large crest of symbols around it.

Meanwhile I looked back the medical kit, pulling out more bandages. Even if they soaked through I could still keep pressure on Shale’s wounds and keep her innards where they belonged. I worked quickly, wrapping up her torso with every bandage I could pull out, which wasn’t much, honestly. I had to still wrap one hoof around her barrel just to keep pressure on and one of the smaller cuts covered up. Her body felt so cold, and her heartbeat was so weak and irregular, I kept willing Arcaidia to work faster, to get B.B on her hooves.

As I knelt next to Shale, pressing my body up against her wounds to keep pressure on it I felt her stir and saw her eyes flutter open, and focus on me.

“Longwalk…oh good…you made it. Thought that thing hadn’t died.”

“It did. You got it. You were incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it,” I told her and tried to put on my most reassuring smile.

She smiled, then coughed, wincing, and glanced down at her body.

“Oh. That’s…not good. All of that blood…all of that blood’s mine then?”

“It’ll be alright,” I said, putting a hoof around her and holding her tight, “In just a bit Arcaidia will have B.B up, and she’ll be able to help. She knows medicine after all.”

I didn’t like the way she looked at me with such resignation. It looked far too much like giving up.

“You’re still trying…to save me? It’s fine Longwalk. I don’t want to die but…this is about what I deserve, after everything I’ve done.”

I felt something in me snap and I held her even tighter, bringing my face close to hers as I looked straight into her eyes.

“Listen. I don’t care about whatever it is you’ve done or think you deserve! Right now that doesn’t matter! Right now you’re my friend and I intend for you to stay that way for a long time. You hear me? You can tell me all about whatever past you have or not, or just keep it all to yourself for as long as you know me, but you have to live dammnit!”

“I’ll…try…” she said so quietly I could barely make it out, her eyes seeming to have trouble focusing on me. I could hear her breathing getting shallower and her body getting colder despite me being right there pressed up against her. I turned my head towards Arcaidia.

“Arcaidia, how’s B.B? We’re running out of time!”

The unicorn didn’t answer me but I could see her look back at me with obvious strain and I felt a stab of guilt at pushing her like this. She was doing all she could, I had to understand that. It wasn’t as if she could make her magic heal any faster. Besides that might put B.B in danger too. She was just as bad off as Shale and it wasn’t as if Arcaidia’s magic could wash away any wound instantly, it clearly took more time the worse the wounds trying to be healed were. Even so I saw Arcaidia’s horn get wrapped with an additional over-layer of brightly glowing blue aura, then a third as small beams of light and sparking blue moats flowed from the horn. The crest around it grew as well, gaining another woven layer of symbols.

Then with a sound like breaking glass the crest evaporated and Arcaidia’s horn stopped glowing, the unicorn falling to her haunches with an explosive sigh. Her head hung as she took in gasping breaths. She’d just tapped herself out. I stared at where B.B was still laying, wanting to go over there to see how the pegasus was, if Arcaidia’s spell had healed her enough, but I didn’t dare leave Shale’s side.

I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding when I saw B.B’s form stir, her wings flapping once, then twice as the pegasus mare let out a low moan and raised her head. I saw the dazed confusion in her eyes even at this distance as she looked at the plainly exhausted Arcaidia, then over to where I was with Shale. I imagined the blood covering both of us was the reason B.B’s eyes went wide like saucers.

To the pegasus’ credit she got to her hooves with remarkable speed given she still looked like partially fried chicken. I saw Arcaidia tiredly followed after the pegasus as B.B flew over to us, landing and looking over me and Shale with still wide eyes.

“Please, do something for her,” I begged B.B, pulling myself away just enough to let B.B see the wounds on Shale’s barrel. I moved around to Shale’s other side, not wanting to break contact with her.

B.B looked hesitant, her eyes having a wild, fearful look about them as she looked at all the blood. I saw her visibly take control of herself and breath in deeply through her mouth. She very pointedly avoided breathing through her nose as she examined the wounds more closely. I felt my heart sink as I saw the darkening of B.B’s expression and the sad shake of her head.

“I…Longwalk there’s ain’t nothin’ I can do fer this! I’d need…I need a full medical suite, and she’d need a real doctor. I know a bit a’ first-aid, that’s it. Maybe my pa coulda done somethin’, but he ain’t here.”

A real doctor, and a full set of medical gear; those were what we needed. Neither were things we had or could logically get our hooves on within the next few minutes, which as I felt Shale’s body begin to shudder I suspected minutes was all she had left. I didn’t want to accept it. There wasn’t any way I could. There also wasn’t anything I could do about it. Shale was dying and I was powerless to help her beyond holding her as tightly as I could until the end…

“Hey…B.B…” Shale said, her eyes briefly regaining their focus, “Could you do me…a favor?”

“What, hun?” B.B asked softly as she leaned down, her earlier mistrust of the earth pony mare well forgotten, “What do ya need?”

“Could you…after…explain…the Volunteer Enforcer Corps…to Longwalk? I…want him to know…what kind of pony…I was. Don’t have time to…do it myself…”

I saw the brief shock and then understanding in B.B’s features as she nodded, “So that’s what it was. No wonder. I’ll tell ‘im, don’t you fret none, but he ain’t the kind a’ pony to care ‘bout that kind of thing, hun.”

“I know…he’s…dumb like that. Makes friends with…anypony.”

“Shale-“ I began but she cut me off with a look, one of surprising strength given her near death state.

“No, Longwalk. I…thank you…for caring enough to try. Nopony ever…did. Just…please just stay with me until it’s…over? I don’t want to be alone.”

I nodded and wrapped my hooves around her, saying “Not just me. We’re all here.”

B.B laid down on Shale’s other side and put a hoof around her as well, the pegasus giving me a tear brimmed look as she said to Shale, “Damned straight we’re all here, hun. Ya just relax now an’ rest.”

Arcaidia surprised me as she walked away from us and I almost called out after her but I saw she was grabbing Gramzanber. She trotted back, moving in front of Shale only after laying the spear before us and giving me an odd look before laying down herself in front of the earth pony mare. I hadn’t noticed it before but there was that same comforting feeling of when I held the spear, only now I felt it just from the spear being nearby. There was also a familiar pressure in my head, but I didn’t notice it much as Arcaidia opened her mouth and…began to sing.

It was the same tune she’d been humming when I’d awoken in the cave with her and Trailblaze, what felt like half a lifetime ago now. It had no words to it, more the formless sound of what I imagined many a mother hummed to their child to help them drift off to sleep. Comfort, warmth, and kindness were what these soft sung notes meant, and we all felt them move through us as the mare nestled between us began to breath slower and slower…

…until she stopped breathing.

There is much I’ll remember from that day. Arcaidia as she continued to sing, even after Shale was gone. B.B, trying to hide her crying behind falls of her brown and pink streaked hair. My own tears as they nearly blinded me.

Most of all though I’ll always remember the smile on Shale’s face. Peaceful, and without any regret in it.

Footnote:
Level up!
Perk Added – Ferocious Loyalty: Something about you inspires your companions to incredible feats of loyalty when you find yourself in dire straits. When your health drops below 50% all your companions gain plus 50% damage resistance.

Companion Perk Added – Soothing Song: As long as Arcaidia is in your party all gain the ‘Well-Rested’ condition even if you have not been able to sleep in a bed you own.

Skill Note: Melee has reached 50.

Chapter 6: Odessa

Chapter 6: Odessa

Death.

I’d understood it as a concept. I’d even seen it before. Ponies had died in my tribe either from old age or the rare accident, or even a slip up during a hunt. However in my sixteen years I’d never had much direct connection to those deaths. Of course my tribe was small enough that when anypony died you knew about it. You knew there was a pony who was there yesterday and now wasn’t. I’d been to every funeral pyre of those who had died during my young life, always feeling the air of depression and mourning that surrounded my fellow tribesmates and even feeling it somewhat myself…but the feeling was always muted to a degree by a sense of separation. I simply hadn’t really known the ponies who had died and hence, while knowing it was sad, and even feeling a little sad they were gone, their deaths never fully hit me like they probably should have.

I hadn’t had many friends beyond Trailblaze and her own friend Whetstone. I hadn’t had family besides my mother. I don’t even remember when my grandparents died, though I knew both had passed when I was quite young. So while I had understood what death was the full impact of what it meant didn’t sink into me until I’d been faced with Shale’s cold, unmoving body.

She wasn’t coming back. There was no fixing this. Anything she might have done with her life or may have become was simply gone.

And that hurt. A lot.

That might not have made sense. I’d known her such a short period of time. Less than a day, really, if you were only counting the time spent down her in the Ruin, before which she was just a nameless slave mare who’d I’d intended to save with all the rest. One would think that a hoof-full of hours wasn’t enough time to develop a bond strong enough to care about another pony’s death; but it had. It had been more than enough. It had certainly been enough that she’d been willing to put her life at risk to make sure the rest of us didn’t die. That risk had cost her everything.

So maybe it was understandable that I was in a catatonic state for a time, or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know who judges whether or not a pony has a right or not to check-out for a little while when put through the emotional wringer. All I know is that for some time I wasn’t measuring I didn’t even really notice what was happening around me, I just lay there next to Shale, not willing to move. After all I had promised her I’d stay next to her until the end. I suppose some messed up part of my mind thought that if I did move that’d be admitting it was, in fact, over, and that if I just stayed next to her long enough, somehow, someway, she might stir back to life, taking in that sudden breath I was desperate desiring she would take.

So I’m not sure how much time had gone by before I noticed that B.B and Arcaidia weren’t there. I blinked like a pony waking from a dream, eyes bleary from tears, and my head still fuzzy from a black mire of useless thoughts concerning the countless different ways I could have theoretically prevented Shale’s death. I didn’t take me long to spot Arcaidia, her horn’s glow unmistakable in the darkness. She was over at the top of the raised stairs that led to the orange glowing field of force that had blocked our way out of the room after that ghostly spotted horse had appeared. I couldn’t tell what she was doing over there but I could surmise she was probably trying to recreate her feat with opening the door above.

B.B I didn’t spot until she literally flew down in front of me. The pegasus mare still looked pretty banged up and burned from her own close brush with death after that monster had unleashed that damned energy attack. Her own white coat was scorched in many patches that even Arcaidia’s healing magic hadn’t been able to fully renew. I didn’t notice, however, that her wings looked to be in better condition, the earlier wound from the turrets seemingly having been healed over by Arcaidia’s spell. B.B looked at me with clear trepidation and for a second it looked like she tried to muster a reassuring smile, but the expression died before it could even partially form.

“Ya good ta stand?” she asked cautiously “Was worried ye’d be out fer good. Yer are here, right? Some ponies…I’d seen some ponies that just kinda fade out when…well when dealin’ with this kind a’ thing.”

My beleaguered but gradually more alert brain pony smacked me with the notion that B.B was quite worried about me, and if I was any kind of stallion at all I’d at least try to reassure her instead of letting her stand there hanging. My mouth felt like I’d swallowed a bagful of Wasteland sand but I managed to croak out, “I’m still here. Not sure about the standing part, but I’m here.”

I’ll admit I felt a pang of shame at the way I could see relief flooding her at my words. She must have been really worried that I’d gone totally comatose and wouldn’t be coming back. I should have tried to pull myself together instead of letting my friend worry like this, even if she was justified in her worry. I wasn’t at all sure just how ‘there’ I really was. There was an empty weight in my chest ringed with pain every time I even let myself be partially aware of the body next to me, of the feeling of blood that caked my coat from the dried pool of blood I’d been laying in this whole time. It was only with extreme effort that I managed to give B.B a nod.

“How long?” I asked.

“Ain’t too sure, ‘bout two hours maybe? Arcaidia’s been busy. Took the lift back up top fer some reason not long after...y’know.”

“You let her go back up there by herself?” I asked and B.B gave a small shrug.

“It was that or leave ya here by yourself, an’ ya weren’t in no condition ta be protectin’ yerself. So, yeah, I stayed her ta keep an eye on ya while Arcaidia went off to do…whatever it is she did up there. Don’t rightly know but when she got back she weren’t lookin’ near as tired as she did when she left an’ she’s been workin’ at that barrier since. Anyway I’d been chekin’ ‘round here to see if there was anythin’ useful but ain’t nothin’ ‘round here save a big open alcove where I figure that critter must’ve crawled outta.”

“I see,” I said, trying experimentally to rise, despite a part of me that madly screamed in my brain not to, to just stay next to Shale. But I didn’t have the luxury of letting myself sit in self-pity or denial here. B.B and Arcaidia were still alive. I had to focus on that and the knowledge that, however little I could contribute, they’d need my help to finish what we’d started down here. Besides, I had to finish this, because if I didn’t then who would give Shale a proper funeral? I didn’t know what the norm was for the Wasteland when it came to such things, but I didn’t imagine anypony would object to a pyre. It was what my tribe did and whatever religious beliefs Shale might have held I hoped her soul wouldn’t object to the notion.

Even if I was able to get my spirit willing to move my body was certainly being the neighsayer. Every single muscle ached and burned with pains both dull and sharp, intense and fleeting. My stomach lurched and I felt my gorge rise. B.B must’ve seen the look because she deftly side stepped me as I bent over and dry heaved for a few minutes on the cold metal ground.

“Yeah, shoulda warned ya the backlash o’ drugs leavin’ the system ain’t good, ‘specailly on a first timer,” B.B said as my stomach tried to see how effectively it would twist itself up and out of my throat.

By the time I was done with that lovely bit of bodily reaction I was able to move right along to a splitting headache and shivers, presumably from a combination of dehydration, exhaustion, and blood loss. The gash on my chest was nasty and would have been the worst wound on me if the burned hole in my back leg wasn’t already preventing me from putting any weight on it. B.B looked at it with no small amount of concern burning in her eyes.

“We’re all gonna need mah pa ta look at us when this is done,” she said.

“Healing powder, in my bags,” I managed to say, “No good for big wounds, but smear it on your burns, or on flesh wounds and it should help.”

I’d wished that healing powder was more akin to the healing potions Shale had used on me. If we’d just had one or two of those maybe Shale would…no, no stop thinking about that. You can’t change what happened. Wishing about what you didn’t have is going to put you right back to being a useless lump. Focus on the living for now. Mourn the dead after you’ve made sure no more ponies are going to join them. Ancestors above it was simple enough to think that, but to feel it, and do it; completely different matter. I kept seeing those moments in my mind’s eye, Shale taking the bomb collar, her incredible charge at the monster, and finally that horrible moment in time where a single rake of a claw thrashing in death had savaged the mare who’d just saved our lives. Damnnit Longwalk stop thinking about it!

B.B had gone over to where my saddlebags had still been laying by the collapse of rocks and brought them over to me.

“Don’t know what’s what in there. Ya know what yer tribe’s healin’ whatsit looks like and how to use it.”

“Right, this’ll just take a moment,” I said as I got into the saddlebags and got out the two small pouches in question. Inside was a fine ground powder of a gray-ish color tinged with bits of green. The powder was made from a combination of a particular flower that grew in rare patches around my tribe’s valley combined with an ingredient only the tribe’s shaman knew about. Whatever that other part was, when mixed together with the flower and harvested into a powder the result was something that when spread upon wounds would rapidly accelerate the rate at which that wound would naturally heal, not to mention sooth much of the surface pain. One night of sleep with healing powder applied was like weeks of normal recovery. I wouldn’t put us back in top fighting shape, but if we took time to rest the powder would certainly get us back to normal quicker than anything else we had available.

B.B was patient and quiet as I used the powder from one bag to cover most of her burns and scrapes, the mare not shying away even though I knew my unskilled ability to apply the powder must’ve caused some discomfort on some of those burns. When I was done she switched over, and having apparently watched my own method was able to repeat the process on me, using a lot of the powder form the second bag just to get the gash on my chest properly covered. We’d managed to save about half a bag for Arcaidia’s injuries, which I’d estimated ought to be enough.

Speaking of the unicorn in question both me and B.B looked her way when the orange glow from the field of energy abruptly went out and Arcaidia gave out a small cry of victory. Again, despite what must have been being at near exhaustion of her magical supply, that little filly managed to surprise me with her tenacious ability to keep going. Of course she had had some time to rest and may have found some way to replenish herself when she’d ventured back up into the Ruin’s while I’d been catatonic, but I was still worried about her.

With a deep breath I braced myself to try standing again. The healing powder had very minor pain relieving properties, so many of my wounds hurt just a fraction less as I tried to get myself vertical, but my leg was still next to useless and I had to have B.B help balance me for a second as I basically had to use just three legs to get up. Once standing I could more or less hobble like I had before, but I wasn’t going to be doing any galloping any time soon.

I slowly bent to retrieve Gramzanber from where it lay at the foot of Shale’s body, trying my hardest not to look at the mare’s form. I wouldn’t shy away when it came time to take her from this place and see to sending her off properly, but for now I just needed to get myself mentally separated from thoughts of her.

Which wasn’t made simple by the fact that as soon as I picked up Gramzanber I got the abrupt sense, like a gut instinct, that the mare in question was beside me. The feeling was difficult to describe as anything more than just a faint sense, not unlike the pressure I at times felt in my head when near the spear, of Shale’s presence, like she was standing right next to me. The feeling faded almost in the same moment it hit, but it was so real that for that moment I almost called out her name. But the feeling was gone before it even fully registered to me and for all I knew just a fragment of my pained mind trying to cope with events. I shook the feeling off and with some grunting effort from the pain of twisting my neck so I strapped Gramzanber in its proper place. My barding was all but shredded to uselessness, but by some trick of chance the spear’s custom sheath was still intact. Getting my saddlebags strapped back on I nodded to B.B and we both turned to head for the stairs.

As me and B.B were trotting up to meet Arcaidia, who was slowly descending to stairs to meet us half way, when that damned ghost appeared again. It looked much as before, a translucent orange image of a bizarre pony with a white spotted hide, black whip-like tail, and tufts of fur on its hooves and ears. It didn’t seem to look at us so much as through us as it spoke.

”The final seal has been breached and our sentinels are fallen or under your sway. All this child of Ordoryuk can do is give one final warning to those who intrude upon this sacred tomb. Leave the Roaring Metal to its slumber. It is naught but the flame of destruction, meant only to cleanse and sweep away all in its path in crimson fire. The Elw have left it to sleep, as we ourselves sleep. Should you not be of the cold, iron hearted Veruni, or the dark corrupting Hyadean, then please, turn back. If you are Veruni or Hyadean, our hated foes…then I shall only say this; may your unending greed and lust for violence finally consume you, as it almost consumed Filgaia.

The image flickered, as if as a flame under a harsh wind, and began to repeat itself. I bared my teeth at it, anger flaring in the place in me that was still hurting, the anger a welcome balm against the pain.

“Will you shut up already!? I don’t give a damn about your ‘Roaring Metal’ or ‘Filgaia’ or whatever the hell else!”

But the ghost just kept repeating itself, not even seeming to notice us there as it flickered on and off. Then the ghost seemed to physically distort and twist, its form going even hazier as its orange form quickly turned blue, then burst in scattering static. I looked down to see Arcaidia looked up where the ghost had been with a very self-satisfied and smug smirk on her face that oddly reminded me of the Trixie poster in B.B’s saloon.

“Sirvia, ren Elw,” Arcaidia said as she spat, or more made a spitting motion with no actual spit involved, and scuffed her hoof as if pretending to remove something unpleasant from it. I think I’d gathered by this point that she didn’t like these spotted ponies, and despite my generally slow mind I’d gathered they must have been called Elw. Arcaidia looked between me and B.B and her look of distain melted away and became that of a hesitant smile.

“Estu vi goval, Longwalk?” she asked.

“Not really, but I’m standing, which is going to have to be enough for now,” I told her while forcing a smile onto my face. Arcaidia didn’t look like she completely believed me and I could hardly blame her for that but she did nod an acceptance at what I said and gestured her head towards the open archway at the top of the stairs.

“In a sec,” I told her and pulled out the remaining healing powder, “First we’re gonna see to you.”

The unicorn peered at the pouch I held and looked up at me with a dubious expression after she noticed me and B.B had our wounds covered in the stuff.

“Trust me,” I said and after a moment she gave a reluctant sigh, floating off her dress so I’d have an easier time getting at the wounds. The garment wasn’t nearly as shredded as my barding but it’d certainly taken a beating down here. Arcaidia tucked it away in her own saddlebags and gave me an expectant look. I realized I’d been hesitating now that I was getting a clearer look at her, taken a little aback. She was more wounded than I’d thought, beneath the dress; with a large part of her left side bruised to near purple.

“Damn, why didn’t you use any healing magic on yourself, if you were this bad off?” I said as I began applying the healing powder to the cuts she had. The powder wouldn’t do anything for the massive bruise. Arcaidia remained silent while I worked, B.B keeping watch just in case anything decided to come out of the open archway at the top of the stairs. It didn’t take me long and Arcaidia gave me a grateful nod as I tucked away the now empty pouch.

I cast a reluctant glance back to where Shale’s body was and I felt B.B’s hoof on my shoulder.

“We’ll be right back fer her, hun.”

“I know, I know,” I shook myself, taking a steadying breath as I faced the stairs, “Let’s get this over with. I’ll take lead, Arcaidia next, and you watch our back.”

“Can do partner,” B.B said, checking to make sure her revolvers were fully loaded.

We were all still hurting, both inside and out, but we were as ready as we were going to get to finish this baring having a month or two of rest or a giant pile of healing potions. I’d considered the possibility of taking at least another hour or two to rest, but honestly we needed way more than that for it to make any real difference in our condition. On top of that if we took too long down here then Crossfire would either assume we were dead or get suspicious we were up to something. Either way the Drifter wouldn’t stay up top forever, she’d either resume excavation efforts with the slaves or come down with her two cronies to find out what happened to us. We didn’t have to the time to rest and while Arcaidia had gotten some of her magic back the fact that she wasn’t already dishing out the healing spells suggested it hadn’t recovered that much.

The steps weren’t easy to get up, my injured leg now little more than a mass of pulsing pain, but I managed to hobble up them, my two companions behind me.

The archway at the top of the stairs was large enough that a pony three times my height could have easily gotten through it and it was wide enough that if we’d wanted all three of us could have walked in at once. The edges were carved with the same geometric patterns that seemed to be the Ruin’s norm, only a few faint etchings till glowing blue from whatever magic Arcaidia used to disable the barrier that had been there. One day I’d make it a point to ask her just why she was able to do the things she did, but right now questioning my magical unicorn ally was pretty far back on my to-do list.

The room beyond was easily the largest of any in the Ruin. If the previous room we’d fought the huge monster in had felt big, but this place was cavernous. It was also quite empty feeling. We walked out into the wide expanse with little to no guide in the dark, our hoof steps echoing around us. After a minute though something resolved in the shadows ahead, coming into clear view from the pool of light cast by Arcaidia’s horn and my lamp (miraculous how that thing had survived all of this so far).

Four pillars, much the same size as was in the room on the floor above, spaced equally apart in a square formation. They surrounded a large slightly raised platform of metal that had perched on it what appeared like a massive metal box standing on its end. The box was easily twenty meters tall, and it was clearly slit down the middle as if it was meant to open up. A single giant green gem was situated in the middle of that slit, like a lock. At the foot of this box was another of those blocky devices that was this Ruin’s apparent equivalent of a terminal. As we approached this I felt a change in the air. The air down here had held a dry cold as its norm, but close to this massive metal box I felt…heat. A palpable increase in temperature was evident, even to my senses dulled by pain and fatigue.

“Well this ain’t quite what I figured we’d be findin’,” muttered B.B as she floated up a bit to get a closer look at the box, “What do ya’ suppose this things supposed ta be? Looks like a big freight car stood on end.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said, looking around suspiciously, “Either way I figured there would be…I don’t know, some kind of final trap or something here.”

“That floatin’ image said we’d pretty much gotten through all o’ his defenses. Just warned us away like a cheap horror story ghost.”

“Suppose so…” I looked at the giant metal box and felt a cold, flaring anger in me.

This is what Shale died for? Some box buried in the dirt? This is what the Labor Guild was after down here? Okay, so from what I’d heard of them talking it was likely neither Crossfire or Dr. Lemon Slice had any clue what was down in this Ruin, they just were on hire by the Labor Guild to excavate this place because apparently some ponies thought these Ruins contained valuable stuff. So far all we’d found as death. I suppose somepony might find those Tunneler’s useful, or maybe the turrets were salvageable as weapons. Dr. Lemon Slice seemed to have a thing for weird weapons anyway. But it was clear that whatever was inside this box was the grand prize. From what the ghost thing…the Elw, had said, I gathered that it was probably a weapon of some sort. I grit my teeth.

I was angry that so much had needed to be sacrificed for this thing, that I was even now playing a role in seeing that the ponies who’d so callously sacrificed lives for it would get their prize. If I had the strength I’d smash this metal box to pieces, just to deny them what they forced Shale to die for. I was as responsible for Shale’s death as anypony, though, so a fair portion of my anger was self directed. Not very constructive of me, I know, but emotions don’t work on logic. I was mad and didn’t have anything to direct that anger at other than myself, the Labor Guild, Crossfire, and this damned metal box.

“Well, we might as well see what’s inside,” I said, approaching the big terminal. Arcaidia walked beside me and her earlier energy had seemed to invert as she looked at the big metal box, her silver eyes narrowing and her entire expression becoming tense.

“Eh, yer sure that’s a good idea Longwalk?” B.B said as she floated in front of me, hovering backwards as I kept walking forward, “I mean, ya heard that image. Flames, death, cleansing…don’t ‘xactly sound like somethin’ we wanna be takin’ a closer peek at.”

I looked at her and there must have been something in my eyes because the pegasus floated up a bit, out of reach. I tried to soften my expression. She was a friend. My anger wasn’t directed at her but she didn’t know that.

“I just want to see what the Labor Guild thought was worth the lives that have been lost. I want to see if there’s some way we can find to make sure they don’t get their hooves on it. Maybe we can break whatever’s inside so it isn’t useable, or at least harder to make use of. The Labor Guild shouldn’t benefit from the deaths its caused for this place.”

“Yeah, but if we do that won’t them Drifters get mighty cross wit us?” B.B asked, then seemed to hear her own words and frowned, “Not that I care what that snake Crossfire wants, but yer deal wit her was ta’ clear the Ruin.”

“Which we’ve done. No part of our bargain guaranteed the condition of anything in the Ruin once we were done. Though I get what you mean. She’ll likely retaliate if we screw over her contract with the Labor Guild. But I’m thinking if we open the box, mess up whatever’s inside, then close it again, by the time the Labor Guild finds out we’ll be long gone. “

“An’ what ‘bout them other slaves?” B.B asked, floating back down to eye level with me when it seemed I’d calmed down a bit.

“Still working on that,” I said, furrowing my brow in thought, putting my brain pony to work as hard as I could, “We at least know Arcaidia’s ice can get those collars off. We’ll need to think of a way to keep the guards distracted long enough so she can get to them and free them, then get everypony out of that camp. If Crossfire and her team are busy down here we might have a chance at pulling that off.”

“Not sure what the chances are of us bein’ able ta’ keep her down here…” B.B said, then her eyes lit up and she pounded a hoof to the other, “Got it. When Crossfire comes down here to check up on this room we’re basically free ta’ leave, right? On our way up Arcaidia trips the security back on, like you talked ‘bout before. That’ll keep ‘em busy fer a little while, then we can hit the camp. Them Labor Guild guards ain’t near as tough as a Drifter team, I bet we can catch ‘em by surprise, then free the slaves!”

I nodded, glad to at least have something resembling a plan of action, though there was still a kink in it (probably more than one but my brain pony could only do so much) .

“There’s still the problem of the Labor Guild retaliating against Saddlespring. Didn’t you say they’d cut off trade if the townsfolk caused them problems?”

“Yeah, well, good thing it ain’t no townsfolk doin’ the meddlin’,” B.B said, forelegs cross over her chest, “Don’t know if ya figured this one out yet Longwalk, but once we’re done here I ain’t stayin’ in Saddlespring.”

I knew my eyes had gone wide and my mouth had gone a little slack but I recovered quickly enough to say, “But why? This is your home, right?”

“It is at that, but I’ve already been caught helpin’ ya out an’ Crossfire knows where I live now. One way or ‘nother it ain’t safe fer me or my pah if I stay in town after we do this. I knew this back ‘fore we came down inta this Ruin,” the pegasus mare let out a soft sigh, then immediately gave me a hard look, “That’s just the way it’s gonna be. If we got time I’ll say a proper goodbye to mah pa an’ let ‘im know who all I’m travelin’ wit. Maybe one day, when all this here simmers down, I’ll be able to come back. ‘Sides, been feelin’ an itch ta do some travelin’. Me an mah pa used to travel quite a’ bit ‘fore he put down roots in Saddlespring, I kinda miss walkin’ the open wastes…or flyin’ as the case may be.”

“I…well, I’ll be glad to have you along,” I said, honestly so. I’d come to enjoy B.B’s company and it’d certainly be good to have her skills on my side, “Just so you know though me and Arcaidia don’t have a short journey ahead of us, assuming we live through today. She’s looking for family, a pony named Persephone, whose somewhere in NCR territory.”

“I figured ya’ll be headin’ that way, given’ all them questions ya asked me back at the saloon. Sounds fine ta’ me. Don’t know how we’re getting’ inta NCR, but if we do it’d sure be somethin’ ta see. I hear they got Manehatten almost back ta bein’ like a normal city an’ it’d be nice ta see a land that ain’t covered in dirt an’ mud but got some green ta’ it.”

Well, that settled that then. With a plan of action in place and the prospects for our future trek towards NCR looking a little brighter if not clearer we turned our attention to the immediate matter at hoof; opening up this box. Or maybe I should start thinking of it as a tomb. That’s what the Elw had called it. I looked to Arcaidia and nodded my head at the terminal. Her own expression was still nervous, even a little fearful now. She certainly bounced between moods a lot, but I think whatever was spooking her now had to do with the symbols she was seeing on the terminal because she was examining them closely now.

“Estu…mas bivai,” she said as she began to tap symbols on the terminal, her horn glowing as she did so. The symbols on this terminal I noticed were far less complex than the one we’d seen on the previous floor. I got the impression this terminal didn’t really serve many purposes beyond probably just opening this tomb. I took a deep breath as Arcaidia’s hoof tapings began to have an effect and I saw patterns of orange light play across the metal surface of the tomb.

All we had to do was smash up whatever was in there then close the tomb. Easy peasy one two threesey.

Arcaidia’s sudden gasp of fear made me look at her. She was tapping the symbols on the terminal much more rapidly now and with evident and growing panic. The orange light tracing along the tomb grew in intensity and frequency and I watched as more and more of those lights began to converge on the green crystal in the center.

“Mas! Esru vi harbol di shivol! Vi renparsa dol mana vi estriba! Maaass!”

Arcaidia slammed both her forehooves on the terminal and I could see her teeth grinding in frustration. She then promptly turned around and faced me and B.B and, with a very calm tone said one word.

“Rir.”

I didn’t know the word, but she demonstrated its meaning as she galloped past me and B.B, making a bee-line straight for the archway out of the chamber. Me and B.B didn’t immediately follow suit, which was why we were still present to see the green gem in the tomb shatter and with a hissing sound the metal tomb of Roaring Metal began to unfold, opening like an ugly blooming flower.

I hadn’t known what to expect inside it. I’d assumed something like a really big version of the turrets, or maybe a collection of starblasters, or something essentially inert and easily smashable if we’d had our time to take with doing so.

What I hadn’t expected was the massive metal giant that was revealed inside the tomb.

It was crimson red for the most part, made of a material that shone in the dusty light of my lamp with incredible luster, though much of its form was trimmed in pearly white. It was of a bizarre bipedal shape, with two massively thick legs holding up a stocky torso from which two gargantuan arms sprouted form shoulders containing huge blocky devices the purpose of which was unclear. The arms ended in meaty red metal hands and the fore arms were ringed with ridged drill-like bracers. Its head was flat, no pony muzzle to be seen, and squared. It had the vague sense of a face but mostly its eyes were what I saw, two black pits that for a moment looked dead and lifeless…until two orange fiery lights lit up in them with a sound like a reverberating gong.

Distantly me and B.B heard Arcaidia yell from the archway, “RIR!” and that snapped us out of our fugue state just as the monolithic metal thing’s head tilted down towards us and I felt a very real presence of malice as it recognized targets.

“Run!” I shouted, though it was hardly needed at this point. B.B flew down and before I even got a few steps she wrapped her hooves around my torso and with her wings beating like a furious frenzy she sped towards Arcaidia, carrying my hobbled flank. Behind us I could hear the sound of metal grinding on metal and the thunderous shake of the ground as the thing behind us took its first step and the temperature in the room suddenly began to increase by degrees.

I’m an idiot, I thought as B.B struggled to carry me, knowing that in my injured state my own legs would be slower still, I’m a complete ancestor condemned idiot!

I could have made the excuse that I couldn’t have actually known what was inside. I could have said that the desire to open the tomb and smash whatever was inside so the Labor Guild couldn’t benefit from Shale’s death was a pure and sensible intention. But fact was I’d wanted to do it out of pure anger and spite and had moronically ignored the freakin’ obvious warning of that ghostly image that opening the tomb was a bad move. That weird pony had told us to turn back, to leave this thing sleeping in its tomb, and like fools we ignored it. I even ignored Arcaidia’s obvious hesitance and had let her fiddle with the terminal anyway. As soon as I’d seen the room was clear of any further traps of monsters I should have called Crossfire on the radio and let the Drifter and her team deal with this…but no, I’d had to take things that one extra step further. I’d just had to see what was in that box to satisfy a primal need to break something because that’s what smart ponies do when they’re pissed about not being able to protect somepony, right? Yeah, I wasn’t buying into my excuses either.

At least the thing didn’t seem to be that fast, me and B.B were almost to the archway and Arcaidia was…looking behind us and wow she looked really scared I wonder-

-hey, why is it suddenly so hot? And bright?

I looked behind me and I think I might have screamed (or managed a masculine bellow? Nah) as I noticed the box boxy devices on the metal giant’s shoulders had opened up to reveal inside them extending blunt nozzles that now glowed with very intense blood red light. The giant leaned towards us and multiple streams of crimson fire poured out of the nozzles like jets of liquid. I felt the fur on my coat singeing off from the raw heat well before the flames even got remotely near us.

“Fly faster! Fly faster! Fly faster!” I shouted as my legs kicked uselessly at the ground.

The flames were nearly to us and we were just shooting through the archway. Arcaidia was already galloping down the stairs taking them three at a time. I felt the world lurch as B.B dived, givng out a guttural cry as she flapped her wings to a blurring hum. There was a burst of red and heat above us and I felt an incredible pressure wash over me for a second, then me and B.B were flying just a few feet above the floor, the stairs stretching out behind us, and Arcaidia was already halfway to the platform waiting for us.

“B.B! You okay!?” I looked up and the pegasus mare had a look of complete fear-driven concentration plastered on her face as she flapped her wings. The tip of her mane was smoking a little but we’d managed to evade the flames, if only just. I saw the archway behind us, its edges rimmed red and the metal of them running like water from the heat.

If we’d been even a second too late in getting through…

At least the giant didn’t seem to be pursuing us. As we reached the spot where the platform was and B.B set me down, the mare panting, and Arcaidia reached us, looking much the worse for wear, I noticed that while I could hear the giant’s echoing steps and feel their vibration in the very ground, they weren’t getting louder.

“What’s it doing? Why isn’t it chasing us?”

“Who…cares…?” B.B said between each rasping lungful of air, “Let it…stay…where it…is.”

It was possible the archway was too small for it to get through, right? That was probably it. Hm, what was that weird noise? Sounded like what a bunch of geckos hissing all at once would if you also gave them serious throat problems. Uh-oh, those steps weren’t going away anymore, they were getting louder, and closer, fast.

“B.B, Arcaidia, on the platform, I’ll get Shale!”

Right on the tail of my words there was a titanic crashing sound and the entire room shook as metal bent and was rent asunder and the entire archway was ripped open from the top as the red metal giant literally shoved its way through. The big drill-like bracers on its forearms were now spinning so rapidly they made a hissing noise through the air, and it seemed to give its fists horrendous strength as it ripped the wall open large enough for it to step through into the chamber with us. I didn’t let myself gape at the spectacle though and focused on the pale form laying a few meters from me.

I heard B.B and Arcaidia’s voices shouting after me as I ran to Shale. I wasn’t leaving her here. Period. I didn’t even look up at the thunderous steps of the metal giant that was bearing down on me, nor did I even let myself feel the pain coursing through my wounded form as I put Shale’s body on my back. I turned and forced my disabled leg to obey me as I half limped half galloped to my companions on the platform. The second I got to them Arcaidia activated it and the platform began to rise, far too slowly for my taste.

Looking I saw that our titanic pursuer was halfway across the chamber, its glowing orange eyes fixated on us as it took its massive, ponderous steps. I could feel this thing’s need to destroy. It was a physical aura of violence that surpassed even the very real heat it seemed to pour from its metal hide.

Ancestors above what had I set loose? What the hell was this thing!? Who would create something like this, and why?

My thoughts were drowned out by the rapid fire cracks of B.B’s revolvers as the pegasus unloaded all twelve rounds of her dual pistols into the metal behemoth as it seemed to pause slightly when the corpse of the creature we’d killed in here brushed its feet. The metal giant only glanced down briefly at the body of the monster, ignoring completely the sparking pings of B.B’s armor piercing rounds that utterly failed to live up to their purpose against whatever otherworldly material the giant was made out of.

Still, that brief and odd pause of the metal giant bought the platform the needed time to get higher than its head and by the time it resumed walking towards us we were already getting up beyond the reach of its arms. Unfortunately we were not beyond the reach of its fire’s as I saw those shoulder devices open up again to reveal the nozzles inside and the building crimson glow of flames. There was no way we’d reach the opening of the shaft in the ceiling in time!

Arcaidia, sensing the impending danger, rushed to the lip of the platform and looked down. I saw the fear etched on her face but also a steel hard resolution beneath it. A massive crest of symbols formed around her horn as she began to let loose a stream of frosty blue magic at the base of the platform, forming a growing wall of ice around us. Even as she did so I saw the aura of her magic flickering and guttering out like a small torch under a harsh breeze, sweat matting her coat and her face twisting in obvious pain as she continued to build the shield of ice around the base of the platform. The crimson giant let loose with twin streams of its harsh red fire, a tidal wave of destructive heat that roared up to consume us. The flames met with Arcaidia’s ice with a titanic hiss of steam and I watched with horror as the ice began to evaporate almost without effort. Arcaidia closed her eyes tightly in concentration and as I watched her horn sparked and sputtered with the last flickers of what little magic she’d been able to recover, all if it poured into the melting ice. With a final guttering spark her horn went dark and the unicorn collapsed in a heap. I could only throw myself on Arcaidia and hope that if her ice wasn’t enough to shield us I could at least keep her from burning with my own body.

The world around us turned red and the heat I could feel was an oppressive wave that made my skin feel like it was about to blister right off my bones. I could hear Arcaidia’s ice cracking and melting away in gouts of steam that might have been just as harmful as the flames if we hadn’t hit the shaft in just that same moment. The ice had kept the fire from rushing over the platform and incinerating us, buying that split second extra we’d needed to reach the safety of the dark shaft leading up. The heat was still palpable though as we ascended through the dark and I heard B.B breathing heavily next to me.

“Celistia’s flamin’ teats what in the bloodly bloomin’ hells was that!?”

“A mistake…” I said with quiet anger at myself, slowly getting off Arcaidia, who I could see was breathing normally but was knocked out cold by her overuse of her magic, “My mistake.”

“Whattya talkin’ ‘bout, Longwalk? We made it! Far as I’m concerned that there thing is the Labor Guild’s problem now. Just try and see that Crossfire deal wit that monster, ha! They’ll just have to seal up this Ruin again an’ leave our town fer good, knowin’ there ain’t nothin’ down here but death waitn’ fer ‘em.”

I shook my head, “No…B.B…it’s not done. That giant, it’s going to keep coming. I know it. We have to get the town evacuated before it’s too late!”

“Evacuate Saddlespring? That’s crazy talk. Them folk won’t tear up roots an’ skedaddle just ‘cause we tell ‘em too, an’ ‘sides that thing’s trapped down there. Sure it’s big an’ nasty but it ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“The pillars, B.B, remember those four pillars down there?”

“Uh…yeah…?”

“There are the same four pillars in the room on the floor we’re going to. I remember the map now. Those pillars are all connected top to bottom, and they keep going up. They’re like this platform. Those pillars are a lift. A big lift, for that thing to reach the surface.”

B.B blinked at me. Even in the dark I could see the spark of realization strike her as she reached the same conclusion I did. That giant metal monster was so fixated on us it wasn’t likely to just stop chasing us. It’d torn through a wall to come after us. If it had a lift that could take it to the surface there was a very real chance it’d be using it, and once it was on the surface there was nothing standing between it and Saddlespring except a handful of Labor Guild ponies who had no idea what was about to ascend from the Ruin they were excavating.

“Oh no…” B.B breathed and I matched her words with a grim nod of my own.

We’d unleashed fiery destruction, just as the image of the Elw had tried to warn us, and that fire was poised to raze Saddlespring to the ground if we didn’t find a way to stop it.

Getting out of the Ruin was the easy part. Once we reached the room where Arcaidia had shown us the map we loaded the unconscious unicorn onto B.B, since I was still carrying Shale’s body. Weighed down and wounded we were hardly fast, but fear for Saddlespring and a fair bit of adrenaline were doing there part to give our hooves some speed (though ‘speed’ was a purely relative concept at this point).

The ice Arcaidia had placed up around the door out of the room before had been removed, presumably by the unicorn herself when she’d back up here after Shale’s death, so we had no trouble getting out and into the rest of the Ruin. Fear of traps of more Tunneler’s was mitigated by the knowledge that Arcaidia had theoretically disabled the former and pacified the later when she’d cracked the Ruin’s security, but me and B.B were alert just the same as we limbed at speed through the turns of the dark corridors before us. Every step was agony to my body and every second my dread for the fate of the town above worsened, making the journey back to the Ruin’s entrance a torturously slow nightmare.

I nearly shuddered with relief when we finally reached the archway that led to the large dug out hole in the ground with its scaffolding leading up to where Crossfire had said she’d be waiting for my call on the radio. As we limped up the scaffold I actually got out said radio and fumbled with the buttons, simply pressing the one that said ‘call’ an spoke into what I figured was the right spot.

“Crossfire, you there? Hello?”

Only a faint buzz of static greeted me and I wasn’t sure I was using the thing right, so I tried again, but with the same results.

“She ain’t answerin’?” B.B asked as we climbed, nearing the top of the scaffolds.

“No,” I said, and put on a final burst of speed, figuring if the radio wasn’t working it didn’t matter because we were nearly there anyway. However once we reached the top of the scaffolds and came up out into the warehouse we found it was completely empty.

Some faint light was coming in through the warehouse windows indicating the coming dawn. There was no sign of Crossfire, Shard, or Brickhouse. The warehouse was deathly quiet. I twitched my ears and tried to listen for anything out of the ordinary, knowing we were running against the clock but not wanting to rush into some kind of ambush. Crossfire might have decided to go back on her deal with me and try to kill us or capture us, after all. My ears detected a faint, odd sound. A kind of quickly repeating thumping sound that reminded me of the way B.B’s wings buzzed when flapping fast, but this wound was much lower in tone.

“C’mon, we gotta hurry,” B.B said, “If we can talk sense inta Crossfire maybe them Drifter’s can work together with the town’s milita ta stop that thing!”

“Something’s not right, she ought to be here waiting for us,” I said as we hurried as fast as we could manage to the hole in the warehouse wall that would lead into the Labor Guild camp. My instincts were telling me we should be cautious but the need for haste was a stronger motivator.

As we walked out into the Labor Guild’s camp I had only a few seconds to notice everything that was wrong. The bodies of the guards strewn about, the torn apart tents, the empty slave pen, the sound of distant gunfire mixed with that odd humming sound, all of it registered quickly, but not fast enough for me to do more than start to warn B.B before our eyes were blinded by a number of ludicrously bright flood lights that snapped on in front of us.

“Do not move or my troops will open fire upon you,” said a smooth and commanding male voice, “You are to drop your weapons immediately and surrender yourselves. Failure to do so will result in your unfortunate execution.”

I wasn’t able to see much through the light but I did manage to catch the shadow of a pony moving in front of the light while being flanked by half a dozen other ponies and I heard the tell-tale rattle of guns loading and being aimed. I flicked a glance at B.B. The pegasus mare had her teeth clenched as she glared at the ponies in front of the lights. I wasn’t even sure she could drop her weapons, as they were strapped to her hooves. As for myself I didn’t like it but I didn’t see much choice, I planted Gramzanber in the ground in front of me. I hoped I could talk to these ponies, whoever they were, and convince them of the gravity of the situation; that this town didn’t have a lot of time and whatever they were doing here we weren’t their enemies. I hoped we weren’t.

The pony in the lead took a few steps forward and I was able to make out details about him as the light silhouetted his form.

He was a pegasus with a dark gray coat not unlike an overcast sky, his mane cut short in back but left with long front hanging bangs. A pair of thin silver rimmed glasses sat perched on his muzzle and I watched as one of his wings bent around and pushed them up to rest closer to his eyes as he regarded us. He was wearing a sleek white uniform coat with some kind of rank insignia on the shoulders, two silver swords sitting side by side over a lightning bolt. The same insignia was on the cap he wore, a squat thing with a short black bill on the front, presumably to shade the eyes. I saw a shoulder holster for a long barreled pistol with a hefty clip slung under the main chamber in front of the trigger, rather than inside the mouth grip itself. The pegasus’ amber colored eyes regarded me, B.B, and our two unmoving burdens with a calculating stare.

“Good morning, my little ponies. I am Captain Shattered Sky. I presume the young pegasus mare is the town resident we were told of, while you, young stallion are the tribal? Yes, of course you are. The description we were given was quite specific. I then must presume one of the two bodies you are carrying is what we seek. I care not for the earth pony, but the unicorn is of great importance to me. If you do not resist you will not be harmed. As an officer of Odessa I provide my word on that. However any attempt to flee, fight, or prevent us from taking the unicorn into custody will result in your deaths.”

Oh ancestors above did I have several dozen questions to ask this stallion! First off I wanted to know what happened to Crossfire. Not sure why that seemed so important to me but I was actually concerned over it. I wanted to know who he was and what he and his soldiers were doing here, as my eyes had adjusted enough to the light to see that the ponies behind him were all pegasi, armed with strange boxy looking rifles or even stranger looking pistols covered in green tubes. Many of them wore body armor that covered most of their forms, all bleached white, with black helmets. The term ‘Odessa’ hadn’t escaped my attention. I remembered what my mother had told me; that was the name of my father’s tribe. Even more than wanting to ask about who they were I wanted to know why they were after Arcaidia, because it was plain that’s who they were interested in.

Instead of asking any of those questions though I instead focused on the far more immediate problem.

“Listen, I know this is going to sound a little crazy but you have to believe me,” I said, pouring every ounce of sincerity I could muster into my words, “We woke up something down in the Ruin that’s going to be on its way. Something big, and powerful, and about ten different shades of deadly. We have minutes, at best, before its here, and starts killing this town. Whatever you’re here for can wait. You have to help us get the townsfolk out-“

The pegasus had sighed during my little speech and had in a flash drawn his pistol and fired a shot that brushed my cheek, leaving a small gash of red to trickle down my coat.

“I am not in the habit of repeating myself. If your next action is not to deposit that unicorn on the ground in front of me the next round goes between your eyes,” he said with perfect clarity around the mouth handle of his weapon.

Well, this Shattered Sky was significantly less reasonable than the last pony who pointed a gun at my head had been. Crossfire was downright personable next to this pegasus! The complete lack of warmth or empathy I saw on the amber eyes sitting behind those glasses suggested he was not making a mere jest; if I didn’t immediately comply with his order I was a dead pony. However there was no way I could just give up Arcaidia to these pegasi. Never mind that I had no idea what they wanted with her, it didn’t take even my dubious intellectual abilities to conclude their intentions were far from pleasant. I could still hear the occasional pops of gunfire from further in the town and I had put together that these Odessa ponies hadn’t just attacked the Labor Guild; they were attacking the whole town.

Problem was that I didn’t have a lot of options on what to do. B.B seemed to realize it as well because she, very slowly, knelt down and let Arcaidia slide off her back. I stiffened, not angry at her, knowing she was doing the only thing we really could do at the moment, but still not liking this. Shattered Sky made a gesture and two of the white armored soldiers flew up, presumably to grab her.

I didn’t know whether I was relieved for the opportunity it presented or horrified at what it meant when the entire ground began to shake violently beneath us.

“What in Celestia’s burning heavens is that?” Shattered Sky asked harshly, not so much alarmed as seemingly just irked that something was interrupting him. Boy was he in for a surprise.

Rather than answering him I took the distraction of him and his troops, snatching Gramzanber in my teeth and yelling to B.B, “Grab her and fly!”

B.B didn’t need a second urging and immediately wrapped her hooves around Arcaidia and began flying off to the right, towards the densest pack of tents, me following close behind her as fast as I could manage. Shattered Sky was not as slow or as distracted as the ponies under his command and I heard his pistol fire and saw the round puncture through B.B’s left wing. She screamed past grit teeth but in a remarkable display of willpower kept her wounded wings flapping and before the Odessa Captain could get off another shot there was an explosive crash from the warehouse and I chanced a look over my shoulder.

The roof of the warehouse had collapsed in a rising cloud of dust as four large pillars of bronze extended up into the air, same some ones from inside the Ruin. A large vibration churned through the ground, filling the air with a deep hum of machinery that gradually grew louder. The pegasi were looking to Shatter Sky for orders but some had taken to the air while others had fallen back to what I now could see was some kind of large…metal bug-shaped thing? It was what was producing those lights from big lamps mounted on its side. I watched two of the pegasi that went to the big meal thing go inside glass pods on the front where they hooked themselves to harness inside and began to flap their wings quickly, while a third got into a big opening in the middle of the metal object and got behind what looked like a pony-sized version of the weird tube covered guns. I watched, fascinated, as this metal object began to rise into the air with the wing beats of the pegasi in the pods, getting almost higher than the warehouse by the time the crimson giant arrived.

It rose on the same platform its tomb had been on, the platform having clearly risen along the four pillars all the way to the surface. The bipedal monstrosity of red metal looked around with his blocky head and fierce bright orange eyes, surveying the town around it, then the various tiny ponies moving around on the ground.

“Sir…? Orders?” I head one of the pegasi say, and Shattered Sky had a shrewd look on his face as he adjusted his glasses again.

“Contact the Vesuvius and inform the Colonel that we have discovered a Class S Relic and Target 02. We may require immediate reinforcements and artillery support. Otherwise, all weapons free, engage at will! And get after those ponies, do not let the unicorn escape.”

Well, that was all the more reason for us to move our flanks! The air was filled with sharp cracks and hissing sounds as the pegasi began to fire at the crimson giant. The pegasi weapons let lose with long beams of red light from the boxy shaped guns and bolts of sickly green energy from the ones with the tubes. Neither red beam or green bolt seemed to do more than slightly scorch the shining red hide of the giant as it turned its attention to its attackers and raised its arms. Along the forearms behind the drill-like bracers the metal hide of the thing opened up and multi-barreled weapons rose up, much like the gun I’d seen the guard at the town gate wearing only easily three times the size. With thunderous retorts those guns began to spin and spit out a stream of rounds that burned with dark red tracers, exploding in balls of crimson fire wherever they struck. Pegasi were reduced to fine splats of red mist and massive chunks of buildings were blown apart by the storm of shots from the metal giant and the pegasi reeled under the assault.

Even as me and B.B ran through a torn opening in the camp fence I saw a beam of red light slice past us. One of the pegasi had taken to the air and was chasing us. I think it was only the shock of the giant’s appearance and the devastating fire it was putting out that had the pegasus shaken enough that she missed us. I didn’t see where Shattered Sky had gone off to, but the Odessa metal flying bug-thing (I really needed a better name for it) was circling the giant. From the big pony sized gun mounted in the vehicle’s side I saw the pegasus mounting the weapon brace itself before firing; letting loose a bolt of green that dwarfed the ones made by the smaller guns.

That bolt struck the giant in the side of its head and for a second it seemed to stagger, but it righted itself almost immediately and turned its attention to the flying machine. In response to this the machine quickly veered away and began to climb into the air. I managed to catch the sight of the giant’s shoulder’s opening up once again and those terrible nozzles emerging with their mouths already spewing fire but didn’t have time to see what became of the Odessa flying machine. We still had a pegasus chasing us with a freakin’ light gun!

Running alongside the street with those beams of red raining down around us I saw B.B dodge right into the open doorway of a rundown empty building without a back wall. My pegasus friend had finally lost what little strength she had left to fly and I saw B.B hit the ground, Arcaidia and her both becoming a heap on the floor. Much as I didn’t want to I had to shuck off Shale’s body so I had enough agility to turn around fast, Gramzanber at the ready. I figured the pegasus chasing us would be coming through the doorway after us. The pegaus didn’t disappoint, appearing in the doorway a moment later, weapon aimed right at me.

There was a single split instant of time where I froze up, a realization hitting me. If I didn’t kill this pegasus he or she was going to kill me. Not just me either, but B.B as well, then Arcaidia would have nopony to protect her from whatever these pegasi planned for her. I knew I had to strike, to thrust Gramzanber forward into the pony before me…

…and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill another pony. Monsters. Fine. Weird machine things, I’d fight them all day, when they weren’t fifty foot tall and spewing fire. But the thought of killing a pony caused a sense of pure revulsion in me so strong it simply paralyzed me on the spot.

The pegasus in the white armor obviously did not share my sentiments as she aimed her weapon at my head and I saw her mouth tightened on the trigger.

The quick succession shots from B.B’s revolvers were loud in the closed in space of the building and I saw sparks dance off the Odessa pegasus’ weapon, which she promptly dropped as it began to smoke from the holes that had been punched through it. I was shocked but didn’t waste the distraction and charged forward, twisting my head and smacking the pegasi solider over the head with the flat of Gramzanber’s blade as hard as I could. That didn’t drop her though, either due to the quality of the helmet she wore or just plain being tough she merely staggered a bit under the blow and shoved a forehoof into my chest with remarkable strength and accuracy, causing me to stager back myself. She hadn’t cracked a rib but I’d have another nasty bruise to add to my ever growing collection of injuries. The armored pegasus quickly drew from a bandolier a wicked looking combat knife and tensed to charge me.

“Please…don’t do this,” I said, backing away slightly, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The pegasus solider snarled at me, “Then surrender.”

“We ain’t doin’ nothin’ like that,” B.B said as she slowly got her hooves under her, raising her right hoof and aiming it at the solider, who gave the revolver a hesitant look. With her own gun broken the solider suddenly looked a lot less confident but she remained where she was.

“You can’t get away. Odessa will hunt you down as long as you’re with Target 02. If you give up at least you’ll be allowed to live…I think. Can’t guarantee anything, given you’ve gotten on the Captain’s bad side.”

“Stellar offer hun, but I think we’ll pass. Now how ‘bout ya skedaddle ‘fore I perforate yer face with lead. Ya got a knife, I gotta gun. Clear to anypony how this’ll turn out.”

I looked between B.B and the other pegasus, tense and fearful. I was a little surprised at B.B. I could tell she was serious; she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot this other pony if she didn’t take the hint and leave us alone. She didn’t look happy about it though. I could see etched on her features a look of distaste. Beneath that though was unbending resolve. If she had to, she’d pull the trigger. It made me wonder if she’d had to do this before.

The Odessa pegasus clearly saw what I was seeing as well, but she didn’t back down. She snarled again.

“Orders are orders. Captain doesn’t tolerate disobedience.”

“Don’t-“ I managed to get only the one word out before the pegsus solider charged B.B.

Another shot rang out and one of the soldier’s eyes vanished in a gout of red. Green eyes, I hadn’t even noticed until now that she had very pretty green eyes. One now. Blood sprouted from the ruined hole that was her other eye and from a corresponding hole in the back of her head and the solider dropped to the ground, her remaining eye staring blankly in death. I simply stood there, starring at her for a moment. Some back part of my mind wondered what her name had been. If she had family that was going to miss her? I couldn’t tear my gaze away from that one remaining, staring green eye.

“Dagnabbit Longwalk snap outta it!” I felt a hoof slap my face and I blinked, looking at B.B, who was staring at me with hard eyes that were laced with pain from her wounds, “We gotta git movin’, find out where all the townsfolk are, an’ git the hell outta town ‘fore that monster destroys everythin’!”

“I…I…yeah…” I said in a daze, trying to ignore the sick twisting feeling in my stomach as I kept seeing the dead solider out of the corner of my eye. I was never going to get used to dead ponies. Especially ones killed in front of me by my friends. Rationally a part of me knew that B.B had only done what she had to in order to protect us. If she hadn’t we’d either be dead or captured. But another part of my mind argued that B.B could have tried to shoot the other pegasus in a leg or something, just to keep her from following us. She didn’t have to…

I shook my head. Focus Longwalk. Sort out your emotional issues once you’re all out of here. While I was getting myself together B.B had dragged the dead Odessa pegasus further into the old ruined building and taken a brief peek outside before turning and quickly rummaging through the soldier’s pockets.

“What are you doing?” I asked, feeing more nervous as I noticed outside the harsh glow of red that was covering the scenery and the loudening sounds of shots being fired by those weird energy weapons the Odessa peagsi used combined with the roar of flames and heavy repeating blasts that must’ve been the large forearm guns on that crimson giant. I could feel the ground shake still with its steps and it felt closer than before. Each second ticking by felt like a minor eternity as I wondered how many ponies were dying out there because of the monster I’d set loose.

“That there thing’s still fightin’ wit a’ growin’ flock o’ them pegasi. Got a few sec’s to git anythin’ useful offa her,” B.B replied as she fished out a smaller, blocky version of the rifle the pegasi had, plus a bunch of small cylindrical objects, some of which she slapped into a port she opened up on the side of the gun. Among the soldier’s belongings were also a single round object I recognized as a grenade, but this one had a bright green band around it, and then the real prize, a pair of healing potions.

B.B shoved most of this stuff into my saddlebags, except the healing potions, one of which she tried to give to me but I shook my head.

“Take them yourself. You’re wing, it looks pretty messed up. I’m not that bad off.”

“Don’t be tryin’ ta act like a tough buck!” B.B said, somehow sounding both pissed at me and worried for me at the same time, “I’ll be takin’ one too, but yer takin’ the other. No arguin’!”

I didn’t think I really needed it but arguing with her was going to cost us valuable time so without another word I nodded and downed the potion while she took hers. Despite my words I couldn’t deny how good the cool wash of relief felt as the potion did its magical work. While it couldn’t even begin to heal all of the injures I’d been stacking up on myself it certainly helped to dull the worst of the pain. I saw similar relief on B.B’s face as she drank hers and she experimentally flexed her wings, her face giving a grimace of pain as she did so but managed to get a little off the ground and maintain a hover.

Not wanting to tire her wings she landed once more then gave a brief look at the Odessa pegasi’s armor before a wash of heat and pressure followed by a deafening explosion nearby knocked both of us off our hooves. Dragging ourselves back up to standing we looked to see one of the Odessa flying machines had crashed in a tangled wreak of crimson flames in the street just outside our building. I felt a horrified chill down my spine as I watched a burning pegasus crawl out of one of the machine’s front pods and try to get away, only making a few steps before collapsing in a flaming heap. The reverberating quakes that indicated the giant’s steps were now getting louder and both me and B.B looked at each other.

“Time to go!”

No time to grab the armor as she’d been obviously been thinking I just helped B.B get Arcaidia onto her back and I lifted up Shale’s body onto mine and we dashed for a back door. As we ran out into the alleyway behind the building I heard gunfire above our heads and I looked up to see a whole wing of about a dozen Odessa pegasi in white armor zip by overhead, weapons blazing, presumably at the metal giant though I couldn’t see beyond the building we’d just exited.

There were a few other pegasi in the group wearing larger, bulkier armor that covered their whole bodies and with bulbous glowing eyes and flicking scorpion tails, giving them a demonic appearance despite the white sheen of the armor. These pegasi didn’t have mouth gripped weapons but instead had larger weapons mounted on their sides on what I recognized now as battle saddles. One of these pegasi had large rectangular weapons that when fired let loose a visible projectile that flew off on a trail of smoke and fire. I heard a distant impact and explosion as the wing of pegasi flew out of sight. I also heard the distant humming sound of more of those flying machines. Odessa had certainly showed up here in force and were now directing all of it at that massive metal monster…and from the sounds of things were barely even slowing it down! Still, despite the fact that they were trying to take Arcaidia and kill me and B.B I found myself wishing these Odessa pegasi luck against the crimson giant. Part of me wanted to turn around and fight the thing alongside them, but it was doubtful I’d be of any help and the safety of my friends and the townsfolk of Saddlespring was the higher priority.

Heat filled the air, blanketing and oppressive, and I could see smoke in oily pillars of black stretching up into the sky. It even filled the air around us with a dark haze and red sparks. The entire quarter of the town where the Labor Guild camp had been was now on fire, the bizarre blood red flames of the giant somehow clinging to even stone and burning at it relentlessly while it consumed whatever else that was wood or otherwise burnable.

With no time to spare the pair of us ran down the alley, winding through the debris strewn back alleys between Saddlespring’s main buildings. Before long we found ourselves behind a huge concrete structure that it took me a moment to recognize as the back of the sheriff’s building. In front of it would be the T-section street that was the center of town, and the most obvious route out of town. If we could just figure out where everypony was at then…

A loud gunshot rang out some nearby and I heard the faint shouting of a familiar voice that I could make out over the din of noise.

“You think you can just waltz in a screw over a perfectly good contract I got going!? Huh!? Do you know who you’re messing with!? I don’t think you do!”

Eyup, that was Crossfire’s voice alright. She certainly didn’t sound happy. I’d have found some satisfaction in that if the situation wasn’t so messed-up desperate. Sounded like her voice was coming from the front of the sheriff’s station. The heavy resounding cracks of Crossfire’s rifle firing were mixed in with others. Lighter popping gunshots from lighter caliber weapons were mixed in with the odd snapping and fizzing sounds of Odessa energy weapons, all of the noise concentrated on the other side of the building. I looked to B.B and the pegasus caught my look and gave me a ‘what now?’ tilt of her head.

“Keep our heads down, sneak up, take a peek and see what we can see?” I suggested.

B.B nodded and we both began to creep up one side of the sheriff’s building, keeping close to the wall. When we reached the edge of the alley that would lead out onto the main street I poked my head around the corner just enough to get a glimpse of what was happening. I felt B.B right next to me, leaning up to peek her own head right above mine.

The T-section of street in front of the sheriff’s station was the scene of an intense fire fight. Odessa peagsi were either taking cover amid the balconies and rooftops of the buildings leading down the main street or were zipping and soaring about in the air as they send red beams of light or green searing bolts of energy flying down into the front of the sheriff’s building. From the windows on both the bottom and top floors of the sheriff’s building gunshots answered the Odessa pegasi’s assault, though not nearly in the same volume. Pure guesswork on my part but I figured there couldn’t be more than four or five ponies in there shooting back at what looked to be around ten peagsi.

Even as I thought that I saw a red lance of energy from one of the pegasi’s rifles scythe into a window and heard a high scream from a pony inside.

This was quickly answered by Crossfire’s snarled, “Stop killing my caps you rank bastards!”

I saw the bladed bayonet and massive barrel of Crossfire’s rifle stick out of one of the windows and fire. One of the pegasi in the air who’d just banked around for another shot jerked in the air as a gout of blood erupted from its back and it tumbled out of the sky to crash into the side of B.B’s saloon.

Aside from the fight I’d managed to get a better look down the main street towards the gate I’d entered town from. Down that way I saw what looked to be a huge gathering of ponies, surrounded by a number of white clad Odessa pegasi. It couldn’t be all of the townsfolk but it looked like a large chunk of the town’s population had been rounded up and gathered near the entrance of town, but I couldn’t make out details from this angle or distance. It was good that the townsfolk were all in one place, sort of. It meant that if we could somehow deal with the Odessa pegasi it’d be that much easier to evacuate everypony. On the downside if that giant metal monster got this far all it would take is one good blast from its flame weapons to kill a lot of ponies who didn’t deserve it.

A plan quickly took form in my head in the haphazard ‘no time to really refine it’ way plans tended to with me. Step one; help Crossfire and Co. deal with the immediate pegasi threat here at the sheriff’s station. Step two; convince Crossfire not to shoot me and that it was in her best interest to help me rescue Saddlespring’s townsfolk. Step three; rescue townsfolk and get them as far away from here possible with as few deaths as possible because death sucks and I’d had enough of it for one day/lifetime/epoch. Step four; collapse in an exhausted heap and alternate between sleeping and crying for the next week. Step five;…profit?

“B.B, we’re gonna make a run for the sheriff station. Just keep your head down and run and we can probably make it without getting shot. In fact I bet we can tap the top off of one of those metal dumpster things in the alley to use as a crude shield.”

“…Or we could git in through the back door.”

“…Or we could do that.”

I was very glad I had B.B here. She was a smart pony. Everypony was a smart pony. Except me. Wait, if the sheriff’s station had a back door why weren’t the Odessa pegasi using it?

Even as I thought that I saw a trio of pegasi peel off from the squad firing into the front of the sheriff station and fly in a high arc that would take them over the top of the building and into the back alley behind it. Apparently they’d just thought of the idea as well. I grit my teeth around Gramzanber’s haft, realizing that if we wanted in that way we’d need to fight those three, but chances were it’d be a safer bet than trying to get into the front without being shot to pieces. That meant that, like it or not, I’d have to probably use lethal force. I knew I’d need to eventually anyway but…the thought was still causing a sense of nausea to rise up in me. Somehow I knew if I tried to stab one of the Odessa pegasi with lethal intent my body would probably just freeze up. I wasn’t up to this yet. I also didn’t have time to mentally debate this with myself. I settled for the notion that I could still bludgeon a pony in unconsciousness if I had to.

B.B, also seeing the three pegasi going for the back, frowned and looked at Arcaidia on her back and Shale’s body on mine, “This ain’t gonna be easy Longwalk. Ya can’t hold nothin’ back, ya know that right?”

Damn it all why were my companions so good at figuring out what I was thinking? I lowered my head, eyes closed as I said softly, “I know, I know. I…I can’t kill a pony B.B. I just can’t. I’ll fight, but this spear isn’t for taking the lives of ponies.”

There was more sympathy in her violet eyes than I was expecting, given her hard tone, “I don’t like it either. But if it comes down ta it, between yer life an’ theirs…Longwalk, protect yourself. Ya gotta live through this ta make her life mean somethin’.

Shale. I knew she was talking about Shale. And she was right. If I died here then what was the point of Shale giving up her own life for ours? Trailblaze’s words also came back to me, my promise to her that I wouldn’t die out here in the Wasteland. I hadn’t really understood just what I might have to sacrifice to keep that promise though. Now that I was starting to get an inclining of what survival out here was going to entail, I wasn’t sure how ready I was to pony-up and do it.

“I’ll try,” was all I could give B.B before we saw the three pegasi fly over the top of the sheriff’s station and we both knew we’d need to move fast if we were going to catch up to them.

She simply gave me one final hard look, as if trying to force me with her eyes to understand I needed to do more than just ‘try’, then turned and headed back along the side of the building. I followed close behind, the nervous feeling of nausea in me building with every step. At the back alleyway we both peeked around the corner to see the three Odessa pegasi had landed at a few short concrete steps leading up to a single door to the back of the building. One was aiming one of those green tube covered pistols at the doorknob and blasted it, the metal of the knob melting away in a run of green goo.

“I’ll git them two wit the rifles if ya can take the one wit the pistol,” whispered B.B and I nodded.

There was no count to three or anything, B.B just flew up and hovered around the corner towards a dumpster alongside the fence forming the other side of the alley as she fired her revolvers, striking the closest Odessa pegasi and causing him to jerk about and stumble the ground, though clearly more in shock from the attack rather than the wounds. I rounded the bend and charged forward as best I could, not having to hobble as bad due to the benefits of the healing potion, but still not nearly at my fastest.

The Odessa pegasi were trained soldiers and reacted fast to our ambush and with discipline. One used her forehooves to drag back her wounded comrade towards another dumpster for cover while firing red spears of light from her rifle at B.B, who just barely managed to get behind her own dumpster to protect herself. The pegasi with the pistol began to fly straight up and took aim at me, a green bolt of energy sizzling by my head as I ran to get close enough to strike before he got too high.

The pegasi pulling her teammate to cover tried to switch her attention to me as I got closer but B.B forced her to take cover with a few will timed shots. As I reached my target I used the few concrete steps leading up to the door to get a little extra height and letting the haft of Gramzanber extend a little forward in my mouth I thrust up at the pegasi who had flown up. He’d underestimated my spear’s reach apparently and was just close enough to hit. The spear still felt light and comfortable in my grip and I was so used to it by now that aiming felt more instinctive now than conscious thought.

Gramzanber’s blade bit into the pegasi’s left fore limb and the sharp silver spear seemed to have little trouble gouging into the white combat armor of the Odessa pegasus. He screamed in pain and blood flowed freely from the wound as I twisted my head and forcibly dragged the pegasus down to the ground, slamming him into the dirt. I imagined the combination of my spear twisting in his leg and having his head forcibly introduced to the ground from a ten foot height was far from pleasant. I just hoped I didn’t break his neck or anything. He just sort of lay there on the ground as I pulled my spear free.

Then I felt a blazing pain in my side and a force slam me back against the wall of the sheriff station, Shale’s body sliding off my back at the hard motion. Oh, right, there were two others besides this one. While the pegasi who’d dragged her comrade behind a dumpster was busy trading fire with B.B the wounded comrade in question had regained his senses and had aimed his rifle at me, sending a heated bolt of red energy into my side.

Strange thing was that this beam, while it hurt a lot, didn’t feel half as strong as the orange beams the turrets in the Ruin’s had fired. Compared to those things this little red beam was more like a bug bite…albeit a still very painful and potentially lethal bug bite. I turned my attention to those two and the pegasus who shot me narrowed his eyes and raised his rifle to fire again.

On impulse I turned my head and tilted the angle of Gramzanber’s blade, turning it so the broadside was between me and the pegasus. Shockingly enough the red beam hit the spear and reflected off it at a wide angle, veering off into the sky. I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t thought that would work, I’d just sort of blocked on instinct. Apparently it caught the pegasus off guard too because his eyes boggled and his mouth was gaping. Then his comrade, poking her head over the top of her dumpster to get a shot off, instead took three rounds to her face from B.B’s revolvers and her head became something indescribable as a having even been part of a pony.

I retched. Ancestors help me I was never going to get used to seeing ponies die like that. Unfortunately my weak stomach left me vulnerable and the last remaining conscious Odessa pegasus, still covered from B.B by the dumpster, and reasonably pissed that one of his comrades was dead, screamed an incoherent obscenity at me and raised his rifle to finish me off.

Then the back door of the sheriff station burst open and a half dozen small knives wreathed in a golden glow flew out and embedded themselves into the Odessa pegasi at various vital points between the neck joins of the armor and throat. He gurgled and collapsed in a gout of blood and I barely kept myself from dry heaving some more before I looked up to see the pony standing in the doorway.

Shard was giving me a surprised look, the blond unicorn’s horn still glowing as he removed his knives from the pegasus’ body and floated a few more from their sheaths as he looked between me and B.B.

“You? You’re all still alive? Boss was sure you’d all kicked it down in the Ruin. Hell, guess I’m glad you saved us the trouble of guarding the back door. You coming in or what? I need to blockade this door before more of them show up.”

“We’re coming in, just hold on a sec,” I said around gasps for air as I heaved Shale’s body onto my back, B.B coming around the dumpster to approach us.

Shard backed up into the sheriff station and without a second to waste me and B.B followed. Once inside the unicorn closed the door and shoved a bookcase in front of it, followed by a desk, a filing cabinet, and an old stained mattress. The inside of the sheriff station was cleaner and neater than most the ruined looking building’s in Saddlesrping but the back room we were in seemed more like a half forgotten storeroom, with dust covering numerous crates stacked about.

“This way,” Shard said once he seemed sure he’d thrown everything worth throwing in front of the back door, “Boss is up front, playing shooting gallery with the white chickens…” he trailed off as he saw Shale’s body on my back. The unicorn’s scarred face frowned but he didn’t say anything. Probably for the best. I wasn’t in the mood for comments about Shale right now, or ever.

As we passed into the next room I saw we’d entered a detention area, a hallway lined with cells that had several doors leading to other parts of the station, one of which was open and showed stairs. There were ponies here, several dozen, huddling among the open cells or just milling in the hallway, most looking dazed or scared. At least half of them had exploding collars on. The slaves! I remembered the pens I’d seen back at the Labor Camp were empty. I’d been worried the Odessa pegasi had dragged them off somewhere, which would’ve made their collars explode, given they were still tied to Crossfire’s proximity detonator.

The rest of the ponies here looked like townsfolk, and they gave us bleary, almost empty looks as we walked by. I heard a foal crying somewhere in the crowd and felt both fear, shame, and intense worry stab through me. These ponies, their lives were in danger now because of me. That red metal giant was going to burn this whole place down before long and even if they all got out alive and safe their homes would still be gone.

If you can get them all out of here alive. You could all die here after all, shot by Odessa, or burned by that monster you set free.

Shut up brain, don’t need the running commentary. My brain pony was still shaking its head sadly at me as we left the cell area full of crying and scared ponies and entered the front lobby of the sheriff station, where we were greeted by the wall of noise that was gunfire and ponies scream and yelling.

“Got another two comin’ in from the left!”

“Need ammo here!”

“Shitshitshit, I’m shot, fucker’s shot me!”

“Calm down, focus fire on the ones with the bigger guns. Don’t let the strafing ones distract you!”

There were about ten ponies here, most of them armed, taking turns alternating between hiding behind the cover of the station walls and poking their heads and weapons out the windows to fire at the Odessa pegasi outside. In return red beams and green bolts were slamming in through the windows at regular intervals, and in some places blasting chucks out of the concrete walls and sending chunks of granite and dust flying everywhere. Most the ponies here were armed with what I recognized now as 9mm and 10mm pistols, and a hoof-full of rifles and shotguns. The only big guns in the room were Brickhouse with his massive long-barrel revolver and Crossfire and her large caliber bayonet rifle.

As we entered Shard called out, “Boss! Brought some familiar faces! You’ll never guess who!”

Crossfire didn’t look back immediately, concentrating on lining up a shot, “The hell you talking about Shard? What familiar faces, we don’t know anypony in this two bit town!”

She fired, there was a scream from outside, and Crossfire smiled in grim satisfaction, then took cover from the return fire and looked at us. Her yellow eyes met mine and I saw a strange range of emotions cross her face. Shock, then anger, then amusement followed by pure snark.

“You didn’t tell me you were friends with a bunch like Odessa, buck,” she said with equal measures of sarcasm and menace.

“Do your friends try to shoot you on sight too?” I shot back, not in the mood, for a multitude of what I hoped were obvious reasons, the most important of which was on my back. I hadn’t forgotten that Crossfire was the one who’d forced Shale to go into that Ruin with us. If she wasn’t the only possible ally I had in a desperate situation Crossfire would be among the last ponies in this world I’d want to talk to; more like buck her square in the jaw.

“More often than you’d think,” was the black unicorn mare’s cryptic reply as she reloaded her rifle with huge clearly armor piercing rounds from the pointy tips, “Glad you made it anyway. Had you pegged for dead when we lost the slave’s signal.”

She was probably talking about the bomb collar going off. The moment when Shale sacrificed her life to save ours. I kept my voice level with no small amount of effort.

“We didn’t all make it, but I can tell you the whole story later, assuming you care. Right now we got ponies to save.”

“Oh we do, do we? All I care about is getting them slaves, my caps, out of this place intact. Could give two shits about this town now. Odessa can have it.”

“What do ya know ‘bout Odessa?” asked B.B suddenly, her eyes narrowing in suspicion, “I ain’t never ‘eard of ‘em ‘til now!”

“Guess that means you don’t know everything,” replied Crossfire coldly, “Maybe if you’re ever good enough to join the Drifter’s Guild and make it to the top tier you’ll be allowed to know a few things most ponies don’t. Fact is, I know Odessa, and know that we need to punch our way out of here fast before they decide to start leveling this place. Saddlespring is good as fucked and I don’t plan on joining it.”

“Yeah, about that,” I interjected before B.B, whose face had turned beat red, could start a shouting match with the unicorn, “We probably have even less time than you think. Down in the Ruin there was this…monster. Trapped in a tomb. We…kinda sorta let it out and now its setting fire to the whole town. I figure we have five, maybe ten minutes before it gets through what Odessa is throwing at it and reaches us.”

I’d expected Crossfire to look surprised, instead she gave a soft whinny of amusement as she said, “Doc had it right then, that place was a storage facility.”

Speaking of the doctor in question I barely blinked before the pink form of Dr. Lemon Slice was right before me, eyes wide and bright behind her thin rimmed glasses as she excitedly hopped in place as she spoke in a fast breathless manner.

“Youfoundit! You found Roaring Metal!? What does it look like! Is it intact!? Wait, you said it’s burning down the town, so of course its intact! Marvelous! Not the town burning of course, that’s horrible! But an intact Golem! One of the Eight! Active! Oh I must absolutely see it! You say it’s coming this way!? Right now!?”

I looked at the pink unicorn mare with a faint sense of cold dread. They knew…the Labor Guild knew exactly what was down there. It suddenly clicked in my head why they’d hired Crossfire and her team. It wasn’t to protect the slaves at all. That was just the cover. The real reason was they wanted to make sure nopony interfered with their attempt to acquire that monster…a Golem, the doc had called it a Golem. One of eight?

“Yeah it’s comin’ this way,” said B.B sourly, “Ye wanna git a close look at it that’s yer business, but we’re gettin’ out, and gettin’ out now.”

“I…suppose I can make observations as we evacuate,” Dr. Lemon Slice said, more subdued now that she seemed to grasp that danger of the situation, she then perked up as she saw Arcaidia lying on B.B’s back and Shale on mine.

“Oh my, before we do anything though I should examine those two!”

“If you can get Arcaidia back on her hooves that’d be great, she used up a lot of her magic and fell unconscious,” I told the doctor as she went to B.B, a cold lump in my chest as I then said, “But there’s nothing you can do for Shale.”

“Why carry a body around anyway?” asked Crossfire as she floated her rifle around the corner of a window and took a pot shot at a pegasus that got too close to the station, “She’s literally dead weight now. Just drop her.”

There must have been something in my eyes that went beyond the simple flare of rage I felt as I glared at her, because I didn’t think Crossfire was intimidated by me at all, instead she looked as if she realized something in what she said that even she didn’t like and gave a small sigh.

“Never mind then. Alright Mr. Hero, you got a plan, or do you want me to come up with something to get us all out of here? You said we had, what, ten minutes?”

The increase in volume and the heftiness of the vibrations from the red giant, the Golem Roaring Metal, as it was stomping its way through the town were getting louder just as the sounds of Odessa gunfire was getting more sparse.

“More or less, probably less,” I said, glancing back at the door leading to the cells where the slaves and townsfolk were, “We don’t have time for anything complicated. We have to gather everypony up, arm whoever is willing, and charge the gates. There’s a bunch more townsfolk gathered over there with more Odessa guards. We’ll just have to bet on our charge taking them by surprise.”

“That’s it, that’s your big plan?” Shard asked, “Run for it and hope for the best?”

“Sounds fine to me,” said Brickhouse, firing off a shot out the window and taking a green bolt in return, though the massive dark brown earth pony didn’t seem to even notice the burn wound that caused.

“Anything sounds fine to you Brick,” said Shard with a roll of his eyes, “If we didn’t tell you to get into cover you’d just stand out in the open and get shot all day.”

“Don’t hurt none and I aim better when I can stand still instead of all this ducking and diving,” muttered the huge earth pony.

“Shut it bucks,” said Crossfire, “Shard, go round up the civies and slaves. Brickhouse, you and me will break through the door first. Sheriff Bulwark, you and your deputies flank the civies and cover the sides. Doc, you got that ice filly up and running yet?”

As Shard dashed back into the detention area to gather the ponies there and corral them into formation to run, explaining what they were going to be doing, Dr. Lemon Slice looked up from her work. She’d removed Arcaidia from B.B’s back and had laid her out on lobby’s front desk. The doctor’s horn was glowing a lime green color and a faint and very pin point aura of green was floating around Arcaidia’s body.

“Hm, oh yes, I’ve discovered the poor dear has over channeled rather severely. I don’t know what she was doing down in that Ruin but her horn is almost devoid of magic. Waking her would be quite…dangerous. I could inject her with some artificial adrenaline, then perhaps keep her on her hooves with some Mint-als, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so. But really that’s of minor consequence, after examining this mare’s body I’m discovering the most unusual-“

“Not now doc! Brickhouse, carry the dead weight,” said Crossfire, and Brickhouse moved to go pick up the doctor before Crossfire groaned, “I meant the blue one! The unconscious blue one!”

“…Oh, okay,” Brickhouse set down the surprised doctor and instead flipped Arcaidia onto his back.

By now the front lobby had filled with a lot of scared looking townsfolk and slaves, Shard herding them from the ear alongside…Iron Wrought? I blinked and met the green earth pony’s gaze as he looked up. Iron Wrought looked tired and wounded, dark circles beneath his eyes and his body wrapped up in medical gauze that was stained red.

“I see you’re still kicking,” Iron Wrought said as we all gathered up at the front of the sheriff station, the sheriff and his deputies laying down a blanketing barrage of cover fire out the front windows to get the Odessa pegasi to start taking cover so we’d have an opening to begin our charge for the town’s front gates.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering just what had happened to the slaver pony since we’d last seen each other, but there was no time for questions, “Somehow. Let’s see if I can keep things that way for myself and everypony else.”

“We’re about to charge through the open streets with a bunch of heavily armed pegasi coming at us from all sides and some kind of ancient Ruin monster setting everything on fire behind us. You really think many of us are getting out of this town alive?”

“I…” I looked at the form of Shale on my back. Sitting there she looked like she could be sleeping instead of dead. As much as my heart wrenched seeing her there was a faint sense of comfort and calm that spread into me as I looked at her and for a single second I thought I almost heard a voice in my head telling me to be strong, “…I don’t know, but I’m going to try and make sure as many ponies survive this as I can.”

Iron Wrought had the ghost of a grim smile on his face, “Suppose I’ll do the same. “

B.B joined us, floating in the air with obvious effort with pained flaps of her wings, revolvers at the read, “You ready Longwalk? I ain’t comfortable lettin’ that big o’ brute carry Arcaidia, so I say we stick to ‘em like Wonderglue.”

“Ready as I’m going to get, and yeah, not planning on letting that guy out of my sight. No matter what, we make sure we all get out of here.”

“Can ya do what ya might need ta, when it comes ta it?” asked the pegasus mare with an edge that caused me to want to look away, but I met her eyes and put as much conviction in my words as I could.

“If it comes to that, I’ll do what I have to.”

B.B nodded, seemingly satisfied. I didn’t let out the sigh of relief I wanted to. I felt bad, lying like that, but I didn’t want her to worry about me. I knew though that if it came down to me having to kill any of the Odessa soldiers, not matter how little sense it made, I’d probably not be able to. It was a problem that could get me killed, I grasped that much, but I didn’t know what to do about it yet. I just couldn’t get my head around having to kill.

Crossfire’s voice reached us, “Alright fillies and gentlecolts, we’re about to get this show started! Rules of the game are simple; don’t stop running, shoot anything that isn’t us, and don’t die! Ready?”

There were a few replies ranging from terrified to grimly enthusiastic, but most ponies just stayed silent. They all knew what was about to happen and just how likely death was to follow, yet desperation and simple lack of choice was steeling most of them. I saw that most of the townsfolk were huddled between the few armed ponies, himself and B.B included. There were foals huddled close to parents legs, young couples holding onto one another, and elderly with hard, sad eyes.

They’re lives were relatively peaceful...until I showed up, I thought, my teeth tightening on Gramzanber as Crossfire bucked open the front door and rushed out, Brickhouse right behind her, both their guns blazing. One by one the armed deputies and Sheriff Bulwark went out next, pouring down a line of fire to keep the Odessa pegasi suppressed. The civilians came next, Dr. Lemon Slice among them, rushing out the door with their heads lowered.

Iron Wrought, B.B, and myself were the last out, following the unarmed civilians. My plan was to be the rear guard, cover everypony from any Odessa pegasi that tried to sweep up behind us as we moved.

The moment we were outside I felt the heat and saw the pillars of fire back towards where the Labor Camp used to be. Half the town was ablaze by now. The blood red flames didn’t seem to care what they touched, they consumed without discrimination and with almost eerie eagerness, as if the fire was a living monster itself crawling along every surface it touched. If we’d been even a few minutes later in getting out the sheriff station would have been consumed around us.

As it was the outside wasn’t much better as even with the combined suppressive fire from Crossfire and her team, Sheriff Bulwark and his deputies, and the few townsfolk with guns the Odessa pegasi were returning fire with deadly accuracy. Even as we ran I saw a red streak of light hit a deputy in the head, the mare’s whole body flashing red as her form disintegrated into a pile of ash that was blown away in the heated wind billowing through the street. An earth pony in front of me dropped as a green bolt struck his leg and I was about to stop to help him up when another bolt struck his chest, knocking the stallion over like a rag doll. I got all of two steps to try and help him before I saw his dead eyes and realized it was too late. I heard B.B shout over the sound of her firing revolvers for me to keep running and I did, the dead pony’s face still in my mind.

In a running gunfight like this my spear was theoretically useless I recalled how it had managed to deflect the energy weapons before. Running hard I got up to the left side of the rushing group of ponies I was supposed to protecting, where I noticed a wing of three or four pegasi were firing down into the group. As unlikely as my chances were of striking any of the beams I tried to anyway, waving Gramzanber about. The red beams were too fast, but those green bolts were slow moving, easy to see where they were heading. I managed to actually smack one away and I think I must have insulted the pegasus who shot it because suddenly she was wheeling about and coming right for me, her rifled sending bolt after emerald bolt at me.

“Crapcrapcrapcrap!” I swung my spear left and right, trying to keep the bolts off me. One managed to get through and burned a patch of my flank off, causing me to yelp. Then I realized the pegasus in question wasn’t slowing down or trying to veer away. I tried to duck down but was a fraction too slow as the pegasus plowed into my side. She was lighter than me by a good margin, even with her armor, by had more than enough momentum to knock me flat off my hooves and beat the wind right out of my lungs.

I lay stunned for a moment, and then shakily started to get up, Gramzanber still in my mouth. Looking around I saw the pegasus had knocked me onto the wooden walkway alongside one of the town’s residences, Shale's body having fallen off my back to lay against the wall of the building. The pegasus had rolled right into the open door of the home and was already back on her hooves. I blinked as I got a decent look at her. Similar facial features, a little smaller but those green eyes were near identical. She looked like the mare B.B had shot before. Not exactly the same, but the family resemblance was there.

“You’re dead,” she told me in a squeaking voice that was both cracking with equal parts anger and fear as she aimed her rifle at me.

“Wait, hold on-“ I couldn’t say much as I was busy putting Gramzanber between me and green burning death as energy bolts slammed into the spear. I quickly ducked back around the outside of the doorway, getting out of the line of fire. I could see that the group had gotten ahead of me, though they were spreading out and slowing down as pockets of ponies had to stop to take cover or return fire at the pegasi darting around them though the air. And then there was the heavy shaking steps of the Golem, getting ever louder…

The Odessa pegasus who’d tackled me came rushing around the door, eyes blazing, teeth barred around the mouth grip of her energy rifle. For a second she was completely exposed, having apparently not expected me to stop just around the corner like I had. Shoving Gramzanber through the unprotected joint where her shoulder armor met her neck would have been…easy. Easy for anypony other than me. Remembering how well that helmet had protected against bludgeoning I turned around and instead used the moment I had to buck the Odessa pegasus’ legs out from under her. She went over with a shockingly young sounding squeal.

Now that I was thinking about it she did look kind of short for a soldier. No time to think on that I jumped on her, using my superior weight to hold her down as she struggled under me. With a quick swipe I knocked her rifle out of her grip and sent it flying away, then yelled down at her as she kept struggling.

“Listen to me damn you! I don’t want to hurt you, or anypony! Just stop shooting at us! Fly away from here, you hear me! That monster is almost here and it doesn’t care who it kills! You under-“

There was a crash like thunder, so close I saw the wooden boards of the walkway jump.

“-stand…oh…buck me.”

I was looking behind us, down the street, at the freshly destroyed sheriff station. The station was a broken shell of a red inferno, its walls breaking apart and melting under a wash of red fire. Walking from the wreckage like some nightmare vision was the Golem, Roaring Metal. Its entire crimson frame was wreathed in an aura of red fire, its own flames clinging to it like a cloak. It took another step and I felt the vibration in my bones, and gulped as I saw steam bubbling up from the street where its foot landed.

There was a lull in the shooting as Odessa pegasi paused, wondering what was now the more priority target, the fleeing townsfolk of Saddlespring, or the Golem advancing down the street. Whatever I thought of Odessa, however I may have been pissed at them for killing innocent townsfolk, I had to give them credit…they knew the bigger threat when they saw it.

As one the Odessa pegasi still in the air ceased to harass the group of Saddlespring ponies trying to rush the gate and instead concentrated their fire at the Golem. Beneath me the pegasus scrambled out from under me and for a second I saw the desperate debate in her face as she looked between me and Golem. Then she took off, giving me one last venomous look before she drew a pistol from a side holster and joined her comrades in attacking the advancing Golem.

I quickly retrieved Shale's body and staggered back out onto the street, turning my back on the Golem and galloping to catch up to the crowd. I could see they’d gotten to the other mass of Saddlespring ponies that had been corralled to the gate by Odessa guards. Those Odessa pegasi hadn’t joined their compatriots though in fighting the Golem and instead had gotten fully engaged with Crossfire and the others. Even as I galloped up I saw the black unicorn spearing an Odessa pegasus with her bayonet, while Shard’s knives danced through the air cutting at another Odessa pegasus and keeping it from firing at Brickhouse, who still had Arcaidia perched on his back as he kicked out with a forehoof and smashed in a pegasi’s head helmet and all.

I caught sight of B.B and Iron Wrought standing back-to-back, Iron Wrough with his small semi-autmatic pistol, and B.B having picked up one of the Odessa energy pistols in her mouth as she awkwardly tried to fire it. As I got up to them I could see her bandolier of ammunition was empty.

“Longwalk? What’n blazes happened ta ya!? Lost sight o’ ya an’ dang near had a’ heart attack!” B.B shouted over the din of fighting and she smacked the energy pistol in her mouth with a hoof, “Don’t help none I’m outta ammo an’ gotta use this useless thing!”

“Got sideswiped,” I said, a little out of breath, and looked over my shoulder at the Golem. It was sending gouts of red fire into the air from its shoulder mounted nozzles and with each blast pegasi dropped from the sky like little motes of crimson light. I found myself wondering if one of those falling bodies was the green eyed pegasus. My heart clenched. If only I had some way to fight that thing!

“Don’t even think about it!” Iron Wrought growled as he turned to me, “You heard Crossfire. We keep running!”

Only we’d been stopped dead where we where. The entire crowd was stuck at the gate and I couldn’t see why for a second. Then a parting in the confusion and melee of ponies showed me what was blocking our way. The front gate was open, but a large vehicle, similar to the smaller flying machines I’d seen before by longer and three times the size, had been parked right in the middle of the open gate. There wasn’t even any space to squeeze around the vehicle. Its side was opened up and I saw several Odessa pegasi, including to my surprise the form of Captain Shattered Sky, standing inside and shooting any pony that got close to the vehicle.

“If we can’t get past that we’re not going anywhere,” I said while stomping my hoof. What was that Captain trying to do!? Keep us here to get fried by the Golem? Didn’t he even care his own ponies were getting slaughtered wholesale trying to stop it!?

“Well lets open up a’ way then!” said B.B as she went airborn and began to fly over the crowd, heading for the big vehicle. Cursing under my breath I began pushing my way forward, ducking energy bolts, side-stepping fallen ponies, and feeling my heart thrashing in my chest from equal parts adrenaline and fear. Roaring Metal was halfway down the street and seemed to be finally noticing the dense crowd of ponies ahead of it at the gate.

Bursting from the crowd and finding myself standing next to, of all ponies, Crossfire, I found we were both facing the open side of the big flying vehicle with Captain Shattered Sky standing in the opening, pushing up his glasses with one wing. He was flanked by two Odessa pegasi in that bulkier near demonic looking white washed armor, scorpion-like tails flickering about. The Captain looked at us coldly as B.B landed beside me.

“I’m starting to think that I have remarkable good fortune,” Shattered Sky commented, “And here I was worried I’d lost Target 02, and here you’ve brought her right to me. Along with a Class S Relic. My reputation shall soar once this operation is complete.”

“You’re reputation!?” I roared, “Ponies are dying! Who cares about your reputation!?”

“A military career is built upon reputation, but I can’t expect a dirt pony like yourself to understand. Fortunately you’re understanding isn’t necessary. In fact, nothing about any of you is necessary except Target 02.”

“Hey!” shouted Crossfire “I don’t much care about what either of you think! Get your oversized toaster out of our way otherwise I’m ending you!”

By now Brickhouse, Shard, and Iron Wrought had joined us ahead of the crowd. I could see the Golem taking its long ponderous steps down the street and it looked like there were less than twenty pegasi still flying around the thing, firing away despite the seeming futility of it. Joining them in that futility, driven by desperation, were the Saddlesrping ponies who were armed and couldn’t get up to where we were facing down Shattered Sky. They added their fire, sending a hail of bullets to uselessly ricochet of the Golem’s armor.

Even if we did immediately start fighting Shattered Sky and managed to beat him and his two guards, which I thought we might be able to pull off given we had him outnumbered six to three, there just wasn’t time. Roaring Metal was going to be on us in less than a minute.

Shattered Sky seemed to understand this but was showing remarkable calm. Either he was crazy, or knew something we didn’t. He smiled at Crossfire’s threat and raised a placating hoof.

“Please ma’am, the Skylord-class Vertibuck is hardly a toaster. It’s a valuable mobile command center for operations like this…though as I am about to demonstrate Odessa has far better things in its toy chest. Observe and witness why you should feel privileged we even bothered to come to this dust bowl of a town.”

He touched a hoof to his hear and spoke, but not to us, “Vesuvius, you have a firing solution? Good, you may fire when ready.”

Seconds went by with nothing happening except the thunderous and ever loudening steps of the Golem. It was less than fifty yards away from us when the gray cloud filled sky above was suddenly filled with massive flashes of light. There was a scream in the air like that of hundreds of angry spirits all wailing at once and I caught a faint glimmer of something raining down from the sky towards the Golem.

Then with the sound that for all I knew was the earth itself splitting open the world seemed to explode around me.

Footnote:
Level Up!

Perk Added - Strong Back: You've gotten plenty of practice lately at carrying heavy loads. You gain +50 to your Carry Weight limit. You try not to think too hard about why you got all that practice...

Chapter 7: Remorse and Promise

Chapter 7: Remorse and Promise

I was lying on my side on the ground and wasn’t entirely sure how I got there for a moment. I couldn’t hear anything beyond a high ringing tone in my ear followed by a sensation of muffled pressure. My body was numb and I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.

Then everything snapped back into focus as my brain remembered to make my lungs draw in air and sound returned to me. I felt a copper taste in my mouth and realized there was blood in it, the sharp pain in my tongue indicating I’d bitten it. My head still ringing I raised it and looked about, trying to get my bearings. All around me were the ponies of Saddlespring, all of them in the same state I was, on the ground and in shock, slowly coming to their senses after…whatever the hell had hit us.

“Marvelous. Simply marvelous. The pinpoint accuracy of that barrage was commendable. I’ll have to give my compliments to the Colonel and his gunnery crew. I’ll admit though, I’m somewhat disappointed. I imagined an S-Class Relic would withstand more than just one barrage.”

Captain Shattered Sky was still standing where I’d last seen him, smugly observing us from the open platform in the side of that big flying machine he’d called a Skylord-class Vertibuck, his heavily armed and armored guards standing next to him impassively. How was that smug bastard and his guards still on their hooves while the rest of us got knocked flat? I saw next to me Crossfire and B.B were dragging themselves to their hooves. B.B had a shell shocked look on her face, her eyes looking behind us and her mouth slowly mouthing the world ‘no’, though I hadn’t looked yet to see what she was seeing.

Arcaidia’s unconscious form had fallen off of Brickhouse as the big earth pony still lay dazed on the ground like I was, and I glanced over to notice Shale’s body was on the ground next to me. Iron Wrought was also still down and wasn’t stirring like the others. I could see Shard rubbing his horn with one hoof so I knew the unicorn was at least conscious.

“What…was that?” I barely managed to croak as I stood, looking behind me at…Saddlespring?

I blinked. That couldn’t be right. What I was seeing didn’t seem possible. But I was looking right at it. Now I knew why B.B had had that look on her face.

There wasn’t much of Saddlespring left that could be described as a town. What wasn’t still burning from the Golem’s flames was little more than deep smoldering craters trailing pillars of black smoke. The entire town had been flattened or otherwise blown to chunks of rubble. Only a small area by the gate where we all were had been left unscathed. How many ponies had still been left in town, hiding in their homes? I didn’t even want to guess. Nopony was left alive in town now, certainly, nopony except me, my companions, and whatever ponies we’d managed to either bring with us from the sheriff station or “rescue” at the gate.

Where the Golem had been standing was a thick black oily cloud of smoke, obscuring any sign of the metal giant.

I didn’t care. My eyes were still focused on what little remained of Saddlespring. The first town I’d ever seen, where hundreds of ponies had been living their lives in relative peace despite a clearly harsh and uncaring world around them. Living their lives until I’d come here and set loose hell on their town. Inadvertently, but that didn’t matter. This was my fault.

“Impressed?” Shattered Sky said in response to my question, which hadn’t be directed at anypony but hey the pegasus stallion seemed chatty, “Rightly so. The linear cannons on board the Vesuvius are an unparallel achievement in ballistic weaponry; a testament to Odessa’s might-“

He had to stop talking to duck and avoid the spear that had nearly taken his head off. He didn’t get a chance to make the indignant comment his eyes said he had to make as he had a good two hundred pounds of pissed off earth pony tribal slamming into him at breakneck speed. A red boiling haze had filled my vision the second I’d heard this bastard start to talk again and a incredible heat that wasn’t unlike the crimson fires of the Golem had risen in my heart. Much as I hated myself right now for being the one primarily responsible for Saddlespring’s destruction I could certainly lay a fair portion of the blame at this pony’s hooves; or at least it felt a hell of a lot better to be pissed at him than at myself right now.

I think it was only the sheer brazen nature of my attack and the fact that the Odessa pegasi had felt very much in control that had allowed me to get in close and tackle Shattered Sky without his guards turning me to green goo or a pile of dust. As I tumbled end over end into the Vertibuck with Shattered Sky both of his guards had turned to follow our movements, weapons on their battle saddles leveling to protect their commanding officer…and in so doing turned their backs on my companions.

I heard B.B’s own roar of rage mimicking my own as she landed on top of one of the guards, shoving the tube covered energy pistol against the back of the thick white insectoid helmet the guard wore and fired at point blank range multiple times. Shockingly that didn’t actually kill the Odessa solider as the guard reared up and threw B.B off, the flexible scorpion-like tail on the armor snaking out and trying to skewer the pegasus mare. She rolled out of the way and was up and firing again, the point blank range making it impossible for her to miss even with the unfamiliar weapon

The other guard was already down, even that thick demonic looking armor was little match for the combined fire from Crossfire’s heavy rifle and Brickhouses huge revolver. Crossfire had finished that guard off before he’d even gotten a shot off, ducking in and shoving her bayonet right into the chest guard of the armor and firing a round right into the pegasus, literally blowing a hole clear through his body.

All of this I barely caught sight of while I tussled with Shattered Sky.

The Odessa officer was much lighter than I was and I was certain I had the advantage in terms of strength, but that didn’t seem to count for much as amid our rolling about on the ground he slipped from my grasp like a oiled snake and I felt a hoof connected with the side of my head in almost the same instance I felt another hoof wrap around my shoulder and with shocking ease twist me around and slam me across the metal deck of the Vertibuck.

“Such anger. Do our actions truly enrage you so?” the Captain asked in an unconcerned tone, adjusting his glasses with a wing tip. How the hell did he still have those things on!?

I ripped Gramzanber out of the bulkhead of the Vertibuck and responded to his question by lunging forward at him, thrusting the blade at first at his throat, but even in my anger a part of me hesitated at going for a killing blow and I adjusted the angle of my thrust to go for the shoulder instead.

We were fighting inside what looked to be some kind of large cargo hold and passenger compartment. Steel crates lined one wall while metal benches extended from another. The back of the area had some kind of closed ramp that I surmised opened out the back of the Vertibuck while the other end had a short metal staircase leading to a closed metal door. The sides had sliding doors like the one we’d charged in from. Most these details I barely took note of as Shattered Sky gracefully slide aside my thrust and with speed and force I couldn’t have imagined possibly from a flesh and blood opponent and stepped into my lunge, placed a hoof under my outstretched neck, while hooking my right hoof under the shoulder with one of his wings, and literally flipped me end over end and threw me downrange to slam into one of the bulkheads.

How had he done that!? I knew I wasn’t exactly the most experienced fighter out there, but I’d been getting pretty good with Gramzanber, or at least I thought I was. Shattered Sky had countered me with the ease an adult pushes aside a newborn foal.

Rage still burning through me I scrambled to my hooves, seeing Shattered Sky hovering in the air with lazy flaps of his wings as he casually glanced away from me to watch as B.B and Crossfire tag-teamed his remaining guard. He seemed so…relaxed. Like he was watching a sparring match instead of a battle to the death involving one of his soldiers. Didn’t he even care that one of them was already dead and the other was likely to die fighting? He wasn’t even lifting a hoof to help, he hadn’t even bothered to draw his gun yet.

As could be expected despite the potent armor the Odessa soldier’s weapons weren’t suited for close combat and B.B’s earlier shots had done a number on her, so the pegasus solider was disoriented and her shots were flying wide as B.B ducked and dived around, firing until her own weapon went dead. Then Crossfire simply moved in and with a casual move tripped the Odessa pegasus with the stock of her rifle, flipped the weapon as the soldier fell on her back, and slammed the bayonet down at the joint where the neck met the head. The huge blade slide right through the joint in the armor and blood gushed out. I could hear the pegasus mare behind the helmet coughing and sputtering her last breaths as Crossfire dug the blade in, then wrenched it out in a gout of red.

“Commendable,” commented Shattered Sky, “I see the Drifter’s Guild has not lowered its standards since I last faced one its members in battle.”

“Piss off,” Crossfire said as she turned her weapon on the Odessa officer, “I’m not fishing for compliments. You’ve cost me a lot of caps today. I plan on taking the difference out of your hide.”

“Oh? Well conflicts of interests are a simple inevitability of the times we live in. If you feel cheated of a hard earned reward perhaps you might consider a deal?”

He, once more with speed I found difficulty believing, dodged aside as Crossfire’s bullet nearly grazed past his ear. He sighed.

“I shall take that as a ‘no’ then? Very well, since you dirt ponies seem so insistent upon this I shall oblige your desire to fight.”

B.B growled in frustration as she fiddled with her energy pistol and found it had no more shots left. Tossing the weapon she braced herself on all four legs in a clear stance ready to lunge at Shattered Sky, teeth bared and eyes blazing. Guns or not it was clear she was ready to tear the other pegasi’s through out with her teeth if need be. I was more than raring to keep fighting, though Shattered Sky’s ability to avoid my attacks so far was starting to really bug me. I couldn’t figure how he was doing it. Simple skill couldn’t explain the way he just seemed to know how to avoid attacks. And if he was this good how had my first tackle managed to land?

As the tension built and we all prepared to resume the fight there was a sound like a titanic intake of air followed by an explosive discharge of heat and pressure from outside. A harsh red glow filled in from the open sliding side door followed by the sound of ponies screaming.

I wasn’t at a good angle to see outside but B.B was and from the look on her face I could take a guess at what she was seeing.

“Is it that thing?” I shouted.

“Moving an’ shootin’! It’s aimin’ them big gatlin’ guns on its arms up into the sky!”

Shattered Sky had put a hoof to his ear and seemed to be listening to a different conversation, and talked to thin air. I wasn’t up on technology much but I was guessing he had some kind of device in his ear that was letting him talk to other Odessa ponies.

“Repeat Vesuvius, I don’t think I understood those orders…wait, Colonel, Target 02 is still in the vicinity! I only need a few more minutes-…very well Colonel, I understand. I shall evacuate the area immediately. Pilots, get us out of here.”

Get us out of here? What did- I stumbled as the entire floor shifted and vibrated beneath my hooves. I felt a pull on my whole body and felt the Vertibuck lurch as the sound of the machinery of the vehicle buzz to life. Quickly the scenery outside the door shifted and I saw the ground suddenly drop away, the angle showing me the still intact gate of Saddlespring and the dozens of ponies still running around it, now trying to dash through the opening left by the departing Vertibuck. I realized with a dull, sick feeling that Arcaidia was still down there along with Shale’s body! I suppressed the illogical urge to go diving out of the open door. I had to worry about that later, we still had Shattered Sky to deal with.

As it stood myself, Crossfire, B.B, and Brickhouse were all gathered before the Odessa officer, who now regarded us with cold, calculating eyes behind his thin rimmed glasses. The flying Vertibuck created a harsh current of air from the open side door that blew my blue mane into my face but I didn’t take my eyes off of Shattered Sky.

“What are you waiting for, an invitation?” he asked us as he waved his hooves wide, still hovering in the air with casual flaps of his wings.

“First tell me something,” Crossfire said in a level tone, “What’s this Target 02 you were talking about?”

I glanced at her. Why was she curious about that? I’d already figured by context that ‘Target 02’ had to be Arcaidia. I couldn’t get my head around what Odessa wanted with her but it seemed likely this all tied into what my father must have been searching for all those years ago. The thought made me even more angry, the realization that this Shattered Sky and all the pegasi who’d attacked Saddlespring were in a twisted way ‘family’. Was my father still alive? If he was did he have anything to do with this? I had a hard time swallowing that bitter notion. I recalled my mother referring to him as a ‘Colonel’, and hadn’t Shattered Sky just been talking to a Colonel about that Vesuvius thing a few minutes ago?

“My dear if you have no interest in parley with me then why should I speak of classified operations with you?” Shattered Sky replied to Crossfire while I was busy fuming.

“Meh, was worth a shot that you’d feel like a monologue. You strike me like a buck that likes the sound of his voice,” she said with a small shrug, levitating her rifle next to her aimed squarely at the hovering gray pegasus.

“Well, I do like the way my voice sounds, but that is neither here nor there. Now then, shall we begin?”

“Don’t gotta ask me twice,” snarled B.B as she flapped her wings and lunged up into the air at the smugly smiling officer, or at least she tried to but a harsh glow of red magical aura surrounded her and pulled her back to the ground. Crossfire was glaring at here.

“You an idiot, filly? You manage to suddenly pull some ammo out of your dainty little virgin plot?”

“What are you babblin’ about!? ‘Course I’m outta ammo otherwise I’d already be shotin’!”

“Then you’re useless here. Back off and let those who still got weapons to fight handle this,” said the Drifter harshly, “Want to be useful? Take this and get back down to them ponies we left behind!”

Crossfire pulled something from her jacket and threw it at B.B, who caught the device in her mouth while Shattered Sky looked on. He didn’t seem to be in any rush to stop any of this and for a second I wondered why he seemed so casually content to let us do our thing and converse instead of fight. But then sometimes my brain pony could actually do some thinking for a change and I realized he had no reason to rush. We were inside his flying machine, which was probably on a course for a place with even more Odessa soldiers. If anypony was on a clock here it was us, not him.

The device Crossfire had given B.B I recognized as the detonator for the bomb collars on the slaves. Shit, I’d almost forgotten about them! That detonator had some kind of proximity range with those collars didn’t it? Where we already out of range!? I hoped not, but since Crossfire had given it to B.B with the clear intent she get back to those slaves there was a good chance we hadn’t gotten far enough yet for those collars to go off. If any of those poor slaves were still alive down there B.B was now their best shot at surviving. B.B seemed to realize it too and I saw the conflict on her face as it went from burning desire to smash Shattered Sky’s face in, to a concerned worry-filled look at me, to a weighty sigh as she looked at the detonator in her mouth and understood a lot of lives were now resting on her getting back to what was left of Saddlespring.

“Kuk ‘is auf fur muh!” she awkwardly mouthed around the detonator and then flew out the open side door, heading back to the surface.

“…So, any more questions, comments, concerns, or last minute preparation?” asked Shattered Sky, “Because I do happen to have all day. My schedule is remarkably clear, so if you remaining three wanted to do a little group huddle and plan your tactics, really, do feel free.”

“I think we’re good here. Doubt we need much planning to mop the floor with your sorry flank,” said Crossfire and Brickhouse nodded his head.

“Don’t need any fancy tactics to fight,” the burly earth pony said, cracking his neck “Not for a feather weight shrimp like you.”

I felt like I ought to say something, since this seemed to be the moment for wisecracks and witty one-liners before the fight, but…meh, I had nothing. So instead of talking I decided to kick things off by being the first to charge the hovering Odessa officer. I heard Crossfire groan, presumably at my naïve attempt to get the first shot in, but I wasn’t paying her much mind as I used one of the metal benches as a springboard to leap into the air and get enough height to slash at Shattered Sky’s legs.

For my trouble the pegasus easily twisted in the air, slapping the flat of my spear down and out of the way with one hoof while he flipped in the air and came down on the back of my head with both hind hooves. The kick sent me hitting the deck hard but I was conscious enough to roll with the fall and was actually on my own hooves again in a second.

Crossfire and Brickhouse both opened fire and Shattered Sky zipped back and forth, his body moving in ways that looked exceedingly uncomfortable for any pony with a proper skeletal structure, but Shattered Sky seemed to enjoy flouting the laws of physics. With a fluid motion he drew his own pistol and fired a trio of shots that forced Crossfire to dive for cover behind a metal crate while Brickhouse just took one of the shots to his chest with a grunt of pain but otherwise little sign he was being slowed down.

With Shattered Sky’s attention on them I tried to take advantage of his distraction and dashed under him and thrust up at his barrel with my spear, some part of me trying to rationalize that if I did manage to stab him it wouldn’t be immediately fatal and hence wouldn’t count as killing. Fuzzy logic was still logic, right? I wasn’t even surprised when he looped around the thrust and grabbed onto the shaft of my spear with the crook of one foreleg and shoved his pistol at my face. I whipped my head and let go of Gramzanber, throwing both spear and Odessa officer at the wall. His pistol went off and the bullet cut a line past my cheek as I threw myself to the side. My own throw had seemed to catch him a tad off guard as he actually did hit the bulkhead pretty hard and Gramzanber clattered to the floor. But Shattered Sky barely had the air knocked out of him by that and he was already up and buzzing around, lining up a shot on me, only to have to dodge in a fast spinning flight back towards the tail end of the cargo hold to avoid a barrage of fire from Brickhouse and Crossfire.

While those two advanced down the hold, firing downrange and keeping Shattered Sky on the defensive I scrambled to go recover Gramzanber, getting the spear in my mouth and rushing forward to close the distance with Shattered Sky. The pegasus was trading shots with Brickhouse, the huge earth pony looking more and more frustrated by his inability to hit the agile pegasus and I was starting to worry about the big buck’s injuries. For every near deafening boom of Brickhouse’s revolver Shattered Sky was sending back two or three shots from his long barreled pistol, and whatever borderline unnatural endurance and raw toughness Brickhouse had the growing number of bullet holes appearing in his hide was…disturbing. How many times could a pony afford to get shot like that? I could see blood trailing from Brickhouse’s mouth and nostrils as he single-mindedly continued to pour shots at Shattered Sky.

This gave both me and Crossfire more than enough time to get close though and the black unicorn mare gave me a sidelong glance and a nod as she dashed to the left of the Odessa officer. Guessing what she wanted I went to the right and we both came at him from opposite ends, Crossfire using her magic to whip her bayonet rifle around in a deadly vertical arc while I thrust up with Gramzanber. Shattered Sky rolled in the air, trying to contort his body between our strikes, but I could see that we’d finally boxed him in and he was too slow to-

-he vanished from sight and Gramzanber bounced off Crossfire’s bayonet and we both staggered back, staring at the empty space Shattered Sky had just been in. I felt an intense pressure in my mind and Gramzanber’s metal growing cold in my mouth, the spear seeming to vibrate in reaction to something.

“The fuck!?” Crossfire shouted, and I could only mentally echo her as I looked around trying to figure out what had happened.

“That was a very close call,” came Shattered Sky’s voice from the other end of the cargo hold, “I commend your efforts.”

We all looked and there he was, calmly floating in the air on the opposite end of the hold, having seemingly instantly traversed the distance in an eye blink. He was casually reloading his pistol as Crossfire and Brickhouse both opened fire and I swear I didn’t even see the bastard move this time as he just seemed to vanish inside of one eye-blink and appear a few feet to the left in the next, the shots completely missing him. In the instant he’d performed his vanishing act I felt another spike of pressure from Gramzanber, and for a second I could almost hear a mare’s voice in my head shouting something but I couldn’t make out what and it was gone in an instant. Was I going crazy?

“I imagine I will be chewed out somewhat for making use of my ARM without authorization, but I simply despise being injured. Pain is so…irritatingly unpleasant,” Shattered Sky commented as he pulled up the sleeve on his left hoof to reveal some kind of odd device on it. It was a silver band with a round apparatus on it that had two little pointers, one longer than the other on it. I’d never seen a watch before so I had no context at the time; to me it’d just looked like a weird wrist device. But I did recognize its silver sheen of the device as being very similar to Gramzanber and the term Shattered Sky had used.

“Hold on a sec, did you just call that thing an ARM?” I asked as Crossfire and I came up next to Brickhouse.

I heard Crossfire whisper to Brickhouse, “You look pretty tore up, Brick. Got any healing potions left?”

“Sorry boss, used them all up back in town,” the big earth pony said between labored breaths, blood dripping between his teeth clenched around the mouthgrip of his revolver.

“…I see,” I wasn’t sure what Crossfire’s narrowed eyes meant but something about her look felt cold to me as she looked over Brickhouse and then turned her attention back to Shattered Sky as the pegasus finished reloading his weapon and addressed my question.

“Yes, I did call this ‘thing’ an ARM. An artificial Astral Resonance Machine, developed from the few examples of the genuine article Odessa has collected over the years. Genuine ARMs like the one you possess. What, are you telling me you’ve been traveling with Target 02, and bear an ARM yourself, yet you have no idea what it is you’re wielding?” the pegasus shook his head, “Your ignorance is criminal. You’re aiding somepony while unaware of the danger she represents. I am doing you a favor in ending your journey here, before you make any further errors in judgment.”

For a second I saw a pale blue aura appear around the device as the two pointers on the face of the circular apparatus spin around, then Shattered Sky disappeared once more, only to appear instantly above us, pistol pointed downward.

I barely had time to throw myself to the side as a barrage of shots rained down on us. I felt a bullet tear through the meaty portion of my shoulder and I cried out in pain. I heard Crossfire swearing profusely and Brickhouse grunt. As I painfully rolled to my hooves, blood trailing down my wounded shoulder, I saw Brickhouse teeter on his hooves and slowly collapse on his side like a felled tree, a hole torn clean through the top of his back by one of Shattered Sky’s shots, leaving a bloody hole in the bottom of his barrel. Crossfire had dove to the opposite bulkhead from me and looked uninjured, but that seemed to be because she’d floated her rifle into the way of the barrage and the weapon had taken the beating. The stock had a hole blown in it and there were a few more chunks blown into the wood beam holding the barrel. Crossfire seemed more pissed about the damage to her weapon that about her fallen companion and I heard her growl a she fixed Shattered Sky with a deadly glare.

“I ain’t getting done in by some bullshit magic trick! Foal’s hoofshoes are officially coming off, asshole!”

I had to admit I had figured Crossfire had been fighting with all of her strength and skill already. I was apparently quite wrong. The way she renewed her attack on Shattered Sky was like watching a storm cloud break. The unicorn swung her rifle around in a dizzying pattern, combining shots at bizarre angles with sudden thrusts and slashes of the bayonet, all the while leaping into the fray herself and bucking out with hind legs or trying to gore with her horn; all in a combined arms flurry of death that continued to build upon its own momentum. I’d never had kept up with such an assault and if she’d directed that kind of fury at me I’d have been dead in seconds.

Shattered Sky didn’t get touched.

It wasn’t like he was faster and I doubted he was any more skilled than the Drifter. It was that device; the thing he called an ARM. Whenever it seemed Crossfire was about to land an attack I felt that sharp pressure from Gramzanber as Shattered Sky’s wrist device glowed blue and he would vanish into thin air, appearing just outside of range of the attack. Every shot, every slash, every kick of her legs came within centimeters of striking the Odessa pegasus only for him to wink out of existence and reappeared in the same moment somewhere just beyond harm. Crossfire’s frustration was clearly mounting from the bloodshot tinge her eyes were taking and the low growl emanating from her.

I’d been staring in complete awestruck dumbness of the spectacle when a forceful shove on my hoof drew my attention down. Brickhouse had kicked me from where he was laying and was giving me a hard look, even as blood poured out of his mouth, boiling up from his torn stomach. Somehow even with that ragged wound he managed to force words out of his blood choked throat.

“..grenade…pocket. Can’t dodge…”

It took me a second to figure out what he was saying and in a rush I went to him and with an apologetic look, regretful I didn’t have any healing potions on me for him, rummaged into the pocket of the stallion’s vest. And tucked in there was indeed what I recognized to be a pair of frag grenades. These might do the trick! A big blast like they made, could Shattered Sky get clear even with his weird ability? Quickly sheathing Gramzanber I got one grenade out with my mouth and quickly turned to face the still battling unicorn and pegasus. I briefly calculated in my head the best angle of the throw, doing so feeling natural, then pulled the stem out of the top of the apple shaped weapon. Now…what had been that phrase Shale had used? Oh, right.

“FRAG OUT!”

I threw, the thought crossing my mind that this weapon wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that could be used non-lethally and I might end up killing a pony because of this…but the situation was desperate and options were few and far between. If I ended up with blood on my hooves I’d just have to figure out how to square that away with myself later.

Crossfire looked and I saw her eyes go wide as she galloped towards me and dove. Shattered Sky looked at the arcing grenade with a quirked eyebrow and I think my jaw may have dropped as I watched him target the grenade in mid-flight with his pistol and let off a shot.

There was an explosion and a rain of shrapnel, the grenade going off between us. I felt pieces of hot metal stab into the hide and heard Crossfire call me something very unflattering. As the ringing slowly began to clear from our ears and I stood, remembering to draw Gramzanber once again, I saw the grenade had torn loose a few of the metal benches and left a scorch mark on the floor of the cargo hold, but otherwise hadn’t done much. Shattered Sky looked unharmed, just a few scuffs and cuts on his uniform as he adjusted his glasses again, this time with a hoof.

Crossfire got up next to me; hide a little bloodied and cut up from the shrapnel as well, as she glared at me.

“Buck, grenade plus closed in space plus allies equals BAD!”

I just pointed a hoof at Brickhouse, “His idea.”

“…seemed smart…at the time…” said Brickhouse.

“Stallions,” Crossfire muttered.

“Well, I must say, I am at least impressed by the tenacity if not the intelligence you lot have displayed thus far,” Shattered Sky said, “Really it’d be a shame to dispose of such talent. I’ll extend the offer of a deal one final time, my dear Drifter. Dispatch the two stallions by your side and I assure you you’ll be compensated tenfold for the credits you’ve lost as a result of my organizations operation interfering with your job. You needn’t even renounce your standing with the Drifter’s Guild. We do have ties that would allow you to work for us and them at the same time…”

Unlike last time Crossfire’s response wasn’t an immediate bullet towards the Odessa officer’s head. Instead the black coated unicorn seemed to be seriously considering her options. I saw her yellow eyes darting to me, then to the fallen and bleeding out Brickhouse.

“Tenfold you say…? You know how many caps that really is?” she asked in a very natural tone and I felt my blood running cold. She couldn’t seriously be considering this!? Her partner was dying at her hooves and she was thinking of bargaining with the bastard that shot him!?

“Oh, I imagine it was quite a lot, but caps are of a little concern to Odessa. We value the services of capable and skilled ponies such as yourself and would consider your enlistment worth ten or even twenty thousand caps.”

I blinked. Ten or twenty thousand? I was no expert on Wasteland economics but what little I’d seen thus far had shown that that kind of money was probably the kind of figure a pony could live off of in comfort for a good long while. Crossfire’s own words echoed back in my mind.

“That’s another free lesson I’ll give you on the Wasteland; Caps are King. You got enough caps, you can do anything. You live through this you’d best remember that.”

“Crossfire…you can’t be serious. These pegasi, they killed that whole town!” I said, though there was a stab of guilt through me as I said it because honestly I was as responsible for Saddle Spring’s destruction as anypony, given that Golem had been released by me and my friends, “If they’re willing to do that then there’s no way you can trust them to keep their end of a bargain! And what about Brickhouse!?”

Crossfire shot me a sharp look, lips pulling back in a snarl, “What about him? He’s the idiot that got himself shot. I tell every pony that partners up with me the same thing ‘Keep up, or go home’. I don’t run with ponies that can’t hold their own, and if you get yourself killed, that’s your own fault! Besides, he ain’t dead yet.”

“Well, part of this arrangement would involve you putting him out of his misery,” said Shattered Sky off hoofedly.

“That a fact? How about this instead? I take out the dumb buck here,” she gestured at me, which caused me to instinctively take a step away and ready my spear, “And if Brickhouse can keep breathing long enough for you Odessa types use your fancy tech to get him back on his hooves then he’s in the clear. He’s an idiot sure, but he shoots straight enough and makes for a good meat shield.”

“…I suppose that is acceptable. Very well, it is a deal. Now, kill the other one.”

I wasn’t even given a second to prepare myself before Crossfire rounded on me, her rifle’s bayonet slashing for my face. I reacted as quickly as I could, getting Gramzanber’s haft between me and the large bayonet, the reverberation of the strike rattling my teeth as I blocked it. Crossfire didn’t waste any time though, following up her rifle by spinning around and bucking me with both hind legs, and I wasn’t fast enough to dodge that one. I went sprawling across the cargo hold floor, barely getting back to my hooves as Crossfire came in at me again.

Remember when I just said a second ago about how long I’d last if Crossfire attacked me full force like she had been with Shattered Sky? Yeah, the fact that I wasn’t dead within seconds and instead was just being forced towards the other end of the cargo hold by a relentless but oddly rhythmic and predictable series of slashes and thrusts from Crossfire’s rifle clued me in that something was up. At first I wondered why she wasn’t using the actual gun portion of her weapon to shoot at me, but then I saw her magic flick a switch that let the empty magazine of the rifle clatter to the ground and I assumed it was just her being out of ammo. But then I noticed the clip that she levitated out of her saddlebags and slapped into the rifle, giving me a brief reprieve from her melee attacks, was of a different color than the matte black clips she’d been using. It was blood red.

“…There’s a lever on the ass end of this cargo hold,” she whispered as she slashed at me again, much harder and faster than before and forcing me onto my haunches as I blocked the blow, “Flip it when I send you over there, then buck, you’d better duck and fucking grab something, or you’re dead.”

I had no idea what she was talking about but it was clear that this was the only chance we were getting to get the drop on Shattered Sky. I tried to keep the relived look off my face and instead look appropriately scared, like I was desperately trying not to let the Drifter kill me. Not a hard act to put up considering this time Crossfire moved her rifle even faster and combined that with an artful spin kick that knocked Gramzanber aside and let her strike a shallow slash across my side. She followed this up by sweeping my legs out from under me with the butt of her rifle, then spun it around to aim the point of the bayonet at my chest. Her eyes were cold and grim, but there was an almost snarky small half smile on her lips.

“Don’t fuck this up,” she said as she brought the bayonet down towards me, but at the same instant her horn glowed a brighter and fiercer red than I’d ever seen it and I suddenly felt like my whole body was being pulled in all directions at once. My vision filled with red light and for an instant my senses did a barrel roll as I felt myself being taken apart piece by piece in an instant and then shoved back together just as quickly.

Blinking my eyes I realized I was suddenly somehow on the other end of the cargo hold, right next to Shattered Sky, and just as Crossfire has said, a lever in the bulkhead that was labeled ‘Emergency Hatch Release’. Disoriented but clearly remembering what Crossfire had told me to do I threw myself at the lever, pulling it down hard. In that same instance I heard Shattered Sky shout something to the affect of us all being fools, but it was kind of hard to hear over the sudden explosive decompression of the entire cargo hold as the massive back hatch of the Vertibuck opened up to the sky and the all I could hear was howling wind force.

The suction of the air flowing out didn’t last long but it was enough to pull me off my hooves and send me skidding towards the now open hatch towards empty sky. I flailed my hooves about, my left foreleg caught hold of one of the hydraulic pistons that had opened the hatch. Burning pain from the bullet wound in my shoulder seared through me as I held on for dear life.

Shattered Sky was still in the air, his wings now beating furiously to try and keep himself stable from the sudden wind tearing through the cargo hold.

Looking up I caught a brief glimpse of Crossfire, her horn still glowing a bright red as she held Brickhouse in place, and also aimed her rifle downrange at Shattered Sky. I saw her give me a brief look, one that seemed a little regretful as she shrugged at me. I didn’t understand why that was until she fired.

This round seemed slower than a normal bullet, just so much that I could actually see the single round sail through the air at Shattered Sky for a brief second before that one round burst. It exploded into a shower of dozens of flechetts that filled the entire space of the cargo hold, leaving no room to dodge, no place to hide…for either Shattered Sky or myself.

I saw the brief look of consternation and indignation on the Odessa officer’s face as he raised his ARM to activate it, then seemed to realize there wasn’t anywhere for him to go but straight out the back of the Vertibuck. His eyes were narrowed and filled with righteous annoyance as the barrage of flechette rounds tore into him, cutting up his pristine white uniform and staining it with red as he was sent tumbling out the back of the Vertibuck. Being a pegasus capable of flight he’d probably be fine, assuming those wounds hadn’t been enough to kill him, but he wasn’t likely to catch up to the Vertibuck anytime soon. And really that was a minor concern in my own mind as a shower of flechettes torn into my back and legs and I felt my grip loosen.

I briefly felt myself slide along the remaining metal of the Vertibuck’s hatch, then all I felt was open air roaring past me as I went into free fall.

Well…this sucked. I was rolling and spinning through the air, seeing only glimpses of what was around as I fell. The ground looked kind of distant and I got the faint impression of some huge sword-shaped air ship larger than the Vertibuck we’d been in by a ridiculous margin. I think I saw the black pillars of smoke from what might have been Saddlespring and the vague shape of something bipedal, large, and red walking away from that carnage, but everything was just a tear filled blur as wind sheer alone kept me from seeing more than a second or two before blinding me.

I couldn’t think of anything to do. I was falling and in minutes would be an unpleasant smear across the Wasteland, another dead among the many that had died this day. I was kind of pissed at Crossfire, but I suppose she had warned me. I couldn’t really blame her for using the one attack she had available to take out Shattered Sky. It was just bad luck I was caught in the blast as well, but somepony had needed to pull that lever and I’d been the only one available to do it. Humoring Shattered Sky’s ‘deal’ had been her only opening to get me over there…and how had she done that anyway? It was like she’d just winked me over there somehow? Was that a unicorn thing? I’d have to ask Arcaidia sometime…

…oh, wait, falling to my death. Damn.

Was Arcaidia even okay? Last I’d seen her she’d been on Brickhouse’s back, but he’d come onto the Vertibuck to help us fight and Arcaidia hadn’t been on him then. Had he just left her back in Saddle Spring, with that monstrous Golem thing? There had still been dozens of ponies there, including Iron Wrought and the remaining Labor Guild slaves. I even felt a little worried for Dr. Lemon Slice. Crossfire had sent B.B back that way with the slave collar detonator, so maybe she’d be able to look after things. At least Arcaidia…damn it all I’d told Arcaidia I’d help her find her family! I couldn’t die until I’d at least done that much for her! And besides that there’d been another promise I’d made. I’d promised Trailblaze I wouldn’t die out here!

Thing was I didn’t have a way to fight gravity. It wasn’t like I could stab it, or buck it. Those were really my only skills. Maybe I’d luck out and survive impact…yeah, I’d already been falling for more than a minute, and I could safely say that any forthcoming impact wasn’t going to leave enough of me left to survive.

By this point I was flapping my legs up and down in a completely pointless effort to see if I could spontaneously tap into my pegasus blood and sprout wings. So far it wasn’t working. The ground was much, much closer now and I could make out I was falling towards a densely packed collection of ruined buildings, like a forest of twisted concrete and rubble. Any hopes I may have harbored of there being a convenient ‘Pillow Factory’ or something similar for me to fall onto was dashed.

Well, it’d been fun while it’d lasted. I hoped that, whenever I saw Trailblaze again when she too joined with our ancestor spirits she’d be at least a little forgiving and not kick my flank too badly for breaking that promise. And on a bright side maybe I’d see Shale somewhere in the everafter? Even if she wasn’t a part of the tribe the ancestor sprits might still let me go look for her in whatever world waited beyond this one, right?

As I pondered this I briefly noticed that something white and fast was coming right at me from off to my right. I didn’t quite see what it was before it impacted with me but I got the faint impression of a mane of brown and pink streaked hair and feathered wings. I felt hooves wrapping around me and my whole body got jerked to the side. The ground was so close now I could see the tops of ruined structures and I heard a mare yelling something in my ear but it was drowned out by the sensation of a sudden rolling impact with hard dirt.

Then everything went black. Ancestors above I hate losing consciousness like this!

I’ve come to the realization that I very much dislike having to wake up from being knocked out or passing out. It’s not like waking up from a nice restful sleep, something I hadn’t had in days. With normal sleep you wake up feeling refreshed. Waking up like this though my brain just wanted to remain checked out, quite fed up with my tendency to throw us into the fray to get horribly injured over and over again, and oh did my brain like to inform me in no uncertain terms about how injured I was.

Fortunately this wasn’t like the same dead-buck-walking feeling of every muscle and tendon in my body being on fire with pain like I’d felt back in the Ruins, this was more of a dull ache that blanketed me from muzzle to tail, but the kind of ache that says that while still in bad shape I was at least mending. I was laying down on my barrel on what felt like a soft if unpleasantly greasy mattress and when I opened my eyes I saw that it was still light out, but a subdued orange cast light of evening rather than the soft light of morning. I’d must’ve been out for at least twelve hours or so.

I was in what looked to be the interior, or mostly interior, of a burned out destroyed building with only half a roof and three walls. The mattress I was on was tucked up against one corner of the remaining walls, Gramzanber’s silver form leaning against the wall next to me, my saddlebags beside the spear. I was bandaged up, my shoulder wound and various other small cuts covered up with clean gauze wrapping. I also appeared to be alone. I thought back to the most recent events I could remember. The destruction of Saddlespring…fighting Shattered Sky on the Vertibuck…Crossfire’s last attack knocking both the Odessa pegasus and myself out the back of the Vertibuck…falling…then some mare had caught me, or tried to. Brown mane, with pink streaks-

-B.B!

I stood on shaky legs but found my hooves could carry my weight. I got my saddlebags on and then I snatched up Gramzanber and went to sheath it but realized my barding, or what little had been left of it, was gone. Sighing I kept the spear in my mouth and cautiously walked over to the open side of the building, not sure what to expect. Being that I was alive, wounds all nice and treated, chances were I wasn’t in any immediate danger, but given last I remembered Odessa forces were still at large there was no reason not to be wary.

Peeking around the corner of one ruined wall I caught a glimpse of the destroyed suburb around me, but that was all I saw of my surroundings before I bumped nose first into a horrific floating metal monstrosity. I like to think the scream I made was fairly masculine but that was probably wishful thinking on my part, but at least I made up for it by dropping into a defensive stance, spear pointed squarely at the…whatever the hell this was.

It was round, about two hoof lengths around, with a dark metallic sheen to its metal carapace. The metal sphere had four or five long metal spikes spread out behind it and a miniature turret mounted under it with a short, stubby barrel. The face of it was grated and while I saw no eyes or anything I got the impression the thing was staring right at me. Oh, and did I mention it was freakin’ floating!?

“Stay back demon! I got a pointy thing and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“…Okaaay. Longwalk, right? Are you usually this jumpy or is it just that you’ve never seen an eyebot before?”

The voice that issued forth from the floating machine was oddly warped sounding, making it impossible to identify inflection or even gender. I blinked a few times and while not pointing Gramzanber away from the thing, er, eyebot, said “Both, I guess? What are you? Sorry I’ve been having…a really bad day. Kinda been having bad luck with machines too.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of how your day’s been. Not a lot of ponies that survive a fall like you did, even with a pegasus friend coming in for a last second save.”

“B.B! Is she alright!? Please tell me she’s okay!” honestly my worry for B.B very quickly pushed aside any misgivings I was having about talking to a floating metal ball of unidentified origin and purpose.

“She’s fine. Better off than you were anyway. She woke up well before you did and her father took her back to camp. We didn’t want to risk moving you until you woke up on your own so I volunteered to keep watch on you until then.”

The wave of relief that flooded me made me sit down on my haunches, Gramzanber going lowering as I tried not to cry, “Thank goodness…I…if anything had happened to her...”

While there was little more than a bland monotone to the eyebot’s “voice” I still had the impression of sympathy in it, “Your other friend is okay as well. The blue unicorn? B.B told me you two had come to Saddlespring together.”

“Arcaidia’s alright? That’s great!” I said, then hung my head and asked in a more somber voice, “…How many others made it, from the town I mean?”

There was a long, uncomfortable pause before I got a response, “Not…a lot. Thirty, maybe forty? Not including those slaves from the Labor Guild. Everypony is holed up a couple miles from here, deeper in the suburbs where there’s plenty of cover and some sewer access to hide. Odessa’s stopped doing flybys but we’re not taking chances until we’re sure they’ve moved on.”

“Odessa…what do you know about them? Wait, first off, back to my first question, who are you?”

I had a lot of thoughts snaring up my mind. Questions about Odessa. Questions about Arcaidia. Guilt and worries about Saddlespring. Not to mention Shale, whose body I still owed a proper funeral. Before I could let any of it overwhelm me though I wanted to at least know who, or what, I was talking to.

“I’m…well I guess you can call me LIL-E.”

“Lily?” I asked and in response the machine rotated around until I could see a plate on its side that had the letters ‘LIL-E’ engraved on it.

“LIL-E. Don’t ask, just a silly acronym a friend came up with.”

“Is that actually your name though? I mean…what are you?”

“A pony. What you’re looking at is a special eyebot a friend built for me. I’m not giving you my real name because…well…let’s just say it’s not a name you need to know nor would knowing it do you any good. If anything it’d cause you trouble if you said it to the wrong ponies. Anyway, LIL-E was made to be an extra set of eyes for me so I can observe places in the world I can’t get to anymore because of my…condition. Places like the Detrot Wasteland.”

“You mean the Skull City Wasteland?”

“Ugh, no, I am not calling Detrot by that stupid name. They should’ve just stuck with Detrot instead of trying to make themselves sound all intimidating and badass. Anyway, yeah, I normally couldn’t keep an eye on a place this far north, but LIL-E is set up with a transmitter that maintains a connection to my home. With her I can go almost anywhere. Mostly. Still a few places where LIL-E’s transmitter won’t work.”

I slowly digested this information. I had something of a better concept now of what robots were but the machines still confused me and honestly gave me the creeps. Not to mention my closets encounter with another robot involved an entire town burning to the ground. Ancestors…Saddlespring…

“Where is Saddlespring from here?” I asked and LIL-E rotated and floated up a bit, pointing her ‘face’ in a direction.

“That way. There’s not a lot of it left.”

Without understanding why I was overcome with a sudden, almost violent need to see it for myself. I began at a slow trot that despite my injuries groaning in protest quickly became a full on gallop. LIL-E floated after me, making a strange low buzzing noise as she did so. Past a broken concrete street and three or four more old rubble strewn buildings I came upon a hill that gave me a good view of the surrounding area. Looking in the direction LIL-E had indicated I got a clear view of Saddlespring.

There was nothing there now. It was just a mass of a dozen or so craters and black scorched foundations with little more than thin skeletal walls, not one of which was more than five feet high any longer. There was no movement down there, not a single sign of life. An entire town of several hundred ponies, wiped off the face of the world.

I wondered who had survived. The guard at the gate who’d given me and Arcaidia directions, Copper Shell, had that friendly mare made it out? What about the merchant who’d swindled my caps for cheap armor and a sheath for Gramzanber, was he still alive? The foal I’d heard crying in the sheriff’s office, had their mother or father gotten them out safely? I even wondered if the green eyed Odessa pegasus mare I’d fought had lived through the fight…

…So many dead and most of them I never even met. It seemed wrong that I should be responsible for so many deaths and hadn’t the decency to know any of them. I at least wanted names that I could carve into my mind and remember, because I shouldn’t be allowed to forget what I’d done. No matter the circumstances this town’s destruction boiled down to one dumb choice I’d made; I’d gone and opened the Golem's, Roaring Metal’s tomb instead of calling Crossfire on the radio.

I knew that it was possible things would have turned out exactly the same way if I had called them, that even if Crossfire and her team had come down there like had been originally the plan it was very possible that Golem would’ve been set free anyway. But at least there was a chance that it wouldn’t, that maybe Dr. Lemon Slice had known a way to control or otherwise shut the Golem down. Or maybe Crossfire, Brickhouse and Shard, being far more skilled than I or my companions had been, could’ve actually stopped the Golem if it had gotten loose. Odessa would have still attacked Saddlespring, sure, but they wouldn’t have needed to destroy the town if the Golem hadn’t been there.

I could spin in my mind thousands of possible excuses and reasons that would’ve diminished my part in this, but right at that moment, looking at the end result, I couldn’t. I couldn’t excuse myself from the simple truth; that from Shale’s death to the destruction of Saddlesrping I was responsible.

“Did you know a lot of ponies there?” asked LIL-E’s toneless voice and I looked up past tear filled eyes to see the robot floating next to me.

“I…didn’t, and I should have. This shouldn’t have happened.”

“Nothing like this should ever happen, but it does. Every day it does,” I heard a sound that might have been a growl of frustration but the monotone buzz of whatever the robot used to generate its ‘voice’ made it sound like a demonic bee, “Every single damned day somepony dies in the Wasteland. Until the Wasteland is wiped out forever it’ll keep killing ponies.”

“I can’t blame this on the Wasteland. I did this. This is my fault.”

“…You’re going to have to explain that one. How is this your fault? I only got some of the story from B.B’s father. All I know is that a giant metal monster came out of the ground at about the same time Odessa showed up and attacked. What’s your part in all of that?”

Maybe because I didn’t really know who LIL-E was, because she was just a faceless pony controlling a robot from who knew where, and mostly because I desperately felt a need to let out all the pent up guilt I had choking me from the inside I began to talk. I didn’t hold anything back, I told her everything from the moment me and Arcaidia met the slave caravan to the moment we’d released the Golem, where I…sort of lost it.

“I mean what the fuck was I thinking!? Did I honestly think I’d just be able to bust up whatever was inside that tomb!? That image, ghost, whatever the hell it was, warned us about the danger! And what did I do? I ignored it and went ahead anyway! Why? Because of some half-assed thought that I could deny the Labor Guild what they were after? So the fuck what!? It’d have been better than an entire town dying! And…and…Shale. Her body is still…she deserves a proper funeral…they all do.”

I was breathing hard, just taking in ragged breaths as I listened to my heart beating in my chest. I was so pissed at myself and I didn’t have any notion of what to do about it. I’d screwed up before in my life, made mistakes and gotten in trouble; but it was all simple things that had only ever really affected just me. Getting Chief Hard Tack angry enough at me to bar me from hanging out with Trailblaze had been the worst trouble I’d ever been in, and compared to Saddlespring…there wasn’t a comparison.

Two days in the Wasteland and my actions got a town killed.

It was a concept I couldn’t even fully get my head wrapped around. Just thinking at all about what had led to this, how ignorant and foolish my actions were, let me with a tight angry feeling in my chest, like I wanted to hurt something. Mostly myself.

“If you honestly feel that way,” said LIL-E’s blank machine tone, “Then what are you going to do about it?”

“Huh…?”

“I said, ‘what are you going to do about it’? You looking for punishment? I know the survivors would probably be looking for somepony to string up for the loss of their loved ones, so if you’re just looking to run from the pain your feeling, they’ll likely oblige you. Or maybe you just want to lie down and feel sorry for yourself until starvation or some Wasteland creature kills you? That’s also an option. Nopony’s going to stop you from giving up Longwalk, except maybe yourself. Assuming you’re up to it and you honestly feel responsible for causing the death of this town, and intend to do something about that.”

I starred at the floating robot, not able to respond. Was she right? Was I just feeling sorry for myself, letting myself wallow in guilt? But what else could I do? I’d tried so hard to help ponies and the end result had been more death and destruction than I’d ever witnessed in my life all wrapped up in one horrifying twenty four hour period. LIL-E was right that amid the swirling pale of dark feelings roiling around in me right now the thought of just laying down and giving up, of not doing another single damned thing, wasn’t absent. But there was something else coursing through my thoughts and emotions that was different than that feeling of being overwhelmed by what had happened.

It was the thought of the things I still had to do and the promise I still needed to keep.

I’d promised Trailblaze I wouldn’t die. Somehow, one way or another, someday down the line, I needed to be able to walk back to my village and see my best friend again.

I still had to pay the debt I owed to Arcaidia. I didn’t know anything about the filly and had more questions now than ever before, but I hadn’t forgotten what I’d started this journey for.

I certainly couldn’t let B.B worry about me either. The mare had risked her life once again to save mine. Was I going to disrespect that by giving up, no matter how badly I had screwed up?

And then Shale…she had given her life for mine. More than anything else was I going to devalue that sacrifice now by wallowing in self pity?

No. I couldn’t imagine what I was going to do to make up for my part in Saddlespring’s destruction, but I’d look for a way. I’d figure something out I could do that, while probably never being enough to atone for the deaths I’d had a role in causing, would be better than simply quitting.

And I at least knew the first thing I needed to do, if not what would come after.

“I’m…going to do something about all of this,” I said, “But first I’m going to find Shale’s body, and as many others as I can, and I’m going to make sure they can rest in peace.”

LIL-E guided me towards Saddlespring. She said she had something called ‘scanners’ that let sense things far better than a flesh and blood pony, so if any Odessa pegasi were left in the area she’d spot them long before I could, and could direct us to cover to hide. However we encountered nothing as we approached the destroyed remains of what had once been a thriving settlement.

As we approached the spot where the gate had been I noticed the massive imprints in the ground alongside the craters. From the shape of the prints I could only conclude that these were the footprints of Roaring Metal. The tracks looked like they were heading south. All I knew that was in that direction was that big desert B.B had called the Bleach. And beyond that the NCR. Would the Golem keep walking all the way to that distant country, or was it after something in the desert itself? I couldn’t begin to guess and while I knew I had a responsibility now to find some way to stop that thing before it hurt anypony else I had no clue how I’d even start going about that. One thing at a time…

The bombardment from whatever Odessa had used had left numerous craters, but there was space between them to walk. The gate itself was partially intact.

“Most of the survivors ran from the gate area before that Raptor hit it any harder,” said LIL-E as I began looking around, “If there are any bodies left here, there isn’t going to be much left to bury.”

“What’s a Raptor?” I said as I looked in one crater, seeing a burnt severed hoof with a little yellow coat left on it, but not much else.

“One of the Enclave’s airships. Odessa might call themselves by a different name, but their origins are clearly Enclave. The Raptor they used to hit this town and that big metal thing-“

“Golem.”

“-, right, Golem, well the airship they had looked like a Raptor. More or less. A little larger, with a longer and narrower hull than I’ve seen. But it was still pretty clearly a Raptor. I don’t know what Odessa’s goal is here but they’re acting little different than the Enclave did back in the day.”

“You sound like you know a lot about this Enclave,” I was starting to feel a queasiness in my gut that was getting hard to suppress as I picked through the craters, not finding much save scraps and bits of bodies, most of the remains no larger than what I could hold on a single hoof. I couldn’t stand the thought but if Shale’s body had been…no, no damn it, she deserved better than this! I had to give her a funeral, something, anything, I…needed to say goodbye at least.

“Unfortunately,” LIL-E replied as she floated behind me, “It was the ruling body of the pegasus race for a long time. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised there are remnants of it left, even today. Most of the Enclave is either gone or fully absorbed into the NCR government. Groups like Odessa may not be common but they are not the only remnant group that refused to give up old Enclave ideals, or just redressed them as something else. I figure that must be what Odessa is, some kind of Enclave Redux or whatever…Celestia pour liquid sun on my cunt and buck me ‘till I’m raw why can’t ponies just learn when something’s a bad idea, no matter how you dress it up?”

I had to pause and look over at LIL-E at that last comment. The hay kind of cursing was that? I mean, I was prone to the occasional curse word under duress, having let off a few not more than a hour ago, but that was…creative.

“What?” LIL-E asked as she rotated to face me. I just shook my head.

“Never mind…I’m not…I don’t think there’s much left here.”

“…Sorry, I shouldn’t have let you come down here. I thought maybe you’d luck out and the mare you’re looking for might still be here.”

“I can’t believe I left her…I just lost it when Shattered Sky sent that barrage down and I charged him without thinking,” I said as I looked at the ground, “I just…left her behind.”

“Longwalk, I’m not very good at this whole ‘advise’ thing but it doesn’t sound to me like there’s a lot else you could have done. Sometimes…sometimes you can only react. There’s no perfect plan. Believe me, I’ve tried to come up with those. Never worked. You can’t plan for everything, or always have time to think about the best choice. If you left Shale’s body here…that’s…shit I’m not good at this…it’s not like she could have suffered any more.”

“I know. She deserved to be sent off with a proper funeral pyre, though I have no idea who her ancestor spirits might be so I can’t name them and ask them to look after her, or perform the rituals the shaman could have...and there’s so little left of anypony else I don’t think I could get a good pyre going…”

“Right, forgot you were a tribal,” said LIL-E, floating down to eye level with me, “For most ponies burial is the normal way to handle the remains.”

“…Burial? Like, in the ground? Why?”

“It’s just the way it’s usually done, though I have heard of a few places that do it the way your tribe does. Look, if you’re serious about doing this then I’d suggest gathering what remains we can and burying them together. I’d say do it by what’s left of the gate wall. That way we can put an epitaph on the wall.”

I had to get LIL-E to explain to me what an epitaph was, and while it seemed a little strange I think I understood the importance of it if one were to bury remains in one place rather than burning them to send the pony’s body and soul onward to their ancestors. It was like leaving a hoof print behind, it was remaining proof that the pony had once lived. I didn’t know what epitaph I could put for an entire town’s worth of ponies, but I had plenty of time to think about it as LIL-E and I went about gathering the remains we could find. LIL-E didn’t exactly have a way to help my physically, but she helped me keep focused on the task and scour the town.

We only found three intact bodies, the rest was burned bones or charred pieces. I won’t deny my constitution failed me a few times, but since I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday there wasn’t much for me to do but dry heave once the bile was gone, wipe my chin, and get back to work. LIL-E kept an eye out for trouble but nothing bothered us as we did our grisly task and in about three, maybe four hours time I had the majority of the remains carefully laid out in one of the smaller craters by the wall. I had arranged the intact bodies, two earth pony mares I didn’t recognize and one pegasus stallion I faintly recalled as being part of the crowd at B.B’s magic show, side by side.

That done I started filling in the crater using Gramzanber as a makeshift trowel. Strangely I felt a sense of calm and somber resolve filling me as I did so, accompanied by a faint pressure in my head that I’d come to associate with my…connection, or whatever it was, with the ARM. And once again, if only for the briefest of moments, I felt like I had somepony standing next to me and I looked almost expecting to see Shale standing there. But of course she wasn’t. I didn’t know if any part of her was left with the remains I’d found, but it seemed like this was as close to a funeral as I was going to be able to give her.

It was nearly nightfall by the time the hole was filled and my hooves and neck were beyond aching. But I wasn’t done. LIL-E showed me how to fashion a proper grave marker from a few burned metal bars, tying them together with some salvaged wiring we found in the foundation of one of destroyed buildings. It was roughly cross-shaped and I asked LIL-E what that meant, but she just told me it was an old sign tied loosely to some analogy for the balance that existed between Equestria’s two Princess’, one of which raised the sun, the other the moon. I didn’t question it beyond that.

Placing that marker over the grave I then moved onto the wall, Gramzanber at the ready. For a long time me and LIL-E both stood (well, I stood, she got to float…lucky robot) and wondered what to put down.

“I wasn’t there,” LIL-E said “So honestly I can’t think of what would be fitting. Sorry Longwalk.”

“Don’t be, this is also part of my responsibility to them now.”

I began carving the words into the stone wall, carefully measuring each stroke of Gramzanber’s serrated edge as it cut into the concrete. It took a few minutes, and probably was a bit simple and hardly felt like enough, but it was the best I could do.

Many ponies lay here; earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorn’s alike.

They worked together to make a home called Saddlespring.

It wasn’t a bad place, and nopony here deserved what happened.

They will not be forgotten.

I looked at the words I carved, feeling that those words just weren’t good enough for the ponies now buried beneath me, that I had names I could carve there so that anypony who saw this knew just who had died. The only name I really had was Shale’s, and carving her name alone didn’t feel right when so many others would go unnamed. Ultimately I left it at that, only saying a few soft words to the spirits of those who were gone.

“I’m sorry. I’ll...I’m not…I’m not a strong pony. I’m not a smart pony. But I’ll find a way to make this…right. Even if that’s impossible, I’ll still find a way. I won’t let this happen to another town. Wherever I end up going, I promise I won’t let another home burn. So please rest. And…and look after Shale, okay? I know she’s not from your town, and I don’t have any right to ask anything of you folk, but she’s a good pony and I don’t want her to be alone up there. So please don’t let her be alone…”

I couldn’t speak anymore. LIL-E remained silent as I cried into the scorched earth.

Making our way through the Wasteland at night was showing me a whole plethora of ways to trip and fall on my flank or face, depending on just what chunk of rubble or pothole caught me and where. LIL-E, being a freakin’ floating robot with apparent night vision wasn’t having the same problems I was. In any other set of circumstances I might’ve been able to take my ungainly stumbling about with a healthy dose of self humor, but as it was it just felt like a fraction of how hard I still felt like hitting myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I was resolved to keep going. I needed to link up with B.B and Arcaidia and continue helping Arcaidia find her lost family member. I was also determined now to find out more about Odessa and why they’d come after Arcaidia and even find some way to make them both pay for Saddlespring and ensure they could never do something like that again. On top of that I also needed to figure out some way to eventually stop the Golem Roaring Metal from going on another rampage, though how I was going to pull of that feat was even more of a mystery than how I’d confront an organization like Odessa. Then there were the numerous other things I felt I needed to do; like escort the survivors of Saddlespring to safety somewhere and make sure the remaining slaves were freed from their collars.

But despite my resolve to do all of that I couldn’t deny that I couldn’t just cast aside the iron hooks of guilt that dragged down my mind. One pep talk and a make-shift funeral wasn’t going to just erase the memories of Saddlespring. I was, however, capable of still walking. I was still putting one hoof in front of the other, even if every three steps led to another nasty trip.

“You know I really wish the pegasi in NCR could get an expedition out here to do something about that cloud cover,” commented LIL-E as I snagged a back hoof on a piece a rebar jutting from a pile of smashed concrete and cursed as I stumbled.

“What do you mean?” I asked, more because I knew she was just trying to keep a conversation going and take my mind off things and I felt like I ought to reciprocate her efforts, even if honestly I wasn’t all that interested…well, maybe a little. Curiosity is a powerful motivator that often times doesn’t care about the rest of our emotional state.

“Well, inside the NCR the SPP Towers allow for direct weather control over a very wide area. We’ve been able to keep the sky clear from Dise all the way to Trottingham without needing pegasi to do any of the weather work. Problem is with Detrot, though, is that it’s outside of range from the northernmost SPP Tower. I don’t know why, but the MoA never built a Tower out this way. So if the cloud cover that was put here two hundred years ago is ever going to go away we’d need a full expedition of pegasi to do it.”

“MoA? That’s…Ministry of Awesome, right?” I asked, recalling B.B’s lecture back when we were in the Ruins, “That’s the one that was controlled by that famous pegasus warrior?”

“Rainbow Dash. Yes, her Ministry built the SPP, Single Pony Project, Towers, with the expressed purpose of granting the ability to regulate Equestria’s weather to a single pony who would plug into the system, becoming a sort of living computer. They built Towers in every corner of Equestria…everywhere except the Detrot region.”

“Why wouldn’t they build a Tower out here? I mean, Detrot was a part of Equestria wasn’t it?”

“It was. Detrot and it’s surrounding suburbs and sister towns were home to a lot of factories, research facilities, and businesses that were all civilian run. The Ministries had the manticore’s share of the most prominent and capable research staff for their own work, the most advanced factories, and ties to the biggest corporations all in the Equestrian heartland…but Detrot was where a lot of civilian groups not under the Ministries worked on projects of their own. They were still monitored, and if they ever developed something of use the Ministries would sweep in to grab it up, but for the most part Detrot was left to its own devices. Except towards the end of the war, when resources were scarce enough that Detrot’s factories were taken over for the war effort and a lot of its labs were shut down under…mysterious circumstances. Which just adds to the oddity that the MoA never built a Tower in the area. Could be that they just lacked the resources to do it. No way of knowing for sure, unless you dug up enough memory orbs from around here to start piecing it all together.”

“Wait a sec,” I said as I set down Gramzanber long enough to reach over and rummage in my saddlebags, finally extracting the Recollector and its memory orb and showing it to LIL-E, “You mean something like this?”

LIL-E paused in mid-flight, slowly rotating towards me and hovering closer to the deice, “Where did you find that?”

“Um…in the Ruin, the one that was in Saddlespring.”

“…Have you viewed it yet?”

“No. LIL-E, is something wrong?”

“Longwalk, I know you’re eager to get to the camp and reunite with your friends but…but do you think you’d be willing to do me a huge favor and go into that memory orb right now? I need to know what’s in there and I can’t do it through LIL-E’s interface.”

I was a little nervous about the prospect. I wasn’t even sure if I’d ever intended to go into that memory orb. Curiosity or not it just sounded weird, dreaming another pony’s memories. Something in LIL-E’s words managed to convey a powerful sense of urgency even beyond the normal blank monotone of her mechanical voice. It occurred to me that, while it seemed she had helped me and was a good pony on the other end of that machine, I still didn’t know much of anything about LIL-E. I mean, who can fully trust a pony who won’t even give her real name?

I looked about nervously, “Is it safe? I mean, we’re out in the open.”

“We can use that rubble for cover and I’ll keep watch. Trust me, few things can sneak up on LIL-E’s sensors. You won’t be able to wake until the memory is done, but if something comes our way…well, LIL-E is plenty well armed. I know this is an odd thing to ask Longwalk, but half of why I’m out here has to do with finding answers to certain questions I have about Detrot and its Ruins. Answers that might be in that memory orb. Please? Pretty please? Pretty pretty I’ll-do-you-whatever-favor-you-need-later pleaaaase!?”

Wow, I didn’t know it was possibly to sound that whiny with a mechanical voice. I could almost see big watering puppy eyes popping out of LIL-E’s face plate and little mechanical arms clasping in front of her in a pleading gesture. After a moment of LIL-E bobbing up and down in front of me repeating ‘please’ over and over again I relented and nodded my head.

“Yay! Okay, let’s just hide over here,” LIL-E led me around a pile of rubble that had a vaguely crescent shape to it so we could hide in the curve.

I set myself down on my barrel, folding my legs under me, and LIL-E instructed me on how to put the Recollector on my head.

“And it should start up pretty much the second you fit it on and-“

LIL-E’s words faded away like sand being washed away by the tide and I felt myself being strangely drawn away from my body.

oooOOOooo

I’d been told basically what to expect, that I’d be ‘riding’ in the body of another pony without any real control or ability to do more than think while I was in my ‘host’, but it was still a very jarring experience to suddenly be running without any control of my movements.

The body I was in was running down a corridor I recognized as one of the hallways inside the Ruin, the pony running alongside others who were all armed with various weapons and dressed in an assortment of clothing, though most of them had some kind of armor on. Turrets would drop from the ceiling and were subsequently quickly blasted by the lead pony, a unicorn mare who was levitating two drum-fed shotguns that roared in the closed confines of the hallway. There was gunfire behind me, er, my host as well.

There was something odd about the way my host was moving, the very way their body was built that was giving me the weirdest sensations of being horribly out of place. My balance felt off and I had the oddest sensation of there being something on my back. It was only when the ponies reached a door and the lead unicorn, a mare with a light brown coat and blond mane, began to open it with her hooves and my host spoke that I realized the problem.

“Hurry it up Quick Fix! Those things are right behind us,” my host said in a very clear mare’s voice.

So that was what felt off. I was missing certain…parts…and there were other parts…where parts of another kind ought to…oh dear ancestors this was just weird feeling!

The unicorn, Quick Fix, had a white hued aura of magic around her horn as she pulled at the door with her magic now as well as she said through grit teeth, “You could always help, Airheart!”

“Okay, everypony else watch our backs!” my host, Airheart apparently, said as she flew over to the door. Oh, so that’s what else felt different, those weird sensations on my, her, back had been wings. It was an utterly peculiar feeling to suddenly have two new limbs bursting with sensation flapping on my back and the weird sensation of rising off the ground with barely any effort and hovering over to the door. I could feel air gently caressing over every pinion of my, her, wings and if I’d still had a spine of my own to shiver in I would have.

Airheart put her hooves next to Quick Fix’s and added her wing power to the unicorn’s own magic and hooves. Meanwhile the other ponies in the group, another pegasus mare with a blue gray coat and black mane and two earth ponies, one a stallion of red coloring and a buzzed white man, the other a mare with a green coat and curly brown mane, turned their attention down the corridor where I could faintly see the approaching forms of Tunnelers.

The ponies all opened fire at once, all with a mix of pistols and rifles just like the collection of mostly rusted and broken weapons I’d found in the Ruin among the skeletons…two hundred years later. It hit me then and there with the full impact of a hoof to the jaw that every single one of these ponies I was watching were already dead. They didn’t know it, but somehow, someway, regardless of what they were trying to do down there, they were all going to die. Shot by somepony. I remembered the bullet hole in the skull of the pegasus I’d taken the Recollector off of…Airheart. Somepony was going to shoot her in the head.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout some kind of warning to them. I tried to force words past a throat that wasn’t mine and out lips that I had no control over, words to tell these ponies that they had to get out of this place, that if they stayed here somepony was going to kill them! But of course it was useless. I wasn’t actually there. This wasn’t actually happening right now. This was a memory, pulled out of Airheart’s head by the Recollector I could feel her wearing and put into the memory orb that I knew had to be there. These ponies were dead for two hundred years. Nothing I could do but watch and witness their last moments.

The Tunneler’s kept advancing past the hail of gunfire that tore through them, but it slowed the cybernetic monstrosities down enough for Airheart and Quick Fix’s efforts to finally pull the door open. Quick Fix turned and brought her dual shotguns to bear the second the door was open all the way and jerked her head in a gesture for Airheart to go through while she shouted, “Everypony get in! NOW!”

Airheart dove through the door and the others joined her as Quick Fix laid down a stream of cover fire, her shotguns firing a fully automatic burst of death that ripped into the lead Tunnelers that were just meters from reaching them. Airheart turned around and awkwardly got out a small pistol from a shoulder holster that she clutched in her teeth in the same unfamiliar manner I tended to with firearms. Glad to know I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t used to the damned things. Despite her clear lack of proficiency Airheart still aimed her pistol at the Tunnelers, the barrel shaking in her mouth. I could feel her heart racing and obvious fear, but I couldn’t feel any of her emotions or thoughts, just the physical stuff.

Airheart didn’t fire, either too afraid to hit Quick Fix, or just too afraid period, but it didn’t matter. Quick Fix’s shotguns in such a confined space were able to keep the Tunnelers back long enough for her to back up and use her magic to slam the door metal door shut. There was the sound of pounding on the metal for a few seconds but it subsided before long. I listened as all the ponies in the room breathed heavily from their flight and fight, and soon Quick Fix, seeming the one in charge, turned to the others.

“Alright, Screen Saver, are we anywhere near where we need to be?”

The red earth pony stallion raised a foreleg and I saw he had a PipBuck on it. He peered at its screen, then slowly smiled, “Yup, right where the doc said the terminal should be.”

“Must be talking about this thing,” said the green earth pony mare as she approached what I recognized as the big blocky device that had been in the room, “I hope the doc’s program will work with it. This tech isn’t exactly Equestrian standard.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Airheart said as she flittered over to the device, looking back at Quick Fix, “I might’ve found and destroyed that bug on our skywagon, but somepony knows we’re here. Depending on whose after us we got hours at most to get this done!”

“Are we really doing this,” said the other pegasus, the blue coated mare who was giving her surroundings a look as if she was expecting the walls themselves to come alive and eat them, “I mean…if we do this it’ll change everything. The war, the country…the whole world.”

“Kinda think the point of no return was passed some time ago Overcast. You wanted out you should’ve went when the doc gave us the chance.”

“Ugh, I know that Quick Fix! I know! Damnit it’s just…it’s…Celestia just look around us! All of this proves everything the doc’s been saying yeah, proves what we’ve all seen and felt for years. But…if we transmit the information in here then…I don’t know, it just feels like a lot of ponies could die in the fallout of the truth coming to light.”

I felt Airheart’s shoulder’s slump as she floated over to her fellow pegasus and put a hoof slowly around Overcast’s shoulders, leaning in closely to the other mare as she spoke in a gentle voice.

“You don’t want anypony getting hurt Overcast. I feel the same way. But you know that the truth is important. Ponies everywhere deserve to know what’s been kept hidden. It might…it might actually end this stupid war with the zebras! If everypony, including them, know that we’re not alone in this universe and that our world’s in danger from something ‘up there’ then…then that has to make everypony and zebra stop fighting! We can’t fight each other if there’s something bigger and worse out there coming to get us, right?”

“I…yes, you’re right. Let’s…let’s do this then, before I loose my nerve again,” Overcast said, leaning into Airheart’s embrace. The two mare’s parted and Airheart looked over at Quick Fix and nodded. The unicorn returned the nod and before long the five ponies went to work.

Screen Saver removed the components of some kind of device that he began to assemble next to the Ruin’s terminal while Quick Fix went to the terminal itself and used her horn’s magic to begin interacting with it, lighting up symbols on the block of metal a lot like I’d seen Arcaidia do. Quick Fix though had a grimace of pain on her face and extreme concentration as she did so. Airheart came over to her.

“Is it working…?”

“Mmph…yeah its…uhn…just harder than the doc…made it sound. The magic in this…errgh…thing is resisting me every…huff…step of the way.”

As the minutes drug by Screen Saver had built a miniature terminal just like the one I’d interacted with in the Ruin and the green earth pony mare next to him ran a cable from that terminal to the Ruin’s terminal, Quick Fix’s magical interaction with the device seeming to make progress as a port opened on the Ruin terminal and Overcast stepped up.

“Here’s hoping the doc’s theories on interface adaptors for magical matrices weren’t a bunch of pipe dreams,” she said as she affixed another device, a small steel cylinder, into the port and then connected the cable to the other end of the cylinder.

“Alright, let’s see what we can see,” said Screen Saver, settling in front of the terminal and clacking away at the keys, “…Stable-Tech’s OS is active and…good, we’re receiving a response from the other end. Looks like the doc’s adapter is doing the job! I’m getting streams of data! We can get this baby ready to roll soon as the surface team gets the transmitter online!”

“Huff…good…huff…Airheart, how’s the surface team doing anyway?”

“Just a sec,” Airheart said and I felt her raise a hoof to her head and tap her ear, her hoof brushing the Recollector as she did so, which made her sigh, “Wish you weren’t making me wear this thing.”

“This could be the single most important moment in Equestrian history, if not the history of the entire world,” Quick Fix said past labored breaths, “Figured we ought to have a record of it for posterity’s sake if nothing else.”

Airheart shook her head and then tapped something that I felt in her ear. Weird how you don’t notice those little sensations until they’re brought straight to your attention. It felt like a bead, or little pebble in her ear attached to some rubbery cord. When she tapped it I heard a faint buzzing noise in her ear as she said, “Down Team to Up Team, we’re connected and have a clean and clear data stream. What’s the status of the transmitter?”

I heard a chiming female voice say back, “We’re ready. Transmitter is up and hidden. There’s little to no activity up here, but its 3AM so no surprise there. Town’s nice and quiet. We’re about to move…wait…Millie, you see that? Everypony, take cover.”

“Up Team, say again? Allie Way? What’s going on?”

The other ponies were looking at Airheart in concern though Screen Saver wasn’t ceasing his work on the terminal. Overcast had a growing look of horror on her face as she whispered, “It’s too soon…it can’t be the military.”

“Allie? Talk to me!” I winced, well, mentally winced, at the tone of fear and desperation in Airheart’s voice.

“Shh,” said Allie Way’s voice in Airheart’s ear, “There was a shadow passing between the buildings. We’re hiding, just in case…but doesn’t look like it was anything. We’ll-“

Whatever Allie was going to say next was interrupted by the sudden sound of something brushing against something else and then a loud and abrupt snap of bone followed by a thudding sound like…like a body hitting the ground.

“…Allie…?” Airheart’s voice was little more than a soft whimper.

There was no answer, just dead static. The heart rate in my host’s body doubled as she dropped her hoof from her ear and hung her head slowly, whispering “…no…”

“Airheart? What happened? Say something damnit!” Quick Fix said as she came up to the pegasus, staring her in the eyes.

“I…I think…they’re dead. Somepony got them all.”

“It’s too soon to be the regular military,” said Overcast again, “It’d have taken them at least an hour or two to sortie a mission to stop us. This has to be the work of a group that’s faster and with less red tape to deal with than the army.”

“Like who…?” asked the green earth pony mare.

“I can only think of one group that could pull off tracking us here and getting here this quick,” said Overcast darkly, “The Shadowbolts.”

“Oh dear Luna protect us…” whispered the green mare.

“Probably not, considering she’s likely the one that gave them the order to take us down, Fresh Grass,” Overcast said as she went to the door, readying her pistol in her mouth.

“But they’ll have a hard time getting down here, right?” said Screen Saver, “What with all those turrets and monsters blocking the way.”

“Screen, have you even heard of what the Shadowbolts can do? We got down here, so you can sure as buck bet they can do it three times as fast as we did, with half the ammo spent,” Quick Fix said sharply, levitating her shotguns and taking a position on the opposite side of the door from Overcast, “We just have to hope they didn’t find the transmitter. Screen, how far are we along with file decryption?”

“Getting there. We’re over 70% done…” he trailed off, then after a second added glumly, “Even if it finishes in time and we transmit…we’re not getting out of here alive, are we?”

“…Probably not,” Quick Fix admitted after a moment of hesitating, pain clear in her eyes along with a strained quiver to her legs, “If the Shadowbolts have a kill order, then we’re pretty much dead ponies. For what it’s worth I’m sorry I dragged you all into this.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Airheart, “We all agreed this was the right thing to do. We all…knew the risks.”

“I’m still the one that introduced you all to the doc. I’m the one who pulled us all together, and came up with the idea to come here and do this in the first place…”

“Buck it Quick Fix I’m supposed to be the wishy-washy one,” said Overcast with a snort, “You’re supposed to be the one who can fly steady, so can you quit the blame game? I don’t want to die listening to my friend bitching and blaming herself. Let’s at least go down…well, not gloriously, because honestly, buck glory I’d rather live, but let’s at least finish doing what we came here to do.”

Quick Fix looked at her companions, Airheart nodding to her and drawing her own pistol, Fresh Grass swallowing in plain fear but also pushing it aside as she adjusted the assault rifle mounted on the battle saddle she wore and came up to stand next to Airheart. Overcast had a grim and small smile on her face, and Screen Saver was staring at the terminal as if his whole world was contained in its soft emerald screen.

“…You all…thanks,” Quick Fix’s eyes gained a shining gleam of determination as she aimed her shotguns at the door, “I’m still sorry you all had to do this.”

That seemed to end conversation between the five friends as the waited; either for their terminal to finish what it was doing, or for the enemy they all knew was coming to arrive. While this was happening my own mind was reeling with questions. What were they talking about; transmitting data from the Ruin terminal? Was that what I’d done when I’d hit the ‘Y’ button on the terminal, two hundred years after these events? What kind of data? Why would transmitting it be such a big, important deal like their talk seemed to make it sound? I didn’t understand.

While my mind had been picking over its questions I hadn’t noticed that the five ponies had all gotten tense as something bumped into the door. Quick Fix’s horn glowed a brighter shade of white and a similar white aura covered the door suddenly.

“Can you keep it closed?” asked Overcast as she backed up a step from the door, pistol trained on it. It occurred to me she could talk rather well for a pony with a pistol in her mouth. Wonder why that skill seemed so uncommon in the modern era?

“Not if they got explosives to get it open,” Quick Fix said, “Which they’ll use if I keep this door closed for much longer. Our only chance is to swing it open and use one of Fresh Grass’ grenades. Maybe stun them long enough for us to take them out.”

“We’re at 96%,” said Screen Saver, “We just need another couple of minutes.”

“They’ll blast the doors in less than one, then we’re all dead and the terminal is toast,” said Quick Fix, “Fresh Grass, prep a grenade, I’m going to open the doors in ten seconds. Everypony get ready.”

“This is such a bad idea,” said Fresh Grass as she went and got a grenade, one I recognized as the same kind of flash bang types I’d acquired from the skeletons of these very ponies.

Airheart didn’t say anything, just stood a little off to the right side of the door, knees shaking, breath quick in her throat, and heart pounding. I could only imagine what the pegasus mare was going through, what she had to be thinking. Trapped with her friends in a small room, knowing that on the other side of that door were ponies both willing and fully able to kill her and everypony else in the room. The only chance for survival was to fight, but if the reputation of these Shadowbolts was anything close to the reality, what chance did this ponies have?

I would have given anything to be there. To really be there, in that room, two hundred years ago. It’s a stupid thought I know, it’s not like there would have been anything I could have done to help beyond fight and die along with them. But damnit that didn’t stop me from wanting to be in that room, spear ready, to fight beside those brave ponies. To put a comforting hoof on Airheart’s shoulder and tell her that we’d make it, somehow, even if those words would’ve been lies.

It was a desire that couldn’t be fulfilled and was stifled by the reality of the fact that I was just watching a memory, Airheart’s last memory. At least she was with her friends.

Tension mounted as Fresh Grass exchanged nods with Quick Fix and everypony else readied their guns. Quick Fix gulped, I could see the brief second of hesitance on her face, her wondering if she was doing the right then, then that fleeting look passing for a moment of stone faced concentration. She yanked open the door with her magic, already opening fire with her shotguns.

Everypony else opened fire, a crescendo of gunshots in the dark corridor as Fresh Grass lobbed her grenade with a shouting warning for her friends to have time to shield their eyes.

Airheart ducked, covering her eyes with one hoof. There was a flash, even beyond her closed eye-lids, and a concussive crack of sound. Airheart’s breathing was fast and ragged as she opened her eyes and looked down the corridor. There was smoke from both the grenade and the gunfire from earlier filling the air, and absolute silence.

“Did we get any of them?” Fresh Grass asked.

“I don’t see anythi-“ Overcast began to say as she peeked down the corridor, but then a black and blue streak of motion slammed right through the door, taking Overcast’s head between two black clad hooves and slamming the pegasus full force into the ground.

A blur of motion and gunfire was almost too disorienting for me to figure out what was happening. I felt Airheart lift herself into the air and try and shoot at a dashing black form with a trail of unimaginable colors flowing with it but I couldn’t even tell if her wild shots were hitting anything. There were more black, blindingly fast pony shaped forms in the room now and I saw Fresh Grass get lifted bodily into the air and smashed into the ceiling by one of the flying black forms…a pegasus clad head to toe in a black form fitting suit that covered everything save her muzzle, mane, and tail. The mane and tail were all the colors I’d never seen growing up as a child. They were blinding, beautiful, and I barely got a solid look at them before this pegasus mare wheeled in the air, dodging Airheart’s pistol shots, and was suddenly right in Airheart’s face with a buck that sent Airheart flying into the wall so hard I felt ribs snap and pain lance through her entire barrel.

As Airheart slid to the ground I caught sight of the rest of the fight, two other black clad shapes dancing through the room with graceful motions that none of the ponies in Airheart’s group could keep up with. Quick Fix’s shot guns blasted away left and right but a black clad shape much larger than a pony, with a beak poking out of one part of the uniform and a thin whip-like tail at the other, with yellow bird claws move in and slash at the unicorn mare, cutting into her face.

Quick Fix screamed and her horn glowed, briefly taking hold of the weird creature with both bird and feline qualities and sent it flying back into a wall.

Screen Saver and Fresh Grass were both unconscious now, a third pegasus pony in black having zipped between the two and with deft hoof strikes had knocked them clean out.

Strange, if these were the Shadowbolts, they didn’t seem to be using lethal force. None of the ponies were dead yet, just knocked out of the fight. What was going on? My memory was clear; those skeletons had had bullet holes in them.

Quick Fix, still on her hooves despite the blood pouring from the ragged cuts across her face, rushed towards the terminal. Airheart was trying to move, trying to get up, but the pain stabbing into her chest from her broken ribs caused her to cry out and fall back against the wall…right in the spot I remembered finding her skeleton in the present.

“Don’t move,” a hard but not unkind tone said to Airheart as one of the black clad pegasus, this one with a jasmine colored muzzle and light teal mane and tail came up to her and pressed a hoof against Airheart’s chest, “This’ll hurt less if you stay down.”

Airheart whimpered and let her pistol clatter from her mouth as she did as she was told. Quick Fix was the only one still up now, but the pegasus with the rainbow colored mane and tail had pulled a slim black pistol on the unicorn and the two were at a standoff.

The odd bird-like creature had extricated herself from the wall and growled, “Bitch, using cheap ass magic. Going to take the rest of your face off!”

“Cool it Odessa,” said the mare with the rainbow mane, “You’re already on my bad side for using lethal force without authorization. Don’t piss me off more by acting like a sore loser. I hate sore losers. Unicorn got a fair hit in on you, so take it like a good griffin and fall in line.”

The bird like creature, a ‘griffin’ apparently, snorted, nodded, and came up to flank Quick Fix, who was eying the pegasus with the rainbow mane while pointing one shotgun at her, and slowly aiming her other one at…Odessa?

Wait, Odessa!? As in the organization!? But…wait, that rainbow pegasus just called that griffin thing Odessa, like a proper name? The hay was going on here!?

“You’re…Rainbow Dash, aren’t you?” said Quick Fix slowly, carefully.

“Told you you ought to dye your damned mane when on op,” said the pegasus with the teal mane, “You pretty much broadcast who you are to everypony in sight, which ain’t exactly covert.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll keep your opinion in mind Raindrops,” said Rainbow Dash, then turned her full attention to Quick Fix, “Anyway, just drop the guns and surrender. You have my word if you surrender without a fight you and your companions will be taken into custody without further harm.

“Is that what you told Allie Way, Millie, and Yellow Jacket?”

Airheart had her eyes fixed on the scene so I had a pretty clear look of a slight tremor of regret passing over Rainbow Dash’s expression, “We…one of your companions was, unfortunately, killed by my overzealous subordinate, and trust me she’s going to be answering for that once this mission is done.”

“Hey, we were told these ponies were armed and dangerous insurgents! I’m not going to hold back and get all namby-pamby with a bunch of armed ponies-“ Odessa began but Rainbow Dash cut her off.

“Enough! I didn’t give the okay for lethal force so that damned well means you play it cool and keep it clean! You do not go for the kill without clearance, you understand me?”

“…Perfectly,” said Odessa, though I could see her bristling. Raindrops rolled her eyes at the scene and kept her attention focused on Airheart, though it was pretty clear there wasn’t any fight left in my host.

“Rainbow Dash,” Quick Fix said, oddly formally, “The mare in charge of the Ministry of Awesome…do you even know why you’re here?”

“I’m here to stop a group of dangerous conspiracy theorists from messing with my Equestria,” said Rainbow Dash curtly, “I don’t know what you thought you were doing in this messed up archeological site, but if it could harm Equestria then its stopping here.”

“Archeological site? Archeological site!?” Quick Fix’s eyes widened in a combination of shock and rage, “You think those magical fucking turrets and mechanical monsters were made by fucking cave ponies!? This Ruin is over four thousand years old! Open your eyes, this place wasn’t built by ponies!”

“Cut the crap, four thousand years old? This place is in way to good shape to be that old. And it doesn’t matter who or what built it, the fact is that my orders are to keep you from doing whatever it is you were doing down here. Now surrender. We’ve already got your ringleader back in Detrot in custody.”

“…I can’t do that. If you’ve got the doc…I have to make sure the last thing he wanted me to do get’s done.”

“Don’t do it. I’m warning you,” said Rainbow Dash, and I had to admit, I was impressed by how calm she was given Quick Fix had a shotgun leveled at her face.

“You know it’s funny…if all those years ago somepony told me I’d be pointing a gun at one of the mares who saved Equestria from Nightmare Moon and Discord, I’d have chalked it up to pure insanity,” Quick Fix said with a pained smile that had no mirth to it at all, “I certainly never would’ve believed that I’d just lose…faith, in our Princesses, in our country, in…everything. How did everything change so much?”

“I can’t answer that,” Rainbow Dash said with a shrug of her wings, “I don’t know either. But this is how it is. I still believe in the Princesses.”

“Even if Celestia failed us? Even if Luna lies to us?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah…I can see you don’t…”

There was a second where both ponies stared at one another, bodies tensing. A slight fluctuation in the white aura of magic surrounding Quick Fix’s horn was the only warning of her tightening her magic’s grip around the trigger of her shotguns. Rainbow Dash moved with the hard and sudden speed of breaking lightning, her movement so quick I could only get the barest impression of her striking the barrel of the shotgun pointed at her with one hoof, pushing it up and out of the way so its shot blasted into the ceiling. Before Quick Fix could respond Rainbow Dash had swept the unicorn’s legs out from under her and planted a forehoof solidly into Quick Fix’s barrel with enough force to blast the air clear from the unicorn’s lungs. As Quick Fix lay stunned Rainbow Dash pressed a fetlock firmly against the unicorn’s throat and shot a glance at Odessa.

“Get her guns, empty the chambers.”

The griffin gave a curt, “Yes ma’am,” and went about the business of disarming the two shotguns, removing the cylinder clips and ejecting the remaining shell in their chambers. Quick Fix was still trying to get air past her constricted throat and struggled underneath Rainbow Dash, but the pegasus was clearly the stronger, easily keeping the unicorn pinned until she lost consciousness, whereupon Rainbow Dash eased up so she didn’t choke the unicorn mare to death.

“Guess that’s that then,” said Raindrops, “Intel said there were only the eight, so we got all of them accounted for. What’s next?”

“Get on the horn and call in an extraction unit for the prisoners,” said Rainbow Dash, “Also get Starburst’s team on standby. I’m…curious about what this place is. Once we’ve cleaned up with the prisoners we’ll check things out here more thoroughly.”

“Works for me,” said Raindrops as she began talking to herself, into a device I could only assume was similar to the one Airheart had on. Airheart was still laboring to breath past her injuries and was seemingly trying to just stay as still as possible.

Odessa was giving Rainbow Dash a look with a raised brow, “We’re gonna explore this hole now? That isn’t in our orders.”

“Oh, now you care about orders? We weren’t told not to explore, and this place looks dangerous enough that it’s worth clearing out. Can’t let any of those cybernetic creatures get to the surface after all,” said Rainbow Dash, looking at the Ruin’s terminal, “That and I wouldn’t mind finding out what some of this stuff is.”

“Wait, repeat that?” said Raindrops suddenly, then gave Rainbow Dash a concerned look, “RD, we got…um…it’s the Princess. She’s on the line. Says she needs to talk to you directly. She’s on frequency 140.85.”

“Huh…right, start tying up the prisoners while I see what she wants.”

Odessa and Raindrops began to use black thin corded rope dispensed by what appeared to be some kind of utility belt worn around their black form fitting uniforms. Raindrops had given Airheart a hard look and said, “Stay put”, quickly kicking away Airheart’s pistol while she went to help the griffin tie up the other ponies. Meanwhile Raindbow Dash was talking, obviously communicating to somepony far away on the other end of those same kind of long-distance speaking devices that I was starting to get a little envious off. I might not understand how technology really works but I was certainly behind how useful it could be.

“Yes…yes we’ve caught them all, they’re in custody, except one that was killed due to a miscommunication of orders. No…no they haven’t said anything except some pretty pointless rambling about the age of the site. I don’t know, they were linking one of their terminals to some device down here.”

Suddenly Rainbow Dash’s posture stiffened and while the outfit she wore obscured her eyes with yellow goggles her mouth slightly dropped in clear shock.

“…Princess…please repeat that order…I…are you certain that-“ Rainbow Dash suddenly winced, then grit her teeth, “Yes. Yes I understand. You can…you can count on me Princess. We’ll carry out your orders immediately.”

By now Raindrops and Odessa had tied Screen Saver, Overcast, Quick Fix and Fresh Grass and had moved them up against the wall next to Airheart…all in positions I remembered finding their skeletons in the present time. Raindrops was giving Rainbow Dash a worried frown.

“What’s up? You look like you just swallowed a gulp of Flim & Flam’s cider.”

Rainbow Dash took in a deep breath and looked at her two comrades with her face a stone mask of schooled emotions, “Raindrops, get topside and call in Starbursts team, tell them to bring a full det-package. We’ll be closing this place’s entrance, permanently.”

“Alright, you want me to send Cloudkicker down to help get the prisoners topside as well?”

“There…are no prisoners.”

“What?” Raindrops sounded confused but Odessa suddenly had a knowing grin on her beak.

“You heard me,” said Rainbow Dash, though her tone was faint, almost as if she wasn’t entirely believing the words she was speaking, “This is straight from the Princess’ mouth. There are no prisoners. All the insurgents were killed resisting capture.”

“But…that’s not the truth! They’ve surrendered!” Raindrops near shouted in disbelief, throwing her hooves out, gesturing at the tied up prisoners. Airheart was shivering, looking between the two pegasi Shadowbolts with wide eyes. I could feel her breaths coming in short, rapid panicked gasps despite the lancing pain of her broken ribs. By now she’d been tied up as well and she struggled against those bonds despite the clear futility of it.

“Drops! Fall in line. These are orders from the Princess herself. Now…now get topside. Me and Odessa will handle things down here,” Rainbow Dash said bitterly.

“With all due respect ma’am…I can’t obey that order,” said the jasmine pegasus, “Executing civilians that have surrendered themselves is not what I signed up for.”

“Raindrops,” Rainbow Dash’s voice had a dangerously thin quality to it, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Once. You won’t get another chance. Get topside. Now.”

“…No.”

Rainbow Dash hung her head, her multi-colored mane falling across her Shadowbolt outfit’s yellow goggles. She whispered something but I couldn’t make out what it was, and in that same instant she was on Raindrops. The other pegasus had been ready for the charge and in a blink of an eye the two had become a blinding storm of striking hooves as they wheeled through the cramped air space of the chamber.

Odessa hung back and had a matte black pistol with a long barrel attachment the point of which I didn’t know in one claw, pointed at the prisoners casually as she watched the two pegasi fight with the grin of an adolescent watching friends in the schoolyard brawl.

The fight wasn’t a long one. For a few seconds the two seemed evenly matched, but while Raindrops had powerful blows, indenting the wall where Rainbow Dash dodged one hoof strike, and nearly cracking the ground from a buck the cyan pegasus barely got out of the way of, she was also slower than the rainbow speedster. Raindrops seemed to have endurance, withstanding dozens of rapid strikes from her superior officer that rained down from all sides of her, but it wasn’t enough. With speed and precision that would’ve put Shattered Sky’s fancy ARM teleporting to shame Rainbow Dash got in punishing strikes on Raindrop’s limbs, dislocating joints with each blow. Even then Raindrops didn’t quit, lashing out with one wing and even clipping Raindbow Dash a solid blow with the sudden wing-strike across the cyan pegasus’ jaw, but with her limbs disabled Raindrops could do little more than that before Rainbow Dash got behind her and wrapped her forehooves around her opponent in a solid hold.

Raindrops bucked and flew upwards, slamming Rainbow Dash into the ceiling multiple times, but Rainbow Dash held on firmly and slowly Raindrops’ struggles slowed, until finally the jasimine pegasus lost consciousness and collapsed on the ground.

Breathing heavily, blood tricking down her lip, Rainbow Dash stood over Raindrops, looking down at the other pegasus with a pained grimace that I doubted has anything to do with her injuries.

“I’m sorry Drops. You’re a hell of a flyer and a fighter…but there’s more to being a Shadowbolt than that. Loyalty to the Princess, loyalty to Equestria, above all else, and the willingness to do what is necessary…that’s what makes a Shadowbolt.”

“Heh, you definitely showed the bleeding heart a good ass kicking,” said Odessa, “We gonna off these traitors now?”

“Shut it Odessa. I don’t like this any more than Raindrops does, but I’m not going to betray the Princess’ orders. I don’t know why she...gave this order, and I’m sure as hell going to get answers…but right now we’ve got a job to do. Take Raindrops topside and make sure she’s given proper medical treatment. I’ll deal with the not-prisoners.”

“Ugh, fine, I’ll take Dropsy up top. Not any fun offing someone outside of a fight anyway. Just don’t take too long, this place if creepy as shit. Makes my feather’s ruffle.”

The griffin collected Raindrops, slinging the unconscious pegasus onto her back and strolled towards the door, only pausing once to glance back at Rainbow Dash to say “Hey, RD, don’t take this personal, but if you really don’t wanna be the trigger-mare, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

“Just…go, Odessa.”

The griffin shrugged at that and walked out, leaving Rainbow Dash alone with the prisoners. I was only a little relieved at the fact that most of them were unconscious and hence wouldn’t have to see death coming. Airheart, however, was still wide awake and shaking as she watched Rainbow Dash approach them. Quick Fix groaned as she regained consciousness, looking up to see Rainbow Dash holding a pistol identical to the one Odessa had, aiming it at her forehead.

“…So…I’m going to guess your Princess gave some pretty explicit orders about what to do with us.”

Rainbow Dash said nothing, holding the pistol steady in her mouth, body tense. Quick Fix sighed, hanging her head.

“Right, Element of Loyalty…what’s the point of trying to convince you not to pull the trigger. If what the doc found out is all true then Luna wouldn’t want any of this getting out to the public, no matter the cost. Not the truth of these ‘archeological sites’ she’s been funding, nor the reason why so many laboratories are getting shut down around Detrot. Maybe she thinks she’s protecting us, protecting Equestria. Needs of the many and all that shit. She knows though, go ahead and ask her, once you’re done here, look her in the eyes and ask her…about the Elw. See how she reacts t-“

The pistol barley made a sound when it fired, just a light ‘pfft’ noise and suddenly Quick Fix’s head jerked back and a spray of blood and brains coated the wall behind her. Airheart shrieked and looked away, trying to bury her head in her barrel as she curled up. There were more ‘pfft’ sounds as Rainbow Dash went down the line. Pfft, Screen Saver, pfft, Fresh Grass, pfft, Overcast…

Slowly Airheat looked up, knowing what she’d see, even past the burry tears clouding her eyes. Rainbow Dash looked down on her, the bright cheerful colors of her mane at complete odds with the dark unforgiving black of her Shadowbolt uniform or the harsh yellow glare of the goggles that obscured her eyes…and the tears that must’ve been there as well for even if Airheart wasn’t paying attention I could see the wetness slowly leaking out from beneath the goggles. The pistol in her mouth wasn’t steady anymore, it was shaking, and the cyan pegasus was whispering over and over:

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

Airheart swallowed, and her breathing slowly steadied. I don’t know if she was accepting her impending death, or what, but she even smiled a little bit up at the pegasus that was about to kill her, and her voice was rather calm, almost serene.

“It’s okay…you’re a good pony Rainbow Dash. You just don’t remember that you are.”

“I didn’t want to do this…”

“It won’t hurt…will it?”

“It’s quick. I…I promise.”

Airheart nodded and took in a final, deep breath, leaning her head back against the cool wall of the room, then closed her eyes. I heard one last ‘pfft’, and as it turns out Rainbow Dash was right, it didn’t hurt.

oooOOOooo

Waking up from the memory orb wasn’t jarring or anything. In fact it was basically the same as waking up from sleep, my eyes fluttering open and the feeling of my own body coming back. It was a little weird, because I still had the fresh memory of being in a mare’s body just seconds ago, but that weirdness was overwhelmed quickly but the swirl of emotions and thoughts stemming from what I’d just witnessed.

I was crying. I noticed I did that a lot, but given all that had been happening I was going to give my masculinity a pass for now. It was different, just seeing the skeletons, looting them of their possessions, not really knowing who they were and just thinking it odd they were down there in the Ruin at all.

Now I had names. I knew they were ponies who’d gone into that Ruin with a purpose. To expose some kind of truth that’d been kept hidden by broadcasting some manner of data from that Ruin. Strange, Rainbow Dash had killed them, but had left their terminal intact and running? Guilt, perhaps? Had she investigated the Ruin further after that, had she confronted Princess Luna about those orders afterward? And what about Odessa? Why was some griffin bearing the name of the organization that was chasing after Arcaidia? More questions than answers.

LIL-E was hovering before me, and as I stood I looked at her and removed the Recollector from my head, setting it down and drying my eyes with a fetlock, “That…I don’t think I ever want to view another memory orb as long as I live.”

LIL-E didn’t respond. The robot just kept floating there. I cocked my head.

“LIL-E?” I slowly approached her and leaned my head close to the robot’s face plate. Cautiously I tapped it.

“You in ther-“

“Ohheyhibacknow!”

“GAH!” I fell back, startled by LIL-E suddenly coming to life. The robot hovered over me, peering down at me.

“Err…you okay Longwalk? Sorry about that, you were in there for awhile so I put LIL-E on auto-guard and went to take care of a few things.”

“Ugh…I’m fine, just, uh, kind of faint of heart right now, easily startled you know,” I said as I stood back up, cracking stiff (and still injured) legs. Apparently sitting with my legs folded under me was not a good position for memory orb viewing; not that I had any intention of making that a habit any time down the road.

“Right, just give a me sec and I’ll play back what I missed…oh, heh, yeah, memory orbs can be a pain in the flank. Let me see if I can guess; it was depressing, referenced a shit-ton of things you had no clue about, and left you with way more questions than answers.”

“…So you’ve viewed some memory orbs in your time then?”

“Oh, just a few. Now then, tell me what you saw. Don’t leave out any details you remember.”

It took me a little while to tell her everything, but as she asked, I left nothing out. When I was done LIL-E was quiet for so long I almost poked at her again to see if she’d checked out and left her robot on autopilot, but right before I did so she spoke up.

“Fuck.”

“…That’s it? Fuck?”

“Well I’d say something or other about Celestia and Luna double penetrating my anus with the sun and moon both, but honestly I think a good old fashioned ‘fuck’ got my feelings out clearer.”

“So did that memory orb answer any of the questions you were trying to get answered?” I asked hopefully.

“No, it didn’t answer shit, and my list of questions just got twice as long. Honestly I’m not sure why I was expecting anything less from a memory orb. I’m going to have to check with a few ponies, and, er, other people I know on making some sense of this information. I’m no stranger to conspiracies from two hundred years ago. Seems like that kind of shit likes to sit around and leave a bigger stink for us in the present to deal with.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now? I get you to the camp where everypony else is waiting and have a chat with my buddy Doc Sunday. From there I’m going to keep on investigating this region until I can damned well find the answers I need. What about you? What do you plan to do?”

That was a good question. I was still overwhelmed mentally and emotionally but the events of the past day or two. I felt drained, like a blade had cut right through me and scrapped away parts of me, leaving me raw and hurting and exhausted. It wasn’t a good feeling. My head wasn’t doing any better, a thick murky soup of floating questions, none of which I was anywhere near an answer to. More than anything right now I wanted to find a place to just sit down and rest, to catch my breath and my thoughts. I wanted to see B.B and Arcaidia and make sure they were both safe. Beyond that, I didn’t know.

“I don’t really have a plan. Once I’m with my friends again, I’ll think of something. I…want to find out more about Odessa, and I need to find a way to stop that Golem before it destroys another town. Then there’s the fact that I still need to help my friend get to the NCR to find her family. I just don’t have a clue how I’m going to do any of that.”

“You know, having a whole bunch of random objectives like that, mixed in with the fact that you’re stuck in the middle of territory you’re unfamiliar with, while still being wet-behind-the-ears in terms of fighting skill…I can think of just one thing you’d need to help you out with all of that.”

My ears perked up and I felt a strange sense of concern ebbing up in me as I asked, “Yeah, what’s that?”

“You, Longwalk, are in need of a PipBuck.”

Footnote:

Level up!

Perk Added – Toughness: Seems that getting horribly injured on a regular basis has had the side affect of toughening up your hide, that or you're just getting used to pain. Ain't that a cheery thought? Either way, you got +3 to DT.

Chapter 8: When the Heart Ignites

Chapter 8: When the Heart Ignites

“I need a Pip-Buck?”

“Alright, perhaps ‘need’ is a strong way of putting it, but trust me, it’d be useful to have one. We’re talking inventory control, objective management, auto-mapping, threat detection, targeting assistance, data storage, and even a built in radio receiver. A lot of features that’d make journeying in the Wasteland a few shades easier,” LIL-E’s machine monotone still managed to convey the enthusiasm the little flying robot seemed to have for the subject.

I didn’t really need convincing; after all I’d seen Arcaidia put her own Pip-Buck to some good use so far. The idea of having one wasn’t something I was opposed to…but…

“Okay, you got me interested, but where would I get one? You don’t have one on you, do you?”

Honestly I didn’t know what to expect. LIL-E was my first flying talking robot. I was still trying to grasp how she just…floated there like that. I was assuming magic. Because magic was a good blanket assumption for any weird stuff I’d run into out here I figured. For all I knew she could just shoot a magical beam to make a Pip-Buck appear out of thin air…

“What? No I don’t have one. Why would I randomly keep a Pip-Buck on me?”

So no magic Pip-Buck beam. Damn.

“ No I was just thinking that since after my business with Doc Sunday is sorted I was going to check out one of the Stable’s in this region it’d be an opportunity to get you one. It’s a fair bet there’d be a Pip-Buck there…” she trailed off for a second before adding, “…though that’s assuming a lot of things. Like the Stable not being one of the ones that are closed off, or not being a complete death-trap if it is open…”

Stable? I’d heard that term used at least once before, and after briefly picking at my memory my brain pony managed to flash me a quick cue-card reminding me my mother had mentioned something about going with my father and Hawker to explore something called a Stable.

“Don’t know if it’s become obvious yet LIL-E but I’m not the most informed pony in the Wasteland. What’s a Stable?”

“Heh, usually its Stable ponies that are the uniformed ones. Almost nice to be on the other side of the fence for once. Right then, short version; Stables are large underground dwellings that were built so ponies could survive even after the balefire bombs destroyed and poisoned the surface. They were built by a company called Stable-Tech, and while a portion of them were just meant to be places for ponies to live…well, there were a lot that were given unusual design features. Basically Stable-Tech used a number of Stables as a testing ground for various social experiments, while others were just flat out altered in some fashion to serve a purpose beyond simply being habitations. You with me so far Longwalk?”

“Think so…” I said, absorbing what LIL-E was saying. So if the ponies from back then were so aware of the real possibility that the Great Fires were coming, these ‘balefire bomb’ things, that they actually went out of their way to construct giant vault-like holes in the ground to live in…why didn’t they put all that same amount of effort to preventing their destruction in the first place? I was still dead tired and admittedly my mind was not up to snuff to thinking to hard about anything, let alone comprehending the how’s and why’s behind the war that ruined the world. I could’ve probably bugged LIL-E for hours with questions about things, but honestly I just wanted to get moving so I could see Arcaidia and B.B again.

“Right, so there are literally dozens and dozens of Stables, scattered all over Equestria. I’ve even found evidence to suggest there were Stables built outside Equestria, possibly even in zebra lands…though Celestia light my clit ablaze and Luna douse it in liquid mercury if I can grasp how that would happen. Anyway a lot of Stables over the past two hundred years have opened up, either by the residents, or by…outside forces. Even those that haven’t opened up it’s a fifty-fifty chance if anypony’s still alive in them. Stable-Tech’s experiments had this bad tendency to go wrong and get ponies killed. So any Stable you encounter in the Wasteland could be an abandoned death trap, or just be sealed off. Still, there can be a lot of worthwhile salvage in them, and records of events from two hundred years ago…that’s why I’m going to this particular Stable; Stable 104. I know there were three Stables built for the Detrot region, and I don’t know where the other two are. I’m hoping I might find clues to the locations of the other two by searching 104, not to mention dig up anything that could help answer other questions I’ve got…”

“Makes sense. If…if Arcaidia is alright with it then I wouldn’t mind accompanying you to check out this Stable. She’s got the largest say in this given it’s her family I’m trying to help her find. Not that I don’t appreciate the offer of a Pip-Buck, but if Arcaidia wants to get moving down to NCR that’ll be my decision as well.

“I can respect that. I’m going to 104 anyway, and if it turns out your not coming I’ll still see about salvaging a Pip-Buck for you. Think of it as payment for diving into that memory orb for me. Well then, let’s get back to the camp.”

With that we resumed our night enshrouded trek, complete with me discovering new and exciting ways to bang my limbs on every protruding piece of Wasteland ruble between us and our destination. I was getting good at ignoring the minor (and some not-so-minor) pains my body was using to remind me of my still vastly injured state, so despite my night blind clumsiness we made pretty good time. It was only about an hour before LIL-E paused in front of me and I heard the rustling of movement ahead of us from the skeletal shadows of a burned out building.

“Relax, it’s just me,” said LIL-E “I brought the stallion Doc Sunday was looking after.”

There was a brief silence before a mare’s voice said, “Come on through.”

Upon approaching the building I saw three ponies I could only assume were Saddlespring survivors, all of them armed with small arms. They all were dirty and haggard looking, looking at me and LIL-E enter the building with hollow stares. Tension bled off of them as they resumed their positions keeping watch. Now on the inside I could see this building was actually just one of several broken remains of houses that had apparently collapsed towards each other during the destruction of the Great Fires, creating a blasted and makeshift shelter that looked like it was barely standing. But then it’s probably been looking that way for two centuries so what did I know?

There were ponies clustered under cement overhangs and huddled against the few intact walls, many of them quiet, a few whispering amongst themselves in comforting tones. I heard a few soft sobs and couldn’t tell if they were coming from the few foals I saw or the adults holding them. As LIL-E and me arrived we got a few looks, some eyes briefly filling with hope before slowly dying back down to resigned pain. I didn’t understand at first until I realized most of these ponies had probably lost friends and family in Saddlesprings and any new pony walking into the camp might have been viewed as a possible survivor. While I was a survivor, I wasn’t a Saddlespring pony, just another wanderer who drifted in.

Near the back of this small camp was a section of ruined building that had a rusted old pair of metal doors mounted into a cement block in the ground. These were opened and had a ramp leading down into the ground. LIL-E must have noticed my curious look because she briefly said, “Sewer access. Most everypony is still down there. Just because Odessa isn’t doing visible flybys it still feels safer for most to stay underground until it’s time to move.”

“Move? Move where?” I asked, suddenly coming to the unpleasant understanding that with their home destroyed most of these ponies probably didn’t have anywhere to go.

“That’s up to them,” LIL-E said, a small wispy buzz coming from her speakers that I thought might have been a sigh, “There are a few settlements along the roadways to the north before you get to Detrot proper; though none of those settlements are as big as Saddlespring was and probably wouldn’t be able or willing to take in refugees, what with the scarcity of resources. Some might try heading for Port Needle, but that’s a long, rough trek. Rougher still, but also a choice, would be to head for the Protectorate, and before you ask, I’m not the one to ask about what the Protectorate is. Doc Sunday would know far better. Then there’s a few that’ll probably try their luck with getting to Detrot.”

I slowly absorbed that as we went into the sewer access, the wide steps leading down into a poorly lit concrete tunnel barely large enough for my height and giving me a faint sense of unease. I don’t think I’m claustrophobic but then again most my time spend underground had been in places with decent head space. This sewer didn’t have that…actually now that I was thinking about it-

“LIL-E, what’s a sewe-gah! That smell! What’s that smell?”

“Heh, the sewer. Did you tribe have any space ponies did their…er…y’know, ‘business’?”

“You mean like the market Saddlespring had? No, we only had Hawker, who occasionally bartered items from his tent.”

“No, I mean, um…you know I’m gonna simplify this. Sewers are big tunnels underneath cities that were used to dispose of the waste thousands and thousands of ponies living in the same area tend to make. Get it?”

I did. I wasn’t the brightest of ponies, and arguably I was minus a considerable amount of common sense, but even I could take the nature of the smells that were assaulting my nostrils and combine that with what LIL-E was saying to conclude what we were walking into. I was only somewhat grateful that two centuries of disuse had left these sewers more dry and dusty than freshly unpleasant. Still not a good thought to realize the layer of soft cracking mud-like ground I was walking over probably wasn’t actually made of mud. It was a testament to the damage done by Odessa that ponies would consider hiding down here to reduce the chance of discovery by the organization of heavily armed pegasi and their disturbing flying machines.

It still hadn’t quite sunk into me that I’d actually be on one of those things while it was in flight. A little too much emotional shock from all that had happened I suppose; but now that I was thinking about it…it was both exhilarating and utterly terrifying to think I’d been flying in the sky. And then falling. Actually the falling part was pretty much just terrifying. Note to self; hug B.B a lot when you see her.

LIL-E floated ahead to a T-section in the sewer, and I saw a few soft glows of light that I soon realized were coming from lamps somepony had strung up along the ceiling. This pale white light illuminated the several dozen ponies who were camped out along the walls of the sewer, most of them in the same state of the ponies I’d seen up above. Heads turned to regards us, most of the stares coming my way vacant and exhausted. I wondered if I looked the same way?

“Back sooner than I expected,” said a deep male voice to my right and I turned to see a pony walking towards us from down the tunnel.

He was a dusky blue stallion with a rich chocolate brown mane that was mostly tucked into a wide brimmed leather hat save for a few long strands that hung in front of sharp gray eyes. He also wore a cape of tanned leather that matched his hat and I saw that, slung under the cape, was a holster containing a sizable wood handled revolver.

“Longwalk woke up pretty quick. He’s a pretty durable buck,” LIL-E commented, floating lower beside me and bumping into my side, which caused me to wince and grunt in pain, to which LIL-E buzzed, “Sort of.”

The stallion’s expression was hard to read, mostly unmoving and stoic, save for a phantom quirk of his lips that might have been a smile. He trotted up to me and gave me an appraising, clinical look.

“How are you feeling?” he asked me, and I felt a little uncomfortable from the way he looked at me, like he was placing me on a giant scale and weighting me against something I couldn’t fathom.

“I’m…uh…”I was about to say ‘okay’ but something in this stallion’s gaze made me feel like being more truthful “…honestly, about to collapse. Tired, hungry, still hurting but mostly numb by this point. Also emotionally drained by…everything. Really though, all that aside, I’m still walking and talking, so that’s something, right?”

“Impressive, given the amount of trauma and strain you’ve put your body through, my young friend. I’d recommend taking a week off your hooves to recover, but circumstances are not likely to permit that,” the stallion said with a soft sigh, and I found myself suddenly wondering at his breed.

His hat hid the part of his head where a horn would be, and his cape hid if he had wings, and his build wasn’t clearly thick enough for an earth pony but not thin enough to exclude the possibility. Actually, overall, he had an oddly bland appearance that would make him blend into a crowd with little trouble. Shaking off the thought I asked, “So, who are you?”

The stallion chuckled, “My name around these parts is Doc Sunday, though honestly you could just drop the ‘doc’ part. Not a trained physician, just a pony whose got a fair good idea of how to put another pony back together. Guess my daughter never told you much about me?”

“She didn’t,” I admitted, looking at this stallion in a new light now that I knew who he was. I remembered B.B mentioning she was adopted, so I suppose that explained why there wasn’t much resemblance between the two. I also remembered her mentioning he was a unicorn, so that answered that question. This was also the pony that had apparently been a top ranked Drifter in his day, either on par with or maybe better than Crossfire. I felt myself feeling a little…uncomfortable. This pony was both a noteworthy warrior and apparently also a healer, and had raised one of the companions I’d taken into danger. Oh, and I was heavily responsibly for the destruction of his home. It left me with a cold, roiling feeling in my stomach.

Doc Sunday seemed to pick up on my discomfort and shook his head, one of the ears he had flopped under his hat flicking, “Relax son, why don’t you follow me? My daughter’s been worried about you and you’re interesting unicorn friend has been practically chewing through the walls in anxiousness. I think seeing you will do them both good, and quite frankly I got some things I need to talk to all of you about.”

“Figured,” chimed the robot as we began to follow Doc Sunday down the tunnel.

Passing by some of the resting refugees I noticed a lot of them had those slave collars around their necks! Oh thanks the ancestor spirits, I’d been worried. I knew LIL-E had told me a lot of the slaves had made it out, but seeing them alive, breathing, if not in perfect shape, did me a lot of good. If only Shale had…no…don’t think about it.

Down the tunnel things opened up into a larger chamber that looked like some kind of by-way for the various other sewer tunnels that I could imagine stretching for miles around. It gave me pause, a certain sense of amazement creeping over me that had been slowly boiling for the past day or so but hadn’t had time to really assert itself. Civilization…the Equestria of old…it was so massive! So advanced! My life amongst my tribe just hadn’t prepared me for seeing the extent of what the old world had had to offer. Here I was standing in a complex maze of tunnels that must have taken years to plan, construct, and required constant maintenance by countless ponies…and it was all built for the sole purpose of waste disposal! Mind equaled blown. It also left me with a growing sense of…not loss, exactly, but just a hollow realization that despite all its clear power and prosperity that the Equestria of old had still burned in the Great Fire. Those ponies, despite all their technology and vast resources had still somehow come to the point of self destruction.

…It made me wonder again as to whether or not my tribe’s policy of isolation was valid or not.

Doc Sunday led us to a rusted metal door that ground loudly on its hinges as he pulled it open with what I could only assume was his magic, a bright orange aura that enshrouded the door as it swung wide. Inside was a room filled mostly with pipes and a small metal desk, a filing cabinet knocked over next to it. The air in here was just as dry as everything else in the sewer. As we entered I saw a white pony with her pinked streaked brown mane whip around and the moment she laid eyes on me B.B was in my face, barely before I’d managed a step into the room.

“Bloody moon an’ stars ya crazy, dumb buck, what n’ utter tarnation were ya doin’ fallin’ outta that Vertibuck!? Whatdaya think’d happen if I hadn’t been in time ta catch ya!?”

I shrank back from her hard words, “S-sorry! I didn’t fall out on purpose! I got caught in Crossfire’s shot and-“

“She’s the one that done shot ya!? Blast it I shouldn’ve let that dang rattlesnake convince me ta leave ya like that!” B.B raved, taking in sharp breaths as she looked me over, then added after a calming moment, “I…just glad ta see yer still standin’ Long.”

“Should be me thanking you, for catching me,” I said, not quite able to meet her eyes, “But yeah, don’t be too angry at Crossfire. She…might’ve nearly killed me, but there weren’t a lot of options. That Odessa officer, Shattered Sky, had us in a tight spot.”

“Hope ya killed the bastard,” B.B growled, tail flicking.

“Honestly I don’t think we did. He’s a slippery sort,” I said, my look slowly moving towards the blue unicorn in the corner of the room who hadn’t moved nor spoken since we all entered. I’d been carrying Gramzanber in my mouth up until now, and I took a second to set it aside, leaning the large silver spear against the wall next to the door before I turned to face Arcaidia, and smiled.

“Arcaidia…” my voice was soft and filled with relief seeing her up and awake, and otherwise unharmed. Hearing that she was alright from LIL-E was one thing, but actually being able to see her in the flesh, alive and well, was altogether different, “How are you?”

The unicorn filly smiled at me, a small one, but it lit up her eyes, “Esru vi goval. Esru mana ren vuville…” she paused, and then said, very slowly, enunciating each word, “I am good.”

I blinked, and then grinned, my ears perking up happily, “Glad to hear it. Picking up some of the lingo too!”

“Been tryin’ to teach ‘er a few words since we ain’t had much else ta do,” said B.B, flexing her wings idly as she gave Arcaidia a sidelong look, “She’s an awful quick learner, seems like.”

“My head is toaster!” Arcaidia proclaimed brightly.

“Quick-ish,” B.B deadpanned.

“It’s still impressive progress for half a day of study,” commented Doc Sunday as he went to lean up against the room’s desk and floated off his hat, dusting it off on his cape, “Your young friend is certainly something else, Longwalk.”

I just shrugged at the comment. Really Arcaidia was probably leagues away smarter than I was and it occurred to me that she’d been listening to everypony talk around her in Equestrian since she woke up from that weird pod thing me and Trailblaze had found her in. Wasn’t too surprising to me she’d started to pick up words. Still, something about the look Doc Sunday gave Arcaidia made me uncomfortable. In fact, despite his friendly demeanor and the fact he was B.B’s adopted father the unicorn just sort of unsettled me in general and I couldn’t put my hoof on why.

LIL-E floated around to my left, sort of hovering between everypony. Arcaidia cocked her head to the side upon seeing the robot and immediately approached it, peering intently at LIL-E and reaching out a hoof to poke at her.

“Um…hi?” said LIL-E as the unicorn filly jostled the robot with a hoof, Arcaidia’s eyes narrowing as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking at.

“Estu ren girviri? Dol povi ren colvari?”

“That’s LIL-E,” I said, coming up to Arcaidia and gently laying a hoof on hers and lowering it so she’d stop poking the eyebot, “She’s a friend.”

Arcaidia looked at me, then made a small ‘hmph’ sound and returned to where she’d been standing. B.B let out a small laugh, “She just likes ta stick ‘er nose inta anythin’ don’t she?”

“Yeah…anyway,” said LIL-E, “Doc, you got us all together now, so let’s hear what you have to say.”

“Pa?” B.B asked, giving her father a questioning look, “Talk ta us ‘bout what?”

My stomach chose that moment to also voice its own opinion on the matter, demanding I cease ignoring its needs like I’d been doing. Doc Sunday gave all of us a small little half smile as he levitated aside part of is cloak to reveal the saddlebags underneath. From those he gently floated out a few small cans of what I now could identify as old pre-war food, and a small metal device I hadn’t seen before but looked sort of like a little metal flower with a glass base to sit upon.

“I’ll get us something cooking while we talk,” he said and set the device down, turning a knob on the side of it. To my surprise I saw a small flame appear from the flower end of the device and as Doc Sunday floated the first can over it after using a knife to pry open part of the top I realized it was a miniature cooker. I wondered what it ran off of? I was getting to the point where my first thought didn’t turn to there being spirits driving the device, but my knowledge of arcane ‘science’ was so abysmal that I couldn’t even guess how that weird little object was producing fire.

Doc Sunday must have noticed my curious look because he chuckled warmly, “It’s a jury-rigged heater I made from a pilot-light from an old oven and a few other nick-knacks. Runs off of the same magic energy cells you can find are compatible with magic weapons.”

“Like the one’s Odessa uses…?” I asked.

“The very same,” the stallions’ expression suddenly hardened and as I saw lines appear around his eyes and the corners of his mouth I wondered just how old he really was. His mane didn’t have any white streaks in it and he didn’t carry himself with any clear aches and pains of age…but he suddenly looked so tired, so haggard and world worn, that it was hard to think of him as anything but and old, old pony, “I’m sorry for what you kids had to go through, in Saddlespring. A young buck like yourself, new to the Wasteland…I doubt anything could have prepared you to witness death on that scale. And you, B.B...forgive me for not being there.”

“Pa…no, it ain’t…” B.B lowered her head, walking up to Doc Sunday and nuzzling him, “Ain’t nothin’ I should be forgivin’ ya for. What happened ain’t none of yer doin’. Can’t ‘elp it if ya had a’ house call ta’ make.”

Doc Sunday returned the nuzzle, a wane smile on his face as he said, “I’m not sure all of Saddlespring’s survivors will agree. I was the town’s protector as much as Sherriff Bulkwark was.”

“Was…?” I asked, then almost immediately regretted doing so. B.B closed her eyes and breathed deeply, like she was trying to hold something back, and Doc Sunday just gave me a look. I flattened my ears, “…sorry, I don’t know who…you know…”

“Its fine,” Doc Sunday said, “There are many who will be missed. You didn’t have time to know many in Saddlespring, but for myself and my daughter it was our home for three years. Friends and family whom we cannot even give a burial to…”

“Actually, Longwalk here did put up a marker, and buried who we could find,” LIL-E said, getting looks of surprise from the two Saddlespring residents.

“Really?” B.B asked, “Ya did that Longwalk? When?”

“Oh…well…after I woke up, I wanted to see the town,” I explained, pushing away the threatening sadness I felt at the memory, “I felt I had to. And Shale, I wanted to see if I could find her body down there. I didn’t find her, but after LIL-E explained to me that ponies outside my tribe tend towards burial, I decided it was the right thing to do for those whose remains I was able to find.”

“You have my thanks for that,” said Doc Sunday with a nod, “But this Shale you mentioned…she wouldn’t happen to have been a white coated earth pony mare? Black mane?”

I found myself starring at the stallion, mouth hanging open a little before I managed to shake my head and collect myself, “Yes, that’s her.”

“I see. Then you should put yourself at ease on that count. One of the Drifters who was in Saddlespring, a unicorn stallion like myself, brought her body out of there and to this camp. B.B and myself saw to her burial earlier, just after night fell.”

I don’t know if I can fully emphasis appropriately the relief that flooded through me. I hadn’t realized how much thinking I’d failed to even protect her remains had been dragging me down. To hear that she’d been given a proper burial was…it might have seemed a small thing in comparison to all the other horrible things that had happened, but that small thing was more important than could be put in words.

“Thank you…” I said, not able to say anything else. I felt a hoof touch my shoulder and saw B.B looking at me with a small smile, wings fluttering slowly.

“Hey, I needed ta put ‘er to rest too. How ‘bout, once we’re rested an’ my pa’s said his peace we go say our proper goodbyes?”

I nodded, rubbing hoof across my face. I’d try to save my tears until at least I was at Shale’s grave. Arcaidia was giving us all a curious look, and I could see she was pacing about the room, apparently not comfortable staying still. She seemed a little agitated. Happy too, she kept giving me and B.B a small smile when she looked our way, but I could sense she was getting on edge. I wondered why, but I wasn’t able to think much on that as Doc Sunday started to speak.

“Now then, what I wanted to talk about is actually a number of questions I have for you, Longwalk.”

“For me? Um, okay, ask away,” I said, B.B moving away from me with a supportive nod as she went to sit against one of the walls. I was still pretty tired and feeling the aches of my injuries, though the dull note of them made it easy enough to ignore if I wanted to. Even so I took the opportunity to find a comfortable, or as comfortable as the dirty cold metal floor allowed, spot to lay down. It felt good, just laying down for a second with no immediate promise of danger or violence.

Weird how just a few days out here in the Wasteland had so quickly altered my perceptions on the benefits of something as simple as a minute to breath.

“Now, first of all, what do you know about this young filly you’re traveling with?” Doc Sunday asked, gesturing at Arcaidia. She took note of the attention and stopped her pacing, facing the unicorn stallion with a quizzical expression of her own while gesturing a hoof at herself.

“Esru…?”

I looked between the two of them and shrugged, “I don’t know that much, honestly. Me and my friend Trailblaze found her in a cave when we were out hunting. The hunt went bad, and a bunch of weird gold geckos chased us into the cave, where there was this strange object. Big, pointy on one end, like a big metal spear head. Arcaidia was inside of it. She saved us, me and Trailblaze. Because of that I owe her a debt I’m only capable of repay by helping her. She’s trying to find somepony named Persephone, or at least that’s what I think she’s trying to do. According to the map on her Pip-Buck we’re supposed to go somewhere in the NCR.”

“And that’s the extend of what you know? You don’t know where she came from originally, or where she acquired her Pip-Buck, or why she gave you that ARM?”

“Well no I…wait…wait a sec, how do you know this spear is called an ARM?” I asked, jutting my head towards where the spear was still leaning against the wall.

Doc Sunday adjusted his hat, shading his eyes a little as he looked at the spear, “I learned the term from several sources, but the most knowledgeable of them was a pony named Colonel Winter Sun, of Odessa.”

I felt my throat tighten and for a second I could only hear my own heartbeat in my ears. Very slowly I licked my lips; my mouth had gone rather dry all of a sudden, and said, “Please…explain that to me.”

Doc Sunday gave me an odd look before he continued, “Long time ago I was a different kind of pony, Longwalk, a member of the Drifter’s Guild. I am not idly bragging when I say I earned my place in their top ranks, though I carry little pride for many of my actions during that time in my life. Those who enter those top ranks are granted access to…special assignments. Some of those assignments had us working with the organization you know as Odessa.”

“Pa, this is the first I’m hearin’ o’ this,” said B.B, “Ya told me all sortsa stories ‘bout yer time as a’ Drifter, why ain’t ya ever mentioned this ‘fore now?”

“B.B, you should understand well there are some things a pony prefers to keep in their memories alone, unless they have good reason to speak of them. I have not had reason to recall my time with the pegasi and griffins of Odessa until now.”

“Griffins?” I asked, remembering the lion and eagle hybrid creature I’d seen in the Memory Orb.

“Yes, Odessa is a group that has both pegasi and griffin’s among their number. Several unicorns as well, but they are…more indentured servants that proper members,” Doc Sunday said, “In any case, I know of what ARMs are because ten years ago I took an assignment to assist Odessa in field testing the fruits of their early research on ARMs. A project Colonel Winter Sun was in charge of. All of my knowledge of them comes from that…incident.”

“What was the Drifter’s Guild doin’ workin’ with them bastards in the first place!?” B.B asked heatedly.

“The Drifter’s Guild does not care about the ethical standing of those who commission assignments from them, as long as the Guild gets its due. Odessa pays well for the occasional assistance of high ranking Drifters, and pays even more to ensure the Guild’s silence on the details of any such assignments. If I were still a member of the Guild my status would be instantly revoked and a bounty placed on my head if it was learned I was spoke of this assignment. Now, it hardly matters, and it is more important I learn what this colt knows about the weapon he’s carrying and the filly that gave it to him.”

B.B. violet eyes flicked towards Gramzanber and I couldn’t tell if she was uneasy or just trying to absorb things, “I…’spose I’m kinda curious myself.”

They were curious? I was curious! I just hadn’t had any opportunity to really ask Arcaidia any questions about herself or the spear. I mean, we didn’t speak the same language, and pantomime can only get you so far. I just hadn’t really let myself worry about it so much, because regardless of the details of who she was or what Gramzamber was it didn’t change that I was resolved to help her for what she’d done for me and Trailblaze. Even thinking about it made me wonder how Trailblaze was, what she was doing right now.

I pushed back the dark thought of what she might think of me if she learned of all I’d done this past day, the hoof I had in the burning of a settlement of ponies.

And all that aside I was trying very hard to keep my brain pony from having a heart attack over hearing about Doc Sunday’s connection to my father! Here was a pony right in front of me who knew my father, even worked with him! Did I even dare ask any questions about that? Odessa had just played a huge role in the destruction of their homes…would either Doc Sunday or B.B be forgiving towards the son of a pony who apparently held such high rank in Odessa? And…just how involved was my father with all of this? Doc Sunday was talking about ten years ago, but what if whatever Odessa was doing back then directly tied with what they were doing now, and my father had a hoof in all of it? I didn’t want to think about that. So I told my brain pony to shut up with the questions and instead focused my attention on Doc Sunday.

“I don’t know any more than what you know,” I said, “In fact it sounds like you know more than I do. A lot more. Just what are ARMs? I fought with an Odessa officer that had one, but he called his ‘artificial’ and mine ‘genuine’. What was he going on about?”

“That isn’t a simple thing to answer,” said Doc Sunday, and as he paused I got the impression he was taking his time to pick his words carefully, “The term ‘ARM’ means Astral Resonance Machine, according to Odessa and the research they’ve conducted on them. As to what that means, well, it’s complicated. You’ve already experienced one of the Ruins that exist scattered over the Skull City Wasteland. Surely you realized that Ruins are quite different from the remains of Equestria leftover from the war.”

“Well…yeah…” I said, frowning as I thought about what I’d seen in Saddlespring’s Ruin, comparing that to the ruins of the Wasteland itself that I’d seen, “The Ruins are really old, right? Like, thousands of years old.”

“Yes. Many of the Ruins in this region could be dated to roughly four thousand years ago, and some are older than that. Yet inside them is technology built using arcane science that equals or surpasses what was possessed by Equestria towards the end of the war,” Doc Sunday’s tone became grave, “And ARMs are among the most advanced of such devices found in Ruins. They are rare as well. Exceedingly so. I only know of two other genuine ARMs like yours that have been discovered.”

“There you go too, calling mine genuine. What does that mean?” I asked again.

“It simply means that your ARM is an original, created, theoretically at least, by whatever…race…originally built the Ruins. Artificial ARMs like the one used by the Odessa officer you fought are devices created by Odessa in an attempt to replicate the power of ARMs. Understand this, Longwalk, an ARM is something that reacts to your…essence, shall we say? I hesitate to use the word ‘soul’ but essentially ARMs resonate with the essence of a creature in order to generate its form and over time, create abilities from that resonance in a similar fashion a unicorn’s magic creates spells. That’s why they were dubbed Astral Resonance Machines, though the term ARM may actually refer to something else.”

“Whoa whoa whoa, are you saying Gramzanber is affecting my spirit!?” I asked, suddenly looking at the spear with an uneasy gaze. I’d noted how comfortable I tended to feel when I was carrying it, and the slight sense of loss whenever I set it aside…but I thought that was just me being a little silly and overly attached to a gift Arcaidia had given me. If it was actually touching my spirit in some way…well, what was it doing to me when it did that?

Doc Sunday didn’t seem too surprised by my outburst, “You may have reason to be wary, Longwalk. I don’t doubt that your ARM is connected to your essence now; given the form it’s taken. ARMs can take nearly any shape to suit the desires of their wielder. The fact that it took the form a spear, a weapon you’re familiar with using, is proof enough that it is resonating with you. However while two other ARMs were found, nopony has been capable of bonding with them and survive for long.”

Oh…lovely. B.B was now also looking at Gramzanber with a worried look, and LIL-E floated a little closer to Doc Sunday.

“Isn’t this Odessa group using ARMs though? Think we need some elaboration here,” the eyebot buzzed.

“That’s part of the difference between Odessa’s artificial ARMs and genuine ones. Any attempt to remain bonded to a genuine ARM inevitably led to the death of the pony who bonded to it, usually only after a few days time,” at my look of growing horror Doc Sunday was quick to go on, “however this was also usually accompanied by very clear symptoms of the pony’s body starting to reject the ARM. From what I’ve seen of you Longwalk you’re not exhibiting the same symptoms, and since you’ve had your ARM for several days now, you should be. I can only guess why, but it seems you’ve somehow succeeded in being the first true ARMs user; something Odessa has been trying to create for over a decade. Their artificial ARMs, constructed using the one genuine ARM they have as a blueprint, do not possess the same amount of power, but they are easier for a pony to bond to and survive.”

“Just how many of these artificial ARMs does Odessa have?” asked LIL-E “And how strong are they, really?”

“Not enough to be a real threat yet to the NCR, if that’s what you’re worried about,” said Doc Sunday, “It takes a great deal of effort and resources on their part to produce one. The trials I assisted in ten years ago were for their first prototype. I can’t say for sure how many they might have by now, but I wouldn’t guess more than a dozen. It took them years just to build the one prototype.”

“Was it a weird wrist thingy with a circular face and two little pointy things on it?” I asked, displaying my incredible capacity for description by adding ‘y’ to the end of words, “This…proto-whatsit?”

“Hm? Oh, the prototype. No, it was a blade. I think you just described a watch. Or a compass. Was this the ARM the Odessa officer you fought used?’

“Yeah. I don’t know what it did, exactly, but it made it seem like he could just…vanish into thin air to avoid our attacks. We had to use stuff that affected the whole area around him so he couldn’t dodge in order to even scratch him,” I said, grimacing at the memory of the fight with Shattered Sky, wishing I’d been able to do more. I wondered if Crossfire and Brickhouse had made it out of there alright…I remembered Brickhouse had taken a mortal looking wound at the time. I shook the thought away.

“Interesting.” said Doc Sunday, tilting his head slightly in thought, “An ARM is essentially a collection of microscopic magic-tech robots that channel the energy of the one they’re bound to in order to take a specific physical form and produce affects not unlike spells. The real thing has a great deal of potential to evolve new abilities through its bond with its wielder, but artificial ARMs don’t have that capacity. Odessa instead had to design one that lacks that ability to continuously evolve, in order to ensure they could bond to their ponies without killing them over time. My assistance with Winter Sun’s project allowed them to prove the effectiveness of an artificial ARM, however, and while they lack the ability to evolve stronger abilities with their wielder their base powers can be impressive. The affect you describe isn’t outside the reach of an ARM, since they can produce abilities that mimic various forms of magic. Odessa’s interest in them is definitely their use as weapons, however. They’re a group obsessed with obtaining the technology of the Ruins and learning to reproduce it, all in the name of ‘protecting’ Equestria. You’ve already experienced what their idea of ‘protecting’ entails.”

“Sound like what would happen if somepony took the worst traits of the Steel Rangers and Enclave and mixed them into the same group.” said LIL-E “Hate to say this, but I’m kind of surprised they haven’t done something like what just happened to Saddlespring sooner.”

“It’s actually unusual for them.” Doc Sunday’s tail twitched as he regarded LIL-E “They’ve gone to great lengths in the past to avoid displaying their power like this. Something must have changed recently for them to behave this way…and I think I may have an idea of what that is.”

He looked at Arcaidia pointedly and the unicorn filly returned his gaze with one of her own. I knew she was aware we were talking about her, and I felt a little bad about having a conversation like this without her being able to join in. I hoped soon, perhaps with me helping B.B, we could teach her enough of our language and in turn perhaps learn enough of hers to properly communicate. However right now I didn’t particularly like the way Doc Sunday was looking at her. He wasn’t really hiding the suspicious narrowing of his eyes.

“This filly had a genuine ARM. She was discovered in a strange device. By the story my daughter told me she also was familiar with the technology of the Ruin you all entered. All of these things are highly unusual to say the least, and all clearly point to one conclusion; that she is directly connected to the origins of the Ruins in some way. This, in turn, would make her an obvious target for Odessa.”

“Target 02…” I said, mulling things over in my head. Doc Sunday was correct that, if you looked at all the presented evidence, it was pretty clear Arcaidia was heavily connected to the Ruins. What that connection was I wasn’t really able to guess. If the Ruins were so old it seemed pretty impossible that Arcaidia could be one of the ones responsible for creating the Ruins, or ARMs. But regardless of all that it’d become obvious who Odessa was after, “Shattered Sky, the Odessa officer I fought, kept referring to a ‘Target 02’. I think that was Arcaidia.”

“Yeah, he was makin’ it all sound real important like.” Muttered B.B, “Was willin’ ta kill so many ponies ta get at her too…”

“And if she’s Target 02, that’d mean there’s a Target 01, right?” piped in LIL-E “Somepony else they’re either searching for, or already caught?”

“Probably.” Said Doc Sunday, “In any case, Longwalk, it’s a certain thing that as long as you’re traveling with this unicorn you will be hunted by Odessa. I need to know; are you capable of taking on the responsibility of protecting her, even against such an organization?”

I didn’t even have to think about that one. It wasn’t like I didn’t already understand the difficulties involved; how powerful Odessa was and how little power I myself actually had. Up until now, if I was going to be honest with myself, Arcaidia had been protecting me far more than I had been protecting her. She was stronger than I was. Smarter than I was. Without her I’d be dead several times over by now. Even so I wanted to keep her safe on her journey. Despite how little I understood of the world yet, and how little I might be able to really contribute to her safety, I still wanted to. Because I truly did owe her. For my life and that of Trailblaze’s. For that I didn’t even need to hesitate. I didn’t need to think about her past, or who she truly was, or what connection she had to the Ruins, or why she gave me something like Gramzanber. I just needed to protect her.

“Yes,” was all I said, with as much conviction as I could muster as I met Doc Sunday’s eyes with my own determined look.

Doc Sunday closed his eyes and nodded, “Good. I can rest a little easier knowing my daughter will be traveling with a pony willing to protect his friends. That’s all I needed to know from you, Longwalk. I assume you’ll be resuming your journey as soon as you all have had enough rest?”

I glanced between B.B and Arcaidia. B.B was still showing a lot of injuries from our ordeal in the Ruin and then in Saddlespring, and I was admittedly in no better shape. Arcaidia was also still wounded, though hers were lighter. I was more worried about her magic, and how much of it she’d drained in the Ruin. She was awake now sure, and seemed energetic enough, but she’d knocked herself out completely shielding us from Roaring Metal’s flames. How good was she to travel? It was pretty clear we weren’t in any shape to go rushing off across the Wasteland. I hadn’t even had a chance to take stock of our supplies. My barding was gone, though I still had my saddlebags, tore up as they were. That meant I still had the food and water supplies I’d bought in Saddlespring, with whatever few caps I had left. I’d bought that food and water with just me and Arcaidia in mind though. Adding B.B to our travel party meant we’d need to stretch those supplies, and I had no idea when our next chance to get more would be.

My thoughts must have been pretty obvious because LIL-E was quick to say, “The ponies here were planning to bunker down for one more day before moving. Most of them are probably going to try for Skull City, and Doc Sunday’s already volunteered to escort them. That means we’re free to go to Stable 104 if you want. I can show you a lot of tricks of the trade where it comes to Wasteland survival and scavenging, which should help with your supply problem. Once we’re done at Stable 104 we can work out how to get you three to the NCR. Not going to lie, it won’t be easy, but it’s doable.”

I gulped and nodded, as the full extent of what lay ahead me started to sink in. But even with the fear of what may happen between now and fining Arcaidia’s family member, or what might happen when we did, I was encouraged. Despite everything that had happened I’d have friends next to me. I didn’t know them well yet, but I was certain I would be able to do so, given time. I’d make sure I had that time with them; that nothing would happen to B.B or Arcaidia. Whatever it took from me I wouldn’t let another friend like Shale slip away from me before I had the chance to know them.

“Alright then,” said Doc Sunday “It’s about time for us to eat.”

As he passed out cans of the now cooked food, which turned out to be something called ‘baked beans’, me, B.B, and Arcaidia all ended up sitting together against one wall of the room while Doc Sunday sat across from us. LIL-E excused herself, saying she wanted to run a quick patrol back up top in case there was any trouble, explaining with her sensors she’d be the most likely to spot danger like a raider band or Wasteland monster before it got close. As we ate my mind began to wander to numerous loose ends and questions about our current circumstances, so I spoke up, nudging B.B.

“So…I wanted to know,” I said slowly, not sure how to approach this, “Did you see a green earth pony with a short black mane among the survivors, with a pair of manacles as a cutie mark?”

“Yer Labor Guild buddy?” B.B asked, and at my nod she said, “He’s here. So’s that crazy mare from the Followers of the Apocalypse. Last I saw o’ either o’ them they were hangin’ out further down the sewer, at the next junction. Don’t know what they’re doin’ down there…”

I took that with a small smile, too glad to hear Iron Wrought and Dr. Lemon Slice were still alive to be all that concerned with what they were doing. The two ponies might be with the Labor Guild, who were not on my list of favorite groups right now, but hearing of any survivors from Saddlespring was a blessing from the ancestor spirits in my mind. I made a mental note to try and talk with them before we left for this Stable, if only to bid Iron Wrought farewell; he had given me my initial primer on the Wasteland after all.

As we got close to finishing eating, and oh how sweet these ‘beans’ tasted, even if they weren’t meat, I looked across the room at Doc Sunday. Briefly a debate raged through my mind. Should I ask? Would it seem suspicious? Maybe if I asked right I wouldn’t make it sound like anything more than idle curiosity…

“Um…so…” I began, stumbling a little over how to phrase this, “When you worked with Odessa, you were working under somepony called Winter Sun?”

Alright, managed to get it out without tripping over my words and not letting on my relation with the stallion in question. Yay me, I can be subtle!

“I was.”

…well, damn. I’d been kind of hoping he’d be more elaborate than that. Guess I had to press a little harder.

“So, what was he like?” I asked, and at the look Doc Sunday gave me, one that felt like it was peeling open my skull to interrogate my brain pony I added, “Just, y’know, he sounds like some big chief in Odessa, so it’d be useful to know about him, right? A good hunter takes the time to learn about his prey, after all.”

Doc Sunday held that look on me for a few seconds before levitating out the last of his own beats, seeming to think things over as he chewed. At length he said, “Winter Sun was very involved with his project; I don’t recall an instant that I worked with him that he wasn’t pushing some aspect of ARMs development. A very strange stallion. He always seemed to act like a buffoon, but I got the impression he was quite intelligent…dangerously so. Among Odessa officers he was certainly an odd one. However no matter how he acted it was clear he held great prestige in Odessa.”

“You’re talking about him in the past tense…” I noted.

Doc Sunday shrugged his shoulders, “This was ten years ago. I haven’t had any contact with Odessa since that assignment, so for all I know Winter Sun could be still among their number, or he might have left for some reason, or he might be dead. It probably isn’t that important to worry about now, Longwalk, you’re more likely to encounter Odessa’s rank and file soldiers and lower ranked officers than a colonel like Winter Sun. It’d be more worried about Cocytus being sent against you.”

“Cocytus…? Is that a Wasteland creature? Doesn’t sound edible.” I said, cocking my head. Really, what was it with weird named things out here in the Wasteland? First those ‘Balloons’, then ‘Radscorpions’ and now whatever a ‘Cocytus’ was? I rather preferred it when geckos were the extent of my monster encounter list.

“No, it’s not a creature. It’s the name of Odessa’s special operations unit. I had to fight one of its members as part of my assignment testing the prototype ARM. Each agent of Cocytus is supposed to be the equivalent of an entire platoon in capability, and I can attest from my experience that their skills match that estimation. The rumor at the time was that the artificial ARMs were being made for their use.”

“Wait…so if it’s these Cocytus members that use Odessa’s ARMs…that means Shattered Sky was a member?”

“It’s likely to be the case, given I doubt Odessa would waste giving one of their ARMs to any normal officer. This is why I warn you now Longwalk. If you’ve already fought a member of Cocytus and survived that means they won’t hesitate to assign other members of that unit to hunt you and Arcaidia. You’ll need to be prepared to face such as Shattered Sky again.”

“Well…I’ll just have to deal with that when it happens,” I said, having a hard time imagining an entire group of ponies with abilities on par with Shattered Sky. It was not a pleasant thought. How much stronger was I going to have to become to even have a chance of keeping Arcaidia and B.B safe? As it stood both mares had me beat in terms of fighting ability. B.B could fly and was an incredible shot with her dual pistols. Arcaidia’s magic alone put her on a level above me, and that wasn’t including that starblaster she…wait, we never got that back, did we? Last I remembered seeing it Dr. Lemon Slice had it. Note to self; ask the good doctor about Arcaidia’s starblaster. Ha, who needs a Pip-Buck when you got mental notes to keep track of all your side questing?

That aside I was pondering what Doc Sunday had said about my father. It wasn’t really much and it hardly satisfied the burning curiosity I had about the stallion. I was anxious, almost more than curious. I wanted to know, to find out beyond a shadow of doubt, just what my father’s role in Odessa was. How much of a part did he play in events like Saddlespring’s destruction? Did he raise no protest at all against such action, or was he a whole-hearted supporter of wiping out entire settlements? Even worse…was he one of the ponies helping to orchestrate it all? Was it one of his ‘projects’ that required Odessa to target Arcaidia? I needed to know damn it!

I was frustrated, even with my own thoughts on the matter. Sixteen years spent trying not to think about my father, to just let him by an anonymous shadow that had no bearing on my life…but now that I was learning things about him it was starting to nag at me, bog my thoughts down, and I hardly needed more of that after Saddlespring.

“Ya alright Long? Beans ain’t agreein’ wit ya?” asked B.B, giving me a frown of concern.

“Huh? No, they’re fine. Still could use some chopped gecko to give it that flavor of home, but I’m discovering hunger is a seasoning that makes everything taste good,” I said with a light, half-hearted chuckle.

“If ya say so,” B.B said, not looking convinced. I didn’t want to worry her. Honestly I was just as worried about her. She’d lost her home and I could only guess at how many friends. It couldn’t be easy for her. Just leaving my home had felt bad and I hadn’t even been all that well liked by my tribe. I couldn’t imagine what it’d feel like to lose one’s home completely. I was a little surprised she still seemed willing to travel with me. Had I earned that kind of loyalty from her?

I washed down the last of the beans with a swig of water from my waterskin, though Doc Sunday gave me an odd look as I did so.

“Something wrong?” I asked, confused. Doc Sunday nodded his head towards my waterskin.

“Was that water bought in Saddlespring?”

“Um, yeah, had the waterskin filled when I bought food supplies. Why?”

“Just making sure. Not sure how much or how little you know about surviving the Wasteland. Got to be careful where you get the things you eat and drink. Of course you’ll be traveling with LIL-E, so I’m sure she can fill you in on many of the basics.”

“Okay,” I said, at first not sure what he was talking about, but it hit me soon enough. My tribe’s legend about Fire Spirits infecting the land, remnants of the Great Fire that destroyed Equestria, this corresponded with the story B.B had told me about the destruction by balefire bombs, “Wait, so you’re saying there really are Fire Spirits that can burn you from the inside out!?”

B.B nearly choked on the last of her beans, trying to suppress a laugh, and Doc Sunday quirked his lips in a slight smile.

“Not exactly, but there are places and objects still saturated by magical radiation that can poison you if you are exposed to too much of it. Most natural water supplies you’ll find like ponds or rivers are heavily irradiated. Most food leftover from before the war is too. The Water Guild and Farmers’ Guild hold monopolies in the Skull City Wastes on the technology to purify food and water. Most settlements you’ll encounter get their food and water from the caravans run by those Guilds. Now I’m not saying you can’t drink or eat from sources you discover in the Wasteland…but just avoid it unless you truly are in an emergency, and try to ensure you have some RadAway on hoof in case you do. They’re easy to spot, packets of orange liquid, clearly labeled.”

“Taste wretched though,” said B.B “ Like tryin’ ta drink paint.”

Right, RadAway; good for saving your life, equally good at killing your taste buds.

With my stomach now a margin fuller than it had been a minute ago I decided it was time to go see if I could find Dr. Lemon Slice and ask after Arcaidia’s starblaster. While I was at it I was going to see what I could dig out of her concerning the Golem. She’d clearly known what it was, and had even spoken of there being more of those things. Maybe she knew about how one might be able to fight something like that; a weakness of some sort I could exploit. At the very least she might have a clue as to why it trundled off to the south.

I got up and stretched my legs, grunting at the still painful aches I was feeling, “Well, I’m off to find Lemon Slice. B.B, you said you saw her further down the main tunnel, with Iron Wrought?”

“That’s right. Hold up a’ sec an’ I’ll join ya…ugh, ain’t much fer sittin’ ‘round myself anyways,” she grunted in similar fashion to me as she stood, stretching her wings and wincing. We’d been nothing but walking piles of wounds since our first fight in the Ruins. Despite everything, and the very likely possibility I’d be having a nightmare or two, I was actually quite looking forward to getting some rest tonight. My body was clearly informing me that it had enough of my abuse. I imagined B.B felt the same way.

Seeing both of us getting up Arcaidia finished quickly with one of the weird goopy ‘snack cake’ things she liked to eat, making me wonder how many of those she had left, and trotted up between us.

“Estu dol galvai, Longwalk? Where…go?”

It was a little odd hearing her speak words I could understand, but I liked it. Her voice had an airy, chiming quality to it that I hadn’t quite noticed before when she was speaking her own language. With a smile I said, “We’re going to try and get your starblaster back.”

To emphasis my point I pointed with a hoof a made as close an approximation of the sound her weapon had made, which went something along the lines of ‘kzzzzrtvoosh!’. Arcaidia gave me a confused look for a second, but I saw the spark of understanding in her eyes and she grinned ear to ear, giving me a jostle with her hoof.

“Longwalk, estu vi raivia, ren solva.”

“I’ll just assume that was a comment on my amazing skills in mimicking sound. You should hear me do a gecko mating call!”

“Think we oughta’ just take yer word on that one, Longwalk,” B.B said, pausing before the left to jab a wing at Gramzanber, “You gonna leave yer weapon?”

I looked at the spear, glanced at my side which was now quite without barding or nifty custom sheath. Well, it wasn’t as if I had any problem carrying it around in my mouth before, and while my knowledge of Wasteland survival still had lots of gaps to fill one rule I was quite certain of now was; never go anywhere unarmed. I snatched it up, feeling that now familiar sense of rightness at its touch. I wondered at how normal that was. Did the Odessa ponies who used the artificial ARMs feel this sensation? Despite the feeling I was a little nervous holding the spear. After all Doc Sunday had said that other ponies who’d used a real ARM hadn’t lived long. He hadn’t really gone into details on exactly what happened to those ponies, only that I had lasted longer than any other without showing signs of it affecting me negatively…but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen.

I pushed the thought aside. Arcaidia wouldn’t have given it to me if she knew it would hurt me. I looked to my two companions and nodded, “Alirght, let’s go.”

“Y’know, I’d like ta learn how ya talk all clear like when holdin’ that thing in yer mouth.” B.B said as we left the room and went back out into the sewer tunnels, turning left to head further into the dark and musty depths. Arcaidia was lighting the way with her horn.

“It’s not too hard.” I said, “Its mostly just using your tongue rather than your lips to sound words, and a lot of the sound comes out of the nose…kinda makes me sound a little nasal I know, but this is how my tribe’s hunters talked while we were out on a hunt.”

B.B chuckled, “So yer tribe are all ventriloquists?”

“Ventrilwha?”

“Heh, never mind fer now, but I might be thinkin’ of a way to set up an act wit ya to add to the Mighty an’ Mysterious Mirage’s show.”

It didn't take us too long to meander our way down the tunnel and reach a spot that split off in two directions, one leading to what looked like a short dead end with a small ramp leading up, looking like another surface entrance. Hm, weren’t the doctor and Iron Wrought supposed to be down here? B.B was also looking about with curiousness growing to concern. She looked at me and I shrugged. Guess we didn’t have any choice but to keep going until we found something. That or head on back. After all Dr. Lemon Slice and Iron Wrought might have rejoined the rest of the refugees-

I heard a pained cough and groan from down the short tunnel and I took another look, squinting. Arcaidia shined her light down there and I saw that what I’d thought at first was just a shadow as actually the form of a fallen pony. I recognized the pink coat and short green mane. Dr. Lemon Slice! I galloped up, my two companions right behind me.

“Dr. Lemon Slice, what happened? Are you…okay…? Oh, oh that’s not good.”

There was a small pool of red beneath the pink mare and she was lying on her side, preventing me from seeing what the wound was, but the mare’s lab coat was stained red as well. She was alive though, I could see the rise and fall of her sides, and as we came up her eyes opened and she licked her lips.

“Um…mmph, that…oh my…I…why am I…?’

“Easy there gal, don’t talk, don’t move.” B.B bent down and looked her over quickly, “Can’t see clear. Arcaidia, git yer light in here.”

Arcaidia did one better and immediately formed one of her magical crests, casting an aura of her icy blue light over Dr. Lemon Slice. I recognized her healing spell easily enough. It was good to see she was capable of still throwing spells around; I’d been worried just how much she’d drained herself in the Ruins. The result on the doctor was immediate as she shuddered and let out a sigh, her eyes gaining focus as she raised her head.

“Oh my, that does feel good. Ow! Oh, yes, not moving sounds good for the moment. My, such violence was wholly unnecessary!”

“Can you remember what happened? Where’s Iron Wrought?” I asked. Now that it seemed like she wasn’t in immediate danger of dying I wanted to know where Iron Wrought had gotten off to.

Dr. Lemon Slice’s expression scrunched up in a deep frown, “That, that….that brute! He’s stolen my research data, and that wonderful starblaster! I’d thought it strange he wanted to talk alone, but I didn’t imagine he’d go so far as to try to take my precious research! Then he goes so far as to stab me!” She shivered, “If you hadn’t found me…”

I didn’t quite believe what I’d just heard. Why would Iron Wrought do that!? They both worked for the Labor Guild, right? This didn’t make sense! I shook myself, trying to focus. This must have just happened, so Iron Wrought couldn’t have gotten too far from here. I looked to B.B.

“You think she’s going to be okay?”

“I can’t be sure. Arcaidia’s healin’ spell is mighty strong. It got me back up on my hooves after I got toasted by that big ol’ critter we fought, so should be able to deal wit a stab wound. Still, better if my pa got a look at her.”

“I…I fell alright. Please, you must get my research back. It was all on a set of record disks I kept bundled up. They contain everything I’ve learned studying the Ruin in Saddlespring; they’re irreplaceable!”

“You don’t have to ask twice,” I said, putting a hoof on her to keep her still as the doctor tried to rise, “Just stay here and let Arcaidia help you. Now did you see where he went?”

Admittedly asking wasn’t all that necessary, as even as I did I noticed the tracks through the sewer filth leading towards the ramp leading back to the surface. Even my below average tracking skills could follow hoof prints that clear. Dr. Lemon Slice confirmed my suspicions by pointing a hoof towards the ramp.

“I think I heard him run that way. Oh…oh I think I’ll take you’re advise and rest a moment…rather lightheaded now, actually.”

“Do you think you’ll be okay here while we chase him down?” I asked and the doctor examined herself, gingerly running a hoof around the area of her wound and pressing slightly.

“The cut was deep…I don’t think any organs were damaged. Your friend’s spell seems to be doing well for the worst of the trauma. I think I can get myself back to the others after resting a few minutes, and then I can scrounge some medical supplies.”

“My pa oughta have somethin’,” said B.B, eyeing the ramp, “We gotta git goin’ if we’re gonna catch that bastard.”

She had already put on the weapon straps for her pistols around her forelegs while we’d been talking and I eyed her seriously, “B.B, if we find him, let’s try to give him a chance to explain himself. I want to know why he did this.”

“Sure, fine, just don’t do nothin’ ta put yerself at risk, Long. He starts shootin’ at us, I’m shootin’ back. Simple as that.”

Arcaidia finished her spell, the crest fading away. I gave Dr. Lemon Slice one final nod, saying “Don’t push yourself, just get to B.B’s father. We’ll take care of the rest.”

The pink mare gave me a thankful smile, “Please hurry. My research, without it I don’t have anything…”

Should a part of me not been so eager to help her? Should some part of me have realized that she was, in her own way, party to the destruction of Saddlespring. After all she worked willingly for the Labor Guild to excavate Ruins, apparently for the sole purpose of digging up and researching things like Roaring Metal. I sincerely doubted the Labor Guild had any plans to help ponies with Dr. Lemon Slice’s research. Perhaps those record disks shouldn’t make it back to her.

Perhaps she shouldn’t make it back to the Labor Guild…I stopped that thought before it could go any further, disgusted with myself. What was wrong with me? I shouldn’t even be considering the implications of doing this pony any harm, let alone that it might…might…be beneficial in some way if she couldn’t keep researching dangerous things for the Labor Guild. I shoved all those thoughts way, telling my brain pony to not bring up the subject again.

Turning to give each of my companions a look to confirm they were ready I began following the trail, heading right up the ramp. There were metal doors that were already open, letting in a dry and freezing breeze of night air. Heading up I found that this sewer entrance led to the middle of a barren, cracked street in a thinner part of the ruined desert of suburban housing that had been north of Saddlespring. The cloud shrouded night made visibility wretched but Arcaidia was providing light with her horn again. I briefly considered asking her to shut down the light spell, because it made us horribly visible in this darkness, but I needed it to track…

“Hey, Longwalk,” said B.B, “Have Arcaidia tone done that there flashlight, will ya? We’re signalin’ our position ta every critter an’ possible raider fer at least a’ mile.”

“Well, yeah, but if she turns out the light, I can’t follow Iron Wrought’s tracks.”

“Don’t ya fret none ‘bout that, hun. I got it covered,” said the pegasus magician.

“Dare I ask how?” my curiosity was piqued as I peered at her through the darkness.

There was a notable pause before she answered, tone guarded, “Longwalk, if I ask ya to trust me on this, an’ not to pry, will ya?”

“Um…okay…?”

“I’m serious Long. I can explain it, but I don’t want ta answer no questions. Ya take my word on this, take what I say at face value, an’ don’t question beyond that. Alright?”

I’d heard B.B sound serious before, but never quite this stone cold tone of utter seriousness that she now had. She was staring right into me, unblinking. I even heard her breathing intensify. I gulped, ears twitching as I said, “You have my word.”

“Alright then. I can follow ‘im by smell. He’s got the doctors blood on ‘im an’ I can smell it. I can follow that ‘till we catch up, no problem.”

I was…somewhat regretful of my promise to not ask questions. Because that right there was a very good example of the kind of thing one should ask questions about. A lot of questions. I was a pony of my word though, and kept my mouth clear of any queries, instead saying “That’s…pretty awesome, actually.”

Turning my attention to Arcaidia I pointed at her horn, and said “Don’t suppose you know the word for ‘off’ by now?”

Arcaidia cocked her head at me, pointing a hoof at her own horn, “Esru dol alva shurvi?”

“Yes, light off.” I repeated.

She frowned at me, but the silvery blue light faded away, leaving us in complete darkness. Oh how I was going to enjoy trying to not smack my knees into every available piece of debris out here. I saw B.B’s shadowy form move to the front of our little group and I heard her taking in a huge breath though her nose, then she put her muzzle towards the ground and I heard a few smaller sniffs. It was kind of weird to see.

“I got ‘im. Follow me,” she said as she fluttered her wings, hovering a little off the ground as she flew forward, nose still sniffing. I followed behind her, and Arcaidia fell into step beside me as we trotted along.

I found myself falling into a familiar routine, that of being a hunter. With B.B sniffing head of us, following the trial of our quarry in her own unique way, I kept watch for danger amid the dark skeletal forest of burned out houses and wreaked, rusted wagons. Doing this again brought back fond, and at the same time painfully homesick, memories of hunting with Trailblaze. I swallowed back the feeling, forcing myself to focus. I knew Arcaidia had that useful Eyes something-something on her Pip-Buck to alert us of danger, but I didn’t know what the devices limits were. I had to admit though, I was kind of looking forward to getting my hooves on one myself. I trusted my own senses of course, and it wasn’t like I didn’t appreciate generations of honed hunting techniques…but I was developing a growing appreciation for the machines built by the ponies of the old world.

Except for guns.

Still hadn’t acquired an appreciation for those. Wasn’t intending to either. Nevermind that my melee-only tactics up until now had nearly gotten me killed…was it going on five times thus far? Let’s see…geckos…turrets in Ruins…big damned monster thingy…Golem…Shattered Sky…sky…nope I was wrong, including falling through the sky I was up to six ‘near death experiences’. This was a disturbing trend I could only attribute to the fact that the Wasteland hated me. Apparently the Wasteland hated everypony though so I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad. Really I felt I just needed to adjust the way I went about getting into melee. Cover seemed to be the key. Tasty, life-preserving cover. If I could just learn how to expertly dash from Point A to Point B, without getting shot, gradually getting closer to my opponent, then once I got in their face I was pretty good at handling things from there. Thinking about it I recalled that ice wall Arcaidia had created in the fight with the large monster in the Ruins. While thinking back to that brought a pang of regret because it also instantly made me think of Shale, I realized that ice wall would make for good cover in a firefight.

We’d need to have a sit down and talk tactics once she got better at Equestrian.

We were keeping up a quick pace, and I must have been getting better at navigating the Wasteland at night because I only whacked my limbs on jutting pieces of metal or stumbled on rocks once every ten minutes instead of every ten seconds. Yay, improvement! I was keeping quiet because basic hunter doctrine is stay as silent as possible and if you got to communicate use hoof signals. B.B didn’t now my tribe’s signals though so I would just have to hope that if she spotted something she’d know a good way to let me know, and if I spotted something a quick tap on her shoulder would do the job as well.

So far though I wasn’t seeing anything. I hadn’t quite realized just how…empty the Wasteland was. All of these blackened hollowed out structures I was seeing had at one time been home to ponies, hundreds to thousands of them. How many had died during that war? My mind couldn’t quite get around the impossibly huge number it must have been. That got me thinking though, something odd that hadn’t occurred to me before. If so many ponies had died why hadn’t I seen any remains? Even after two hundred years there would still be some skeletons leftover, right? Not that I wanted to see something like that, mind you, but it did strike me as odd that I hadn’t seen a single skeleton laying about.

I shrugged off the question, figuring there was probably some common-sense explanation for it I just wasn’t aware of due to my general lack of Wasteland lore.

Abruptly B.B halted. I was paying attention so I halted my stride right behind her, though I made a small ‘oof’ sound as Arcaidia bumped into me.

“Sersi.” She said in a whisper, voice apologetic.

“Think he’s close,” said B.B in a quiet, barely audible tone, “Scent just got a’ whole lot sharper. Comin’ from there.”

She pointed with her muzzle at a structure up ahead that was larger than the rest of the broken houses that were on either side of the dilapidated street we were on. The structure was at the end of the road, about three stories tall I guessed, though the third floor looked to be little more than a few pieces of floor barely held up around patches of barely intact wall. There was a fairly large concrete lot in front of the building that held a half dozen shadowed forms of rusted out vehicles. As we quietly approached I saw a mostly intact sign of artfully carved stone sitting in the base of a long dried out fountain, the lettering large enough that I could make them despite the gloom. The sign read; ‘South Brooke Elementary School’.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“It’s a’…” B.B paused, tilting her head I thought, “It’s a place young ponies went ta learn stuff. Like, uh, I’m assumin’ ya learned things from yer parents, right?”

I flinched a bit at the word ‘parents’ but nodded, “My mother taught me a lot of what I know. The rest I learned from my fellow tribesmates.”

“Yeah, an’ that’s pretty common fer most ponies these days. But way back when they had these big ol’ schools ta teach ponies. Schools for young ponies to learn the basic o’ life, then specialized schools fer older ponies ta learn their trade or special studies.”

I frowned, looking at the charred corpse of a building in front of us, its windows black pits, its walls stained with shadows, soot, and dirt.

“So how young were the ponies that would of come here?”

“Elementary school? Maybe...seven to twelve? Don’t rightly know, ta be honest.”

I found myself wishing I hadn’t asked as I thought back to what must have happened her two hundred years ago. I imagined a big, colorful building in a bustling town, dozens, maybe hundreds of small foals, fillies, and colts all gathering for another day of learning. I wondered if the Great Fires, the balefire bombs, came in the morning or in the afternoon. Were the foals still inside when it happened? Would they have had time to flee the school and find their families among the now destroyed homes me and my friends had passed by?

I forced myself to stop thinking about it. I had to find Iron Wrought, find out why he hurt Dr. Lemon Slice, and hopefully get the mare’s items back along with Arcaidia’s starblaster without having to hurt him. I was very much hoping to get this done without injuring Iron Wrought. Whatever his reasons for doing this he was still a pony who’d helped me.

“So, how do we want to do this?” I asked, “If he’s in there might take awhile to search the whole place…”

“No Longwalk,” said B.B firmly.

“No what?”

“No we are not ‘splitting up to cover more ground’.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest it.” I said, and at her look I laughed nervously “Well, not now anyway. But I was also going to say that once we find him, do you mind letting me try to talk to him first? I want to try to talk him down, or at the very least figure out why he stole the research.”

“I make no promises, Long. You feel ya gotta talk, do it quick, make it good.”

“All I ask is the chance,” I said, giving B.B what I hoped was a reassuring look. That said I turned to the front doors of the school, which were hanging open as bent and rusted metal frames with shards of glass dusting the ground in front of them.

As a group we moved forward, slowly and silently crossing the school’s parking lot. As we did so B.B made a few more sniffing noises and I saw her wings stiffen, her tail twitching about in sudden irritation.

“What’s wrong?”

“Shh,” she said as she sniffed again, and even in the darkness I could see her nose wrinkle and her eyes widen, “He ain’t alone. I’m gettin’ more scents here…augh…blood and bile…so much sour sweat and worse things…”

B.B shook her head and gave me a dead serious look, “Only one thing that smells this bad in all the Wasteland. Raiders.”

I might’ve argued that the Balloons I’d fought smelled pretty damn bad, but the severity of the situation stifled any comment I would’ve made like that. I’d heard the term ‘Raiders’ used before, but only in vague reference to what I gathered were bands of…not so nice ponies. I wondered just how bad they could possibly be, because B.B looked far tenser than she had a second ago. Her entire posture had stiffened and her wings were snapped down against her side.

“What can we expect…?” I asked, trying to keep my own nerves in check. I’d faced mutated monsters, the deadly traps of an ages old Ruin, survived a fight with somepony that could apparently teleport at will…I should be able to keep it together when dealing with other ponies. But what if, this time, I couldn’t avoid having to kill?

“Can’t figure it’d be a large band,” said B.B, eyeing the school and gesturing for me and Arcaidia to follow her to hide behind one of the burned out wagons in the parking log, “probably dealin’ wit a dozen, at most. Any bigger n’ that an’ Saddlespring woulda found ‘em out and sent guards ta root ‘em out. Can’t let Raiders git all close ta town like that. They usually ain’t too well armed, but can’t make any ‘ssumptions ‘bout that. Just…we go in there ya gotta be ready ta do harm, Longwalk. Ain’t no room fer anythin’ less with Raiders but kill or be killed.”

I swallowed, trying to steady my breaths. Gramzanber was a cold weight in my mouth and even the spear’s usually comforting presence wasn’t enough to banish my growing unease. Even if we hadn’t come here to chase down Iron Wrought and get answers from him it was clear having Raiders so close to the refugees from Saddlespring was dangerous. Regardless of what Iron Wrought had just done, he was still a pony who’d treated me with some regard, so he’d just been captured by the Raiders I wasn’t going to just leave him. So, one way or another, it was clear we had to go in there.

Which meant I’d probably have to take a life, maybe multiple lives.

The thought alone created a sense of disgust and panic in me that I had to shove down hard to keep from overtly showing, and even then I was pretty sure a tremble had entered my legs and my breathing was faster than it should be. B.B clearly picked up on it and frowned.

“Longwalk…we could just head back. Odds are these buggers ain’t goin’ nowhere, an’ my pa could-“

“No,” I said, taking a deep breath, “There’s no telling what they’re doing to Iron Wrought in there. If he’s alive, and there’s a chance to get him out, I want to take it.”

“He tried ta kill that doctor mare,” B.B said, “Don’t figure we owe him no rescue.”

“B.B, he’s one of the first ponies I met out here that tried to help me. He’s got…family, out there somewhere. I don’t know why he did that to Dr. Lemon Slice, but I want to find out. If Raiders are so bad, and he’s still alive, I don’t know how long he’s going to stay that way.”

I closed my eyes, forcing my breathing to steady, then opened them slowly, meeting B.B’s violet gaze.

“I can do what I have to.”

“If yer sure…” B.B bobbed her head and put a hoof on my shoulder, “Just, y’know, afterward, if ya need ta talk about it. I know where yer at right now, how it feels.”

“Comes to that, you’ll be the first pony I come to,” I said, returning her gesture and, well, not smiling because that just wasn’t possible with the situation and the way I was feeling, but appreciation in my eyes.

“Esri dol marivo, ren covrival? Esru vi vira di ravae.”

Arcaidia nudged my side with her horn and gestured at her Pip-Buck, then at her eyes, and then jutted her head towards the school building. I poked my head up a bit to see over the wagon and noticed what she was pointing at. There was movement by the front doors. It was hard to see clearly with the lack of light but I did notice a pony shape stumbling out and heading over along the wall of the building to…ah, call of nature. I exchanged looks with my friends. Arcaidia seemed eager, and quite at ease with the circumstances. A part of me wondered if she really understood why we were here, but then again Arcaidia seemed more comfortable with violence than even B.B was. Should I have been worried about that? B.B was still clearly tense but she was quite a bit calmer than I imagined I was looking at the moment.

“This is a good chance ta take one out an’ git in there,” said B.B, flexing her wings, “Follow behind me, but keep it quiet.”

“Think I can manage that,” I barely got the whole sentence bout before B.B flew up over the wagon and zipped out across the black parking lot, forcing me to move as quickly as I could to follow while staying as silent as I could manage. I’d learned from my previous attempts at stealth that one of the issues I was having was that concrete street, or parking lot in this case, was not nearly as conducive to silent moving as just plain old dirt. I had to really watch how I put weight on my hoofsteps to keep them from creating noise on the cold, cracked concrete.

Arcaidia and I crept around the side of the wagon and began to make our way to the wall of the school building, the unicorn filly making a grumpy comment under her breath I didn’t catch, not that I’d have understood it if I did. I looked around, trying to figure where B.B had gone. I thought she’d have charged right into the Raider, but I didn’t see here ahead of us.

The Raider was finishing her business, I was close enough now to make out the more feminine shape of her, and was heading back for the entrance with a slow, uneasy swagger that reminded me of how one of my tribesmates looked when having indulged in the less medical applications of healing powder. She hadn’t spotted me and Arcaidia yet, and I was making out more details. For one, B.B was almost right, the sour and sickly smell that wafted through the air to my unfortunate nostrils was near enough to top the unnaturally wrong scent of the Balloons. Near enough, but not quite. Still, this was not a healthy smelling pony.

As we got close enough to make out the details I got my first look at a real Wasteland Raider. She had a thin, patchy mane that might have been white if not for the dark stains of blood, grime, and other fluids I wasn’t going to even try to identify. Her coat wasn’t any better, possibly at one time having been light gray, but was marred by so much dirt and stained with blood that it made her look more like a rusty brown, and that was the coat I could see past the barding. The barding was as if she mare had stitched together hide from whatever Wasteland critters happened to wander by, and adorned with pieces of sharpened rebar that didn’t seem to serve a purpose beyond making the armor look as dangerous to wear as it would be to grapple with the mare. I tried to ignore the distinct possibility that one of those hide patches had a marking on it that might’ve been a cutie mark. Even Raiders couldn’t be that…horrible…right? Then I saw the Raider’s actual cutie mark, a long curved knife cutting into skin, making it look like it was cutting into her own hide.

The mare was thin as a rail, and I thought I could make out ribs, and as she walked she laughed a raspy, cackling laugh at some inner joke that turned into a hacking cough. It was a pitiful sight, one that made me want to recoil.

I didn’t get it. What could possibly lead any pony to live a life that put them in such a state?

I also didn’t have time to ponder that, because as me and Arcaidia got to within twenty feet of the mare she happened to turn her head towards us. Eyes the yellow of egg yoke looked at us, widened, and I saw a faint glow of pale yellow magic as I realized the mare was a unicorn and she was drawing a bulky looking but horribly rusted pistol from a makeshift holster on her flank. Another hacking cackle escaped her lips past rotting teeth.

“Geehee, more meat, more mea-“ the mare started to yell out but before she got far a white form dropped on her from above.

B.B landed on the mare’s back with all four hooves pushing down and I heard the snap of bone from the impact. Worried for a second B.B had just injured herself I rushed forward, but had to staggered back as a loud gunshot run through the night air and a flash blinded me, pain blazing into my side as the bullet grazed my flank.

The raider was under B.B, her back legs flopping uselessly from what I could only imagine was a broken spine, but her front half still seemed to work and the Raider mare screamed and roared as she swung her bulky pistol around in its wreath of yellow magic aura.

B.B swore under her breath and ducked down, avoiding getting her head splattered over the school building’s wall as the big pistol went off again. She pressed one of her hooves down tightly on the Raider’s neck and shoved the barrel of one of her pistols under the Raider’s struggling chin.

“Bitchbitchbitch , I’m gonna-“ the Raider’s tirade was silenced by a muffled *pop* of B.B’s pistol, taking the top of the Raider’s head off.

It all happened inside of seconds, leaving me standing there staring at my friend. B.B rolled off the dead Raider and quickly got to her hooves, giving me a sharp look.

“Don’t just stand ‘round, we gotta git inside! They’ll be comin’!”

It was true, I was already hearing the sound of voices shouting coming from inside the building. I gulped, and nodded at B.B.

The fight was on.

The entrance to the school building was dark and empty when we got to it, our hooves crunching over old glass. It was, however…decorated. Blood streaked with bits of viscera made skull and bladed symbols on the walls beside the entryway, and strings of bones were left dangling to clack slightly in the night breeze; bones I couldn’t help but notice were gnawed on. As we headed inside to a large open room with several doors leading forward, left, or right, I noticed that sour Raider smell was choking in here. It clung to the air and felt like it was infecting my nose. A staircase flanked either wall as well leading to a second floor, though the stairs on the left were destroyed by a partially collapsed ceiling. This room was as bad as the entryway, with plenty of blood stained graffiti depicting images of ponies murdering each other, or violating each other, or murdering each other in violating ways covering the ceilings, floor, and walls. In one case the image wasn’t being depicted by blood, but by two old, rotted corpses that had been posed like macabre mannequins.

I’d have wondered where the Raiders could have gotten all the poor victims to create such a horrific scene had I not been thoroughly busy trying not to throw up. And failing.

“Estu…Estu…” Arcaidia’s silver eyes were wide as she took all this in, then narrowed with a cold rage flashing in them, the ‘kitten drowning’ look I’d come to associate with her being ready for violence, “Shivol! Di shivol ti zurhir!”

I didn’t need a translation to know what she was saying. The acidic tone said it all. She was not happy with these Raiders. Chances were my previous worries about seeing ponicicles were about to become justified. The thing that started to scare me was that I wasn’t sure how much I would mind the prospect, with what I was seeing in this place.

All three of us stood there a second, and Arcaidia, apparently deciding stealth was no longer a factor, lit up her horn brightly to give us a better view, bathing the scene in pale blue light. It illuminated quite clearly the four Raiders that came barreling into the room, three from the first floor doorway on the right, the last one up top on the second floor. In the span of a moment the room was filled with gunfire as B.B opened fire on the Raider above, flying towards the ceiling herself, and the Raiders started shooting with an assortment of broken down small arms.

Arcaidia darted to my right, hugging the wall as one black Raider earth pony stallion, gripping a double barreled shotgun in his mouth, blasted out large chunks of the wall beside her. Her horn was glowing frosty blue to produce light, but at the same time the crest of symbols was already snapping into place around her horn as she dove to the ground and fired out a cone of icicle shards that battered and tore into the Raider.

I was moving too. The lack of effective cover left my only viable option to close the distance with the Raiders and take them in melee as fast as possible. The remaining two Raiders consisted of a dull orange earth pony mare with a stained blue and red mane, though I wasn’t entirely sure the red was natural and just not blood. She was aiming a small rifle of some sort at me, firing as I darted in at her and her companion. The other Raider was a short, painfully thin white pegasus stallion with a tangled brown mop of a mane and with a face sporting more scars than unmarked hide. His mouth was wrapped around a large knife, and his eyes were fixed on me…or rather, on Gramzanber.

“Pretty big shiny spear this one’s got. I’m gonna enjoy shoving it through yer ass and hanging ya from my wall!”

I ignored the Raider’s taunting as I closed the distance to the pair, another bullet zipping past my ear and almost clipping it. Good thing it missed, because Crossfire had already taken a chunk of that ear off, didn’t want to lose any more of it. Trailblaze would be pissed next time I saw her and I didn’t think my jaw could handle any more of her ire.

I charged in at the orange mare with the rifle, but her pegasus companion leaped in at my left side, forcing me to turn to defend myself. For such a sickly thin looking pony he was remarkably fast and had a wiry strength to him that I felt as I deflected one of his knife thrusts, only to have to dodge back as he twisted around my guard and slashed at my legs.

The sound of stamping hooves and more shouts alerted me to the fact that we didn’t have a lot of time to deal with these four ponies, though a rapid staccato of shots from B.B’s pistols followed by a gurgling scream and a pony crashing through the second floor railing alerted me to the fact that we were down to three opponents at that moment.

The orange mare was reloading her rifle, shoving shells awkwardly with her mouth into the breech of the rifle she’d transferred to her hooves. That’d buy me a second to deal with the knife wielder. The pegasus Raider had taken to the air as I’d dodge backwards from him and now was coming at me from above, diving back and forth and slashing at my back from an angle that was hard to block with Gramzanber’s blade.

I felt a burning cut across my back and grit my teeth, focusing past the pain to notice that while the Raider pegasus was fast and agile, he was moving in a very predictable pattern. Taking a deep breath I waited until he made a pass at me, ducking down to avoid the knife, then as he dove around to come at me again I shoved the pointed back end of Gramzanber’s shaft into his path.

I might have slightly altered the course to aim for his wing instead of his body. I didn’t even know in that instant if it was conscious, random chance, or some instinct I couldn’t stop from taking control. Either way the silver spike on the back end of my spear pierced right through the pegasus’ right wing with a meaty crack and he screamed in a high pitched tone as he crashed to the ground. I pulled the spike free, turning so the spear’s actual blade was leveled at the fallen Raider’s chest. My blood was pounding in my ears, my heart hammering in my chest. The pegasus Raider’s eyes met mine and I saw the realization dawn on him that there was no way for him to evade in time, and in that I saw the fear on his scarred face, the Raider’s eyes widening in shocked horror at the thought of impending death.

Strike! Do it! He’s a monster, they all are! I mentally shouted at myself, trying to force my head forward, to shove Gramzanber into my enemy, this Raider who wouldn’t have hesitated a single second were our positions reversed, and who had likely taken part in creating the horror around me. I’d told B.B I could do this! If I didn’t I’d be endangering my friend’s lives. Something inside me, however, was resisting, something that was shouting in my mind just as loud as all the practical reasons I had to kill this pony. There was no time. I had to act, and it was as if two equal halves of me were tearing in opposite directions, one trying to pull me across a line I’d never thought I’d have to cross, the other trying to keep me from going over the edge.

I think I screamed, a primal sound of my own fear at what I was about to do as I reared up and drove Gramzanber downward. My spear didn’t strike the pegasus Raider in the chest…it instead stuck into his other wing. I didn’t have time to question myself, to berate myself, to call myself a fool for once again failing to go for the killing blow…

…mainly because I was too busy getting shot.

The orange Raider mare had finished reloading her rifle and fired. At point blank range even her bad aim was enough to catch me in the side. I felt the impact and the exposition of pain through my side as I was staggered. It wasn’t a big rifle, but a rifle was still a rifle, and even being shot by a small caliber gun wasn’t something to sniff at. It was only my recently developed familiarity with such pain that let me focus past the gunshot wound and turn around, ripping free Gramzanber from the pegasus’ wing, which caused him to scream and writhe on the ground, and charge the mare as she fired again. The bullet skipped off the broad spear blade I’d angled in front of me like a shield.

I slammed into her with all my weight. I was surprised by how light she was and she was flung back by my slam and impacted with the wall, flattening against it and sliding to the floor in a heap. As she struggled back to her hooves I stumbled towards her, not sure what I was intending to do, but certain I needed to at the very least take her out of the fight.

Before I got to her though a weight landed on my back and I felt a hoof wrap around my neck, a voice rasping in my ear with coppery rotten breath.

“Guss wut? Yur ded!” the Raider snarled around the knife in his mouth as he pressed the blade to the side of my neck.

I felt coldness sweep over us suddenly, intense and even freezing part of my hide. The Raider yelped and fell off my back. I turned to look, seeing an icicle protruding from the pegasus’ side and freezing his body over. He twitched sporadically, gasping for air past what were probably freezing and crushed lungs before he twitched one final time and lay still.

“Longwalk! Esru ren mir di mas!?”

Arcaidia walked up to me, her silver eyes flashing fiercely at me. The black stallion she’d been fighting was now a frozen statue, and hovering next to Arcaidia in a field of her blue magic was the double barreled shotgun. She gave me stern look, but sharply glanced at the orange Raider mare who was still dazed from me slamming her into the wall. Arcaidia snorted and turned the shotgun on her. Before I could speak a single blast rendered the Raider mare a non-issue. While I gaped at her Arcaidia casually reloaded the shotgun while sweeping past me towards one of the doors leading further into the school, where I could hear the sounds of more Raider’s approaching.

Up above B.B had landed on the second floor, yelling “We got more comin’ this way! You all alright down there!?”

“We’re…we’re fine,” I said, grimacing at the pain still digging into my side from where I’d been shot, “Nothing that’ll put me down yet, anyway.”

I looked at where Arcaidia was taking up a defensive position by the doorway were we heard Raiders approaching fast from, then glanced up at B.B on the top floor. We really didn’t want to keep fighting here. I voiced that notion.

“I’m agreein’ wit ya there Long,” said B.B as she flew down to me, “Let’s relocate this. C’mon Arcaidia, we’re movin’!”

The unicorn gave us a look, frowning, but followed as me and B.B heading for the door on our right where the initial three Raiders had come from. If there had been any more down that way they’d probably would’ve shown up by now, so it was safe bet we were going to a clear spot.

“We find a place that’s got some cover, set up an ambush,” I said, “Sound good?”

“Works fer me!” said B.B.

“Vira! Good,” Arcaidia consented still looking at me with anger in her eyes.

The doorway we ran through led to a long hallway with numerous doors on the left side. Most had either rotted away doors hanging half open or just didn’t have any doors at all. The walls were lined with tall, thin metal containers, a lot of which were closed, a few left open. I wasn’t sure what they were for but I could imagine they were some kind of containers students used? No time to think about it, I could hear the Raiders closing in behind us, a series of threats and profanity that intensified suddenly, probably because they found the bodies of their dead comrades in the entry room.

Which meant we didn’t have a lot of time to choose a spot to make a stand. We’d reached the end of the hallway, which sharply turned to our left. Here the ceiling has also partially collapsed, blocking any further progress, but creating a makeshift ramp upwards.

“Up we go?” I asked.

“Higher ground equals good,” replied B.B.

That settled up we went, B.B flying up first to make sure the area was clear before me and Arcaidia began our climb. The rubble was strewn with a broken desk and bookshelf, requiring a bit of a leap to get from one spot to the next in order to reach the most level part of the ramp. Making that leap after Arcaidia I landed and stumbled, gritting my teeth as my pain shot through my insides. Maybe that bullet wound was worse than I thought?

I managed to climb up to the second floor, Arcaidia pulling me with some of her levitation magic and setting me next to her. The unicorn filly was eyeing me with her silver eyes unblinking. She looked at my side, with the clear bullet hole, and I heard her let out a sigh. She conked me on the head lightly with her hoof.

“Matta, estu vi muras, ren solva.”

“What’ wrong? Longwalk, ya okay?” B.B asked in concern.

“Yeah, yeah,” I began to say, then caught the unamused look from Arcaidia and amended, “Just a little shot, is all.”

“Little shot!? Ain’t no such thing. Arcaidia, whacha’ waitin’ for, heal him up!”

Arcaidia nodded to B.B, and abruptly I felt myself being lifted off the ground, held in a field of telekinesis. The unicorn summoned up a crest of symbols once more and I felt soothing, cool magic sweep through my side, pushing back the digging pain in my side. While Arcaidia cast her healing spell B.B quickly began pulling overturned desks towards the top of the rubble ramp, forming a barricade. While I floated there I was able to take stock of the room we were in.

It was sizeable. Not quite as large as the entryway but big enough that a few dozen ponies could fit in here with room to spare. The hole was in the near middle of the floor, about ten feet wide. The desks B.B was using to form a barricade were small affairs, with chairs attached to them that made moving them awkward for the pegasus mare, but she was moving with speed born of knowing we had less than a minute, tops, before the Raiders would be on us. A big black board of some kind covered one wall across from where we’d entered up the ramp. To our right a series of windows, most of them broken, looked out onto the Wasteland night. Opposite that was a wall where old broken down shelving contained burned books and assorted other items, most of which I didn’t recognize the purpose of. There were doors on either end of this wall, looking like they led out into another hallway.

Assuming no Raiders came through those doors and they were all going to pile up the ramp we at least had a good spot to ambush them from. The ramp didn’t leave any cover for trying to get up it, and if it turned out there were too many we could use the doors as an escape route. Between B.B’s pistols and Arcaidia’s magic we’d have the Raiders covered, and if any broke through to get into melee…

…I’d, what? Lose my nerve again? Politely ask the Raiders to surrender? Risk my life and the lives of my friends by fighting to wound, not kill, a trait our opponents clearly didn’t share?

Shame and doubt filled me as I was set down by Arcaidia, her healing spell done with. The wound was still present but the pain was mostly gone and I was breathing much easier. Arcaidia was still looking at me with those silver eyes of her twin pools of light in the gloom. Her voice was hard, when it spoke.

“Longwalk…” she sounded the words slowly, “Must…strong…now…”

The whooping and hollering of the Raiders was loud now, almost upon us. B.B huddled behind the barricade she made while shouting, “Chatin’ time over! Fightin’ time now!”

Arcaidia didn’t break the gaze she held on me, one hoof reaching up and touching on my chest, right over my heart.

“Hurts…” she said, “…hurts more…if…gone,” she shook her head “Gaa! Estu dol suvinlir di surtra. Esru dol ARM vi dipal, ren solva.”

That said she went to the barricade and poked her head around it. I saw her horn flashing blue as I huddled behind the stacked desks. They didn’t make an entirely solid barrier and I could peek through some of the cracks to see that Arcaidia was using her horn to freeze over the top part of the rubble ramp. She was breathing heavily and winced as she pulled her head back behind the barricade. I was reminded she hadn’t had a lot of time to rest since the Ruins; her magic was probably far from fully recovered.

If I fight to kill, take my share of the enemies, the burden lessens on her, and on B.B, I thought. I’d told Doc Sunday I’d protect them. Was that just bluster on my part? Was I just saying those words, not grasping that to achieve that I’d have to abandon any notion that we could survive out here without killing? The sound of hooves hitting rubble right head of us told me I didn’t have any more time to debate the issue.

“Gut ‘im then make ‘em eat their guts!”

“Gonna skin ya, then plough ya, then grill ya!”

“Pretty ponies, tasty ponies, pretty ponies, tasty ponies!”

“Don’t kill them right away, let’s take our time with these ones.”

“Oh, gee, thanks fer the suggestion, Fine Dining, like we hadn’t thoughta that!”

“Well, we did go through the last one’s rather quickly, and you killed too many from the get go, the remaining ones didn’t last long.”

“I got that new one though, didn’t I! An’ you just tucked ‘im away in yer room for your own fun!”

“Of course, to the strongest go the spoils.”

“Uh, guys, something’s wrong with the…the…walkway thingie.”

“You mean, ‘ramp’, Low Brow.”

“Yeah, it’s all slippery an’ stuff!”

“Were all them desks there before?”

That was about as far as the conversation amongst the Raider’s got when B.B and Arcaidia reared up over the barricade, the pegasus mare pumping her forelegs rapidly to fire a barrage with her pistols while the unicorn let out a blast of concentrated icicles. I reared up as well, just in case one of the Raiders had gotten close enough to strike at. As it happens they had only gotten halfway up the rubble when the lead pony had spotted the ice Arcaidia had frosted over the ramp with.

The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot more Raiders clustered down there than I thought there would be. B.B had said there’d be maybe a dozen Raiders in total, and we’d already gotten five thus far. However on the ramp alone there were about eight Raiders, plus probably close to a dozen gathered at the bottom. They were a mass of ponies of all colors, but all equally stained red and brown by the filth of their existence and the horrid spiked metal and hide mish-mash armor they wore. Many bore vicious rusted melee weapons from rebar spikes to nail embedded clubs to one bearing a blade that looked like it was fashioned from the metal of a burned street wagon. Others carried an assortment of old blood stained pistols, rifles, and in one case a sub-machine gun. One pony of note stood at the very back of the group, a unicorn. He was midnight blue in coat color, with a light blond mane. He stood out because, unlike the rest of the raiders, he wasn’t wearing piecemeal armor, but instead wore clothes of a kind I’d never seen before. It was some kind of neatly cut suit, black, with a blue tie that almost blended in with his coat. It was dirty and torn, but remarkably in better condition than what his compatriots wore. Floating in a green aura that matched his eyes was a weapon that I instantly recognized.

Arcaidia’s starblaster.

The initial volley of B.B’s pistols and Arcaidia’s ice spell had a devastating effect on the first group of Raider’s on the ramp. Shards of ice speared through one Raider, a beige earth pony mare who tumbled over backwards and tripped up the Raider behind her, while another Raider had half of his face frozen solid. This stallion hollered in pain and blindly fired the pistol in his mouth as he fell, hitting his allies. Two other Raiders were simply dropped by the punishing shots from B.B, who the second she was empty ducked back behind the barricade to start reloading. Arcaidia similarly ducked back and I found myself starring at half a dozen downed Raiders, with their comrades starring up at me and my spear. Guns raised at me.

“Eeh…heheh,” I chuckled nervously, and then ducked back behind the barricade of desks as a storm of bullets tore through the air above my head.

As it turns out school desks make for poor bullet stoppers. Granted they were doing the job of deflecting most of the small arms fire, but wood chips were blowing all over us and I could see holes opening up all through our makeshift barricade as the Raiders poured a continuous stream of fire up at us.

“Longwalk!” B.B shouted over the cacophony of gunshots, “Git inta yer saddlebags!”

“Whaaaat?” I shouted back, not able to catch what she’d said.

Hugging the ground B.B crawled up to me and nuzzled her nose into my saddlebags, rummaging around inside. I cocked my head in curiosity, then ducked it as a bullet grazed my cheek. Arcaidia huffed in annoyance as she kept her forehooves crossed over her head, apparently quite irritated the Raiders appeared to have so many bullets.

B.B’s head kept moving about in my saddleback until she made a satisfied ‘Ah-ha!’ sound and pulled back, something in her mouth. I blinked, wondering where the spherical object with the green band around it had come from. Then I remembered; it was the grenade she’d acquired off the Odessa solider she’d killed and looted back in Saddlespring. I knew how to recognize the normal grenades and the flash bang ones, but the green band was a mystery to me.

“This’ll clear a’ room,” B.B said and waggled her eyebrows at me. She pulled the stem from the top of the apple shaped weapon and then lobbed it over the top of the barricade as the green band started to flash with an inner emerald light.

“Aaaaah, Shit!”

“The fuck they get that from!?”

The Raiders apparently knew what it was and were less than happy with it. Which was probably good for us. Then a bored voice said, “Calm down. Seriously, I have to do everything myself around here?”

The grenade B.B just tossed suddenly appeared back over the top of the barricade, wreathed in a green aura of magic. That unicorn in the suit! Me, B.B, and Arcaidia exchanged glances as the green aura around the active grenade faded away and the active weapon dropped towards us. We scrambled away from the barricade then dove as one.

The blast that came was brilliant flash of green light that filled the room with a scorching heat that reminded me of Roaring Metal’s flames. I’d leaped far enough to hit the wall beneath the black board, only slightly burned. Shaking my head and looking up I saw Arcaidia was next to me. She had formed a small wall of ice to defend us, the ice melting away to green goo and the unicorn filly breathing rapidly from her magical exertions. B.B had dove and flown up, the tip of her right wing smoking slightly but otherwise she seemed unharmed as she hovered in the upper right corner of the room.

“Bloody bleedin’ moon-damned unicorns!” B.B swore, then looked abashed, “Pardon mah Prench.”

Arcaidia brushed off her dress and huffed. Then she looked at the ramp and I saw her eyes widen. I looked as well. Oh.

The barricade was a blasted apart hoof full of green gooey fragments. A lot of Raiders were looking up the ramp at us. The unicorn in the suit at the back of the pack smiled up at us.

“Well hello there my little ponies, a pleasure to get a look at you all finally, my name is Bloodtrail. Myself and my lovely little gang here will be your murdering, raping Raiders for this evening’s festivities. Pleasure to make your acquaintances. Now, I advise you please relax and place your heads between your tails and kiss your candy flanks good bye.”

I raised a hoof, “Can I just say one thing?”

Bloodtrail smiled cordially, “I suppose so. No reason to be uncivilized with my soon to be plaything/dinner.”

“Run!”

I shoved Arcaidia towards the door and the unicorn filly didn’t waste a second to bolt ahead of me to shove it open. B.B, quick on the uptake, was right above us as we barreled out of the room. The Raiders were only taken aback by our sudden retreat for a couple of seconds before they opened fire and began charging after us. Drywall blasted part around our heads as we clambered into the hallway and started galloping. From the sound of several Raiders swearing profusely and the clatter of guns they were being slowed a bit by Arcaidia’s ice on the ramp, buying us precious additional time to widen our lead.

“So, yeah, that’s a lot of Raiders,” I said between breaths as we ran, “I thought you said there were supposed to be, like, a dozen?”

“Don’t figure none!” huffed out B.B, “How’d so many git all situated this close ta Saddlespring!? We gotta git outta here an’ warn my pa! Them refugees git movin’ then they’ll be ripe pickin’s fer this lot!”

“Maybe there’s another way out up ahead?” I speculated hopefully.

“Dol corval rir, vi irivil ren covir!” shouted Arcaidia, who slowed down a little and cast a look backwards as we turned into a new hallway. We weren’t bothering with any of the doors to either side of us, mainly because just a glance through the usually broken down or rotted away doors revealed more class rooms like the one we were in, minus any convenient hole in the ground for us to escape through. The last thing we needed was to trap ourselves somewhere.

The hallway we were now heading down didn’t last long though, ending abruptly in a ripped open chasm, as if an entire section of the school had been torn down by some huge concussive force that cut a swath through its center. The gap in the building was easily twenty feet across and I could see clearly the first floor below us, leading to a pile of twisted rubble and a empty concrete pit that looked like it was there by design, with some kind of board on one end arching out over the pit. Above us was the skeletal third floor, little more than a series of pillars connecting chunks of floor with bridges between them made of doors or sheet metal. To our left the gap opened out into a courtyard, a black pool of night that even Arcaidia’s light couldn’t illuminate much of…but there were other lights in the courtyard, lights that illuminated something that made my stomach twist and my heart go numb.

So far my sense of right and wrong had been taken quite the beating since I’d joined Arcaidia on this journey into the Wasteland. I’d been told by several ponies now that I was either too soft, or too innocent, or just too naïve to be traveling it. Up until now I’d seen some bad things. Ponies in chains, their lives bought to be used at the whims of whatever master paid the Labor Guild enough caps. I’d seen a mercenary mare who, despite whatever code she lived by, didn’t see any problem working any job if the pay was right, even if it meant killing. I’d seen mutated monstrosities that didn’t even belong in any natural world, mindlessly ready to tear apart any pony unfortunate enough to come across them. I’d seen an entire organization of callous ponies who with military might beyond my imagining participated in the destruction of an entire settlement…

…But to one degree or another those were things I could somehow accept without losing my own sense of right and wrong; without questioning that, fundamentally, we were all still ponies.

Looking into that courtyard I began to feel that sense of right and wrong slipping away, because ponies just couldn’t do things like this. Not and still remain ponies.

The light in the courtyard was coming from a trio of small fire pits, pits that I realized with an unpleasant twinge were much like the kind my tribe used. Over these fire pits were spits. The spits were thankfully bare of anything, but I didn’t have to see meat cooking over the fires to know what had been cooked there, once. That was because the piles of bones unceremoniously piled around the cooking pits were clear to see in the flickering firelight; pony skeletons. Not old and crumbling to dust, but relatively…fresh. Several were missing heads, which I could account for because said heads had been spitted onto rebar spikes in the dirt. Apparently for decoration. Clustered around the cooking pits were a number of makeshift tables, all built from the remains of what looked to be some kind of miniature wood fort with swings attached to its side. At the time I didn’t know what a foal’s play fort and swings were, so perhaps I should have been thankful the sight of a recess play gym being converted into cannibal Raider’s dining area was lost on me. Besides, I was still too busy mentally trying to come to grips with what I was seeing.

Arcaidia was actively growling, the unicorn’s filly’s face twisted in more rage than I’d ever seen on her youthful features, silver eyes reflecting the fire light like twin pins of orange hellfire. Her horn was wreathed in an intense white blue light, and I could swear I saw it frosting over.

She turned around, facing away from the sight down in the courtyard and looking back down the hallway where I could hear the Raider’s coming up quick. It was clear all thought of running away had now left my companion. B.B had a grave look on her face, head hanging slightly as she looked over at me.

“Sorry Longwalk, I shoulda warned ya ‘bout just how bad Raiders are. Ya see why ya shouldn’t be holdin’ back in killin’ ‘em? They ain’t ponies; they’re just...” a strange look passed over B.B’s features, pained, and briefly distant, as if she wasn’t seeing the here and now, “…monsters…”

I shook my head, trying to keep myself focused, still feeling numb inside, “We’ve got to get across this gap. Can you fly Arcaidia down?”

“She don’t look like she wants ta go nowhere,” said B.B, looking over at Arcaidia, who was practically rooted to the spot where she was, the steady glow of her horn gradually increasing in intensity as she pointed it downrange at the turn in the hallway. I imagined the first Raiders to come around that bend weren’t going to have a very good day, but even Arcaidia’s magic wouldn’t stop all of them. We couldn’t fight in this narrow hallway, with no cover from the Raider’s guns.

I tried to put some strength in my voice, “Arcaidia, we can’t fight here.”

“Shivol! Longwalk, di mas! Esru dol solva, esru ren revir ventilli vi brosvas ti shiviral, nes!?”

I couldn’t follow any of what she was saying but her tone was cold anger incarnate. She couldn’t accept what she was seeing of the sheer wrongness of the Raiders any more than I could, but unlike me, she didn’t have the hang up with killing them. I saw it in her eyes, she wanted to destroy the Raiders. To wipe them out completely like one would burn out an infection. Or in her case, freeze. I wasn’t really sure anymore I disagreed with the notion. I’d come here to find Iron Wrought, that was it, but the idea of leaving these…’ponies’ around to threaten anypony else, to keep doing what they were doing…I didn’t think I could just walk away now.

That didn’t change the fact that fighting in a narrow hallway with no cover was a bad idea. I quickly went up to Arcaidia and put myself in front of her, forcing her to meet my eyes. Even without the same language we’d managed to convey a lot to each other just through tone and look. I hoped she’d understand me here and now.

“Arcaidia, I want to stop them too! We can’t fight here, though!” I stomped the ground and shook my head forcefully, and pointed a hoof at B.B, then at the other end of the gap, “We need to find better ground.”

Arcaidia spent a second taking in a sharp breath, then looked away, huffing, “…Shiskri…”

One day I’d make it a point to learn what Arcaidia’s swearing meant. It sounded colorful.

“C’mon!” B.B called to us and me and Arcaidia joined her at the gap. The Raiders’ voices were close, seconds away probably. I looked to B.B.

“Carry Arcaidia across, I’m going to climb down on my own. We’ll meet over there,” I pointed with Gramzanber at the far end of the courtyard where a big set of double doors on the first floor were.

B.B frowned, “Alright, let’s get-“ then a bullet tore past us and we all looked back to see the Raiders had come around the corner, the first few firing with their rusted up guns in our general direction. I reflected we were pretty luck Raiders seemed to be lousy shots at long range.

B.B and Arcaidia both providing a brief reprieve of cover with gunfire and a spell, then the second that drove the Raiders back around the corner B.B grabbed Arcaidia around the unicorn’s barrel and flapped her wings rapidly. Arcaidia made a little lady-like yelp at being abruptly ponyhandled but didn’t struggle as B.B flew out across the gap and heading over the courtyard.

I wasted no time, briefly judging the jump to the nearest most even portion of rubble and leapt. The landing wasn’t all that solid as I tripped and rolled down the rough, uneven concrete, but luckily I avoided spearing myself with my own weapon or getting too tore up on any of the glass or rebar strewn over the rubble. It hurt, and I was certain I bruised myself up bad, but I scrambled to my hooves and started making my way down the rubble to the bottom of the courtyard quickly. Behind me I heard the Raiders arguing amongst themselves about which of us to start shooting at until I heard Bloodtrail’s calm tone rise above the turmoil.

“Bring down the pegasus, she’s weighted down by her lovely little cargo. The buck isn’t a threat.”

That would’ve stung my pride if I had all that much pride to begin with, and I wasn’t so fearful for the safety of my friends. Still, ‘no threat’? I was holding my own so far. Mostly. Does getting shot and not dying count as ‘holding my own’? Well, I figured that at the very least if the Raiders wanted to underestimate me I could possibly use that to my advantage.

Gunfire filled the air as I reached the bottom of the pile of rubble and jumped into the courtyard. Small tracers of light from some of the guns sparked through the air at the faint dark form of B.B and Arcaidia. Arcaidia had shut down her horn’s light, presumably to make her and B.B a harder target. They were making steady progress over the courtyard but B.B had to keep banking left and right, trying to avoid the hail of bullets that were tearing through the air at her.

So far nopony was bothering to shoot at me, but I could hear hooves clattering on cement and I glanced back to see that a number of Raiders, the ones who didn’t have guns but instead were armed with knives or clubs, were climbing down the rubble to chase me. I would’ve been worried about that but my concerns were all for my two friends currently having an uncomfortable amount of lead thrown their way.

As I dashed across the courtyard, skirting the fire pits and circling around the pools of light they cast I heard a yelp in the air and looked up in time to spot B.B’s form drop sharply, only barely righting itself and staying airborne about ten feet up. I saw Arcaidia detach from B.B and fall to the ground, rolling to her hooves and then her horn lit up. B.B’s shape got encased in Arcaidia’s ice blue aura and brought to the ground. I heard the pegasus mare yell something to the affect of “I’m fine! I’m fine! Ya can let me go now!”

They’d landed on just the other end of the weird miniature fort/dining area, which offered a little cover from all the gunfire, which my companions took immediate advantage of. It was still a stretch of a good twenty yards to the double doors I’d pointed out but I figured B.B and Arcaidia knew I was still trying to get across the courtyard so they wanted to provide me a little cover fire.

The problem was that while their position was well covered against small arms fire, it wasn’t such good cover versus starblasters. A snap of hissing air followed by a brilliant flash of silver light made me blink and falter in my gallop. I saw a beam of light pierce right through the makeshift cover my allies were using and heard B.B shout in surprise and Arcaidia let loose another vehement swear word of her own language.

I didn’t know if either of them had been hit and wasn’t given time to worry over it as my momentary falter in step had given the Raiders chasing me the opportunity to catch up. I felt a heavy form bash into me from behind, somepony lifting me bodily over their heads and flipping me. I briefly felt the world invert as I tumbled through the air and landed with a solid *thunk* on the hard earth. I kept my teeth grip on Gramzanber and, sucking in air I’d lost just a second ago, got to my hooves. One glance around me told me I was in trouble; five Raider ponies surrounded me.

One, a light purple earth pony mare with a slicked back blue mane an unpleasantly similar shade to my own, with one missing eye and wearing armor that was covered in a patchwork of bones I was pretty sure were from ponies, grinned at me with a mad light in her pink eyes. She was clutching a lead pipe in her mouth which she swung at my head as she leapt in, giggling all the while.

I ducked back, only to sense another pony coming at my back. I twisted aside as a twisted club of cement and rebar spikes smashed past me and hit the ground right where I’d been standing a second ago. This weapon was being wielded by a burly mare with an orange coat a lot like the one who’d shot me in the entryway earlier. Unlike the mare with the lead pipe this one wasn’t smiling, but instead had a face contorted with rage.

“Iffin yur duh wun dut kulld muh sus ahm gunna rup yu tuh shruds!” she mouth incomprehensibly around the weapon she held in her teeth.

She shook her head violently at me, wiping her big club back and forth in a while pattern that lacked precision but held such power behind it I didn’t even want to risk trying to block it. Instead I kept stepping back, looking for an opening to present itself. If I could get one of her legs, maybe she’d-

-The mare with the lead pipe came in on my right with a sudden burst of speed just as the orange mare swung her club. I reacted instinctively, some of my sparring with the hunters of my tribe paying off as I ducked into the swing of the mare with the lead pipe and hooked my right foreleg around hers, then rolled backward. This heaved the mare over me just in time for her body to intercept the club of the orange mare. I felt the impact still, but I was betting the Raider mare felt it way more by the sound of snapping ribs. I finished my roll, tossing aside the mare with the lead pipe, who was still breathing, but was now coughing up blood and curling up on the ground from the blow she’d received.

That still left me facing four Raiders, and while the orange mare grunted in annoyance at me and came in again with a smashing swing her three still standing comrades began to circle behind me, leaving no room to back up. Unable to dodge backwards I instead did the only thing I could do, I tried to parry. It was an awkward action, turning Gramzanber’s blade into the path of the descending rebar club, and I braced for what I imagined would be a teeth rattling impact.

Instead what happened was the rebar club was sliced neatly through its metal center by Gramzanber’s serrated edge. I blinked as the cement block of the club fell away, leaving the mare reeling with just a sliced piece of twined rebar in her mouth. I knew Gramzanber was sharp…but that sharp? I mean, I’d seen it embed into stone after I’d thrown it, but that’d seemed a special circumstance. I blinked, recovering from my surprise quickly. Faster than the orange mare did.

Even as I slashed at her legs and cut a deep gouge through both her forelegs, causing the mare to drop with a shriek, their was a voice yelling in my head. Why was I still trying to be non-lethal with these ponies!? Hadn’t I seen what they were capable of? Was I blind to their complete and utter lack of anything resembling morals or basic pony decency? Was I going to ignore the fact that they not only wanted to kill me and my friends, but fully intended to do worse to us before our inevitable deaths, then bucking eat us after we were killed…if they even chose to wait until we died.

That voice screaming in my head was telling me there was not even the slightest shred of a reason to be merciful. That indeed the mercy was…impractical. These weren’t ponies that’d tolerate weakness among their own kind. Even if we did get away, with the wounds I’d inflict on them to drop them without killing them they wouldn’t likely recover without medical care; the kind of medical care Raiders seemed wholly unprepared or interested in giving.

Stop being such a hypocrite Longwalk. Killing them is…in its own way...mercy.

I didn’t know what to do. That side of me I knew, logically speaking, was correct. I just…I needed time. Time to think, time to work out with myself how to be squared away with the notion that sometimes doing the right thing meant taking the life of another. Problem was the Raiders weren’t exactly giving me that time, the fight was here, now, and thinking wasn’t on the itinerary.

While the three still standing Raiders around me stalked in, trying to surround me, I caught a glimpse of B.B and Arcaidia’s situation.

The two mares were still using that odd mini-fort/dining area as cover, but their cover was quickly getting torn to pieces by the collective fire of the gun armed Raiders, many of whom had left the top ledge of the second floor gap and had apparently used the time to take up positions at windows all along the second floor to fire from multiple angles down at my friends. There was the occasional brilliant lance of energy from Arcaidia’s starblaster showing that Bloodtrail had also relocated to a different room on the second floor, and every shot tore a hole through the cover. It was only a matter of time before one of my friends got hit by that, and I recalled with a shudder what it had done to the Balloons Arcaidia had shot with it. I couldn’t let that happen!

It’d be easier if you went for the kill. You’ve seen what Gramzanber can do. If you just fought to kill, you’d be able to slaughter these foes. Just forget that they’re ponies. Think of them monsters. Like the Balloons, or the Tunnelers. Just things to remove from your way.

Arcaidia and B.B were putting up a fierce fight, returning fire with almost equal measure of what was being thrown at them. B.B reloaded with blinding speed, firing off barrages of shots from her twin revolvers, usually getting a scream of pain from one window or another when she did do. Arcaidia’s ice spell wasn’t as effective at long range, but that wasn’t stopping the unicorn from sending the blasts of icicles into any Raider that exposed themselves for too long. She’d also begun to form small barriers of ice around the damaged parts of the mini fort, trying to keep the cover intact for as long as possible. But I could see she was flagging, breathing heavily as she once again was forced to tax her barely recovered magic. B.B was looking haggard as well, and I thought I saw a dark splotch of red coating one of her hind legs.

You can’t save them like you are now Longwalk. To protect their lives, you’re going to have to take lives. This is not wrong. Your tribe hunted and killed to live, did it not? What makes this different? Take life, to preserve life. It is the natural way of things.

As I dodged a Raider unicorn stallion who was tried to brain me with a floating club of wood I realized that these thoughts coursing through my mind…they felt like mine, but at the same time, something didn’t feel right about them. Was I really thinking like this? The voice was mine, it felt natural, like any other train of thought…no time to think-

-Just as I dodged the unicorn stallion’s bat a light green earth pony mare with a darker green mane, grinning a mad wide smile at me, jumped at me with strange spiked wrappings covering her forehooves. I was off balance from my previous evasion to turn fast enough and she hit me with both forehooves in the side, sending me sprawling.

“Heehehehe! Ya big softy wofty, I’m going to make you my personal little buck-toy; keep you alive nice and long like the boss says!”

“Hey ya don’t get to just claim ‘im like that Binge. He’s gonna be fer alla us to ‘ave fun with!” said the third Raider, a brown pegasus mare who had one wing so bent out of shape I didn’t think she could possibly fly with it. She wielded a dainty little knife with odd dexterity with her remaining good wing.

“Shut it ya dumb cunts, we gotta finish him first, break his legs so he can’t dance around like that,” said the unicorn stallion as he watched me get to my hooves.

I glared at the three, “What is wrong with you ponies!? Why in the name of every ancestor spirit back to the beginning would anypony choose to be this way!?”

I knew I didn’t have time for idle chat but I just couldn’t keep this in any longer. I needed to hear it from the proverbial horse’s mouth. Besides if they felt chatty it might by me a second to catch my breath. The green mare, Binge, was a lot stronger than her average frame made her look.

Binge was the one who answered me, between giggles, “Nothing wrong with us! We’re just havin’ fun. That’s all ya can do out here in the Wasteland, have fun with it.”

The light in her eyes was pure, driven insanity. She believed every word she was saying. I just…didn’t understand.

“Fun? That’s crazy. You’re crazy,” I said.

“Wasteland’s crazy,” Binge said, grinning wider “We’re just along for the ride.”

Her grin turned sultry, “Ya know, if you’re a good boy an’ learn to come along for the ride, maybe the boss’ll let you join the family. Lotta ponies get into the spirit of things after a little while, if the live long enough being our toys.”

Was that how Raiders got…more Raiders? Capture ponies, torture them for awhile, treat them like playthings…and if you lived through that long enough and showed the right hints of madness you were initiated into the group? Was that how a mental sickness like this spreads? It occurred to me that had to be part of it, because I sure didn’t see any foals among these Raiders. I couldn’t imagine a foal living long in these conditions. Made sense Raiders increased their numbers then by inducting adult ponies, or at the very least older colts like me. I wondered how many of these Raiders then had been normal ponies, sometime before now? Had they been caravan guards, or traders themselves, or just poor settlers that’d gotten captured in a raid? Had they then been subjected to horrors and pains so great that the only way to live through it was to…embrace it? Make yourself a part of it?

That thought bothered me more than the notion that they were all just born irredeemable monsters. I thought back the times I’d heard Raiders be mentioned by ponies before. They were apparently common enough that everypony in the Wasteland knew about them, knew they were to be avoided, feared, or destroyed if possible. That meant that, somewhere in the Wasteland, every single day, somepony either ended up dead at the hooves or Raiders, or ending up becoming one themselves in order to survive. Every day, more Raiders were born from the horror of the Wasteland, who would in turn twist more ponies into Raiders, the ones they didn’t end up killing. Those Raiders would then, in turn, be killed by other ponies who hadn’t quite succumbed to the Wasteland’s wrongness, but still only had violence as their sole solution to protect themselves. Yet more Raiders would always be waiting in the wings, like they just spawned from thin air. Then the killing would start all over again from square one.

How do you stop something like that? Where do you even begin to prevent a cycle that’d become an engrained part of life for over two hundred years, longer even if one counted the war that brought the world to this state in the first place?

Big questions for a little pony, and I didn’t have the faintest clue how to answer them, and with three blood crazed Raiders bearing down on me, with my friends pinned down by gunfire from dozens more, I didn’t have time to seek the answers.

Binge didn’t wait long for me to give her any kind of answer to what she’d asked and with a happy little cackle that was one part hunger, one part lust, and all parts malicious intent she charged in at me. I slash with Gramzanber, trying to clip her legs out from under her, but she was fast, jumping over my slash. Her forehooves lashed out again, this time for my face. I side stepped, feeling the air from her strike rush past me and bringing with it the sharp stink of the filth she was coated in. The unicorn stallion moved in on my ride, his faint white aura of magic swinging the smooth club of wood at my back. I wasn’t fast enough to dodge and took the shoot full on, grunting in pain as wood cracked into my solid hide and sent pain shooting through my spine. Gritting my teeth through the pain I took advantage of the unicorn’s brief surprise at the fact that I hadn’t dropped from the hit and pivoted on my forelegs, delivering a solid buck to the stallion’s chest. As the unicorn went sprawling the brown pegasus mare rushed me from the opposite side, her good wing flicking at my face with her small knife.

I ducked, but felt the blade cut my scalp and soon a veil of red was sheathing my vision from the blood trickling from the head wound. Her attack left her open, however, and I quickly spun my body, using the back end of Gramzanber’s shaft like a club of my own, giving the pegasus mare a heavy smack across the face. She staggered but didn’t drop. I couldn’t make a follow up attack because Binge was on me again, ramming me in the side with both forelegs once more. I felt sharp pain from the spikes on her hoof wrappings cutting into my hide.

The force of the blow didn’t put me on the ground but I did end up leaning on one of my forelegs, Binge looming over me.

“Just let it go,” she said with a happy, crazed smile, “It feels better if you let it go. It’s easier if you let it go.”

“Let what go?” I asked as I rolled away from a double hoofed stomp that would’ve at the very least broken a bone in me had it landed. Binge’s eyes looked at me and for just a split second the wide, insane light in them dwindled into something almost lucid.

“Yourself, silly.”

Before I could respond to that I heard a strange sound, like the hissing of a large gecko, followed by B.B shouting “Rocket!” in a fearful warning. Then there was a flash of light and a detonation next to me. I felt pressure lifting me off the ground and throwing me through the air like a rag doll, pain exploding all over my body. I landed in a heap, my ears ringing with a loud, sharp whine. For a second I just lay there on the ground, unable to think straight. My whole right side was a mass of pain, and my left felt rather numb. I tried moving a hoof, finding I could, but just trying to get up was making my whole side light up in agony.

What was that? Getting to my hooves amid my body’s rather sharp protests to me doing so I looked around. I’d been flung all the way to the side of the fire pits, having landed, to my disgust, next to one of the piles of bones. It took me a second to spot where I’d been, where a crater in the ground could be seen still smoking slightly. I saw mangled bodies over there as well and for a moment thought all three of the Raiders I’d been fighting must have been killed. Then I heard a groan next to me and glanced over.

Binge was sitting up on her haunches, rubbing her head, then she glared up at the roof of the school building, “Hey! Friendly Fire, what gives!?”

A big, broad shouldered pink mare with a vermillion mohawk of a mane laughed riotously down at us. I couldn’t see clearly in the dark but it looked like she had some big tube-like weapon strapped to her side via a harness, with a bit by her mouth that I figured must be the trigger.

“I did yell fer y’all ta move outta the way. Guess I coulda said it louder. Well Binge, I’ll say it again, move. I’m already reloaded.”

Binge looked up at Friendly Fire, looked at me, back up at Friendly Fire, back to me. She calmly got to her hooves, waved at me in a sheepish up and down ‘bye-bye’ gesture, and then proceeded to scramble away at a full gallop.

Seeing Friendly Fire aiming at me, I decided Binge, despite being an insane Raider, had a valid point; running was a good idea.

I heard the same hissing whoosh of sound behind me as I turned around and started galloping across the fire pit area, trying to reach my friends behind cover. I felt more than heard the detonation behind me and felt myself getting thrown once again by the blast. Not as far, and not as hard, given I’d gotten a bit of distance between myself and the blast zone, but I was still thrown forcefully across the ground, shrapnel slicing into me. About the only good news was that I hadn’t lost my mouth’s grip on Gramzanber through all of this, but my body by now felt like little more than a walking, bleeding wound as I struggled to my hooves.

My inner voice spoke to me again, its tone calm and practical, a stark contrast to the way my heart was beating a mile a minute with growing fear of our survival.

She’s right, you know. Twisted Raider or not, she’s right. Just let yourself go. It’s the only way you’ll be able to protect Arcaidia, B.B, and yourself. Didn’t you promise to Trailblaze you’d return to the tribe one day? Be rather hard to do that if you die here, in this place. Didn’t you also promise to yourself you wouldn’t let more ponies suffer like in Saddlespring? What do you think will happen to the survivors if these Raiders aren’t stopped? Like B.B said, the refugees will be found, then they’ll be attacked by these ‘ponies’. Even with LIL-E and Doc Sunday there, who knows how many innocent ponies will die? All because. You. Refuse. To. Fight.

But that wasn’t true! I was willing to fight! I was fighting with all I had!

No you haven’t. You’ve been playing. Playing around at fighting, like this was all some sort of game. And you know what happened as a result? Ponies died. Shale died.

No…that wasn’t…I fought as hard as I could…I…

Stop lying to yourself. You’ve been holding back. You’ve always held back. Because you’re afraid. Afraid to hurt others. Afraid of what’s inside you. A fire that’s just been waiting for the right moment to…ignite. Let go, Longwalk. Let that fire grow.

I still wasn’t sure if these thoughts were honestly mine or not, but with every word that coursed through my consciousness I felt keenly a fear in me that I hadn’t taken note of before, a fear that blanketed another emotion that was buried so deep in me I’d never noticed it until these extreme circumstances forced it to the surface.

Anger.

I was angry. Angry at so many things. I was angry I’d had to flee my tribe because of the actions of my chieftain, leaving behind my mother and best friend. I was angry I hadn’t been able to protect that best friend on my own. I was angry that ponies were being enslaved by the Labor Guild. I was enraged that ponies like Crossfire could one second be so callous as to put something as irrelevant as caps above the lives of others, yet could still somehow make an ally of herself for conveniences’ sake. I was pissed that Odessa had callously unleashed destruction on a good community of ponies who’d just been trying to survive this Wasteland.

Most of all I was angry that Shale had died and I hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it.

And I was afraid of that it would happen again with B.B or Arcaidia.

There was a pressure in my head, and a pulse of familiar cold that shot through me, flowing from Gramzanber.

That’s when I felt something…else. Not a voice in my head, mine or otherwise. It was more of a sense, an impression, but one so sharp and real that it cut through my confusion, fear, and mounting anger. It was a calming feeling, followed by the distinct sensation of a pony putting a hoof on my shoulders comfortingly. There were no words, but I could feel the intent of this impression. It was telling me to not be afraid, to trust myself. If I wanted to protect my friends, then I should trust myself to do that, and do it without being afraid of the anger inside me.

The pressure in my head increased, time slowing to a crawl as words flowed through my brain, slamming through it with a familiar sensation like what I’d felt in the cavern I’d met Aracaidia in.

ASTRAL RESONANCE LINK AT 26% SYNCH

FORCE ADAPTION CAPACITY AUTHORIZED FOR RELEASE

PREPAREING ASTRAL PATTERN RECOGNITION MORPH

ESTABLISHING DESIRED PROTOCOLS

Gramzanber requests wielder’s objective defined for Force Release; please provide.

What the-!? Why can I…? Shit! Longwalk, can you hear m-

ERRORERRORERROooorr-

\\...calibrating connection…removing excess signal…/////

Goddesses damn you let me talk to h-

ERORR CORECTED RESUME PROCESS

Gramzanber repeats request for objective defined for Force Release; please provide.

Once again I was left bewildered by what I was hearing, but I remembered that the last time this happened, Gramzanber had been formed, and it had helped me save Trailblaze. If this was anything like before, then I realized I had a chance to turn things around.

All of these thoughts and mental voices had passed through me in the span of the second I’d spent getting up after the second, what had B.B called it, a ‘rocket’, had nearly hit me. I was right in front of the miniature fort Arcaidia and B.B were using for cover against the Raiders firing from the second floor windows of the school, peppering the area with a rain of gunfire. I could see B.B flying a little over the cover, firing one revolver, her other foreleg hanging limp from a gunshot, her face contorted in pain but filled with a grim determination to keep fighting back. There was also a strange light in her eyes, almost akin to the madness I’d seen in Binge, and seeing that look on B.B filled me with a keen fear. Arcaidia I noticed had come around the edge of the cover, panting heavily even as she cast another spell of frosty death towards the Raiders. She was coming towards me, and I could see she on her face that she was worried, fearful I was too hurt to get to cover on my own.

I could see on the roof the Raider, Friendly Fire, shaking with laughter as she loaded another rocket into her launcher and began to aim down at me. At all of us. The blast would catch my friends as well, I realized.

I had to stop the Raider. I had to stop all of them. The thought of killing or not killing didn’t even enter my mind; like the question was just swept away by a boiling, burning need to protect the two mares who stood fighting at my side. I didn’t know how, but knew I’d need to act fast, faster than I’d ever been, to even have a chance, and I couldn’t afford to have my wounded, battered body slow me down.

Understood. Protocols Established. Astral Pattern locked. Force Release Active, Level 1; Code Name: ACELLERATOR

Blinding heat washed through my body in an instant, wiping away pain. Everything in my vision became sharply focused and tinged blue, and suddenly I found I could see clearly, even in the dark. My heart was beating at a steady rhythm but it felt like each beat was coursing blood through my body with the force of a tidal wave. Gramzanber was a warm weight in my mouth, and I noticed the spear was smoking with a cobalt aura that was like fire.

Then I noticed everypony around me, no everything around me was moving as if through molasses. Arcaidia’s eyes were slowly widening at me, but she was barley moving. I could see each slow individual flap of B.B’s wings, and as she slowly pumped her forehoof forward I saw the mechanisms on her revolver pull the trigger and the lazy jet of flame that pushed out the lead bullet, which I could then watch trace through the air.

I could even see the individual bullets of the Raiders’ shots, moving more like tossed stones that actual bullets.

And I could see Friendly Fire’s rocket launch from her weapon and begin its slow flight through the air towards us. Slow enough that I felt like I had all the time in the world to decide what to do about it.

I moved forward, propelled by the fire coursing through my veins. My thoughts felt clear, concise. I looked over the windows on the second floor of the school and picked out that there were, in total, eighteen Raiders still fighting us. One of them was Bloodtrail, standing at a window almost directly across from where we were, and below the spot on the roof where Friendly Fire was standing. I smiled. The rocket was trailing at a downward angle, and was almost on a level with Bloodtrail’s window.

I know I said I’d never throw Gramzanber again until I got a proper tether for it, but circumstances were…unique, at that moment. I found I could move with the same speed I normally felt, despite everypony else’s slowness. I trotted quickly forward and judged the proper arc, guessing the speed of the rocket and where it would be at the right moment.

With a whip of my head Gramzanber was sent flying, sailing a true course through the air, a silver missile to counter the descending rocket.

The spear hit the rocket dead on and I saw the way the projectile exploded outward, the blossom of fire sending out a wave of force through the air alongside a rain of tiny metal shrapnel shards. The explosion sent Gramzanber spinning backwards, flipping through the air, and I ran to catch it, jumping up into the air myself and snatching the spear in my teeth and landing in time to see the results of my gambit.

The exploding rocket had been just close enough to the wall of the school that the shockwave and shrapnel caused a number of windows to shatter, a large crack to run through the already weakened ancient walls of the school, and most importantly, Bloodtrail was thrown back from the window he’d been watching the fight from. I didn’t know if he’d been injured or not, but a number of the other Raiders at the windows had needed to duck into cover from the close explosion. It’d buy me and my friends a much needed few seconds to fall back into the other half of the school.

I turned to them, running over to Arcaidia, who by now was slowly looking somewhere to the right where I’d been when I’d thrown Gramzanber. I blinked and glanced in that direction, noticing a strange blue trail that led to where I’d run, then over to where I’d jumped to catch Gramzanber. Apparently I was leaving behind that odd blue light in my wake?

I wondered how long this affect would last? Or what it even was?

As if thinking about it triggered it, the blue tint to my vision abruptly ended, the world returning to normal speed. And sound. I only realized when noise suddenly slamed back into my ears that everything had gone errily silent while I’d been…in that weird state.

Arcaidia blinked, starting as if I’d suddenly appeared next to her. Her silver eyes shone wide at me with…worry.

“What in bloody blazes?” B.B said, “What’ya just do Long?”

“Esru…dol ARM? Arvartia!? Shivol! Longwalk?”

Arcaidia sounded worried. Really worried. She came up to me and put a hoof around me, starting to drag me back behind the cover. I started to shake my head.

“I’m fine Arcaidia! We need to get to…the…school…oh…”

It was like something had opened up a plug in me and was letting all the energy remaining in my body drain out. Pain screamed back into my body three times as hard as it had been and I felt like every muscle in my body was trying to tear itself apart. I felt a coppery taste in the back of my throat and promptly threw up blood on Arcaidia’s hooves as she now had to drag my now very limp body behind cover.

“Arc…what’s…” I couldn’t even get half a sentence out. It was like my body was just…shutting down.

Even my vision was flicking in and out of blackness. I saw Arcaidia straining with her horn, her magic flickering as she formed the crest of her healing spell over me. B.B, eyes wide and fearful as she shouting something down at me, but I couldn’t hear her.

I couldn’t hear anything as blackness closed in around me, even as I struggled to speak, to reassure my friends that I was alright. I wasn’t sure I was, but I couldn’t stand the fear and worry on their faces as they looked down at me. I was afraid for them, they needed to be running, using the distraction I’d provided to get away, not…worrying about me. I tried to tell them, tried to say one of their names…not even sure which one…

…darkness as complete as the night sky above clouded over me…

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added – Stonewall: Since you seem to have volunteered to be the Wasteland’s favorite punching bag you’ve learned to stand up to the punishment. You gain +5 DT versus unarmed and melee attacks and can no longer be knocked down in close combat. Again, would’ve been handy a little while ago, why do you keep picking these perks after the fact?

Quest Perk Added – ARM Bound Stage 2: You’re connection with your ARM has strengthened. The ARM now reduces target DT by 10, and you can access the Level 1 Force Ability.

Level 1 Force Ability Added – Accelerator: When your Force Gauge reaches 25% you can activate ‘Accelerator’ which quadruples your speed and reaction times by over clocking your biological processes. You may keep Accelerator active for as long as you like, however, for every second you keep Accelerator active you suffer 10HP damage when Accelerator is deactivated. There is no built in safeguard, so be watchful of overuse of this ability.

Explanation of Force Gauge and Force Abilities

Force Abilities will be gained as your bond with your ARM becomes stronger. Your Force Gauge increase as you take damage in combat or inflict damage, and is rated as a percentile between 0-100%. Each Force Ability requires a certain amount of the Force Gauge to be filled in order to activate, and doing so depletes the Force Gauge by the corresponding amount. The Force Gauge does not retain its amount when not in combat, and resets to 0% if you are out of combat for longer than five minutes.

Chapter 9: In a Cold Sleep

Chapter 9: In a Cold Sleep

I wasn’t asleep. I knew this for a fact because, for as long as I could remember, I didn’t dream. At least never dreams I could remember, let alone experience actively as if I was there. I recalled falling unconscious in a faint manner, but the thought, along with all the worry and twisting anxiety I was feeling over the welling being of Arcaidia and B.B was being shuffled aside by the confusing things I was seeing and hearing.

I couldn’t feel my body, and I didn’t have any control over what I was seeing, didn’t even feel like I had eyes to move. I just had to accept the barrage of images and sounds that passed over me like a runoff current from my village’s river when it occasionally flooded.

I saw an orb of brilliant blue, whites, and greens hanging in inky blackness, joined by a smaller orb of silver brightness. I could barley comprehend what I was looking at, but I had an instinctive notion that I was looking at…the world. Just before the image shifted I noticed, with an odd sense of disquiet, that hanging behind the silver orb that must have been the ‘Moon’ tribal legends spoke of, the one that was now hidden by the cloud covered sky, was another orb…a smaller moon, only a fraction of the size of its silver cousin, and colored a dark, ugly iron shade.

The scene shifted, this time on the precipice of a rocky plateau. Before me was a massive ocean of thick tree canopy, an ocean that stretched as far as my eyes could see until the carpet of green touched the feet of a mist shrouded mountain range. It was beautiful, if not for two things marring the scene. The red sky above, dominated by a sphere of indescribable proportions, dark blue and glowing with baleful green lights, and the sight of the battle taking place in the expansive jungle before me. I couldn’t see the combatants clearly, but fires burned through the trees, causing waves of black smoke, and in the light of those fires I could see writhing masses of…things, non-pony things, swarming among pockets of strange creatures clad in silver armor. Blasts of light and fire criss-crossed the field of battle, followed by detonations. Above my head strange machines of crescent silver designs or dark organic monstrosities wheeled and spun in dances of destruction, spewing lances of light and streams of exploding projectiles at one another.

Before I could do more than feel overwhelmed by what I was seeing the images burned away from my vision, replaced by a barren field that for a second I thought was the Wasteland…

…but it couldn’t be, because the sky was still visible, a crystal clear blue so sharp and intense it would’ve put me in tears to see it had I eyes to cry. But the landscape itself was a blasted red waste, a desert of craters, with smashed pockmarked mountains in the distance. I realized this was the same place I’d seen that had been a vast green jungle, now reduced to this. That’s when I heard words, a voice that reverberated through my mind, my very soul.

“Not…yet. Not ready…to…see…truth. Go…back. You’ll see…in…time…little pony.”

I awoke with freezing sweat plastering my mane to my face. I could barely blink my eyes before I had to put my hooves to my flattened ears as gunfire, loud and harsh, filled my head.

“Not to alarm anypony, but we’re running sort of low on ammo,” said a male voice that it took me a second to realize was Iron Wrought.

“Then grab up a’ bloody lead pipe an’ git ready fer a close in brawl!” shouted back the familiar voice of B.B, “We’re not givin’ up!”

“Estu dol volti vi rivialli, Longwalk!?”

I felt hooves on the sides of my head, turning me to look up into Arcaidia’s worry filled silver eyes. She was gently turning my head and I felt a hard, dirty mattress underneath me. I noticed the stained ceiling above us, the cracked walls around us, smeared with old blood in vaguely pornographic graffiti. Were we still in the school?

Coolness washed over my body, pushing back a wave of pain I’d barely started to notice, as Arcaidia’s horn lit up and the familiar crest of symbols appeared around it, bathing me in her pale blue glow. She looked drained, dark circles under her eyes, and I reached up to put a hoof on her horn, shaking my head.

“I…I’m okay. Don’t use up your magic, Arcaidia.”

She frowned at me as I shoved my hooves beneath me and struggled up to all four legs, panting slightly as I did so. Everything ached, and my right side felt like it’d been slid over concrete for several miles, and my chest still dully throbbed from when I’d been shot…but overall I thought I was alright. More gunshots made me look up. The room we were in wasn’t all that large, but it looked like somepony’s living space. The mattress I was on wasn’t the only one, with several more lining the wall I’d been laying against, each one covered in brown or black stains I didn’t want to guess the origin of…especially considering the chains nailed into the wall above each mattress. Opposite the mattresses was a much more neatly kept bed, next to which was an old, dusty desk with what I now recognized as a terminal on it. Along the wall to my left there were a number of old rusted lockers that didn’t look like they’d been there as part of the original room’s décor but had been moved there from somewhere else. These lockers were open, with a small pile of guns littering the ground before them.

Next to the lockers was a large metal trunk, and my spear, Gramzanber, laying on top of it.

The other wall was where the door into the room was at, and on either side of this door, which was now shredded by bullet holes, were two ponies; B.B and Iron Wrought.

B.B wasn’t using her revolvers anymore, instead having a different ivory handled revolver in her mouth that had a scope on it. Whenever she ducked her head around the side of the door to let off a shot down the hallway beyond the scoped revolver barked with a heavier blast than her foreleg revolvers, which I could only assume she wasn’t using because she was out of ammo.

Iron Wrought was using a small semi-automatic pistol, the same one I’d seen him with when we’d first met. He looked…well…rather worse for wear. Cut marks lined his legs that were too small and too deliberately placed to be from an actual fight, and his back and hindquarters were a mass of lined red welts the like of which I’d never seen caused by any weapon I knew of. His own short black mane was sweat soaked and his blue eyes were harsh if fear filled. I noted that he was wearing a single musty gray saddlebag that was filled with something bulky. The research data?

My standing up hadn’t been noticed yet by either B.B or Iron Wrought immediately, but when a stream of rapid blasts from what sounded to my ears to be a number of shotguns and rifles they both turned to see me on my hooves.

“Longwalk! Princess’ blessin’ I’m glad yer awake,” B.B said, then winced as a chunk of wall by her head got blown out and she ducked down, “Ya had me scarred stiff there when ya’ll collapsed like a’ sack o’ hammers.”

“Sorry,” I said, going to quickly retrieve Gramzamber, “I don’t know why I passed out like that. Gramzanber did…something…to me.”

“Yeah I saw that. Was like ya turned inta some blue ghost an’ zipped around, blew up that rocket in mid-air. Ain’t never seen nopony move that fast! Gave us ‘nough time ta drag ya back here ta this room,” she jerked her head in a gesture at Iron Wrought, “Found this bugger chained ta the wall there. Let ‘im loose if only so he could help us keep them Raiders at bay.”

I glanced at Iron Wrought and his eyes met mine. I saw a mix of fear, challenge, and a hint of shame in those eyes. He looked away from me without saying anything, reloading his weapon and swearing sharply under his breath when he slipped in the last clip he seemed to have on hoof.

“I wasn’t out long,” I said, mostly to myself, as I tried to make any kind of sense out of what I’d seen while unconscious. It was just…too weird, to random, and felt far larger than me. I shoved the memory aside. No time to worry about whacky dreams when you’ve got a desperate life or death situation on your hooves!

Arcaidia was standing next to me with that same concern etched on her features, and it made me feel more than little guilty for making her worry. I much preferred seeing her when she was smiling and energetically curious, rather than this. I forced a reassuring smile onto my face as I nodded to her, “Thanks for looking after me. Now that we’ve found the pony we’re looking for its time to get out of here.”

I went over and picked up Gramzanber in my teeth. The spear felt…just a little different. Lighter in my mouth, with a faint heat to the metal. Holding it not didn’t just feel comforting or familiar. Now, now it made me feel stronger. Once again I felt the sensation of here being somepony next to me, putting a comforting hoof on my back, and I turned instinctively to glance at Arcaidia, but she was still watching me. What was with these weird phantom sensations? Did I have a ghost stalker? I laughed the notion off, and was a little shocked I was even capable of laughing in this situation. I was either getting used to having my life and the lives of my friends be in mortal danger, or I was becoming a tad unhinged. Either prospect was equally unsettling.

I approached the door, though not directly, keeping to the right where B.B was and the minimal protection of the wall. Arcaidia trotted up behind me. We were both keeping huddled low, to minimize the chances bullets would zip into us.

“Right, now that I’m back among the gloriously conscious, and possibly useful, do we have a plan?” I asked B.B. The pegasus mare gave me an incredulous look, then shook her head with a helpless smile. Glad to see my friends could keep their spirits up too.

“Plan? Plan an’ us don’t seem ta go together all that well, Long. Still gotta whole bunch o’ Raiders down this here hallway, though luckily ‘nough the approach ain’t got a lot of cover fer ‘em to move in on us. Thing is, all they gotta do is wait out our ammo, then they’ll rush us.”

Something about that statement bothered me and it took me a second to realize what. Cocking my head slightly, ducking as a bullet whizzed through the drywall over my head, I asked “What about their ammo? How can they keep up this rate of fire?”

That made B.B blink, “Don’t know. Buggers must ‘ave some kinda supply elsewhere in the school.”

“Must be one impressive supply,” I muttered as the hail of gunfire continued. My brow creased in thought as I looked at the pile of weapons by the lockers, “Any of those have ammo?”

“Nah, most of ‘em were empty, an’ we’re using the ones that weren’t. Was a’ little ammo in that there desk, but we’ve just about run through that too,” said B.B, sending another heavy blast from her new revolver down the hallway, yipping as a bullet grazed her muzzle for her efforts, “Agh! Dangnabbit, we need a way outta here!”

I looked at the gradually increasing number of holes in the walls around the door that my friends…well, two friends, one I-don’t-know, were using as cover. The walls weren’t that strong, especially after two hundred years or more of gradual decay. I remembered the way Gramzanber had so neatly cut through that rebar club a Raider had tried to use to make turn my skull into a drum. Shouldn’t the spear be equally effective at making another ‘door’?

“I think I can cut us a way out through the wall,” I said, pointing with Gramzanber at the back wall, “If you can buy me a few minutes.”

“Ya serious? That’d take more than a’ few minutes Long!” B.B shouted.

“No, I got it, Gramzamber’s…sharp,” I didn’t know how else to explain it and we really didn’t have time, “Just trust me.”

I looked to Arcaidia as I crawled, head low, towards the back wall, “Arcaidia, how much juice do you have left?” I pointed at her horn and gave her what I hoped was a concerned and questioning look. I didn’t want to push her, but every minute we could get would be helpful, and I had an idea of something she could do.

Arcaidia seemed to easily understand my question, and she put on a brave face, a determined smile on her tired features as she nodded her head with an energy that couldn’t help but make me smile and hurt a little inside at the same time. She was ready and willing to do whatever needed doing, no matter the strain on her. I couldn’t stop some guilt at that, but I had to trust that she wouldn’t push herself into unconsciousness again.

I gestured at the doorway and pointed my forehead at it and made an ‘fffssshcrisssh’ sound that I figured sounded pretty much like it sounded when she created an ice wall. Arcaidia looked at me, then at the door, and then her smile turned wry as she nodded.

“B.B, Iron Wrought, back up from the door,” I said, and the two complied, though Iron Wrought was hesitant, still giving me a wary look, his tail flicking nervously. I noticed when he moved it was with a pronounced limb, favoring his left hind leg. I hadn’t noticed before but his flank on that side had a strip of flesh torn off, right where his cutie mark would have been. I felt a seething feeling roil inside me. More Raider torture? I just didn’t comprehend what was wrong with those ponies.

Arcaidia went right to work the moment B.B and Iron Wrought were clear, her horn glowing with first one layer of frosty blue magic, then a second layer, the circular crest forming around her horn flaring with many intricate symbols. A stream of blue and white frost shot out of her horn, starting at the base of the door, forming a wall of ice. Inside of a minute Arcaidia worked her way up the door until it was entirely encased a barrier of ice a foot thick. It clinked and pinged as bullets struck it and I found myself faintly wondering if it was normal for ice to be such an effective shield against firearms, or if there was something special in Arcaidia’s magic that was making her ice stronger. Either way we had our barrier, now we just needed another door.

“Hey Long, if ya think yer spear’s that sharp, try openin’ this up first,” said B.B, pointing with the barrel of her revolver at the big metal chest by the lockers. It had a thick padlock on it.

“Do we have time for this?” asked Iron Wrought, his voice sounding strained, exhausted. He was looking nervously at the ice wall.

I shrugged. Not like it’d take me more than a second anyway, and the chest might have something useful in it. You didn’t lock something if you didn’t put something in there that was worth protecting, right? I went up and aimed a quick slash at the lock. There was a little resistance but the sharp serrated edge of Gramzanber went through the lock like a good bone knife slices roasted gecko meat. Dang, I was hungry. Especially for meat. I was starting to wonder if I’d ever get a chance to sink my teeth into a nice juiced piece of gecko ever again. Oh well, lock off, let’s see what our prize was!

B.B was the one who flipped the chest open, and me and her peeked inside while Arcaidia remained by her ice barrier. Iron Wrought had lain down, breathing heavily; apparently taken any second he could to rest. I raised an eyebrow at the jumble of leather and metal I saw inside, not sure what it was at first. B.B, however, was quick to remove some of it.

“Bardin’,” she said, “Leather armored bardin’, several suits, an’ it looks like they gotta metal one in here too.”

She frowned, “What’re they doin’ with good armor all locked up in here? That don’t make a lick o’ sense fer Raiders to not use good stuff like this, asssumin’ they looted it from some poor ponies. It’s all in’ good shape too, ain’t been modified wit any o’ that Raider spikes an’ bones garbage.”

I followed her logic. It did seem strange all of this perfectly good armor would be locked up in this chest, rather than being used by the Raiders. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to puzzle it out. By now the Raiders had clearly figured out we weren’t shooting back anymore and on the other side of Arcaidia’s ice barrier I could see shapes moving, cautiously approaching. Might take them a little while to either smash their way through.

“Well, whatever the case, I got to get through the wall here,” I said as I cracked my neck, rearing up and ready to start digging away with Gramzanber. For some odd reason I felt almost a pang of indignation, as if the spear felt oddly offended I was about to use it on drywall.

“We should put on the barding while we have the time,” said Iron Wrought as I slammed Gramzamber into the wall, its long blade sliding easily through the plaster and wood, and started sawing downward. Serrated edges, they’re good for more than just looking cool!

“Yer right, gonna need every bit o’ advantage we can git,” said B.B as she tossed one of the leather barding sets to Iron Wrought and started pulling one on herself. She kicked another set of leather towards Arcaidia but the azure unicorn filly turned her nose up at the rough brown leather and ran a hoof over her dark blue dress.

“Esru vi golval, ren bruhir,” she said in a firm, slightly haughty tone. Then she winced when there was a huge slam on the ice barrier.

I didn’t turn to see what was happening, too wrapped up in my work on making us a new door, but from the slams the Raiders were taking turns bucking the ice or going at it with clubs. I could hear the slight tingling of ice cracking and Arcaidia cursing under her breath, the distinctive ringing chime of her horns magic filling the air. I chanced a glance to see she was working to repair the cracks as they appeared in the ice barrier, sweat dripping off her chin, her breathing heavy.

“Arcaidia,” I said as I finished the first sawed line through the wall, pulling out Gramzamber and shoving it back into the wall to start the other half, “Don’t push it. This’ll only take another minute!”

She huffed, blowing away stray strands of her silver mane and kept at her work. I frowned, hoping she’d pull back before having another burnout, and kept sawing. Almost…there!

By now B.B and Iron Wrought had finished putting on their respective leather bardings. The armor was made of a dark brown leather, from what kind of creature I couldn’t tell, but it was well fitted, with pads protecting the chest, shoulders, back, and flanks, lined with pockets and pouches for spare items and ammo…if we’d had any to put in them. I had to admit, while I’d liked B.B’s purple dress she’d worn during her Might and Mysterious Mirage show, she didn’t look half bad in leather. She’d had to remove a few pads to make space for her white wings to stretch through, and as she stretched them she flicked some of her brown and pink streaked mane away from her face and looked at me looking at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, and finished cutting the top line through the wall that would complete the makeshift ‘door’. As I did so I turned and gave the wall a stiff buck, and with a cloud of dust filling the room the section of wall broke away and fell forward. Through coughing sputtering I grinned, “Mares, gentlestallions, and Iron Wrought, I present to you our way out!”

Iron Wrought snorted, giving me a rolling eyed look that almost made me forget I’d come here initially to capture him for stabbing Dr. Lemon Slice. If we survived this me and him were going to have a very interesting conversation I imagined. No, when we survived, not if. Had to force myself to think positive-

-A brilliant white beam of light cut right through the ice barrier like it wasn’t even there and sizzled past my head, and I could feel parts of my mane tingle and burn off. Arcaidia’s starblaster. I could hear Bloodtrail’s voice on the other side of the barrier, his tone chiding.

“Really now, my little ponies, holing up in my room like a bunch of common thieves. Are you trying to steal my new toy and the valuable treasure he brought to me? For shame. My friends, what is the punishment for thieves among our happy family?”

The Raiders voices called back a series of highly unpleasant and in many cases downright anatomically impossible sounding things they intended to do to me and my friends when they caught us. The best of those scenarios involved us being dead before the rape, roasting, and subsequent consumption by the apparently very hungry Raiders. One voice in particular rang out louder than the others, and I recognized Binge’s high voice.

“Can I has the pretty blue mane pony for myself boss! I wanna hug him, and cut him, and bleed him, and have him at my tea party, and call him ‘Mr. Snuggle Bloods’ which I can carve into his face so he never forgets who he is!”

“Calm yourself Binge, we’ll divvy up time with our new meat once they’re ours. Now the, about this pesky ice…”

Another beam cut through the ice and Arcaidia had to duck away to keep from getting blasted. However our egress was clear, and with no wasted time the four of us crawled out the hole I’d made in the wall, staying low to try to avoid Bloodtrail’s enthusiastic use of Arcaidia’s Starblaster. At this point I was wondering if that thing ever ran out of energy.

Once through the hole I was hit with a cold wind and fresh air, my eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom of the outside. The hole had opened up right out the back of the school and led to what appeared to me to be some kind of field. It was a wide, brown, almost featureless flat field. Key term being ‘almost’. The field was strew with wreaths of wire, seemingly at random, wire that seemed to be covered with small razors and barbs. At other spots there were rusted spikes of metal jutting from the ground like deadly bushes, and other places were makeshift barriers and fences of twisted metal and random debris. It was like somepony had gone out of their way to turn an otherwise plain and empty space into a deadly little obstacle course.

“The buck is alla’ this?” B.B asked, flying a little off the ground. I noticed her injuries seemed less severe than what I’d seen when I’d passed out, and I figured Arcaidia must have hit her with a dose of healing magic as well.

“It’s a hoofball field,” said Iron Wrought, then added sourly, “Only from all the razorwire and spikes I’m guessing the Raiders don’t use it for hoofball. Or maybe they do.”

I was about to ask what hoofball was, but the sound of smashing ice behind us forestalled that, “Whatever it is its blocking our way out.”

That much was true, the way to the left or right was blocked by piles of rubble from the ruined sections of the school. The only remotely clear way away from the building and into the concrete jungle of the blasted suburbs beyond was the field ahead of us with its array of dangerous obstacles. It was either this way, or back the way we came, and back that way was a bunch of ponies who wanted to use our hides as blankets, and that was the most mild of the possibilities.

I could feel the hesitance and fear among my companions, feelings I shared. There was no time for either though, so with a deep breath I narrowed my eyes and grit my teeth, taking one step, then another forward. Before long I’d broken out into as fast a trot I could manage without risking getting tangled up in the razor wire. I slashed with Gramzamber, trying to clear a path through the obstacles that my friends could follow. I heard the behind me, and B.B caught up the fastest, being the group’s flyer.

She pulled up next to me, looking over her shoulder nervously, “We’re gonna be easy targets out in the open like this, Long.”

“I know, I know, just keep moving,” I said, grunting in pain as a misstep had some barbed wire cutting up part of my left foreleg, but I kept going, “If we can just get through this we can lose them in all those buildings.”

“Still the…positive type…I see,” said Iron Wrought between labored breaths somewhere behind me. Why was he breathing so hard? Then again, I’d only seen the surface wounds from the Raider’s treatment of him. It occurred to me there could be internal injuries.

We were only about a third of the way across the field when I heard the shuffling hoofbeats and shouts of the Raiders. They’d broken through the ice barrier and were now pouring out of the hole in the back of the school. In the dark I couldn’t quite count exactly how many there were left but at a quick glance over my shoulder I’d have guessed at least a dozen. Guess between my blowing up that rocket and the gunfight in the hallway we’d cut their numbers down somewhat.

It was small consolation considering the amount of gunfire that started filling the air, angry yellow tracers snapping around us with harsh buzzing snaps. We had the night time gloom to our advantage, granting us some small cover, but B.B was right, there wasn’t a lot of cover out here. It wouldn’t take the Raider’s long to correct their aim, either. I clenched my teeth around Gramzamber.

…If I could only use that power again. The words that had flashed through my mind, I’d understood little of it, but I think it’d referred to the power as…’Accelerator’? How could I use it again?

*beep*

Huh?

*beep* *beep*

I glanced around, trying to figure out what was causing the strange, rapid beeping noise. I caught a glimpse of a faint orange light in the dark before I felt somepony striking me, bowling me over and we went tumbling, barbed and razor wire scratching at us as we did so. For a second I was panicked that a Raider had rushed me, but the following small explosion nearby ceased that train of thought, followed by the pony on top of me hauling me to my hooves roughly. It was Iron Wrought. He had blood trickling down his face from a cut on his forehead but the green earth pony didn’t seem to notice as he glared at me.

“A minefield, you led us into a bloody minefield.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about by B.B, flying nearby, shouted, “Guys! No stoppin’, shift yer arses! Pardon my Prench!”

Neither I nor Iron Wrought needed to be told twice and be began to beat hooves again. As much trouble as me and Iron Wrought seemed to be having with the strewn wire, I noticed Arcaidia was lightly stepping over and around the barbed and razor wire with an almost ghostly grace. As tired as she was she still seemed to have a spur of energy in her that was honestly encouraging. Not to mention the Raider’s aim didn’t seem to be improving, even as they chased us into the deadly field of wire, spikes, and…mines, was it? Dumb name for something that explodes. Wouldn’t ‘landbomb’ make more-

-A bullet struck my right flank, causing me to yelp and start to fall, a string a razor wire right in front of me.

“Whoa nelly!” B.B grabbed my mane with her teeth, saving me from a nasty fall, but just as I righted myself, hobbling on my remaining good legs, another bullet caught her left wing and she dropped, forcing me to hop over a step and catch her on my back.

She growled, both in anger and in pain, and shook her hoof at the Raiders, “Dang-nab-IT! Mah wings! Why always mah buckin’ wings!?”

Up ahead was a pile of twisted metal wreckage formed into a rough barricade of spikes and barbed wire, one of the only things out here that could serve as any kind of cover. I was straining under the pain in my flank, and grunted past clenched teeth as B.B slid off me, getting shakily to her hooves.

“Everypony, behind this!” I called out.

Amid the storm of bullets coming our way me and my friends managed to get behind the barricade, though it was so thin and had plenty of gaps in it that we all had to hunker down to avoid the bullets that would skip through it. I had my face practically pressed into the grimy dirt, trying to ignore the ripping pain in my flank, and the feeling of hot blood soaking my leg. Part of me was wondering if I was ever going to be able to go a full day again without getting injured. The other part of me was answering ‘Not a chance buck-o, this is the Wasteland’.

Glancing to my left I saw Arcaidia looking at me, or rather, looking at Gramzamber. The unicorn’s expression was pensive. Next to me B.B was drawing her revolver and checking the chamber, the pegasus’ face sweating proverbial bullets.

“Two shots, “she sighed, “I got two shots left.”

“Five on mine, I think,” said Iron Wrought, also drawing his small semi-auto and holding it gingerly in his mouth as he kept his head low, one hoof over it as if that’d provide protection.

I gulped. The barricade we were behind was almost dead center in the middle of the field of deadly traps. If we abandoned it the Raiders were probably close enough now that they’d have an easy time gunning us down. Fear was clenching my guts, making my heart hammer. We were running out of options. In fact, it seemed like we had next to none. I wracked my mind for some way out of this, some way I could get everypony here out of this alive, and I was coming up blank. Unless I could activate that power again, activate Accelerator. Maybe then I could provide enough of a distraction, keep the Raiders busy long enough, for the others to escape.

Yes, my only plan hinged on utilizing a power I had no idea how to activate again, and judging from the way it’d affected me last time, could potentially kill me. Bask in awe of my tactical brilliance!

“Everypony,” I said, “Get ready to make another break for it, when I give the signal.”

“Longwalk, what are ya plannin’?” asked B.B, sounding nervous.

I just smiled at her helplessly, “Something dumb.”

B.B met my eyes, narrowed her own, and poked me in the chest with her hoof, “Nope, had enough of ya doin’ things that’re gonna git ya killed.”

“What else do you suggest?” I asked, wincing as a bullet grazed my cheek. The gunfire was dropping off a bit, but I could hear the Raider’s picking their way through the field towards us, their delirious, mad, and malicious laughter and taunts filling the air.

B.B gave me a hard look, her violet eyes filled with a fire I’d never seen before as she said, “We fight together, an’ we win together.”

With that she gripped her revolver in her mouth and tensed herself, ready to spring and attack. I starred at her, amazed at her steadfastness. Whereas I’d been getting more and more desperate, and I imagined it was showing on my face, B.B was projecting a burning determination to survive. I felt that feeling seep into me, and I felt like I could think a little clearer, ignore my own pain a little more.

“You’re all crazy,” said Iron Wrought, “Seriously. At least if we make a break for it one of us might make it…”

“Esru dol verna rir vi corvari, sholvar. Run…fine…go,” Arcaidia said, waving a hoof at Iron Wrought dismissively as she squared her own shoulders and wreathed her horn in icy blue light.

Iron Wrought looked between all of us, looked behind him at the remaining half of the field of deadly spikes, wire, and mines he’d need to cross, and made a frustrated growl, “I just want my family to be safe again…” he muttered, then took up his pistol in his mouth, nodding to me.

Well, looked like we were all going to be doing something dumb. I found myself okay with that. Despite the odds, I felt encouraged. Because I had ponies by my side, friends, I realized, that I could trust to not abandon me any more than I would abandon them. Even Iron Wrought had to be feeling it, this odd sense of unity even in desperate straits.

And if I could still figure out how to activate Accelerator again, it’d up the chances we’d all make it through this. Assuming it didn’t end up killing me.

“Right then, on three…” I said, “One…two…three!”

I don’t think the Raiders had been expecting the attack. They’d advanced on our position in a disorganized cluster, half of them with melee weapons up front, the rest with guns hanging in back. I could see Bloodtrail in his worn and torn black suit at the very back of the cluster, the midnight blue unicorn looking quite pleased with himself and still floating Arcaidia’s starblaster in an aura of green magic. That pleased look faltered as he saw us charge around our barricade so suddenly, and vanished entirely when B.B’s first shot rang out in the night and took out a Raider mare next to him, splattering his suit with blood.

Iron Wrought let out his own quick double-tap, one of the bullets tearing into the throat of another Raider. Both him and B.B were focusing on the Raider’s with guns, and I approved as that left me and Arcaidia to deal with the melee fighters.

Arcaidia lowered her head and pointed her horn, a flash of blue accompanying her cone of icy shards that pelted into the lead melee Raiders, freezing one knife wielding stallion on the spot and spearing another mare with a shard through the chest, causing her to drop the hammer she’d been carrying and to fall over, shrieking loudly.

“Don’t just stand there you morons! Kill them!” I heard Bloodtrail roar, his cultured and cordially mocking tone from before now gone under a mad rage that revealed he was, in the end, no different than any other Raider despite how he dressed himself. A blinding beam of white split the night as he fired the starblaster, but the aim was off, and I could see the reason why as a blue aura began to intermingle with his green.

Arcaidia was focused on him now, working to wrest control of her starblaster away from the Raider leader, though this was taking all of her concentration. She’d be vulnerable if any Raiders attacked her now. Not wanting to give any of them a chance I dove into the midst of the remaining four melee fighters, charging in first at a tall, pink mare who outsized me by a good margin. I suddenly recognized her vermillion mohawk mane. It was Friendly Fire, the rocket wielding nut job. Only now she was carrying a big blade in her mouth that looked like somepony had decided to carve something vaguely sword shaped out of a wagon bumper. She apparently recognized me too, as she grinned crazily and snarled at me.

She smashed downward with the bumper sword and I flung my own head up, angling Gramzamber to block. Silver spear met rusty blade in a shower of sparks and though my legs burned fiercely from pain and my flank was writing in agony I held my ground and stood up to the blow. This seemed to surprise, even unbalance the bigger mare as she backed up a step from the clash.

I took advantage of her lack of balance and moved in slashing out with Gramzamber’s blade at her chest. Some back part of my brain was wondering if this would be the moment I ended up taking a life, if I really could do this. That part was drowned out by the heat and pain of the moment and the absolute knowledge I now had that if I didn’t fight with everything I had, my friends would not just die, but die in whatever horrible number of ways these Raiders could dream up. I wasn’t striking with intent to kill, but I wasn’t holding back either.

Friendly Fire saw my slash and backpedaled from it, taking a shallow slice on her chest, but avoiding a critical wound. However as she backed up a now unpleasantly familiar beeping filled the air. Both me and her looked down to see the blinking orange light underneath her hoof.

It was strange, because she looked at me with an odd expression and shrugged as she said, “Fuckin’ figur-“

I threw myself away from the explosion, feeling dirt, metal bits, and warm wet meaty bits plaster me. When I raised my head to look I had to suppress an urge to wretch. I’d seen worse by this point, but I wasn’t all that pleased to see what was left of Friendly Fire. And I didn’t even have time to consider if that counted as my first kill or not because the fight was far from done.

While Arcaidia was magically struggling with Bloodtrail, the starblaster flying and flipping about through the air between them, the weapon sent white beams of light slashing across the field. One such beam hit and vaporized a Raider who’d been coming up on Iron Wrought’s left while the green earth pony fired his last shots into a Raider who’d been charging him with a metal spike fashioned into a makeshift spear. But then his weapon ran dry and I cried out as I watched another Raider with a shotgun blast Iron Wrought in the side and the earth pony dropped like a sack. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.

I heard the heavy roar of B.B’s new revolver, her last shot too, which took out the Raider that’d shot Iron Wrought. The pegasus spat out the empty revolver and bent down to scoop up a small rifle in her mouth from the first pony she’d shot, but a Raider with an sub-machine gun sent a spray of bullets her way that not only knocked the rifle out of her teeth, but pelted her shoulder and caused her to cry out and fall to the ground.

I grit my teeth. NO! We were so close! We couldn’t lose here! If only I could use Accelerator again. For the first time since I’d taken up the spear I tried to…focus on it. To respond to that familiar pressure in my head that was always there, just at the edge of my perceptions. For just a second I felt a shift in my mind, a slight increase in the pressure. I felt a mix of feelings all at once that I wasn’t at all sure were mine. One was readiness, a sort of eagerness, as if Gramzanber had been waiting for me to finally acknowledge it as something more than a weapon in my mouth. The other feeling was odd, both scared and relieved, and it felt like it was trying to warn me about something.

I didn’t have time to sort it out, I just needed the power. I’d deal with the consequences later.

“Ooooh you look so cute with that serious face! But you need to smile, smile, smile more!”

Pain ripped into my leg, and I felt a pony’s head suddenly bend under my stomach and with a single heave send me flying up and onto the ground. Great, just when I was getting good at keeping on my hooves in a fight somepony had to cripple my other good back leg. I was seriously starting to think the Wasteland as a whole was paying special attention to me. Or maybe this was just a normal day in the life? From my experiences so far I was leaning towards the latter option being the more likely possibility.

I blinked to clear my dizzy vision and saw a knife in my back left leg, and in seconds a familiar light green mare was on top of me, puling another knife from a bandolier across her chest as she stared down at me with a widely smiling face.

At this close distance I couldn’t help but notice that Binge had freckles, little dark spots covering her cheeks. A smelt sour sweat and a muskier, thicker scent as she bent over me, knife in her teeth, and somehow speaking perfectly clear around it. The spiked wrappings around her hooves bit into my chest, but she seemed more interested in using her knife on me, one of many I noticed from a bandolier of the jagged things she’d apparently gotten between now and our last scuffle.

“You make Friendly Fire go boom! That was pretty cool! See, I told you you just had to let go! It’s easy, easy, easy!”

She pressed the knife down towards my throat, but I still had Gramzanber stuck in my teeth and I raised my own chin, putting the serrated edge of the blade against her throat at the same moment her knife touched mine. We sat there a moment, her straddling me, me on my back with blood pouring from my wounds, coating my face, and staring into her eyes.

“Ooo, you gonna do it?” she asked, wiggling on top of me, “I think Friendly Fire was an accident, but you gonna do it to me nice and dirty like, up close and personal so you can taste the blood? Hehehehehe, do it, do it, you’ll feel so much better afterward, I promise.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I didn’t have time for this, I didn’t have time to deal with this crazy mare, but I couldn’t help it, she was nuts in a way that seemed different even for a Raider, “Do you want to die?”

“No, no, no, you silly goose. I don’t want to die because I’m already dead. Everypony in the Wasteland is dead. Dead, gone, buried, souls gone to sleep, hush now, quiet now. You’re still alive though and that’s a bad thing, because that means you’ll be hurt. So I want you to die, so you don’t have to hurt. Then you can be like me, and we can hang out, and have tea, and play games…forever!”

She began to press down with her knife; I felt the tip pricking into my hide. At the same time the much sharper edge of Gramzanber was cutting into her throat, but she didn’t seem to care, just giggling as the blade began to cut a line of red on her green coat.

“Stop it!” I said and in desperation shoved my forelegs underneath her and pushed up with all the strength I could muster. She gave a little squeal as she was flung off and I felt her knife drag a little on my throat before it left. It didn’t penetrate, but I could feel the hot trickle of blood on my neck now as I hobbled to my hooves, barely able to stand with my shot right flank and stabbed left hind leg.

Binge was getting up too, giggling, with a small seep of blood staining her own neck as she looked at me, “Big Sis Binge keeps trying to help you, little silly filly-” hey, I was a buck dang it!...wait, not important right now “-, but you just keep trying so hard not to learn. This calls for drastic measures!”

For once I was agreeing with her, the situation called for drastic steps. From what I could see including Binge and Bloodtrail there were six Raiders left. The other four were either trying to take cover from the lightshow of deadly beams firing from the starblaster Arcaidia and Bloodtrail were magically wrestling with, or were angling to get in on the fight between me and Binge. Which meant I had to end this now.

Both me and Binge enacted our ‘desperate measures’ at the same time. She reached into her mane and pulled out, of all things, an apple grenade! I delved into my mind and pushed at the pressure I felt there, focusing all of my mind on Gramzanber and thinking one solid thought; Accelerator!

Binge pulled the stem and tossed the grenade between us, so close that it’d kill us both when it blew. At the same instant I felt Gramzanber respond, flooding my body with that same wash of warmth and strength that blocked pain and tinged the world in cobalt blue, wreathing the blade of the spear itself with a hue of fire like azure light.

Everything slowed, just as before.

I didn’t know how long I should let this last, but I knew what I needed to do. I was going to end this fight now. I surged forward, feeling light on my hooves, like an expertly tossed spear sailing towards its target. I intercepted the now slow sailing grenade and battled it aside, sending it flying slowly towards Bloodtrail. Then, pumping even more speed into my legs even in this enhanced state, I all but flew towards the remaining four Raiders, a cobalt bolt of living lightning. When I reached the first Raider there was a moment, just a moment, to decide what path I was going to take. Again that voice from somewhere inside me spoke with cold practicality.

If you can’t kill now, when will you ever? Now, when everything is at stake? What will it take, Longwalk, for the Wasteland to finally get through to you? Who are you to deny its truths? Do you even know?

Ultimately, I didn’t. I didn’t know who I was to deny everything the Wasteland stood for or told me was correct, and had existed in this state of simple practical brutality for two hundred years.

But I knew what I wasn’t.

I wasn’t a killer. I was still a pony who couldn’t take the life of another, not now. So I cut tendons in legs, sliced weapons in half, destroying them, I smacked the back of heads with the shaft of my spear. I did everything I could to cripple my enemies while they were busy slowly reacting in a state of time and perception far reduced from what I was experiencing. One of them even managed to spray a shower of bullets from a sub machine gun, but sidestepping the now visible pullets trailing through the air was almost simple.

I was almost back to Binge when I realized I’ been using Accelerator longer than my first run, and a stab of worry as to how bad it’d affect me I thought hard at Gramzanber, hoping it’d get the message and shut the power down. To my surprise the thought was enough and the blue washed away from my vision, and the world returned to normal speed. I saw Raiders fall to the ground screaming from the wounds I’d inflicted, and Bloodtrail yelp at the sudden grenade landing next to him. The suit wearing Raider dove away and rolled from the explosion, saving himself from a messy death, but in doing so losing his concentration on holding onto the starblaster.

“HA! Ti golval solaria! Vi Vira!” Arcaidia was ecstatic, to say the least. She practically bounced around in a little hopping dance as she floated her starblaster back to her side, wreathed in her frosty glow of magic. She even rubbed the weapon against her cheek affectionately. Then she looked at the Raiders with a frozen smile and the dreaded ‘kitten drowning’ look returning to her features in full force.

“Arcaidia…um…take it easy,” I said, then felt my body seize up, all the pain returning to me tenfold and my muscles going in spasms from the backlash of using Accelerator. I fell over like a logged tree.

“Damn it all,” I heard Bloodtrail say and through hazy vision saw him start to scamper back towards the school, “The time for a tactical withdrawal seems to have arrived.”

“I’d say the time for that was a long ways back,” said a mechanical voice, “Before I showed up.”

There was a loud, echoing gunshot, and I saw Bloodtrail pitch over with the back of his head blowing out in a spray of red chunks. Floating over his body, flying out from the hole I’d made in the back of the school, was a sight that would’ve made me laugh in pure joy and relief if I wasn’t so busy being paralyzed in pain and puking up blood.

The big barrel of the turret slung under her mechanical frame still smoking, LIL-E floated up to the scene and seemed to hover there a second, observing all of us cut, shot, beaten, and barely alive.

“So,” asked the robot in her mechanical monotone, “What’d I miss?”

I coughed and sputtered a bit but otherwise greedily drank down the healing potion, trying and failing to suppress my groan of pleasure and relief as it shoved life giving magic back into my system. This was the third potion I’d drunk and while it was far from being enough to deal with the total amount of injury my body had sustained, it was doing wonders nonetheless. I could actually move my hindlegs without causing shooting pain up and down my haunches could breathe without it burning my chest.

LIL-E had brought us the healing potions, stored in a side compartment on her metal hide. The robot had distributed them as soon as she was sure there was no further danger from the Raiders.

Of the four that had been left when I’d used Accelerator there were three still alive, one of them having had to be shot by LIL-E when he’d still tried to raise a gun at her. The others had surrendered without any further resistance. One of those survivors was Binge, who kept looking at me with a creepy, unblinking stare as I’d rested and drunk my healing potions.

B.B and Iron Wrought were nearby, nursing their own potions. Iron Wrought’s side was torn up badly from the shotgun blast, and even with the healing potion I could see that the earth pony was breathing in a labored fashion…but I was glad he was alive. All the questions I had for him aside I’d seen more than enough death, and wasn’t holding onto any more illusions I was going to be able to avoid seeing more of it in the coming days, weeks, months…who knew how long before all this was over.

B.B seemed to be doing much better, experimentally flexing her wings. She saw me looking and gave me a wan smile, “Should just git the dang things cybered up, way they keep getting’ shot at.”

I smiled, shaking my head, “I think they’re fine as is. They look…good.”

I had to admit I liked the way pegasi wings looked. So thin and elegant, graceful even. I admired their strength, the way they could hold their charges aloft with such ease despite their fragile appearance. A pegasus, with wings flared out, had a almost noble, mythical look to them. I found myself wondering what the wings felt like. I knew a little of what it was like to have them, from Airheart’s memory orb, but I was more curious what it would feel like to touch them with my own hoof, or be caressed by one in return…

…I looked away from B.B, hoping my face wasn’t showing the heat I felt on my cheeks. Not the time to be thinking like that. Besides, I still hadn’t sorted how I felt about Trailblaze. Until I got home to her again and was able to really determine if I just thought of her as a friend I shouldn’t be looking at other mares.

Speaking of other mares, Arcaidia was still cooing a little over her freshly returned starblaster, having drunk down her own healing potions while carefully examining her weapon. I’d watched with a sort of entranced fascination as she’d held the starblaster in her magic and had with great meticulous detail taken the weapon apart piece by piece, looked over every part while making small cooing or clucking noises, and had used her magic to clean off parts of it while slowly reassembling the entire affair back into proper shape.

“Is everypony feeling better?” called LIL-E from her hovering position near the Raiders, “Seeping wounds not seeping, cracked bones less cracked, and nopony immediately in danger of falling unconscious?”

The last bit I felt may have been directed at me, given right after she’d arrived and killed Bloodtrail, I’d collapsed again. I’d managed to remain conscious long enough for LIL-E to distribute the healing potions from her side compartment, getting B.B and Iron Wrought on their hooves so they could force feed me a healing potion as well…but I’d nearly passed out again. Whatever benefits Accelerator had in terms of letting me fight, it had a nasty side affect when I ended it. I’d have to be more careful in the future, make it a point of carrying some healing potions myself.

“I’m alive,” I said.

“Kickin’ and flappin’,” said B.B with a wiggle of her wings.

“Meh,” said Iron Wrought with a bleary look in his eyes.

“Esru golval!” chirped Arcaidia happily.’

“Good,” said LIL-E, “Now then, anypony got a particularly compelling reason why I shouldn’t execute these Raiders?”

I found myself blinking as I stammered, “W-what?”

B.B was frowning thoughtfully next to me, neither enthused nor looking like she was in any rush to object. Iron Wrought just spat and said, “Knock yourself out.”

“Wait,” I said, getting to my hooves and trotting over to LIL-E, “Why kill them?”

The dark colored eyebot hovered a little towards me, though her turret never ceased pointing at the Raiders, one of which was cowering, another of which was glaring at us. Binge was still looking at me with that inscrutable gaze but I saw her mouth quirking in a little smile. I noticed out of the corner of my eye her cutie mark, which I hadn’t had time to really spot during our fight. A tankard with the bottom cut out, a coppery colored liquid flowing out of it.

“Longwalk, they’re Raiders,” LIL-E might have lacked inflection with her mechanical tone, but she still managed to make it sound like she was talking with a foal, “Their list of life skills involve; killing, raping, cannibalism, and torture. You saw for yourself this…this ‘school’. You saw the bones, the bodies. So my question for you is; why not kill them?”

I found myself looking at the Raiders, feeling the same boiling sense of disgust and anger I’d felt when I’d seen the fire pits and bones, the horrible entrance to the school with its rotting dead pony décor. The cowering Raider was a black earth pony with a messy piss yellow mane and a cutie mark of a skull being bashed in with a crowbar. The Raider that was glaring at us was a burly unicorn mare with a cracked horn, red coat, and purple mane done up in braids with pieces of barbed wire mixed in. Her cutie mark being a blood covered garrote of the same barbed wire in her hair. Then there was Binge, staring at me, smiling ever so slightly in that crazed manner of hers.

These were not good ponies. They were the kind of ponies my mother’s warning had been about, perhaps more so than the likes of the Labor Guild and Crossfire. Ponies who were the living embodiment of the Wasteland’s pain, madness, and sickness. It would be easy to think of them as nothing more than something to be expunged. And perhaps that was the right way to think. It was certainly the smart way to think.

Remember folks, not the brightest colt in my tribe.

“Killing them won’t change anything they’ve done.”

“If we let them go, they’ll just hurt other ponies, eventually,” said LIL-E.

“I…I know. But I…” I struggled to find the words to properly get across what was going through my mind, to sort out the confusion, “If we kill them, they can’t…ever change.”

“They won’t change anyway.”

“I can!” said the cowering Raider, “I totally can. Just…just don’t kill me! I don’t wanna die! I’m sorry about all the things I did-“

“Oh shut the fuck up Braindead,” said the red Raider mare with a look of disgust on her face, “Everypony can hear how much of a lie that shit is. Just yesterday you were itching to get a turn with the green buck-toy over there,” she jutted her chin at Iron Wrought, who bristled and cringed away from the look, “You’re as fucked as the rest of us. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

Binge started breaking out into giggles and the red mare glared at her, “And you! The fuck’s up with you!? You had this asshole-” she now fixed her glare on me, and I met the stare despite feeling like she was peeling my skin off with her eyes, “-by his little scrotum, all ready for the kill, and what do you do? You fucking talk at him, straddling him like you’re wet for a ride?”

“Hehehehe, oh Redwire, you mad? I was having fun! The nice bucky-whucky is so cute and naïve I just wanted to help him. Show him how to play dead like the rest of us. Hehehe!”

“Fucking whack-job,” Redwire muttered, then fixed her fiery gaze on LIL-E “Whatever. Death is what happens to everypony in the Wasteland eventually. So knock yourself out robot. Splatter me. It’ll spare me having to listen to this sanctimonious shit’s idealistic prattle.”

The last was directed at me, in case you were wondering. I wasn’t entirely sure her assessment of me wasn’t wrong. Just about everything I’d seen in this world, this wide Wasteland my tribe had hidden away from, said that to be anything other than a willing killer was to open yourself up to death and the deaths of those who counted on you. I’d told Doc Sunday I could protect Arcaidia, protect his daughter, and now more than ever I was starting to realize just how heavy the burden of keeping that promise was going to be.

I looked at Redwire, meeting her challenging look. LIL-E remained silent. Maybe whoever was on the other end of that floating little deadly eyebot was curious to see what choice I would make, was willing to let me be the one to make the choice. I always regretted never telling her how much I appreciated her giving me that choice.

“Redwire, if you leave here alive, what will you do?” I asked.

The Raider threw her head back and laughed at me, “I’ll go find another gang to hang out with and get right back to killing and fucking as I please, duh! Might even come looking for you with a bigger, better gun, take your friends out around you, so you can watch them bleed out, then take my sweet, sweet time showing you what a dumbass you are.”

I nodded, slowly, feeling a strange calm, coldness in me and then looked at Braindead, “How about you? What will you do, if you live through this day?”

The thin black pony looked up at me, his body trembling, a far cry from the snarling Raiders I’d seen trying to kill me and my friends just an hour ago, “I-I…I’ll uh…not do what she said…I’ll, um, do the other thing? Be a…good pony?”

There was no confidence in his voice, just fear. I nodded again, and then looked at Binge. She didn’t even wait for me to ask and smiled at me, giggling.

“Oh silly nilly, it doesn’t matter what I do. I’m already dead. All of us are. You don’t have to worry about little old Binge.”

There was almost a full minute of silence. Iron Wrought was shaking, though I couldn’t tell if it was from building anger as he stared daggers at the Raiders, or if it was from simple exhaustion. B.B was giving me a thoughtful look, violet eyes unreadable. Arcaidia looked…bored by the proceedings, though the idly way she kept pointing her starblaster towards the Raiders suggested she was in LIL-E’s camp on this one, but she seemed just as happy letting me decide this one.

At length I looked at the Raiders, and then nodded my head across the field, out towards the ruins of civilization and the blasted Wasteland.

“Go. All of you.”

Redwire blinked, then shook her head and scoffed, muttering again “Dumbass.”

LIL-E made an odd sound that might have been a mechanical sigh.

Iron Wrought all but growled at me, “Are you out of your little pony mind!?”

He bent his head down to retrieve one of the gun’s from a fallen Raider, but B.B put a hoof on his shoulder, giving him a firm look as she said, “Leave it be.”

“You agree with him!? Its Goddesses damned stupid! You don’t. Let. Raiders. Live!”

Something strange passed through B.B’s eyes, a sort of hurt that flashed through her violet orbs but was gone the moment it appeared, “Not disagreein’ with ya. Fer most, killin’s the only way ta make sure they don’t hurt nopny else…”

“Then let’s shoot them now and be done with it! What’s it matter what Longwalk decides? Nopony put him in charge!”

True enough, there’d been no real decision as to who was leading here. I’d made the choice because, for whatever reason, LIL-E seemed to want me to be the one to make it. So I had. Now I needed to stick by the choice. I looked at Iron Wrought, putting myself between him and the Raiders.

“Are you going to shoot me, too, then?”

Iron Wrought narrowed his eyes at me, “I should. Save the rest of the Wasteland from your idealistic foal’s dreams. You should go back to your tribe, buck; because now more than ever it’s pretty damned clear you don’t belong out here.”

“Maybe not, but I am here, and I’m not going back home until I finished what I started with Arcaidia. Now are you going to try to shoot me and these ponies, or are you done blustering?”

A slow tense moment passed as Iron Wrought and me locked gazes. Gramzanber was lying near where I’d been resting, but even without it I was willing to charge Iron Wrought and try to take him down if he made a move for that gun. Eventually he blew out an irritated sigh and walked away from us, saying “When you are all done being idiots I’ll be inside.”

B.B gave me a brief look before flying after him, I imagined keeping an eye on him and making sure he didn’t run off.

Redwire gave the scene one last contemptuous look before she began to trot away. Braindead practically looked like he was going to collapsed from relief and scrambled away even faster than Redwire was trotting. The two Raiders seemed intimately familiar with their field of traps and got across easily enough…but I noted it was just the two leaving. Binge was still sitting there smiling.

“Um,” I said nervously, pointing my hoof across the field, “I said you could go.”

“I know,” she said, “So that means I can go wherever I want, yes?”

“I…guess…?” I suddenly had a bad feeling about this.

“Yay!” Binge said, hopping on her hooves, “Then I’m going to go with you my silly little pony! We’re gonna have fun, and I can show you how to have a proper tea party, and we’ll play charades, oh have you ever played charades with a dead body? It’s really cool, I’ll show you. We have plenty of bodies to choose from and…why are you all looking at little old me like that?”

We were still recovering from the fight. And recovering from Binge. She never seemed to stop talking. We’d decided to rest a bit inside the living space we’d been barricaded in earlier, the room where Iron Wrought had been found, along with the weapons and armor. Not to mention the terminal.

B.B was checking out the terminal in question. Iron Wrought was tucked in the corner, taking the time to use some relatively clean scraps of the blanket from the bed to further bandage the cuts on his legs and lashes on his flanks. Arcaidia was poking her nose around the lockers and was generally pacing, occasionally casting irritated glances at Binge. Me, LIL-E, and Binge were sitting (well, the ponies sat, the eyebot hovered) in a circle and talking.

“Binge, if you come with me I need to lay down some rules,” I was explaining, in what I was hoping was a stern tone. I didn’t really know how to do this but I was adopting what I hoped was something similar to the way my mother spoke and held herself when scolding me.

“Rules, rules, rules, like tiny barbed chains in the hide. You want to play dirty with me all you have to do is ask. I don’t mind wearing a leash, just don’t choke me. And you have to wear the leathers then. Oooh, and what’s our safe word gonna be?”

“I…huh? Look, all I’m saying is that if you’re going to travel with us, there are some basic rules. Rule one; no killing. Uh, not unless it’s a monster attacking us, or something like that, or we’re all in serious danger. Rule two; no weird Raider stuff. I’m serious, try to act…normal. Er, normal-ish. Oh, and rule three; help out. Me and Arcaidia got a long journey ahead of us, so if you’re coming along, help. Sound fair?”

“Fair as a meat hook!”

“…I’ll take that as an agreement,” I said, shaking my head.

“Still think you’re crazy Longwalk,” said LIL-E, “Think your friends are crazier for letting you agree to this.”

“I don’t really mind,” said B.B from the terminal, not looking up from it, “I’ve heard o’ crazier shenanigans than a’ Raider pony turnin’ ‘round a new leaf. Ain’t common, but…y’know, I’ve heard o’ it happenin’. ‘Sides if she try’s somethin’ funny Longwalk knows I’ll do what I gotta.”

I did at that. B.B could be pretty easy going, but when it came to life or death situations she lacked any of the hesitance and doubts I harbored. B.B could and will kill Binge the second the Raider mare did anything out of line. Binge didn’t seem to notice the implied threat, or care about it if she had noticed.

Arcaidia looked at Binge and merely sniffed, turning her head up, “Longwalk di frivol dol armrival. Longwalk…nice…pony. Too…nice.”

I sighed, hanging my head, “Don’t know how else to be.”

“Gonna hafta figure you a way ta git ‘round that issue, sooner ‘er later,” said B.B, “Otherwise yer, and hence our, luck’ll run out.”

I didn’t bring up Friend Fire as a point here. That had been, honestly, more of an accident than anything. If she hadn’t stepped on that mine then chances were I’d have just tried to disable her like I had the other Raiders I’d fought. Didn’t mean I wasn’t responsible for it, and I hadn’t figured out just how I felt about that. It was the same way I was responsible for Saddlespring, deaths I didn’t mean to be a part of causing, but had to accept that I did. Raider or not, good pony or not, I was starting to realize I just had an issue with death. Most ponies did, of course, it was only natural, but I noticed most Wasteland ponies just learned to accept it as a necessary part of survival.

I wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be…and was less sure I’d continue to be allowed the luxury of the choice. With an icy feeling in my stomach I was certain that B.B was right. Sooner, rather than later, I’d have to decide whether or not I could kill.

So, time to distract myself from that morose line of thinking!

“Iron Wrought,” I said, looking over at the green earth pony, “Now that we’re all out of immediate danger of death and bloody dismemberment, care to explain to us why you stabbed the doctor and stole her research stuff?”

“Oh, good, was wondering if you were going to get to that or I’d be stuck reminding you,” said LIL-E, “Doc Sunday’s got Lemon Slice patched up and sent me to make sure you three were alright. Rather curious myself as to what this is all about.”

“So its interrogation time then?” asked Iron Wrought, meeting my eyes, “If I don’t tell you, what will you do? Torture me for the answers?”

“No. I’m just asking your reasons. I’m taking the research back to the doctor, one way or another, answers or no answers. I just don’t get it. Why do it?”

Iron Wrought drew in a slow, deep breath, then let it out just as slowly, ears flattening to the back of his head, “Because I was ‘hired’ to, and because while I might have had a choice, it was a choice between doing the job, or letting my family die. Not really much of a choice.”

“Let me guess, one of the Guild’s back-stabbin’ double-dealin’ affairs, right?” asked B.B with a sour look, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the line of discussion or her efforts with the terminal. I didn’t know what she was doing with it. She kept clacking her hooves and wingtips on the keys, frowning as she paused, clacking again, then she’d wait a few seconds and start the process over again. Did look rather aneurism inducing, whatever she was doing.

“More or less,” said Iron Wrought, voice heavy, “Before I even left on the run to Saddlespring I’d been approached by a representative of a certain Guild. They knew about the Labor Guild discovering something important in Saddlespring, though they didn’t have a clue what. They did know though that Dr. Lemon Slice was there. She’s sort of the Labor Guild’s little golden mare for developing drugs for their slaves. My instructions were to find out what she was researching, steal the research, and kill her in the process. My ‘employers’ didn’t want her working for the Labor Guild anymore.”

“Which Guild hired you?” asked LIL-E.

In the same moment I asked, “How is your family being threatened?”

Iron Wrought gave us a sour look, “Since I’ve failed and my wife and son’s lives are forfeit, suppose I might as well tell you. It’s the Skull Guild. They can threaten anypony, anywhere in Skull City, because they all but own the city. A lowly Labor Guild pony like me, if approached by one of their agents…well I do what I’m told, because the Labor Guild might protect my family if I was higher ranking, but I’m not, so they wouldn’t, so I did what I had to do. Or tried to anyway.”

“Skull Guild…” LIL-E buzzed, “I’m afraid I’m still getting up to date on this region. Haven’t heard of them.”

“They ain’t near as widespread as the other Guilds,” said B.B, “But Iron Wrought ain’t lyin’, inside and around Skull City itself, they’re at the top o’ the pile.”

“How’s that? What do they do exactly?” I asked, frowning. The Guild’s I’d heard so far all made sense. Labor Guild deals in labor, Mechanics’ Guild dealt with machines, ect. So what could something called the Skull Guild deal in?

“They run the ghouls,” said B.B with a shrug of her wings, “Keep the feral ones from takin’ the city, an’ keep the sane ones sane.”

I gave her a blank stare. She noticed it and blinked, then chuckled, “Right, keep forgettin’ how little ya know ‘bout Wasteland stuff. Just…uh…take it from me, ghouls can be alright, but feral ones are nasty business…and Skull City is a city of ghouls. Means the Skull Guild’s got a lot of power inside the city. Not much outside it mind, but every other Guild’s gotta pay a bit o’ tribute to the to keep the ferals off their doorstep.”

“So they’re powerful, I got that much,” I said, frowning, hoof idly rubbing the flat of Gramzanber’s blade laying next to me, “So how are we going to protect Iron Wrought’s family?”

“What?” Iron Wrought asked.

“Huh?” said B.B

“Avra?” said Arcaidia.

“Muffins?” asked Binge.

“Figured,” said LIL-E.

I paused, looking around at everypony briefly before sheepishly saying, “Its just…well…I mean I get now why Iron Wrought did it. Now I’m concerned how we can keep his family safe.”

Iron Wrought stared at me a moment, before slowly shaking his head, “Crazy. Why are you such a crazy pony? I know you’re young, a tribal, and barely get the Wasteland…but just, why Longwalk? We’re not friends. You don’t owe me anything.”

“That’s debatable. I have it on good authority I’ll befriend anypony, so don’t tempt me,” I said, wagging a hoof threateningly at him, “Besides, haven’t you noticed? I’m not a smart pony. If your wife and son are in danger, I’d like to find a way to help, because it’s what I’d want anypony to be willing to do for me.”

“Dumb reasoning,” Iron Wrought said, shaking his head, “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but what can you do? I return to Skull City without the research, my family dies, then I join them. Simple as that. Unless you’re going to let me walk?”

I considered that, rubbing my chin with a hoof, “Well, I did kind of tell the doctor I’d get her research back. She sounded like she really needed it. Who knows what the Labor Guild might do to her if she doesn’t deliver those disc thingies.”

“Wait,” said LIL-E “If the research is recorded on magic-tech record discs, then I might have an idea. If Stable 104 is laid out like most Stables then there should be equipment in there I could use to make copies of the research discs. Iron Wrought, was there a time limit on this job?”

He shook his head, “They didn’t say.”

“It’s a risk then, but a possibility. Longwalk, what do you think?”

I just sat back on my haunches and raised my front hooves in front of me, “I still haven’t asked Arcaidia if she even wants to detour to Stable 104. It sounds like our best bet to try and make sure everypony can walk away alright, though. Arcaidia?”

The unicorn filly perked her head up, looking at me. I took a moment, working out how to explain this all to her. She was demonstrating a understanding of some basic Equestrian, yes, but this was going to take a bit of work to pantomime out. I went up to her and gestured at her Pip-Buck. She held it up towards me, her brow quirking in curiosity. I fumbled a little with the toggles, but managed to bring up the map, with the objectives still being shown as a dotted line and markers. I pointed at the one far to the south west, the one that marked Persephone’s location.

I then pointed at LIL-E, and pointed at the map again, where there was a marker I figured was us, based off the topography being shown. Then I turned to LIL-E, “Where’s Stable 104?”

She floated over, while Binge, giggling something under her breath, cantered over to B.B, who’d seemingly given up on the terminal.

“Let me see…” the eyebot chirped mechanically as it looked at the Pip-Buck’s map. Slowly she swiveled around, and a side hatch opened up, from which a small metal grasping claw extended, poking at a pint on the map to the north west, I’d guess about ten or twenty miles from where we were, “Around here, if the information I got on it was accurate. It’s built into the side of a small canyon.”

“Thanks,” I said with a nod, noticing out of the corner of my eye Binge whispering something to B.B and the pegasus mare giving the Raider a incredulous look. I ignored them for the moment and focused on Arcaidia, “Arcaidia, do you mind if we go here?”

She looked at me, slowly tilting her head to the side, and looked at the map for a long moment with her silver eyes unblinking. After a second she pursed her lips and gave me a pat on the shoulder, “Dol esrivir?” she frowned, apparently thinking, “Big…good?”

I looked at Iron Wrought. I might not have fully understood his circumstances, or if he really had to do what he did. Strictly speaking I didn’t even have proof he was telling me the truth about his family. Call me naïve and trusting, but I wanted to believe him. If there was a way to protect him and his family while also ensuring Dr. Lemon Slice’s well being…well I’d call that ‘Big good’ in my book.

…Okay so I suppose it didn’t hurt I might get a Pip-Buck of my own out of the arrangement, but that was only 20% of my motivation, tops.

“Yes, big good,” I said.

She smiled at me then with an understanding look, “Estu di viriz dol sevarte es, Longwalk.”

I smiled back at her, but the moment was interrupted by B.B giving an exasperated shout of, “Seriously!? ‘Incorrect’? That’s the buckin’ password?”

Binge was laughing, “Bloodtrail was very bad at keeping secrets and waggled his tongue in the wrong way when doing naughty waughty things.”

“Don’t wanna know. At. All.” Said B.B while she typed at the terminal, “Now, let’s see what this ‘ere bugger had on this ‘ere machine…”

“Why are you so intent on that terminal anyway?” I asked, curious.

“This whole thing’s been buggin’ me, Long,” said B.B “How’d so many Raider’s get so close ta Saddlespring? Why not attack the town? They had plenty a’ firepower fer it. An’ this armor we lifted, why weren’t they usin’ it? Oh, by the by, might wanna look inta getting’ some of that armor on yerself. I recommend that metal suit, since ya seem ta like getting’ into the thick o’ things.”

I glanced at the metal armored barding. It consisted of several heavy plates for the shoulders and chest, then thick leather for the flanks and back, followed by more metal plating for the legs, all held together with many leather straps and buckles. It looked big, heavy, protective and…restrictive.

“Sorry B.B, but I don’t think me and that armor would work. My tribe’s hunting techniques are more about being agile on your hooves. My old hide barding was pretty suited for it.”

“Well, that bardin’ is shredden an’ gone. Gotta think ahead Long. Try it; at least, see if it’ll work fer ya. Kinda getting’ tired of seein’ you shot and blown ta pieces all the time.”

“Okay, mom,” I said with a little sarcasm and joking smile, to which she blew her tongue out at me. Thinking it was some kind of game, apparently, Binge joined in, scrunching her face up with her hooves in a weird shape as she did so.

While B.B looked at whatever was on the terminal I sorted out getting the armor on. Took a little while, but Arcaidia was kind enough to lend a hoof, or more specifically a horn, to help levitate the pieces on properly and help get all the straps tightened down. Once the outfit was on, my saddlebags adjusted over it, I wiggled about a bit, taking a few experimental paces and flexing my neck around to see what my range of movement was like. I was right that the armor was restrictive. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but I would have trouble twisting around as quickly as I’d like and dodging as fast as I was used to would be tough. On the plus side I couldn’t deny the heavy metal plating did seem pretty tough and did give me some confidence that if I did get hit, it wouldn’t hurt nearly as bad. I doubted the metal was bullet proof though. With a little extra work we were also able to fashion a simple sheath for Gramzanber, using some more stripped cloth from the bed and a few spare leather straps (I’m sure they didn’t go to anything important).

“What the…buck?” B.B was frowning at the terminal, Binge nearby, nodding her head as if in agreement.

“I know right? How does anypony get what all those silly symbols mean anyway?”

B.B gave her a look, then shook her head. Me and LIL-E came up, all of us now crowding around the terminal, except for Iron Wrought who seemed content to stay resting where he was.

“What is it?” I asked, looking at the screen. Looked like a series of notes. The black screen and sickly green text were partially obscured by all manner of dust and stains, but it was readable.

>>>Subject: Phase 3

Bloodtrail,

I trust you’ve received all of the needed materials for your infiltration. The guards are beginning to ask for additional bribes to look the other way from your activities, so time is short. In one weeks time the Labor Guild’s ponies should be arriving in force. Should provide sufficient distraction for a little ‘changing of the guard’ as it were. Bulwark will think he’s meeting mercenaries to supplement the town guard with. You must ensure your ponies behave themselves an act the part. No modifying that armor to your unique…tastes. Once you and your ponies are integrated in Saddlespring’s guard, contact me again through the usual channels and I’ll supply your instructions for Phase 4. All goes well you’ll have yourself a town, and we’ll have ourselves a profitable little partnership. Just remember what I do to ponies that fail my expectations.

Goddess preserve

-SS

B.B clicked through several more notes that looked like they were from before the one we’d just scene, but they all painted a similar picture. These Raiders had been building up in strength here at this school for at least a month or longer, preying on caravans traveling pathways to the north of here. Saddlespring’s guards had been paid off by someone, possible this ‘SS’ to look the other way that whole time…never knowing that Saddlespring itself was to be the eventual target for infiltration and take over. The armor and fresh weapons were all meant to be part of a disguise to make some of the Raider’s look like normal mercenaries.

B.B looked the screen, clicking through the same notes over and over again, her expression darkening with each moment. Eventually she just pushed herself away from the terminal and trotted away from it, a scowl on her face.

“I…I…those greedy little fucks,” she spat, not pardoning her language this time, “Them guards were takin’ bribes ta ignore Raiders practically at our doorstep!? Fer a’ whole month!? All o’ them bones we saw? All them dead ponies…they were killed ‘cause my own town was takin’ caps ta pretend they weren’t here…”

I went up to her, mind reeling a little itself. However I was in no way liking seeing B.B this worked up. The anger in her tone was boiling over into rage. I lowered my head and craned it to look up at her, “B.B, you can’t know for sure who did or didn’t take bribes. I figure most the town had no idea what was going on.”

When she fixed her eyes on me I almost recoiled. I’d never seen her pupils dilate quite like that. It left me feeling like I was facing another Raider, if only for just a second before B.B blinked, seemed to realize who she was looking at, and visibly took control of herself. She took a step back from me, wings moving in slow, tense flaps.

“Yer…ya don’t git it Long…I thought maybe Saddlespring was different. Different than anywhere else. Ponies workin’ tagether ta make a good community. A place I could be proud of livin’ in. Even losin’ it, I could deal wit that…but this, readin’ that, it’s like learnin’ my home wasn’t even my home, ya know?”

“Stuff like that’s common though,” said Iron Wrought, “Saddlespring wouldn’t be the first town, and far from the last, to cut deals with Raiders, slavers, and anything else they can to try and make their lives easier.”

“Not Saddlespring though! Not my town!” shouted B.B

“Iron Wrought, B.B, please, enough,” I said, moving over and putting myself between them before things could go any further, “There’s no point arguing this.”

Iron Wrought just shrugged his shoulders, “Wasn’t arguing, just pointing out that what’s she so upset about is a commonplace thing.”

B.B looked away, a partial scowl still on her face, “Alright Long, I’ll keep my peace fer now, but…just give me my space fer a little while, alright?”

Binge watched the peagasus mare slowly float by and the dark green earth pony had her head titled so far to one side it was all but sideways, “Everypony’s so mad all the time, it makes me feel like they’re missing out on the point,” she held up a dirty piece of cloth she’d gotten from somewhere with a rough smiley face painted in what looked like old blood on it, “What do you think Mr. Happy? Should everypony learn to smile?”

I’ll admit to being slightly concerned over my decision to let her come along.

“Annnnyway,” said LIL-E, the weird way she drew out the first word making it sound like a drunk bee, “We should pack up what we can that’s useful, then get back to the camp.”

“Agreed,” I said, looking around at my companions, Iron Wrought and B.B morose, Binge still talking to her new ‘friend’, Arcaidia starting to get that bored look, “I think I’ve had enough of this place.”

I’d hoped for some downtime. Some time to rest up, just sort of absorb the past day’s events fully, pay a visit to Shale’s grave, then psyche myself up for the trek to Stable 104. Instead what I got was a standoff.

When we all arrived back at the refugee camp the night had passed and it was getting into morning, the brooding dark gray sky turning a gloomy white. Most of us walked with some weariness, except for LIL-E who I was starting to wonder what powered her or if the pony on the other end of the machine ever needed to sleep, and then Binge who seemed to be hopping along next to us with a bounce that screamed of a limitless supply of inner energy. On LIL-E’s suggestion the Raider mare had donned one of the suits of leather armor we’d found, to help her look less…Raidery. LIL-E explained it was important to not look like a blood crazed psychopath in the Wasteland, because it encouraged good ponies to shot first, shoot again, shoot five or six more times, and then well after your dead consider asking you if you were really a Raider.

Instead of the normal small number of guards and mostly empty looking burned out building I remembered from last night, what we saw instead was almost a full dozen of Saddlespring’s surviving refugees, all armed to one degree or another, with Doc Sunday at their head, facing off with three ponies. Three ponies I recognized.

“Now listen here you backwater hicks,” said Crossfire, massive bayonet rifle hovering by her side in her blood red glow of magic, not quite pointed at anypony but clearly ready for action, “I got a wounded stallion here, and I know there’s got to be at least one healing potion sitting among you all. Top that off with the fact that you’re harboring some of my goods, and we got ourselves a problem.”

Standing next to Crossfire was Shard. The beige unicorn’s short blond mane was slick with sweat and he seemed extremely jittery, alternating looks between his boss, the group of Saddlespring ponies, and then back behind him at a third pony…Brickhouse.

Brickhouse wasn’t standing and was instead laying on his side. I couldn’t even tell if he was conscious, but given the last time I’d seen him the big brown earth pony had taken a mortal shot through the top of his back…well I was just shocked to see him at all. I was rather surprised to see Crossfire too, given the last I’d seen of her had been in the back of that big Skylord Vertibuck during the fight with Shattered Sky. Brickhouse’s sides were bandaged, I saw, but the bandaging was stained red, and while I could see he was breathing, it was shallow and labored.

I didn’t even need to think this one through as I turned to Arcaidia. She met my eyes and I nodded towards Brickhouse, saying “You got it?”

She smiled softly, waving a hoof at me as if to say ‘please, of course I’ve got it’, and with a flick of her long tail went trotting over. Our approach hardly went unnoticed as a murmur went up among the Saddlespring ponies and Doc Sunday turned to look at us as we came up. I walked right between the two groups, looking first at Doc Sunday.

“Is Dr. Lemon Slice alright?” I asked.

Doc Sunday gave a curt nod, “She is. It’ll be another day before I’d let her do much walking, just to ensure her wound doesn’t reopen, but she’ll live.”

“Good,” I said, “Tell her that her research discs are in safe hooves. We just need to borrow them for a bit and can get them back to her soon.”

“Borrow them?” Doc Sunday was eying the group with me, shaded eyes lingering on Binge, “I’m noticing you have some additional company…just what happened out there?”

“I’ll explain later, first, what’s going on here?” I asked, turning my attention to Crossfire, who was giving me a rather flabbergasted look. Should I have felt slightly guilty of the fact that I liked seeing the usually unflappable Drifter looked shocked by something? Should I have felt even more guilty in feeling satisfaction that I seemed to be the source of that shock? Yes? Well…dang, I felt it anyway.

“Minor disagreement,” said Doc Sunday with a cagey little half-smile, “The young mare there seems to think we owe her something. The good ponyfolk of Saddlespring, as a whole, don’t reckon they do.”

B.B flew up, landing on the other side of her father. The two exchanged quick looks, the kind you use to confirm somepony is okay without the need for words. B.B gave the other ponies of Saddlespring a slower look, and I could see her face twitching, trying not to frown. She must have been thinking about what she’d learned concerning the Raiders and the bribes. She was keeping herself controlled, but her agitation was still readable, and I could see Doc Sunday pick up on it as he put a hoof on his adopted daughter’s shoulder comfortingly. She visibly calmed and looked away from her former fellow townsponies.

Meanwhile Arcaidia had cantered up to Brickhouse. Shard was giving her a worried look, saying “Boss? What do we do? Hey Longwalk, what’s your weird unicorn about to do?”

I looked at Shard, and said, “She’s going to look after him. She’s got healing magic.”

I trotted over. Most the Saddlespring ponies were staying silent but I heard a few mutters as to why I was helping ‘That low-down little rattlesnake’ and such. I tried to ignore it. I couldn’t say I liked Crossfire or her team. They had their own part in being responsible for a lot of the death that’d occurred in Saddlespring. However Crossfire and Brickhouse had fought next to me against Shattered Sky, even if that had just been a team up of convenience and circumstance. Shard, by B.B’s account, had carried Shale’s body away from the destroyed Saddlespring and made it possible for her to be buried. I figured helping Brickhouse survive was a simple enough way to repay the debt.

“Crossfire,” I said, nodding my head in greeting.

She’d controlled her surprise by now and was now regarding me coolly, “Must have at least one of the Princess’ looking out for you, buck. Won’t even ask how you survived that fall,” she glanced towards B.B, “Though I could take a guess. Going to take another guess and assume you’re not going to side with me here, given that bleeding heart of yours.”

“Not even sure what’s going on,” I said, miles away from any kind of mindset to deal with further complications to my day, and I was hoping I was getting that across, “Could you explain in a fast, simple fashion? No big words?”

She apparently didn’t appreciate my humor, giving a brief snort as she gestured with the point of her bayonet at the gathered ponies, “Pretty easy, buck. They have property of the Labor Guild they’re not giving up. Oh, and were holding on healing.”

I looked back at Arcaidia, who’d bent over Brickhouse to examine him and start to apply her healing spell. The big earth pony immediately started to breath a little stronger, more evenly. I turned back to Crossfire, “One problem taken care of. Now I’m the first to admit I can be slow on the uptake, but I imagine you’re talking about the former slaves.”

“Nothing ‘former’ about it. They still got the collars on, and are still property of the Labor Guild. Nothing to discuss on that front, buck.”

“Yeah yeah, B.B, where’d that detonator go anyway?” I asked the pegasus mare, who gave a small chuckle at my question.

“Gave it to my pa here,” she said, nudging Doc Sunday with a wing, winking.

Doc Sunday pulled his hat a little lower over his eyes as he said, “Simple enough tech. Labor Guild hasn’t changed its standards in decades. Disabled the trigger codes and unlocked the collars. No slaves around these parts. “

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Crossfire facehoofed, “You think the Labor Guild won’t send ponies after their property? If you’re not dealing with me you’ll end up dealing with worse, like the VEC.”

“VEC?” I asked, still not quite used to the concept of ‘acronyms’. Seemed like slippery logic to me, shortening words to letters, like if you took it to some massive extreme you’d get a whole language of short hoofed words that’d look something like; Hey LW I was TH at the BDT with your BBFFF so we could PU some GAF, you wanna CWU?...What? My brain pony thinks about these things sometimes.

“Volunteer Enforcer Corps,” Crossfire said, and I heard B.B take in a sharp breath at the mention. Oh, right, that. Shale’s last words, wanting me to know about what she’d apparently been a part of. B.B hadn’t exactly told me yet, though I hadn’t blamed her, we’d been pretty busy what with burning towns and fighting Raiders. Crossfire kept on, “They’re the Labor Guild’s slave army. Made up of their slaves who like the violence, or are desperate enough to take a shot at freedom if they serve long enough. Well armed, and since if they don’t complete their missions their collars blow, they’re damned ruthless. You think I’m bad, buck? I haven’t slaughtered whole settlements to recover runaways like the VEC has.”

My brain pony tried to wrap itself around that information, and gave up fairly quickly, apparently going to lunch to leave me to deal with this on my own. An army of volunteer slaves? What, so they fought so they could be…free? Killed ponies in the hope of one day having those collars taken off? I tried to imagine Shale doing that, a voluntary killer for the very ponies who’d enslaved her. It…kind of explained her familiarity with guns and grenades. But what had she done while she was in the Volunteer Enforcer Corps? She’d sounded so sad when she’d mentioned it, had wanted me to know about it. She must have quit it, but why? What had happened? It drove me nuts, thinking I’d probably never find out.

“Shut yer gob ya desert rat,” growled B.B as she flew up next to me and put her face in Crossfires, “He don’t need ta know ‘bout that right now.”

Crossfire shoved a hoof forcefully into B.B’s chest, causing the pegasus to stumble back. I stepped between them. A number of Saddlespring ponies aimed their guns. Doc Sunday became still as stone.

Crossfire looked at us, then huffed, “Don’t like ponies getting in my face. What’s the big deal? VEC is something you’ll run across eventually if you’re going to walk the Skull City Wasteland. You’re marefriend trying to protect you’re soft fragile heart or something?”

“No, and she’s not my marefriend, she’s my friend. One who told another friend she’d let me know about this Volunteer Enforcer Corps…” I glanced sidelong at B.B who was still glaring at Crossfire, but noticed my look and cast her look downward, “…when the time’s right. But that’s neither here nor there. Point is the slaves aren’t slaves anymore. You’re not taking them. You’re friend is being healed. Take that as a good thing, call it a day, and go back to wherever you came from.”

“Or what, Mr. Hero?” Crossfire asked, eyes narrowing.

I felt movement next to me, and with a quick look I noticed LIL-E, Binge, and Iron Wrought had joined B.B in a line behind me. Behind them the Saddlespring ponies all had their weapons trained, with only Doc Sunday remaining stock still, with no apparent weapon yet I got the distinct feeling he was the most dangerous pony of the bunch. LIL-E’s turret was aimed, Binge was playing with one of her knives like it was a ball she was bouncing between her hooves, and Iron Wrought just had a grim look on his face, mouth gripped around his pistol…which if I recalled was still empty, but hey, Crossfire didn’t know that.

The Drifter looked at all of us, as if finally noticing just how many ponies were arrayed against her. She flicked her eyes to Shard, who didn’t at all look enthused with the situation, then back at Arcaidia and Brickhouse. The azure unicorn filly had continued her healing spell on Brickhouse, but had casually drawn her starblaster and was levitating it in a slow, playful spin as she gave Crossfire a raised eyebrow.

I could almost see the calculation run through Crossfire’s mind and the Drifter shook her head, a rueful grin on her face that wasn’t at all comforting but rather promised the next time we met would be…interesting.

“Well, buck, I can see when the deck is stacked against me. Fragile thing though, relying on so many other ponies. What’ll you do, I wonder, when they aren’t there for you, and you got to stand on your lonesome? Watch your back out there buck. C’mon Shard, we’re out of here.”

“Is…Brickhouse good to walk now?” Shard asked, giving the stallion question a worried look.

“If he ain’t, feel free to carry him, otherwise he’s dead weight to us,” Crossfire said as she began to trot off, slinging her huge rifle across the back of her red leather jacket.

Arcaidia ended her spell and stepped aside as Shard came up to Brickhouse, nudging the burly brown earth pony. Brickhouse groaned, but didn’t move. Shard sighed and wrapped the earth pony up in a yellow glow of his own magic and started to gently carrying him, turning to give Arcaidia a brief nod of thanks. Which reminded me.

“Hey Shard,” I said. The beige unicorn turned his head to me.

“Thank you, about keeping Shale’s body safe.”

He looked at me a moment, before shrugging and turning to follow his boss. I watched the three go, the three Drifters gradually vanishing into the ruined suburban landscape as a dry wind blew a screen of dust and dirt across the ground. I let out a breath I’d forgotten I’d been holding. Even with all my friends next to me I’d honestly had no desire to fight Crossfire. Even if we’d won, ponies who didn’t deserve it would’ve died.

And death, I’d had my share of dealing with it. Wanted to avoid it as much as I could.

Of course the Wasteland was going to have other plans for me.

I was falling. Falling through thick, red blood, unable to breath. I struggled and flailed with my hooves but there was no light to swim towards, no purchase to gain with my efforts, just a gradually faster current drawing me down.

I bumped into things in that black and red mire. The copper coated guardsmare from Saddlespring, head a burned out skull. The rotting corpse from the Raider’s den, dancing about and pulling at me with hooves of sloughing off hide. The roasted corpses of the two dead slaves in the first part of the Ruins, crawling at my hindlegs, dragging me further down. Quick Fix, starting defiantly at a rainbow colored shadow that blasted away the pony’s head in a puff of gray smoke and fire, splattering me with brain and blood. Friendly Fire, grinning wide and lipless at me, all parts and guts swirling about in a ghostly approximation of pony form, her voice burbling in my ears, “Fuckin…figures…”

I fell through the bottom of that choking mess and came out in darkness. Only rather than cloying red this was frozen black, and I couldn’t breath, and felt my body chilling to the soul. So much infinite black. Then I was pulled, like a snapping piece of twine, to a place I didn’t recognize.

Cold black and violet steel was all around me. I was in a circular, cavernous place, a room of massive proportions. The walls were featureless metal, save for a massive window before me, rimmed in glowing deep violet light. I saw no sheen of glass, rather the 'window' appeared to be little more than an opening. However there were faint traces of violet light playing across the opening, some kind of scintillating, mostly invisible barrier of energy. Through that opening I could see the expanse of a silver landscape, dotted by craters and rimmed by jagged gray mountains, stretching to a black horizon whereupon a familiar blue orb hung; the world itself.

I felt my body move on its own accord and immediately noticed it didn’t feel like my own form. Limbs I didn’t recognize as legs moved, two at a time, while other limbs with long, slender grasping things on them held something cold and metal. More than that the entire body felt stiff and wrong and clanked with a metallic chime with every movement. It was a sickening experience, disorienting beyond belief.

This…whatever I was, approached the window and gazed at the blue orb of the world, and then laughed. It was a rich, deep laugh, filled with mirth, and want, and a sort of eager anticipation.

“These are the moments I live for.”

“Truly? I thought you much preferred the more…intense moments of warfare?”

This new voice was a high pitched screech unlike anything a normal throat should make. I felt my, its, whoever’s body turned, regarding a…dear Ancestors, what was that thing? The creature I was looking at hung in the air, suspended as if by magic, a hulking non-pony shape covered in a white cloth rimmed with a dizzying pattern of reds and greens. Its…face…or whatever that was, was covered by a massive golden mask, with three triangular points forming a crest. Red eyes glowed from inside the mask, and beneath the draping cloth covering this thing’s body were the tips of huge silver claws.

“I enjoy all aspects of war, my friend,” said my…host? This wasn’t a Memory Orb, it couldn’t be. I’d fallen asleep and… “However it is these calms before the storm that most energizes me. Fills me with fire for all the other moments to come. Soon the enemy will array themselves to oppose us, and our mettle will clash in sky, in sea, and upon terra firma, and only the strongest and most worthy will emerge as victors. All for the glory of Hyades.”

The masked creature floated forward, looking outward at the blue orb of the world hanging in the blackness, “The scouts say this world is…different, than others we’ve fought the Veruni over. That there are strange energies coursing through it. That there are powers that protect it.”

“Hm, even if that is so, what concern is it of ours? It is not the worlds that we conquer that matter, but the struggle of conquering them. The eternal struggle that is the birthright of every Hyadean to pursue. Let this world have its mysteries and protectors. They matter not. As long as the Veruni try to deny this world to us, we shall wage war to claim it from them.”

"That is the natural cycle our species has followed. Do you ever tire of it? It takes me too often from my research, these continuous battles," said the gold masked being.

The figure raised the thing it’d felt it holding in it right…hoof? Claw? It pointed the object at the blue orb in space, and I felt my mind go blank as I saw what it was holding. A spear. A spear of black metal, but there was no denying its shape. It was a shape I was very familiar with as the figure laughed again, a laugh that made my heart shudder.

“Tire of it? Never! War is what our race exists for! We are but weapons, my friend, no different than this spear in my hand! Gramzanber, it hungers. Its edge aches for the flames of war as surely as the beating of my own heart! What more could there possibly be of worth, for such as us? Nothing, I say. Only war... only war.”

Just as I was feeling horribly trapped in this nightmare, trying to scrape my way out of a body that wasn’t mine, away from visions I didn’t want to see and couldn’t understand, I felt a warm presence in my mind. A familiar and comforting feeling. I could almost actually feel my hoof stretching out…

…and be grasped by another hoof. A mare’s voice spoke.

Its okay, I’m here…wake up…

I woke up. I was soaked in cold sweat, my mane plastered to the front of my face. I wiped away the offending blue strands of mane and raised my head, taking stock of my surroundings. We were tucked under the cleft of a small series of rock outcroppings, providing protection from the rain, which was still coming down in a lazy drizzle beyond the cover.

It’d been two days since the Raiders. I was still having nightmares, but most of them had been like the beginning of this most recent one…nothing like the second part with the strange…whatever that was. I shuddered again, looking over at Gramzanber. The silver spear lay by my side in easy grasping distance. We’d only run into a few weird mutated little furless things on stubby legs LIL-E had identified as ‘radmoles’ that hadn’t proved very dangerous, but sleeping out in the Wasteland was a dangerous business no matter how big or well armed the party.

There were six of us. Myself, Arcaidia, B.B, LIL-E, Iron Wrought, and Binge. Doc Sunday had begun escorting the Saddlespring refugees northward towards Skull City the day after we’d returned with Iron Wrought, taking Dr. Lemon Slice with him. The doctor had been very…upset about us having to borrow her research data but once brought up to speed on Iron Wrought’s situation even she relented that making a copy of the discs was the best solution for everypony involved. Doc Sunday had left us instructions on meeting up with him and the doctor at a place called Rust ‘n Dirt Inn in the Skull City Outskirts. Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck was updated with a tag to the location. Once we were done in Stable 104 we’d go there, make sure Iron Wrought’s family was okay, and then…begin figuring out how to get to NCR.

The only final business I'd taken care of before we'd parted ways with Doc Sunday and the rest of the Saddlespring survivors had been a visit to Shale's grave. It'd been a small affair, a cross of wood from a dead blackened tree she was buried next to making the marker. I'd tried to say things to her, but I hadn't been able to get the words out. B.B and Arcaidia had joined me there, and both had stood close to me, letting me silently cry as they provided the comfort of their shared pain with me. I'd said my final farewells internally, and had, in that moment, felt oddly...calm. As if Shale herself had been there, laying a hoof on my shoulder, letting me know it was alright.

I'd been pretty quiet the rest of that day. My mind had wandered a lot during the days of the trek up until this point.

A lot of roundabout detours and side things had happened, but at least I felt like we were starting to make progress…and it was nice not be…alone? I felt a warm body next to me and looked over, nearly jumping as Binge wrapped her hooves round my right foreleg and, still apparently asleep, started nibbling on it.

“Mmmmph…needs…hot sauce…” the Raider mare murmured. Should I think of her as an ex-Raider now? I wasn’t at all sure the term could apply. She was clearly unhinged. Was she a danger? Her nibbling turned into something of a bite and I grimaced, enduring it as I tried to edge the rest of my body away from her.

“Having trouble there, loverbuck?” asked LIL-E suddenly, who hovered in the middle of the group, facing out towards the rain soaked Wasteland.

Everypony else was asleep, curled up against the relatively dry rock face, so it was just me and LIL-E for the moment. I sighed and looked at the eyebot with a helpless expression.

“I don’t know what I’m doing LIL-E,” I said, “I didn’t really know how to tell her…well…no, when she said she wanted to follow me. Am I doing the right thing here?”

“I’m not the one to ask. I’m no expert on doing the ‘right thing’. I’ll say this though; I let you make the choice with the Raider’s because it’s a choice you needed to make on your own. If I’d made it for you, you’d never learn which path you wanted to take yourself. At the risk of sounding like a preachy pony there are consequences to every choice we make Longwalk. Killing them would’ve had consequences too. This is just a consequence of not killing…you got to deal with her. Maybe it’ll turn out good, and she’ll learn a new way of life. Maybe it won’t and this’ll end up biting you square in the flank. I can’t say. You’ll just have to accept it and find out yourself.”

I nodded slowly, looking at the rest of my sleeping companions, “Never imagined when I left my tribe I’d find so many…other ponies who’d travel with me. Thought it’d be just me and Arcaidia the whole way.”

“Disappointed it’s not just you and her?”

I turned away, not at all blushing; no you’re imagining that, “No. Trust me, furthest thing from my mind. Mostly. Okay…uh…to be honest, and don’t breathe a word of this to anypony, but I kind of…”

“Yes?”

“Well I have a friend back in my tribe. My only real one. She’s always been there for me, my whole life, really. I never really paid attention to just how much I…how much I really felt, well, good when Trailblaze was around. Now that I’m out here, and she’s so far away, I find I think about her a lot. When I’m not busy thinking about how to not die, anyway. I think I might…y’know, really like her. A lot. Still sort of trying to sort out my feelings there.”

LIL-E was silent for a time, and then I heard an odd sound that I think might’ve been the robot trying to convey a sigh, “I know what it’s like to be separated from somepony that’s special to you. You never told her any of this, did you?”

“…No,” I said, hanging my head.

“Won’t lie, it’s going to be tough going then. But use those feelings. Remember how you feel and when things get bad, and I mean really bad, as in world’s crashing down around you’re flanks bad…just remember that feeling, and her. Remember she’s there, waiting for you. Use that to pull through those dark moments, when everything goes black. Of course doesn’t hurt to have friends with you too, to help you along.”

“Friends like you?” I asked, with a smile.

“Guess we are friends, aren’t we?” said LIL-E, then she hovered down a bit, closer to eye level with me, “Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to get to training you on some basic Wasteland survival 101. Wish I had a copy of the Wasteland Survival Guide on me, but I remember most of it and can give you the juicy bits in abridged format.”

“Wasteland Survival Guide? They’ve got one of those?” I paused, head cocked, “Why don’t they have a copy of that everywhere for ponies to read?”

“Oh yeah, believe me I’d like that book to be more widespread. Written by a good friend of mine who’s got more experience with dealing with the horrors of the Wasteland than anypony I know. Now then, let’s see, where to start…?”

The rest of the night was passed with LIL-E telling me all sorts of useful little tidbits, from where to look for the best salvage for food and medicine, why scrap metal was so useful to keep around, the infinite uses of the magical item known as Wonderglue, to how to properly roast radroach meat so it wouldn’t poison you and why bloatsprites were to be avoided like the plague.

It was a lot to take in, but I absorbed the information as best I could. I was pleased to hear that geckos weren’t a species exclusive to my tribe’s land, and that they could be found almost anywhere in the Wasteland. Gave me hope of not only tasting gecko meat again, but also that in time I could get enough gecko hide together to fashion myself a new set of hide barding. The metal barding was alright, but it was starting to chaff after wearing it for two days.

The rain continued, but the sky was getting lighter, revealing the vast empty and uneven Wasteland we’d been traveling through. We’d gotten beyond the ruins of the suburbs and were now out among rocky, wind blasted emptiness, heading for a rise of hills to the north west where Stable 104’s canyon was.

“How long until we reach the Stable, do you think?” I asked LIL-E.

“Probably this evening, if we manage to keep the pace we’ve managed so…far…” LIL-E trailed off and abruptly hover back up into the air, internal mechanisms in her buzzing. She floated forward, out into the rain, and I watched her, suddenly concerned.

“What? What is it?”

She was silent a second, then said, “Start waking everypony up. Quietly.”

Easier said than done. Binge began giggling the second I started trying to nudge her awake, murmuring “No no no, you don’t run away’s from me meaty morsel when Miss Tummy still wants to eats you.”

“Ugh, Binge, stop being…you, or whatever it is you’re doing, and wake up,” I said nudging her again while trying to extricate my foreleg from her grasp. Eventually I managed to get my leg free, having had to practically life her up to do it, and she plopped back to the ground. She blinked awake lazily and yawned.

“Mmm, time for school?” she asked dreamily.

I shook my head, suppressing a groan, “Not as such. Just, uh, wake up and try to stay quiet. I think LIL-E spotted something.”

It was a lot easier to wake my other companions. For the most part. B.B and Iron Wrought were apparently light sleepers and I had no trouble poking them awake. Arcaidia though, I was a little hesitant with. I remembered when she’d shoved her starblaster in my face that night back in my tribe’s camp. So I did the most sensible thing. I found a tiny rock and, from a safe distance, hiding behind a bemused looking B.B, I tossed the rock at Arcaidia’s flank.

The unicorn snapped away, and as I’d anticipated, her starblaster was up and levitating around as her silver eyes looked for the culprit responsible for waking her. She settled her eyes on me and I gave her a sheepish wave. B.B rolled her eyes, and Arcaidia soon matched the look, getting gracefully to her hooves and levitating on her dress.

“What’s goin’ on Long?” asked B.B, frowning as Binge slinked up to us and whispered, hoof to her mouth.

“The funny metal bug is ‘seeing things’,” Binge made quote marks with her forehooves.

“This is an eyebot, and as a matter of fact I am seeing things,” said LIL-E to us, “My scanners are based heavily on Stable-Tech’s EFS arcane matrices. I’m picking up eight…nine hostile contacts, due west. Normally I wouldn’t care, if it looked like they’d just pass us by, but I’m also detecting four non-hostile contacts. I think they’re being chased by the hostiles. Can’t get an image at this range, but my audio receptors are picking up barely audible gunshots. I think somepony’s in trouble.”

I didn’t need to hear more. I went and snatched up Gramzanber, fixing the spear in its sheath at my flank. B.B, ammo freshly resupplied to her foreleg revolvers from her father, her newer heftier revolver tucked into a holster across her chest over her leather armor until she could find more ammo for it, gave me a small grin.

“So we’re runnin’ into the fray, no plan, no clue?”

“Eeyup,” I said, returning her grin. Despite everything that’d happened, I was glad to know I was still able to.

Arcaidia ran a hoof over her mane and sighed, “Esru vi dorvilar, dervir dol corvaile. We go now? Fighting?”

“Don’t suppose it’d do me any good to just stay here and wait for you crazy ponies to get back,” said Iron Wrought, “Just try to not do anything that could get one of us killed Longwalk. I’m planning on seeing my family again.”

“Happy hour is coming early today, and I’m not going to be the designated driver,” Binge chirped happily, flipping a knife up and down with one hoof. I was fairly certain I was never going to understand her.

We all got our gear together quickly, then as a group moved out into the rain shrouded morning.

We galloped as a group through the rain, hooves churning up reddish brown mud as we went. LIL-E was in the lead, her scanners showing us the way to where we needed to go. A few minutes of hard running and we could hear the gunshots. A few minutes more and we crested a small rise in the land that showed us the scene.

I licked my now very dry lips. Those were…um…very large…whatever they were. LIL-E’s count had been accurate, as there were about nine massive creatures moving rapidly across the landscape on multiple dark gray chitin covered legs. Their flat armored bodies ended towards the front in two huge pincer appendages, while the bags curled up into huge tails with deadly stingers on the ends.

“Buck me, why’s it always radscorpions?” groaned Iron Wrought, “I’d have preferred Balloons.”

“Ah quit complain’, could be worse,” said B.B, then squinted her eyes at the radscorpions, as if finally noticing their rather giant size, “Though not by much I reckon. Them’s some big ‘uns.”

“Aww, they’re so cuddly!” cried Binge, “If I promise to house train it can we keep one?”

“Alright, no chatter, we gotta help those ponies,” I said, drawing Gramzanber and pointing at the target of the radscorpion’s chase.

Four ponies were moving quickly at a gallop, keeping ahead of the radscorpions, but with only a dozen yards of space. I couldn’t make out many details about then but two of then looked young, more like they were colts or fillies rather than adults. One of the bigger ponies was the one doing the shooting, occasionally poking a head around to blast with a big thumping boom I recognized by now as being from a shotgun. It seemed to always slow down the lead radscorpion with each shot, but not for long.

I’d been in enough fights by now to know charging in blindly wouldn’t serve anything save to put myself and my friends in danger. I scoured my mind as fast as I could for a halfway workable plan; a plan of the kind that involved ponies living and a lot of grotesque bugs dying.

“B.B, keep to the skies and distract the lead bugs. LIL-E, Iron Wrought, head right and try to link up with those ponies while giving the rest of us some cover fire. Arcaidia, do what you do best, and don’t be stingy with the ice. Binge…stick close to me.”

“Ooo, is this a confession? It’s not even Hearts and Hooves day! And you don’t have any candy to give me.”

“Ugh, I just mean I’m going to try and hit them from behind once their attention is focused on B.B and the others. You don’t have a gun, just those knives. Honestly I’d rather you kept out of the fight but I’m not expecting that, so just stay close, try not to get hurt, and back me up if you can.”

“Okie Dokie Lokie.”

Huh? Hadn’t I heard that somewhere else before? Whatever, time for potential violent death, yay!

“Let’s go!”

B.B was off in an instant and we all began to gallop, or in LIL-E’s case rapidly hover. B.B easily got to the radscorpion’s first, flying high in the sky so that the creature’s couldn’t touch her as she began to rain down a hail of bullets from her revolvers on the lead ones. The radscorpions didn’t stop in their chase, but certainly faltered, confused by where these new attacks. LIL-E and Iron Wrought moved fast, swinging out to the right at an arc that put them near the fleeing ponies. I didn’t hear what words were exchanged but I heard them shouting out to the group of ponies just as LIL-E opened fire with her turret. She’d explained to me that while many eyebots used energy weapons, her model was equipped with a rapid firing .357 magnum cartridge that could quickly exchange various ammo types; armor piercing, hollow point, and something called ‘spark rounds’. She also said she had other weapons, and I saw those come into play as a hatch on her side opened up and a longer barrel emerged. This barrel had a heavier cracking sound in comparison to her undeslung turret and fired bursting tracers that when they hit the lead radscorpion bathed it in flame. Incendiary rounds, she’d later tell me. Compared to LIL-E’s yield of fire Iron Wrought didn’t add much with his small semi-automatic, but he went to it with a gusto I could only imagine was born from a hardened determination to survive and see his family again.

Meanwhile me, Arcaidia, and Binge galloped to the left, swinging around the group of radscorpions, which hadn’t quite noticed us yet. Binge was giggling again, a high twitter, around one of her mouth gripped knives. I didn’t know how many of those she had, but between them and her spiked hoof wrappings I hoped she’d be able to hold her own. Given me a fight, in any case.

When we got close Arcaidia opened up with both her starblaster and her ice spell at the same time. The silver bolt sliced into one of the back radscorpions, cutting through one of its legs. The cone of icy shards smashed another two, causing them to stumble. The radscorpions began to turn to face the new threat just as me and Binge got to them.

I moved in on the two that Arcaidia had hit with her ice, shoving Gramzanber forward straight into the side of one of them. The silver spear bit in deeply through chitin and an off yellow viscous blood spewed out. It dragged the spear to the right, slicing more chitin off and pulled back. The giant radscorpion clacked and hissed, and rounded on me. Crap, the thing took a wound like that and was still kicking!? I backed away fast as it brought its pincers to bear and snapped them at me. I used Gramzanber’s edge to slice through one pincer, but the other caught my left foreleg and squeezed. The metal plating held up but the pressure only increased and I realized the thing’s tail stinger was about to strike.

I chopped hard with Gramzanber, cutting off the pincer holding my leg, and rolled to the side. The stinger shot forward faster than my eye could see, scrapping along my side. If the metal barding hadn’t been there, that stinger would’ve gone right into me. I made a mental note to thank B.B later.

The other radscorping Arcaidia had iced was coming in on me as I got to my hooves and I heard Binge laughing hysterically behind me. I chanced a glance to see her dancing and cart wheeling around the radscorpion that’d lost a leg, darting in and stabbing, darting away from its front as it kept trying to turn on her. She wasn’t really doing much damage, but she was doing well to keep out of danger.

Arcaidia’s starblaster fired again, cutting into the face of the radscorpion that’d tried to sting me and causing it to collapse in a smoking heap. One down, eight to go. I took a deep breath, facing the one bearing down on me, and charged in. It tried to sting me, and I narrowly managed to duck it. A pincer came in, battering at me. I rolled with the blow but it still clocked my head. Fortunately it didn’t manage to clamp down on me, but the glancing hit caused blood to start coating my face. I still drove in, shoving Gramzanber deep into the radscorpion’s face between its many black bead-like eyes.

The thing convulsed and thrashed, but ultimately lay still. I pulled my spear free and turned just in time to see Arcaidia flank the radscorpion Binge was distracting and fire a point-blank blast of ice shards right into the huge bug’s back end, freezing it over until it was one giant frosty blue statue.

So far so good, now if we could just-

A pincer closed over my flanks and I felt myself being hauled backwards. I yelped, turning as another radscorpion pulled me towards it. I forced my hooves to plant into the ground, throwing my strength against the huge mutated monstrosity. Its stinger tensed and I’d begun to notice the sign of a strike coming. I wheeled my head around, Gramzanber whistling as its blade cut through the air. The stinger shot forward and the spear just barely managed to intercept it, cutting the stinger and the front portion of the tail off in a neat snicker snap. This only seemed to piss the radscorpoin off more though, as it began to crush my flanks with its one pincer while bringing its other to bear.

A knife flew in and slammed into one of its eyes, causing it to shudder, and more importantly, forget me for a split second. I heard Binge yelling in a cheerful twitter, “You gotta cuddle harder my little bucky, or you’ll go join the whispers in the sky.”

Right, whispers. Fighting now. I rolled around, stabbing the pincer gripping around me. I didn’t have the right angle to just slice through it, but I could sort of start sawing awkwardly. The radscorpion hissed, a piercing sound that made my ears flatten, and gripped me harder. I was starting to feel bones bend. With a final heaving saw the lower part of the pincer went limp and I was able to hobble a quick step away, turning myself around to face the radscorpion fully. Gunshots continued to ring in my ears so I knew my companions were still fighting, but I didn’t have time to see how they were doing.

The radscorpion came in at me with its remaining good pincer and I shuffled aside as it tried to snap at me. I avoided getting caught by the points of the pincer slammed into me, causing a sharp pain in my side as I staggered back, but kept on my hooves. Armor was definitely slowing me down, but was doing a fine job of protecting my hide. My nostrils flared as I took in rapid breaths, focusing all my attention on watching for the radscorpion’s next attack. When it came I ducked under it and jumped in, taking the pincer off at the base with a hefty slice. I think quickly finished the radscorpion off with another stab into the face.

I was breathing heavy, aching under my armored barding, but was still good to go. I took the moment to see how the rest of the fight was going.

The remaining radscorpions were caught in a field of fire. LIL-E was floating around quickly, turret and side arm blazing. Iron Wrought was keeping well back, staying with the four ponies we’d come to save who’d stopped and turned to watch the fight in apparent shock that help had arrived. Above B.B continued to drop a torrent of shots. On the other end Arcaidia laid into the radscorpion’s with her starblaster and had also coated the ground for several meters before her in a sheet of ice that the radscorpions that tried to charge her had trouble crossing without skittering off balance.

Everything was looking good…which was why I immediately started to feel an itchy twitch in my tail that told me something was about to go wrong.

There are times being right isn’t a good thing. Especially in the Wasteland.

The ground beneath the radscorpions trembled. I could feel vibrations run through the dirt and rock, and into my legs. With an explosion of upturned earth something emerged from under the radscorpoins, which had already been near death from my companion’s storm of fire. A creature emerged that quickly tore into the radscorpions with a frenzy that was reminiscent of the Tunneler’s from the Saddlesrping Ruin, but it was coming from just one, hulking brute of a creature. The radscorpions were decimated in mere moments and we were left staring at something that looked as if it’d walked right out of someponie’s bad dream.

It was bipedal, sort of. It hunched on huge clawed legs, but its form suggested it could use its thick overlong forearms to move on all fours. Those forearms of dark skinned thick hide also happened to end in strange fingered hands housing long blade-like claws. A bulky muscular torso was encased in blackened metal armor that was much thicker than what I was wearing. A narrow, wedge shaped canine head looked at all of us with no concern, faint green glowing eyes solid as two emeralds barely giving us a glance before a maw of vicious fangs started tearing into one of the radscorpion corpses. I noticed the creature had a big empty sack slung across its back.

There was a brief silence as Arcaidia began to aim her starblaster at the thing, and it sniffed the air, its tapered ears flattening. B.B made an X gesture with her hooves and said, somehow trying to whisper and shout at the same time, “Do. Not. Shoot!”

Arcaidia quirked an eyebrow, but held her fire. Everypony else was holding their breath. I tried to gulp but my mouth was too dry to do so. That thing had moved so fast, and torn through those radscorpions as if they’d been made of rotted bark.

“B.B…what is this…?”

“Hellhound,” she said, eyes saucers, “Ain’t ever but seen one before. Don’t provoke it…an’…an’ maybe it’ll let us live.”

The creature, the Hellhound, ate its fill of radscorpoin, then began to stuff meaty chunks of the bugs into its pack. When the pack was near full it paused and sniffed the air again. Its baleful green eyes focused on me for a second and to my horror it slowly approached me. I heard Arcaidia issue a low growl, and nearby Binge was looking at the Hellhound while licking her lips; even her insanity seeming to be suppressed momentarily but the sheer predatory menace the Hellhound exuded.

I won’t deny that even my desire to appear like a strong and proper stallion went fleeing to a dark corner to weep and piss itself as the Hellhound’s hulking dark form loomed over me. For a moment it seemed like that horrible nightmare creature blotted out all else as it bent over me, its huge nostrils sniffing at my mane. Its solid green eyes examined me, and it even lifted a single claw to poke at my face. I was standing stock still, all too aware that my body had frozen up in pure terror.

Seconds crawled by with agonizing slowness, but eventually the Hellhound gave one final snort at me, with, of all things, a perplexed look on its strange features and turned away from me. It went and hopped down into the hole it’d made in the ground and vanished from sight.

I don’t think anypony dared move for at least a full minute after it’d left.

B.B was the first to me, landing in front of me, eyes wide.

“Ya okay Long?”

“Y-y-yeah…”I said, taking a shuddering breath, “I’m okay. I think. Maybe pissed myself, let me check. Nope. Yay.”

A few deep breaths later and I was almost not shaking. Binge was looking down the hole.

“Big nice puppy went away without playing fetch with us.”

“Good,” said Iron Wrought, “But hey, stick around, maybe it’ll come back and play fetch with you.”

“Oooh, that’d be so much fun! But I can’t leave little Longwalk by himself, not without Big Sis Binge making sure he learns the facts of life!”

Arcaidia seemed less shaken than the rest of us and just gave me a reassuring nod, which helped a lot in getting me to get my nerves under control. I gave her my own nod of thanks.

With the fight done and…that event out of the way we congregated with the four ponies we’d saved. They were a stallion and mare, husband and wife, and their two children. A salvaging family, working for the Salvage Guild, the stallion, Fine Eye explained. He was a thin, reedy orange unicorn with a straight brown mane and a cutie mark of a pair of glasses. Which was weird because he didn’t wear glasses. His wife, Sweet Pear, was a light brown earth pony mare with a yellow mane tied up in a bun, bearing the cutie mark of a trio of fruits that was apparently part of her namesake. Their children, two young colts named Fresh Pear and Crumb Trail were mirror images of their parents, Fresh Pear having his father’s coloring and Crumb Trail his mothers.

“Much obliged for the help, friends,” said Fine Eye, tipping a small billed cap he wore with a hole cut in it for his horn, “My family owes you a solid for what you’ve done.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said, “But what are you doing all the way out here?”

“Salvage Guild’s been sending teams out further and further afield, and is paying less than it used to for what we bring in,” explained Fine Eye, “Me and my own, we’ve been having trouble with getting enough to eat week to week…so I figured I’d take a chance on a rumor.”

“What kind of rumor’s that?” asked Iron Wrought, a suspicious look on his face, though I couldn’t figure why.

“We heard tell that someponies think there’s an old world Stable in this area. Those placed are dangerous, but there’s such a good chance for profitable salvage…well I figure if I luck out I can make enough caps to maybe move my family away from Skull City. Place is getting worse by the day.”

“Worse than normal?” B.B looked surprised, “Just ‘ow bad could it be gettin’?”

“There’re more and more gangs taking root in the Inner City, and the Outskirts are all but a full on warzone these days. There’s even word that the Guilds are gearing up for a brawl, what with the Skull Guild itself imposing a new tax on each territory in the city for daily protection, and cutting off half their patrols on the roads to the city. To make matters worse, Protectorate’s been seen out west here…ponies saying they’re planning some kind of attack,” Fine Eye sighed, “Just ain’t a good region to try and raise my family anymore. Wasn’t much before, but now, I’m feeling it’s time to take a chance at getting out.”

Iron Wrought’s suspicious look slowly vanished and I saw the green earth pony actually look understanding, much closer to how he’d looked when I first met him.

“You got to look after your family, I understand,” he looked at me, “Why don’t we help them out?”

“No need to ask me twice,” I said, “After all, we’re just going there to get the recordings and LIL-E’s information. Maybe Pip-Buck on the side.”

“What are you all talking about?” asked Sweet Pear.

“We know where the Stable is. We were heading there when we spotted you in danger,” explained LIL-E, “And I agree with the others, there’s no reason not to work together. We’re not going there for all that much salvaging, just some specific errands. You want to team up, then that’ll make things easier on everypony.”

“Sounds fine ta me, ‘specailly now that we know what kind o’ things are lurkin’ out here,” said B.B, “Safety in numbers an’ all that.”

“More pretty ponies to travel with! I’ll need more chairs for the tea party,” said Binge with a creepy smile, causing Sweet Pear to take a step between the light green ex(?) Raider mare and her two colts.

Fine Eye looked a tad hesitant, but finally nodded, “Agreed then. We’ll work together. It’ll be a pleasure…?”

“Longwalk,” I said, and in short order introductions were made around by everypony.

Not long after that we caught our breath, checked our wounds, Arcaidia doled out quick rounds of healing magic, and in short order we were off again. Despite the terrifying hiccup with the Hellhound I was feeling better than I had in days.

Which probably meant things were going to go horrible wrong in Stable 104, but for the moment I was allowing a little hope to seep into my heart.

Regretfully, it wasn’t to last…

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added – Snicker’ Snack: You’re getting disturbingly good at attacking an opponent’s extremities. You do 10% more damage whenever striking a part of a foe that isn’t their center of mass.

Companion Perk Added – Set Scanners for Fun: As long as LIL-E is in your party you use her Perception in place of your own for detecting creatures in the vicinity, with a hefty bonus to range due to her awesome suite of scanning devices.

Chapter 10: The Unknown Stable

Chapter 10: The Unknown Stable

The rain had thankfully slacked off by the time we’d reached the canyon where Stable 104 was supposed to be. By ‘slacked off’ I meant it had gone from a soaking deluge that turned the earth beneath our hooves into a slurry and had become a drizzle that just left our bones chilled, and our manes sopping in front of our faces. We were cold and we tired from the fight with the radscorpions and the subsequent walking, but other than that the group’s spirits seemed… high. High-ish. Not being in a life threatening battle for the better part of the day seemed to be doing wonders for everypony’s mindset, mine included.

B.B was working with Arcaidia’s language barrier, flying along next to the unicorn filly and trying to teach her new words by pointing out objects and repeating what they were. There wasn’t a lot out here to act as a reference, so while Arcaidia was getting down the words for ‘dirt’, ‘rocks’, ‘mud’ and ‘clouds’ there was some difficulty in teaching other terms. Still, it was good just to see the two smiling at each other, as opposed to that bit of tension that had resulted from their rather odd first meeting.

Iron Wrought was still being pretty morose, but he had a driven look on his face. He was still giving Binge the occasional death glance. It bothered me, but could I really blame him? I didn’t know the full extent of what the Raiders had done to him for the short time he’d been captured, so I had little room to judge. As for Binge herself…she was playing with the colts.

I was bringing up the rear of our group so I was having an easy enough time keeping an eye on her, and when she’d approached Fresh Pear and Crumb Trail I’d gotten looks from their parents. Sweet Pear had worn a worried, but firmly protective expression as she’d adjusted a lead pipe she carried in a loop around her neck for easy access, while Fine Eye kept a light telekinetic grip on his shotgun. They’d both looked to me as if to ask ‘is she safe?’ and honestly, what could I tell them? I had no idea just how safe Binge was to be around. Just yesterday she’d been part of Raider gang that’d tried to kill me and my friends…now she was traveling with us, seemingly out of her own insane whim and incomprehensible attachment to me.

I had given them the barest of nods and pointed a hoof at my eye, then at her, indicating I was keeping a close eye on her. That seemed to have appeased the scavenger parents, but I noticed they never took both eyes off of their colts as Binge joked and played with them, seemingly harmlessly enough. It was near mid day and Binge had pulled out that odd little sock puppet with the bloody smiley face.

“Now kiddies, listen to your good Auntie Binge and her smiles-a-minute friend Mr. Happy as they tell you a super fun story! It’s about a nice little filly who goes on a magical quest-“

Well, that sounded harmless enough.

“-to find the Bloodaxe of Torturous Mutilation, so she could wreak her terrible vengeance upon the murderous slavers that captured and ra-“

“Binge, Binge, hold it!” I said hastily, “Stories are good. Just that, maybe, you should, uh, tell a different story? Something less murdery?”

“Oh, but this is a real good one! It has lots of action, and has a valuable moral about the magic of vengeance!”

“I’m sure it’s, er,” I struggled for the right words to communicate with the not-all-there mare, “A classic. Just, um, perhaps those two are a little outside the story’s intended audience?”

Binge smiled at me as if I was the one who was not all there, “Don’t be such a silly pony, plenty of stories can be enjoyed by those outside the original target demographic!”

Target demowha? I was sure she was just making terms up now to try and sound smarter than me (not a hard feat, but hey, buck’s gotta have his pride!) and I fixed her with a stern look, trying once more to emulate the ‘mom stare’. I suppose technically I needed to be emulated a ‘dad stare’, but I never knew my father and didn’t know how one was suppose to stare, so ‘mom stare’ it was. Binge just giggled at me, but I went on and said, “Yes, well, keep your demo-whatevers to yourself and don’t fill those poor foal’s heads with any stories involving…stuff that to you is normal. Okay?”

“Please,” said Sweet Pear, “I don’t mind if you want to play with my foals, but do restrain yourself, miss. Or I’ll be forced to introduce you to my smiles-a-minute friend, Mr. Pipe.”

Binge blew out a sighing whinny but nodded, smiling down at the two foals, saying “Okaaaay, I’ll be a good, clean little pony. No juicy bits. Nice and wholesome like fresh Mint-als it is. Ooh, I know a good one, with no blood or guts at all. Once upon a time there was a cheerful unicorn named Charlie-“

I decided that Binge was toning herself down and only paid half attention to a less than coherent tale about a unicorn getting dragged along on some nonsensical quest for a mountain of candy and focused on what lay ahead of us. Mostly a dead muddy landscape of desiccated brown and red muck, slow hills sloping up and down like boils on the earth’s surface. Back home the land had also been a dead, dry thing without much color…but somehow my tribal lands had seemed brighter, somehow more natural. Was it the fact that the Great Fires of the balefire bombs had not only destroyed life then, but burned out the very essence of the land itself, and otherwise warped and tainted what was left? I didn’t know, but I felt myself longing after the sight of my home valley, the small village of tents crowded around the clean and clear mountain stream.

I shook the feeling off. LIL-E was at the very head of our procession and had halted at the top of the hill we’d ascended, mechanical face slowly turning left and right as if looking for something.

As I trotted up towards her I noticed Fine Eye joining me, trotting alongside, double-barrel shotgun still in a side holster on his left shoulder but being loosed a bit in a soft purple glow of his horn’s magic. I noticed his eyes were alert, keeping a sharp scan around us. He was expecting trouble, even though LIL-E hadn’t made any mention of sensing anything on her scanners. It occurred to me that for Fine Eye, who was born and grown up in the Wasteland, being ever watchful for danger must have been as second nature as breathing was to me. I suddenly felt rather embarrassed that by this point I’d been spending most of the walk letting my mind wander. Would’ve made me an easy target if something had surprised us.

Now Fine Eye was looking at me.

“Still don’t feel like I thanked you proper enough yet, for coming to me and my family’s aid,” he said to me, looking…embarrassed? Not exactly, more just uncomfortable.

“Um, well,” I began, not at all sure how to respond, “Its fine. Really. We noticed some ponies in trouble, we helped, you and yours are still alive. That’s all that matters.”

He didn’t look like he was understanding me, just giving me that same uncomfortable expression as he said, “That’s just it though. You helped. Against a large pack of radscorpions. When you had no reason to. You just did it…Do you know how many other ponies I know who would’ve done the same thing, even among my friends in the Salvage Guild? None. Not a one. Nopony I know would have come to our aid, not under those circumstances, with such a high risk to their own lives. So…just…thank you.”

How was I supposed to respond to that? I just blinked at him, rather dumbly I imagined, as I said, “Sounds like you need better friends.”

Again with that uncomfortable look. Fine Eye looked away from me, looking back at his family, Sweet Pear letting Crumb Trail and Fresh Pear ride on her back so they could rest their legs while Binge finished her story. Even Sweet Pear seemed to be getting into the (former?) Raider mare’s tale. Fine Eye smiled slightly.

“Friends are hard to come by,” he said, “I’ve counted myself lucky to have a family at all, let alone many friends. Try to understand, Longwalk, that a friend out here is somepony that will, half the time, still turn on you for caps. But only half the time.”

I didn’t have any comment on that. Seemed a bleak assessment to me, but maybe I’d been lucky so far, meeting ponies like B.B and LIL-E. Well, okay, I had no proof other than her word that LIL-E was a pony, rather than a floating eyebot. Speaking of LIL-E, we’d caught up to where she’d stopped and the rest of the group came to a shuffling halt behind us. The hill we were on slopped down to a short plain of dirt and rocks (gotta love that varied Wasteland scenery) before leading to a sharp rise in the landscape. Through the middle of this tall rise was a narrow space, a small canyon. Then I noticed that it wasn’t the only one, that further to the north were two more, similar canyons.

“Why’d we stop?” asked B.B as she flew over to us, “Tryin’ tag it the lay o’ the land or somethin’?”

“Something like that,” said LIL-E in her mechanical buzz, “Just doing some mental ennie-mennie-minnie-moe over which canyon we should search first.”

“Which one?” I asked, “Don’t you know which one the Stable is supposed to be in?”

“Not exactly. I know it’s in a canyon around here. Was kind of hoping there’d be just the one. Should have figured this wouldn’t be as simple as that. So I’m feeling pretty good about the middle canyon there.”

I frowned, “Well, any problems with taking our time to search all of them?”

“Not specifically,” said LIL-E, “Except that those radscorpions we ran into back there make me think we’re in pretty heavily infested part of the Wasteland, and radscorpions love to nest in canyons.”

“Right enough,” said Fine Eye, “That’s how we got caught by those bugs before. Spotted an abandoned set of shacks in a smaller canyon back there and thought it’d be worth the risk to take a peek. Should’ve known it wouldn’t be worth it.”

I pondered, weighting options. We’d proven ourselves capable of handling a pack of radscorpions, though it’d still been a rough fight and I was still aching some from it even after a little healing attention from Arcaidia. Even if we ran into radscorpions or some other Wasteland monster and dealt with it, it’d be a drain on our limited supply of ammunition. Best to avoid it if at all possible…and thinking back to my first day in the Wasteland with Arcaidia I recalled her doing something that could help.

“Hey Arcaidia,” I called, and the blue unicorn looked my way and cantered over. When she got to me I pointed my hoof at her Pip-Buck. She raised it, used to my gestures by now and willing to let me fiddle with the knobs on it. I brought up the map feature. Pointing at where we were I tried to imitate the sound of her using magic, not very well I might add, and then made a small circular motion on the map around the point we were at.

She raised an eyebrow at me, obviously not immediately getting what I was asking, but she was a smart filly and I could see after she pondered a moment the light of understanding sparking in her silver eyes. She pressed a button on her Pip-Buck and from a slot that small metal rectangle she’d put into back then slide out.

“Cresviali? Estu tu avari di cresviali, nes? Make…map?”

I nodded and she smiled, putting the metallic rectangular object back into her Pip-Buck and started to charge her horn with magic.

“What’s she doing?” asked Iron Wrought and I raised a hoof.

“Just watch, it’s one of her spells. Not sure how it works, but it’s pretty useful.”

The crest of symbols appeared around her horn like before and the pale blue glow of her magic intensified until it seemed to collapse along with the crest and the same concussive wave of force shot out, mostly up into the air. It made the two foals jump a bit, but Sweet Pear calmed them quickly, though she gave Arcaidia a bit of a glare.

“Okay… ” B.B looked at me with a shrug, “What did that just do?”

I went up to Arcaidia and nodded at her Pip-Buck, which she happily raised so we could crowd around to view the screen. The map was updated, just like before, with a big circular space of land around our point on the map now being revealed. There were actually several tags there now. One to our south east was marked ‘Three Shacks’ and Fine Eye cocked his head.

“Three Shacks… ? That’s what the sign on that little shanty town me and my family checked out said the place was called. Thought it was odd because there were actually five shacks there instead of three.”

There were three other markers on the map, one of which was a few miles to the north called ‘Silver Mare Studios’. Another, just west of that was marked ‘Mysterious Excavation Site’…okay, how did the Pip-Buck know it was mysterious? The final marker was the one we wanted to see, in the nearest canyon just to the west, ‘Stable 104’.

LIL-E made a small buzzing noise that I think was the pony on the other end going ‘hmmm’ and said , “A spell that interfaces with a Pip-Buck’s mapping system to reveal an wider area? Pretty specific magic. I wonder where she learned it?”

“I’m more wondering how this thing always knows what to call stuff… ” I said, shaking my head.

To that LIL-E laughed, a very strange sound coming from her buzzing speakers, “Try not to think too hard about Pip-Bucks and how they do what they do, Longwalk. You’ll hurt your head.”

“Nooo, not his head,” cried Binge, “That’s where his brain pony lives! Longwalk, quick, stop thinking about anything before you cause a headsplosion!”

“Why do you care?” said Iron Wrought, rolling his eyes, “You were trying to kill him yesterday.”

This got some odd looks from Fine Eye and Sweet Pear, to which I gave Iron Wrought a look that I hoped communicated my want of him to not bring up Binge’s…previous (possibly still current) occupation. Binge for her part just got uncomfortably close to me and patted me on the head as she grinned at Iron Wrought. Did I mention she was still wearing those spiked hoof wrappings? I was just glad she wasn’t patting my head too hard, but it was uncomfortable just the same.

“Now now, I wanted to cut him up and play doctor with him and show him all the different shades of blood there are. Then he’d know how to play dead like me and we could have fun. Now I know he’s a much longer term case. He’ll see though, and it’ll hurt him when he does see. Then Big Sis Binge’ll be there to pet him and hold him and make it all better. See?”

Iron Wrought stared at her a second before looking at me with a deadpan expression, “Yeah, this, this right here? This is why you should’ve just killed her.”

“Um, something we ought to know about?” asked Fine Eye, standing protectively between his family and Binge.

“Nothing,” I told him, slowly pushing away Binge’s hoof from my head, “Binge is…a little special.”

“Aww, that’s so sweet of you to say,” she grinned, yellowed teeth flashing. I was going to have to introduce that mare to the concept of teeth cleaning via roots. My tribe had harvested roots not just for food, but the thinner portions of the roots could be chewed on to keep your choppers decently clean. Too bad I hadn’t seen any such roots since coming out to the Wasteland.

“Don’t think he meant that kind o’ special, hun,” B.B said with a sigh.

“Anyway, she’s my problem, and isn’t a threat to you and your family,” I said, hoping to the ancestor spirits, and possibly even this Goddesses everypony else seemed to hold to, that my words were the honest truth, “Now that we know where the Stable is, let’s just focus on getting in there, everypony agree?”

There were mostly murmured agreements to that, though Iron Wrought was mostly doing his best to ignore me now. I also noted Arcaidia, while seeming as generally energetic as ever, was also giving Binge an odd look. Not wary, or tense. More faintly displeased. I didn’t think my unicorn friend liked the way Binge acted around me. I vaguely wondered why for a moment, but we had work to do and I was glad to have a solid task in front of me.

Following the Pip-Buck’s map we made quick progress to the canyon we needed. Its steep walls reminded me briefly of the small cliff Shady Stream had been nestled under a brief wave of homesickness washed over me as I turned my head to say to Trailblaze that this place looked like home…and realized she wasn’t there. It was an unpleasant hoof to the gut feeling and I thought back to my conversation with LIL-E last night. I felt a near overwhelming desire to want to find an excuse to return to my tribe, if only for a brief time, just so I could speak with Trailblaze…work out how I felt about her.

It was impossible though and I knew that. There was no way I could go back, not until I’d finished what I’d started with Arcaidia.

“Ya alright, Long?” asked B.B, coming down and landing to trot next to me, “Got kinda a’ sour n’ distant look on yer face.”

She hesitated a second, then asked, “Is it ‘bout Shale an’…what Crossfire said?”

Huh? Oh, right, that. I shook my head, “No, just thinking of home. I do want to know more about this Volunteer Enforcer Corps, if only because Shale wanted me to know, but I wasn’t going to press you to tell me.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be so hesitant,” said B.B, “It ain’t like its all some big secret. Just didn’t wanna have ya all distracted while we were goin’ into danger, like wit the Raiders, or here wit this Stable. Seems like ya distract yerself enough as is.”

I smiled at her in as much a reassuring manner as I was able to manage, not wanting her to worry, “It’s all good. I’m good. Just missing home a little. Once we’re done here we’ll have a pretty long trek to meeting your father at Skull City. Feel free to tell me then.”

Was I just putting it off? Did I really want to know the details about what the VEC was? I already had an inclining based off of what Crossfire had said, and it hadn’t painted a very pretty picture. Would learning more about what this private army of the Labor Guild did change anything about how I felt concerning Shale? Would I…think less of her, if I knew about what she’d been a part of? I truly wished to believe it wouldn’t change a thing, and that I’d always think of Shale as a friend, one who’d saved my life and the lives of B.B and Arcaidia by giving up her own. So was I just trying to stall, then, hearing the whole truth from B.B?

I didn’t want to think so, but given all I’d gone through lately I wasn’t giving my own mental and emotional state a lot of credit. Honestly I was surprised I was still managing to put one hoof in front of the other without having some kind of breakdown. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact I hadn’t had a lot of downtime, not enough time to really sit, rest, and let the events of the past couple of days fully sink in. Deep down I was rather terrified of what might happen if I did stop for any real amount of time.

Luckily we had a Stable to explore, so I could put other thoughts out of my mind for now. Hooray for mental distraction!

The marker on Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck led us to a small cavern entrance not far from the canyon mouth. It was narrow, only wide enough at first for us to walk in two shoulder to shoulder, and it got rather dark within just the first dozen meters. The unicorn’s of the group, Fine Eye and Arcaidia, lit up their horns, while LIL-E produced a soft green glowing light from a panel on the side of her robotic chassis. Soon enough the cave opened up a bit, enough that we could get a little shoulder space, but the ceiling got uncomfortably close at the same time.

“LIL-E, you said that its possible this Stable will be closed,” I said, my voice sounding loud in the closed space even though I was trying to keep my voice low, “If it is, is there any way to open it?”

“Stable doors were designed to withstand anything short of a direct balefire bomb strike, and even those they might stand up to,” replied LIL-E as we came around a bend in the rocky cavern, “They’re not exactly the kind of thing you can…just…holy Luna’s gleaming clit…”

“Huh?” I asked, following the floating robot around the bend, and paused in my tracks as I saw what she saw. My companions filed in behind us, and were all silent for a moment, until B.B broke it.

“Well, guess the doors open…real open.”

“What could have done that?” breathed Sweet Pear fearfully as her foals huddled around her legs and her husband placed a comforting hoof on her shoulder while drawing his shotgun.

“Ooo, I can smell the blood and fear still lingering like balloons,” said Binge as she smiled wide, “Something bad happened here.”

“Buck me, do we really have to go in there?” asked Iron Wrought, and then sighed, “Right, dumb question.”

Our hesitation and comments were stemming from one simple fact. The massive thick metal circular door of Stable 104 was laying in two brutally cut halves, the metal wall from which it had once set battered and torn outward as if some great force had ripped it asunder. Even the rock walls around us looked cracked as if hit with some extreme force.

LIL-E slowly floated forward, light shining over one of the sundered halves of the door, “This should be borderline impossible. You’d need…a lot of force to damage a Stable door like this. A lot. Like, not physically possible to produce through conventional means.”

“It looks ta me like them doors got hit from somethin’ inside too,” said B.B, face going grim, “Like somethin’ came out.”

“Well, whatever came out is obviously long gone, right?” I said, trying to sound optimistic, “At least with the door open we can get in to find what we’re looking for.”

B.B nodded, taking a deep breath and adjusting the straps on her foreleg revolvers, “Guess there ain’t no point standin’ here shakin’ our hooves. Let’s git in there and git this thing done.”

“Estu di mervare ren bruhir, dol eriavae vi givir mas,” said Arcaidia, bringing out her starblaster and letting it float at her side as she stepped up, adjusting her dress and shining her horn’s light in a more focused beam into the dark gloom of the open hole in the Stable.

I took everypony else's queue and drew Gramzanber from its sheath at my side and took a step forward as well, “Right then, in we go.”

“Just a second,” said Fine Eye before we went in as he turned to his family, “Dear, let’s get the boys geared up.”

I quirked an eyebrow at that as I watched Sweet Pear nod to her husband and get into her saddlebags while Fine Eye lined his two colts side by side and began speaking to them.

“Okay boys, repeat to me the rules,” he said in a strict but somehow warm tone, one that sounded so similar to my mother’s own stern voice when she wanted to teach me something. Firm but, encouraging.

“First rule; stay within eyesight,” each colt said at the same time, having obviously gone through this routine before.

“Second rule; do not point our guns at anypony unless we intend to pull the trigger.”

Sweet Pear had gotten out two little sets of leather barding and was fixing them on the two colts as they stood still, continuing to list off rules in unison under the watchful gaze of their father.

“Third rule; no touching anything unless mom and dad says its okay.”

Out came a pair of small pistols, sleek little black things I recognized as probably being 9mm caliber. Hey, just because I absolutely sucked in using guns didn’t mean I was starting to pick up on a few things. I’d never be a true Wasteland gun nut who could point out the make, model, and specific modified components of a firearm at a glance, but I could at least tell a general type by now.

“Fourth rule; don’t get lost.”

The guns were given to the colts and Sweet Pear passed each of them a spare clip of ammo and a pair of little green plastic sticks.

“And the final rule?” Fine Eye asked, tone still firm.

“Fifth rule!” each colt said, “No matter what, if something bad happens, if mom or dad tell us to run, we run, and don’t look back!”

Fine Eye nodded, a small smile pulling at his lips, “Good boys.”

I was…honestly a little jealous. I could hear the pride in Fine Eye’s voice as his colts had gotten equipped and shown they knew the rules he’d taught them. I wondered how many times this family had gone through this routine, how many times they’d delved into dangerous places to salvage useful items to sell and keep living their lives together as a family. Children, mother…father…

I took a moment to mentally bludgeon my jealousy with big mental hammers and tossing it in closet. I replaced the feeling with a strict resolve to ensure this family stayed a family, whatever dangers Stable 104 held in store for us.

LIL-E insisted on going in first, and I followed close behind, B.B and Arcaidia beside me. Binge went in next, the dark green mare practically skipping and seeming to soak in the quiet, dead atmosphere like it was her element. Fine Eye and his family entered next, his wife pulling out a small lantern she attacked to her side and drawing a small block shaped weapon I recognized as a magical energy pistol that fired those thin red beams, like some of the Odessa ponies used. Her foals stayed close to her, both of them taking out small little sticks they shook a bit which made the sticks begin to glow. Iron Wrought brought up the rear, pistol in his mouth, his eyes flicking about as if expecting an attack at any moment.

The chamber immediately beyond the opening was wide and circular, with a domed ceiling. The entrance was in a lowered floor, but a ramp ahead of us led to the upper section of floor that encircled the room. Machinery, presumably originally meant to move the massive Stable doors, hung from the ceiling above us. Up the ramp were three doors, big heavy metal affairs with valve handles in their middle, though one of them was hanging partially open and with a section of its top half sheared off with the same smooth cut as the big main doors.

There were corpses here, well, more skeletons in any case. I wondered if the musty and dry smell was from them or just the way the Stable was supposed to smell. There were half a dozen of the skeletons, all wearing a dark blue and black armor with the word ‘SECURITY’ etched on the backs in white. From the fallen weapons and numerous shell casings littering the floor it was pretty clear a fight had occurred here…and not a one of the bodies was fully intact, with cleanly cut through limbs, or decapitated skulls, or their entire body neatly sliced in half. Dark red smears and streaks of old dry blood marked all surfaces like somepony had decided to decorate with buckets worth of the stuff. It was, overall, a less than encouraging sight.

“This isn’t right…” said LIL-E.

“I know, I’m thinkin’ Binge is right, somethin’ real bad happened here,” said B.B, eyeing one of the bodies with her nose wrinkling in disgust. Fine Eye and his family didn’t seem to mind it, which was a little disturbing to see, as they all, the two foals included, immediately went to work checking the bodies to see if their weapons and armors were salvageable, and if they had any other valuables on them. A part of me felt guilty, watching them loot the dead, but some practical part of me realized this was their job, how they sustained themselves in the Wasteland.

“That’s not what I mean,” LIL-E replied, floating around in a slow circle, light flickering left and right, “I mean this room, it’s not right.”

“How do you mean?” I asked, not following what she was getting at.

“Stable’s almost universally followed similar design pattern. Some variation was normal because some Stables needed to be built differently to accommodate whatever special experiments Stable-Tech had planned for them, but even then rooms still looked the same, hallways looked the same. It was a modular kind of design. This, though, this entryway, this doesn’t look like any Stable entrance I’ve seen before.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” asked Iron Wrought, spitting out his pistol briefly to speak. I noticed he’d attached a small tether to it that allowed it to hang around his neck so he could talk, then easily snatch it up again when he was done. Clever pony. It reminded me I still hadn’t found a solution to my issue with throwing Gramzanber and retrieving it. I might just have to find the material to fashion some additional spears just for throwing. Another item to add to the check list of ‘stuff to do when not busy avoiding horrible gruesome death’.

“No idea,” admitted LIL-E, “But it means I might not be able to rely on my previous knowledge of Stables in here, if the layout turns out to be serious different. Means there’s more chance of running into something…unexpected.”

“Fun,” I said, then got curious, “How do you know so much about Stables anyway?”

“Used to live in one,” LIL-E replied, a little fast, “Was a long time ago.”

“Did you use eyebots back then too?” I asked, “Were they part of whatever you did in your Stable?”

“Hm, oh, no, no this eyebot thing came way later.”

Suddenly one of the colts chimed in, Fresh Pear, “Eyebot? What’s that? I thought you were a sprite-bot. You look like a sprite-bot!”

“Fresh Pear, dear, it’s not polite to interrupt a conversation,” said Sweet Pear.

“Now, it’s alright,” said LIL-E “The kid is right, sort of. My model is based on the sprite-bots used by the Ministry of Moral that you still tend to see floating around. Eyebots, like this one, are newly designed by the NCR for…specific roles. If you’re familiar with sprite-bots you’ll notice I’m about twice the size? Don’t have the little mechanical wings? That’s because I’m using refined levitation talismans and have expanded capacity to carry modular weapons and additional features.”

“Are there a lot of eyebots in the NCR?” I asked, wondering if we’d run into more LIL-E’s if/when we ever got there.

“Not like this one,” LIL-E said, “Like I told you when we first met, my model was built specific for my use by a friend. The other eyebot series were limited in production, mostly as experimental attempts at creating a security and enforcement robot to keep the roads safe in places we lacked enough volunteers to patrol against Raiders and monsters. Turned out President Grimfeather’s didn’t think the eyebots were cost effective and had the lines discontinued.”

I felt a burning curiosity to keep asking questions but sensed my companions getting a little antsy to get started with the Stable, so I changed the subject.

“So if this was anything like a normal Stable, were would be the place we could get those disks copied?”

“Either the Overmare’s office would have a terminal for the purpose, or one of the maintenance workshops would probably have something similar. I’d go for the maintenance shop first, because the Pip-Buck technician’s stall is usually near there too, so we can maybe nab a Pip-Buck. I need to get to the Overmare’s office anyway to check this Stable’s files, but I’m in no rush.”

“That fine by us,” said Fine Eye, “We’re here for salvage. Where’d we find the most valuable stuff, like weapons or medical supplies?”

“Armory and med-lab respectively. Armory is probably locked and is usually on the third level. Med-lab would be on the top floor above the arboretum, not far from the Overmare’s office. Again though, I don’t know if that information is any good.”

“Just how big do Stable’s git to anyhow?” asked B.B, “It gonna take us awhile to search this place?”

“Why, thinking of splitting up to cover more ground?” I asked her jokingly, and laughed a bit as she gave me a small smirk.

“Course not ya dolt,” she said with a light laugh.

“Actually that might not be a bad idea,” said LIL-E, earning surprised looks from me and B.B, to which the robot just continued, “Normally splitting up is less than smart but with a crowd like ours, if something does go wrong and we’re attacked, there isn’t going to be a lot of room to maneuver. Too many narrow hallways or small rooms. We’d be tripping over each other, getting into each others fields of fire, that kind of thing. Also if something goes wrong it might help one group if the other isn’t caught in whatever ‘trouble’ happens and can come help, rather than all of us getting into trouble at once.”

She was being rather vague about what kind of trouble we could expect, but I mulled over her logic and found it made some sense. Tiny compact little corridors and small closed in rooms did not make for a lot of space for a crowd of ponies to fight in, and if something happened to trap us we’d all be screwed if we were together. On the other hoof, if we were split into two groups, and one group ran into trouble, the other group could potentially come and help.

“Okay, so let’s do this as two groups then. One works with Fine Eye’s family to get salvage, the other focuses on getting to maintenance and the Overmare’s office...whatever an Overmare is.”

“Leader of a Stable. Think the equivalent of a tribe chief,” said LIL-E.

“Why not just call her the Stable Chief then?”

“It’s just a different kind of terminology Longwalk.”

“But why ‘Overmare’? What is she over? And why a mare? Are there Overstallions?”

“Longwalk, seriously, not the time for this conversation.”

I still didn’t get it, but I relented, “Okay, okay, so now we just need to figure who is going with who?”

I felt a hoof wrap around my shoulder as Binge pulled me close, teeth flashing in a yellow smile, “I’m going with my very special little pony-project. If he got all hurt without me around I’d be oh so sad and disappointed! I mean can you imagine missing out on that kind of fun?”

I didn’t push her away but I did sort of shift uncomfortably. B.B made a small snorting sound, “I’m goin’ wit Longwalk too, no question there.”

Arcaidia seemed to grasp that there was a grouping going on here, looking over from where she’d been examining some of the machinery in the ceiling and trotted over to me, standing with head held high and giving me a simple nod. Her eyes lingered a little longer on Binge’s hoof around me and I think my unicorn friend actually gave me a small amused smile. Glad somepony was finding Binge’s attachment to me funny. Me? I was a little unnerved, yes, though so far she’d been fairly harmless.

“That’ll work,” said LIL-E “The ice totting filly there’s Pip-Buck should be something I can use my own radio signals to tap into and keep communications open between us, so I’ll go with Fine Eye’s family.”

“Guess that just leaves you then, Iron Wrought,” I said, looking at the green earth pony stallion, “Which group you want to go with?”

Iron Wrought gave one derisive look at Binge and said, “Think I’ll be fine going with the robot and the salvagers.”

That all settled we began our search of Stable 104, LIL-E and her group heading through the door on the far right that was marked with a sign that said ‘To Living Quarters/Administration’. Myself, B.B, Arcaidia, and Binge went through the partially slashed open door, its sign damaged but clearly reading ‘Maintenance/Terminal Access/La-‘. We didn’t know what the last word was, but the maintenance part was what we were after anyway. As we stepped through the threshold to go deeper into the shrouded darkness of the Stable I felt a small chill run along my back and crawl up the length of my neck, making my mane bristle.

“Long, ya alright?” asked B.B.

“Um…yeah, yeah I’m good. Just…let’s get this done quickly.”

I suddenly felt quite certain none of us wanted to be here, and that the sooner we got out, the better.

I was starting to realize I wasn’t all that fond of closed in spaces. I’d been fine in the Saddlespring Ruins, so it occurred to me this might be a recent development, but I just didn’t like having walls so close on either end of me, with a short ceiling making me feel like it could collapse down on my head at any second. Didn’t help this place had zero natural lighting and we were entirely reliant and Arcaidia’s horn and Pip-Buck light to keep our way illuminated. It felt like the shifting blackness of the shadows themselves were trying to close in around me and smother me, held only at bay by those small points of light.

As we explored forward we’d found several branching corridors beyond the doorway from the entrance, and all the while we’d found signs of a fight. More skeletons with sliced apart limbs and weapons, with the steel walls having large, long smooth gouges torn out of them. More bullet shells littered the floor, scattering before our hoofsteps with soft plinking sounds. A darker blast mark at one point indicated where a grenade had gone off. Binge kept pausing to poke at the skeletons, and before long the dark green mare had a small jingling collection of caps and spare bullets.

“Why not take the guns?” I found myself asking, curious.

“All broke, old, no good at all. Won’t make anything go pop and drop with little toys like these! But everypony loves bullets and caps, so keep a lot of them on you, and everypony loves you, see?”

“That’s ‘bout the most sense I think I’ve heard her make since she started taggin’ along wit us,” said B.B. She was constantly turning back and forth, floating in the air so she could keep her forelegs open to aim her revolvers up and down the corridor. She was clearly as jumpy as I felt. Binge didn’t seem nervous at all, and for that matter neither did Arcaidia, who was just curiously examining our environment. I wasn’t sure why, so far there hadn’t been much to see. Arcaidia was a curious sort though, and would pause at anything that seemed remotely out of the ordinary. One such oddity was a series of posters that spanned the bleak and otherwise dull corridors. Most of them depicted ponies in blue jumpsuits doing various mundane tasks with motivational slogans like ‘Work – It’s only for the rest of your life’ and ‘Teamwork – When in doubt, get more ponies’. There were also a lot of posters that depicted a particular unicorn, an aged violet coated mare with a darker purple mane, straight combed with a streak of color through it, almost but not quite pink. She was usually depicted wearing a lab coat or suit, and her posters often involved slogans like “Read Books!” or “Learning is Fun!” or “Friendship is Science!”.

“Someponies were fans o’ the Ministry of Arcane Science,” commented B.B, eyeing one such poster that showed the violet mare holding up multiple beakers of glowing multi-colored liquids, seemingly mixing them at random, with the slogan “Never be afraid to experiment!”

“That’s the one that…uh…” I tried to recall, “Did all the magicy and sciency stuff, right?”

“…Yes, Longwalk, magicy and sciency…anyway, seems like these Stable folk had a thing fer that Ministry. Not seeing posters for any other one ‘round here.”

I agreed, it did seem odd, especially considering if I was remembering right LIL-E had told me this region saw very little presence from Equestria’s Ministries. I shrugged it off though. At the moment it didn’t seem to relate to our objective here.

Though we peeked down the side corridors we kept to the main hallway, and it wasn’t long before we reached a door that lead to a set of switch back stairs heading down. Shadows flickered and danced down the stairwell as Arcaidia’s horn light shone down it. It was enough to see the collapsed rubble blocking the way. We doubled back and tried one of the side corridors. This led to a door that was sealed shut, but a little application of brute force courtesy of Gramzanber’s unnaturally sharp edge and we managed to cut through the bolts keeping it locked which let Arcaidia levitate it open.

Inside was a workroom, or what I could only assume was one from all the tables littered with machinery I didn’t recognize but certainly looked like it was meant to build things. There were certainly enough parts laying around for the purpose.

“Thinks this is where they made spare parts fer the Stable,” B.B said, flying over to one of the tables and picking poking at a plug shaped object, “Like spare light-bulbs an’ stuff like that.”

“Not what we’re looking for then?” I asked.

“Not unless ya feel a mighty powerful need ta learn how ta make spare piping.”

The far side of the workroom was fashioned into a rough barricade of overturned tables and piled crates. The barricade had been torn apart, and while there weren’t any skeletons here there were old black stains covering the ground here in wide smears.

“More ponies went dancing off with death here,” said Binge, “Hmm, why are we always late for the fun parties?”

Arcaidia was toying with one of the machines on the table, poking at it with a hoof and looking disappointed when the switch she flipped didn’t do anything. With a huff she gave me a look as if I could make the offending machine work, to which I just gave her a shrug. I grew up throwing sharp sticks at lizards, technically proficient I was not.

“Hey Arcaidia, mind comin’ over here a sec?” asked B.B as she floated around the barricade, pointing at something. We all gathered to see B.B was hoofing a square disk with a circular reel on it that looked similar, if more bulky, to the data discs with Dr. Lemon Slice’s research on it.

“What’s this?”

“Audio recorder. Copies an’ stores sounds. Arcaidia can play it wit her Pip-Buck.”

“What’s it doing here in the first place?” I asked.

“Some ponies really, really like to talk,” said Binge, “They like to talk so much that even with blood in their throats and their bodies going cold they’ll still just chitty-chat away. They love to do it with these little guys that’ll talk for them forever and ever so anypony can hear their voices even after they’ve long since gone to sleep.”

“Morbid, but makes sense,” I said, and looked to Arcaidia, pointed at the disk, “Think you can get your Pip-Buck to play it.”

I was curious, I won’t lie. While it seemed a little creepy listening to the voice of a long dead pony, I figured that whatever the pony said to this disk thing it must have been important to do it even facing whatever horrible event must have happened here. Seemed right to try and give that pony’s voice a chance to speak, one last time.

Arcaidia connected the disk to her Pip-Buck and flipped a few knobs. In moments a mare’s voice, raspy, tired sounding, began to speak with a faint scratchy quality to it that I could only assume was because it was a recorded set of sounds.

”Time Sheet here, I guess. Day…buck if I know anymore. Eight? Nine? I…uh, well I’m recording this because Slick Wrench says it might do me some good. Me and him are the only ones left, since Brass Bolt put a bullet in his brain. Guess he didn’t want to die the slow, starving way. Can’t say I blame him, but I just can’t bring myself to put the barrel to my head. I keep thinking if I do that, if I pull that trigger…what if they come back? What if I’d just held out one more day? Maybe somepony would come through, cutting through that damned sealed door and get us out of here. Can’t give up hope, right? Heh…hahah, listen to me, trying to convince myself we’re not screwed straight up our tail holes. Shit…shit it pisses me off so much. Those Goddesses damned, Luna cursed eggheads down below just had to keep digging, didn’t they? Don’t know what they found, but damned if it hasn’t done a number on us. Blew out the primary power, then the secondary generators went. Hence why our damned door won’t open! Heard the gunfire after, and the screams. When both of those stopped, and nopony came cutting through the door, I’m left assuming everypony else died. Only hope me and Slick Wrench have left is that, if the doors got left open, somepony will wander in. Might be those pegasi will come back…”

There was a scratching sound on the recording, like something shuffling along metal. Time Sheet’s voice came back, suddenly fearful.

”Buck, those noises again. Slick, Slick wake up.”

“Hm, ummm, what…? What is it TS?”

“I’m hearing those noises again in the ducts. I’m telling you there’s something in there.”

“Radroach TS, just a radroach. Hope it stops scuttling in there and comes in here. I’d even go for eating radroach meat now…we only got about another two days of food left…”

“Buck, stop reminding me. Lucky this shit all went down during our lunch break, but rationing out a few lunches to last over a week…I’m starving. I don’t want to die like this dammit!”

“TS…just…just chill. Maybe, maybe we can try the vents again?”

“Nearly lost your leg in there last time. They’re too narrow for us to fit Slick.”

“That was at the start. We’re kinda skinnier now. Maybe we can make it.”

“…Shit, it’s worth a shot. Let’s do it. C’mon. Oh, wait, gotta shut this thing off-“

The recording stopped and we were left looking at each other. Our eyes went up to the ceiling and I saw an open grate that I hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t large and it was hard to imagine a pony fitting in there. I certainly wouldn’t. But those two ponies had clearly tried. It also hadn’t apparently gone well for them, if the dry blood on the grate was any indication.

“Cheerful place,” said B.B, “I ain’t so keen on hangin’ ‘round longer than we gotta.”

“Tell me about it,” I said as I mulled over what we’d heard on the recording. It sounded like somepony had found something? Eggheads? What did that mean? I mentally had the picture of a pony with an egg shaped head. I very, very quickly shook my head of that disturbing image. Time Sheet had mentioned they were digging for something? Why? What would be the point? Then that mention of pegasi…what had Time Sheet meant by that? Too many questions. Always more questions.

Since this room seemed a dead end we went back to the main corridor and found another side hallway to explore. After hearing the recording all of us were a little more tense, even Binge, who’d drawn out one of her knives and was playing with it. Nopony was speaking, so of course it made all of us jump when LIL-E’s voice suddenly spoke from Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck. Well, okay, I jumped, I couldn’t confirm if anypony else did. My ego just wanted to think everypony else did. Stop judging me!

“Hey everypony, you all okay?” LIL-E’s voice crackled out of Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck.

Arcaidia gave her Pip-Buck a look, then sort of waggled it at me while pressing a button. I lowered my head to the Pip-Buck and said, a little unsure of myself because I was basically talking to Arcaidia’s leg, which in my brain pony told me looked silly, “Uh, yeah, we’re okay here. What’s up?”

“Just wanted to do a status check, and test out to make sure my com system could reach that Pip-Buck, in case there was something that might interfere with it. My scanners are…acting up. I’m getting a lot of sensor ghosts. How’s your group’s progress?”

“Not much,” I said, frowning. Sensor ghosts? Did she mean…nah, probably just a turn of phrase? Like she was sensing things that weren’t there? I hoped so. Didn’t need to add spirits of the dead to my list of things to deal with in the Wasteland.

“We found some stairs, but they were blocked. Got into a machine shop, but there wasn’t anything there we could use, though we found a recording that…well it was interesting. Freaky, actually. Suggested somepony found something bad, dug it up or something. Right now we’re checking a different hallway, trying to find another way down.”

“Wish I could help you out with finding one, but the more we explore this place the less its layout looks like a Stable. We’re in the medical lab now, but it was an entire floor lower than it should have been, and I’m not seeing anything that looks like an Overmare’s office from here. It’s weird, found a few more skeletons of security ponies closer to the entrance, but haven’t seen any bodies of normal Stable ponies. There’s a big set of elevators across from us we’re going to check out next, but this place doesn’t have any power, so we might need to fix the generators before we can get much further. At least the medical lab here is pretty well stocked. We’re not going to be hurting for healing potions, once we link back up with you.”

“First good news I’ve had in awhile,” I said, smiling at the thought of having a decent stock of healing supplies for once, “You and everypony else be careful, and we’ll meet up soon. We’re going to keep trying to find a way down to the next level. Oh, and LIL-E, I just realized, even if we find the right machines to copy the disks I don’t know if anypony with me knows how to use them.”

“Don’t worry about that, I can walk you through it over the radio. You all be careful too. Sensor ghosts aside my instincts are telling me we’re not alone in here.”

“…Are you trying to sound ominous on purpose?”

“Maaaybe.”

I found myself wanting to bop the pony controlling LIL-E over the head, but I mostly just appreciated that LIL-E was willing to joke. She probably heard the tension in my voice and was trying to help break it. Granted she could’ve done it in a way that didn’t make me want to look at every flickering shadow like it was about to come to life and attack me, but I imagined her heart was in the right place.

The hallway turned to the left up ahead and as we rounded the corner we all paused. There were stairs before us, only these ones went up rather than down. Seemed counterintuitive for a Stable to have a floor above its entry level, but even as I had that thought Arcaidia strode forward. She had her silver eyes locked on strange circle shaped protrusions mounted in the wall on either side of the stairway entrance, like tiny nodes with red glass lenses. Arcaidia examined them, illuminating one with her magic and started to fiddle with it, using levitation to try and pull one of the node’s apart.

“Arcaidia I ain’t sure ya oughta be fiddlin’ wit that,” B.B began to say cautiously.

Arcaidia ignored the pegasus mare and got a look of heavy concentration on her face as she pulled one of the node’s out of the wall. I noticed all sorts of small white fibers connecting the node to its fixture in the side of the stairs. Arcaidia began to frown as she looked closely at these fibers, then at the area where they connected to the node, making a little ‘cluck’ sound with her tongue.

Binge was shuffling on her hooves, one of them bouncing her knife up and down, “Getting bored now. Why don’t the ghosties come out to play? They’re watching us, but they’re acting all shy.”

I glanced back at her. Her dark green coat seemed to fade into the background blackness like a wavering shroud, only her shining eyes clearly visible in the darkness along with the flashing metal of her knife as it bounced up and down on one hoof.

“We’re being…watched?” I asked, trying to not sound as suddenly ice cold nervous as I felt.

“Uh-huh!” Binge said, “In the walls, in the ceiling, in the floor, all eyes are on us, but its like they’re holding their breath, waiting, waiting, waiting. Soooo boring.”

“Waiting for what?”

“Oh don’t pay her any mind Long,” said B.B, “She’s just talkin’ like that ta git our tails in a’ bunch ‘cause she ain’t got nothin’ ta stab.”

“Neither do you, and that makes me kind sad. Why doesn’t the bird of prey indulge in her kills?” Binge asked, wide smile like a shark’s grinning up at B.B, “Must be getting awful hard, playing at being a sparrow, when all you want is some fresh, bloody meat.”

I gave Binge an utterly quizzical look, and then switched over to looking at B.B as the pegasus gave a small, strangled sound like she was about to say something and just barely managed to swallow it back. B.B was looking at Binge with eyes slightly wide, lips pressed tightly shut, and oddly her tail swished over to cover her cutie mark. Right, the cutie mark, the one with the red petal rose being fed by a pool of blood. I’d never gotten around to asking her about it, though I wasn’t too sure I wanted to. It seemed to make B.B uncomfortable, and honestly I was willing to let the matter drop. After all it wasn’t like my companions pressed me about my blank flank, so I ought to be willing to return the favor and not pester them about personal life details like where they got their cutie marks…not matter how odd they were.

“There ain’t nothin’ I’m pretendin’ ta be, an’ you just drop that subject right now missy, or I’m gonna forget real quick like that you ain’t nothin’ but a Raider Longwalk decided ta keep breathin’.”

Binge just kept smiling, but stopped bouncing her knife and tucked it away, where I couldn’t say, she was still in the rim of the light from Arcaidia’s horn, bathed in black.

“Okie Dokie Lokie,” she said, and went silent, but that smile never left her face.

With, well, that having just happened I was just as happy to see Arcaidia give up on fiddling with the device in the wall, which she’d thoroughly taken apart, and looked to be about to walk right on up the stairs.

“Hey Arcaidia wait up-“ I started to say when there was a sparking sound from the wall and I saw an arc of blue electrical magic energy surging from the taken part node and cascading to the other ones along the wall. The lenses all began to glow and I felt my hairs raise, instinct telling me to act and that I only had a second to do it.

I was rushing forward, throwing myself at Arcaidia. Arcaidia was only just starting to raise her head and look back, realizing something was wrong. I saw a sheet of blue energy snapping out from the nodes along the wall, starting to form a barrier between the entryway to the stairs, a barrier that would cut right through Arcaidia’s mid section…if I wasn’t barreling into her with a flying tackle.

Arcaidia wasn’t heavy, so pushing her aside…I probably used more force than I needed to, in my panic. She went sprawling up the stairs just as I landed inside the closing barrier. The heated blue sheet of energy slice off some strands of my tail, which was only just starting to grow back some length from when I’d cut it down in the Ruins. I was breathing hard and got to my hooves just as Arcaidia did, the unicorn looking at me with shock, maybe even a little anger, until she saw the barrier that’d almost caught her and she blinked, looking a tad embarrassed and nodding her head to me in thanks.

“Estu…mi vili arivae, Longwalk.”

“Danku,” I said back to her, earning a small laugh from her. I wondered if I got the word right, I was pretty sure ‘danku’ was meant to be ‘you’re welcome’.

B.B and Binge were on the other side of the field of energy that had cut us off and I could hear B.B pretty clearly as she said, “Ya alright over there you two!? How’d this little bugger suddenly switch itself on? Thought this place was outta power?”

I saw B.B as an indistinct form across the flickering field of blue. It wasn’t entirely intact, one of the nodes projecting it having been taken apart by Arcaidia, but it was still solid enough that I didn’t think I could just push past it. I tapped it experimentally with Gramzanber’s tip and the entire thing sparked and sent a jolt into me, throwing me back to lay at Arcaidia’s hooves. I blinked up at her, coughing a bit.

“I think we should avoid touching the glowing blue barrier thingy. It might hurt,” I said, wondering if that was smoke rising up from my now slightly frizzled mane.

Arcaidia sighed, shaking her head, and called out, “B.B, estu ti matra es ovilri. Retir…avi…wait. Stay?”

“Not a’ lot o’ choice on that count, assumin’ I don’t feel much like wanderin’ ‘round this place wit just Binge at my back,” replied the pegasus mare with some exasperation, “Longwalk okay?”

“Fine. Touched the barrier. Wasn’t smart of me, but what else is new?” I said, slowly getting back to my hooves, shaking myself, “You and Binge just sit tight, we’ll get a hold of LIL-E’s group and let them know what’s going on. Might be able to meet up with them.”

“What ‘bout you and Arcaidia then? Wait, Long, don’t ya tell me yer just goin’ ta keep explorin’ ahead, just you two!? This place is getting’ dangerous. Let’s just sit tight until LIL-E an’ the others show up, an’ we can figure how to disable this field.”

“Noooooot a goooood ideeaaa,” cooed Binge, “They’re moving now.”

“Movin’? Whose movin’? Speak straight ya blasted mare!” shouted B.B

“The Stable ponies silly. They’re scuttling around excited, can’t you hear them? This is what they were waiting for, the party ponies to get all broken up in the fun house. Now they want to play with us,” I couldn’t be sure past the blue field, my companion’s forms beyond it a sort of off-blue blur, but I think Binge had gotten her knife back out, “Now Longwalk you go on and play with little Arcy! Have fun you kids! Big Sis’ Binge and B.B will go find the other living ponies before all the dead ponies do.”

I was rather worried at this point. I wasn’t hearing anything like Binge seemed to, and it occurred to me she might just be trying to mess with our heads for her own amusement, but I wasn’t about to take the chance of ignoring her. I was giving the walls, and especially the ceiling, very wary looks, eyes lingering on each vent cover. I remembered all the blood in the workshop, the dried red on the vent cover Time Sheet and Slick Wrench had apparently made their last bid for survival to get through. Something had to have caused all that blood to be spilled, and it didn’t seem like it was the same thing that had escaped the Stable by slicing those huge balefire bomb resistant doors in half.

“Longwalk,” B.B said, “This mare, she’s nuckin’ futz.”

“I’m noticing,” I said dryly. Meanwhile B.B turned her attention to Binge.

“Now look here, Arcaidia’s our only light source an’ I ain’t keen on walkin’ ‘round in the dark wit no idea where I’m goin’!”

“Not to worry pretty pegasus, Big Sis Binge is real good with the darkness, we’re old palsie walsies!” Binge punctuated her words with a face splitting grin and a squeaking ‘squee’ sound that I couldn’t even fathom how she made it.

B.B blinked at the mare grinning at her with a look of utter non-confidence.

“Yeah, that’s not comfortin’. It’s the opposite of that.”

“If I promise to play soft and no touchies will you feel better? You can smell if I’m gonna be a naughty nelly, riiiiight?”

“How do ya…? Ugh fine, I’ll go. Longwalk, me an’ her will go hook up wit LIL-E an’ the others. Just, just don’t do nothin’ crazy ‘till we can all link back up, alright?”

“Will do. Be safe,” I said and motioned Arcaidia over, gesturing for her to let me see her Pip-Buck. It took me a little time fiddling with the buttons before I figured out how to access the radio and tab over to the broadcast feature. The design was intuitive enough that even my lack of technical knowledge was little barrier to operating it. Fortunately my tendency to jinx machinery wasn’t kicking in yet, unless you counted the barrier activating like that.

“Uh, LIL-E? You there?”

LIL-E’s response took a moment, “Right there Longwalk. Something happen on your guy’s end too? This place is starting to act up.”

I frowned, answering “Yes, me and Arcaidia got separated from B.B and Binge by some energy barrier that just activated out of nowhere. Binge is saying something about this place having dead ponies in it watching us and moving, and she and B.B are going to be heading down the path you all went to try and catch up to you. Think you might be able to disable this barrier?”

“Not exactly equipped for it but I could try. We’ve been having doors trying to close on us too, but we’ve managed to avoid getting separated. I thought this place lacked power, but it seems like it’s running off of some tertiary generator that’s routing power to specific places. I’m pretty sure now somepony’s here, trying to break us up.”

I found myself sighing, “Where are you now?”

“We’re across from the medical lab, down a flight of stairs that leads to what looks like living quarters. Fine Eye’s family are just sort of scavenging around, and Iron Wrought’s guarding the stairs. I’ll let him know to keep his eye out for B.B and Binge. What are you and Arcaidia going to do?”

“We’re moving forward, see what we can find. I won’t let us go too far though, in case you manage to get the barrier down. Still getting those sensor ghost things?”

A pause, then “Yes. More of them too, but still not actually seeing anything.”

Buck it all I was not liking this. If something was going to attack us I wished it would just get it over with and come on already. All this creeping around, being there but not, making doors and barriers close to keep me and my friends separate, it was starting to drive me up a wall.

“Right, well, just keep your eye…sensor…things, peeled,” I said, then turned back to the barrier, “Okay, LIL-E knows you’re coming. They’re across from the medical lab, so find that, you can find them. Iron Wrought should be watching out for you. Be careful, you two.”

“Same ta you Long,” said B.B.

“The dark, it’ll look back at you my little bucky, so poke it hard in the eye when it does!” said Binge merrily.

After I watched the two’s blurred shapes vanish beyond the barrier I turned back to Arcaidia with a heavy sigh, worry for my friends making my mind feel heavy, but I felt immediately better, seeing Arcaidia giving me an encouraging nod.

“Well, looks like it’s just us again for now.”

The stairs were switchbacks just like the ones we’d seen going down earlier. They took us up to a single door that I gave a suspicious look as it opened for us easily upon turning the valve. LIL-E said they’d had doors closing on them, and I didn’t want to take chances, so I kept Gramzanber ready to prop the door open as Arcaidia stepped through first, followed by me.

The hallway beyond was short and curved, a window along the right side showing a dark room beyond. Me and Arcaidia walked around this bending hallway, as I peered into the window. There was a crack at one point, and a smear of something darker than the normal shadows pasted across the glass. You know, because that was comforting.

The end of the hallway had two doors to be seen, one on the actual hallway, another leading into the dark room. Markings on the doors were painted in sterile white and I read the one on the door to the dark room aloud, sounding out the unfamiliar words, “Arti…artifact…la..bra…laboratory? Huh, so what do you think Arcaidia, door number one, or door number two?”

As I gestured at either door with a hoof Arcaidia breathed a small chuckle as she brushed past me and tapped one of her own hooves on the door marked as the ‘Artifact laboratory’.

“Vi es aria di vorae, nes?”

We tested the door, finding it locked, but I made use of my universal lockpick (ie Gramzanber) to slowly cut away the door’s locking mechanism. Then it was a simple enough matter to pry the door open, Arcaidia shining her horn’s light into the gloom. I looked about warily as we entered, eyes darting back and forth for any signs of movement or hidden danger.

The room was perfectly circular and was filled with tables and shelves lined with apparatus’, gizmos, and other assorted random descriptions of machinery of so many different sizes and shapes I was having trouble even starting to guess their purpose. One wall had a bank of terminals though set up along a series of desks, many of which were piled with scattered papers and books. In fact the entire room was a bit of a mess, more papers and random debris like little writing pencils and broken glass vials littering the floor. There were blood smears as well, dark like the one on the window. It was scattered in random splotches across the tables and floor, though at one corner table there was a much larger pool that had been smeared in a way that made it look as if something had been dragged through it. All the blood was old, dry, and practically black. The room had the same dead dryness to its air that was prevalent through the rest of the Stable.

Arcaidia didn’t seem to notice, or if she did she didn’t mind, the blood. She cantered into the room with her horn glowing brighter, bathing the room in lighter shades of pale blue light. She went right up to the first table and began excitedly examining one of the objects on it, a square container of glass that contained a fragment of metal in it that shone with hexagonal patterns under the glow of Arcaidia’s light.

“Ava! Esri vi tivilae mi Veruni! Estu dol carae shir?” her words carried a happy chiming tone to them that matched her smile. Whatever this stuff was, she sure seemed fired up upon seeing it.

She swung right over to another object, practically bouncing on her hooves. This was a small metal disk being suspended in the air by a grasping apparatus that looked like a scaled down metal radscorpion claw. Arcaidia picked this item up with her levitating magic, the metal disk shrouded in blue as it was pulled from the metal arm’s grasp and floated before Arcaidia as she examined it closely.

“Glad you’re finding some neat things to look at, but we need to focus on either finding a way to shut that barrier down or moving forward,” I said as I walked past the center tables in the room, gingerly stepping over shattered glass, and began to make my way to the other side of the room where the terminals on the desks were.

I hadn’t seen another door out of here besides the one we’d entered, so I thought I’d see if my luck with machines felt like turning around at all and try my hoof at one of the terminals. It’d help take my mind of the creeping sensation in my neck that the shadows were watching us. I was as alert as ever, Binge’s strange words about dead Stable ponies fresh in my mind. That alertness, however, just reminded me of how limited my vision was with only Arcaidia’s light to see by, and how easily anything could be lurking in those softly shifting dark places in the room without me being able to tell the difference between a threat and a shadow.

It had to be much worse for B.B, with no light source at all. But then again, didn’t she have her amazingly keen scent to work with? I had yet to ask her about that. Revealing that she could even do it the first time had made her pretty nervous, and I had promised not to press her for answers on it. Didn’t stop my curiosity, though. I still worried about her and Binge. About her being alone with Binge.

If you can’t get yourself to trust her then you shouldn’t have let her join you in the first place. That or done what any sensible pony would have in that situation and finished the Raiders off.

I firmly ignored that frosty, practical voice in my head.

The first terminal I checked was black and dead, no response at all as I fiddled about typing with one hoof. How had B.B pulled this off? I kept hitting multiple keys and was having trouble angling my hoof to just strike on button at a time. Huffing to myself I moved to the next terminal, which turned out to be dead as well. I was about to give it up and see if I couldn’t pry Arcaidia away from fiddling with the random items on the table when I heard a buzzing sound and looked to my left. The terminal on the far desk had just turned on, and was making a few clicking and buzzing sounds.

“Right…because that’s not creepy,” I said to myself.

“Avra?” Arcaidia looked up from where she’d been poking a hoof at a big metal cylinder laying across one of the tables. I had no idea what she’d done with the little metal disk, but she looked quite pleased with herself, even as she looked at my curiously.

“Oh, nothing, just machines turning on at random. I’m going to go touch it and hope it doesn’t explode. Wish me luck.”

Arcaidia might not have understood the words but she got the tone and rolled her silver eyes at me, “Estu di wavari, ren solva.”

I waved back at her as I cantered over to the terminal, “If it blows up on me I’ll completely accept you saying ‘I told you so’ or whatever your language equivalent is.”

The terminal’s screen was blank save for a single blinking green square. A little disappointed I sat myself at the stool in front of the desk, setting Gramzanber to lean against the desk after brushing the stool off of old dust. I raised a hoof to the keys, finding it awkward having to angle my hoof just right to poke the keys I wanted…though at this point I had no idea what to type. I just tried hitting one of the bigger keys, one that said ‘enter’, though enter what I couldn’t fathom. If I got magically sucked into this thing I was going to be very displeased.

*click*

Well, no getting zapped into magical terminal space and it didn’t explode either, so things were going well so far. Indeed the blinking green square had vanished and was replaced by a set of scrawling text. Reading it over it looked like a menu page giving me a series of options, but any one I tapped the arrow keys towards and tried clicking the enter button on just gave me the same message of ‘SYS.ERROR FILES UNAVAILABLE’, until I got to the ‘Messages’ section. Then I got a list of options headed under a series of numbers the purpose of which I had no idea, but looking it over…it seemed fairly systematic. It took me a minute or two of picking at my rather slow mind to realize the pattern of numbers was an ascending order, with lower numbers at the bottom of the page, and higher numbers at the top.

Not that I had any idea what ‘dates’ where back then, but even for an uneducated tribal I gathered that the messages were being numbered from oldest to newest.

I clicked on one of the older ones, just to get an idea of whose terminal this was.

FRW: Hey Misty Glasses

Sorry to drop this on you at the last second but do you mind switching shifts with me tomorrow? The maintenance mare I was telling you about last week finally said yes to lunch but her only day off is tomorrow! Please sis do me this solid, pleeeease!? You know your bro’s a pony of his word, so you help me out here I’ll totally take a double shift from you down the road, like next week, month, whatever. Anytime Director Twinkle’s on your flank and you need a break, you can count on me. Just please do me this one favor. I cannot emphasis enough how hot this Time Sheet is. I mean, daaaaamn, and she actually agreed to do lunch. With me! This. Is. Monumental. So, please, favor, yes, pay you back.

-Your awesome bro, Figure Eight

Okay, not exactly a bountiful hunting ground in terms of useful information, though I found it oddly comforting to read something so mundane, simple and…pleasantly normal, given the circumstances. But then, given the current state of the Stable I had to suppress a rising depression. I wondered if Figure Four and Time Sheet had a good lunch that day, assuming Misty Glasses agreed to switch shifts with her brother. Heh, another family connection I never really got a chance to understand; never had a sister. I clicked on a newer message.

Subject: Fragment Analysis 12 Thoughts

I agree that the object in question follows a similar design pattern to, say, or own solid state matrix storage materials, but so far we’ve lacked any way to confirm that. The reactions to magical fields suggest a built in matrix of its own, but every attempt to interface any of our own arcane matrices has resulted in that matrix collapsing almost immediately. Blue Wine is still in a comma from her attempt to interface herself. Can’t believe Director Twinkle ordered that. In any case I had an idea, given your analysis. You said you noted an increased amount of activity in Fragment 12 when it was in the same lab as the Specimen, during the whole transfer fiasco when our new lab was built. What if we tried taking a piece of the Specimen and did a few tests to see if we can get it to interact with Fragment 12? I’m pretty sure you spin the idea the right way Twinkle will go for it. She’s hot to please our “guests” from outside and to make the higher ups in Center happy. Heard about the inspection that happened in Stable 105? Not exactly stuff to boost one’s confidence. Anyway, get back to me soon as you can, I want to start getting some results from this research before Twinkle blows a gasket and makes our lives harder than they need to be. Seriously, why put such a stress ball in charge of a Stable?

-Clear Thinking

I leaned forward on the rather uncomfortable and cold metal stool, peering over the message again. I knew time was a factor so I couldn’t spend too much time messing around with these messages, but my curiosity was getting scratched in just the right way to make me want to keep searching. I glanced once over my shoulder just to make sure Arcaidia hadn’t wandered off. She’d removed that metal cylinder she’d been looking at from the table and had set it on the floor. It was about half the size of a proper sized pony, with an indent along one side that looked like a hatch or door where the cylinder was meant to open, with a small control panel near the top with a number of little buttons. Arcaidia was ignoring the buttons and instead was casually sending a small jet of ice along the seams of the cylinder. Ancestors, and she wanted to chide me for messing with terminal? She was the one screwing around with random cylinder things.

“Hey Arcaidia,” I called out, pausing only long enough to make sure I’d gotten her attention, “What’s got you so curious about those… whatever those are?”

I sort of waggled my hoof at the cylinder, then at the other assorted items strewn over the laboratory tables, then shrugged my shoulders at her while putting on a quizzical look.

She blinked at me, then strangely enough got an embarrassed look on her face, rubbing a hoof in circles on the floor as she said in a tone that sounded defensive to me, “E-Esru… tu vod dol Veruni mundri. Esru vi shir vira tas.”

She raised her Pip-Buck and ejected the metal disc I’d seen her insert in it to perform that map revealing spell of hers. She wreathed it in the soft blue glow of her magic and floated it over her head. Then she floated out the little circular disk I’d seen her take from the table. Other than slight differences in size and shape I noticed both discs had an identical, slightly silver sheen to them, and were both roughly as thin as each other.

My eyes widened slightly with realization.

“Those are the same kind of item. These Stable ponies were studying stuff that’s from… wherever you’re from!”

Word barrier or not my expression and tone clearly got across that I understood and Arcaidia put away the small silvery discs in her saddlebag, giving me a brief nod before she gestured her hoof at the cylinder before her and looked at me expectantly.

I waved to her in ascent, “Go ahead then, if you think you’ll find something useful. Not like I’m not doing the same thing over here. Just keep alert, in case of…” I gestured at all of the old blood splatter and pointed a hoof at my eyes. Her lips quirked in a small cocky smile as she floated her starblaster in front of her. She’d be alert, and probably more ready than me for danger.

Satisfied I returned my attention to the terminal and clicked on the next message.

*click*

I paused. Was that click me? I clicked another key.

*click*

Okay, must have been me. I went back to reading the message, the most recent one left in the system.

Subject: none

MG, there’s no time. Get your brother and meet at the Terminal Station tonight, 0200. They’re going to try it, the bastards. They’re coming for the Specimen. It’s going to be Stable 105 all over again and Center’s not going to do shit about it! All the research staff are going to be targeted, even their families. When the train gets to 106 my friend will meet you there and get you to the surface. I know it’s bad up there, but it’s got to be better than what those pegasi will do to you. And no, don’t tell anypony else. I know you got friends in those labs, but I can’t get anypony else out of there but you and FE. Wish I could do more. Wish I could come with you. It’d look to suspicious. Thank you, MG, for giving somepony like me the time of day, even if it was just a short-term thing. Stay safe.

-SW

More mention of this ‘Specimen’, whatever that was supposed to be. I wished there was some way for me to copy these messages down, because I did not feel like a smart enough pony to pick out much of anything useful from this. LIL-E or B.B or Iron Wrought, they could probably point out all manner of useful clues from this, but me, I just found myself scratching my mane with a hoof in confusion as I tried to figure out what any of that meant. What happened in Stable 105? Wait, weren’t Stables all isolated from each other anyway? And what was Center, or the pegasi being mentioned here? My brain pony was busy having a little seizure in a corner of my mind from question overload. I’d just have to remember all this as best I could and ask-

*click*

…

*click*

… Oh… that wasn’t me this time.

I slowly bent my head over and wrapped my mouth around Gramzanber.

*click*

Glancing behind me I noticed Arcaidia’s ears were twitching and her eyes were scanning around. Good, she’d heard it too. She caught me look and we shared a nod.

*click*

Where was it coming from? The sound wasn’t loud enough to have a distinct direction of source. Not yet. It was a light, scratching tap, like how the tip of my spear had sounded when laying against the cold metal floor. Every time the sound filled the silent room it felt like it was sticking a pin lightly across the base of my neck. I backed away from the terminal and started walking slowly towards Arcaidia, winding around the tables towards her. Then something plinked off my head, landing on the ground with a cold and tiny metallic ping.

I glanced down, which was stupid of me, but it was reflex. The thing on the ground was barely discernible in Arcaidia’s pale horn light, but it looked like a metal spoke, kind of like the screws I’d…seen…holding up vent grates.

I looked up in time for another screw to bounce off my forehead and to see the grate above me swing down, and something drop out of it right onto my face. Something with bristly coarse fur, far too many small, scratching legs, and emitted a high keening shriek.

For the sake of my stallion’s pride I’d like to think my own shriek was only a few octaves lower pitched than that of the creature’s, but honestly I wouldn’t take that bet. My immediate reaction to this many legged, scratching screeching thing landing on my face was to start bucking and whipping my head about like I was on fire. In fact I’m fairly certain I might’ve reacted with greater calm and dignity if I had been lit on fire instead.

The thing on my face managed to maintain its grip for a second, but my wild head whipping managed to dislodge it with only a few small cuts along my muzzle from its sharp pointy legs. I caught a faint view of a many legged, pink pastel…thing fly into the darkness and heard it land lightly, then bloody well skitter into the deeper darkness of the laboratory before I could get a proper look.

“Longwalk! Estu vi goval!?”

Arcaidia was at my side in an instant, the unicorn filly swinging her starblaster towards the area where I’d tossed the… whatever it was, and lighting the area brighter with her horn. I crinkled my nose and muzzle, licking at one of the scratches with my tongue. Not deep. I was mostly just scared shitless. What was it!? It. Had. Way. Too. Many. Legs!

We heard a light skittering to our left and both turned instantly in that direction. Just the shadow painted scenery of the blood specked laboratory greeted us, a single half broken beaker of class lazily rolling across the ground from where something bumped it. I was breathing fast past my teeth tightly clenching Gramzanber. I kept wanting to shift my hooves, not wanting to stand still. Arcaidia looked much calmer than I felt, cold silver eyes scanning the darkness around us as her horn seemed to focus the light coming from it, shining it about in a concentrated but bright pool of pale blue.

I felt something brush my tail and yelped, swinging about and smashing Gramzanber into…the table I’d bumped into, cutting a huge gouged in the metal lab table. Arcaidia gave me a look, which I returned sheepishly as I pulled my spear out of the offending table. Stupid table.

Taking a calming breath I turned around. And came face to face with the creature.

It was on top of another lab table opposite the one I’d just nearly chopped in half, looking right at me with its…eight…eyes…

Fillies, gentlecolts, I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I’ve never seen a spider before, though I’d later learn the term. Insect life was a non-existent factor in my life back with my tribe. The radscorpions had been horrific enough, but manageable to my psyche because I’d faced them in broad daylight and had all of my companions at my side.

This was just me and Arcaidia in a dark abandoned Stable.

The creature before me wasn’t a stereotypical example of arachnid life. No, not at all. This creature was about the size of an older foal, had coarse, bright pink fur covering its bulbous form, with splotches of creamy white fur forming spot-like patterns on its back. Eight incredibly long segmented legs sprouted from its sides, sharp hook-like tips making those clicking noises I’d heard before. The face of the creature…yes that was what got stuck in my mind the most. It was vaguely pony-shaped, with a mane, an actual mane, of shiny bright yellow. Six of its eight eyes, arranged around the forehead, were black, beady things. The final two were wide, round, and all too pony-like, with bright blue irises.

I screamed. So did it…her? Kind of looked female in facial structure. The spider…pony? Spony? Pider? Either way, when it screamed its jaw unhinged and broke apart in a grotesque wide mouth with four curved fangs dripping a thick pale green liquid. It then leaped at my face. In pure panic I tried to bat at it with Gramzanber’s broad blade, but all I ended up doing was twisting my head in a way that the spider pony landed on my neck instead of my face; which by the was not any better in my opinion.

I felt its hooked legs scrabbling away at my neck and visions of it plunging those ichor dripping fangs into me sent shivers through my whole body as I scrambled with a hoof to try to dislodge it. With a forceful shove I sent the thing flying, and I cringed as I felt a sickening crack and a shrill whine fill the air. Feeling my neck I noticed that while I’d knocked the spider pony off of me, one of its legs was still hooked into my neck. I pulled the leg off my neck and with a grimace tossed it aside.

I still heard that loud, keening whine, and both me and Arcaidia walked around one of the lab tables to see the little spider pony was laying on its back against the wall, curled up with its remaining legs and…crying? It wasn’t quite like a natural cry, it was too high pitched, but the pain in it was all too evident. Green blood pumped from the stump where its leg had come off. What disturbed me most was that I actually saw tears in the pony-like pair of eyes the creature had. If I’d just been looking at the eyes alone I’d swear I was just looking at a foal wailing in pain.

Now I was horrified by more than merely the creature’s appearance, but now by the notion that I may have just inadvertently badly injured a…well the equivalent of a foal. Arcaidia didn’t look like she felt the same, however. Her eyes remained calm, cold, though her brow was arched in curiosity as she looked at the little spider pony. I realized I’d seen a similar look on her face before, though I hadn’t recognized it at the time; she’d looked at the Labor Guild slaves the same way. When Arcaidia pointed her starblaster at the crying spider pony I put a hoof up, stopping her.

“Wait, Arcaidia, I don’t think it was trying to hurt me! We…we need to help it…uh…her?”

I wasn’t sure on the little critter’s gender, but I got the impression she was a she. Either way I went and found where the removed leg had been dropped and carefully got it lifted with one hoof, awkwardly moving on three legs back over towards the crying foal…spider…pony…thing. Arcaidia was looking at me like I’d sprouted an additional head. I lifted the limb, then nodded my head at the wailing child creature, then looked at Arcaidia pleadingly.

I was pretty sure she understood that I wanted her to use her healing spell to try and help me get the leg reattached. The problem was she wasn’t moving, she was just staring at me like a pony who’d just lost his last vestige of sanity.

I found myself biting back a growl. I wasn’t…angry, per se, at Arcaidia, but come on, she didn’t have to look at me like that!

“Look Arcaidia it’s just a foal…creature. It probably was just scared, so please h-“

A loud, angry and chilling hiss cut through the air, interrupting my words. Arcaidia and I both looked to our left at the doorway into the lab. Standing there, full sized as an adult pony, with the same pink coarse fur, was a much larger spider like creature. Same mane color, bright shiny blond, but different eye color, a sort of light sea green. Mommy spider. I looked between the crying foal spider (monster?), and the big, very angry looking adult spider (pony?) in the doorway, then at the severed limb I was holding in my hoof.

Oh shit.

“Um…this isn’t what it looks like?”

Mommy spider didn’t seem to care for my words, as I found myself getting bowled into by the extraordinarily fast creature before I barely finished my sentence. Only the metal armored barding on my chest kept the creature’s fangs from piercing into me as it tried to slam me into one of the lab tables. I braced my hooves and stayed upright, hitting the back of the table hard and scattering lab equipment, but not falling over. A hooked leg stabbed down at my neck and I turned my head to the right, using Gramzanber’s shaft to block the leg, which proved much stronger than its spindly form suggested. I was afraid, but not panicking, experience at this point taking over and keeping me focused. As the creature kept trying to pierce my metal barding with its fangs, getting close to one of the leather seams, I steadied my hindlegs, shoved with Gramzanber’s shaft to push the creature back, then reared up and kicked out with my forelegs. I hit the large spider pony square in the face and it staggered back, right next to the smaller spider pony which was still curled up, crying.

“Okay, now listen to me! I didn’t mean to hurt the little one, and we-“

A scorching zap of burning air followed by a silver streak of light interrupted me as Arcaidia’s starblaster fired, cutting a brilliant path right into the adult spider pony. The line of energy burned through the spider, not disintegrating it, but causing it to flip over and start howling in pain, its many legs flailing in the air. The adult spider pony’s cries were joined by a desperate wail from the smaller one as Arcaidia fired again, just as I was turning to try to get her to stop. The second line of death dealing light did its work with brutal effectiveness, cutting right up down the center of the adult spider pony, turning its form into silver light, then a pile of ash.

“Arcaidia sto…p…” I just sort of trailed off, staring forlornly at the ash remains of the spider pony.

Arcaidia cocked her head at me, looking confused.

“Estu dol rivalae, nes? Estu vi dolor tu martriv…”

Arcaidia didn’t look regretful, just concerned, like she was worried about there being something wrong with me. When the small spider pony’s wails started up again I turned back, gritting my teeth at the sound. The small creature had righted itself, standing wobbly on its seven remaining legs, and was looking at the pile of dust where the adult had been. The little foal spider pony poked a single leg through the ash pile, its beady eyes black and unmoving, but its pony eyes wide with shock. Then the tears welled again and the little creature began to wail even louder.

Damn. Just…damn. I’d been scared. I’d panicked and just slapped the little critter off of me. How else could I have reacted? Wouldn’t any of you done the same thing, if some random spider looking creature had jumped on you all of a sudden? For all I knew the little spider pony had been trying to eat me! But now…?

Hard to think that now though, looking at the pitiful sight of the creature crying over the ash of its probable parent.

Also hard to think about it now that I was hearing a series of more loud hisses coming from the hallway. A lot more. I backed up to where Arcaidia was, and gave her a look. She was still giving me that worried look as if she was wondering if I was alright, her starblaster never once wavering from pointing at the tiny spider pony. She just wasn’t taking any chances. Should I admire her practicality over my…whatever it was I was?

“I think we need to go,” I told her and she nodded in apparent understanding.

Without any hesitation she snatched up the cylinder she’d been fiddling with in a levitation aura of magic and we both ran for the door out of the lab, past the still crying little spider pony. Out in the hallway I heard loud clicking sounds I’d come to realize now were many hooked spider legs clattering on metal surfaces. I looked down the hallway where me and Arcaidia had originally come from to see a mass of shadowy many legged forms marching down the corridor, at least half a dozen, probably more.

I put my moral concerns on the backburner as best I could, understanding just how much danger both I and Arcaidia were in right now. I immediately went to work ‘unlocking’ the next door with Gramzanber while Arcaidia opened fire with her starblaster, while at the same time solidifying a piercing hail of icicle shards and launched them down the corridor. Pained howls and angry hisses accompanied us as I tore open the door and both me and Arcaidia flung ourselves into the next hallway beyond at a dead gallop. This hallway curved in the opposite direction as the previous one, following another blackened window into what I could only assume was another laboratory. Unfortunately there was no time to think about exploring that one as I galloped down the cold metal corridor, ignoring the splashes of old blood on the walls.

Blood, but no bodies. Only bodies at the entrance. The thought entered my mind and left it just as quick, but somehow struck me as important. What had happened to all the Stable ponies? Why did these creatures have pony features? I had a sinking feeling that those questions were directly connected, if not the how or why of it.

Up ahead the hallway widened to a larger set of sealed metal doors that didn’t have the normal valve I’d been used to seeing, but rather a small metal pedestal with a complex looking keypad on it. I ignored the keypad and charged the door. Ultimate unlocking tool Gramzanber go!

*CLANG*

I found myself laying on my back, head ringing. I raised my head, seeing Gramzanber partially planted in the door, but its blade only having sunk in a few inches into what was apparently a very thick door. I rubbed my mouth, feeling a loose tooth towards the back of my mouth.

“Not getting through the easy way…” I muttered, glancing behind us. I couldn’t see them, but I heard them. A scratching, maddening wave of clicks and hisses echoing down the hallway. We didn’t have long. I shared a look with Arcaidia, who’d set down the cylinder she’d been floating along.

“Ice?” I asked.

“Vril,” she replied, then added with a nod and smile, “Ice.”

I may have been a tad unnerved by how she’d killed that spider pony without any hesitation, but I couldn’t really blame her either. Time and again Arcaidia had shown herself to be far more adept at dealing with hard situations than I was. She perceived a threat, and she dealt with said threat in the most efficient means available to her, to protect herself and me. I just didn’t get how she did it so effortlessly. Be merciless one second, smile the next. Made me wonder what kind of life she led before me and Trailblaze had found her in that pod.

As Arcaidia went to work on the corridor entryway with forming an ice barrier I went to retrieve Gramzanber, and then went to examine the keypad on the pedestal. I tapped a few keys experimentally, but I didn’t get any kind of response. Maybe it didn’t have any power? I growled in frustration. The doors were too thick for me to be able to cut through them with Gramzanber, at least not without an hour or two to go at it. With no power to the keypad, though, I’d never get them to open, even if I had any skill or knowledge with machines.

I heard a sharp cry behind me and looked back. Arcaidia had gotten half her ice barrier up, but the last top portion was still open, and a spider pony with dark blue fur had shoved several of its limbs through the opening and slashed at her. Arcaidia had a cut along her brow which was coating her silver mane red. She wheeled her starblaster up and fired several point blank lines of white energy into the spider pony, causing it to burst into ash, but another one took its place just as fast.

Galloping over I swung my head and Gramzanber cut an arc through this spider pony’s leg as it tried to grab at Arcaidia, the limb clattering off in a spray of green fluid. I forcibly swung my head back the other way, slamming the spider pony’s face, causing it to fall back. Arcaidia resumed sending out a stream of ice, sealing up the opening more. Blood covered her face now but she blinked past it and sealed the opening all the way while I kept the creatures outside back with thrusts from Gramzanber.

Even with the ice barrier in place I could hear the fast repetitive sound of digging and picking at the ice like the sound of rain falling on sheet metal as the spider ponies began tearing at the barrier.

The two of us were safe for the moment, but essentially trapped.

LIL-E’s voiced coming from Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck sounded like a blessing from the ancestor spirits to my ears.

“Longwalk, Arcaidia, we got a problem.”

Well, her voice sounded like a blessing. Her words, not so much. I could actually hear the sound of gunfire crackling over the speaker. I went up to Arcaidia, reaching out a hoof to check her head wound, but she waved me off, shoving the Pip-Buck at me instead. Right, talk to LIL-E first, worry about injury later. Again, she was the more practical of the two of us.

“I think I can guess what it is; big critters with a lot of legs, kind of got pony-ish faces?” I asked.

“Oh, you’ve made friends with them too?” LIL-E asked on the tail of a loud series of gunshots and a pained hissing wail, “Started crawling out of the Celestia hoof-fucked vents just as we were getting done with the living quarters.”

“Are B.B and Binge with you?” I asked nervously, trying to ignore the noise of the spider ponies chipping away at the ice barrier.

“No,” was LIL-E’s flat reply, her mechanical tone somehow carrying a heavy weight to it, “And we got pushed back to what looks like the Administrative level. Cubicles everywhere. Nothing like the Stable’s I’m used to. We’ve barricaded the main entrance but these things are coming in from the ceiling- Fine Eye on your right!” crack of a shotgun, “Whew, close. I don’t know where those two are at, but I’m seeing a big office above this floor that looks similar to what an Overmare’s office might be. I’m trying to get us in there so I can access the terminal, maybe get control of parts of this place.”

“But there’s no power-“ I began but she cut me off.

“There is here. And in a few other places. Things’ have been turning on for us, same way doors were trying to close on us. Like there’s two forces in control of parts of the Stable, one trying to kill us, the other tying to help. Either way, the Overmare’s office is our best bet for finding a way out of here. And finding your friends, if I can access the Stable’s intercoms. What’s your situation?”

I glanced at the dwindling ice barrier, then at the big sealed doors.

“Pretty fucked,” I said, wincing a little at my own swearing. I didn’t do it very often. Was LIL-E rubbing off on me? “Me and Arcaidia are trapped between her ice keeping these pony bugs-“

“Spiders. They look like spiders,” LIL-E said.

“The buck is a spider?”

“Take our new friends, minus the pony looking bits and replace them with eldritch fucking horror, and you got a spider.”

“…the Wasteland sucks.”

“Long, spiders were common before the Wasteland.”

“…the Wasteland still sucks.”

“Point. Anyway you were saying?”

“So the spider ponies are being kept back by Arcaidia’s ice, but we’re stuck between that and a big set of doors too thick for my spear to cut through. Without any power I can’t even fail at using the pad thingamabob I’m assuming would open the doors.”

“Aren’t you just a barrel of hope and sunshine today,” commented LIL-E between sounds of gunfire and what I think was Iron Wrought yelling at one of the salvagers to watch where they were shooting.

“Sunshine?”

“Okay now I’m certain you’re just bucking with me. You know what sunshine is!”

“Well, I’ve heard of it. In tales of my tribe. The stories say it was an amazing thing, taken too much for granted,” I said while wondering just what sunshine had to do with a barrel of hope? Pony sayings could just be weird sometimes.

“In any case just sit tight. Once we’re in the Overmare’s office I might be able to get into the system and open those doors for you. Think you can manage?”

A particularly loud cracking noise was followed by a small chunk of ice being knocked out of the barrier and bouncing off the side of my head. I sighed, replying to LIL-E “Not a lot of choice on our end. Don’t take too long.”

I felt worry clenching my gut as I let go of the Pip-Buck, Arcaidia reinforcing her barrier where the spider ponies were managing to start to break through it. I was less worried for me and Arcaidia though than I was for B.B and Binge. They were out there somewhere in the dark and there was no way to tell if they were okay or if they were at that very moment fighting for their own lives against these creatures. Amid the worry I felt a familiar fire starting to burn in me as well. I may have had my doubts about whether or not these spider ponies were just mindless monsters, or if this wasn’t the result of some misunderstanding I caused when I hurt the little one, but with my friends lives at risk I would need to get over my hesitations.

Arcaidia stopped working at the ice barrier once it was replenished in thickness. She quickly went back to the cylinder and pointed at me with a hoof.

“Longwalk, estu dol grenz vril silvol,” she pointed at the ice barrier, then at me, or perhaps Gramzanber, then back at the barrier. Then without another word she began fiddling with the buttons on the cylinder, wreathing it in her aura of magic and pulling at it with a look of extreme concentration on her features.

I understood what she wanted me to do; she wanted me to guard the barrier in case the spider pony’s got through while she was working on getting that cylinder open. Why she was so intent on getting it open I had no idea, but I trusted her enough not to question it. I let her do her thing while I faced the ice barrier, watching the black inky silhouettes of the spider ponies tearing at the ice with a ferocity that I found unnerving. With nothing to do but stand there in wait with that constant scratching and scrabbling at the ice as the sole noise to be heard I began to get more and more worked up.

I felt, for a fleeting second, the sensation of a hoof on my shoulder, and swore I almost heard a mare’s voice telling me to calm down. I glanced back. Arcaidia was still working with the cylinder a few meters behind me, not even looking my way. What had I just…? I shook my head, confused, but oddly feeling calmer, regardless.

Minutes stretched on agonizingly, and bit by bit the ice barrier began to degrade. First a few cracks, then with small chunks being knocked out again. Still Arcaidia made no move to reinforce the barrier again, all of her focus on the cylinder. I tensed as spider pony legs with their sharp hooked ends began to tear away a widening hole in the center of the barrier. I told myself to not think of them as ponies, regardless of their facial features, regardless of the fact that one of them cried at the death of its parent, regardless of my suspicions concerning their origins. Just think of them as…obstacles. Obstacles between me and getting all of my friends out of here alive. If I just thought like that…

I shook my head again, harder. What was I thinking? I’d fight, wound, and if I had to… I thought I could kill…but only if I had to. Trying to think of these spider ponies as just objects to be removed from my path though, that felt uncomfortably like the way I’d seen Odessa operate.

The hole in the ice barrier was torn wider with a large top chunk falling off and being knocked aside as a purple furred spider pony with a black mane crawled through and opened its wide fanged jaws to hiss at me. I closed the short distance, already prepared to attack even as the spider pony was coming through the hole, and swung Gramzanber’s with the broad end of the blade facing out to smack the spider pony hard in the face. I felt the muzzle of the spider pony crunch under the blow but even as my momentum pushed it back its legs lashed out, cutting at my metal barding and unarmored neck. One of the hooks managed to snag a leather strap on my armor and tear through it, causing the left shoulder plate to start hanging loose.

At the same moment I felt freezing bits of ice landing on my head and shoulders as chunks got torn out of the barrier above me. I swept Gramzanber up at the sharp, stabbing spider legs that were ripping through the new hole. I clipped off a few, green brackish blood raining on me, but even as the injured spider ponies pulled back others replaced their wounded kin. To make things worse the hole in the middle of the barrier was widening, and another screeching spider pony was crawling through it.

“Arcaidia, whatever you’re doing with that whatever it is, please do it faster!” I yelled as I spun on my hooves and planted my forehooves down to deliver a hefty buck at the spider pony crawling through the hole.

While I felt my hind hooves connect nice and solidly with my target, I grunted in dismay as I felt more of those hooked legs grap around those same legs and yank. I turned my head around seeing that the spider pony, with a half crushed bleeding face, had grabbed onto my legs, and its companions were dragging it, and hence me, back through the hole.

“Notgoodnotgoodnotgood!” I yelped as I wheeled my head around and slashed Gramzanber, but my hesitance at the possibility at doing as much damage to myself as the spider ponies kept my from swinging my head with full force. Before I could figure out how to adjust my attack I found myself being pulled clean through the hole, the remaining bits of the top of the barrier falling down on top of me as I went.

There was rough spinning sense of disorientation as I was sent rolling into the corridor. I had a split second to have the unpleasant realization I was now stuck alone in a small passage with at least a dozen of these spider ponies all around me, some of them even clinging to the ceiling with their hooked legs. Then I didn’t have time for much of anything as my world suddenly became a dark, terrifying blizzard of sharp tearing claws and fangs. Needless to say, I didn’t stay still for this. I won’t say I kept control of the panic instinct that shot through me, but I kept my head enough to immediately back towards to the wall to keep the amount of ways the spider ponies could come at me limited.

Gramzanber was little more than a whipping blur as I tried to lash out in every direction, desperate to keep the fangs of the creatures away from my exposed flesh. I didn’t know for sure that the green dripping goo was poisonous, but it wasn’t like I was in any eager rush to find out from first-hoof experience.

It was so dark without more than a trickle of Arcaidia’s light to see by, so all I could make out around me were a writhing mass of hissing shadows that flowed around my slashing spear and came at me from all sides, even above. Sharp digging chitin hooks ripped at my metal barding, cut at my face and head, lashing burning lines of pain wherever they dug at me. I’d managed to brace my legs to keep myself from getting dragged down again, and at least one of my ancestor spirits seemed to favor me enough that none of the spider ponies had managed to dig their fangs into me yet. My heart was a rapid pounding thunder in my chest and my eyes were blinking past rivulets of blood from my slashed up brow, but I was doing remarkably well for being all but surrounded.

That was until one of the spider pony’s out there in the dark reared up, a spindly mass of unnatural darker shadow on the background black of the corridor, and from somewhere in its abdomen fired a strand of white webbing that coated my right foreleg. The force of the strands hitting the limb shoved the leg right up against the wall. I was stunned for a second, then tried to move my leg, shocked to find it stuck fast by whatever sticky, cord-like material was now plastering it to the wall.

Taking advantage of my distraction another spider pony rushed right up onto me, shoving its fangs at my face. I barely managed to duck, tucking my head under the spider pony’s chin, avoiding the fangs. I angled my head down, Gramzanber of course still in my mouth, and thrust, not really aiming for anything except the spider pony’s center mass. The spear sunk in with little effort and I felt warm blood spray over my hooves as the spider pony screeched and fell off me. I didn’t know if the wound I’d given it would be fatal or not, but from the noises it was making it was still alive, if hopefully out of the fight. Great, one down, ancestors alone knew how many more to go.

The thought to use Accelerator had just entered my mind when the corridor suddenly became much brighter as Arcaidia poked her head over the half dismantled ice barrier, horn a beacon of blue light. She took one look in my direction, eyes wide, but then she smiled and floated something out in front of her. It was a small vial with a familiar blue glowing liquid. One of those magic restoring potions! Arcaidia’s horn was already glowing with a strong over glow and the vial I noticed was half drained. The air began to turn cold and Arcaidia’s voice reached me over the hissing of the spider ponies descending on me.

“Longwalk, rir!”

No need to tell me twice.

Accelerator.

I intended to use just a short burst, my vision turning brilliant deep blue and everything around me slowing. I imagined a few seconds would be all I needed. I sliced through the web on my arms, being careful to not slice my own leg off. I then began to barrel my way through the small gaps between the spider ponies that had surrounded me, pushing aside or weaving around slow slashing limbs and open fang filled maws. The extra time gave me an uncomfortably long moment to see clearly how disturbingly emotive the eyes were of these creatures. There was desperation in those eyes as much as anger. A few that were hanging towards the back of the group even looked…conflicted, as if they didn’t even want to be involved in this.

I was then and there certain I wasn’t just dealing with mutated Wasteland monsters, I was dealing with ponies. Ponies that had been changed somehow into what they were, but ponies all the same.

I didn’t stop, however, and in my Accelerated mode broke through the pack of spider ponies and jumped over Arcaidia’s head, landing back behind what was left of the ice barrier. I ended Accelerator immediately after that, returning to normal speed, the cobalt hue of my vision bleeding away to norm, though Arcaidia’s light still bathed everything in a wash of frosty blue light.

Arcaidia didn’t waste a second after I was safe and her freshly restored horn was wreathed with a complex circle of arcane crests before sending forth a thick burst of consuming ice down the narrow passage. I cringed as I heard spider ponies scream, watching as their bodies turned blue and white from the blast of sub zero magic. A part of me hoped the more hesitant spider ponies in the back of the group managed to avoid the worst of it.

Pain seized through my body, the after affects of using Accelerator. I knew it was coming and was braced for it, and the convulsing waves of pain, while acute, weren’t nearly as bad the first two times I’d used this strange new ability of mine. If I hadn’t figured it out before it was now pretty clear to me the trick to Accelerator was to be careful how long I let myself use it. Shaking myself as the pain in my muscles faded, but still left the sharper pains of the actual lacerations from the spider ponies’ wickedly hooked legs, I walked up next to Arcaidia.

“Another save from the ice filly,” I shook my head, wiping blood from my face with one hoof while giving her a wane, helpless smile, “Keep this up and I’ll be stuck owing you for life. Gotta let me save you sometime in the future, just to even things up a bit.”

Arcaidia shared my smile, though hers was a lot wider, and polished off the last of the blue magic restoring liquid in the vial she had and made a small pleased ‘mmmm’ sound as she did so. I titled my head a bit, “Where’d did you get that anyway?”

She put a hoof to the side of my face and pushed my head to look back into the room, specifically at the cylinder she’d grabbed from the lab. It was now cracked open, hanging open by a seam through its middle. Inside was a dark padded interior that contained ten little indents. In nine of those indents were more blue glowing vials of the liquid. The tenth was empty, presumably the one she’d just consumed. There was a engraved plaque on the inside of the cylinder, and as I peered at it I read it aloud, “Unknown Substance Sample 4 – Research tag 102479, live testing permitted…”

Seemed like the ponies of Stable 104 had gotten their hooves on all sorts of weird things. I wondered where they’d gotten them from, though, and why so many of the items the Stable ponies were studying seemed to be things Arcaidia was so familiar with. The unicorn filly in question was levitating out the remaining vials and slipping them into her saddlebags when the corridor began to fill with more echoing hisses. One glance showed that, while Arcaidia had managed to freeze three or four spider ponies solid, the passageway was getting crowded once more by the creatures. They were advancing slowly, though cautiously, as if wary of another blast of magical ice.

Arcaidia had a somewhat irritated look on her features as she noticed the spider ponies returning and rather than reform the ice barrier she instead levitated up the now empty cylinder and launched it like a spinning wheel down the corridor. I heard it bounce into one of the spider ponies with a metallic clang and a short, pained cry that also held a note of annoyed shock. I suppose I’d be annoyed and in pain as well if somepony just pelted me with a big metal tube.

“Arcaidia, can you stop provoking the multi-limbed poisonous web spewing mutant ponies?”

“Mas.”

“Thought not, but it never hurts to ask.”

I was really hoping LIL-E would get those doors open soon, though that hope was laced with concern over how everypony else was faring. Fine Eye’s family didn’t deserve to get stuck in this kind of danger, though at least I trusted LIL-E and Iron Wrought to look after them. I had to keep convincing myself that B.B and Binge were both capable of taking care of themselves. Perhaps between me and Arcaidia we were drawing enough of the spider ponies’ attention that those two weren’t being attacked as well? Groundless, wishful thinking, but for the moment it was all I had.

While the spider ponies continued their slow advance down the corridor Arcaidia let out a hefty sigh and aimed her horn at the remains of the ice barrier; making me wonder if she was getting tired of using this same method again and again.

I saw several of the spider ponies rear up just seconds before Arcaidia began to rebuild the ice barrier, and only got out half a shouted warning before multiple fast strands of web darted across the darkness. Arcaidia hadn’t seen the earlier use of this web, so was caught completely off guard as one strand struck her in the chest, another on her left shoulder, and the final one wrapped right around her forehead and horn. There was a vicious yanking on the webbing and Arcaidia was almost pulled bodily through the air, but was halted as I was there, hooves wrapped around my friend’s barrel and holding her in place. I had to angle my head to the side to keep Gramzanber away from her body, and widened the stance of my hindlegs to brace against the remnants of the ice barrier as I held us both in place.

“Arcaidia, you alright!?”

“Shivol!”

Well, at least her mouth was uncovered so she could still breathe, and her eyes remained unobstructed. I was struggling to keep her in place against the pull of multiple spider ponies, and I saw even more of the creatures getting ready to send more webbing at us. They’d just barrage us with web until neither of us could move unless we got out of here now! Arcaidia’s levitation had her starblaster floating nearby and it began to shoot well aimed streaks of light into the spider ponies, buying us a few precious seconds. I managed to cut one strand of webbing by twisting my head at a uncomfortable angle, but even by the time I cut that one strand, two more had been shot out at us, one nailing my left foreleg, practically gluing it to Arcaidia’s barrel.

The webbing was coarse and smelled acrid, and I had to resist the urge to pointlessly try to scrap it off with a hoof. Instead I redoubled my efforts to pull on Arcaidia, just trying to break the strands off of us through brute force. The spider ponies that weren’t shooting web were only barely being kept back by Arcaidia’s starblaster, and those that were shooting the webs were aiming for the small, floating weapon. Arcaidia made it spin and shift about in the air, avoiding the seeking strands. Even so, it was clear it was only a matter of time before it too got snagged.

“Longwalk, Arcaidia, we’ve gotten into the Overmare’s office,” LIL-E’s static laced voice said from Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck, “What’s your situation? I’m trying to hack my way into the main terminal now.”

I saw a faint glow of blue light trying to break through the strands of webbing around Arcaidia’s horn, and the webbing itself began to start to slowly freeze over while at the same time I saw the little knobs on the Pip-Buck get encased in tiny globes of blue magic and start to turn. That, while keeping the startblaster levitated and firing. I was impressed by her sheer magical multi-tasking skills, though granted I didn’t have many other unicorns to compare Arcaidia to. I’d seen Crossfire just levitate her rifle around, but then the hardened Drifter mare had also somehow transferred me from one spot to another instantaneously during our fight with Shattered Sky. I was a tad envious of those versatile little horns unicorns had.

Right, about to be devoured by spider ponies, think about horn envy later.

Thrusting Gramzanber at a particularly rambunctious red spider pony that’d slipped past Arcaidia’s startblaster fire I started shouting, probably louder than I needed to, at the Pip-Buck.

“Door! Open! Now!”

“What? Say again Longwalk, there was some interference. What’s your situation?”

“Bad! Very bad! Door open now please!”

There was a short pause, “Hold on, I’m in the system now. Huh, the Stable generators aren’t damaged, they’re just shut off. Some kind of administrative quarantine protocol…alright, turning that off-“

“LIL-E! Doors! NOW!”

My panic was driven mostly by the fact that Arcaidia’s starblaster had suddenly stopped firing and I noticed that some of the little lights and tubes on the device weren’t glowing anymore. Had the thing finally run out of whatever was powering it? Whatever the case without the streaking bolts of silver energy to keep them back the rest of the spider ponies were now charging in at us and were going to be upon us in seconds.

“Got the cameras on, let’s see what’s up -Celestia’s combustible cunt! I’ll get the door!”

I didn’t know what a camera was but at least whatever it was got the message across more clearly to LIL-E that we needed a point of egress. I heaved with all my might on the webbing binding me and Arcaidia, making one last hefty slash with Gramzanber on the now taunt and pulled back strands. The serrated edge of the spear sawed through the webbing and with the tension suddenly gone both me and Arcaidia flopped back. Still somewhat stuck together we scrambled up just as a loud hydraulic chunking sound of machinery signaled the huge doors behind us sliding open.

A spider pony jumped over the remains of the ice barrier, legs splayed wide, mouth open with its four dripping fangs aimed for Arcaidia’s exposed belly. With my leg still stuck to her I rolled the unicorn filly under me protectively. I felt the spider pony’s body hit my back and fangs dig into the exposed part of my barding where the metal shoulder plate had come off earlier. While the fangs didn’t get deep I felt the prick of them pierce my hide even as I jabbed back with the spiked end of Gramzanber’s shaft. I felt the spike sink into and crack past the chitin of the spider pony and it’s pained cry fill my ears as it fell off me.

So much adrenaline surged through me that I don’t even think there was anything driving me besides pure paniced strength as I heaved Arcaidia back to her hooves and the two of us in a awkward tangle of stuck together limbs threw ourselves through the open doors and I shouted, “Close them LIL-E!”

I heard the enraged hisses and shrieks of the spider ponies behind us as the doors churned closed in a wash of heavy machinery, their closing signaled by a solid and very satisfying *thunk*.

For just a few seconds, still covered in sticky thick webbing that had us partially pinned together, me and Arcaidia just laid there beyond the closed door in a tired, panting, pile of exhaustion.

Then the poison hit me like a burning inferno in my gut. I seized up, teeth clenching as nausea, waves of it, wracked me from the very pit of my stomach. I heard Arcaidia saying something, tugging against the webbing binding us together, and heard further the soft crystalline cracking of her ice magic. LIL-E’s voice also reached my ears, but I could barely make out any words past the sound of my own sudden violent vomiting.

For a change of pace, however, I didn’t pass out. Mores the pity as all I could really do was lay there, alternating between shivering and throwing up more, until I was left dry heaving. I decided poison was not my favorite thing ever, and besides the sudden concern over my potential imminent death I was also worried those spider ponies might find a way past those doors and break into…wherever it was Arcaidia and I had ended up.

My head was now swimming and I felt like the world itself was slowly tilting, my head blanketed now by a crushing pain that only fed the nausea, not that I had anything left to throw up at this point. I felt myself being dragged, but only in the faintest sense, as trying to open my eyes to see anything left me reeling. There was a sudden cold chill on my left foreleg and after I moment I felt a hoof smack on the leg a few times, followed by the sound of ice breaking. With a forceful pull my leg tore away from Arcaidia’s side and I heard the unicorn gasp. Were we being attacked again!? I tried to stand, but felt firm hooves on my back, pressing me down. Arcaidia’s voice was hard and while the words were nothing but a faint blur in my mind, I got the hint and lay back down.

A few moments or a few hours of gut churning agony passed as I lay there, I couldn’t tell how long exactly. My mouth was dry and with a bit of panic I realized Gramzanber was no longer held there. Where had I dropped it? Needed to tie that thing to myself. On the heel of that thought I felt a cooling wave of relief wash over my body, pushing back the pain, if only for a few seconds. The pain would return soon enough, and like a tide surging up and down that was the way it went, cold relief rolling over me few a few moments, pain rushing back the next. On and on that went for a time I couldn’t even guess at…but at long last there came a moment where the pain didn’t return. At least not in full. The nausea receded, and I could finally open my eyes without my head feeling like it was splitting in half.

There was light now, not the soft blue glow of Arcaidia’s horn, but actual sterile white beaming light casting our surroundings in a dead white hue. Raising my head I saw Arcaidia standing over me, looking me over carefully as her horn glowed, bathing me in her healing aura. I saw an empty vial of her magic restoring liquid laying on the metal floor next to her. Just behind her was Gramzanber, the silver spear still shining despite the ichor and gore now coating it.

She let out a small sigh as she saw me stirring, then gave me a brief bop on my head with a hoof.

“Estu vi atama rilar tu mas!”

I rubbed my head, “S-sorry, didn’t mean to worry you. Ugh…water…”

I don’t really want to go into details as to how my mouth tasted right now, and I noticed with some embarrassment that what was no doubt some of my sick had ended up on Arcaidia’s hooves and dress. She noticed me looking and just shook her head with another one of those small sighs of her’s and put a hoof on my forehead. Seemingly satisfied I wasn’t about to keel over she stepped back and gave me some space so I could get into my saddlebags, now more than a little worse for wear with bits of webbing and unidentifiable gunk staining them, and fished out a waterskin. LIL-E had informed me the previous day to avoid using Wasteland rain to fill my waterskins unless I liked drinking radiation as much as water. This waterskin was still filled with a bit of water from the clean stream by my village, however, so it’d be clean. I had other water supplies from when I’d shopped in Saddlespring, little canteens and plastic bottles of clean water, but for some reason I felt a need to drink from the waters of my own home right now. I’d never been much for my tribe’s beliefs, yet I still found myself offering a small whispered prayer to the spirits of the water to fortify my body and help purge it of the poison’s remaining affects.

Once I’d cleared my palette and hydrated myself I tried to stand, finding my legs a tad wobbly but otherwise able to support my weight. Still a tad blurry eyed I slowly went over and retrieved Gramzanber, letting out a quick relieved breath at the spear’s familiar touch. I now finally took a look at where we were. I had to blink a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

I’d seen trees before of course, but they were always black, or gray twisted things, barren of life, even in the relatively radiation free valley of my tribe. I’d seen plants before, though usually only dry yellowed grass or the exceptionally tough roots grown around my tribe’s land.

So seeing the tall vibrant green trees lining in neatly ordered rows growing from small closures of verdant grass was for a second quite mind numbingly shocking. The room we were in was a vast rectangular chamber with a high ceiling from which yellow lights shone down on the plants growing in rows through the length of the room. In between the rows the more sterile white lighting illuminated the rest of the room. The trees were short, with thick green leaves, and strange round bits hanging from its branches that were of various colors; green, blue, yellow, orange…and red. It took me a moment to realize the shape of these objects were like the grenades. What was the term? Apples? Is that what these were?

The apple trees weren’t the only plants occupying the rows. Some rows were dedicated to what looked like patches of tilled earth contained in sequestered metal barriers, walkways between the rows allowing access. I saw green plants growing from the top soil, like little bushy tails.

“What is this place?” I found myself asking.

“Hydroponics and Botany Laboratory.” said LIL-E’s voice from the Pip-Buck, causing Arcaidia to glance down at it and hold the device up, LIL-E’s tone continuing, “You two okay? Things went quiet after you pair went through the door, and the cameras in that area are damaged.”

“We’re okay, mostly. Got bit by one of those spider ponies, put me down for a little while, but Arcaidia got me back on my hooves. Now where are we again? Oh, and are you all okay? Any idea where B.B and Binge are at?”

“First question; the map I’ve accessed puts you in one of several laboratories. Seems all the upper levels of this Stable are for research. From the name I’m guessing the one you’re in is used for testing on plants. Second question; we’re all alive and kicking. A few light injuries, an Iron Wrought also got poisoned, but luckily the med lab had doses of antivenom, so he’s probably doing better than you. We’re holed up in the Overmare, or rather ‘Directors' office. This place is feeling less and less like a Stable the more I learn about it; it’s even got a vehicle bay just above what looks like some kind of train terminal, both with surface access. As for the third question; I don’t know. I’ve been cycling through the still functioning cameras, but I haven’t spotted them yet. I’m going to go with no news being good news here, as at least it means they’re probably keeping mobile.”

I appreciated her optimism and tried to let a little of it sink into my own heart as well. Looking again at the trees and their numerous colorful apples I wondered just what the ponies of Stable 104 could possibly have been experimenting on here. I said as much.

“This ‘Director’ Midnight Twinkle has files on a lot of the research projects Stable 104 was involved in here in her terminal,” said LIL-E “It seems this Stable was designed to function like a Ministry of Arcane Science hub…among other things…hmm, the lab you’re current in was experimenting specifically on strains of plants recovered from ‘Excavation Site Primary’, whatever that is. There are logs on things dubbed ‘Grow Apples’ and…’Force Carrots’? This might take me awhile to sift through Longwalk, and I doubt you and Arcaidia have time to wait for me to decrypt this stuff. You both need to keep moving, before those creatures find a way in there.”

I frowned, my curiosity burning past my physical weakness and worries. I really did want to find out what was going on in here. Maybe if I just snagged an apple and…carrot (weird name?) to check out later?

“Agreed. How can we get to you?” I asked as I went over to one of the trees and lifted my head, cutting one of the red apples off with Gramzanber’s edge.

“Map indicates if you get beyond the Hydroponics and Botany Lab there’s a branching corridor beyond. Take the right corridor and you’ll reach a Weapons Testing Range. Opposite that there’s a series of smaller individual research offices. Ignore those and bear left until you reach a service elevator. That will take you all the way down to the Terminal Station. There’s an elevator here in the Director’s office that leads to that same spot. That’s where we’ll meet up. From there we can regroup and figure out how to find our two lost ponies.”

“Weapons Testing… ” I said curiously, interest perhaps more piqued than it should have been as I put away the apple and went over to one of the dirt patches with the weird little green bushes. Arcaidia followed me, eyeing the plants with…wariness? She had a tight, vaguely disgusted look on her face. What was that about?

“Longwalk,” LIL-E said, somehow managing to put a warning tone in her otherwise monotonous mechanical voice, “Don’t get too many ideas. Salvage is one thing. Experimental stuff is dangerous. Mess with the wrong thing, push the wrong button, and you’ll be in need of a new muzzle.”

“Just curious,” I said, putting aside Gramzanber for a moment while I experimentally nipped at one of the green bushes, “I mean, given what I’ve learned about Odessa, any edge we can get our hooves on will be useful, right?”

“If any weapons in there were ready to use, they wouldn’t still be getting tested.” Said LIL-E flatly, “Just focus on getting to us. Alive and unexploded. I may be the last pony to be saying this, but you can’t afford curiosity right now.”

“One of these days I’m going to have to meet you face to face,” I mentioned with a small chuckle as I pulled at the bush, surprised when a strange looking orange root came popping out of the earth. So this was…a carrot? Arcaidia standing next to me gave the carrot a narrow eyed look and to my surprise levitated it out of my grasp and put it in her own saddlebag.

“Arcaidia! Hey!” I said, and she just gave me a wave of her hoof, as if to say ‘Don’t ask’.

“You might find that kind of hard to do,” said LIL-E in response to my earlier comment, “I’m not exactly the easiest mare in the world to get to.”

I was about to ask what she meant by that when I starting hearing shuffling and by now painfully familiar clicking noises coming from the ceiling and from the floor beneath our hooves. I looked up first to see the high ceiling with its fixed lights rattling a bit, as if something in the ceiling was pressing on the metal panels. Beneath our hooves the floor panels began to shift. I grimaced and quickly got Gramzanber back in my mouth while Arcaidia floated her starblaster up…then she briefly let out a sharp breath as she noticed the weapon was dead and quickly holstered it.

“LIL-E, you weren’t kidding about us not having time. Can you make sure there are no more closed doors in our way?” I asked as my backing up gradually became a trot, then into a full on gallop as me and Arcaidia began to dash for the opposite side of the chamber.

“Consider them open. Whatever was in the system before, trying to get us separated, isn’t trying anything right now. In fact most of the system opened up once I got into this terminal. I can slow them down for you, just keep running.”

“The running part is definitely something we’ve gotten good at,” I said past panting breaths. Despite my words the poison that had run through my system was leaving me feeling like my muscles had been replaced with brittle twigs. I was so lightheaded that I nearly ran face first into one of the trees if Arcaidia hadn’t yanked me aside with her levitation.

I chanced a quick look back as I heard metal grating falling down or crashing panels being ripped out of the floor. Spider ponies were dropping from the ceiling or crawling along it now, while others surged up through the floor. Just how many there were I couldn’t count, but the larger chamber certainly was lending to a small horde coming after us. Our only saving grace was our head start.

The end of the chamber was a similar thick set of metal doors that slid open moments before we reached it and slammed closed behind us as we galloped through the threshold. I didn’t believe for a moment that would slow the spider ponies down for long, though. They seemed to have an unnatural talent for crawling through tight spaces. Made me worry that LIL-E and the other’s weren’t all that safe in the Director’s office.

As we tore down the corridor I started to notice Arcaidia getting ahead of me, my own pace flagging as my vision spun a little, blackening around the edges. I shook my head and tried to force my legs to go faster, even as I titled a little and bounced off the wall, almost falling flat on my face. Arcaidia looked behind her at me and she drew in a sharp breath. Her horn glowed brightly and I felt my legs leave the ground as my body got encased in her levitation magic.

“Argh, h-hey, Arcaidia! Put me down! I can…I…” I had to shake my head to keep myself awake, and Arcaidia gave me a hard look, silver eyes flashing with anger, “…I can patiently shut up and let you carry me…” I finished lamely.

Note to self; don’t get poisoned if you don’t want to be a burden on your friends. Now I knew a little of how Trailblaze felt when she’d had to be carried around like this. At least in her case it hadn’t been in the middle of a life or death circumstance. I concentrated on just keeping my breathing even and getting the lightheadedness out as Arcaidia carried me.

It was less than a minute before we reached the doors to the Weapons Testing Range, which were already open courtesy of our eyebot friend with remarkable computer skills. I considered bugging LIL-E when time allowed to show me a few tricks with terminals. I may have been jinxed with it but I was fascinated with technology and wanted to learn more about how it worked. If only I could get into a place like this Stable without the imminent threat of death to me and my friends and just be able to relax and delve into its secrets!

What? Did that not seem like a healthy obsession to start developing?

I was about to have that obsession given an overdose as Arcaidia began to drag me through the Weapons Testing Range. It was a long but thin corridor with shelves lining the wall to our left alongside hefty metal lockers. The shelves alone had numerous devices that looked like sleeker, less boxy versions of the magical energy rifles I’d seen the Odessa peagsi using. Some were small, pistol shaped weapons, while others were larger rifles. Some shelves were filled with carefully placed spheres of varying sizes, that immediately made me think of grenades. More shelves yet had small circular devices with prongs coming off of them and obvious mouth grips whose purpose I couldn’t even guess at. But I wanted to find out!

“Arcaidia, Arcaidia, hey, can we stop? Just for a sec?”

“Mas!”

“Pleeeease!? One minute is all I ask! Maybe two! Three at the tops, if we find something cool!”

“Di mas! Uvrai, Longwalk!”

“But just look at all this stuff! It’s so shiny and I just want to play around with it for-“

Magic clamped down around my mouth, stifling me talking any further beyond muffled “Mmmph! Emmmph!”

I took the hint and dropped my head and tail, letting Arcaidia carry me past all the awesome looking tech on our left. I noticed the right of the room involved over a dozen thick metal doors. Windows displayed the rooms beyond as alternating between long chambers with what looked to be targets at the far end, or smaller circular chambers where I could see a few faint blast marks marking their walls. Arcaidia ignored those doors and galloped towards the far end of the chamber. We couldn’t hear the spider ponies yet, but didn’t doubt they were in pursuit.

When we were almost to the end of the room, where I could see another door waiting open for us, I glanced to my left at the passing lockers and shelves. The very last locker was left hanging open. My eyes slid to Arcaidia, who was concentrating on where she was running and wasn’t looking my way. I licked my lips. Just needed to time it right…and…now!

I grabbed with both hooves as we passed by the open locker, not even looking at whatever it was I was snatching at. I came away with a strange ring shaped device about as wide around as a hoof. It reminded me of the general appearance of a Pip-Buck, but shorter, a little bulkier at the top, with a circular depression instead of a screen. There was what I recognized now as a recording disk attached to the device, and a little yellow piece of paper slapped on top of that that said ‘MG, play this before the next test phase please’.

I quickly shoved the device, recorder disk and note both, into my saddlebags before Arcaidia noticed me squirming about and looked back at me. I gave her a wide, innocent smile. She frowned at me. The smile faltered. Her eyes continued to bore into me as she turned left outside the exit of the Weapons Testing Range, seemingly able to navigate without needing to look where she was going. I coughed. Her look intensified.

I sighed in defeat and hoofed out the device sheepishly. Arcaidia rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath that I was pretty sure was, if I could translate it, would not be flattering towards me. At least she let me put the device back in my saddlebag.

By the time we reached the elevator doors that LIL-E had told us about Arcaidia finally let me down. My legs still felt weak, but I wasn’t swaying about and my head wasn’t spinning as much. Arcaidia had gone up to the elevator doors and hoofed the button on the side of them before she turned to me and poked a hoof at my chest.

“Estu vi volaire dol karva. Estu mi ivir mas, ren solva.”

She lifted her Pip-Buck and shoved the screen at my face, her magic turning the knobs until it showed the ‘Objectives’ screen.

One in particular was highlighted now above the others.

Protect Longwalk from himself

I frowned, seeing both the anger and concern mixing in her eyes. I wanted to argue that she didn’t have to worry so much, but…what room did I even have to talk? I was worried about my friends too, it only was natural they’d do the same for me. It was made worse by the fact that I tended to do things to warrant that worry; shoving my spear into an energy barrier, trying to be merciful towards creatures that were trying to kill us, or throwing myself in the way of poison fangs when Arcaidia could have probably protected herself without me getting myself injured? Whether it was my curiosity, my tendency to throw myself into danger, or my reluctance to use lethal force, my actions put myself at risk, and by extension, my friends.

I opened my mouth to say something…closed it as I realized I didn’t know what to say…then opened it again as I just tried to force words out, not sure what I was doing, “I don’t mean to make things hard on you Arcaidia. I-“

She poked me with her hoof again, harder this time, eyes narrowing, “Shae…esru ren shae, Longwalk!”

“I…what do you want from me Arcaidia? I’m sorry I’m making you worry! I’m not trying to.”

She just shook her head, huffing and flicking her tail in clear irritation as the elevator doors opened and we both entered. I started to hear the echoes of multiple spider ponies hissing down the corridors as our pursuers began to catch up to us, but the elevator doors closed just as they were coming into view. LIL-E had told us to go to what she called the ‘Terminal Station’ so I had to take a few seconds to look over the displayed buttons with names of the levels the elevator went to displayed next to them. There was the sound of pounding on the doors that spurred me to read quickly and finding the right button I hoofed it and felt a sigh of relief escape me as I felt the elevator begin to descend.

The awkward silence between me and Arcaidia was broken by LIL-E.

“I’m seeing the service elevator moving. I’m assuming that’s you guys?”

“Yes,” I said, keeping my tone even, “What’s this Terminal Station we’re going to anyway?”

“Refers to a train terminal, far as I can tell. It’s the biggest area in the whole Stable. I want us to link up there because the armory isn’t far from it, and if we’re lucky, the train itself is still operational. It can get us out of here fast, maybe bypass dealing with our eight legged friends. We’re getting on our elevator now, we’ll meet you there.”

Silence returned to the elevator, leaving me to stand next to Arcaidia with a growing feeling of unease. I understood she was angry at me, and I thought I knew why, but the language barrier was still making it hard to find out for sure. Maybe I ought to start being more careful, avoid the kind of risks I’d gotten used to taking up until now. I was so used to just…doing my own thing. Trailblaze complained when I’d gone off on my own all the time back home, but she’d always backed me up as well. Arcaidia, B.B, the others, they did too…but unlike back home the stakes were a lot higher. Or maybe they’d always been high and I just never noticed. Traiblaze had nearly died because of my lack of caution. Others had paid high prices recently too. Shale, the ponies of Saddlespring.

Had I learned anything yet? I thought I was trying to be more careful, to not take risks that’d cost me or my friends dearly. But my curiosity was a part of me, as was my desire to help others and protect my friends. How was I supposed to balance those fundamental aspects of myself with the growing need to keep my friends and others around me from getting hurt or worse due to my actions?

My mind was still trying to piece together my thoughts on this when the elevator finally stopped and its doors opened.

Out Arcaidia and myself trotted into a truly cavernous chamber. The first thing I noticed was the thick blankets of webbing covering the walls and strung up around the ceiling. The next thing I noticed was the way the center of this huge square chamber was dominated by a long, rectangular vehicle consisting of several segmented boxes, set up on a pair of metal rails that lead to a switching station and several mouth-like tunnels in the wall. Metal catwalks led high over the rails, and high up on the wall opposite the elevator we walked out of was a hanging control room with a staircase leading up to it. This control room was also covered in webbing, a bridge of the stuff leading from this control room to the center of the ceiling. There, a huge dome of web extended down almost half the height of the room.

This dome shifted and an opening at the bottom of it widened, and from this opening two, long, bladed legs extended, covered in coarse brown fur and chitin. These huge legs were joined by others as a massive body pulled itself out and hung from the ceiling by a thick cable-like strand of webbing as thick as my body.

This spider pony was a giant among its kind, the size of one of the boxes comprising the vehicle I could only assume was the ‘train’ LIL-E had mentioned. Its mane was long, ragged, and white, and its huge eyes were a bloodshot red. As this monolith of a spider pony looked at us and opened its dripping maw to bellow a bone shaking and ear splitting hiss, I noticed many more normal sized spider ponies starting to enter the room from countless openings and holes in the ceiling and wall.

A more mechanical hiss next to me and Arcaidia singled another set of elevator doors opening and out floated LIL-E, along with Iron Wrought and Fine Eyes family trotting along behind. The eyebot paused as she floated out, the others halting behind her as they finally noticed the details off the room.

I heard Iron Wrought’s facehoof loud, clearly, and echoing in the huge room.

“Huh,” said LIL-E “I suppose I should’ve accounted for there being a nest somewhere in here.”

“So, is this how you’re luck usually goes?” Iron Wrought asked me.

I nodded dumbly, not able to say anything more intelligent than, “Eeyup.”

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added – Pacifist Crush: You’re desire to avoid killing has led you to develop greater skill in non-lethal force. Any time you target the head or similarly vital point you can choose to deal half damage in exchange for having a chance to knock your opponent unconscious (the chance of success depends on your target’s Endurance stat). Note this does not work on robots or creatures that lack a discernible anatomy.

Current Conditions: Poisoned! You are currently suffering a -2 to Strength and Endurance until you receive proper medical treatment.

Bonus EX-File: Longwalk’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats.
STR = 9 (currently 7 due to Poison)
END = 5 (currently 3 due to Poison)
PER = 5
AGI = 6 (currently 5 due to armor)
INT = 4
CHA= 7
LUK= 4

Author's Note

I shall now make use of the Author's Notes section! Many thanks go to Kkat for creating FoE in the first place to inspire so many of us to write our own stories. Many other thanks go to the folks who read this crazy triple crossover of mine, especially Doomade and Honey Mead for all the useful comments and help with finding the (many) typos and spelling errors. Thanks also to Fillyosopher for trying to teach me how commas work (hopefully I'm doing better with that). Here's to all of you and hope you continue to enjoy the story!

Chapter 12: From Anxiety to Impatience

Chapter 12: From Anxiety to Impatience

I’d been distracting myself by trying to guess the use of the medical tools I saw scattered around the medlab. Perhaps that thing with the long tube connected to tiny plastic and metal disc was for checking temperatures? Ugh, that’d be uncomfortable. Hm, and what could that machine with the paddles be for? Giving soothing massages? Then there was big metal cylinder with the rubber mask. Could it be for-

Dead eyes, the deep crimson of fresh blood.

-…okay, time to find a new distraction.

I knew Misty Glasses had told me to get some more rest, but apparently laying in bed wasn’t going to cut it where my nerves were concerned. I needed some physical exertion, the opinion of medically knowledgeable spider ponies notwithstanding. I threw off the blankets, and though my muscles made little creaking protests at my movement, I rolled out of the bed and stretched all four limbs, hooves clicking hollowly on the cold metal floor. Taking a deep breath I started to walk around the medlab, giving curious looks at cabinets of apparent medicine and other assorted drugs, half of which looked more empty than it should. I suppose LIL-E had cleaned the place out pretty thoroughly. Surprising none of that stuff had been returned now that were were on friendly terms with the Stable’s eight legged residents. We were on friendly terms with them right? I wondered how many of them had really been keen on ceasing hostilities, given how many died in the fight with my friends and I.

Thinking on the fight, I wondered where Gramzanber was. The spear wasn’t in the medlab. A chilling sense of vulnerability passed through me as I realized the spear was nowhere near me, but at the same time I got a... feeling, that same familiar pressure in my mind that I now associated with the ARM. Focusing on the pressure, I noticed it seemed to stem from a direction, somewhere below me. Did that mean Gramzanber was down a few floors? If I focused hard enough I could almost pinpoint exactly where.

Was this just part of the bonding process with the ARM? It was nice to know that I could feel the spear’s location, but I didn’t like the feeling of weakness that came with not having it on me.

I passed by the desk Misty Glasses had been using a terminal at, giving the machine a curious look, but my eye was drawn to movement by the window. In the reflective surface of the window above the desk I saw the anger filled visage of Director Twinkle looming. When I jumped back, doing a double-take, the window was empty. It just showed a view of a lit promenade outside, flickering fluorescent lighting showing that there was nopony out there.

“Calm down Longwalk,” I told myself, rubbing a hoof on my head, “Just got to get it together, that’s all.”

Even as I tried to push down the thoughts my mind instantly recalled the way Gramzanber had broken through the protective chitin between Midnight Twinkle’s eyes, remembering in painful detail the meaty snap of sound and wet ripping of the silver spear punching through flesh. Mouth feeling dry, I glanced at the terminal on the desk, hoping to find something interesting there to take my mind off of things. The black screen was filled with a thick scroll of green text, an open file that looked partially finished.

>>>M-Files, 10.26.899, Subject: LW<<<

Patient Information

Name: Longwalk

Species: Earth Pony (?, see EX-File 011)

Gender: Male

Age: Mid-teens, 15 or 16

Medical History: Unknown

Injuries: Mild radiation poisoning, numerous lacerations and bruises on shoulders, crest, withers, muzzle, front and back canons,flanks, and barrel, severe shrapnel wounds on chest with internal damage to right lung, four fractured ribs, two broken ribs, fracture in left hind leg, signs of mild concussion, signs of drug overdose from combination of Buck and Med-X leading to moderate muscle tearing in limbs, unknown trauma to internal vasculature system, unknown trauma to epidermis, unidentified shadows in front temporal lobe.

Procedure: Applied healing alchemic drip via IV into bloodstream while removing foreign shrapnel from right lung. Assist by temporary nurse, Arcaidia, with healing magic (possible Crest Sorcery?) to accelerate recovery. Applied separate drip of RadAway to purge minor radiation. Applied synthetic flesh bindings to lungs and utilized bone growth spell in conjunction with intravenous nutrient supplement to provide for further body recovery. Performed medical scans while further application of healing spell took place, discovering abnormal strain on inner veins and arteries, as well as an unknown ‘shadow’ in subject’s temporal lobe. Further investigation failed to reveal nature of shadow or source of unusual trauma, but all vital signs show that a full recovery is to be expected within 72 hours. Recommend further observation for an additional forty eight hours post regaining of consciousnesses.

… Wow, I didn’t quite grasp all of the terms used, but that certainly sounded like a lot of me doing the opposite of what Trailblaze wanted; getting myself hurt. I was rather shocked I was feeling so physically fit, aside from the stiffness in the limbs. Certain things in the text got my eyebrow raising; like all these “unidentified shadows” in my... what was a temporal lobe, exactly? Did I need it? Was it normal for it to be all shadow-y? What was with the question mark by my species!? I was pretty sure I was an earth pony. Somepony would’ve told me if I’d spontaneously sprouted a horn or a pair of wings. There was mention of an EX-File 011 that might have more information, but when I tried clicking at the terminal’s keys nothing happened, as if the terminal was locked on this page.

I decided to let the questions be for now until I had time to ask Misty Glasses about it. She’d done a fine job patching me up so there was probably no reason to worry. The medical ability of this facility amazed me. My ears flicked down as I wondered how many injuries a pony might survive if only they had access to a place like this and a good medical pony to help them. If medicine like this was widely available, how many ponies would not have to die? If we’d had a place like this when Shale had been...

Shaking my head I blew out a huff of air, angry at myself. I was trying not to think about Director Twinkle, but all that accomplished was it got me thinking of other deaths I’d witnessed. Shale’s was just the most prominent in my mind, the one that cut deepest, but I remembered others. The Odessa trooper with green eyes whose name I never learned, gunned down by B.B. The Raider, Friendly Fire, stepping on a mine and exploding into pieces in front of me. The pink spider pony who’d tried to protect the foal whose leg I’d accidentally tore off, turned to dust by Arcaidia’s starblaster. Each death played through my head like a depressingly sick slideshow.

I wondered how many more deaths were to come. Seeing how things had been going… probably a lot. Odessa would show up again eventually. We’d inevitably run into more Raiders. Skull City sounded like it’d bring with it an entire host of conflicts, any of which me and my friends could easily get mixed up in simply by walking the streets. There was no way the path to the NCR was going to be a peaceful one.

So what did I intend to do when violence ensued once again?

My mind’s eye again saw my spear sticking out from between Twinkle’s eyes, and I shook my head.

What had made me do it? What made that instant different from any of the others where I’d hesitated to take a life? I remembered feeling so certain that Arcaidia was about to die, that all of us would have been killed, if we’d allowed Director Twinkle to get back up after disarming ourselves. I just hadn’t seen any other option. I was desperate. So, instinctively, before I even realized what I was doing; I’d acted. What I didn’t understand was if my action was a mistake born of fear and desperation, or a justified action that could be forgiven for being the only thing I could have done without risking my friend’s lives. There were no convenient answers to be found moping around the medlab, though, so I took another calming breath, turned from the terminal, and decided to head out.

I didn’t plan on wandering far, as Misty Glasses had gone to get my friends, but I wanted a bit more space to stretch my legs.

“Place seems less creepy now, at least,” I said to myself as I noticed that the promenade was filled with pools of light from ceiling lights that drew my attention almost instantly. The lights made this buzzing hum and I wondered what powered them. The light they made was strangely sterile, not at all like the warm lively light of the bonfires my tribe made. Still, the Stable had a homey feel now that it wasn’t a quiet, dark place filled with shadows.

I heard movement on a bridge that was passing over the promenade, apparently connecting to parts of an upper floor, and glanced up to see a pair of spider ponies passing by, dragging a crate between them. The spider ponies gave me a brief look, one of them giving me an odd half wave with one of its thin legs, while the other looked away from my gaze quickly. I couldn’t tell if that was due to fear or anger. I hesitated a second before I returned the wave from the one spider pony and watched as they continued on with carrying their crate.

Had either of those two been in the fight in the terminal station? Perhaps they had friends, or family, among those that had been kill-

I smacked my head. I knew that trying to avoid these thoughts was a losing battle, but I was going to push them back as best I could, at least until I had my friends around to take the edge off, to help me work through things. B.B had told me, back at the school with the Raiders, that if I ever needed to talk about my first kill that she’d be a willing ear. LIL-E was also somepony I was sure I could talk to, and might have a useful perspective, given she seemed the most experienced out of my companions. With Arcaidia there was a language barrier that’d made having a heart-to-heart difficult, and Iron Wrought was likely to just call me an idiot for thinking about the matter at all. Some part of myself wasn’t sure he’d be wrong to do so. As for Binge...

I’d probably try to avoid talking with Binge about it. I was fairly certain that her take on the whole affair might not be all that helpful. Interesting, yes. Helpful? Not so sure on that.

As I was going about stretching my legs, trying to work out the stiffness in them, I heard a slight clicking sound behind me that had the now familiar staccato of a spider pony’s gait, though this one was quieter than the others. I turned my head to see a tiny spider pony foal walking into the promenade from a side corridor. Her pink coat with the splotchy patches of white, the mane, bright yellow, and her pony eyes a bright baby blue. I also noted the one leg out of her eight that wasn’t organic, but was now a spindly cybernetic replacement.

The spider pony foal who I’d injured, and whose parent had been killed by Arcaidia, froze in place as she entered the promenade and saw me standing there.

I could see an entire stampede of emotions crossing her features in just a few seconds. First paralyzing fear, soon washed away by a twisting combination of pain fueled anger, hate, and sadness. Tears filled her eyes as she immediately turned around and skittered away down the corridor she’d come from.

“W-Wait!” I shouted after her, moving to follow. I desperately wanted to apologize to her, for hurting her, and for not being able to stop the death of her parent, but spider ponies were fast, and this little foal no less so. She’d vanished down the corridor before I’d even taken two steps to follow.

“Ya alright Lonwalk, what’re ya doin’ outta bed? Misty Glasses told ya ta take it easy didn’t she?”

I glanced back at B.B’s familiar drawling accent, seeing the white pegasus mare floating down into the promenade from an upper balcony. She brushed some of her light brown and pink streaked mane from her face as she landed and tucked her wings against her side, looking at me curiously. She was wearing clean clothes, as opposed to the grimy leather armor she’d had on when we’d entered the Stable. She wore a plain, light violet dress with white lacing covering her barrel, chest, and part of her flank, but leaving her cutie mark exposed.

I lowered my head, but realizing I must’ve made me look rather morose, I raised it again and tried to school my face into some semblance of normalcy, “Sorry, couldn’t keep myself still. Legs were begging for a stretch.”

“Heh, guess I can relate,” B.B said, her wings twitching a bit at her side, “Can’t stand lettin’ my girls here stay still too long either. So what where ya doin’ just now though? Ya had a look like ya got a punch in the gut.”

She paused, and then said, voice softening, “Is it what ya had ta do, back in that scuffle?”

I took a moment to collect my thoughts before saying, “I killed somepony, and that’s... I’m going to need to sort that out with myself. But what’s bothering me right now is that I ran into one of the spider ponies. A foal. One I hurt, by accident, when me and Arcaidia had been exploring the Stable. The foal’s mother, or I think it was her mother anyway, found us and attacked, probably thinking I was trying to kill her child and wanted to protect her. Arcaidia ended up killing the mother though.”

B.B’s eyes were kind as she approached me, giving my shoulder a small bump with a hoof, “It was a’ messed up situation fer everypony. I’ve been talkin’ a lot with Misty Glasses and some of the other spider pony folk. Lot of ‘em didn’t like what that boss lady o’ theirs was forcin’ ‘em ta do, but they went along wit it all ‘cause they were scared o’ her. There’s some sore feelin’s towards us, sure, but most of ‘em spider ponies are grateful ta be out from under Midnight Twinkle’s control. Ya shouldn’t go blamin’ yerself fer all the deaths that led up ta ya havin’ to put a’ end ta Twinkle.”

“I’m not. Not for all of them anyway,” I said, trying to give her a reassuring smile, though I doubted I was doing a very good job of it judging from her own expression, “I still… wanted to tell that foal I was sorry for what happened. Its all I can offer her.”

“Long, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m thinkin’ the last thing that foal wants ta hear is a’ apology. Take it from somepony whose seen a few things… folks, when they lose somepony close to ‘em, they don’t wanna hear no words from those they feel wronged ‘em. You’d just remind her o’ what she lost, if ya tried talkin’ wit her. Better ta just give her space.”

I couldn’t stop my head from hanging down now, knowing B.B was likely correct. What could I possibly say to that foal, or any of the other spider ponies here who’d lost friends and family, that would make things better? Sorry wouldn’t cut it but a wide margin. It didn’t stop me from wanting to, though. Even if forgiveness wouldn’t be forthcoming. With some effort I raised my head and said, “You’re right, but that doesn’t make things any easier, knowing that. Probably best we finish what we came here to do and leave as soon as possible.”

“Can’t argue wit that,” said B.B, her posture relaxing, seeing me at least trying to perk up, “Figure ya gotta be half-way ta starvin’, so everypony’s waitin’ down in the cafeteria. Them spider ponies Misty Glasses sent topside managed ta bag some grub.”

That immediately got my ears flicking up and my tail swishing happily, “Meat?”

“Ha, though that’d perk yer spirits a’ tad. Guessin’ yer tribe ate it pretty regular?”

I nodded, warming to a topic that was steering well away from death, “It was our norm, gecko meat. We had roots we grew too, for stews and soups, but gecko was what we lived off. Sometimes there were other animals, birds and rabbits, but they were really rare to see. Geckos though, they bred like crazy and were always packs of them around to hunt,” I said, glad for the distracting topic as B.B led me to a side door that opened up to some stairs leading up a floor. I was glad enough for the distracting topic, and it felt good to talk about home.

“Ain’t been able to hear much ‘bout yer tribe,” B.B said as we got up to the next floor, heading down a short corridor as we talked, “You don’t talk much ‘bout ‘em.”

I had to laugh a little, though it was a quiet, subdued sound. I felt better, talking with B.B, but I was far from ‘okay’. Every little step helped though, and I did feel more energy bleed into my tone as I said, “There’s just been so much going on, you know? We’ve barely had any time to rest since we met, and half of that has been because we’ve been recovering from horrible injury. Just hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to chat. I haven’t been avoiding it or anything. So, um what did you want to know?”

“Nothin’ specific, just figured you might be missin’ home a’ bit. Talkin’ might help.”

“You don’t always have to offer up to listen to me, especially every time I might have something to whine about,” I said, feeling guilty that B.B was so worried about me.

“Ah’, that’s a’ load a horseapples, Long. This is what friends do. If I ever got somethin’ on my chest I need sortin’, I’d expect ya to be there ta listen to me complain ‘bout it too! So its all nice an’ equal, no reason ta feel like yer imposin’. I totally intend ta use you fer spillin’ my issues with too, so ya best be ready fer it!” B.B said as she gave me a wry half smile.

I couldn’t help but return the smile, “Alright, alright, I’ll refrain from guilt tripping myself further for using you as a shoulder to cry on. Its okay though, I’m… I’m a bit homesick, but I don’t regret leaving. Helping Arcaidia is important to me. Its not as if I’m going to forget mom, or Trailblaze.”

“Trailblaze? Friend o’ your’s?” asked B.B.

“Mmhm, she was pretty much my only friend back home. Always looking out for me,” I said, feeling a warm ache in my chest as I thought about her. I could see her clearly, Trailblaze’s light brown coat, and dark mane, with blue eyes giving me a hard look even as she smiled at whatever dumb adventure I happened to be dragging her on. I remembered the way she looked at me, just as we parted that early morning, what felt like such a long time ago. She was so worried. Scared she’d never see me again. How many times had I nearly made that fear reality, through one crazy stunt or another, since following Arcaidia into the Wasteland?

I have to get back to her, no matter how long it takes, or how dangerous this journey gets I have to return to her. Tell her…

I blinked, realizing I’d almost run into the door to the cafeteria. One could tell it was the cafeteria due to the rather large, brightly lit blue neon sign hanging over the sliding metal doors.

“Whoa, ya alright there, Long?” B.B asked with an amused grin, “Kinda spaced out there, talkin’ ‘bout yer marefriend back home.”

I felt a bit of heat in my face, “She’s not exactly like that. She, well, I haven’t said anything, and I don’t know what I’d say if given the chance. I… don’t have any experience.”

“Figure that’s kinda how goes fer anypony,” B.B said with a shrug of her wings, “Don’t sweat it. Ya feel like that, it’ll come naturally, when the time comes.”

“I don’t even know if she feels the same way,” I said, in a small whisper.

A light smack across my head made me wince and B.B retracted her wing while giving me a stern look.

“None o’ that talk now. Gotta have confidence Long, but let’s shelve this fer now an’ git some grub!”

The cafeteria was a wide, rectangular room bathed in bright fluorescent lighting. Numerous long metal tables were neatly lined in ordered rows. Most of them were empty, but I immediately noted there were at least a dozen spider ponies gathered around one of the tables, chatting in what seemed to be their own odd language of clicks and hisses. A table down from them were a group of ponies; my friends. They had bowls of what seemed to be steaming soup in front of them, with a plate of what I recognized now as carrots and apples from that lab Arcaidia and I had found earlier… which made me question if they were safe to eat, but further grumbling from my stomach pushed aside any misgivings I may have had. I was wondering where the meat was though. B.B had said there’d be meat!

Iron Wrought was giving wary sidelong glances at Binge while the mare was playing with one of her knives, flipping it up in the air and balancing it by the knife tip on one hoof while she ate. Or did something that was the approximation of eating. The term ‘inhaling’ or ‘utterly destroying’ her food might be more accurate. Meanwhile Arcaidia serenely ate opposite them with a dignified air, munching on one of her snack cakes, while giving the apples and carrots strange glances as if the plants somehow offended her.

As B.B and I came up to the table Arcaidia turned first and noticed us, her silver eyes briefly going wide before she dropped her snack cake and practically galloped up to me.

“Hey Arcaidia, good to see-OW!” I winced and tried in vain to shield my head as Arcaidia proceeded to lightly clobber me with a forehoof, her eyes flashing with anger even as they were filling with tears of relief.

“Longwalk brain of mud!? Jump in gun think smart!? Shivol, estu dol hathir di bakir, ren solva!”

She glared at me, wiping her face, as B.B chuckled, coming up next to Arcaidia and putting a hoof on her shoulder, “Easy there hun, don’t be givin’ the poor fella no more head trauma, or he won’t ever learn. But yeah, shoulda known better n’ ta leap in front of a double barrel o’ buckshot.”

Arcaidia snorted, “Brain of mud. Good body, bad brain. Is… is… bruhir, esru ti volare mas.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it Arcaidia, I think he gets the gist,” said B.B, patting Arcaidia in a comforting manner. Which I noticed Arcaidia didn’t seem to mind. I glanced between the two, slowly realizing just how much Equestrian Arcaidia had just used in that last exchange.

“I was only out for three days, right?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, Arcaidia’s been workin’ real hard ta learn, an’ been shockin’ me how much she’s improved,” B.B said while giving Arcaidia a warm smile.

“Head not toaster,” Arcaidia said proudly, then resumed her glaring at me, “Your head toaster, ren solva! Estu dol atma di molvris mas.”

I grimaced, rubbing my sore head, “I was protecting Binge. I just sort of reacted, didn’t have time to think it through.”

“Not that it’s my business how you choose to get yourself killed,” said Iron Wrought as we came up to the table and I took a seat next to Arcaidia, across from Binge, who was now balancing two knives end to end on the tip of her snout, “But that was a stupid move.”

I was too hungry to want to argue with the green stallion, looking over at him, then at Binge. It was odd, though Iron Wrought was a darker green, both shared similar coat colors, both were earth ponies, and both had dark manes and blue eyes. Any casual glance and one would think they were siblings. I licked my lips and eyed the apples and carrots, grabbing one of the red apples between my hooves as I said, “Stupid, maybe, but I don’t regret it if it protected a friend.”

Binge flipped her balancing knives with her snout and deftly caught one with her hoof, and the other with her tail, of all things. In a flash the two blades seemed to just vanish, and I couldn’t tell where they’d gone too. She wasn’t wearing her spiked Raider barding anymore, and was just with her bare coat. It gave me a chance to see the condition of her far clearer than I had before. She had that same stained, mangy quality to her fur as most Raiders. Her entire body, from neck to flank, was covered in numerous pink, fleshy scars. They were from dozens of sources. Puckered holes from obvious gunshot wounds. Long, jagged cuts from blades. Multiple thick ripping scars I think may have been animal bites. I hoped they were just animal bites. Her body told of a lifetime of blood and pain and she sported her ragged, scarred coat with a relaxed and easy stance. The moment she noticed me staring Binge waggled her eyebrows seductively and snatched up a carrot, smiling as she began licking the tip in a way that made me quickly decide the table in front of me was very interesting.

“It was real sweet of my little bucky to play meatshield for his big sis, but the grumpy guss is right-“

“Grumpy guss?” Iron Wrought echoed with a bemused frown.

“-you didn’t have to tear up your clean, soft, edible flesh to shield me. I can’t play with you if you go to sleep forever and evers. Besides, it wasn’t needed; I could have sliced up the angry pony, easier than making diced apples.”

I blinked at her, “It’s a good thing you didn’t have to. Fine Eye was just angry. I don’t blame him for what happened, he just lost control for a moment.”

My eyes glanced about the cafeteria. Some of the spider ponies a table down had skittered away upon me and B.B’s arrival, and the ones that remained were either ignoring us or casting looks our way that were either guarded or just plain unreadable. I didn’t see Fine Eye or any of his family around.

“Where is he by the way?” I asked.

“As soon as Sweet Pear was well enough to move Fine Eye took his family and left. That was just this morning,” said Iron Wrought.

“Oh,” I said, feeling oddly disappointed. I’d wanted to at least apologize for dragging his family into this whole mess, “Did they even get any kind of valuable stuff before leaving?”

I didn’t have any hard feelings of him shooting me. I was starting to realize this kind of thing happened a lot in the Wasteland, so holding a grudge would be pointless. We’d teamed up with his family to help each other, which meant I wanted them to have walked away from this with something to make it worth the risk they’d endured.

“They were allowed to take some of the choice weapons from the armory, stuff the arachquines would have trouble using anyway,” said Iron Wrought and I cocked my head at him.

“Arachwha?”

“What them spider pony folk call ‘emselves, hun,” said B.B “Kinda a smash together of arachnid and equine.”

At my blank stare B.B just rolled her eyes at me, “Ya can just keep callin’ ‘em spider ponies I guess.”

Yeah, I’ll do that. Arachquines… just didn’t roll off the tongue right. I finally got around to munching down on the apple I’d grabbed, leery of anything that wasn’t meat, but finding the sweet, juicy plant won over my taste buds at a rapid rate. Before long I was on my second apple, though I cast B.B a sidelong look.

“So where’s this meat I was promised?”

“Hold yer horses Long, last I checked they were cookin’ it up fer everypony, but the arachquines don’t eat meat like normal,” said B.B, waggling a hoof at me in a chastising manner, “They use venom to all liquefy the gooey bits and suck it up like a juice, so they ain’t used to havin’ ta cook. Kitchen ain’t been used fer years.”

I accepted that and focused on my apple, happy enough just to get some food in me. I tried very hard not to think of the fact that the red of the apple matched the red of Director Twinkle’s eyes. Gah, gotta distract myself with something! I looked at Binge, who was… was it necessary to suck on the carrot like that before biting into it!? I looked away quickly, glancing at Arcaidia.

“So, Arcaidia, you’re learning Equestrian from B.B. Have you learned enough to maybe talk about a few things?”

“Things?” Arcaidia blinked at me with her bright silver eyes, head tilting and part of her face getting obscured by her long equally silver mane, “What things?”

I traced a small circle on the table with one hoof, wondering if I was about to be rude, asking her a bunch of questions when I’d already decided I would trust this filly and help her in any way I could, but there were a lot of things about her I didn’t know, and now that we could kinda-sorta hold a conversation...

“You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to,” I said hastily, “I was just curious if you could tell me, well, where you came from? Why were you in that pod in the cave me and Trailblaze found you in?”

Iron Wrought was giving me a strange look, and it occurred to me he hadn’t heard anything about how I’d met Arcaidia. “Pod thing?” the green stallion asked curiously.

B.B remained quiet, already knowing this part of the story, and just watched on in interest as she nibbled at an apple clutched between her hooves.

Binge seemed disappointed that I wasn’t paying attention to her carrot abuse, so she snapped off a bite and chewed loudly while leaning against the table and watched as Arcaidia fidgeted nervously at my question.

“I from...“ Arcaidia paused a second, as if unsure, then said, “Esru di ricav. Big city. Manehattan.”

“Manehattan?” B.B piped in, “That’s in the NCR.”

Arcaidia blinked, as if not expecting that, “Hovir? Eh, sorvi dis morvitae...”

“Huh?” I scrunched my face up in confusion, “If you’re from the NCR how did you not know Equestrian?”

“I... shivol, esru si morvair dol respaza!” she shook her head vigorously, and gave me an apologetic expression, one that looked as strained as her tone, “Sorry. Very sorry. What told to say. For mission. Not from Manehattan... not from anywhere.”

She took a calming breath that seemed to steady her as she levitated out a small silver metal flask from her saddlebag and took a drink from it, “Longwalk, can’t tell. No ask, please? Sister very mad if I tell.”

“Your sister? Persephone?” I asked.

Arcaidia nodded once and said, “Vira, esru dol miruvi. Sister. Very strong. Very mad if I break rules.”

I leaned back in my seat, tail swishing back and forth as I took that in, thinking. Alright, so Arcaidia was on some kind of mission, or had been at least, and she wasn’t allowed to tell me certain things because it was against the rules; rules that’d get her in trouble with her big sister if Arcaidia broke them. She’d been given some story about being from Manehattan to tell so she wouldn’t have to tell the truth? Weird.

“Well, is there anything you can tell me about yourself? Like I said, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’m not interrogating you or anything. I’m just curious to know who you really are and how you got to be where I found you.”

Arcaidia stared ahead, not really looking at any of us, just thinking, ordering her thoughts I imagined. Binge had finished off her carrot and was giving Arcaidia’s flask a thirsty look, having drained her own cup already.

“Hurting yourself thinking too hard,” the Raider mare said with a lick of her lips, “Secrets and lies piled high, like too much yummy treats in the belly. Let it all vomit out in one big gush and you’ll feel better, special agent mare.”

Arcaidia gave Binge a sharp look, but quickly turned her nose up at the Raider with a small huff and looked at me with a sincere and solemn expression, completely ignoring the weird faces Binge was making at her.

“Longwalk beat you, ‘shivol bir’, lowest-caste. Give life. Serve now. Mud brain, though, let shivol bir talk much.”

“Ooo, heheheh, more funny words. What’s a ‘shovel beer’?” Binge asked with oddly innocent curiosity in her voice. Arcaidia’s eyes got frosty with her ‘kitten drowning’ look and crossed her forelegs over her barrel.

“Shivol bir. Lowest of low caste. Serve higher caste... as... B.B, word?”

B.B sighed, a sour look on her face and giving me a wary sidelong glance before answering, “The term is ‘slave’, hun, and it ain’t a’ good thing by our standards. Binge, she ain’t a’ slave. Not ta us, an’ not ta Longwalk.”

I could only nod at that, shocked at the turn of conversation, “That’s right, Binge is here because... well, I guess because she wants to be? I’m not forcing her.”

Arcaidia frowned at me, “Shivol bir di volmir; enemy. Longwalk beat,” she looked up in thought, clearly trying to string together what words of Equestrian she’d learned to try and explain this to me, “Longwalk beat... make own? Life owned? Yes, shivol bir serve Longwalk now! Owned.”

I shook my hooves in front of me, waving them in a clear gesture of denial, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t own anything, least of all Binge!”

For one, I didn’t want to have anything to do with the idea of owning another pony. For two, Binge sort of terrified me. I still didn’t know where she kept those knives of hers!

“Ooooh, I’m not so sure about that, I’m thinking I’m getting the squiggly paths of the brain thoughts our fun icy friend has,” said Binge as she played with some of her dark green mane with a hoof, as she looked at me, eyes twinkling, “You did put a heavy leash around my pretty neck. You don’t tug on it hard, but its there. If I pull on the leash, tried to have fun like my old family had fun, you’d choke me with the leash, right?”

“Huh?” I didn’t get what he was trying to say, but Iron Wrought spelled it out for me with a small slam of his hoof on the table.

“She’s saying, numbskull, that if she starts killing ponies and wearing their hide as a dress you’d step in and put a stop to it. She’s not too far off from a slave. Doing what she’s told is pretty much part of the package deal of you letting her live and follow us around, right?”

I gave him a sour look, “Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to make her do everything I say! She’s not my property. You’re not my property Binge”

The last was said as I looked at her, rising from my seat, breathing heavy as my tail flicked behind me in rapid, frantic movements. She actually giggled at me, as if me being upset was some kind of joke, “Heheh, you’re such a puppy. You want to be a good boy and get pets on the head, don’t you?”

“Estu dol kuvris nir?” Arcaidia seemed to have calmed down somewhat, her silvery eyes more confused than annoyed now as she kept glancing between me and Binge, “You not own her, but command? Make no sense, ren solva.”

I just shook my head in defeat, saying lamely, “It makes sense to me.”

B.B chuckled a bit, not condescending, just amused as she gave me a comforting pat with one of her wings, “Don’t git too wound up there, hun. ‘Sides, more food’s comin’ up.”

I quickly set aside being bothered by the argument over the semantics of Binge’s exact status in our little party as a smell reached my nostrils. A warm, salty and wonderful smell I didn’t realize how much I’d missed until that moment. The smell of fresh cooked meat. A yellow spider pony with spots of black on his(?) coat walked with his many clicking legs over to our table, pushing a tray cart loaded with smoking slabs of meat. The spider pony’s expression was hard to read as he gave us all a quick, nodding look, pale eyes not really meeting any of ours as he set the tray on the table.

I smiled at the spider pony, “Thanks, you have no idea how much I’ve been missing meat.”

The spider pony looked at me blankly for a second, expression unreadable, then walked away silently. I wondered if he had the ability to speak with the same voicebox Misty Glasses and Director Twinkle had if he would have at least said “You’re welcome” or something.

I didn’t think too much on it though, my attention entirely focused now on the feast in front of me, mouth already slick with anticipation. Even as I reached for a slice of the meat I heard Arcaidia gag. I looked over at her. The blue coat around her face had taken on a greenish tint.

“Ugh... boro, flesh, why eat, ren solva? Estu dol boro est vilro mas!”

“Because it’s tasty?” I replied as I began to happily munch away at the meat. Mmm! If that yellow spider pony had been the cook he knew his stuff! This was cooked just right to be juicy, but had not lost any of the flavor, and I could taste a tangy seasoning that complimented the texture just right... hmm... hey, this texture seemed familiar.

“You know, paranoia would tell me to question where this meat came from,” said Iron Wrought as he put a slab of the meat on his own plate and tried it, “But, hate to say it, I’m hungry enough to not care.”

B.B sighed, not touching the meat herself and eating one of the carrots instead, “Pleasant thought, Iron, pleasant thought. I saw them spider ponies Misty Glasses sent out ta do some scoutin’, an’ the beastie they brought back ta cook up. Looked like a’ gecko ta me, only it was a’ weird color, all gold an’ stuff.”

I halted mid-bite, nearly choking on the meat. I coughed a few times, smacking my chest as I forced the meat to go down the right pipe, my companions all giving me weird looks. Taking in a deep breath I looked at B.B, “G-gold, you said? A golden gecko? You’re sure?”

The pegasus mare nodded, brown and pink streaked mane falling over her eyes, “Sure as my own shootin’. Why ya ask Long?”

My mind instantly flashed back to that day, less than a week ago, when that pack of large golden scaled geckos had nearly killed me and Trailblaze. They’d been unlike any geckos I’d seen before and I’d assumed they were some random, freakish offshoot that had only lived in those foothills near Shady Stream. But the spider ponies had hunted one near here, miles and miles away from my home? Realizing B.B was still staring at me, in fact everypony was staring at me, I quickly answered, “I ran into geckos like that before, and I’m just surprised there’s more of them running around.”

My companions seemed to accept this and we all resumed eating, Binge digging into the meat with an eagerness that surpassed my own, making little satisfied growling noises as she almost ferally tore into the food. Arcaidia still had a disgusted look on her face but she made no further comment. B.B didn’t partake either and I got a little curious.

“Don’t like meat, B.B?”

I saw her tense slightly, wings pausing in their normal relaxed flaps, “Ain’t normal fare fer ponies, ya know Long.”

“Iron Wrought’s eating it, so is Binge,” I pointed out.

“Hey,” said Iron Wrought, “Don’t compare me to the Raider! Eating whatever food’s in front of you is just common sense, even if meat isn’t all that healthy for a pony to eat regular.”

I frowned, “My tribe is plenty healthy. Eaten geckos since forever and nopony ever seemed to get sick off it. And meat tastes good! I don’t see the problem.”

“It ain’t a problem, really. Ponies can eat just ‘bout anythin’ they gotta,” said B.B, “Just my pa raised me ta...”

She hesitated, and I wasn’t sure why.

“Ta eat healthy-like,” she said finally, “Nothin’ more to it.”

I decided to leave it at that and not press her further, though I was curious as to why she hesitated in answering. It occurred to me that I actually didn’t know that much about the ponies who were traveling with me. I found I wanted to know more, like maybe what their lives before meeting me was like, or what kind of things they enjoyed. You know, the basic kind of stuff friends ought to know about each other. Problem was I didn’t really know how to go about talking about that stuff. Trailblaze had been my friend for as long as I could remember, so knowing her well had just happened naturally. But I hadn’t had any friends besides her until now, so I was at a loss as to how to just make small talk with them.

Fortunately there was delicious gecko in front of me to occupy my attention. I’ll admit once I got over my initial shock I found a certain guilty and ironic pleasure in eating the meat of a golden gecko. Try to chomp down on my foalhood friend will ya!? Well whose eating who now!? Bwahahahah!

It was around that time that I noticed something. Or rather the lack of someone.

“Hey, where’s LIL-E?” I asked.

B.B’s brow drew up in a look of thought, “Ya’ know, I don’t know. Ain’t seen her since last night.”

“That robot was acting strange,” said Iron Wrought, “Has been since the fight.”

“Care to be more specific?” I asked, “Strange how?”

The other stallion gave me a sour look, his weathered features tightening, “She was damaged in the scuffle, a few gaps torn in her side from the shrapnel this one-” he jabbed a hoof towards Binge, who still had a mouthful of meat and growled at him as she hunched over her food, “-firing off all those missiles.”

“She alright?” I asked, feeling an odd twist of worry in me. I knew LIL-E wasn’t actually that floating robot, that she was a flesh and blood pony somewhere else in the world just controlling the machine, but it was just instinctive to worry about a friend who was ‘injured’.

“She’s a robot, buck,” said Iron Wrought, echoing my thoughts, “Isn’t like she’s actually hurt. Just was acting weird about it. Not letting any of the arachquine technicitans here look at her or help with repairs.”

“Feels a’ bit like she’s tryin’ ta avoid us,” said B.B with a shrug of her wings, “But it ain’t like it’s any o’ my business ta bother her iffin’ she don’t wanna talk none.”

“But nopony even knows where she is?” I asked, still worried.

“On surface,” said Arcaidia, pointing a hoof up at the ceiling, “Machine go up.”

“Huh, why would she go outside?” I couldn’t think of any reason off the top of my head that our robotic companion would want to leave the Stable, at least not without us, or even telling anypony where she was going or why.

“What do you really know about that robot?” asked Iron Wrought, “For all you know she’s nothing more than some crazy rogue A.I, or is being controlled by the that group of pegasi that destroyed Saddle Springs.”

“That’s crazy talk there,” said B.B, scowling slightly, “LIL-E ain’t nothin’ o’ the sort! My pa knows her from years back an’ he can vouch fer her bein’ a’ good pony who just happens ta have ta git things done via that robot.”

“And why is that?” Iron Wrought pressed, voice hard, “Why does she need a robot? Why not just come and do things herself? Must be nice, not having to actually risk your life for anything, just sending a robot into danger instead of putting your own blood on the line.”

“Ya got no clue what yer talkin’ ‘bout Iron,” B.B grumbled, then blinked and looked him in the eyes, “An’ yer a fine one ta talk ‘bout trust! Ya stabbed that poor doctor mare an’ tried to nick her research!”

“My family’s at stake, I don’t need to justify what I did!” said Iron Wrought heatedly.

“Everypony, stop,” I said, putting a hoof on B.B’s shoulder, “We don’t need to argue about this.”

“I don’t like hearin’ him talk bad ‘bout LIL-E,” said B.B, eyes flashing, “My pa trusts her. That ought ta be ‘nough fer anypony.”

“Hmph, fine, I’ll drop it,” said Iron Wrought, looking away.

I breathed a small sigh of relief. Didn’t much like seeing my companions argue, especially over the issue of trust. It reminded me of what Shale had said, that I trusted and befriended ponies too easily. I wanted to believe that ponies could trust each other without needing to have ulterior motives or taking a long, slow time in reaching that trust.

Binge had finished eating (a more accurate term might be ‘destroying’) her food and let out what I could only describe as a shockwave that if toned down by several octaves might have been a burb. She had a contented grin look and sighed, not having paid the brief argument between B.B and Iron Wrought any mind. Arcaidia was looking at the ex-Raider with her nose wrinkling. She then looked to me with an almost pleading expression.

“Longwalk, shivol bir travel with group, she needs clean.”

I cocked my head to the side, and Binge made a small strangled sound between a squeak and a gasp.

“Clean?” I asked.

“Clean!?” Binge echoed, sounding... worried?

Arcaidia nodded her head, holding a hoof to her nose, “No travel with shivol bir without her clean! Needs bath-”

Arcaidia had barely finished saying the word ‘bath’ before Binge was on her hooves and heading for the door like somepony had just suggested pulling her teeth out. Arcaidia’s eyes narrowed as her horn glowed and she caught the other mare in a field of blue energy, levitating her up. Binge howled.

“Noooo! Let gooo! I refuse to accept your social standards! My dirt and I have a close intimate relationship that will not be diffused by the tyranny of soap!”

Arcaidia was already trotting for the door out of the cafeteria, Binge helplessly struggling in the unicorn’s levitation field, but Arcaidia glanced back at the rest of us at the table.

“This take time. B.B, want to help?”

The pegasus blinked dumbly for a second before chuckling to herself and smiling, “Oh yeah, been thinkin’ that mare’s been needin’ a’ proper scrubbin’. Be happy ta help, hun.”

The pair left, dragging a desperately flailing Binge along with them, leaving both me and Iron Wrought behind with dumbfounded expressions on our faces.

“Should I have stopped them?” I asked.

“Why? Raider needs it,” Iron Wrought said, then sniffed at me, “Speaking of which, I think you could do with at least a shower.”

I frowned, giving myself a sniff. I didn’t know what he was talking about, it was just my normal everyday Longwalk smell. I’d bathed... at least a couple weeks ago. That was standard, right? By the look Iron Wrought was giving me, apparently not by the standards of some.

“I’ll think about it,” I told him, gulping down the last of the meat on my plate with a satisfied feeling of being full, “But first I’m going to go find LIL-E.”

“You don’t know where she’s gone,” pointed out Iron Wrought, “If she’s gone outside she could have floated off anywhere.”

“I won't go far,” I assured him, “Just take a look in the immediate area to see if she’s around.”

“Alright, but be careful,” Iron Wrought said, blue eyes narrowing as he subtly jerked his head towards the spider ponies still eating a few tables down, “We ended up killing enough of their kind that I wouldn’t trust them not to hold a grudge, no matter how polite they’re being now. Watch your back.”

I nodded at him, “I will.”

It took me some time to find my way back to the entrance of Stable 104. The massive underground facility was no easier to navigate going up than coming down, and if not for asking directions from passing spider ponies I would’ve likely spent hours just trying to get back to the ground floor.

The entry room and the nearby hallways had been cleaned up, the skeletons and blood on the walls cleared away. While the door was still an open hole the severed halves of the Stable’s main door had also been removed. I wondered if the spider ponies were intending to try to repair the door? Thinking about it made me realize I really didn’t know the story of how any of that happened to the Stable in the first place. Something I’d have to ask Misty Glasses about when I saw her next.

The exit was guarded by a quartet of spider ponies, one of which was hanging from the ceiling by a strand of webbing, while her three fellow guards were clustered around the gaping hole where the Stable door had been. I assumed they were guarding, if only because they barred my way as I headed for the exit.

“Ummm, hi?” I said, smiling awkwardly. The spider ponies just stared at me, one of the males making a few clicking noises followed by a low hiss.

“Well, you see... I, uh, was looking for my friend, LIL-E.”

The spider ponies exchanged looks, and the female hanging from the ceiling making a sharp hiss that drew my attention. I watched her, a red coated spider pony with bright yellow eyes, make a series of gestures with her front legs. A circular motion, followed by a bobbing motion.

“Yes!” I said, nodding “Yes, the floating ball.”

The female spider pony nodded and pointed with one clawed leg out the door.

“Okay, so she did go outside. Um, is it alright if I go out too? I just wanted to check up on her.”

Another round of looks passed between the gathered spider ponies before the female shrugged, or rather lifted her forelegs in what I surmised might have been their equivalent of a shrug, and gestured towards the door. The three spider ponies on the ground skittered out of the way, allowing me to pass. I thanked them and trotted on by, navigating the dark cavern beyond with only one or two stumbles. I swear those rocks just loved to leap out in front of my hooves.

Daylight brightened the cavern floor ahead and I emerged into the rocky canyon. The sky was a light overcast, the brightest I’d ever seen that always present blanket of clouds. I almost thought I could see the point in the sky that was hiding the sun, a faintly pale orb just barely visible through the cloud cover. I wondered what the sky was really like, beyond those clouds. B.B might know. She was a pegasus, so perhaps she’d been up that high before?

Putting those thoughts aside I looked around, trying to spot LIL-E’s metallic form. I couldn’t track her, given that floating robots didn’t tend to leave tracks, but I didn’t imagine a floating spiked metal ball could be that hard to find. LIL-E did tend to stand out. The canyon stretched deeper to the west, twisting and turning out of sight, while the entrance was to the east. While it might have been more logical to think that LIL-E would’ve headed for the canyon entrance, to stick to familiar territory, I got an impulse to look deeper down the canyon. That, or I was just indulging my explorative nature, interesting in seeing what was down that way.

I thought about the possibility that it was dangerous to wander without a weapon, but had confidence in my ability to flee danger. I’d had plenty of practice at running recently, I figured I should’ve received some sort of achievement for it.

The canyon turned and twisted back on itself several times as I cantered down it, the canyon floor narrowing with each turn. The walls became less like sheer cliffs and began to turn into uneven slopes. In a few minutes I reached the end of the canyon, which by this point had become more of a shallow valley. I huffed out a bit of disappointment at not finding anything interesting and was about to turn around when I heard a mechanical voice from behind one of the outcroppings of rock nearby.

“Celestia’s cum-covered horn! Argh! C’mon... c’mon... Brrzzt- rugh, Luna anal lick a Diamond Dog! Who thought it was a good idea to make a combat model without self-repair skills!?”

“LIL-E?” I asked cautiously as I walked around the rocks.

“Didn’t even give me a long enough manipulator... Longwalk? That yo-kkrzzt-ou? Oh shit! Uh! Stay there a sec!”

It was a little late though, as I’d already gotten around the rock and spotted LIL-E. The eyebot wasn’t floating, but rather was laying on her side up against the rock. She had that little robotic arm extending from a hatch on the back of her, nestled between her antenna-like spikes, which was awkwardly bent up and around to get at her side. That side had several holes in it, burned and gashing, one of which was large enough to see inside her chassis. I saw wires and tubes, sparking, with several bits severed and damaged. The robotic arm had in its little clamping claw an odd multi-tool device that was currently glowing with a dull pink flame-like light that was slowly restoring one of the holes. Inside the hole I saw a gleam of a spherical object, small, about the size of...

“LIL-E, is that-?”

“Nothing! I’m fine,” the robot hastily hovered up into the air, distinctly turning so I couldn’t see her damaged side, “I mean, this robot is fine. Just needs some repairs and I didn’t trust the residents of Stable 104 to do it without screwing up LIL-E’s wiring. She, I mean, this is a delicate robot that I can’t just replace, you know?”

“-a memory orb?” I finished my sentence, still blinking in surprise. I was pretty sure, even though I’d only seen one other before. LIL-E had a memory orb inside her, seemingly built into her circuitry.

LIL-E was silent for a second, then said, “Yes, it is. Its part of how this unit’s targeting and other combat abilities work. I wouldn’t be half as accurate in a fight without it.”

“O... kay?” I said, not entirely sure I understood, but then I hadn’t come out here to grill LIL-E about how the robot functioned, “In any case I was just looking to see if you were okay. I’d heard you’d gotten damaged in the fight. Was a little worried.”

“Oh. Well, as you can see, I’m just dandy. Little light structural damage, but nothing I can’t fix myself,” LIL-E said, her mechanical tone as monotone as ever, but I noticed there was a slight pause between each word, as if she was selecting them carefully.

“Well, if you’re sure,” I said, shifting awkwardly on my hooves. My curiosity about that memory orb was a potent little worm in my mind, but it was pretty clear she didn’t want to talk about it. I had a strong feeling it was more than just something to assist with the robot’s targeting. Memory orbs contained, well, memories. Whose memories were in that orb, and why build them into a robot?

“Was there anything else you needed, Longwalk?” LIL-E asked, somewhat quickly, “Or were you just worried about me? Actually... how did you find me?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, just sort of luck, I guess? I headed down into the canyon on a whim, and, er, curiosity mostly. Figured if I was going to look for you I might as well check out someplace I hadn’t been before. Just happened to hear you talking to yourself, right before I’d been about to give up.”

“Hmm, okay. Thought maybe... nevermind. It’ll be about another hour before I’m done with repairs and I’ll head on back. No worries, I’m not detecting anything out here, so I’ll be safe.”

“Actually,” I said, “Do you mind, um, if we talk for a little bit? That is if you don’t mind,” I said, deciding that as long as I was here with LIL-E with nopony else around this would be a good chance to have a chat with her about... things. Midnight Twinkle related things.

“Not really. Mind, I mean. What’s eating you?”

I sat back on my haunches against the rock, LIL-E floating back down next to me, the soft mechanical whirring sounds of her manipulator arm the only sound for a minute as I gathered my thoughts. A dry, cold wind whistled through the canyon then, almost like a signal I should stop stalling and just start talking.

“LIL-E, you’ve... killed a lot, right?”

“You could say that,” was the terse reply.

“What was your first time like?” I asked in a quiet tone, hesitant but swallowing my worry and just getting the question out.

“A colt really shouldn’t ask a filly that kind of thing... ugh, okay, sorry, bad joke I know. You’re trying to be serious, guess I’ll do the same,” LIL-E said, then went silent.

Almost a minute passed and I was just about to ask her if she was alright when she spoke again.

“My first time was, honestly, fast and not really remarkable. I didn’t even see it until it was done. Grenade. Raider tossed it at me, I tossed it back. Reflex, more than intent. Didn’t really even sink in I’d killed the pony until a little later, and by then... it didn’t matter.”

“What do you mean it didn’t matter?” I asked, maybe a bit petulantly, “I mean, how can killing not matter?”

“Its not that complicated Longwalk. I was too busy trying to stay alive, and save ponies, to really register what I was doing. And quite frankly too pissed off to care when it finally did register.”

“Pissed off?” I asked quizzically.

LIL-E turned so her dark, metal grill was facing me, and I got the impression of the pony on the other side of the world looking at me through the eyebot’s view with intensity, “Longwalk, you’ve seen firsthoof what Raiders do. My first time I was stuck neck deep in Raider territory. I stumbled, well, more like I was led, into a nest of the bastards. The blood, the filth, the outright wrongness of those rotten ass-sucking pieces of shit... it ignited a fury in me I hadn’t known I was capable of. That anger, it drowned out everything. I didn’t think, I didn’t feel, I just eradicated whatever pissed me off. It felt right, Longwalk, to kill Raiders, slavers, and anything else I could easily see as part of the Wasteland’s evil. I didn’t question if I was going too far, or if I should show mercy.”

“Not... not even once?” I asked, feeling a coldness creeping into my bones and spreading to my hide, causing my hairs to stand on end. Even with that mechanical tone I could hear the simmering anger in LIL-E’s tone as she talked, and wondered just what memories I was dredging up in the pony on the other end of the robot.

“Not once,” she said, then paused, “Well, that’s not entirely true. There was one time I... may have gone over the line, vague as that line is in the Wasteland. At that point though, I had so many bodies under my hooves, up to my knees in blood, it was a little late to start feeling guilty.”

I took a moment, trying to process that, trying to imagine being like that. Was it really that simple? Allow my anger to override everything else and just kill, without feeling anything else other than... satisfaction at a job well done? It couldn’t be that simple. Could it? I couldn’t deny I felt anger as well, when faced with the evils that seemed so commonplace in the Wasteland. The Labor Guild’s casual enslavement of ponies, or the Raiders even more casual disrespect for simple common decency, or Odessa’s seemingly cold disregard for collateral damage. It did make me angry, and it would be... perhaps all too easy to just let that anger guide my actions, use it as a shield against the guilt of taking lives. It’d be a simpler way to live.

“So should I not feel... guilt? At all?” I asked, mouth feeling dry.

“Whoa, Longwalk, don’t go jumping to conclusions for yourself based off of my own experiences. We’re two very different ponies. Just because I could rationalize what I do doesn’t mean you should do the same thing. Let me ask you this; do you feel guilty? About killing Director Twinkle?”

How else could I respond?

“Of course I do! I... I don’t even know why I did it! I’ve been trying to avoid killing anypony since I set foot outside my tribe’s valley. I was-” I was... what? I thought back to that moment, with Midnight Twinkle’s fangs poised over Arcaidia, her demands for us all to disarm hanging in the air.

I gulped, throat constricted, “-I was just so sure that Arcaidia was going to die. That all of us would be killed if we gave into her demands. The instant that certainty hit me, I just... acted. I didn’t even realize I’d thrown Gramzanber until it was already... already done... I...”

Ancestor's damn it I thought I’d cried enough after Saddlespring’s, after Shale. Apparently I wasn’t done with tears yet. I was ashamed, looking away fro LIL-E as I wiped at my face.

“I didn’t want to do it. I couldn’t let it happen though. I couldn’t let Arcaidia die, but shouldn’t I have looked for another way to save her? Found some better way than to just.. just kill another pony?”

“Longwalk, its debatable just how much pony was left in that monster,” LIL-E pointed out.

“There was enough,” I said, voice sharp with hurt, “Enough that it should have mattered.”

“But it didn’t,” LIL-E said, “Midnight Twinkle lost whatever made her a pony when she started using other ponies as a food source. Any wastelander or scavenger that came into that Stable was hunted down and killed on her orders, then used as food. There isn’t a pony in the Wasteland that would blame you for killing her. Hell, there are few that would blame you if you decided to wipe out the entire Stable’s population.”

“Dammit all, I blame me!” I said, even though I understood what LIL-E was trying to say. I understood that Director Twinkle hadn’t been a good pony by practically any standards. But then again neither was Binge, right?

“I don’t want to kill anypony. Is that wrong of me?”

“Not wrong, but its not a realistic ideal, either. Sparing some lives can risk others. Personally, Longwalk, I feel some ponies deserve to die.” said LIL-E, “Like those raiders you spared. You think they’ll just turn over a new leaf because you showed compassion? I guarantee you that right this second those two are with another Raider band by now.”

“But... but if I’d killed them, wouldn’t I have had to kill Binge too?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” was the simple, quick reply, “Me, I’d have put a bullet in all of them and been done with it, but if you want to judge on a case by case basis, that’s your choice. Some might call you a hypocrite for that, but it's your decision Longwalk. I’m not going to tell you what you should do. You got to make the choice on your own.”

A heavy sigh escaped me, my head hanging, “That’s just the thing though, I don’t know how I’m supposed to make that judgement. Common sense says I should’ve killed those Raiders, Binge included. But... but if I did that... Ancestors so help me she may scare the shit out of me but I can’t see her as somepony that deserves to die. Besides, if I’d killed her she wouldn’t have been there with B.B to save us all in that fight. We’d all be dead now.”

“You don’t know that for certain. B.B might have saved us on her own, or we might have survived that fight some other way. More to the point, you shouldn’t forget what Binge is. She’s murdered ponies, Longwalk, done horrible things to them. Eaten them,” even with her mechanical tone I could hear the seething anger in LIL-E.

“We can’t be sure that-” I began with a hasty, shaking voice, but was cut off.

“She has, period,” LIL-E said with a hard finality, “She’s a Raider. That’s what Raiders do. Only thing keeping her in check right now, I think, is that she’s taken an interest in you and is playing it safe so the rest of us don’t simply kill her.”

The words created a sick, boiling sensation in my gut, one I recognized as a painful mix of fear and worry. Fear that LIL-E was completely correct, and worry of what Binge might do in the future. It was simply hard, though, to imagine her as a threat. She was strange, certainly, and had an air of deadliness about her, but we’d just shared a meal just a short while ago without incident. I even felt like laughing, thinking of how Arcaidia and B.B had dragged off Binge for a bath, the Raider mare wailing like a foal the whole way. I remembered the way she played with Fine Eye and Sweet Pear’s foals with obvious enjoyment and had a hard time reconciling that image with the blood and murder of a Raider.

But Binge was a Raider, who’d murdered who knows how many ponies before I came along. By the standards of Wasteland justice, she deserved death. Ancestors, by the standards of my own tribe’s sense of justice she probably would deserve death. So who was I to say that she deserved to live? That she deserved a chance to find a better way to live?

Am I wrong? Naive? Just a stupid pony who hasn’t accepted that if I want to save lives, I’ll have to take them... won’t accept it, even though I’ve already-

My thoughts were interrupted by LIL-E floating over and bouncing her hard metal chassis off my head.

“Ow! Hey! What was that for!?” I asked, rubbing my head where she’d struck me.

“Just snapping you back to reality. Look, I don’t like Binge. I think she’s a danger. I’m not trying to change your mind about sparring her, though. I just want you to realize that you’ve got a responsibility to make sure she doesn’t hurt anypony else. You choose to walk the high road, you take on all the baggage that comes with that, you get me?”

“I... I think so,” I said, still rubbing my sore head, “If I spare a life, I have a responsibility to see to it that the ones I spare don’t cause... problems. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that though. Its not like I can force every Raider and slaver we come across to join our group and personally keep an eye on them!”

“Exactly,” said LIL-E, “That’s what I mean when I said your ideal isn’t realistic. Unless you plan on taking a few decades out of your life to cut out a bloody nation of your own where you rule as ‘benevolent’ dictator you’re going to need to make some compromises in those ideals of yours. Trust me, the last pony I met that tried fixing the world by forcing everypony around him to obey his will... things didn’t end well for him and his ideals.”

I felt lost, with a gaping hole in my own logic that I couldn’t rectify. I wanted to save lives, not take them. But the more I walked the Wasteland the more I met ponies who preyed on other ponies, and I didn’t know how to stop them without using force, and ultimately, if they couldn’t change their ways, death.

“What am I supposed to do then?” I asked, wishing I didn’t sound as pathetic as I did to my own ears.

“I can’t answer that for you. My answer has always been to deal out death, as long as I believe that doing so will save more lives than I take. But if that’s not your answer, you’re going to have to figure out another way. Until you find that way, you’ve got to either learn to accept that sometimes you have to take a life, like you did with MIdnight Twinkle, or be willing to let your friends do the dirty work.”

I felt my ears flatten against my head, “That’s what I’m afraid of though! LIL-E, when I killed Twinkle, it was so easy. It was too easy. One instant of deciding her life was worth less than the lives of my friends, that was all it took for me to just... just end somepony’s life. It’d be so easy to just let go and start seeing every pony I meet who does something I don’t like as just another problem easily solved by the edge of my spear. Just kill and forget, another corpse in my wake.”

I grit my teeth, trying to bite back the tears in my eyes as my heart clenched painfully.

“I don’t want to be that way! I don’t want to become somepony-”

An image of Shattered Sky slipped into my mind as the Odessa officer had casually ordered the bombardment that had destroyed most of Saddlestring, and with it so many of its inhabitants.

“-who sees life as that cheap!”

Because it wasn’t. Life wasn’t cheap. No matter how much two hundred years of the Wasteland’s violent existence tried to make it so. Because it was fragile, because it could be easily destroyed, life should be safeguarded with all the strength one had!

The moment I had that thought in mind it felt natural. Right. Intrinsic. I’d felt it when the golden geckos had nearly killed Trailblaze, and I’d been desperate to my very soul for a way to save her. I’d felt it when I’d seen the Labor Guild’s slaves and realized they were dying in the Ruins, and I could only think of how to free them. I felt it when I and my friends huddled close to Shale as she drew her last breaths, desperate to give her some comfort even as it became clear there was nothing I could do to save her. I felt it when I fought the Raiders, seeing twisted mockeries of ponies living as the Wasteland told them they should, but unable to kill them because to do so meant taking my first step towards becoming them. I felt it when surrounded by the spider ponies, fighting for my life and my friend’s lives, yet still holding back because I could see in their all-too pony like eyes that the spider ponies were no different than us.

“I know now that I’m capable of taking a life. I’ve crossed that line and there’s no taking that back. That doesn’t mean I was right to do it though. If I’m pressed into a corner, if I can’t find any other way... then I’ll do what I feel I have to, but killing will never be my first option. Not if there’s even a small chance I can avoid it.”

“Even against Raiders? In the middle of a fight?”

My stomach twisted up into knots, “Same deal. I’ll fight, but won’t kill unless I know there’s no other option. Raiders are... horrible ponies, and if its a choice between their lives and mine, or that of any of my friends, or another innocent pony... I’ll do what I have to. But if even one of them might be like Binge, capable of maybe living better, I have to give them that chance.”

“Like I said Longwalk, if it hurts you that badly to do it yourself there’s no shame in letting your friends do it. I’ll do it. One of my closest friends was a pacifist who wouldn’t kill during the battles we got into. That didn’t make me see her in a lesser light, if anything it made me see her as a better pony than I was.”

“I know. All I ask is that, if you guys have to do it, do it quick. And give me a chance, if I do see a Raider who might have a spark of something else in them.”

“You got it.”

“Also... if I start to slip, if it starts looking like I’m starting to think killing is the better answer... don’t let me go too far. I’m scared of that, LIL-E. Scared to death of how easy it might be for me.”

“Can’t speak for everypony else, but if I’m in a position to do so, I’ll remind you of who you are Longwalk,” LIL-E said, and her choice of words made me look over at the eyebot.

“And... who am I?”

“A naive, foalishly idealistic colt with a skull thicker than dragonhide,” LIL-E said, then patted me on the shoulder with her robotic manipulator arm, “And a good pony, despite it all.”

I let out a small laugh, not much of one because I was still a tight little ball of angst, but talking with LIL-E had lifted my mood, and helped me at least conclude that if nothing else I could count on my friends to be there for me. Uncertainty shrouded my future, but I wasn’t facing it all alone. Before I could voice my thanks to LIL-E though, a sound reached my ears; a sort of repetitious whump-whump-whump sound that vibrated through the air.

It was coming from behind us, beyond the canyon walls, and I looked around the rock in bewilderment. I ducked almost immediately right behind it as one of the same flying machines I’d seen Odessa using, a Vertibuck, fly by at high speed. It was over and past us in just a few seconds, skimming low at about fifty feet above the top of the canyon. I blinked in shock, then looked to LIL-E.

“You saw that, right? My hallucinations haven’t expanded beyond seeing Director Twinkle’s eyes glaring at me from the realm of the everafter?”

“... Not even going to comment on that, but yes, I saw the Vertibuck,” said LIL-E as she started to float up the rocky slope in the direction the Veritbuck had gone. I quickly followed after her, scrambling over the loose rocks.

“Wait, LIL-E, where are we going? Shouldn’t we get back to the Stable!? What if they saw us?”

“If they did they’d have already slowed down, but my scanners are still picking it up moving away at the same speed, I just want to see where they’re going,” replied the eyebot as we reached the top of the canyon slope.

Up here I could see that the land turned into a rolling sea of craggy foothills to the west, and even further distant in that direction I could make out mountains. Not as large or as the ones my tribe made their home near, as these mountains were small enough I could make out the dark, jagged tops off just below the cloud cover, but it was a long range that looked like a practical wall to the west. The Vertibuck was a rapidly shrinking dot flying north.

“Haven’t seen Odessa since Saddlespring... what are they doing out here? Did they follow us?” I asked.

“Doubt it,” said LIL-E, who was floating low next to my head, a series of mechanical whirring noises coming from inside her, “If they had any notion we were in the area we’d be seeing a lot more than one Vertibuck. Hm, they’re slowing down.”

I squinted my eyes and could see she was right, the distant dot of the Vertibuck had stopped getting smaller and now was hovering some miles to the north. It started to lower and I noticed that below it the foothills had thinned out around what looked like some kind of... crater? Hard to tell at this distance.

“We should go back,” I said, anxious, “Whatever Odessa is doing over there its not like there’s anything we can do about it right now.”

“You’re right, but can’t help it, I’m curious what’s got them landing over there. I remember that Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck had mapped out some of the land to the north. Tagged some kind of excavation site didn’t it?”

I picked my brain for a second, and nodded firmly as I remembered, “Yeah it did. ‘Mysterious Excavation Site’. Seriously, Pip-Bucks make no sense to me. Hey, was the plan still to try and get me one?”

“Didn’t forget that, I see.”

“Hey, you sold me on them when you first brought them up,” I said as we headed back down the slope into the canyon, “I’m pretty curious to see if they’re as awesome as you made them out to be.”

“I think you’re primitive tribal mind will be blown the first time you use S.A.T.S,” LIL-E said, and as if realizing her monotone inflection quickly added, “Joking about the primitive part.”

“I figured. Not sure if I’d feel insulted even if you weren’t joking. The more I see of technology the more I feel like my tribe’s way of life is kind of depressing. My people descended from ponies who built wonders like Stable 104, or machines that could let even an earth pony like me fly in the sky, and medicine that can heal a pony from the verge of death... how’d we lose all of that amazing technology?”

“That very same technology, bent for decades towards the purpose of waging war, with nopony able to stop it before it turned the world to dust and ashes,” replied LIL-E, and an ominous silence fell between us as we returned to the entrance of Stable 104.

Before we headed inside LIL-E stopped. I glanced back at her.

“Still need to finish repairs on myself,” she said after an awkward moment.

I frowned. I could ask her why she was so insistent on finishing repairs on herself without any help or anypony seeing her, but it wasn’t my business. LIL-E had helped me out, listening to my angst over everything that’d happened. I owed her to let her keep her secrets. Thinking the matter over, it wasn’t as if the rest of my companions didn’t have their own secrets.

Even I had my secrets. I hadn’t told any of my friends about the weird dreams I’d had.

“Alright,” I told her, “You’ll be able to find us when you’re done?”

“Easy. Besides, if I stay up here for a bit I can keep an eye out, in case whatever Odessa is doing sends them our way,” the eyebot replied as she floated down to the ground and resumed work repairing herself.

I turned away from her, allowing her to concentrate on the work she had to do as I trotted on back into the waiting dark entrance of Stable 104.

I’d barely gotten back to the entry chamber where the four bored looking spider pony guards were still hanging out when the familiar voice of Misty Glasses spoke over the air, through what I assumed was some sort of interior communication device.

“Longwalk, if you’d be so good as to come to the Stable control center? One of the guards will escort you. Also, is wandering outside ‘taking it easy’ like I told you to?”

I grimaced at the invisible voice, or wherever I imagined the voice was coming from. I felt fine, really. Still sore in the chest a bit, and tired, but for a buck who’d been stabbed, poisoned, and shot a few days ago I wasn’t feeling too shabby. Emotional issues aside.

“Like to see her stay in bed all day, with nothing to do,” I grumbled under my breath as the female spider pony who’d been hanging from the ceiling dropped down. After exchanging a few hisses, clicks, and weird arm gestures with her fellow guards the spider pony turned to me and poked me in the chest with one spindly arm, followed by a drawn out hiss. Without waiting for me to reply she scuttled down to one of the doors leading further into the Stable, only pausing once to glance back at me with a ‘Well?’ expression on her face.

“Lead on, my good mare,” I told her as I trotted along in her wake.

It was little surreal, following one of the spider ponies that I’d been fighting and fleeing just a few short days ago through these very halls. Also a tad uncomfortable, the way the spider pony just silently moved down the corridors with jerking, clicking motions of her eight legs. It was mesmerizing watching those legs move. Hadn’t really gotten a chance to look, what with all the desperate fighting for the life earlier, but those legs moved with remarkable coordination. Wonder what it was like to have eight legs?

“How do you keep track of them all?”

When the spider pony paused and gave me a weird look I blinked and coughed, smiling nervously, “S-sorry, just wondering out loud.”

The mare rolled her eyes at me and kept on walking, and I followed, concentrating on keeping my mouth shut and my mind focused. Focused on what? Practical things. Like what B.B, Arcaidia, and Binge might be doing right now. I envisioned the three mares, Arcaidia holding Binge firmly in place in a pool of water while B.B scrubbed the Raider mare, whose struggles splashed water on all three of them. Manes and tails dripping, water running off of flanks-

I blinked. Okay apparently I needed to not focus my mind, because when I did that, it went weird places. So I went back to thinking about Midnight Twinkle. Hello guilt, you’re way more familiar and comfortable to think about than my various mare companions bathing.

Actually the talk with LIL-E had settled my mind considerably. I hadn’t known how good just getting out all my frustrations and fears would feel. It wasn’t as if I was, well, over it or anything. I’d killed somepony, and that just wasn’t going to sit well with me for a long time, but knowing I had friends like LIL-E who would listen to me and be willing to give me some honest advice, even if it wasn’t advice I was immediately able to follow... helped. It helped a lot.

I’d be so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice we’d run into a dead end at first. I had to pause in my trot and take in my surroundings. It looked like a storage room, with a number of metal boxes neatly stacked in rows branching out from the walls, but not much else. The only door was behind me, the spider pony mare having led me right into the middle of the room. She’d turned around and was looking at me, just staring right into my face. I suddenly became very aware of how unarmed I was, and unarmored.

“Um, so, this isn’t the control room is it?” I asked.

The spider pony mare shook her head, then made a quick, high pitched whistling sound. I heard clicking behind me and glanced over my shoulder to see two more adult spider ponies enter the room, with a smaller spider pony riding on the back of one of them. The door slide closed after they entered and I heard an audible clunk of metal that sounded suspiciously like the door locking.

I might have asked what was going on at that point, but the fact was, I already had a good idea. I recognize the small spider pony on the back of one of the adults, after all. The pink of her coat with the white stripes, her blonde mane, and most of all her bright blue eyes, glaring at me with unbridled anger and pain.

“Would it help if I said this wasn’t a good idea?” I asked, already going over in my head how I was going to get out of this without getting myself killed, or getting any of them killed. I might be able to just buck them all into unconsciousness, though that wouldn’t help me with getting the locked door open. I might keep one of them conscious long enough to force them to open the door for me, but I still needed to actually survive the fight first.

Did Misty Glasses set this up? No, there’d be no reason for her to. If she’d wanted to hurt me there would have been no point in patching me up in the first place. This was probably just a few of the more angry spider ponies looking for payback for all the one’s who’d died in the fight. They’d waited until they could get at one of us while we were alone, and probably could be brought to a part of the Stable where there wasn’t any kind of equipment to monitor it.

In response to my question the small pink spider pony foal opened her jaws and let out a pained, high squealing hiss, her wide blue eyes already filling with tears of anger. The two spider ponies that had entered through the door with her made small clicking sounds, one of them nodding his head as if agreeing with whatever the foal had said. In front of me the female spider pony who’d led me in her was still watching me, and I thought for a moment I saw hesitation cross her arachnid feature’s. So she wasn’t quite on board with this? I had to seize that chance, before it was too late for any of us to walk away from this.

“Look,” I said, turning to the side so I could keep on eye on all of the spider ponies in the room, “Whatever you want to do to me, hurt me, or kill me, it won’t change what happened. I’m sorry it did happen. Truly I am. Me and my friends didn’t come here looking to hurt others. We didn’t even know the Stable was occupied. That fight... that whole fight shouldn’t have happened, and I’m sorry it did. Midnight Twinkle shouldn’t have put you all in that position in the first place.”

I didn’t know how much of an affect my words were having. The female spider pony hadn’t moved, but the other two, both males, had started to circle around me, while the little foal had hopped off the back of the one she’d been riding on. She stayed by the door, glaring at me with clear hatred, more than I felt should ever be on the face of one that young. I know B.B told me I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself, I turned to face the foal and lowered my head. Even if I ended up getting killed here and now, I wasn’t going without saying what I felt I had to say.

“I... I know it doesn’t change things, but I am sorry that-” I didn’t even get to finish the sentence, the tiny filly spider pony leaped right for my face, her tiny legs giving her remarkable distance as she jumped straight for me.

I froze, feeling her land on my face and skitter with scrabbling claws over my scalp, heading for the back of my neck. Instinct said to smack her off, or rolling over and try and crush her, but I took a firm hold of that instinct and bucked it straight into orbit. I wasn’t making the same mistake twice and I refused to hurt this kid again!

With all of my willpower I forced myself to stay still. I felt the spider pony foal clamber onto the side of my neck and didn’t need to look to know she was about to sink her fangs into me. I looked straight at the female spider pony who led me in here and simply said, “I won’t hurt her.”

Then there was a piercing pain in the side of my neck followed by a fiery pain that spread right through me in a flash. I grunted and clenched my jaw, my heart racing as poison was pumped into my system. The intensity of the pain, plus the speed of its spread, felt far weaker than the previous time I’d been poisoned. Made sense, she was just a foal after all, the poison probably wasn’t as developed in her as in an adult. Lucky me her fangs weren’t large either.

I kept my gaze locked on the female before me, who was looking decidedly uncomfortable with the fact that I wasn’t fighting back. The other two also looked confused. They’d cried out and moved forward when the foal had jumped me, as if afraid I’d hurt her defending myself. They clearly hadn’t been expecting me to just stand there and take it.

“I... ugh... I’m not your enemy,“ I said, feeling blurry headed and a profound need to vomit. Weaker or not, poison was poison, but damn it all unless I was certain I had no choice I wasn’t going to hurt this foal!

“I’m sorry for everything.”

The adult female’s hinged jaw had opened slightly in what I think may have been shock. Her pony-like eyes were an interesting shade of orange, and they swam with indecision for several seconds. When I collapsed to one knee, still refusing to harm the foal trying desperately to take her vengeance on me, I saw a decision get made in the female’s eyes as they narrowed. The female spider pony hissed loudly and in a flash was at my side, her forelegs reaching up and peeling away the foal.

The foal wailed and screamed, and the other two adults also hissed. The female, still holding the struggling foal whose eight legs were kicking about madly, gave a sharp series of clicks and hisses at the other two and shook her head fiercely. The other two exchanged confused looks, clearly having expected this scene to go down quite differently than it was.

Just then there was a sound of a muffled gunshot, followed by a hydraulic release of air as the door slid open. I then heard B.B’s voice shout out, “What in bloody tarnation is goin’ on in here!? What’re ya bastards doin’ ta Longwalk!?”

Weakened limbs or not I was still able to force my legs to move as I turned around to see B.B floating in the air in front of the now open door, wings buzzing madly and her white coat tinged red with rage, one of her pistols still smoking while the other was pointed at the spider ponies in the room. She took one look at me and snarled, forelegs drawing back to start shooting. I barely managed to raise a hoof.

“B.B, stop!”

She did, but barely. Her entire body was tense, almost vibrating with anger. Even her eyes seemed... different, tinged slightly red around the rims, though I may have been imagining that. I had to be, right? Ponies eyes usually didn’t turn red, even when royally pissed. Her nose was also twitching her nostrils flared wide, as if she was smelling something, and her breaths were coming in short, intense gasps.

“Long, ya alright? Tell me yer alright, an’ I won’t plug these bastards full o’ holes!”

“I’m alright, just a little poison. Won’t kill me, mmgh, just feel a bit woozy,” I managed to say while swallowing back bile.

Just as I finished that sentence I heard a brief keening hiss behind me and looked back to see the female spider pony dropping the foal, clutching at her leg where a bit of blood oozed out. The foal had bitten the adult and was scrambling into the back of the room. I heard a crate click open and before anyone, pony or spider variants thereof, could react the foal had hopped on top of the crate with something clutched between her spindly front legs.

It was a magical energy pistol, similar to the boxy shaped one’s I’d seen a few Odessa soldiers carry. It was almost comical, the way the spider pony foal had to hold it so awkwardly in her tiny legs, but there was nothing funny about the crying look of frustration and fury she was directing at me as she pointed the weapon at my face. I heard B.B growl and I moved between her and the foal. The poison was slowing me, but the pain wasn’t getting worse anymore, so I was keeping myself on my hooves.

“Dangnabbit Long, move! How many times ya gotta git yer dumb self shot!? Ya ain’t gonna always be able ta git up again after!” the pegasus shouted desperately as she tried to get a clear shot around me. I didn’t budge, turning my attention fully to the foal, whose legs were shaking. Was I making a mistake? Probably. But I’d rather be wrong and try and save a life, than be right, and watch another die.

The other spider ponies seemed hesitant to move under the circumstances, as if not sure what to do. I ignored them, focused solely on the foal. My eyes and hers locked on each other, and I could all but feel what she was. It wasn’t hard to put myself in her place, because I had been in her place. Nothing in my life had hurt as badly as losing Shale. A pony I’d known for a day, yet had become my friend surely as Trailblaze was my friend. How much worse, if I had known Shale my whole life? Would the wound her death had opened in me have hurt more? Would the scar it left behind be deeper? It didn’t matter, pain was pain, and I’d had enough of seeing it and causing it for one day.

“I hurts,” I said, “I know it hurts.”

The foal hissed at me, but she didn’t fire, though half of that was probably just because she hadn’t quite figured out where the trigger was, and her aim was shaking terribly. She was fiddling with the energy pistol, looking to get a grip on the trigger while steadying her aim. It gave me a few seconds; gave us a chance, both me and her.

“She can’t be replaced. I know that! Mother, sister, friend, whoever she was, she was irreplaceable and she’s dead because of me and my friends. I could say sorry a thousand times and it wouldn’t be enough. But I am sorry. Sorry I hurt you, sorry I didn’t stop my friend from killing her...”

The foal had the weapon figured out now and was steadying it in her shaky legs, drawing a bead on my head. I didn’t take my eyes off hers. She was breathing heavy, taking in rapid, short, panicking breaths. I could imagine her tiny heart pattering away like a drumbeat in tune with her anguish.

“If I could undo it, give her back to you, I would. But I can’t. Even if you kill me, she’ll still be gone, and you’ll still hurt. I wish I could have stopped all of it, any of the deaths that happened.”

I’d taken a tentative step towards the crate the foal was standing on, the poison she’d injected me with making my muscles twinge with pain and my stomach roil acidically with every inch of movement. The foal tensed. Still the weapon didn’t fire. I took another step. Everypony else was silent as death, holding their breath.

“More than anything, right now, I don’t want you to be hurt,” I told the spider pony foal.

One more step and I was close enough that I could reach up and touch her if I wanted to. The spider pony foal was so still she may have been a statue, or a ghost. I didn’t look at the energy pistol, I just looked at her, those shimmering blue eyes. She must have known she couldn’t miss at this range. One tiny twitch of her leg and I’d be badly wounded at best, dead at worst.

I could see Midnight Twinkle, a phantom image in my mind’s eye, looking at me with mocking accusation. Why not kill this one too, just like you did me? that dead gray wraith asked me, Because she’s a child? Because she’s threatening just your life, and not your friends? Hypocrite!

No! I thought back, not sure if I was just arguing with myself, or a hallucination, the actual spirit of the one I killed, or some crazy fragment of my mind which may have started to break under the stress of all that had happened to me since leaving my tribe.

I don’t care if its hypocrisy! Its worth risking my life to save her! Its worth risking it to save anypony, no matter what the circumstances are! That’s... that’s what I’m meant to do! This is who I am!

My hoof raised with dream like slowness. I reached past the energy pistol and I saw the foal’s eyes widen as she shoved the barrel right against the base of my chest, fear now mixing with her anger. Then, gently as I could, I put my leg around her in an awkward hug, my own eyes finally brimming the tears that had been gathering in them.

“I won’t hurt you, no matter what you do.”

I felt the spider pony foal trembling against me, the cold metal of the energy pistol pressed loosely against me shaking. Then all strength seemed to just drop out of her as the foal sagged, a piercing, keening wail escaping her as she started to bawl. The energy pistol clattered to the floor.

In an instant the female adult spider pony was next to us, giving me a strange look as she made small, soft clicks and cooing noises as she carefully put long forelegs around the foal and took her from me. The foal buried her face in the adult’s, crying her eyes out, and the adult just patted her gently.

B.B was next to me, hoof on my withers, giving me a once over with a look that was both relieved and pissed all at once.

“Longwalk,” the pegasus said, “Yer a’ right idiot! What were ya plannin’ ta do if she pulled the trigger!?”

“Uh... dodge...?” I said, weakly, knees shaking. Ancestors, I had to stop making a habit of getting into situations like this. It just wasn’t good for my health.

“Dodge!? How!? By teleportin’!?”

“Okay so maybe I didn’t plan that one out very well, but hey, nopony’s dead, right? All’s well that ends... ugh... well...”

Dizziness overcame me and the sickness I’d been holding in from the poison and general stress of the day came up. I think B.B sensed the incoming issue because her eyes widened and she dodged to the side as I bent over and proceeded to give the storage room floor a new, smelly coat of paint. Lunch had been great the first time. Didn’t taste nearly as good though, coming back up.

B.B was hovering a little behind me now. The spider ponies had gathered by the door, the female still holding onto the crying foal. The two males were shuffling nervously, one of them speaking to the female in a series of quiet hisses and rapid arm gestures. The female responded with a sharp glance and fast, cutting gesture. I wondered what they were talking about. Probably what to do, now that the whole ‘help the kid get revenge on the bad murderous ponies’ plan had sort of fallen through.

Spitting out the last of the bile from my mouth, I craned my neck to look over my shoulder at B.B, who I noticed was giving me an odd look.

“How’d you end up finding me here anyway?”

“After a’ rough bit o’ work me an’ Arcaidia got Binge in somethin’ resemblin’ a’ clean state. Mare treats water like its radioactive waste. That done I thought I’d come find ya, see how yer were holdin’ up an’ if ya found LIL-E. Caught yer scent though comin’ back from the Stable door, an’ followed it here,” B.B looked over at the spider ponies, violet eyes narrowing, “An’ found ya gettin’ bushwhacked!”

At her tone the spider ponies looked over at her, the female holding the foal close as she looked between me and my pegasus friend. I put a hoof on B.B’s side, hoping to calm her, but she flitted outside my reach, giving me a sour look. I frowned, realizing just how much what I did upset her.

“B.B, it was a mistake. How easily could you keep your cool if you were told to make friendly with folk that’d killed your kin?”

B.B’s nostrils flared, and again I thought I saw that faint tinge of red around her eyes, but slowly the irritated fast flapping of her wings slowed and she landed. She took in a slow, deep breath, and brushed some of her brown and pink streaked hair away from her face.

“I’d be right pissed. I git that. Don’t mean I gotta like that they tried ta hurt ya, an’ worse let a foal in on the deed! That ain’t right t’all!”

The female looked at B.B, and to my surprise slowly nodded gravely, features abashed.The foal she set on her back, the little spider pony hiccuping little squeaking sobs. My chest tightened painfully seeing her in such a state. I’d already given her what words I could, and what else did I have but those words? I could only hope that eventually, someday, those wounds would heal for her. If the pain I felt every time I thought of Shale was any indication, though, the healing process was going to be a long one.

Somewhere around twenty minutes later I found myself slowly slurping down a thin, pink concoction that supposedly was helping neutralize the poison that was still circulating in my system. The spider ponies that had led me astray to that storage room had, after some apparent browbeating and argument from the female, turned themselves over to their fellow spider ponies. I wasn’t sure what had been exchanged between them but the foal had been led off one way, and the adults led elsewhere. When Misty Glasses found out what happened and I asked what was going to happen she simply told me that the community as a whole would decide upon a punishment for those who broke the law of hospitality they’d agreed to in regards to me and my friends. She told me the punishment wouldn’t be too severe, but she as closest thing the Stable had to a leader at the moment had to enforce some kind of law, otherwise things would degrade to a state worse than when Director Twinkle was in charge.

I was reminded of Chief Hardtack, and the things she often had spoken of; maintaining the peace, doing what was needed for the good of the community. Being a leader wasn’t easy, and it occurred to me that having so many lives depending on your decisions probably created a lot of pressure to make the ‘right choice’ for as many of those under your care as possible. If I were in Hard Tack’s, or even Director Twinkle’s positions, would I have managed to do any better? Could I have found the right way to do things, without having to make any kind of sacrifice for the greater good? I didn’t have an answer, and way too much on my mental plate to really contemplate it. I was having a hard enough time just working out how to pursue my own sense of morality.

“Let me get this straight,” Iron Wrought said with a look that said he was wondering whether or not I had anything between my ears besides sand, “Somepony points a gun at you, and your response is to hug them? You do understand there are easier ways to commit suicide, right?

“She was just a foal,” I said, hanging my head. I’d already gotten chewed out by B.B, and Arcaidia had given me nothing but blood freezing glares since she’d gotten news of what happened. Didn’t really feel like getting the third degree from all of my companions.

“Amazing thing, buck, but foals can pull triggers just as easily as adults,” the green stallion chided, then snorted and shook his head, “Why do I bother? You haven’t listened to an ounce of sound advice since I met you.”

“Can we re-focus here?” I asked, “Misty Glasses, what did you need to talk to us about?”

We were all together; me, Arcaidia, B.B, Iron Wrought, and Binge. LIL-E wasn’t with us, still hanging outside the Stable working on repairing herself. I’d already told everypony about seeing an Odessa Vertibuck passing by and landing somewhere north of here, news that had been met with equally concerned looks exchanged between all of us. Odessa had shown its willingness to destroy entire settlements to get at Arcaidia. If they found out about us being here at Stable 104 then everypony here would be in serious danger.

The room we were in was what I was assuming was the Stables ‘control room’, though I could only guess at what even half of what I was seeing was meant to do. The chamber was a large half circle. We’d entered it through a single large elevator along the flat end of the room. The room was formed of two tiers, the upper one with banks of terminals circling around the lower tier, where a large mechanical apparatus rose like a metal flower of hydraulics and wires, all culminating in a control chair and panels where Misty Glasses was... not sitting, exactly, as her bulk was too large for the chair obviously meant for a normal pony, but she was poised easily on top of the apparatus with the ease spider ponies seemed to have with walls and ceilings.

Other spider ponies skittered around the room, checking monitors and flipping buttons, doing whatever it was ponies did in a Stable control room. Whatever it was, they were all pretty intent on their tasks.

“Yes, let’s,” she said in her somewhat distorted voice, “Though I can’t apologize enough for that incident. I knew some of us were holding ill will towards you and your fellows for the Director’s death and that of the one’s we lost in that unfortunate fight, but to think they’d go so far. At least Syringe had the good sense to see reason once she saw how far you in turn would go to avoid hurting Time Sheet’s daughter.”

I cocked my head, memory prickling, “Time Sheet... wait, wait, I know that name! She and another pony had been trapped in that machine shop. We found a recording when we were exploring.”

Misty Glasse’s blinked, “Hm, I see. She and Slick Wrench were among the last to be found and... converted into what we are now.”

“So ya’ll were made inta what ya are?” asked B.B as she floated up, the tall ceiling giving her plenty of room to stretch her wings. The thought occurred to me that she might not be very comfortable spending so much time underground. I wasn’t fond of it either.

“The first ‘generation’ was, yes. Others were born later,” Misty Glasses said, while my own mind went about the process of adding two and two.

The foal is Time Sheet’s... does that mean the spider pony Arcaidia killed was...?

Misty Glasses must have read my expression because a sigh escaped her, sounding odd the way it was distorted by the voice box, “Yes, Time Sheet was among those killed in the fighting. I’m aware of how it happened, but I don’t blame you or your friend. I blame myself for failing to get in contact with you all sooner. If I could have managed to do so, and explain things, so much death could have been avoided.”

Before I could respond Iron Wrought spoke up first, his tone tinged with suspicion, “Why didn’t you contact us? Why get in touch with the crazed Raider instead of, you know, the sane ponies who could have done more to end things without adding unnecessary explosions to the mess?”

“Explosions are fun, and how could fun be unnecessary?” asked Binge in a sweetly innocent tone, even as she scratched at her neck with a hoof and gave B.B and Arcaidia a withering look.

“I’m not dignifying that with an answer,” Iron Wrought said, then frowned, “And will you stop scratching yourself!?”

“No, I feel funny all over.”

“It’s called being clean!”

“It itches!”

“Being clean should make you the opposite of itchy!”

“Ahem, all that aside,” Mist Glasses said, bringing one hooked leg up to her nose to adjust her spectacles, “I was working under severe limitations on what systems I could access. Director Twinkle was quite paranoid, so making any attempt to control even the smallest of systems in the Stable took a great deal of patience on my part. Miss Binge and Miss B.B just happened to be in the right place at the right time for me to sneak a message to one of the terminals they were passing.”

“That was you with the terminal in the lab me and Arcaidia were in, too, wasn’t it?” I asked, and she nodded.

“Yes, I was trying to provide you with anything that might help you understand that we were all ponies in here, not monsters.”

“But how?” asked B.B, gesturing at all the other spider ponies at the various terminals, “How’d normal pony folk git all, er, spiderfied?”

“A question with no short or simple answer I’m afraid,” said Misty Glasses, who then looked down at Arcaidia, and then at me, “One that may well relate to both of you in particular.”

I looked over at Arcaidia, who was giving Misty Glasses a confused and reserved look of her own. The blue unicorn filly had been quiet since we’d entered the elevator, only giving a sharp reprimand about my stunt with the spider pony foal. There may have been certain threats to freeze particular stallion bits off if I continued to act in such a reckless manner. I was fairly certain she wasn’t joking, either.

“What do Arcaidia and me have to do with this?” I asked.

Misty Glasses hesitated, a couple of her legs tapping on the metal sides of the control station she was perched on. I could see her pale green eyes staring off, not at us, but at other things. Distant memories, I was guessing.

“I should start at the beginning. Give context to all of this. You are all aware of what Stables are, yes?”

My friends gave a round of nods, and I followed suit. Misty Glasses gestured at the side of the control station, where I noticed there was that same Stable-Tech logo as had been on the Mini Golem Binge had found.

“Stable-Tech created everything related to the Stables, but they were not the sole organization that built them. Their brand may be on many of the machines in 104, but as you probably noticed when exploring this place, there was another group whose trappings fill our halls.”

“The Ministry of Arcane Science,” said Iron Wrought with a twist to his lips like he tasted something foul, “Half the mutated freaks in the Wasteland are from their bloody labs.”

Misty Glasses’ head bobbed in a nod, “Yes, Twilight Sparkle’s Ministry of Arcane Science was the group responsible for building Stable 104; just as other Ministries were involved in the creation of our sister Stables, 105, and 106. Specifically the Ministry of Wartime Technology built 105, and the Ministry of Peace built 106.”

“What about the other Ministries, did they build stables in this region as well?” I asked, remembering LIL-E had said she was only aware of three Stables in the Skull City Wastes, but if there were more...

“Not precisely. Allow me to explain,” Misty Glasses said as her long legs spun a rapid dance over the controls in front of her and in a moment a circular glass eye-like device extended from a small port on the front of the spire and projected a thin ghostly beam of light. To my equal parts fascinating and surprise an image appeared in the air, not unlike the same manner in which that pony-like figure from the Ruin beneath Saddlespring had. Only this image was not a pony, but rather it showed what seemed to me a three dimensional map. I saw the role of the landscape, with mountains flanking either side of the circular map. Dotting it were what I could only imagine were small clusters of bumps that may have been the ruins of towns and cities like what I’d seen north of Saddlespring. These skeletal remains of the past covered a large portion of the middle right portion of the map, and if I was getting my scales right then... that city had once been massive.

“What you are looking at is a holoprojection of the city of Detrot and the five hundred or so square miles that comprises its environs, including the Whitehoof Mountains to the west, and the Eerie Mountains to the east. Most of the details of this map are based upon the last survey data we collected about twenty years ago, so there is no doubt a number of things that are incorrect, but for our purposes this will suffice,” Misty Glasses said as she manipulated a few controls, and a dot lit up on the south west portion of the map, “This is where we are, Stable 104.”

Another dot appeared, far to the north and east, a fair bit north of what I was assuming was Detrot itself, “This is Stable 105, and here,” another dot, this time in the eastern mountains, a little south of Detrot, “Is where Stable 106 is located.”

“Is it me or do them Stables make a’ triangle wit Skull City sittin’ right smack ina middle?” noted B.B floating down and taking a closer look at the translucent white map, “There a’ reason fer that?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Misty Glasses, flipping another switch on her controls and making another dot appear... this one directly in the middle of Detrot, “This is the location of Center, the core of the Combined Stable System. Unlike other Stables, the CSS was meant to be an interconnected system in which each Stable in the system would perform the needed functions associated with their Ministry. The nature of the Ministries of Image, Morale, and, uh, ‘Awesome’ were such that they were all combined in Center. However the other Ministries like the Ministry of Arcane Science required more space for their work, so sharing a single Stable with another Ministry would not be feasible. Also the nature of the work, the experiments and such, meant that having it based in a separate Stable acted as a safety buffer. That is why Stables 104 and its sister Stables were kept separate, but still connected to each other and Center via an underground railway. The terminal station you fought Director Twinkle in is part of the system that links us to the other Stables in the CSS.”

“O... kay?” I said, not quite getting it, “Why do all that, though? I thought Stables were basically supposed to be all self-sustaining and independent.”

“Conventional Stables, designed for the purpose of protecting a portion of the populace were designed to be singular, that is correct,” said Misty Glasses as she gestured at the map, a series of red lines criss-crossing the map to connect the three Stables and Center, “However the CSS was created to serve a different purpose. In the event of a megaspell war, in which both Equestria and Roam unleashed their megaspell payloads, there would have been three possible outcomes. The first was mutually assured destruction of both sides; which is what occurred. However there were two other possibilities. One was Equestria coming out ahead, managing to disrupt enough of the zebra megaspells for a large portion of the country surviving while destroying our enemies. In that event the Stables would have only served as a temporary shelter and their inhabitants could rejoin a triumphant Equestria in short order. The other possibility was that the zebras would come out ahead, stopping enough of our megaspells that Roam and a significant portion of its empire would survive, while Equestria would be devastated. In that event it could be decades or centuries before the Equestrian Stables would open, and in that time the zebras would move in and have taken over most of our territory. The CSS was created to counteract that possibility. A series of Stables, containing the needed research, industry, and governmental structures of the Ministries to function as a miniature version of Equestria itself. We would create and maintain a military force that would continue to grow technologically, and when the time came to return to the surface in the event of a zebra take-over, we could come out strong and effectively re-ignite the war.”

Silence reigned amongst my friends and I while we took all of that in. I was following what Misty Glasses was saying but wasn’t sure what this had to do with Arcaidia and myself yet. What the Combined Stable System was made sense, though it begged a number of questions. Questions I didn’t need to ask because other ponies among my traveling companions were already on the case.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Binge was hopping up and down, raising a hoof in the air and shaking it. Misty Glasses looked over the rim of her glasses at the Raider mare.

“Yes?”

“With so many pretty little ponies playing doctor down in the darkness why didn’t any of you come up to play with us sooner!? If I’d known so many new friends were waiting to be shown how to have a good time, Mr. Happy style, me and him would’ve invited you all up a long time ago!” Binge said with a far too wide grin that showed teeth in a way that reminded me of the golden gecko that had lunged for Trailblaze’s neck.

“Mr. Happy?” Misty Glasses asked, bemused.

Binge materialized the bloody sock puppet, “Yup! He likes to meet new ponies! Why’d you all stay down here so long, huh? Just thinking about it makes my inside bits hurt. But its okay now, because we can have fun and I can show my new friends how to party surface style!”

“Crazy as she’s talkin’ she’s brought up a’ good point,” said B.B, “Why did y’all stay down here so long if ya had a’ big bunch o’ Stables wit new fangled tech and stuff. Ya coulda been helpin’ out the surface this whole time!”

Before Misty Glasses could answer it was Arcaidia who spoke up, her tone level and collected, “Esru vi yuvire dol vorae mas, ren bruhir. No... gain? No good? Big risk. Surface ground damaged, bad, why risk go? Not good plan, yes?”

“That is essentially an accurate assessment,” said Misty Glasses with a small sigh, a few small clicking sounds escaping her followed by a soft hiss, “Ultimately the Center Council decided, after initial surveys of surface conditions, that attempting to re-establish Equestria on the surface was not a viable option. Too much risk to our own population due to the contamination of radiation plus the dangers of the extensive presence of mutated predators and... violent, unstable ponies. That decision was made over one hundred and twenty years ago, well before I was born, but it had remained the policy of the CSS to remain underground and apart from surface affairs while looking towards our own needs since that time.”

Iron Wrought scoffed, blue eyes closing in disdain, “So you’re the bloody Enclave, only underground instead of above the clouds? All the technological means to help, but too scared of getting your hooves dirty to risk coming to the surface!?”

I looked at him. I’d heard the Enclave mentioned by LIL-E, though I didn’t know anything besides the bare bones details. Regardless, I didn’t like his tone.

“Iron Wrought, I don’t think its that simple.”

“Isn’t it?” he glared at me, “Its always the same damned story with ponies like this. They got a nice, safe, secure place, with all the resources they need to survive, but are they willing to risk any of it to help others? Hell no! Why risk their own precious hides?”

“This coming from the stallion who harps on me for risking my hide to save others?” I asked. I didn’t understand why Iron Wrought was so angry about this, given he was usually the one advocating not taking risks.

“There’s a difference between you, one easy-to-kill pony, and a whole damned network of Stables with all the technology and resources of a nation behind them! You can’t make a difference. They could have!”

Well... ouch. Thanks Iron Wrought, I’m glad I can count on you to keep my morale high. Before I could get too morose about that cheerful statement, however, Misty Glasses cut in.

“Ahem, whether or not the CSS could have made any significant difference to the quality of life in this region of the Wasteland is a moot debate, given the CSS no longer effectively exists.”

That got our attention focused back on her. Seeing as she had our undivided attention Misty Glasses resumed, her mechanical voice taking on a grave note that I could hear even with the distortion of the voice box.

“Our policy of isolation remained in place until twenty one years ago. We had only sent small teams to the surface once a year, just to check up on conditions until that point. However, on August 12th of that year our annual recon team was discovered by an unusual group of pegasi possessing remarkably advanced technology. The recon team was initially held hostage, but after negotiations with these pegasi, the nature of which I am not privy to the details of, Center agreed to an alliance with the pegasi’s organization. This organization is what you know as Odessa.”

At Odessa’s mention I realized that while I’d told my friends about it, I hadn’t gotten around to informing Misty Glasses about the Veritbuck LIL-E and I saw.

“Misty Glasses, I should tell you that Odessa is in the area. One of their flying machines landed somewhere north of here.”

“We already know,” said Misty Glasses, waving a hooked foreleg, “They landed at our northern excavation site. A couple of our monitoring devices are still intact there, so while we can see them there, we can’t get a clear view of what they’re doing.”

The image of the map flickred, wavering like wind billowing through fog. The smooth circular pie of a map changed into an image of a crater, or similarly depressed area of land. Slabs of stone grasped up from the ground in two uneven rows, too smooth and pointed towards their tips to be natural formations. These stones formed a path towards the mouth of an open cave in the side of the largest and steepest of the crater slopes. The Odessa Vertibuck was sitting in the middle of the area, a insectoid beast of metal with its engines turned downward. A few pegasi in Odessa white armor stood guard in the area, and I could even see a griffin or two among their number. The guards were watching a team of unarmored pegasi hauling crates towards the cave mouth.

“What are they up to?” I asked, “What is that excavation site?”

“What they’re doing is unknown. There should be nothing left for them at that site, given when they were last here they took all of our research, and in the many years since they have not returned,” replied Misty Glasses with a wondering tone of her own, “As for the site, it is the location of a Ruin, one of many that exist scattered over the Skull City Wastes. This Ruin in particular we had used to acquire many interesting things to research. Part of the reason the CSS was established in this region, as opposed to any other, was because of the Ruins. It was the belief of the CSS’ designer and benefactor that the Ruins could prove to be a boon to our research projects.”

“An’ just who was this benefactor?” asked B.B, her eyes warily looking over the images of the Odessa troops at the excavation site, “Must’ve been a’ real high roller ta throw together somethin’ big as this CSS o’ yers.”

Misty Glasses laughed, a breathy series of short hisses, “You could say that she was a ‘high roller’. The pony who created the CSS was none other than Princess Luna herself.”

B.B blinked, the flutter of her wings slowing a bit, “That’d qualify as a high roller, yeah. So, I’m noticin’ yer not all that bothered Odessa is sittin’ in yer backyard. What’s up wit that?”

The spider pony shrugged, “They haven’t bothered us in the seventeen years since they were last here. That they’re back at the excavation site now after so long is concerning, but there’s little we can do to stop them. As long as they don’t come here we should be fine, and even if they do, I can evacuate my people into the caverns beneath the Stable.”

Binge had wandered underneath the floating images, what had Misty Glasses called it?

A holoprojection? She waved her hoof through the phantom images, like she was trying to grasp the Veribuck.

“Such a shiny, big, fat bird. Can we go take it? I’d like to see how high it can go. Maybe we could reach the moon?”

“Not sure we could fly that thing even if we did take it,” I said, actually a little tempted by the prospect Binge had brought up. I wasn’t eager to go fight the Odessa soldiers, but there was a certain attraction to having one of those Vertibucks. For a moment my mind imagined the freedom of being able to go anywhere, anytime. The feel of stretching gray sky above, the endless expanse of brown earth below, no restrictions, feeling nothing but air coursing over my wings...

Huh, that was a new thought. Never really fantasized about wings before. Must be the pegasus blood in me. Though if that was the case, why hadn’t I ever had such thoughts before?

“We. I like that tiny word,” said Binge as she looked at me with her tongue flashing across her lips, eyes boring into me, “It’s an easy feat, just saying ‘we’. If ‘we’ can’t take the pretty metal bird, what can ‘we’ do together, my little bucky?”

Iron Wrought’s ears hugged the back of his head as he looked at Binge with eyes narrowed to slits, “Can you say even one sentence without making it sound like you want to either kill him, eat him, or fuck him?”

Binge burst into a series of rapid, high pitched giggles at that, while my own face winced, giving Iron Wrought a sidelong look.

“Yeah, anyway, moving on...” I looked back at Misty Glasses, who just had a bemused expression on her spiderish features, “I’m assuming things started going bad for your Stable after the CSS and Odessa started working together?”

“Yes, and it happened quickly,” Misty Glasses said, flicking a switch that made the holoprojection fade away, much to Binge’s obvious disappointment as the Raider mare hung her head with a small sniffle.

“A few of us here in 104 were intrigued and excited at the possibility of sharing knowledge and technology with what appeared to be such an advanced group of surfacers. The pegasi and griffins from Odessa brought news of events all across the Wasteland of Equestria, and at first shared a great deal of information with us. Odessa had been studying the Ruins, the same as we had, and between our organizations we made numerous breakthroughs in our studies. Breakthroughs that Odessa wished to possess for themselves, and allow none else to have them. Our first sign of trouble was when Odessa pegasi started to perform ‘inspections’ of our research and stopped sharing their own research results in turn. Before long we heard rumors of ponies being... taken, from the laboratories.”

Misty Glasses looked away from us, her gaze slowly passing over the other spider ponies in the control room. Some of them had stopped or slowed their work, either meeting Misty Glasses gaze, or looking away, lost in their own thoughts. It occurred to me they’d been listening in on our conversation and that this was all bringing up bad memories for them.

“Center wasn’t communicating clearly with us,” Misty Glasses continued, “Not answering inquiries as to what was happening with Odessa and why ponies were going missing. We all got more and more nervous as the days went by, now afraid of when the pegasi and griffins would show up in their white uniforms and heavily armed power armored guards. Who might they take next? Before we knew it, an incident occurred at Stable 105. The M.W.T researchers there made a massive breakthrough in researching an ARM, one of the artifacts found in the Ruins. They’d succeeded in replicating the ARM’s nanomachine base form, albeit at a much reduced capacity to synchronize with a living organism. Not more than a few hours after news of the breakthrough spread to the rest of the CSS, Odessa moved on Stable 105 and confiscated not only the original ARM and the replica, but took all of the researchers involved in the project. We were all terrified! Odessa had even used force, killing several of 105’s security ponies when there was protests made against their actions.”

Misty Glasses spat, a small grimace of anger that marred her otherwise calm features, “And still Center did nothing! Director Twinkle contacted them I don’t know how many times! She all but pleaded with them to put a stop to Odessa’s actions! To protect us! Center was not helpless! They had the greatest concentration of our security forces including the elite Brionac platoon! But they did nothing... only told us to cooperate with Odessa, regardless of what the pegasi might do.”

I could understand her anger, putting myself in her place. How frustrating it must have been, being powerless to stop Odessa from doing whatever they pleased, to have the very leaders of your tribe refusing to lift a hoof to help! If it had been my tribe being threatened and Hard Tack had just been sitting on her haunches telling us to do nothing I imagined I’d have been furious.

Next to me Arcaidia had a confused look on her face, silver eyes thoughtful. Was she having trouble following the conversation?

“You alright Arcaidia?” I asked.

She flicked her eyes towards me, barely nodding, “Vira. Esru... I good. Thinking. Spider pony talk much, but no on me and Longwalk.”

Oh, that was it. Misty Glasses had said this all tied into Arcaidia and myself, but hadn’t gotten to what that connection was. I think Arcaidia was nervous about that. She was trying to hide her past because it was supposed to be secret. If Misty Glasses knew something then that might mean Arcaidia’s secret would get out and then she’d be in trouble with her big sister. I took a step closer to her and touched her hoof with my own, giving her a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, whatever we end up learning, won’t change I’ll help you however I can.”

She returned my smile, batting my hoof away playfully, “Mud brain, I not worried.”

“Soon enough Odessa did come to Stable 104 in force,” Misty Glasses was saying, “They already had our research notes on the Force Carrots and Grow Apple reproduction in our Botany department, or Director Twinkle’s development on the Full Tuned Gear, and the Crest Sorcery my Theoretical Arcane Physics labs were working on, but they had not yet been given our data on the Specimen.”

She looked now to Arcaidia and I, her look pensive, and I felt oddly tense.

“The Specimen was discovered in the northern excavation site, where Odessa is now. It and the Golem.”

“Golem?” I suddenly blurted, “Like... like a giant, bipedal thing of metal and mean?”

“Not the most scientific definition, but yes, the Golem we discovered was obviously at one time fully bipedal, similar in structure to a minotaur. It was damaged beyond our ability to repair, but the samples we took from it allowed us to create the Full Tuned Gear prototype that your friends found in our hangar bay. Advanced metal alloys unlike anything found in Equestria, with power systems that used magical energy more efficiently than our most advanced robotics knowledge. But the Golem was not what Odessa was after then, it was the Specimen. A... a bipedal creature of possible extraterrestrial origins. Like the Golem it must have been entombed in the Ruin for thousands of years. Unlike the Golem it was an almost perfect fusion of organic and machine qualities. Not merely cybernetic, not merely replacing organics with mechanical parts, but rather a complete mixture of machine and flesh, to the point where it was impossible to tell where organics and technology stopped and started. It was... dead, or at least we believed it to be dead, and had been studying it in our most secure laboratory. However it reacted on a metaphysical level to certain Ruin artifacts and I was trying to convince Director Twinkle that it was possible the Specimen could... revive itself. She would not listen, had become obsessed with studying it. When Odessa came for the Specimen she... she ordered all security ponies to stop them and tried to move the Specimen out of the Stable.”

One of the spider ponies across the room at one of the many terminals along the wall made a series of hisses, to which Misty Glasses replied in kind, shaking her head. The spider pony that spoke up fell silent.

“My apologies, there is... there is a lot of bad memories in this story for some of us. But this has to be told. Some of my ponies don’t trust you, Longwalk, or you Arcaidia. Not because of the fight with Director Twinkle, but because of what happened when Odessa came for the Specimen. You see, as Odessa was fighting its way down to the lower labs, Director Twinkle and her team was moving the Specimen to the terminal station, hoping to flee with it to the surface. I think Twinkle planned to run, run until she found a surface facility to continue her studies on the Specimen, abandoning the Stable. However, while they were moving it the Specimen... well, woke up.”

She shuddered, a tremble that ran in twitching shakes through all eight of her legs. I heard a crunching sound next to me and glanced, blinking to see that Binge was sitting next to me, holding one hoof up as if carrying something, and making gestures with her other hoof like she was scooping something up and popping it into her mouth. She was making the crunching noises like she was eating something, even though her hooves were empty.

“Want some?” she asked, offering me her empty hoof.

“Want what?” I asked in utter bewilderment.

“Popcorn, silly filly,” she said happily, eating more of her nonexistent... whatever ‘popcorn’ was.

“I’m... good,” I said and looked back at Misty Glasses. Sometimes you just had to ignore the crazy.

Misty Glasses had moved one of her forelegs to her console, hesitating over one of the switches. She looked at me, eyes growing serious, “You must have noticed we moved your ARM elsewhere. I had to have a look at it myself, to examine it and ensure it wasn’t... well, something else. You’ll understand why with this footage. Of the Specimen.”

She flicked the switch and a recording began on the holoprojector. I recognized the entryway of the Stable, the circular chamber and the huge cog-like thick door of metal that in the image was whole. I remembered finding that same door sliced cleanly in half when we’d first arrived at the Stable. Ponies in blue and black padded security armor, carrying pistols and SMGs, clustered around the door, forming a concave line of defense against one of the interior doors.

“The Specimen awoke and began to slaughter those around it. Director Twinkle barely escaped by crawling into a vent shaft. The Specimen retrieved an artifact we’d taken from the Ruin. We didn’t know the artifact belonged to it, though I should have known, given in our experiments this artifact reacted with the Specimen stronger than any other. Once the Specimen and this artifact were brought together... nothing could stop it. It walked out of this Stable, and killed any who stood in its path, whether they were Stable security, or Odessa.”

As she spoke I saw an Odessa griffin, clad in stark white combat armor, stagger into the entry room. The male griffin spun around, carrying a large multi-barreled energy weapon that spat a stream of red lances of magic down into the corridor he’d fled from. Then in a flash something stabbed out, spearing the griffin and pulling him back into the corridor. It happened so fast I couldn’t tell what it was, but I saw blood splatter from the corridor and all the Stable security ponies tense.

Then the Specimen emerged from the corridor.

I heard B.B take in a sharp breath.

“Sweet Goddesses,” Iron Wrought said in a whisper.

“Oooo, he’s adorable!” Binge cooed.

Arcaidia’s eyes were wide as saucers and I heard her growl deeply in the back of her throat. She uttered a single word, and I don’t know if anypony else heard it.

“Hyadean.”

I just stared.

The Stable security ponies opened fire, their guns filling the holoprojection with flashes of light and tracers. The storm of bullets was as impressive as it was useless. They just bounced off the steel blue armor covering every inch of the bipedal form that stood before them. Like the Golem I’d seen in the Saddlespring Ruins this creature had two legs attached to a horizontal and broad chest, from which two arms sprang with a pair of five fingered hands. Its head was a steel helmet, azure blue, with a single dark slit where eyes may have been, and a spike like crest flowing from the top. A cape of deep violet hung from its shoulders. It stood head and shoulders taller than any pony, easily eight feet.

It was no Golem, but that hardly registered to me. What shocked me, what caused my mouth to hang open as I stared, was the weapon the Specimen carried in its right armored fist.

A spear. A dark spear. I’d seen that spear in my dream.

I’d also become familiar with its shape as the weapon I myself had been carrying since my journey began.

The spear was shaped exactly like Gramzanber.

Its the same creature. It has to be. The one in my dream. But... what is it? Why does that spear look like mine? My mind was a reeling whirlpool of circular questions. Arcaidia had called it a Hyadean. I knew that term. The ghostly image from the Saddlespring Ruin had mentioned it, called it an enemy, alongside something else... the Veruni.

As my companions and I watched the steel clad bipedal creature in the holoprojection allowed the Stable security ponies to run through their clips, bullet casings raining upon the steel floor as the bullets themselves ricocheted harmlessly off the Hyadean’s armor. Then, surprisingly, the creature laughed. Not derisively, but... it sounded honestly rather happy. It raised its spear in front of it in some kind of salute, then, to my equal parts shock and fascination it spoke. Its, his, voice was much as i recalled hearing it in my dream, a smooth masculine baritone that spoke its words with strength and authority.

“Marvelous. Fear chokes you. Despair straddles you. Yet you fight on. Truly marvelous. How can I not reward such courage with befitting deaths?”

In a flash the Hyadean was amongst them, a form so large, yet moving with the fluid speed of river rapids. Ponies struggled to reload, or back away, a few brave ones trying to engage with batons. It didn’t matter. Whether while firing their guns, trying to flee, or desperately screaming while swinging their weapons the security ponies died. That dark spear was a cutting shadow, severing ponies in half, removing limbs, and plucking heads from shoulders with a sickening ease that I knew all too well. After all, Gramzanber held a sharp edge unlike any other.

It was over in less than a minute, the last security pony dying with a terrified scream on her throat as she blasted uselessly at the Hyadean with her SMG, the creature’s dark spear skewering through her barrel with a single thrust that lifted her off the ground. The Hyadean seemed to consider the mare impaled on his spear curiously as she shuddered her last breath out and went still.

“Hm,” a simple flick of his spear and his dislodged the body to land amongst the piles of her fellows, “Not Elw, but they bear the same genetic markings. How long did I slumber? Surely the Veruni did not win? No, this place doesn’t carry their stylings. But if they did not win, and we did not win... hah, then who did win? No matter, let us see what has become of this world since I last laid eyes upon it.”

With that the Hyadean turned towards the Stable door, the black slit in his helmet’s visor showing no eyes, but somehow I could feel him examining the door. Instinctually I understood he was gauging its thickness. With a slow deliberate movement he braced his spear before him, the dark counterpart to the Gramzanber I knew taking on a familiar flickering aura like fire. In an instant he struck, a heavy overhand chop with the large bladed spear. Light flashed, the holoprojection’s image flickered, and there was an ear scraping wail of rending metal followed by a roar of rushing air.

When the image cleared the Hyadean was already strolling casually throat the freshly destroyed Stable door, leaving behind him the piles of bodies that would later become the skeletons my friends and I would find when first entering this place. The image then died away as the recording came to an end. Misty Glasses looked down on us from her perch on the control spire.

“So, as you can see, some of my ponies are a little concerned, given you bear a weapon that looks so similar to the one that was carried by that... being.”

“The buck was that?” asked Iron Wrought, the hackles of his mane standing on end.

“Someone who really knows how to party and have a good time,” declared Binge, holding up her sock puppet, “Don’t you think he looks like fun Mr. Happy?”

“Misty, ya said yer ponies were studyin’ that thing,” said B.B, “They ever figure out what it was before it got all... stab happy on everypony?”

“Nothing more than what I’ve already told you I’m afraid,” said Misty Glasses, “Popular theory was that it is a creature of extraterrestrial nature. From what you heard it say yourselves it was sapient, and knew how to speak our language. We were unable to confirm any more information than that, but it used the terms ‘Veruni’ and ‘Elw’, which we learned from our studies of the Ruins were two other races that participated in a war on this planet some four to five millennia ago. Just as we find is strange your ARM resembles the weapon of the Specimen, we find it strange your companion Arcaidia can make use of Crest Sorcery.”

“Crest Sorcery?” I looked over at Arcaidia, who was rubbing a hoof over her Pip-Buck, almost protectively, “What is she talking about Arcaidia? You’re a unicorn, magics normal for you right?”

“Estu ti ricartae dol vivarz ren corvarl. Two powers. Two magics. Hard explain.”

“Allow me to elaborate,” said Misty Glasses, “Crest Sorcery is the term we used to describe a form of magic that stems from certain artifacts found in some of the Ruins. Small tablets of information compressed as microscopic glyphs. These glyphs, when charged with magic, react with a form of metaphysical energy that seems to exist alongside the world’s natural magic we’re all familiar with. This energy, which we’ve dubbed Force, is invisible and inert unless interacted with through a specific medium. Only when using these glyphs with our magic could we create reactions, spells that seemed to be created by combinations of different glyphs on these tables, which we dubbed ‘Crest Graphs’. Since Crest Sorcery utilized a new energy source there were many researchers here who theorized that it could provide vast possibilities for power and technomagic advancement, though few unicorns among our number could link their magic properly to a Crest Graph without damaging backlash. We could only assume there was a method to it we were missing. In any case, the fact that your friend there both recognized what a Crest Graph was, taking one from our labs, and can also seemingly use them without the same backlash others have suffered has led some of us to... wonder as to who, or what, she really is.”

Arcaidia held her head up, part pride, part defiance, as if she was daring Misty Glasses to keep going, “I am... me! Arcaidia Del Chevail Del Luminariaso Dol Graza Venti Veruni Halastra Mi Surta! Friend of Longwalk Del Sand Storm Del Shady Stream Dol Soval Equis Mi Hurita!”

She stamped a hoof as if to emphasise her declaration. Binge seemed to be mouthing all those words as if trying to taste them while B.B and Iron Wrought exchanged shrugging looks. I shifted my eyes between the blue unicorn filly and the spider pony scientist and said, “So, yeah, that’s what she says. Arcaidia is Arcaidia. Nothing more to it than that.

“Uh-huh,” said Misty Glasses, her spectacles nearly falling off her snout before she managed to catch them and push them back up, “And it doesn’t strike you as even remotely odd that the Specimen mentioned the Veruni, and we already told you that was likely a race engaged in warfare on this world thousands of years ago... and she just used the same term in her little self introduction?”

I blinked. Thought about it. Realized Arcaidia did have the word ‘Veruni’ in her full name.

“Huh... okay. What of it?”

“What of it? Do I have to spell it out for you?” Misty Glasses blurted while waving her legs at me, “Does it not seem likely to you that the pony standing next to you may not be a pony at all? That she is a Veruni?”

I looked at Arcaidia. She met my gaze with her own silver eyes, her expression beyond reading. I turned back to Misty Glasses, “Again I ask; what of it?”

Misty Glasses cocked her head to the side, and I decided to explain myself clearer to her, “Look, I knew from the start Arcaidia wasn’t normal. There is a lot about her I know nothing about, including where she comes from. I don’t think it matters though. This ‘extraterrestrial’ stuff, all this talk of some ancient war, its all way over my head. All I want is to help the pony who saved my friend’s life and also my own. Sure I’m curious about Odessa and why they’re after Arcaidia, or what in the name of the Ancestor spirits that Hyaden thing is and why it has a spear that looks like mine. Sure I’d love to unravel all those mysteries. But helping my friends comes first. Helping ponies in general comes first. If I happen to figure all this other complicated stuff out along the way, yay for me. If not, I don’t think I’ll lose a lot of sleep over it.”

Not more than I already have anyway. Why did I dream of that Hyadean? Was that all a vision of this war Misty Glasses is harping on about?

Misty Glasses looked vexed for a moment, but then let out a long, slow sigh, “Very well. I thought I’d bring this all to your attention, since it seemed pertinent to inform you of things that could affect you in the long run... but if it is ultimately something you are not going to be concerned with then I will consider the matter closed for now. I apologize if I came off as accusing.”

“Forgiven,” said Arcaidia with a satisfied nod.

B.B had her forelegs crossed over her barrel as she hovered closer to the floor, taking up a spot on Arcaidia’s other side. Binge had apparently gotten bored standing and had laid down on her back, stretching her legs spread-eagle and yawning.

“So cold heart filly is from outer spaaaaace and we have more squicky crawlies from beyond the stars walking the earth, but what about Big Sis Binge’s fun eight-legged gal-pals? You’ve been talking sooooo much about everything other than that! To much exposition already, make it snappy!”

Misty Glasses coughed, “I was getting to that. I wanted to give you all context. If I’d skipped to this part we would've spent hours just answering questions to explain how things got to this point. You see, when the Specimen left, we Stable 104 survivors tried to contact Center again, but all contact had been severed. The tunnel system connecting the CSS were taken out by explosives, presumably planted by Odessa. Odessa pulled out, and Director Twinkle tried to restore order. However our Stable’s reactor was damaged and was leaking radiation. Twinkle ordered the power systems shut down. This caused lock downs across the entire Stable, though most of us had evacuated to the atrium. Only a day went by before the Specimen returned, with another.”

“Another?” I asked, taking a cue from Binge and sitting down myself. Standing in one place for so long was making me feel a tad antsy as well.

“Another of its kind, we assume. It looked different, however. A floating creature with a ornate gold mask, its form covered in white cloth, with eyes a solid glowing red,” Misty Glasses shivered, “This creature named itself ‘Alhazad’, and it... it rather politely informed us that we were to be subjects in its work. We resisted, of course, but the creature’s power was immense. You saw what one Hyadean could do, with two of them, we were prisoners with no way to fight back. The blue armored one left, seemingly content to let its comrade do as he would with us. Those days were horror. Alhazad had countless insect-like drones to keep us in check, to move us where he willed, when he wished to experiment upon us.”

She laughed, a dry, bitter sound, “He was remarkably cordial for a sadistic bastard. Talked politely whenever we attempted to engage him in conversation, but never once granted us an inch of mercy or freedom. We were his ‘subjects’ and he made it clear that while he enjoyed intellectual discourse, we were nothing more than flesh for him to do with as he would. As it happened his desire was to combine us with what he called a ‘impressive local example of organic evolutionary design’. The spider. One by one we were converted, painfully, from the ponies we were, into the creatures you see before you. Midnight Twinkle was the first. She... she struck up something of a understanding with Alhazad, became his favorite pet, and received the greatest of his experimental changes. She was made our ‘mother’, the largest of us, the only one who could regularly and effectively reproduce, and with bio-machine enhancements that made her more powerful than the rest of us combined.”

“Wait, she was the only one a’ ya’all that could, eh, “ B.B blushed, “Git it on, basically, an’ make more spider ponies? I hear that right?”

“Director Twinkle was the one who could spawn regularly, yes, and a third of our population are second generation from her womb,” Misty Glasses said with a grimace, “But the rest of us can, with effort, bear foals. Our fertility rate is just very low. A two percent chance of pregnancy per coupling, under ideal conditions. That is why you see so few young among our number.”

“No wonder some of them don’t like us,” Iron Wrought said, “For a third of you, Longwalk basically killed their mother.”

I twitched, feeling a twinge of guilt, but not as bad as it probably would have been before I’d had a chance to talk things out with LIL-E. I still couldn’t help but think of that foal, Time Shee’s daughter. Between Saddlespring and Stable 104 I was starting to think I was cursed by the spirits to be an ill omen for any settlement or community I came across. Note to self; thank Iron Wrought for implanting that cheerful thought.

“Those who could not stand us turning on Director Twinkle have either fallen in line, or already left the Stable,” Misty Glasses said with a heavy tone, “It was never going to go well, removing her, but it had to be done. Alhazad, that monster, when he was done with us he simply left. Said the experiment was done and we would be left to our own devices. That was seventeen years ago. In all that time neither Alhazad nor the blue clad one ever returned here. Nor had Odessa, until today. Director Twinkle ruled us, kept us isolated from the outside, and had us prey upon any who ventured into the Stable... all until the lot of you arrived and put an end to that.”

She looked at me, black bead eyes all fixed on me, as well as her green pony eyes.

“Whether you believe it or not, you saved us from a life that forced us to prey on other ponies and have no future to look forward to. Now, with Director Twinkle gone, we survivors can start to pursue real lives and create a worthwhile community in this place. This is the reason I actually wished to speak with all of you. I intend to oversee the refurbishing of Stable 104 and establishing ourselves as a settlement in what you call the Wasteland. However this will not be an easy task, and there are many dangers on the surface, among which are Odessa and I have no doubt the Hyadean’s are somewhere up there as well. We want you, Longwalk, and your companions, to become a group that shall be our eyes and ears on the surface. You can find us resources, allies, and help us form eventual trade with other surface settlements. Furthermore, you are the only group with experience dealing with Odessa, and in fighting terms could even potentially counter whatever plans the Hyadeans may have been developing over the years.”

I gulped, “Wait, I, I’m still just trying to get Arcaidia down to NCR to find somepony she’s looking for! I can’t do all of that too!” I didn’t even really want to get involved in something so complicated. I liked the spider ponies, had more or less gotten over how creepy their forms were and realized that ultimately they were just ponies like any other. I did feel a sort of desire to help them, but Arcaidia was top priority!

“Awww, but I thought helping ponies is what you do to shield your tender soft insides against all the rust trying to creep into you?” asked Binge as she rolled to her hooves and gave me a searching, unblinking look, “They’ll all go to sleep forever without a few friendly faces. So many pretty ponies would come into this trove of forbidden treasures and rip it clean out of the bloody ground, crushing all the poor little twisted ponies within. Or roast them up. Crunch, crunch, crunch.”

“Much as I don’t be needin’ the imagery that’s conjurin’ up, Binge’s kinda gotta point. Misty and her spider pony folk ain’t gonna have an easy time o’ it if they’re lookin’ ta live proper on the surface. Few ponies gonna give ‘em the time a’ day, if not just shoot ‘em outright fer their looks. They’ll need help,” B.B said, frowning, “Though I know what yer sayin’ Long, ya started out ta help Arcaidia, an’ all ya’ll been doin’ is gettin’ sidetracked.”

“I assure you,” said Misty Glasses, “I understand you have priorities and goals besides assisting us. Be assured that not only will we do our best to compensate you for your help, but we will also enable you to better pursue your other objectives. First, we can provide weapons and equipment I guarantee you won’t be able to find anywhere else. You will also be welcome here at any time, as a place to rest and recover. We can also facilitate faster travel on the surface, through providing a vehicle, and through other means I will reveal if you accept this offer.”

My eyes went towards my companions. I wished LIL-E had caught up with us, as this felt like something I could use her opinion on, but she hadn’t shown up yet. Looking at my friends, I got a mix of reactions.

Iron Wrought snorted and waved a hoof, “Don’t include me in this. Once I leave here and get back to my family, our business is at an end, buck. Wish you the best of luck, but knowing you, you’ll be neck deep in somepony else's problems in a day or two, regardless of what you decide here. Either way, it won’t be my problem.”

B.B gave him a frown, before landing and tucking her wings to her side, “I’m fer helpin’ them. Gonna need ta tussle with Odessa sooner or later anyways. Might as well git some good gear ta do it wit, an’ have a place to fall back to if things go south.”

Binge was licking her lips again, her tail wagging back and forth eagerly, “Do it! Do it! The shy ponies want to be shown how to get out and have a good time, and I’d just love to be their chaperone! Heheheh, and we get party favors too! Can I have a chainsaw? I’ve always wanted one!”

Arcaidia looked hesitant, a tightness around her eyes and a small twitch at her lips. She was eager to go find her sister, and I think how far we’d gotten off that simple path south was starting to bother her. When she looked at me I felt like she was weighing something, possibly even me, as her eyes met mine.

“You not break promise? Find sister?” she asked. I found myself smiling slightly. As if there was ever any doubt?

“Of course. You give the word, we head straight south to NCR, even if I have to carry you across the entire Wasteland on my back!”

She returned my smile and her stance straightened, looking stronger, “Vira, vira. Esru sirac dol vanrish. You defeat many legged ponies, now they serve you. Good. No bad in help them. Make us strong, di orivah.”

Well, that settled that. I didn’t imagine LIL-E would have any real objections, and sort of like Iron Wrought she had her own things to take care of, so this decision only peripherally affected her. With my companions opinions on the matter having been said I turned back to Misty Glasses.

“Sounds like we’re the ponies you’re looking for. As long as I can still help Arcaidia get south then my friends and I will also be willing to help you and your ponies out too Misty Glasses.”

The spider pony’s hinged mouth turned upwards in a smile as her legs sagged in relief, “Good, good. With that taken care of why don’t you and your friends take some time to relax? We’ll maintain monitoring on Odessa, just in case they do anything that might threaten us here, but please, do get some rest. We’ll take care of properly equipping you and detailing exactly what I’d like you to do for us tomorrow before you depart.”

“Wait!” said Binge suddenly, holding a hoof up.

“Um, what?” I asked.

“We need a name,” the green mare declared.

We all stared at her.

“Who needs a name?” I asked, head tilting.

“Us silly billy,” Binge said, “We’re gonna be an official team now! Me, and you, and blue icy death machine, and the bird of prey in a sparrow’s dress, even the grumpy guss though he won’t admit it, plus let’s not forget the lost echo trapped in the floating metal cell. I feel so sorry for her. She just wants to be a real filly, but Big Sis Binge can’t make her bleed to show her she’s as real as the rest of us.”

I had no idea what she was talking about but B.B chuckled, saying “Grumpy guss.” under her breath, and Iron Wrought gave her a huffy look, grumbling.

“Okay,” I said, “What kind of name were you thinking of?”

The Raider made an exaggerated show of thinking it over, putting her hooves to her head and shutting her eyes as she started going “Hmmmm” and “Aaaaah”, leaving me wondering if she was actually thinking this over or if this was just Binge being Binge. The mare bounced between confusing me, making me laugh, and making m episs terrified of her so often in the short time I’d known her I didn’t know what to expect.

“That’s it!” she declared, suddenly having a knife in her hoof and posing with it, making quick slashes in the air as if drawing out what she was saying in the air, “ARMS! That’s who we are!”

“ARMS? Another one of those weird acronym things? What does it stand for?”

Binge blinked, as if not understanding the question, “I means ARMS. Duh.”

I groaned. B.B was shaking her head. Iron Wrought rolled his eyes, “What did you expect out of a crazy-ass Raider?”

“Well, ya got an ARM, Long, so it kinda fits I guess,” said B.B, “Might be somethin’ we can work with. How ‘bout... Agile... Remote... Mission... Squad?”

The moment she said it though the pegasus mare creased her brow, “That sounded a’ lot better in my head ‘fore I said it.”

“How’s this?” said Iron Wrought, “Absolutely Ridiculous Mental Stupidity? Fits us to a tee, I’d say.”

“Doesn’t roll of the tongue though, does it?” I said, thinking it over myself, “I kind of like the one B.B came up with. Didn’t sound too bad to me.”

“That’s because you have no taste,” said Iron Wrought, but he had a resigned, almost amused note in his voice, “Doesn’t matter what you madponies call yourselves. I just want to get those files and get home as fast as I can.”

I nodded, approaching him and offering him a hoof on the withers, “I know. With the Stable’s help we can probably get to Skull City faster, and this guarantees you getting the copies of Doctor Lemon Slice’s research. We’ll save your family. I pr-”

“Don’t make that promise,” he said, pulling away from my hoof, “You can’t make sure you’ll keep it, and promises turn to dust pretty quick in this world. I’m helping you only because I’m not sure I can even get back to Skull City on my own. Like it or not I’m stuck with you all until then, but that doesn’t make me your friend.”

I wished I could put Iron Wrought at ease somehow, but I could understand why he was having trouble with this. Every day could put his family in greater risk. But if Misty Glasses came though and gave us some kind of vehicle, then that would get us to Skull City that much faster. Just one more day.

“Alright, Iron, I understand. We’ll leave for Skull City tomorrow and do everything we can to make sure your family is safe.”

The earth pony didn’t respond, just brushed past me and headed to the elevator. After a moment of looking after him I started to follow, B.B muttering something under her breath next to me that I didn’t catch, but Binge laughed.

“But birdie, if you took the stick out, what would hold him up?”

Footnote: 50% to next level! (What? You didn’t do anything this chapter, Longwalk! If this were a JRPG you’d only get xp for killing monsters anyway, so be glad you got halfway to next level through sheer dialogue.)

Bonus EX-File: Party Weapons “Arcaidia’s Starblaster”

Dmg: 70
Crit chance multiplier: x2
Capacity: 24 (unknown energy source)
Weapon spread: 0.3
Value in caps: 10000
Skill Req: Energy Weapons 50
Special Bonuses: Ignores Damage Resistance

Author's Note

So first off I got to thank KKat for creating FoE in the first place, otherwise I'd never been inspired to write this. Major thanks now also go to doomande, who has now officially taken on the task of being this fics prereader! Serious round of applause for the man. And of course thanks to everyone whose been sticking with me so far! A story isn't really a story without someone reading it.

Now, this chapter, what to say? Its mostly reflection and exposition, hope it doesn't feel too slow paced after last chapters massive fight scene. Let me know what you guys think of things, I do so love to get feedback and comments.

Chapter 13: Impatience Leading to Trouble

Chapter 13: Impatience Leading to Trouble

Dreams again. Knowing it was a dream did absolutely nothing to put me at ease. Then again the blackened rust covered corridors of Stable 104, spattered with far more blood than there had been when I’d first laid eyes on it, wasn’t encouraging me to feel relaxed either. I didn’t know if dreams were supposed to be this vivid but I could smell the thick coppery odor of blood mixed with the sour scent of decay.

Despite knowing this was a dream my body seemed compelled to move on its own down the corridor, shadows trailing me like wisps of smoke. The air was cold and clammy. It clung to my tan coat in a unpleasant sheen of moisture that made me want to shake myself dry. Before long I heard a hollow scraping sound, as if someone was dragging something partially metallic across the ground. It was coming from behind a door that appeared on my left.

The door was already part way open, and upon its rusty metal front were words drawn in bright, fresh blood.

Come on in!

Without any prompt of my own will my body moved, bringing my eye up to the crack opened door, peering into the what was a brightly lit room, one that looked much like the Stable cafeteria. Just as I took a peek within, the door flung open and strong hooves wrapped around my head, yanking me inside and throwing my bodily onto one of the tables.

“Surprise!” said many voices at once as I felt more hooves holding me down on the table. The smell of blood had intensified until it felt like I had the stuff pouring down my nose and I choked.

“Aww, the party buck is a little squeamish,” giggled the familiar voice of Binge, “But we’ll get ‘im used to it won’t we gang!?”

“Hell yeah!”

“He’s one of us now, so we’ll take good care of him!”

“Gotta make the killday buck feel extra special on such a big occasion~!”

A number of ponies were keeping me firmly held against the table. Ponies I recognized. Raiders. The Raider’s my friends and I had killed, or at least most of them. I could see Friendly Fire, missing all but one of her limbs and parts of her torso exposed, hanging from the ceiling yet still somehow holding a drinking glass of some dark liquid in her remaining skeletal hoof as she took a drink and winked at me.

“Still say I count as your first kill kid, but hey, these jokers want to celebrate the first one you did all on your own! Bottoms up pal!”

She tipped some of her drink down onto my face. The thick scent of blood made me gag, even more so after some of the partly congealed stuff got in my mouth.

One of the ponies holding me down was wearing a well made suit, a hole in his head that was still leaking brain, but that didn’t stop Bloodtrail from taking a sip and saying in his cultured tone, “As we’ve told you so many times, accidents don’t count. A kill is a kill only when you choose it yourself. Its so much more personal that way. Truly my young friend I am impressed. Hopefully this a sign of many good things to come from you.”

“What,” I said while spitting the taste of blood out, “What is this? I... okay, this is a dream. My brain is just messing with me.”

I was trying to calm myself but my heart was having none of that and doing its best to do an impression of a rabbit's, pounding away with a rapid and panicked beat.

“It is a dream my fun little softy fleshy puppy!” said Binge, who appeared at my head, leaning over me with a hungry look on her face as she licked her lips, her ocean blue eyes dialated to crazed black saucers, “My dream! I wanted to celebrate your first kill sooooo bad but nobody wants to party like I do! So here in my special place you’re-” she licked me “-All-” she then pressed her lips to my neck and purred, “-Mine!”

“B-Binge! Getting a little too close here!” I said in a panicked tone, feeling her nibbling at my collarbone, “Seriously! Personal bubble!”

Then I felt the knife dig into my gut and didn’t even know how it got there until I noticed that, in an eye blink, Bloodtrail had produced a very elegant curved blade and inserted it into my abdomen. I cried out, but Binge blocked my scream with her lips. My mind froze, feeling those wet, eager lips forcefully pushing against my own. I was shocked by how warm her mouth was, and she tasted like something sweet and rotted at the same time. Binge let out a happy little growl. Part of me was horrified my first kiss with, well, anypony was under these circumstances... the rest of me was saying ‘Hmm, this isn’t half bad.’ Then I remembered the knife.

If I’d been near panic before, the impromptu lip locking and knifing pushed me over the edge and I started trying to kick my legs and wrench my body off the table while screaming, or at least trying to despite Binge’s forceful kiss. Breaking the kiss Binge gave a disappointed whine and looked at Bloodtrail with a frown.

“Bad boss Bloodtrail, you’re doing the thing that I’m not supposed to do until he wants it!”

“Aaaah!” I said, adding my own two caps to the conversation.

Bloodtrail sipped his drink again and with a glow of magic from his horn casually twisted the knife, sending bursts of pain through me and causing warm blood to well up in my throat, “I’m doing this because its what you want, my dear. Don’t you?”

“Mmmm, mayyybe? I want his tasty bits, but I want him to want me to want his bits! And he’s just acting like a hurt little puppy!”

“Bi-Binge... why... what is...?” I couldn’t string my thoughts together, fear, pain, and confusion swarming my mind, but I coughed up some blood, grit my teeth, and forced my head up, “Let me... go. I’m not... I’m not your toy!”

Binge made another whining sound, and Friendly Fire groaned, “Geeze Binge, this guy is a real stiff. You sure you want him that badly?”

“Yes!” Binge stomped her hoof down, on me consequently, “He’s so awake and hurting and being silly about himself! He doesn’t know how to play and that’s so sad! If I don’t make him mine then he’ll just keep walking around awake, seeing all the bad things and hurting because of it! He’s got to learn to go to sleep like me. Like how all of us do! He’ll be safe there. Big Sis Binge will make him feel safe, and warm, and nothing will ever hurt for him again!”

“But he won’t learn,” Bloodtrail said, “He doesn’t want to learn. His kind never do. It’d be kinder to kill him. Put him out of his misery.”

He wasn’t looking, instead paying attention to Binge, and I took advantage of that to pull my hindleg out of the grip of the Raider holding it and kicked him square in the face. He went flying away and in that instant I lunged off the table, ignoring the gripping pain in my gut from the knife still embedded in it. I scrambled for the door as Friendly Fire swore and threw her drink at me and the other Raiders jeered. I heard Binge behind me as I hit the door.

“I just wanna help you bucky wucky... like you help me...”

Out in the corridor the door behind me seemed to slam shut on its own and I just laid on the cold rusted floor, catching my proverbial breath. The pain was gone and I noticed as I ran a hoof over my stomach that the knife was too. I shivered. If this was a dream (it had to be a dream right?) then I wanted to wake up now. I looked at the door I’d just vacated, recalling Binge’s voice. It had carried currents of sadness and hope, intermingled in a desperate manner. What had I just seen?

Again, as if my body was being pulled by strings I could not see or feel I was drawn further down the dark, rust stained Stable corridor. My senses felt like they were bending, warping as the corridor twisted into a spiral that certainly had never existed in the real Stable 104. In seconds the spiral became a slope, then a slide of slick, rough hewn rock, and before I knew it I was tumbling down and bouncing off the walls with sharp bruising thumps. Soon I felt my body be ejected into a vast open blackness and I flailed helplessly for a moment before falling into a shallow pool of what felt like warm water.

Dim and pale orange light bleed along the water in ripples, emanating from what looked like torches burning from grooves in the walls of what looked to be a manufactured cavern. The parts of the wall I could see were marked by cobbled stones and from the ceiling hung light fixtures long broken and useless. Like pitch black skeletal remains several, large skywagon husks were strewn around the floor, which was covered in about a half-hoof depth of oily water.

I got up and with hesitant steps explored this new place before me, wrinkling my nose at the damp, mold choked air. Here too was the faint metallic tang of blood on the air. Before I took more than a dozen steps, my mane prickling at the hollow echoing splashes my hooves made in the water, I heard a voice. It was a breathy, quiet sob, repeating itself over and over again.

“... this isn’t me... I won’t go back... this isn’t me... I won’t go back...”

I swallowed, a prick of nervousness rising in me at the desperate fear in that voice, echoing so it reached my ears from all around. Yet even then I felt a pull towards the nearest skywagon, its back door hanging open like a yawning mouth. Slowly, each step bringing with it a greater cold wriggling under my skin despite the warm, clinging wetness of the air, I made my way into the skywagon.

The dark inside was offset by the nearest wall torch from outside, washing the interior with writhing orange shades of light that played like running foals with the shadows rather than banished them. The skeletons of ponies occupied the many seats running either end of the skywagon, silent passengers who would never reach their intended destinations. Each black skull was turned to look towards the center of the skywagon, where a single white form sat huddling, clutching at something in its hooves. The sobbing voice sounded no louder, yet somehow it cleared in my mind like fog being pulled away from my thoughts as I noticed the streaks of pink in a light brown mane.

“B.B?” my voice, though I was trying to keep it low, still sounded loud as a gunshot to my ears.

B.B didn’t look up. Her face was obscured by falls of her mane. She wasn’t wearing anything, just her white coat stained with grime, her tail done up in an odd, intricate set of braids that I’d never seen her wear it in. Closer now, I halted in my steps as I saw that what was clutched in her hooves was another pony; a young blue colt with a black mane. The colt was dead; he had to be, with his neck torn out from shoulder to halfway up to his chin, half his body stained red with blood.

“Ancestors, what is this? B.B?”

Now she did look up, such a sudden, sharp movement. I took a step back, the cold feeling in me going frozen. B.B’s eyes were rimmed in red, the same color as the blood staining her muzzle, soaking it all the way to her cheeks. Those eyes, violet ringed in red, gleaming with orange flickering torchlight, looked at me without recognition; just predatory instinct. But only for a moment. Fear blossomed upon her features and like the body of the colt was on fire B.B threw it aside and scrambled away from me, screaming. As she babbled I suddenly realized her accent was gone, her voice as smooth as it was when she played the role of Mirage.

“No, this isn’t right! He wasn’t here! He hasn’t seen! He can’t. None of them can! I’m not this! I beat this... I beat this!”

She threw herself towards the front of the skywagon, flying with her ragged wings flapping so fast droplets of blood from the corpse she’d been holding flew off her like a small red shower. I followed after her, only hesitating for a moment. As confused as I was by what I was seeing, even if this was just some strange dream, I wasn’t about to just let my friend fly off! I galloped past the body of the colt as B.B went out the broken front window of the skywagon. I had to rip open the side passenger door to follow, splashing out into the water as I gave chase.

I didn’t have to chase her far. She hadn’t flown more than a twenty yards from the skywagon before she stopped dead in the air and fell to the water in a splash. I came up behind her, B.B sitting up and staring ahead with her ears flat against her head and a tremble in her form.

“Where are you going, child, in such a frightful rush?” said a dulcet feminine voice from the shadows, and I looked ahead to see another pony trotting into view from deeper in the cavern. I noticed with a little shock that this pony was walking on the water, rather than through it.

She was a mare, with a pale white coat just like B.B’s. Her rich blonde mane fell in smooth waves, curling only at the tips that nearly touched the water. She wore a cape across her back and withers that was not quite black but rather more a midnight blue on top, but a crimson red underneath. A red that matched her eyes, like two pools of fresh blood in a youthful face that didn’t match the mature tone of her voice.

“You’re an awful mess child. Did your parents not teach you to clean yourself up after eating?” the mare asked B.B, apparently not seeing me, or just not paying me any mind, and B.B was drawing in heavy, tear wracked breaths.

“I didn’t mean to do it, I found him wandering scared... I wanted to help him... but he was hurt, and the smell... Mistress, I couldn’t stop!”

“Shh, its okay child. Such a good child you are, trying to aid some poor soul. Do not forget what you’ve been taught though, little Blood Bloom,” the mare said, and in an eyeblink she was gone from where she was and was behind me. Hooves stronger than corded steel wrapped around me and held me tightly, and any struggle I made felt like trying to push against the strength of a mountain. I felt the muzzle of the mare tickle against my neck. “You cannot hate yourself for being born as you are. As one of the Family.”

B.B turned around, her red rimmed eyes wide as she reached towards me, mouth gaping. Her teeth... I saw the fangs, streaked with as much red as the rest of her, “No, Mistress! Stop! Don’t hurt him!”

I felt a soft prick upon my neck, two of them, just enough to feel the heat of blood trickle down my chest. The mare holding me sighed, like a disappointed teacher. I felt myself being shoved forward with harsh hooves, and I stumbled and fell before B.B. I looked up at her, water dripping from my face, and saw her staring down at me; a blood stained white wraith in the black... but still my friend, scared and confused. I reached up to her and she flinched away.

The mare, the Mistress, laughed, “You haven’t forgotten anything Blood Bloom. You don’t belong with them. You belong with the Family. You’ll remember, every day, every night. Until either you break, or you return to this place.”

“I’m not one of the Family. I’m not,” B,B said, though I saw her nose twitching at me and her body drawing closer to mine, even as it trembled in struggle to stay away from me. Her eyes were fixated on my bleeding neck, “I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.”

She was on me almost as fast as the Mistress had been, and her limbs were filled with a desperate strength, pinning me in the shallow water as her mouth went for my wounded neck with a scared, desperate scream on her lips. I felt the ground drop out from under me in my panic and felt myself sink into the black waters, spiraling further downward, leaving behind B.B’s frustrated and terrified sobs and an final sentence spoken by the Mistress’ knowing tone.

“You’ll always be a part of the Family, no matter how far away from the nest you fly.”

Being sucked further down into the warm, swirling embrace of black I felt a sensation of being strung through a pin prick space before being ejected forcefully onto something flat and hard that gave way underneath my weight with a splintering crack of noise.

I lay on my back for a moment, deciding that if this dream wanted to keep tossing me about from place to place I could afford to rest a second and catch my breath.

“What in Tartarus are you doing here!?”

Or not.

Opening my eyes I saw I was laying among the ruins of a wood table that was now quite splintered beneath me, some of said splinters probably having made their way into my sore hide. Broken plates and scattered bits of food indicated I may have just interrupted a meal. The room I was in was a plain, simple room, clean if utilitarian and lacking any real decoration of luxury. Around me and the broken remains of the table I’d apparently fallen on was a family of ponies. I say family because the resemblance of the young filly and colt to Iron Wrought was plain to see, though the colt had a strawberry blond mane that matched that of the older mare staring at me with wings protectively around her foals... oh, wings, she was a pegasus. Neat.

“I said, what are you doing here!?” I felt hooves lift me off the ground and I was wheeled around and slammed into the nearest wall with shocking strength. I was staring into Iron Wrought’s face, veins throbbing on his forehead, his eyes wide and bloodshot, and the dark green of his coat tinged with red.

“I... don’t know?” I replied nervously. Was Iron Wrought always this strong or was this just because I was in a strange psudo-dream? I still wasn’t sure what I was experiencing was a dream, though I couldn’t think of any other explanation for it.

Iron Wrought’s face was a rictus grimace of anger and, of all things, embarrassment. His green coat was brushed with rose heat as he glared at me. The pegasus mare, her own coat a rich dark brown and her doe eyes soft, subdued pink, spoke in a wavering voice.

“H-honey, protect us. Don’t let any bad ponies hurt us.”

“I don’t wanna be taken away,” cried the colt, huddling close to his mother’s wing.

“Make the bad ponies go away daddy!” sniffed the filly, curled into a tight ball.

Iron Wrought looked as if he’d been stabbed at those words, his eyes starting to water, “I won’t love. I won’t let anyone hurt you or the foals! I’ll take care of all of you!”

With that he hauled me bodily towards a nearby door. My own body felt weak, helpless to resist. “Iron Wrought what’s going on!? What is this? Are we all asleep or something?”

He wasn’t listening though, one hoof wrapped tightly around me in a grip as strong as his namesake. Before I knew it I was being thrown bodily through the wood door of the room with a loud cracking sound, only surpassed by Iron Wrought’s heated shouting.

“Never come into my home again! Its mine! My family! My home! Nopony else’s!”

His voice faded away, as if being pulled away to some distance place, until the last of his words were just a faint echo in the dark. I felt my disheveled blue mane falling about my face and blew it away from my eyes with an irritated puff of air. Mane was getting long, I ought to consider trimming it down a bit. Might get caught on something at an inopportune moment.

“Okay, now where am I? And whose next? I may not be the smartest of ponies, but even I can see the pattern here...”

Looking around to take in my new surroundings I found myself standing in place that looked wholly unfamiliar. Books. Books everywhere. Upon shelves lining the walls, packed tightly even against the three huge vaulted windows outside which I could see a dark night. There was a large table in the center of the room, its own ‘legs’ made up of more small shelves for books. Even the chairs had spots to hold books under the arm rests. There was a single bed underneath one of the windows, which wasn’t covered in books for a change of pace.

“Where is this...?” I asked, nervous as I trotted along the clean tiled floor, staring around at the countless books and feeling a powerful draw towards the nearest shelf. Before I could get to it though a female voice I didn’t recognize spoke; light, young, yet somehow carrying with it the weight of the world in its serious tone.

“This is a friend’s home. Was sort of my home too... I think. How can anypony know, though, if their memories are any more real than a half-remembered dream?”

I spun around. Standing near a set of doors that led into the room was a... mare? Her form was indistinct, as if I was looking at her through murky water. I got the impression of a gray coat on a small frame, perhaps what might have been a short mane of plain brown strands. Any other details were impossible to make out, other than she wore something blue and tight fitting.

“Uh, hi?” I said, smiling in lieu of letting how confused I was show on my face, “So, I might be gradually going insane, or just having the most bizarre dream of my life, but so far I’ve been seeing my companions one after another in weird situations... now I’m here, and I don’t recognize you. So no rudeness intended, but who are you?”

“That’s the million cap question isn’t it?” the mare said, trotting forward, going around the table as she made her way towards the bed. I caught a glimpse of her flank through the haze that surrounded her; trying to make out her cutie mark. I couldn’t make it out, other than some kind of black and green blob. The mare reached the bed, looking at it with a thoughtful tilt of her head.

“I remember this place. This bed,” I saw her reach out a hoof and run it along the bed, and did she just shudder? “I remember a lot of things here, actually. But are they my memories? Does just remembering them make them mine? Memories can be stolen you know. Taken out and put somewhere else. You’ve seen it, Longwalk, how memory orbs work.”

“You know my name?” I asked.

The mare laughed. It was... a good laugh. A little manic, maybe, but it put me at ease.

“Of course I know you. Only been looking after you since you decided to try skydiving out of Vertibucks as a new hobby. That was, what, three, four days ago? Still we had ourselves a pretty good talk earlier didn’t we? You don’t recognize my voice without it being all messed up by the bot’s modulator?”

“LIL-E?”

Amid the haze that surrounded her I saw the mare nod, “That’s the name you know. It’s the name I know too. It’s not the name they know, though.”

Sadness and uncertainty blended together in LIL-E’s voice as her indistinct form turned back towards the bed. I looked over and was startled to see two ponies on the bed, jumping back a bit. Then I blushed. They were, um, two mares, sharing an embrace. They hadn’t quite gotten into anything that would cause me to avert my eyes, but the affection between the two as they nuzzled together on the bed, and the amorous looks in their eyes, made it clear where they were intending to take their evening. Neither mare was moving, however, like I was looking at a still picture.

One was a dark gray mare with a blue, two toned, wild looking mane and tail. The other mare was lighter grey, her brown mane a match for the fuzzy image of LIL-E’s form. I couldn’t see either mare’s cutie mark, their forms too wrapped up in the bed sheets. I looked over at LIL-E with confusion plain on my face.

“LIL-E, what am I looking at here? Where am I?”

“Memory, or a dream, or both,” she said, not looking at me but facing the two mares on the bed, “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how much of this is real, or mine. I want it to be mine.”

She reached out a hoof towards the pair on the bed, almost touching the dark gray mare with the blue mane. But she hesitated, pulling back sharply right before touching the mare’s face. She held her hoof close to her chest, hazy head hanging down as she whispered, “I want this all to be real, but I don’t... believe it is. I’m not me. Or I’m not the me I remember being. I’m... something else. An echo. Or worse, an imitation? How do I prove to myself I’m real?”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I trotted up to her and reached a hoof out to her to try and pull her into a hug. However LIL-E made a small ‘eep’ sound and skittered back from me quickly. I blinked, “Whoa, LIL-E, was just going to give you a hug. You sound like you need it.”

“What the- wait, are you actually here Longwalk? You’re not just something I’m dreaming?”

“I... don’t know? I thought this was me dreaming here!” I said, sitting down on my haunches as I ran a hoof over the back of my head. I was starting to get a headache.

“I thought I was just dreaming you in here,” said LIL-E, “I do that sometimes, when I’m in here. Ponies I’ve met, I talk to them, or my own mental image of them, to try and help me work things out. I’m more aware of my dreams than normal ponies. But if you’re here, the real you... well, how?”

I shrugged, “Ancestors burn me if I know! Wait, how does me trying to hug you prove I’m me and not, uh, dream-me?”

LIL-E laughed again, shaking her head, “I’d never dream you trying to hug me. I’m... kind of sensitive about getting touched. That and you were asking way too many questions. Celestia nuzzle my nethers this is weird.”

“You think this is weird?” I said with a helpless chuckle, “You should’ve seen what was going on in Binge’s dreams. Or B.B’s.”

LIL-E didn’t really relax at all, I could see her blurred tail flicking about, and hear her breathing hard. It was a little odd, hearing her do something normal like breathing. I’d gotten used to the robot, which didn’t make little noises we flesh and blood types tend to make. I still felt an urge to go up to her and give her some kind of comfort, but I didn’t want to upset her, especially if she had some kind of thing about no-touchies.

“Longwalk, don’t take this the wrong way, but do you think you could find a way to leave my dream? There's kind of personal stuff in here and I... I don’t really know what else you might end up seeing that I’d prefer you didn’t.”

As if her words were some kind of signal the pair of mares on the bed suddenly came to life and began rather loudly and energetically showing just how affectionate they were towards each other. I couldn’t help myself; I stared, wide eyed, face heating up like I was sitting before a bonfire. Was that... how... oooh, bendy...

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Longwalk, eyes down!” LIL-E shouted as she threw her mist-like form between me and the two mares on the bed, waving her forelegs like they were made of rubber in some attempt to obscure my vision of... events, “Oh for the love of Luna’s shining plush plot why does this memory have to be the one in my mind! Longwalk, do you mind leaving?”

I’d lowered my eyes, face still feeling as hot as a cook fire. Even not seeing it, I could still hear it. Were mare’s really that loud when... I shook my head, “I don’t really know how. I’ve just been getting dropped from one dream to the next!”

LIL-E sighed, “Try. The. Doors!”

I blinked, and looked behind me. There were a pair of large double doors leading out of the room. I coughed, “Of course. Doors. Right. I’ll just leave you to it then. Um, talk to you later?”

“Yes, later. Now go! Before she-”

One of the mare’s, the one who looked like LIL-E if I was guessing right by the voice, let out a long, high moan that set my mane tingling and caused all sorts of odd little warm feelings in places I was not used to feeling that way. I was pretty sure my face would melt off from the heat and could only imagine how red I’d gone.

“I’ll just, uh, be leaving now,” I said as I trotted to the doors. Opening them awkwardly with my mouth I saw there was little more than a bland hallway beyond them. I exited, hearing LIL-E mutter in a remarkably mortified manner as the doors closed.

“I really hope he doesn’t remember this when he wakes up.”

Oddly enough, I also heard another voice, I think it was the darker gray mare with the blue mane, say, just before the doors clicked closed, “Let’s see if we can’t get to forty four tonight.”

Huh? I looked back at the closed doors in bewilderment, ears flicking. Forty four? Forty four what? I shook my head. It was probably best I never found out. LIL-E’s business anyway, not mine. Turning my attention to the hallway before me I began trotting down it, wondering what was next. I’d seen the pattern of this strange dream, and figured if it was going to continue that pattern I was about to walk into Arcaidia’s dream... assuming the filly did dream.

The further I went down the corridor the more I noticed strange, silver lights playing across the walls. Looking I saw that the plain drywall was becoming translucent in places, with streams of light moving through it in complex patterns of constantly shifting right angles. As the walls and floor started to give way to more patterns of light, light I found I could walk on as firmly as solid ground, I felt a familiar pressure appearing in my head. With this pressure came words, floating through my mind as solid and real as a voice without being a voice. Voices, actually, I could feel two of them, speaking through me so fast I couldn’t interrupt or do anything but feel the conversation pass through me in an instant.

ASTRAL RESONANCE LINK AUTO-COMP!@#$%!@ROGRESS

ALTERNATE LINKS AT 23% EFFICIENCY: COMBINATION ART ASTR*&^%$##!RNS INACTIVE UNTIL 25% EFFICIENCY ACHIEVED

TERRA EQUIS HOST PHYSIOLOGICAL STATUS RE!@@#$% NSTABLE: ESTIMATED TIME FRAME OF REMAINING ACTIVE STATUS AT 2306.34 STAND(*&%^%&$$#!RS BEFORE CELLULAR DEGRADATION REACHES CRITICAL L!@@#$$%^S.

How long is that? I suck at math, c\\\error data not found////rmal language for once!?

!@#^$#@TING TIME FRAME TO ESTIMATED ROTATION OF PLANETARY ORBIT: 91 DAYS EIG(*&^%^$@!N SECONDS.

Goddesses damnit! That’s only three months! There’s gotta be something we can \\\error data not found/////sure you can’t break the bond with him?

NEGATIVE. ASTRAL RESONANCE LINK CANNOT BE TERMINATED ONCE ESTABLISHED UNLESS ARM UNIT IS DESTROYED OR HOST !@%%##!!#!&. ATTEMPTING CALIBRATION WITH NEARBY ASTRAL PATTERNS HAS ESTIMATED 33.45% CHANCE TO S(*&^%$@!ONDITION.

That puts everypony at risk though doesn’t it? The only reason it helps with me is because I don’t \\\error data not found///// at about them? If being bonded to you is slowly \\\error data not found/////, won’t it also do the same to the others?

CONJECTURE; SPREADING ASTRAL RESONANCE LINK TO OTHER ASTRAL FORMS WILL REDUCE STRAIN OF ENERGY CON!@#$%$@!CESS. ESTIMATED EFFECTS ON ALTERNATE LINKED PHYSIOLOGICAL FORMS TO BE MINIMAL. ACCEPTABLE LEVELS OF RISK.

I don’t think they’d agree. What about tha\\\error data not found/////you were talking about? Lombardia? You said it could fix \\\error data not found/////

AFFIRMATIVE. SERVANT CLASS ARM ‘LOMBARDIA’ IS CALIBRATED TO EQUIS BIOMETRIC DATA. CONTACT WITH LOMBARDIA WILL LEAD TO ACQUISITION OF PROPER CALIBRATION WITH T!!@#$%^^&!!NATION ‘LONGWALK’. PROBLEM: LOCATION OF LOMBARDIA CURRENTLY UNKNOWN. THEORY: UNIT IS INACTIVE ON PLANETARY S!!@@#$%$^^^!TRUCTION OF VESSEL ‘ARK OF DESTINY’. ACQUIRE DATA ON ORBITAL DEGRADATION OF ARK !!@@@#$%%^&POLATE LOCATION OF LOMBARDIA.

So we can’t find Lombardia without \\\error data not found/////have no way of finding out. In short; we’re boned.

QUERY; DEFINE ‘BONED’.

The conversation ended in my mind with the same instantaneous speed it had occurred and left me feeling light in the head. Parts of it had been garbled, just a burst of high pitched static in my brain, while other bits had simply been missing. My head hurt and the pressure was fading, but even so my thoughts reeled. Who was talking with who? I’d sort of figured that when I heard these voices before at least the one with all the fancy language was some sort of representation of Gramzanber, but I had no way of being sure. As for the other voice... I couldn’t really explain it. This wasn’t like hearing a voice with your ears where you could pick out tone and such, it was just... knowledge of what was being said. Even so that other voice felt familiar. I just had a gut feeling I knew it.

I’d been so caught up with wondering what that conversation had been about that I hadn’t noticed that things around me had changed. The hallway of light had become a vast, rolling plain, but unlike any plain I’d ever seen. It was covered in this thick blanket of strange white powder that crunched underneath my hooves and was freezing cold to the touch. In fact everything was bloody cold! My teeth began chattering as a wind blew across me, causing wisps of the powder to flow across the flowing rolls of the plain like sand.

More than the expansive plain of cold powder around me I was struck by the sky above. It was cloudless, and a deep midnight violet, speckled with a blanket of sparkling droplets of light like in a gleaming tapestry. I heard a thudding sound and realized I’d fallen onto my back gaping up at the sky. I quickly sat up, pinprick needles of cold covering my hide as I shook myself to try and get off all the freezing cold powdery stuff that I’d gotten on myself.

“Gah, Ancestor spirits, feel free to lend a hoof if any of you up there have any bucking idea where I am now!”

Getting to my shivering hooves I looked about, trying not to gape anymore at the admittedly incredible sight of the night sky above me. The amount of starlight (for what could those points of light be except those legendary things known as stars?) was reflecting off the white powder and making everything almost as bright as day. There were the distant sharp, tooth-like peaks of white mountains I could see far away in one direction. In another, opposite the mountains I saw... something strange. A glow, like a bright pink wash of light that lit up the whole horizon. In that distance I thought I saw a line of densely packed spires, but they were so far away I couldn’t be sure of what I was seeing other than those spires seemed to be the origin of the glow of light, and they covered the horizon from edge to edge.

“Wow...” was my own articulate and highly descriptive way of responding to the sight.

My staring was interrupted by the sound of crying coming from nearby. Frowning I trotted through the thick powder to the lip of one of the hills in this rolling plain and found myself looking down a small ravine. In that ravine were two figures; one I recognized, one I certainly didn’t.

The one I recognized was Arcaidia. She looked even younger than I remembered, the small blue filly rubbing at her face with her hooves as she cried. Standing before her the other figure shook its head, its stance both relaxed and exasperated at once, with one strange limb propped on its hip. What were those weird multi-digit extremities called... hands?

“Arc, you have to try harder. If you want to join the Fleet like your big sis you can’t cry over a little pain. The backlash couldn’t have been that bad.”

The creature that was speaking reminded me in some ways of the blue armored Hyadean I’d seen in Stable 104’s video records. It was bipedal, two long, slim legs, two arms, ending in five fingered hands. However that was where the similarities ended. This creature wasn’t large or bulky, instead it was quite... curvy. She? The voice was feminine, a rather rich dulcet feminine tone. She wore a rather tight, form fitting outfit of white and purple material that formed numerous intricate patterns on her form. The patterns were particular intricate around where the material hugged two large... mounds of some sort on the being’s chest. Wonder what those were about? Only her neck and face was exposed, pale white flesh forming a blunt, small nose and two small red eyes. This odd, flat face was framed by a long mane of deep purple hair, the brow of the creature’s head fixed with a strange white metal apparatus like a crown or helmet that covered her forehead and where I imagined her ears would be.

The bipedal female was looking at Arcaidia with what I thought might have been exasperation and sympathy, but it was hard to read the stance and facial features of this odd alien being. Arcaidia hiccuped and nodded, wiping her tears and getting onto all four hooves.

“I’m sorry Persephone, I’ll keep trying! I just... I just don’t know why this is so hard!”

It was so strange hearing her voice speaking clear in words I understood. She had a soft, bright, tinkling voice, I noticed; filled with energy. It was like the sound of the wind whistling through a narrow canyon.

“Its hard because you’ve never done it before,” said the bipedal female, Persephone, “If anyone could master Crest Sorcery in a day then we’d all be masters of the art. You’re problem is you keep trying to use that horn of yours at the same time!”

“Am not!” Arcaidia shouted back, then gulped as Persephone gave her a narrow eyed look and the little blue filly cringed in on herself, “I mean, I’m not doing it on purpose sister!” She gave the horn on her head a touch with a hoof, “It just comes on by itself! It messes up the Crest every time! I don’t even know why I have this thing. Why I’m not like... like you. I hate being so different!”

Arcaidia sniffed, tail and ears drooping. Persephone sighed and walked up to the filly. Her movements on her two legs were sinuous, fascinating. I had no idea how a creature could move around on two legs like that without falling over but Persephone moved in a way that made it look not only natural, but somehow seductively smooth. Well, either that or the memory of the two mare’s from LIL-E’s memory together was fresh enough in my mind that was easily suggestible. Either way, Persephone came up to Arcaidia and crouched down before her, head tilting a little coyly as she patted the filly on the head with one gloved hand.

“Hey, you’re a Veruni, whatever your body is shaped like. Don’t ever say you hate yourself. Remember; we’re sisters, in all ways that matter.”

Persephone held up her other hand, the fingers balled up in a fist. Arcaidia looked up and saw the gesture, and smiled lightly as she raised a hoof and bumped it against her sister’s fist and said, “Y-yes, we’re sisters. I’m sorry, I’m ready to try again! I’ll get it right this time for sure!”

I suddenly felt like an intruder, as if I didn’t belong here. This was clearly an important memory that Arcaidia was dreaming about, and I didn’t feel like I had any right viewing it. Granted, the same could be said for the others in my party, but I hadn’t quite realized what was happening before, but now that I knew I was intruding on my friend’s dreams I really just wanted this to stop. Curious as I was about what I was seeing, I just didn’t think it was right. Arcaidia, I respected her privacy, and her right to keep her secrets. This... strange world, and just seeing what her sister looked like, those probably counted as rather big secrets to her. I figured it’d be for the best if I stopped watching the two sisters and found a quiet out of the way place to wait for this dream to end.

I turned away from the pair and headed back down the hill, and as if my decision to turn away was a signal I felt the world around me turning into a shifting mist, peeling away like fog blowing away in the wind. I felt myself falling into that mist, being blown away myself... getting lighter and lighter until...

I woke up in darkness, but I didn’t panic. I’d turned off the light in the room I’d been given in the Stable after locking the door on recommendation from Misty Glasses as a ‘just in case’ precaution. The room had been small and fairly basic, but the bed had been the most comfortable thing I’d ever slept upon, its soft plush mattress carrying me away to sleep almost as soon as I’d settled into it.

I remembered the strange dreams I’d had clearly, but before I could think much on what any of what I’d seen might mean I noticed something odd as I tried to move my hooves.

My forelegs were splayed out to either side and above me and were being restrained by something tight and leathery tied around them to the sides of the bed. Moving one of my hind legs I find the left was similarly bound, and the right...

“I tie him up real tight

so he won’t go away

when he wakes up soon

then it’ll be time to plaaaay

Longwalk Wrap Up Longwalk Wrap Up

Let’s get these bindings done

Longwalk Wrap Up Longwalk Wrap Up

‘Cause then we’ll have lots of fun!”

There was a warm body on top of me, wiggling around on my barrel and around my legs. I felt the brush of a bouncing, puffball of a tail on my face. The high, happy voice that was singing was undoubtedly Binge’s. I fought rising panic and said rather hastily, interrupting her song, “Binge... why am I being tied up?”

Binge made a squeak of surprise, and I felt her go still atop me, then heard her giggle and saw her two shining blue eyes in the dark and her wide grinning teeth, “Oh good, you’re awake! I was hoping you’d get up soon. You’re such a heavy sleeper my little bucky whucky! Did you know you talk in your sleep? That’s not a sign of good mental health, no sirree!”

“That didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out nervously.

“Hm? Oooooh, well, I was thinking you were so tense that I’d give you a helping hoof to unwind, but knowing you you’d get all scared so I’d need to keep you safe by tying you up nice and tightly so you couldn’t hurt yourself while I helped you relax. Now just stay still and I’ll finish up, then the real fun begins!”

She moved back towards my unbound leg, which I quickly jerked back away from the bedpost as I said, “Hey! No! No fun, okay? Binge, I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m plenty relaxed! See how relaxed I am!? I couldn't be more relaxed!”

Granted my rising voice to the point of yelling in hopes somepony would hear my distress probably wasn’t all that convincing. Binge made a small tittering sound as she shifted on me. I felt her soft fur brushing up and down my chest as she did so, the warmth of her body on top of mine making me suddenly feel rather self conscious. A second later I felt her hooves tickling my belly. I made a quick choking sound which soon became a burst of giggles at her relentless tickling.

“Ooooo, see? You need to have some fun! You’re so ticklish how can I not want to play with you!? Now, what else could I tickle you with?”

My giggling stopped dead as I felt a cold tip brush against my stomach. The memory of the knife going into my abdomen in the dream was so sharp for a second I felt my heart stop. My mouth went dry and I became very still.

“B-Binge...?”

“Hmmm?”

“Please... get off me. Now.”

She was silent for a moment, then she said, while idly tapping the flat of her knife against me, “I’m scaring you, aren’t I?”

“You’re holding a knife on me and have me mostly tied up, in a room where I’d locked the door. So, yeah, you’re scaring me.”

“... You don’t want to have fun with me?”

How was I to answer that one? I was more or less at her mercy. I didn’t know what it was she was trying to get out of me. If she just wanted me dead she had every chance to go ahead kill me while I’d been asleep. If she wanted to hurt me, well, no reason to go through the charade of asking questions and chit-chatting. She sounded oddly serious, for Binge, too. I decided I could only answer as honestly as I could.

“Binge, I’d be fine with having fun with you, sometime later... with other ponies around... in broad daylight,” did she just cackle-snort at that? I continued on, regardless, “But I don’t know what you mean by ‘fun’, really. My idea of fun, it doesn’t involve rope and knives in a dark room where presumably nopony could hear me scream.”

In response she turned around so she was facing me, her knife seemingly vanishing into her mane as she leaned over me, eyes wide and shining blue, holding me transfixed like a serpent with a rodent. She tapped a hoof to my nose, “You need to expand your tastes, before you starve, you silly filly. Let go. Its soooo easy, and when you do, it’ll feel good I promise. I’ll be there too, so you won’t be all lonely.”

“Binge... I think its time for you to let me get up.”

She paused for a moment, staring at me. I could feel the cold steel of the knife slowly tracing along me, in sharp contrast to the heat of her body. Hadn’t she just put that thing away!? How had she drawn it again without me seeing... and what was she moving it with, her hooves were all where I could see them! Wait, her tail was swishing about... was that holding the knife? I tensed myself, not sure if I was about to have to fight for my life, my virginity, or both... but then with a huge sigh she hopped off me, and with fast, deft motions of her tail almost faster than I could give credence to, I felt the bindings on my legs fall free as she cut them. The knife was gone again in an instant and Binge cantered towards the door of the room, her tail swishing about in a happy bounce as she opened the door, a door I knew I’d locked before going to sleep, and stepped out. I frowned as I sat up on the bed, rubbing my legs where the rope had cut off circulation.

“Binge, was my door locked before you came in?” I felt I had to ask.

She turned and smiled at me, a wide, toothy grin, “Yes indeedy!”

The Raider mare trotted away with a happy bounce, leaving me feeling more than a little nervous about the next time I went to sleep.

That evening we were on our way out of Stable 104. The interior of the train was brightly lit, with remarkably comfortable, plush seats set in neat ordered rows along the sides of the passenger car, though the color scheme was all the same dull white and steel gray that dominated Stable 104’s hallways. I felt the soft vibration in the floor of the train car as the engine started up and looked about the cabin at my companions.

LIL-E was inside the control room, her bobbing form barely visible through a glass view-port in the door. Out of all those I’d seen in my dreams last night she’d been the only one who seemed to remember anything. The others had just given me odd looks, but LIL-E had just gone silent when I asked if she’d had any unusual dreams the previous night, only telling me to “Try not to think too much about it.”

Not too hard. I’m a champion of not thinking. Except when I’m trying to work out morality issues. I didn’t know what to think about those dreams anyway. Binge’s had disturbed me, but that had been eclipsed by waking up with her tying me to my bed, planning to do... I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what she’d wanted to do. I didn’t know what to make of B.B’s dream. She’d... been eating that colt... and that strange mare she’d called Mistress... I shivered and put that out of my mind. Some nightmares didn’t have to make sense, or be... based on memories, right? No way that B.B would do anything like what I saw in the dream. Iron Wrought had been dreaming of his family, and I could see why he was so protective of them. I didn’t know what it was like to have foals of my own, but I could understand the desire to protect. It made me wonder why he gave me such a hard time about trying to protect others myself. He ought to understand, right? Then there was Arcaidia. Looking at her sitting on the seat across from me, adjusting something on her Pip-Buck while humming her familiar tune to herself, I just couldn’t see her as anything other than Arcaidia, my friend.

Her being from some other world, raised by strange alien creatures called Veruni, well... that just didn’t seem real. Even though it plainly was. I just couldn’t get my mind wrapped enough around the idea to feel like it should change how I think about her. She’s a friend, that’s all there is to it. No reason to ask her a bunch of questions rapid-fire in a orgy of trying to satisfy curiosity.

Oh how I wanted to satisfy curiosity.

Fortunately I did have other things to occupy my attention.

Like the swanky new gear we’d all gotten outfitted with. Swanky. Blame B.B for teaching me that word.

The weight of the Pip-Buck 3000 clamped snugly against me left foreleg was a little odd, but also left me grinning like... well like a young colt with a shiny new toy. Not really an analogy there, huh?

For some reason LIL-E had chuckled at me when I’d put it on my leg, saying “Left? Pfft, typical.” Didn’t know what that was about but who cares; I got a Pip-Buck.

It wasn’t alone either, joined by the bracelet-like device I’d discovered in Stable 104’s Weapons Testing laboratory. My vision was bathed with a plethora of new images that I was getting used to, but felt a thrill at seeing. Technology had yet to cease to amaze me. Horrify me as well, but still amaze. The bottom left of my vision had this neat little bar that told me how hungry and thirsty I was, and even somehow measured my overall health! While I was impressed the Pip-Buck could detect those things, I found it curious the features were there. If I was hungry or injured I’d know it without needing a bar displaying how severe it was. Maybe it was for knowing just how close to starvation or dehydration you were? Because my stomach might growl at me and hurt, but maybe I couldn’t tell just how much time I had before I actually starved to death? There was another bar on the bottom right of my vision was some kind of measure for how much charge was in the Pip-Buck for activating that... what had Misty Glasses called it? S.A.T.S? I just called it ‘Awesome Time Stopping Spell of Flank Kicking!’

Misty Glasses had let me practice with S.A.T.S all morning in one of the firing ranges in the Weapons Testing lab. The range had used holoprojections to create facsimiles of just about anything. I wasn’t thrilled at first with the all-too accurate holoprojections of ponies that were created for targets, but I had to be practical about this. I was going to end up fighting ponies again, and I needed the practice.

It was thrilling and unnerving all at once, the way S.A.T.S just halted time, the Pip-Buck somehow calculating a percentile chance of my ability to hit a target with any given weapon. It was mind boggling the kind of information the device had to somehow sense, record, and process to come up with those numbers. Oh, and stopping bucking time! I mean, I was shocked somepony hadn’t worked out a spell like this for the purpose of dodging instead of attacking.

In practice I gave Gramzanber a good workout with throwing it at the holographic targets. The spear had been in one of the laboratories, but the spider ponies had given me no trouble in retrieving it; apparently they’d just been curious about the weapons. With Director Twinkle gone it seemed many of the spider ponies were interested in returning to the research they used to do, and Gramzanber represented a valuable object of research. I agreed to let them keep examining it during the times me and my friends would return to the Stable, but I needed the ARM in the field.

I’d gotten a little rusty in my throwing accuracy, what with all the melee combat I’d been doing, having been avoiding throwing Gramzanber until I had a way to easily retrieve it. Guns were... no good. At the range I not only managed to miss every single time with or without S.A.T.S, but I’d somehow managed to jam two of the guns I’d been trying to use. I didn’t do any better when it came to magical energy weapons; worse in fact. I somehow ricocheted a plasma ball off the ceiling and nearly fried B.B, who had come to the firing range to practice as well. She’d given me a bit of a stink eye, I think more because I managed to sizzle part of her tail more than the possibility I’d nearly injured her.

On the plus side I was good with grenades. Wasn’t going to impress anypony with my finesse but I could toss the little balls of death where I wanted them more often than not. The Stable had a decent supply of energy based grenades, but I didn’t think I could afford to carry a bunch with me. And plasma grenades did not sit well with me. I didn’t want to toss something that would turn ponies into piles of green mush. Spark grenade’s though, which let off streams of magical blue energy that shorted out tech like robots and power armor? I’d taken a dozen of those for the road, along with some more flash-bang grenades, and yellow striped grenades that apparently exploded with a tear inducing gas. All far more up my alley than actual explosives.

I’d also gotten a chance to practice with the bracelet device I’d taken from the Weapons Testing Lab when Arcaidia and I had fled through it during our exploration of the Stable. It was called a Grapple, a simple arcane-tech device developed with earth ponies in mind, to allow them to more easily traverse vertical obstacles and keep up with their pegasi or unicorn comrades. Of course soldiers had such equipment already, but the Grapple was something else, using a combination of levitation and weight elimination spells to make it so when the metal hook the bracelet fired latched onto something, the user could adjust their own weight or the weight of what they latched onto. This meant that, if they wanted, a user could lessen their weight to easily climb or be pulled up a wall, or lessen the weight of somepony else to make it easier to pull them. On top of that the hook and its spool of extra strong chemically hardened wire existed in a magically compressed space inside the bracelet, allowing for a hundred meters worth of wire to be stored in the compact device. Oh, and since it was designed to attach to a Pip-Buck it worked very well with S.A.T.S.

I couldn’t wait to give it a try! Iron Wrought had to practically sit on me to keep me from trying to scale the canyon walls before lunch. Too risky, with Odessa still out there, to go exposing ourselves so close to the Stable.

On top of everything else I’d acquired some new armored barding and saddlebags! I wasn’t too keen on going back to the metal armor I’d been wearing, too restrictive, but this new armor was a whole different story. I’d gone to the kitchens that morning for more tasty golden gecko meat and tasty carrots for breakfast. After some extensive pantomiming I’d communicated to the cooks that I wanted to see where they’d put the hide of the golden geckos they’d brought in for the meat. They hadn’t disposed of it yet and I found the gold scaled hides of the geckos stored in a freezing room that was apparently used to keep certain foodstuffs nice and cold. Taking all the hide I could carry I’d asked Misty Glasses if she could secure a place for me to cure it, and she’d given me a look like I was a few spears short of a full hunting party. I had to explain that the golden gecko scales were much harder than those of normal geckos, a fact I unpleasantly recalled from my fight with one of the beasts, and that my tribe made armor out of such hide. Once she understood she offered to help with some of the Stable’s researched alchemical processes to make the curing process take hours instead of days, and that they could fashion somthing for me using some Stable security armor as a base.

After an afternoon of work what we ended up creating was the unique suit of armored barding I was currently wearing. It was a suit of dark blue Stable security armor that covered my forelegs, chest, barrel, flanks, and hindlegs. Thick pads of cured golden gecko scale hide were bonded through alchemical means to major portions of the chest, knees, sides, and back. The armor was comfortable and didn’t restrict my movement at all and I just couldn’t stop grinning about it. The saddlebags I had on were larger than the ones I had taken from my tribal village, made from smooth dark blue material that Misty Glasses told me was fully waterproof. The bags were full of fresh water flasks, more gecko meat now treated into something called ‘jerky’ which I was looking forward to trying, and a nice little store of healing potions and caps, not to mention an assortment of nick-knacks I’d acquired from the Stable including a set of something called... magazines! I was stoked to try reading them. A rig of straps made from similar material was on my left flank where Gramzamber was firmly sheathed.

All in all I was feeling rested, refreshed, and decked out to take on the world.

Which probably meant something was going to go horribly wrong before the end of the day, but I wasn’t going to let a little Wasteland induced pessimism ruin my good mood.

Besides, I wasn’t the only one sporting new gear. My friends had all taken full advantage of Stable 104’s generosity. They all had resupplied on water and food, and I knew each carried a few healing potions as well.

B.B had not taken any new weapons, still keeping her twin .356 revolvers and the larger .44 magnum. However she’d acquired a large supply of ammo. Not just regular rounds, but a number of special bullets, including armor piercing, spark rounds, and high explosive shells for the .44. She’d gained a new bandolier for her bullets, now decked out with little cylinders she called speed loaders. She’d showed me how they let her reload her revolvers all six rounds at a time instead of round by round. B.B had opted to take some cut down security barding to wear under her new violet dress. I knew she’d acquired some more sets of clothing, including a few “Choice pieces ta dress ya up fancy-like in case we gotta impress anypony.” I didn’t know what she had in mind, and was confused by the idea overall. Dress up to impress? Why did ponies even need to wear clothes outside of barding for protection? B.B had also taken medical supplies besides healing potions; snagging a couple of first-aid kits, a bag of doctor’s tools for more complicated surgeries, and a book on medicine that she’d been reading between lunch and when we loaded up onto the train.

Iron Wrought had taken a 10mm SMG, and a larger automatic rifle, along with some heavier security barding and even a helmet with face guard. He was also sporting one of the Stable’s experimental energy weapons, a white rectangular barreled pistol that fired red energy beams like the ‘lasers’ I seen Odessa troops use, but this one apparently used something called a ‘beam splitter’ to produce a spread of five beams like a miniature energy shotgun. I wasn’t sure why he’d taken it, since I’d never seen him use energy weapons, but I wasn’t about to question him on it. Iron Wrought could do what he wanted.

Binge was also wearing securing barding, the same kind of heavier padded model like Iron Wrought had taken, but she’d... modified hers. I wasn’t sure how she did it but she’d taken a few dozen of the security combat knives, cut off the blades, and much like the way the gecko hide had been chemically bonded to my security barding, she’d used the same process to bond the blades to choice places on her own barding. Her flanks, elbows and knees sported blades like jutting spikes. Her back had a series of them like they followed the curve of her spine nearly to her tail. Even her armor’s chest piece sported a small array of knife blades. I could only imagine what would happen to some poor pony she hugged. She had new knives for her personal use as well. One was a strange, thick bladed affair with chain-like teeth. It was motorized and whenever she played with it the chain blades would hum and buzz with a throaty wine. The other knife was... a kitchen blade. Larger than any regular knife, curved for dicing meat or vegetables. I was confused as to why she wanted it for fighting until I saw her slice off the skin of an apple with deft ease.

“Fear the Cosmic Knife!” Binge had declared, hosing the knife up proudly in one hoof (nevermind how she kept the thing balanced there!), and I had only nodded dumbly.

Finally there was Arcaidia, who had not taken new equipment so much as she’d just raided the laboratories containing all the Veruni relics. I wasn’t sure what she was doing with some of those devices, but she’d acquired a number of those little metal rectangles, a number of small oblong bright gems which I think may have been ammunition for her starblaster, and all the remaining vials of her blue magic restoring liquid she could find. There was also a small metal cube she’d tossed into her saddlebag without explaining what it was for. She had not taken any new armor, but then her dark blue dress had seemed to... repair itself and was as shining and clean as ever.

I was still playing with my Pip-Buck, trying to sort out how it determined the pieces of golden gecko jerky were worth 10 caps apiece, when I heard B.B say from across the passenger car, “Hey Long, ya sure ya don’t wanna take a peek at what them Odessa folk’re up to?”

“Are you still going on about that?” snapped Iron Wrought, sulking in his seat.

B.B huffed and crossed her forelegs over her chest, “Ain’t been goin’ on ‘bout it or nothin’, just makin’ sure Longwalk is seriously alright just lettin’ Odessa do whatever they please up there without even takin’ a look!”

Before Iron Wrought could respond, with the angry glare in his eye indicating it wouldn’t be a pleasant response, I cut in, “Like I said at lunch, if everypony agreed on it, I’d be okay with seeing what they’re doing. But Iron Wrought wants to get back home as fast as possible, Arcaidia doesn’t care either way, and LIL-E thinks its too risky. I kind of agree with her. I’m curious, but if we got caught then, even if we escaped Odessa might suspect we came from the Stable. We’ve brought 104 enough trouble.”

B.B got a sour look on her face, lips pursing, “Figure we could avoid gettin’ spotted long ‘nough to just find out why they’re so keen on this excavation site. Remember part o’ the arrangement we got goin’ with 104 is we put a’ stop ta Odessa’s plan. Gonna be hard ta do that iffin’ we don’t know what them plans are.”

She had a point, I couldn’t deny that. However we’d just recovered from Stable 104, I didn’t want to throw my friends or myself into a fight so soon after that if it was completely avoidable; which this was. Besides, well equipped as we were now I wasn’t eager to pick a fight with Odessa soldiers. I was still shaken from killing Midnight Twinkle, and while I was feeling better after the talk I’d had with LIl-E, I wasn’t eager to throw myself into a situation where I might have to kill. If such a fight came to me, I’d deal with it then, but no reason to go seeking such fights out unless I had to, right?

“Whatever they’re doing there, is it more important to find that out than it is to get Iron Wrought to Skull City so we can get his family out of danger?” I asked, and immediately felt bad about it. B.B’s wings wilted and I saw her give me a hurt look.

“‘Course it aint! I wasn’t sayin’ that, I just...” she trailed off, then slumped in her seat, “Don’t feel right lettin’ Odessa be. Not after what they did ta mah home. I want ta do somethin’ that feels like we ain’t runnin’ from ‘em.”

Her wings were twitching now and I could see her tense up as she spoke. By now Arcaidia had stopped her humming, stopped paying attention to her own Pip-Buck, and without prompting she went over to B.B and sat next to the pegasus. Arcaidia smiled in a small, comforting way, placing her hoof on B.B’s shoulder.

“Not run. Chose... estu vi salral di vira mir, choose right time. B.B is no scared pony,” Arcaidia said, stumbling a little over her words but putting a lot of encouragement in her voice, “Time soon to battle enemy. Then they scared ponies! Frozen scared ponies.”

B.B chuckled slightly, one of her wings returning Arcaidia’s gesture by gently brushing the unicorn’s withers, “Yeah, soon ‘nough we’ll give ‘em a taste o’ their own medicine. Ain’t lettin’ Saddlespring go unanswered. Just wish I knew what they were plannin’!”

“I do too,” I said, feeling like I should offer some apology but not really knowing how to segway into it, “We’ll see what information we can dig up once we’ve settled into Skull City. Place that big has to have somepony who knows something about Odessa.”

Iron Wrought made a soft scoffing sound, “Most likely the only ponies who’d know anything would be the higher ups of one of the main Guilds, and getting information from them wouldn’t come cheaply.”

I shrugged, feeling a slight shift in the floor and hearing the subdued grind of metal on metal as the train began to move. There were flashing yellow lights from outside the window coming from the corners of the door the train was slowly approaching. The terminal station was better lit now, with the bodies from our battle long since cleared away. I never did ask Misty Glasses what they did with the remains of their dead. The train had detached all cars except for three, compact engine car, the long passenger car we were all seated in, and a flatbed cargo car. Upon that was a tarp covered form; the vehicle Misty Glasses had promised us.

The huge metal doors to the tunnel ahead opened with the grinding of machinery and hydraulic hissing, and just as the train departed the station, sliding into the dark tunnel beyond, the train’s speaker system flared to life.

“Good luck to all of you,” said Misty Glasses' voice over the speaker, “Stay safe out there, and remember you can contact us through your Pip-Buck, Longwalk. I’ve programmed our frequency into the radio and communication tab. Thank you again for all you’ve done, and for what you’ve agreed to do.”

I hunkered down in my seat, ears twitching, “We’ll stay as safe as we can Misty Glasses. Same goes for you too! We’ll be in touch.”

The tunnel we were going down was one that would, if we took it all the way, lead to the excavation site Odessa had troops at. The other tunnels were collapsed at points, blocking access to other parts of the Combined Stable System, and unfortunately the one that would’ve brought us closest to Skull City had been collapsed very close to Stable 104. Our best route was to take this smaller tunnel about halfway and use a surface access gate to unload the vehicle we’d been given and drive that to Skull City. LIL-E had said she knew a relatively safe route that would get us in range of the city, though she hadn’t elaborated much beyond that.

With luck we could avoid any trouble and be at Skull City in a day or two.

Binge had flopped onto her stomach and was curled up napping on her seat, looking for all the world like a little green ball of spikes in her new armor. I questioned my own sanity slightly as I thought the sight was kind of adorable as her tail flicked about and she made tiny motions with her legs like she was running in her sleep. Probably doing something in her dreams I didn’t want to know about.

B.B looked at the Raider mare with a curious look before turning to Arcaidia.

“So, Arc, back to language lessons?”

Arcaidia smiled, “Yes, learn more good. I become best speaker fast with good teacher.”

Iron Wrought watched the two for a few minutes as B.B started up a lesson on vocabulary, using objects in the passenger car for reference, then he turned his attention my way.

“Longwalk, want to ask you-” he blinked “-the hell you doing?”

I didn’t look back at him. I’d pushed down the window next to my seat and had clambered up to stick my head out the window. The train had started to gain speed and I was curious to see what this was like. I felt wind whipping my long blue mane about my face, getting a few strands caught in my mouth that I spat out before turning to face the front of the train. The wind made my lips flap about and on impulse I smiled wide as I could. I heard the gummy flapping of my lips and laughed at the noise.

“Heeey!~The wind makes my voice sound weird!~” I said, and heard Iron Wrought groan.

“Get you’re head back inside before something takes it off you idiot!”

“Huh?~” I asked, confused, before seeing something with another strobing yellow light approach fast around a bend in the tunnel. I just managed to pull my head back through the window before some kind of black and yellow stripped sign with a flashing light on it would’ve smacked into my head... probably with what would’ve been lethal force.

“Geez,” I said, “Can’t even enjoy a simple ride without possibly dying.”

Iron Wrought stared at me. B.B and Arcaidia had briefly glanced over from their lesson, and Binge giggled in her sleep. She was asleep, wasn’t she?

“Anyway, what I was going to ask before that bit of stupidity,” Iron Wrought said with a frown, “Is what do you actually plan on doing once you’re in Skull City?”

Again, Iron Wrought, with assuming I was a buck who made plans. Though in this case he was right... sort of. I did have a plan of action, it was just filled with a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘what ifs’ and had a high probability of going wrong very fast. So, basically every plan I’d ever come up with.

“If things go well with your family and we get that sorted out, my idea was to approach the Drifters Guild,” I said, earning curious looks from my companions, “Like you said Iron Wrought, only place we could learn about Odessa is from one of the big Guilds. I know for sure that the Drifter’s Guild has had dealings with Odessa before.”

“Alright, but how ya plannin’ on gettin’ them ta spill the beans?” asked B.B.

“Don’t know yet. Was hoping to get some advice from your father on that point, since he used to work for them,” I replied, flushing with a bit of embarrassment at the admission. What did they expect though? I sucked at plan making! I knew from Crossfire and Doc Sunday both that the Drifter’s Guild had dealings with Odessa. I wasn’t sure how I’d get the information they had, but I didn’t doubt there was a way. Probably involving copious amounts of caps. Caps are King. I didn’t like it but I had to acknowledge that Crossfire was probably right; you can get a lot more done if you have money than you can if you don’t.

Crossfire... was probably going to run into her again if I went to the Drifter’s Guild.

Was not looking forward to that meeting. There would likely be shooting involved.

B.B looked pensive, rubbing a hoof on her chin, “Pa might be able ta help out. Might not even haffta mess ‘round wit them Drifter folk.”

“That’d be for the best,” said Iron Wrought, “None of you could pay the price the Drifter’s Guild would want you to pay for their ‘services’. Caps or otherwise.”

“You have any other suggestions?” I asked, a little irritably. Seriously, did Iron Wrought enjoy to do nothing other than to point out what won’t work?

“No, but then I’m not going with you so its not my business to hoof feed you solutions. I told you already Longwalk, we get to Skull City, we’re done with each other. I...” the green stallion hesitated, face scrunching up in consternation as he wrestled with something inside, “I’m... grateful you’ve helped me. I’m just trying to... I don’t know, you just insist on keeping doing things that I know won’t work, that will get you or one of your friends fixed for an early grave. Wish to Tartarus and back that you’d just gone home before getting mixed in all this, because you have a habit of making poorly thought out decisions.”

There was silence for a few moments after that, save for the steady hum of the train moving along the rails. It was broken by Binge giggling in her sleep and murmuring, “Don’t run away, you tasty little treats.” She waggled her legs and made gnashing motions with her teeth, like she was eating something, or trying to. Iron Wrought looked at her, then looked at me.

“See exhibit A for an example of what I mean,” he said dryly.

Conversation petered out after that. Not like I had much I could say to Iron Wrought at that point. I decided to take my mind of things by checking out some of the magazines I’d snagged from the Stable. I’d grabbed a number of them at random, not really knowing what to expect, but with eagerness I started going over the stack I had. My tribe taught its foals to read, yet I’d never put much thought into why. We didn’t have any books, nor did we rely on the written word for any kind of communication. It was just something that was taught, usually by drawing out the letters in the dirt. Thinking about it I could come up with no logical answer as to why parents in my tribe would teach reading to their foals other than because it was taught to them by their parents, and so and so forth. Maybe, after the balefire bombs dropped, and my ancestors wandered to that mountain valley... they just taught their foals to read because to them reading was a common and important skill. Not knowing it wouldn’t matter to their tribal descendants they just drilled their foals in reading, making a big deal about its importance... and the tradition just stuck.

Whatever the case, I’m glad my mother taught me, because it would’ve been a shame to not be able to read all these neat articles. The first magazine I looked through was called Magical Miracles Monthly and was filled with tidbits about advancing magic and technology. I didn’t understand a fraction of it but it had a lot of neat pictures of bizarre devices, unusual diagrams of sparkly patterns, and plenty of ponies in white lab coats looking very enthusiastic about their work. There was even an interview piece with that lavender Ministry mare, the one on all the posters back in Stable 104. The interviewer was asking her a bunch of questions about recent advances in arcane technology as a result of the war, and while most of it went right over my head, there was one bit that really stood out in my mind:

QM: Miss Sparkle, as the war puts greater and greater pressure on brilliant minds such as yours and your colleagues the rate at which we’ve been creating new devices and weapons has reached a peak never before seen by ponykind. When the war ends, with Equestria victorious of course, do you think that streak of invention will end?

TS: Oh I don’t think it would! When this terrible, terrible war ends, I don’t think we... well I don’t think we could stop even if we wanted to! With the inventing I mean. Its really great, in a way, not the war obviously, but... but just the way its forced us to look at things in ways we never would have, or at least wouldn’t have for many, many centuries if we weren’t under pressure to do so. I firmly believe that once the war ends, once we win peace for ourselves, that the Ministry of Arcane Science will continue to learn and discover new things about magic, technology, how they work together, and how we can make everypony, indeed everyone’s, lives better through what we create.

QM: There are some, though, that fear this rapid rise of technology, that it may be causing a disconnect from our cultural identity. Do you have any words for those who fear what the future may bring?

TS:Yes... don’t. Don’t fear. Fear of the future, that’s the end of all knowledge. Its always a scary thing, dealing with what’s new, seeing things change around you. I get scared too, of some of the changes I’ve seen in the world. We can’t just stop, however. The future is coming whether we’re scared of it or not, so isn’t it better to try and face that future with all the knowledge you can and with heart and mind ever prepared to learn more? That’s the future I hope for, after the war. One where knowledge and hope for the future is stronger than fear and mistrust of the unknown.

I didn’t really remember much else of the articles in that magazine, but that exchange stuck in my mind and remained, even as I moved on to the next magazine. Don’t fear the future? I thought about the blasted Wasteland somewhere above the train tunnel, filled with its empty, broken, dead remains of homes. I wanted very much to agree with that lavender unicorn mare, the picture in the magazine showing eyes that were tired, yet still filled with energy, with hope. I wanted her to be right.

It just wasn’t easy when you were the one who had to live with that future.

Fortunately my morose mood vanished with curiosity over the next magazine. I looked over the title with a raised eyebrow. Wingboner Magazine? What in the world was a ‘Wingboner’? Well, the pegasus on the cover, a pink coated mare with a deep crimson mane and violet eyes lidded in such a way that made her look like she was sleepy, seemed interesting enough. I didn’t know why she was posed like that, or why she was wearing purple and black striped socks... but I was curious to see what the magazine was about. Mare fashion perhaps?

I opened up to somewhere in the middle of the magazine... looked at what was on there, and proceeded to make a noise that was somewhere between a squeak and a gulp.

“Longwalk? Ya alright over there?” B.B asked.

“Esru di coivai shai mas?” Arcaidia piped in as well.

I didn’t respond. My eyes were wide, glued to the rather wide angle picture of two pegasi mares and a unicorn stallion... who knew pegasi could do that with their wings? And was the stallion levitating... into the mare’s.... oh... my...

I didn’t know there was such a thing as a full-body blush, but I was told later by B.B that I’d been practically glowing like a stove top from the tip of my tail to the tip of my snout.

When B.B had come up to me saying, “What’re ya lookin’ at there?” I gave a startled yelp and threw the magazine across the passenger car. It hit Iron Wrought in the face. He gave me a disgruntled look, then picked up the magazine and laid it out with a hoof. He stifled a chuckle and said, “Oh, he’s just discovering the most prevalent form of entertainment among young bucks his age, and some mares too.”

I blanched as he rolled the magazine up and put it in his own saddlebags! I wasn’t done looking at it!... I mean... I had no interest in that...

... Okay, blatant lie, I had a very healthy interest. Unfortunately the only mare in the group who had any apparent interest in me might also have been just as eager to stab me to death. Even though she was rather cute, especially while sleeping. But then I still had this strong feeling of affection towards Trailblaze that I didn’t know if it would lead anywhere! Or if Traiblaze might feel the same! I shouldn’t just be looking or thinking about other mares, right? But those pegasi were amazingly lithe, and the way they posed with their flanks so perfectly sticking out-

I shook my head in mental denial as B.B gave the magazine a cock-eyed look, sighed, and went back to Arcaidia. The unicorn filly looked confused and whispered something to B.B that I couldn’t hear, and B.B just shook her head with a little amused smile and whispered something back. Arcaidia looked at me then, her head tilting slightly, then she got this annoyingly knowing smile and nodded at me as if she was giving approval! What the buck was that about!?

I turned my attention back to Iron Wrought, “Can I have my magazine back?”

“I don’t think you need anything clogging up you’re already overtaxed brain, buck,” he said, then grinned ruefully, “Besides I can get more use out of it than you.”

“B-b-but... you’re married aren’t you!?”

“Yes, and I haven’t seen my wife in over a week.”

I decided he had a point and let the matter drop. Not like I was overly interested in stuff like that anyway! Except those pegasi mares were so very, very athletically lithe, and could bend their wings in such fascinating ways. I shoved my face in my hooves as if I could scrub the thoughts out of my brain. Iron Wrought was right, I didn’t need my mind bogged down by thinking about mares! What was wrong with me anyway? I had been fine not thinking about them before. What had changed?

Well, up until lately you’ve only had Trailblaze around, and your mother. Most the other mares in the tribe didn’t even talk to you unless they had to, except Whetstone, and even her just because she was friends with Trailblaze. Now you’ve spent days on end traveling with a party of mostly mares. It's actually surprising its taken you this long to start noticing them.

Thanks brain pony, why don’t you provide such logical conclusions when they’d actually be useful!?

I realized I’d been staring at Binge’s flanks and pointedly turned around in my seat to instead watch the tunnel go by. And to think of anything else other than mares.

I was bouncing around excitedly. The train had stopped at a section of the tunnel that was connected to a large cut-away platform supported by a number of metal pillars, lit up with fluorescent ceiling lights. A huge ramp lead to a smaller tunnel where I could see the distant dull white glow of daylight. This surface access point was about two thirds of the way between Stable 104 and its northern excavation site, far enough away that we should be able to slip out into the Wasteland without being spotted by Odessa’s troops there.

Right now Iron Wrought, B.B, and LIL-E, and I were working to uncover the tarp surrounding our new vehicle and get it started up. My excitement was entirely directed at the vehicle in question. The train was cool enough, but this was like a train that didn’t have to stay on the rails!

“What did Misty Glasses call this thing again?” I asked as the blue tarp covering the vehicle was finally pulled away.

“An Ursa-class All Terrain Wagon,” LIL-E said, floating over the top of the Ursa, “According to her it’s what the Stable used for its surface recons, before they decided to stop checking the condition of the surface.”

“So sad in my feels that they wouldn’t let us play any more with Geary,” Binge said with drooping ears, “Now he’s gonna be all alone and bored in that stuffy hole in the ground instead of partying with ponies across the Wasteland!”

Binge had made something of a fuss when she found out we weren’t allowed to keep that Mini-Golem, the Fully Tuned Gear. Needed crowbars to pry her off the thing’s leg. I wasn’t too disappointed though. The Mini-Golem had been too small to carry all of us comfortably, and the Ursa ATW looked far more rugged. Besides, I think Misty Glasses wanted us to help her people make peaceful relations with surface settlements... not blast them into craters.

I patted Binge on the shoulder, which was a delicate operation to avoid the knives sticking out from her armor now, but I managed.

“Hey, no worries, I bet we’ll have plenty of fun with, uh, ‘Ursy’ too.”

“Hmmm,” Binge squinted her eyes at the vehicle, as if trying to imagine the carnage she might be able to wreak with it, “I don’t know... he’s big, but doesn’t have any fun ‘splody bits.”

It was true, the Ursa ATW wasn’t armed. But then it didn’t look like it needed to be. It was a huge machine, with a thick, blocky front cabin with black tinted windows on front and wrapping along the side. It stood easily a good ten feet off the ground on six massive wheels, with door access on either side and on the passenger compartment on the back. The roof even had a small railed deck that you could stand on. The Ursa was made from solid, thick metal painted a rusty, subdued red that would blend in well with the terrain of the Wasteland.

“Ain’t no point gawking folks, let’s take a’ look inside an’ git going’!” said B.B, flying down onto the Ursa’s roof and popping open a top hatch, crawling in. We all clambered aboard, using a small metal step access to get up to the door itself, which you could open with a simple hoof press to a button.

The interior was dark and remarkably comfortable for such a rugged looking vehicle, with the driver cabin alone having four big plush chairs to snuggle into. The driver seat itself had a big wheel in front of it with grooves for hooves to fit in, and a few pedals on the floor which I figured was for getting the Ursa to move forward. The dashboard was a kaleidoscope of monitors and displays I didn’t understand, but was more than curious about. A door at the back of the driver cabin led to the larger passenger compartment. Back there was like a miniature living room, with a kitchenette, a small table booth, and a few bunk beds and cargo lockers. There was even a tiny lavatory on the corner next to the back exit hatch. The roof access were here as well, and B.B was already poking her nose into the kitchenette, “Hey Long, wanna learn how ta cook?”

I smiled, rubbing the back of my head, “If you got the patience to teach me.”

“Vi rimawl dol voltirsha est golis,” Arcaidia said, settling into the table booth, “We move better now, yes?”

“That’s the idea,” I said, turning my smile towards her, “Don’t worry, we’ll be in Skull City before you know it!”

She nodded, her silver eyes casting a glance towards her Pip-Buck. Much like the EFS allowed me to see little yellow bars indicating where my allies were, it had a special additional white tag for Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck. Misty Glasses had wanted to examine Arcaidia’s model, but Arcaidia had firmly refused. The sleeker Pip-Buck was still similar enough to mine, apparently, that one could track the other. Arcaidia’s horn glowed blue, and a few knobs on her Pip-Buck turned, and I could see she’d switched to her map screen.

“Persephone far down,” she said, then frowned, “Down map... south?”

“South, that’s right, hun,” said B.B, “Up is north, left is west, right is east.”

Arcaidia nodded, “Persephone south, across big... dessert?”

“Desert,” B.B corrected gently.

“Can new vehicle go?” Arcaidia asked.

I blinked, “Huh, good question. Could we cross that big desert to the south and get to the NCR using the Ursa?”

B.B frowned thoughtfully, “Don’t rightly know. It’d be risky. Rumors I hear talk ‘bout all sortsa nasty critters in the Bleach that could even tear up this big clonker. Be safer if we found ‘nother way.”

“I can put my ‘ears’ to the ground once we’re in Skull City,” LIL-E’s voice said from a small radio in an upper corner of the compartment, “See if I can give you a few leads. Everypony settled in?”

“Oh, we about to go!? Let me come up front,” I said hastily as I turned for the door, “I want to see how to drive this!”

I heard B.B and Arcaidia sharing a chuckle behind me as I opened the door back into the driver’s cabin and scurried through. I practically ran face first into Binge in my haste and we ended up tumbling over each other on the floor of the driver’s cabin, wedged between the two back passenger seats.

“Hiya bucky, you wanna play right here?” she asked with an impish smile, eyes twinkling.

“Aaaah!” I said, mainly because running into a mare who had dozens of knife blades sticking out of her armor was painful, even though my own armor kept any of them from actually penetrating (go golden gecko hide armor!). Still, it was far from a comfortable position to be in, especially with the way Binge wiggled around.

In response to my obvious distress Binge licked my nose. This did not help.

“Are you two done making out?” asked Iron Wrought irritably, sitting in the driver’s seat, “Because I’m about to start this thing.”

Somehow Iron Wrought driving distracted me from a knife covered Binge beneath me, “Why do yout get to drive!? I wanna drive!”

“Only adults get to drive, buck,” he said sagely. LIL-E, floating over the passenger seat next to the driver, bobbed as if nodding.

“I am an adult, mostly,” I said and felt Binge wiggle in a way that made my face turn into a burning red beacon.

“Oooo, I can atest to that,” pat, pat, pat, “Very healthy. Mr. Happy is jealous.”

I didn’t want to know why a sock puppet was jealous, or how, or what, or oh-dear-Ancestors-Binge-stop-that!

I was standing up and getting into a passenger seat in seconds, legs crossed firmly underneath me, and trying very hard to ignore Binge while the Raider mare also got up and sauntered to the other passenger seat. Too many knives, too many sensitive places on me that lacked the benefit of armor. Iron Wrought grunted in faint satisfaction seeing us both in our seats and I suddenly felt rather embarrassed, like I really was acting childish.

“This is part of why I never had foals,” said LIL-E.

“Mine are much better behaved,” said Iron Wrought firmly as he ran a hoof over a lever by the wheel and the Ursa’s engine roared to life, causing the frame to shake briefly before settling out into a throaty hum. I didn’t know anything about how the engine actually worked, only that it got its power from something called spark batteries, and we’d been given a hefty supply to keep the Ursa running.

The train was set to automatically return to Stable 104, and as the Ursa rumbled off the cargo car and onto the ramp-way towards the surface I could hear the train start rolling away. I sulked for a few moments in my seat before I started to feel too excited to worry about not getting to drive or fume over Binge’s teasing. We were on our way! The light ahead got brighter as the ramp sloped up and I saw a metal gate ahead begin to open for us as the Ursa rode up to it. Beyond was a short tunnel that led to a wide opening that took us out into the wide open Wasteland from the mouth of a natural looking cave set in a high, rocky hill. Anypony passing by probably wouldn’t have realized the cave was anything more than a natural formation, rather than an entrance to an underground tunnel system connected to a Stable.

In minutes we were rolling along the blasted red landscape, the broodingly dark gray and thick mass of clouds above sprinkling a light drizzle of rain. The Ursa handled the uneven rocky terrain without any trouble, the cabin barely shuddering.

I looked out the window, and while I knew it would get me yelled at my resolve wavered and I soon had the window open, my head stuck out and facing the wind as we rode.

I was yelled at, but I didn’t care. This was awesome.

As it turned out traveling over large swaths of Wasteland is almost as boring in a vehicle as it is on hoof. Once the fun and novelty of having the wind of the Ursa’s speed whipping my mane about, I discovered I needed a way to occupy my time. Reading my magazines was a no go, however, as unlike the smooth ride of the train the Ursa jostled just enough to make me feel queasy if I tried to read anything.

So instead I learned a little cooking with B.B when dinner time rolled around. The light was started to turn the world into gloomy shades of long shadows, tinting the world dark, and we’d stopped the Ursa under the looming overhang of an old blasted highway that would block us from being spotted from above. Odessa was still active in the area and it’d be a serious problem for us if we ran afoul of one of their patrols.

B.B was showing me the fine art of soup-making, using carrots and strips of gecko jerky, when I heard Iron Wrought call from the driver’s cabin.

“Hey, we got something on the radio you might want to hear folks.”

We left the soup to simmer and squeezed into the driver’s cabin, which was a little crowded for all of us but Arcaidia stayed in the passenger compartment and LIL-E had floated out the window to make room. Iron Wrought beckoned me forward at my questioning look.

“They’re repeating the broadcast. Wanted to make sure I heard it all right before I had you listen,” he said as he adjusted a knob on the dashboard, causing some static to crackle over the speakers.

“Broadcast? From where?” I asked, confused.

“Skull City Radio Guild,” Iron Wrought said, and before I could question further I heard a resonant female tone, rich and deep, start to speak through the radio.

“Hope you all enjoyed that single ‘Only the Night Sky Knows’, our Skull City’s very own Wellspring Whistles. We’re taking a break from her lovely voice to recap our headlines and bounties before you day-shift folk turn in and the night life kicks off! Barret, you want to take this one?”

Another voice now spoke, a smooth, male tenor.

“Always a pleasure Grin. Today’s highlights; violence in the Outskirts as the Beastlords made a raid on the east end. Guards from both the Labor Guild and Security Guild pushed back the Raiders after a pitched firefight, but the Beastlords are still holding the offices in the east Deadburbs, so any of you Salvage Guild folk planning on making runs to that area, double think your plans. In case anypony living near the south gate were blind you probably noticed the column of power armored ponies trotting into town this afternoon, well we got it from our sources that the fancy carriage they were escorting was carrying some visitors from, get this, the Protectorate!”

There was a brief pause, I can only assume for dramatic effect, or perhaps the pony on the radio was just collecting his thoughts. He was a pony right? Never heard of a pony with a name like Barret, though.

“In case anypony out there’s been keeping their head in the ground instead of on the pulse of politics, that’s the alliance of the self-styled ‘Kingdoms’ of Neighlesius and Applehyde across the west mountains. You know, the ones that took a shot at us years back and we sent their steel clad flanks packing. Now rumors along the grapvine’s saying one of their big shots have come to town! No idea yet why, but they were met by representatives from the Skull Guild itself and escorted to the Skull Guild headquarters towers. Its anypony’s guess right now what our resident ghoulish overlords (I kid guys, I kid, don’t sick the revenants on us please) are chatting with the Protectorate about but rest assured the Skull City Radio Guild’s got your backs. Soon as we know, you’ll all know!”

A shuffling of papers was followed by a sight, Barret continuing in a more solemn tone.

“For those of you among our listeners who had friends or family down south in Saddlespring allow us at the Radio Guild to offer up our condolences once again. For those who haven’t tuned into our broadcast for a while then its my sad duty to repeat this bit of tragedy; almost a week ago the town of Saddlespring, a well known waystation for folk traveling south and one of the largest communities in the southern Skull City Wastes was destroyed. Flattened to the ground, with no known survivors.”

I stiffened at that. No known survivors!? Dozens had managed to survive Saddlespring’s destruction!

“But that’s not true-” I began but Iron Wrought put a hoof to my mouth, silencing me and shook his head. Barret was still going on the radio.

“Reports from both the Salvage Guild and Labor Guild investigation teams indicate the town was destroyed by a combination of fire and heavy ordnance. The perpetrators remain unknown, but based on the extend of the force used on the settlement most speculators suggest a large scale raid by the Bursters Raider gang. If anypony has any information concerning this tragedy we encourage you to come down to the Radio Guild studio. Alright, Grin, think its that time again?”

“I think our listeners could go for something more upbeat after that bit of downer news! For all you eager gun toters and justice (or cap) seekers out there its time for tonight’s Bounty Bonus Bingo recap! Quick refresher on the rules my little ponies! The Bounty Guild has scores of bounties available for anypony with the guns and the guts to snag and turn in, and once a week just for funsies they randomly draw certain bounties to get a double or triple bonus payout if you manage to turn in before the week’s done! For some bounties that’s a heap load of caps! So, let’s see which three lucky bounties are getting a nice bonus payout tag for you happy hunters to gun for!”

I gave Iron Wrought a confused look and he returned the look with a grave one of his own as Grin’s happy, smooth voice continued.

“First up we have the nefarious Schrodinger family! These bandits are wanted by the Mining Guild for grand larceny of valuable gems and their original bounty was 5,000 caps. With a double bonus that’s a payoff of 10,000 caps for anypony who bags the whole crew; headed up by the elder sister, True Illusion. Watch out though, reports say this filly packs a gatling gun up her fancy dress, and the rest of her family are no slouches either! Reports say her little brother’s a genius alchemist with explosives coming out the wazoo, that her butler is a master swordstallion, and that her pet cat breaths fire! Now it's entirely possible these reports are coming from folk who might be fooling around with Dash, but take no chances when engaging the Schrodinger’s, just the same!

Second bonus bounty for the week is an oldie but goodie, a bounty that’s stood for near on three years but hey, you never know, you might be the lucky one to bust this infamous beast, and its a triple bonus this time around! That’s right folks, its the Trask! In the north of our fair corner of the Wasteland is old Highway 70, a road nopony has dared cross since a nasty creature took up residence there and has attacked any with the courage to travel that way. Our few reports of this carnivorous critter is that it’s huge as a house, tough as a tank, and can even fly! Any of you willing to go after the Trask this time and manage to bring its head into the Water Guild gets the triple bounty of 30,000 caps!

Now, finally, a fresh new bounty, just put up a few days ago and now doubled for the pleasure of your purse! The Labor Guild’s put this one up, citing this stallion has responsible for attacking and killing one of their caravans just north of Saddlespring just a day before the town’s unfortunate demise. While we’ve not been given a name we have a fairly thorough description. He’s described as a young stallion of tribal origin. He’s in his teens, tan coat, blue mane, green eyes, and a blank flank to boot! May be traveling with companions, and has a posted bounty of 3,000 caps! That’s 6,000 to anypony who brings this tribal buck in! Specifically the Labor Guild wants him alive, so don’t forget to aim for the legs!

Well folks, there's our bonus bounties for the week, so get out there and get hunting!”

“And that’s also us signing off for a bit so you can listen to some more of Wellspring Whistle’s lovely vocals to ease you into your night! But don’t worry, we’ll be back soon enough with some caller commentary! She’s Grin and I’m Barret, and this is Skull City Radio.”

Their voices were replaced by music, a soft, bubbly mare’s voice accompanied by a fast paced, energetic guitar. I didn’t pay the lyrics any mind, too busy feeling brain-locked over what I just heard.

“So,” said Iron Wrought, “Might be a bit of a problem for you.”

“Why didn’t they report any survivors?” I asked quietly, fearful of what might have happened to the ponies I’d left behind. The Saddlespring survivors, and the Labor Guild slaves... I remembered Crossfire warning me that the Labor Guild wouldn’t let them go so easily. Should I have stayed with them, to guard them? My gut churned at the notion of something happening to those ponies.

“I was talking about the bounty,” said Iron Wrought, rubbing his head and huffing out an exasperated sigh.

Arcaidia waved a dismissive hoof, snorting, “Bounty no problem for Longwalk!” she then turned to B.B, tilting her head questioningly, “B.B, what’s bounty?”

“Its when somepony pays ta have others captured or killed,” B.B said, frowning thoughtfully, “Usually only folk that done ‘nother wrong get bounties on them, but Bounty Guild ain’t picky ‘bout who they put up a’ bounty on long as somepony fronts them the money for it.”

“It essentially means that there are now bounty hunters out there who will be on the lookout for a pony of Longwalk’s description,” chimed in LIL-E, “So they can capture him and cash in on the bounty. It’ll make things rough on you in Skull City, unless we work up a disguise for him.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, nor the way the mare’s in the party were all suddenly looking at me thoughtfully. It sent a chill down my spine. No, wait, that was Binge’s hoof. Binge get off me!

“I think my little bucky would look good in green!” Binge said, chortling with sparkling eyes looking over me as I jumped back from her. I started backing up towards the door to the passenger compartment as the mare’s started to move in on me.

“Hm, I ain’t sure, was thinkin’ somethin’ more in purple myself,” said B.B, her eyes somehow gaining an particularly evil sheen to them as she came in from the left.

I gave Arcaidia a pleading look, but the blue unicorn filly just had a thoughtful look on her face as she watched B.B and Binge, then looked at me with a dainty little shrug and smiled at me.

“Blue more his color. I do his mane. Sister always let me do her mane, so I am strongest at mane doing!” she declared and joined the other two mares in cornering me. Traitor! Turncoat! I gave one last look of desperation at Iron Wrought and LIL-E, but the two were ignoring my predicament, instead chatting with each other about how to best approach Skull City. Couldn’t they see my life, or at least my dignity, was at stake!?

I turned to flee, hoping against hope I could make it out the back of the Ursa and flee into the night, but it was too late. The mares pounced upon me as one and my fate was sealed.

Some hours later, after much shouting and struggling, followed eventually by hollow acceptance, I found myself standing in the middle of the passenger compartment surrounded by three insane mares who were looking me over with appraising eyes. Since when had these three learned to team up so effectively!? It must have been the shower time they shared, I suspected. Somehow they had forged a secret alliance against me while getting all wet and clean and soapy!

“Weeeel,” B.B drawled, “Ain’t ‘xactly what I’d call a’ work a art, but given’ we didn’t have no proper material ta work wit I’d still say ‘e ain’t half bad lookin’.”

Arcaidia nodded her head firmly, standing tall and proud looking at me while she’d just crafted some sort of masterpiece, “Longwalk looks very pretty!”

Binge giggled, “We can’t call him that silly filly! This is a disguise, so he has to have a disguised name! Oh, I think I know just the one, too!”

Binge paused, as if awaiting a drumroll. She seemed genuinely disappointed when no drumroll was evident, but that didn’t dampen her enthusiastic tone as she declared, “I dub thee, Princess Blueberry!”

I was sincerely hoping I was able to communicate the sheer level of hate I was feeling at the moment simply through glaring, but this seemed to only amuse the mares! I suppose, to be fair, I couldn’t have looked very intimidating in my current… state of dress.

Dress being the key term.

There had not been any random fabric or cloth just laying around the Ursa, but B.B, for reasons I was not entirely clear on, had apparently acquired no small number of clothing articles from Stable 104. As it happens mares who were formerly ponies, but now eight legged spider mutations, didn’t have much need for their old wardrobes, so B.B had availed herself of the Stable 104 closets.

As such she’d had a remarkable collection of dresses for me to try on.

Whether I wanted to or not.

Arcaidia had demonstrated once again how useful telekinesis was in keeping a pony still who did not wish to remain still.

My new, awesome, and very masculine armor barding was sitting in a pile on the dining booth. I was now wearing a elegant and curve-hugging bright green dress that I had to grudgingly admit at least matched my eyes quite beautifully. Not that I cared about that kind of thing! It was at least tastefully cut, hanging well over my haunches and not showing off too much, really just more suggesting the curve of my flanks rather than exposing them (and rather cleverly hiding my lack of a cutie mark, I suppose). The chest was a neat button up that went up to mid-neck, but leaving a v-curve in front for a bit of chest tuft to be exposed, a good spot to hang a necklace… if you were into that kind of thing. The forelegs of the dress went down to the hooves, with green threads of a darker shade than the rest of the dress making an embroidered pattern of wings up to the elbow.

“Oh quit yer scowlin’ ya big foal,” chuckled B.B, “Ya make a fine lookin’ mare, though I’m thinkin’ Binge is goin’ overboard declarin’ ya a Princess. Still, Blueberry ain’t a’ bad alias! Yer mane’s kinda got the right shade fer it.”

Right… my mane. My nice, rugged, wild, unkempt, stallion’s mane! Less rugged now, wild, or unkempt, after excessive brushing from Arcaidia, who had then proceeded to tie it into two bouncy, short pigtails! Pig… tails! At least she’d left my tail alone save for straightening it out with more of that wretched brushing! Really, why did so-called ‘civilized’ ponies feel the need to brush everything! And bathe constantly! Once a week was enough wasn’t it!? I mean, I enjoyed taking a quick simple shower back at Stable 104. The past few days had gotten blood and other assort gunk into crevices I didn’t even know I had, so the shower of steaming hot water had been incredibly pleasant. However my companions were crazy if they thought this whole grooming thing was going to be something I’d be doing on a daily basis!

I whinnied my displeasure, refusing to talk to these three.

Arcaidia seemed confused with me, “Why is Longwalk making angry face? Need hide from bounty ponies, so this good thing, yes?”

“Hehehe, he’s not angry my little icy death wind!” said Binge happily, “He’s bursting at the seams with gratitude! See how red his face is! That’s the color of happiness! Or murder. I can’t remember which. Happy murder?”

Not. Talking. To. Them.

B.B looked at me with a critical eye, hovering a little bit even inside the confines of the Ursa’s passenger compartment, hooves on her hips. She then gave a sympathetic, small smile and said, “Alright gals, looks like we’ve had our fun an’ might’ve pushed ‘im a might far. Let’s git him back to normal sorts, ‘fore he pops a vein or somethin’.”

“Awwwww,” Binge pouted, holding up a set of crimson red ribbons, “I wanted to do up his tail!”

Where had she gotten those ribbons from? Arcaidia gave the ribbons a brief glance, then a haughty snort.

“Hmph, shivol bir not good with hair! I make mane and tail look best!”

As the two debated the finer points of how to best go about styling my tail (Arcaidia wanted to braid it!?) B.B came over to me and bowed her head apologetically, though I could see she was trying to hide a chuckle.

“Sorry Long, let me ‘elp git ya outta that dress,” she said as she started to tug the buttons open while I tried to keep up my glare. However her sincere tone broke down a fair bit of my indignation and I resigned to soften my look. I suppose it was a decent disguise...

Once the dress was off and my mane was back to something resembling normal we all settled down for dinner, with B.B finishing up with the soup she’d been teaching me to cook. LIL-E went up to the Ursa’s roof to “keep watch” while the rest of us ate. Dinner was rather quiet, with just basic chit-chat. It was sort of nice. No talk of impending doom, or worrying about what might happen with Odessa, me having a bounty on my head, what had happened to the Saddlespring survivors, or anything else.

I hadn’t felt this relaxed and at ease since before that day Trailblaze and I went over Ghost Ridge.

I suddenly felt a powerful urge to take a detour, crazy as the notion was, back to Shady Stream. With the Ursa it shouldn’t have taken us more than a day to return to the village and... and I just wanted to see my mother and Trailblaze again. I shoved the urge away, however. I couldn’t go back. Not before my debt to Arcaidia was repaid. Besides, with Odessa targeting us it was too dangerous to go back. If I ended up leading Odessa back to my home village...

Well, there went my good mood.

“Think I’m going to go get some fresh air,” I said aftering licking away the last of the soup from my bowl.

“Ah, ah, ah,” said B.B, waving a wing at me, then at the bowl, “Ya clean up after yerself first.”

I cocked my head at her, then collected my bowl and took it over to the sink. Strange how easily B.B mirrored my mother’s tone and manner. In short order the table was cleared and Arcaidia and Binge started fighting over who got top bunk of the two bunks the passenger compartment had available. B.B had already volunteered to take the floor, saying she was used to “roughin’ it”, and honestly I didn’t care and was fine with the floor as well. I just wasn’t feeling tired yet.

Iron Wrought retired to the driver’s cabin, presumably to recline in one of the seats there. The Ursa’s doors were thick and bolted, and according to Iron Wrought the vehicle had a system similar to the Pip-Buck’s E.F.S that would provide warning of approaching threats. Between that and LIL-E up on the roof we were about as secure as we could be for bedding down for the night.

As I cracked open the hatch leading to the roof I clambered up the ladder, a little awkwardly as I wasn’t used to going up a ladder. I got the impression the concept of these things were not really meant for ponies. Still I managed to get to the roof without breaking a leg and closed the hatch behind me. The Ursa’s roof was a wide smooth surface with guarded rails along the edge about to chest height. They’d serve as good cover in a firefight. The night Wasteland air was cold and muggy from the fresh rain that had just stopped an hour earlier. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I looked over the broken and rubble strewn landscape. We were getting back into the suburbs that sprawled away from Skull City like a twisted graveyard carpet of dead, hollow buildings and fallen highways, one of which we were parked under.

LIL-E was floating towards the back of the roof and didn’t turn to look my way. I saw the little yellow bar of her on my E.F.S, and felt a twinge of tension as I noticed a red bar somewhere to my right.

“Relax,” said LIL-E, “It’s just a radhog, scuffling around in one of the houses.”

I didn’t question how she sensed my tension, but did ask, “How can you be sure?”

“My sensors are a much better than your standard E.F.S. Don’t worry, nothing will sneak up on us without me knowing about it.”

I nodded, accepting that, knowing I could trust her. We enjoyed some silent company for a few minutes before LIL-E shifted, turning slightly towards me.

“It’s pretty late Longwalk, you ought to sleep.”

“What about you?” I asked, “You must get tired too, on the other end of that robot. When do you sleep?”

“I’m on a different sleep schedule than you lot in this region. Remember, I’m on the other side of the country. Seriously though, why are you staying awake? Too much on your mind?”

“Not really. Feel more at ease than I have in a long time,” I said, smiling, hearing a few muffled voices I was fairly certain were Arcaidia and Binge still arguing, followed by a shout of what was likely Iron Wrought telling the two to be quiet, “I don’t know why. Nothing’s resolved, and my future is as up in the air as its ever been... but for some reason I feel... good. Makes me think of home, actually.”

“Friends have that affect,” LIL-E said and I blinked.

Was that it? I supposed it must have been. Having friends, enjoying something as simple as a meal together, or something as silly as putting me in a mare’s dress... it did leave a solid, strong feeling of rightness in me. Like no matter what came my way I’d be able to handle it, as long as I could keep hold of this feeling. My smile deepened.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Then my Pip-Buck started to beep at me. I frowned, raising the device to my face and nosed a few of the knobs.

“What’s with this thing? I won’t stop making this noise,” I said, shaking it, as if doing so would make the Pip-Buck stop. I heard a buzzing noise I identified as LIL-E sighing.

“Switch the tab over to the radio. You’re Pip-Buck just picked up a new signal.”

“How do you know that?” I asked as I did as she told me, carefully nudging knobs until the screen clicked over to the radio tab, showing me a dotted list of frequencies. A short list; with only three frequencies. One of them was Skull City Radio, and another was for Stable 104. The third frequency, however, I didn’t recognize, and simply read as; Unknown Distress Signal.

“I just picked up the same thing,” responded LIL-E, “You’d better listen in. Don’t know how you’ll react to this though.”

It took me a second to puzzle out how to get the Pip-Buck to actually play a selected frequency, but I soon had the distress signal selected and there was a burst of static followed by a voice. It was male, young, with a strong tone but cracked with stress and near panic that was barely under wraps.

”I say again, this is Corporal Glint, 8th squad, Odessa 2nd Recon. We’re trapped at the Silver Mare Studios building; 3rd floor! There’s something in here that’s picking off my squad. We’ve barricaded ourselves in one of the offices, but there’s no windows for us to get out and take flight from. Damnit somepony respond! We need evac! I’ve lost two ponies already!”

There was a muffled crashing noise, like something massive slamming into something else made of loose metal. A female voice could be heard shouting.

”Shitshitshit! Bernard, help me out here!”

This was followed by another male voice, different that Glint’s; a sort of gruff squawking voice.

”Scoot over Spring, I got this! You want some of this you ugly bastard!? Have some of this!”

There was the sound of booming gunshots, from a shotgun I thought, and the female voice cried out.

”I think you’re just making it angry! Stop making it angry!”

Why did that voice sound familiar? Glint’s voice came back on, clearer, probably speaking directly into whatever communication device he was using to send this signal out.

”I don’t know who can hear this, and right now I don’t care! Command isn’t responding, Captain Francheska isn’t responding! Nopony is bloody damned responding! So anypony who can hear this, please, I’m asking you, help. I’ll pay you in weapons, armor, whatever, just get my squad out of here!”

The signal cut out there, but I’d heard enough and was already switching my tab over to my map. The soft green light of the Pip-Buck brightened as it brought up the full topographic map of the area around my position, showing the terrain in various shades of green and black. I zoomed in until I could scroll over to the location of Silver Mare Studios, which had somehow already updated with a chevron marker and dotted line showing the route there from our current location. It was as if the Pip-Buck had sensed my intent, and I somehow didn’t doubt if I’d checked the ‘Objectives’ tab I’d already find an entry there about rescuing the Odessa squad.

I didn’t notice LIL-E talking until she raised her volume.

“Longwalk! You want me to wake the others?”

I blinked up at her, “Huh? Oh, right.”

I’d been so focused on the idea of just running over to Silver Mare Studios I’d not even thought of needing to go wake the rest of my companions to fill them in. I shook myself, trying to regain my concentration. It was just... difficult. My relaxation had been replaced by a burning, tense feeling of haste in my heart. Every second counted. Couldn’t waste a moment.

“I’ll get Iron Wrought up and moving, you bring everypony else up to speed,” I said as I went for the hatch and opened it. LIL-E was right behind me.

“They might not want to do this, Longwalk,” she said, and I paused, glancing over at her.

She continued on, seeing my look, “It’s Odessa. I know why you want to help, but can you be alright with this? Taking them into a fight, even if they have no reason to care about what happens to those ponies?”

I thought about it. For a few seconds. Then grim determination passed through me, as I remembered my conversation with LIL-E back in the canyon. Life was precious. Anypony’s life. Those weren’t idle words in my head. They were convictions I wanted to live by. Wherever they took me.

“I’m going. They can follow, or they can stay. I won’t force anypony to come along, and I will come back, one way or another.”

LIL-E let out a short, huffing sound of static that might have been a laugh, “Figured that’d be what you’d say. Alright, let’s do this.”

There was less complaining and arguments than I had expected. Arcaidia seemed more annoyed at just being roused awake after having just gotten to sleep than at the reason itself. Binge just laughed, stretching sinuously, and said, “Puppies’ll chase anything flashy, even skywagons. Gotta keep an eye on you so you don’t get run over.”

B.B and Iron Wrought were both less accepting.

“Don’t figure we owe no Odessa folk a rescue,” B.B said, but she was strapping on her pistols just the same, “After what they did ta Saddlespring, they ain’t deservin’ o’ help.”

Iron Wrought was glaring at me, jaw set in a firm grimace, “Its a waste of time anyway. Silver Mare Studios is a good twenty minutes away even pushing this wagon full speed. They'll probably all be dead by the time we get there.”

I kept my voice as calm and level as I could manage, despite the way my heart was pounding, “Even so, I’m going, even if I have to go on hoof. Rather use the Ursa, though, as twenty minutes is a lot faster than however long it’ll take me just running.”

B.B sighed heavily, “Ya can be such a darned thickheaded wool-brained mule Long. I’m comin’ wit ya though, no doubtn’ that! I don’t like it, but I git why yer doin’ this. Just don’t ‘spect me ta hold fire iffin’ these Odessa ponies ain’t so thankful fer us savin’ them that they don’t take a’ crack at us. Remember, they’re after Arcaidia.”

I remembered the way B.B had taken down the Odessa soldier from Saddlespring. I knew the risks involved with what I was doing, and accepted this might end in bloodshed one way or another. But I had to try. It just wasn’t in me to ignore a plea for help. Besides, if it turned out this squad of Odessa ponies was grateful for a rescue... maybe I could get some information from them. Learn why they were so interested in capturing Arcaidia.

Iron Wrought got in the driver’s seat when it was obvious there was no talking me out of this and in a minute we were bouncing along the uneven terrain, tearing across broken streets or crashing through burned, rubble strewn yards. The Ursa was one rugged all terrain vehicle, and it hardly needed roads to get to where it was going, but at the speed Iron Wrought pushed it even the Ursa’s impressive shock absorption still made for a very bumpy ride.

Corporal Glint had stopped transmitting, which made me nervous, and I kept switching between my Pip-Buck’s signal tab and the map screen, watching as the dot marking our location gradually got closer to the chevron marking Silver Mare Studios. I had no idea what to expect when we got there, and just gave a silent prayer to the Ancestor spirits to watch over those trapped ponies, to please let me and my friends reach them in time.

Strange, I’d rarely prayed much, or even thought about, the Ancestors spirits, or my tribe’s spiritual teachings... but recently it had become a habit. Made me wish I’d paid more attention to the shaman’s lectures when I was younger.

Iron Wrought’s estimate was fairly accurate, as it was just about twenty minutes of silent, tense driving before he brought the Ursa to a halt. Through the thick windows I could see a building before us, its front illuminated by the Ursa’s huge bank of headlights, which cut a blazing white path of light through the Wasteland night.

Silver Mare Studios was a four story structure of scorched wood and brick, but was remarkably intact in comparison to the rest of the blackened shells of buildings that shared the same cracked patches of concrete that used to be a street. There were few windows that were not boarded up from the inside, the ones that weren’t all open black holes on the bottom floor flanking the main doors. An arched sign above those doors displayed big plastic letters with busted lights that at one time were clearly meant to light up each letter during the days this building had been occupied. Though a few letters were missing, joining the debris strewn along the walls of the building, I could still make out the sign declaring the building to be Silver Mare Studios. There was also a faded, tattered painting above the sign showing a silver unicorn mare’s profile holding a bag of some kind of tiny food she was popping into her mouth.

I looked at the third floor, hoping to see some sign of life, but the place was quiet, at least from the confines of the Ursa.

“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying to think this through despite impatience screaming at me to get in there, “Iron Wrought, I’d like you to stay with the Ursa and keep the engine going. If we need to get out of here fast, I don’t want to waste a single second. LIL-E, how high can you fly?”

“My hover talisman has a ceiling of about thirty meters before it gets too far from the ground to generate more lift, but as long as I have something like a wall to use as a surface I can keep going up,” the eyebot responded quickly.

“Okay, then we’ll go in through the roof. Must be a way in up there, and if not,” I patted Gramzanber, “I’ll make us a way in. B.B can carry Binge, and I’ll use the Grapple to climb up while carrying Arcaidia.”

“You ain’t used that thing much Long, sure ya can climb up while trying to haul Arcaidia as well?” asked B.B, to which I shrugged.

“Won’t know until I try.”

Arcaidia nodded firmly, exuding confidence, “I very lean! Like rock!”

I wasn’t sure Arcaidia was getting her analogies right, but let it be.

“Come on, every minute matters here,” I said as I opened up door and hopped down to the cold, muddy ground. One by one my companions joined me, save Iron Wrought who gave me one last grave look before closing the door of the Ursa.

For just a moment I felt a stab of suspicion. Iron Wrought had the copies of Dr. Lemon Slice’s research now. He could just drive away and abandon us here. He never once left it unclear he wasn’t fond of me and only cared about saving his family.

Could I trust him at all, then? I shook my head forcefully. No, I had to be willing to trust. If I started doubting those around me how long before all I could do was look at others with suspicion? Iron Wrought would stay... I hoped.

“Any idea what we’re dealin’ wit anyway?” asked B.B as she flapped her wings, taking off and hovering above Binge. The Raider mare had her blade covered barding on, of course, and her puffy green tail was flicking back and forth playfully and I caught a glint of metal; realizing that she was somehow holding the Cosmic Knife in her tail. How was she pulling that off?

“Blood, violence, squicky guts, and lots of screaming!” chirped Binge happily, “In other words; FUN!”

B.B gave me a flat look as she slowly floated down and gingerly started to lift the giggling Raider, taking care to avoid getting stuck on the blades, “I’ll remind ya it was yer decision to let her stick ‘round wit us.”

“In any case,” said LIL-E, “My sensors are picking up four non-hostiles in the building, on the third floor. Must be the Odessa squad. However I’m not picking up any hostiles.”

I frowned. My own E.F.S only showing the yellow bars of my allies. I supposed LIL-E’s sensors were better. Soon B.B and LIL-E were both flying up the side of the building, leaving me and Arcaidia to approach the wall. I craned my neck and looked up at the lip of the roof. The light from the Ursa provided just enough illumination for me to make out my target. I glanced to Arcaidia. The unicorn filly’s silver eyes gleamed in the dark, and I could make out the phantom of her confident smile. She wasn’t worried at all. Not like the churning, pounding feeling in my own gut.

“Up we go,” I said and Arcaidia came over, her small frame clambering onto my back and her hooves wrapping around my neck. Her long silver mane brushed against my sides like a silken sheet.

I raised my left foreleg and aimed, and as if it knew what I was intending, probably through the mysterious arcane science of the Pip-Buck it was attached to, the Grapple brought up a targeting reticule in my vision. It was a red little cross-hair that, when I brought it over a surface it could grip onto the cross-hair would turn green and even show me a ghostly outline of the trajectory it would follow.

Firing the Grapple was as simple as flexing my hoof in the right way, not too different from how B.B’s foreleg pistols worked. With a harsh but quiet puff of air the Grapple bracelet fired the matte black hook and long wire cord, sending it flying up with unerring accuracy at the spot I’d marked with the target reticule. When the hook attached to the lip of the roof I tilted my hoof left to signal the Grapple to pull me up. The spells in the Grapple activated, giving me a slight tingling sensation as my body’s weight was reduced and I found myself being pulled up along the wall. I was a little unprepared for it so awkwardly scrambled my hindlegs for a second as I was hauled upward, but soon found myself steadily aiding my ascent with an almost bipedal walking motion with my hindlegs.

It only took a minute to reach the roof, where B.B, Binge, and LIl-E were waiting for us.

Arcaidia slipped off my back and floated out her starblaster, her horn a pale blue light in the dark. Her expression had become chiseled ice, a look of concentration and focus. Now that we were going into danger she had no hint of her earlier levity. B.B was similar, though hers was less an cold mask so much as a weathered look of ready tension.

“We got a’ notion o’ what we’re rescuin’ these Odessa folk from?” she asked as she surveyed the roof. There were a few metal vents for fans here and there, but otherwise the roof was empty save a single shack with a door, presumably leading to stairs.

I drew Gramzanber from its sheath, “No idea, but apparently shooting it just makes it mad.”

“That’s encouragin’,” muttered B.B.

Binge tittered, her green coat blending with the darkness, “This place drips with fear. It likes to play with its toys!”

“Longwalk, we shouldn’t linger. We need to get moving,” said LIL-E.

“Okay,” I said, heading for the door, “I’ll take lead. B.B, you and Arcaidia are in the middle, and Binge will bring up the rear. That way whichever way we’re attacked from, the two of us can hold it off while you two blast it with guns and magic. LIL-E, I want you to stay here on the roof. If we need to retreat to here I want to make sure this spot stays safe. We find the Odessa pegasi and lead them to the roof here so they can fly away safely.”

“An’ report on us ta their bosses, ‘summin’ they don’t turn on us,” B.B said with her ears flattening against her head. In the dark I almost thought I could see that red tinge to the rim of her iris’.

I choked back a sigh, not wanting to start arguing over the matter, “We deal with that when and if it happens. Right now, they need our help. Let’s go.”

As we approached the door to the stairs a cold wind kicked up and swept over the roof; chilling me to the bone and bringing with it a shrill howl I couldn’t tell was caused by the wind itself... or something else. It triggered an instinctive fear, however, like some intrinsic piece of myself was telling me to flee before the source of that noise ate me.

I glanced at my companions. I could tell at least B.B and Arcaidia both felt it too, the pegasus frowning deeply to hide the fear in her eyes, and Arcaidia looking confused, as if she didn’t understand why she might be afraid all of a sudden. Binge was shivering too, but from the look on her face I didn’t think it was from fear. She was enjoying herself.

Before any of us could comment, however, there was the sudden sound of gunfire followed by the lighter snapping sounds of energy weapons firing; all muffled from the interior of the building. I also may have heard an actual voice screaming in pain or fear, but it was too subdued to tell. My fear was joined by anger; a warm fire pushing back the cold. Ponies lives were in danger! I didn’t have time to be locked up by fear!

With a determined grunt I rushed to the door, not even bothering to check if it was locked or not. I just sliced with Gramzanber and the simple wood frame and metal knob came apart under the spear’s edge and the adrenaline fueled strength surging through me. I heard LIL-E say something cautionary behind me, but I wasn’t paying attention. Before me was a dark stairwell switching back on itself and just opening the door made the sounds of gunfire from down below louder... along with the shrieking of someone who sounded like they were facing death itself.

No time to wait for anything! I have to save who I can!

With that thought alone in my mind I leapt down the stairs, rushing headlong into the dark, heedless of what horror might be waiting for me.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Can’t Lead From Behind: You have a rather reckless brand of leadership, but you make it work; mainly because your companions fight all the harder to keep your reckless flank from getting shot off. As long as you’re in the lead, all allies that have line of sight to you gain +10% to hit and +2 DT.

Bonus Ex-File: Arcaidia’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats
STR = 3
PER = 6
END = 4
CHA = 6
INT = 10
AGI = 6
LUK = 5

Author's Note

Freaky dreams, new gear, the obligatory radio show, cross-dressing for fun and profit, and the promise of impending violence! Just another day in the Wasteland. Once more all due thanks to Kkat for the creation of Fallout Equestria. Huge thanks to Doomande for pre-reading and helping me work out all those little chapter kinks that need working out. And of course thanks to all of you who keep on reading!

Questions, comments, criticisms? Fire away, I'm happy to receive them all!

Chapter 15: Shrine of Flames

Chapter 15: Shrine of Flames

There’s nothing like getting your flank handed to you by a nine foot tall monstrosity with claws bigger than most ponies’ forelegs to make you consider mortality. That, or all the massive aches and pains coursing through my body now that the adrenaline of our side-trip into Silver Mare Studios had worn off was making me wish I was dead in a ditch somewhere. The spinal bruise was particularly pleasant, let me tell you. All things considered, though, I’d been shot, stabbed, beaten, poisoned, and generally put through the Wasteland’s meat grinder a fair bit already, and yet I was still somehow among the breathing. A worrying back portion of my mind was telling me I was pushing my luck too much. I couldn’t always rely on healing potions and spells to get me back on my hooves. If I died out here, how long would it be before my mother or Trailblaze even learned of it? Would Trail wait forever for me to come back, always wondering what became of that idiot buck she once called a friend? Not my most cheerful thoughts, but it really was dawning on me just how many times I’d come close to joining the Ancestor spirits this past week. Spirits, had it only been a week since Arcaidia and I left Shady Stream? Well, closer to ten days now, if you counted how long I was out recovering from being shot by Fine Eye. At this point I’d spent almost as much time this journey unconscious, healing from wounds, than I did awake. That was probably a sign I needed to seriously reevaluate my normal tactics.

Arcaidia had tapped me with a little healing spell goodness, though just enough to take the edge off the pain. She seemed a little drained herself, and wasn’t as eager to suck down her blue potions of magic juice as she’d been at the start of all this. I think she realized we might not be getting more for quite some time and that conservation was the new name of the game. I certainly didn’t disagree with her. The more she kept those magic restoring potions on hoof, the better off we’d be in an emergency when we’d really need Arcaidia at her peak. I couldn’t count the times since I met Arcaidia that I ended up owing my continued breathing privileges to her. Of course other ponies in the group were catching up with Arcaidia on that count; B.B being a close runner up.

B.B, despite having healed some of her wounds from her blood drinking, had barely moved since we boarded the Ursa. I didn’t know if she was fully recovered from that wound to her stomach, though I figured if it was bad, she would’ve said something. She was our medical expert, after all, despite Arcaidia’s access to healing magic. Arcaidia had spoken softly and briefly with B.B as we’d pulled away from Silver Mare Studios, the words too quiet for me to hear them, and Arcaidia had given a worried and confused look at B.B when she just waved the unicorn off. Arcaidia had then looked at me questioningly, but I had nothing I could really say to her and just shook my head. I couldn’t just blab about B.B’s secret, and I was almost certain that was what was bothering my winged friend. I’d just have to wait for a moment we were alone to see if I could talk to her about it. I was more than a little worried myself.

Iron Wrought was mostly quiet as he drove, grumbling every now and again and giving his “co-pilot” dirty looks when Binge would play with the buttons on the dashboard.

“Will you stop that!? You’re liable to break something!”

“Oh come on, Ursy is built like a rock, made out of smaller, tougher rocks. Just finding out what all the bells and whistles do. Hmm, bells and whistles. What a weird saying. Never seen anything that even had bells and whistles. Except that one rusty bell from the school Meat Pounder tried shoving down this one caravaner’s throat. Wow, I didn’t think a pony’s jaw could unhinge that wide-”

“Just. Shut. UP!”

“Pfft, you’re no fun. Always so grumpy. You need to enjoy being alive, my grouchy friend. Never know when the ride’s gonna come to a sudden, messy end, with spikes, chains, and hooks in funny places.”

I could practically hear the gravely sound of Iron Wrought’s teeth grinding as he growled and focused on driving, not responding to the Raider mare’s sing-song tone. Binge seemed to exercise a modicrum of self-control and stopped screwing with the dashboard, instead going over to one of the side-windows and gazing out while tapping out a random rhythm with one of her hooves and humming to herself.

The Odessa squad remained close together at the bunk beds where Nosedive was laid up, Suture constantly checking their squadmate’s condition. They whispered quietly amongst themselves, often giving either B.B or Arcaidia wary looks. Especially Arcaidia. The unicorn filly noticed the attention and looked back at the Odessa pegasi with open amusement and curiosity. She clearly didn’t consider the Odessa soldiers much of a threat and happily bounced around the kitchenette, ignoring their glares with a glibness that bordered on arrogance, even singing a small tune to herself as she warmed up some of last night’s soup.

Overall it made for a very awkward ride so far; us and the Odessa troops sharing close quarters, but without the threat of imminent, mutual evisceration to make us forget we were enemies.

It wasn’t long before I saw Glint rise from where he’d been laying by the back of the passenger compartment and approached where I had laid down on the floor by the door leading between the two parts of the Ursa. I raised my head, giving him a questioning look. He was wearing his Odessa power armor, but the insectoid helmet was off, and I notice out of the corner of my eye that Spring Breeze was fiddling with it back next to the bunks, using a series of small tools I assumed were designed to repair sensitive equipment. I was amazed at how dexterous peasi wings were, especially in fine manipulation of objects. Spring Breeze’s wings worked the small tools with practiced ease.

“Longwalk,” Glint said, “Before we get too far, we should talk about what comes next.”

I looked at him with a level stare, trying to muster some good cheer, “Alright, I’m ears. What’s next?”

Glint let out a sigh, giving me a rueful look, “You’re not much on the planning aspect of things, are you? I mean, you don’t intend to just truck me and my squad all over the Wasteland, right? So maybe we ought to figure out where you plan to drop us off.”

Oh, right. I suppose it would be weird to just have a squad of enemy soldiers hanging out with us. Ought to figure out what to do about that, without endangering myself and my friends, but still ensuring Glint and his squad would be alright. Or as close to alright as was possible, considering one of them was still at death’s door, and the rest were wounded to one degree or another. I frowned, brow furrowing, blowing a few stray locks of blue mane out of my eyes as I thought about the problem. One could probably see steam rising from my ears and hear the creaking of gears.

“How far are you from any other members of your tribe?” I asked, thinking perhaps we could drop them off halfway without it being too risky.

“There’s a basecamp set up at a... site,” Glint said, with some hesitance, “about twelve miles west of here. I can’t recommend you trying to drop us off there, though. There’s no way Captain Francheska would allow you to escape. Maybe if you took us to within about four or five miles, we might make it the rest of the way on hoof-”

“Glint, no!” said Spring suddenly, dropping her tools and standing up, “There’s no way Nosedive will live through a trek like that! Suture, tell him!”

The yellow medic gulped, glancing between the injured, unconscious Nosedive and Glint, “She’s right, sir. Nosedive’s condition is too fragile. He won’t survive much longer, even if we keep him resting like this. Any kind of overland travel, even a few miles, will kill him that much faster. He needs the medical facilities on board the Varukisas, and as soon as possible. We need an extraction by air.”

Glint hung his head, shaking it, soft waves of his orange and yellow tinted mane framing his grim features, “With my helmet’s radio down we can’t call for evac. Suture, are you sure there’s nothing you can do to prep Nosedive to be moved?”

“I’m sorry sir, but no, I’ve done all I can to keep him comfortable and stable, but he needs more than bandages and healing potions,” the medic replied morosely, looking away, voice cracking a little, “He needs more than I can do.”

“Glint, there is a way,” Spring Breeze said, giving him a pleading look as she stood and took a few steps closer, wings flaring, “Remember that radio tower we spotted while inbound to the mission site?”

Glint cocked his head, “Yes, we didn’t scout it though.”

“Its not far from here, only a couple miles. We could be there in minutes. If any of the gear in the shed by the tower is intact, I might be able to repair it,” said Spring Breeze, “Then we could call the Varukisas directly.”

“That could work, if the shed has what we need, and if it isn’t all scrap,” said Glint, tapping his chin, feature’s tightening around his red eyes as he thought it over. I knew what he was going through. Its never easy, weighting options when the choice could lead to a friend’s death. My mind went back to Saddlespring, and to Shale. For me, getting caught up in situations where I had to make tough choices that could cost lives wasn’t ever my intention, but the result of me throwing myself into circumstances a smarter pony would walk away from. For Glint, it was his life’s role in his tribe. I might not have understood that much about Odessa, but Glint was like a hunt leader in my own tribe. The lives of his hunters, his squad, were always in his hooves. It was staggering to think how much the deaths that had already happened among the team he was responsible for were weighing on him... and now he had to make yet another decision that could either save, or doom, another pony whose life was in his hooves.

No, I didn’t envy Glint’s position at all.

“Glint, it’s his only chance,” said Spring Breeze, a note of desperation creeping into her high pitched voice.

At last, Glint nodded, then looked at me, “Will you take us there? I know you’ve done more than we had any right to expect already, but-”

I held up a hoof, cutting him off, “No need to convince me. Time’s of the essence, right? So let’s do this.”

I turned my head towards Iron Wrought, who didn’t look back, but tensed, aware I was looking his way. The green stallion’s shoulders were rigid as he spoke, “No fur off my flank what you decide to do with those ponies. Just plug in the coordinates into the Ursa’s nav-com.”

Binge bounced excitedly in the seat next to him, grinning over at us, “Taking the birdies to roost? That means we’re going to camp out too? I didn’t bring s’more-stuff but,” she licked her lips, and suddenly a knife was in her hoof, tracing along her neck, “I can find alternative cooking materials.”

“Binge, remember those rule things we talked about?” I said, trying to sound authoritative and suspecting I needed to work on it, “Let’s cut down on the creepiness, okay? I need you to behave.”

She stuck her tongue out at me and blew, but she put away the knife, leaving a small cut on her neck that trickled blood. She didn’t seem to mind. I turned to see Glint and Spring staring at me. I coughed, rubbing the back of my head with a hoof, “She’s really not that bad.”

“Uh-huh,” said Glint as he went up beside Iron Wrought and looked over the dashboard. After a minute he seemed to figure out the interface of the miniature terminal built and tapped out a few commands, “This should take us close enough to get a visual on the tower. Please hurry, and thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Iron Wrought, “It’s the crazy buck over there who wanted to help you. If it’d been up to me I’d have left you feathery flank to die.”

A shadow of a frown passed over Glint’s face, but he kept his peace and trotted back to join Spring Breeze in the passenger compartment. The Ursa shuddered a bit as Iron Wrought adjusted course, taking us deeper into the thick suburban ruins. Hills started to become more frequent, dipping up and down, and looking the windows I could see the terrain was like that for leagues to the north and west. We were passing a patchwork of what had once been houses with interspersed stores and restaurants, though only a few were anywhere near what could be described as intact. Most were just stained or burned walls and piles of masonry, or charred metal frameworks that weren’t recognizable as anything that ponies would have once inhabited.

“Ain’t much ta look at, is it?” said a familiarly accented voice next to me in a quiet tone.

I looked over, surprised that B.B had left her seat at the dining table and had come up to share the window with me in the driver’s compartment. She was looking out at the passing landscape, a look on her face that I just couldn’t read. Introspective? Wistful? Withdrawn? I just couldn’t tell for sure. Her eyes were back to full violet, no longer carrying any trace of the crimson that had been there when she’d gone berserk. Not knowing what to say, I fumbled about for a moment, focusing my attention out the window as well.

“It could be worse. I mean, sure, its bleak, decayed, mostly in bland colors of brown or gray... but at least none of its on fire.”

I blinked as I realized what I just said, to a pony whose hometown had been burned to the ground recently. I immediately put a hoof to my face, feeling like I ought to be cramming it down my throat, “S-sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Relax, Long,” B.B said, taking in and letting out a deep breath, “Don’t git me wrong, I’m still mournin’. Lot a’ good folk gone, an’ a home I ain’t gettin’ back.”

Her eyes took on a strange light as they stared out the window, her voice barely audible now, and I wasn’t even sure she was really talking to me anymore, “But it ain’t the first home I’ve lost.”

I wanted to ask her about it. Part of it was, I admit, just plain, simple curiosity. The same curiosity that burned in me my whole life, driving me to explore where I shouldn’t, and question where I ought to leave well enough alone. The rest was honest concern for this mare who’d gone so far out of her way to help me, and hadn’t asked a single thing from me in return so far. It was pretty clear what’d happened in Silver Mare Studios was bothering her, and by the Ancestors I wanted there to be something I could do to help. The most I could offer was a willing ear to listen, if she wanted to talk about it.

A single glance to the side showed me Binge, peeking over the top of her seat and watching me and B.B with her glittering blue eyes, licking her lips like she was watching a particularly tasty pot of stew cooking in the pot.

So, long story short; I wimped out and couldn’t bring myself to question B.B with Binge there watching us. Close quarters with the whole party around probably wasn’t the best spot for a heart-to-heart talk anyway, especially about things B.B wanted kept secret. So I kept quiet and B.B and I watched the Wasteland roll by together.

The radio tower stood like a lonely metal sentinel, watching over the sad, run down collection of hollow, burned out apartment buildings that occupied the area around the steep hill the tower was set upon. Next to the rusted red chain link fence surrounding the tower was a solitary metal shed. A jagged hole was blown in the shed’s side, from what I had no idea. A chilly wind rolled over us as Glint and his squad unloaded from the Ursa and onto the hilltop. I joined them, with Arcaidia also hopping out the door alongside Binge. Arcaidia trotted around to survey the surrounding landscape and fiddle with her Pip-Buck. I found myself wondering what she was doing, but was distracted by Binge scampering towards the fence surrounding the tower. The fence had a wreath of barbed wire on top of it, and Binge, to my confusion, climbed up the fence and used her Cosmic Knife to cut the barbed wire down and started collecting it.

I shook my head at the Raider’s action, not wanting to know what she intended to do with the stuff, and turned my attention to Glint and his team. Suture had carefully brought Nosedive’s unconscious form, bundled up in thick blankets from the Ursa’s storage lockers, into the shed. Glint and Spring Breeze stood side by side, Glint’s damaged helmet tucked under Spring’s wing.

“Well, I guess this is it,” said Glint, looking as awkward as I felt. The Odessa pegasus cast a wary look towards Arcaidia, who was still focused on whatever she was doing with her Pip-Buck, and then back at me, “Sure there’s no way I can convince you she’s a deadly alien, bent on world domination?”

Arcaidia sneezed, a small, lady-like sneeze, looking around as if afraid she’d just committed some kind of sin, and then went back to poking at her Pip-Buck. I gave Glint a deadpan look. He frowned, saying, “She’s still dangerous.”

“Nopony knows that better than I do,” I said, remembering how easily Arcaidia could switch between cheerfulness to cold hearted violence, “But you’re never going to convince me to turn on her. As long as Odessa is trying to harm her, you guys are going to have to go through me to do it.”

Glint’s ears drooped, but that was the only sign of his feelings as he nodded, “Don’t take this the wrong way then, Longwalk, but I hope we never meet again. You’re a decent pony; I’d hate to kill you.”

I found myself smiling, laughing, even if just a little bit, “You’re a decent pony too, Glint; I’d hate to see you try.”

As we turned to go our separate ways I heard Spring Breeze say, “Hold on a sec.”

Both Glint and I turned to look at her. The mare was looking distinctly nervous, looking between us, and I could see her bite her lip before she said, “There’s... well, there’s a lot of, um, dangerous stuff out here, you know. Glint and I are low on ammo, and, and, uh, maybe you lot should stick around until I know I can get Glint’s helmet working, or fix up a radio or something. Just in case.”

I cocked my head to the side, curious, “I guess we could, but we haven’t seen anything for miles,” I looked back towards the Ursa where LIL-E had remained on her perch atop the roof of the vehicle, “Hey! LIL-E! You detect anything out there?”

The robot didn’t respond and I scratched my head, wondering. Was she asleep? I suppose the pony on the other end could have shut the robot down to get some shut eye, or might be busy doing something. I had no way of knowing, one way or another. B.B had heard me yell and poked her own head out of the top of the Ursa’s roof hatch.

“Somethin’ up, Long?”

“Was asking LIL-E what her robot eyes could see, but I guess she’s napping. Spring here wanted us to stick around a bit and stand guard, in case any Wasteland critters or Raiders showed up.”

B.B’s eyes narrowed as she cast a searching look Spring Breeze’s way, “Did she now?”

Spring stood up straighter, chin up, “I’m just taking a precaution to make sure my squad will be alright! I doesn’t mean I like you murdering landbound any better! But... uh, yeah, could be Raiders around, or something.”

“Noooope!” sung Binge as she bounced back towards the Ursa, coils of barbed wire somehow balanced on her back without hurting her... no, wait, I could see a few small trickles of blood from where the stuff cut and jabbed at her hide, but Binge didn’t seem to notice; or perhaps she did and didn’t care. The Raider went by Spring Breeze and showed the Odessa mare a open mouthed grin of yellow teeth that Spring recoiled from with a look of disgust.

“No Raiders this far west! No sireeeee! This here, this here is Balloon country! Watch out for any dark, warm places in the ground!”

Balloons? I shuddered at the memory. I’d only encountered the monsters that one time outside Saddlespring, but once had been more than enough for me. The memory of the smell alone made me want to gag. I hoped Binge was joking, or just trying to scare the Odessa soldiers, because while I had every confidence we could handle a bunch of Balloons, it would be a messy, extremely unpleasant affair. If Binge was right, though, I wasn’t sure how well Glint’s wounded squad could deal with a pack of those freakish creatures showing up.

“Binge, will the Balloons be a problem for Glint’s squad up here?” I asked, to which the mare turned her grin towards me.

“Oh, maybe, maybe not, or maybe lots. Balloons don’t hunt like animals with meaty parts that want to eat. They hunt like a bunch of wild dogs injected with Stampede! Might be you’ll see one, and that’s that. Or you’ll blink and a hundred will be screaming down at you, wanting a kiss. Fun times, fun times. But bad eating. Poor Splinter Hoof learned that the hard way. Screamed for days and days she did, puking out every little bit of her insides. Don’t eat the Balloons. Nope, not unless you like your insides on your outsides. Now, me and Mr. Happy are off to work on our super-secret project!”

Away Binge went, skipping merrily like a little filly back into the Ursa with her mound of barbed wire. I didn’t dare inquire as to what her ‘super-secret project’ could be, even with my natural curiosity. I turned back to Glint and Spring Breeze and shrugged, “If you’re asking, I don’t mind staying a little longer to keep watch while you get your radio situation sorted. I’m not in a rush-”

“Wait, Long,” said B.B as she flew down from the roof of the Ursa next to me, tucking her wings in under her dress as she landed. She fixed Spring Breeze with a hard look, “Why ya suddenly so keen ta be keepin’ us ‘round?”

Spring Breeze sneered, looking away, “I don’t, but I can’t let personal feelings get in the way of keeping my squad safe. I owe it... I owe it to my sister to protect Glint and the others,” her voice gained a hint of guilt, “No matter what.”

I’d been, up until that point, mostly ignoring the E.F.S of my Pip-Buck when it came to Glint and his squad. I understood that when the markers in my vision flicked from green to red, it meant hostility, but ever since I met them Glint and his squadmates had alternated between green and red with a fair bit of regularity. I just operated under the notion that all that meant was that they honestly couldn’t see me and my friends as true allies. With Arcaidia around it wasn’t surprising that they’d flick red occasionally. So when Spring Breeze’s dot on my E.F.S went red I just didn’t think anything of it. Not until I heard something. It was distant, still, but it was distinct. A sort of rhythmic thrumming of air, getting louder. I recognized the sound. The sound of a Vertibuck.

Realization dawned on me the same moment as Glint, whose eyes went wide as he whirled on Spring Breeze, his voice sharp.

“Spring, what did you do!?”

Spring Breeze had tensed her stance, watching me and B.B as she stepped back, her energy weapon aimed towards B.B, “What I had to, Glint! You were going to let them get away! Summer’s killers!”

Arcaidia had heard our yelling and had started to come over while B.B went to draw the .44 revolver holstered across her chest, but Spring fired a warning bolt of green plasma past B.B’s ear. B.B halted, mouth still near her weapon, her violet eyes glaring dangerously.

“Don’t even think about it, bitch!” Spring snarled, “I’d slag you myself if you so much as move another inch towards that gun, but I want to see what they do to you in interrogation. Glint told me it was you that killed Summer. You won’t get away with it, none of you will!”

Glint still looked stupefied, “How? You couldn’t have called the Varukisas. You haven’t even touched the equipment in the shed, and my helmet-”

“You’re helmet isn’t broken anymore, Glint. I fixed it, before I made the suggestion of coming here to this tower. I made the call while you and Suture were fussing over Nosedive. I told the Varukisas we’d be here, with Target 02. I knew you’d just let them go. I couldn’t let it happen! I won’t let it happen! Summer will be avenged, and these bastards won’t kill any more of us!”

A shot rang out, loud and harsh, and Spring Breeze jerked like a kicked doll, hitting the ground hard. Her combat armor had a hole punched in it, already leaking blood, her green eyes wide with shock. From the roof of the Ursa, LIL-E, floating now in the air with her turret still smoking, said with her monotone mechanical voice, “And I won’t let us be caught without a fight.”

“Spring!” Glint rushed to her side as I stood there in shock. Glint bent down over his squadmate and friend, close enough that when she tried to take in a breath and choked out blood, a fair bit of it hit his own face. He didn’t seem to notice the blood as he screamed, “Suture! Spring’s down! She’s hit!”

He then glared at us and I saw the anger flashing in those red eyes of his. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut myself, but the sound of the Vertibuck had become louder, and now I heard multiple sets of engines indicating we had more than one incoming. We had to run, now... but I was watching Spring Breeze bleed out and drown in her own blood, and an image of Saddlespring flashed back to me, seeing Summer’s lifeless body interposed over Spring’s.

Not again...

I turned to Arcaidia, who had taken on her cold look, but I met her silver eyes and said, “Arcaidia, please, heal her.”

She looked at me solidly, and said in a completely frosty tone, “No.”

I blinked, “What?”

“No,” she repeated, as Suture ran out of the shack, rushing over to Glint and Spring’s side. I heard Suture asking about what was happening and Glint telling him to just try and save Spring, while she made a horrible, sputtering cough as more of her blood soaked into the merciless gray Wasteland dirt.

"Arcaidia, she's-" I began, but she cut me off harshly.

“An enemy,” the young blue unicorn said, “Enemy that betray us even when we help. So no help now. She can die with dumb mistake. We go now, ren solva.”

I was at a complete loss. I opened my mouth to argue, even though I didn’t actually have anything resembling an argument, but Arcaidia suddenly wrapped a hoof around my neck and pulled me close, her silver eyes boring into mine with intensity.

“No talk, ren solva! No question! You run now, feel bad later! Cry if have to, but now, run, before enemy catches us!”

“She’s right Long, we gotta go!” said B.B, who’d taken to the air and strapped on her foreleg revolvers, “I can see them birds comin’ our way! They’re gonna be on us in minutes!”

LIL-E called out right on B.B’s words, “ I estimate we got two minutes, forty seconds, before company arrives, and I’m spotting three of the Goddess-damned things! I suggest getting aboard now, ponies!”

B.B swooped over to the Ursa to join LIL-E on the roof, and Arcaidia had released me and stood back, levitating her starblaster to cover Glint as she backed towards the Ursa’s open back hatch. I stood, motionless for a second, looking back as Suture, eyes brimming with tears, worked furiously with what little medical supplies he had to try and stem the flow of blood from Spring, whose breathing was becoming more ragged by the second. Glint was looking at me with his face and frame trembling with unreleased emotions. I looked at him, no words I could say. Instead I just solemnly reached into my saddlebags and pulled out one of my remaining healing potions, and tossed it to him. He caught it, eyes not softening, but he nodded at me silently. We both knew the potion would just delay the inevitable... but with Odessa’s medical technology, and Vertibuck’s minutes away, maybe a delay would be enough. Either way, there was no more I could do, except maybe pray to the Ancestor spirits.

Giving the Odessa pegasi one last, regretful look, I turned and galloped for the Ursa. Arcaidia waited until I was aboard before backing up the hatch herself, her starblaster never twitching from pointing at the Odessa squad until the metal door slid up all the way and hissed closed. Even then she didn’t holster the weapon, keeping it levitating at her side.

Inside I saw Binge had piled her barbed wire in a corner next to the storage locker and was now hopped up on the dining table, hooves planted on the wall as she peeked out a small window slit, her tail wagging about excitedly, “Heheheh, we’re gonna have a chase scene! I hope there’ll be a bridge for us to drive off! Or maybe a cliff!”

I ignored her and trotted to the driver’s compartment, Arcaidia right behind me. Iron Wrought looked back at me, already hitting the pedal and directing the Ursa down the hill, causing me to stumble a bit as the whole vehicle dipped, but I kept on my hooves as I went for where I’d left Gramzanber laying on the floor behind the passenger seats.

“So, I take it things went to shit out there, and that’s why we’re suddenly needing to run?” asked Iron Wrought as I grabbed my spear and secured it in its sheath on the left side of my armor. I glanced at Iron Wrought, then at Arcaidia, who had that icy look on her face still.

“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” I said, trying to keep my tone calm, “We’ve got Odessa Vertibucks coming at us. Can we outrun them?”

Iron Wrought snorted, “How in flaming Tartarus am I supposed to know!? My hoof’s going to be pushing this pedal past the damned floor, but I wouldn’t bet on us being able to go faster than them flying. This, this is why we should’ve left those bucking pegasi to rot! Hope you’re bucking happy with yourself.”

I bit back a sharp retort, my nerves frayed, my anger rising. I instead put a hoof on his shoulder, “Just drive, and try to keep us steady. LIL-E and B.B are up top, and I’m joining them.”

“Why? The buck you going to do? Wave that shiny spear at them?”

I shrugged, already turning back to head for the roof hatch, “I was thinking I’d see just how far I can throw a grenade.”

Arcaidia was at my side as we reached the ladder to the roof, the Ursa rocking and bouncing as it accelerated under Iron Wrought’s direction. I felt a hoof touch my leg, and glanced over at Arcaidia. Her cool expression softened slightly as her silver eyes met mine.

“Stay inside Ursa, ren solva. You not good mind now for fighting. Confused, angry.”

I paused, my hoof on the first rung of the ladder, feeling her own hoof on my leg, warm, comforting. I saw the worry there in her face. For some reason that only made my anger flare more. I didn’t even know if I was angry at her for not healing Spring Breeze, or at myself for... for trusting that I could help my enemy without it biting me in the flank. I didn’t blame Glint, but Iron Wrought had been right. This was my fault. If any of my friends died, or got captured by Odessa, it’d all be on me, and despite that a part of me still felt like helping Glint’s squad had been the right thing to do. Angry and confused was a good summary of my mental state, and Arcaidia had me pegged in that regard.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, tail twitching, “We’ll talk about this later, after we’re all safe. Seriously, Arcaidia, I can’t just sit here while the rest of you fight. You should know me better than to expect me to stay in here.”

She slowly took her hoof off my leg, eyeing me critically, “Yes, I know you. That why I worry. Not stop you, but no toaster head moves, ren solva. I watch you close. Freeze small bits if do dumb thing.”

“Fair enough,” I said, getting halfway up the ladder before I realized what she said and glared down at her, half jokingly, “What do you mean ‘small bits’!? I’ll have you know my bits are at least of appropriate and perhaps even above average size for my age!”

Arcaidia rolled her eyes and poked me in the flank with her starblaster, “Not look that closely, ren solva. Joking. Learn to take joke.”

“I’ve seen them,” cooed Binge, “I’d say they’re, mmm, bite sized.”

Well, there was my face turning into a bright red beacon. I didn’t know if the sudden levity conversing about my ‘bits’ helped or hindered my current mental state. At least it was distracting. Reaching the hatch I looked at Binge, “Can we call pretend we never had this conversation, please? Anyway, you staying in here Binge?”

“Like to play with the whirly birds, but knives don’t do much to metal that’s thick, tough, long, hard, sturdy, robust, rigid, wide-”

“Binge!”

“Whaaaaat?”

I huffed, feeling the heat on my face like somepony had lit a campfire on my head, “Just buckle up and keep your head down. Imagine this ride is going to get extremely interesting, extremely fast.”

With that I opened up the top hatch with a push of my hoof and clambered up onto the roof of the Ursa, Arcaidia following right behind me. The metallic form of LIL-E greeted us, her form bobbing right along with the Ursa as it roared down the cracked, mostly absent streets of the suburban ruins. I wasn’t sure how the robot was maintaining her place without being left behind, but I assumed it had something to do with the magic device that let her hover around. B.B was flying beside us, keeping pace with the Ursa with fast flaps of her wings.

“Longwalk, sorry I had to do that, but I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t going to shoot you or B.B,” said LIL-E, and I held up a hoof.

“Forget it. We’ll talk afterward. Where’re the Vertibucks?” I asked. I could hear them, a beat of rushing air and thumbing engines that was louder than the throaty growl of the Ursa. However I couldn’t see them. I looked around, watching the tall, shattered walls of buildings and homes pass by, a crumbling highway to our left rolling over the suburbs, but I didn’t see any of the sleek flying machines.

That was, until one came screaming over the top of a blasted out two story apartment building and slid in right behind us. Air blasted at us from the wash of its turbines, blowing my mane into my face and forcing me to look away. The Vertibuck’s nose was mounted with what looked to be a pair of gun barrels, and this was confirmed as a sharp whine filled the air and the road around us began to explode in concrete showers, sparks dancing along the roof. I instinctively dropped down, covering my head.

When the gunfire ceased for a second I looked up to see the Vertibuck pulling back and away slightly, streams of silver bolts chasing it as Arcaidia opened fire with her starblaster. B.B crossed over the roof, twisting in the air, and fired with her revolvers, and I could see sparks bounce off the cockpit window of the Vertibuck. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised the cockpit was reinforced. B.B cursed and flapped harder, pulling ahead of the Ursa and angling down to grip the front of it on the passenger side. I think she was using the Ursa for cover.

As I fumbled into my saddlebags for a flash bang grenade LIL-E floated by me to the back of the roof, her side hatch opening and extending its rifle barrel.

“Let’s see how they like spark rounds,” the robot said and let out a quick succession of shots at the Vertibuck, which had climbed higher. I finally spotted the other two, further back and flying over the top of the highway. Why weren’t they attacking? Were they just being overconfident that one would get the job done? Or, perhaps they were actually being cautious? Also, seeing the other two made me feel a stab of regret, realizing that none of the Vertibucks had gone to pick up Glint’s team. I sincerely hoped there had been another Vertibuck that I didn’t see that was retrieving Glint and his fellows, getting them to medical aid. Even if she’d betrayed us, the thought of Spring Breeze dying choking on her own blood was not one I relished.

LIL-E’s spark rounds hit the Vertibuck that was on us, sending coursing streams of electrical discharge over the vehicle's surface, but it didn’t seem to slow the machine down any. I heard LIL-E sigh; a strange sound coming from a mechanized voice.

“Should have figured the thing was shielded. Times like this I wish I’d been equipped with a rocket attachment,” said LIL-E, floating down as the Vertibuck cut loose with another burst of fire from its nose guns. The Ursa turned sharply, drifting down a sharp curve in the road, shuddering as it smashed partially through an old fountain.

“Times like this I wish I had a rocket attachment!” I said, finally getting a grip on a flash bang grenade, the little apple shaped device balanced on my hoof as I eyed the Vertibuck to judge the throw without getting my head shot off by the storm of heavy caliber rounds raining down around me.

Deciding that trying to judge a grenade trajectory on a moving vehicle against another flying moving vehicle was an exercise in madness I shrugged, pulled the stem on the grenade, and hurled it after a second or two of letting it cook. I undershot it by a fair margin, the grenade sailing underneath the Vertibuck before it went off in a flash of light and accompanying bang of noise. I grunted in frustration, but grit my teeth and pulled out another grenade.

Another sharp turn caught me off guard, making me side along the roof until I hit the safety railing. Thank the Ancestors somepony was smart and put that railing on this roof! I lost the grenade though, seeing it roll off the roof. LIL-E was firing again, a few small explosions ripping along the side of the Vertibuck. However the high explosive rounds seemed to only be leaving small blast marks on the machine’s armor.

As for the Vertibuck itself, I saw portions on either side of it slide aside like tiny arms, and on small racks I saw boxes lined with small holes. I had all of a second to wonder what those where before the missiles started firing.

“Ohcrapohcrapohcrap!” I scrambled towards the front of the Ursa’s roof, banging on it, “Iron Wrought! Left! Left!”

I didn’t know if he heard me or not but the Ursa jerked to the left, jumping a small hillock to land amid the rusted ruins of an old playground as missiles started to explode around us in showers of flame and dirt. I gripped the railing with my hooves, desperately hanging on as gravity and momentum did their thing and tried to shake me off my precarious perch.

Arcaidia was doing the same thing on the opposite side, still shooting wildly with her starblaster to try to dissuade the Veritbuck from getting a clear shot at us. I saw her look my way and she actually grinned a bit at me. I was glad she was having fun. I could have stood to have a little less explosions and gunfire in my day.

“Long, we ain’t ‘xactly gonna be able to drop this thing off our tail wit normal weapons!” cried out B.B from her position of cover hanging off the nose of the Ursa.

“Yeah, I’m noticing that!” I shouted back, “Any ideas!? Because I’m kind of fresh out after I realized throwing grenades at a flying machine wasn’t my brightest plan ever!”

We’d left the playground behind and were now weaving our way through what looked to be a giant parking lot, a sizable and lengthy building off to our right with giant faded red lettering on it that said ‘Consumer Paradise’. A golden yellow mare with a poofy orange mane was depicted on the sign, smiling brightly while pushing a shopping cart laden with groceries. I somewhat resented the long dead mare for her carefree shopping trip. I’d much rather be browsing stores than having missiles explode around me, throwing ancient rusted wagons around like little pebbles kicked by an angry foal. How much ammo did that Vertibuck have anyway!?

“Well, Long,” shouted B.B, “Just thinkin’, maybe ya got a weapon that ain’t normal, that’d go right through that there reinforced cockpit!”

I frowned as I thought about what B.B was suggesting. Never mind the fact that I had sort of sworn off throwing Gramzanber until I worked out an easy retrieval system, I wasn’t keen on the suggestion to begin with. I didn’t want to kill the pilot of the Vertibuck. Maybe smack them around some for trying to blow us up, but I wanted to avoid killing unless I had no choice...

… An idea crept into my brain, and it was exactly the kind of thing that would count among Arcaidia’s probable list of ‘dumb moves’ she specifically told me not to do on threat of important Longwalk bits getting frozen off. I really didn’t want to push her to the point where I had to learn if she was being serious or not.

Speaking of Arcaidia, I saw her horn flash with crests forming in a tight circle as she sent a shower of ice shards flying up at the Vertibuck, striking along it’s left side. I think she was aiming for the engine turbines, but the pilot also seemed to realize this and jerked the Vertibuck to the side, sending it up and around so it was strafing along side us, nose angled downward, and keeping its turbines’ unprotected undersides out of sight.

As Arcaidia shouted out another curse in her language and reloaded her starblaster I looked over at B.B, who was peeking at me around the nose of the Ursa.

“B.B, I’m going to do something stupid,” I began, and she gave me a look.

“Go on.”

I held up my hoof with the Pip-Buck on it, and also the Grapple. B.B’s look turned incredulous as she tilted her head at me, one of her eyes twitching slightly.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. You got wings. Just catch me if I fall. I cut us a way in, then we take it from the inside.”

“That’s a’ right mad plan, an’ it’s probably gonna git one or both of us killed,” B.B pointed out.

“This is different than anything else I’ve ever done, how?” I asked.

“Fair ‘nough,” the pegasus mare said with a wondering shaking of her head, “Let’s do it then.”

Arcaidia was giving me the stink-eye from her side of the roof, “What you planning, ren solva? Not liking look on your face. This be toaster head idea?”

She had to duck her head down, and I did the same, as the Vertibuck’s front guns stitched a line down the center of the roof and I felt a chip of metal slice past my cheek. I gave Arcaidia a look, “Sorry, Arcaidia, I promise I’m mostly confident this isn’t suicide! Besides, B.B’s helping. It’ll be fine. But, uh, could really use that shield spell of yours, just in case!”

Arcaidia made a noise that was halfway between a whine of frustration and anger, and a grunt of ascent as she gracefully made her way over to me. B.B crawled up to the roof and flapped over to us as well, taking cover along the railing. Arcaidia was fixing me with steely eyes, her mouth a thin line of disapproval.

“Not liking this, ren solva. You owe me much when this over. Oh, and you die, I freeze your bits. Might freeze bits anyway, doing dumb thing when told not to!”

“Okay, okay! I get it, this is stupid of me. Not even disagreeing, really, but I can’t see any other options right now! Got to get this blasted thing off us, one way or another.”

Arcaidia let out a heavy sigh, giving a short nod, then her horn was wreathed with another crown of mystical crests and both mine and B.B’s body were bathed in a protective glow of light. She was still looking at me with a glaring disapproval, and I did my best to give her a confident, reassuring smile, not unlike the ones I used to give Trailblaze.

“Don’t worry, this will work. I think. I’m fairly sure. Like, eighty percent sure,” I said, wincing as a close call with a missile sent a piece of flaming shrapnel into my shoulder. Luckily for me my armor and Arcaidia’s shield spell absorbed the blow without giving more than a bruise, but I hunkered down all the same. The Vertibuck was letting up a little, not sending streams of missiles and instead just sending one or two while still trying to get a beat on us with its guns. Iron Wrought was doing well in keeping us a hard to hit target, twisting in between piles of rubble and other obstacles, never driving in a straight line for long. It would make my plan a little harder, true, but so would us getting exploded, so I wasn’t complaining.

I found myself oddly enough hoping that Binge was alright inside. She’d piled up all that barbed wire and I had a unpleasant mental image of the stuff bouncing around the passenger compartment, Binge getting tangled up in it. I just had to trust the crazy mare had the sense to find someplace inside that was relatively safe and secure.

We rounded the north end of the giant ‘Consumer Paradise’ building, where I could see the entire north wall had collapsed, creating a large pile of fallen concrete that lead to an open honeycomb of stores and a large gap between them that looked like it went through the entire building. And the storefronts weren’t empty.

Our chase had apparently woken up a nest of Raiders. I saw over a dozen dirty ponies in standard Raider dress of cobbled together armor and spiked, sharp objects all piling around the gaping hole in the north wall, all of them armed with a surprisingly large variety of weapons.

“Buck me wit a cactus,” B.B breathed as with a series of whoops the Raiders opened fire. Machine guns, pistols, rifles, and a few grenade launchers all went off at once, targeting both us and the Vertibuck. I pulled Arcaidia down and shielded her with myself. She gave me a unladylike look, but I was the one with a shield spell on me, so I figured I was just being practical, not chauvinistic. Bullets ripped around us, a few slamming into my armor and the shield spell. Even with those, the rounds hurt, brushing my hide from raw kinetic impact alone.

Hadn’t Binge said there weren’t any Raiders out this way? I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised the mare’s information wasn’t exactly accurate. She wasn’t the textbook definition of reliable, after all. Still, as if we needed more things shooting at us!

One either well aimed or very lucky grenade went off right under the front bumper of the Ursa, not jostling the massive All Terrain Wagon that much, but still causing us to veer slightly and demolish what had once been some kind of coffee stand. Splintered wood chips showered my hide and I nearly had my head taken off by a free flying sign of a happily grinning mare enjoying a cup of coffee. Why were all the mares in this signs always smiling like they were in the midst of euphoric joy!? Were ponies not creeped out by these things back in the day!?

While we left the giant ruined mall and its Raider occupants behind I could see the deranged ponies scrambling out of their nest. At first I wondered if they were insane enough that they thought they could chase us on hoof, but then I noticed them piling into rusted wagons in the parking lot, wagons I had assumed were broken and non-functioning. Apparently, crazy or not, Raiders had a talent for maintaining ancient vehicles. I probably should’ve realized that nopony from before the war would put large rebar spikes or mounted skulls on their wagons.

So, not only did we have a heavily armed Vertibuck still gunning for us, we now had a half dozen wagons laden down with whooping, blood crazed Raiders also chasing us.

“Finally,” said LIL-E, “Something I can shoot that isn’t immune to my bullets. You three focus on our flying friend, I’ll take care of our new tag-alongs!”

The robot wasted no time, either, immediately opening fire with both her side mounted rifles and underslung turret, peppering the lead Raider wagon with bullets. She must have hit the driver, because the snub-nosed rusted out wagon swerved sharply and implanted itself in the nearest suburban home with a graceful flip after careening over another, ruined wagon. The other Raiders didn’t even stop or slow down to check their fallen comrades, all hollering and howling like mad animals as they started firing at us from behind.

The Vertibuck had pulled ahead of us now, turning around and hovering backwards. I think they were trying to go for our driver as well. I didn’t want to give them any more time to get a solid hit in on us, so amid bullets from the Raider’s whizzing by our heads I gave B.B a look, shouting, “On three!?”

“Nah, counts are overdone I reckon. Just go fer it, I’ll follow.”

Bah, I liked the idea of counting to three. On a gecko hunt back home we always counted to three before unleashing our devastating hunting traps. Okay so maybe I was the only one among the hunters that did that, and everypony else had thought I was kind of a moron for it, but hey, I thought it was cool. Trailblaze did it with me at least. No, not like that. I mean the count to three thing.

Shaking off my inner monologue I steadied myself on the safety railing on my right and brought up my left hoof, aiming it at the Vertibuck. I faintly wondered how I must have looked to the pegasus pilot of that vehicle, just standing up and pointing a hoof at it like I was trying to make some sort of challenge. Whatever the pilot was thinking, it wasn’t friendly thoughts, because when the nose guns on the Vertibuck opened fire again the burst of rounds were mostly aimed at me. I yelped, almost losing my grip on the railing, as I felt the air getting torn up around me, only Iron Wrought’s swerving keeping the concentrated fire from ripping me to pieces. As it was I saw a rusty old blue metal mail box get ripped in half by the high powered rounds, and stitch their way through the ruins and ricocheted off another, taller blue, wooden box that was nestled between two collapsed walls of a house. Wait, bullets ricocheting off a wood blue box? That didn’t seem right. Wood didn’t deflect bullets, especially not ones that tore up concrete with ease.

We’d already driven by so fast I couldn’t get another look at what I’d seen, but my mind felt tickled. Hadn’t I seen that blue box somewhere before? I shook off the feeling and got back to aiming. Probably wasn’t important anyway.

Taking a deep breath I activated S.A.T.S, my Pip-Buck triggering the targeting spell at thought. In an instant time crawled to a stop, and I was treated to a magnificent view of how ridiculous our situation was. Arcaidia was huddled in the back corner of the roof, watching me intently, but firing her starblaster blindly backwards at the Raiders and their wagons. LIL-E was hovering beside Arcaidia, fire from muzzle flares licking the air from the barrels of her guns as she blazed away at the Raiders. I could see the flaming bullets from her rifle tracing through the air, and the uncomfortably detailed view of some of those rounds stitching up the barrel of a stark white Raider mare with a ragged brown mane, her face frozen in half war cry and half scream of pain as the bullets tore into her.

The air all around us was filled with bullets, from the small stubby rounds of the Raiders to the massive spikes of the shots from the Vertibuck’s guns. I even saw one of those rounds in mid impact with the roof of the Ursa, the sharpened tip of the bullet blunting off the thick metal armor of our ATW. Whatever one might say about those spider ponies, they certainly knew how to build a tough piece of equipment. Good thing, too, otherwise this would’ve been a very short and bloody chase.

Focusing my attention on the Vertibuck, I calmed my mind, so the Pip-Buck could more easily read my mental commands. The S.A.T.S spell read mental intent to interpret what its user wanted to target and what it wanted the user wanted to target with. In this case I focused on a mental image of my Grapple and on the distant sight of the Vertibuck’s side hatch. S.A.T.S took my mental focus, calculated the data based off who knew what kind of information, and sprung up a percentile readout of my chances for queueing up the shot.

43%

Well, kind of unnerving. Was really hoping for at least a fifty-fifty shot at this. Then again, considering the circumstances, perhaps I should be glad my chances of making this shot were that good. Nothing for it, I didn’t have any other plan, and it was pretty clear we weren’t getting away from this thing without doing something to take it out of commission. Time to do something crazy.

I confirmed the shot and let S.A.T.S do its thing. Time instantly snapped back into motion and without any mental prompt my leg twitched and the Grapple fired. The sleek wire and hook sailed through the air, and to my satisfaction managed to snag right along the hull of the Veritbuck just next to the hatch. Gulping, steeling myself, I gestured and signaled the Grapple to lighten my weight and start pulling as I galloped for the nose of the Ursa. I felt the tug and my body tingle as the device did its work, the enchantments lightening my weight as I jumped.

This is the worst idea I’ve ever had!, my brain pony screamed at me, with a rather detailed flash of what I’d look like smeared across one of the ruin walls or piles of rubble nearby. I couldn’t argue with it this time either, as I was terrified and screaming like a tiny foal as I dangled beneath the Veritbuck from my Grapple wire, wind shear ripping past me and pushing me about as the flying machine banked around to the left side of the Ursa.

I felt the Grapple pulling me up towards the hatch into the Vertibuck, but it was moving far too slowly for my liking, especially since I saw myself careening towards the blackened walls of a ruined house rather quickly. My arm was also not enjoying my choice of actions, the joint wrenching in protest. I reached up with my other hoof to try and grip the wire and relieve some of the stress, but couldn’t do much with the way I was dangling and spinning about as momentum had its way with me. Then the wall of the house had its way with me when I smashed into it.

Pain blasted through my body and my head rung like somepony had smacked it inside a giant bell. Fortunately two centuries worth of decay, plus whatever structural damage the balefire did to begin with, made the ancient wood and plaster wall fairly weak, at least against two hundred or so pounds of earth pony slamming into it. I still felt every part of me rattle like the sacred fetishes of my tribe’s shaman when he got really into a ritual dance. My already bruised and battered body wracked itself with pain, and I felt my throat let out a rather pitiful moan as I limply hung from the Grapple wire. I saw stars spinning around me as I dangled around on the wire, catching a brief glimpse of a Longwalk shaped hole through the wall that was now collapsing entirely.

It took me a few moments for my head to really clear, and for me to notice the ground was pulling away as I got higher into the air. Glancing up I saw the Vertibuck climbing, and turning as it did so, the guns on the nose swiveling around. At first I thought they were trying to get a bead on me, but then I saw the guns fire and send a line of traces through the air. Following the line of fire, I saw B.B darting through the air, her slim form banking hard to avoid the cluster of tracer rounds that were trying to catch up to her.

I was spinning around too much and too disoriented to be able to tell where the Ursa had gone, but I could still hear faint cracks of gunfire from the Raiders, and knew that the chase was still on. I felt confident the rest of my friends could take care of themselves while B.B and I dealt with the Vertibuck. Well, one of them. Truth be told I hadn’t thought ahead to what I’d do about the other two, assuming I lived long enough to deal with the one right now.

The Grapple had hoisted me up to the Vertibuck itself, and I was able to brace myself against its smooth metal surface. The hook had jammed itself solidly onto a hoof hold alongside the hatch, which was closed shut with an electronic lock I didn’t bother trying to figure out. Instead, using my hindlegs and one hoof to stabilize myself on the Vertibucks side, I reached over with my mouth and drew Gramzanber. I felt instantly better with the spear in my grip, and angled my head to point the tip at the seam of the hatch. With a twist of my neck I jabbed the spear into the hatch, the unnaturally sharp edge sliding through... well, not easily. The angle was beyond awkward and Gramzanber’s sharpness could only do so much when I had a hard time applying my full strength, but the spear did penetrate the hatch and started sawing up past the electronic lock.

Somepony inside obviously didn’t like me doing that, as I had to keep a firm grip on Gramzanber as the hatch hissed open, sliding along grooves into the hull of the Vertibuck, leaving a square hole two ponies wide into the dark interior of the craft. Unbalanced by the sudden opening of the hatch, I was an easy target for an Odessa trooper in full white power armor as she poked her front half out the hatch and aimed twin glowing green magic energy rifles at me.

Green bolts sailed past me, but almost as many struck me in the chest and shoulder. Arcaidia’s spell dissipated a lot of the energy, and my armor held up against the rest, but a burning pain seared through me regardless. I was lucky so many shots also missed, probably do to the trooper having an awkward angle to fire on me. Glaring at the trooper, I put on my best look of confidence and took on a commanding tone.

“I am commandeering this vessel! Surrender now and you shall come to no harm!”

Considering I was now slightly smoking from being shot, and dangling haphazardly from the side of her Vertibuck, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Odessa soldier’s only response was to resume shooting at me. I was prepared for the attack this time and tilted my head, using the flat of Gramzanber like a shield. Green bolts of magic energy reflected off the spearhead's silver surface, and I heard a sharp scream. Shocked, I glanced to see the Odessa soldier tumbling out of the hatch, a burn mark on her leg where one of the reflected bolts seared her limb past an unprotected joint in her armor.

The trooper’s armored wings spread and she took flight, only to instantly be dive bombed by B.B from above. B.B hit the trooper square in the back, sending the Odessa mare further tumbling towards the ground where I saw her crash into the top floor of a set of ruins, her white clad form tumbling and spinning in ways that didn’t look at all natural. I was pretty sure I saw the soldier’s helmet fly off from the impact, and by the trail of blood in the air I wasn’t entirely sure her head wasn’t still inside. I winced, shoving aside a stab of regret as I reached over to try and haul myself into the Vertibuck.

Doing so I came muzzle to muzzle with another Odessa trooper who’d apparently been waiting for me. I let go and fell back out the hatch as more bolts of green energy sizzled past me, one more bolt catching me in the barrel, slipping past Arcaidia’s weakening shield spell and searing past the lighter underbelly armor. Pain seared into me, but I grit my teeth, balancing myself on the hull outside the hatch, and waited for the trooper to come and see if I’d fallen. He did so, the stallion’s armored head peeking out, only to receive a full on smack upside the skull from the flat of Gramzanber. That dazed him, but didn’t quite drop him, so I gave the Odessa stallion another solid whack, which did the trick and he started to fall out the hatch.

“No you don’t,” I said, leaning into the hatch and catching the trooper, pushing his unconscious form back into the vessel’s interior. Hopping in I finally felt a sense of stability as I glanced around the compartment I was in. In seconds I felt a presence by my side and glanced to see B.B landing next to me, her wings folding in at her side. The interior compartment wasn’t large, just a square affair with a few seats built into the front and back that’d accommodate about seven ponies and their gear.

Well, we’d taken care of two. Where were the rest? Maybe the Vertibuck wasn’t fully loaded, and the two B.B and I had just taken down were just guards? The feeling of heat by my ear and a red energy beam flying past my head made me whip my head around, and I found my answer. The others had launched out already. The Vertibuck was now surrounded by Odessa pegasi, several of them gunning for me and B.B now standing in the open main compartment.

B.B ducked behind the edge of the interior hull, and I did the same on the opposite side.

“Long, git to the cockpit an’ force them to land this bird,” B.B said as she started to return fire at the pegasi flying around us, “I’ll keep ‘em busy here!”

“You sure? I could, uh, provide moral support while you shoot,” I said, keeping my head ducked back as green and red bolts and beams of energy flew by the open hatch, impacting along the small space that I was using as cover.

B.B shot me a look and I sighed, “Sorry, sorry, not the time for jokes. I got it. Just take it easy on them, alright? They’re just following orders.”

“Long, not the time! Or the place! They’re shootin’, I’m shootin’, everypony’s shootin’! The time for moral quandaries kinda passed us by already!”

I wanted to argue with her, but she wasn’t wrong. Right now, with ponies sending blasts of magical death flying at us, and all of our friends in equal or greater danger, how could I sit there and argue with her that she ought to take the time and risk of disabling those pegasi rather than just take them down as fast and efficiently as she could? Yet I still wanted to. After meeting Glint’ squad I was more keenly aware than ever that every one of those white armored pegasi, even if I couldn’t see their faces past that stark white armor, was still a pony.

Survival in situations like this often simply depended on disassociating yourself from the knowledge that your enemy is just like you are. You have to reduce them to a thing. An object. Enemy. Such a simple, easy to say word, that stripped another’s life of all value in relation to you, but added value to the notion of their death. You’re supposed to want your enemies dead.

I didn’t want enemies. I truly didn’t. However, what I wanted was becoming less and less consequential in comparison to what was happening around me. Even if I didn’t want enemies, other ponies were still determined to be such, and I just didn’t have the means yet to change that. All I could do was fight back, try to keep the bloodshed from reaching bucketload levels, and hope for the best.

Yeah, didn’t have a lot of high expectations for my success either.

I didn’t give B.B much of a response beside a grim nod as I waited for her to let loose a series of shots at our... enemies... which gave me an opening to dash across to the small hatch that led towards the cockpit. I operated under the assumption it was going to be locked, and so gave it the Gramzanber treatment. It took a minute of sawing, but soon enough I had that hatch open and forced my way through into a small, tight little corridor that lead to the cockpit.

The cockpit itself was a sleek, angular thing with just enough room for a pony to work his or her way around a circular space that had a complex arcano-tech harness set before the front window. Before the window was an entire array of holographic projections and a bank of consoles with all manner of buttons and knobs on it. The harness itself was occupied by a young mare in a tight fitting white suit that seemed designed to synch up with connectors from the harness. Her wings fluttered and beat, with trailing cables from small pads on the feathers. The Vertibuck moved with the way the mare’s wings did, and her front hooves worked a joystick in front of her, which I surmised might operate the weapons systems if the holo-projection showing the targeting array and a display of the Ursa on the ground with crosshairs dancing around it were any indication.

The mare herself was colored like a piece of fruit, her coat a bright shade of red and her mane a brilliant orange, tied back in a short, neatly cut tail. The second I entered the cockpit she turned her head towards me, pink colored eyes widening.

“Oh shit!” the mare exclaimed in a rough, almost coltish voice, and snapped her muzzle down to a holster on her chest, with a energy pistol dangling there. I surged forward, thrusting Gramzanber’s point right into said pistol, which sparked and sputtered as it broke.

The mare stiffened as I lifted the spear and placed it an inch or so from her neck.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “Let’s make this quick. I’m Longwalk. What’s your name?”

The mare looked at me like I was a Hellhound wearing a purple magician’s hat, dancing a jig and asking her if she’d go out with him. Or at the very least like I was a crazy pony. Was I a crazy pony? Don’t answer that.

“W-what!? Who!? What!? No! What!?”

Okay, not the best result I was hoping for, but at least she wasn’t screaming wordlessly, and more to the point, the Vertibuck had leveled out and was no longer chasing or shooting at the Ursa down below. Progress!

“Name. Yours. Just trying to get on the right hoof here, you know? This is been a real bad day, probably for both of us, and I’m just trying to make it go a little less bad. So what can I call you? Otherwise I’m just going to name you the first thing that comes to mind, which I’m horrible at. Just ask my friend Arcaidia.”

The mare just looked at me with her jaw working soundlessly, her eyebrow twitching, her head slowly cocking to one side. Might have been a bit of steam coming out of her ears too. I sighed.

“Okay, Twitch it is. So, Twitch, let’s start over. Your friends are shooting at my friends. I find this to be an unacceptable situation. My friends are probably going to kill your friends for shooting at them. I imagine you find that to be an unacceptable situation. Believe it or not, I do too. So what I propose, so all of us get to have a much better day, with fewer friends dead all around, is that you land this Vertibuck thingy, hop on out, and let me and my friends continue on our way, all nice and not shot. Sound like a plan to you?”

Her look of confusion slowly turned to one of anger, her eyes hardening and her mouth twisting up in a small snarl. Really, she was far too cute to be looking that murderous. And what did I do to deserve that look!? I was being nice, wasn’t I!? Aside from the spear I had at her throat. And breaking into her Veritbuck. Okay, so maybe her anger was a tad justified.

“Go park your ass on a stormcloud, landbound!” she spat.

I sighed. I was doing that a lot lately. It was starting to become my default means of expression. Stupid, sigh inducing Wasteland.

“If you don’t, I’m going to have to do something I really don’t want to do,” I said, warningly.

I saw fear cross her features, but resolve harden them further as she turned and focused on her piloting again, turning the Vertibuck to start chasing the Ursa once more. Her voice wasn’t as resolved as her feature’s however, shaking a little, scared, but trying not to be.

“D-do what you have to! Kill me! But I’m taking you xeno sympathizers down with me!”

This time I groaned, pulling Gramzanber away from the mare and securing it to its sheath. When she gave me a weird look I shook my head, “What? You called my bluff. I suck at this kind of thing anyway. Though, granted, I still have to do something I don’t want to do, even if that thing isn’t killing you.”

She opened her mouth, maybe to ask what that thing was, but it became apparent as I jumped on her back, wraped my hooves around her wings, and started to move them around.

“W-w-what are you doing!?” she screamed shrilly, “Get offa me! Hey! Stop that!”

The Vertibuck veered sharply in the air, rocking us from one side to the other as I struggled to control her wings, which she was obviously not cooperating with at all. In fact she started trying to bite me, whipping her head around to try and get a latch on me. What was it with mares and trying to bite me lately!? First Binge, then B.B, now this mare!

“What?” I asked, “You’re not cooperating, so this is what it comes to! Now quit squirming, I’m trying to fly this thing!”

“You’re gonna crash us you idiot!”

“Well whose fault is that?”

“YOURS!”

“Well I’m trying to direct this thing towards the ground in a nice, safe fashion,” I said as I kept pulling at her wings, working out just what movements made the Vertibuck move in which direction, but I was being spectacularly unsuccessful by the way the vehicle swiveled about and jerked through the air, lurching like a drunken pony.

“There’s nothing safe at all about this! Let go before you kill us both!” Twitch yelled, throwing her head back, trying to dislodge me, but I doggedly held on.

“And let you keep trying to blow up my friends? Sorry, Twitch, not happening. We’re landing, one way or another! I’m pretty sure I can figure this out. If I pull like this,” I pulled back on her wings, which caused her to yelp in pain, for which I felt a twinge of regret as I wasn’t really trying to hurt her, and the Vertibuck lurched downward, “This makes the ship go down. And if I push like this,” I pushed her wings down, like she was flapping them, and the Vertibuck unsteadily climbed, “We go up. See. This isn’t complicated-”

She then managed to get a foreleg around and elbowed me in the chin, which made me slip off her to the side. As I fell off her I inadvertently caught her right wing on the harness at an awkward angle and i heard a loud snapping of multiple small bones, sounding like somepony stepping on a pile of pinecones. Twitch’s ear bleeding scream filled the cockpit.

Laying dazed for a second I slide around the cockpit as the entire Vertibuck started to swerve around and tilt dangerously to the left, heading downward. It scrambled to my hooves, looking at her horrible bent right wing, and winced. I hadn’t intended to do that. Twitch was still screaming, her eyes screwed shut in pain. I saw the world swirling around outside the cockpit’s window, the ground approaching fast. Well, I did want us to land. This was going to be a harder one that I’d hoped for, though. I sent a small prayer to the Ancestor spirits that B.B had the sense to take to the air before we hit, then rushed over to Twitch. I didn’t know what else to do except hold onto her and hopefully lessen some of the impact when we-

CRUNCH!

-crashed.

Sparks and bits of magical discharge illuminated the now mostly dark cockpit, a little light streaming in from somewhere that I couldn’t see. My, well, everything ached, and I was pretty sure one of my hindlegs was, if not broken, very badly twisted. I coughed, smoke burning in my lungs. With straining effort, and a small whimper of pain, I managed to get to my hooves. I activated my Pip-Buck’s light, and glanced to my left at the pilot harness.

Twitch hung limply in the harness, and fearfully I approached her and put a hoof on her chest. I breathed out sigh of relief as I felt a heartbeat. It hadn’t been my plan to actually crash the Vertibuck. I didn’t know how badly she was injured, aside from her wing still being broken. Being as careful with her as I could it took me a little time, but I managed to disconnect her from the harness and put her on my back, her limp form quite light and easy to carry. With an unsteady trot, pain lancing up and down my leg, I made my way back into the Vertibuck’s main compartment. Looking around I didn’t see B.B anywhere, which was probably a good sign, all things considered.

Unfortunately I did see the Odessa stallion I’d knocked out earlier, laying crumpled up against the back bulkhead. His head was twisted at an angle that couldn’t have been right, given the orientation of the rest of his body. My head sagging, heart feeling heavier, I turned to leave. I paused, however, and glanced back at the body. I knew I didn’t have much time, but...

I removed the dead buck’s helmet. Why? I honestly don’t know. I just wanted to see his face. Dark blue coat, sand colored mane, light brown eyes, glassy in death. I was struck by the fact that he didn’t look any older than I was. Odessa sent their ponies out to fight, even this young? Well, who was I to judge. My tribe trained its hunters young too.

“I”m sorry,” I told the body, closing his eyes, useless as the gesture was, and headed out the hatch into the open.

The Vertibuck had crashed up against the side of the remains of a tall building that might have been some kind of tower at one point. I could see a huge furrow dug in the ground for about fifty yards from another building that had its wall knocked clean over, showing the path of the Vertibuck’s crash. Looking around, I still didn’t see B.B anywhere. I also didn’t hear any gunfire, but there was still the distant sound of the other Vertibuck’s engines. I didn’t know if the lack of gunfire was a good sign or a bad one.

I sat Twitch down on the ground, giving her a light pat on the head. I pulled out a healing potion, leaving me down to two, and sat it next to her. I’d have tried to get her to drink it, but didn’t trust myself to do it right without her choking on it, and then there was her wing to consider. I doubted something as delicate as a pegasus’ wing would react well to healing potions without those broken bones being set right. I just hoped her tribe would get here soon enough to help her. But not so soon I wouldn’t be able to get away.

Speaking of healing potions, I could do with some myself. Less than two days out of Stable 104 and I was already almost out of healing potions. I. Hate. The. Wasteland. Actually, that wasn’t fair. I couldn’t really blame the Wasteland for this. This was almost entirely the fault of my tendency to think that the best plan was the one that put me in the most danger. I feared for my stallion bits when I met Arcaidia again. She was not going to be happy with me. I took a second to debate if I was injured enough to warrant using one of my last two potions; then a horrible spike of pain wracked my body and nearly made me black out. Okay, healing potions it was! Sucking one down the pain receded somewhat and my vision cleared.

That taken care of I took stock of what I needed to do. The sound of one of the Vertibucks was getting louder, and fast. Too fast.

I knew I could track Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck tag with my own, so I figured it wouldn’t be hard to find and catch up with my friends. All I had to do was get into the cover of the Wasteland ruins, then start following Arcaidia’s tag. I didn’t get more than halfway to the nearest ruin, however, when a small spherical object landed next to me in the dirt. I glanced down just in time to get hit in the face with a bright flash of light and a loud burst of sound.

“Bwah!” I fell over, already guessing that I’d just been hit with a flash-bang grenade, and tried to make myself move towards any kind of cover, but in seconds I heard the buzzing of a large number of energy weapons charging up, and felt wind sweeping over me with the accompanying sound of a Vertibuck. Apparently it’d been a lot closer than I’d thought.

By the time my eyes stopped seeing white and my ears completely cleared, I saw I was surrounded by a dozen Odessa troopers in power armor, their energy weapons trained on me. A Vertibuck was fast approaching, and in seconds was hovering no more than twenty yards away from me, and an equal distance up. Its missile pods were deployed and its nose guns were aimed squarely at me. I swallowed hard, backing up a step. They’d certainly gotten here fast. I... honestly hadn’t thought through what I’d do under these circumstances. Gramzanber hummed at my side, its energy pulsing. I could use Accelerator... but could I draw the spear fast enough to activate it without getting shot from all sides? My body was injured enough already, even if I did use Accelerator would I survive the backlash? I couldn’t just surrender though, could I? My friends... blast it I’d told Arcaidia not to worry, and here I was, neck deep in it.

“Quite the unfortunate quandary, no?” said a crisp voice dripping with satisfaction, and from the Vertibuck a dark gray stallion flew down, his white uniform flapping around his sides as he landed before me.

“You really do give quite the chase, but right now I’d suggest if you have any plans to resist, consider what might happen to your friend if you do,” said Captain Shattered Sky, adjusting his glasses with a tip of his wing as he smiled at me with cold smugness. I felt my mouth go dry, my body quivering with impotent anger as the full-of-himself Odessa officer looked at me with that look on his face of absolute control. So he’d survived our fight back in Saddlespring, and with no residual scarring to mark his coldly smiling features. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I could certainly feel a little disappointed. What? Just because I don’t like killing doesn’t mean I can’t be a tad vindictive towards somepony who’d helped turn a peaceful settlement into a series of smoking craters.

Wait, did he say ‘friend’?

My surprise must have been evident on my face, as Shattered Sky gestured with his other wing up at the Vertibuck, and I looked; fearing I’d see B.B there, captured.

When I saw who it was, though, my eyes shot wide, my heart beat faster, and my jaw touched the cold Wasteland dirt. It wasn’t B.B that was held prisoner in the Vertibuck, clear to see from the hatch with two Odessa troopers with pistols aimed at her head.

It was Trailblaze.

I froze up, all sorts of emotions pumped their way through me all at once as I looked at that familiar dark brown mare, her black mane whipping around in the backwash from the Vertibuck’s engines. Her bright blue eyes were glaring lightning bolts at her captors. Her body was battered, I could see that much, with a cracked lip and blackened eye. She held an expression of pure murder for those holding her, but wasn’t currently resisting. The bright shiny manacles around her limbs, and the collar around her neck, probably had something to do with that. The collar was like a more streamlined, shinier version of the Labor Guild’s explosive collars. The manacles were... odd. They weren’t connected by physical links. Instead the bright, thick steel bands were connected to each other by little green crystals, between which streamed bands of magical energy.

My blood roared in my ears as fear, exhilaration, anger, and warmer, softer feelings I didn’t quite grasp seized up my higher brain functions. Somepony was talking, though, and I didn’t pay it any mind until I heard the line:

“-attention to what I’m saying or I’ll have her thrown out the hatch!”

My eyes glanced down at Shattered Sky, who while still looking calm, had a faint tinge of red to his gray face as he looked at me with disdain.

“Let her go,” I told him flatly.

Shattered Sky adjusted his glasses again, his smiling thinking, “I’m afraid you seem to not quite grasp how this works, my young friend, you see-”

“Longwalk!?” Trailblaze shouted out, apparently stopping glaring at the pegasi holding her long enough to actually see what was going on down below, “Ancestors flaming’ spirits, what are you doing there!? Run! I’ll take care of these bastards!”

She tried to body slam one of the pegasi next to her, smashing one of them into the hatch door with her shoulder, but the other guard pistol whipped her. Immediately after that the manacles around her sparked with green energy, sending a wave of magic over Trailblaze’s body that caused her to cry out. She didn’t collapse, seemingly from sheer force of will as she grimaced stubbornly and kept on her hooves, but it was clear she couldn’t really do much to fight.

“Trail, stop!” I shouted, “You’re just going to hurt yourself. Besides, I can’t really run. Kind of surrounded down here!”

“What are you even doing out here!?” she shouted back, sounding equal parts happy to see me and royally pissed that I was in trouble.

“Getting... captured?” I replied sheepishly.

Oh, oh... that look. That look! That burning, hard look of disapproval mixed with endearing affection. I’d missed that look. So. Bucking. Much. If she wasn’t up in a Vertibuck and I wasn’t surrounded by soldiers that wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me I would’ve wrapped her up in the biggest, tightest hug I could muster. I was so happy to see her again that I almost forgot the implications of her presence here. If she’d been captured by Odessa... what of the rest of our tribe!? What about my mother!?

My mouth opened to ask my oldest and closest friend how she’d come to be here but a gunshot made me flinch and redirect my attention to Shattered Sky, the pony who’d fired. The bullet had snapped right by my ear, coming dangerously close to shaving off an even bigger chunk than Crossfire had shot off back in Saddlespring. Shattered Sky himself had that look of a pony who was livid and failing badly at trying to hide it. He holstered his odd, long barreled pistol, and adjusted his glasses once more with his wingtip. I was really starting to hate that gesture.

“If you two are quite done bantering, I was making the demand of you to disarm yourself of your ARM and surrender yourself to my custody. Failure to comply will result in the execution of your tribal mate.”

“She’s not my mate!”

“I’m not his mate!”

Trailblaze and I exchanged a look. She raised an eyebrow. I coughed, looking away. Shattered Sky’s eye twitched.

“Platonic friend, then, if you prefer,” he said with acid dripping in his tone, “I’ll have your ‘friend’ executed. Either way, you are to disarm, without resistance. Now.”

If it’d be somepony else... perhaps I’d have tried something. Fast talk, or make some kind of desperate attack to free Trailblaze. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have options, nor a solid past record of being just crazy enough to try them. I still had my Grapple, that might get me up to Trailblaze. I had grenades in my saddlebag, smoke, flash-bang, spark... anything might be the key to distracting the Odessa troops. Trailblaze herself certainly looked like she wanted to try and escape. I could see her body was tense, even at this distance, and she was looking at me as if she wasn’t sure if I’d make a move or not. I didn’t blame her. If I was still the same buck I’d been a ten days ago, before leaving my tribe, the buck Trailblaze knew, I’d probably be brash enough to try something.

But I knew Shattered Sky wasn’t playing games. He wasn’t that kind of pony. In fact it was a surprise he hadn’t shot me outright. That meant he needed me alive for some reason. Trailblaze must have had some value beyond being a hostage to get at me, otherwise he would’ve killed her by now as well, just because I didn’t immediately disarm as he demanded. But he still would if I stalled for much longer... and the second I tried something, Trailblaze would die.

There was also the unpleasant realization that I wasn’t at all certain I could beat Shattered Sky, even if it was just the two of us, one-on-one. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I wanted to smash his teeth in through the back of his throat. Even if I wasn’t the killing type, that didn’t mean a certain desire to beat Shattered Sky to the brink of death wasn’t present. That said, I keenly recalled that the last time I tangled with this pegasus he’d readily taken on both me, Crossfire, and Brickhouse at the same time, and would have won that fight if Crossfire hadn’t pulled a last second gambit that’d barely paid off (and sent me falling out of a Vertibuck... Ancestors, that’d been a crappy day). Granted last time we fought I didn’t have Accelerator, but I still didn’t know the extent of his own ARMs power. I could see the slight bulge underneath his right sleeve where the silver watch was; that ARM that somehow allowed him to teleport around instantly. Could Accelerator’s speed boost let me beat that power? I didn’t know... and I didn’t want to bet my best friend’s life on finding out.

The only good thing about this situation was that I was fairly certain now my other friends had managed to escape, mainly because if they hadn’t Shattered Sky would be threatening me with their deaths as well, or gloating over their capture at least. He was far too full of himself not to do that.

Shattered Sky raised one wing, and I saw the Odessa troopers next to Trailblaze aim their pistols at her once again, simply waiting for his command to fire.

“What is your answer, landbound?” Shattered Sky asked, his eager look telling me he wouldn’t necessarily mind if I resisted.

I looked at him, face a stone mask.

“Alright... you win.”

For now.

I was sitting next to Trailblaze in the back of the Vertibuck as it soared through the air. I’d been divested of Gramzanber, my armor, and my saddlebags. The former two items had been tucked away in a storage compartment in the floor, but Gramzanber received special treatment. To my surprise, there’d been a unicorn on board the Vertibuck, a dour looking black stallion with a short beige mane wearing an Odessa white uniform. The unicorn had carried Gramzanber with his magic and set the ARM inside a long metal case with multiple magical glowing locks that sealed over it once the spear was secure. Shattered Sky then took the case and strapped it to his own back as if afraid it might fly away on its own, giving me a smug look of satisfaction as he went into the pilot compartment.

I’d had a collar strapped around my neck and the same manacles with the green energy crystals placed around my legs before I’d been shoved down next to Trailblaze, four Odessa troopers staying in the passenger compartment with the unicorn, keeping weapons pointed at me and my friend.

“So, you didn’t actually answer my question Longwalk,” said Trailblaze next to me in a quiet tone, but one that was heated with simmering anger, “What were you doing out here? I thought you were taking Arcaidia to look for somepony down south.”

I tried not to look too embarrassed as I smiled helplessly back at her, “Got sidetracked.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I could tell she was trying to maintain an angry look at me, but the more those blue eyes looked me over the more I saw her lose the hard edge to her anger. Very slowly her hoof raised, and I feared those energy manacles might do something, but this time they didn’t flash or send a burst of energy over her as she touched my withers.

“Ancestors... look at you. Sidetracked? You look like you’ve been through a war. What happened? I told Arcaidia to look after you, dammit!”

I blanched, suddenly realizing what I must look like to her. Healing potions only did so much for scarring, and without my armor on to conceal the worst of it, my hide probably looked like I’d tangled with a entire pack of geckos bare hooved, and lost. Bite marks from my first run-in with Balloons. The piece missing from my ear where Crossfire had shot it. Cuts and claw marks from fighting both the Tunnelers and that massive beast in the Saddlespring Ruins. The bullet wound from being shot by the Raider tribe we picked up Binge from. Numerous lacerations from the horrible fight in Stable 104, not to mention the bare scarring from Fine Eye’s double barreled shotgun. Then the more recent wounds and blood still coated me from the hectic chase that’d just ended in my capture. All in all... yeah, I imagined I looked like fifty different shades of crap.

“It’s been, uh, kind of rough, yeah,” I said, trying to give her a reassuring smile, “Don’t blame Arcaidia, though, its not her fault. Most of this is my own doing.”

Trailblaze snorted, and was back to herself, her own smile rueful and knowing, “I have no trouble believing that. I knew I should have gone with you. Still, ‘sidetracked’ doesn’t really explain much. How did you end up out in the middle of nowhere, being chased by these crazy winged ponies?”

“I’ll answer that, but first, how did you get here? What happened to the tribe?” I asked, unable to keep a fearful squeak from my voice. My feelings were not at all reassured by the sudden, grim expression that crawled over Trailblaze’s features, her entire form taking on a sad droop.

“It happened three days after you left,” she said, voice taking a distant tone of remembrance, “They came in the early morning, before dawn. These blasted flying contraptions. They carried dozens of these white-clad bastards, including the one with the strange lenses over his eyes. We hunters went to meet the intruders with my mother, demanding to know what they were doing coming to our village!”

Trailblaze paused, her breathing getting heavy as she closed her eyes, face tightening in pain.

“They demanded we surrender to them, to be taken away, the entire tribe! Of course my mother told them to leave us be, or we’d fight... then the shooting started. I don’t even know how many of us fell before my mother called for us to lay down our spears. I... I’ve never seen her like that Longwalk. She was crying. So angry, but crying. She was the first to toss her spear aside, after... after it became clear we couldn’t win.”

“Ancestors,” I breathed, fear slipping through my heart with equal measure with sympathy and anger. My home, attacked, my tribemates, taken or killed. I hated to ask, but I needed to know.

“Who... fell?”

Trailblaze shook her head, “I don’t know for sure how many. Stone Crack, Whittle Wood, Harrier, I saw them die. Whittle, one of those red beams hit her and she just... turned to dust. I know Whetstone made it though, she was in one of the lines I saw getting herded on board these flying machines. And your mother! Ancestors, I should have told you first. You’re mother is alive, and was taken along with the rest of us survivors.”

A stone clench around my heart let loose, though only just a bit. I was horrified to hear of the dead, but couldn’t deny a sense of relief that my mother was among the living, still. But the entire tribe, captured!? The reality of it hit me like a Hellhound’s claw to the chest. My mouth had turned utterly bone dry.

“Do you know where they were taken?” I asked. Trailblaze shook her head.

“Not all of them. I was taken to some... strange place. A camp of some kind, with a hole in the earth. A few others of the tribe were taken there too, including Whetstone. I was just there, actually, when that son of a mule with the glass eyes snatched me and took me aboard this flying machine in a hurry. He said he was going to use me as ‘leverage’. I didn’t know against who until I saw you.”

I grimaced, “I’m sorry, Trail. I couldn’t do anything. Not under those circumstances.”

“We’d both be dead now if you’d tried something,” she said with a small nod, but then her expression turned hard, “I’m still waiting on an answer on why you were out here! Where’s Arcaidia?”

“Its a long story, and with present company,” I tilted my head towards the Odessa pegasi, “I can’t really tell you everything. Arcaidia and I... we got mixed up in some complicated things, pretty much day one after we left. Made some enemies, and made some friends. We were trying to secure a way to travel south, past some big desert, and were going to meet some friends in a place called Skull City... but, again, got sidetracked.”

I glanced at our captors, then gave Trailblaze a look I hope she could take as meaningful. She nodded, looking unsatisfied, but understanding.

“Okay, you can give me the whole story some other time. Is Arcaidia alright at least?”

She sounded genuinely concerned, and I couldn’t help but smile. Even under the circumstances, Trialblaze still cared about the well being of friends, even ones briefly known.

“Healthy and well,” I said, “She’s actually learned to speak our language! Not, you know, perfectly, but fairly well. B.B’s been teaching her.”

“B.B?”

“One of the friends I’ve made. You’ll get to meet them. I hope. Once we figure out how to escape.”

“You do know we can hear you?” said one of the Odessa pegasi, the stallion’s voice deadpan as he looked at us, power armor helmet expressionless but his tone vaguely amused and irritated at the same time.

I shrugged, “Well, its not like its a big secret. We’re prisoners. What else do prisoners do?”

“Behave or get beaten to within an inch of their lives?” the stallion pointed out. I frowned.

“You’re not a nice pony,” I told him flatly.

“I’m not paid to be nice. I’m paid to keep smart ass prisoners in line. Now cut the chatter, or I introduce you to what the stun setting on these weapons do.”

“Those things have stun settings?” I asked, shocked.

I swore the bastard must’ve been smiling underneath his helmet as he said, “No.”

With that silence descended upon the cramped compartment, save for the steady beat of the engines and the constant whistle of wind. I wished I knew where we were being taken, but the one time I’d tried to look at my Pip-Buck had resulted in one of the guards demonstrating to me exactly how my manacles worked. Apparently the energy bands were harmless to touch, the magic inactive unless certain conditions were met. Condition one, fast movement. The moment I moved any of my hooves at a speed faster than what I’d need for a normal trot and the magic inside the manacles would activate, sending horrible pain and sickness wracking through my body. Condition two, trying to apply pressure to anything beyond a certain poundage; basically I could sit, twiddle my hooves, whatever, but the second I tried to open a door, press a button, or do anything that required applying pressure? Yup, more horrible pain and an overwhelming need to vomit. And of course, condition three; any bored Odessa trooper who felt like activating the manacles remotely with the right radio frequency from the com-system in their helmet.

So, yeah, in case you were wondering that was why there was this stain on the compartment floor in front of me.

This was why I hadn’t been able to look at my Pip-Buck’s map to see where we were, or where we were going, not to mention where Arcaidia might be. A part of me really was hoping that she was smart enough to disable whatever device in her own Pip-Buck allowed mine to track its tag, because I had a sinking feeling the moment we arrived at an Odessa base where they had to the tools to remove my Pip-Buck that would be one of the first things they’d use it for. As it stood I was still trying to figure out how I might turn still having both the Pip-Buck and my Grapple attached to me to my advantage. So far I was coming up with nothing. Worry for my friends was starting to replace any clear thoughts on escape I was having, and thoughts of my tribe overshadowing it all.

It was just starting to sink in, what Trailblaze had told me. I wondered how many of my tribe had been killed by Odessa. I might not have been close to many of them beside Trailblaze, but I known them my whole life. Stone Crack, as much as a hard flank as he was, had been the leader of the hunters for as long as I could remember, and he’d accepted me on the hunting parties even when others had not wanted me, the one with outsider blood, to come. I never spoke with Whittle Wood much, but I knew her... known her, as a mare who’d been part of Trailblaze and Whetstone’s circle of friends and had made beautiful wood carvings.

Why had Odessa attacked my tribe? What could they have wanted? Was it just to get at me and Arcaidia? But how had they even known I was from that tribe, specifically? How had Shattered Sky known about my friendship with Trailblaze? They must have learned of that by interrogating other members of the tribe. I seethed, wondering how much more my tribe had suffered already, and also if... if I was at fault for this happening.

Did my tribe suffer because I had chosen to help Arcaidia?

I felt warmth leaning against me and was broken out of my dour thoughts, looking over to see Trailblaze, leaning her shoulder against mine. Her look was concerned, somber, and a little reproachful all at once. She didn’t say anything, and didn’t have to. I leaned back, nodding my head. She was right, of course. I needed to not spiral into beating myself up over what had happened. I wasn’t certain it wasn’t my fault, at least in part, but if I thought about it too much I’d be no use to anypony.

Trailblaze and I waited quietly, taking strength from each other’s presence as the Vertibuck flew on.

When we were finally shuffled out of the Vertibuck and into the cold, dry Wasteland air I quickly recognized where we were. The mountain range stretching across the west horizon combined with the sharp rusty brown and red hills were the same ones near Stable 104. The large, uneven depression along the front of a ridgeline of hills was familiar. I’d seen it from afar with LIL-E. This was where we’d seen Odessa troops arriving before we’d left Stable 104, miles north of the Stable.

The depression was large enough that all three Vertibucks could land in it with significant room to spare, though just the one that’d been carrying myself and Trailblaze had landed. A cluster of a dozen or so stark white tents had been sat up nearby, arranged in neatly ordered rows, and Odessa ponies both in the light combat armor and the heavier power armor were standing guard both among the tents, and further on towards what I thought had to be the entrance to a Ruin. Other ponies, and a number of griffins, bustled about the tents, not in armor but clearly wearing trim white uniforms that showed their allegiance to Odessa. Three of the tents were larger than the others, arranged close together, and a metal spire with a small disc on top sprouted from the center tent.

The end of the depression that was part of the ridgeline was marked by a large stone doorway, now hanging swung open down the center. Two rows of stone pillars marched away from the open doors, and I recognized the style of unusual script on the pillars as being the same as what I saw on the Ruin underneath Saddlespring. There was a tent near this entrance, large enough that you could fit the Ursa inside it, and I heard a distant hum from that tent, and noticed there were cables running out of it and into the Ruin entrance.

The Ruin entrance itself would’ve taken most of my attention if there wasn’t something far more interesting to look at up in the sky.

There were other Vertibucks in the sky, though I wasn’t sure if the ones I saw were part of the group that’d been hunting my friends and I. As I looked one landed near where the one that’d been carrying Trailblaze and me had landed, while another one that remained airborne circled the camp once then proceeded to rise into the gray overcast sky... where a massive form was descending to meet it.

It wasn’t the same airship I’d caught a brief glimpse of at Saddlespring. No, this one was smaller, I estimated, but no less massive compared to the Vertibuck approaching it, growing into a tiny speck compared to this airship's wide frame.

The vessel was shaped like a huge, avian creature. Prongs like those making up the skeletal structure of a wing spread from either side of a smooth central body. Circular holes carved into either side of the main body crackled with magical energy, dark stormclouds forming within them and coiling outward, spreading among the metal prongs of the ships ‘wings’, forking with arcs of lightning. From the stout central body a long, elegant neck speared outward, ending in a avian, beak-like head that I imagined housed the ship’s bridge. Underneath the vessel were four, long, jutting protrusions, like the barrels of guns. In fact, I was certain they were guns, of some sort, and shuddered inwardly to think of what that battery of massive cannons might be able to do... in fact I was certain I’d already seen a preview of what they could do at Saddlespring.

“Impressed?” said a smug, smooth tone next to me, Captain Shattered Sky exiting the Vertibuck behind our guards and approaching me. He looked up at the descending airship with a content sigh.

“The Vesuvius may be Odessa’s prime warship, but I’ve always held a certain fondness for the Varukisas’s design. Utility is all well and good, but visual appeal has its uses, and the Varukisas isn’t without its functionality. It was made for the kind of fast, dirty ground operations that Odessa’s been forced to perform so often in the war we wage.”

I watched as the distant Vertibucks landed in what looked to be a bay that opened up underneath the joint of one of the airship’s wings, giving me a good idea of its scale. From wingtip to wingtip that ship was large enough to house a small town, probably carrying several hundred ponies.

And Odessa had bigger ships than this one?

I certainly knew how to pick my enemies.

Shaking my head I looked at Shattered Sky with narrowed eyes, ears flat against my head, “Does this ‘war’ justify all the ponies you’ve hurt trying to pursue it? Why have you taken my tribe!? Where have you taken-”

His hoof strike was fast, precise, and right across my jaw. I wasn’t knocked on my flank, but it rung my bell soundly and forced me to blink a few times as I cleared the proverbial stars from my vision. Shattered Sky’s smug look had been replaced with one of iron distaste.

“You are not in a position to question us. Your tribe is of use, so we’ve acquired them. Anything done in pursuit of defending the world is justified. This cannot be argued, least of all by a dirty, flightless landbound with ignorance as his only defense.”

“Try me!” growled Trailblaze, interposing herself between me and Shattered Sky, “You talk big, for ponies hiding behind armor and weapons that let you fight like cowards! You say we’re dirty, but I’m smelling quite the stink coming off of your sorry flank!”

One of the guards let out a short growl and moved to hit Trailblaze, but stopped at a gesture from Shattered Sky’s wing. Shattered Sky gave Trailblaze a wry half smile, spreading his wings out as if to emphasize what they were.

“Spoken like a true landbound savage. You make my points for me. It is the advanced technology that Odessa possesses along with our unique heritage as lords of the sky that give us the singular duty to defend ignorant dirt creatures like yourself from threats you can’t even comprehend. If we must... be somewhat rough with our charges, taking what we must from you, and pacifying those that resist our efforts, it is a small price to be paid in the pursuit of our nobler goal, because your kind simply cannot do as we do. Too aggressive, too ignorant, and without the two centuries of technological development that we possess.”

He sounded so... proud. So sure of himself. I’d heard similar talk from Glint underneath Silver Mare Studios, but the young Odessa soldier had spoken like somepony quoting from a lecture, repeating what he’d learned all his life, but didn’t necessarily hold that close to his heart. Shattered Sky on the other hoof, he spoke like a pony who believed utterly in what he was saying. There wasn’t a hint of doubt in his tone; indeed it was heated with an edge of passion. He completely believed his people were superior, and had every right to do as they pleased in their pursuit of fighting the supposed threat Arcaidia and her people represented.

That made him more dangerous than any amount of power his artificial ARM gave him, because there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to pursue his tribe’s goals.

“Fine, whatever,” I said, speaking around Trailblaze, “You pegasi and griffins got it all worked out. What do you need me and my tribemates for, then? I might not be in a position to ask, but that doesn’t mean its not a valid question.”

Shattered Sky lowered his wings and narrowed his eyes at me, one wingtip adjusting his glasses once more until the light reflected off them, obscuring his eyes in the process.

“Perhaps you have a point, but why hear the answers from me when you will see for yourself soon enough? Come, and you’ll see exactly what certain members of Odessa think you landbound might be able to do for us.”

“You know for somepony who seems to hate us ‘landbound’ you were sure quick to offer Crossfire a deal back in Saddlespring,” I pointed out, frowning, “You even said Odessa’s worked with the Drifter’s Guild before.”

Shattered Sky’s face twisted slightly, but he quickly composed himself, “I do not hate landbound, and recognize that utilizing the skills and talents of grounded species is still a vital part of Odessa’s long term goals. The Drifter’s Guild is just one small piece of our dealings with the surface.”

He snorted, looking up at the sky, “Of course that contemptible mare spat in the face of my offer! As if she was in some position to make such a blunt refusal to my generosity! When I next meet her, I assure you, there will be no parley. Yes, she will... learn.”

I had no idea just what was up with the weird look that took over Shattered Sky’s face, a sort of self-aware grimace of disgust that didn’t seem to have any direction. His face was slightly red, and for some reason his wings were extended as he chuckled to himself, then seemed to realize what he was doing and quickly stopped, snapping his wings to his side.

I thought about pointing out that, whatever he planned to do to Crossfire, she’d probably be harder to handle than he thought. Somehow I doubted he’d respond well to the heckling, and honestly with the battering I’d taken last night with the Hellhound and today with the Vertibuck chase... I just didn’t feel up for any more hooves to the face. Honestly I was feeling dead on my hooves and was kind of glad the manacles meant we only had to move at a slow trot as we were lead past the camp.

A number of ponies and griffins, carrying stretchers and boxes marked with a strange red cross symbol I didn’t recognize the meaning of went rushing out of one of the tents and to the other Vertibuck that’d landed. I cast a quick look that way and felt a stab of both worry and relief as I recognized Glint exiting the Vertibuck, meeting the group coming to meet him as Suture also hopped out, waving and shouting. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I saw the griffins and ponies, medical staff I assumed, unload two forms onto the stretchers while starting to administer aid. At this distance I couldn’t be sure, but I assumed Spring Breeze and Nosedive had to be alive, otherwise why bother with the medical help? I also saw another pony exit the Vertibuck, recognizing Twitch’s red coat and orange mane. She was conscious, and walking, but the medical team descended on her as well, mostly focused on her broken wing.

I couldn’t watch further, however, as the guards around us shoved me and Trailblaze further on. Passing tents I caught glimpses of Odessa soldiers out of armor, relaxing, or cleaning equipment, or talking quietly over meals of rations being eaten out of small metal tins. In one of the larger tents I saw an entire plethora of terminals and other high-tech equipment I didn’t recognize, with pegasi and griffins alike working on what looked like readouts of data. It reminded me of what I’d seen in Dr. Lemon Slice’s research tent in the Labor Guild’s camp outside the Saddlespring Ruin. Was Odessa doing the same thing here; researching this Ruin?

I imagined I’d find out soon enough, as Shattered Sky led us through the camp and towards the Ruin itself.

The entrance was flanked by a squad of guards in white power armor, their orange insect-like eyes expressionlessly watching us approach, but from their stances I noticed tension in the way their wings flexed and their scorpion tails flicked much like I imagined the ponies’ actual tails doing do. We barely got to the entrance when a roaring, angry voice called out from the camp behind us.

“Shattered Sky, you got some explaining to do, you blind sonuvadick!”

The figure that was approaching was a griffin. She was easily a head taller than Bernard had been. Her powerfully built lion’s body was covered with a sleek brown coat, while the eagle part of her was a dusty gray, a crest of feathers upon her head slicked back and tipped bright orange. Her eyes were a brown that matched her fur, and were flashing with ire. She wore no armor, but instead a tight fitting white and silver jacket with the same double lightning bolt and sword insignia that Shattered Sky wore. Most notable was that, slung over her back, was a weapon that almost made her seem small. It was a gatling gun, its many barrels running into a housing that carried two huge ammunition drums, a handle on both the top and back of the weapon clearly designed for a creature with hands... or in this case, talons. What caught my eye, however, wasn’t the size of the weapon, which this griffin carried with ease. No, it was the fact the weapon was made mostly from a bright silver material. The same way Gramzanber was, or Shattered Sky’s watch. Another artificial ARM. That meant this griffin wasn’t just an Odessa officer, but a member of that elite group Doc Sunday had mentioned; Cocytus.

Shattered Sky smiled at the female griffin as she stormed up to us, adjusting his glasses again as he saluted her with his other wing.

“Captain Francheska, just who I wished to see. I apologize for not being able to inform you of events, but I had to act quick-”

He was cut off as the griffin, Fancheska, got right in his face, one talon gripping his collar, the other pointing right on the tip of his nose.

“I don’t want to hear your bullshit excuses, Shattered! I want to know who the fuck scrambled my base’s com-lines! We were out of contact with our recon squads for twenty four fucking hours! I know you had something to do with it!”

“I haven’t a clue what you’re referring to,” said Shattered Sky, putting a hoof on Francheska’s chest and pushing her back, “I heard you were having communication troubles, but from what I understand it was a malfunction, nothing more. Besides, its afforded us the opportunity to reacquire Target 02.”

By now Francheska had given me and Trailblaze a once over, and her fierce gold eyes made me gulp slightly. Bernard hadn’t seemed all that intense, but with this griffin, I felt like I was being sized up for a roasting pit. The griffin scowled, though I don’t think it was directed at me.

“Is that why you jacked two of my Vertibucks and brought in the Varukisas? You have confirmation that Target 02 is in the area?”

Shattered Sky nodded, “She’s evaded us for now, but she and her insurgents are in the area without a doubt. The external cameras of the Vertibuck that engaged her can confirm it, as can the survivors of one of your recon squads.”

Francheska growled, “Corporal Glint’s team. I know. I just spoke with the corporal in the med-tent. His squad was trapped without aid due to our damned ‘communications malfunction’ and lost six good soldiers because of it!”

“Are... are they okay, the wounded ones in the squad?” I asked suddenly, unable to keep the concern out of my voice. Shattered Sky glared at me, but Francheska gave me a more... appraising look? Not friendly by any means, but still measuring. The griffin's eyes narrowed.

“You’re the tribal. The one aiding Target 02. Glint mentioned you,” Francheska said, tone even, “He says that without your help, none of them would have gotten out of that jam alive. For that, if nothing else, you have my thanks. I’ll give it to you straight, privates Nosedive and Spring Breeze are both in critical condition. Soon as our medics do what they can here they’ll be transferred to the Varukisas, but Nosedive is, at best, looking at partial bionic reconstruction, given his wings are, well, gone,” she shuddered, head feather’s ruffling, then continued, “Spring Breeze is going to need a new lung, assuming she survives the next twenty four hours. She’s lucky the armor piercing round went clean through and didn’t catch any other organs on the way out. Now... Shattered Sky, can I assume this is the reason you took one of my prisoners out without authorization as well as commandeered my Vertibucks?”

“Yes, Captain. Again I do apologize, but when I heard Private Spring Breeze’s transmission I didn’t think there was time to go through proper channels. I knew this tribal female had a connection to the buck, here, so I brought her along as leverage. And it worked. Target 02 escaped, yes, but with her personal warrior in our custody, along with his ARM, she’ll be that much easier to capture when we finally corner her.”

“Won’t be nearly as easy as you think,” I said, suppressing a growl, my mane’s hackles rising, “Even if you win, it’ll cost a lot of lives that don’t need to be lost! She’s not your enemy.”

“Again you speak in ignorance. Captain Francheska, I understand this is your operation, but surely you can’t object to a fellow Cocytus member being present for the continuation of the experiments?”

Francheska blew out a heavy grunt, suggesting she very much could object, in the same way one objected to a bad case of indigestion, but she waved a talon, backing up from Shattered Sky to give him space, “I am not convinced you didn’t do something to fuck with our com systems, just to try and bait Target 02. I’m having my people give that array a thorough look for signs of tampering. I get any proof you put my soldiers’ lives at risk for a shot at your own personal glory, I will have your fucking balls nailed to the Varukisas’s main guns!”

“Noted,” said Shattered Sky, “Now then, have there been any changes in the shrine?”

“Not in the last hour or two, no,” Francheska said with a huff, seeming to drop her ire at Shattered Sky as the conversation turned towards other matters, “The research team just ran through the last of the tribals we got, and I was about to get them loaded up to the Varukisas for transfer to Heimdal Gazzo. We didn’t get to this mare though, before you jacked her. And if this buck is from the same tribe, I guess he’d be a candidate as well.”

Trailblaze and I were ushered forward by Shattered Sky and the guards, and we trudged forward into the looming gateway into the Ruin. As we walked I thought over what the two Cocytus members had talked about, confused. If Francheska was angry at Shattered Sky about their communication gear being possibly sabotaged, what would’ve possesed Shattered Sky to do that? Francheska said something about baiting Arcaidia. So... what was the deal? Shattered Sky intentionally put Glint’s squad in danger, suspecting they’d send out a distress call, and that Arcaidia and me would come running?

Seemed like a large leap of logic on his part that we’d come to help a squad of enemy soldiers. He was right, true, but it was still a gamble, and why would Francheska risk her soldiers lives on such a risky gamble...

… Oooooh, she wouldn’t have. Well, that might explain why Shattered Sky would sabotage the communications gear, though it still seemed odd to me. Couldn’t he have just gone over Francheska’s head to whatever higher authority these Captains reported to in order to get his plan authorized? Unless he knew his superiors wouldn’t support his plan, and he was willing to risk reprisal to go ahead with it anyway but damaging the communication equipment. I had no idea for sure, but it was good to know that not all of Odessa’s members were working smoothly together. Might be something I could use to my advantage later.

“Longwalk,” Trailblaze leaned over, whispering to me, “Why do these ponies want Arcaidia so badly?”

“They, uh, eheh,” I began awkwardly, trying to decide how to even begin explaining this without it coming off as delusional, “They think Arcaidia’s part of some otherworldly invasion they’re sworn to prevent. I don’t get it either, but the crazy thing is, I’ve seen a few things that suggest Arcaidia actually is from some other world, and that there are other aliens, or xenos I guess, here too.”

Traiblaze’s reaction was about what I expected; her blue eyes blinking at me in disbelief. To be truthful I wasn’t sure how much I believed it either. The sheer insanity of my own words, and of the strange events of the past week and a half, were never clearer than when I saw that look in Trailblaze’s face. I mean, how does one truly react to the notion that their world isn’t the center of the universe, and that not only are there other forms of life out there in the realms beyond the sky, but that those life forms have been to your world before, and may even now be seeking to invade it? Not to mention one of these beings was a current companion and friend. I think it was all so above my intellectual capacity that I just ignored the whole thing and went with the flow. Trailblaze obviously wasn’t quite as flow-oriented as I.

“That’s insane,” she said, shaking her head, “All of these ponies are insane if they believe that! And... and they killed our tribesmates, and took the rest of us captive, because of these mad beliefs!?”

“Not as mad as you think,” said Shattered Sky, glaring at us sidelong, one of his wings gesturing at our new surroundings as we passed the threshold of the Ruins, “Tell me, who, or what, do you think built this structure?”

Trailblaze and I both took in the area we’d entered, our eyes sweeping over a neatly carved passageway large enough that a giant could step through this hall without worrying about headroom. The stone walls were perhaps once the natural confines of a cave, but had clearly been expertly hewn into smooth, straight walls, and a narrow wedged ceiling from which hung numerous pillars. The pillars were circular, and carved with the familiar geometric patterns I’d seen in the Ruin beneath Saddlespring. The floor beneath our hooves was the same, smoothly worked stone carved with dense clusters of geometric shapes that pulled at the eyes. The passage stretched ahead, lit by glowing crystal lamps set up on tripods, clearly set up by Odessa as the clean metal didn’t match the dust covered architecture around us. Up ahead I could see the hallway ended in a wall, with small, pony sized passages open on either side of a raised stone platform upon which was a massive bowl shaped object made out of a bronze metal. Upon the wall behind the bowl the stone was carved with intricate detail, depicting a creature emerging from a ocean of flames. The creature was a bird, its wings flickering like the flames it rose from, its long elegant neck ending in a regal, sharp avian head. Its beak was open, and the carving breathed with such life like detail I thought for certain I could hear the bird’s defiant shriek. More than the birds fiery appearance, I found it odd that upon its body it seemed to be wearing armor. It’s eyes glittered, and I realized some kind of red jewels were set in there.

Shattered Sky was still looking at Trailblaze, expecting an answer. Francheska was ignoring us, leading on towards the wall.

“I don’t know who built this place,” admitted Traiblaze, meeting Shattered Sky’s eyes glare for glare, lips curled back in a snarl, “And I don’t care! Ancient ponies, I guess, what does it matter!?”

It was Captain Francheska that chimed in next, drawing an irritated look from Shattered Sky.

“Shattered Sky, stop screwing around with them,” the griffin said, her lion’s tail flicking about as she cast her piercing orange gaze our way, “Look, you ponies don’t need to believe in what we do. Fact is, you’re our prisoners, so your opinions aren’t worth much. Just cooperate, and everything will go smoother for all of us.”

“What are you even researching here?” I asked, frowning, getting an uneasy feeling the closer we got to that wall with the carving, “What do you need us for?”

Francheska merely gave me a small shrug of her shoulders, gesturing with a talon towards the passage on the left side of the wall, “We’re checking to see if any of you tribals got the right ‘stuff’ we’re looking for to react to the special energies inside this place. I dont’ get all the egghead parts of it, but relax, long as you play it cool and don’t give us any trouble, you won’t be harmed. Immediately.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” growled Traiblaze.

“It means that your coltfriend there is directly implicated in the deaths of a lot of our soldiers,” said Francheska with a grim tone, “His aiding one of our squads will be taken into account, but he’s still going to be tried and judged for his role in the deaths he’s helped cause. Hate to say it, but much as I’m grateful for him helping out one of my teams, his chances of escaping a firing squad are slim.”

I wasn’t too surprised to hear that, though it left me with a cold, icy feeling in my gut, regardless. However, that feeling ended up doubling as Shattered Sky laughed in a light, friendly manner that was innately not-at-all friendly.

“Actually its far more likely this tribal will be sent to Research and Development for... thorough experimentation. Remember, he’s the only pony in our records that’s used a Veruni ARM for more than a few days without suffering fatal side effects,” the gray pegasus said, “They’ll likely take him apart piece by piece to find out how he accomplishes that feat.”

Traiblaze roared, spinning around and raising a hoof to strike. Shattered Sky paused, but didn’t move out of the way. He didn’t have to. The energy bands along the manacles on Trailblaze’s legs flared and she cried out, staggering from a virulent combination of pain and nausea. Yet even so, she didn’t fall down, and fixed Shattered Sky with burning eyes. He grinned at her.

“What? Did I say something to make you angry?” he asked with a look of enjoyment on his features.

“Fuck... you...” Traiblaze breathed.

Francheska was looking on with a hard look of annoyance, “Shattered, I told you to stop fucking with the... prisoners?”

The griffin had trailed off and was looking to her side in confusion. I followed her gaze, which landed on the bronze bowl. Where it had just seconds ago been cold and empty, now there were flickering red and orange flames within. I felt warmth bathing the area from those flames, and more than that, I felt a strange... I don’t know how to explain it properly; it was like that fire wasn’t just warming my hide, but something inside me, something deep at the center of me. It made me feel lighter. The pain of the days injuries faded, still there, but just... not important. Even the growing sea of worries, fears, and doubts churning in me was stilled, if only a little, but this warmth.

Trailblaze was staring into the fire with her mouth slightly open, her blue eyes wide and reflecting the flickering red embers. Even her tail, which had been swishing about in her anger at Shattered Sky, was now completely still. Her ears were perked a little forward, and I could see her leaning slightly towards the fire.

Captain Francheska was first to react, raising a talon and speaking into a device on her wrist that looked like a smaller, more compact Pip-Buck, “Doctor Headway, this is Captain Francheska; if your research team’s plots aren’t on your instruments then get them there now! We’re getting a reaction in the first floor!”

A scratchy female voice shakily replied, “Y-yes ma’am! We’ve got it on our monitors. We’re reading a clear eighteen percent increase in magic resonance from the ley line, and its still going up... now it’s over twenty percent! What’s going on ma’am? We don’t have any of the subjects in the harmonic chamber.”

Shattered Sky was giving us a measuring look while also eyeing the fire with a suspicious gaze, when he soon turned towards us, “Captain Francheska, I suggest getting additional guards in here.”

Francheska glanced at the two guards that had already been following us, her beak twisting in a smirk, “Don’t get your wings twisted, Shattered. The shrine’s ley line is reacting to something, but there’s no sign its dangerous. Besides, if it is, having more guards in here won’t help more than having two of Cocytus present. The two of us can handle any trouble. Chill. Now, you two, let’s get downstairs.”

Shattered Sky still had a sour cast to his features, his wings extended, but kept low as he glowered at the fire, taking the lead ahead of Francheska into the left passage. The two regular guards ushered Trailblaze and I along, though Trailblaze needed more than a few prods to get her moving. Francheska took up the rear as we entered the passageway, which turned out to be a wide, circular stone staircase leading down. As we walked I leaned my head low and close to Trailblaze, nuzzling her lightly.

“Trail? You okay?”

She blinked, shaking her head, “I’m... yeah, yeah, I’m good. Longwalk, did you... well, did you hear anything back there just now?”

I looked at her, searching her features. Her eyes were wide, not quite scared, but confused, and her lips were drawn in a tight, small frown. I knew her well enough to understand she was anxious. I felt a clenching inside me and wanted nothing more than to pull her into a hug; not that the manacles would allow that, even if there weren’t guards moving us forward. Much as I wanted to say something comforting I had to shake my head.

“No, I didn’t hear anything,” I hesitated a second before asking, “Did you?”

I watched Trailblaze take hold of herself, forcing her anxiousness away with a slow, heavy breath, and closing her eyes in concentration, “I don’t know. I thought I heard a voice. From the fire.”

“If that’s the case you might just be what we’ve been looking for,” spoke up Francheska, her predatory eyes now fixed on Trailblaze, “We’ll find out soon.”

I glared back at the griffin. I was getting tired of how cryptic Odessa could be. What could they possibly be trying to accomplish here that would justify killing and abduction!? And what was happening to Trailblaze!? She was supposed to be safe! They all where. My home, my family, wasn’t supposed to be mixed up in this insanity! I didn’t realize just how much of a pillar of strength that thought had been for me; the notion my home was safe and that I could go back there, once this crazy adventure was over. Now, home was gone, my tribe in danger, and my closest friend trapped right in the center of it with me.

Stay calm, I told myself with a deep breath, Frantic thinking is what gets you into trouble. Just... focus. Right now all you can do is observe, learn what you can about Odessa’s plans, and look for an opportunity.

The stairs led to a new hallway, though it was a short one that soon opened up into a wider square chamber. Inside were a number of Odessa ponies, about half a dozen bored looking guards, and an equal number of excited looking pones wearing tight fitting uniforms. In the center of the room was a stone tablet, upon its surface a dense cluster of symbols I couldn’t begin to guess the meaning of. Along the far wall was an archway that I could tell was once closed with thick metal doors, but those doors were now hanging open, the center of them containing a green crystal that looked... vaguely familiar. It took me a moment to remember that the crystal was a lot like the ones that had sealed the tomb of the Golem at the bottom of the Saddlespring Ruins.

“Dear Ancestors, you crazy ponies are trying to get everypony on the surface killed?” I blurted out, “There are things in these Ruins you don’t want coming out to say hi!”

A sharp pain on the back of my skull caused me to stumble, and the guard behind me grunted, “Shut it, dirt pony.”

“That’s enough of that,” said Francheska, putting a talon on the shoulder of the pony that’d struck me, to which he straightened up and saluted with a wing, taking a step back. She nodded at him, then turned to look at me, “As for you, we’re well aware of the dangers that exist inside ‘Ruins’, as you call them. This place has no active defense systems that we’ve detected, and if anything does happen to pop up that our ground forces can’t take care of, we have the Varukisas on standby to deal with it.”

“You’ll have to forgive his excitable nature, the poor ignorant colt,” said Shattered Sky, though his smug tone was lessened by his still uneasy stance, “His last foray into a place like this led to the incident with the S-class Relic. He probably thinks there’s another one down here.”

I turned a look towards him, “What makes you think there isn’t?”

Trailblaze was looking at us with confusion, not following what we were talking about, but keeping her peace. Francheska blew out a sound that was more growl than sigh.

“This place got excavated by Stable ponies well before we showed up here to claim it,” she said, “We’re just pursuing lines of research we couldn’t back then because we didn’t have the right... resources to do so. Now that we’ve got you and your tribe, its made this site valuable again.”

Waiting patiently for the conversation to die down a griffin in a white uniform that I noticed had a single lightning bolt and an hourglass instead of a sword approached, saluting Francheska quickly with one wing while holding up a portable terminal with a talon.

“Captain, we’ve warmed up the harmonics chamber in the main cavern. The tribals in there are getting restless. Should I get them moved up top for transfer to the Varukisas?”

“If they all tested negative, yeah, go ahead and get ready to transfer them,” said Francheska, then jabbed a thumb at me and Trailblaze, “We’ll be testing these two next. Start with the mare, she’s already exhibiting signs of a connection that are congruent with the data from the Baskar Tribe candidate.”

The other griffin got an excited, happy grin on his face as he looked at Trailblaze, but his eyes were filled with a sort of eagerness that reminded me more of the way Raider’s looked at potential victims than anything else. It made my hide crawl and I found myself moving next to Trailblaze, touching her hoof with mine. She returned the gesture while glaring fire at our captors. I wanted to shout my lungs out at these pegasi and griffins! I wanted answers, but any time I asked a question about what this was all about all I got were deflections and cryptic responses.

I think Trailblaze understood asking further questions was pointless as well, because we both were silent as we were marched past this room and beyond the archway. Beyond it we found ourselves following another hallway, one that had several adjoining hallways that we passed without stopping. Soon the end of the hallway opened up upon a large open cliff edge in a truly massive cavern. Pillars thicker than a Vertibuck ran from top to bottom of a hundred foot high ceiling. The curved walls were carved with dozens upon dozens of frescos that contained smaller versions of the raised bowls from upstairs, half of them already lit with flickering red fire. Down below us I saw the cliff went down about forty feet or so. At the bottom I saw a carved out opening in the cliff face from which a set of metal rails led to a simple platform that looked too old to be Odessa’s construction. I realized quickly that this was the end of one of Stable 104’s train lines. This was where they excavated to, all those years ago, and acquired all those artifacts they’d been studying in the Stable!

That also meant this had to have been where they found what they’d ended up calling the ‘Specimen’, that strange bipedal armored creature that carried a spear just like Gramzanber.

I felt a nagging sense of trepidation in me, looking over this cavern. I noticed Shattered Sky flick his tail, as if he was nervous as well, as he took wing and flew down the cliff, while Francheska and our escort of guards led us to a lift built into the side of the cliff that started to slowly lower us down into the basin of the cavern. I shifted on my hooves on the cramped, cold metal of the lift. The lower we went the more I got an uneasy feeling, and I wasn’t sure why. Glancing at Trailblaze, wondering if she was feeling the same, I noticed she was standing taller. She was no less tense, but there was a new energy to her, as if she felt bolstered by being in this place.

“Feeling twitchy?” Francheska suddenly asked me and I nearly jumped, grimacing as the griffin stared at me with unblinking orange eyes.

“N-no,” I said, not very convincingly. Francheksa grunted, patting the gatling gun on her back.

“It’s these,” she said, “ARMs. Inside a shrine like this anyone bound to an ARM starts to get to feeling like someone’s watching. Which isn’t inaccurate, I guess. The entities this shrine is built to venerate had no reason to love the ones who built ARMs, the Veruni. If you’re bound to the real deal, and not the half-powered replicas we’ve managed to create, I bet the effect is even worse, whether you got your ARM or not.”

As she spoke I paid closer attention to the feeling of nervousness in me, and noticed that it felt... connected, to the part of my mind where I felt the pressure that was Gramzanber’s presence. Even without the spear in my possession I still felt it, above us and somewhere behind, probably still in the Vertibuck we’d landed in, or maybe it’d been moved into the Odessa camp. Now that I was paying attention to it, I noticed my unease really did seem to be stemming from the pocket of mental pressure that represented Gramzanber. It was like the spear was trying to warn me.

“I... think you're right,” I said, shaking my head, “I feel like Gramzanber is telling me to be careful.”

Francheska laughed as the lift reached the ground of the cavern basin and we started walking towards the area’s center, “Gramzanber? What’s that name supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s just what the spear named itself,” I said.

Francheska blinked, “It named itself? That’s... okay, whatever, I’ll let the eggheads figure that one out.”

Her tone kind of made me want to ask her just what Odessa named it’s ARMs, but I was distracted by the sight of a number of new details about this cavern I hadn’t noticed until we were down in the center of it. First of all, the cavern floor was marked by dozens of craters and blast marks, some of them burned black, others as if the stone itself had melted away. There were similarly melted lines in the stone, or cut out gouges, some of which were larger than a pony’s body. Finally noticing a few bars of light sifting in through the dust strewn air I noticed that several sections of the ceiling and wall across the cavern were punctured by holes, one of the pillars even broken in half and collapsed. I was reminded of the pod we’d found Arcaidia in, but I didn’t see any such pods around, just holes in the cavern as if something had punched into this place long ago.

A battle was fought here, I thought, somehow knowing instinctively it was true. This was the site of a desperate fight, and... it all seemed familiar. I suddenly felt as if I’d been here before. I could almost hear it in my ear; the sound of gunfire and clashing blades, shouts and screams. I shook my head to clear it as we caught up with Shattered Sky at the center of the cavern.

Here there was a site where research equipment and terminals set up around a rise in the cavern, like a miniature hill. Atop this hill was a statue. Around twenty feet tall, this statue was, inch by inch, a perfect representation of the firey bird we’d seen in the mural on the top floor. Its massive wings spread, dripping flames, its head rising to the ceiling with its beak open in silent, defiant screech, the bird of fire was carved with every facet of its form given detail so fine I felt like the statue was breathing as I looked at it. The bird’s long tail swept behind it, also covered in stone carved to depict flames. Much like the wall carving we’d seen before, this bird was wearing armor, plates covering its chest, neck, and a curved angular helmet. Just looking at it sent a chill into my heart.

Next to the research area with its terminals and arrays of strange equipment, I noticed a single, sizeable device surrounded by ponies and a few griffins. The device was like a small, metal house, shaped like a disc, with thick windows making up half of its walled surface, the rest being reinforced metal. A single hydraulic door led into the device, which was currently empty, and a lot of the strange equipment being monitored by the Odessa ponies was linked to this device.

Just off to the side, under guard, was a group of ponies that weren’t Odessa, and from them came a shout.

“Trailblaze!”

A gray earth pony mare, with a black braided mane, waved at us from the grouping of ponies, though one of the Odessa guards was quick to move in and give her a smack with a hoof.

“Quiet, prisoner!”

The mare, who I recognized now as Whetstone, took the hit with a small grunt, and cracked a wry, sharp half-smile at the guard, “Ease off Mr. Overcompensation, I’m just greeting my friend.”

The guard Whetstone had just insulted face glowed red, lips twisting down in an enraged frown. He looked like he was about to draw his energy pistol before Francheska called out, “Its fine. Let the prisoners play catch-up for a sec while I go make sure the harmonics chamber is ready. Use force only if they get rowdy, corporal.”

That said she flew off and started to speak with a number of ponies near the large disc-shaped device, which by now I was assuming was this harmonics chamber they kept mentioning. Shattered Sky stood off to the side, looking on quietly, for which I was grateful. I was tired of listening to him by now. Our guards led us to the group of other guarded ponies; all members of my tribe, about eight in total. Looking among their number I saw plenty of faces I recognized, primarily Whetstone, but I didn’t see the face I was really looking for.

Wherever my mother was, she wasn’t here.

Trailblaze trotted up to Whetstone and they exchanged a quick embrace, the gray mare with a relieved smile on her face.

“Had me worried, the way they snatched you out of here without any explanation,” said Whetstone.

Trailblaze returned the smile, a hoof still on Whetstone’s withers, “The bastard over there,” she nodded at Shattered Sky, “He used me to get at Longwalk.”

Whetstone’s eyes turned towards me, her blinking in surprise.

“Longwalk! Holy spirits, it is you!” she said, still smiling, if the expression faded somewhat, “So these nutty pegasi got you too? Don’t see that cheerful little ball of blue energy here. Is she...?”

Whetstone left the question hanging in the air, her ears drooping a little at the implication of what she was asking. I quickly answered, “She’s okay, last I saw her. Um, how about you Whetstone? And everypony?”

I directed the question at the group in general, feeling... utterly out of place and suddenly very ashamed. My tribesmates were mostly silent, all looking at me with a mixture of expressions ranging from dumbfounded at my being there, to mistrustful and scornful. The only ones showing any happiness to see me were Trailblaze and Whetstone. The others, well I was still the colt with outsider blood. I wondered if any of them blamed me for what happened. Wouldn’t be an illogical leap to make. Odessa attacked only days after I fled with Arcaidia, from Hard Tack and some of the hunters trying to chase us down. Anypony might decide the two events were linked. Whetstone, in a move I’d always be grateful for, suddenly laughed and pulled me into a quick hug.

“Ancestors teats, you look like you’ve been chewed on by geckos and left for dead and you’re asking us if we’re okay? Longwalk, you dumb lug, c’mere!”

She playfully ruffled my mane with a hoof, hugging me tight to the point where I ended up groaning in pain as my accumulated injuries decided to inform me of how much they didn’t appreciate having pressure put on them. Fortunately for me Whetstone stopped with the hug almost as fast as it started when her manacles activated, causing her to yelp and double over.

“Whetstone!” Trailblaze was next to her friend as quickly as she could manage, “Curse it, don’t do that to yourself!”

On the ground, one hind leg twitching a little, Whetstone raised a hoof and said in a completely serious tone, “Worth it.”

I went over to help Trailblaze in getting Whetstone back to her hooves, shaking my head as I let out a short laugh, “Didn’t think you liked me enough to take physical pain just to give me a hug. You’re not a closet masochist are you?”

“Nah, I just wanted to see the look on their faces when I did that,” said Whetstone cheekily, nodding her head at the Odessa guards around us. Most of them were giving us either strange looks like they weren’t certain if they needed to subdue a bunch of madponies, or distasteful looks the way one might give to a bunch of foals one found playing in the mud. Despite what Whetstone said, I think I knew the real reason she gave me that friendly hug. Looking at the other members of my tribe I saw their own tension and mistrustful looks towards me softening. Whetstone broke that ice, accepting me, making it easier for the rest to do the same.

“Well, whatever your reasons, thanks,” I told her, “It’s... it’s good to be with you all again. Even under circumstances like this.”

Whetstone nickered, flicking one of her ears, “Not exactly the homecoming me and Trailblaze wanted to give you, yeah. We don’t even know where they took most of us. Trailblaze’s mother, yours, and my father, all of the older or really young members of the tribe aren’t here.”

Looking at the other of my tribe here I realized she was right; these were all younger ponies, either at the cusp of adulthood like myself and Trailblaze, or just a few years into their adult years. None of them were particularly old, nor were any of them truly colts or fillies. Whetstone’s father was actually Hawker, my mother’s friend who’d traveled with her alongside my father, and I wondered if maybe there was some connection there that’d explain why neither of them were here. Maybe my father, knowing them, intervened after Odessa took my tribe and had them sent somewhere safe? Well, it was a small thing to hope for, and right now had no way of finding out for sure.

“So,” Trailblaze said in a quieter voice, “Any idea how we might escape?”

Whetstone glanced around, lips pulling back in a contemplative twist, “Won’t be able to even think of getting away long as we have this magical doo-dads on our legs. We need these off, otherwise any escape will just turn into a very short, kinda sad attempt at walking fast.”

“There’s also, you know, all the guards,” mentioned one of the other tribe ponies, a stallion with a dusky black coat and brown mane; I recalled his name was Sure Throw.

The guards in question were giving us narrowed eyed looks, clearly not liking us whispering amongst ourselves, and I interjected quickly.

“We can’t do anything right now, but all of us should keep our eyes and ears keen. Listen and watch to everything our captors say and do. Somewhere, somehow, we’ll hear, or see something we can use to help us get away. Until then, we shouldn’t try any hasty moves... what?”

I asked the last bit as Whetstone and Trailblaze, in fact everypony among my tribe stared at me. I nervously shifted around, coughing, “What?” I repeated.

“Are you sure this is Longwalk?” asked Whetstone of Trailblaze, “He’s... making sense, and acting cautious.”

“I’m surprised myself,” said Trailblaze.

I chuckled, though it was a sighing chuckle, “Don’t get too used to it, I’m sure I’ll get a crazy idea in my head soon enough on how to escape and then it’ll be right back to me getting horrible injured and need you to bail me out of trouble. Still, I’d like to think I’ve learned a little about the value of caution.”

I was only half joking. I wanted desperately to find a way to get my friends and tribemates away from here. The only thing that seemed like a possibility at the moment was if we had a distraction, and a way to get these manacles off, we might be able to make a break for the train tunnel that’d lead back towards Stable 104. I wouldn’t lead my tribe all the way back there, to keep Stable 104 and Misty Glasses people safe from Odessa, but I could lead them to any of the side exits like the one we’d taken with the Ursa yesterday. From there we could disappear into the Wasteland and then try and find Arcaidia and my other friends while avoiding Odessa.

Only I couldn’t think of any way to get our manacles off and provide a large enough distraction that we could reach that tunnel without getting swarmed by the guards and the two Cocytus members in the room. I didn’t even know how the manacles worked, or if there was a way to remove them without an Odessa soldier's help. If I had Gramzanber maybe I could use its sharpness to cut the manacles off without triggering them, but then there was also the collars to consider. The collars were more than likely explosive, and there was no way to get those off without some kind of device, or having Arcaidia on hoof for some pin-point freezing.

“Alright, its time!” barked Captain Francheska, breaking me out of my thoughts as the tall griffin approached, looking at Trailblaze and I, “You two follow me. The rest of you, you’re going to follow these fine soldiers back to the surface, and cooperate with their instructions.”

“Where are you taking us?” asked Whetstone.

“Up,” said Francheska with a point of her talon upwards, “Try not to fall out of the Vertibuck, and enjoy the show. Not a lot of landbound get to check out one of our ships from the inside.”

There were grumbles and protests from among my tribesmates, but Trailblaze was fast to speak, addressing all of them in a loud, commanding tone that I recognized as being very similar to her mother’s, “LIsten up everypony, just go along with it for now! Our task now is to stay alive, whatever it takes, so don’t do anything foalish! Longwalk and I will see you all again, I promise you. Keep your heads high and remember we’re still a tribe, no matter what happens!”

Voices of protest soon became nods of acceptance as the others of my tribe listened, and took Trailblaze’s words to heart. I don’t know if it was because their circumstances shook them up bad enough they wanted any kind of leadership they could find, or if Trailblaze really was just that good (I certainly thought so), but either way one by one the ponies of my tribe let the Odessa guards lead them away. I hoped they’d also remember what I said about escape, and they’d keep their eyes and ears peeled for any tidbit of information that might aid us in escaping later.

“Heh, not bad talk for a landbound. If that motion for landbound auxiliary units ever passes might be you’d make a halfway decent officer,” said Francheksa, who gave Trailblaze an appraising gaze before motioning her towards the harmonics chamber, where the Odessa research team were buzzing about excitedly.

“As if I’d ever work for you monsters,” said Trailblaze, eyes flashing defiantly, “Let’s get this over with.”

Francheska shrugged, as if Trailblaze’s heated words meant nothing to her. I imagined they didn’t. I followed along quietly, casting a briefly look Shatterd Sky’s way as we walked. He was with the researchers, giving the statue of the giant bird a stony look behind glasses that were obscuring his eyes. He still seemed tense. Probably from that same feeling I was getting. However different our ARMs were, they both weren’t reacting well to whatever presence or energy was in this shrine.

Gramzanber was humming in my head now, and I could almost hear that familiar mare’s voice. What was she saying? I strained to hear, but just couldn’t quite make out the words, and the voice faded in and out anyway, making it hard to know if it was really hearing it at all.

At the harmonics chamber the researchers fitted Trailblaze with a series of little plastic nodes and tabs, along with a circlet affixed with a series of gems of various colors. As she was led to the huge hydraulic doors into the chamber I was led to the side where I could see and hear what was happening, but was kept out of the way.

“Test subject #22: Earth pony female, approximate age eighteen,” read off one of the Odessa pegasi, “Acquired from tribal group in southeast quadrant of Surface Sector 115, Settlement 198. Harmonics resonance chamber experiment beginning at 0948. Ley line status; energy reactions at 35%, highest recorded reaction since Baskar Experiment. Doctor Lieutenant Headway presiding.”

Next to the pegasus was a unicorn, one I didn’t recognize, but was wearing an Odessa uniform. She was somewhat short and thin, mousey brown coat supporting a neon pink mane, cut short and neat. Equally pink eyes regarded Trailblaze with enthusiastic energy. I noticed the unicorn mare’s cutie mark was a machine spouting sheafs of paper with numbers on it.

“Okay folks, this may well be it! No mistakes now, I want every shred of data we can get off of this. Miss, if you would, please start up the steps there.”

Trailblaze gave Doctor Headway a brief glare before holding her head up and marching up the metal steps. As she did so the hydraulic doors opened up with a smooth sound of oiled metal against metal and releasing air. Trailblaze went inside the chamber, the doors closing behind her.

“Now,” said Doctor Headway, reminding me creepily of Lemon Slice with the way she practically skipped over to a monitoring station of her own and speaking into a microphone, “Just stand in the center of the chamber and... relax. Really, all you have to do is stand there while we activate the chamber and get our data. Shouldn’t even feel a thing. None of your fellow tribe had any reaction.”

Even though Headway had just said my other tribesmates hadn’t been harmed in any way, I felt jittery as I watched Trailblaze stand in the center of the chamber, and the entire disc shaped device began to hum.

“What’s it doing?” I found myself asking.

It was Doctor Headway herself that energetically answered me, not even looking up from her monitor, “The harmonics resonance chamber is designed to bombard the subject inside with magical particles that probe them at a metaphysical level, then take samples of their own natural bio-arcane matrix and introduce it in a controlled manner to a specific metaphysical array the chamber is built near. In this case we’re seeing if your friend’s bio-arcane matrix creates a reaction with the ley line that exists inside this site. And before you ask, a ley line is a naturally occurring stream of energy that is attuned in various different ways to match with elemental or spiritual properties found in the planet and in living beings. Most ley lines are either very weak, or all but dead, but several, specifically in this region, seem to be stronger than others Odessa has located. We’ve learned that certain ponies, of particular bloodlines, seem to have a connection to these ley lines; hence today's experiment! Hopefully we’ll get a reaction from your friend and obtain a new Medi-”

“That’s enough Lieutenant,” said Francheska sternly, “Keep your focus on your instruments.”

“Oh! Sorry Captain, of course!” the unicorn mare said, shoving her nose back towards her monitor.

I could only continue watching, the entirety of Headway’s “explanation” going not just over my head, but soaring over it like a majestic, yet highly confusing, eagle. It mostly translated in my head to; We’re doing a magic thing, with this magic thing, to learn stuff about another magic thing. Unicorns. Bah.

As seconds crawled by the harmonics chamber’s buzz intensified, and I saw that inside it the air was being filled with pulsing waves of white and blue light. I gulped, fearing for Trailblaze’s safety, but she didn’t seem to be getting harmed by the energy around her and flowing over her. My friend was starting to lose some of her confidence and composure though, visibly trying to stay still despite her ears flattening against her head and her eyes looking about nervously.

“Bio-arcane matrix acquired from subject,” said one of the researchers, “Confirming gene to meta-gene patterns. Confirmed match with projected data. Beginning resonance sequence.”

“Good, good, good!” said Headway, bouncing on her hooves, “How’s the ley line?”

“Still holdong at 35%... wait, wait! We’re getting a spike in energy readings... It’s doubled to 70%!”

“What!? That fast!? But it can’t-”

Suddenly the cavern shook. Not violently, but enough to rattle a few electronics and make a few ponies shift on their hooves. The air abruptly felt warmer as all of the braziers set up in the frescos in the cavern walls burst into crimson and orange fire. Captain Francheska frowned, and flew over to Headway, while Shattered Sky backed away from the harmonics chamber, where the energy inside was turning from white to a distinct flaming red.

“Lieutenant, what’s happening?” asked Francheska.

“I-I-I don’t know! The last time we acquired a Medium the readings never went above 50%, but that was just one time! Its the only data we have on this kind of event! The Guardian is reacting! Its just much stronger than the last record we have!”

“Doctor,” said one of the researchers, “The energy has spiked again; it’s at 120%!”

“Skies above, we should consider evacuating the area,” breathed Headway, backing away with her eyes wide, and jaw hanging open as the statue of the giant bird literally exploded into bright orange and red flames.

"Trailblaze!” I screamed, seeing my friend inside the chamber as the fiery energy inside started to flow into her. She shuddered, but otherwise didn’t move, and as the energy entered her body, it became wreathed in fire so bright I was having a hard time making out anything more than her outline. I screamed her name again, running for the door, forgetting the manacles too late as pain and nausea wracked through me, dropping me to the ground.

“Trail....” I tried to pull myself to my hooves, but felt heat and an unrivaled force press upon my mind. Then a voice tore through me, loud, deep, and roaring like a firestorm.

She is not yours, warrior of the enemy. She is mine. If she passes her test. Fear not, however, for you too shall be tested by my flames.

I looked up, and saw the harmonics chamber explode outward in fire, the raging red flames washing over me in a blast of all consuming heat and light.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added: Force Adept (Rank 1) - You’re experience with your ARM has made you better at retaining Force energy in your body. You now keep a percentile amount of your Force Gauge equal to twice your character level, even when not in combat. Nifty!

Bonus Ex-File: B.B’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats

STR = 5
PER = 7
END = 4
CHA = 6
INT = 6
AGI = 7
LUK = 5

Author's Note

Longwalk just can't catch a break, can he? If he's not getting shafted by ponies he's trying to help, his tribe is getting kidnapped. This keeps snowballing at this rate and he's going to need a industrial sized plow just to get out his front door. I digress though, this was a fun chapter to write, if only because I like chase scenes, and I think I might've given Longwalk that grapple device just to have a reason to dangle him from a Vertibuck. For an earth pony Longwalk seems to have a thing for heights; must be his pegasi heritage messing with his good earth pony sense. Anywho's, once more I need to thank our usual suspects; KKat for being the one that inspired so many of us to tap into our own creativity, and doomande for taking the time to pre-read for my too-long chapters, and all of you fine folk who keep reading along! As always, feel free to comment, question, critique, and just say hi. 'Till next time folks... Oh, wait, almost forgot!

Check it out!

A particularly cool fellow over on DeviantArt did this for me as part of a commission deal he had going involving copious amounts of Mountain Dew. Considering I drink the stuff like water, I totally found it an equitable exchange. Good to see the entire team together like that. So 'till next time folks... Oh, wait, almost forgot!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Chapter 17: The End of the Beginning (Part 1 of 2)

Chapter 17: The End of the Beginning (Part 1 of 2)

The rhythmic, monotonous whine of the ship’s internal alarm and the occasional rumble of an explosion, either deep and resonate from something internal, or echoing and faint from one that was external, were the only sounds to accompany our hoofbeats as my tribesmates and I galloped down the sterile metal hallways of the Odessa airship, Varukisas.

Each of the ponies beside me wore different expressions, all tinged with varying degrees of anxiety, fear, and excitement. They knew the danger we were in, and that our escape hinged on a combination of speed and reliance on what little information of the ship’s interior that I knew. Many of my fellow tribal’s gave me nervous glances as we moved, except for Trailblaze whose eyes were unwaveringly focused ahead, and Whetstone who looked at me with less nervousness and instead wore an encouraging grin.

“Think I’m getting now why Trail was always following you off places,” Whetstone said to me as we reached the T-junction hallway where the door Sunset said had my gear behind it was located, “You just get mixed up in the most interesting situations, Long.”

“Not by choice!” I said as I reached over with the keycard I’d taken off Sunset and slipped it through the pad built into the side of the door. At Trailblaze’s dry look I amended, “Not always by choice.”

Whetstone just chuckled, one elbow nudging Trailblaze’s flank, “You’re right, Trail, he needs a pony to keep an eye on him, otherwise he’d get himself hopelessly in over his head.”

As the door slid open with a soft hum I gave them both a sidelong glare, “Hey, I’m totally capable of taking care of myself-”

My sentence was halted mid-way as an Odessa soldier who’d been waiting on the other side of the door yelped at seeing me and reached for a holstered energy pistol at her side, drew it, and fired in almost the same motion. Fortunately the thin red energy beam shot wide in the Odessa mare’s haste to just draw and fire, and I managed to duck away from her follow up shot, which clipped one of my tribe in the flank. The tribal stallion in question, a dark brown fellow I remembered was named Rock Roller, cried out as the beam singed his coat and fell back against the wall. Meanwhile Trailblaze and Whetstone both burst into movement, surging into the room, and I followed haphazardly after I recovered my wits.

The room was a little larger than the brig, a roughly rectangular space with a curved far wall, lined with numerous wide lockers. In the middle of the room a small desk and terminal set up faced the door, and this was where the Odessa pegasus mare had been standing at when I’d opened the door. She, a purple coated mare with a short military cut green mane and matching green eyes, was wearing just a simple set of light combat armor and a cap, clearly not one of the security forces on the ship, had come around her desk and had wide, fearful eyes as she fired at Whetstone and Trailblaze rushing her.

Red beams snapped by my friends, one scoring a mark on Trailblaze’s shoulder but that barely slowed Trailblaze down as she body slammed fully into the Odessa mare with a wet, meaty smack. The pegasus mare yelped in pain and I heard a snap of bone as one of her wings smashed into the lockers she’d been thrown against by Trailblaze’s hit. Whetstone skidded to a halt by the desk, looking around, possibly for a weapon. Trailblaze stood where she was, her eyes narrowed at the pegasus mare, the Odessa soldier struggling to stand and whimpering in pain from her broken wing.

I saw waves of heat roll off of Trailblaze’s body as she seemed to raise a hoof without thinking about it, and to my shock I saw fire wreath the hoof, yellow and bright. The Odessa mare had just barely gotten to her hooves and looked up to see Trailblaze, eyes widening in fear as she looked about for her gun, which she’d dropped when Trailblaze had hit her.

I moved fast, following my instincts as I rushed up behind Trailblaze and without really thinking about it grabbed her outstretched arm and pulled it up. Fire lanced into the ceiling, fire that would’ve burned the Odessa mare alive. Instead the fire scorched my own arm and I grunted in pain, releasing Trailblaze’s arm and backing up a step reflexively. Trailblaze turned her fierce blue eyes on me and I saw the fire reflected there, but her expression softened almost immediately as she looked at me.

“Longwalk? What...” she glanced at her arm, “What was I-”

“One sec,” I said and turned to rush at the Odessa mare, who was scrambling for her gun now that she saw where it’d fallen. I threw myself on her, and we wrestled on the ground, rolling about in a small flurry of scrambling, kicking hooves. She was rather strong for her slight frame, but my advantage of weight was solid. Helped the pegasus had a broken wing and the pain of it was weakening her attempts to break free of my grasp.

“Longwalk, hold her up!” said Whetstone, coming up to us with the energy pistol in her mouth.

“Wait, don’t kill her,” I said, and Whetstone laughed.

“Relax, just hold her. Trust me.”

I was fearful and worried as to what Whetstone was intending. If I could get my tribemates off this ship without killing anypony that was the preference, though a practical part of me realized that it was almost inevitable it’d happen if we ran into too many Odessa ponies on our way out. But Whetstone’s calm, disarming smile was enough to calm me. I decided to trust her, and with a wrench of my forehooves, which were now locked under the Odessa pegasus’ own forelegs and behind her head, I lifted the soldier up.

Whetstone came in and after a second of giving the purple pegasus a judging look she licked her lips and gave the Odessa mare a solid whack across the temple with the flat end of the boxy energy pistol. The mare went still in my arms and I rolled her off me, checking briefly to make sure she was still breathing, but not moving. Convinced she was unconscious I looked at at Whetstone, who was smiling broadly and offering me a hoof.

“Thanks,” I said, taking her hoof.

“Hey, don’t think anything of it,” Whetstone said with a shrug as she pulled me up, “Not interested in killing anypony unless I got no choice. Besides, couldn’t pass up a chance to try knocking a pony out in one hit. Kinda miffed that metal mare didn’t go down; that was my best punch!”

She examined the pistol in her mouth, spitting it out onto a hoof to look at it curiously, “Nifty little thing.”

She grinned at the unconscious Odessa mare and went over, snatching the holster off the mare’s uniform, “Yoink! I claim this loot in the name of me!”

I just chuckled at her as she started to divest the Odessa mare of her light armor, complete with side pouches probably containing ammo and possibly other useful things. I would’ve advised her to be careful where she pointed the energy pistol, but I was distracted by Trailblaze, who was staring at the unconscious pegasus mare with a worried frown.

I came up to her and looked her in the eye, “You okay?”

“I would’ve killed her,” Trailblaze said, voice calm, “I didn’t even think about it. I just raised my hoof and the fire was there, and I would’ve used it to burn her alive if you hadn’t stopped me...”

“Don’t worry about it now,” I said, looking around the room, sensing where Gramzanber was from among the numerous lockers and side compartments located around the walls, “We can talk about it once we’re gone from this place.”

“I’m not worried about it,” she said, which caused me to give her a blinking, surprised expression as she stared at me. I sensed Gramzanber’s distinct pressure behind a sturdy, thick locker in one corner of the room, but I couldn't go to it yet, unable to look away from Trailblaze. Her voice had been steady, unwavering, and in her eyes I saw a tightness around the edges, as if there were a million thoughts trying to push their way out but were being kept under tight control.

“Longwalk, I want... no, I need you not to jump in like that,” she said, her voice still that disturbing calm, “I get why you did it. I do. But I can’t risk losing you or anypony else in a fight because you tried to hold me back. My only concern has to be getting all of us out of here alive. I don’t have any weapons to use except this fire. I don’t want to kill ponies this way, but I will to protect all of you. If I have to, I’m going to burn us a way to freedom, through anything, or anypony, that gets in our way.”

The fire returned to her eyes and I felt the heat washing off her, making sweat bead upon my forehead, and I took a step back from my best friend. Her voice burned with an inner passion that was scalding.

“So please, Longwalk... don’t stop me again.”

My mouth opened, but no words came out. I just nodded. What could I even begin to say to that? Certainly nothing that wouldn’t take far too long to say given our present circumstances. Instead I resolved to just make sure to remove as many obstacles in our path as possible, and as fast as possible, myself so that Trailblaze wouldn’t have to use that fire inside her. I didn’t know if this intensity inside Trailblaze was truly her own feelings or if her connection to the Guardian of Fire was doing something to her, but I didn’t like the change I was seeing. Or was it a change? Was Trailblaze always like this, and it was just the circumstances bringing out a part of her our peaceful life back home hadn’t allowed to spring to the surface? There was no way to be sure, but I reaffirmed a promise to myself that I’d do everything I could to make sure Trailblaze didn’t have to go to such extremes to protect us.

As I trotted towards the locker I sensed Gramzanber inside. I raised a hoof to touch it, but a instinctual warning popped off in my head and I hesitated. Paying close attention as I very slowly and carefully moved my hoof closer to the container’s surface I saw the hairs of my fetlock raise, and I saw a small glimmer of energy course over the metal’s surface. Some kind of barrier, then. No telling what would happen if I touched it, and I wasn’t about to find out, having learned my lesson on that count back in Stable 104. After a second or two of thought I turned to look at Whetstone, who was getting into the Odessa mare’s armor.

“Hey Whetstone, check those pockets, and look for anything that looks like the keycard we took off Sunset,” I said, swinging around and heading for the terminal on the desk.

Outside in the hallway Trailblaze had trotted over to check on Rock Roller’s wound, and I sent a silent prayer to the Ancestor spirits that no more Odessa soldiers would arrive while I figured out how to get my gear out of this room. Fearful visions of Trailblaze roasting pegasi and griffin in droves fueled my speed as I leapt in front of the terminal, and despite my trepidation at my poor track record at using technology of any kind, started trying to figure out how to open the locker containing my ARM.

The menu system was straightforward at least, and with a few tentative keystrokes I found a menu list that showed various ‘Secure Containers’ and their contents. At a guess I imagined this room was an armory of some sort, as most the containers were listed to have held weapons and armor, but were all now quite empty. Probably because the attack on the ship the security ponies emptied out their gear to go fight. Several of the larger containers were listed as ‘Highly Secure Storage’ and one of them showed a listing of ‘Prisoner Accoutrements’.

Unfortunately when I selected that container the terminal asked for a password, and I stared blankly at the screen, at a loss as to how to proceed. I had zero clue how to even begin to guess the password, or otherwise get the terminal to do what I wanted. I glanced up at Whetstone hopefully as the mare trotted beside me. The Odessa mare’s armor was tight on Whetstone’s more bulky frame, but she didn’t seem to mind, her tail swishing in pleasure as she came up and looked at the terminal.

“So we getting your stuff or what, Long?”

“I, uh, don’t know. The container with my things in it is locked solid and protected by a magic barrier. This terminal wants a password to open the container. Was kind of hoping you found something in your newly acquired pockets that’d help.”

“Nope!” said Whetstone, reaching into the pockets and pulling out various objects, things I recognized as magic gems to reload the energy pistol, a health potion, a blackened knife, what looked like a locket of some kind, and a small green packet that read ‘Cloudmint Bubblegum!’.

Looking the items over I nodded towards the potion, “That heals wounds. Rock Roller could probably use it. Keep the gems, they reload the gun. Don’t know what bubblegum is.”

Whetstone nodded, snatching up the potion and trotting out to where Trailblaze was examining Rock Roller’s burned flesh, which at this point I could smell clearly despite the small wound. Burned pony had a distinct scent to it, no matter how small, and I felt a chill in my neck, wondering if, by the end of this day, I’d smell it again. No, I had to believe we could get away from here without Trailblaze having to do that. I just had to move fast.

On impulse I picked up the locket, a small bronze heart-shaped affair, and clicked it open. Inside was a picture of the purple pegasus mare, hugging an embarrassed looking gray stallion, probably because the mare was nuzzling his cheek and clearly enjoying his embarrassment. It was a simple, silly picture, and it wasn’t clear if the two were a couple, or perhaps siblings, but either way I was glad I’d managed to stop Trailblaze. For now. Damn it. Why couldn’t Odessa had just left my tribe alone?

Closing the locket I set it aside in frustration, but out of the corner of my eye I saw that on the back of it something was written.

Wingstrider & Lemon Loops

Always thinking of you

I sighed, looking at the unconscious mare, and noticing the yellow, rounded fruit cutie mark on her flank. I decided I’d leave the locket with her before I left... assuming I could figure out how to get Gramzanber out of that container! Frustrated, and without any better idea, I jabbed at the keys and entered in the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be the first name on the locket.

The screen blinked after I entered ‘Wingstrider’ and instantly the icons changed to show a simple menu for the container with my gear in it with a ‘Open/Close’ command. I nearly fell over at the sight, realizing that somepony hadn’t really thought hard about their password, apparently using their special somepony’s name. I glanced at the unconscious Lemon Loops.

“Looks like its a lucky day for both of us, Lemon. You don’t get killed, and I get my stuff back. Win for everypony!”

I wasted not a second more, clicking the ‘Open’ command, tossing the locket onto Lemon Loops’ comatose form as I galloped over to the large container. It’d made a loud hissing click and I saw circular protrusions on its surface twist about, and the sound of what might’ve been heavy bolts unlocking before a seam down the center of the container swung open. Seeing the thickness of the container’s doors I realized I never would’ve been able to force this thing open, not without something like Gramzanber itself to do the cutting, and even then it would’ve taken awhile.

The opened container was spacious on the inside, with both sides of the open door having notches where my saddlebags and armor were sorted, along with a shelf where I saw my Pip-Buck and Grapple attachment on the bottom. In the main compartment Gramzanber was held against what looked like some kind of metal disc. When it touched it there was resistance from some kind of invisible force as I pulled Gramzanber off the metal discs, not strong enough to stop my determined effort but enough that they held the spear upright.

I felt instantly better with the spear in my possession, and breathed easier.

“Longwalk, hurry up will you? You got what you need or what?” said one of my tribesmates, an off white mare with a brown mane named... was it Snowdrift? I felt bad, not being sure of all the names of my tribe, but there it was. I was pretty sure her name was Snowdrift. She was joined by Whetstone who came back in.

“Ooooh,” Whetstone gave an appreciative smile, “I see you got that ridiculously over sized and shiny spear back! What’s the story with that anyway?”

“Tell you later when we’re safe,” I said, hastily pulling my other stuff out and struggling to quickly don my armor and saddlebags. I looked my Pip-Buck over and tried to recall if I needed any special tools to put it back on, or if that was just needed for the purpose of removing it. The cuff was open, at any rate. Shrugging, I placed it on my left foreleg and clamped the cuff closed. There was a snipping click and I felt the device tighten around my leg, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“So you just needs special tools to get them off,” I said aloud, chuckling as I reattached the Grapple to the universal device port the spider ponies back in Stable 104. Whetstone broke out into giggles and I glanced at her.

“Sorry, sorry, just, uh, yeah, I guess someponies do need ‘special tools’ to get off, but I didn’t know you were into that kind of thing.”

At her words I found my eyes widening to pools and heat rushing across my face, but Whetstone just nudged me with a hoof, smiling conspiratorially, “Hey, I’m not judging, to each their own, right? Still, my advice is always check with a mare first if she’s into that before making a move.”

“Whetstone, you’re impossible,” I said, finishing attaching my saddlebags over my hastily donned armor and making sure all the straps were firmly tightened.

Whetstone just grinned, “I try. Now, what do say we get off this flying contraption and get our hooves back on solid ground?”

I could only nod in agreement with her as we trotted back out into the hallway where our fellow tribesmates were nervously gathered, watching the different corridors. So far we’d been lucky, with nopony coming our way. Rock Roller was looking better, back on his hooves, the smaller state of his wound indicating Trailblaze had given him the healing potion.

“Can we go now?” asked Snowdrift, her ears flat against her head as she looked left and right down the hallways, “Do we even know where we’re going?”

“I do,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster as I moved down the corridor back towards where the brig was, “We need to backtrack this way, then hang left, assuming there’s the same kind of T-junction at the other side of the ship. From there there should be an elevator that’ll take us to a hangar with escape pods we can use.”

“Elevator? What’s that?” asked Snowdrift.

“Like a, uh, big metal box that goes up and down.”

At the mare’s utterly confused look I just sighed, “Just trust me, it’ll be safe.”

Trailblaze came up next to me, eyeing Whetstone and the pistol she carried, “Can you use that?”

Whetstone rolled her shoulders, loosening them as if she was getting ready for a hoof fight... which she probably was, “Can’t be too hard. Point it at the bad ponies, and pull this little trigger thing. I got it.”

“Then don’t hesitate,” said Trailblaze firmly, “I want you guarding our rear, and anypony or anything shows its head trying to pursue us, shoot first...” she hesitated a second, then added, “But don’t take any unneeded risks. Keep up with us.”

“No worries there, if its comes to us being chased and I need to make a desperate last-stand to make sure you all have time to escape... I expect you to turn around and save me! This flank is way too well toned to be for me to waste it dying before it’s got a chance to get all old and wrinkly!”

Trailblaze sighed, but in a way that was warm and filled with fondness, and I glanced sidelong at the pair out of the corner of my eye as Traiblaze and Whetstone shared a close hug, my eyebrow raising slightly. That hug... was certainly very friendly. I shook my head, putting it out of my mind as I took the lead once more and we started a fast gallop down the hallway we’d come from.

Past the brig the hallway was all but identical to the one we’d just used, and as expected I saw a T-junction ahead in this direction as well. A similar metal door was built into the wall of the T-junction, and I briefly wondered if it led to a similar armory as the one we were just in, but didn’t have any intention of trying to open it up and find out, despite my curiosity. I skidded along the smooth metal deck, almost tripping over myself in my hastiness to keep my speed up. I was a little ahead of everypony, intentionally trying to put a bit of distance between myself and the group. The reason for this paid off as I rushed around the corner and up ahead saw a pair of Odessa pegasi milling outside another door on the left side of the hallway.

They were wearing simple combat armor, both armed with boxy energy rifles, a stallion and a mare, the former a pinkish hue, and the later a near jet black. Hearing the clamour I’d made coming around the turn in the hall these two guards had already been looking my way, and upon seeing me I saw both pegasi’s eyes open wide.

“H-halt!” the mare said, aiming her rifle, “Stop where you are or I’ll fire!”

“Fuck it, just shoot him!” growled the stallion, also raising his weapon.

I grit my teeth and lowered my head, not slowing down. Indeed, I speed up my gallop, barreling forward full tilt as both pegasi opened fire. The corridor was narrow, true, but both of these soldiers were clearly jittery from the attack on the ship, and hadn’t expected to see me charging at them. Their aim was still good though, one red beam slicing by one of my legs, and another coming close to my neck. My armor absorbed one, and a slight tilt of Gramzanber put the silver spear in way to deflect the other. But the pegasi recovered fast from their shock and adjusted their aim, the mare flapping backwards with her wings and reaching to the wall and pressing a button, while the stallion pulled out one of those metal barricades from the other wall and took cover behind it while snapping another shot off at me.

That shot went wide, but before I could reach the two pegasi a turret popped down from the ceiling behind the mare, probably activated when she’d hit the button on the wall. The burning rain of red bolts from that turret was too much for me to dodge, even as I tried to juke in my gallop. Pain seared through me as my armor tried to ablate most of the heat, but some of those deadly energy bolts seared past golden gecko hide and armored fabric to burn my fur and flesh. Still I charged on, hearing my tribesmates not far behind me.

I was intent on dealing with these threats before Trailblaze could! I wasn’t letting my friend become a killer today. Not if I could help it.

Knowing the turret needed to be gone now I aimed my Grapple at it, mentally activated S.A.T.S and targeted the barrel. With a decent chance to hit flashing numerically next to the turret (how did the Pip-Buck get these numbers anyway?) I let fly and the Grapple snapped around the turret’s block shaped barrel. Twisting my hoof to have the Grapple’s magic lessen the turret’s weight I turned and yanked with all of my strength. Lightened by magic, the turret was much easier to tear out of its housing than it would’ve been normally, and it came out with a shower of sparks and smoke. A little luck had it bounce off the pegasus mare who’d been trying to line up a shot on me, causing her to squeal and hit the ground in a heap.

Not wasting any time I recalled the Grapple and leapt forward towards the barricade. The pegasus stallion popped up, ready to fire, but found me practically in his face. He yelped and flapped backwards, but not fast enough. A quick slice from Gramzanber had his rifle falling into two clean halves, which caused the pegasus to look at me in shock before he scrambled for a pistol in a shoulder holster. But his second of hesitation and fear gave me more than enough time to rush forward over the barricade and smash the flat of Gramzanber across his face, sending him smacking to the wall.

From his groan he was dazed, but not down, but before I could move to finish knocking him out another red beam sizzled by my face. The black mare had recovered from the turret hitting her in the back and was standing once more, firing her rifle at me. I turned to use Gramzanber as a shield, but a bolt of orange fire flew past me. The fire bolt hit the pegasus mare’s outstretched wing and bust it into orange flames. The mare’s scream was piercing, a wrenching cry of pain that I could all too well empathize with, remembering Moa Gualt’s flames burning me.

I didn’t need to look behind me to know Trailblaze had caught up and had fired that bolt. Quickly, not sparing any time, I rushed the pegasus mare, who was far too busy screaming about her burning wing to notice me. Reaching her, I swept her legs out from under her with the back end of Gramzanber’s shaft, then aimed a blow with my hoof, connecting solid with the side of her face. She crumpled, feebly trying to reach for her pistol, but another blow from me knocked her out cold. Her wing was still on fire, though.

I didn’t have time to immediately deal with that, turning to take care of the pegasus stallion, but found my tribemates already had beaten me to that punch. Trailblaze and Rock Roller, along with a larger, more burly murky blue mare whose name I believe was Carving Stone, had all jumped upon the Odessa soldier. Hooves rose and fell and by the time they were done I couldn’t be entirely sure if the stallion was alive, but he certainly wasn’t going to be getting up again any time soon.

Sighing I turned back to the fallen pegasus mare, and did my best to pat out the flames on her wing. The flames died down, but her wing was a blistered, featherless, charred mess. I couldn’t imagine the kind of pain she was going to be in when she woke up, and sent a silent prayer to the Ancestor Spirits for her.

I stepped away from the mare to turn and find Trailblaze looking at me, a hard to read look on her face. She looked down at the pegasus, then at me, and without a word turned and began galloping down the hallway, making a simple whistling call that any hunter in our tribe would recognize as the signal to form up and follow. Everypony got moving, and I pulled ahead of the herd to gallop next to Trailblaze.

“Not going to try running ahead again?” she asked.

“The elevator isn’t much farther,” I said, “Wouldn’t matter to run ahead now.”

My words proved true as we came around to an area identical to the room with the three elevator doors that Sunset had taken me to on the opposite side of the ship. Remembering which elevator had taken us down to the hangar I approached it and hit the button, hoping there wouldn’t be any security systems that kept it locked or anything. If there had been Sunset would’ve said so, wouldn't she? Well, the button had lit up, which I figured was probably a good sign.

As we stood there, my tribesmates and I, waiting for the elevator to arrive, I heard a blast from nearby, deafening with the sound of tearing metal. Wind whipped around my mane and the deck lurched so hard that I fell over and rolled into the wall. Amid the cries of my tribesmates I heard Whetstone call out, “Holy Ancestors cocks up my-” before another ripping blast of metal sounded and drowned out the mare’s curse.

It took me a second to get my bearings. Trailblaze was already back on her hooves, but most of my tribesmates were on the floor, dazed, except Whetstone, who was... sliding across the slanted floor towards a giant gaping hole that had been ripped in the side of the hull of the airship. Outside the hole I saw a being that I could only assume was a Golem. It had the same strangely metallic, bipedal appearance of the red Golem from Saddlespring, and the darker brown Golem Odessa had in its hangar. This one, however, had a faded blue color. Its form and shape were slimmer, sleeker than the Golems I’d seen before, though still large, easily three or four times the size of a pony. Which actually put it at about half the size of the other Golems I’d seen, I realized. The Golem had a strange pair of swept back crest from the side of its dainty, almost feminine head. Two wings, pearly white, and formed from a single crescent from which broad, blade-like protrusions spread, sprouted from the back of what looked like an armored skirt around the Golem’s blade shaped legs. Its arms were nothing more than a pair of drill shaped appendages, made from a metal much darker than the rest of the Golem, and from the way one of the drills was still spinning with a high whining noise, half tearing through the metal of the hull, I could guess this Golem had just rammed the ship and ripped open the hole Whetstone was now sliding towards.

The Golem wasn’t looking at her, through, its gem-like, glowing white eyes were focused solely on me.

“G-guys! Little help here!” cried Whetstone, her hooves scrambling to try and find purchase on the smooth deck.

I immediately aimed my Grapple, firing it her way, while at the same moment the Golem aimed its other drill arm into the hole it’d made, pointing its tip at me. Even as my Grapple line flew past Whetstone, letting her wrap a hoof around the wire line, the Golem’s drill split open in four segments, revealing a long, smooth barrel concealed inside. White light gathered in it, aimed squarely at me, but I couldn’t possibly move out of the way, not without risking Whetstone losing her grip on my Grapple wire.

I almost decided to try throwing Gramzanber, but Trailblaze beat me to the punch. Her eyes flashed with anger as heat waves flowed around her, and she outstretched a hoof. A concentrated jet of fire launched out, red and orange flames, blasted into the Golem’s arm. I saw the flames wash over the armor, not seeming to do much damage, but the blast forced the arm to the side at just the moment it fired a thin, white beam of energy that tore through one of the elevator doors behind me.

With a fast twist of my wrist I activated the Grapple’s retrieval, pulling Whetstone back towards me. At the same time whoever was driving the airship got their act together and righted the vessel, the deck getting back to a more level state. The Golem backed up and I saw it’s wings and legs projecting small white pulsing flames, presumably part of how it flew, and started to give chase. At that moment though I saw two pegasi fly by; Shattered Sky and Hammerfall.

Shattered Sky fired several shots from his pistol into the Golem’s head, his form vanishing and reappearing several times at random angles to avoid the beams of white energy the Golem fired back at him. Hammerfall came in from below, bellowing a laugh I could hear over the wind shear. His massive tooth-bladed weapon was making a high whining noise, its spinning teeth seeming wreathed in crackling blue energy as Hammerfall slashed in a spinning arc, cutting a sparking line across the Golem’s armored chest. Their attacks, much like Trailblaze’s fire, only seemed to do superficial damage but the Golem abandoned trying to catch up to the hole leading to me, and instead wheeled about in mid-air with speed and maneuverability far outstripping something of its size, and started to engage the two Cocytus members. In seconds the airship had gone past where the three battled, but I could tell the ship was banking around to circle the fight, and I could hear the distant sound of gunfire, making me believe the ship’s weapons were trying to target the Golem, and possibly other things flying outside.

“Is this how you’re days have normally been going since leaving?” asked Whetstone, climbing to her shaking hooves, and giving me a grateful smile as the Grapple retracted back into its device. I just gave her a helpless shrug.

“Today’s been a bit more hectic than most, but, yeah, basically,” I said, then laughed, “Puts the boring life back home into a much more positive light, really.”

Most my other tribesmates were on their hooves and had moved to huddle together away from the open hole in the hull, and were looking towards Trailblaze for direction, who in turn was looking at me with exasperation, tinged with a grateful nod as she saw Whetstone was unharmed. Beyond her I could see that the Golem’s beam had cut a thin line through the wall between the elevator doors, a sparking hole with the edges red hot from melted metal. I was suddenly quite thankful Trailblaze had managed to screw up the Golem’s aim. I also felt an odd bit of concern, because while I didn’t care at all about Shattered Sky, Hammerfall was Glint’s father. I found myself hoping he’d be alright out there, fighting that thing.

Whatever else I could say about Odessa, they built their machines to be tough. Even with a hole blasted through the area right next to it the elevator itself arrived with a soft ding and the doors opened with no trouble. We piled in, and it was a tight fit for eight ponies.

“Slate that better not be your hoof I’m feeling,” said Snowdrift with a soft gasp.

“Hey! I’m not trying to! I’m stuck in the corner,” protested Slate, a short beige stallion with a bushy brown mane.

“Why are we suffocating ourselves in a metal box, exactly?” asked Rock Roller.

“Because Longwalk says so,” said Whetstone, who then glanced at me with a sheepish grin, “Uh, why are we in here?”

I grunted, trying to shift so I could reach the button panel, eliciting a quick yelp from Whetstone as I had to reached one hoof out and brace myself with the other, “Sorry, sorry. Just need to hit this button here, and this ‘box’ will take us to where we need to go.”

“Great, just get your elbow out of my-yah!” Whetstone yelped again as I pushed forward and hit the button I saw was marked ‘H1’ which, honestly was just guessing meant ‘hangar one’. All the rest were numbers, ordered four to one, but with no letters. Immediately the elevator lurched into movement, taking us down.

I readjusted my position, and got a faceful of Whetstone, who was half glaring half grinning at me, “You know, if you were that interested you should just say so.”

I rolled my eyes, but was glad enough for the break in tension, letting my heart rate slow a bit to something resembling normal levels, if only for the moment, “Sorry to disappoint you Whet, but my heart belongs to another.”

“All marekind weeps to hear the news,” Whetstone said with a wink, “So, who’s the lucky stallion?”

It took me a moment to realize the innuendo, at which point I just huffed, “Very funny.”

“Who’s joking?”

“Please, you two, could we stay focused?” Traiblaze asked in a grumbling tone, neighing in fond frustration, “I swear if I knew herding you two would be like herding foals I’d have just shoved the leadership role onto Snowdrift.”

“Hey, why am I suddenly a part of this conversation!?” Snowdrift cried, “If I was leading I’d just end up walking us off a cliff. Trailblaze, you’re in charge, and staying that way as long as I have a say in it.”

“Seconded,” said Stone Carver, the burly mare twitching her lips in an almost-smile, “Sorry Trail, but you’re stuck leading us. Chief's daughter and all that.”

For a moment I saw Trailblaze’s features freeze in a moment of fear and frustration, but she quickly shook it off, forcing a calm, determined mask into her face. I still noticed the slight twitch in her ears and the stiffness to her stance that showed how much tension she was feeling, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my hooves around her and hold her close, tell her that things would turn out okay and I knew she could do this. I couldn’t do that through, only give her a silent nod and smile of confidence, which when she saw it she gave me the barest of smiles. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, then frowned, “How much more time does this thing need? How big is this place?”

Pretty big, from what I’d seen of its exterior, but Trailblaze was right, the elevator was taking longer to reach its destination than seemed right. I could feel it’s momentum was slower than when Sunset and I had ridden it earlier. Just then I felt the elevator grind to an unnaturally sudden halt. Amid cries from my tribesmates asking what was going on I frowned, listening. I heard the soft snapping of metal wires, and suddenly realized we had very little time.

“Move!” I said, taking Gramzanber up in my mouth, careful to keep its edge away from my fellow ponies as I tried to get to the elevator doors.

“Get out of his way!” Trailblaze commanded, sensing the fear and urgency in my voice, no doubt.

They scrambled as best they could to give me space as the elevator lurched again and the sound of breaking wires was heard by all. I didn’t waste any time once I got to the doors, I shoved Gramzanber into the thin metal and shook my head back and forth, tearing through the doors. Gramzanber did what it did best, slicing metal apart, and after a few seconds, combined with a few well placed bucks, I’d managed a hold onto one of the lower decks large enough for us to fit through. I backed up and didn’t hesitate to grab the nearest pony and shove her towards the hole.

Whetstone went out without complaint, and once she was out in the corridor she stayed there to help the next pony, Rock Roller, down. The elevator shuddered again, but held its position as Snowdrift went out, followed by Stone Carver, who ended up getting cut on the metal edge of the torn door due to her size, but the stoic mare barely made a whimper as she went through. Soon the others were out and it was just me and Trailblaze inside. We exchanged a look. Her eyes narrowed. So did mine.

“You next,” we both said at the same time.

Trailblaze’s lips pressed tight in a thin line and she let out an exasperated groan, “Longwalk...”

It was amazing to me how much raw irritation and understanding fondness she could mix into that one utterance of my name. It made it all the harder to grasp that the longer I stood there arguing with her the more likely we’d both get ourselves killed. With a single, accepting nod I clambered out the hole first. The second I was out I was turning towards the elevator, hoofs out to help Trailblaze come through.

There was a sickening moment of fear as I heard the grind of metal and the final snap of more wires, and I didn’t hesitate a second in pulling at Trailblaze’s hooves as she threw herself through the hole. She cleared it just as the elevator lurched again, then fell in a strangled, halting drop. I think a few of Trailblaze’s tail hairs were caught, but that was it, thankfully. She landed on top of me, but was back on her hooves in an instant, helping me up. I saw a slightly rattled look in her eyes as she glanced back towards the elevator shaft, but she quickly composed herself and looked back towards me.

“Now what?”

Good question. I looked at where we were, which was essentially an identical area to the elevator rooms on the other decks. If nothing else Odessa was consistent with its deck plans on this ship, so I felt safe assuming that this floor would follow a similar pattern to the one above. Not that knowing that gave me any clue on where to go from here. Unfortunately Sunset had only told us to use the elevator to get to the port hangar. If there was another way down, I’d need information from one of the pegasi or griffins of Odessa.

“We search this deck,” I said, making sure I had a steady grip on Gramzanber, “Find somepony that knows another way to the hangar.”

“Oooh, do we get to beat somepony up for information?” asked Whetstone, sitting back and clopping her forehooves together.

“Maybe,” I said, hanging my head slightly, “If we’re lucky we can get what we need without too much need to... uh... convince them.”

Trailblaze nodded, expression hard, determined, her jaw set tightly, “Let’s move. Don’t want to waste another second in getting out of here.”

There was no more discussion at that point and we were moving once more. The corridor, much as I suspected, mirrored the one on the deck above. Which meant, if the ship’s decks were built more or less the same then we’d see a door on our right soon, and beyond that a T-junction with a turn off to our right and a route that moved further ahead.

It didn’t take long to realize that the fighting on this deck was heavier than the one above, however. We came across dozens of scorched marks in the walls, broken turrets, melted pop-out barricades, and bodies. Odessa had been fighting hard in this hallway. There were a few bodies, pegasi and griffins alike, laying dead strewn about. Most had their armor melted or parts of their bodies torn away, victims of those strange dark beams the skeletal creatures fired from their blades, or cut by the unnaturally sharp weapons. To the Odessa soldier’s credit for every one of their dead I saw the fading, dusty remains of three or four of the skeletal monsters.

Shortly we came across a door on our right, in the same location we’d seen one on the previous deck. Unlike the one above which had been locked and guarded, this door was torn open, its edges melted away or pulled outward. A rank smell of coppery blood and bodily fluid wafted from the door, and against my better judgment I poked my head in first, before any of my tribesmates could. I grimaced at the sight within, letting out a long, hissing curse.

I backed away from the door, and cautiously my tribesmates glanced in, Whetstone retching, Snowdrift actually throwing up, and Trailblaze taking on a frozen, stony look with only her blue eyes betraying that even she found the slaughter inside the room disquieting.

The door led to what I could only figure was some kind of barracks, a large room with double beds lined in neat orderly rows. I don’t know just how many Odessa personnel were in here when the monsters had gotten through the doors. It was impossible to tell with so many bodies, and body parts, strewn around like confetti from a party. From the lack of armor or weapons I could only imagine most of the ponies and griffins in here were just ship crew, not field soldiers. A part of me wanted to walk away from this as fast as possible, but in case there were any survivors I felt I needed to take a closer look.

“Longwalk, do you really want to walk in there?” asked Whetstone, holding a hoof to her nose, “I mean, there’s nothing left in there big enough to be a complete, living pony.”

“Just a second, that’s all I need,” I told her, gulping back bile and entered. I couldn’t avoid the blood that covered the deck or dripped from the ceiling, so I just accepted getting it on my hooves, or drops of it landing on my face, as I did a quick search of the bodies. I tried my level best not to stare too long at any of the faces. As much as I was starting to get used to being around dead bodies it was always the faces that got to me the worst. You just see those eyes, and realize that this was once someone alive, and you can’t help but wonder who they were, and if any of them ever thought they’d die this way. Or maybe that was just me, my mind getting more and more morbid the longer I had to deal with things like this. Kind of hard to think cheerful thoughts when knee deep in dismembered corpses.

I think in that moment I started to understand Raiders, just a little bit. Dealing with stuff like this day in and day out? Be enough to drive anypony to learn to grin and accept the blood soaking into them. How long could anypony stand up to a world of constant, brutal death and maintain any semblance of good inside them? How long did I have before I started to crack? Maybe I already was and just didn’t notice it. After all, here I was, sifting through piles of eviscerated and melted bodies, and I wasn’t throwing up or running away in terror, as if this was actually... normal. I shook off the thought and continued my search.

Though I hadn’t expected to find anypony alive I was still hit with a intense grip of sadness when I didn’t spot a single living soul in that slaughterhouse. What I did find, however, was a disturbing number of marks in the deck or in the bodies themselves, marks that looked like they came from a massive weapon, much larger than the blades carried by the skeletons.

I didn’t have long to think about what that meant when I heard Snowdrift call, “Guys! I hear something!”

I went back out into the corridor, where Snowdrift was worriedly looking down the hall, while the rest of us gathered. Rock Roller was next to her, rubbing a hoof comfortingly on Snowdrift’s withers. I noticed their ears were perked as if hearing something and I soon heard what they did, the faint noise of screaming, magical weapons discharging, and a high warbling shriek that was... utterly unearthly in nature. My eyes met Trailblaze’s and I saw that she wasn’t at all happy with the situation, but she wasn’t going to stop me from doing what was already clear in my expression that I wanted to do. Trailblaze took a deep breath and told me, “Remember what I said. Don’t stop me if I have to protect us, but we’ll go lend a hoof.”

I gave her a grateful nod, and then Trailblaze turned to the rest of the tribe, “Okay, we’re going to help them. Not for their sake, but for ours. To learn how to get off this Ancestors cursed place! If any of those winged bastards take a shot at you, take cover, let me and Longwalk take care of things.”

There was a murmur of agreement, with Whetstone pulling out and readying the energy pistol she’d taken off the mare from the armory, and grinning at us in anticipation. I hoped for all their sakes they’d listen to Trailblaze and stay mostly in cover.

Following the sounds of fighting we soon got to the T-junction, and turned to the right. The sound only grew louder and more pronounced, and we found yet more dead Odessa soldiers and the remains of destroyed skeletal monsters, though not many. It took only moments to reach the source of the fighting. Right where the brig would have been on the deck above there was a similar door, this one ripped and melted open just like the door to the crew quarters. Inside the sound of magical energy weapons firing, ponies yelling and screaming, and that unnatural warbling noise, were clear and loud.

Trailblaze and I both reached the door at about the same time, and we had only a second to take in the scene before us.

The room was about the same size as the crew quarters, though slightly elongated. Either wall was lined with beds, which in turn had terminals and shelves of sterile equipment next to them. I quickly recognized the kind of equipment and the nature of the setup from being in Stable 104’s infirmary. This was the airship’s medical bay. And it was under attack.

Odessa ponies, soldiers in combat armor and a few in the heavier, full body power armor with the scorpion-like tails, were lined up about halfway down the medical bay, using overturned beds and tables of medical gear as cover to set up a firing line. Behind them other pegasi and griffins in white coats and wearing medical scrubs either worked furiously on wounded crew members, or were dragging wounded further back away from the firing line.

The rest of the room was filled with the shapes of skeletal creatures trying to charge their way towards the Odessa troops, magical crests forming around their blades as they fired dark, melting beams of energy towards the groups of pegasi and griffins. Others used their swords to stab into the bodies of ponies already dead, either killed in defending the medical bay or murdered in their beds.

Leading the charge of the skeletons was a hulking creature, several hoof spans taller and wider than the skeletons. At first I was reminded of the image of the blue armored Hyadean I’d been shown in the holo-recording back in Stable 104, but this creature was different. It had the same metallic, bio-organic armor plating, and a vague bipedal shape, but this thing was wider at the shoulders, and more squat in stature. Pale green armor covered its whole body save for a few joins that showed strange, red and violet, ropy muscles. Its head was square, like that of some machine, with odd spikes protruding up from its head like a crest, and a single gem-like red eye was embedded in its smooth, featureless face.

Magical energy blasts, both red beams and green bolts, slammed into this creature from the Odessa troops, and it let out a warbling, ear bleedingly wrong sounding cry, and it barreled forward. In its hands was a large shafted weapon, not quite a spear or an axe, but some hybrid of the two, with a large crescent shaped blade married to a wicked spike.

Some far less sane part of my mind decided to name this thing a ‘BAT’, short for; Big Ass Trooper. Somehow I doubted it would appreciate the name.

The BAT charged the Odessa gun-line, staggered somewhat by the concentrated fire that came its way, but the skeletons around it were also providing it a barrage of covering blasts that were forcing the Odessa soldiers to split their fire, or take cover. I saw the BAT raise its massive blade, aiming to cleave on a poor griffin straight down the middle, and I had an unpleasant flashback to Bernard’s death at the claws of the Hellhound.

Accelerator.

I activated the power without thinking about it, moving before the world even finished turning a shade of cobalt blue in my vision. Everything slowed to a crawl as I galloped forward. For once Gramzanber struck with no hesitation on my part, no worry as to sparing my opponents. These creatures, there was no doubt in my mind, needed to be stopped. One skeleton, then two, then three were cut clean through in my charge across the medical bay, each swing of Gramzanber only meeting minimal resistance as it’s edge cut through bone cleanly. One skeleton directly in my path had its head bisected by one clean swipe, and then I was right behind the BAT, its blade halfway through its descending arc towards the griffin; whose eyes were wide at watching his impending death.

I rammed Gramzanber into the BAT’s back. I didn’t know if this thing had a spine, or any kind of understandable normal anatomy, but I couldn’t waste time second guessing myself. Gramzanber’s tip bit home, and for a second I felt an odd burst of pleasure and satisfaction that I knew wasn’t coming from myself. It was like my ARM was suddenly immensely... happy? As if it was finally, at long last, being used to fulfill the purpose for which it was made. It did not like these Hyadean monstrosities, and sinking into one made the spear, for lack of a better term, give off a sense of giddiness.

Gramzanber sunk deeply into the BAT’s armor, and I saw sparks of energy, and an odd dark violet fluid spurt out, coating my spear. I pulled back, ready to strike again, but quickly realized I ought to end Accelerator before its backlash got too bad. I’d only used it a few seconds, but I didn’t want to wear myself out too fast. There was no telling how much fighting there would be before this day was done.

With a simple mental command I felt Accelerator end, the world turning back to a normal wash of colors, and everything move back to normal speed along with a crash of sound as the real world reasserted itself. The skeleton’s I’d cut in half, which hadn’t even had time to register what had happened during my attack, now fell into pieces. The BAT let out a piercing shriek that made me cringe. I briefly saw Trailblaze back at the medical bay entrance, staring at me in disbelief.

Oh, right, she’d never actually seen me use Accelerator before. To her eyes it would’ve been like seeing me literally teleport across the room, leaving a blue streak behind me, and then see monsters fall in half. I would’ve found her dumbfounded expression sort of funny, if we’d been in any other set of less serious circumstances... and I wasn’t getting smashed across the face by a whirling backhand from the BAT as it spun around with ludicrous speed.

I felt my head smack solid into the deck and my vision went almost black. I blinked and cleared the stars from my sight just in time to see the BAT spin its weapon around, aiming its spear point at me chest, and drive it down. I rolled aside, and heard that metal spike sink right into the deck like it was made of sand.

Dizzy from the blow, feeling blood tricking into my face from what was probably a split scalp, I got to my hooves and charged in, slicing down with Gramzanber with all the strength my neck muscles could manage. The BAT, its single red-gem of an eye swiveling in its socket to look at me with an angry red flash, fired a beam from that eye. Only pure instinctive reflexes saved me as I turned my slash into a block, catching the red eye-beam on the flat of Gramzanber’s blade. Rather than deflect the beam, like it did with normal magical energy weapons, I felt a physical force hurl me back as a small explosion of energy threw me through the air.

I landed hard, and only had a moment to realize three skeletons were converging on me, when a jet of raw flame blasted above me and turned one of the skeletons to ash, and a smaller red beam of energy hit another one, staggering it.

Trailblaze had entered the medical bay, and Whetstone hung by the door, her energy pistol firing away. Trailblaze charged, a snarl on her lips, and fire in her blue eyes as she body slammed one of the skeletons that’d been coming at me. I saw heat waves wafting off her hide as she got on top of the fallen skeleton, slapping aside its sword with one hoof, and raising another. For a moment I thought I saw a gleam of orange light in her raised hoof, as if from some inner fire, before she slammed it down with more force than I’d ever have expected from her. The skeleton’s skull turned to powder.

The other skeleton had turned to fire at Whetstone, crests flashing around its blade to send a black beam towards the gray mare, who ducked with a little yelp, and returned fire, her pistol sending wild shots that grazed the skeleton but nothing more. Still, its distraction was all I needed to get up and sever its skull with Gramzanber in one clean stroke.

Whetstone gave me a sheepish look, then her eyes widened and she fired again rapidly, forcing me to duck from the crazy shots, that were aimed at the BAT which was advancing on me. I turned to face it, ready to charge in, but Trailblaze beat me to the punch, literally. She jumped in, ducking under a wild swing from the BAT that cut a huge, sparking gouge in the wall, and with her hooves now clearly glowing with orange light, she spun in place and cracked the BAT squarely in the gut with a two-hooves buck that sent the hulking armored brute stumbling backwards.

Seeing an opening, I activated S.A.T.S. Time froze, and I targeted the BAT’s head, specifically its eye. At first I got no percentage chance to hit, but that was because the targeting spell thought I was trying to still use melee, which was impossible at this range. After a mental command switched the spell’s calculations to account for me throwing my spear, it gave a very acceptable chance to hit in the eighties. Queuing up the attack I released the spell and time started up again, my body going into automatic as I reared up and flung Gramzanber full force.

It streaked across the medical bay and with a satisfying sound embedded itself cleanly into, and then through, the BAT’s head. The green armored hulk stood there transfixed for a second, purple fluid that I could only imagine was its blood flowing out of its mortal wound, before it staggered once last time and fell to the deck in a crash.

A few more seconds of weapons fire followed as the Odessa soldiers finished off the remaining skeletons, and then there was relative silence. The pegasi and griffins stared at us, and didn’t lower their weapons.

I took a cautious step forward and somepony shouted, “Halt! Identify yourself!”

Another shouted, “Shit, its the prisoners! The ones that just got brought in today!”

“Fuck, what do we do? Did they escape?”

“We need to detain them!”

“But they just... they just helped us.”

From the din of voices one spoke up loudly, “Everyone stand down your weapons, now!”

It was a pegasus stallion, with a faded, washed out red coat and a short cut white mane, wearing the coat and scrubs of a doctor. He went to the front of the gunline of soldiers, putting one wing out and lowering the rifle of one of soldiers as he said, “These ponies just saved the lives of my patients, your wounded comrades. We will not be shooting at them. I shall take full responsibility for these orders; you are all to stand down.”

There was a moment of hesitation among the Odessa troops, but gradual weapons were lowered, and I saw most of them relax in a way that suggested they truly weren’t eager to keep fighting at this point anyway. I approached cautiously, Trailblaze at my side, her eyes dark and challenging as she swept her gaze over the gathered Odessa troops.

“Thanks,” I told the doctor who’d given the order for the others to stand down, “I wish we’d been able to help sooner.”

The doctor gave me a saddened nod, his eyes looking at the carnage, the bodies of those who’d already died by the time we got here, “Hardly your responsibility. I am 1st Lieutenant Coagulant, Odessa Medical Corps. Thank you for helping to save my ward from further senseless loss of life at the hands of these xeno monstrosities.”

“Longwalk? That you Longwalk?” shouted a familiar voice from the back of the room, and both Coagulant and I looked that way to see a rust colored pegasus stallion approaching from the back of the room. It was Glint, the Odessa corporal looking not much better off than when I’d pulled him and the remnants of his squad from Silver Mare Studios . He was wounded, with bandages covering his side, and his brow, both fresh wounds I could only figure were sustained in the attack. He’d been in the back of the medlab, apparently getting treated, but he was armed, despite being out of his armor and for all intents and purposes naked.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding to him with a sad smile, “Didn’t figure we’d meet again so soon, but I’m glad you’re still alive. Is everypony else...?”

Glint smiled, though it was strained, and he gestured behind him where I could see the other members of his squad among those still in beds being looked after by the medical staff; Spring Breeze actually conscious, if still bedridden. She didn’t give me a particularly grateful look, the scowl on her face still clearly showing how she felt about me. I just sighed and looked away, only to meet Trailblaze’s heated gaze.

“We’re not here to play friends, or even to help you ponies,” she said with a harsh tone to Coagulant, “You killed parts of my tribe and forced the rest of us into chains. The only reason I’m here is because we want off this ship of yours.”

Fire blossomed in her hooves, “And somepony here is going to tell us how.”

Weapons started to raise around us again but Coagulant held up a hoof, forestalling them as he looked at Trailblaze with sympathy in his eyes, “If its to spare any more lives from being lost this day, I’ll gladly tell you. All you need to do is take the elevator to-”

“Elevator is broken,” I hastily interrupted, “A beam from the Golem attacking the ship damaged it I think. It fell.”

“I see. Then you’ll need to take the stairs,” Coagulant said, “They’re located opposite side of the elevators. Just take the stern branch of the junction you used to get here, and you’ll find the stairs clearly marked next to the doors to engineering. I suggest avoiding engineering. There’s fighting there as well. The hangar is one deck down from here, and you can find escape pods from a floor hatch along the interior wall. They’ll be marked as well. The pods are easy to operate, and just one could fit all of you, I imagine.”

Coagulant took a deep breath, and looked me in the eyes, “I may lose my commission for helping you, but the lives you saved here are worth more to me. Whatever your reasons, you have my thanks.”

Trailblaze snorted, but I nodded, and turned my look towards all the soldiers in general, many of which were watching me with guarded, unsure looks. I decided I needed to say one last thing.

“I don’t want to fight with anyone from Odessa. I don’t think of you as enemies I have to kill if I can help it. But you have my tribe. You have my mother. And you’re coming after one of my best friends. Remember that. Because I’ll fight to get my tribe free and to protect my friends... but I don’t want to kill any of you. These... xeno things, are an enemy I can get behind fighting, but not the way Odessa is going about it. Think about that.”

I doubted my words meant anything to them. From the looks of many I was just talking to the wind. I was just another landbound, just another potential threat and target in their war. A lifetime of indoctrination meant a few words from me were pretty much wasted. But even so, I saw the spark of thought in the eyes of one or two of the Odessa soldiers, along with gratitude for the help me and my tribe just gave them. Glint himself, through carrying a tired, dour expression, looked happy enough to see, and gave me a final nod before I turned to leave.

Trailblaze, of course, had her own parting words for Odessa.

“Like him, I’m going to free my tribe that you’ve wrongfully taken from me! Unlike him, I don’t care if I have to kill any of you that gets in the way. Remember that, and move aside when the time comes... or burn.”

Back out in the hall the rest of our tribesmates waited, Whetstone giving Trailblaze a sardonic half smile, “Geeze Trail, way to bust out the diplomatic skills. Think you could rain on Longwalk’s peace offering any more?”

“You’re not interested in making peace with these ponies,” said Trailblaze, “Are you?”

Whetstone shrugged, “I’m a lover, not a warrior. Rather we all could sit down by the fire, get drunk, and fool around dancing, getting wasted on healing powder, and making out until dawn. Not that I ain’t pissed at what they did, but the practical side of me says there’s hundreds of them, and not a lot of us. Declaring unending war and hate on them seems counter productive to living a long, happy life.”

Trailblaze sighed, “I’d rather they’d never come to Shady Stream at all. But I have to rescue the rest of the tribe, no matter what it takes.”

I interjected, before the conversation could get more depressing, “Come on, we know where to go now. Let’s get out of here.”

To that there was no disagreement from anypony.

I sent a quick prayer of thanks to the Ancestor Spirits that we ran into no further trouble on our way to the stairs. So far we’d been lucky, but I had no illusions as to how much longer that luck could last. The stairs were a tight fit, barely large enough for just one pony to go up or down one at a time, and we were all scrambling to move as fast as we could. I think seeing the monstrous creatures in the medical bay had shaken some of my tribesmates, as had just seeing so many dead ponies in such a short span of time.

For many of them they’d simply been living a calm life up until a few days ago. I knew exactly what they were going through and my heart went out to them. I wanted nothing more than to shield them from what was happening, to protect them from what was likely to come. I also knew there was little I could do except fight as hard as I could to to get them away from here, and see where things went.

Getting to the bottom of the stairs there was a simple hatch I quickly opened, leading out into the vast open space of the port hangar.

This hangar was identical to the one on the starboard side, a huge expanse shaped like half on an egg. All of the hangar’s bay doors were open, and I noticed many of the Vertibuck scaffold berths were empty. From the open bays I could see the blue vista of the sky and the ocean of clouds the Varukisas sailed upon, the ship seeming to maintain a steady course over the rolling clouds. The distant sound of heavy energy weapons fire could be heard from the open bay doors, but it sounded like it was coming from somewhere far off from the ship, now, as if the Golem had been left behind, or was at least busy fighting some distance off.

Had the ship launched all of its Vertibucks, just to deal with one Golem? Are those ancient machines really that strong, I wondered. Well, I’d seen what the red one had done in Saddlespring, I supposed there was no reason to think any of the others that existed would be any less devastating. It occurred to me how lucky I was to still be alive after a close encounter with two of the Golems. I tried to remember Dr. Lemon Slice’s rambling rant about them. She’d mentioned there were... eight? Eight Golems. One of the damned things was too much by my estimation.

Looking about, I tried to spot where the route to the escape pods were. Coagulant said they were on the interior wall, and would be clearly marked. My eyes roved between the alcoves for the Vertibucks, scanning the wall. There were a lot of small doors and hatchways, but none of them had any obvious markings. At least nothing I could see from this distance.

With unspoken agreement among us Trailblaze took the lead and we all began to gallop across the open hangar for the wall, and I continued to scan about for any indication of where the escape pods were. The closer we got the more desperate I became.

Then, as we just got amid the crates and pits of the repair bays, I spotted it. A space along the wall closed off by yellow railing, with a red and white sign mounted in the bulkhead above it that read ‘Emergency Escape Deck Access’. There was a simple box with a pair of buttons next to the railing which I figured must open the way.

“There!” I shouted, pointing, and Trailblaze nodded, and we all trotted forward.

Then beams of energy rained down around us. I heard a yelp of pain, and others shout in alarm as my tribesmates dove for cover among the crates or pieces of repair equipment. Looking back I saw that the ones firing on us was a small squad of Odessa pegasi and griffins, about five of them, that had flown in through one of the bays from outside. They all wore the thick power armor of Odessa heavy troopers, the magical energy weapons mounted on their sides as they strafed us.

I too leaped for cover behind a table with scattered tools. Taking stock I saw most of my tribesmates had made it to cover, Trailblaze across from me behind a metal crate with Whetstone next to her.

“Snowdrift! Get out of the open!” I heard Rock Roller shout.

I looked around the table I was using for cover and saw that Snowdrift was limping, dazed, the back of her left leg burned where a magical beam had hit her. While the Odessa squad was banking around for another pass I realized we just had seconds before they fired again, and Snowdrift was nowhere near cover.

I didn’t hesitate. I dashed out into the open, making a straight run for Snowdrift.

I could feel I didn’t have enough energy build up yet to use Accelerator again, and poured on the speed as I galloped. I saw Trailblaze and Whetstone both rear up behind their cover and open fire at the Odessa squad, Whetstone’s wild shots going all over the place, and Trailblaze breathing hard as she summoned up another bolt of fire... through I noticed this one seemed weaker than her previous ones. Like Arcaidia sometimes did, was Trailblaze running out of juice? Her face looked strained to me, but I couldn’t look long, having to focus on my dash to get to Snowdrift.

The Odessa squad broke up to avoid the fire coming their way, only two of them staying on course to strafe Snowdrift. I got to her just as red beams and green bolts smacked down around her, and I dove, tackling her and rolling her out of the way; not easy with Gramzanber still clutched in my mouth, but I’d gotten used to moving around with the massive spear.

I felt searing pain in my side, not bothering to look to see how bad the wound was, and forcibly pushed Snowdrift into one of the lowered repair bays, diving in after her. We landed amid hoses, cables, and protruding robotic repair arms.

Coughing, the air temporarily knocked out of me, I rolled into the wall, and pulled Snowdrift beside me. The mare was breathing hard, eyes wide and wincing with pain.

“Th-thanks,” she breathed.

“No problem,” I said back.

She looked around the repair bay, which was basically just a cluttered lowered square big enough to hold a Vertibuck, making the walls about ten feet tall. There was a ramp leading up, presumably for techs to get in and out while they worked on the flying machines. Snowdrift shuddered as the sound of magical energy weapons fire intensified, combined with the roar of flames Traiblaze had summoned. I put a comforting hoof on her shoulder, feeling her shaking.

“Stay close to me,” I told her, “We’ll go up the ramp, and get to cover. Then I’ll distract those fliers while the rest of you get into the escape pods.”

Snowdrift looked at me with fear and worry stark on her face, “Can you do that? I mean, do that and not die?”

I just smiled and shrugged helplessly, “Don’t know. But I need to get them shooting at me, not the rest of you, so you guys can escape.”

“Just... why not kill them? With that weapon. You could, couldn’t you?”

To be truthful, I didn’t know. They kind of had the advantage of flight, which meant at best I could get one of them with a good throw, then be defenseless for the rest to turn me into a fine mist.

“Maybe, maybe not. What I know I can do, though, is distract them. Come on.”

I stood to head for the ramp, but she didn’t follow, and I turned to look at her. Snowdrift was still breathing hard, eyes unblinking as she looked at me, “I don’t want to do this.”

I understood completely. For Snowdrift this was probably the first time her life had been in this kind of danger. I was starting to get used to it, if only one bit at a time, but then the world had been forcing a lot of practice upon me. For Snowdrift this was fresh, new fear, of the kind she’d never had run into back home. Geckos just didn’t compare to heavily armed pegasi and griffins trying to kill you.

I went up to her and gave her a quick hug, “Stay close, and don’t think about it. Just run, don’t think. Just like when you’re on a hunt, right? Trust your fellow hunters to watch your back.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, nodding, “I can do that.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here.”

We crept up to the ramp. I waited until I heard another round of energy weapons fire from the Odessa soldiers, making sure they finished a pass, before rising up and going up the ramp, Snowdrift behind me. My tribesmates had stayed pinned where they were, but thank the Ancestors that all of them were still alive. Whetstone and Trailblaze were still firing back, and from somewhere Rock Roller had acquired an energy pistol of his own, it probably having been left on one of the work tables.

Through my tribesmate’s fire was highly inaccurate, it served to keep the Odessa troops evasive and from surroundings us, especially Traiblaze’s fire. Even if it was weakening she was able to send up jets of it that made the fliers wheel and dive away, ruining several attempts to strafe us as Snowdrift and I got to cover again.

“Trail!” I yelled, and she glanced at me. I pointed towards the hatch that’d lead us to safety.

“I’ll draw their fire. You get them down there.”

“What about you?”

“Give me sixty seconds. I’ll come right back. But if I’m not there-”

“Then we come save your stupid ass!” shouted Whetstone, laughing as if I was an idiot for even suggesting they leaving me behind. Which I realized I was. It was crazy of me to think they’d willingly leave me behind. For a second I forgot where we were and felt a great deal of warmth for these ponies. Whatever I might’ve been treated like in the past, it was clear they thought of me now as truly one of their own.

“Fair enough. Now get going!”

With that I left Snowdrift in cover and went running back out into the open, waving Gramzanber around and yelling at the top of my lungs, “Hey you flying pieces of- “ Hmm, what would be a good insult to these people, who seemed to prize their ability to soar the skies? “Wingless rocks! I bet you’re all just earth ponies who glued on fake wings! I’ve seen better flying from my own dung I dropped off a cliff!”

It was juvenile, yes. It was also surprisingly effective. Almost as one the Odessa squad turned in different directions, but all aimed to bring them around and aim square for me as I ran out into the middle of the open hangar. I didn’t look to see if Trailblaze was getting the others away, but I trust her, and galloped as hard as I could in a wide arc that would take me along the curve of the open bay doors.

It wasn’t long before energy weapons fire lashed down around me, red beams skimming by my face and balls of green fire sizzling between my rapidly pumping legs. I felt the jarring pain of a few shots that stabbed into my armor, but credit where credit was due, Stable 104 had made for me a nice piece of personal protection. The armor held up, turning crippling strikes into painful flesh wounds. Not that I wasn’t starting to realize what a particularly bad idea my plan was at this point. I’d apparently been operating under the assumption that as long as I kept being a moving target that I’d be fine. In hindsight I really should’ve realized that a bunch of trained soldiers who spent most of their time in the air, you know, moving themselves would be fairly skilled at hitting mobile targets.

By the time I got near the open bay doors I’d taken more than a few solid hits that caused lances of agony to course through my body, making me nearly stumble over my own legs, which would’ve been fatal under the circumstances. If I’d attained a single skill above and beyond any others in my ill-fated sojourn into the Wasteland so far it was the skill: Withstand Hellish Agony and Still Stubbornly Charge Into Damnation Because You Think You Can Win. That’s a skill, right? Maybe its an inborn trait, instead, and just needed the right (or horribly wrong) situations to really shine. Either way despite my mounting injuries I was still running full tilt when I reached the hangar doors and I got to enact phase two of my brilliant stratagem. The part I didn’t bother telling Trailblaze about because I knew she’d have screamed bloody murder at me if she knew, but I needed a way to fake out these Odessa troops, and the only way I knew how to do that was to do something so stupidly suicidal that nopony would expect it.

I flung myself out the hangar door and into open air.

Despite all the hits I’d taken I felt the build up of energy inside Gramzanber and I activated Accelerator just as I reached the apex of my leap.

Time slowed just as my body started to get pulled by gravity’s merciless grip. With the extra time I was able to see the vast form of the Varukisas and take in the bits of damage covering its otherwise pristine hull, several holes in its hull trailing smoke. I saw its weapons, dozens of small boxy missile launchers or green glowing plasma canons firing barrages at swarms of multi-winged, insectoid creatures that reminded me of what would happen if you took a radscorpion and forcibly mated it with a Vertibird. Speaking of Vertibirds, the sky was dotted with them, along with flights of Odessa soldiers, all equally engaged with the flying bug-like monsters, exchanging weapons fire against the critters that fied eye-beams like the BAT I fought in the medical bay, or lances of stinger-like projectiles.

Beyond all that, the flying Golem was engaged with the distant forms of what had to be the Cocytus unit. I couldn’t make out details from so far away, but the Golem’s blue beams, and the rapid way in which one of the pegasus forms evaded by seemingly teleporting out of harm’s way, was all apparent even in the few seconds I took to observe.

But I didn’t have time for watching longer than that and turned my attention to the hangar I’d just jumped out of. I could see the Odessa squad that’d been chasing me hesitating, pulling up short in surprise at my leap. That confusion was what I needed, because it slowed their flight and made their movement's predictable. I aimed my Grapple and used S.A.T.S, targeting the lead griffin, aiming for a hind leg.

The Grapple fired, a heart stopping moment as I watched the clawed line sail out and prayed my crazy gamble would work. Fortune and the good aim of S.A.T.S was with me and the Grapple line wrapped around the griffin’s leg. With Accelerator still going I had the Grapple lessen my weight and pull me forward. In the slow motion of Accelerator I could see the griffin gradually realize what was happening, shuffling awkwardly in the air at my weight, but instinctively maintain a hover before he could really react beyond instinct.

Gauging my next move I deactivated Accelerator, grimacing as the backlash hit me and time return to a normal speed. My body was still being pulled up towards the griffin I’d hooked, and the second I cleared the bay doors and was back inside the hangar I had the Grapple switch from making me lighter, to making the griffin lighter.

The sudden switch in weight had me land solidly on the deck, while the suddenly light griffin was pulled forcibly down, and with an extra hefty tug from me the griffin lost all balance in the air and ended up tumbling to the deck with a meaty smack. I was running, the Grapple line returning, before any of the other Odessa soldiers had time to turn around and draw a new bead on me. Now I was galloping full speed back towards my tribesmates and the escape pods.

My stunt bought me precious time, but even then it was only a matter of seconds before the Odessa soldiers recovered and were back to pursuing me, firing away. Ahead of me I saw that Trailblaze had gone to the panel I’d seen earlier and had pressed the button, opening up a mechanical floor hatch that she was ushering the others of my tribe down into. She pushed them along one after another, waiting until she was the last one still up there, and she looked back towards me.

I heard her shout my name and wave her hoof for me to run faster. I didn’t even have the breath to shout back that I was running as fast as my wounded body was allowing me to move. Though it was only a matter of a few dozen meters the distance between me and the safety of the hatch down to the escape pods felt like an expanse of miles. I knew I was running, hooves pounding the deck, at full speed, but each second felt like I was galloping through mud, and every zap and hissing burst of noise from the magical energy weapons firing at me made my heart leap.

I was almost there, less than ten paces from Trailblaze, when a stray magical beam hit something volatile amid the repair bay to my right, and an explosion of smoke and electrical discharge knocked me flat off my hooves and pushed the breath from my lungs. For a stunned moment I could only lay there, fearing any second a deadly rain of magical energy bolts would land on me.

Then I felt somepony pulling me along, hooves wrapped around my shoulder and forelegs. I thought it was Trailblaze for a second, but then I saw Trailblaze next to us, sweat plastering her black mane to her face, as she fired streams of fire at our pursuers. The pony pulling me along turned out to be Snowdrift, her eyes fearful but determined as she hauled me along.

I recovered quickly and let her help me get my hooves under me, and she gave me a brief, relieved smile, before we both headed for the hatch. The hatch itself was a series of long, open rectangular panels in the deck that revealed a dark, steep, and short staircase leading to a corridor beneath the hangar.

I put a hoof on Snowdrift and sent her ahead of me down the stairs, which she did so with only a second of hesitation. I turned to see Trailblaze had backed up to the hatch as well, her shoulders sagging from the effort of the fire she was putting out, which was keeping the Odessa soldiers diving and wheeling away and unable to get clear shots at us.

She gave me one glance and a weak grin, and we both turned to rush down the stairs, Snowdrift and the others waiting for us down below.

“That everypony?” asked Whetstone loudly from further down the corridor, where I saw she’d opened up a circular hatch at the end that I could only guess lead into an actual escape pod. There was nopony else down here so I figured the others of the tribe had already gone in.

“Yes, go!” said Trailblaze, pushing us along. I understood the haste. We probably had only seconds before the Odessa soldiers chased us down here.

We all ran, Whetstone entering the hatch just as we got there.

There was a moment of pause as Trailblaze looked at me but I shook my head and gestured for her to go in first, which, thankfully, she didn’t argue this time, exhausted as she was. I was just about to push Snowdrift in as well when I heard something clank onto the metal deck of the corridor behind us, and I turned to see an Odessa pegasus stallion had jumped down the stairs and had his beam rifles aimed at us.

“Stop!” he commanded, “Surrender, or I’ll have to fire!”

I turned to face him, but I felt Snowdrift suddenly grab me and haul me into the hatch to the escape pod. If I hadn’t been so wounded and tired myself I might’ve been able to shake her off and push her into the hatch so I could face the Odessa soldier alone, but she was able to catch me off guard and off balance, pulling me into the hatch before I could even shout a protest.

The Odessa soldier swore and fired at us, red beams filling the corridor.

I heard a pained gasp as Snowdrift and I hit the deck of the escape pod. The inside wasn’t large, really just a long cylindrical room lined with thick padded seats with mounted braces that would go over a pony’s shoulders to secure them in place. There was a series of buttons on a panel by the door and the second Snowdrift and I were inside Whetstone, who was waiting by the panel, just hit her hoof after all the buttons.

Whatever Whetstone had hit, it was enough. The hatch closed, and the entire pod shuddered. I felt a jolt, and then a feeling of weight pushing me to the deck, along with the sight of light streaming in from the few window inside the now sealed hatch. The escape pod was away. We’d made it!

“Heh...” I laughed, patting Snowdrift, “That was close. Thanks for the save before, I almost didn’t...”

I looked at Snowdrift’s face and felt all of my emotions instant grow cold and drain out of me.

Snowdrift’s eyes looked back at me with a blank, glassy lifelessness that I had seen too many times on the faces of others since entering the Wasteland.

There was a bit of smoke rising from the hole that had been burned in the back of her head, the smell of her singed mane now testament to the energy beam that must have hit her in that last second before the hatch closed.

I didn’t say anything, even when the others noticed Snowdrift wasn’t moving, or when Trailblaze, yelling something, pulled me away from her and forced me into one of the seats, securing it even as the feeling of the escape pod shuddered grew worse. I didn’t notice everypony else yelling, screaming, rushing to get secured as well in seats with Trailblaze’s and Whetstone’s help. I didn’t look out the window to see the sky rushing by, or notice how rapidly the ground was approaching.

I didn’t look away from Snowdrift’s empty, dead eyes, even when the escape pod hit the ground, shaking me like a rodent in a gecko’s killing grip. I couldn’t look away from them, through the rough, jarring drop through the sky, or when the escape pod finally landed with a head rattling crash in the middle of the Wasteland.

Footnote:

Save Game? Y/N... Y...

Select File: Longwalk, Lvl 15, Play Time; 10:45:29

Overwrite Save? Y/N... Y...

Saving... Save Complete.

Author's Note

Hello again everyone and thanks for reading, hope this first portion of the rather hefty Chapter 17 was worth the wait. As you might've noticed there's a "Part 1 of 2" attached to this chapter, and that's entirely because this particular chapter was the first one to hit the 30k+ range in size. Decided for ease of reading it'd be best to split this one up into two parts Not to worry though, Part 2 is actually quite far along and should be done within a few days, a week at most, so more Trigger is soon to come. Thanks to Doomande for helping me out with the pre-reading, and of course a big thanks to the ever awesome KKat for kicking this sub-fandom off to begin with. And of course thanks to all you who continue to read along with Longwalk's journey. I wouldn't have a reason to do this without you guys. As always feel free to leave any comments whether they be critiques, suggestions, randomness, or even a simple 'yay' or 'neigh'.

Chapter 18: The End of the Beginning (Part 2 of 2)

Chapter 18: The End of the Beginning (Part 2)

We didn’t remain in the cracked, shattered street where the escape pod landed us for very long. Those first few minutes after we landed were confused ones as my tribesmates scrambled to unhook themselves from the seats that had likely saved their lives in the rough landing. Few ponies even realized that Snowdrift was dead until after we were all out, catching our breath, and it became obvious that Snowdrift wasn’t standing up on her own.

I don’t remember much of what immediately happened after that. I recall there was shouting, arguing, blame being tossed around. Trailblaze took it all and with tired, but steady tones told everypony to get ready to move, because we couldn’t stay near the escape pod. It was too likely that Odessa would come after us, and they would likely be able to track the escape pod’s landing spot. No matter how angry everypony was at the loss of one of our own nopony could argue that moving was a good idea.

Before that, however, Whetstone had pulled me into the pod, away from everypony.

“Hey, Long?” she said, tapping me on the head, “Longwalk?”

“Uh... yeah...?” I replied, still dazed, brain a locked up mess. I was still seeing Snowdrift in my head, pulling me into the escape pod at that last moment when the Odessa soldier fired on us. Was there anything I could have done differently? A question to drive anypony crazy if they ask it enough times. It was a question I found myself asking more and more lately.

“Trail wants us to get going, but I figure there might be stuff in here we’ll need, but I don’t know what stuff is good and what isn’t,” said Whetstone, looking at me with a steady gaze as if she was trying to emphasize with just her expression that I needed to get it together, “You know this kind of gear better than the rest of us. What do we take?”

Gear? I looked around the interior of the escape pod. On the walls above the seats there were hatches, like horizontal lockers. Most of them were already open, filled with either dark gray saddlebags or simple plastic crates. I shook myself, trying to shove away thoughts of Snowdrift and just focus on what was being asked of me.

“I... give me a minute, I’ll take a look,” I told Whetstone, and with leaden hooves went about the work of checking the contents of the lockers. My body ached all over from the wounds taken during our escape, and blood still matted my mane, sticking it to my face in dirty strands. Hopefully there was some healing potions in here somewhere.

The insides of the plastic crates were filled with what I guessed was basic survival gear for any crew that would theoretically use the pod for its intended purpose of abandoning the airship in an emergency. Doubtful anypony in Odessa imagined a bunch of escaped tribal ponies would be using this stuff instead. Yay us.

The saddlebags each carried an empty canteen along with a package of small tablets labeled ‘water purifiers’, a half dozen packs of what looked to be preserved foodstuffs, a simple knife, rolls of paper the use of which I wasn’t sure of, and a small energy pistol of the red beam variety. The plastic crates were varied; some with additional food and water tablets, others thankfully carrying medical supplies like bandages, antiseptic fluid, and healing potions, and another crate held a strange box shaped device with all sorts of buttons on it and a screen, like a miniature terminal. Other crates held more mundane gear, tents, sleeping bags, something I suspected was some kind of portable stove, and a number of other items I had a hard time guessing the function of.

I told Whetstone to help me take the saddlebags and the crates of food and medical supplies. I decided to leave the device behind, having no idea what it might be and not wanting to risk fiddling around with some Odessa equipment I couldn’t identify. I didn’t bother with the tents, but the sleeping bags I figured would be useful. I wanted us to stay in natural cover, using the Wasteland’s usual collection of rubble and burned out buildings to say out of sight of any Odessa patrols. The shiny white tents would stick out in this landscape.

“Longwalk,” Whetstone got my attention as we were finishing gathering all the supplies up at the escape pod’s hatch, “You holding up alright? Things got pretty intense back there.”

I looked at her and saw nothing in Whetstone’s eyes other than honest concern. It blunted the edge of irrational anger I felt at her question. Alright? Of course I wasn’t alright. But Whetstone’s concern reminded me that I wasn’t doing this alone, and I was far from the only one hurting. Beneath her own concern I saw the pain she was feeling. That all of us were feeling. I knew now just what Trailblaze and the others had gone through when our home had been attacked and they’d seen fellow tribe members killed by Odessa soldiers.

“I’m managing,” I told her, “Alright is a long distance off, but I’m managing.”

Whetstone nodded, looking away, “Good. That’s good. Uh, what about physically? You look one harsh breeze away from keeling over dead.”

“Believe it or not I’ve been worse,” I told her as I rooted out a healing potion from one of the boxes of medical supplies, gulping it down and taking a few seconds to let the brew do its work; a cool wash of relief flowing over me. Looking at Whetstone I saw her staring off, her own eyes having a rattled, haunted look to them.

“Hey,” I said, putting a hoof on her leg, “We both can manage. The others are hopeless without us, right?”

“Heh...” she laughed, wiping at her face, keeping away tears I knew she didn’t want anypony seeing, “Yeah, Trail needs us to keep her from going gray from stress. I know Snow wouldn’t want to watch us fall apart right now, not after escaping those...bastards.”

There was a lot of venom in that last word. Could I blame her? No, not really. Not if I was being honest with myself. Much as I kept wishing that there was some way to reconcile with Odessa it was hard not to feel a violent anger growing inside me. It would be much easier to just start hating them, and unleash all of the anger due to Snowdrift and my other tribesmate’s deaths on the next group of Odessa’s soldiers I ran into. How satisfying might it feel to just... cut loose, and cut those pegasi and griffins down with Gramzanber, before they had a chance to hurt any more of my tribe or my friends?

I shook my head, banishing the thoughts I didn’t want taking deeper root in my mind. Better to focus now on survival and getting my tribesmates that were still alive to safety. I could help the living. The only thing I could do for the dead was keep going, and not forget them. Well... that, and always strive to prevent more deaths. Then again, hadn’t I intended to do that when Shale died? I wondered if, no matter what I did, there would inevitably be instances like what had just happened with Snowdrift. Moments where either my strength or resolve to protect others just wouldn’t be enough, regardless of what choices I made.

No. I couldn’t let myself sink into thinking like that. I had to believe my choices still made a difference, even if I wasn’t able to always ensure I’d be able to make the right ones. Snowdrift saved my life, the same way Shale had. I’d be insulting both ponies if I started to lose myself to depression. Granted, even thinking that didn’t do much at that moment to banish the weighty gloom over me. You don’t get over something like that quickly, even under the best of circumstances. Whetstone’s concern helped, though, and the knowledge I wasn’t alone in this.

Outside the escape pod I saw Trailblaze talking with the rest of the surviving tribe (I hated having to think of them as the ‘rest of the survivors’). Nopony looked particularly happy. The reason was obvious. Snowdrift wasn’t covered by anything, but somepony had thankfully closed her eyes, so she just looked like she was sleeping. As Whetstone and I finished getting the supplies out of the escape pod I heard what the discussion was about.

“We’re not doing it here,” Trailblaze was saying, “That’s my final word on it.”

“She has to be sent to the Ancestor Spirits properly, Trailblaze!” said Rock Roller, a strained crack in his voice as he glanced towards Snowdrift’s body, “We can’t leave her spirit to rot in there.”

“And we won’t,” said Trailblaze, ragged frustration giving her tone a rough edge, “But we don’t have time to perform the rights or form a pyre here. Our enemies are probably already tracking us. We need to move, soon, and we’ll be taking her with us.”

“How long then?” asked another, Stone Carver, the big mare’s usually stoic eyes shimmering with barely contained tears, a sight that didn’t seem to suit the otherwise tough pony, “How long until we give her a proper farewell, instead of dragging her through this cursed land?”

Trailblaze sighed heavily, “I don’t know. A day or two? Long enough for us to put some distance between us and here. Listen, I feel the same way you do. I can’t stand the idea of leaving Snow’s spirit tied to her body any longer than we have to, but we can’t perform funeral rites until... until I know the rest of us are safe and we won’t lose anypony else.”

“We shouldn't have lost anypony at all,” said Rock Roller, voice thick with bitterness.

“What do you want Trail to say?” Whetstone spoke up, “We all knew how dangerous the mess we were in was. All of us know its a Ancestors granted miracle any of us got out. Are you blaming Trail for Snow not making it?”

Rock Roller’s eyes flashed with anger, “No! I... I’m not blaming her. I blame the monsters that did this! Those winged demons have to pay for this. They...”

He clenched his eyes shut and I saw fresh tears on Rock Roller’s face as he lowered his head, shaking it back and forth as if in denial, “She never hurt anypony in her life.”

Suddenly he was glaring at me, his voice acid laced, “What were you doing!? If you hadn’t gone and run out in the open like that she wouldn’t have had to die saving your stupid flank!”

I took a step back from the vitriol in those words, looking away, “I wasn’t trying to get anypony hurt. I was giving everypony a chance to get away.”

“Fat lot of good that did for Snowdrift! We could’ve killed those bastards, then gotten away! Instead you go charging off, forcing Trailblaze and Snow to go back after you, and-”

“Enough Rock!” snapped Trailblaze, and Rock Roller turned his glare towards her.

“Of course you’d defend him! You two have been friends forever.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” growled Trailblaze, stepping towards Rock Roller, looking every inch her mother’s daughter with the stone hard glare she met the stallion’s own gaze with, “Listen to me Rock. If we’d stayed and fought even more of us might have died. Even with the power of fire I have now I wasn’t hitting those fliers. They were just too fast. Even if I could hit one or two, and Longwalk and the rest of you killed the others, don’t t you think we would’ve lost ponies as well? Longwalk did what he thought was right, and you know what? It worked. It brought us the window we needed to escape. Snowdrift... she died saving him, yes, but there was nothing he, or any of us could’ve done to stop that. It was just bad fortune. That’s it.”

Her eyes softened and she raised a hoof, putting it on Rock Roller’s shoulder, “We’ll make them pay one day for those they’ve taken from us, I promise you that, but right now we can’t fall apart blaming each other. We need to survive, so we can take revenge, and save those of our tribe still held captive.”

As much as I appreciated her words, in that they were a balm on my own sense of guilt in Snowdrift’s death, I was worried about her focus on getting back at Odessa. She even put ‘revenge’ ahead of rescuing the rest of our tribe. Maybe she was just trying to appease Rock Roller, but the worry in my heart remained. Trailblaze was still the mare I’d always known, and cared for more than I’d had the courage to admit to her yet. Her being angry wasn’t new or anything. But the anger had an edge to it that felt different, and concerning.

Moa Gault... a part of me wanted to blame the Guardian, but a more rational part of me said that Trailblaze’s actions didn’t need some fire spirit to explain. Revenge, anger, these were feelings ponies didn’t need outside influences to feel. They happened pretty naturally on their own. If anything I was the odd one for not really blaming or hating Odessa as a whole for the death they’d caused so far.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I was angry too. If someone had put that Odessa soldier who’d shot Snowdrift in front of me right then and there... I can’t honestly say one way or another what I might have done. But the difference was that, as much as the immediate anger was there, it didn’t translate into a long term desire to start murdering any member of Odessa I’d happen to meet in order to ‘avenge’ Snowdrift’s death. The sad truth was that there was a strong chance that stallion hadn’t wanted to fire on us any more than we had wanted to fight him. It’d just been the tragedy of circumstance that led us to that point.

I was willing to be that, in a different world, a different time and place, if Snowdrift, me, and that nameless soldier had simply met on the street and struck up a conversation that violence would’ve never come into the equation. Bad fortune and circumstance leads to a lot of folk who’d otherwise get along just fine into butchering each other.

Musing too much on that kind of thing was pointless though. What had happened, happened. Snowdrift was dead, my fellow tribesmates, including my best friend, were more than a tad pissed at Odessa, and at one point or another more death was going to result from all of this. And it didn’t seem like there was a single damned thing I could do about it.

All in all, another craptastic day in the Wasteland.

The escape pod had landed in an area thinly occupied by sparse suburban ruins of the kind that seemed to perpetually blanket the land. The houses that were still intact enough to have walls looked to be of a quaint, single story variety, and anything larger than a small hill was few and far in between.

My tribesmates and I had been moving for the better part of the day, heading in a south and westerly direction. Our route was dictated mostly by my own limited experience and intuition when dealing with the Wasteland environment, and the mysterious mapping abilities of my Pip-Buck. I’d checked the device not long after we’d loaded up and distributed the supplies from the escape pod amongst us and the question of “Where to now?” cropped up. My Pip-Buck’s map screen only showed the area we were immediately in, plus the locations I’d already crossed over in my previous travels, but by fiddling around with it and discovering the zoom in/out feature I was able to get an overall picture of our location. We were east of Skull City, a fair distance north of where Saddlespring used to be, and on the edge of the suburban area that surrounded Skull City like a forest.

Knowing that, we essentially had two choices.

The first choice was to try and go to Skull City itself. Assuming nothing delayed us I estimated it’d only be a day, or a day and half at most to reach the actual inhabited parts of the city. The other choice was to go to Stable 104, the place where my friends were. I knew they were there because my Pip-Buck still had Arcaidia’s own Pip-Buck tag tracked, and that confirmed she was at Stable 104. I couldn’t imagine B.B leaving Arcadia there alone, and it stood to reason that at least Binge would probably be hanging out with them. I supposed Iron Wrought might have continued on to Skull City, and LIL-E could have gone anywhere pursuing her own agenda. However I remembered the vision I’d seen while fighting Moa Gault, and suspected my friends were all still together.

After talking it out amongst my tribesmates it was decided to take the longer trip to Stable 104. There, at least, I knew was a place of relative safety, and I really wanted to reunite with Arcaidia and the others. Tailblaze agreed with me, through she along with the others of my tribe seemed unnerved when I told them of the nature of Stable 104’s residents.

“Spiders...” Trailblaze muttered as she trotted next to me, giving me a sidelong, grumbling stink-eye as I grinned at her, “I did not think anything that creepy could exist! But no, of course you spend a few days out in this desert-”

“Wasteland.”

“Whatever! Wasteland, then. You spend a few days out here and you’re finding things like eight-legged, eight-eyed, fanged, sticky web shooting ponies, and oh, you make friends with them! What is wrong with you!?”

“Hey, they’re a nice enough bunch, when they’re not trying to eat you,” I said with a disarming smile that did nothing to lessen the way Trailblaze was shooting spears at me with her eyes. She huffed, still mumbling under her breath.

“This is why we worked so hard to stay in that valley. Mother knew the rest of the world was insane. What else is out here that I’m going to need to worry about?”

“Well,” I said, thinking the question over seriously, “There’s the Balloons. Those are mutant monsters that are like floating balls of melted together pony faces. Then there’s the radscorpions. Those are giant insect things with huge claws and poison stingers. There are Raiders... basically crazy, murderous ponies that also happen to be cannibals most the time. There’s something called ‘ghouls’ I’ve heard about, but haven’t seen yet, but I hear they’re pretty nasty. Think ‘walking corpse’ and you got the idea. Oh, and let’s not forget about the normal ponies who would be happy to capture you and sell you into slavery. Around these parts they’re under an organization called the Labor Guild. I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of other things, but that’s just what I’ve come across so far.”

Trailblaze snorted, “Is that all? Any other cheerful news to give me? Is there anything out here that isn’t going to be a threat to our lives and sanity?”

“Sure,” I said, “There are ponies out here that are decent enough. There was a whole town of them...”

As I got quiet Trailblaze’s expression turned more concerned than anything else, “Longwalk? What is it?”

“Sorry, bad memories,” I took a deep breath, steadying myself, “Saddlespring was the first town I arrived at. It was a good place. Was. I’d rather not talk about it, but I have to believe there are other towns like it out here where ponies work together to try and make lives for themselves. Stable 104 can be that way, even if the ponies living there are a little different than others. I think it’ll be a safe place for you and the others.”

Tailblaze didn’t immediately reply, and I looked her way to see that she was looking towards the horizon, far off in the direction we were walking. I slowed, squinting my eyes to see if she’d spotted something, but she kept on trotting and didn’t seem concerned about anything, so I shrugged and kept pace. Apparently she was just thinking about something.

I was still getting used to the E.F.S provided by my Pip-Buck, getting a feel for what might be a threat and what wasn’t. Red dots did appear on my field of vision, though distance was impossible to tell. Nine times out of ten the red dots just stayed red dots, whatever caused them never appearing from the ruins around us. A couple of times, though, some small Wasteland critter would rear its head, or even madly charge us. They were nothing big, one time a couple of mole-like beasts half the size of a gecko, another time a few small skittering bugs about the size of a hoof. Each time the critters were dispatched easily enough, through my tribesmates certainly found the creatures startling, and fascinating.

Stone Carver decided to take one of the mole beasts to try and add some meat to our diet, as it didn’t take us long to realize the Odessa rations consisted primarily of dry, flat squares that were crunchy and crumbly, and very salty, but not all that appetizing. The packaging called them ‘crackers’. At least there was also some dry fruit in the rations, which my tribesmates weren’t used to, but after some assurance from me that the fruit was perfectly fine they found it was tasty stuff.

For water we’d explored a few of the more intact buildings. Finding a working faucet took time, and the water that came out did not look at all drinkable, but I decided to test out the ‘water purifiers’ in our supplies. The instructions said one tablet would create both a magical and chemical reaction that would remove most impurities in contaminated water and make it safe to drink. Nopony was eager to volunteer to be the first to test the water, so I grit my teeth and gave it a shot after dropping a tablet into a canteen of dirty faucet water.

The water was warm but didn’t have the horrible taste I’d been expecting, and I didn’t get sick afterwards. The purifiers tested and proven, we filled our canteens and moved on.

So far there had been nothing to indicate that Odessa was tracking us. I heard no sound of Vertibird engines, and my scans of the sky revealed no sign of squadrons of patrolling fliers. That, oddly, didn’t put me at ease, and in fact just made me more nervous. A part me was actually worried about the fate of the Varukisas and its crew. They had managed to fight off that attack, hadn’t they? I hoped Glint and Sunset were alright.

Speaking of sunsets, it was starting to get dark by the time my tribesmates and I came across an interesting sight. The only other buildings we’d seen aside from the remnants of houses was the rare tiny establishment that, when I glanced in them turned out to be stores with practically nothing left inside them. What we came across now was a building unlike anything I’d seen so far in the Wasteland.

It stood atop a low, but wide, flat hill. It was huge compared to the few intact homes I’d seen, easily four or five stories tall. Unlike the houses that seemed to have been made mostly of wood, this building was made almost entirely of stone. It had tall, dark gray walls, with a steepled roof of dark tiles. There were two spires sprouting from the building, one in front, the other in back. The front spire was thinner, ending in a long, spear-like point, from which rose an iron rod shaped like a circle with wave-like protrusions wreathing it, and a crescent shape in the center. The back spire had an open area at its top that held a huge metal object the purpose of which I wasn’t sure of, but it reminded me of kind of a big metal hat with a rope hanging out of it.

Windows could be seen all over the building, tall vertical windows lining the sides and front. These windows, half of them were burned, or melted, or otherwise blasted out, but a few were miraculously intact, having survived the Great Fires from so long ago. I couldn’t make out details from such a distance, but the windows were colored, and seemed to form pictures.

A gate of spear-like iron joined a half broken down fence that surrounded the building, and I saw a large set of stone steps leading to a broken pair of thick wooden double doors that led inside. The entire building had a... solemn air about it. I felt a strange sense of comfort, though, looking at it. As if this place was meant to be some kind of sanctuary, and even the war, and all the horrors of the Wasteland, hadn’t stopped it from serving that purpose.

“Well, that’s looking like a spot to hole up for the night if I ever saw one, “ said Whetstone as she caught up to me and Trailblaze, the rest of our tribesmates right behind her as we lined up at the base of the hill leading up to the building, “Kind of weird looking. Wonder what it was built for?”

“Don’t know,” I said, stepping forward, but holding out a hoof as the others made to follow me, “You guys should wait out here. Let me take a look, just to make sure its safe.”

Stone Carver made a small grunting sound, “I don’t remember you being the stealthiest hunter in the tribe. Why not let another of us scout-”

“No!” I said, faster and sharper than I intended, which earned a flat look from Stone Carver, and I felt a spike of embarrassment as I tried to meet her look, “What I mean is, I have the most experience here with the dangers out here. I have an idea of what to look for that any of you could miss.”

“It’s fine,” said Trailblaze, “Let him look. But, Longwalk, don’t take any chances.”

“What, me take chances?” I said, but the joke clearly fell flat with Trailblaze as she narrowed her eyes at me, and I sighed, “Sorry.”

“Just be careful,” she said.

Since there were portions of the fence that were knocked down I simply went through one of those holes rather than bother with the rusted gate. The hill was barren, with patches of faded, dry yellow grass that crunched under my hooves as I walked by. I followed the trail up the hill and soon found myself at the stone steps leading up into the building. A few dark, dead trees dotted the flat top of the hill, and I wondered what this place must have looked like before the Great Fires. I tried to picture it in my mind, but my mind’s eye almost instantly showed me Snowdrift and I shook my head. Taking a steadying breath and climbed the stairs, trying to step lightly to keep my hooves from making too much noise but... well... you try keeping your hooves quiet on concrete. It didn’t help that everything was eerily silent, with no wind this day to provide even a little background noise.

Much as I had a sense of comfort from seeing the building from a distance, it was imposing up close, towering over me as I got to the top of the stairs and approached the doors. Or rather the open hole where the doors had been before they’d fallen off. Rotted, most splintered and charred husks of wood was all that was left of the doors.

The inside was almost entirely one single space, a vast room with a high vaulted ceiling. There were two long rows of stone benches, now many overgrown with moss and mould. There was a wide aisle between the rows, a ragged, barely intact blue and white carpet rolled out down the aisle leading to the far end of the room. I walked in, slowly, keeping low. I was watching my E.F.S carefully, not seeing any red dots, but not entirely trusting that. I kept scanning for any sign of creature habitation, or that the place might be getting used by Raiders. But I saw neither tracks, spores, or the normal gore graffiti Raiders tended to splatter around their dwellings. I also saw no bodies that could possibly be ghouls. In fact aside from the clear disuse, the interior of the building was remarkably free of debris.

Now that I was inside I could see the windows in more detail, making out the pictures formed from the multi-colored glass. Some were only partially intact, but others were full. Many of them showed green fields, or idyllic looking, simple villages of small thatch roofed buildings. Some showed rivers, others forests, but whatever the scenes were there were always ponies there. Ponies of all colors, sizes, and tribes, shown playing with each other, running, dancing, or just lounging around enjoying the scenery. And always above the ponies was a stylized sun or moon, upon which stood one of two ponies. These ponies were unlike the others, larger, with both wings and horn. One was pure white, the other a dark midnight blue. They were always shown protectively watching over the ponies playing beneath them.

It didn’t take a great mental leap for me guess that these two were the Princesses that B.B had told me about way back in Saddlespring.

Two Princesses, watching over their little ponies.

I wish they’d done a better job of it.

No, that wasn’t really being fair. I didn’t know them. For all I knew those two sisters did everything they could to prevent the coming of the Great Fires. Maybe they couldn’t stop it. The war, the balefire, none of it. It’d be easy to blame them, to throw all the responsibility for the state of the world at their hooves. With Snowdrift’s death fresh in my mind and all the rest of the suffering I’d encountered since leaving (and losing) my home, there was a temptation to just... vent. To let it all out at these convenient scapegoats, these two immaculate goddesses who were once protectors of my race, and were now... what? Missing? Dead? What would be the point of blaming them, even if it was justified? Which it wasn’t. I couldn’t blame it all on those two alicorns.

Us ponies, we’d had over two centuries to get our shit together after the world ended. Can’t really blame any but ourselves for the way things still were. At least there were those out there that were trying. The NCR, settlements like Saddlespring, my own tribe, Misty Glasses and the spider ponies of Stale 104, even Skull City... there were plenty of us trying to make lives for ourselves. The fact that there were also horrible ponies out there, like the Raiders, or the Labor Guild, didn’t change what the rest of us were trying to do.

And would do. Whatever else happened, between me and Arcaidia, or with Odessa, or anything else, I intended to make at least some small part of the world better before I left it.

“Assuming I live long enough...” I muttered.

“Not with how easy you are to sneak up on,” said a voice behind me, which caused me to jump, and wheel about.

Trailblaze bobbed me on the head, looking at my stunned visage with a sardonic, weary smile. After I managed to collect my breath, and my heart which I’m fairly certain had leaped out and skittered away to hide in a corner, I glared at my friend.

“Don’t do that!”

She shrugged, “Don’t space out. If you go scouting someplace, Long, I’d prefer if you wait until you’ve cleared the area to start daydreaming.”

I frowned, ears flattening as I looked away, mollified, “I, uh, just started thinking about things. Nothing on the E.F.S, though. This building looks clear so far.”

Trailblaze cocked her head, blue eyes flicking left and right, “Not a lot here, I’ll agree, but let’s not get cocky. E.F.S... I remember that’s something Arcaidia had on her little hoof device too. Spots threats or something?”

“Basically,” I replied, turning and resuming my slow trot down the middle of the aisle, Trailblaze by my side, “Red dots pop up in my vision showing things that want to get frisky with our internal organs. Green dots are nice, or at least indifferent, things that won’t immediate want us dead.”

“How does a hunk of metal do any of that?” Trailblaze asked, pausing to examine a small metal plate laying upturned between the stone benches, a small pile of tarnished coins littering the floor.

“I haven’t a clue, but I like it,” I said as I reached the end of the aisle. This end of the building had a podium of sorts, stone like the rest of the interior. A raised portion along the back wall held a tall sculpture of entwined metal, silver and gold. It reminded me of a tree, with branches of gently curving metal spreading from a central trunk. To the left and right the branches formed shapes from their entwining, the sun and moon motif again. There were empty notches along the sculpture, none larger than my eye. On closer inspection I saw a single small, green gemstone on the ground that looked about the right size, though there were dozens of notches on the sculpture, all empty. Had somepony stolen the gems? Why? What good would the gems do? They must have been valuable to somepony.

On the stone podium there was the remains of what had once been a book, but the pages were dust, now, and even the thick binding was worn, leaving only the metal image of the two alicorn sisters upon it.

“So,” I asked Trailblaze, “Did you come after me simply because you sensed I was being introspective, or was there another reason?”

Trailblaze trotted towards a doorway along the left side of the far wall once she seemed satisfied there was no danger here in the main room, “Whetstone said I ought to double check on you. She noticed you were, to use her words ‘in a funk’, and likely to get distracted.”

I sighed. So Whetstone was still worried about me? Well, she clearly had good reason. All it’d taken was a few colorful windows to make me forget I’d come in here to check the building for danger, “I”ll have to thank her later.”

I joined Trailblaze by the back door, a mostly intact, thick iron bound affair with a metal loop for opening. I glanced at Trailblaze and she readied herself, giving me a nod. I took a deep breath and gripped the iron loop with my hoof and pulled. The door screeched open, making us both wince. Fortunately no monsters, crazy ponies, or traps assaulted us. Beyond was just a hallway, stretching to the right towards a simple stone flight of stairs. There was another door across from us, but the door wasn’t that important, given the wall itself was crumbled, leaving a huge hole from which daylight poured in.

“Guess we found the back entrance,” I said, and Trailblaze rolled her eyes, holding up a hoof to her lips and making a soft ‘shh’ noise. I returned the eye roll. As if we hadn’t just been talking two minutes ago! Still I did as instructed and kept quiet as Trailblaze snuck forward, hunkered down. Seeing her brown coated form crouched low as she snuck towards the hole in the wall I felt somewhat vindicated. Take that Crossfire! Crouching down is a perfectly acceptable form of stealth!

I joined Trailblaze in crouching down and sneaking forward. One by one we poked our heads around the edge of the hole, peering past fallen blocks of stone. The hole led to the backyard of the building, which was nearly twice the size of the front. The iron fence wrapped all the way around the building back here, with an equal number of missing section. What caught my eye was the extensive series of stone slabs and small stone sculptures, sometimes capped with moons, others suns, even a rare cross. The markers were all in fairly neat, ordered rows, evenly spaced, and I could make out writing on most of them. Towards the back there were a pair of stone buildings, much smaller than the one we were inside. They had a similar look to them, however.

Trailblaze gave me a puzzled look, and I returned it, shrugging. We both walked out cautiously. My E.F.S was still clear, but Trailblaze had reminded me that the device wasn’t perfect. After all, she was supposed to show up on it as a green dot, and now that I was paying attention to her she did, but before that I hadn’t noticed her. However E.F.S worked, it clearly somehow keyed into my own alertness and if I wasn’t paying attention it wouldn’t do me any good.

Walking among the stone markers I could make out what the wording was, though a lot of it was faded. Names, or what I assumed were names, and numbers. Either these markers had pony’s names on them and important dates, or somepony really wanted to remember that there was a ‘Windy Breeze’ from ‘779-796’. More realistically I had already guessed what I was looking at.

After all, I’d seen Shale’s grave, so why wouldn’t I recognize others?

“Longwalk, what are these? You know, don’t you?” Trailblaze’s solemn tone was only matched by her face. She might have suspected what this place was already.

“These are where the ponies of the old world buried their dead,” I said.

Trailblaze’s eyes looked over the markers, easily several hundred spread across the wide yard, and furrowed her brow in a deep frown, “How do their spirits find peace if they’re stuck in the ground like this? How do they find their Ancestors?”

“They don’t...” I hesitated, realizing that I wasn’t honestly sure what ponies believed in these days or why burial was their method of saying goodbye to the dead. I’m sure there were reasons. I decided I should ask B.B about it sometime. “I don’t know. They don’t believe the same things we do. But this is how they do it.”

Trailblaze shuddered, “Long, promise me something.”

“What?”

“If I die, don’t let anypony put me in the ground. Make sure you burn me, so I can get to our Ancestors.”

I stared at her. Suddenly a chill wind swept across the graveyard and I shivered alongside Trailblaze. I moved closer to her, leaning against her slightly. She looked at me, and I saw how hard she was trying to keep it together, keep herself together, after all that had happened. The last thing I wanted to contemplate, or even acknowledge, was how vulnerable, how... not immortal we both were. A few weeks ago we were just two young ponies with no worries beyond the next hunt or set of chores we’d need to do. Death was the last thing on our minds. No longer, those days. They were gone, and my best friend was scared of dying and being buried in the cold ground.

“Hey,” I said, leaning in a bit more, my shoulder touching hers, “If it happens, I’ll take care of it myself. Just don’t make me have to, Trail. Let’s not make either of us go through that. Not anytime soon, anyway.”

She looked away, beautiful blue eyes staring out across a dead, gray Wasteland that didn’t deserve to have eyes like that behold it. I could see the anxiety, the stress, the fears, all of it being shoved back deep into those eyes as she pulled herself up. Strength and fire were back on those eyes, and she smiled at me, pushing me away with a playful shove.

“Alright, alright, I’ll stop being morose. No dying for either of us. Not until we’re old, withered ponies with bad knees and worse teeth.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said, “I plan to age gracefully and retain all of my teeth in the process.”

“Not the way you fight.”

“Pfft, bet I could take you, now that I’m a hardened, veteran of the Wasteland!”

“Oh? Sounds let a challenge to me,” she said, turning to face me, a coy eyebrow raised.

I held up my hooves in surrender, “Whoa, whoa, didn’t say I wanted to throw down right now! We’re on recon, remember? Scouting dangerous areas, so our tribe has a safe place to sleep for the night.”

She flicked her tail, laughing under her breath, “Guess I’ll spare you for now, since you’re being all responsible.”

Like that the dour mood was gone and we were back to a semblance of normalcy; perhaps the most valuable thing of all in the Wasteland. Talk of death was forgotten and for even just a few precious minutes we were just two friends shooting the breeze, almost like how we were when out hunting.

The rest of the building and its surrounding area proved to be miraculously danger free. I felt like the Wasteland was trying to fake me out, and kept expecting horrible monsters to spring from the ground or a band of Raiders to come howling from the surrounding ruins at any minute while the rest of my tribemates made themselves at home inside the building.

Trailblaze and my exploration of the building earlier had revealed a upper floor with plenty of rooms that had probably once been sleeping quarters for whoever had lived here. Old mouldy bedding and broken down furniture was plentiful. There was also a room I imagined was some kind of meeting room or study for somepony, with its larger desk, and bookshelves. There wasn’t much to scourge, despite my thorough searching. Some stray bottle caps, ever prevalent in the Wasteland, and a lot of random knick knacks, the only bit of which seemed useful was this gray roll of sticky stuff I thought might come in handy later and added to my saddlebags.

There were more stairs leading up into the back tower, through these stairs were wooden, and looked ready to collapse. I saw the rope dangling from that metal hat thing fell all the way down to the bottom of the tower. I resisted the urge to pull it. Knowing my luck I’d just end up crushing myself, rather than learn the purpose of the metal hat.

Another, shorter staircase on the second floor, just above the front doors, led to a roof access. Despite the steepled nature of the roof the very tip of the steeple was actually flat, forming a walkway wide enough for one or two ponies to trot across. The roof offered a rather nice view of the surrounding area in all its barren, dirty Wasteland glory.

Night was approaching fast, and my tribesmates and I enjoyed a simple meal. Stone Carver wanted to cook the mole beast she’d caught, but I advised against fire. At night, light would give away our position. For the same reason we agreed to wait until morning to burn Snowdrift. Rock Roller had insisted on carrying her body that day, and he kept a protective watch over her, rarely straying far from where he’d set her down near the podium in the main chamber. I’d wanted us to use the second floor to rest, but it seemed my tribesmates were more comfortable in the main room. Which was well enough. We’d used the last of the daylight to barricade both entrances with the broken furniture from the second floor and a few of the stone benches. Us earth ponies can move a lot of stuff in a short span of time when we want to.

While everypony slowly got tired and started to drop off for sleep I headed upstairs. I’d agreed to take first watch of the night and would wake up Whetstone in about three or four hours so she’d take second watch. I made my way to the roof, what seemed to be the best spot to maintain my vigil. Up there I could see all around the building for quite a distance, and hopefully my E.F.S would make up the difference of crappy night vision.

The problem with being on watch duty comes from having to be alert for long periods of nothing happening. The mind rebels against that kind of thing, wanting ways to distract itself from boredom, even though doing that is exactly the kind of thing that makes you drop your guard. For the first half hour time crawled by at a snail’s pace. The cloud cover above had thinned out in a few places, letting slivers of pale moonlight to break through, but all this did was illuminate tiny fragments of the Wasteland, and didn’t provide anywhere near enough light for me to see much of anything clearly. For the most part the world was a shadowy ocean of irregularly shifting blackness. My hearing felt sharper, my attention focusing on the sounds around me and less on sight.

So I heard the pony coming up the stairs well before Whetstone showed up. I knew it was her, despite the lack of light. There was enough that making out her gray coat and braided mane wasn’t too hard once she got close.

“What’s up, Whet?” I asked as she came up, plopping down next to me.

“Meh, can’t sleep, figured I’d just keep you company until you felt like turning in for the night,” she said.

“You going to be good for your watch?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m good. Like I said, sleep’s kinda elusive right now. Mind won’t shut up,” she said, yawning, as if to prove her body was plenty tired at least. I gave her a look for a few seconds longer, then shrugged it off and resumed my watch.

Whetstone and I shared a long silence, stretching past my first hour of watch. Then, rather abruptly, Whetstone spoke up.

“Longwalk, can I ask you a serious question?”

“Go for it.”

It was hard to make out the details on Whetstone’s face in the dark, but I could sense the tension in her body, a sudden stiffness in her posture, and the sharp intake of breath she took before speaking, “Do you have a thing for Trail?”

I blinked. On my list of possible questions that was, perhaps, the least likely one I’d thought she’d ask. My surprised silence seemed to answer for her because she let out a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, “Yeah, figured. You had that look.”

“What look?” I asked, and even I realized how defensive my tone was and balked.

“You look at her differently now. I noticed it back in the cave, when those pegasi first brought you and her in. The way you look at her isn’t the same as it was back in the village. There’s... how to put it? Before, you just looked like normal, happy, goofy Longwalk when around Trail. Now, it’s still that, but there’s something more. A want. A need. You want her. I can see it.”

“I...” my voice trailed off as I tried to order my thoughts. Could I actually deny what Whetstone was saying? I already knew I had feelings for Trailblaze that were budding into something well beyond friendship. “I think I do.”

There was a heavy sigh from Whetstone at that. I looked at her, peering through the dark, and saw she had a sad, worried frown on her face that didn’t fit Whetstone’s generally upbeat attitude. Why did she look that way, and why did she care if I liked Trailblaze or not? Turns out the answer was much simpler than I could have imagined.

“I figured as much. Trail doesn’t know. I don’t think she’s noticed it the way I have, but you and her have been close for so long I guess she’s got of a bit of a blind spot where you’re concerned. Longwalk... I really, really don’t like having to say what I got to say next, because I like you. You’re a good friend to Trail, and I see you as a good friend to me. Makes this hard, but Trail doesn’t know how you feel, and if you straight up told her it’d probably be even harder hearing this from her...”

She took a deep breath, as if she were psyching herself up, and I just stared at her, wondering what this was all about.

“Trail and me are together,” she said.

I tilted my head slightly, “Together?”

“Together.”

“As in... together together?”

“Yes, together together.”

My brain did a few little acrobatic flips of mental processing, trying to suss out the meaning of these words. All sorts of mental images rapidly flashed by, along with a small tidal wave of complicated emotions I’m not sure I could explain in words had I years and thousands of pages to do it with.

“So Trail... likes mares...?”

“Yes.”

“And you also like mares?”

“Well, I like stallions too. I’m kind of willing to be on either end of the spear, as it were.”

Mental image not needed, thank you Whetstone. In the rather maelstrom-like deluge of half completed thoughts and confused emotions swirling around inside me I asked the next most logical question, “How long?”

“About a year. We, uh, well, I asked her first, while we were out hunting one day, just us two, you know? She wasn’t sure how she felt about being with another mare, and it was a little weird for us both at first, but after a few weeks-”

I interrupted her, holding up a hoof, “That’s alright Whet, I, um, don’t think I need the day to day details.”

Awkward silence came back with a vengeance. I sat there, not knowing what to think or feel. The warm, happy feeling I got when I thought of Trailblaze was still there, but now it had company in the form of a large helping heap of guilt, disappointment, fear, anger, foolishness, and shame. It was a nice, volatile cocktail of emotion simmering at a low boil and I didn’t know what to do with it.

“Long, look,” Whetstone said, her tone mimicking the emotional swirl I was feeling. Clearly she wasn’t any happier with this than I was, “I’m sorry I had to tell you this, but I felt it was better this way than you coming onto Trail and her having to be the one to tell you. We’re in dangerous territory and I didn’t want this coming up at a more critical moment.”

“Yeah, because I’d totally confess to Trail the fact I love her in the middle of a battle,” I said, unable to keep a little sarcasm out of my voice.

“That’s not what I mean, Long. I mean if you dropped that on Trail, like, tomorrow or the next day, during our trek to your friend’s place, and then we came under attack, do you really want Trail distracted by worrying about you then? Because you know she would.”

I couldn’t argue her logic. She was right. Trailblaze would worry about me after having to reject me like that. It’d be the kind of thing that’d stick in her mind and distract her, even when she couldn’t afford to be distracted. Whetstone was right to spot my feelings and head this issue off before it came to that. I ought to be grateful. Didn’t change I felt like a pony that’d just gotten bucked in the gut.

“I understand,” I said at length, “Thanks, Whet, for telling me.”

I perked up, forcing a bit of false cheer into my stance and tone, “And its good you two are together. There needs to be some happiness to be had out here, and if two of my friends are making each other happy, then what else can I do except also be happy for them?”

I must have been a terrible liar, because Whetstone’s face, while she smiled, was still drawn in a sad cast. She reached out with a hoof, touching my withers, “Longwalk, thank you. Seriously, for everything. You’ve always been there for Trail, and I couldn't ask for a better pony to be watching her back. I love her, and there’s nopony I’d trust more to watch out for her than you. You understand?”

I did. Of course I did. After all if our positions were reversed I’d feel the same way towards Whetstone, happy to know there was a pony I could count on watching out for Trailblaze. As a friend. Friend... well, I’d been Trailblaze’s friend all my life. Why should I feel bad about staying her friend for the rest of our lives? A friend, and nothing more. I pushed the thought aside. What right did I have to get moopy over this anyway!? Snowdrift died yesterday! How could I sit here pining over my feelings for Trailblaze when we hadn’t even properly mourned our dead yet!?

Not to mention we were still in danger, and would be as long as we were traveling the Wasteland.

“I understand,” I told Whetstone, “And I’m going to watch both of your backs. You’re my friend too, Whet, and doubly so now that I know just how close you and Trail are. Just call me Mr. Bodyguard, now.”

Whetstone chuckled, patting my shoulder, “Don’t get too vigilant. Me and Trail will need some alone time every now and then, you know.”

Okay, that brought up mental images I didn’t need floating around in my head! I felt the heat on my face and didn’t need Whetstone’s soft giggle to confirm that I was lit up like a torch. Was probably telegraphing our position to everything within miles. I managed to give Whetstone a bit of a glare.

“I’ll endeavor to retrain myself from standing watch while you two do... whatever mares do with each other...” I paused, honestly thinking about it for a second, and blurted out without thinking, “How does that even work?”

Whetstone’s grin was from ear to ear, and dripping with coy suggestion, “Well, Long, let me put it like this. I can touch tip of my snout with my tongue.”

She demonstrated, extending her tongue an impressive distance to curl around her nose. She then very slowly drew her tongue back into her mouth, waving it back and forth all the way. My eyes followed the movements, wide like saucers, and those aforementioned mental images back tenfold. Whetstone gave a little bow.

“Well… uh...” I said, “I guess that would work.”

“Wonders,” Whetstone confirmed.

“I think I need to get back to paying attention to the big, dark, scary Wasteland filled with things that can kill us in horrible ways.”

“Right, right, good point!” Whetstone said, suddenly looking embarrassed, “Sorry Long, didn’t know when I’d get another chance to talk to you about this where we’d be, you know, alone without anypony overhearing the personal stuff.”

“That’s fine, I get it,” on impulse I gave her a quick hug, which seemed to surprise her as she gave a tiny, quiet yelp as I did so, “You go get some sleep. You got second watch, remember?”

“Meh, me and sleep haven’t gotten along well lately anyway,” said Whetstone, returning the hug, “But I’ll try to.”

“And that means no sexy tongue time with Trail tonight,” I said, adopting a faux admonishing tone, trying to emulate my mother’s no nonsense voice as I waggled a hoof at her, “She needs sleep too!”

“Oh dear Ancestors you’re going to be like one of those overprotective brother-types aren’t you?” Whetstone said, and I grinned at her, for the moment my mood brightened a little.

“Relentlessly.”

Whetstone laughed, and we broke the hug, “G’night Long.”

“Good night Whet, see you in a few hours.”

After she was gone I settled back down and resumed my watch over the vast blackness of the nighttime Wasteland. My thoughts were still muddled, my emotions confused as ever. That warmth I felt for Trailblaze, the warmth that had been growing bit by bit ever since I left her behind in Shady Stream... well it was still there. That feeling was strong as ever, actually, and with it was confusion and pain over knowing that Trail and I were never going to be anything more than just good, close friends.

I laughed at myself, shaking my head. The world wasn’t going to cut me any slack because I was confused over finding out my best friend, who I also just recently realized I was in love with, was actually into mares and already involved with another pony.

With no small amount of effort I cleared my head, if not my heart, and kept up my vigil well past the point where I was supposed to go wake up Whetstone for her watch.

By the time morning came around I hadn’t gotten that much sleep. I had eventually gone to let Whetstone take over my watch, but even then, despite being dead tired, I had trouble letting sleep take me. Fortunately when I did drop off into slumberland it was, for once, a blissfully dream free one. Well... not entirely. I didn’t dream, per se, but I had the strangest sensation of somepony watching me, even in my sleep, and when I awoke it was with a start, my head looking about as if I expected to see somepony standing over me.

“You okay Long?” asked Trailblaze, who wasn’t far off. I’d slept down in the main floor with everypony else, and I noticed that I was apparently that last one to awake, as the rest of my tribesmates were either not in the room, or standing with Trailblaze.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, yawning and standing up, rubbing a hoof over my face.

“You sure?” she asked, coming over, “You could sleep a bit longer if you want. Stone Carver just started breakfast. Won’t be ready for at least half an hour.”

I shook my head, then glanced around sharply, “She’s cooking that mole beast from yesterday?”

Trailblaze must have noticed something in my voice, “Don’t worry, she’s keeping an eye out, and we dug a fire pit with an air tunnel to keep the smoke down.”

I breathed easier. I should’ve thought of it myself yesterday, but had completely spaced out on the technique. My tribe liked its isolation, but our hunters had sometimes traveled in areas where ponies from the Wasteland might wander, either to hunt or be scouts against possible trouble. For that kind of situation there was a type of pit you could dig that kept smoke from fire down, and hid the light from the fire. These pits were usually about a hooflength deep, and you also dug a small side tunnel upwind of the main pit, which provides airflow to the fire in the pit, and keeps the smoke dispersed.

Unfortunately we couldn’t do the same for a funeral pyre. I figured we’d just have to take the risk, but if we timed it so we were ready to leave immediately after saying our farewells to Snowdrift we could be away before any dangerous sorts like Raiders spotted the smoke from the pyre.

I stretched and after answering the call of nature on the opposite side of the hill I took the half hour before breakfast to walk the perimeter of the hill, staying low to keep my profile from being easily spotted, and just kept watch on the Wasteland. For all the danger I knew existed in it, the dead, broken expanse seemed so empty and quiet it was all too easy to forget how easily ponies died out here. Though, honestly, if the sky was clear, and one did a little cleanup, it might not look so bad. I could see civilization rebuilding itself. All the base materials were still out there. You just had to get rid of all the things that wanted to eat you, and get crazy ponies like Raiders to… stop being Raiders. Probably through violence. Much as I hated to admit it I never really expected to run into another strange case like Binge.

Thinking of Binge made me think of my other friends, and how they were doing. I looked at my Pip-Buck, switching the screen to the map. Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck tag was still at Stable 104. I wondered what they were doing there? Were they waiting for me? Could they track me by my Pip-Buck the same way I tracked Arcaidia? They might know, then, that I was on my way back. At least they’d know where I was, more or less.

“Food’s up!”

“GAH!”

I jumped, turning about to see Trailblaze grinning at me. I let out a heavy breath.

“Didn’t we have this conversation already!? Do you just get twisted pleasure from making my heart skip a beat?”

Wow, that could be misinterpreted. Luckily Trailblaze waved it off, “We did. I thought you said you’d stop daydreaming, but I keep catching you doing it. Come on, let’s go eat.”

I grumbled wordlessly under my breath as I followed her, mostly because I didn’t have a comeback for her. As usual, Trailblaze had my number.

Everypony gathered around the small pit where Stone Carver had just finished cooking the mole beast over a spit made from one of the branches of the blackened trees in the area. The big mare was cutting off hunks of the freshly cooked meat with one of the survival knives gained from the escape pod’s supplies. My tribesmates had armed themselves with those knives, but I saw a few had gotten creative, pulling out spikes of iron from the rusted fence line and tied the knives to the ends using strips of cloth taken from the ruined furniture in the huge building to create makeshift spears. Only I and Whetstone were armed differently, I with Gramzanber, Whetstone with the energy pistol she’d taken from the Odessa mare back on the Varukisas. Rock Roller had apparently abandoned the pistol he’d taken in favor of a makeshift spear, and I couldn’t blame him, I couldn’t hit anything with those things either.

Conversation was light as we ate. Nopony was up for the usual joking and chat that commonly came with the tribe sharing a meal. Probably didn’t help that there were only eight of us left out of a tribe of over a hundred. Really put a damper on the communal spirit. I had to believe the rest of the tribe would survive long enough for me to figure out some way to rescue them. I tried not to think about what might be happening to them, my mother included.

Trailblaze, sitting next to me as we munched roasted (and tasty!) mole beast nudged me with her shoulder, giving me a small, calming smile. I returned it. She must have seen my worried face. I returned the shoulder bump as well, silently nodding to her in thanks. Whatever happened next, I knew I wouldn’t be facing it alone.

Whetstone, sitting on Trailblaze’s other side, smiled as well and leaned against the other mare. Trailblaze leaned back, eyes closing in contentment, or at least a decent facsimile of it given the circumstances. Looking at the pair, their tails wagging happily as they leaned on each other, I wondered how I didn’t notice earlier how close they were. Whetstone had been Trailblaze’s friend for as long as I had been. How had I missed the signs?

Easy. I hadn’t been looking for them.

Suppressing a sigh I went back to my mole beast, trying to forget the distinct possibility that I was probably ingesting some trace amounts of magical radiation with my meal.

Once everypony had finished eating we put out the fire, cleaned up, and then it was on to the grim duty of Snowdrift. Building the pyre was physically easy, but emotionally taxing. The dead trees offered plenty of wood for the task, but every movement was weighed down by the knowledge of what we were doing and why. In short order, however, we had our pyre, built in front of the massive stone building in front of the steps leading to its main doors. We were all lined up in front of the pyre while Rock Roller, who insisted upon taking on the duty, gently and reverently carried Snowdrift to the stacked pile of wood.

I tried to not see the tears on Rock Roller’s face as he laid Snowdrift on the pyre. I had no idea just how close the two were, but only a blind moron would miss how hard this was for him. Again the events in the hangar replayed in my mind. I knew asking myself if there was anything I could have done differently was pointless, but sometimes the mind is its own worst enemy. It didn’t help that I also thought of Shale. The situations were different, but that didn’t stop the present circumstances from opening up that not-so-old wound.

While I was mired in my thoughts Trailblaze began the rites. Normally the tribe’s Chieftain and shaman would be performing these duties, but we didn’t have anypony resembling a shaman, and Trialblaze, as Hard Tact’s daughter, held the duty of standing in for the Chieftain’s role. I saw her swallow hard before speaking, her own eyes shimmering with tears she held in check. I couldn’t help but respect how steady she kept her voice.

“Ancestors, whose voice we hear on the winds, whose lives gave us life, and watch over us in this world, hear us. One comes to you now, who we call sister, friend, and family. Let the warmth of our love for her, and the guiding light of fire see her safely to your embrace. Welcome her, as you have welcomed all who have come before you, so she may watch over we who remain behind.”

There was normally more to be said by the shaman, rituals to help prepare the spirit for its journey, and beseeching prayers for the Ancestors Spirits to draw their gaze. Without the shaman to do this Trailblaze simply proceeded to the next, more intimate portion of the funeral rite. She approached the pyre, reaching out, to lay her hoof gently on Snowdrift’s face. When she spoke this time it was in a quieter voice, but since it was so silent out in the Wastleand we could still all hear her clearly.

“Fire frees the spirit. You are my friend, and I will remember the day you first taught me to whistle.”

This rite was normally done with only the members of the tribe who were closest to the deceased, but we’d all agreed that since we’d all escaped together, and that Snowdrift’s direct blood relatives were not present, that all of us needed to do this for her. In turn each of us came up to the pyre, to lay our hoof on Snowdrift’s body, and say the words, each with a memory we would carry, whatever memory was most bright in our minds of the pony we were saying goodbye to.

“Fire frees the spirit. You are my friend, and I will remember watching the stars with you.”

“Fire frees the spirit. You are my friend, and will remember when we stayed up all night to finish making our first spears together.”

“Fire frees the spirit. You are my friend, and I remember showing you how to stand up for yourself when you got teased.”

“Fire frees the spirit. You are my friend, and I won’t forget how awesome you were that one hunt, nopony thought you could make a throw that far, but you nailed that gecko before it got away.”

“Fire frees the spirit. You are you are my friend, and I will always remember the day my father got sick and you helped me watch over him.”

Finally it was my turn, and I came up. My hooves felt heavy, and I had a cold weight in my stomach as I looked at the body on the pyre. I slowly touched Snowdrift’s cold face with my hoof. I gulped, mouth dry, memory flashing to the moments in the hangar, Snowdrift dragging my wounded body to safety as magical bolts rained down around us. My mind’s eye saw that final moment when the Odessa soldier faced us in the narrow corridor in front of the escape pod entrance, and the way Snowdrift didn’t hesitate to pull me inside even as the soldier fired.

With a final, deep breath, I said the words, “Fire frees the spirit. You are my friend, and I won’t ever forget that you saved my life.”

I stood aside, joining the others as Rock Roller, the last of us to approach the pyre, raised a trembling hoof to Snowdrift’s face. His voice was little more than a whisper.

“Fire frees the spirit. You are... more than a friend. I will never forget the fact that I love you.”

Rock Roller seemed ready to collapse as he shuffled away from the pyre. Trailblaze gave him a solemn nod, and hugged him, even as Rock Roller visibly battled the need to break down crying. Once he composed himself, Rock Roller nodded to Trailblaze who then turned to face the pyre. This was normally the point the shaman would light the pyre, but Trailblaze would now take that duty.

Stepping forward, she raised a hoof, and took a deep breath. Coils of fire traced around her hoof. The others exchanged glances, some shuffling nervously. They’d seen Trailblaze use the fire in our escape, but had been so focused on the need to get away that her new abilities had really registered to them, yet. Now there were mixed looks of fear and awe on their faces, save for Whetstone who seemed calm. I wasn’t too worried. I figured they’d get used to Trail’s fire, given time, but it reminded me that I still needed to talk with her about Moa Gault and what the Guardian had done to her.

The fires gathered at the tip of her hoof, and Trailblaze released them in a gentle stream that washed over the pile of dark, dead wood. The pyre ignited easily, flames and smoke quickly billowing upwards into the sky, and engulfing the form of Snowdrift.

I watched the flames consume the body as I prayed for the spirit.

It didn’t take more than ten minutes for the fire to start to die down, ten minutes where we all stood silently watching, my tribesmates and I sharing the silence as we mourned our dead. Watching the long, black trail of smoke reach into the sky, I frowned. I didn’t like it, but I knew we couldn’t afford to stay here long, with that signal giving away our position to anypony or anything within miles.

Heart heavy, but knowing I needed to get us moving, I turned to Trailblaze, about to tell her it was time for us to go, but just as my mouth opened to speak, another voice spoke loud and clearly, filled with amusement and mock caring.

“Aww, isn’t this just such a sweet, heartwarming sight? Giving respect to the dead by burning the shit out of them. Just a suggestion for you folk, when you’re running from a group comprised mostly of people who can fly, you might not want to give away where you are with a giant smoke signal.”

All of us turned, eyes searching upwards to spot the speaker. She was standing on top of the steepled roof of the large stone building. I immediately recognized the pegasus mare from her dark red coat and silver mane of two curly pigtails. It was Black Petal, wearing a very short cut white and blue Odessa uniform, one that left her withers and upper chest bare, and only partially covered her flanks, but with long sleeves on her forelegs with wide, white cuffs. She wasn’t alone, either, next to her was Shattered Sky, wearing his more utilitarian uniform and customary glasses. He gave Black Petal a displeased look.

“Did you have to announce our presence? Taking them by surprise would have been more tactically viable.”

Black Petal giggled, making a waving gesture with her right hoof. The air seemed to ripple like water and I saw her hoof disappear as if it were entering a liquid space, and out of it she pulled the large silver key I’d seen her floating on earlier. She twirled the large object around like it was a twig, and not a metal object the same size as she was. The key had a long, straight shaft, its teeth block-like and reminding me of a hammer. The other end of it was capped by a hexagonal piece, the core of which had a blue gem set in it.

“I think the words you’re looking for there, Shattered, is ‘booooring’! I want to have fun, for once, and I’d appreciate it if you played along a little. Its more entertaining if they get the chance to struggle a little,” Black Petal said in a cooing tone, and then lifted off the roof, flying down slowly towards us.

Shattered Sky rolled his eyes, adjusting his glasses, “Do remember the goal is to recapture the escapees of value. Kill the others if you want, but leave the two valuable targets alive. I’ll call the others.”

“Nope! Don’t you dare make that call! I don’t want anypony to interfere with my fun!” Black Petal chided, flying right back up to him as if we weren’t there.

I took advantage of the distraction to edge closer to Trailblaze, who was glaring up at the two pegasi with fire in her eyes. Not literal fire in her eyes, I feel I should clarify, just the normal Traiblaze glare. Its so strange to think I need to make that distinction now. Bumping her with my shoulder I got her to look at me and I whispered, “Get the others inside. I’ll draw their attention. When I do, ru-”

I didn’t finish the sentence before Trailblaze interrupted with a firm tone, “Not happening this time Longwalk. You’re not playing decoy for us again. We fight them together.”

I stiffened, my voice becoming more desperate, “Trail, these aren’t normal Odessa soldiers! They’re both part of some special, elite unit that have weapons like my spear. I don’t even know if I can take on one of them, let alone two!”

“All the more reason for us to fight as a group,” said Whetstone, coming up beside us. The gray mare gave me a reassuring smile, then nodded to Trailblaze, “Trail is right. We run, they’ll just hunt us down like animals. If I’m going down, and not in the fun, licking way, I’m going down kicking somepony in the face.”

“Exactly,” said Stone Carver, hefting her spear in her mouth, “Not the ‘going down’ part, that was awkward and more than I wanted to know, but the fighting part. We owe these pegasi a heap of payback, and I’m tired of running!”

I could see it in the eyes of the others as well, all of them brandishing their weapons with looks of grim resolve. They weren’t going to flee this time. My heart clenched. I didn’t want them fighting here! Shattered Sky I already knew as ruthless and deadly, and I didn’t doubt Black Petal would be just as dangerous! I had no confidence I could protect any of them while trying to fight foes like this. I honestly didn’t know if I could match just one of them.

But it was clear I was about to find out, and that like it or not my tribesmates were going to be right there next to me. Rather than fear for their lives I wanted to take heart in their presence, but with Snowdrift’s body still burning behind us, it was hard not to let the fear take root. I didn’t want to have to repeat funerals for anypony else today, or anyday for that matter.

Meanwhile Shattered Sky and Black Petal had been arguing with each other as if we weren’t even there, the darker colored pegasus mare waving her forelegs around at Shattered Sky. Her silver key just floated next to her, seemingly under its own power.

“No, no, no, NO! I swear to any higher powers you want to waste time believing in if you call the others and ruin my day I will remove your rectum through your throat and bury you under this church!”

Shattered Sky seemed less than intimidated by the tirade, casually blowing a bit of his own white mane from his face and wiping a bit of Black Petal’s spittle from his face as he blinked at her, “I understand you’re just a liaison to us from your... unique family, but you still must follow Odessa protocols while you wear our uniform. Or that indecently cut version of or uniform, at any rate. I don’t doubt our ability to deal with these escapees, but why take risks when Hammerfall and Francheska are also on patrol and could be here within twenty minutes?”

“Sure, let others swoop in to claim credit,” retorted Black Petal, which caused Shattered Sky to raise an eyebrow. This seemed to encourage Black Petal to go on, “You know those two will take credit for recapturing these guys, even if its use that do most the work. You just said yourself you know we can take them, so why bother involving anyone else when you know we’ve got this? Then all the credit is ours. Or yours. I just want to have fun, so you can claim the capture as yours, I don’t really care.”

Shattered Sky pursed his lips in thought, looking at the hovering mare before him who was grinning with a wide, hungry smile, and he finally sighed, “I’m only agreeing to this in order to keep you from whining at me later. However I’m setting a strict time limit of ten minutes on this. If by some chance they’re causing us issues after ten minutes, I’m calling for reinforcements.”

“Yay!” Black Petal cried out, doing a little flip in the air, giving Shattered Sky a fast hug which he pulled away from, or at least tried to and failed, “This is going to be great. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten to eat live pony! You Odessa stiffs only feed me that pre-packaged crap! Not today! Today Black Petal dines on fresh, warm, yummy pony, and I get to play with my food first!”

Her celebration was cut somewhat short by the bolt of fire that seared by her head, causing Black Petal to make a sharp yelp, then turn to glare down at Trailblaze, “Hey, you mind!? Having a moment here!”

Down on the ground I frowned, and said, “Trail, I think you missed.”

Trailblaze grimaced, her hoof still afire, “Still figuring out how these flames work, okay? I think there was a crosswind or something!”

“Oh, sure, blame the wind for bad aim.”

“You know, you’re a lot closer than those two right now.”

“Point taken,” I said, gripping Gramzanber tightly in my jaw. Our ranged attack options were limited to Trailblaze’s fire, Whetstone’s pistol, and my spear, which I wasn’t keen on throwing unless I could guarantee a hit. Trailblaze, probably realizing the tactical situation faster than I did, made a few quick whistles and gestures. Hunting code. Everypony else in the tribe immediately spread out forming a loose circle around Trailblaze, Whetstone, and myself. It was a simple set up, using one group as bait, while the rest of the hunters in the party formed a ‘net’ around the bait group.

“Cute,” I heard Black Petal say, and she glanced at Shattered Sky, “I want the stallion first, you can play around with the sparky one in the meantime.”

I tensed, expecting to see her charge. I almost didn’t. She didn’t pull off Shattered Sky’s disappearing trick, but she crossed the distance between us so fast I was barely able to follow it. She left a pale white streak in her wake, and I never imagined that a pegasus could fly that fast. The only thing that I’d seen that matched it was Rainbow Dash when I saw her in the memory orb. Black Petal went from the top of the building (didn’t she call it a ‘church’, whatever that was?) to being right next to me in the span of a second, landing on the ground with an impact that sent up a cloud of dirt.

“Hiya,” I heard her sugary sweet voice say the moment before her hoof flicked towards my face.

I rolled, throwing myself away from the blow, but it still caught me partially across the jaw. I felt my whole head ring, and teeth rattle, at the impact as I jumped away. Black Petal didn’t even give me a split second to recover, coming in at me with a quick, powerful flap of her wings. Her teeth were wide in a mad grin, and her fangs were now clear to see. She swung her hoof and that silver key of hers swung with it, moving along with her hoof as if somehow attached to her by invisible wires. Instinctively I moved Gramzanber to parry, swinging the spear’s serrated edge to intercept the massive key.

There was a sound much like metal striking metal, but with a distorted, echoing quality to it. A small flash of unnatural silver sparks flew from where spear and key met, and my whole body shook from the force behind the blow. I found myself skidding back, hooves leaving grooves in the dirt. My head rung, but I cleared it quickly with a hard shake, just in time to parry a vicious overhead swing as Black Petal flew up, then down in a short arc, smashing the key down at me. This time I backed away, deflecting more than trying to outright block the attack. That same echoing, distorted ring of metal sounded as the two ARMs met, and silver sparks filled the air between us, but I maintained a stronger stance this time as the key got deflected into the ground.

I heard gunshots, and glanced out of the corner of my eye to see how Trailblaze was doing. Running, as it turned out. Not running away, but Trailblaze had quickly learned that when dealing with opponents armed with guns it was a good idea to keep moving. As Shattered Sky flew above her Trailblaze had dove among the grave markers, using the stone slabs and statues as cover. Now they were engaged in a firefight, literally in Trailblaze’s case. For the brief second I had to watch I saw Trailblaze dive from one grave to another, throwing a bolt of fire at Shattered Sky as she dove. In return Shattered Sky would evade the flames with deft, quick flight patterns, then shoot back with his long barreled pistol. From the frustration on his face it was clear he was annoyed by the fact he couldn’t shoot to kill on Trailblaze, but it was only a matter of time before he decided to attack one of the others of the tribe.

For their part they’d taken Trailblaze’s example and were taking cover among the grave markers, most of them waiting to line up throws with their spears. I saw Stone Carver make a very precise throw that would have caught Shattered Sky cleanly if he hadn’t done his disappearing act, instantly vanishing out of harms way only to reappear nearby in the same moment.

I could see no more of that fight, however, as Black Petal was giving me little to no breathing room. Recovering her key from the ground, pulling it free and quite intentionally spraying a big clod of dirt at my face in the process, she thrusted straight at me with the tip of the key aimed for my chest. I thrust forward to meet her, determined to regain the momentum in the fight, but something strange happened. That same water-like ripple from before appeared in the air and the key vanished, and Black Petal gracefully leapt into the air over my spear.

“Tag!” she called playfully as I was slammed in the side by her key, which appeared from that water-like ripple once again, only from a completely different angle than it had been before. My lungs had the air blasted out of them as the blow sent my flying, then rolling along the ground. I stopped short of one of the gravestones, and rolled aside as Black Petal flashed forward, smashing the gravestone apart with her key.

I made a quick backslash with Gramzanber that forced her to jump back, and she landed in a reared down stance, tail wagging in a manner that reminded me far too much of Binge.

“You having fun?” she asked, “Your blood pumping? Blood tastes better when its got fresh adrenaline in it; adds a nice little kick.”

“Oh I just love having crazy bloodsucking mares trying to beat me to death with giant keys! No I’m not having fun! Besides, aren’t you supposed to capture me alive?” I said, catching my breath, and readying myself to strike.

“Hey, doesn’t mean I can’t grab a quick nibble. Oh, but before lunch, I got an important question to ask you!” she said, just as Whetstone popped up from behind another nearby grave marker and fired off a series of fast shots with her laser pistol. Black Petal didn’t even bother dodging the red bolts. Instead that water ripple flowed through the air with a sweep of her key, and the energy bolts were absorbed into the ripple. Black Petal glanced behind her, wagging a hoof.

“Ah, ah, ah, no interrupting the adults while they’re talking!”

Suddenly the ripple appeared again, and from it the very same energy beams that Whetstone fired shot out back at her. Whetstone shouted in alarm, diving back into cover. At the same moment, charging in from the side, Rock Roller came at Black Petal with his spear lowered. Black Petal actually sighed as she twisted away from him and lashed out with a hoof, clotheslining Rock Roller and landing the stallion flat on his back, writhing.

“Really, can’t have any kind of conversation here, can we? Let’s move things a smidge!” Black Petal said with an annoyed snort as she kicked Rock Roller away with a single hindhoof, actually lifting him off the ground and sending him flying into a nearby gravestone, where he crumbled to the ground in a heap. I didn’t know if he was still conscious or even alive after that, but I rushed in at Black Petal, chopping down heavily with Gramzanber. I wasn’t any more keen to kill at this point, but she’d already clearly proven that I couldn’t afford to pull my swings with her either. If I saw an opening, I’d disable her, but I until then I had to fight like I intended to kill.

Black Petal swung her key around, catching Gramzanber’s edge on the long shaft of the key, right below the teeth, and she smiled at me, her wings buzzing. I felt her body straining to push me back as I in turn pushed down with all my strength, trying to force her to the ground.

“Mmmm, not bad at all,” Black Petal said appreciatively as she held firm against me, and her nose twitched, “Well muscled, but not a lot going on upstairs. Oh, and I definitely smell her on you.”

“Huh?” I cocked my head in confusion, and Black Petal took full advantage of it to headbutt me, then fly around behind me. I felt a sudden pain as she yanked my tail, and bodily lifted me off the ground! She wasn’t exactly a big mare, but she tossed me like I weighed no more than a newborn foal.

I sailed through the air and landed hard near the hole into the back of the... church? I really wondered what that word meant, but didn’t have time to consider it much as I had Black Petal flying at me, lashing out with her giant key once again. I stood my ground and caught the key on Gramzanber’s shaft, feeling the strain on my body from this mare’s unnatural strength. It didn’t help that my body was taking a beating, on top of the damage it’d sustained yesterday.

“C’mon, tell me, why is it I’m smelling my good old friend Blood Bloom all over you?” Black Petal asked in a childishly sweet voice, her nose twitching as she sniffed the air, “You and her blanket buddies? Hard to tell, you got the scent of a lot of ponies on you, but hers is just so distinct and I ain’t smelling the sexy times on you.”

“The what? Waitwhat? No. No sexy times. What is wrong with you!?” I growled, twisting around to draw her key away and to the left while bucking out with my right hindleg. I felt it connect solidly, but even though the blow pushed her away it didn’t seem to harm her much as she laughed at me.

“That’s cute, you’re face is all red. What, you never got warm and sticky with another pony before?”

“That’s every level of not your business,” I retorted, eyes flicking towards the sight of the rest of the fight in the graveyard.

Stone Carver had moved over to drag Rock Roller away, while Whetstone and Trailblaze were tag-teaming to keep Shattered Sky off balance, forcing him to remain on the defensive, but that couldn’t last. I saw the others of the tribe backing off, staying in cover, unable to lend any real help. It was only a matter of time before somepony else died, and I wasn’t sure what I could do to stop it.

Can’t let this drag out. C’mon Longwalk, its time to get with the planning!

Black Petal took advantage of my distraction and was in my face in an instant, slamming a hoof under my chin in an uppercut that made me see stars for a second. I slashed hard without bothering to wait for the ringing in my head to clear, and saw Black Petal flip out of the way, through a few silken strands of her tail came off from the near hit.

She landed back on the ground, flicking her tail to glance at its newly trimmed state, and turned a dagger glare on me. Her red eyes almost seemed to flash.

Or I could get punched in the face. Great plan. Keep this up and she’ll get tired. Eventually. After you’ve amazed her with your impression of an unconscious pony. Do I have to use Accelerator?

I felt from the buzz of pressure in my head that Gramzanber was good to go, having built up plenty of energy from the fight so far. I hesitated, however. I didn’t want to use Accelerator unless I truly was put up against a wall. I thought of Snowdrift, and how I might have been able to save her if I’d been able to use that power, and feared a similar situation occurring in this fight. There was no telling when I’d need that speed, so I held off, instead watching Black Petal carefully for any openings I could take advantage of.

Black Petal took a deep breath and casually spun her key around. So far I couldn’t figure out just what the artificial ARMs power was. Both the key and the mare wielding it were unpredictable. Not to mention it was troubling that she seemed to know B.B. Or Blood Bloom... that had been the name that strange pony in the dream I saw had called B.B. I hadn’t wanted to believe there was a connection between Black Petal and my friend, but it was pretty obvious by now. Maybe I could get a few answers and distract Black Petal at the same time. She didn’t seem to be taking this fight seriously, so if I played her game a little she might end up dropping her guard.

“What do you mean you smell Blood Bloom on me anyway?” I asked, keeping a wary eye on her, my stance tense and ready to move at the first hint of her attacking, “Who is that supposed to be?”

Black Petal giggled, licking her lips, “Oh, she using some half-baked alias? How adorkable of her. Bet its something stupid, like just abbreviating her name to a couple of letters. She’s a pegasus like me, but not as cute, and with a white coat and plain looking brown mane; tacky pink streaks in it. Sound familiar?”

“It might,” I said, catching it when Black Petal shifted slightly in the air, so I was ready when she charged me. As she swung out with her key, aiming for my head. I ducked under the extended, swinging key and jumped forward. I brought Gramzanber down at Black Petal’s outstretched arm, not particularly hesitant at the notion of severing it. That was mostly non-lethal, right? She clearly didn’t need to have all of her limbs.

My de-limbing strike was thwarted, however, Black Petal reacting with remarkable speed as she rolled in the air, twisting her arm away from Gramzanber so that its edge cut a line in the stone wall of the church instead of her, the sharp spear blasting through the stone in a shower of concrete dust. I didn’t let up, following Black Petals’ movements as she spun around to my left, and the air rippled like water once again. Only this time Black Petal and her key both disappeared in the ripple, only to appear on my opposite side, lashing out.

I parried, moving with the momentum of Black Petals’ strike, and countered with the back spike of Gramzanber’s shaft, thrusting it at her face. I expected her to back off, but she surprised me by batting the spike away with her hoof, taking a deep cut as the tip pierced her hide, but at the same moment she caught me in the stomach with the teeth of her key. I rolled with the blow, but I was still pushed away, feeling sharp pain run through my stomach from the hard blow.

I wasn’t done, though. Having not forgotten the other weapons in my arsenal I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out a flashbang grenade, pulling the pin and throwing it in one quick and smooth motion as I bounced away from Black Petal. I quickly covered my ears and shut my eyes to protect myself just in time. I still heard the deafening bang of the grenade going off, even with my hooves plugging my ears.

I jumped to my hooves to see... nothing. I blinked, wondering where Black Petal had gone. Then I felt a weight slam into my back and I was driven into the ground, the air once more getting knocked from my lungs. I felt her body on my back, one hoof trying to get around my neck, and I elbowed back with my hoof as hard as I could. I caught Black Petal on the face, but the blow barely slowed her down as she got her hooves beneath my neck and started to choke.

Feeling my windpipe getting clenched I rose to my hooves and, glancing at the church wall, I rammed my elbow back again and again. She growled ferally and the pressure on my neck only increased. Desperately I twisted myself around and flung my body backwards against the wall. Slamming her body into the wall once, then twice, I felt her grip loosen. After a third, hefty back slam, I felt her slide off me as I stumbled away, gasping for breath.

Glancing behind me I saw Black Petal standing up by the wall and stretching, like some feline creature. There was a slight series of cracks in the wall where I’d slammed her.

“Mmm, that felt good,” she said cheerfully, looking at me with eyes that had started to glow with a red that was familiar. The same as B.B’s had after she’d fed on blood, “Warm ups done now? We can fight for real?”

I blinked at her. I was breathing hard, pain causing my legs to shake slightly. I then growled, nickering loudly as I stamped my hoof as if I could force away the fatigue and pain. It helped a little, but I knew that if this kept up as a battle of attrition Black Petal was likely to come out on top. She seemed to read my thoughts and she made a clucking noise with her touch.

“Tch, you can’t tell me you’re winded already? Come ooooon! I need a stallion with way more stamina than that! I haven’t even shown you my neat eye trick yet!”

Yeah, well, I haven’t shown you my move faster than bullets trick yet, I thought grimly. I hadn’t wanted to use Accelerator, but it didn’t seem like I had any other options, now. The ability was potent, but not suited for a protracted fight, and there was still Shattered Sky to deal with.

Speaking of which, a scream of pain from behind me drew my attention, and I ground my teeth in frustration as I saw Stone Carver fall over, a hole blasted in her shoulder from Shattered Sky’s gun. The only thing that kept him from finishing her off was an impressively wide and fan-like blast of fire from Trailblaze, who’d stood up on her hind legs and outstretched both hooves to send the extensive sheet of flames into the air. To my surprise Shattered Sky, despite using the vanishing power of his watch shaped ARM, actually came away from the huge sheet of flame slightly signed. He actually had to pat out his uniform, though he didn’t seem too injured and narrowed his eyes at Trailblaze, who looked more than a little winded from her attack.

This looked bad. I was barely holding against Black Petal, and Shattered Sky was forcing Trail to tire herself out far too fast. Trailblaze hadn’t apparently learned to pace herself with her power. I grit my teeth, trying desperately to think of something. I felt a gust of wind, and felt my blood chill as I realized I really shouldn’t have looked away from Black Petal. I turned to see she was right in my face, our snouts nearly touching. I tried to pull away, but rather suddenly I found I couldn’t move. I felt her hoof touch the bottom of my chin to tilt my face to look directly into her eyes, which glowed red like jewels, pulling me inside.

“Now that’s a nice, calm, pliant little pony,” she said in a voice that suddenly sounded like something wet and smooth sliding against my ears. My heart was hammering in my chest, yet my entire body was draining of tension, despite the fact that my limbs were suddenly stiff as boards. Black Petal smiled, but I barely saw it, my eyes unable to look away from hers, as if some invisible force was drawing me straight into those twin red pools.

I felt her hoof stroke my cheek, “I wanted to have more fun with you, but I guess if this is all the exercise I get for today I can’t complain, you’re still more fun than most the worthless ponies I get to feed on. Now, stay still, this won’t hurt... a lot.”

She licked her lips and opened her mouth wide, two long fangs seeming to extend even longer from her teeth as she leaned towards my exposed neck. I tried desperately to move, to kick, to shake my head, but it felt like spikes had driven themselves into my head, forcing my eyes to stay riveted to hers.

A spike of pressure from Gramzanber hit my head like a tiny hammer and I felt the hold of her eyes on me slacken, if only for a moment. I didn’t hesitate and immediately slammed my forehead into Black Petal’s snout with all the willpower and force I could muster. She yipped in pain and reared away from me, shaking her head and holding her now bleeding nose.

“You dick!” she snarled.

Free from the control of her eyes I aimed my Grapple at her, mentally activating S.A.T.S. In the timeless calm of the targeting spell I took a few deep breaths, calming myself and my racing heart. She’d nearly had me. What was that anyway!? I didn’t think it had anything to do with her key shaped ARM. Then how had her eyes paralyzed me like that? I gulped, knowing I couldn’t afford to get caught by Black Petal’s eyes again.

I fired the Grapple and the steel hook and line flew out the second S.A.T.S released and time resumed. The line wrapped around Black Petal’s hindlegs while she was still distracted by her injured nose and she blinked at the steel cable now tangling her. She glared at me, and I looked away from her eyes, which caused her to grin in a distinctly murdery manner.

“You bloody my pretty nose and you think it’s a good idea to tie yourself to me!? Buck, I’m going to bite off your-”

I decided I really didn’t want to know what she was going to bite off and instead stood on my hind legs, took hold of the Grapple line between my forehooves, and proceeded to start spinning. With Black Petal coming along for the ride. I think she might’ve shouted something unflattering about the stature of certain anatomical parts of me that will go unnamed as I spun her around like a bolas and proceeded to slam her into a tall, cross shaped grave marker.

Black Petal was not as daunted by this as I had hoped she’d be.

She howled in wordless anger and proceeded to smash the grave marker to pieces with her key and snarled at me with eyes that seemed to glow with raw animal malice. Hackles raised on her neck and I swear her fangs grew. Then she reached down and bit the Grapple line in half. The steel Grapple line.

I’m not certain whether or not I pissed myself in that moment but it wouldn’t have surprised me.

“You-” she said in a voice that was suddenly deeper and more bestial, “-are food.”

She spread her wings and reared down to charge me, but then there was a sudden, crackling sound in the air, like a current of electricity. A glow of green light filled the air and bathed me and Black Petal. She paused, blinking at a green dot of light that had appeared in the air next to us. Suddenly that green dot expanded quickly, filling out into a wide, flat circle of swirling green energy with arcs of power flowing off the edges like a current of lightning.

“The flying buck?” Black Petal asked in confusion. Her animal anger from a moment ago seemed to recede as she looked at the strange sight of the glowing circle. A second later green circle of light burst open like a shattering window. Revealed now was an open portal, a literal hole in the air. Within that portal I could see a darkly lit room, huge and faintly familiar. It looked like the interior of Stable 104! But more important than that, was the vehicle sitting in front of the portal, its loud engine roaring like the vengeful cry of some ancient beast.

“That,” I said, with an honest smile on my lips, “Would be my friends.”

I dove away as the Ursa, tires screaming as it peeled out, drove straight through the portal. It nearly smashed into Black Petal, but her reflexes were quick and she flew above the charging All Terrain Wagon as it landed on the scene, driving a dozen meters forward before turning around in a sharp skid and stopping.

The portal was still open for a few seconds and I saw beyond it spider ponies, Misty Glasses among them, peering through. Misty Glasses was at the controls of some sort of device, and I could see it was hooked up to an array of large coils that looked to be generating a lot of green arcs of energy. The spider pony scientist waved at me once with one of her many legs, cracking a smile, before giving me a helpless shrug as the portal closed. I heard her shout, “Sorry, portal only lasts a minute or two, we’ll make it better soon! Be carefu-”

Then the portal was closed, but it’d served its purpose in delivering my friends to the battlefield. Even as the portal snapped shut the hatches on the Ursa flung open.

B.B shot out first, straight from the Ursa’s top hatch, a brilliant white bolt of speed that flew high above the graveyard. Her wings spread wide B.B took in the sights around her, taking one brief look between me and Black Petal. I saw her violet eyes widen at seeing Black Petal.

“Longwalk, ya alright?” she asked, not taking her eyes off Black Petal. B.B’s voice was strained, and I could see her practically vibrating with tension.

“Never better,” I said, stumbling a bit as I reached the Ursa, grinning and wagging my tail happily. Arcaidia leapt out of a side hatch in the driver’s compartment of the Ursa, while LIL-E and Binge rushed out of the back hatch of the A.T.W.

Arcaidia reached me first, her silver eyes both glaring and welcoming at the same time as she rushed up to me and swatted me upside the head the very same instant she threw her hooves around me in a tight hug. I winced as my wounded body took the hug, but I laughed, despite the dangerous situation, and returned the hug.

“Happy muchly to see you, ren solva! Lecture you huge after battle over. Now, point towards enemies so icy vengeance can be mine!”

I made a vague, pointing gesture towards Black Petal, who preened herself a dozen or so meters away, and just seemed to be noticing B.B’s presence with a friendly smile that was far too wide. Arcaidia snorted as she looked at the dark red pegasus mare and snorted, letting go of me and getting into a battle stance, drawing her starblaster and wreathing her horn in frosty blue light as her tail flicked eagerly behind her.

“Hiya bucky, you look nice and blood covered, as usual,” chirped Binge in a breathily cheerful voice, energetically bouncing up next to us with LIL-E floating by her side. The robot had its side mounted rifle deployed, and her turret was spinning back and forth as she hovered backwards, paying attention more to the fight between Shattered Sky and my tribesmates behind us.

“Longwalk,” the robot said, “How many hostiles, and who are the friendlies?”

Right down to business, with LIL-E. Not that I was complaining. It was a comfort to have LIL-E there, reminding me to focus on the issues at hoof.

“Two,” I replied quickly, “Both elite Odessa officers. The others are from my tribe. Fill you in later. Iron Wrought here?”

“Driving,” came the reply, the green earth pony stallion waving from the Ursa’s driver’s seat window, looking less than enthusiastic about the circumstances, “I see you’re still making a lifestyle out of getting in over your head.”

I gave him a helpless shrug, then nodded towards my tribesmates, “We’ve got wounded. LIL-E, can you give my tribe cover while Iron Wrought gets them loaded onto the Ursa?”

“On it,” she said and immediately flew off towards where Shattered Sky wheeled through the air, trying to get shots on Trailblaze. LIL-E’s sudden arrival and additional firepower, a fusillade of shots from both rifle and turret, certainly gave Shattered Sky something else to worry about.

Iron Wrought threw the Ursa into reverse and pulled it around, backing up towards the firefight, and I had to trust my tribesmates would know a safe haven when they saw one.

“Sooo,” called Black Petal, idly spinning her key shaped ARM around, “Does that mean the rest of you are gonna gang up on poor little helpless me? Four on one? So unfair.”

“Since when ‘ave ya ever given’ a care ‘bout ‘fair’ Petal?” asked B.B, voice as strained as I’ve ever heard it, even counting the time after she’d had her little bloodlust episode. I couldn’t help but notice the bristling in her mane and raised hackles; not at all dissimilar to the way Black Petal had looked a short while ago.

Black Petal laughed musically, with a hefty note of manic in it as well.

“That’s funny, coming from you, Bloom. What’s with the old orchard folk accent?”

“Ain’t none a’ yer business. Just ‘ow I prefer ta talk nowadays.”

“You sound like an idiot. Whatever. So, any of your new buddies-for-life know about you? The real you? The one that made the Family so proud as our best and brightest killer?” Black Petal asked with a sweet, innocent tone that was so sarcastic it hurt my ears.

B.B’s ears flattened against her head and she aimed her revolvers at Black Petal, her voice suddenly losing its accent and turning to something closer to her Mirage persona’s voice, “They know the me that matters. The one raised by Doc Sunday.”

“Yes!” said Arcaidia, “We know B.B as good ally friend pony. Stupid other pegasus can shut up now!”

Arcaidia made her desire for the conversation to end pretty clear by the magical crests that instantly formed around her horn, then fired out a massive cone of freezing air and white ice that turned the ground into solid sheets of frost as it billowed towards Black Petal. The dark red pegasus nimbly flew aside of the deadly torrent of cold, laughing all the way.

“Oh, but there’s so much to tell! My good friend Blood Bloom was a real artist back in the day! You should’ve seen her,” Black Petal landed on top of a grave marker, coiled like a cat, her curled tail swishing in merriment, “The things she did to the Family’s enemies, mmmm, the memories alone make me shudder in all the right ways. She was an inspiration to us all. The Mistress’ strong right hoof, her merciless, perfect little enforcer. Perhaps the only pony besides the Mistress herself we were all afraid of.”

“You should still be afraid,” B.B’s growl was low and primal as she flew at the other pegasus. Her pistols barked in a fast, melded staccato. Black Petal danced away as the rounds tore up the grave marker she’d been standing on. B.B didn’t let up, reloading her pistols faster than I’d ever seen her manage, and chased Black Petal with her pistols outstretched, pouring more fire at the diving and turning form of the other mare. These rounds tore clean through grave markers and I realized B.B had loaded armor piercing rounds.

Black Petal’s cooing voice answered the gunfire, “Afraid of you, Bloom? Now? Hah! That’s a laugh. You’ve fallen so hard I’m shocked you can still stand! How long have you been denying yourself a proper meal? I can smell you Bloom! You don’t got any bloodscent on you. No power. Nothing. You’re practically one of them now. As weak as any of the other morsels crawling on the ground.”

Arcaidia, Binge, and I all started to gallop forward to chase after Black Petal, but B.B flew down in front of us, holding out a hoof.

“You guys stay outta of this.”

I paused, and exchanged looks with Arcaidia and Binge. Binge, tail wagging, made a whining noise. The green former-ish Raider had her shiny Cosmic Knife in her mouth and her ripper blade swishing about in her tail, and she looked at me oddly pleadingly.

“Auwh dun whunna wushun! Cwuuutin twum ush nuwwo!”

“Huh?” I asked and Binge spat the Cosmic Knife into her hoof and said, in a clearer voice.

“I don’t wanna listen! Cutting time is now! I’ve been a good girl for days! Its time for me to get a treat and I want to wear a pair of wings! And the dark one’s wings are so nice. I can have them, right?”

I blinked at her, then glanced towards B.B, “Uh, B.B, I was kind of thinking we’d fight her all together. She’s pretty tough, and I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t let Binge fight something. She might, I don’t know, explode.”

Binge nodded her head vigorously, “Explosions will happen if Binge doesn’t get her happy staby time! Want to cut off talky birdies wings and wear them like a princess!”

B.B gave Binge a strange look as she reloaded her revolvers. Black Petal was just watching as if she had all the time in the world. She smiled over at us, stretching her wings out and winking at Binge.

“You like my wings? You want them? If you’re mare enough I might even let you touch them before I drain you of your last, little, diseased drop of blood. Come on, what are you waiting for?”

Binge’s eyes did a rather disturbing shrinking of the pupils and I saw the Raider mare lick her lips and start breathing erratically, “Oh, Binge has found a screamer. Binge can tell these things. This one is a screamer for sure. Can’t take it. Wanna stab!”

Binge didn’t wait for further prodding and charged forward, or rather more like skipped happily. I groaned and moved to follow, but B.B shouted, “Long, let me take o’ her! Iffin’ Binge wants ta fight, ain’t no stoppin’ her, but you an’ Arc should go deal wit the other one!”

“B.B, you’re going to need us!” I shouted back, worriedly watching Binge close with Black Petal, who was just waiting for Binge to get to her with a relaxed smile on her face.

Arcaidia was gritting her teeth, looking at B.B with no small amount of concern, “Ren solva have good head right now! We must fight as unit!”

B.B shook her head, “Please, ya two, don’t be arguin’. I can fight her better wit fewer friends I gotta worry ‘bout her hurtin’.”

“Yeah ‘Long’,” cooed Black Petal, “Let her fight me alone. It’ll give us a chance to catch up on old times and- hold on a sec.”

Those last words were said as Binge reached her and pounced, both head and tail whipping about to slash with their respective knives. Black Petal blocked with her key and retaliated with a wickedly fast counter stroke. Binge, surprising me, bounced away from the strike and leapt right back in, bending and twisting her body in strange, spastic ways that looked as confusing as they were uncomfortable. I could see from the sudden look of brief shock in Black Petal’s face that she hadn’t expected the Raider to move that quickly and was as confused by the erratic movements of Binge as I was. Black Petal rolled away from Binge’s flashing knives, but came out of the roll with a slight cut on her foreleg and with a newfound respect in her eyes.

“Well somepony knows her way around a knife fight. I might get you stuffed and mounted after killing you. Assuming theres enough of you left to stuff.”

“Lussh tulk murr gummi thu wungs!” Binged mumbled around her knife hilt, her eyes in full dilation and a little foam forming around her madly grinning lips.

B.B gave me and Arcaidia one last pleading look and with a heavy sigh I nodded to her. I took some heart in her grateful smile as she flew off once more, backing up Binge in her assault on Black Petal. I hoped the two of them could handle it. Black Petal was physically stronger than her small frame would imply, and her ARM was doubly dangerous, mostly because I wasn’t certain how it worked yet.

“Watch out for that key!” I shouted as I turned back towards the fight with Shattered Sky, “Its got freaky wibbly-wobbly air powers!”

“Thanks for the heads up!” B.B shouted back as she unleashed another barrage of shots at Black Petal, twisting about in the air so that her shots came in at Black Petal in a series of odd angles. Black Petal spun with quick, fluid movements, either avoiding the bullets or deftly deflecting them with her key.

Arcaidia hesitated a moment longer than I did, but with a final, worried look towards B.B, she turned to follow me. We both rushed towards the other side of the graveyard to the sound of B.B’s revolvers firing behind us and Black Petal’s mocking laughter filling the air.

I had to physically resist the urge to turn around and go back, but I wanted to trust B.B. Besides, it was looking like LIL-E and my tribesmates were in need of help. I saw Whetstone and Slate standing at the back of the Ursa. Whetstone was rummaging around in her saddlebags while Slate helped a badly wounded Stone Carver into the A.T.W. Whetstone looked up as Arcaidia and I rushed up, and she had an exasperated look on her face that lightened somewhat upon seeing Arcaidia.

“Hey, I remember you!” Whetstone said, giving Arcaidia a pat on the shoulder, “Glad to see you’re still kicking it with Long. Hey Long, don’t suppose you got any of those gem thingies that make with the zap-zap? I’m all out.”

It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about; ammo for her energy pistol. I gave a quick shake of my head, “Sorry, don’t carry any.”

“Sucks,” she sighed, tossing the now useless pistol into her backs and drawing a knife instead, “Guess it’s back to basics. Got to say Long, you make real frustrating enemies. This guy keeps dodging. Like, everything.”

“I know,” I said, glancing to where LIL-E, flying after Shattered Sky, blasted away with her turret. The pair zipped about, both blurs in the air, and for every shot LIL-E sent towards the Odessa officer he returned with dangerously accurate shots of his own. Where he could seemingly vanish out of harms way at will, LIL-E was stuck taking hits, bullets sparking over her dark robotic carapace. I wasn’t certain how long she could take the beating, but LIL-E was staying doggedly on Shattered Sky’s tail. A good thing, as it was clear Trailblaze needed the breather. She was nearby, huddled by a gravestone with multiple gunshots blown out of it, catching her breath as she watched LIL-E and Shattered Sky fight.

“Its that thing on his wrist,” I explained to Whetstone and Arcaidia, “Its like my spear, sort of. It gives him that power to vanish somehow. I don’t know how it works, but maybe if we can get it off him...”

Whetstone nodded, “He won’t be able to go ‘poof’ and we can lay the proper smack down on his feathery flank. Great. So how do we get the shiny off his leg?”

“Haven’t a clue,” I said, glancing inside the Ursa. I saw Slate set Stone Carver down next to Rock Roller, and the beige stallion glance back towards us.

“Stay in there,” I told him, and glanced at Whetstone, “Whet, you-”

“Ain’t happening, so don’t bother,” Whetstone replied firmly, then looked towards Arcaidia, “Right Frosty?”

Arcaidia nodded with a determined flick of her tail, “Yes! Get around and overcook opponent with better counts!”

At Whetstone and my confused looks Arcaidia frowned like a child who’d just gotten a question wrong on a quiz and made a small grumbling noise as she rubbed her chin, “Words not right, uh... get all around, surround! Surround and attack muchly with bigger numbers!”

Now that made a lot more sense. I watched the spiraling, speedy dogfight between LIL-E and Shattered Sky and found one large problem with Arcaidia’s tactic, “He’s up there and we’re down here. We don’t have a lot to hit him with unless we can get him on the ground.”

“Have you considered the possibility of us just, you know, running for it?” asked Iron Wrought, cautiously poking his head out the Ursa’s back hatch, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the battle, “Pile everypony on the Ursa and we might be able to just outrun the crazies trying to kill us.”

I shook my head, “Love nothing more than to get everypony somewhere that wasn’t here, but if we run that’ll give them time to call for help, which involves a giant, heavily armed airship. We got to beat them here, and fast.”

I thought frantically, trying to force my brain to formulate anything resembling a plan. Not for the first time I found myself really wishing that pegasi blood in me had popped out some wings for me. The earth pony resilience was doing well for me, but Ancestors above would a lot of problems be easier with the ability to fly. But since I wasn’t spontaneous getting a pair of flappers any time soon it was back to thinking of a more mundane way to solve our tactical issue. Glancing around my eyes settled on the church itself. It was roomy inside, the ceiling pretty high. Even if we got Shattered Sky to follow inside he’d still have the advantage...

… but what about the roof? It’d just be a single shot, and the timing would have to be pretty damn near perfect, but it might just work. LIL-E had a direct line to my Pip-Buck, so I could coordinate it with her, but I’d need Arcaidia, Trailblaze, Iron Wrought, and Whetstone all together to make it work.

“Right, I got a plan,” I said, eliciting various looks from my immediate companions. Iron Wrought had a quirked eyebrow as if he was expecting to hear a particularly funny joke, which given my track record with plans I couldn’t blame him much for that. Whetstone at least had the decency to give me a humoring smile. Arcaidia, though, just looked eager.

“No time to explain it, but everypony head into the church. Get to the roof, but stay hidden. I”ll bring Trail and join you guys up there in a sec.”

“What are we going to do on the roof that’ll do any good?” asked Iron Wrought.

“Remember the ‘no time to explain’ part?” I asked with a frustrated grunt as I started to gallop for where Trailblaze was, “Just go! Trust me, I’m mostly sure this will probably work!”

“And my confidence levels just keep on rising,” Iron Wrought said, no small amount of sarcasm in his tone, but he did hop out of the back of the Ursa, hitting a switch to close up the hatch, and in short order he, Whetstone, and Arcaidia were making a break for the hole in the church’s wall. Arcaidia gave me one last look of encouragement over her shoulder and I nodded to her in return before galloping for Trailblaze.

As I ran I caught a glimpse of Binge sailing through the air. It took me a second to realize it was because the green Raider had taken a rather heavy hit from Black Petal, as the dark red pegasus was chasing after Binge’s flying form even as Binge hit the ground hard and rolled a few dozen meters. Worry stabbed through me, but I saw Binge shuffle to her hooves, laughing despite blood coating her face from a cut scalp.

I saw Binge charge to meet Black Petal, and B.B dive down from above, the three mares all about to collide, but I couldn’t see any more as I felt a sudden, painful force jerk my front left leg out from under me and I face planted in the dirt.

The sharp pain in my leg was familiar. It was kind of depressing to realize I’d gotten shot enough times to know what it felt like without having to think about it. I’d also gotten good at assessing damage to myself without really needing to look, not that I didn’t look anyway. My armor had soaked the worst of it, but there was definitely some bruised and torn muscle just from the raw impact. Made me hold the leg up a bit as I hobbled over to where Trailblaze was hunched behind a larger gravestone.

She looked at me, frustrated eyes turning to concern as she looked at me, “Long, you’re shot.”

“It happens,” I replied, peeking over the gravestone, only to have to duck back as another shot from Shattered Sky blew a chunk of stone away next to my face, “Yup, I’d say he doesn’t like us much. Jerk has real deep ammo pockets, doesn’t he?”

Trail growled, “I can’t hit him! This is ridiculous. What’s the point of having this fire in me if I can’t hit anything with it!?”

“In my expert opinion the problem is that he’s moving.”

“Longwalk, I’d like to remind you that I can now light your flank on fire by gesturing in your general direction.”

I chuckled, though it was a weak one, and punctuated by altogether too much gunfire for me to really get much humor in it, “Preferably we want a different pony on fire right now. Sent my friends up to the roof where we’re going to arrange a surprise for Mr. I Dodge Everything. Want to join in?”

Trailblaze’s smile was positively fiendish, “Love to.”

“Fantastic,” I said, lifting my Pip-Buck, fiddling with the dials until I turned on the radio’s broadcasting feature, switching to the frequency LIL-E had us use in Stable 104, “LIL-E, you okay up there?”

The robot’s monotone voice had a buzz to it that sounded almost like worry, “The only reason I haven’t dropped from the sky is this unit’s got reinforced armor and a spare power supply. He keeps teleporting and I can’t get a clean shot.”

“We’re fixing that problem. Can you lead him to the roof? Get him to fly over it, in, say, sixty seconds or so?”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Good, see you there.”

With that Trailblaze and I started to make a break for the church. I was somewhat less than the spirit of swiftness with one leg still hurting like it was on fire, but I managed to keep up with Trail as we dashed for the hole in the back of the church. A bullet snapped by my head so close I felt my mane billow from its passage. I didn’t glance back, but I heard LIL-E’s weapons firing twice as fast as the robot tried to give me and Trailblaze some covering fire.

I spared a quick look left and right, trying to see where B.B and Binge had gone, but worryingly I didn’t see them near the graveyard anymore, nor did I spot Black Petal. Their fight must have migrated elsewhere, but they couldn’t have gone far, I still heard the popping sounds of B.B’s revolvers echoing through the air.

Once inside the church we hit the stairs and got to the second floor in mere seconds. From there we thundered down the hallway, soon reaching the smaller staircase leading up to the small door to the roof. By that door Whetstone, Iron Wrought, and Arcaidia waited, all turning to look as Trailblaze and I arrived.

Arcaidia bounced down the stairs and threw hooves around Trailblaze, who blinked in surprise, but smiled as she returned the hug.

“Very glad I am to see you alive!” Arcaidia said, then backed off slightly, a brief look of shame coming over her young features as she nodded towards me, “Greatly sorry I not keep word. Did not know how hard to keep Longwalk from harm would be. Ren solva fight like blood not belong in his body!”

Trailblaze shook her head, holding up a hoof, “I know, Arcaidia. I don’t blame you for Longwalk getting injured all the time. Pretty sure most of that is his fault and I’ve got you to thank for him being still alive. I’m just sorry he put you through so much trouble.”

“Hey!” I said, “I didn’t do anything to make Arcaidia’s life hard on purpose!”

Both Trailblaze and Arcaidia looked at me, like a firestorm and an icy avalanche both aimed straight at me, and I cringed back a step or two, “Just saying, you two don’t gotta act like I’m the only one who acts reckless around here.”

Iron Wrought gave me an incredulous look, “There’s a difference between reckless, and whatever it is you do, buck. I don’t think they’ve invented a word to describe it. Maybe ‘suicidal’, but then you’re still alive, against any form of logic I know of. I’d say the two mares got plenty of reason to be mad at you. I know if I did half the shit you try, my wife would break my legs off so I could never leave the house again.”

“Thirty seconds,” said LIL-E through my PIp-Buck, “He’s hot on my tail. You all better be ready!”

I snapped my head towards the door lead to the roof, tensing, as did my companions. I heard the click as Iron Wrought turned the safety off his sub-machine gun, and the gentle buzz of magic as Arcaidia’s horn glowed a cold blue. Whetstone barred her knife, her only available weapon, and said, “So you got us here, Long, what are we doing?”

I grinned, gripping Gramzanber tight in my mouth, “Oh, a complex, multi-layered strategy of pure brilliance. We’re gonna hit him really hard a lot of times!”

Blank stares, all around. I couldn't help but laugh. There wasn’t time to explain the details, and my companions couldn’t understand because none of them had seen Shattered Sky fight before now. Simple fact was, as long as he had space to move, and could see it coming, Shattered Sky could evade just about any attack. I saw that thoroughly back during Crossfire and my fight against him back in Saddlespring. Crossfire was a better warrior than any of us and even she hadn’t been able to land a blow under normal conditions against the power of Shattered Sky’s ARM. The only way Crossfire had been able to end the fight was to hit Shattered Sky with an attack that left no room to dodge. On top of that, I knew that Shattered Sky had to be aware of an attack in order to avoid it, because I remembered clearly being able to tackle him at the start of our fight in Saddlespring. He hadn’t expected, or seen, my lunge, and hence couldn’t avoid it when I tackled him.

What it came down to, then, was that we had to overwhelm him with an ambush that not only took him completely off guard, but also threw so much at him at once that we didn’t leave him anywhere to dodge.

“LIL-E is going to fly by in seconds,” I said, “With Shattered Sky right behind her. When he does, attack him with everything you’ve got. Trail, Arcaidia, use fire and ice, the widest spread you can manage. Iron Wrought, empty your clip at him at the same time. Whetstone, stick close to me, and follow my lead. If he dodges the magic and bullets I’m going to try and catch him as he comes out of the evasion and I’ll need you to back me up. Got it?”

All of them nodded as one, their eyes fixed on me with varying degrees of resolve. For a second I felt overwhelmed by the fact that they were all trusting me, and my plan, with their lives. I returned their nods, promising to myself that however this went, I’d do everything I could to bring them all out of this alive. There was a comforting pressure from Gramzanber, as if the spear was also pitching in its confidence, telling me not to worry.

“Almost there,” LIL-E said, her voice scratchy and filled with static, “Get ready. We’re passing by in five... four...”

Despite the static her countdown was still clear for us to hear and I tensed, reaching over and clicking open the door with a hoof. I slowed my breathing, steadying myself as LIL-E’s robotic voice counted down the last numbers.

“... two... one!”

I flung the door open and we rushed out onto the roof. I saw LIL-E, her round metal form sporting a number of sparking bullet holes, and she was trailing oily black smoke. She flew straight across the roof, zipping by us, and behind her was Shattered Sky, swooping along in pursuit.

And he didn’t see me and the others bursting onto the roof until he was already right in front of us.

Arcaidia and Trailblaze both reared up, Arcaidia’s horn glowing with fierce blue symbols as she formed her spell, and Trailblaze’s right hoof ignited in boiling orange flame. Both unleashed their power at the same instant. A wide conical blast of freezing air and shredding spikes of ice combined with a wave of searing fire, like two halves of conjoining worlds. The line between the two powers clashed with steam that was no less dangerous, like a jet of scalding mist. This blinding magical assault washed over the roof and Shattered Sky, tearing apart roof tile as it went, blasting into the tower on the opposite side.

Iron Wrought was then there between Arcaidia and Trailblaze, and let loose a fully automatic stream of bullets into the flame, ice, and steam, running his clip dry. At the same moment LIL-E reversed her course, the eyebot halting and spinning about in the air, and despite the terrible damage covering her chassis she unleashed her own weapons into the conflagration. Rifle and turret blazed away, stitching a wide, random pattern of lead into the cloud of steam leftover from the combined magical attack.

Meanwhile Whetstone and I had rushed along the slanted roof to the left. It wasn’t easy keeping our balance on the sloped tiles, but both of us were experienced hunters who knew how to keep our hooves under us. I kept my eyes on the cloud of mist, sharply looking out for any sign of Shattered Sky.

When I saw the mist move I immediately shifted my run, galloping up towards the dispersing cloud, Whetstone right behind me. Shattered Sky appeared just outside the cloud, appearing in mid-air from having used his watch-shaped ARM. There were frozen feathers on his wing, and singed bits on his hide, indicating he hadn’t been able to completely avoid the assault we’d brought to bear on him. He wasn’t looking my way when Whetstone and I reached him, both of us slashing from opposite sides. I was aiming for one of his wings, knowing if I could clip one of them then the fight would shift dramatically in our favor. I think Whetstone probably had the more sensible plan by going for his throat.

At the last second his eyes shifted to me, narrowed, and he vanished.

Oh no you don’t! Accelerator!

The world snapped in cobalt blue focus and I looked around for him, and spotted the bastard appeared right behind Whetstone, the barrel of his gun aimed at the back of her head while she was still recovering from her missed swing. With the speed born of Accelerator I shoved her out of the way before she could even blink in surprise and surged forward, chopping with Gramzanber. Shattered Sky’s gun fired, the bullet deflecting off of my spear’s edge. I reversed the swing, once more aiming for one of his wings. I saw Shattered Sky’s eyes widen, and just as Gramzanber started to tear into the soft feathers of his wing he vanished. But this time I felt Gramzanber inside my head, its pressure reacting to the power of Shattered Sky’s own ARM. I could feel it, his ARM, as if it were a separate pressure than Gramzanber.

Which meant I could feel it when Shattered Sky appeared behind me. I ducked, not needing to look. I felt the bullets fly by my head before I saw them, their slow motion trails passing through where my skull had been just a moment earlier. I turned to see him, his face a mask of concentration behind his glasses before he vanished once more.

This time he didn’t appear behind me, but instead appeared right in front of me, close enough that I couldn’t get Gramzanber in line to block or counter as he shoved his gun under my chin. Only the raw speed of Accelerator allowed me to pull myself aside in time to keep my brains from getting splattered, and even then I felt the bullet tear a painful graze across my cheek and rip off a part of my ear.

I spun around and kicked out, a little shocked and immensely pleased to feel my hoof clip Shattered Sky’s side before he managed to vanish once more. So he could be hit. I saw him appeared in the air above the roof, still aiming at me, but even with Accelerator making the actions of my companions seem slow, the ice shards that flew in at him from one side and the wide sheet of flame spreading into the air on his other side still moved with surprising speed to clash upon the Cocytus officer.

Trailblaze and Arcaidia had spread out to flank either end of the roof, and had waited until Shattered Sky had become focused on me to unleash another attack. Shattered Sky dodged straight down, appeared on the roof with a look of consternation on his face. Bullets traced in from Iron Wrought and LIL-E, neither letting up or giving Shattered Sky a moment to catch his breath. Shattered Sky twisted in the air, evading the storm of bullets, but in doing so taking his eyes off of me.

I kept Accelerator going, rushing at his back. His wings were up, and I hoped to get both of them with a fast horizontal slice as I leapt at him. He ducked the swing, but I spread my hooves, and despite the danger of getting shot by my own companions, I slammed into Shattered Sky. Once again it seemed the speed of Accelerator was just enough to catch him before he could use his ARM to evade. I had expected him to still vanish when I grappled with him, but surprisingly once I got my hooves on him, he didn’t vanish, and we both hit the roof with a heavy smack.

Followed by a crack, as the weakened roof gave out underneath us.

There was a very confusing and painful moment of freefall amid shards of broken wood and stone as I scrambled with keep hold of a pegasus who really didn’t want to be kept hold of. He rammed a hoof into my chest, smacked me upside the head with an elbow, and buffeted me with his wings before we hit the floor of the second story hallway. That nearly knocked me senseless, but I stubbornly kept a grip around Shattered Sky’s barrel as that floor gave out and we crashed through it into the main chamber of the church amid a shower of dust and debris.

In free fall once more I felt Shattered Sky wriggled in my grip like a greased up gecko. He planted his hindlegs on my stomach and kicked off me. Without looking I slashed out wildly with Gramzanber. I felt the spear connect with something but couldn’t see what amid the confusion of the fall, and I hit the stone floor of the church a second later. I think I may have blacked out for a moment because when I opened my eyes again Accelerator had stopped, returning the world to its normal color tones and speed, and I felt like I’d not only fallen through the roof of a building but like somepony had given all my internal organs electrical shocks.

I was laying in the middle of the church aisles, groaning as I pulled myself to shaky hooves, the entire world seeming to swim. I had to choke back bile, and felt more than a little woozy. Gramzanber lay at my hooves, and I noticed the blood splattering its edge.

Looking up I saw Shattered Sky not far off, also shakily getting up on his hooves. And minus one wing. Where his right wing had been was now a smooth, bloody stump. I saw the appendage off to the side, twisted and laying across a stone bench. Feathers fall around us like small gray motes of snow.

Shattered Sky’s face was twisted in pain, but also in pure rage as he looked disbelievingly at his severed wing, then at me.

“You...wretch! What have you done!?” he roared, one part of his glasses splintered, blood coating his face, his usual composure utterly shattered.

I slowly retrieved Gramzanber. I was out of quips. They didn’t really seem appropriate here, anyway. Tired, I started to walked towards him. His entire form bristled and he glanced around for his gun. I did too, spotting it laying between us, closer to him than to me. I paused as he looked at me, a second of tension springing between us. I shook my head. My memory went back to Stable 104, in the dark, when Midnight Twinkle had Arcaidia at her mercy.

“You can walk away from this,” I said, “Leave. My friends and I won’t stop you.”

He smiled at me, a thin, humorless one.

“You don’t understand anything, landbound. We don’t get to walk away, because there’s nowhere to walk away too. For us, for Odessa, its win, or die. Because if we lose, the world loses with us. Get that through your thick, moronic skull. We’re the only ones who can protect the world. Not the NCR and their glorified weathermare of a Lightbringer! Not the pathetic, scattered remnants of the Enclave or Steel Rangers! Not that cesspool of gangs and Guilds in Skull City! Certainly not an idiot tribal and his little band of misbegotten Wasteland trash!”

His whole body tensed, and I tensed as well. Shattered Sky, regaining his composure in that moment, used his one remaining wing to adjust his glasses on his nose.

“Odessa will win. No matter how many of us die, we will win.”

“And that justifies everything wrong you do in the meantime?” I asked.

“Of course it does.”

There were no more words as he sprang forward, the pressure I felt from Gramzanber warning me about his ARM activating a second before he vanished. Wounded as I was there was no way I was going to beat him to his gun, so instead I stayed where I was and kept watch for when he’d reappear. He did so, scooping up his gun and aiming at me in the same motion. I threw myself to the side, diving between stone benches as he opened fire. Stone chips flew as rounds punched through the stone, raining down around me as I scrambled towards the far wall.

Reaching the end of the bench I grit my teeth at the pain flowing through my body as I shoved the heavy stone bench over, giving me more cover to work with. Shattered Sky appeared in front of me, Gramzanber’s warning providing just the instant I needed to slash out at where he appeared. He had to jump back, no longer able to fly, and he fired as he jumped. I tried to get Gramzanber in line to block but was too slow, the bullets slamming into my shoulder and chest.

The golden gecko scales on the chest of my armor helped absorb that bullet, but the shoulder one tore past the armor and ripped into my flesh, causing me to stagger. Grinding my teeth to ignore the pain I rushed him, thrusting my spear. He laughed and vanished, appearing on the opposite side of the church.

“I wonder how much of that ARM’s power you really can use,” he said chiddingly, “You seemed to be able to keep up with my Chronos’ time compression power when you entered that ghostly blue state, but it doesn’t look like you can do that too often. It’d be better if Odessa had that ARM of yours. We could probably learn how to use its full power, instead of it being wasted on you.”

Time compression? Was that what he was doing when he vanished like that? The concept flew right over my head. I wheeled about, running along the wall as he fired, bullets blasting out bits of wall as I galloped in a hobbling gait, diving at the last moment behind the last bench along the aisle before the raised platform where the podium and the golden tree-like sculpture was.

Grunting in pain I reached into my saddlebags and rooted about for another grenade, this time pulling out one of the gray striped ones that indicated a tear gas grenade. As I did so I heard a barrage of gunfire above me and glanced up to see Iron Wrought was poking his head over the lip of the hole Shattered Sky and I had made in the roof, and was firing down.

He had to duck back at Shattered Sky’s return fire, but that bought me the seconds I needed to pull the stem of the tear gas grenade and lob it over the bench towards the Odessa officer. I heard him curse as the grenade popped with a loud hissing sound. I rushed out as one side of the church was engulfed in a smoky yellow gas that even at a distance I could smell, a horrible acrid stink that made my eyes water despite being well outside the cloud.

My body felt like it was near to breaking, but I knew my chances to end this were dwindling, and I needed this to be over now.

As if in response to that thought the pressure of Gramzanber intensified and it felt almost like a hoof reaching out to me in my mind. While instances of this in the past had confused me, this time I didn’t hesitate. I reached out as well, trying to mentally touch that spot in my mind that connected me to my ARM. The second I did I felt warmth spread through me, and a voice, now remarkably familiar.

Good, good, keep it up Longwalk! This is the way to do it! Don’t fight it, just relax and let Gram do his thing!

Astral Resonance Link operating at synch rate of 57%. Force Adaption now possible at Level 2 Release. Wielder Longwalk will please identify objectives for Force Release?

He needs you to focus Longwalk! What do you need him to do? Focus on it and he can adapt to do it! Now! Before that jerk recovers!

Shattered Sky had appeared outside the tear gas cloud, coughing and hacking as he stumbled away from the gas and into the center aisles of the church. His ‘time compression’ clearly hadn’t worked well against something like the gas grenade that covered a wide area. Just like Crossfire’s shrapnel round, or Arcaidia and Trailblaze’s ice and fire combo.

I focused my mind and for the first time felt like I was honestly speaking to Gramzanber, sending my thoughts to the spear as if it were a partner, not just a weapon.

I need an attack that hits a big area! So he can’t dodge it!

The response was near instantaneous.

Understood. Protocols established, Astral Pattern locking...

Warm heat seared through me, but unlike the last time this happened, when I had acquired Accelerator, I could see what was happening inside Gramzanber itself. It could see the spear, not as a solid, single object, but as a vast collection of trillions of small cell-like machines, all united in function and purpose. The machines were united by a single overriding spirit, a power source of magic that took part of its fuel, part of its very existence, from my own spirit. I could see the lines and currents of my spirit flowing into the spear and vice versa, like Gramzanber was a tree and its roots were wrapped into my soul. I saw those roots realign, the microscopic machines forming the shape of a spear shifting to allow new lines of power to be drawn from me, to resonate inside the spear, and to start taking a new shape.

And as it did that I could also sense something else. I saw something else. A different spirit, separate from myself or Gramzanber. I didn’t know what it was, but I was certain the other voice was coming from that separate spirit, which seemed tethered to Gramzanber.

Then my senses were overloaded with heat, blocking out anything except my focus on Shattered Sky, who seemed to have recovered enough to see that something was happening with me.

Gramzanbers voice rang out one more time in my head.

Force Release Active; Level 2; Code Name: Impulse.

I found myself standing in front of the sculpture of the tree with its sun and moon motif, and though I wasn’t sure how it’d happened I was standing on my hind legs, Gramzanber’s shaft wrapped around my fetlock, much like it had in my fight with Moa Gault. The stance should have been unnatural for a pony, but for some reason it felt incredibly familiar, as if I’d done this hundreds of times before.

My body felt like it was being drained of strength, yet instead of feeling weak, I felt that strength flowing into Gramzanber, which began to pulse with blue fire in time with my own heartbeat. Shattered Sky was aiming at me, mouth tightening around the trigger of his gun, and in the same instant he fired I hefted Gramzanber and with all the force I could muster hurled it at him. I didn’t have time to hesitate, or wonder if he’d survive whatever was about to happen. Or if I would.

I felt his bullet strike me in the chest, slamming me back against the golden sculpture, while Gramzanber sailed like a indigo comet at Shattered Sky. He raised his hoof, his watch ARM, Chronos, flashing blue. He vanished, but at the same instant Gramzanber exploded outward with a sphere of swirling blue energy that expanded outward in an instant, so fast it touched the ceiling and walls within a split second. Unfortunately those beautiful multi-colored windows shattered, the images of the idealized, peaceful Equestria falling apart in rainbow shards. The sphere of energy almost reached me, but pulled up short by a few paces.

It dissipated almost as fast as it had appeared, revealing Gramzanber unharmed in the center of the blast. The spear stayed in the air for a second before falling to plant itself blade first in the ground, which was now a shallow crater in the middle of the church.

Coughing, numb, and feeling like I was already dead, I slowly patted my chest. The bullet was lodged under a gecko scale, my armor once more proving itself. I was pretty sure the impact had cracked a rib, though. I found I couldn’t quite stand, instead managing to just roll over. I felt like all the strength had fled my body, my muscles replaced by particularly thin and useless twigs.

“... Blarg.” I said, indicating my opinion on the general state of my body.

My voice was answered by a similar groan from the other side of the crater, near the open entrance to the church. I blinked in surprise to see Shattered Sky laying there, his whole body battered and scorched. His glasses were missing, and even his remaining wing was missing a number of feathers. He rolled over, groaning in pain, and raised his left hoof, looking at it in disbelief. I saw that on his hoof was a blackened object, falling off in pieces. His ARM, charred black now, quite possibly overloaded by the attack I’d just thrown.

“Ludicrous,” he said, “Even an artificial ARM can’t be...destroyed.”

“I don’t know,” I said, grunting in pain, “It looks pretty damn destroyed to me. Unless its supposed to be falling apart like that.”

“Ugh, shut up you bottom feeding, mentally challenged, cave pony! Gah!” Shattered Sky cried out as he rolled over onto his stomach and I chuckled... immediately groaning as well at the pain rolling through me.

“Heh, ow, hah, ow, still... still won,” I said, slowly dragging myself forward, “Not bad for a cave pony.”

“You haven’t...guugh...won yet!” Shattered Sky retorted, also dragging himself along. He was dragging himself towards the exit to the church, and I was in hot pursuit. Or rather, slow pursuit. Neither of us could walk, and were half crawling, half dragging our wounded, nearly exhausted bodies across the cratered floor of the church.

I imagined we made for a pretty pathetic looking pair at that moment. Or a comical one, if your tastes ran towards the morbid. I didn’t think either of us has the strength to actually fight any longer. However that didn’t mean Shattered Sky wasn’t still a threat. He could still call for reinforcements. Assuming my last attack hadn’t fried any devices he had to call for help with.

I got to the other side of the crater, every pull of my exhausted hooves sending lances of agony through my wounds, the bullet in my shoulder radiating tearing pain. Shattered Sky had managed to drag himself all the way to the top of the stone steps outside the church, and to my utter shock the proud pegasus actually forced himself to stand with a scream that was equal parts pain and willpower. Much as I didn’t like him, I had to kind of respect his own ability to withstand punishment and keep going.

I heard the pounding of hooves behind me and nearly sagged into unconsciousness with relief as I heard both Arcaidia and Trailblaze call out my name at practically the same time.

“Longwalk!”

In seconds my friends were around me, Arcaidia immediately surrounding her horn with soft blue light as she cast a healing spell over me. Trailblaze stood on my other side, glaring at Shattered Sky, Iron Wrought and Whetstone both moving to either side of us.

Shattered Sky grimaced, reached towards his ear, and pulling out a small, smoking device. He snorted, tossing it aside, “Should have called in our position the second we spotted the smoke from that pyre. Idiot mare, Black Petals has cost us this whole operation!”

“Oh, don’t blame me because you couldn’t beat them!” said the mare in question as she suddenly landed next to Shattered Sky, her large silver key floating by her side in a lazy spinning pattern.

Black Petal was wounded, though nowhere near to the extent Shattered Sky was. I saw cuts that must’ve come from Binge’s knives, and a bullet wound or two that had to be B.B’s work. But Black Petal wore her wounds like they were decorations, and looked like she still had plenty of fight left in he. Which was alarming, given last I’d seen her she was locked in combat with two of my friends. If she was here...

“Where are B.B and Binge!?” I shouted, forcing myself to stand. Arcaidia’s spell was helping, but given my current state it’d take a lot more mojo to put me back into fighting form. Still, if I was going to shout dramatically at least I could stand while doing it.

Black Petal looked at me, coyly licking her lips, “No need to raise your voice, little morsel. Bloom is alive. Just had to remind her how much difference there is between a Family member who's been eating properly, and one that’s been denying herself that sweet lifeblood that makes us what we are. She and the bouncy bitch with the knives are taking naps right now. Think I’ll save the mouthy green one for a snack later, or maybe I’ll get Bloom to drain her. Shouldn’t be too hard to get Bloom back to form, if I cut the green mare’s throat and just pour the blood down Bloom’s fucking throat.”

My face paled, and I felt Arcaidia cease her healing spell. My blue unicorn friend had a look of utter frozen death in her eyes as she looked at Black Petal, her starblaster levitating next to her in an instant. She’d gone well beyond a ‘kitten drowning’ look. At this point I’d say the lake the kittens were in had just turned to a solid glacier.

“You hurt ones close to me, nothing to stop me from killing you until you die,” she said.

Black Petal deadpanned, “Filly, you need to learn to speak Equestrian without sounding like you spent time sniffing glue as a foal.”

“Just a thought,” said Shattered Sky, “Perhaps you should stop exchanging posturing quips with the enemy and call for help now!”

“Why don’t you do it?,” said Black Petal, eyeing Arcaidia.

“I cannot. My communicator has been disabled,” Shattered Sky said.

“What a shame. Guess that means I get to keep playing.”

“Against all of us?” I asked, glaring at the dark red pegasus mare.

Black Petal tapped her hoof in contemplation, “I’ll admit, five on one, not the best odds. And weak as she is Bloom and her little psycho friend did get a few hits in. Usually prefer my fights nice and firmly planted in the realm of ‘me winning’. But really, only the iceball and firebrand got any fight left in them, so maybe this is really just two on one?

“Hey, I’m not exactly a lame gecko over here!” shouted Whetstone, stamping a hoof.

Black Petal rolled her eyes, “Yeah, I’m sure you and your tiny knife are going to be the one to tip the scales. Face it, you’re not even a pawn on the board, you’re one of the packing peanuts the chess set came in.”

“Stop. Quipping!” Shattered Sky yelled, pure exasperation in his voice, “Either fight, call for help, or get me out of here!”

“Getting real tired of that lip of yours,” Black Petal said, turning red, dangerous eyes towards Shattered Sky, “Especially from a sack of blood that can barely stand, and sure can’t fly.”

Shattered Sky’s face screwed up in both rage and shame, “I will fly again! Odessas medical technology-”

“Won’t do you any good right here and now, Shattered Wing,” Black Petal said, with a cruel smile, “Can’t fight anymore. Can’t fly to get away. And I’m not carrying you anywhere. You’d just slow me down.”

“Both of you shut up!” shouted Trailblaze, stepping forward, her body shimmering with heat. She fixed a glare of burning rage upon the two Cocytus members, her voice trembling with seething ire, “Neither of you are leaving this place alive. Not after the pain you’ve caused me and mine! No more words, and no more fighting, just burn!”

She seemed to become fully engulfed in fire for a moment, red and orange flames swirling and spiralling up from her like a funnel until they took the shape, just for an instant, of the Guardian of Fire himself. The heat made my cringe, both from the physical discomfort and the painful memory of that fiery bird’s flames. The shape of Moa Gualt wasn’t quite solid, more like an apparition, formed from the fire.

I tried to reach out to Trailblaze, but the raw heat coming off her body actually burned my hoof as it neared her, “Trail! Wait! We need one of them alive! They can tell us where our tribe is being held!”

That was my logical reason, but honestly I just didn’t want to see my best friend burn anypony alive. I didn't want to see anypony get burned alive, for any reason. Most of all I was scared of the look on Trailblaze’s face, as if all the anguish of losing the tribe, of the death’s she’d seen and been unable to prevent, were pouring out of her and fueling the fire that seemed to be literally summoning Moa Gault inside the church.

I saw the tears in her eyes, boiling away into steam as she looked at me, fury and sadness equally warring on her face, “I don’t care! They deserve to burn!”

“We need what they know, Trail, please! You don’t have to do this,” I pleaded, looking around me for support. But Whetstone seemed in shocked awe at the massive flaming bird summoned by Trailblaze and wasn’t paying attention, and Arcaidia had a difficult to read look. Her silver eyes regarded Trailblaze with something between fear and calculation. Iron Wrought had simply backed away, saying nothing and looking warry.

“Trail,” I tried again, because she was, at least, hesitating, “Shattered Sky is done. He can’t run, or fight. This isn’t the way to do things.”

“He deserves it.”

“And you’re going to throw away our chance to learn where our tribe is on what? Revenge?”

“I wouldn’t talk anyway,” said Shattered Sky suddenly, a fierce look coming over his wounded features as he spread his one, blackened wing, “You waste your breath, landbound. I will not be your prisoner, your informant, or your hostage! Set lose your flames, mare, and do so knowing I still am your better. Better than any of you worthless, filthy, landbound!”

I knew he was goading her and tried to say something to counter his words, to try to calm Traiblalze down, but Shattered Sky had pushed her over the edge and it was too late.

The apparition of Moa Gault screeched like the hunting cry of a thousand hawks, and rushed forward, a surging storm of fire. I saw Black Petal fly away, leaving Shattered Sky behind. My eyes, for just a second, locked eyes with Shattered Sky as the flames descended on him. He looked satisfied, as if he’d won. Perhaps, in his eyes, he had. He knew he couldn’t escape, and would rather burn than become our prisoner and run the risk that we’d force him to talk.

And there was nothing I could do. At all.

The entire front of the church exploded in fire. Stone melted, and collapsed, and anything wood combusted instantly.

Trailblaze teetered on her hooves, sweat pouring down her neck, and she fell over, but not before I rushed over to catch her, ignoring my wounds. Arcaidia was next to us a moment later, supporting Trailblaze’s other side. Trailblaze was completely knocked out by the attack she’d summoned. Around us our friends gathered themselves, and we all looked towards the blanket of flames covering the front of the church.

Beyond that wall of fire was Black Petal, her key trailing wisps of steam, but sporting no clear injuries. She must have evaded the blast, because I couldn’t imagine many things withstanding a direct hit of that kind of fire. Of Shattered Sky’s body there was no sign, the Odessa officer consumed in the flames entirely, leaving not even ashes.

“Close,” said Black Petal, “Almost had me there, firebrand!”

As she dusted herself off she suddenly hopped back as bullets snapped by her. I blinked, seeing B.B, awake and seemingly uninjured, landing in front of Black Petal. The wall of fire would have kept me from running to her side, but Arcaidia conjured a stream of icy air that cleared a small portion of the fire. She looked at me.

“Stay with Trailblaze, ren solva,” she said and galloped out onto the church steps, standing next to B.B while Black Petal eyed the pair with clear irritation.

“Looking a lot better Bloom. How’d you recover from the ass beating I just gave you? Wait, don’t tell me, I can smell it. You fed.”

B.B grimly lowered her head, wings spreading, and I finally noticed her eyes had become blood red, her voice missing its accent as she said, “If I have, what do you think that means for you if you don’t run?”

Black Petal giggled, alighting upwards with a few quick wing flaps, “Scary. Good to see some of the old Bloom is still in there. I’ll be happy to tell the Mistress that the Family’s prodigal daughter hasn’t completely forgotten her roots. Ta-ta!”

Black Petal then reached for her key, touching it. A ripple in the air washed over both her and the key, and like somepony stepping through the sheet of a waterfall Black Petal vanished, the ripple disappearing behind her and the key. And just like that she was gone.

By now the church’s roof was getting engulfed by the flames, smoke filling the air and making us cough and sputter. I quickly, with Whetstone’s help, retrieved Gramzanber and we hauled the unconscious Trailblaze outside and down the steps of the church where we joined Arcaidia and B.B. Getting closer to her I saw the blood stain on B.B’s lips and a fear gripped me.

“B.B...” I started to ask, but she held up a hoof, shame creasing her features.

“Ain’t bad as yer thinkin’ Long,” she said, accent back, but voice shaky, and she refused to meet my eyes, or anypony’s for that matter, “She let me, an’ I didn’t take a’ lot.”

As if to confirm that statement Binge came stumbling around the corner of the burning church. She looked wobbly on her hooves, blood coating her face from a cut scalp and a dozen fresh bruises on her sacred body. There was also a clear set of puncture marks on her shoulder. She saw us and waved, looking to bounce over, but tripping and falling on her face as she did so. Still, her unkempt, puffy tail wagged weakly.

“Hi all you pretty, spinning ponies. Can I have a cookie and some orange juice please? I was a good filly and donated blood to the angel. Church’s run blood drives, but are supposed to serve snacks. Its a rule.”

B.B looked away, running a hoof through her mane, “Just took ‘nough ta heal up an’ get over here... didn’t want ta. Hated havin’ ta. Ain’t me. Not no more.”

I smiled at her, “It’s okay. We needed you.”

She still wouldn’t look at me. Her face was ghostly pale, and filled with trepidation, and her ears were drooped with shame. Needed or not, I could tell that what she’d done was weighing on her. And speaking of things weighing on ponies, I looked at Trailblaze. Laying on the hard dirt, eyes closed as she slept, I could see the pain etched onto the soft contours of her face. I sighed, looking at the burning church as its roof started to collapse inward. It would be a massive, charred gravestone for Shattered Sky, another pyre, its smoke billowing up into the air.

“We need to go,” said Iron Wrought, “Like, now. Ursa’s still parked out back, with your tribal buddies inside it.”

“Yeah...” I said, knowing my practically minded friend was right. Odessa would be coming again. It was past time to go.

We trudged our tired, battered bodies around to the back of the church, the Ursa waiting for us among the gravestones. There was little talk past that point, just enough for me to reassure my tribesmates that these ponies with me were my friends and that Trailblaze was okay, just sleeping. Introductions and decompression would have to wait. B.B said something about Misty Glasses and the spider ponies of Stable 104 being able to open another portal for us soon, using my Pip-Buck as a tracking device to pinpoint where to put the portal. Apparently that was how they got to the church in the first place. I wasn’t paying that much attention, honestly.

My eyes remained fixed on Trailblaze’s sleeping form as we drove away from the burning remains of the church.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Falling With Style: Hey, if you can’t fly like a pegasus, you might as well learn to fall like an earth pony! Your experiences with nasty tumbles have given you insight on how to make terminal falls into merely painful ones. You now take 50% less falling damage!

Quest Perk Added - ARM Bound Stage 3: Your bond with your ARM has become strong enough that you and the ARM respond to each other more like trusted partners in battle rather than like someone merely wielding a weapon, allowing you to fight with greater fluidity and heightened awareness. You gain an effective +1 to Agility and Perception as long as you wield your ARM.

Level 2 Force Ability Added - Impulse: When your Force Gauge reaches 50% you can use the special attack ‘Impulse’. This ability converts bio-energy into destructive force, concentrating it into the form of your ARM to be thrown and detonate upon impact with a target or where desired. The attack drains physical strength, however, to generate the blast. Using Impulse imposes a -3 Strength penalty. This penalty is temporary and recovers at a rate of one per hour of rest.

End of Disc 1...

...Please Insert Disc 2

Author's Note

And here we are, a little later than I'd hoped, but here nonetheless! The end of "Disc 1" marks the official-ish milestone of the first third of the story I've got planned (though take the term 'planned' with a gain of salt, I know where the story ends, and what the basic outline of the middle is, but there's still lots of dots to connect). Hard to believe I've been working on this story for something like two years. Its incredibly pleasing and humbling to know there are those of you out there who've been sticking with me that whole time. You guys have my sincerest thanks. Thanks of course also goes to KKat for creating such an inspiring setting for the rest of us to write stories in and share with all the other FoE enthusiasts out there. And can't go without thanking Doomande for being willing to always help out with prereading. I hope all of you have enjoyed the ride so far, and of course never hesitate to leave a comment on what you think, as I'm always open to critique of any kind.

Onward to Disc 2.

Chapter 19: Parting, Bonds, Setting Out

Chapter 19: Parting, Bonds, Setting Out

It had been two days since the battle at the church.

Most of that time I had spent either trapped in the medlab being treated, poked, and prodded by Misty Glasses and a small team of spider pony researchers, or being tossed into any number of testing chambers to provide data on Gramzanber. It wasn’t that the spider ponies, Misty Glasses in particular, were being rude, or pushy about it, but while they were taking care of my wounds they seemed more than a little eager to study me while they still had me around to do so. They seemed to think that if they didn’t take advantage of the chance now, I might do something crazy, like die, in a few days and deprive them of the chance to gather data. Given that they were providing healing, food, and shelter to me, my companions, and the survivors of my tribe I felt it a small price to pay to let them run some tests on me.

Our return to Stable 104 had been courtesy of what Misty Glasses called a ‘Transdimension Singularity Projector’. When that name had made my eyes glaze over she re-termed it a ‘portal device’, which I more or less understood. Sort of. Technology and magic by themselves were hard enough for me to get my head wrapped around. Mix them together and the results tended to melt my brain. All I knew was that the giant ring-like device the spider ponies had set up in Stable 104’s vehicle hangar opened up holes between two spots that you could walk through like a door, instantly going from one place to another.

Apparently this was one of many projects the Ministry of Arcane Science had been working on in Stable 104 before the balefire bombs of the Great Fire scorched the land. The device itself was based upon one found in a Ruin near one of Stable 104’s sister Stables, 106. The researchers had never figured out exactly how the device in the Ruin worked, but they’d learned enough to start attempting to build a similar one, albeit with far more limited potential range and stability. At most Misty Glasses said the portal device could potentially open portals to locations within a hundred miles, give or take, but theoretically the original device in the Ruin near Stable 106 could reach anywhere on the planet. Little wonder the ponies of Equestria had wanted to learn how to use it. I could only imagine what a device like that might have done for the Equestrians in their war against the zebra.

The project had been left unfinished with all the other research projects the Stable had been working on after Odessa had raided the place and the remaining Stable ponies had subsequently been transformed into spider hybrids by the work of the Hyadean creature that had come upon them in the aftermath. With the death of Director Twinkle, however, Misty Glasses had been putting her spider ponies on getting back to work on all the Stable’s old research projects, prioritizing ones that would make life easier for them in adapting to the Wasteland, and to make life easier for me and my friends so we could better aid the Stable.

To that end she’d put completing the portal device as a high priority, and the spider ponies had quickly gotten a semi-stable prototype working just a day before the battle at the church. My friends who’d been left behind after my capture by Odessa had returned to Stable 104 to plan out how to rescue me, and when Misty Glasses told them about the portal project they decided that’d be their best chance to get me away from Odessa. Of course I’d managed to escape along with my tribesmates, which made things easier all around. Stable 104 had equipment to track any Pip-Buck, which came from Stable 104 anyway, so they had known where I was. They’d used the Pip-Buck’s coordinates to determine where to place the portal. My friends had loaded up the Ursa and gone through the portal assuming I’d be in trouble and in need of immediate help.

When I asked why they’d assume I was in trouble Iron Wrought had been first to answer, with a scoffing, “Because it was you.”

Sad thing was, I couldn't even argue the point.

I’d sustained a lot of injuries in the fight with Shattered Sky and Black Petal, but nothing rest and the concentrated medical expertise and magic of Stable 104 couldn’t take care of. I was still sore two days later, but at least I could walk. As for the testing, Misty Glasses was highly interested in trying to define just how Gramzanber interfaced with me and how I used its abilities. To that end she’d had me use Accelerator and Impulse both in controlled situations, usually in test chambers designed to test fire experimental energy weapons.

By this point using Accelerator felt as natural and instinctual as blinking, and I had discovered I had a better sense of how long I could use it before risking serious backlash. Impulse on the other hoof was taking some getting used to. I could activate it just fine when I felt the right amount of pressure from Gramzanber. Distance, aim, and any kind of precise control of the blast was proving difficult. I nearly detonated the thing right in front of my face my first time trying to use it in the test chamber. I also discovered I could really only use it maybe twice in a row before the drain on my body was so much I could barely stand, let alone keep fighting.

I was also... ambivalent about the force behind Impulse. Misty Glasses informed me, perhaps a little too cheerfully, that the blast was slightly stronger than that of a thunder cannon, but still quite a bit weaker than the explosion of something called a ‘balefire egg’. I didn’t get what that meant, having no idea what either a thunder canon or balefire egg were, but it was clear the destructive force was pretty high. Which mean I couldn’t really use Impulse unless I was certain I was willing to kill whoever I used it on. It’d really been pure luck, and the power of his artificial ARM, that Shattered Sky had survived my first use of Impulse...

… not that doing so had done him any good, come the end.

I hadn’t had a chance to talk with Trailblaze about that, and I sorely wished to. Not to accuse, or confront, but to make sure she was okay. Killing, no matter the circumstances you do it in, is going to leave a mark. There’d been no time, and I hadn’t actually seen much of Trailblaze anyway since we arrived. She and the others of my tribe had settled in, at least, through from what I’d seen they were still a bit skittish around the spider ponies. For the time being they were safe, and for me that was enough to lift my spirits and make the soreness in my body feel a little less painful as I trotted to the residential quarters of the Stable.

They also grumbled about the confined spaces of the Stable. I couldn’t blame them. While I was getting used to it, I thought I would’ve prefered to sleep in a tent out under the open sky. On the other hoof, beds were a wonder I hoped to introduce to my tribe if... no, when I rescued the rest of the tribe and went back to Shady Stream. I found myself fantasizing about the soft bed, nearly falling asleep before I even entered my room. Yawning I stripped off my armor, which I’d been wearing even in the Stable out of habit, and set Gramzanber aside next to the bed. Stretching, not having bothered to turn on the lights, I hopped into bed and started to get comfortable.

Rolling over, stretching out a hoof to try and snuggle a pillow, I instead ended up grabbing something that was altogether too warm and pliable to be a pillow. Pillows also didn’t giggle in disturbingly high pitched voices.

My tired eyes snapped open to see, in the dark, Binge’s smiling face inches from my own.

“Nom,” she said as she proceeded to bite my nose.

More out of shock than pain I found myself giving my lungs a workout as I yelled and scrambled out of my bed fast enough that I might as well have used Accelerator and gotten the same result. Breathing heavy and laying on my back on the cold metal floor in shock I saw Binge creep up to the side of my bed like a cat stalking a mouse, her tail wagging in the air above her.

“Binge, what are you doing in my room!? Again!?” I asked. Completely calm...

… Yeah, okay, I’m lying. I wasn’t calm, I was two seconds away from a panic attack. It didn’t help that I noticed Binge had a particularly hungry look about her tonight. She licked her lips as she giggled at me again. Cold sweat beaded on my brow at that giggle.

“Sleeping in your bed, silly. Isn’t it obvious? I know the nice doctor spider put you back together and juiced you up with all that healing goo, so your eyes work, and your ears, and your other parts.”

I stayed on my back, still too surprised and fearful to even think about trying to stand. I was noticing, as my eyes adjusted to the dark, that Binge had made some... additions to my room. For one, her own armor and other acquired knick-knacks were strewn around the bed like a little nest of random junk. I had no idea how I’d missed tripping over any of it when I’d first gone to the bed. There was also the beginnings of what I tended to consider Raider “art” on the walls.

“Uh, Binge, that’s not blood is it?” I asked, pointing at some of the scribblings. They were hard to make out, but I could tell they weren’t quite like the more conventional Raider graffiti, which seemed obsessed with dismemberment and putting ponies in sexual positions, often at the same time. These were... well they were as crude as other Raider drawings, but looking at them I noticed they were less focused on gratuitous sex and violence and more just... weird.

I don’t know everything that goes on in Binge’s mind, but I got the impression the wall scrawlings of her sitting on a giant throne constructed out of lollipops and bones while I fed her slices of meat from a platter was a peek I didn’t need. The pictures with the rampaging horde of little fuzzy animals was cute, though, if you ignored the teeth. And I have no idea to this day what the picture of Arcaidia flying around in what looked like a weird saucer-shaped thing with antenna poking out of her head as she fried fleeing ponies with her starblaster was all about.

“Hehehe, well duh its blood, silly,” said Binge with a lick of her lips, “I couldn’t find any red paint! Except inside me!”

She wiggled one of her hooves at me and I saw the fresh cuts, some of them still bleeding. A few specs got on my face. All at once my fear twisted into genuine concern and my face tightened in a frown, “Binge, you shouldn’t hurt yourself like that.”

She responded instantly with a little reverberating noise rising in her throat that was half growl, half purr. Binge bounced off the bed, landing partially on top of me with her nose poking against my own and her crazed blue eyes glittering down at mine. The blanket on the bed had gotten tangled in her hooves and was now covering us partly, and I was painfully aware of just how... warm, Binge was. It could feel her against me like a breathing, heated blanket, and as nervous as I was the feeling of the mare that close was making my head feel light.

“It doesn’t hurt one teensy itty bit,” she said, petting my head with one hoof, her touch surprisingly gentle, “Don’t you worry your pretty head, bucky. Oh, but it does make me feel all fuzzy and hot inside to know you care.”

I gulped, my heart beating faster in my chest. I was trying very hard to ignore the way her belly rubbed up against my own, and how lower parts were... also in remarkably close proximity. Uncomfortably close. Or too comfortably close, depending on how you view these things. There was a distinct line of inappropriate thoughts running through my head that I was working fast to put the brakes on. I tried thinking of Trailblaze but that didn’t help at all, instead just serving to remind me of my guilt and frustration over learning about her and Whetstone.

“B-Binge,” I said, putting a hoof on her chest and slowly pushing her up as I tried wiggling out from under her, “I, uh, look, if you want this room, it’s all yours. I’ll find another place to sleep.”

Binge let me push her up but as I was wiggling away I felt her hind legs clamp around mine, and she kept stroking my mane with one of her hooves. I then heard a distinct scraping of metal on metal and noticed that with her tail she was idly running one of her knives along the room’s metal floor.

“You don’t have to go, bucky, this is your room after all,” she said, licking her lips.

“You... um, you seem like you were planning on sleeping in here,” I said, my logic centers having trouble working as they were quite distracted by the dual sensation of Binge’s legs wrapped around mine and the constant ‘schkkk’ ‘schkkk’ of the knife’s edge on the floor.

“Mmmhmm, and you were gonna sleep here too,” she said, leaning over me, her voice turning into a sympathetic coo, “I can see into you. You’re like a party balloon that’s about to pop.”

She licked my nose, “Let’s snuggle and see how much air I can suck out of you.”

Yup, that was my cue to leave! Binge, for all her... grabbiness, wasn’t prepared for a properly motivated Longwalk when he wanted to be somewhere else. With a tiny yip of surprise Binge found herself being bodily lifted away as I, abruptly, went from simply trying to wiggle free to being on my hooves and tripping over the bed sheets to get to the door. However I myself had underestimated just how quick and agile Binge was, and as I got to the door I found the mare had somehow gotten under me, popping up between my forehooves while laying on her back as she grinned up at me.

“Is that a no?”

I stared down at her, hoof halfway up to touch the button that’d open the door, but I found myself meeting that gaze of indigo eyes, and hesitated. My instincts were torn. My little brain pony was screaming at me to just get out of the room, now. Common sense told me being alone with Binge was dangerous. My sense of morality also told me that if Binge was offering what I thought she was that I shouldn’t just jump at it, no matter how... pent up I was.

If being pent up was enough excuse to sleep with a pony then nature wouldn’t have given us hooves!

But damn me if a part of me wasn’t intrigued. Tempted. Would it really be so wrong? I was a stallion in all ways save two; no cutie mark, and never mated. The only mare I had ever had feelings for was into mares herself. Now I had a strange, admittedly alluring if somewhat crazy pony, who was seemingly more than willing to show me exactly what I was missing.

At what cost? Could I even trust her? What would she do with that knife, if I dropped my guard? Did it matter? What would my friends think? Did I care?

“You think too much,” Binge said, sighing, “Why do you think so much?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the first pony who's ever accused me of that,” I said, backing away from the door and getting Binge out from under me. She stood with speedy fluidity, and the knife that had been in her tail was now in her hoof, bouncing up and down as she looked at me with her endlessly blue eyes.

Ancestors, they looked so much like Trailblaze’s, I realized. The comparison ended, there, however. I’d looked at Binge plenty of times, but that night in my room I started to really... look at Binge, as a mare, and not a Raider, or ex-Raider, or ally, or possible still enemy. She was dirty, and messy, and unkempt, and somehow made that all look alluring with a simple crooked, yellow toothed smile and tilt of her head that promised she could do all sorts of things I wasn’t sure I wanted but knew I’d never forget. Her eyes were where the comparison to Trailblaze ended. Trail was athletic, well muscled, a full bodied mare, whereas Binge was almost painfully lean and whipcord thin. Yet I still wondered what it might feel like to hold her. That knife kept bouncing up and down, twirling in the air.

“You think I’ll do bad things to you?” asked Binge.

“Maybe. That’s part of it,” I said, shaking my head and stepping back from her, “Why do you want to do this anyway? I mean, with me?”

Binge giggled, dropping her knife, though she didn’t seem to care as she sashayed closer to me, “Why, bucky? What do you think I want to do?”

I cocked my head, still stepping back to keep some distance between us, “Seriously? I know I’m not the brightest colt in my tribe, but if you’re not trying to get me to mate with you what are you doing?”

“Oh I’m definitely trying to get you to do the sexy with me!” said Binge with an excited swish of her tail, “I just think its funny the way your brainmeats work. You worry and worry and worry about everything you do! All these little knots in your head, winding tighter and tighter until you can’t do anything. There’s nothing to worry about my precious puppy. I won’t hurt you. A lot.”

She stepped forward and I stepped back, again and again until my back was against the wall and she reared up on her hind legs, planting her forehooves on the wall on either side of my head. She leaned forward, lips inches from mine, but I hold a hoof up as well, pressing against her chest, keeping her back.

Something in Binge’s eyes changed, a shimmer of hurt, and her voice turned... frustrated, “Why not, bucky? I know you’re hurting, inside and out. Let me make it feel a bit better. Let me give you something to smile about.”

“Binge, I can’t,” I said, taking a few deep breaths, which didn’t help because it just meant I was breathing in her thick, musky scent, which made my brain light up with all sorts of impulses I knew I couldn’t afford to give into, “I really can’t.”

Binge gave me a coy look, her eyes sliding downward. I didn’t get what she was looking at until her hoof started going down, down, and further down past my waist, to pat at something that made me yelp and try to jump back, but there was kind of a wall in the way. All my movement did was jostle Binge even closer to me.

“Can’t? Not according to this little guy,” she said with a smile that nearly broke away the little control I still had left.

Nearly.

“Binge. No.”

Again I saw that faint shimmer of hurt in her eyes. She stared into me, blue glittering eyes stabbing into me in a way her knives probably never could. I gulped, feeling a tightening in my gut, wondering if I was making the right choice here, but I couldn’t do this. Not like this, not here, with her. Putting aside the fact that I didn’t know just who would be sticking things into who if I did accept Binge’s offer, I just didn’t know her well enough. I didn’t... feel for her? There was a surprising amount of hesitance in my own heart when I thought about her. Could there be something there?

Binge, after a slow uncomfortable minute of staring into my eyes let out a hissing sigh and backed away from me, looking at me with confusion in her eyes.

“You want to, I can see it,” Binge said, looking down, and I self consciously adjusted both my hind legs and tail to hide my... er... physical reaction to Binge’s prodding earlier.

“Well, its not like I can control that,” I said, feeling the rush of warmth in my face.

“So you won’t cuddle and snuggle with me?” Binge asked, “Even if I promised to only cut you a little bit?”

I blinked at her for a few seconds, “Uh… let’s just... yeah, no. No cutting. Even if, someday, I do decide to do that with you, no knives.”

“But the knives are the funnest part,” she complained.

“Binge, no knives in our theoretical future sex!” I said with a firm flick of my tail.

“What about razor blades?”

“No!”

“Barbed wire?”

“NO!” I said, but found I was smiling a bit, unable to help a bit of laughter at the turn of the conversation.

“Gee, maybe I don’t want to have the sexy with you then,” Binge said with a turn of her nose and a small huff, but she was sharing my smile as she slide up to me again and whispered, “But I’m glad I could get you to laugh. Its a good laugh. Do it more.”

I obliged, laughing as I suppressed a yawn, “No promises, but I’ll try. So, uh, can we just pretend this incredibly unsettling conversation didn’t happen? You can sleep in this room, I can go find another.”

“Nope!” said Binge as she glided over to the door, “I have lots of rooms, and you’re still skittish. Sleep, Longwalk, and have warm, messy dreams.”

As she slid out the door I saw her pause, then grin at something, or somepony, in the hall, “Heya birdie! I didn’t wear him out, so he’s all yours!”

I felt a little of the blood drain from my face and imagined my ears had just drooped as much as my mane as Binge giggled and skipped off, a very bemused looking B.B trotting to the door while looking where Binge had gone. B.B’s look towards me involved a highly raised eyebrow and something akin to a smirk.

“Whatever you’re thinking B.B, we didn’t do it,” I said, my voice a tiny squeak.

B.B let out a chiming chuckle, shaking her head as she entered my room. I noticed on her back was some oddly shaped black leather case and she shrugged her shoulders to let it slide off to the floor, “Don’t ya worry none, Long. Yer forgettin’ I got a’ sharp nose. I’d smell it iffin’ ye an’ her took a’ romp in the hay.”

That was a good point. A good, somewhat disturbing point. I managed to take a calming breath and sat back on my bed, looking B.B over. She wasn’t wearing her normal violet dress or armor, and it occurred to me I often didn’t see her without either. It made her cutie mark stand out all the more. I glanced away, realizing I was staring. Binges... antics, were having some lingering effects. I really did just need to get to sleep, maybe, er, ‘take care of’ my problem before drifting off.

“Ya want me ta go, Long?” B.B asked and I blinked, shaking myself.

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, “Just... Binge. I can’t figure that mare out. I don’t know if I will if I spend years trying to.”

“Looks like she got ya a tad riled,” B.B remarked, nostrils flaring a bit, a small tint of rose coloring her face, “Ya... were ya thinkin’ ‘bout it?”

“No!” I said, probably far too fast for it to sound convincing, “I mean, I wouldn't do that with Binge. I don’t feel that way about her. I mean, I’ve only known her for a matter of days, and our first meeting was, if you recall, kind of violent. There was punching and stabbing involved.”

“Right, I trust ya. No need ta convince me,” B.B said as she tapped a hoof to the black case she’d brought in, “Ain’t why I came anyway, ta talk ‘bout yer love life.”

“Not that I have one to talk about,” I said while getting comfy on the bed, “So what’s with the case?”

“It’s fer a cello,” B.B said, flipping a few hatches on the side of the case with her nose and tipping it open with a wing. The inside was empty, however, and I gave her a questioning look. B.B rolled her eyes with a small smile, “Ain’t no cello in here, plain ta see, but I was thinkin’ ya could use this case fer lugging ‘round yer spear.”

“Huh...” I took a closer look at the case. It did look like I could fit Gramzanber inside, but... “Why? I mean, I got a sheath for the spear attached to my armor. Why would I need this, uh, what did you call it again?”

“Cello case,” B.B said, “It’s a’ ol’ fashioned string instrument. Real classical like. One o’ the ponies livin’ here ‘fore the whole turnin’ inta spiders thing happened used ta’ play.Way she tell it she’s related ta’ a pre-war cellist or somethin’. She got this spare case an’ after I asked she let me have it.”

“Nice of her,” I said, nodding, “But still, not sure why I’d need it.”

B.B looked at me with that flat expression of hers that said I was being simple, “Long, we’re headin’ off ta Skull City tomorrow. Teleportin’ wit that niffy machine ta’ git most o’ the way, at least. Ain’t ya forgettin’ somethin’?”

“Um... what?” I asked, wracking my brain. I did feel like I was forgetting something. Something about a... radio broadcast? Why was I thinking of caps and Crossfire all of a sudden?”

“Yer bounty!” B.B said, wings flaring, “Ya got a bounty on yer head, Long. So, iffin’ yer rememberin’ the plan is ta have ya disguise yerself. Given Gramzanber there’s a’ dead givaway as ta who ya are we need ta keep it hidden too. Figure this here case’d be perfect fer that.”

“Oh, right, that. I think my brain conveniently decided to erase all memory of that plan in a futile effort to save my sanity and sense of self-dignity,” I said, and reluctantly hopped off the bed to retrieve Gramzanber from the wall.

“Oh c’mon Long, it ain’t gonna be that bad. Ya make a’ right fine lookin’ mare,” B.B said, and I couldn’t honestly tell if she was being sarcastic or genuine. Quite possibly both. Also...

“Wait, what? Why would you know what a ‘fine lookin’ mare’ looks like? And no I’m not one, for your information. I’m a butch, muscular, incredibly masculine mare! Stallion! I meant stallion!” I said, realizing even as I spoke just how peevish I probably sounded. Sighing, I set Gramzanber down into the case, and had to admit that B.B had it right. Not about me being making a good looking mare, obviously! About my spear! The weapon spear. Not the... other... spear... ugh! Gramzanber fit in the cello case near perfectly, is what I mean.

B.B was hiding her laugh with a wing and looking at me sidelong, “First o’ all, just ‘cause I ain’t a fillyfooler don’t mean I can’t recognize a’ good lookin’ mare when I see one. Second o’ all, ya are kinda cute when we dress ya up all feminine like. Its ’cause ya got just the right bit o’ muscle on ya that makes ya stand out as a’ mare.”

She gave me an affectionate pat on the head, “Don’t ya worry yer pretty head, we won’t let any disreputable types have their way wit ya.”

I gave her a deadpan look, “Thanks. Anyway, looks like you were right, Gram fits just fine in here.”

B.B nodded in satisfaction, “Good. Pretty much was why I dropped by. That, an’ I caught a whiff o’ Binge heading towards yer room an’ figured ya might need a hoof wit her. Had a’ feelin’ ya might end up wit her puttin’ the moves on ya.”

“I have no idea why she wanted to,” I said, returning to the bed and laying down, lowering my head to rest atop my folded forehooves, “Then again, I never have idea what that mare is thinking.”

“Part n’ parcel wit bringin’ a’ Raider along fer the ride,” said B.B, looking pensively at me, “Glad ya were able ta keep it under yer tail, at any rate. I’ll let ya git some rest. We’re gittin’ up early in the mornin’.”

She turned to go and the thought occurred to me that there wouldn’t be many opportunities in the coming days to talk to her alone, and despite how incredibly comfy the bed was, luring me towards sleep, I spoke up, “B.B, can I ask something, real quick?”

She paused, turning her head to look back at me questioningly.

“What happened,” I said, awkwardly searching for words, “With... that mare. Black Petal. She knew you.”

“...Yes, she did...” B.B said, her accent dropping away.

“She’s like you. Feeds on blood. B.B, I won’t force it if you don’t want to, but is there anything we need to know about this? Is she, or others like her, going to be a problem?”

I felt bad having to ask, but I didn’t want to just leave this matter hanging. I didn’t think B.B owed us any kind of explanation, and I was serious when I said I wouldn’t force the issue, but if there was any chance that B.B’s past was going to come and bite the group’s collective flank I felt I needed to at least see if B.B was ready to talk about it. B.B’s face was like a stiff board for a second, lips pressing tightly together, wings tipped downward. Then it was as if she wrestled down something inside herself and her whole body relaxed.

“Yes, Black Petal is going to be a problem. By now she’s probably informed the rest of my family that I’ve been found,” B.B said and held up a hoof to forestall and questions for me, “Theres way too much for me to tell right here and now. I need time to get my thoughts in order, figure out where to begin. Look, Longwalk, this is going to get dangerous, having me in the group.”

I let out a small laugh, “Can’t be any more dangerous than what we’ve already been through.”

B.B gave me a serious look, “You fought Black Petal. Now imagine fighting a dozen more like her at the same time.”

That did get me to flinch, “You’ve got a big family.”

“You have no idea,” B.B said with a quiet sigh, brown mane falling across her face, “Long, I’m not exaggerating. Having me around is going to get dangerous. My family will come, and when they do it’s going to be hard, fast, and without any mercy. I don’t know how long we have, maybe a few weeks, a month at most, but when it happens I don’t know if I can protect all of you.”

I was silent for a few seconds, digesting that, but really there was only one response I could give. I hopped off the bed, went over to her, and threw my arms around her in a tight hug. B.B gave a tiny yelp of surprise, but soon enough relaxed, hugging me back.

“Let us do the protecting B.B, “ I said pulling back enough to look her in the eye, “Whatever your old family brings against us, they’re going to have a tough time dealing with your new family.”

“Thanks Long, I...” B.B sighed, her accent coming back like she was wrapping a protective blanket around herself, “I’m a’ right lucky pony ta have ya’ll ta count on. Gimme ‘till we git ta’ Skull City an’ I’ll figure out just what I can say ‘bout my family that’ll make any sense.”

“No rush,” I said, “When you’re ready, and only what you’re ready to tell.”

After she left I slowly got back into the bed, glad to finally be able to get some sleep, to the point where I wasn’t even thinking anymore of needing to ‘take care of’ my pent up sexual frustrations. Might take a long shower in the morning, though. Not even bothering to wrap the covers around myself I just snuggled the nearest pillow and started to rapidly drift off to sleep.

It took me a few moments to figure out that I was, in fact, dreaming. It was one of those incredibly lucid dreams where I had complete control and awareness of myself, in the way natural dreams almost never allow. I was in a depressed pit of slate gray rock, with holes burrowed around the perimeter at seemingly random, and scaffolds of wood and metal leading up to the lip of the pit at each of the cardinal directions. The sky above was overcast and gray with the rain that was lightly falling, wetting my face as I looked up.

“Sorry about the setting,” said a voice behind me, “I just had Gram make something quick so I wasn’t talking to you out of thin air.”

I turned around fast, but saw nopony there. The voice was still there, though, distorted and so familiar, yet I couldn’t place it. All I could tell was the voice was female. When she spoke again all I saw was a faint, pony shaped shimmer in the air.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you for awhile Longwalk. I need to tell you something important and-”

“Who are you?” I asked, waving my hoof at the shimmer in the air, “Why can’t I see you?”

“Hey! Stop that! Seriously, I’m trying to tell you something important here, ah, stop, that tickles!”

It tickled my hoof as well as I waved it through the shimmer, feeling little tickling pin pricks across my fur, “You’re the one whose voice I keep hearing, right? When I’m in danger, or am using Gramzanber, its you who keeps trying to talk to me.”

“Yes, but it's not important who I am,” the voice said as I saw her shimmer float up and away from my searching hoof, “And no more touching! Geez. Now stop asking questions and just listen!”

I gave the shimmer a pouty look, realized I must have looked quite silly doing so, and sat on my haunches with my forehooves crossing over my chest, “Alright, Miss Voice, what did you need to tell me?”

She waited a moment, as if not believing I wouldn’t interrupt her again, then the voice started to speak once more, the wavering shimmer in the air floating back down to my head level, “Right, here’s the short version; Gram isn’t calibrated to interact with your body properly. He was built to deal with an entirely different species than ponies. You’re able to survive bonding with him because your body isn’t quite... normal, and because he’s using me as an adapter of softs. Me and your friends.”

“Waitwaitwait, what!?” I near shouted, “I don’t care about the short version, this sounds like something that requires the long version! What’s wrong with my body and how is Gramzanber using you and my friends to... adapt?”

“Longwalk, I don’t know exactly how this works because Gram can’t explain in terms I understand. That, and I don’t think even he knows what’s going on with you,” the voice had a hesitant quality to it, and even without the body language I could hear the frustration in the distorted tone, “He’s told me your body is different from a normal earth pony’s, that’s it. Not how, or why. As for me and your friends, Gram’s been forming links to them, the same way he tethered me to him. Me he grabbed because he needed something to use as a... a... well, its like being an adapter to an electrical plug. Gram was having trouble syncing with your spirit, so he used another spirit to be like the glue that’d bind you to him better. Then he started forming tethers to your friends to reduce the strain on your body when you use his power.”

My face scrunched up as I digested that, “Is it dangerous to my friends? This tether or whatever?”

“No, no. Believe me I had words with Gram about that when I found out what he did, but he assures me your friends aren’t in any danger. Not like you are, and that’s the main thing I need to tell you. Longwalk, you have to stop using Gramzanber’s abilities so much. You’re not immune to... to the way ponies die when trying to use an ARM. You’ll still die, its just the results have been delayed because of your unusual body. But instead of just a few days, like normal ponies, you’ve got closer to three months before Gramzanber’s power ends up killing you.”

I blinked a few times, feeling a strange, metallic coldness inside me. I looked at the ground for a second, then glanced back up at the shimmer, “So... I’m going to die in three months.”

The voice was silent for a minute before saying, “If we don’t find a way to stop it, yes. But we can stop it, Longwalk! First off, if you slow down how much you use Gram’s power, it’ll buy us extra time. But more than that the people who made Gramzanber have the calibration data to allow a pony to use an ARM without any trouble.”

“The Veruni, right? Why would they have information to let ponies use their weapons?” I asked, curious, and mostly trying to distract myself from the prospect of imminent death. Three months... damn.

“It’s because of Arcaidia,” the voice said, “She’s a normal pony, and was supposed to receive an ARM to use. I think Gram might’ve been meant for her, but he wasn’t calibrated before their ship crashed here. The data we need is on that ship, the Ark of Destiny. If you find that ship, you can take Gramzanber to the bridge and he can retrieve the calibration data. Do that and you’ll be okay.”

“Where’s this ship then?” I asked, suppressing my curiosity and urge to ask just how and why this ship crashed in the first place. Why had a Veruni ship been here? Hadn’t Moa Gault told me that the Guardians had hidden the world after the last invasion? Or had this happened during that period, thousands of years ago? Had... had Arcaidia been sleeping in that pod for that long? No, I had a feeling there was more to it than that. I didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet.

“We don’t know,” the voice admitted reluctantly, “Gram has a limited scanning range. If you get within a certain distance of the Ark, Gram will detect it. He assures me it had to survive the crash. Veruni ship’s are pretty durable.”

Again, then how did it crash? I almost asked, but kept my curiosity in check. Chances were the answer would be cryptic anyway. Besides, Arcaidia likely knew. If I needed to I could ask her.

“So, what, I just wander around aimlessly hoping I get close enough to this ship for Gramzanber to detect it?” I asked, trying to keep myself from a rising sense of panic. How could I help Arcaidia or any of my friends, Trailblaze or my tribe, if I ended up dead in three months? Could I manage to make sure Arcaidia was reunited with her sister and my tribe rescued from Odessa inside that time frame?

“Well, Gram isn’t sure where the Ark of Destiny went down, but he wasn’t even fully functional until he bonded with you. However Arcaidia might know. She was on the ship’s bridge herself until at least the point where Gramzanber’s ARM sphere was given to her. She might have gotten an idea of where the ship was falling. I’d try asking her.”

There was a heavy strain of worry in the voice, and I found myself wanting to put on a confident smile, if only to let this pony, whoever she was, feel more at ease. Pulling up as much good cheer as I could I smiled, hoping it didn’t look too forced, “Better than nothing. Knowing my luck it’s on the other side of the world, but at least Misty Glasses has that portal working. Maybe if they learn more about how that thing works they can get the original working. It’s supposed to have a worldwide range.”

There was a pause, then the voice said, “I hope so. Sorry to have to tell you this, but you needed to know. I can let you get back to dreaming now.”

“Wait,” I said, thinking of something, “I want to ask, is it this tether with my friends that’s allow me to see their dreams?”

“Oh, that” the voice sounded embarrassed, “Yeah, that’s kind of a weird side effect of the tether, but also something else.”

“Like what?”

Another pause, longer than the last one, “Gram says there is a likelihood that this is happening because of the parts of you that aren’t earth pony. That aspect of you is interacting with the tethers, possibly creating a bridge for your dreaming mind to touch your friends. He won’t say more than that.”

I frowned, flicking my tail, “You know, if Gramzanber has things to say to me he can do it himself. I’ve been wondering if there was a… well, person, or consciousness, in there. If we’re working together I ought to at least meet him.”

“It’s not possible right now,” the voice said, “If it was he wouldn’t need me to be the adapter. I‘m pretty much the go-between here.”

“But I’ve heard what I’m pretty sure is Gramzanber’s voice in my head too!” I argued.

“That’ll happen sometimes, especially as your sync rate between the two of you gets stronger, but it’s not strong enough yet for Gramzanber to communicate directly. Maybe after you get the calibration data. Don’t feel bad, I’ve been stuck with him for over a week now and he’s not much of a conversationalist. Took me forever to get him to stop talking like a robot.”

“Alright, well, tell him I said I’m looking forward to talking with him, when the time comes,” I said, “And that I’m grateful for all the help he’s given me. Without him I’d be dead a dozen times or more by now. As much as Arcaidia, I owe him my life.”

“He knows. And he’s grateful too. I don’t know how ARMs are supposed to work, but I get the feeling they’re… happiest, when helping the one they’ve bonded to. If a machine can be happy. I don’t really know. Anyway, why did you ask about your friends’ dreams?”

It was my turn to sound embarrassed as I rubbed the back of my head, “Well, I was kind of wondering if it’d happen again. Or if I could control it at all.”

This pause was the longest one yet, however I now understood this voice was conversing with Gramzanber. A minute or two later she said, “He says it’ll probably happen every now and again. No way to predict when and he says he doesn’t think he could stop it if it did, not until we get that calibration data anyway. Looks like you’re stuck being a peeping tom.”

“Doesn’t count if I’m not doing it on purpose,” I said with a small pout.

The voice let out a distorted laugh, “Good night, Longwalk. Try not to wander into any inappropriate dreams.”

The pony shaped shimmer faded away and soon enough the rocky pit began to grow dim, and with it I grew more and more tired. Soon darkness overwhelmed me, but rather than frightening, I felt relaxed, and comfortable. A sense of peace drove away the worries the voice’s words had brought. Whatever happened, I certainly wasn’t going to be facing it alone.

I didn’t dream anything else unusual that night, though a part of me was disappointed at that. I wasn’t necessarily eager to go traipsing through my friends’ dreams again, but I couldn’t deny I was curious. Then again, remembering Binge’s last dream, and her sudden apparent growing interest in me, it might’ve been for the best that I didn’t go into any of my friend’s dreams that night.

I shook my head, putting the thoughts from my mind as I grabbed a shower and then made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast. I found Trailblaze and Whetstone both there at one of the tables, though the way they sat suggested they really weren’t used to the benches at the steel tables yet. I didn’t see any of my other tribesmates there, but I did see Arcaidia sitting across from Traiblaze, the two chatting. Even from this distance, however, I could see that Trailblaze was letting Arcadia do most the talking, and had a distant look to her.

I didn’t see any of my other friends, but that didn’t surprise me much. If I was getting the hang of reading the clock on the wall of my room then I had seriously overslept. It was actually kind of surprising Trailblaze and Whestone were still eating breakfast, but looking closer I noticed their trays of food were already empty.

I trotted towards the table and Whetstone spotted me and smiled brightly while giving me a wave, which in turn caused Arcaidia and Trailblaze to look in my direction. Arcaidia gave me a bright, cheerful smile and waved as well, all but mirroring Whetstone. Trailblaze smiled, but hers had a subdued, wane qaulity to it. Reaching the table I sat next to Arcaidia.

“Morning,” I said.

“Afternoon, practically,” said Whetstone.

“Sleep be good, ren solva?” Arcaidia asked, stretching her haunches, “Bed much gooder than dirt. Very bad we cannot take beds.”

“Meh, you're just soft from all that fancy living I’m thinking you did before you found us honest tribal folk,” said Whestone, patting her stomach, “Though I have to say the food here isn’t too bad. I might get used to this place.”

“It’s not home,” Trailblaze said, “We’re just here until we rescue the rest of the tribe, then we’ll resettle at Shady Stream.”

“I know Trail, I know,” said Whetstone, “Still, we can enjoy what we can.”

Trailblaze nodded, slowly, almost as if to herself, then she glanced up at me. Her eyes had an intense quality to them, like there was a force there that almost pushed outward. Still, this was Trailblaze, and I smiled at her. It was good just to be able to sit next to her again, no immediate threats or dangers. After a second she returned the smile and she looked like her normal self again.

“Longwalk,” she said, “I heard from Arcaidia that you and that group of yours is leaving today.”

I glanced at Arcaidia then back to Trailblaze, “That’s right. We’re going to Skull City. The plan is to find B.B’s father, and hopefully with his help find somepony that can get us into the NCR to look for Arcaidia’s sister.”

“And Odessa?” Trailblaze asked pointedly.

“Well, there are Guilds in Skull City, and B.B’s father told me that if there was anypony who knew anything about Odessa, it’d be one of the larger Guilds. So while we’re there I was planning to see what I could dig up. Odessa has to have a base or camp somewhere, a permanent place where they keep their big airships when they need to be repaired or refueled. I figure if we find this base, we can find our tribe. Or at least somepony who knows where they were taken.”

It wasn’t a great plan, I knew. Much as was the case with Longwalk Plans they were full of potential pitfalls and dead ends. What if this Odessa base was too heavily guarded to get into? What if our tribe wasn’t there? What if nopony there knew where they were, or wasn’t willing to talk even under threat of death; a threat I wasn’t at all sure I could carry out if I wanted to. What if none of the Skull City Guild’s had any information on Odessa? My plan was as tenuous and unstable as a pile of sand.

I felt a hoof pat my shoulder and Arcaidia was smiling at me with confidence brimming in her silver eyes, “Fear bad, ren solva! We do much good things together as group. Learn where tribe taken, beat Odessa to icy pulp, and go to far away NCR to get Persephone! Everything be better when I find Persephone.”

“I hope you’re both right,” said Trailblaze, her expression turning sour, ears twitching as she stared at the table. I couldn’t stand seeing her like that, not after we’d finally managed to get somewhere safe and rest. I reached across the table and put a hoof on hers.

“Trail, you okay?”

She looked at me, startled, and seemed to withdraw for a second before taking hold of herself and saying, “I’m fine. Fine as I can be with most of our tribe in the clutches of an insane army of pegasi and griffins. I just want to get going. To do something. Sitting here is just…”

Trailblaze didn’t have to finish her sentence, I could see the way her entire body was wound tight with tension, her mane all but bristling. She looked like she was a short way from exploding. It left me concerned, and also brought up an important question I had to ask.

“I understand Trail, which leads me to ask; what do you plan to do? Are you coming with me to Skull City?”

“No,” she said, and she had said it quickly and with a great deal of finality. That hit me a bit, like a swift blow to the jaw, but Trailblaze saw my look and I saw her eyes soften, “Not because I don’t want to, Long. I can’t. I’ve got… a different path to walk.”

Her hoof reached up and brushed the mark on her chest, the black marking of the bird’s talon. Moa Gualt’s mark. A brief flicker of flame played across her hoof and vanished, and Trailblaze sighed deeply. When she looked at me again it was with a sad smile.

“I have to seek out the other Guardian Shrines and find the Mediums that will awaken them. That’s the task Moa Gault has given me. If I can somehow work around that to rescue my tribe Moa Gault won’t stop me, but he’s made it pretty clear that the Shrines come first.”

Arcaidia had a sour look on her face, her silver eyes narrowing, “Stupid bird not give orders! Trailblaze free pony. Tell bird to sit on egg and spin butt feathers!”

Whetstone snorted a bit at Arcaidia’s attempt at swearing in Equestrian, but Trailblaze had a serious look that didn’t drop as she said, “It’s not that simple. I need his power if I’m to have a chance at doing much of anything, and he can pull that power from me as easily as he granted it. The thing is, there can be any number of potential Mediums for a Guardian to work through, so he doesn’t need me the way I need him.”

“You don’t need him,” I said, “You’re pretty amazing on your own.”

Again her smile, that smile I’d walk through fire for. Had walked through fire for.

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but right now having the ability to summon flames at will is probably going to save my flank, and our tribe’s flanks, before this is over. It's… not that bad, Long. I’ve got lots of leeway in how I go about this ‘quest’, just as long as I look for these Shrines while also looking for our tribe.”

I tilted my head, thinking it over, “How are you supposed to find these Shrine’s anyway?”

“Moa Gault knows where the closest ones are, and if I can find Mediums for those ones the Guardians of those Shrines can lead us to others. This is important, Longwalk. We’ll need the Guardians to fight against Odessa and the other threats that are out there,” Trailblaze said, and for a moment I saw her eyes flicker towards Arcaidia, but it was so fast I barely noticed it and I don’t think anypony else at the table did. Did… did Trailblaze think Arcaidia was a threat?

“So where will you be going?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as uncomfortable with this conversation as I felt, “Where are these nearby Shrines.”

“Closest one is in the mountains near where Shady Stream was,” Trailblaze said, “More north, but in the same chain. Going to be a lot of climbing involved.”

“And you’ll be passing by Skull City anyway,” I said, hastily, “It pretty much is right between us and the mountains. You could come with us part of the way-“

“Long, your spider pony friends have already offered to make one of those magical doorways to take us most the way,” said Trailblaze, “As long as we do a favor for them when we get there.”

At my questioning look Whetstone spoke up, “It’s like this, me and Trailblaze are the only one’s going for these Shrines, the others are staying here. In exchange for taking care of our own and letting us use their magical portal thingamajig, these spider ponies want us to lead a little expedition into one of their other Stable things. 106 I think they called it. Don’t know why these guys number everything. That’s a boring way to name things. Like I’d say call this place Metal Pit, or Web Tunnel. You know, something with some oomph to it!”

“Whetstone, focus,” Trailblaze said, giving Whetstone an affectionate pat, then turned back to me, “Basically that’s the gist of it. The leader here, Misty… Glasses, right? She laid it out for me. The tribe gets food, housing, and I get access to the useful magic and technology they have, and in exchange I help them explore Stable 106. Misty Glasses seems to think the place might make a good second home, or there might be useful research or something there. Either way, she’s sending a team of her security guards with me and Whetstone and we’ll scout this Stable 106. Once that’s done, we’ll go for the Shrine in the mountains. Moa Gault doesn’t care as long as we get to the Shrine.”

It sounded a lot like the deal Misty Glasses had made with me and my friends. It wasn’t a bad deal, per se, but I wasn’t happy that Misty Glasses was sending Trailblaze and Whetstone into a potentially dangerous, unexplored Stable. Then again what right did I have to question how either Trailblaze or Misty Glasses wanted to do things? Trailblaze had every right to decide what to do with herself, and if this was what she wanted to do, I couldn’t stop her. Not even if I wanted to. A lot...

No matter how I looked at it, I still loved Trailblaze. I wanted her to be safe. But safe wasn’t going to happen. She was right; she had her own path to walk, and that path… much as it hurt to admit to myself, wasn’t one that had me walking alongside her. I just had to have faith in her and Whetstone, that they could look out for each other and that our paths would cross again in the future. A future I was starting to fear, with the many unknowns hiding within it. Gulping, I gave Trailblaze a stiff nod.

“That sounds like a solid plan,” I said, “Misty Glasses is trustworthy, and she’ll take good care of our tribe while we help out around here. Just be very careful at this Stable 106. There’s no way to be sure what you’ll find in there.”

“Hey, no worries Long!” said Whetstone, her eyes brimming with confidence as she flexed with one of her forelegs, “Me and Trail, we’re a tough pair. Going to take a lot more than a gloomy hole in the ground to get the better of us.”

I sincerely hopped so. I prayed to the Ancestor Spirits that it’d be so.

If only I could be there myself to make sure it’d be so.

I caught up to Trailblaze a short while later outside the cafeteria. She and Whetstone were trotting along down towards one of the wider common rooms where the members of my tribe had set up a sort of communal gathering place, like the village center back home. Blankets had been scavenged to create mock tents, and various chairs and benches had been gathered in a circle around the center of the room.

As we entered Stone Carver approached, wearing a makeshift spear strapped to her broad back, and gave us all a curt nod before addressing Trailblaze.

“Going out hunting and scouting.”

“Alone?” Trailblaze asked, eyes narrowing slightly.

“No, couple of them bug-folk are coming along,” said Stone Carver, a faintly uncomfortable twitch of her ears signalling her unease at the prospect, “Figured I oughta show them the proper way to hunt, if we’re going to be neighbors for awhile.”

“Good idea,” I said, “Be careful though, there are some strange geckos out there. Gold scales. A lot stronger than normal ones. Let the spider ponies use their guns if you run into any gold geckos. Also, watch the sky. Odessa could still be watching this area.”

Stone Carver rolled her shoulders in a small shrug, “Do what I can.”

After she trotted away Trailblaze looked at me, her eyes thoughtful, “You think Odessa will come for us here, Longwalk?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, knowing my own expression probably looked more than a little worried, “MIsty Glasses tells me the Stable’s sensors haven’t detected anything since Odessa pulled out of that excavation site, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come back. If they do Misty says she and the others can hide in the natural caverns beneath the Stable, making it near impossible to find them if they want. But there’d be little chance they can fight if Odessa decides to check this place out again. That’s why you’re going to check out Stable 106, right?”

“I suppose it is,” Trailblaze said with a tired sigh. Whetstone patted her on the withers.

“It’ll all be okay Trail, don’t lose your mane worrying about it,” Whetstone said forcing a cheerful smile.

“Yeah...” Trailblaze said, still looking distant. I frowned, knowing that we’d be leaving soon and I might not get another chance any time soon to really talk with my friend. I glanced at Whetstone.

“Hey, Whet, you mind if I talk with Trail alone for a bit?”

I got weird looks from both mares, but after they shared a glance with each other and Trailblaze nodded Whetstone smiled and said, “Alright, you two don’t get into any trouble. I’ll just go find a wall to stare at for the next ten, fifteen minutes.”

Whetstone wandered off, muttering something about murals, and leaving me and Trailblaze relatively alone. She was giving me a sidelong look, and she didn’t look nearly as relaxed or pleased as I’d want for a private chat, but then maybe she knew what I wanted to talk about.

“So, uh...” I started, a little tongue tied as I tried to figure out how to begin. Well, might as well dive right into the deep end, “Are you holding up okay after all this?”

Her eyes flashed with anger, but she didn’t immediately explode at me (figuratively or literally), instead keeping her voice tightly controlled, “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”

I took a deep breath, “Just worried a bit Trail. The church... that pegasus, Shattered Sky, he-”

Trailblaze cut me off sharply, “Longwalk, don’t.”

“Trail, I just want to know you’re okay,” I said, stepping towards her. She didn’t step away, so that was something. I looked her in the eyes, holding the stare as I kept talking.

“I don’t want you burying anything. I’m here to talk, if you want to talk about it.”

“Well, I don’t,” Trailblaze said firmly, looking away from me, “I did what I did. No changing it, and I don’t... I don’t regret it. He deserved what I gave him. Just drop this, Long. I’m not going to forgive Odessa for what they’ve done. Any of them.”

I stood there for a long, quiet moment, watching my best friend stand there, refusing to look my way. I could see a slight tremble in her stance that went from snout to tail, as if she was shaking under some incredibly heavy burden. All I wanted to do was hold her and take a share of that burden off of her proud, unbending shoulders. I wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.

I slid close enough to her that I could lean a leg against hers. She stiffened a bit but didn’t pull away. We stood there for a few quiet seconds before I said, “I can’t say for sure what’s going to happen next. I do know the world’s a lot harder than either of us ever knew, and its only going to get tougher if you try to face it all by yourself. If you can’t talk to me, then promise me you’ll talk to somepony. Whetstone, or Arcaidia.”

After a moment Trailblaze gave a small nod, “Alright. I’m sorry Longwalk. I got a lot on my mind. I can barely keep it straight. Everything is just... so messed up right now. I’ll try to talk with Whet. I have, already, but we’re both... well, you know Whet, she’s hard to have a serious conversation with.”

“Heh, tell me about it,” I said, remembering my talk with Whetstone on top of the church. I hugged Trailblaze, “As long as you talk about it with somepony. I’m always here for you, you know.”

“I know. Okay, I think we’ve done enough heart to heart,” Traiblalze said, giving me a playful shove, “We’ve both got work to do before its time to leave.”

I found myself playing pack mule, cheeks puffing in exertion as I pushed heavy plastic crates into the back of the Ursa. Wiping sweat off my face I sat down after getting one such crate packed into one corner of the A.T.W’s passenger compartment and shot a look towards my friends gathered nearby.

“Anytime one of you want to pitch in,” I said suggestively, waving my hoof at the two or three crates still to go.

“I don’t have limbs,” LIL-E pointed out.

Arcaidia actually looked rather innocent and sincere when she looked at me from where she’d been dragging a black duffle bag across the hanger with her magic and said, “You already pack big crates mostly. Good strength what you do best. Everypony busy. No complaining, ren solva.”

I sighed, shoving myself back to my hooves and heading for the next crate. The others were technically busy, I supposed. Iron Wrought was working on downloading navigation information into the Ursa’s computer and apparently going through final maintenance checks. B.B was checking our load of ammunition and spare weapons. Binge was... actually I didn’t know where Binge was. She knew we were leaving soon, right?

Looking at the duffle bag Arcaidia was carrying I noticed a sweet mix of smells in the air, “What’s in there?”

Arcaidia set the bag down and zipped it open, with a somewhat pensive look on her face, as if she didn’t really like what was inside. Within I saw a number of clear plastic bags containing a collection of... carrots? And apples!

“Hey, this is the stuff they grow here in the gardens,” I said, taking a closer peek, “Food provisions?”

“Partially,” said Misty Glasses as the spider pony descended from the ceiling on a gossamer string of webbing. Her black and orange spotted form landed in front of me, her glasses perched precariously on her equine snout.

“There are normal carrots and apples in there, preserved inside these bags that have spells to keep them fresh for weeks. If you need some of it for food supplies that is fine, but the real reason I’m sending this food with you is to be a trade item. We can’t eat these vegetables and fruits any longer, but it could prove a useful bartering tool for you in Detrot.”

“Neat,” I said, placing my hooves on one of the crates and beginning to push it towards the Ursa, “Between this stuff and the food, we could probably buy whatever we need.”

“Not all of that is for trade,” Misty Glasses said, keeping pace with me, “Some of it are tools, weapons, materials, things to barter with like the food. But I’ve made sure to label the crates with the devices I’d like you to deploy. Please follow the instructions and don’t break anything.”

I nodded, grunting as I put my shoulder into getting the crate up the ramp. Misty Glasses had requested that my friends and I, on our way into Skull City, set up a pair of devices for her. One was a scanner that would detect any useful pockets of materials that the spider ponies might want, allowing them to send salvage teams to recover anything they might want. The other device was a communications beacon that’d act as a relay back to Stable 104. It meant I’d be able to stay in touch with the Stable via my Pip-Buck a lot easier, and more importantly it meant Misty Glasses could monitor and stay in contact with Trailblaze and her team as they explored Stable 106.

If anything went wrong there, Misty Glasses could contact me and let me know. And vice versa, if I needed to call for help from the Stable, I could.

Trailblaze and Whetstone were already gathered by the portal device, and once I had the last crate loaded I went around the side of the Ursa to see that they were standing in front of the device with four spider ponies. The spider ponies were wearing makeshift armor clearly made from modified padding from normal security armor. These spider ponies were also armed, having been able to alter the triggers on some of their guns to be be mounted like battle saddles on their arachnid mid-sections.

Trailblaze herself bore little besides a small pair of saddlebags and a simple knife, her eyes staring at the large ring-shaped metal device that was built up from a platform along one wall of the cavernous vehicle bay. She looked... resolute. The lines of worry in her face were clear as was the tense set of her shoulders, yet she stood tall and straight as a pillar, eyes determined.

I wanted nothing more than to go to her and wrap my hooves around her, hold her close and tell her everything I still felt for her. I suppressed the urge, though I no less decided to trot over. It was time to set out, for both of us, and I was going to say farewell properly.

Whetstone was a bedecked antithesis of Trailblaze’s threadbare approach to journey preparation. She was wearing a heavy set of security barding, with two sets of bulging saddlebags the contents of which I could only guess at. She was strapped with multiple weapons. A long, scoped magic energy rifle with a thin, tube-like barrel was slung across her back. She had two different pistols, one being the same style as the Odessa box-shaped pistols, the other a much more bulky affair with a thick barrel and set of green magical gems embedded along its sides. The mare looked happy as a filly could be, practically bouncing on her hooves, her black braided mane flopping about.

“You got enough stuff there, Whet?” I asked playfully, trying my best to keep my trepidation buried.

“Hey, these awesome eight-legged friends of yours offered us whatever we wanted, so you’d better believe I’m taking what I can. Besides these magic pew-pew guns are great!” Whetstone said, patting the larger pistol strapped to her side affectionately, “Seriously, I’ve spent my whole life poking things with a pointy stick and here ponies had gone and built stuff that shoots fire. Hunting is never going to be the same again.”

I wondered just how serious Whetstone was taking this, or if she understood that these weapons weren’t toys. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, however. She’d survived our escape from Odessa and had seen first hoof what the weapons she was wearing could do. Whetstone may have acted lighthearted but I think she knew the severity of the weapons she carried and what she might have to do with them to protect herself and Trailblaze. At least I hoped so.

“As long as you’re a better aim with them than I am,” I said, coming up to Trailblaze. She turned to look at me with a knowing, wane smile.

“So, this is it,” she said, “Another goodbye.”

I shook my head, “No. Not like last time.”

I reached out, hesitantly, then felt Whetstone push me from behind, saying, “Hug her you dolt!”

I ended up unbalanced, falling onto Trailblaze and we both went down with a pair of confused yelps. Whetstone laughed, looking at me and Trailblaze tangled up with each other, and then dogpiled on as well. In seconds we were all laughing, Whetstone wrapping both me and Trailblaze in a tight embrace.

“Longwalk’s got the right idea Trail,” Whetstone said, “This ain’t a goodbye. We’re all coming back here, so none of that gloomy shit! There’s going to be a lot of rough times ahead, but we look out for each other, and come back here to swap stories of our kickass adventures! No matter what.”

Trailblaze was still laughing, but it was... tinted with a note of sadness, “Whet, you’re impossible.”

“You know you love it,” Whetstone said, and I had to look away as the two shared a fast kiss. Trailblaze, face bleeding into a pink blush, shoved Whestone away with a playful bat of her hooves.

“Alright, alright! Enough already, I get it! See, I’m smiling, no more moping for me,” Tailblaze said as she stood up from the tangle and I joined her, though Whetstone seemed content to lay there looking at us with amused eyes.

Trailblaze and I looked at each other, but before either of us could say another word Misty Glasses approached, along with most of my friends. I noticed Binge had joined the crowd, seemingly materializing out of nowhere. She had something wrapped up in a thick set of blankets and tied to her back. I had no idea what it was but Binge had an immensely large and pleased smile plastered on her face. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried or not. Probably... yes, worry would be warranted.

“Ya’ll make a’ cute pair,” B.B said with a wink, and I realized she actually had no idea that Trailblaze and Whetstone were together. That explained the confused look that came across her face as Whestone grinned and wrapped a hoof around Trailblaze.

“We try,” she said. Trailblaze rolled her eyes but said nothing on the subject, instead looking towards Arcaidia.

“Arcaidia, I know it’s going to be pretty much impossible, but think you can keep the idiot here out of trouble? Or at least alive, when he does get into trouble?”

Arcaidia solemnly nodded, putting a hoof to her chest, “I make swear that ren solva not die while I breathe air. His toaster brain make trouble, but I turn trouble into frozen cube shaped objects! Glad I wll be when seeing you again, friend Trailblaze.”

“Ya’ll don’t need ta fret none,” said B.B with a firm nod. She was back to wearing her violet dress underneath a set of light security armor, and alongside her saddlebags I noticed she had a small medical box strapped to her flank, and a satchel on the other that I could see the hint of a blood pack poking. B.B had a calmer air about her than I’d seen in days, certainly more so than last night when I’d asked about her family.

“Iffin’ Long bits off more ‘n he can chew, we’ll all be pitchin’ in ta pull him outta the fire.”

A soft, annoyed whinney escaped me, “As if I’m the only one that might end up in trouble...”

Binge patted me on the head like I was a tiny foal as she said sweetly, “Course not bucky! I’ll be sure to stir up some fun for both of us!”

Trailblaze’s eyes looked at Binge sharply, “If you get him hurt, Raider, there won’t be enough ash left of you to even cause somepony to sneeze.”

Binge tittered, lickng her lips, “Wouldn’t ever dream of hurting my Longykins. Me and Mr. Happy will keep him safe as a foal in her mother’s unpunctured womb. Isn’t that righ Mr. Happy?”

Up came the bloody sock puppet, Binge’s voice poorly ventriloquizing, “Yuppers we will! We certainly won’t be watching him sleep at night from a ventilation shaft!”

General silence all around.

Misty Glasses coughed politely, adjusting her glasses in a manner that unfortunately reminded me of Shattered Sky, “Ahem, all banter aside, if you are ready to begin we shall start the activation sequence for the portal.”

Nopony disagreed that it was time, and in short order we were standing aside while spider ponies operated the control terminals set up alongside the giant metal ring. There were a series of green orbs set into the circumference of the ring, and as the spider ponies under Misty Glasses direction began to turn the device on the ring started to spin. The spider ponies chittered and squeaked in their own hissing language, Misty Glasses speaking through her voice box to keep us informed of what was happening.

“We are using the last known coordinates from transmissions we received from Stable 106 prior to losing contact. They had a small surface outpost from where they conducted forays into the Wasteland, and that is where we’re sending you. Miss Trailblaze, do be careful. Stable 106 was primarily under the purview of the Ministry of Peace, and I cannot be certain what the state of any of their medical experiments might be after all this time.”

Trailblaze simply nodded, Whetstone at her side, the four security spider ponies going with her arrayed behind her. By now the spinning ring was moving like a blur, and the green orbs set into it were now forming a near solid band of light as each gem flared to life with magical arcs of energy. Soon those arcs of energy reached into the open space within the ring, forming a solid sheet of green. The air around us started to smell of ozone, an acrid tingle touching my nostrils and making my hairs stand on end. The energy built until, with a flash, the green sheet burst like a bubble.

Now within the ring was a different space, an open hole that showed not the wall of the vehicle bay, but the open, daylit rocky expanse of a shallow mountain valley. I could just make out the faded, squat form of a concrete building off to the right, but other than that the view through the portal was too small to see much else.

“Please hurry,” said Misty Glasses, “The portal can be kept open for only a few minutes.”

Trailblaze turned her head, looking at me, her blue eyes filled with an intent light, as if she was trying to burn the memory of me into her mind. With a final smile she said, “Not goodbye. Just until we see each other again.”

With that, without looking back, the same way I didn’t look back when I had left her and my mother on that morning that felt like ages ago, Trailblaze galloped through the portal. Behind her went Whetstone and the four spider ponies, and when the last one was through there was a shimmer inside the ring, like a rippling pool of water... and the portal vanished with another flash of light.

And that was that, Trailblaze was now all the way across the opposite side of the land, walking into her own dangers and trials. I kept that image of her in my mind, and tucked her words away deep inside my heart. Not goodbye. Just... until we see each other again.

We all strapped into the Ursa as Misty Glasses got the portal ring revving up again. Iron Wrought at the wheel, me buckled in next to him. Binge and Arcaidia were behind us in the extra passenger seats, leaving LIL-E and B.B in the back passenger compartment. Out of the front windshield I saw Misty Glasses wave one of her many legs at us from the portal ring’s control panel. Her voice spoke over the Ursa’s com unit.

“You’ll be coming in from the southeast, on what used to be South River Freeway. We’re using one of our old expedition’s beacons to figure the portal’s position, but we haven’t had anypony out that way in around twelve years, so we will have no way of knowing just what conditions will be like. I recommend going in prepared for any possibility. When you get to the other side try to find a high position, like a building, but somewhere also decently hidden if you can. Set up the scanner and com relay in such a place. Speed of the Goddess be with you, A.R.M.S.”

I hit the transmission switch and said, “And Ancestor Spirits watch over you and yours, Misty Glasses. Heh, I’d nearly forgotten we’d given ourselves that name.”

“We haven’t,” said Misty Glasses, “Stay in touch.”

“We will,” I said, and leaned back in the seat as the portal device’s ring spun faster and faster, its green lights of magical energy building up until it flashed to form the hole in space we’d be driving through. In that hole I saw what looked to be the cracked, barely visible remains of an ancient street, a wide band of dirt and dust interspersed with chunks of partially buried concrete amid a sea of suburban ruins.

“Hold onto your flanks, kids,” said Iron Wrought as he put his hoof to the pedal and the Ursa jumped forward, rushing right up the ramp and through the hole. When I’d gone through a portal to get back to Stable 104 I had felt a strange, teeth aching buzz through my body, and this time was the same. The buzz, like the hum of a thousand little bugs, warped through me from snout to tail, making me shudder.

The Ursa bounced a little when it hit the road, or rather what was left of it, but the rugged A.T.W kept us from jarring about too much and soon we were comfortably cruising along the Wasteland ruins southeast of Skull City. Looking left I imagined somewhere not far in that direction would be the church. To my right, through gaps in the passing tangle of charcoal black and gray ruined structures I caught sight of a expansive sickly brown band of water that was easily several hundred meters across. It ran east to west, towards the distant black spires that was the center of Skull City, still scores of miles away.

“If nothing gets between us and that city we’ll be there in a couple of hours,” said Iron Wrought, jaw tight, eyes focused on the path ahead. The Labor Guild pony’s entire body was rigid and tense and I felt a spike of worry for him.

“You okay Iron? We’re on our way there. It won’t be that much longer, like you said.”

He didn’t even glance my way, green hooves tightening around the wheel, “At this point it’ll be a miracle of the Skull Guild hasn’t assumed I’m dead. Or maybe they’ve assumed I’ve run off. Either way there’s no telling what they’ve done to my family, if they think I’m not coming with the research data they sent me to get.”

“We do have it, though,” I said, nodding towards his saddlebags, “You’ve got your copy of Lemon Slice’s research. They’ll have to let your family go now.”

“If they didn’t kill them already, or if they don’t want to keep using me as an agent against the Labor Guild,” Iron Wrought growled, “Sorry, buck, but I can’t... I don’t want to talk about this. I never wanted to get involved with any shit like this, and if I can get out, I will. I’d appreciate it if once we’re in Skull City you just forget about me. I don’t need to get stuck in your affairs anymore, and you don’t need to worry about mine!”

Binge giggled and Iron Wrought snapped at her, “The fuck you laughing at Raider!?”

“You, silly grump,” Binge said with a rictus smile, “Thinking Longikins will forget you like that, or that you can get away from him. Can’t you see? He’s like a big bouncy ball! And we’re all the cat’s stuck chasing it through the minefield!”

Arcaidia looked at the passenger side door of the Ursa, then looked at me with flat, serious eyes, her tone matching, “I maybe make loud shivol bir quiet by throwing out door? She make less noise, and smell not so bad, then?”

“Nopony is throwing anypony out doors,” I said.

Iron Wrought grunted, “That’s still your worst mistake so far. You’re better off if you let your ice filly do what she says and kill this Raider trash. Before she ends up doing something you’ll regret.”

The bitter anger made his voice hard as stone. I didn’t want to argue with him. Not because I thought he was right, but because I didn’t want us to run around in circles over Binge. Until Binge gave me a reason not to trust her she’d at least earned some trust from me. I understood that Iron Wrought had every reason to want Binge dead, however. He’d been the captive of Raiders, and I still didn’t know the extent of what might have been done to him during that time. Had Binge herself done things to Iron Wrought?

“Look, let’s just try to focus on getting to Skull City,” I said with as much of a calming, diplomatic tone as I could muster, “Keep watch for any danger. Sound good?”

Iron Wrought spared me a brief, guarded look, then huffed out a short whinny of agreement. Or at least I think it was agreement. He didn’t argue further and just silently kept driving.

After around half an hour my ears twitched, flicking left and right as I heard a faint popping noise. Glancing left and right I didn’t see anything around us, but I was certain I was hearing a strange sound. I looked back at Arcaidia and Binge. Binge was sleeping, head lolled back, lightly snoring, but that wasn’t what I was hearing. Arcaidia was clearly alert and I noticed she too had her ears cocked as if she was hearing something.

Seeing my look she nodded to me, “My ears eat sounds too, ren solva.”

“What?” asked Iron Wrought, glancing at us askance.

“Slow down,” I told him, and unbuckled, “Don’t stop, but slow us down a bit.”

At his glare I hesitated and added, with a sheepish grin, “Uh, please?”

I felt the Ursa start to slow as I went towards the passenger compartment. Back there I found B.B and LIL-E had been sitting at the dining table. Well, B.B had been sitting, LIL-E had landed her eyebot to rest on the table itself. I raised an eyebrow at the sight of a bunch of cards laid out on the table, the same kind I’d seen B.B use in her show back at Saddlespring.

“Something wrong?” LIL-E asked.

“Maybe,” I said, “I’m hearing something. Thought I’d head up top to take a look around. Wanted your help, since that robot’s got all that nifty tech in it.”

“I’ll head up too,” said B.B, setting her cards aside and pointing with a wing towards one of the small window slits that was open, “Caught a’ whiff o’ smoke an’ was thinkin’ I’d tell ya ta stop a spell so we could take a peek.”

I went up first through the top hatch, with LIL-E and B.B flying out behind me. I paused there on the roof of the Ursa, briefly reflecting on the fact that the last time I’d stood here I’d grappled onto a flying Vertibuck in the middle of a deadly chase. I really needed to figure out how to get my life back to something resembling normal. Lucky me the spider ponies had fixed up my Grapple, so if I wanted to go Vertibuck hunting again I could. Which I wouldn’t. Because that was probably somewhere in the top five most insane things I’d done so far... and I kind of hated the fact I had to use the qualifier ‘so far’ in regards to that list. But if I was being honest with myself the chances of more such instances was likely. It was just the pattern of my life right then. Still, next time Odessa came after us with Vertibucks I really did need to have another option than flinging myself through the air at it with a hook and wire.

Fortunately there didn’t seem to be any Vertibucks in the air today. The sky was clear, if you didn’t count the massive gray blanket of cloud cover. Some of the sky had a darker cast to it. Rain, and probably not too far off I would guess. At first I thought the sounds I heard might have been that of thunder, but no, after listening for a few moments the sounds of distant booms and pops were too frequent and irregular. With a widening of my eyes I realized I’d heard sounds like this before.

Distant gunfire. The faint, yet loud booms had to be explosions.

“A battle,” LIL-E said, floating alongside the Ursa next to me, “A large one.”

“Can you tell how far away it is?” I asked.

The eyebot didn’t immediately respond, instead rising higher into the air. We were coming around the bottom of a hill that had a half collapsed metal bridge spanning between another hill. Bodies were strewn about like broken pieces of kindling and the Ursa stopped fully before we went under the bridge.

“Not far,” said LIL-E, and I had never heard a robot sound sarcastic before, but now I could check that off my list.

I went to the front of the Ursa, gazing at the carnage before me. It was clear that the battle we were hearing off in the distance had rolled through here not long ago. There were several dozen bodies littered around the bridge or beneath it on the street. Most of them had been savaged by gunfire, bullet holes and splatters of blood marring the ground. There were a few explosive blast marks, I was guessing from grenades, dotted about, and looking at the bridge I realized the partial collapse of it wasn’t from old age, but recent battle damage. The sides of the small bridge was lined with a makeshift barricade of metal sheets and autowagon parts, but that was blasted apart, or burning in places.

The bodies were of two varieties. One set were clearly Raiders, the dead ponies sporting the patchwork, hide-like armor with random spikes and barbed wire. The other type weren’t any less dirty and bloody than the Raiders, but they were marked apart by their more well repaired leather armor and the distinctive bright yellow vests they wore. My eyes narrowed as I noted, to my surprise, the sight of something familiar on the necks of these ponies.

Bomb collars.

B.B swiftly landed on the ground by one of the bodies, carefully looking about, “These here folks are V.E.C. The Labor Guild’s Volunteer Enforcer Corps. Been awhile since I’ve gotten a’ gander o’ so many o’ them outside a Labor Guild camp.”

I heard the window on the side of the driver’s compartment roll down and heard Arcaidia’s voice, “There reason we stop?”

I jumped down from the top of the Ursa, landing heavily and turned to see Arcaidia with her head curiously poking out the window. She didn’t look alarmed, just wondering. Apparently all the bodies didn’t really bother her. For me, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it. Knowing that at least half of these bodies were ponies like Shale just left me feeling cold. The Raiders had hit these ponies hard, and in some places a few of the bodies were desecrated, making it clear which side had won, at least in the short term. One poor mare... a sharp piece of rebar from the barricade on the bridge had been used to impale her through... well, fuck it, you know... and from the look of things she might have been alive when it happened. She wasn’t the only one, either, there were a number of other ponies similarly impaled, lined up along the road, like warning signs, entrails hanging down.

“Oooo, messy messy messy,” said Binge, hopping down from the driver’s compartment passenger door. She skipped up to one of the Raider bodies and kicked the mare over onto her back, the head lolling unnaturally. Binge sniffed the body, then made a clucking noise as she poked at the chest, to a symbol burned into the dead mare’s pale yellow hide.

“Yup, Bursters. One of the Big Two! We’d better be extra super hyper careful kiddies, Big Sis Binge knows the Bursters pretty good! They love to party with toys that go ‘BOOM’!”

From the Ursa I heard Iron Wrought let out a swift, vehement, “Fuck”, and I glanced back at where he was pounding his head into the steering wheel.

Arcaidia had drawn her starblaster, the weapon hanging in a cold blue aura of magic as the unicorn filly carefully exited the Ursa, eyes becoming alert. She came up alongside me, and apparently seeing me staring at the torn up and impaled bodies she put a hoof on my leg, her silver eyes softening for a moment.

“It okay. This not thing you could stop.”

I looked at her, about to protest that I’d been thinking that, but at her look I found I couldn’t form that protest, and instead just sighed, “I know. I know. Just... getting tired of seeing this kind of thing. Want to be able to stop it.”

“Cannot. World too big, you little pony. Need big, world sized things to fix big world sized problem,” said Arcaidia, and gave me a firm nudge, “You fix Longwalk sized problem, not worry about world sized problem. Come, lets look at noise, see if problems still near.”

I wasn’t sure how much I could believe in what she said. Seemed to me like one pony should be able to tackle any sized problem, but then again, here I was, standing amid a field of bodies, with not much I could do about it other than move along. Even giving these poor ponies a burial seemed unlikely, if the fighting was still nearby. We didn’t have time to bury them, and smoke from burning them would give our position away. At least I resolved to take down the ones who’d been impaled, before we moved on. Perhaps it’d be enough just to move the bodies off the road, at least.

Arcaidia started making her way up a small path going up the hill on the right to the bridge, and I followed. I saw LIL-E up there, hovering and apparently scanning the horizon, with B.B rummaging around the barricade. Binge remained below, picking over the bodies, presumably for anything useful. I didn’t tell her to stop. I didn’t see any guns around, supposedly because others had already taken those, but maybe Binge would scrounge up something we could use.

Iron Wrought remained in the Ursa, and I felt a pang of worry for him. He wasn’t banging his head on the steering wheel anymore, but he was just sitting there with his head hanging down, hooves partially covering his face. I was fairly certain he was worried this nearby battle meant we’d be delayed even more getting to Skull City, and hence returning him to his family. I felt a heated spike of determination to make sure that wasn’t the case, that we’d get him to his family soon.

That determination got a dousing of cold reality as I got to the top of the hill, just alongside the entrance to the bridge. Now with this higher vantage point I could see out along the suburban desert before me, a vast expanse of blasted out residential houses to the north and east, with a single, broken highway winding through it towards Skull City. I got an even better look at the river now, seeing its path leading from the distant eastern mountains to its curving path towards Skull City, where it split, one end forming a small lake near the city itself, while the other end turned northward around the city. There were larger bridges that spanned the river at a few points, though most of them were also damaged or completely broken. Only two were intact; one a cage-like affair to the east behind us, where I saw the fires of what looked like a large camp, and the other bridge a high, gray steel affair with two pairs of spire-like spokes connecting a web of thick cables across its expanse. This bridge was fortified with what appeared to be sheet metal and concrete miniature walls, and I saw the forms of dozens of makeshift wagons moving across it, and the dots of distant shapes of ponies.

In the forest of suburban ruins south of the river and bridges a battle was being waged. I couldn’t make out details, we were too far away, but I could see that it was a fight that had to have involved hundreds, perhaps thousands of ponies. All I could make out were the lines of orange tracers from gunfire, trails of smoke from launched missiles and rockets, and the constant popping and flashes of explosions. The fighting was taking place up and down a line of battle that I thought might have covered a few miles of ground. It seemed a swarm of ponies, clumps of disorganized yet ferocious Raiders, were pushing at a hard line of ponies defending entrenched positions. I could barely make out the faint yellow dots of the same kind of vests the V.E.C ponies dead in the street were wearing, through I could tell others were fighting alongside this group.

I'd never seen anything like it, the storm of gunfire and explosions looking like two forces of nature clashing with another. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the scale of what I was seeing. There was also the painful realization that every second that passed meant dozens of ponies were dying. It left me with a tight, sick feeling in my gut. At the same time I felt a heated urge in my chest to rush into that fight, to force an end to it. Utterly crazy, but the urge was there.

“You want to go down there, don’t you?” LIL-E asked, floating down next to me. The robot’s ‘face’ had turned towards me, her mechanical voice carrying a hint of sympathy, though perhaps that was just my mind playing tricks on me, “I understand. I’m not thrilled having to watch this either, though there aren’t a lot of ponies down there I’d be eager to help.”

I frowned at LIL-E, a far off explosion making me flinch, “Why?”

“I’ve gotten a zoomed in look at the combatants. Most of them are Labor Guild. I have no love for slavers, and less for Raiders,” LIL-E replied bluntly.

“From what I’ve been told the V.E.C are just slaves being forced to fight,” I said.

“Kinda,” B.B joined us, landing on my opposite side, “They’re all volunteers. Volunteer Enforcer Corps. Ain’t a’ pony down there that ain’t picked up a’ weapon by choice. Some o’ ‘em are just desperate folk hopin’ ta fight long ‘nough ta earn freedom. Others ‘r just violent crazies not much better n’ Raiders. Ain’t just V.E.C down there. I caught a’ gander o’ Skull Guild ghoul wranglers an’ a’ few groups o’ gangers too.”

I found myself pacing with pent aggravation. My instincts screamed at me to rush headlong into that battle, to help where I could, however I could. Even if we couldn’t do anything to really shift the course of a battle that large we could still likely make a difference for a few ponies down there. The problem was that I knew our goal wasn’t to get stuck in another battle but to get into Skull City. All leaping into this fight would do is sidetrack us and possibly get any number of us killed. I didn’t like it, but I had to remind myself that this wasn’t like Silver Mare Studios. We didn’t have ponies calling for help. This was a battle that fundamentally had nothing to do with me or my friends, aside from it being an obstacle in our way.

I took a deep, frustrated breath.

“Long?” B.B looked at me sidelong, questioning, but with a supportive stance, tense and ready. I got the impression that if I did decide to rush headlong into the fight that I’d find B.B flying right alongside me.

“We’ll see if we can get around it,” I said, pitching my voice loud enough that I hoped everypony could hear me, “Ideas?”

“The fighting is mostly concentrated just south of that bridge,” said LIL-E, “But my scanners are picking up skirmishes all along the route we’d normally be taking. We could head south far enough to go around but that’d tag on an extra day or two to our travel time.”

“I’d like to get us to Skull City as fast as possible,” I told her, glancing back at the Ursa, “Iron Wrought’s been waiting long enough.”

Arcaidia, who’d lightly cantered over to the bridge’s barricade, climbing up a wooden ramp to a small platform where she peered at the far off battle, turned to me and said, “Why no drive through?”

“Arcaidia, case ya didn’t notice, kinda a’ lot o’ ponies down that way wit a’ bunch o’ guns that’d probably be takin’ pot shots at us if we went drivin’ on by,” pointed out B.B, a wry smile on her face as she flew up a bit, gesturing at the battle, “I mean, I know yer a’ confident sort, but ya gotta admit that ain’t a’ smooth ride yer talkin’ ‘bout.”

Arcaidia smiled nonchalantly, “Bad ponies shoot at we, we shoot at bad ponies. What problem?”

She looked over the side of the bridge’s barricade, a dry Wasteland wind blowing out her ridiculously long mane as she flicked her tail, eyeing the distant battle, “No see other way through. What else we do?”

“While I don’t need any encouragement to put bullets into Raiders, B.B’s right,” said LIL-E, “All it would take is one of those motherless bastards getting a lucky shot with a missile launcher to put us in a pinch.”

I was about to point out that the Ursa could probably take a missile hit or two when the world went dark as a pair of hooves snapped over my eyes and I felt hot breath on the back of my neck as Binge’s voice range out, “We play peek-a-boo!”

I stiffened, and no, not in that way, and with a sight I reached up and gently pulled Binge’s hooves off my eyes. I looked over at the mare as she bounced around to stand in front of me, wearing her normal manic grin, and I asked, “Play peek-a-boo?”

Binge nodded enthusiastically. She’d apparently acquired a few random odds and ends from the bodies, stripping extra saddlebags stuffed with any trinkets she’d lifted from the dead, “Hard to shoot what you can’t see. When its dark we go, hidden by nighttime’s warm, cozy blanket.”

That got all of us looking at her, and after a second B.B slapped her forehead, “An’ why didn’t any o’ us think of that?”

LIL-E bobbed up and down in what I recognized as the robot’s version of a shrug, “The simplest solutions are often the easiest to overlook. To be fair, however, I’m not sure how much safer crossing the battlefield at night will be. I know between myself and the Ursa’s navigation features we could get across the terrain no problem, but the Raiders are likely to be just as active at night as they are right now, and if we get caught, well, nighttime battles are a bitch.”

“I don’t think we’re going to find a perfect solution to this,” I said, unable to keep some of my pent frustration from bleeding into my voice, “We still need time to set up Misty Glasses devices, so unless anypony objects with a better idea I say we take care of that, then rest up until twilight hits. Then we cross through wherever the fighting looks thinnest.”

There was a moment of silence amongst my companions, most of them looking like they were thinking it over. Except for Binge, who sat on her haunches as she rummaged in her new saddlebags while humming happily to herself. Arcaidia’s thoughtful look soon turned to an amused smile as she laughed lightly and hopped down from the barricade, striding over to me.

“Not toaster head plan, ren solva,” she said, “I no object.”

“Just remember that if we do get caught up in a night fight, check your targets twice,” said LIL-E, “I don’t fancy getting shot up by my own team.”

“Don’t think we’d be mistakin’ the flyin’ metal beach ball with guns fer a Raider,” said B.B with a friendly elbow at the eyebot. LIL-E swiveled around, her voice buzzing with mechanical laughter.

“Your saying that has just jinxed it, you realize.”

Returning down to the Ursa I noticed that Iron Wrought had gotten out of the vehicle and was looking at one of the bodies. The dead pony was a brown stallion, middle aged I’d guess, with a faded, red mane. I didn’t know what his cutie mark was because that part of his flank was barely intact. It looked as if most of this poor stallion’s back half had been hit by an explosive of some kind. A grenade, or maybe a rocket. I looked at Iron Wrought, whose expression was hard, but I could see a flash of pain there.

“Was this somepony you knew?” I asked, wincing a bit as Iron Wrought turned an angry gaze towards me.

He let out a harsh snort, shaking his head, “Yeah. Pitton. Overseer for a caravan that ran a route among the mills upriver. Used to be guards together until he got promoted. Heh, guess the extra caps didn’t help you out in the long run, did it Pitton?”

I frowned, not sure how to take Iron Wrought’s forced mirth. His black mane shook as he laughed, “I used to get so pissed at him for getting higher up. He could be such an ass about it, but he still took the time to share a beer or two anytime he was back in town. Now he’s dead and it looks like all the mills upriver are probably fucked by Raiders.”

I didn’t understand if Iron Wrought was driving at any point or if he was just... venting. The others had gone back to the Ursa, besides LIL-E, who remained floating above the huge six-wheeled A.T.W’s roof to keep a lookout for trouble. I turned to Iron Wrought and raised a hoof to pat his shoulder but thought better of it and said, “We’re heading out soon. Fix up Misty Glasses tech whatsits, then see about breaking through the battle lines come nightfall.”

Iron Wrought didn’t respond immediately, his eyes staring at the dead body of his... friend? Associate? Something. Eventually he laughed again, in that forced, blank manner, “It could be worse. It can always get worse. Going around to the south would be safer.”

“It’d also take longer. I want to get you home,” I said.

“... Thanks,” he said, roughly, and quickly turned away to head back to the Ursa.

After giving the bodies one last, sad look, I sighed and joined him.

We were all on high alert as we searched for a good spot to set up the communication and scanning equipment Misty Glasses had given us. The actual fighting between the Raiders and Skull City forces might have been a good distance off, but the chances of running into straggling or patrolling groups of Raiders was high enough that we couldn’t relax our guard.

We slowly drove the Ursa off the remnants of the highway, examining the nearby ruins, until we came across an unusual looking building. It was like a tall cement block set on its end, lined with a metal staircase that went from top to bottom of its fifty pace height. The top of the building had broken off, the rubble laying in broken pieces around the base. Next to this tall building was a more squat building, that had its entire south facing wall missing. A pair of what appeared to be huge open garages lines the west end facing Skull City, and I saw the wreck of a huge, rusted autowagon laying on its side in the street just outside the building. The autowagon seemed odd to me, having some kind of large ladder assembly on its roof, and what little paint was left on it was a cheery red.

“Its a’ firehouse,” said B.B upon seeing my curious expression, “Folk use them big wagons ta’ fight fires wit water hoses an’ such. Bet that there cement tower was fer trainin’.”

I had no idea how ponies would fight fires with hoses. Actually I wasn’t certain what a ‘hose’ was, but I just took B.B’s word at face value on this one. Looking the cement building over, I also carefully searched for any sign of Raider habitation. My E.F.S was clear, the only dots in my field of vision being those belonging to my companions.

“If this place is clear, that looks perfect for what we need,” I said, getting no disagreement from anypony.

We were cautious in our approach, and took our time checking both buildings to ensure no unpleasant surprises were waiting for us. The interior of the firehouse was, ironically, utterly burned out. The upper floor had collapsed into the bottom floor, creating an interior almost hollow if not for the crushed rubble. Picking through it had revealed little of value, though B.B scavenged some yellow hard hats apparently part of the firefighting outfits worn back in the day, and Iron Wrought found an intact fire axe that he seemed to take a liking to.

With the area secured we set up inside the still mostly intact garage, parking the Ursa inside. It was late afternoon by then and getting time for lunch, so while B.B volunteered to start cooking something up and Arcaidia decided she’d take first turn as lookout, and Binge scampered off somewhere to do... whatever Binge does by herself, it fell to me and LIL-E to set up Misty Glasses devices. Well, LIL-E would do the actual setting up, as she had something of an understanding of how the machines worked. I would, once more, be regulated to pack mule status.

“You know,” I said between labored breaths as I lugged the crate up the stairs, its heavy weight attached to me via some vinyl rope that let me pull it along, “I don’t know why we couldn’t just take the devices out of the crate, and bring the parts up in lighter loads.”

Floating along beside me LIL-E turned, letting out a buzzing chuckle, “Oh, I thought of that. I just wanted to see if you’d actually haul the whole thing up here.”

I paused, nearly losing my balance and getting dragged back down the stairs by the heavy crate before I dug my hooves in and steadied myself. I glared at LIL-E.

“What?” she asked innocently, “I have to get my entertainment out here somehow, don’t I? Besides, you’re a big, strapping stallion. This shouldn’t be hard for you.”

I grunted, pulling the crate up to the next landing, and took a minute to wipe sweat of my brow, “This stuff weighs as much as a boulder!”

“Oh, where’s your earth pony pride?”

“I think I sweated it out two floors ago,” I said, stretching my hooves to work out a few knots, still feeling the sweat drenching me as I then shook myself from head to tail to try and clear it off. LIL-E floated to the side to avoid the droplets.

“Hey, watch it! Don’t get that stuff on my sensors! Eww, its on my camera lens!”

“Bah, that’s what you get for making me do all the physical labor around here, pushy robot.”

For all my complaining I managed to haul the crate to the top of the building before long. There wasn’t much up here besides a plain, empty concrete room, with blackened marks along the walls. There was some old unidentifiable piles of goo here and there that suggested something had nested here before, but thankfully there was no current inhabitants that I needed to do battle with. Just a faint, musty odor and the lonely sound of the wind passing through the windows.

“Well, at least the view is nice,” I said as I unstrapped from the crate and took a look out one of the windows, then frowned at the distant plumes of smoke and balls of fire from the occasional rocket explosion, “When ponies aren’t murdering each other.”

“Just pray they don’t end up drifting over our way,” said LIL-E as she deployed one of her tiny manipulator arms and opened up the crate, grabbing and pulling out the components, “I figure we can take on a few dozen Raiders, but with hundreds of the fucked up bastards on the loose I’d just as soon let the slavers spill their own blood dealing with the mess.”

I glanced back at the eyebot, raising an eyebrow, “You really don't’ like the Labor Guild do you?”

“I don’t like slavers,” LIL-E clarified, working with remarkable speed and dexterity, assembling pieces of the first device, something that looked like a big cylinder set on a tripod, “Far as I’m concerned they’re just a tiny shade better than the Raiders.”

“I’m sure Iron Wrought would appreciate the comparison,” I said dryly.

“Nopony forced him to make his living off of depriving others of their freedom,” LIL-E said, “Just like nopony forces Raiders to spend their lives making the Wasteland a miserable place for the rest of us. They all chose it, Longwalk, whatever excuses you’ll hear from them as to why they think they didn’t.”

I really didn’t want to get into another moral debate with LIL-E, so it was time for a subject change. Taking off my saddlebags I turned to LIL-E, examining the device she was assembling, “Need a hoof?”

“Not really. These things pretty much build themselves. It’s all about fitting things into the properly labeled slots, reading the directions and all that. Any foal could do it, and multiple hooves won’t make it go faster,” she said, turning the finished cylinder up on its tripod and pulling down a small folding out keypad. Her manipulator claw poked away at the buttons and soon a long antenna slid from the top of the cylinder and deployed a circular dish with a smooth metallic click.

“Which one is that?”

“The long range multi-scanner,” said LIL-E, not even pausing before getting to work on the next device, which looked more akin to a squat hexagonal affair with a few tiny prongs sprouting from it, “It’s basically the big cousin to the scanners built into this chassis. It’ll give the spider ponies a decent look at the local area. Misty Glasses sounded eager to find anything to scavenge out here.”

“As long as they’re careful about it,” I said, settling down next to my saddlebags, since LIL-E didn’t want any help with the devices. I was worried about the spider ponies. Worried that Odessa might piece together that Stable 104 was still inhabited and attack it. Worried that they might get into trouble with Raiders or worse while exploring for salvage. Worries made worse by the knowledge there would only be so much I could do to help.

I wondered what Trailblaze was doing right at that moment. Was her explorations into Stable 106 going well? I hoped it was boring, with nothing but lots of empty, undangerous corridors and rooms to explore. I sent a quiet prayer to the Ancestor Spirits that Trailblaze and Whetstone weren’t fighting for their lives, or if they had to, that they would be able to look out for each other.

To take my mind off my worries I rummaged through my saddlebags. There was plenty of fresh supplies there, but there were also a number of the odds and ends gathered over the course of my journey so far. I made a small grunt of surprise as I fished out two small pearl shaped orbs. One was the Memory Orb that had belonged to Airheart and shown that poor mare’s last moments of life, ended at the hooves of a reluctant Rainbow Dash. The other was the Memory Orb I’d snatched from the safe in the basement of Silver Mare Studios. Granted, both being black orbs made it hard to tell which was which. Did I want to see what was on the one I found in Silver Mare Studios? My little brain pony gave an enthusiastic yes. I looked up at LIL-E. She had the communication array already half assembled.

“Hey LIL-E, you mind keeping an eye on me while I check this out?” I asked, poking my hoof at the Memory Orbs. She turned from what she was doing, the eyebot floating over to me with surprising speed, and focusing on the two orbs at my hoof. She turned her grilled faceplate towards me.

“Where did you get the second one?”

“Back where we rescued Glint and his squad,” I replied.

The eyebot paused, and for a second it seemed to me that she was making a few low frequency hums and buzzing noises, before said, “I’ll keep watch, just tell me all about it when you get out. Also, before you waste an hour, this one’s the one you want.”

She tapped the orb furthest from me and I blinked at her. I’d just planned on guessing. I mean, hey, fiffty-fiffty sounds like good odds to me.

“How can you tell?”

“Not all Memory Orbs have identical characteristics. Slight fluctuations in size and surface contours. My scanners can pick up those small differences.”

“What would I do without you?” I asked with a chuckle, pulling out the Recollector from my saddlebags and fixing it onto my head, settling down into a comfortable position so my legs wouldn’t fall asleep while I was out.

“I imagine you’d manage without me,” LIL-E said matter of factly, picking up the Silver Mare Studios orb for me and pushing it into the slot on the Recollector, “Have fun in there. Bring back a souvenir.”

Before I could comment on the general impossibility of bringing back anything I felt myself grow light headed and slip into the Memory Orb.

oooOOOooo

The first thing I noticed was that the pony whose memory I was experiencing was a stallion. I would’ve breathed a sigh of relief if I could have. Being trapped inside a mare’s body last time had just been too weird. There were some differences with this stallion through that still left me feeling a tad off and disoriented, however. He was shorter than I was, but that wasn’t the strange part. It was the unusual feeling of something on my forehead, putting the slightest pressure on my skull, and somehow, deeper into my mind, that felt like a constant faint tickle. I didn’t understand what it was until the pony approached a set of big wooden doors in front of him and the knobs became shrouded in a glow of green magical light. The horn on my, or rather my host’s head, had to be glowing as well. I felt the magic tingling through his body. I don’t know how to properly describe it in words, like a warm tingle in my chest that flowed up to concentrate in the head with a feeling almost like the warmth of a fire on my face.

Yet somehow it was a warmth I could also direct like I would a limb. I had no idea how the stallion knew what to do, but I could feel the warmth of his magic gripping the door knobs like I’d grabbed it with my own hoof and then turn them open. As he did he turned and I felt him smile brightly.

“Remember, I told you when you signed on that you’d get to see some sights. Well, consider this the first downpayment!”

He was addressing a mare. A unicorn mare I’d seen before, but only in posters. Looking at her in the flesh I was indeed struck by the incredible resemblance to Arcaidia. The same silver mane, though I could see a faint double tone to it with a streak of palest blue. Her coat was the same azure blue as Arcaidia’s. The eyes were different, this mare’s being a light violet hue.

Trixie. A mare from two hundred years ago whose poster had inspired B.B to take up stage magic.

She looked a bit nervous, her return smile small. She was wearing a faded purple cape speckled with stars, and a pair of similarly colored saddlebags. I saw the tip of a pointed hat poking out from inside one of the saddlebags.

“I just can’t thank you enough for this opportunity Mister Shot,” she said, in a voice that hit me between the eyes with how similar it sounded to Arcaidia’s, “There’s truly no way I’ll be able to replay you.”

My host chuckled, shaking his head, “Just Money Shot, Trixie. We’ll be working closely on this film and I prefer to leave formalities by the wayside where they belong. Now, let me show you to our first ‘set’.”

He led Trixie through the doors and out into bright, open space. We were standing on a wide concrete area I recognized as the roof of a building, a fairly tall one. The sky above was painfully bright and blue, with a shining sun hanging at nearly its apex. A pleasurably cool wind was blowing steadily, taking off the edge of what had to be summer heat. The roof was occupied by several dozen ponies, many of them loading cargo and luggage onto a ramp attached to what was moored to the roof.

It was an airship. Unlike the sleek technological marvels created by Odessa this airship held an air of age to it, all wood and canvas, with barely any metal to be seen. It was like one long, smooth cigar shaped balloon, a faded parchment beige, with curving elegant fins flowing from its stern and middle like those of some aquatic predator. Slung underneath it, cradled by line after line of thick rope, was a large fish shaped wooden structure. Lined with small circular windows I could tell the structure had to be the main body of the airship, with at least two decks on the inside, along with the top deck upon which I could see ponies working along the rigging between the cabin of the balloon. Numerous propellers sprouted from the back of the cabin, and from a set of spars mounted at an downward curved angle from the bottom of the ship’s hull.

“Let me proudly introduce you to the Sweet Candy, our conveyance for the duration of shooting the film, and one of our primary sets!” Money Shot said with a flourish of his hoof.

Trixie looked at the airship with wide eyed amazement, stepping forward as if drawn to the airship, “Where did you get the money for this?”

“Ah, don’t you worry about such details my dear,” said Money Shot, a keen laugh on his lips as he led Trixie towards the airship, “Connections are more valuable than bits. At any rate, the Sweet Candy is going to be our home away from home for the next few months. What? You didn’t think we’d be traveling all the way to the Frozen North by walking did you?”

A shiver seemed to go up and down Trixie’s back and she wrapped her cape tighter around herself with her own violet magic, “Well, no, but I wasn’t imagining this. It’s amazing Money Shot. I...”

She trailed off, swallowing and looking away from my host, who I felt frown as he moved to keep her face in view, “Is something wrong, Trixie?”

“No!” she said, rather quickly, wiping at her face almost frantically and putting on a smile, “Not at all. Gah, I feel like such a foal. It’s just been a lot to take in. Things were... well, you know what I was doing when you found me.”

Trixie’s eyes took on a hollow cast for a moment, her voice growing quiet and laced with pain, “I never want to live like that again. You’ve given me a chance to find a better life. A star role in a film! A real film! And now this!? An airship, to take me away to a distant, exotic land? Can you blame me if I get a bit overwhelmed by all of it? I still keep expecting to wake up from this dream and still be back in that horrible apartment in Manehattan, no food, no rent, wondering what I’d do if I ended up on the street... if I’d need to sell my-”

“Hey, no more of that kind of talk,” said Money Shot, putting on a wide smile and placing a hoof on Trixie’s shoulders, “All of that is behind you my dear! No more need to even think about it. Trust me, stick with me and you’ll be a goddess of the silver screen!”

A sardonic half smile played across Trixie’s features, “Goddess? Somepony certainly enjoys exaggeration.”

“Hardly. Don’t forget, I saw you perform while you were still a traveling magician. Your stage presence is exemplary my dear! You’ll do splendidly on the big screen, trust me!”

“Hopefully with no humongous space bears to ruin my life,” I heard Trixie mutter but Money Shot didn’t comment as they reached the airship. There were plenty of ponies about, some appearing to be crew for the airship if I was judging right based on the uniforms of sky blue and white they wore. Others I guessed had to be part of Money Shot’s filmmaking team. One mare, a peach colored earth pony with a curly yellow mane and an inkwell cutie mark trotted up to Money Shot and Trixie, a notepad balanced on her hoof.

“Money, glad you could finally make it,” the mare said with a quick huff, “Captain Bartholomew needs you to sign off on the injury and death disclaimers before we can set off.”

Trixie blinked rapidly a few times, “Injury and death disclaimers?”

Money Shot was quick to chuckle, but I felt his heart rate increase, “Just a simple formality. Happens anytime one engages in a technically ‘dangerous’ expedition. Keeps the lawyers happy and all that. Not that we’ll be in any real danger during filming of course. Hah, right Dotted Line?”

The peach mare, Dotted Line apparently, shrugged, “Right. The mercenaries also wanted to talk to you. They seem to want half their payment up front.”

“Payment up front?” Money Shot asked, sounding less than pleased.

“Mercenaries?” Trixie asked at the same time, one eyebrow shooting up to match her dubious tone.

Dotted LIne glanced between the two of them, asking flatly, “Money, have you actually explained anything about this expedition to this mare?”

“Trixie, Trixie Lulamoon, not ‘this mare’,” said Trixie, in a frosty tone that once more keenly reminded me of Arcaidia, especially the look in her eyes as she glanced at Money Shot, “And I thought he did. Is there more I need to know?”

Money Shot had started to sweat a bit, running a hoof through his mane as he smiled at Trixie, and even though I couldn’t read his thoughts I could tell the smile was a tad forced, “Nothing truly important my dear. Dotted Line is making it sound bad, but really the mercenaries are a formality, nothing more. The Frozen North, specifically the eastern region we’ll be entering, is international territory, owned by no country. There are... local tribes, and possibly dangerous local wildlife, so by the letter of safety laws we’re required to have a proper contingent of security on site during filming. No different than the safety equipment we bring. Its all quite normal, and I assure you, quite safe. Correct, Dotted Line?”

Dotted Line sighed, “More or less. The danger should be minimal, no more than what’s to be expected when filming on location in one of the world’s most remote and barely explored regions.”

Money Shot gave Dotted Line the stink eye but the mare didn’t seem to care as she looked back at him flatly, “The merc captain is just over by the ramp there. She seemed eager, so I’d suggest talking to her first. Oh, and Fleetfoot is looking for you too. Some foalish thing about there not being any tea, I don’t know.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Money Shot, waving the mare off and Dotted Line sighed and trotted away, apparently going back to overseeing the loading of the airship. Meanwhile Money Shot made his way for the airship’s ramp, with Trixie trotting along next to him.

“I thought we were filming near the Crystal Empire?” asked Trixie.

“Well, we will be passing through on our way to the Frozen North. And technically the region we’ll be filming in is right next to the Crystal Empire. Territorially speaking. I mean, we’ll be hundreds of miles from any civilization, but technically the next nearest border is the Crystal Empire so we’ll be near it in that sense. Trust me, everything will be fine. I have this all well in hoof!”

I could see Trixie’s features tremble, a crease of worry being fought back by a deep breath she took, apparently calming herself until her expression was once more of gratitude and trust, “I understand. You wouldn’t be doing this if you weren’t prepared for it. Its all for authenticity, right?”

“Exactly! No cheesy sets. Nope, Daring Doo and the Search for the Guardian Shrine will be filmed in authentic, real locations! No filmmaker since the debut of the medium has been willing to go through the trouble to find such an exotic real-life location to film in! Silver Mare Studios will be the first!” I could feel the energy building in Money Shot’s voice along with the eager, happy bounce that entered his trot, “It will be incredible Trixie, just you wait! And you’ll be a fantastic Madame Rapier!”

The pair reached the ramp, and standing next to it was a small group; three ponies, and one griffin. All three ponies were pegasi, I noted, but more than that, the griffin, or rather griffiness was one I immediately recognized even before she took note of Money Shot and Trixie approaching and addressed them.

“Money Shot,” Odessa said, tone firm and formal, “Been a screw up in communication between your studio and my outfit. Blacksky Company contracts demand half payment up front, and we haven’t gotten that yet.”

It wasn’t the young Odessa who was currently head of the organization of course, but rather the Odessa I’d seen in the previous Memory Orb. She looked a bit older here than she had when I saw her as part of the Shadowbolts. It made me wonder just how much time had passed between this memory and the one I’d seen before. A few years at least. Looking at the others in the group I realized one of the pegasi was a mare I also recognized from the last orb, the jasmine pegasus with the teal mane; Raindrops. She looked even more weathered than Odessa did, with a clear, ragged scar running across half her cheek and down her chin. The other two pegasi were a stallion and mare. The stallion was a very light blue, almost white, but with a much darker blue mane, slightly spiked and combed back. His green eyes looked... tired, as if he didn't’ sleep much. The last pegasus of the group, a mare, was vibrant with energy and wore a cocky half grin. She had a coat of a tint like mixing blue and green into one off color, with a wild orange and yellow streaked mane that reminded me of Glint for some reason. Orange eyes glittered with amusement like the mare was thinking of a joke only she knew the punchline of.

All of the mercenaries were wearing a uniform of familiar color and trim. White and gray fatigues, with off white body armor. It bore different insignia, a white batch with a black cloud on it, but the designs of the uniform were clearly similar to those the Odessa organization used. They were armed with an assortment of firearms, pistols and compact assault rifles, though the blue maned pegasus stallion bore a shotgun strapped across his back.

Money Shot cleared his throat before speaking, “Odessa, I apologize for the mix up. Your company didn’t inform my secretary concerning any ‘up front’ payments but rest assured I can have the bits transferred to Blacksky’s account within the hour. Now, I trust everything else is in order?”

“Aside from the horseapples of being stuck babysitting a bunch of film geeks while we freeze our plots off?” asked the mare with the orange mane with a roll of her eyes.

“Can it Lightning Dust,” said Odessa sharply then turned back to Money Shot, also giving Trixie a critical once over, “Everything is smooth on our end once we get our pay. We’re equipped for three months of cold weather operation and I fully intend to brief your crew thoroughly on how to not die out there. Its going to be important that you and your crew defer to me and my mercs in all matters of safety.”

“Of course, of course,” Money Shot waved his hoof, “As long as it doesn’t interfere with filming we-”

“Even if it does interfere with filming,” Odessa cut him off, “There will be no argument from this Money Shot, let me make that clear. If you got to miss a day of filming so my team can make sure an area is secure, or if a shot is going to look too dangerous, your ass is to stop what you're doing and follow my instructions to the bucking letter!”

I felt Money Shot stiffen, and his jaw clench. It was odd feeling all the physical cues of a pony’s anger as if it were my own body but not being able to feel any of the same emotions or thoughts. Next to him Trixie looked pensive but spoke up.

“Is it really going to be that dangerous? It’s mostly just snow out there.”

This earned a derisive snort from Lightning Dust, then Raindrops said, “The Frozen North isn’t the most deadly environment in the world, but its no walk in a warm Canterlot park. Temperatures get low enough at night to freeze you dead in minutes without proper clothes or a magic talisman for protection. There are predators out there that will attack ponies if they’re hungry enough, and while the local tribes are not aggressive, there are smugglers who use the remote region as a staging ground for their operations and wouldn’t think twice of... making inconvenient ponies disappear if you stumbled across them.”

As Trixie’s eyes got wider the pegasus stallion stood forward, smiling softly. His voice had a calming, kind tone to it, “Don’t be too scared, miss. Raindrops is just outlining worst case scenario dangers. We’ll be well supplied, and as long as you let us do our jobs we’ll protect you.”

Suddenly another voice spoke, female, but with an odd, breathy lisp to it.

“Hah! Maybe some of them can do the job, but you, Soarin, couldn’t protect a pie at a baker’s convention!”

Heads turned, including Money Shot’s, giving me a look at a new pony who trotted up to the group. She was a pegasus, a blue akin to the sky above us, with a sleek swept back white mane, and flinty jade eyes. She was looking squarely at Soarin with a hard, deep set grimace, and Soarin seemed to wilt under that stare.

“Fleetfoot...” Soarin said, looking away from her.

“What are you doing here Soarin?” Fleetfoot looked him over, apparently noting all the gear he was wearing, “A mercenary now? Hah! Too chicken to actually volunteer for the war? Get your fill of letting your friends down?”

With each word I saw Soarin seem to sink deeper into himself, cringing more and more as if he could just fold into himself and disappear. His ears were flat to the sides of his head and his mane seemed to droop like a dying plant. His fellow mercenaries all looked equally pissed, Odessa about to open her beak to speak, but before she could Trixie suddenly stood between Soarin and Fleetfoot, her own eyes suddenly blazing with anger.

“Hey! Who are you to speak like that to one of the ponies who will be risking his life to protect us out there!?”

Fleetfoot looked at Trixie with an air of somepony that had just spotted a piece of dung in their path, her nostrils flaring, “I’m the only reason this film’s got any chance of making it big, but besides that, I’m Fleetfoot, former member of the Wonderbolts, back when that name actually meant a damn! So why are you so quick to defend this guy,” she pointed at Soarin with one of her wings.

“You don’t know him, or what he’s done. You trust him to protect you, trust me, he’ll let you down. Isn’t that right Soarin? Just like you let the team down? Let Spitfire down?”

Soarin didn’t respond, his eyes downcast. With a growling huff Odessa put a claw on Trixie’s shoulder and gently moved her aside, the griffiness’ eyes heated.

“Thanks for the support, but I got this,” she told Trixie, then looked at Fleetfoot, “Miss, I am well aware of Soarin’s record among the Wonderbolts. I know he was there when the team dealt with those zebra pirates. I also know you quit the team to pursue an acting career well before that happened, so maybe you don’t have any place to judge him. Now, are we going to all make up and play nice, or will Money Shot need to find a new lead for his movie?”

“Are you threatening me?” Fleetfoot asked, askance.

Lightning Dust laughed, “Bitch, Dess doesn’t make threats. Go ahead, press her. I’d love to see her toss you off this building.”

“I’m a pegasus you moron,” Fleetfoot said.

Lightning Dust grinned, “A pegasus with her wings torn off is just a real weak earth pony.”

That gave Fleetfoot pause. She gave Money Shot a pleading look, but Money Shot just sighed, shrugging, “Fleetfoot, please, whatever... issues you happen to have with Mister Soarin, can you be professional about them and leave such private affairs out of our work?”

Fleetfoot grit her teeth, but finally nodded with an explosive sigh of aggravation, not saying another word as she stomped her way past the group and up the ramp into the ship. Apparently whatever issue she’d had about ‘tea’ that Dotted Line had mentioned before had been completely forgotten. With her gone the group seemed to collectively relax, but Soarin still looked miserable. Raindrops bumped him with a wing.

“You alright, pie guy?”

He shook his head, “Sorry, I hoped she wouldn’t react that badly to me. Guess she hasn’t forgiven me for what happened to the team.”

“The fuck does she care?” asked Lightning Dust, “She wasn’t there.”

Soarin sighed, “No, but she was close with everypony on the team. Especially Spitfire...”

There was pain in his voice I knew all too well. The pain of remembering somepony close to you that has died. I saw it in his eyes, a haunted pain that never quite went away. I wanted to give the poor guy a damn hug. Trixie, surprisingly, did it for me, making most everypony there blink in surprise.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” said Trixie, “But take it from me, you can’t let yourself get weighed down by what you can’t change. I, personally, look forward to working with all of you and trust you and your comrades will do a fine job protecting us while we make an incredible film!”

“I… uh, yeah,” said Sorain, apparently at a loss for words. Then he blinked, looking confused, “Um, who are you?”

Trixie blinked, then it was her turn to sigh, looking dejected, “Trixie Lulamoon. I used to perform all across Equestria? The Great and Powerful...? Nevermind, it was a long time ago.”

Money Shot cleared his throat loudly, “Indeed she’s quite the skilled stage magician and performer. Now she’s to use those talents for our co-star role. All of you are to give her and Fleetfoot both your best, professional attitudes. No... personal issues, yes?”

“Let’s hope so,” said Odessa, “I won’t tolerate another outburst from Miss Fleetfoot, star of the show or not. So keep a reign on her, and I’ll keep an reign on my mercs. Sound good?”

“Stellar,” said Money Shot as he moved over to put a hoof on Trixie’s withers, and pointedly gave Soarin a look that I didn’t quite understand. Again, as just a passenger I lacked emotional or mental context, but to me that look felt... pointed, “Now, my dear, shall we board?”

Trixie nodded, taking a deep breath, “Yes, let’s. It’s going to be good to be working on stage again.”

Money Shot smiled, “My dear, as I promised, it shall be an experience you will never forget.”

oooOOOooo

When I came out of the Memory Orb it was darker, the light of day quickly fading into the faded colors of evening. I was starving, as my stomach clearly announced with a rumble as I stood up and stretched my legs, removing the Recollector from my forehead. Nearby the two devices, both the communication array and scanner were fully built and steadily humming.

It took me a moment to spot LIL-E floating by the doorway to the stairs back down. She turned at my movement.

“Was it an interesting Memory Orb?” she asked.

“That’s... actually I’m not sure,” I said, rubbing my chin as I slowly reviewed in my head all I’d seen. So the original Odessa had become a mercenary sometime after her tenure in the Shadowbolts. Had Rainbow Dash fired her? There hadn’t been any indication in the orb, through the older Odessa had seemed to me to be a bit more mellow in personality than last I’d seen her. As for Trixie, Money Shot, and the film they were making... well I didn’t know what to think of it. I knew the Odessa organization had been gathering information on that movie, or something tied to it. I had no idea what the connection might be, but I had a suspicion that something must have gone wrong in the Frozen North. Then there was Trixie herself. Was it just coincidence she bore such a resemblance to Arcaidia in both appearance and voice? I supposed it was possible.

LIL-E was eager to hear about it so I gave her a rundown as we climbed back down the stairs and started heading to the old fire station, where I saw the rest of my friends bathered around a small fire, the smoke and light of which were being blocked by the bulk of the Ursa.

LIL-E paused in the middle of floating alongside me as I finished recounting the contents of the Memory Orb. I paused as well, giving her a curious look.

“LIL-E?”

“Sorry. Thinking. Believe it or not this isn’t the first time I’ve heard the name Trixie Lulamoon mentioned in a Memory Orb.”

That got my attention, “Really? Where?”

“I don’t want to say quite yet. Not until we know more. I know that, based off other things I know about Trixie, that this movie of hers either didn’t finish, or didn’t release. Its probably not connected to what happens to her towards the end of the war... at least I don’t see how it could be.”

“You know what happened to Trixie before the Great Fires came?” I asked, surprised. Why would LIL-E know anything about some random unicorn mare from two hundred years ago? It wasn’t as if Trixie was some big-shot like one of the Princesses or Ministry Mares. What would make Trixie important enough that she’d be in multiple Memory Orbs? Actually...

“I do,” LIL-E said, ignoring the suddenly thoughtful look on my face as my brain raced down a different line of questioning, “It’s a complicated story, but the short version is that she... well she was part of an experiment that went wrong. I don’t want to go into details, really. Suffice to say she’s dead, like just about everypony else from back then.”

I wondered why LIL-E was hesitating to give details, but maybe she just didn’t want to distract me or anypony else in the group with unrelated information while we had other problems to deal with. My curiosity was burning, however. I wanted to find out more about Trixie, Money Shot, Sorain, Odessa, and their expedition to the Frozen North. Not just because I was curious about what happened to them, but because I felt like it might shed some light on Arcaidia.

That aside, I’d realized something else, “Question. How are Memory Orbs made?”

LIL-E hesitated a second before answering, “Well, there are a lot of ways to do it. Spells can extract the memories and put them in the orbs. There’s machinery that does it, also the Recollectors like you have.”

“And to make one that works with a Recollector you need to use a Recollector, right?” I asked.

“Far as I know.”

I frowned, “That’s interesting. Money Shot wasn’t wearing a Recollector.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Completely. I was paying attention to his head because having a horn felt really, really weird, and I remember clearly feeling nothing else on his head. What does that mean?”

“Maybe nothing. If he didn’t use a Recollector to record the memory, the only explanation I can think of is that somepony used magic to extract the memory later on, then put it in a black pearl Memory Orb so it could be viewed via a Recollector. Why somepony would do that, well your guess is as good as mine.”

I didn’t have an answer any more than she did. With a frustrated sigh I laughed and said, “Well, another Memory Orb that gives me a whole avalanche’s worth of questions, and not a single decent answer.”

LIL-E’s mechanical voice buzzed with laughter, “And you just want to find another one to see if the next one will provide a better view of the puzzle, don’t you?”

“How did you guess?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been there, done that, and am right there with you.”

Laughing together at the hopelessness of our mutual curiosity, we rejoined our friends at camp. I wish I felt like the future had a more solid sense of certainty to it. Often I felt as if a hundred spears of various schemes and dangers were hanging over our heads, just waiting for the right moment to descend on us. But I could at least face that uncertainty with the knowledge that I had these companions facing it with me. All I had to do was take one look at them to confirm that.

B.B was bent over the fire, stirring a pot of soup, while Arcaidia and her practiced words together, Arcaidia’s face beaming with each phrase she got right. Before long she might be talking like a native Equestrian. Binge was playing with a suit of firefighter gear she’d apparently stuffed full of old rags and had set up to be a practice dummy for... oh dear Ancestors had that mare tied a bunch of kitchen knives to a length of barbed wire!? It was like a barbed wire... knife... whip... thing. She spun it around gleefully to tear up the dummy she’d created, ignoring the way the barbed wire would also scratch at her own hide. Not far away Iron Wrought sat and glared at the mare grumpily while stroking his sub machine gun.

So, basically all was normal and well with my friends. As normal as it got for us.

“Took you guys long enough,” Iron Wrought said as me and LIL-E joined everypony at the fire, “Could you talk to your crazy Raider pet and get her to stop playing with that damned thing before she hurts somepony and I have to shoot her? Actually, on second thought,” he pulled the bolt on his gun, “Don’t stop her.”

“Binge,” I called out, causing the mare to halt in trying to strangle the dummy, “Foods almost ready. Kill the poor defenseless dummy later?”

“Food?” Binge called, eyes shimmering in the firelight.

I glanced at B.B, who gave me a confirming nod, saying “‘Soups on everypony!”

And so we all gathered around the fire. LIL-E couldn’t eat obviously, but she stayed nearby, her scanners acting as our early warning system as we ate. It was warm, relaxing, and filling, exactly like I remembered meals being back home in Shady Stream.

The only thing missing, I realized, was my tribe. For a moment fear for those still held by Odessa gripped me, for my mother most of all, but I felt a hoof touch my shoulder and I looked over to see Arcaidia giving me a reassuring smile.

“No worries, ren solva,” she said, and sat next to me, floating over a bowl of soup with her magic, “Eat yummy soup. Recover strength for tonight. Many battles ahead for us. Fight them all together.”

Returning her smile I took the soup and ate eagerly, letting both the warmth of the food and that of those around me push back my fears.

Footnote: 50% to next level!

Bonus EX-File: Binge’s S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats

STR = 6
PER = 5
END = 6
CHA = 4
INT = 5
AGL = 6
LUK = 8

Author's Note

And so Disc 2 begins! Not a lot of action, mostly focusing on the characters here. We also get our second Memory Orb scene. They're oddly fun to write. This time around I need to thank not just Doomande for his help with pre-reading, but also referee who has been kind enough to jump into the pre-reading crew! So thanks you guys, the help is much appreciated. And of course thanks to KKat for created FoE in the first place and to all the many side-fics that have come after that continue to inspire me to write. Here's hoping you folks out there are enjoying things so far. As always I'm open to all comments, critiques, questions, and thoughts you might have.

Chapter 20: Determination

Chapter 20: Determination

After we finished eating, my companions and I settled down to rest before it became fully dark. What little washed out light there was from beyond the gray cloud cover was rapidly fading. The prospect of a night drive across a battlefield wasn’t exactly lending towards an easy mood to grab a power nap, but I knew I had to get what rest I could for whatever might happen.

“I’ll take care of watch duty while the rest of you rest up,” LIL-E volunteered, the eyebot not even waiting for a response before she hovered away with soft chugging whirrs from the levitation engines that kept her aloft.

“Are ya sure LIL?” asked B.B, stretching her wings, “I’m feelin’ pretty chipper, an’ can take a’ watch iffin’ ya wanna put that bot down an’ grab some sleep yerself. Yer a pony like us, after all, an’ figure ya at least need a break at some point, right?”

LIL-E halted in the air, not turning around, and staying silent for a few long seconds before responding with, “I’m fine. Thanks for the worry, but I usually don’t sleep much these days anyway.”

B.B shrugged her wings, “Suit yerself, but I ain’t feelin’ tired, so think I’ll tag wit ya. Don’t mind, do ya?”

“No, do what you want,” LIL-E said and resumed floating away, now with B.B following her.

I thought the exchange between the two was a tad... off, but didn’t pay it much mind as I nestled up against the side of one of the Ursa’s wheels, setting Gramzanber aside leaning against the steel hull of the huge ATW. Binge had ceased savaging the poor dummy she’d constructed and was now seemingly making adjustments to her bizarre weapon, changing the positions of the knives along the length of wire. She’d sustained several nasty cuts from her practice, but the mare just didn’t seem to care about the wounds. It worried me, how little Binge seemed to care about her own safety.

Iron Wrought sat by the small fire we’d built, his eyes staring into the flames. In the ghostly, flickering light of the fire, with his slumped posture and the way his black mane seemed to droop the stallion looked suddenly so much older and more tired than he’d looked when I’d first met him that first day after leaving Shady Stream. Out of all the companions I’d found out in the Wasteland I realized Iron Wrought had the least amount of reason to care about Arcaidia and my journey, and he had the most to lose; a wife and children whose lives were at risk every hour he was away from Skull City.

“Still worry muchly, ren solva?” Arcaidia asked me as she sat down next to me, her silver mane spilling out across the ground around her. It seemed to have gotten longer since the start of our journey. Its pure platinum splendour was reflecting the firelight, making her mane seem almost like it was made from fire itself. Her thin blue dress also flickered with its strange hexagonal patterns in the light, reminding me of her otherworldly origins.

“I... yeah,” I said, smiling sheepishly, “I want to make sure nothing goes wrong, but if I’ve learned anything so far it’s that something is always going to go wrong. Guess I just have to learn to deal with it. Iron Wrought especially... I just don’t want us to get him home to find out we were too late.”

“It be fine,” the filly assured me, nodding her head confidently, “I know seems bad, Iron Wrought’s... place thing? Saturation? Mmm... situation! Yes! That! Seem bad, but I know betters. Family of Iron Wroughts be lever. Lever used to make good use of him. Uh... bad ponies not get rid of useful lever? Know what I say, ren solva?”

I spent a minute piecing together Arcaidia’s meaning from her still limited use of the Equestrian language, but I more or less got it. The Skull Guild wasn’t likely to harm Iron Wrought’s family as long as they could still be used as leverage against him, to keep him as a double agent against the Labor Guild. It was a cold kind of logic, but it made sense, though I wondered just how Arcaidia came to that conclusion. Was she used to this kind of thing?

It made me think again about how little I knew of Arcaidia’s background.

“I hope you’re right, for his sake,” I said, then glanced sidelong at her. Would it be pushing too hard to ask about the Ark of Destiny, the ship that the voice inside Gramzanber had told me to find? I knew Arcaidia didn’t want to talk about the details of how she’d come to be here or why he was on this world, but maybe if she knew just how much my life depended on it she’d change her mind?

Perhaps now, while everypony else was distracted, would be a good time to ask, so that this could be kept just between me and Arcaidia. I didn’t want the others to know about the three month expiration date my life had just been stamped with, and I figured Arcaidia might be more willing to talk if it was just between us.

“Anyway, Arcaidia, I got something to need to talk to you about,” I began, carefully picking my words.

She gave me a strange look, but with an open and warm smile, “Off course. Speak all mind thoughts.”

I held back a laugh, feeling more at ease with this course of action upon seeing that smile. I lowered my voice so that only Arcaidia could hear me, leaning in a little closer as we spoke. I quickly explained my experiences in hearing Gramzanber in my dreams, along with another voice. Arcaidia seemed surprised at this but she listened intently, with her silver eyes becoming much more intense as I described my last talk with the voice inside Gramzanber and what I’d been told, both about my limited life span and the fact that this Ark of Destiny might have information that could save me from an early demise.

When I finished speaking Arcaidia remained silent, with a thoughtful, pensive crease to her feminine features. She flicked a glance at the others in the camp. Iron Wrought was still spacing out, and Binge was... curling up with the dismembered dummy as if it were a pillow. Neither was paying us any attention.

When Arcaidia spoke it was with a hard, metallic intensity that was at odds with her warmth from moments ago, “Ren solva, listen greatly. What I tell you could make big troubles for me. But... you... you close friend. Will risk big trouble with home for your life to be safe.”

She lifted her hoof that had her Pip-Buck on it and her horn glowed as her magic twisted knobs and pushed buttons on the device. I saw the screen shift to the map. There I saw the same marker I’d seen all those days ago in Shady Stream that showed the tag where Persephone was supposedly located, far to the south in NCR territory. Then there was suddenly another tag, very close to that location, perhaps a few miles west of Persephone’s location.

“I find signal at same time find sister’s signal. Ark of Destiny distress beacon. Encoded. No pony ever find, all... scrambled noise. Only Veruni tech decode signal. Ark crash... close to sister. Sister might not have gotten to escape pod. Might have fallen with part of ship”

Arcaidia gulped and I could see her trying to push down her emotions, and I reached out to her, putting a hoof on her withers.

“If she’s alive, we’ll find her,” I told Arcaidia, meeting her eyes with my own.

She nodded, “I know. Sister tough, not die easy... but long time since ship crash. I in stasis pod for big number of years. Don’t know what we find when we go there. Ship might be in pieces, but signal come from bridge. Go to bridge, find ARM data for you.”

Arcaidia paused again, took a deep breath, and looked at me with a crestfallen wideness to her features, “Very sorry I am, ren solva. ARM, Gramzanber, given to me to protect me. But I not able to download data to make work with pony before ship crash. Didn’t... too scared to activate ARM myself... gave to you. Selfish of me. Gave to you thinking better...”

She shook her head, “Thought better to test ARM on pony I not know rather than risk self. Didn’t know what happen after. When you make Gramzanber and not die, I thought you lucky. Maybe ponies can use ARM, I thought. Then learned later that ARM kill ponies, but for some reason not you. Now... now your life still in danger, because I too scared to use ARM myself.”

To be honest I didn’t know immediately how to respond to this. Arcaidia’s voice carried a heavy note of guilt and I could see in the swimming wetness in her eyes that she’d been thinking about this a lot. This must have been weighing on her for awhile now, probably ever since she learned that ARMs have killed ponies in the past. So... how did I feel about it? A part of me had a small flicker of something that wasn’t quite anger or disappointment, more like just simple surprise. Thinking back to that first meeting, however, that feeling didn’t last long.

I just smiled at her, remembering the far more important facts of my first meeting with Arcaidia.

“It’s okay,” I told her, “Maybe you gave me Gramzanber not knowing if it’d kill me or not, but the simple fact is that if you hadn’t given me the ARM then I couldn’t have saved Trailblaze, and you healed her afterward. You didn’t have time to explain to me the risks, and you’d already tried your best to stop the geckos with your magic. Arcaidia, I can never thank you enough for what you did for me. Without Gramzanber I’d be dead ten times over already. So don’t worry.”

Arcaidia stared at me for a moment before blinking away her unshed tears and she seemed to let an entire ocean of tension drain out of her as she laid her head down over her crossed forehooves, sighing deeply.

“You ought be more madder, ren solva. I... very happy heart to meet friend like you. Will fix you, promise now. Find ship and fix you. Then sister. She can yell all she want.”

“Well, she can yell at both of us,” I said, also laying down and propping my chin on my forehooves, “Just tell her it was all my fault and I made you break the rules. That’s usually what I did when me and Trailblaze got in trouble.”

Arcaidia giggled lightly and the sound made me grin, pushing away the lingering fear of my shortened lifespan and the worries about how things would go once we got to Skull City. We both settled down to get some rest, and as we did Arcaidia began to softly hum a tune. I remembered it as the same tune I’d heard from her Pip-Buck when she’d discovered her sister’s signal. Even without words there was something quieting and peaceful in the simple hummed notes that helped me drift off to sleep with gentle ease.

You all know what time it is? Longwalk’s Random Dream Time!

What? It might as well be given an official name, given how often it happened to me. At least now I had an idea of why it was happening. Still wished I had some kind of control over it, though.

I didn’t know whose dream I was walking in on at first. I knew it had to be one of my friends because if this were my own dream then I was dreaming of a place I’d never been before, and the detail in the place was too real for it to be just something my mind had conjured on its own.

I was standing in what looked to be a Wasteland settlement, much smaller and more ramshackle than Saddlespring. It consisted of little more than a patchwork barricade surrounding the shop fronts of what looked to be maybe a dozen stores along a strip of run down urban buildings. The shops looked like they’d been converted into homes, with maybe twenty various smaller tents or shacks lined up along the outside or situated among the open spaces of the parking lot that seemed to make up the settlement's courtyard.

Ponies were about, perhaps a few dozen, all wearing the normal Wasteland fare of faded, dirty barding, or just the general dust and grime of the world. Still, there was a feeling of energy and good cheer here that felt... homey. The ponies here sat in large, huddled groups, chatting amiably and eating what looked to be grilled meat. The smell made my mouth water. I missed the gecko meat from home so much, and I felt a surge of homesickness at the sight of this simple little community surviving in the Wasteland.

The ponies were mostly armed, with a few keeping watch on the walls, probably for dangerous animals or Raiders. The only thing I noted that seemed off was that, off in one corner of the settlement, there were a few ponies who didn’t look local. They were a unicorn mare and pegasus stallion who looked normal enough; both sporting the dirt and dust of the road, but clearly from out of town by the way they sort of kept to themselves. The pegasus reminded me of Glint and Sunset, having a similar colored coat and mane, through his was a much more bright and solid orange. The one who stood out most in that group was the huge, steel stallion, his whole body from tail to muzzle covered in thick armor that looked much bulkier than the Odessa power armor I’d seen.

I glanced around a bit, wondering just why I was here and who’s dream this was.

“Hehehe! Hiya mister, wanna play?”

I wheeled around, staring at a little filly who was suddenly behind me. Her green coat and darker green mane, poofy and wild, was immediately familiar.

“Binge?” I asked.

Binge, filly Binge, giggled loudly and bouncing on her hooves, “Mama wants me to go to bed but I’m going to stay up and play! Will you play with me, big brother pony?”

I was suddenly very wary, not sure what to expect out of one of Binge’s dreams, but she seemed to not recognize who I was, or at least she was doing a wonderful job of pretending. I decided there couldn’t really be any harm in just playing along, for now.

“Sure,” I said with a smile, “What do you want to play?”

“Binge!” called a voice from the wall, a young stallion, also green, but with a blue mane that looked, surprisingly, a lot like my own, “Don’t bother the out of towner, now! You need to be getting to bed, before mom finds out!”

Little Binge pouted, shaking her tail, “Nuhuh! I’m not tired! Isn’t that right Mr. Happy?”

Suddenly filly Binge had a dirty sock on her right hoof which she raised up. It was the same sock she had in the real world, only its face was made from smeared dirt in this dream, not blood.

“Yuppers! Binge isn’t tired at all so she’s going to play all night! It’s okay because I say so.”

The stallion from the wall groaned and hopped down. I saw he was of a similar age to me, wearing a simple leather set of barding and carrying a plain bolt action rifle. He gave me an apologetic grin as he came up to us, “Sorry stranger. My little sis can be a bit rambunctious when she gets excited over something. We don’t get visitors here in Arbu too often. Its a bit of an event.”

“Heh, well, wasn’t expecting to drop in,” I said, rubbing the back of my head, not sure what else to say. Why was Binge having a dream about her foalhood? I had to assume that’s what this was, a moment from Binge’s past. It didn’t make much sense otherwise. It was interesting to see she was a pretty normal filly, once, though I could still easily see the tad oddness that kept with her through the years. To think she had that sock this whole time.

“Binge, Mug!” called a mare from across the way. She was as green as her daughter, though her mane was a lot straighter. The mare trotted up, giving her two children a stern look.

“Young filly, this is no hour to be awake bothering your brother and one of our guests,” Binge’s mother said. She gave me a kind smile and a nod, “I hope you’re finding your stay in our little slice of quiet pleasant? Have you eaten yet?”

“Mom, you don’t have to pester the poor guy,” said Binge’s brother, Mug, “I’m sure he ate earlier.”

“Mama! Mama!” Binge was hopping about, “Can I please stay up a bit longer? I want to play guard with big brother!”

“Nope, not hearing it. You’re far too young to be on the wall, and it’s late enough as it is. You’re going straight to bed. You can play with your brother in the morning,” Binge’s mother said, reaching down to gather the little squirming filly up.

Just then, however, there was a shrieking, raw bellow of rage from somewhere near the far end of the settlement, a voice filled with such unmitigated fury it sent a frozen claw into the pit of my stomach.

“They ate them! Go and look! The monsters ate them!”

That scorching, rage dripping voice was punctuated by gunfire and screams. I barely caught sight of the muzzle flashes and the angry, orange tracers. I didn’t even get a clear look at who fired before I felt something warm splatter across my side. Binge’s mother shuddered and fell, her body catching fire and her skull blasted open by gunfire, the mare’s blue eyes wide and open with shock as her mouth dropped her daughter.

Binge hit the ground with her mother’s blood coating her face, the little filly’s eyes turning to glass pools as she stared at her mother’s body laying before her.

Mug reacted instantly, grabbing Binge and pulling her back, shouting “Get down!”

I stood transfixed, trying to see where the gunfire was coming from. The residents of Arbu were taken totally off guard by the sudden, vicious attack from within. I saw over a dozen ponies fall to incredibly accurate gunfire before the first of them began to draw their own weapons to shoot back. Whenever a pony fell, they fell screaming, fire blazing across their bodies as if the bullets of their assailant were made to burn its victims alive.

Mug had pulled his shocked sister behind a table he overturned just in time to avoid a burst of gunfire, and I finally caught sight of the pony wreaking this havoc.

It was a small unicorn mare. So small she barely was visible as she dove behind cover herself to avoid some return fire from some of Arbu’s ponies. Unremarkable, gray, a flicker of a brown mane. Oddly familiar, as if I’d seen her before. Then she ducked around her cover and I saw her face clearly.

Rage. Green eyes sparkling emerald with pure righteous fury and hate.

Wherever that mare looked, ponies died. The mare worked a rifle and a revolver in her magic with the smooth precision of a death dealer of the highest order. I’d never seen anything like it short of Crossfire’s skill, and even then I wasn’t at all certain if I stacked Crossfire against this mare that the Drifter mercenary would stand for long. It seemed like nopony could stand before this mare for long. Arbu ponies fought, and died, as if their guns were shooting blanks and this mare’s bullets magically found their targets every time.

Her friends joined in soon enough. The steel pony seemed to sprout weapons from the side of his armor that blasted unmitigated death amid the Arbu ponies. Missiles and grenades tore the residents to pieces. The pegasus, though he seemed reluctant, fired away with battle saddle mounted rifles, picking off targets with impressive sniping. The black unicorn stayed away from the fighting, merely forming a shield of magic around her allies.

All through this I tried to move, but it felt as if my body was rooted in place. I had no weapons, but my instincts were shouting at me to intervene, to stop this bloodbath and slaughter. But I was trapped as an observer, and the world seemed to shift for me, pulling me back behind the cover Mug had pulled Binge, as if I was a puppet being forced to watch.

“Binge, Binge listen to me, I need you to listen,” Mug said, coughing. The bullets that I thought he’d avoided by going behind the wooden table had actually gone clean through the table, and through him as well. The incendiary nature of the bullets had been spent on the table, which was on fire, but from the ragged open bullets holes in his chest and the blood pouring from his mouth, I could tell Mug’s wounds were fatal.

“Nononono!” Binge was saying, hooves on her brother, trying fruitlessly to pull him towards the wall, “You gotta come too! You gotta run with Binge, big brother! Mr. Happy will make you better, please! Run away with Binge!”

Mug shook his head, his teeth gritting as he tried to push himself to his hooves, but failed as he slumped to the ground, eyes losing focus.

“Binge... our secret... secret way out... go.”

He raised a hoof, giving her one, weak push, then went still. Binge’s little filly hooves held her dead brother for a few seconds, then an explosion, probably from that steel pony, landed nearby and Binge, with a terrified squeak, turned and ran for the wall. She slipped through a wood panel that I could tell had a few nails removed to allow a small pony to fit through, and she was gone.

And I was pulled along with her. My vision blurred as I watched filly Binge scamper on her tiny hooves into the Wasteland night, away from the fire and death of Arbu. I was pulled along with her, as if I were a ghost pulled by an invisible set of strings. The wall was no impediment, I simply ended up flowing right through it as I was pulled after the fleeing filly. The landscape became an indistinct wash of shadows and gray, a landscape of dead ruins filled with the shifting spectres of the dead. I could almost see horrible shapes amid the blackness, reaching for Binge, who was the only seeming point of light as she ran and ran, her sobs punctuated by the growingly distant gunfire behind us.

Eventually were we alone, Binge’s filly form collapsing in a breathless little heap, huddled against the shattered wall of what might have once been a home.

Instinctively I moved to her, reaching out to her with a hoof. The second I touched her she cried out and nearly scrambled up the wall in fright, but when she saw me her tear streaked eyes focused, and gained a familiar mad gleam. The tiny filly suddenly rushed forward and hugged my leg.

“Everypony is gone,” she said in a voice that sounded like both the voice of a filly and that of Binge’s adult self, intertwined, “Burned away and gone. I’m alone. I was alone. I ran, ran, ran, just like big brother told me to. I was a good filly, right? Running is what I was told to do, and Binge is a good filly.”

Not knowing what else to do I just put my hooves around the shaking filly Binge and held her in a tight hug, “You did the only thing you could, Binge.”

I wished I knew just what it was I’d just seen. Was this really Binge’s memories? Was that town, Arbu, once her home? If this was a real memory, then what had actually happened? Why had that mare done what she’d done? Had she been a Raider in disguise? Infiltrate the town and destroy it from the inside? Had she been a mercenary, hired to wipe the place out? Neither explanation made much sense to me. The mare was too skilled and well armed to be a common Raider, and she’d been so filled with fury that it didn’t seem likely she’d been a hired gun simply doing a job.

No, I had the feeling there was a lot more to this than what I could see, but in the end, I suppose it didn’t matter. Whatever the reasons, it’d cost Binge her home and her family, and while I hugged her I realized the reasons for the death of Arbu didn’t matter. Not to this little filly, who’d lost everything in the span of a few minutes of violence. All I could do was hold her.

“It’s okay mister,” Binge said, her filly voice still distorted by her adult voice, “You don’t have to stay with little Binge. She’s very sad, and lonely, and wanders around for a long time...”

The filly backed away from me, and looked at me with eyes that gradually gained the mad sheen I was so used to seeing in Binge’s adult self. She held up the same dirty sock she’d been playing with, Mr. Happy.

“You see, she’s not alone,” Binge took a hoof and wiped some of the blood from her face, her mother’s blood, and used it to repaint the smiley face on the sock, and when she spoke next it was with the high pitched pretend voice of her sock puppet, “Mr. Happy’s here to look after Binge and keep her company, and tell her stories, just like momma and big brother used to! So don’t worry, Longwalk. Binge will hurt for a long time, but she’d figure out how to put her soul to sleep so it doesn’t hurt anymore. She’ll find new friends to play with!”

From the shadows around us I saw ponies emerge. Twisted expressions, yellowed eyes, horrible, spiked clothing, and leering grins. Raiders. The Raiders closed in around us, appearing from the shadows of the Wasteland like wraiths, their cackling laughter chilling the air. Binge, little Binge, was smiling so widely it seemed unnatural, her mad eyes still crying.

“It’ll all be alright bucky! The pain goes away eventually, and little Binge grows up big and strong and never forgets to laugh, laugh, laugh...”

And then it was Binge, grown up and as I knew her in the real world, standing in front of me, her crazed grin and eyes boring into me as she giggled the same blood soaked giggle of the Raiders around her. Transfixed by the sight I didn’t move as she came up to me and pulled me close in a similar hug to the one I’d just given her filly form, only this hug was a lot less comforting and a lot more like she was imprisoning me as she leered at me.

“And I’ll teach you to laugh too, bucky!”

Before I could react her lips locked on mine, and I felt her teeth bite into my lip sharply enough to draw blood. The violent kiss shocked me, through in hindsight I should have expected something like this. When Binge broke off the kiss I suddenly felt icy cold, and I noticed that we were suddenly standing at the precipice of a cliff, one that was crumbling beneath our hooves while Binge tittered insanely.

Startled awake, sitting straight up with a cool trickle of sweat on my brow. Slowly I looked over and I saw that while Arcaidia was snoozing on my left where she’d been before, I had company on my right. Binge was also asleep, curled up with her tail happily wagging sporadically as she chewed on my tail. Her knife, whip... thing, was wrapped up next to her, and I could see the freshly scabbed over wounds she’d given herself trying to practice with it.

My heart was still racing a bit from the last part of the dream, but I gradually calmed as I watched her chew on my tail in her sleep. I doubted I could ever really be at ease around her, but I found her general... creepiness to be a little less random, now that I had an idea of just what she’d been through. Assuming what I’d seen had any truth to it. The whole thing seemed too vivid to be made up.

I thought it was a tad strange I hadn’t ended up in any of my other companions’ dreams, but then again I’d only been napping and it’d only been probably for a couple of hours. Besides it was probably for the best. I didn’t have any right to be peeping on something so private, and I doubt any of them would appreciate knowing I was doing it, intentionally or not. That did make me wonder if LIL-E knew, since she’d been the only one to seem to realize what was happening when I’d gone through my friend's dreams the first time. I decided I’d ask her if she remembered me appearing in her dream at all, but I’d hold off until we were at least in Skull City.

It was fully night, now, the only light coming from the carefully stoked campfire. Iron Wrought was nowhere to be seen, but B.B was by the fire, staring into it. I would’ve said she was ruining her night sight by doing that, but then again she had a nose that put all of ours to shame and could probably smell trouble coming well before it could be seen. That and presumably LIL-E was still floating around somewhere using her impressive sensory device to scan for hostiles.

Stretching, and carefully removing my tail from Binge’s chewing grasp, I stood and trotted to the fire.

B.B looked over at me, glanced at my tail freshly covered in Binge slobber, and the pegasus grinned, “Enjoyin’ sleepin’ ‘tween a pair o’ mares? Ya sure do move on quick.”

I blinked at her, taken aback for a second, before I realized her tone was friendly and joking, at which point I just coughed politely, “Yeah, well, I can’t help my incredible masculine charisma. Some stallions are just born blessed, I suppose.”

“Oh, yeah, so filled with coltish charm ya look right fine in a dress an’ wit yer mane done up in pigtails,” B.B said, winking at me.

I hung my head, “I’m starting to think I’d rather just face that entire Raider army than end up having to play dress up just to walk down the streets of Skull City. Why’d the Labor Guild have to go and put a bounty on my head anyway?”

“Been thinkin’ on that,” said B.B, “Figure it could be they want that there spear o’ yers.”

“Gramzanber? I... guess that’s possible.”

“Well think on it, Long. Labor Guild was after anything valuable in Saddlespring’s Ruin, an’ then that big Golem thing just walks off after burnin’ the town to the ground. So the Labor Guild’s gonna want to recoup their losses from that, right? They hear, probably from that radroach in the pipes Crossfire, that not only are ya responsible for their operation in Saddlesrping goin’ sour, but that ya got yerself that spear. Bet they’re thinkin’ if they get their hooves on it it’ll be worth enough to make up fer losing out on any profits from Saddlespring.”

“That... makes entirely too much sense,” I said, shaking my head, “Guess I’ll just have to deal with that if and when it comes up. I got too much on my hooves right now anyway to be worrying about the Labor Guild. Huh... you said I move on quick? Are you talking about...?”

B.B’s violet eyes softened, and she gave me a comforting, small smile, “Trailblaze. Yeah. Had a bit o’ a chat wit her ‘fore we parted ways. Didn’t reveal nothin’ ‘bout how you feel, Long, but I figure out from the talk that she’s wit that Whetstone mare. Thought back to the way ya were actin’ the other night wit Binge an’ put two an’ two together myself.”

She left it at that, looking at me with a mix of expectation and trepidation. Probably looking to see how I’d respond and if I’d even want to pursue this line of conversation. I was grateful to be given an out, as I really didn’t want to talk about the situation with Trailblaze. Mainly because there wasn’t one, and couldn’t be one, and we had far bigger problems on our hooves to deal with.

“Well, I’m over it,” I said, not entirely believing it myself, “Trail’s exactly what she’s always been; a friend. Can’t really get bent out of shape over something that hadn’t even begun in the first place. Besides, got a whole Raider horde to sneak by tonight. Rather focus my attention on that.”

“‘Suppose yer right, we gotta concentrate on survivin’,” B.B said as she stood up, stretching her wings, but her eyes didn’t leave me, “Ya good to go iffin’ we git jumped by Raiders on our way across?”

The subject change was both welcome and unpleasant, because it brought to the forefront of my mind the very real possibility that we’d get ambushed by Raiders while attempting this night crossing of the battlelines. While I had little doubt of my companions abilities in a fight, and was even confident of my own, it wasn’t whether we could win a fight against Raiders that had me worried. It was whether or not I’d have to kill anypony. I’d had a long talk with LIL-E about this after what’d happened in Stable 104. I’d resolved to do whatever I could to avoid having to take a life, but I’d also come to understand I was capable of it if I found myself backed into a corner, with no other options.

“I’m not sure ‘good’ would be the right way to put it,” I told her simply, with a helpless shrug and half smile I didn’t feel, “Don’t think I’ll ever be good with it. No lie, B.B, I don’t think I can kill unless it’s the heat of moment and my instincts are telling me I’m out of alternatives. I can’t plan for it. I can’t go into a fight intending to kill.”

B.B’s eyes lost focus for a moment, as if she were looking past me, but only for a moment before they looked right into me, “I git what yer goin’ through better n’ ya might imagine. I just came at the whole killin’ issue from the other end o’ the tunnel.”

I didn’t understand what she was talking about and the confusion must have been pretty plain on my face from the way she half heartedly rolled her eyes at me, “Gonna hafta’ be a’ story fer ‘nother day, ‘cause I’d prefer to just take this unhappy stroll down memory lane only once, so I’ll tell it when everypony’s together an’ we got the time. I’ll just say fer now, Long, that I know it’s hard. I know takin’ a life ain’t ever gonna feel right to ya. But sometimes ya got ta act against yer own feelin’s, ‘cause the consequences are worse if you don’t. Just remember what’d it’d do to us, to Arcaidia especially, iffin ya died on us.”

I looked back at Arcaidia, who was still curled up napping, her long silvery mane and tail almost acting like blankets, covering her small frame so that only her blue face was visible beneath the coiled waves of silver strands. It was oddly adorable.

“I’ll try not to,” I said, “Like I said, it comes down to not having any options... well, I’ve done it once. I can probably do it again. I’m going to hate every second of it, though.”

“Ya wouldn’t be the dope I’m happy ta call friend iffin ya didn’t, Long,” B.B said and gave me a solid hoofbump, “Now let’s git ‘em up an’ git movin’, we’re burnin’ moonlight.”

“Moonlight?” I asked as I tilted my head upwards at the cloud covered sky. B.B laughed and flicked my face with one of her wings.

“Ya know what I mean!”

Iron Wrought, it turns out, had taken to snoozing in the driver’s seat of the Ursa, his hind legs propped up on the dashboard as he reclined in the chairs, whose back had been lowered so it was like a miniature bed. He snorted awake as I shook his shoulder, blinking at me and then rising in his seat with a grim sigh.

“Time to go,” he said, not making it a question as he cracked his neck and started the Ursa’s engine.

“Yeah,” I said, giving him a worried look, “We’ll be there soon.”

He didn’t respond, eyes intensely focused on the dashboard as he flicked a few switches that I noticed switched several of the dashboard screens to what looked like some kind of radar and exterior camera views that were brightly tinted with green in a manner that made it seem almost as bright as day outside despite the deep dark of the night. I left him to it, heading into the passenger compartment just as everypony else was getting in. I noticed Arcaidia had grabbed Gramzanber for me with her magic and set the spear down next to one of the equipment lockers. I gave her a grateful nod and she smiled at me. LIL-E floated in last, the robot’s small manipulator arm extending and hitting the button to close up the Ursa’s back hatch.

“Mmm,” Binge stretched out on one of the bunks and gave me a wink, “Sleep well, bucky?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” I said, starting to slip into one of the booths at the dining table.

“I did too,” she said with a crooked smile, “I had a very happy dream, and the best part was you were in it!”

I gulped as I sat, laughing nervously, “Really?”

What about anything I’d seen in that dream could be described as ‘happy’? I didn’t think Binge was being serious, just her normal... eccentric self. I tried to keep my response as noncommittal as possible, not wanting to encourage her, but I probably should have known Binge didn’t need much encouragement.

“Yup, I got to show you my old hometown and let you meet the whole family on a very special night where little Binge started to grow up into big Binge! It was a lot of fun! I can’t wait to show you what happened next!”

Arcaidia slid into the booth across from me and gave Binge a faintly annoyed look, “I sure ren solva look forward to hearing crazy talk. Wasn’t school place home and... estu dol shirval mas, bad ponies of much wrongness, they family yes?”

Binge giggled, one hoof playing with a knife idly that seemed to just appear there, “Oh, they were my, hmm... fourteenth family? I’ve had a lot of families since my first one went to sleepy time forever. They were special. That’s where momma and big brother lived. No pappa, though. He died when I was a teensy tiny very little pony.”

B.B, who’d remained standing on the other side of the compartment as the Ursa got moving, using her wings to keep herself steady as the vehicle rolled along the rough Wasteland terrain, looked at Binge thoughtfully.

“Ya bounced ‘tween a bunch o’ Raider groups, then, iffin’ I’m hearin’ this right?”

Binge nodded multiple times rapidly, her smile wide, “Uh-huh! I had lots of fun with one family, but then they’d die, or try to play in a way I didn’t like, so I had to make them go to sleep, or they didn’t like my jokes and stories and that’d make me sad so I’d leave. Sometimes they’d die playing with other Raidery types, or they’d get blown up by the metal ponies with the big party toys, or just other ponies that just don’t like playing very much. Sourpusses.”

“But yer first home, the one wit yer ma an’ brother,” B.B said, “What happened there?”

I almost wanted to stop B.B from asking, but I stopped myself. If Binge was going to talk about this it wasn’t my place to stop her, and it wasn’t as if I had a lot of reason to, besides my own worry about how Arbu connected to LIL-E. I found myself watching the robot as Binge replied, watching for a reaction from the eyebot’s metal chassi.

“Fire,” Binge said, her eyes wide and her smile faltering just enough that some of the old, foal-like horror I recalled from her filly self’s face crept over her features, “Fire came and made all of Binge’s friends and family go to sleep forever. We ate, you see. We ate, and that made us bad, so we got punished by the Goddess. The Goddess sent her Angel of Fire to punish Arbu and little Binge had to run away because big brother told her to. I was a good little filly and did what I was told, and ran, ran, ran...”

She laughed then, a high pitched cackle that went on for almost half a minute as we all stared at her. I still had one eye on LIL-E. The eyebot had reacted when the name ‘Arbu’ came up. LIL-E hadn’t even been facing Binge’s way before that, but now the eyebot had turned fully towards Binge. That didn’t confirm anything, but it lent credence to my theory that the mare I’d seen in LIL-E’s dream really was the same one that’d been in Arbu.

Binge’s laughter finally died down, and the Raider mare had a drained look in her eyes, despite the fact that she was still smiling, albeit with a hollow shade to the expression, “I ran, and found a new family, and that was how I learned to play and laugh without being awake. To sleep without sleeping forever.”

Suddenly she snapped her head up with clop of her hooves together, “Okay! Somepony else’s turn! Story time is no fun if I’m the only one sharing!”

Arcaidia made a warding gesture with her forehooves, “I bound by rules to speak no stories that compromise mission! Look at somepony other than me.”

LIL-E slowly turned away from Binge, “I don’t think I have any stories I can tell that’d be suitable either. I’ve spent most my time sending this robot around the Wasteland to help ponies I find with whatever problems I can while digging up information on the Ruins found in this region. Nothing exciting, and I don’t want to talk about anything I did before I took control of this eyebot.”

I shrugged my shoulders, “You guys all know where I’m from by now and unless you want to hear about the numerous times I drove Trailblaze to go exploring with me outside my village I’m afraid I don’t have any exciting stories. Before this whole mess my most impressive story was when we found a rock shaped like a...”

I trailed off as I realized my current audience was entirely female and that they might not want to hear about that. I abruptly closed my mouth and glanced at B.B, “So, uh, B.B, any cool stories?”

“Oh no, I said I weren’t talkin’ ‘bout my past ‘till we git to Skull City an’ I meant it,” said B.B, through she had a light tone about it, and she had a thoughtful look on her face, “Though I figure I can tell ya how I got my cutie mark.”

I found myself leaning forward about, genuinely interested. Arcaidia and even Binge both seemed equally focused on B.B now, Binge wagging her tail and smiling with anticipation. I admit I’d been curious about B.B’s cutie mark since I’d first seen it. The red rose rising from a pool of blood was very distinctive, and I couldn’t imagine what it meant.

B.B saw our looks and her expression turned solemn as she sigh, “Just try ta understand this ain’t exactly a happy tale, an’ it’ll probably be leavin’ ya with more question. I just ask ya hold off on ‘em ‘till we’re safe in Skull City, ‘kay?”

Arcaidia nodded, “Understood, bruhir. I want to hear of cutie mark, and will not speak questions.”

I nodded my agreement, and so B.B sat down on her haunches and went into her story.

“I was a bit o’ a youngin’, seven, maybe eight. Ain’t a lot o’ pegasi git born below the clouds, so shouldn’t be a surprise I weren’t born on the surface, but up top in the Enclave. Don’t remember much o’ me own ma an’ pa, just that we lived on a cloud farm up north.”

“Cloud farm?” I asked, and at her look I blushed and raised a placating hoof, “Sorry, sorry, no questions.”

B.B nodded and continued, “Anywhose, I was just startin’ ta learn how to use my wings ta fly proper, an’ my pa was givin’ me a hoof wit it. My old pa, not Doc Sunday. He came later. So one day I was learnin’ ta fly wit my pa, an’ a storm kicks up something fierce right outta nowhere. Pa an’ me were pretty far from the homestead at the time, so we had ta go below the clouds ta escape the storm.”

Her eyes shimmered with a sad mirth as she laughed, “First time seein’ the world below was a bit o’ a shocker ya can believe. Pa an’ me didn’t land. Pa didn’t want us gettin’ ‘infected’ or nothing’ wit the Wasteland’s disease or whatever propaganda the Enclave was shovin’ down our throats then. We eventually got back home, just in time ta meet up wit a Enclave patrol that was comin’ through to check in’ on the farms. When they found out we was below cloud cover them soldiers wanted ta take my pa an’ me in fer questioning. Guess they wanted ta make sure we didn’t actually git any Wasteland on us, heh. Well... my ma’s, she was a right prickly sort an’ didn’t take kindly to them soldiers wantin’ ta take away her husband and foal. Was a bit o’ a scuffle an one of them soldiers gave my ma a good smack fer her trouble. Nothin’ serious, nothin’ as bad as, say, tryin’ ta shoot ‘er, but it... it set me off. Seein’ my ma’s bleedin’ lip, and the way them soldiers laughed, it set me off right good.”

B.B smacked her hooves together for emphasis as she said, “Next I know I’m tearin’ right inta that soldier. ‘Course she was wearin’ power armor, so ain’t much a little filly’s gonna do, but still took both her buddies ta get me offa her, and I got beat down pretty bad. My pa an’ me were takin’ in and it was a right nasty couple o’ days as I was beaten, interrogated, an’ beaten again at the nearest Enclave base. Eventually got let go ‘cause I weren’t carryin’ any disease an’ I was just a little foal... but the whole time I just growled at them soldiers an’ gave them no end o’ trouble. By the end o’ it when I was back home I found I had this here mark on my flank. The rose an’ blood. Didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I learned latter its meanin’. I... I bloom when in pain. Adversity, bad things happenin’ ta me, they make me stronger. The worse the situation, the better I perform. It’s kind o’ like how some folks do well under pressure? Same idea. There’s... a bit more to it than that, but I ain’t gettin’ inta that part o’ things until later, so you folks’ll have to be satisfied with that part o’ the story for now.”

After a moment’s silence Arcaidia said, “I like your cutie mark, it good sign of strong mare. Important to learn to grow better from pain.”

B.B had a sad, knowing looking on her face, but she still smiled, “Thanks fer sayin’ so, Arc. Ain’t always been my favorite thing ta think ‘bout, ‘cause ta make the most o’ what I’m good at it means somethin’ bads gotta be happen’.”

“I thought your rosey mark meant you were a gardener who uses dead bodies to grow pretty flowers,” said Binge, “I’ve seen lots of cutie marks that are literal like that. Slit Throat had a bloody knife for a cutie mark and she was pretty much just good at the one thing. Same with Painchain and his cutie mark of a bloody chain. Huh, come to think of it most of my old buddies had bloody weapons for cutie marks and very limited skill sets. No wonder nopony could ever find alternative forms of employment.”

“Yeah, fancy that,” said B.B with a sigh, “So what’s with your cutie mark?”

Binge perked up, patting her flank, which I tried not to stare at as she did so, “What, this? Hehehehe! I earned it even younger than you birdie! I found out real young I could indulge in all sorts of fun stuff for as long as I want and never get tired! Food, drink, play, everypony has only so much of they can stomach of it, but not me! I can go forever and ever drinking, eating, having the messy fun sexy times, and just keep going some more.”

Her eyes gained an odd, bloodshot look to them, “I never get tired of it, no matter how badly my body wants to stop.”

“Okay,” I said abruptly, “Enough about cutie marks. Arcaidia and I don’t even have them, anyway.”

Arcaidia pouted slightly, crossing her forelegs across her chest, “I don’t understand these pictures on flanks. My... estu dol viria es mis ti formaive... we no have marks.”

Looking at her I could see she was nervously shifting in her seat, apparently second guessing bringing this up, but now that she had I was curious, “So does that mean you can’t have a cutie mark?”

Arcaidia pursed her lips, looking away, “I do not know certain. Persephone tell me I not have mark because... because I not grow up here. But now that I here, might gain mark. Magic. Special magic of Equestria. Can’t talk more. Say too much sooner than should.”

B.B waved a wing at her, “It's alright hun, no biggie. Yer not obligated ta tell us nothin’ more, an’ it’s kinda nice ta know ya ain’t just a late bloomer like our Longwalk here.”

“Hey, I’m not a late bloomer,” I said defensively, “Plenty of colts my age didn’t get their cutie marks yet! It’s only been sixteen summers for me. Besides, its probably for the best I don’t earn one while I’m out here. Might turn out to be something weird like a bloody spear.”

“That'd be neat,” said Binge, “A nice, big, blood covered spear for bucky! With the special talent of stabbing things! You do that a lot already, so it’s make sense.”

“Binge, not helping,” said B.B.

“What about you LIL-E?” I asked, deciding to get the topic off of what my own cutie mark might turn out to be, “You have a cutie mark story?”

The eyebot swiveled to face me, her mechanical voice holding a faint hint of surprise, “Me?”

I nodded, “Well, yeah. We can’t see your real body, so we don’t even know what your cutie mark is. I’m kind of curious about it, at least.”

LIL-E was silent for a few seconds before she said, “It’s nothing special. Just a Pip-Buck. I got it when I found a foal who’d gotten lost. It just means I’m good at finding things. That’s it.”

She spoke oddly fast and haltingly, and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the eyebot’s manner of producing a distorted voice or if the mare controlling the robot really was just talking strangely. Either way she paused another second or two and then hastily added, “Sorry. I had a pretty boring life. Until I left my Stable, anyway. Then things got... complicated.”

“What was your Stable like?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager. I was very curious about the mare behind the machine, especially after what I’d seen in Binge’s dream of her past. I didn’t have any proof that the gray mare who’d destroyed Binge’s hometown was the same one in control of LIL-E, but I found myself wanting to know.

“It was just another Stable,” LIL-E said, “Not every Stable was a secret research facility or crazy social experiment. A number were just homes for ponies to survive the world getting cluster fucked by the megaspells. My Stable was a pretty quiet, unremarkable place to grow up. Which really was something I should’ve appreciated more. When I left it I discovered just how valuable a boring, uneventful life can be.”

“Can’t really disagree with you on that count,” I said, turning my gaze towards one of the thin windows on the side of the hull, little more than dark shadows shown beyond the thick reinforced ballistic glass. I could barely make out the shapes of the passing ruins and small hills. And the flash of explosions.

Wait. Explosions? I leaned forward, narrowing my eyes. I knew the battle lines of the fighting we’d seen during the day were to the northwest. If my Pip-Buck’s map and the compass on my E.F.S were accurate then northwest was on the right side of the Ursa, and I was seeing the flashes of explosions and now also the tracers of gunfire on our left side, to the south.

“What is eye viewing?” asked Arcaidia, but she must have noticed it at that very moment because she also looked out the window, her expression hardening, “Ponies battle nearby?”

“Might be some Raiders runnin’ inta some Skull City troops,” B.B suggested.

LIL-E was quick to chime in, “Whatever it is, its just hitting the edge of my own scanners. I’m guessing three or four dozen hostiles, plus near a hundred non-hostiles.”

“If there’s a hundred good guys out there then they ought to be able to deal with the Raiders, right?” I asked, but I was already feeling uneasy with the situation. I felt almost a pull towards the south, a instinct to take a closer look.

“Two ta one odds,” said B.B, but she was frowning as she said it, “But that’s making assuemin’ all them non-hostiles out there are fightin’ types. What if it’s a caravan o’ merchants?”

“Not a lot of caravans that size,” said LIL-E, “But I’m willing to bet that’s not a company of Detrot troops out there. I’m just not getting a read any enough return fire for that to be the case. Something’s wrong. Those ponies out there aren’t fighting back hard enough to push those Raiders off them... and I’m detecting losses among the non-hostiles mounting faster than among the Raiders.”

Whatever was happening it was outside the range of my own E.F.S, so I couldn't get much of a picture of what was happening. Right now the battle was just a series of distant flashes in the darkness. I felt an acidic twist inside me as I realized that, so far, we’d been pretty lucky not to get attacked as we made our way past the battle lines to the north, and if we just kept going there was a good chance we’d get all the way through without any trouble, if the Raiders in the area were otherwise engaged.

But that would mean leaving behind ponies who needed help.

In the end it wasn’t really much of a contest, but I still had a heavy heart as I slid out of the boot and went into the driver’s compartment. Behind me I could hear B.B already strapping on her revolver braces and the sound of Arcaidia also shuffling out of the booth.

“Ren solva make good on name, at least,” I heard her say.

“Ya mean that ‘renwhatsit’ thing ya keep callin’ him?” B.B replied, “What’s that mean anyway?”

“Hard to say in Equestrian words. Warrior of hot blood, but toaster head. Kind of means brave, kind of means dumb, kind of means good heart. All same meaning, ren solva.”

“Sounds about right,” B.B said.

“I can hear you guys,” I said as I opened the door to the driver's compartment.

I didn’t even get a chance to open my mouth before Iron Wrought turned towards me, nearly slamming the Ursa into a stop. His look made his eyes seem like blue spear tips stabbing into me, his tone rough.

“Hold on, hold on, let me see if I can guess this one. We’re on our way to our destination, but you’ve seen something like a pony in trouble, a mysterious signal, or something shiny on the side of the road, and you want to stop to check it out so we can get delayed again for the next five hours. How close am I?”

“Uh… pretty close. Gunfire. Explosions. Ponies in trouble. Probably won’t take five hours.”

“Oh, sure, the fight won’t, but I know your pattern now, Longwalk. You’ll finish the fight, but then find a mysterious Ruin to explore, or the ponies we save will happen to need escort to a town in the opposite direction we want to go, or you’ll get attacked by your Pegasi-Griffin Assholes Anonymous Fanclub and get captured. Again. I will eat my hat if this doesn’t end with you getting us mired in some shit that’ll delay us for another day.”

“... You don’t wear a hat,” I pointed out.

“I will buy a hat exclusively for the purpose of eating it if I turn out to be wrong about this and it won’t turn into a colossal time sink when we could just do what normal, sane ponies do and ignore the obvious danger to just mosey on our merry bucking way!”

I just met his gaze, despite really wanting to look away from the accusation in them. I felt guilty enough as it was about this already, but there just wasn’t any way I was ignoring the situation to the south.

“I was actually thinking that you could drop me and a couple of the others off, and you can keep going to Skull City. We’ll catch up after we’re done here.”

He let out a growling sigh, “Yeah, because I want to keep going in the middle of the night through Raider infested territory by myself! Shit, it’s tempting, even with the added danger of having nopony to shoot back if I get ambushed. This damn thing is tough as a tank and once I leave your asses behind I could probably sell it in Skull City and be set up for life.”

He had a point. I was being incredibly trusting even offering to let him take the Ursa onward while me and the others stayed behind to fight, but before I could say anything he resumed glaring at me, “And I’m not going to do that! Want to know why? Because as much as it pisses me off, I’m not such a dick as to screw over a pony who’s saved my flank and done far more than any sane pony would to help me, when he barely even knows me.”

“I... know you pretty well by now, Iron,” I said, “I mean, sure, I haven’t known you long, but that’s true of everypony here. I want you to get home, and honestly I wouldn’t even care if you decided to sell off the Ursa after ditching us. I can’t afford to split hairs or screw around, is all. I need to go help those ponies, and get you home. I’ll do both, even if that ends up with me getting screwed over. Make sense?”

“No, it doesn’t, but you never make sense, since the first damned day I met you. So let’s just get this done. One more fight before I can say farewell to the lot of you and get on with my life!”

I gave him a nod of thanks but he didn’t see it as Iron Wrought immediately threw the Ursa into sharp reverse to point us southward, then kicked the A.T.W into a straight run southward. I could only trust in his driving skills and the sensory gear on the Ursa would keep us from crashing at this speed in the murky blackness. At least he had the flashes of gunfire to pinpoint where we needed to go. I left the door to the driver’s compartment open as I went back to join my friends in getting ready.

I strapped Gramzanber into its sheath on my left side, and made sure I had a few choice flash-bang, smoke, and gas grenades at the top of my saddlebags. Arcaidia had her starblaster out, and I saw her standing by the back hatch with her eyes closed, whispering something under her breath.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

Her eyes snapped open and she gave me a thin smile, “Workout brain exercise for magic.”

She tapped her horn with a hoof, “Unicorn magic hard to throw at same clock as Crest Sorcery. Train self to keep unicorn magic... estu... ti vir solon est jir. Magic from horn get in way when use Crest spell. Very hard. Take long days to learn good ways for unicorn magic to go to make Crest spells work.”

I realized she must have been talking about what I’d seen in her dream a few days ago, when she’d been young and training with her sister to use the Veruni’s Crest Sorcery. I remembered she was having trouble because her horn was somehow interfering with her spells. Which reminded me that she’d gotten her hooves on a few of those small, rectangular pieces of metal that apparently contained more spells for her Crest Sorcery from the labs at Stable 104.

“Any new spells besides that shielding one?” I asked.

She frowned slightly, “Still study Crest Graphs. I have talent for esru dol muse; water ley magic. Muse mix best with geo; earth ley magic. Most Crest spells mix ley magic of different kind. Only master muse so far. Ice, healing, easy spells. Working on geo so can make new spells with earth. Shield spell made of geo magic. Takes much time to learn more spells.”

She gave me a wry smile, “Not much time for study since meet you, ren solva.”

Binge suddenly popped up next to her, her odd knife whip now wrapped up in her tail like it was a wreath. How she balanced it there without cutting her tail off I had no idea.

“Sounds like the ice filly needs to learn more unicorn mojo! The space magic sounds hard and time consuming. Unicorn magic is so much faster!”

Arcaidia sniffed, holding her nose high, “Veruni Crest Sorcery high art of magic! Unicorn magic good, I learn how to float things! Is useful. What else is there?”

It suddenly occurred to me that Arcaidia might not have really known that much unicorn magic. Thinking back I was pretty sure I’d only seen her levitate things, or create light from her horn. Pretty basic spells from what little I understood of the subject. All of her healing and ice magic stemmed from the Crest Sorcery. I wondered if we could find her a teacher?

“Hey, Arcaidia, would you want to learn more unicorn magic?” I asked.

She looked at me with a slight tilt of her head and one of her ears twitching, “May be good. Where I find teacher?”

B.B had the answer to that one, “Skull City’s full o’ Guild’s, hun. One o’ ‘em is the Magic Guild.”

I laughed, “Of course they’d have a Magic Guild. They have a Guild for everything.”

Arcaidia looked thoughtful for a moment before smiling brightly and giving a firm nod, “Learn magic of unicorns sounds fun. I find this Magic Guild when we get to city.”

“Cut the chat short, folks,” called Iron Wrought, “We’re almost on top of this fight. A plan might be a good thing to have soon.”

LIL-E floated over to the driver’s compartment, and I joined her. I could make out little through the front windscreen, other than it looked like the Raiders had occupied a pair of partially intact buildings and were firing from all floors, top to bottom, on ponies who were stuck taking cover behind what looked like wagons in the middle of a battered street.

“They haven’t seen us,” said LIL-E, “I say we hit both buildings at once. B.B and I can take the one on the left, fly to the roof and just shoot our way down. The rest of you take the one on the right?”

I nodded, “No argument from me. I’m not a plan making pony.”

“I can ram this puppy right through the back,” said Iron Wrought, a grim smile on his face that said he liked the idea, “I can pulp some of those fuckers on the bottom floor.”

His words were a keen slap to remind me that this wasn’t going to be pretty. I had to brace myself for what was about to happen, and clenched my teeth tightly. Ponies were going to die, one way or another. I had to be ready for it. We were less than a hundred paces away now, the two Raider infested buildings rapidly approaching.

“Get us in there,” I told Iron Wrought, then looked to LIL-E, “Meet you somewhere in the middle?”

The eyebot bobbed in her version of a nod, “Don’t get dead.”

We rushed back into the passenger compartment. Arcaidia and Binge were both holding onto fixed parts of the compartment to brace themselves for the impact, and I joined them by grabbing the dining table. LIL-E joined B.B by the top hatch and for a second I almost laughed at the odd thought that the two members of my groups whose names were those funny acronyms that seemed so popular among the ‘civilized’ ponies of the Wasteland were basically teamed up now.

“After you,” LIL-E said, and B.B gave a mock bow and flourish with her wings before opening the top hatch and zipping upward. LIL-E floated up after her.

I heard the distinct cracks of gunfire from both of them just seconds before Iron Wrought shouted, “Hold on to your flanks!”

The Ursa hit the wall of the back of the building on the right with the force of a five ton boulder. The concrete, decayed and soft from the passage of centuries, all but disintegrated under the impact, and the Ursa skidded into the middle of the bottom floor. I heard a few cut off screams and the faint bumps as the vehicle fulfilled Iron Wrought’s grisly promise of grinding a few Raiders underneath its wheels. I tried to shut out the sounds and focus as the back hatch opened with a bump from Arcaidia’s hoof.

The interior lights of the Ursa created a pool of faded white light spilling from the back hatch, and exterior lights flared to life, illuminated the bottom floor of the building. I switched on my Pip-Buck light as well, knowing I might need the extra illumination in the darkness, even at the risk of marking my position.

As I piled out with her at my side and Binge behind us I saw Arcaidia’s horn light up with a burst of crest symbols, her shielding spell snapping over her own body. She then quickly turned her horn to me to cast the same spell on me, but she was interrupted by the impact of bullets as shots from the dusty darkness behind her erupted with muzzle flashes; a Raider wielding a small, semi-automatic pistol pulling the trigger with rapid glee.

The light rounds were mostly absorbed by Arcaidia’s spell, but she staggered under the impact anyway, losing concentration on her the second spell she’d intended to cast to give me a shield. I moved quickly, charging forward while the Raider was busy fumbling to reload. She was a dusty brown mare with a sickly yellow mane, swept back in a blood stained mohawk. I barely took note of the surroundings, some kind of store with bare, empty shelves long since scavenged clean. The Raider had been behind a counter, and as I tore Gramzanber free of its sheath I leapt the counter and tackled the Raider.

She screamed some obscenity at me that I didn’t pay any attention to as I slapped her across the face with the flat of the spear, knocking rotted teeth loose. That didn’t put her down, as she savagely shoved her hooves into my chest and launched me off her. I hit the floor, nearly getting the air knocked out of me.

I rolled to my hooves, ducking behind another counter as the Raider aimed her gun and fired off a series of shots that tore apart wood chunks and old tiling around me.

I heard Arcaidia’s magic surging with its crackling energy, and the tell-tale sound of icicle shards shattering, along with a scream, but it was coming from the other side of the room so I suspected she’d spotted another target for her spell. I heard the Raider mare with the pistol galloping my way, however, and I stuck the shaft of Gramzanber out just in time to trip her up as she charged around the corner of the counter I’d been using for cover.

The Raider went sprawling to the ground and I rushed her while she was still kissing floor. Killing her would have been a simple matter. Easy as slicing an apple. I could smell the fetid stench coming off her, with the copper of blood mixing with numerous other foul odors. I could see her leather armor wasn’t gecko hide at all, but something smoother. Possibly made from other ponies. Even if I doubted that, the relatively fresh, bloody skull mounted on her left shoulder was indication enough of what kind of pony I was dealing with.

Director Twinkle had taught me that I was capable of ending a life. But there was a difference between knowing I could do something when out of options, and choosing to do it when I still had options available. There was a lot less hesitance in me as I struck, whacking the mare atop the head with the flat of Gramzanber, causing her eyes to roll up into her skull as she slumped to the floor.

I’d kill when I had to. I might have to mere seconds from now. I let myself accept that unpleasant fact and turned to survey the room.

There was a smeared, dark stain of red on the floor for several paces behind the Ursa, which still had dust settling around it. I saw a pair of mangled, pulped bodies that were probably the vehicle’s victims. Arcaidia was using the front part of the Ursa, crest symbols forming around her horn at a fast pace. Frost rimmed the floor in front of her as an icy blast of sub-zero air rushed out, flash freezing a set of shelves into crystalline white... and the poor pair of Raiders behind it. I heard one stallion manage to let out a piercing scream before the ice reached his throat.

My companions, of course, didn’t share my sentiments on taking life. Arcaidia especially turned into another pony practically, when it came to a fight. Pure, cold focus radiated from her as she strode forward, keeping to cover. I went to join her, hearing the shouts of ponies coming down a set of stairs on the far right corner of the room.

However another Raider, who’d been hiding behind a counter with an open, cobweb covered cash register popped up and aimed a rifle at my head. I ducked down instinctively, putting Gramzanber’s wide blade in the way like a shield. The ARM did well with deflecting magical energy weaponry, but part of that was because magic beams didn’t have much impact.

A rifle round slammed into the spear rattling my teeth so hard I feared losing one, and it still staggered me into the side of the Ursa’s hull. A part of me wanted to immediately use Accelerator, but I restrained myself, remembering the dire warning I’d received. Every time I used the ARMs power would shorten my remaining days. I had to hold off and only use the spear’s abilities when I had to.

I really had gotten used to having that power on hoof to grant me an edge. Fighting without relying on it wasn’t going to be easy, which I found out as I threw myself forward and to the left, another rifle round grazing me as I took cover against a knocked over shelf that was halfway leaning against a counter. I popped around the corner, head low as I made my way closer to where the Raider was, keeping the counter between me and him.

I didn’t want to use any of my grenades when Arcaidia was still nearby, and presumably Binge as well. Where was that mare at, anyway?

“Get your scrawny ass out here, meat, so I can-URK!”

The Raider’s voice cut off with a wet gurgle, and I chanced a peek over the counter just in time to get a face full of spraying blood from the Raider’s slashed neck. Binge had appeared behind him like a silent wraith, having opened the stallion’s throat with one of her remaining knives she hadn’t attached to that whip of hers. She smiled sweetly at me.

“Hurry bucky or there won’t be any left for you!”

“This isn’t a contest!” I shot back, then my eyes widened as I saw a quartet of Raiders rush down the stairs, guns already blazing before they were even fully out the door, “Binge, duck!”

Binge did not duck, instead flicking her tail with a mad tittering laugh. The knife whip extended from her tail and I realized the insane mare had tied the end of it to the tip of her tail. The knife whip lashed out with no precision, no pattern, just a wild, flicking mass of barbed wire covered with Cosmic Knives. It didn’t really need to be accurate to hit in such close quarters. The lead Raider got a face full of the whips flailing mass, which sliced deeply into flesh and bone. The Raider mare’s shriek was unearthly as she dropped with chunks of her flesh torn clean from her. The other Raiders didn’t even pause to help their fallen comrade, however, as they fired on Binge. I saw Binge take a shot to the shoulder as she skipped behind cover, consequently the same counter I was using.

“I like this toy but it's kind of ornery,” she said, wincing at her tail. and rubbing her shoulder. She was wearing her oddly modified security armor, the one that mounted knives like they were spikes, and it seemed the kevlar had kept the bullet from penetrating, but I imagined the impact had been nasty. Binge’s knife whip was still extended and left hanging around the corner, and without pausing Binge reached over with the knife she’d used to slit the earlier Raider’s throat and cut a few strains from the tip of her tail, freeing the whip.

“Think I need to try making a better handle,” she said, her eyes gleaming “Ooo, if I find a nice, tough femur that’ll be the perfect length!”

Femur? As in, the bone? I just blinked at her, “Binge, can you stop being creepy? We’re in the middle of a fight.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, “I got two. Your turn Longykins! Just think of the big bad spider and do the same thing, you’ll be fine.”

“Not that simple,” I told her but didn’t have time for further debate as something small and metal dropped behind the counter between me and Binge.

Grenade! No fair! Raiders aren’t allowed to use grenades!

Much as I hated to, I had to use Accelerator. I only kept it active for a few seconds, the cobalt blue energy wreathing my vision as I scooped up the grenade and threw it out the nearest broken window. I cut Accelerator off as soon as I made the toss and hoped for the best. The backlash was minor due to the short amount of time I used it, but I had no idea how much time a short burst like that shaved off my thirty day soon-to-be-dead limit. The grenade exploded, the noise and shockwave still battering me despite the cover from the shrapnel.

By now Arcaidia had engaged the new Raiders and I heard her starblaster firing with its distinctive zapping sound. The noise of a familiar 10mm submachine gun told me that Iron Wrought had also entered the fray. Time to stop hiding and get back into it. I nodded to Binge.

“Rush them,” I said and went charging around the counter.

There were even more Raiders now, apparently another two or three coming down the stairs so that half a dozen of the smelly bastards were using the last few shelves near the back wall as a barricade to exchange shots with Iron Wrought and Arcaidia, who were using the Ursa for their own cover. My eyes were left with brilliant lines of white across my vision for each searing beam from the starblaster, which treated the Raider’s cover as little more than paper, and I saw a stallion wreathed in white and blue energy before his charred ashes dusted the floor. Iron Wrought’s sub-machine gun was keeping the Raider’s pinned, but he wasn’t sticking his head out too much, letting the Raider’s waste their return fire on the Ursa’s sturdy hull. The sharp twangs of ricochets filled the air as I rushed forward.

I had a straight shot at the Raiders’ flank, and they’d been distracted enough by Arcaidia and Iron Wrought that they weren’t looking our way as Binge and I charged in.

Getting a little creative I slid Gramzanber’s blade underneath the barrel of a black coated, green manned Raider stallion who had a long empty eye socket. I used the flat of the blade like a giant paddle, straining with all my leg muscles to bodily lift the stallion on the flat of the spear and slam him into the wall like I was shoveling dirt. I then used the remaining momentum I had to plant my forehooves on the floor and turn my whole body, bucking with my hind legs to smash into the jaw of the next Raider in line.

That was as far as I was able to get, however, before another Raider, a smaller mare with a grimy pink coat and shaved head, save for a single black stripe, jumped on me with what looked like a butchers cleaver floating in a sickly green aura. Unicorn. I hadn’t time to notice species, but the blaze of green on the mare’s horn was clear as the cleaver went for my throat.

I raised a hoof to block the cleaver, the blade biting into my armor and causing a burst of sharp pain that had me crying out.

“Scream, bitch, scream!” the mare cried out, straddling my back and punching the back of my head with her hooves as she kept trying to get her cleaver to slash my face. I kept my arm in the way of the cleaver, but her blows to the back of my head left me dazed. For a tiny mare she packed a wallop. Instinctively I turned over, rolling the mare under my back. I briefly caught sight of Binge stabbing the Raider I’d slammed into the wall, her knife plunging in and out of his chest in a bloody fountain of gore a she cackled merrily.

After my roll I lashed backwards with an elbow, catching the mare in the side of the head and knocking her off me. Her meat cleaver also clattered to the floor.

I turned fast, intending to smack the mare across the face with the flat of Gramzanber, but as I did so I saw a stray round from Iron Wrought catch her in the back of the head, blasting out the front of her face and adding a coat of red to my face. I spat out the mare’s blood as her body switched spastically and fell to the ground.

“Ren solva, move!” I heard Arcaidia shout, and I dove aside as a barrage of icicle shards flew by me and battered a Raider who’d been aiming a disturbingly large shotgun my way. The gun’s deafening blast mixed with the Raider’s roar as the ice shards ripped into him. I felt the painful, tearing impact of the heavy shotgun slug slamming into my side. Gold gecko scales and ballistic mesh kept the slug from penetrating but the hit still knocked the breath out of me and a hot, searing pain took root in my side, probably from torn muscle.

The Raider had fared worse, with a series of small spears of ice impaling him from the chest up to his neck. As he dropped I saw another Raider behind him turning her guns towards me, another unicorn levitating a pair of small revolvers. Did all Raiders have the same manner of insane grin on their faces? Did they take classes to learn this stuff? I had the sudden vision of a school, with the classrooms filled with little Raider foals taking lessons from Binge on how to smile like maniacs, the importance of adding spikes to everything, the art of gore-porn graffiti and its use in home decoration, and how to generally act like psychotic madponies.

The thought passed through my head in less than a second, and I was already moving by the time the Raider mare opened fire, bullets tearing above my head as I ducked down. I shoved Gramzanber’s tip into the ground, setting it like a shield in front of me. I counted the shots. Six, seven, eight. One bullet still hit my front right leg, causing sharp pain as the round’s impact nearly knocked the leg out from under me. But then I counted the twelfth shot and then there were just dry clicks as the revolvers’ hammers hit empty chambers.

I surged forward, grabbing Gramzanber as I went. I saw the Raider mare drop her revolvers, instead using her magic to grab, and lift, an entire shelf and fling it at me. I twisted my head in a timed slice that cut the shelf in half as I kept charging. The mare swore as I shoulder slammed her, knocking the relatively light unicorn to the ground. I raised Gramzanber, intending to aim a blow to knock the mare out, except there was a flash of metal and suddenly one of Binge’s knives was buried in the Raider’s neck. The mare’s eyes went wide and stared at me with sudden fear as her lifeblood poured out of the wound in her neck, then she went still.

The last remaining Raider on this floor I noticed had been finished off by Iron Wrought, the Raider’s body slumped against the bottom of the stairs with half a dozen bullet holes torn through her body and blood spreading across the floor. At least for the immediate moment we were in the clear. Binge skipped past me, whistling to herself as she retrieved her knife from the dead Raider.

“Up to four,” she said in a sing-song tone, “You’re really falling behind, bucky. I know you know how to kill things. I saw it, and it was beautiful! Did you forget? Here, let me show you. It’s easy.”

“That’s okay Binge you don’t-” I began, but she ignored me and proceeded to use her freshly retrieved knife to stab the Raider’s dead body again, then again, then again. I gulped, trying to keep the bile from rising in my throat. I was getting disturbingly used to dead bodies but that didn’t mean I liked seeing one getting mutilated any further. Binge was smiling at me brightly, blood coating her face and knife.

“See? Easy! Pointy bit goes into fleshy bits! If you feel like a more slicey-dicey type then you can use the edge to cut. I recommend the throat for best results!”

“Binge, stop,” I said, going over to her and gently pushing her away from the body.

She gave me a hurt, almost filly-like look, “Trying to help you, bucky.”

“Not the kind of help I want,” I said as Arcaidia and Iron Wrought joined me and Binge near the foot of the stairs the Raiders had piled down earlier. I could still hear gunfire up there, presumably from the Raiders still firing on the caravan or whatever it was they were shooting at out there.

More distant I could hear the gunfire from the other building, and couldn’t pick out if any of those shots were coming from LIL-E and B.B. I just had to assume they were holding their own. It did occur to me I could use my Pip-Buck to call LIL-E and see how they were doing, but I didn’t want to distract them in the middle of a fight. However, I did notice an odd sound amid the gunfire over there. A series of wailings and hissing cries that certainly didn’t sound like they came from a pony.

“What is that?” I asked, distracted by the noise.

Iron Wrought had a sour look on his face. Well, more so than usual.

“Ghouls. Feral ghouls. That’s either very good, or very bad,” he said.

Considering that ghouls had been described to me as ravenous walking cadavers I wasn’t seeing the ‘very good’ part of that equation. At my look Iron Wrought rolled his eyes, “If its a wild pack then we might have to deal with them, but they’re just as likely to go for the Raiders. Either way, not our immediate problem. We still got this building to deal with.”

He was right, but that didn’t stop me from worrying about LIL-E and B.B. Dealing with Raiders was bad enough without throwing in cannibalistic corpses to the mix. Unfortunately my E.F.S wasn’t much help in determining how things were going over in the other building. There were too many red dots erratically moving about for me to make heads or tails of it. It was even hard to tell which dots were inside this building rather than the one next to us.

“Let’s make this quick, then,” I said, and peeked up the stairs. I didn’t see anypony up the flight, but it switched back at least once, meaning I wouldn’t be able to see the top until I went further up. Turning back to the others I said, “I’ll go first. Arcaidia, you got enough juice for a shield spell?”

She gave me a confident smile that said that, yes, of course she had magic to spare, and within seconds I was cloaked in a form fitting magic barrier. I wasn’t too badly injured so far, but the impacts from the shots I’d taken so far still hurt fiercely and reminded me I couldn’t afford to get cocky. I may have taken on tougher opponents than Raiders by now, but that didn’t mean they weren’t a threat to take seriously.

I felt a sense of urgency that made me want to rush the next floor but I forced myself to move with some stealth, creeping up the stairs. Arcaidia was right behind me, with Binge next to her, and Iron Wrought bringing up the rear. Coming around the switch in the stairs I saw it was partially collapsed, with a hoof wide hole in the steps. It was easily enough walked over, and beyond it I saw the next floor was actually mostly open to the air, with half the wall fallen away and exposing this second story to the outside. The gunfire was intense up there and I heard Raider’s voices.

“Get ‘im, get ‘im!”

“Hahaha! Lookit that one, he’s still twitching! Shoot him more!”

“That wagon’s got little ‘uns in it, so don’t blow it up you idiots! We want the foals alive!”

Foals? There were foals in that group getting attacked!? Well, there went my desire to take this slow and stealthy. I rushed up the last of the stairs, reaching with a hoof to bounce out a flash-bang grenade. With Gramzanber in my mouth I couldn’t pull the pin immediately, and while I consciously thought to just set the spear aside for a second, I found myself instinctively putting my back to the stairwell’s wall and grabbing the spear in the crook of my left foreleg. It balanced there in an oddly familiar and comfortable way as I pulled the grenade’s pin with my mouth. I only took a quick glance before throwing the grenade and grabbing Gramzanber back in my mouth again, not questioning the way I’d held it in my leg.

This second floor was actually mostly filled with collapsed debris from the third floor, a series of fallen concrete slabs making an awkward ramp to the third floor in the middle of the room. Torn down walls showed me this was probably once a dwelling for whoever had owned the store below, as I saw the metal springs of a long rotted bed in one room and the rusted away bits of a kitchen in another. What I really had eyes for, through, were eight or nine Raiders lining one wall, aiming weapons out the windows to fire down on the street below.

My grenade landed just behind the Raiders, and I ducked back down the stairs, grabbing up Gramzanber just as the flash-bang went off. My friends needed no explanation or urging, and they were right behind me as we surged up the stairs to catch the Raiders on the second floor completely off guard, dazed and disoriented from my grenade.

Arcaidia’s starblaster and Iron Wrought’s submachine gun fired, bullets and beam flying by me to drop two or three Raiders before they had time to react. I reached the first Raider in line just as he was turning a duct taped assault rifle towards me. One slice of Gramzanber cut the rifle in half, its barrel and front stock clattering to the floor. Another slice cut a gouge out of the Raider’s front leg that left him screaming on the floor. I didn’t think the wound was fatal, but I’d be shocked if the stallion remained a threat for long.

At that point the other Raiders had gotten their act together enough to start shooting back and I had to duck into another room, a bathroom by the look of the old toilet and tub. Plaster and concrete chips sprayed over me as the half blind Raiders fired randomly, bullets tearing through the walls with ease. I heard Iron Wrought grunt in pain but didn’t see if he’d gotten hit bad or not, and Arcaidia was swearing up a storm in her own language as I heard her magic buzz through the air, ice shards flying by my line of sight to be accompanied by the screams of Raiders.

Binge suddenly popped up from inside the tub. How had she gotten in there!? She just smiled at me and hopped out, tail wagging.

“This way, Longy!” she said as she rushed out of the room through a door opposite of the Raiders. I hesitated a second before following. A part of me wanted to just use Accelerator, rush the remaining Raiders, and end this. Having to ration the power was problematic. Still, I trusted Arcaidia to hold her own along with Iron Wrought while Binge and I got around to hit the Raider’s from the other side. At least I assumed that was what Binge was planning.

I scrambled after the bouncing form of Binge as we dodged between already half destroyed rooms with massive holes in the walls and floor, making scrambling through them like trying to navigate an obstacle course. It didn’t help that the Raiders weren’t bothering with details like aim, or being able to see where we were, to need to shoot. Their bullets were tearing through the weak walls and zipping by the open holes, leaving me with the feeling of dodging through a hornet’s nest. The cuts on my leg from the Raider who’d gone at me with a butcher’s cleaver hurt the worst as dust and dirt started to work their way into the cuts. I just isolated the pain as best I could, parking it in the back of my mind.

Binge and I came out into a small hall on the opposite side of the building, not far from the stretch of wall where the Raiders were still shooting wildly. A quick peek around the corner showed me that Arcaidia had erected an ice wall to use as cover as she traded shots with the Raiders. Iron Wrought was still using the stairwell for cover, using short, well aimed bursts to keep the Raiders off balance. The Raiders themselves had scrambled to use the various side rooms for cover, or in one or two cases the bodies of their already dead.

Then I saw one Raider mare, a huge, bulky butter yellow mare with a short, raggedly cut red mane who had a missile launcher mounted on her side. My eyes were wide, looking at that heavy weapon as the mare aimed it down the corridor at Arcaidia’s ice wall. I almost didn’t see that there was another pony riding on the back of this hulking mare, and my heart fell down to the pit of my stomach.

A foal. A little filly who couldn't have been into double digits yet in years was riding on the big Raider mare’s back, and there was no doubting the filly was a Raider herself. She had the same butter yellow coat as her obvious mother, with her own mousy brown mane done up in spikes.

“Boom mamma! Blow ‘em up! Blow up ‘em up! Yay!” the little filly cavorted about holding onto the big Raider’s neck.

“Ah shut it and hold on tight Blasting Cap!” the mare grunted and fired a missile off with a streak of smoke.

Arcaidia saw the missile coming and I saw my friend’s silver eyes narrow as her horn glowed fiercely, crests snapping into existence around her horn faster than the eye could follow. Ice extended from the wall like a rapidly growing fist, curving to fill the space between Arcaidia and the incoming missile, which impacted with the extending wall to explode in an echoing impact that shattered both ice and floor alike.

As if the explosion was a slap to my face I snapped out of my momentary stupor and got acting. Before I could really think about it I was charging towards the big mare with the filly, Blasting Cap. The filly was actually reaching into a sack on her mother’s other side to retrieve a fresh missile to load. I barely noticed the other Raiders shooting, some of them turning their guns towards me. The filly was just getting the missile loading into the launcher and the big mare was just barely turning her head to notice me before I barreled straight into them.

Huge or not the Raider mare was still knocked backwards into one of the partially destroyed rooms, slamming into an old, already mostly broken wardrobe. Blasting Cap yelped, falling off her mother’s back, and landing with a squeaking ‘oof!’ on the floor. My shoulder was numb from ramming into the big Raider, but I didn’t slow down as I aimed a slash of Gramzanber at the missile launcher, hoping to disable the dangerous weapon.

For her size the mare was quick on her hooves, however, and rolled aside of my slice, Gramzanber cutting a clean gouge in the floor. Gray eyes glared with rage at me as the mare reared up to her full height, which had about a full head over me.

“You wanna rumble little pissant!? Blasting Cap, get out of the way, I’m turning this fucker into paste!”

“Kill ‘im mamma!” Blasting Cap cried as the filly scrambled out the doorway with little legs moving in a blur.

I was left staring up at gigantic hooves as big around as my face that were smashing down towards me as the Raider brought down her two thick forelegs. I barely threw myself aside as they hit, splintering floorboards with their impact. I wheeled around, slashing at her hindlegs. Again she moved with surprising agility for a mare her size, turning what should have been a disabling blow into a mere flesh wound as Gramzanber’s edge cut through her hide but didn’t cut deep enough to render the leg useless. If the pain affected her at all she didn’t show it as a hammerblow of a uppercut flew at me and caught me square in the chest. The blow lifted me off the floor and slammed me into, and through the weak wall and left me sprawled on my back in the hallway beyond.

“... Ow...” I said, rolled aside of the mare’s following strike as she bounded through the hole I’d made through the wall.

“Quit scurryin’ around you little shit!” the mare roared, “Going to feed your testicles to my kid just so she knows what a weak sauce bitch tastes like!”

I blinked at her, “Seriously, what is wrong with you ponies?”

“Didn’t I tell you bucky!” cried Binge as she suddenly jumped the big mare from behind, “There’s nothing wrong with us! We’re just having fun!”

“The fuck!?” the big mare cried out as Binge started stabbing with one of her knives at the back of the mare’s neck. Unlike previous Raiders, however, this mare was made of sterner stuff and she started bucking and flailing, throwing off Binge before the mare could get a fatal blow in. Binge went flying down the hallway, bouncing a few times before she landed upside down against the bottom of the ruined concrete ramp to the third floor.

“Heheh,” Binge laughed, “That was cool! Again!”

“Fuck that, both of you are paste!” the mare growled, “Blasting Cap, come to mamma!”

“I”m here mamma!” cried the filly as she scrambled into view and waved her little hooves in the air, her mother lowering a hoof to lift the filly onto her back once more. Blasting Cap immediately went to finish reloading the missile launcher, which was now aimed at both me and Binge.

“You’ll kill yourself if you fire that right now, you nutjob!” I said as I charged her, “What are you doing, bringing your foal into something like this!?”

I once again tried to slash at the missile launcher itself, hoping to destroy the weapon. The mare backed up quickly, slapping with one hoof to try to push the spear aside. I had anticipated she might do that, and quickly reversed my swing, catching the mare’s leg just above the elbow. Gramzanber’s edge treated flesh like little more than thin paper and I heard the mare grunt as blood flowed from the deep gash I’d given her leg, but at the same time I saw a narrow eyed glint appeared in her eyes as she grinned at me maliciously.

“Pulling your blows a bit ain’t ya? Ha! You don’t wanna kill me, do ya, punk? What a dickless little pipsqueak!”

“Dickless, dickless, dickless,” Blasting Cap chanted, giggling.

I shook my head, my aggravation and fear blending together into a potent emotional cocktail. I was furious with this mare for bringing her foal into a battle, and moreso letting that foal participating in the bloodshed. And really, should I have been surprised? These were Raiders, the Wasteland’s equivalent of hoof fungus. Ugly, irritating, and the harder you try to get rid of them the worse they spread.

By this point even I had to start questioning why I cared so much about sparing their lives. It wasn’t as if they were doing anything with those lives other than deliberately try to discover new ways of being depraved and psychotic.

I wasn’t there yet, however, and I wanted to take this mare down without killing her if I could manage it. She was tougher, stronger, and actually a lot more skilled than other Raiders I’d encountered, but I had the advantage of reach with Gramzanber and the fact that she wasn’t able to use her missile launcher at such close quarters.

That, and I had Binge.

Binge literally bounced back from being tossed a dozen paces down the hall earlier and leaped to my side, throwing a knife pulled from her mane that went spinning end over end. The big yellow Raider ducked aside, taking a cut along her brow, and she growled, charging us both.

I braced myself, setting Gramzanber low against her charge, aiming to pierce through her legs. If I had to I’d cut the damn limbs off! The mare surprised both myself and Binge by actually leaping over us with a powerful jump that I never would have guessed somepony that size and carrying a big weapon like a missile launcher could pull off.

Blasting Cap actually gave a little squeal of joy at the jump, like she was having, well, a blast.

At the apex of her jump the mare also kicked out with her hind legs. Binge and I were both hit, through I rolled with the kick enough that I was just staggered into the wall, rather than laid out entirely. Binge skidded a few paces, but remained conscious as her eyes swirled about dizzily.

“Hey, get back here,” Binge said as she swayed to her hooves, “I’m gonna stabbity all... uh... all five of you! Whooo, floor is spinny...”

There was a sudden blast of cold and i saw the hallway ice over behind us, followed by a few flashes of star blaster beams zipping by. Arcaidia appeared around the corner, her horn blazing a brilliant cobalt blue as she continued to conjure an ice wall that extended in front of her, deflecting the storm of return fire that was coming from the other Raider’s down the other hall.

“Ren solva, you okay?” she asked, glancing at me briefly as she snapped another shot off around her barricade of ice.

I rubbed my nose, which I realized was dripping blood from the blow I’d taken a second ago, “Fine, fine! Bit busy with this mare here-”

I glanced around, confused. Where had the yellow Raider gone!? I’d lost track of her after she jumped over us. The side hallway was now empty except for me and Binge. No, wait, there she was! She’d run up the concrete ramp of rubble to the third, mostly open and skeletal story of the building. There was barely any floor up there, entire sections of it exposed to the second floor, with only a few criss-crossing sections of ruined concrete and rebar making up that third story.

The Raider mare with her little filly was using a load bearing pillar up there as cover as she leaned out and aimed her missile launcher down the ramp.

“Crapcrapcrap!” I scrambled to grab the still dizzy and dazed Binge and haul her back towards Arcaidia, “Missile!”

Arcaidia heard my warning and didn’t hesitate to cast another spell to extend her ice wall down the hallway towards Binge and me, leaving just enough room for me to push Binge ahead of me and for me to leap forward behind her. I heard the missile fire just as Arcaidia extended the ice wall across the whole hallway. Even then the impact shattered the ice and the explosion peppered my back with shrapnel. A combination of the shield spell and my armor kept the damage to a minimum, but my back was still in sharp pain from the force of the explosion.

I coughed, trying to get to my hooves, Binge wiggling beneath me.

“Mmm, I know you’re pent up, bucky, but now’s not the time,” she cooed, and I groaned as I realized our... positioning.

Before I could say anything I yelped as Arcaidia’s soft blue glow of magic enveloped both me and Binge, forcibly pulled us apart, and floated us back into the main hallway, tossing us behind her and the rest of her ice wall. Arcaidia looked at me with a look that was one part sharp, two parts worry, and a dash of amusement.

“Not many left. Does ren solva need rest break to play with stinky mare?” she asked as she tagged a Raider that’d poked his head a little too far out of one of the rooms further down the hall, her star blaster’s silvery beam disintegrating the poor stallion before he could get out half an agonized scream. I could see she was right, there weren’t many Raider’s left here. Two or three down the hall, plus the one with the missile launcher up top. That didn’t mean we could relax, through.

I shook my head, “No, I’m good to keep going. Where’s Iron Wrought?”

I didn’t see him anywhere, but then I heard a sudden burst of sub-machine gun fire from one of the rooms deeper in the building and another Raider staggered out of cover, her body jerking and twisting as bullets tore through her purple form. Apparently Iron Wrought had snuck off to flank the Raiders while I’d been busy tangling with the missile launcher mare and Arcaidia kept the attention of the main group of enemies.

“There,” said Arcaidia unnecessarily as she smiled thinly and peeked around cover. She ducked back as a few shotguns blasts chewed chunks out of her ice, and she took a moment to reload the charge on her star blaster with smooth, efficient movements.

In the meantime I was looking towards the concrete ramp between the second and third floor. The mare with the missile launcher hadn’t come down, and for a second I thought that was just because she didn’t want to risk charging our position due to Arcaidia’s star blaster... but it also occured to me that with so much of the second floor exposed to the third floor...

“Shit, Iron Wrought,” I said as I charged out of cover and went galloping down the hall, Arcaidia calling after me. I didn’t have time to explain my fears, through. Iron Wrought’s gunfire was loud and clear to hear, and that mean the mare with the missile launcher must have also heard it, and with her position on the third floor she could possibly spot him through the exposed flooring, and he might not see her coming until it was too late.

Fear lent speed to my legs, adrenaline pumping with white hot intensity. I didn’t think about the danger to me anymore, or worry about shortening my already shortened lifespan. A friend was in danger, so I had to do it. I used Accelerator again. The world turned sapphire blue, and sound dampened to odd echos. I could see the trail of a stray bullet fired by a Raider flying by Arcaidia’s ice barricade as I dove from cover and ran down the side hallway, ducking underneath the now slowly trailing rounds.

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, the loud thumping of the blood in my ears somehow louder now in the muted, slowed state I viewed the world. The broken ramp of fallen concrete debris was in front of me and I scrambled up it, hoping I’d be in time. The ramp led to a part of the third floor that was little more than a narrow strip of barely supported flooring, containing little more than half a broken desk and a shelf of books so old and rotted as to be hardly recognizable. The strip of floor led to a twisted half-formed bridge of metal sheets and rebar that led across a wide gap to another section of floor that ran along the north end of the building. It was on this strip of floor that the yellow Raider mare with her missile launcher was standing, her foal on her back.

I could see the Raider was aiming the missile launcher down at the second floor, where the roofless rooms down there were completely exposed to her. I could see, through a large gaping hole in one of the few walls down there that Iron Wrought was behind cover, shooting at the Raiders that were trapped in the crossfire between him and Arcaidia. His eyes were focused solely on his own targets and he hadn’t looked up to see the mare with the missile launcher aiming right at him. Even as I reached the top of the ramp and saw all this I could tell the Raider mare’s head was leaning down, mouth opening in preparation to bite down on the firing bit of her missile launcher.

Time was already slowed with Accelerator, and the adrenaline slowed things even more, but despite that I had almost no time to consider my options.

The last thing I wanted to do was kill this mare. Raider or not, her foal was right there, standing on her back. To kill a mother in front of her child... could I do it? To save a friend?

I desperately tried to think of another way, with the precious few seconds I had.

There was no way I’d be able to dash the distance across that narrow bridge of sheet metal to get to the mare and tackle her, even with Accelerator.

With the head-on angle I had on her I couldn’t target the firing bit itself. Gramzanber would go right through the mare anyway.

The missile launcher was also nearly impossible to target, as the mare’s bulk was angled just wrong so that the majority of the weapon was covered safe the very tip of the tube, which wouldn’t stop the missile from firing even if I did hit it.

Would a flash or smoke grenade work? No. Too much time to pull the pin, and the missile would fire before the grenade could go off to distract her.

I could try using my Grapple to distract her or grab a leg, tugging her off balance. But if I did that she’d still probably fire the missile, and even if I pulled her off balance, all that would do is slightly throw off the shot. If it were a gun that might have worked, but with a missile, she didn’t need to be dead on target. Even a near miss would still kill Iron Wrought.

Targeting any of her legs with Gramzanber ran into the same problem. The sudden loss of a limb would throw her off, surely, but she’d still probably fire, and the missile would still more than likely hit close enough to Iron Wrought to turn him into a red smear.

... I didn’t want to accept it. With every inch of my willpower I wanted to scream denial at the simple truth staring me in the face; if I didn’t kill this mare, she’d kill Iron Wrought.

The moment I’d dreaded had come. I was out of options.

And out of time. Her mouth was nearly on the firing bit. I had to act, or lose a friend I’d sworn to return to his family.

A numbness gripped me as I set my body in motion. My head turned, my body reared, such familiar motions that brought back the memories of hunting gecko with my tribesmates, with Trailblaze.

I prayed to the Ancestor Spirits for forgiveness as I let Gramzanber fly.

It happened faster than I thought it would with Accelerator going, and I was spared no detail of watching the silver spear sink into yellow pony flesh. My aim had been true, at least. I’d always been a good spear thrower.

I don’t think the Raider mare had time to even register pain as Gramzanber planted firmly in her chest, the unnaturally sharp edge going through ribcage and heart with the sickening ease. Blood poured, coating the spear’s silver edge.

The Raider mare stood there for a second, a faint, dumbfounded look of confusion on her face, mouth hovering over the firing bit for a second. Then she just... sort of sat down on her haunches, then her forelegs, so large and strong, slipped as well, and she fell full body to the floor. I saw her try to move her head to look back towards her filly, but in mid-motion her eyes just... went blank, and the head lolled to the floor, lifeless.

I deactivated Accelerator. I welcomed the pain of the backlash, not moving as I stared at my hoofwork.

“Mamma?”

Blasting Caps’ voice was no longer a loud, boisterous giggle, but a terrified whisper as the filly, still on her mother’s back, put her forehooves on her mother’s head and shook the dead mare. The filly’s eyes were wide pools of disbelief as I saw realization creep into them. Then the tears welled. Both mine and hers.

“No! Mamaa, no!” the little Raider filly wailed. Her cries were easy enough to hear, because the gunfire down below had ceased.

“Ren solva?” I heard Arcaidia shout from below, “All enemies down? What happening up there?”

I heard Iron Wrought’s voice next, “Shit, is that a foal I’m hearing?”

Before I could respond I felt a hoof on my shoulder, and Binge was next to me. For once the ex-Raider wasn’t smiling, but had a solemn look on her face as she looked at the crying Blasting Cap still trying to shake her dead mother awake. Binge didn’t say anything, just kept her hoof on my shoulder, firm, warm, and oddly comforting coming from a mare who spent the majority of her time creeping me out.

Arcaidia came up next, surveying the scene quickly. Her eyes had widened slightly at the sight of the dead Raider with Gramzanber still sticking out of her corpse and the wailing filly, but soon Arcaidia’s face was a cool mask of calm as she trotted up to my side opposite Binge.

“Longwalk,” she said, “Battle still going on in other building. We must move quickly.”

I blinked, barely registering what she’d said, but I found myself dumbly nodding, then looking towards Blasting Cap, “She’s...”

Arcaidia flicked her eyes towards the filly, “Will take care of. Prisoner. Like shivol bir. Decide what to do with later. Must move now.”

“The hell’s going on up there?” I heard Iron Wrought ask from down the ramp.

“I... yeah, we... we have to go help LIL-E and B.B,” I found myself saying, taking a step forward, “Let me get my... my spear.”

Arcaidia held me back with a hoof, and with her horn glowing brightly she gripped Gramzanber, the body of the dead Raider, and Blasting Cap. She pulled Gramzanber free easily as she floated filly and spear over towards us. Blasting Cap struggled in the magic, her sorrow suddenly replaced with furious rage.

“You fuckers! I”m swear I’m gonna kill you! You killed my mamma!”

Arcaidia’s eyes were hard as she used her magic to clamp the filly’s jaw shut, leaving the filly making unintelligible grunts and growls. Arcaidia turned her attention to Binge, “Shivol bir, take filly down to Ursa. Have rope, yes? Tie up prisoner. Be useful.”

Binge, her earlier solemness now gone as she gave a small smile, said “Okie doki loki! I’ll keep the little one tied up nice and tight so she doesn’t escape, spend the next ten to fifteen years in rigours training, and comes back to take bloody revenge on our Longy in an epic showdown.”

Arcaidia rolled her eyes at the other mare’s choice of words, but floated the filly over to Binge, who quickly put Blasting Cap in a rather complicated looking headlock and promptly dragged the filly away, trotting past a confused looking Iron Wrought as he joined us. He looked at the body of the dead Raider mare, and I watched him glance from the body, down to the spot where he’d been shooting it out with the other Raiders. I saw the comprehension in his eyes as he looked at me with a surprised look.

“Longwalk, did you...?”

“Yes,” I said, tone quiet.

Iron Wrought looked at a loss for words, but Arcaidia’s strong, musical voice cut through the silence, “Know feelings bad now, but work still to do. Longwalk, good to follow?”

I nodded and Arcaidia, bless her, didn’t question further. She trusted me at my word, and more to the point, was able to keep me focused on what still needed to be done. She would be the pillar I’d need until I could afford to break down somewhere. For now followed the blue filly from the stars who, at this moment, I felt was the strongest of all of us.

Iron Wrought returned to the Ursa alongside Binge. I couldn’t quite read his body language but I could tell something had changed in him from the second he’d seen that I’d killed the Raider who’d been so close to killing him. He gave me an unblinking look as Binge dragged Blasting Cap into the back of the Ursa, pulling some rope from one of the supply crates we’d gotten from Stable 104 to start tying the filly up.

“I’ll bring the Ursa around to the front,” he told me, “Be careful not to get shot by those we’re trying to save. They might mistake you for Raiders in the dark.”

He had a point. The night gave little light to work with. So far Arcaidia’s magic and my Pip-Buck had kept things illuminated enough to fight in, but now that we were about to leave the confines of the building and move out into the open it was more than possible that the ponies we’d come to save might shoot first before asking who or what was producing the light in the dark.

I tried my best to ignore the growls and half unintelligible curses that spewed from Blasting Cap as Binge tied the filly up and then gagged her. The smooth speed at which Binge worked suggested to me the mare had done this kind of thing before. Often.

I felt a hoof tap me and turned to see Arcaidia giving me a solid, supportive stare that still held an edge of hardness to it, “Come, ren solva. Still battle to fight.”

She was right, gunfire could still be heard from the neighboring building where LIL-E and B.B had gone. It was shorter, more sporadic than before, and now joined with unearthly moans and cries, some of which sparked a chill in me as I heard them. Some of those shrieking cries weren’t made by pony throats, and I didn’t think they were being made by ghouls either.

As much as my heart was unsettled, and as much as I just wanted to sit down somewhere and... deal with what I’d just done minutes ago, Arcaidia was right. There were still things I needed to do before I could let myself rest. I looked at Gramzanber’s silver edge, now coated red with blood. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them with a refreshed determination as I nodded at Arcaidia.

“Let’s go.”

Arcaidia and I left out the rather sizeable hole in the back of the building that the Ursa had made when bursting through. My Pip-Buck and Arcaidia’s horn created little fields of light around us, letting us make our way out into the open night. I saw flashes from muzzle fire in the building across the way, heard a scream that had to be a pony dying, and clenched my jaw tightly. Arcaidia let me take the lead as I surged forward.

The space between the two buildings provided some view of the area the Raider’s had been targeting, though I couldn’t make up much in the gloom. I saw what I thought were wagons, lining a wide boulevard between these building and a number of others across the street. I saw movement, and heard shouts and cries, not of pain, but of disorientation and attempts at organization. Whoever was in charge over there was taking advantage of the fact that they weren’t being shot at any longer.

However that did mean that whoever was over there that still had guns were now organized enough to shoot at anything that looked like a threat, like a pair of lights crossing between the two buildings that were supposedly still full or Raiders. Gunshots rang out and I felt a bullet or two zip by me.

“We’re not Raiders! We’re on your side!” I shouted, through my shouts were only greeted with more gunfire. Thankfully it wasn’t far between the two buildings and Arcaidia and I made it to the side of the building we were heading for quickly. There were no doors, but there was enough damage to the wall from time alone that we found a hole big enough to climb through.

Once we were inside the noise of the unnatural moans and screams were amplified, but was also joined by a smell. A smell I instantly recognized and felt a wash of disgust pass through me. That acidic, sour odor could only come from one thing.

“Balloons,” I said, and Arcaidia’s face screwed up in the same disgust I felt.

The moment I said it my word was confirmed by the sight of one of the horrific creatures floating around a corner of what looked like the bottom floor of an apartment or hotel of some kind. The melded together, distorted pony faces, with lifeless, milk white eyes, and the sickly orange and red tinted rubbery skin, all shaped into a faint floating ball, it was just as I remembered from my last encounter with these things, all the way back to my first meeting with Crossfire and the Labor Guild outside Saddlespring.

The Balloon had a pony in one of its many jaws, a Raider by the look of it, and the Balloon chewed on the flesh of the dead pony slowly as if it were savoring the blood that dripped from the corpse. One of its many faces spotted me and Arcaidia and it let out a piercing shriek. Arcaidia’s starblaster fired, the thin beam of silver light piercing the Balloon an instant later and charring the wretched thing into a black, lifeless mass.

I checked my E.F.S, seeing a mass of red dots. Where were my friends? It was hard to tell, but I thought I saw a glimpse of green somewhere amid the red, and the gunfire I heard was coming from a higher floor.

Wordlessly we moved forward. Neither Arcaidia or I needed to exchange words at this point. Left to ourselves we seemed to understand, now, how to fight together. From the struggles in Saddlespring, to the delve into Stable 104, to now, we’d gotten to know each other’s skills enough that when we fought, there was little need for hesitance or checking each other’s movements.

I went around the corner and Arcaidia was right there, just one step behind me to give me room to work. I took my anger, my disappointment in myself, the pain of what I’d done, and I channeled it into my movements. The next room was a reception area, little more than a place with broken down front doors, a few crumbled chairs, and a desk with a terminal on it tucked against one wall between two different sets of stairs.

Balloons, half a dozen of them, were here, chewing on bodies both Raiders and a number of dead ponies whose thin, emaciated corpses looked long dead and rotted, but were still twitching. I saw several of these corpse-like ponies still standing, hissing and moaning as they tried to reciprocate the Balloons’ attention by pawing and chewing on them. It was a sickening sight, moving corpses and deformed monsters, all ripping into each other over the still bleeding corpses of Raiders.

I felt my gorge rising at the sight and my nostrils burned with the combined smell of rot and wrongness, but I charged in regardless. Gramzanber bi-sected the first Balloon before it could react, the creatures foul smelling orange blood spraying across the floor. Arcaidia’s starblaster sent lances of light into one of the moving corpses, ghouls I realized, and the hissing creature turned to ash.

I was breathing hard, not so much tired as just letting my emotions out as I growled around Gramzanber’s shaft, rushing forward as a Balloon saw me, screamed in otherworldly hunger, and floated right at me. I sunk Gramzanber into the beast, even as its deformed faces snapped and bit at me, blunt, oversized teeth gnawing at my armor. I twisted the spear and sent the Balloon flying off the tip to slam into a wall with a wet, disgusting smack.

I heard a guttural hiss beside me and saw one of the ghouls charging my way, a stallion who was still wearing the tattered remains of some ancient uniform of blue, with a miraculously still intact patch that read ‘Detrot Police Department’. I turned to face the charging ghoul, but a gunshot sounded clearly in the small room and the ghoul tumbled to the ground with a neat bullet hole in his forehead.

I turned towards the sound of the gunshot to see B.B, a little bloody from a cut on her scalp, flying down one of the sets of stairs, one of her foreleg revolvers smoking. LIL-E was right behind the pegasus. Soon both pegasus and robot were blazing away into the limited space, and with Arcaidia still working her starblaster with cold, brutal efficiency I barely had time to ram Gramzanber into one more Balloon before the floor was clear of enemies.

I stood there amid the bodies, breathing hard, shaking, and wishing, against my own better judgment, that I still had... something to strike at. Some horrible monster I could attack without guilt. Any mindless creature that I didn’t have to feel any remorse or pain in removing from this world.

“Long? Ya alright there?” B.B asked me, wiping some blood from her face as Arcaidia trotted up to cast a healing spell on her.

I gulped, taking a deeper breath to try and steady myself, blinking several times as I stared at her, “Y...yeah... I’m... I’m fine. Are there more? Raiders.”

“No more hostiles above,” said LIL-E, “But my scanners are picking up more incoming that are probably more Balloons. Plenty of ghouls out there too. I think a ghoul wrangler called them in. But these were the last in the building. Everything I’m detecting is outside. I think we’re clear to get to the refugees outside.”

“Refugees?” Arcaidia asked as the light of her healing magic bathed B.B, who gave the unicorn a grateful nod.

“Yup, me an’ LIL-E got a’ good peek at ‘em. Whole bunch o’ ponies lookin’ ta me like refugees from local settlments. Not a lot o’ guards, but caught sight a’ one mare wearin’ a Skull Guild coat. Gotta be a ghoul wrangler, guessin’ by her lantern.”

I wasn’t quite clear on what she was talking about, but I supposed it didn’t matter until we got out there to talk with those ponies. Getting my breathing under control I wiped some of the blood off of Gramzanber and said, “They were shooting at us, but once we get the Ursa out there I think we can convince them we're not Raiders.”

“Yes, that’s not a vehicle Raiders would normally get their hooves on,” said LIL-E.

Leaving the building through the front doors of the reception room I could hear the wails of Balloons and moans of ghouls nearby, somewhere in the ruins to the south. It sounded like a full scale fight was taking place between dozens of the creatures. I’d burned through my anger to a degree, but a part of me still wished for something to hit. I shoved the feelings down for now. It left me shaking, still, but I felt in control again as we exited the building.

The Ursa was rolling out through the hole in the back of the other building and its lights and throaty engine growl were comforting as it pulled around and occupied the gap between the two buildings. Iron Wrought has his driver’s window rolled down slightly as he said, “Everypony still alive?”

“Alive, an’ kickin’ wit all o’ our limbs,” said B.B as she hovered to the top of the Ursa.

“Great,” he said, then he looked towards me, “Now what?”

I paused, not really used to Iron Wrought looking to me for the next move. I glanced down towards the street with the wagons, seeing movement in the shadows, but seeing no sign of further gunfire coming our way despite the obvious size and location of the Ursa. Perhaps they finally got that perhaps there was a new group in play, here? At the very least they had to notice there were no more Raiders shooting at them from the buildings.

“Let’s move forward slowly and introduce ourselves,” I said, my voice sounding tired, even to my own ears.

The Ursa rolled along on its six massive wheels, and I walked along next to it beside Arcaidia. B.B stood on the top of it, tense and waiting. Thankfully no more gunshots came our way, and before long the exterior lights of the Ursa were illuminating a depressing sight.

A caravan of about ten wagons was strung along the cracked remnants of an ancient street. Three of them were either blown on their sides, or blown apart and still burning, with blasted bodies littered around them. More bodies could be seen around the other wagons, some of them ponies with leather or metallic armor, clearly guards based off the fact that they were armed and facing the buildings the Raiders had been in when they’d died. Other bodies were of simple ponies, either clothless or in very plain garments that had clearly been fleeing the wagons when they’d been gunned down. My heart clenched when I saw a foal or two among the dead.

Still, for all that there were a couple of dozen dead ponies, there were many dozens more that were alive. Hard eyed guards were watching us warily as we approached, weapons aimed steadily at us. There were still at least twenty or so guards still standing, and as I watched I saw scores more ponies steadily and cautiously making their way back to the wagons from where they appeared to have taken cover behind a small ditch and railing beyond the wagons. There were still by my count around a hundred or so refugees, all of them dirty and scared looking as they emerged into the light cast by the Ursa.

I heard whispered talk, and the sound of crying and wailing as certain ponies found friends or family among the dead. I stood in front of the Ursa beside Arcaidia and waited. Soon enough two ponies slowly emerged from the line of guards. One was a rough looking orange earth pony stallion with a black, short mane and mustache, wearing a wide brimmed black hat and carrying a pair of rifles strapped to his sides via a battle saddle. His cutie mark was a pair of crossed rifles; not surprising. The other pony was a unicorn mare, and I blinked at her.

She was teal, at least where her hide was visible. Many patches of her body were naked of fur and was a bruised purple or sore red, as if she was half rotting. Her mane and tail were two toned red, and surprisingly vibrant despite being missing a patch here and there as well. And despite her seemingly necrotic form she wore a bright, relieved smile that complimented and lit up her bright green eyes. She wore a dark coat that covered most of her back, though not her flank, where I could note a cutie mark of a pillow. The back of the coat carried a white skull sigil. She carried in the soft green glow of her magic a metal pole, and from the curled top of it an iron lantern hung, swaying with each step she took. A strange, smokey blue light eliminated from the lantern, washing the area in a ghostly glow. Most odd of all, however, were her hind legs. Most of her flesh and blood back limbs were missing, as if they’d been torn away almost up to the haunches. Replacing those legs were brace-like affairs that housed solid metal spokes attached to wide, rubber wheels. The mare scooted along with surprising ease using her forelegs to pull herself along on her wheeled back legs.

“Alright,” said the orange stallion in a hard voice, “Who are you folks and what are you doing here?”

The teal mare laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, “Vigil, relax! They’re obviously decent ponies! What, you think the Raiders just got bored shooting, then decided to send out their cleanest members with a giant, cool autowagon to chat with us?”

The stallion, Vigil, groused, “Don’t mean we shouldn’t be careful, Knobs.”

The mare laughed again, looking at us with a smile still on her face that just seemed to be oddly infectious. I somehow felt... better, just looking at that smile.

“Don’t mind him,” she said, “He’s paid to be paranoid. Look, I’m Knobbly Knees, just Knobs to friends. I’m real grateful you folk showed up, assuming it was you who just made those Raiders reconsider their decision to blow us all to bits?”

I glanced at Arcaidia, who just gave me a small shrug and a smile, and I said, “That was us. We dealt with the Raiders as fast as we could.”

I looked again at the number of dead among the refugees and guards, “Wish we’d been faster.”

Knobs’ smile faltered for a second, but only in that it became somehow properly somber and respectful while still convey a wealth of gratitude, “Hey, help is help, no matter when it arrives. Without you guys showing up when you did we’d have lost even more ponies before this was over. I called in some ghouls, but I guess they got held up somehow.”

“Balloons,” B.B said, alighting from the top of the Ursa and landing beside the rest of us, “Ya got a bunch o’ them out there, tanglin’ wit yer ghouls. Don’t know how long that’ll last, so we might wanna git movin’ and swap stories once we’re safer down the road.”

Knobs’ eyes widened for a brief second before her smile set into a more concerned look, “Balloons? Not my favorite thing in the Skull City Wastes to deal with. Yup, moving sounds good. Vigil, I’ll clear the path ahead, you can get everypony ready to split in a few minutes?”

Vigil gave a hard sigh and looked back at the destroyed wagons, ones that had more than likely been destroyed by the Raider mare who’d had the missile launcher. Some of the refugees were carefully picking through the debris, either looking for personal effects or to identify the fallen.

“I can get them going,” he said, sourly, “Give us five minutes, I’ll get them ready.”

He glanced at us, “What about the lot of you?”

“We’re heading for Skull City,” I said, putting all my sincerity into my voice, “We’ll be more than happy to help guard these ponies on the way there, assuming that’s where you’re heading?”

“We are,” said Knobs, her smiling brightening once more, “And we’ll be glad for the extra escort. If you want pull your fancy wagon up front and you can clear the way forward with me. Sound good?”

“Works for me,” I said, glancing at my companions to see if they had anything to weigh in with.

“If its all the same to you I’ll take up rear guard,” said LIL-E, “I don’t want anything sneaking up on us.”

“Good idea. Those Balloons and ghouls still fighting?” I asked.

“For now, but I think the Balloons are winning. We don’t have long,” said the robot.

“Hate to be ‘that pony’,” said Iron Wrought, looking at me with a small, worried frown, “But what are we going to do about our prisoner?”

“Prisoner?” Vigil said, eyes narrowing, “You ponies took a Raider prisoner?”

B.B gave Iron Wrought a confused look, then me, “Long?”

I breathed deeply, lowering my head, my ears falling flat as I said, “It’s hard to explain. There was a foal with the Raiders. I... her mother’s dead, and we couldn't just leave the filly there.”

Vigil growled, “Filly or not, a Raider’s a Raider. You ought to-”

“Vigil,” Knobs cut him off, her face turning stiff as her eyes bored into him, “Please don’t finish that sentence. Look, uh, Long, is it?”

“Longwalk,” I said.

“Longwalk, then. If you’re worried about having to figure out what to do with this filly, then just hold onto her for a bit. Once we’re in Skull City I might be able to help you with her. Okay?”

I looked at her, not entirely sure what to think. I knew from her strange appearance that this Knobs mare had to be a ghoul, but one who was apparently one of the kind that could control herself. She seemed friendly enough, but could I trust her to take care of a Raider filly? Or at least help me take care of one? Perhaps it was that bright, honest smile that got me trusting her, but I found that I did and I nodded.

“Alright. So, we should be going, then?”

Knobs glanced sidelong at Vigil, who met the ghoul mare’s eyes with a steady look that gradually cracked under her continued stare and he said, “Fine! Fine! If the little hellion causes any trouble she’s your damned baggage then!”

He turned with an annoyed flick of his tail and went back to his guards, getting them organized to in turn organize the refugees back into a proper marching order. Knobs turned back towards me, and said something that caught me completely off guard.

“You look horrible. Rough night, I guess. Dont’ worry, it’ll all be okay.”

With that she trotted off, or rather wheeled off, leaving me with the memory of her comforting smile as she went to her own rather large, dark wood wagon that was headed by a, of all things, a two headed equine being that was much larger and thicker than a pony. A brahmin, I would later learn, but for now I barely noticed the two headed cow because I was just struck by Knobs’ simple words.

Because for some reason, despite the way the night had gone, and the terrible thing I’d done that I had yet to fully deal with, I found I kind of believed what she said.

I was understandably in need of some time to sort my thoughts. Once the caravan of refugees got moving things became drastically quiet compared to the madness of battle, and the Ursa rolled along at the head of the group alongside Knobs’ wagon. I soon learned that by ‘clearing a path’ that Knobs largely meant helping move debris that might have blocked the road.

“Shouldn’t this road already be clear?” I asked while I helped haul a collapsed street lamp off the road.

“We’re taking a route to Skull City that isn’t commonly used,” said Knobs from the seat of her wagon, her eyes keenly alert as she examined the surrounding ruins in the pre-dawn gloom, “I was hoping it might reduce the chance we’d get attacked if we weren’t using one of the main roads. Guess I was wrong.”

“Nice yer helpin’ these folks git outta the way o’ the fightin’,” said B.B, who’d been helping me with the street lamp. We tossed the old rusted pole down and returned to the head of the caravan as it got moving again, walking alongside Knobs’ wagon. Well, I walked, B.B flew.

Knobs smiled sheepishly, “Just made sense to. I was doing my normal rounds when this Raider army marched in on us, so what was I going to do? Leave hundreds of ponies to flee their settlements without lifting a hoof to help? I’m a ghoul wrangler; it’s my job to keep the roads safe! I mean, sure, normally that just applies to controlling the ferals, but I’m not going to split hairs when it comes to Raiders threatening peaceful ponies.”

I glanced at her lantern, which still held a blue glowing flame inside it, “What’s that?”

“Tool of the trade,” she said, “Helps me control the feral ghouls. Can’t tell you how; Guild secrets and all that.”

B.B floated down to me, putting a hoof to the side of her mouth conspiratorially as she whispered, “Pretty lookin’ lights an’ incense. Nothin’ too fancy.”

Knobs laughed, “Hey! Its way more complicated than that! There’s alchemy and spells and other things. But... yeah, its not that complicated. Skull Guild just likes us to make it look complicated. I’m surprised they don’t make it mandatory to do a little song and dance.”

I laughed, through it was small and only half formed. The simple conversation helped me get my jumbled thoughts in order. I couldn’t help but glance back at the Ursa that rolled along behind us. I could see Iron Wrought at the wheel, one eye on the road, the other on the dashboard, probably keeping a lookout on the radar for danger. I knew LIL-E would be keeping a similar lookout at the rear of the caravan and could contact me via my Pip-Buck in an instant if more Raiders or monsters showed up.

My mind’s eye imagined the interior of the Ursa. I’d been riding in there for a little while, mostly at Arcaidia’s insistence that I rest and let her perform a healing spell on me after B.B could check my injuries. I knew Binge was in there working on her knife whip which she recovered before we left. I could imagine the mare rearranging the knives on the length of barbed and razor wire, trying to optimize the distribution of weight, making little mutters to herself. I could also imagine Arcaidia quietly relaxing on one of the bunks, keeping watch on our prisoner.

The last I saw of the Raider filly Blasting Cap before I came out here to walk and help with clearing the road was that she’d cried herself into a fitful sleep.

“Ya look pretty gosh darn beaten’ when yer feelin’ down, Long,” said B.B, landing next to me to trot by my side, violet eyes tight with concern, “Anythin’ I can do ta help? Got two keen ears ready ta listen.”

I offered her a wan smile, trying to hold my head a little higher and perk my ears up, because I realized I’d started to walk along with my ears flat and head hung like some drained spectre. I glanced briefly towards Knobs, who seemed focused on the road, but I found I didn’t mind if she heard us. The ghoul mare had an open way about her that left me comfortable with her about, despite having just met.

“Not sure what I can say,” I told B.B, being completely truthful. I honestly had no clue how to even begin to talk about what had happened during the fight. My own heart and mind were still digesting it all. Numb and cold was a good way to put it, like there was a stone wall trying to hold back all the emotions, because if that wall cracked and everything came out I’d just turn into a bawling mess then and there. I just kept putting one hoof in front of the other because it was something to focus on.

“That’s fine. I ain’t sure what went down, but it’s plain as daylight ta me that somethin’ happened that’s eatin’ at ya. An’... well, I could smell the blood on yer spear. Then there’s that filly we got tied up. Kinda puttin’ two an’ two together.”

I was silent for a time. Not sure how long. Eventually my mouth just started working, words coming out without a lot of thought. I just spoke, without giving myself time to second guess myself or self-edit.

“It was the mother. She had a missile launcher and was going to kill Iron Wrought. I tried to think of another way. I couldn’t. Nothing looked like it would work. So I... I decided. It wasn’t like with Director Twinkle. That was instinct. This was choice. I choose to kill a filly’s mother in front of her...”

My voice turned quiet and I felt a keen sense of shame as I tried to wipe at the wetness in my eyes, “Sorry, B.B. I don’t know what to think, or say, or... anything.”

B.B didn’t respond immediately save to put a wing on my withers as she walked alongside me. Her eyes flicked ahead for a second, looking away in thought before she turned them back towards me, “Then just let it sort fer a spell, Long. Ya don’t gotta figure it all out at once. All I can tell ya right now is that ya did right by Iron Wrought an’ by these folks.”

She gestured back at the caravan and its many ponies who walked along, many of them trudging with heads determinedly pointed forward, many with foals riding on their backs while others carried sacks of belongings, perhaps all they had left in the world. I looked at them, and then back at B.B who held my gaze with hers.

“Whatever ya might be thinkin’ or feelin’ ‘bout yerself right now, ya helped them folk git outta that fight alive. Ya said this mare had a’ missile launcher? Well, lot o’ the dead out there were from that weapon. Don’t feel fer a’ moment that ya didn’t do right, back there. An’ Iron Wrought, ya couldn’t let him die.”

“You’re right. I know you are. I’m not going to break down or anything,” I paused, then gave a very self deprecating laugh, “Okay, I’ll probably break down when there’s nopony around to watch. But I won’t let this distract me from what we’re doing. There’s just a lot for me to sort out. No matter what I want to make sure that filly will be alright. Then... I don’t know.”

Thoughts of Binge and the dream I’d had that showed me her hometown and its end came to me. Binge had lost her mother in an all too similar manner to how I’d killed Blasting Cap’s mother. I made me wonder all the more why it had happened. What had sent that little gray mare on that rampage? Had it been to save lives?

Did the motivation to save lives really justify the action of taking lives? Where did the line between right and wrong exist in situations like that? Was it always just going to be a choice between one wrong thing and and even more wrong thing?

These questions felt too large for a pony like me to find an answer to, but I wanted to. I wanted to find that answer. I remembered telling Moa Gault that I wouldn’t kill for vengeance, and avoid it as much as I could, by finding a truth other than the need to kill in order to protect.

If anything today had taught me just how hard and long a road that was going to be walk.

Looking at B.B, and knowing my friends were behind me, ready to help, I at least knew I wouldn’t be walking that road by myself.

Knobs remained quiet up until now, her face drawn into a kind, soft look that was at odds with the rotted parts of her face, “If you don’t mind my butting in, I can give you my word I’ll make sure that filly is taken care of. The Skull Guild has a pretty flexible apprenticeship program.”

Looking up at her I tilted my head, “Apprenticeship?”

“Mmmhmm. She could apprentice in the Skull Guild. I know plenty of wranglers who’d be willing to take her for teaching. I’ll do it myself if nopony else will.”

“That’s generous o’ ya,” said B.B, “Just be careful. Raider filly like that is gonna be a hoof full ta keep in line.”

Knobs just smiled, “I can be patient. Besides, I like foals, and... well,” a small brief look of sadness cross her features, “Its not like I can have any of my own.”

“If yer serious, then ya got my thanks an’ respect,” said B.B, “Speakin’ from a bit o’ my own experience, be right careful wit her. Don’t let her near nothin’ close ta a weapon an’ best ta sleep wit one eye open, iffin yer set on takin’ care o’ her yerself.”

“Grew up in the Outskirts,” said Knobs with a quiet chuckle, “I’m not about to take a Raider lightly, filly or not.”

“Thank you,” I told her sincerely, “I owe you one.”

“Think nothing of it,” Knobs said, and with a small flick of her eyes towards my spear she said, “Also, just going to say before we get to the city, you might want to hide that thing.”

I blinked, then nearly slapped my forehead. I’d totally forgotten about hiding Gramzanber once we got to the city! I wondered if anypony in the caravan had remembered the bounty that was on my head. Maybe they were all too busy focusing on survival to really care?

“Thanks,” I said again, “So, uh, you heard about me?”

“Well, I listen to the radio a lot,” said Knobs, “Got a good friend in the Radio Guild. Not too many ponies focus on the bounty segments, so you’re probably good, even with a weapon as distinctive as that to mark you by. And if you’re having a personal crisis over killing a Raider, well, I can’t imagine you killed any ponies in Saddlespring, Labor Guild or otherwise, like the bounty says you did.”

B.B nodded firmly, “Long didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I’m from Saddlespring and saw the whole thing.”

“I won’t pester you for details,” said Knobs with a wink, “But if you don’t mind my asking why are you going to Skull City at all if you know about your bounty? Seems to me you’d want to get as far from the city as possible.”

“It’s... kind of a long story,” I said.

Knobs’ smile didn’t falter, “It’s hours still to the Outskirts of the city. I’m all ears.”

I exchanged a look with B.B and she gave me a shrug, indicating this was my call. I glanced back at Knobs. I figured there was no harm in giving her the abridged version of the story. I didn’t want to go into too many details, honestly, but I could cover the basics for her. I’d skim over the non-critical stuff. Not like she needed to know the name of everypony I met during my travels.

So as the dark of night started to turn into the dim gray shades of early morning I told Knobs of my travels, and in so doing found myself able to push onward past the doubts and regrets pressing against me. My troubles were still with me, and I’d be facing them alongside whatever the next day was about to bring, but at least for now I had the determination to keep walking. Determination, and the hope that by continuing to move forward I could do better tomorrow than I did today.

Sometimes that’s the best we can manage.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added: Counter Canter - There’s just something about getting shot at on a daily basis that teaches the importance of the ancient arts of duck and cover, bob and weave, and even zig and zag. As a result opponents suffer a -5% chance to hit you in combat. You also have an increased chance to not trip while dancing. You also now know how to walk like an elegant mare who uses weapons with her dress and not risk ruining it.

Author's Note

*whew* Tough chapter, this one. Mostly in just deciding two critical parts of it 1) How to present the dream with Binge's origins, as it ties into such an important event in FoE cannon that i wanted to make sure I got the feeling of the scene done right, but from the perspective of someone who had no idea what was going on, and 2) How to go about Longwalk's situation with fighting the Raiders and how to show the desperation of his choice without either going over the top or making it not believable. Hopefully I managed that, but I guess that's up to you readers to decide.

Another delaying factor of this chapter was that I was also writing a story for the Operation Cauterize FoE Group Collab. Tart Hunt, to be specific. I'm pretty happy with that story and how it turned out, so if you're interested feel free to pop on over there and let me know what you guys think.

As always the most heartfelt thanks to KKat for the creation of this wonderful world to play around in, and to my pre-readers Doomande and refferee who both help me more than I can say in keeping the errors to a minimum.

Speaking of Doomande he has requested a note of his own be put here:

"Hey, pre-reader Doomande here. I know that Vex normally are the only one making this author note, but this time do I have a little thing to say. This chapter have been ready for over a week when this gets posted, me not pre-reading it keeping it up. Because of health matters have I not been able to pre-read the story before now, so I do hope that you all can forgive my health in coming between you and your new chapter."

This is thatguyvex again, and personally I just want to say that I think Doomande is too hard on himself, but I respect his wish to put this note here. So *hugs* don't feel bad Doomande, I've said it before, and I'll say it a hundred times more, your help is appreciated beyond what words can convey my friend. :twilightsmile:

Chapter 21: Skull City

Chapter 21: Skull City

I had no idea what to expect from a place named Skull City. Even looking at it I still couldn’t decide what to expect from the sprawl of metal, rust, and bone that spread before me like a fungal mass. Buildings constructed of raw gray and rusted red sheet metal and dull brown mud brick flowed together in their countless dozens with no set pattern or uniformity to them. For nearly a mile in any direction the expansive shanty town that Knobs told me was called the ‘Outskirts’ encircled the center of Skull City as if it were a hungry ooze seeking to enclose and devour a victim. That 'victim’ was a massive wall, a gigantic edifice of concrete, welded metal, and in places stacks of fused ancient autowagons. Atop this wall were the squat gray concrete forms of bunkers and the bristling nests of weapon emplacements, though the city was still too distant for me to make out the guards who no doubt patrolled that wall. Beyond the wall itself I could see gleaming glass and steel towers, three of them close together near the center soaring above the others until their tops became charred, skeletal frames; save for the center whose burned top held a set of glowing pyres of flame that looked for all the world like the grinning face of a skull.

The bone motif had begun well before we’d gotten to this vantage point of the city, however. An hour ago the street my friends and I were following along with the refugee caravan had become more solid, in better repair, and yet had been part of among the more disturbing sights of my sojourn into the Wasteland thus far. For lining this well maintained road were bones. So many bones that I couldn’t fathom how many ponies they had belonged to. Not hundreds. Not even thousands. More than that, and my mind went numb at the thought. The bones, many charred gray or black, a few duller yellows and a few bleached white, were arranged in numerous ways along the road. First and foremost was the fence. Both sides of the road were lined with a fence of bones. Along that fence were posts. These posts bore complete skeletons in places, others with only skulls, but all had signs of sheet metal. These signs bore messages of services offered in the Outskirts; shops, taverns, inns, all boasting their prices and wares. To my shock more than few of these signs had working lights to keep them illuminated, and a few signs looked like salvaged and repaired neon signs.

It baffled me. This was horrific, yet to the refugees and Knobs herself this had all seemed normal. At my look Knobs had given me a wan smile.

“Kinda weird I know,” she’d said, the ghoulish mare’s eyes twinkling a bit as her cheerful tone didn’t waver, “But waste not want not, right? It’s kind of a traditional decoration in our city, because, well, there are a lot of bones and all...”

“I, um,” I gulped, unable to shake a queasy feeling at the sights around me, “I don’t think I get it. Why are there so many anyway?”

“Well, Detrot had a population of around two or three million when the balefire bombs hit,” said Knobs, her leathery ears drooping slightly, “A bunch in the downtown area survived because corporate big-wigs had paid for a powerful defensive shield to keep the center of the city safe. Well, safe-ish. But that left a lot of ponies on the outside of that barrier to either burn, or drop from the magic radiation. You see, the balefire that hit this area was an air-burst variety. Burned slower, spread the radiation to a wider area. Most ponies trapped outside died from the radiation. That’s where all the bones come from. Radiation preserves the bones. Weird necromantic magic. That’s also why Detrot boasts the most ghouls out of any area in the wide Wasteland.”

She sounded almost proud of that, oddly so to my ears but I just found myself shaking my head, “It’s hard to believe any of us survived long enough to have descendants from back then.”

“Ponies are tough. Some folk were far enough out of the center to get to relative safety. Guessing that’s where all the tribes in the mountains like yours came from. Others had shelters in their homes. It’s not like Equestria didn’t know about megaspells before they got dropped; that’s what the Stables were all about, right? Anyway, life goes on and all that. Ponies drift in from other places, survivors survive, have foals, and they survive and have more foals. Doesn’t matter how many of us get killed off, ponies keep going. Kind of encouraging, but also sad if you think about it.”

I supposed it was. I’d seen plenty of ponies struggling to survive in the world we’d inherited from the past and while I’d met some that I wouldn’t say were surviving the right way, there was a certain strange kind of hope that burned inside me as I realized that despite all that’d happened to ponykind we were still around and kicking. As long as we were doing that, there was a reason to keep fighting to make the world better, right?

Still, at the moment I was daunted. We had crested a small hill and were going down it towards the very edge of the Outskirts. Knobs was driving her wagon in the lead, the ghoulish two headed bovine creature pulling it following Knobs’ directions with quiet mindlessness. Behind us was the shining steel form of the Ursa A.T.W, and behind that the long line of refugee ponies and their wagons. I’d learned that the refugees came from numerous settlements that’d been in the path of the Raiders advancing army, Knobs and Vigil being volunteers working to bring such groups into the city safely past the lines of fighting between Skull City’s army and the Raiders. I hadn’t asked too many questions, just enough to know that the Raider army had begun its attack less than a week ago, and was being met by a combination of gang fighters from the Outskirts and a force of soldiers from Skull City’s ‘Inner City’ consisting of members of various Guilds, but mostly the Labor Guild’s Volunteer Enforcer Corps, the regular Enforcer Guild, and hired guns from the Drifter’s Guild.

Attacks like this were not unheard of, but according to Knobs the last time this many Raiders had gotten together to make this kind of go at the city had been before she’d been born.

That was part of why I felt daunted, knowing such a large battle was happening so close by and there was little I could do to help. The other part was the city itself and the enormity of my task here. I had to find some way to secure passage for myself, my friends, and Arcaidia to the NCR, and also find clues about Odessa and where they might be keeping my tribe. The only way to do that was to somehow get in good with the more prominent Guilds of this city, but just looking at the sheer size of the place I wondered just how I was even going to start.

As it turned out my friends knew exactly what needed to happen first. Much to my dismay.

“Looooongwaaalk,” called Binge’s sickly sweet voice from one of the open windows on the side of the Ursa, “It’s time!”

I felt a small shiver run down my spine. I knew exactly what she was talking about, and was hoping perhaps if I just ignored her she might go away. Unfortunately she was not alone.

“Ren solva, tu tiva shae vos! Get self in here,” Arcaidia said, sticking her head out the passenger side door of the Ursa. She was soon joined by B.B, whose head stuck out over that of the unicorn filly’s. Both were wearing amused grins.

“C’mon Long, ain’t no point pretendin’ ya can’t hear us. Sooner ya git yerself inside the sooner it’ll all be over.”

I kept stiffly walking alongside Knobs’ wagon, knowing my fate was sealed, but wanting to defy destiny for just a moment or two longer. Knobs, some of the muscles exposed on her partially decomposed face twitching as she gave me a bemused look, asked, “What’s that all about?”

I grimaced, letting out a deep sigh from the bottom of my heart, “Remember from my story how I kinda sorta got a bounty on my head from the Labor Guild?”

“Yup. And no worries, I ain’t turning you in. I know you’re not responsible for what the Labor Guild says you are,” Knobs said with a firm nod. I believed her. I’d been willing to trust her to a surprising degree since meeting Knobs only hours ago. I wasn’t at all certain why. It was as if I’d simply met a kindred soul, recognizing a simple, plain goodness about the ghoul mare that told me I had nothing to fear from her. If I was wrong, well... then I was wrong. I’d deal with that if it happened. I didn’t think it would, though, and smiled with a expression of self pity as I explained my friends plan to disguise me.

Knobs cackle-snorted. It almost hurt my feelings.

“Oh, oh I got to see this,” she said, making a shooing gesture at me back towards the Ursa, “Go on, don’t keep your friends waiting. I’m looking forward to meeting Miss Longwalk.”

I sighed again, hanging my head in defeat, “While I’m in disguise the name I’m going with is Blueberry.”

This earned another round of laughter. By the time Knobs got herself under control I was already on my way back to the Ursa. It was still moving, but at a slow enough pace to keep behind Knobs’ wagon and not outpace the rather slow refugees. Not many of them had really gotten much of a look at me, and I’d packed away Gramzanber inside the Ursa not long after the fight with the Raiders, so I didn’t think many of them would quickly or easily put two and two together if any of the refugees heard about my bounty. I intended to stay inside the Ursa for the most part anyway, until we were well into the city.

“Hey Longwalk,” Knobs called before I climbed into the passenger side door of the Ursa. I looked back at her.

“If you want, have your big autowagon follow me. I need to take care of a bit of business, but I’ll be heading to my place near the Wall afterward, and you’re all welcome to stay for a bit. I’ll make lunch. Help you find your bearings. Besides, you got to drop off that foal with me anyway, right?”

I nodded, wincing slightly at being reminded of the Raider foal, Blasting Cap. I’d managed to put the recent fight out of my mind for most of the walk to Skull City, but as I entered the Ursa the memory came crashing back with full force. I gulped, swallowing a well of conflicting emotions. I tried very hard to remind myself I had done the only thing I could under the circumstances. I’d given Blasting Cap’s mother every chance I’d been able to. I’d just... run out of options.

I still felt like the lowest form of life as I entered and caught a glimpse into the passenger compartment where Blasting Cap was still sleeping, tied up one of the compartment’s bottom bunks.

However my funk was only allowed to last as long as it took for my friends to grab me like a hungry pack of geckos and pull me to the front of the passenger space. Iron Wrought, still driving, gave me a slightly sympathetic look as I was dragged by, and I managed to say, “Follow the ghoul.”

He nodded, mouthing the words ‘good luck’. Then I was completely in the hooves of the female side of my little band of companions. Well, except for LIL-E. She, or rather her eyebot, was currently in ‘sleep mode’ it seemed, laying in one corner of the passenger compartment while the other mares dragged me back there to get to work on my disguise.

Arcaidia kept a critical, level head during the procedure, reigning in the other two when they got out of hoof and keeping them focused on making my disguise practical but presentable. I didn’t miss the slight, satisfied smirks that occasionally appeared on the unicorn filly’s angled features even as she tried to maintain an aura of cool professionalism.

B.B showed a surprisingly amount of exuberance for the task at hoof, displaying a feminine side that contrasted sharply with my normal mental image of her. She certainly seemed to immensely enjoy picking out which dress I was going to wear; which it turned out was a sharp, frilly green number with a long back train and little white lace at the cuffs, and oddly puffy affairs at the shoulders. Also a rather low v-neck front that left some of my chest fur hanging out. B.B told me it’d add the right touch of ‘tombuck’ to my get up. I required clarification for what a ‘tombuck’ even was.

Then there was Binge, who insisted on being in charge of the makeup. Where they got makeup I could only guess at. Probably Stable 104. I made a mental note to talk to Misty Glasses about what she let my friends take from the Stable. Or at least confirm what it’d be for. I said no to the cherry red lipstick. I said no to the blue eyeshadow. I said no to the cheek powder. Binge thought all of my ‘no’s were extremely funny and promptly ignored them. I resigned myself to being made a, and I quote ‘pretty pretty princess’.

All three of them conspired upon my mane and tail, each working a different part to comb and braid. Once again all attempts on my part to protest were met with futility. My handsome, wild mane was converted like the rest of me. My magnificent unruly tail was beaten into submission by a barrage of combs.

After about half an hour it was over and I was allowed to look at the results of my friend’s hard work in a small mirror above the sink. The pony looking back at me could have been my twin sister. I was still me. If I looked hard enough. Yet I couldn’t deny that, with most of my muscled frame put behind a well cut dress, and my mane and tail put into several fine braids and the rest combed smooth, combined with well applied make up... I made a halfway decent mare.

I had no idea how to feel about that, but at least the disguise would work. Anypony looking for Longwalk the Wasteland wanderer with his giant silver spear wouldn’t look twice at the mare I saw in the mirror. I felt a tad more vulnerable without my Stable issue security armor on, but I still had my Pip-Buck strapped to my right foreleg, the dress pulled back enough to keep it exposed, and my saddlebags fit snugly alongside the cello case containing my ARM.

“An’ ta complete the look,” said B.B, who hefted the large black cello case she’d shown me in Stable 104, “Yer luggage, Miss Blueberry.”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the case with my mouth. It was heavy, indicating Gramzanber was already inside. After a moment I noticed the long black strap I could use to sling the case over my shoulder and did so, taking a second to adjust it so it rested comfortably enough on my back. I looked at the three mares who stood around me with an air of faint indignation and tried my best to affect a lighter, more feminine tone.

“Well, at least Trailblaze or Whetstone aren't here to see this.”

Arcaidia shrugged her dainty shoulders, looking at me with a critical eye, “Is good hiding. No eyes think you male, so no think you Longwalk.”

“That is the point a’ doin’ this, Long, so don’t fret ‘bout it none,” said B.B, her purple eyes winking at me, “An’ iffin’ any stallions give ya trouble, well ya just call in yer sisters ta set ‘em straight!”

Binge let out a high pitched titter, “If they want our bucky when he looks like this then they’re already straight.”

“Ha ha,” I said, “Now that I’ve left the last scraps of my dignity by the side of the road I think I’ll go up front and see what there is to see of this city.”

I went to the driver’s compartment, B.B and Arcaidia following me, but Binge remained behind. I glanced back at her and she smiled wide yellow teeth at me, though the expression held a hint of actual seriousness behind it as Binge nodded back towards Blasting Cap, “I’ll keep eyes on the tiny one. No stabby fun for either of us, promise.”^_^

I nodded, a little surprised that Binge seemed to be taking the matter with a serious attitude, but then thinking back to my most recent look into Binge’s past I realized that maybe Binge had more in common with Blasting Cap than ties to Raiders. They’d both lost their mothers before their very eyes. Perhaps it made sense that, as random and potentially violent as Binge seemed at times, she might have a soft spot for a filly who was in the same situation she’d been in once.

Taking a seat next to Iron Wrought I looked out the window to see that in the past half hour we’d gone the last of the distance and were approaching the Skull City Outskirts. Unlike Saddlespring there was no gate to mark the entrance to the city. One moment we were rolling along the street past ruins and bones, and then we were surrounded by metal shacks and a multitude of ponies. The street actually broadened somewhat, becoming hard packed mud, and to either side I saw the dense thicket of countless makeshift buildings. Many had walls of bricks or well preserved sheet metal, and looking at some of it I realized that there was no chance all of this was salvaged from the pre-war era. Some of it looked recently made. Iron Wrought must have seen my look of awe mixed with confusion.

“You’re looking at the Smiths Guild’s hoofwork out there. Lot of reforged metal and raw iron forged out of still functioning metal works in the Inner City.”

“Where do they get the metal, though?” I asked, knowing next to nothing about how such things were made. My tribe had only ever used leather or wood from the still intact forests of the mountains. Saddlespring had been my first time seeing metal being used in construction, and I’d simply assumed all of it had been scavenged from the time before the Great Fires.

“Mines, mostly,” said Iron Wrought, blowing out a sigh as if he had no taste for the discussion, “You remember I work for the Labor Guild, right? What do you think the Labor Guild sends its slaves to do? There are mines in the east mountains, and in quarries to the north. Lot of Labor Guild resources sunk into keeping those mines operational and trading the metals to the Guilds that work with it. Mechanics Guild and Smiths Guild both, not to mention the Sewer Guild needs plenty of metal for piping to keep the sewer system intact.”

My heart sank slightly as I remembered Shale’s story, how she’d told me of her time forced to work in a mining quarry. I wondered just how many ponies were ‘owned’ by the Labor Guild and forced to work those mines the same as she was. I looked out at the sprawling shanty city around me and felt a stab of conflicting wonderment and shame at the size of the place. Thousands of ponies must live here, sheltered by the buildings both small and large made from the metal mined on the labor of slaves.

Skull City’s motif of bones was in full display here as well and there was hardly a single building or street corner that didn’t display some sort of sign or decoration made either fully or partially from bones. Skulls in particular seemed a favorite to hang over door frames or windows, and I saw at least one home that had its roof almost entirely lined with leg bones. It gave the city a bizarrely morbid feel, yet nopony seemed to mind and the sheer hustle and bustle that passed by our Ursa left me looking on wide-eyed.

The sheer number and variety of ponies on the streets was astounding. I’d been impressed by Saddlespring, but you could plop that town in the middle of the Skull City Outskirts and it’d be swallowed up whole with hardly a notice. Every flavor seemed to be represented. In just the first few minutes of us following Knobs’ wagon down the wide central street I saw a dozen small foals running across the street chasing a pair of what looked like giant, leg-sized rats, the foals carrying pipes, sticks, and small knives as they ravenously chased their quarry; no adults even glancing at the foals. I saw a ramshackle mud hut with a sheet metal roof pass by with its windows hanging open, inside an obvious bar containing numerous ponies packed in sharing drinks while a hoof fight went on in the forefront that nopony even looked up at as one of the combatants threw her opponent bodily through the front door. I saw ponies both old and young living in simple lean-to tents alongside alley walls, while others operated open stalls by the side of the road selling everything from salvaged junk to freshly roasted sticks of meat that were clearly from the same kind of large rats I’d seen the foals chasing earlier.

There weren’t just ponies, either. I saw at least two or three griffins flying or walking about, and among the normal ponies there were a number of the sapient, intelligent ghouls like Knobs. I estimated there was maybe one ghoul for every ten normal, non-decomposing ponies trotting around. They all seemed in various states of unlife, not unlike Knobs’ cracked and rotted hide. I had a hard time imagining what it might be like to live that way, but Knobs didn’t seem perturbed by her state. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it looked?

Before we got far into the city Knobs pulled her wagon up to a two story shake that was mostly made from stacked bricks, its roof a sheet metal platform where an actual squat tower was built, several armed ponies keeping watch from within. There were also ponies out front of the building, all armed and wearing well maintained leather armor barding. These ponies all shared a fairly rough look about them and I noticed each bore a distinctive badge worn on the breast of their armor or clothing; a bright steel star inside of a circle. I had no clue what that meant.

Glancing out the window behind me I saw the refugees had been following us and were now milling about on the street, many of them looking tired and worried as they looked about their new surroundings. There was a distinct air of uneasiness as the refugee ponies stayed close together and eyed the local ponies passing by. The refugees were also being eyed by the locals, looks that ranged from open friendliness to equally open mistrust or disdain, as if the locals were split down the center in whether they welcomed or spurned the presence of the refugees.

With my head poking out the window I was privy to hearing the conversation between Knobs and one of the ponies from the building that approached her wagon, a short red earth pony mare with most of her green mane tucked into a brown leather wide brimmed hat.

“This all you’re bringing in Knobs?” asked the red mare with a clipped tone.

Knobs nodded with a small smile, hopping off her wagon and reaching into the depths of her black Skull Guild coat with her magic to withdraw a bag that clinked and jangled with the sound of small metal objects; caps mostl likely.

“This is it. We... lost a few on the way. One hundred and twenty nine ponies. Hopefully this will cover their entry and initial housing?”

Knobs floated over the bag and the red mare took it in a hoof, weighting it with a small purse of her lips. After a second she pocketed the pouch and said, “Shelter is tight. We’re having to use parts of the upper sewers in some places. Foods tighter. This will do this time around, but the High Marshal is raising the price. Just fair warning Knobs, in case you go out again to bring in more of these sorry souls for us to take care of.”

Knobs’ face briefly became crestfallen, but just as quickly bounced back with a bright smile, “I understand. Tell the High Marshal that push comes to shove I’ll cover what needs covering, though... well... I don’t know if I’ll be able to do another run. The battle line’s too close now and I honestly think this might be the last of the ponies that could get out of the way in time.”

The red mare stared silently at Knobs for a moment, then closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh, nodding, “Fucking Raiders. I wish I was out there, putting some bullets into those lawless bitches. At any rate, we’ll take things from here and get these ponies situated. You let them know what to expect about living on the Marshal gang’s turf?”

“Mmmhmm, they understand. No breaking any laws. You might want to give them a rundown on what all those laws are, Pistolwhip. No need to put anypony on the gallows for littering.”

Pistolwhip coughed in a way that might have been a laugh, “Live on our turf, live by our rules. Only one punishment under Marshal law and that’s the noose. I’ll try to tell the street patrols to cut the refugees some slack, but the High Marshal runs things tight on our turf. You know that. Now then, who’re your friends in the fancy autowagon? Your caps cover the refugees but not these guys.”

I blinked, and glanced back at my friends. Arcaidia came up next to me with an encouraging smile and pushed open the passenger door, hopping out with a confident stride. I followed, a tad bewildered, and B.B flapped along behind us, hovering over my shoulder as we approached Pistolwhip and Knobs.

Arcaidia, with great gusto and a clear sense of assurance, held up her hoof in what I think was supposed to be a salute of some sort as she looked Pistolwhip in the eyes.

“Greetings pony of big city place! I am Arcaidia Del Chevail Del Luminariaso Dol Graza Venti Veruni Halastra Mi Surta! My comrades of great many battles seek shelter and knowledge in city! Direct us to nearest place of foods and sleeps!”

Honestly it was an improvement over her attempts at doing this before learning any Equestrian, so I didn’t feel any particular need to butt into her speech. B.B actually looked a bit proud, as Arcaidia had spoken without any drops into her own language this time, as she was wont to do usually. Pistolwhip, on the other hoof, didn’t look very amused. In fact if the furrowed brow, slight flare of nostrils, and quirk of the lips into a grimace I was pretty sure Pistolwhip was feeling on oncoming headache.

“Knobs, who’re these jokers exactly? You know what, nevermind. Alright, Arcawhatever, before you go traipsing about Marshal turf I need to know who all you got in that shiny wagon, what you’re bringing into our turf, and you need to pay the dues out of pocket depending on if you’re staying in our turf or just passing through.”

“They’re passing through,” said Knobs quickly, “I’m taking them to my place, just FYI.”

FYI? More acronym stuff. I wondered what that one meant, and made a mental note to ask Knobs later. Meanwhile Pistolwhip barked a few quick orders to some of her fellow ponies and a pair of them went off to start organizing the refugees. After that she fixed us with a suspicious glare, one that Arcaidia met with a simple, still quite confident smile. I was feeling less confident by the second, however, feeling more and more self conscious about my disguise. What if this mare found out who I was? Would these armed ponies suddenly turn on us, trying to collect on my bounty? I just hoped she wouldn’t ask too many questions and would let us move along.

“Right, so the toll won’t be too high. Now, I know one of your, uh, names, I guess. What about the rest of you?”

“B.B, ma’am.”

I cleared my throat when Pistolwhip looked at me, and tried my best to affect the feminine tone I imagined I ought to have if I were a mare, “B-Blueberry. Um, pleased to meet you?”

“Uh-huh... let’s take a gander inside then, shall we?”

A bit of panic rose in me as I realized we still had a tied up Raider in the back of our Ursa. A foal, perhaps, but still a Raider. And Binge wasn’t exactly the most subtle mare in the world either. This had the potential to get very complicated very quickly. Seeing the look B.B shot me I could tell she was thinking the same thing, the pegasus landing beside Pistolwhip and saying, “No problem ma’am, ya can look ‘bout all ya like. Three more o’ us inside, Iron Wrought who's in the driver’s seat there, an’ Blueberry’s sister’s, Binge an’... Maple.”

Right, B.B hadn’t actually asked what Blasting Cap’s name was, so she’d needed to make one up on the fly. But why claim Binge and the foal were my sisters? Then it occurred to me that while B.B and Arcaidia didn’t really share any traits with my physically, Binge at least was an earth pony mare. It was better than nothing, as far as cover stories went. I just found myself nodding dumbly.

“Ehh, heh, yeah, Maple’s been feeling kinda sick, so she’s all wrapped up in a bunk. Binge’s looking after her.”

“What are all of you supposed to be anyway?” asked Pistolwhip as we led her around to the back of the Ursa, “You don’t look like merchants, mercs, or settlers. And where did you dig up a vehicle like this? Looks practically brand new.”

I wasn’t so sure about the ‘brand new’ part of the Ursa. For the short time we’d had it my friends and I had put the A.T.W through some seriously rough situations and it was starting to show the dents and scrapes for it. But I supposed compared to any other wagon or similar vehicle one might find in the Wasteland the Ursa did look pretty new. I gave Pistolwhip my most winning ‘you can totally trust me and I’m not in any way lying or bending the truth’ smiles.

“New? Hah, that’s just because we found it in a mostly untouched underground... wagon... cave,” I blinked, suddenly realizing I had no idea where one might normally find something like our Ursa, but I kept my smile going and kept right on talking, “That’s what we do. We’re salvagers. Yup. And we salvaged this big underground cave with all sorts of neat stuff, like this wagon.”

Pistolwhip’s eyebrow crept higher as she looked at me with a flat expression, “Uh-huh. So you and your sisters and friends here are salvagers? You registered with the Salvage Guild?”

I cast a glance quickly at B.B and Arcaidia. Arcaidia looked clueless and just gave a tiny shrug while Pistolwhip wasn’t looking, while B.B gave me a quick, subtle shake of her head. Well, that was good enough of a hint for me.

“Um, no? Nope. We’re, uh... independent.”

To my surprise Pistolwhip gave a small, impressed nod, “Ballsy. Not a lot of salvagers out there willing to work for themselves instead of working under the Guilders’ eyes. Fair warning, when word gets to the Guilders, and it will get to them, fuckers eyes are everywhere, you’ll probably get pressured to join the Guild, just so they can take a cut of your profit.”

“Well,” I said, rubbing the back of my head, laughing off my nervousness and just glad she seemed to be buying the story, “Thanks for the warning. We’ll keep that in mind.”

We were now at the back hatch and my hoof raised to hit the button that’d open it up. I said a silent prayer to the Ancestor spirits that Binge would behave and not do anything to tip Pistolwhip off that there was anything off about our cover story. The hatch started to open, and I turned to Pistolwhip, “Anyway I hope you’ll find everything in order, so we can be on our-”

“I’M GONNA KILL YOU!”

The shrill scream made me turn my head just in time to get a facefull of flying, ballistic filly as Blasting Cap, bits of chewed through rope still clinging to her body, tackled my head. I reared back, forelegs flailing as I tried to maintain balance. Blasting Cap continued to shout incoherently as she punched and bit at me like a mad demon.

“Aaaaah! Get it off! Get it off! She’s biting my eaaaaaarrrr!”

Fortunately my screaming was naturally so high pitched and shrill I don’t think it broke my cover as a mare as I began to gallop around in a panic. That little filly’s teeth were sharp! She was treating my ear like it was a piece of jerky. I shook my head about trying to dislodge her, but all that accomplished was to cause her to bite down even harder and start trying to choke me with her tiny hooves.

In hindsight my panic was probably an overreaction. Blasting Cap wasn’t doing any real damage. Oh, don’t get me wrong, her little foal mauling was painful, but not doing any serious harm. She was scratching and biting and trying to choke, but she wasn’t exactly a paragon of strength, so mostly I was just shocked and after a few seconds of running about like a drunk gecko I got enough of my wits about me to reach up with a hoof and yank Blasting Cap off my head. I held her on my hoof, or more accurately she was biting my leg now and was dangling from it like some feral little critter while making tiny ‘Grrrr’ noises. I felt blood trickling from the bite marks and scratches on my face and ears as I frowned at the filly, then looked at the others.

Arcaidia looked as if she was unsure whether to laugh or be furious about the assault on me. B.B was less conflicted, using her hoof to hide her giggling. Pistolwhip was staring at us with wide, befuddled eyes. Good, her confusion would buy me a moment to think.

“Heeeey, Maple, little sister,” I said in my forced mare’s voice, “Heheh, so you’re still playing that... uh... ambush game we like to play. Because we’re sisters. You, me, and Binge. Where is Binge. She’s supposed to be watching you.”

“Yup, I am,” said Binge, who was suddenly beside me. I hadn’t seen her leave the Ursa and I almost jumped, but by this point I was actually getting used to Binge doing this so instead of leaping a whole pace into the air I just got an inch.

“Wha! Binge! What... nevermind, you were supposed to be watching her,” I said as I pointed Blasting Cap at Binge, the filly still trying to gnaw through my leg. Yes, it hurt. Yes I probably should have tried prying her off. What can I say? I was distracted.

“I was watching her,” said Binge, pointing her eyeballs at Blasting Cap, “It was really impressive how she gnawed through her ropes. I thought it’d take her at least fifteen minutes, but whaddya know, she did it in five! That earns a merit badge if I have anything to say about it. Heheh, she’s so cute.”

Binge reached out to pet Blasting Cap, and the small yellow Raider filly let go of my leg to snap her teeth at Bigne’s leg instead, sinking her teeth into Binge’s hoof. Binge didn’t seem to notice or show any pain as she laughed and held Blasting Cap up, “Cuuuute. Do we have to give her to the ghouly mare? I wanna keep her!”

My eye twitched slightly, sweat beading my brow as I smiled and said, “Binge, sis, our little sis Maple is part of the family. We’re not giving her to Knobs, she’s just, uh, staying there to see if Knobs wants her as an apprentice. Remember?”

I knew Binge was smarter than she often let on and hoped she’d quickly catch on to the nature of the situation. Binge pursed her lips, still ignoring the filly gnawing at her leg now, and eyed me, then eyed the still bewildered looking Pistolwhip standing with Arcaidia and B.B.

“Ah-hah, I get it. Sisters...” Binge got that wide, mad grin on her face as she hugged me, with the arm that had Blasting Cap on it, as Binge put her mouth near my ear and whispered, “Seriously, can we keep her?”

I suppressed a sigh, whispering back, “I don’t think that’d be good for her.”

Binge made a small huffing whine, her teeth nipping at me and her face gaining a difficult to read expression that was still smiling but somehow managed to look disappointed at the same time. She, with rather shocking speed, smoothly pried Blasting Cap off her leg and before the Raider filly could so much as get half a “Kill you!” out Binge put the filly in a simple but effective chokehold. Enough to keep the filly from talking but still get some air in her lungs.

“Rambunctious little sister you have there,” Pistolwhip said dryly.

“She snorted Dash as a foal,” said Binge without missing a beat and still smiling.

I blinked, this time not suppressing a sigh, “Aaaaanyway, Miss Pistolwhip, want to take a look inside our autowagon now?”

The inspection at least went smoothly once I had her inside the Ursa. Iron Wrought answered a few questions about who he was, and got a withering look when he mentioned he was Labor Guild and that we’d helped him out of a jam in the Wasteland. Basically true, actually, but I could tell by now that Pistolwhip wasn’t fond of the Guilds, or ponies associated with them. Still, she didn’t give us much further trouble, at least until it came to discussing the Ursa’s cargo.

“What are in all these crates, exactly? You said salvage, but what do you have specifically?” the mare asked as she flicked her brown tail and peered curiously at the metal crates we’d loaded on from Stable 104.

“Lots of things,” I said, waving a hoof in a vague gesture, “Food, water, medicine, a few weapons, ammo-

Pistolwhip held up a hoof to stop me, “So literally everything that’d be of incredible value to ponies living in this day an age. Got it. Okay, look, I’m not blind or stupid Miss Blueberry. I can tell there’s a lot more to your little ‘salvage’ crew than what you’re letting on. By and large I don’t care. I just need to make sure you won’t be a threat to my gang’s territory and to make sure you pay a proper due as you pass over our turf. Now we’ve got a serious issue with all these refugees coming into the Outskirts but the Marshals are a gang that try to make our turf better to live in than most. All the extra mouths to feed are making that tougher than it normally is, and it usually ain’t a picnic to begin with. So here’s the deal, hoof over a cut of the food, water, and definitely the medicine, and you’re clear to go. You won’t get any trouble while you’re on Marshal turf, long as you don’t break any of our laws; which basically boils down to don’t murder, steal from, or rape anypony. Sound good to you?”

It did. Those supplies were basically given to us by the spider ponies so they could be used to trade, buy goodwill, that kind of thing. Pleasing the gang mare who apparently was in charge in whether or not we got to cross her gang’s turf unmolested seemed a wise investment to me, and from the sound of things she wanted the stuff to help them take care of the refugees and that certainly sounded like a good use of it to me.

Granted the amount of food, water, and medicine she wanted boiled down to about a good twenty minutes of debate. I’ll spare you the details. In the end Pistolwhip let us go with a duffle bag full of the canned food, purified water jugs, and a few of our medkits. With that business concluded she waved to some of her ponies to take the goods into their building. She then gave me a small piece of metal that looked like it’d been cut from sheet metal. On it was an etching of the same star pattern as the silver stars the Marshal ponies wore, along with a small string of numbers beneath it.

“Carry that, and if any Marshal’s question you for your ‘pass’, show them that,” Pistolwhip said, “It’ll get you through our turf.”

“Right, thank you,” I said as I took the small piece of metal and tucked it into the neck of my dress. What? It’s a convenient spot to put things! It wasn’t as if I was getting comfortable wearing such a outfit... okay maybe I was getting a tad comfortable with it, but only because it did fit me quite snugly.

Pistolwhip gave us one last, wary look before trotting off to help with organizing the refugees. I could see the refugees were being similarly looked over and questioned like we’d been and it seemed as if they were being shuffled off in groups of around twenty to thirty. I silently wished them all luck and turned to my friends. Arcaidia was practically buzzing, her head snapping this way and that as she looked around with open interest and curiosity at the city around her.

“You okay Arcaidia?” I asked while I watched Binge out of the corner of my eye as she dragged Blasting Cap back into the Ursa, the filly struggling the whole way but her bites and punches ineffective against Binge’s utter nonchalantness.

“Hm? Oh yes!” said Arcaidia with a smile, “Find city place of big fascination. Barbaric, but interesting. Know too little of pony side, and wanted much to learn, that why I volunteer for mission to-”

She cut herself off, snapping her mouth shut and eyes going wide for a moment as if she just realized how much she was saying. She looked away in what I was pretty sure was an attempt to appear unconcerned as she said, “Nevermind my words, rens solva. We have many things to do in this place, yes?”

I chuckled, “Yeah, but we’ll also probably have time to relax a bit and explore if you want to see more of the city and, uh, your fellow ponies.”

Arcaidia coughed in a quiet, dainty manner as she tried to look away even more, “Exploring would be... acceptable. When we can.”

B.B fluttered over to us and said, “Knobs is good ta go when we are.”

I glanced over and saw Knobs back on her wagon, giving us a friendly wave as she spotted me looking at her. I waved back and said, “Right, let’s go then. I think I’ll walk along outside.”

“Ya been walkin’ all night, Long,” said B.B, “Maybe ya ought ta git a bit o’ rest?”

She was right, of course. Between the fight with the Raiders and trotting alongside Knobs’ wagon for the rest of the night into morning had left me feeling a hollow drain on my body, but I... didn’t want to ride in the Ursa any more than I had to as long as we still had Blasting Cap tagging along. I was trying very hard not to think about the filly or the fight with the Raiders. Maybe that was cowardly of me, but if I let myself start thinking about it I knew I’d end up losing focus. More than I would from just being a bit tired, at any rate.

“I’ll sleep soon,” I told B.B with as confident a smile I could muster, “Once we’ve got the foal dropped off and have a place we can bed down safely. Don’t worry, I’m not passing out on my hooves yet.”

B.B sighed, giving me a ‘yeah, sure’ look, but she didn’t argue as she flew up to the roof of the Ursa and perched there like some kind of sentinel bird.

I saw Binge re-tying and gagging Blasting Cap and she looked back at us with an innocent grin as she hugged the violently kicking filly close, “No worries Longy, I’ll keep a better eye on her now. No biting free or I’ll bop her on the head.”

Arcaidia gave Binge a cold look, “Yes, do job better, shivol bir.”

Her look instantly warmed as she smiled at me, “I walk with you, ren solva. You answer questions about big city.”

“Hey I don’t know anything about this place, either,” I said with a helpless laugh, “I was planning on chatting Knobs up about it while we walk.”

Arcaidia seemed to consider that for a second before nodding firmly, “Yes, esru vi golrav est mir vira haesh. Corpse mare know much, smart to use as guide. Come, ren solva, we go!”

I enjoyed seeing Arcaidia being so energetic and happy. There hadn’t been enough chance for any of us to do more than deal with the next crisis at hoof, and while I was still shaken by the most recent fight, I had an easier time putting it from my mind with Arcaidia by my side. It occurred to me she acted this way when she was in a crowd. She’d been the same way when surrounded by my tribe. Bouncy and filled with eagerness. It was cute. I wondered if this was how she normally was when not on a ‘mission’. She had literally dragged me along faster than I could trot to catch up with Knobs’ wagon as it had begun to pull away from the Marshal’s guard post and the Ursa followed us soft hum of its engine.

In short order Arcaidia and I were trotting alongside Knobs and her wagon, which followed a winding path through the hard packed dirt roads that twisted and turned through the myriad, labyrinthine roads of the Outskirts. It wasn’t long before I’d lost all sense of direction and understood that if I wasn’t a local then getting lost around here would be all too easy. Yet I wasn’t worried. Knobs clearly was comfortable in where she was going and I could tell we were gradually getting closer to the massive wall that separated the Outskirts from the center of the city. So I ceased worrying about direction and just took in the sights, smells, and sounds around me, with Arcaidia by my side to share the experience.

It was a dizzying mix of new things, good and bad. This city hummed with life, but also with at times blatant disregard for the well being of ponies, as evidenced by the sound of distant gunfire that sporadically emanated over the buzz of conversing ponies and the fact so few of the Outskirts ponies even bothered to look up at the noise.

“Who’s shooting?” I asked, my own ear flicking as I tried to pick out where the sounds were coming from. Pretty far off, I guessed, but definitely deeper in the Outskirts.

“Oh, could be anypony,” said Knobs nonchalantly, letting out a small sigh combined with a helpless smile, “Maybe some gangs are tussling over turf, or some Gobs have broken into the streets and are being put down. Could also just be random violence; somepony on too much Dash getting trigger happy or a bar fight.”

Arcaidia tilted her head, “No law?”

“Laws change by which gang is running the turf you’re on,” replied Knobs, “We’re on Marshal turf, so things are pretty quiet around here. The gang takes after the old Equestrian lawponies, or at least they try to. They run this area pretty tight, but... well... there’s a downside to that too.”

Knobs words were spoken with a quiet sadness as she nodded towards one end of a open square we were crossing, and following her gaze I noticed a wooden platform built in the center of the square. I felt my good mood dampening almost instantly as I saw the crossbeam of wood that went over the platform and the ropes hanging from it, tied with nooses... and they weren’t all unoccupied. Two bodies swung from those nooses, and I couldn't be sure how long they’d been there, but a small black bird stood perched on one of the poor dead ponies, pecking at the corpse.

I swallowed, “This is the Marshal’s way of keeping the peace?”

Knobs nodded, her tone quietly tinged with resignation, “I don’t like it much either, but compared to the looser way some gangs run their turf a lot of ponies are willing to deal with the Marshal’s law opposed to taking their chances elsewhere. If it makes you feel any better they usually only hang a pony who did something pretty bad. Usually.”

“Usually?” I pressed.

Knobs shrugged, “The Marshals aren’t very good at investigating crimes. I can’t say that every single pony that’s found themselves on those gallows was guilty of whatever crime they hung for. At least not totally. The term ‘mitigating circumstances’ doesn’t really fly with the Marshals much. So, uh, just don’t get mixed up any anything shady while you’re around here.”

Well, good thing I didn’t have a bounty on my head. Oh, wait, nevermind. At least my disguise seemed to be doing the trick so far. Perhaps too good a job. As we trotted on past the square I noticed more than once that I was getting looks from a few of the locals; and not the kind of looks I was used to getting. It took the third time before I realized that the whistling I was getting wasn’t some strange kind of local greeting custom.

I wasn’t the only one, either. Arcaidia was getting more than her fair share of attention from locals, male and female alike. Like me she seemed initially oblivious to the calls and whistles, in her case even more so because she tried whistling back as if she was imitating an animal call. That got her some odd looks.

“Friendly place. Everypony want to show us good time,” said Arcaidia. I coughed.

“I don’t think you quite know what they mean by ‘good time’ Arcaidia,” I said.

“Good time is good time, yes?” she asked innocently blinking at me.

Knobs guffawed, “You two shouldn’t be going anywhere in this city unchaperoned. I kind of shudder to think what would happen if the pair of you went out for a night on the town without anypony to keep an eye on you.”

“You know, a part of me wants to argue with that,” I said, puffing out a huff and scratching at an itchy part of my dress, which nearly caused me to trip over the thing, “But knowing my track record, you’re probably right.”

“I still not knowing why having ‘good time’ with nice ponies is bad,” said Arcaidia with a frown.

“You look a little young to know anyway,” said Knobs, “Just trust me when I tell you that you get a stallion or mare being too friendly with you, keep that shiny shooter you got close at hoof.”

Arcaidia glanced at her starblaster holstered on her leg, then glanced with a quirked eyebrow at Knobs, “You very friendly.”

“I’m talking more the touchy-feely in bad places kind of friendly,” Knobs said, “That’s what those ponies are meaning by ‘good time’.”

Arcaidia’s silver eyes opened wider for a second, then she narrowed them with a firm nod, “I am seeing. Yes, good help words given. Thank you dead pony. Shall remember what you say and be ready to make touchy ponies not keep hooves if being too friendly.”

“Good, just try not to overdo it,” said Knobs with a sidelong look at Arcaidia that made me think the ghoulish mare was a tad weirded out by my little blue friend, then she perked up as we reached a small hill that was snuggled up right against the side of the giant wall, “Oh! Here we are. Home sweet home!”

Around the hill were a number of the same huts and shacks that made up a lot of the Outskirts, but the hill itself was mostly bare, its gentle sloping incline covered in tufts of dry, yellow grass, with a curving path leading to the relatively flat top. There I saw a simple, one story house. An actual house, made from red brick and with a shingled roof, with intact windows, and even a chimney. On the side of the house was a small trough of water, and it was here that Knobs drove her wagon and once there hopped off and unhitched the two-headed cow creature from the wagon.

“Okay Barry, Betsy, drink up,” she said, gesturing towards the trough, “And thanks for giving me such a smooth ride, even when the Raiders hit us.”

To my utter shock one of the cow heads turned to Knobs and smiled, saying in a slow, female voice, “Nah trouble t’all, hun.”

As the two headed creature went to start drinking Knobs trotted up to me and Arcaidia, and she blinked at our gaping expressions, Arcaidia’s jaw perhaps open wider than my own. Knobs chuckled, rubbing the back of her head.

“First time meeting a brahmin? Not all of them can talk, but you get a few like Barry and Betsy who lucked out and got enough brains to communicate. They help me out with the wagon, and in exchange I give them a safe spot to rest.”

Arcaidia just shook her head, “Planet gets weirder with each day.”

“I live on this planet and feel pretty much the same way,” I said, trying not to stare.

Behind us the Ursa had just pulled up, parking along the side of the house. Before long Binge had come up with a freshly retied and gagged Blasting Cap secured to her back, with LIL-E floating along behind them and B.B taking to the air to land off to the side. Iron Wrought climbed out of the driver’s side door, and began to trot towards me with a purpose in his steps. I could tell just from the tightness in his face and the way his ears lay back and twitched that he was anxious.

“Well, it’ll be a tad cramped, but why don’t everypony come on in and I’ll get cooking something for brunch,” said Knobs, flicking her tail towards the front door of her home.

“You all feel free,” said Iron Wrought as he reached us, “But I don’t have time for that. I have to get into the Inner City, and after that...”

He trailed off, looking at all of us in turn, finally resting his eyes on me with a heavy sigh, “This is pretty much where we part ways, buck.”

His words caused a slight clench in my heart, because he said them with a certain finality to it that I hadn’t really been expecting. I gave a half hearted laugh, waving a hoof, “Well, for now, yeah, you got things to take care of. We both do. But we’ll meet up again-”

Iron Wrought cut me off, shaking his head, his voice serious but carrying an underlying waver as well, “Longwalk, don’t take this wrong, but I’d just as soon you didn’t go out of your way to look me up after this. If everything goes right I’m going to go back to my life, with my family, working for the Labor Guild... and my employers don’t exactly like you right now. I can’t afford to get caught up in your issues, and you can’t afford to be seen with me. My family will be at risk if you come looking for me, and you’ll be at risk if the Labor Guild finds out where you are. So, bottom line buck, we won’t be seeing each other again after this.”

My mouth opened, but no words came out. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Iron Wrought, I hadn’t always seen eye to eye with him. Out of all my companions he was the most free with letting me know when I was being an idiot. It pissed me off sometimes, but I’d come to appreciate that I could trust him to point out my mistakes, because Ancestor Spirits knew I made plenty of them. He’d been among the first ponies I’d met in the Wasteland who’d been friendly, in his way, and taken the time to teach an ignorant tribal like myself a few things about the wider world.

But I had promised I’d help him keep his family safe, and now that he had the copy of Dr. Lemon Slice’s research on the Saddlespring Ruin to give to the Skull Guild and get his family back there wasn’t any reason for him to travel with me. In fact he was completely right that any further contact with me would be dangerous for both of us because the Labor Guild had that bounty on my head. If the Labor Guild suspected Iron Wrought had helped me at all there was no telling what they might do to him and his family, and they’d certainly use him to come after me.

So there was no reason for this to be anything other than goodbye.

Before I could think of anything to say Arcaidia patted me on the shoulder, trotted past me, and sprung on Iron Wrought with a fierce hug. Iron Wrought looked taken aback for a second by the little blue filly giving him such a warm hug, but Arcaidia didn’t give him time to respond, just finishing the hug, stepping back, and giving him a bright smile.

“Chir vas dol tira, Iron Wrought. Stars guide path. Take care of family. I take over duty of watching ren solva, correct his toaster head when he get crazy.”

Iron Wrought nodded then, huffing out a small chuckle, “Don’t envy you that job, Blue. He’s not good at listening to advice.”

I found myself pouting slightly, “I’m trying to get better about that.”

“An’ ya are fer the most part,” said B.B with a wry half-grin, “But yer still a’ right hoofful when ya git riled. Iron Wrought, ya take care of yerself, ya hear? Don’t take no chances wit either the Skull Guild or yer own, and don’t even think o’ hesitatin’ ta git ahold o’ us iffin ya need help wit anythin’!”

“If this goes right there won’t be any need,” said Iron Wrought, patting the breast pocket of his armor where the data disc was secure, “The Skull Guild wants this data, and as long as I’ve proven useful they probably won’t double cross me. I just hope they don’t come calling on me to do this double agent crap again anytime soon. The Labor Guild might seem like a bad group to the lot of you, but they’ve been good to me. Being forced to work against them doesn’t sit well with me. But I’ll do anything for my family.”

“So would we,” I said, finally finding my voice, taking a slight step forward, “Just... if anything happens, if you ever need us for anything...”

Iron Wrought looked at me, and for a second his eyes softened, and I saw a small light of respect in them, “I’ll remember.”

He paused, glancing away as if thinking about what to say next, his next words coming slower, “I still think you’re too naive Longwalk. Too naive and focused on doing what you think is ‘right’ instead of what’s smart. But I know what you’ve done for me. I’m not ungrateful.”

With a bit of hesitance he turned around, only turning his neck slightly to look back at us as he began to trot away down the hill, “So... thank you.”

He didn’t wait for a response, looking ahead to his path and trotting down the hill away from Knobs’ house. Arcaidia returned to my side and B.B stood at the other. Binge remained a few paces behind us, oddly silent considering the usually talkative mare. LIL-E floated nearby, next to Knobs, who’d watched the scene unfold with the kind of awkward stance and expression of a pony watching a personal thing between friends while being the outsider.

I watched until Iron Wrought disappeared into the crowd along the street, silently yet sincerely hoping that despite everything I might one day meet Iron Wrought again.

LIL-E broke the silence, floating over towards me and spinning to face me as she hovered at eye level, “On that note while you guys settle in here I need to go see about linking up with Doc Sunday.”

I blinked, remembering that on our itinerary of things to do in Skull City was meet with B.B’s father. It was at some kind of tavern or inn, through I couldn’t immediately recall the name he’d given us. Then I remembered one of the key features of Pip-Bucks, “Right, right, uh, let me see where we’re supposed to meet him.”

As I fumbled with my Pip-Buck, trying to select the screen that gave me that useful list of objectives, LIL-E interrupted me, “He said to meet at the Rust n’ Dirt Inn. It’s on the southwest end of the Outskirts. Both yours and Arcaidia’s Pip-Bucks have mag tags to the place. I’m just going there now to check to see if Sunday is still there. It’s taken us longer to get to the city than we expected and anything could have happened here in the meantime. I’ve got a line to both of your Pip-Bucks and can fly there fast and give a call on what I find.”

“Makes sense ta’ me,” said B.B, giving LIL-E a small bump with a hoof, “But don’t go fergettin’ ya ain’t the only flyer in the group. How ‘bout I join ya? We can both fly out there an’ see ‘bout hookin’ up with ma pa, an’ let the other’s rest up.”

LIL-E bobbed up and down in the robot’s version of a shrug, “Suit yourself.”

“Ren bruhir,” said Arcaidia, frowning, and bouncing a bit on her hooves as she looked at B.B, “Let robot do recon work! We must do important supply securing!”

B.B blinked, “What, like ya mean go shopping?”

Arcaidia grinned and chirped, “Yes. Shopping. Need experienced local to help with merchant talk.”

“Well I could help with that,” I began to say both mares and one robot all turned to me at once.

“Ya ain’t much fer barterin.”

“Ren solva lose all our money.”

“Better not, Longwalk.”

I grimaced at their combined stares and words, looking away with a slight huff to blow some of my mane out of my face, “Well excuse me for not being a master merchant. I guess I’ll just stay here, polishing my spear until you ponies get back... what? What’s so funny!?”

“Polishing your spear?” LIL-E repeated. I stared at the eyebot. LIL-E snorted again, “Right, euphemisms are lost on you. Nevermind. Okay, so B.B, you coming with me, or going shopping with Arcaidia?”

B.B flapped her wings as she lazily hovered, looking back and forth between the two. Of the pair Arcaidia was the one who looked ready to burst from excitement and was also wearing a wide eyed foalish expression. B.B sighed, “Guess I can do some barterin’ wit Arc. Ain’t sure what we all need.”

“Water,” I said, “Can’t have enough of that. Some local food, whatever you can find, just so we got some variety besides those apples and carrots from the Stable. And...er... if you can find some magazines.”

B.B smirked, “Got a taste fer literature do ya? No prob, iffin’ any local shops got somethin’ ta read I’ll pick it up.”

“Ohohoh!” Binge suddenly spoke up, hopping forward to join us, much to the clear consternation of the filly still tied to the ex-Raider’s back, “I need things too! Need strips of leather or rope, plus a good femur. A good, long femur. Or a table leg, that works too. A lead pipe if you can find one. Also need a ball. Several. Baseballs preferably, but bouncy balls work too. I want them, so birdy can get them, yes?”

B.B looked blankly at Binge’s grinning face, then looked at me, making a gesture with her hooves that I took to mean ‘Well?’. I nodded, and Binge made a quick ‘squee’ noise. In short order Arcaidia, B.B, and LIL-E were all off, the eyebot flying across the rooftops to the southwest to find the inn where B.B’s father might still be waiting for us, and the two mares to do a little shopping. That left me with Binge, the glaring Blasting Cap, and a somewhat bemused looking Knobs.

“Got everything sorted out?” Knobs asked me as I turned her way.

I gave her a helpless shrug, imagining that she was just trying to be polite, but a certain amount of sarcasm couldn’t help but creep into my voice, “For the next hour, at least. Past that, you might want to be ready to duck and cover, because I’ll be due for a fresh crisis by then.”

Knobs’ smile was at total odds with her rotted flesh, lively and colorful, “By the law of averages I’d say you’re due for a quiet day.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” I said, then cracked a small smile of my own, “But hey, you might be right. Now, you said something earlier about food?”

A satisfied twinkle crept into Knobs’ eyes as she motioned towards the front door of her home, “Food can be scarce but being part of the Skull Guild has its perks. I can whip up something mostly fresh and possibly even healthy! I make no promises about taste, but I’ve been getting better these past few years.”

Binge slid up next to Knobs, eyes eager and a hungry note entering her voice, “I can cook. Lemme cook with you ghouly girl.”

A flicker of concern entered Knobs’ eyes, though she didn’t drop her smile, “Let’s clarify first; when you say cook ‘with’ me you mean you want to help me cook. Not, you know, cook with me.”

Binge burst out in a titter, patting a wary looking Knobs on the back several times, “Of course not silly! Ghouls are bad for eating. Too tough and gamey. Longwalk would be far more tasty. Look at those well toned, lean haunches of his!”

“Uh, let’s not look at Longwalk’s lean haunches,” I said, “In fact let’s completely forget this subject and go inside.”

“Good idea,” said Knobs, leading us into her home. She whipped out a small brass key from an inner pocket of her Skull Guild jacket, using her magic to unlock her door, and judging from the time and the sound of clinks and clanks from inside she also moved several additional deadbolts. Cheerful or not she was appropriately careful. I wondered how she secured her windows?

The answer came once we were inside and I could see all the windows were covered with thick iron bars on the inside, the glare on the windows from outside having obscured them from my view. Besides those bars, however, the rest of Knobs’ home looked quite comfortable and a far cry from the usual ramshackle buildings I’d seen. While all of Skull City’s buildings had a certain lived in look to them that made them different from the ruins I’d seen around the Wasteland, Knobs’ place was the first I’d been in that felt like a warm, lived in home. Even Stable 104 by comparison still felt a tad cold and sterile by comparison.

The front door opened into a cozy living/dining room. The center was dominated by a large plastic table covered in a white and red checkered cloth and surrounded by half a dozen metal fold out chairs. A thick if faded couch with several patches for its visible signs of wear and tear was situated against one wall, and next to it was a shelf that was mostly empty but still had a few of a rather rare sight; actual intact books. The opposite wall held the fireplace, a brick affair with a simple bannister, upon which were a few candles and a device I recognized now as a radio. There was a light hanging from the ceiling that was on, indicating to me the house had working electricity.

“Feel free to make yourself comfortable,” said Knobs as she walked around the table towards a door on the other side of the room. She paused at the door and gestured at Binge, “Kitchen is this way, and also, uh, I got a guest bedroom where you can set down the filly. Going to want to chat with her pretty soon. Do you want something to eat, kid?”

Blasting Cap’s only response was a suppressed snarl from beneath her gag and Binge said, “I think that’s a yes.”

Knobs looked less convinced, “Best not to push her this early. C’mon, you want to help cook I won’t say no. Have a seat Longwalk. Food won’t take long.”

I took her advice and plopped down on one of the metal folding chairs at the table, shucking off my cello case and saddlebags. I was tempted to lay down on the couch but I’d probably pass out within minutes if I did that and miss out on food. Completely unacceptable after having the kind offer given. At this point I didn’t even care what Knobs and Binge cooked or what it tasted like, I was feeling famished enough to devour anything short of a live radscorpion.

Left alone for the time being I found myself getting fidgety. I amused myself by looking over my Pip-Buck, flipping through its various screens. I still couldn’t figure out how it organized my inventory or assigned values to my stuff. The ‘35.470’ next to Gramzanber I figured had to be pretty high, not that I’d ever considering selling the ARM. I’d cycled through the status screens for the fifth time and was debating turning on the radio by the time my nostrils caught the enticing scent of food cooking, hearing the associated scuffling and bang of pots from what I assumed was the kitchen. I felt a small stab of worry that Binge might get... rambunctious with Knobs, acting all Raidery at an opportune moment when she wasn’t under my observation and the rest of the party was off running errands, but I quashed it down. I had to decided to trust that mare at some point, otherwise there was no reason to let her tag along. Besides, Knobs seemed able to take care of herself.

I heard Knobs’ voice call out in a friendly sing-song tone from behind the kitchen door, “Hey Longwalk! I got a friend dropping by today. Expecting her soonish, so if you hear a knock at the door just answer it, or she might just barge in on her own. Either way, just a heads up!”

“Okay!” I shouted back, leaning back in my chair. I adjusted my dress, wondering how mares dealt with these things when trying to get comfortable. It was fine for walking but sitting down the garment seemed to like to get bunched in unpleasant places. I had to remind myself that this was just a temporary thing. As soon as our business was done in Skull City I could start dressing normally.

… Actually now that I thought about it did I have the slightest clue how long I’d be in this city? I needed to dig up information from one of the Guilds, and was hoping Knobs might help me out on that front, but it might takes days, even weeks before I could find a clue to my tribe’s location or a method to transport Arcaidia south to the NCR.

Weeks where I’d be stuck playing the role of ‘Blueberry’ the salvage mare. Ugh! Dear Ancestor Spirits give me strength! I didn’t mind the pig-tails in my mane but I was not wearing this dress for more than another day. I could get away with wearing armor. Plenty of mares wore armor! I’m pretty sure the dress was just B.B and Arcaidia’s idea of a joke. Binge too. She was culpable. A conspiracy against my stallioniness. Stallioniness. Was that a word? Screw it; it is now.

I’d just started to play a game where I used a tin spoon to launch caps towards a cracked mug on the other side of the table when I heard a shuffling at the door. No knock, but I assumed this had to be Knobs’ friend. The knob twisted and the door opened, and I noticed that the knob was covered in a faint aura of red magic. The next thing I saw was a mare striding into the house, and I heard a voice that was entirely all too familiar.

“Hey! Knobs! I’m assuming you’re home otherwise the door wouldn’t be... unlocked...”

Crossfire trailed off as she finally rested her eyes on me, her keen yellow eyes taking in the sight of me with a shocked blankness that slowly transmuted to recognition at about the time I was able to fully register that this was in fact the same mare I’d run into at Saddlespring. She was still wearing the same red jacket with leather cuffs and collar, and that ridiculously large rifle of hers with its massive bayonet was slung across her back. Pristine dark fur and a faintly messy blue mane tied back in a firm ponytail were just like I remembered, only caked with enough Wasteland dirt and dust to make her look rugged rather than disheveled.

There was a second of silence before Crossfire’s eyes narrowed dangerously and she moved with the slick, easy speed that’d impressed me so much when I’d seen her in action back in Saddlespring.

If I was a slower buck, as inexperienced as I’d been back then, her sharp swing with the butt of her rifle would have cracked me straight across the face. As it happened I managed to reach down with my hooves and lift the cello case with Gramzanber inside it fast enough to block the hit, though the force of the blow rocked me in the chair and tipped it right over, sending me spilling to the ground in a heap.

There was a crash of noise, a metal tray and a number of bowls splattering on the ground, previously held by Knobs who’d just entered the doorway from the kitchen. The ghoulish mare was also staring in shock, mouth gaping as she shouted, “Crossfire! What are you doing!?”

What Crossfire was doing, which should have been obvious to anypony watching, was beat me to a pulp as she advanced on me, swinging her rifle again in a sweeping arc I barely managed to roll away from, bringing the cello case with me and holding it up like an impromptu shield. Crossfire pulled back just enough to reverse her magic’s grip on her rifle, aiming its barrel straight at me, before Knobs’ voice spoke with a higher, sharper note.

“Crossfire!”

That seemed to break through the Drifter mare’s focus on me and she blinked. She didn’t take her eyes off of me, nor let the barrel of her rifle dip. I’d scrambled backwards, my back now up against the couch with the cello case held in front of me as my only barrier between myself and the high caliber firearm aimed at me. It might have seemed more silly if I didn’t know my ARM was inside the case and could deflect a bullet, through I wasn’t eager to test a ricochet in this confined space with at least one other pony in the room that I liked.

Crossfire, speaking through clenched teeth, said, “Knobs, hi. Question; what the hell is this buck doing in your house?”

“I was about to serve him breakfast,” said Knobs, a note of irritation clear in her huffing voice as she used her magic to pick up the bowls and tray she’d dropped. I could smell a rather tantalizing scent of something tangy and salty, some kind of soup or stew that scent alone sent my stomach into a happy convulsion.

“Breakfast...” Crossfire said the word like she was testing out its taste and didn’t like it, “Right. Okay. So, something you might not know; this buck has a rather high bounty on his head. He’s also primarily responsible for screwing up my most recent job.”

“I know,” said Knobs, and both me and Crossfire looked at the ghoul.

“You do?” we both said at the same time, causing us to exchanged annoyed, heated glances with one another.

Knobs looked at us like we were a pair of rather naughty foals who were horseplaying in her living room, which in a way I suppose we were. She set the tray on the table as Binge poked her head into the room from the kitchen. Her eyes took in the scene with a mirthful and tooth filled grin.

“Somepony having violent fun? Am I invited?”

“No, Binge,” I said, “No more violence, at least I’m hoping not?”

That I directed at Crossfire, with a questioning raise of one eyebrow and holding out one hoof in a placating gesture of peace. Her yellow eyes narrowed and I saw her mentally calculating whether it was worth it or not to keep trying to render me either unconscious or dead versus the earful she’d likely get from Knobs for doing so. After a tense moment she slung her rifle across her back and went to plop down in one of the chairs.

“Fine, he’s got a stay of execution. Knobs, please explain why he’s in your house?”

“Might be because I invited him to come over,” said Knobs, wheeling herself over and easing into the seat next to Crossfire. I couldn’t help but notice the way Crossfire’s eyes briefly flickered towards the wheeled prosthetic limbs and the momentary flinch in her eyes. Knobs looked at me and nodding towards the seat I’d so rapidly vacated.

Slowly I got up and returned to my chair, and soon found Binge had slid up beside me to sit down as well. She was looking at Crossfire with undisguised curiosity and I reminded myself I’d ended up with Binge in the group after the fiasco in Saddlespring. Well, the tail end of it at any rate. Crossfire and Binge might’ve seen each other for all of two minutes when we’d met up with the Saddlespring survivors. That had been the last time I’d seen the Drifter mercenary mare, after Arcaidia had healed one of her comrades, Brickhouse, and she’d left with a less than pleasant opinion of me after I’d played a part in mucking up the job she’d been hired to do in that town.

“Alright, we all sitting down, all calm and friendly like? Good,” said Knobs with a deep breath, huffing it out as she looked between me and Crossfire, “So, uh, first of all I’m sorry Longwalk. I, heheh, have a bad habit of unpractical jokes and thought it might be funny to see how you and Crossfire reacted to seeing each other, so I didn’t tell you I knew her.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you the name of the Drifter I ran into at Saddlespring,” I said with a small shrug.

“Oh, I didn’t need you to tell me her name, I could guess by context. I saw Crossfire off on that very job,” said Knobs, a frowning trace of sadness cross her face, “I’m sorry about how things went down there, by the way.”

Crossfire grunted, a tired, grim gaze looking at Knobs, “Don’t see why you need to apologize to him. Half of that crap was his own damned fault.”

Hot eyes glared at me, “But that’s neither here nor there. How did you meet my friend Knobs here?”

I had a hard time even processing how Crossfire could put herself and Knobs in the context of ‘friends’. The two mares seemed to have all of zilch, zero, and nadda in common. Knobs was patient, kind hearted, and generally had a sense of humor. Crossfire was... opposite of all of that. I had to seriously wonder how the pair had even met, let alone become friends. Yet Crossfire had backed down with only a few words from Knobs. That surprised me. Crossfire hadn’t struck as a mare who really listened to anypony.

Taking a deep breath I gave Crossfire the abridged version of the fight with the Raiders. I left out any mention of exactly where my friends and I had come from, only that we’d been making our way to Skull City when we’d run into the attack on Knobs’ refugee caravan. I also left out the detail about the Raider I’d killed and the filly Blasting Cap. Crossfire didn’t need to know that and I wasn’t keen to remind myself of it any more. When I was done Crossfire hadn’t lost that faintly glaring look, but it was mixed with a phantom of gratitude. It made her look as if she was tasting something sour.

“You helped Knobs out, then... fuck. I hate owing ponies I don’t like,” Crossfire’s nose wrinkled as if she was scenting something less than fresh, and fixed me with a arresting look that was hard to look away from, “You know you got a eight thousand cap bounty on your head, Mr. Hero?”

I blinked, furrowed my brow, tried to pick my brain for the memory of the radio broadcast I’d heard when I’d learned of the bounty the first time. While I couldn’t remember all of the details I did remember the bounty I’d heard back then was around three thousand caps, “back then” being all of, what... four days ago? Maybe five? I was losing track of time.

“I knew about it, but sounds like it’s more than doubled in just a few days,” I said, trying to sound calm. I somehow doubted I was succeeding.

Crossfire got a smug look, lips twisting in an amused grin, “Surprised me when I heard it was going so high. Not so much that you got one, but that the Labor Guild’s willing to pay out the ass for you being brought in trussed up on a platter.”

“B.B thought it had something to do with my spear,” I said, plopping my chin into my hoof as I leaned it on the table glumly.

“That shiny oversized hunk of metal?” Crossfire leaned back in her chair, thoughtful, forelegs crossing over her chest, “Could be. Somehow doubt it. Labor Guild is all about its bottom line, and there’s just not enough profit in snatching your fancy poking tool. They couldn’t use it, and they’d need a buyer. No, my take on this is that you got someone pissed at you on a personal level. Maybe one of the guards who died was the kid of one of the higher ups? I can see eight thousand caps for a vengence kick.”

She frowned, eyes slipping over me with a vaguely skeptical air as her tone went sarcastic to the umteenth degree, “This bounty why you’re playing at dress up?”

I met sarcasm with sarcasm, rolling my eyes, “No, I just wanted to feel pretty.”

“I’m not judging,’ Crossfire said, smirking.

“Yes you are,” said Binge suddenly, eyes intense, “I can see it. You’re looking and liking. Mentally clicking the thumbs up button! Heheh, you think he’s cute too!”

Crossfire didn’t look at Binge, instead sending an inquiring glance at Knobs and asking in a deadpan voice, “Hey, you don’t mind a bit of blood on the floor, right? If I promise to clean it up myself?”

“No Crossfire. You know my rules,” said Knobs, “You need to do something like that you do it on somepony else's time and property. My house is a violence free zone. Most of the time...”

“You pay the Marshals too much,” said Crossfire, “They can’t always keep as much control on their turf as they like.”

“Better than anywhere else except the Inner City, and... I don’t want to live in there,” said Knobs.

“Its a biiiiig wall,” said Binge, “Keeping things out or keeping things in, I wonder?”

“Both,” Knobs and Crossfire said at nearly the same instant. The two friends shared a glance, then they smiled at each other. I couldn’t be certain, but that smile spoke volumes to me about the pair. It made me wonder if Crossfire actually lived here or just visited.

The moment passed between the two and after a few seconds silence I cut to the chase I was still wondering about, “So, Crossfire... are you planning to collect on me or what?”

Knobs looked like she was about to say something but Crossfire held up her hoof and fixed me with as steady, measuring gaze. That calculating look was familiar. I’d seen it in Saddlespring. Cold, practical, and weighting options. This was the Crossfire I knew, the Drifter out for caps and nothing more.

“That bounty of yours is still under a double bonus from a deal between the Bounty Guild and Radio Guild. I bring you in that’s sixteen thousand caps. That’s a payout that’s hard to ignore, especially since I think I’m the only mare in town who can see through your disguise.”

“Crossfire,” Knobs began in a tone of voice somepony might reserve for a foal that was about to touch something they weren’t supposed to, but Crossfire went on, ignoring the ghoul.

“Out of respect for what you did for Knobs I’ll back off for now,” Crossfire said, “Give you a nice twenty four hour grace period. Past that, though, all bets are off, buck. I spot you on the street or anywhere else that ain’t at Knobs house, then it’s open season.”

Knobs made an unhappy, throaty noise, almost a whine if it could be more feminine and intensely displeased, but Crossfire looked at her friend with an exasperated sigh, “Knobs, I can’t just ignore a bounty that high because the buck happened to help you out!”

“He’s a nice pony Crossfire. I like nice ponies. You’re a nice pony too when you try to be.”

Crossfire rubbed her head with a hoof, right on her temple as she shut her eyes tight, “Okay, okay! Two days! I’ll give him two days!”

“A week,” Knobs said firmly.

“What? A week!?”

“A week, and you’ll help him with getting around town when I’m not available,” Knobs said with a firm nod, then her eyes lit up, “Oh! I know! Maybe you can introduce him to the Drifter’s Guild? Longwalk needs Guild contacts to help him get information, and the Drifter’s Guild is perfect for that!”

Crossfire looked helpless before Knobs’ bubbling enthusiasm, the first time I’d ever seen the tough dark furred Drifter looked out of her element, “Knobs, c’mon! You can’t just decide things like that. I have a job and reputation to think about. And if I wait a week I lose the bonus on him!”

Binge leaned towards me and whispered, “Bucky are these two married?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered back.

If looks could cause harm then Crossfire’s eyes may as well have been loaded with armor piercing rounds as she cast a withering glare my way, “I ain’t deaf, buck! Me and Knobs are not married!”

Knobs lips pursed in a wide pout, her eyes growing large and shiny “Aww, but I had a ring picked out and everything for the proposal.”

It was difficult to tell if Crossfire was about to go white as a cloud or red as blood, her face caught between wide eyed paleness and heated blushing. Either way, this was my first time seeing the mare appear as if she was about to go into cardiac arrest. I looked on with interest, both relieved to have some of the attention taken off me, and rather enjoying Crossfire’s discomfort. It was good to know the previously seeming unflappable Drifter could be taken off guard.

Binge, wagging her tail about playfully, licked her lips and leaned her elbows on the table, chin rested on her crossed hooves, “If you two are going to start making the sexy times can me and bucky stay and watch?”

My forehead hit the table, and I heard Crossfire sputter something that might have been a death threat, a fervent denial of sexual interest, or both. Probably both. Either way it came out rather garbled. Knobs began to giggle. Binge joined in. Dear Ancestors, they had practically the same giggle. Me and Crossfire were doomed.

Knobs, struggling to get her laughter under control, managed to choke out, “Ooh, okay, okay, guess we can’t take the joke that far.”

“Aww, why not?” asked Binge, who then blinked, “And who’s joking?”

“Much as I like seeing Crossfire go cross eyed I think we got to pull the conversation back to something serious,” said Knobs, grinning apologetically at Crossfire, “You do realize I was joking, right?”

Crossfire’s eyes darted around the room a bit before she looked away, putting on a mask of unflappable cool that I could not recognize was a mask. Had it been a mask back at Saddlespring?

“Of course I knew you were joking. Obviously.”

Knobs snickered knowingly, “Obviously. Okay, so, seriously, will you give Longwalk here an introduction to the Drifter’s Guild?”

“Hold on a sec,” I said, “Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but what good will being introduced to the Drifter’s Guild do? I mean, I’m not a Drifter, and wasn’t planning on becoming one.”

Binge’s hoof swatted the back of my head, “Oh don’t be silly, bucky! I know you’re smarter than this. Think about it. You want to find tasty infos about your stolen blood, and you gotta magic trick up a trip to the far away dreamland, the NCR. You don’t think anywhere in your delightfully virgin brainmeats that this Guild, that any Guild, would be able to help out?”

It was probably a bad sign that I needed Binge to point out logical thoughts I should have been able to think of on my own. I realized then just how tired I was. After the fight with the Raider’s I had walked all night talking with Knobs and hadn’t had much chance to just lay down and catch some shut-eye. On top of that I was still hungry. My brain pony was too exhausted for having logical thoughts. Binge was, of course, right. The Drifter’s Guild was as sensible a contact as any to make in Skull City, minus the whole bounty on my head.

“Right, sorry, I’m pretty beat,” I said with a sigh, “You’re right that the Drifter’s Guild could be helpful, but what about this bounty I got hanging over me? If Crossfire’s willing to beat me senseless over it-”

Crossfire gave a firm nod at that, smiling wolfishly.

“-then shouldn’t I expect the same from any other Drifter? Wouldn’t walking into their Guild be no different than if I went and turned myself in to Odessa?”

At that point Knobs got up, looking forlornly at her tray and soup bowls, “Well, while you discuss how to deal with that problem, I’m going to go get more soup to replace what we lost due to somepony jumping the gun and attacking one of my houseguests.”

Crossfire mumbled something that might have been an apology as Knobs trotted back to the kitchen. There was a brief, awkward silence, before Binge shrugged and said, “I don’t see any problems with you staying all pretty and dressed up, Longykins. Nopony will recognize you at the Guild if you stay looking so frilly and delectably bitable.”

My ears flattened, tail twitching, “Crossfire recognized me. Besides I can’t stay like this all the time!”

“Only reason I recognized you, buck, was because no matter how dressed up you are there’s now way I’d forget your dopey face. You just got a way of looking so mindlessly hopeful and puppy-doggish that it’s impossible to mistake you for anypony else,” grumbled Crossfire.

“I know right!” said Binge, squeezing my cheeks between her hooves, “Just look at him. He’s like a big pony shaped puppy!”

I frowned, face still being squeezed like cookie dough between Binge’s hooves as I sighed, staring at Crossfire, “I don’t even know what a puppy is, but it sounds unflattering. So you’re saying you think I’ll pass without trouble if you take me to your Guild?”

Crossfire blew out a snort, flipping her ponytail from her shoulder with a toss of her head, ”If you stick with the skirt look, you’ll probably fool most of the low rankers. Shard might recognize you, but he won’t make a move unless I do, and Brickhouse is still bedridden after bumping uglies with death, so no worries there. You plan on playing dress up the entire time you’re in town?”

I heaved out a sigh, looking myself over with a pensive look. The dress did fit well and I thought I could probably fight while wearing it. I’d rather wear my armor. Couldn’t be that bad if I wore it, as long as I kept the braided pigtails and maintained a feminine voice.

“Was rather hoping to get this bounty off my head somehow. Any way I can do that?”

Crossfire laughed, “Only two ways the Bounty Guild takes a bounty down. Somepony collects on it, or whoever issued the bounty in the first place withdraws it.”

My face drew down in a deep frown, but my mind was turning. Exhaustion plus hunger was not conductive to my brain pony drawing up ideas, but fortunately for me Knobs returned at this point with fresh bowls of soup. I couldn’t tell what was in the soup as she set the bowls out on the table. It was dark, and filled with bits of floaty bits that looked like some kind of meat and weird looking strands that when I poked at them turned out to be thin and ropey. There were slivers of some kind of plant in there too, but again, I couldn’t tell what it was.

“What... is this?” I asked. It smelled salty and delicious but my curiosity was piqued.

“Rat, onion, and noddles, an Outskirts classic dish,” said Knobs, winking at me, “Don’t worry, the rat meat is perfectly clean. I buy it from a nice gang of foals in the next turf over. They always make sure the meat is disease free.”

I made a small ‘Hmm’ sound and began to eat. Binge dove in as well, not even bothering with a spoon. She just went muzzle first into the soup and started lapping it up. It was... an interesting sight. I tried to ignore the way she got a lidded look as her tongue took long, slurping darts into the soup. Bad brain. No thinking sweaty thoughts. I shoved aside images of other things Binge might use her tongue on and focused on the soup. It was, much as it smelled, quite salty, but it had a mitigating flavor of spice that balanced it all out. I was done with my bowl before I realized it, and Knobs didn’t even wait for me to ask before smiling and taking the bowl, “I’ll go grab you seconds.”

Halfway through my second bowl I was crunching one of the bits of onion between my teeth and found myself asking, “Okay, what are these onions? They’re great!”

Crossfire got a unusually subdued look on her face as she said, “They’re what you see on my flank, buck.”

I looked, recalling that her cutie mark was three weird looking beige plants, with little twisty tops. I gave her a questioning look, quirking an eyebrow. Crossfire shrugged, “Don’t expect to hear the story behind my cutie mark. Or what it means. I grew up on an onion farm. Figure it out yourself.”

I decided to just let it drop, not wanting to get Crossfire angry. It was pretty clear she didn’t want to talk about it. Which made me wonder why she’d answered my question in the first place. After we were done eating I helped Knobs put away the dishes and clean up. I found her kitchen was pretty small and cozy, but much like the rest of the house it was clean and had a well cared for feel. There was a small hallway that was to the left of the kitchen that turned at a corner deeper into the house, with a door along the wall on the right side. I noticed that door had a padlock on it.

“The filly is sleeping in there,” said Knobs, noticing my curious look, “I made sure she was asleep before coming out to make food.”

I gulped, nodding, “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

Knobs gave me a subdued look for a second before her face brightened, “It won’t be easy, but I’m hopeful. She’s young. That’ll make it a bit easier for her to adjust, I hope. I intend to give her a few days to get used to me, and me to her. After that, I’ll play it by ear, see if she might be interested in the Skull Guild.”

“Good, good,” I said, finishing putting away the bowls after scrubbing them in a small wash bucket that had been filled with water from an actual working sink. I’ll say this much for the Guilds of Skull City, they seemed to get things working, though I wondered at how much an amenity like running water cost Knobs. The Skull Guild must have paid its ponies well. My thoughts turned towards the task I had to find my tribe and transportation south. Might as well start digging for information now.

“So, Knobs, does the Skull Guild do anything other than keep the feral ghouls in check?” I asked.

“Heheh, that job alone is big enough for the need of a Guild to do it, but, no, it’s not our only business,” Knobs replied, rolling about her small kitchen with deft grace, using her magic to float away the last of the dishes, “Everything we do involves ghouls to one degree or another, though. Aside from patrolling the roads to keep the ferals in check, we also train some ferals for more specialized tasks. With the right training a feral can become a simple laborer. We also do rehab for non-feral ghouls to help them keep their minds intact, offering everything from therapy to alchemic solutions to keep the more feral... urges in check.”

She’d paused briefly at the word ‘urges’, her eyes going distant for a second before she shook herself and smiled, “You don’t have to ask in a roundabout manner, Longwalk. If you want to know if the Skull Guild can help you, the official answer would probably be ‘no’, but since you're lucky enough to have met me then I can see about helping you out.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, looking down at my hooves, “Not if it’s going to get you in trouble.”

“Phfft, naaaaah, it’s fine! You’ll learn quickly that our Guilds are pretty fluid organizations. You’ll see what I mean when Crossfire shows you around the Drifter’s Guild. I can make a few inquiries among my peers about your situation with your tribe, and about Odessa. If the Skull Guild’s had any dealings with them I can find out pretty quick I bet. As for transportation, honestly I’d say that cool autowagon of yours would be faster than anything else you might get ahold of here besides the airship the Mechanics Guild maintains. Don’t know how you’d get them to lend you a ride in it, but, hey, for enough caps just about anything is for sale in this city...”

Her eyes went a shade solem at those last words, for the first time her cracked, leathery skin giving her a look of actual age and tiredness, “Wish sometimes that wasn’t the case.”

A part of me wanted to ask what she meant, but I didn’t want to crank up the awkward levels by prying. That’d be a poor way to repay this mare for her fast friendship, not to mention food. Wonderful, delicious food. Seriously, if Crossfire wasn’t marrying this mare I was considering my own prospects. The half-dead thing was totally overlookable if she could keep cooking like that.

Not long after that Arcaidia and B.B returned from their shopping trip, and I immediately took note of the fact that both mares looked somewhat worse for wear. Arcaidia was actually sweating, her long silver mane disheveled and her small body brimming with antsy energy. She was grumbling under her breath in her own language as she entered Knob’s house. Behind her B.B was half covered in mud, her own violet dress torn in a few places and a noticeable bruise on her cheek.

“Uhh... guys?” I asked as they both sat on their haunches inside the door, “Anything you’d like to share with me?”

They didn’t immediately respond to me, the two mares both glaring at a point behind me. I rather quickly realized that Crossfire was still seated at the table, right behind me, and she had a distinctively smug half grin on her face as she waved a hoof at Arcaidia and B.B.

“Why hello ladies? Have fun with the locals?”

B.B grimaced, damn near nearly snarled, pointing a hoof at Crossfire in a way that suggested she wanted her revolvers attached, “What’s she doin’ here?”

I blinked, glancing back at Crossfire, “Oh, uh, right. Her. Explanations all around then. Me first. Crossfire is friends with Knobs. Dropped by today for breakfast. We’ve got a kind of temporary truce going-”

“One week,” Crossfire reminded me.

“Right, one week. She’s going to help out by introducing me to the Drifter’s Guild. Please don’t shoot her.”

Arcaidia held her head high, turning her nose up at Crossfire, “We no problem if she no problem. Unlike some ponies who touch where they are not wanted!”

Arcaidia spat that out with an icy glare that didn’t seem to be directed at anything specific, just the city in general. I guess her fascination with Skull Cit was at an end after meeting too many of the locals.

“Oh, dear Ancestors, tell me you two didn’t kill anypony,” I said, rubbing my forehead with one hoof and feeling the beginnings of a headache.

B.B looked up, as if trying to recall details, “I don’t... think so? We didn’t shoot nopony. I might’ve introduced one stallion’s head ta a’ new career as a’ door stopper. Arcaidia froze solid one poor fella’s groin-”

“He touched my bottom!”

“-an’ I’m pretty sure they ain’t gonna be able ta clear that street o’ icicles fer awhile. Could be we ticked off, I don’t know, two different gangs? There were a’ lot o’ ponies chasin’ us until we managed ta lose ‘em.”

Amid Crossfire’s snickers and Binge’s giggles I just stared at the two mares in front of me, headache increasing. So, this is what’s its like to be on the other side of a Longwalk Incident? I took a deep breath and managed a small, strained smile, “At least you’re both alright. You two are okay? No injuries?”

Arcaidia took a long, deep breath, and her look of frozen death got replaced with her cheerful energy, “Yes, very good. Bad ponies not ruin my day. And we finish shopping!”

B.B nodded, rubbing her cheek, “One bastard got in a’ solid hit, but I’ve had worse. Way worse. An’ yeah, like Arc says, we got the goods. Put it all in the Ursa. The, uh, ‘event’ happened on our way back after we got done shoppin’.”

“What event?” asked Knobs as she came back into the room. It was getting a tad crowded in here. I decided to let the siren song of the couch take root and went over, flopping down on the plush pillows. It was just what the healer ordered for my headache, sinking into that comfy bit of furniture. Binge curled up at the foot of the couch, and B.B floated over to sit on the other side of the couch. Arcaidia took a seat at the table, eyeing Crossfire warily. Crossfire returned the look with a nonchalant expression that spoke of the complete lack of bucks she gave of Arcaidia’s distrustful glare.

Knobs remained standing, seemingly comfortable enough to just balance on her wheeled back legs.

After we were done exchanging updates Knobs let out a short laugh, shaking her head, “Well, I’ve heard of worse introductions to Skull City...” she cast a meaningful look at Crossfire at that, then looked back at Arcaidia and B.B, “Sounds like you two wandered out of Marshal turf. Good thing, too. If you’d started a fight on their turf I’d have some... unpleasant explanations to have to give to them.”

B.B did have the presence of mind to look apologetic, “Sorry, hun. Was hopin’ to avoid causin’ a ruckus on our first day.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Knobs, “Worse comes to worst you might have to avoid a few spots around town. Long as you're on Marshal turf you won’t have to worry much about reprisals. So, you folks staying over today?”

I perked up, speaking quickly, “If it’s not too much trouble. I want to give us a day to rest up. Also need to hear back from LIL-E before we can do much else. Maybe tomorrow Crossfire can take me to the Drifter’s Guild and we’ll figuring things from there.”

Knobs nodded, “Sounds good to me. I’ll check in with my Guild tomorrow then too and get the ball rolling on that end of things.”

“Ya plannin’ on joinin’ up with the Drifter’s Guild?” B.B asked me, violet eyes looking at me with open curiosity.

“I don’t know,” I replied simply, my own face turning thoughtful, “I hadn’t thought of it, honestly. I was just hoping to get some information from them about Odessa, but maybe becoming a member would make that all go over easier. Crossfire?”

The black furred unicorn leaned back in her seat, looking me square in the eyes, “You’d get access to more information and options if you joined, but joining wouldn’t be a walk in the park, buck. You’d need a high ranking member to sponsor you, and pass an aptitude test. If you’re serious, I might be willing to sponsor you. Shit, might make it easier for me to track you down later, if you don’t get your bounty taken off somehow. But what were you planning to do? Join up while pretending to be a mare?”

I groaned. I’d forgotten about that. Did I not have a choice, then?

“Really prefer not to have to do that,” I said, “Maybe I’ll hold off on trying to join until the bounty is gone, one way or another.”

“Think on big matters later,” said Arcaidia, “Spend day resting. Think on new problems with fresh minds on next day.”

I was more than willing to take that advice. We’d had a long night and morning, and for once there was no rush to do anything. No immediate crisis, no need to get anywhere. We’d arrived in Skull City, and now it was going to take time and effort to uncover the information I needed to find my tribe and secure Arcaidia a fast trip to the NCR. We had no time constraints on these goals, at least none that I knew of. I wouldn’t mind a few days of taking things slow, for once. It’d give me time to get back in touch with Stable 104, ask about how Trailblaze was doing. I hoped she’d returned safe from her own expedition from Stable 106.

Knobs offered to get more bowls out and serve some soup to Arcaidia and B.B, and the two mares gratefully accepted. I lay down on the couch, slowly drifting in and out of sleep as I listened to my friends talk about nothing; just shoot the breeze. In between short naps I noticed Crossfire had left. Presumably back to her Guild, or home, or wherever. Knobs informed me Crossfire would be back in the morning to take me to the Drifter’s Guild if I still wanted to go. I did. Even if I didn’t join it in my ‘Blueberry’ persona I still wanted to get a look at the place.

Just as I was starting to get worried about LIL-E my Pip-Buck buzzed. I switched over to the communication tab and noticed that amid the various radio signals it could pick up there was one labeled as belonging to LIL-E, and it was blinking. I switched over to it with a few deft flicks of a switch.

“Uh, hello?”

At my words everypony else paused in their conversation to look at me, then leaned in to listen.

LIL-E’s monotone machine voice spoke over the Pip-Buck’s radio, “Longwalk? You hear me?”

“Yup, what’s up? Did you find Doc Sunday and the others?”

There was a pause that made my stomach lurch a bit. Please, let there be nothing wrong.

No such luck.

“No,” said LIL-E flatly, “Neither Doc Sunday, Dr. Lemon Slice, or any of the refugees have been here at the Rust n’ Dirt Inn. In fact I’ve inquired around and nopony has seen any sign of them in the Outskirts. From what I can tell they never made it to the city at all.”

Footnote: 50% to next level!

Bonus Ex-File: "Boss Rush Stats! - Director Midnight Twinkle"
Location: Stable 104, Tram Terminal Station
Level: 16
HP: 650
DT: 25
Perception: 5
Attack Skill: 85
Scythe Leg Damage: 70
Fang Damage: 60, plus poison (-2 STR, -2 STA, 5dmg/sec)
Special Attack "Web Capture": Immobilizes target on hit
EXP: 600
Loot: None
Weakness: Lightning element attacks

Author's Note

Transition chapters are always a little awkward for me to write because some back part of my brain is trying to figure out how to work in a few explosions or gunfights. Well, no explosions or gun battles, but you do get the return of Longwalk in drag, so it all balances out I hope. Oh, and Crossfire. Taking all bets on how long civility lasts between her and Longwalk. And have we seen the last of Iron Wrought? Probably not. Hope you folk all enjoyed the chapter, and as always never hesitate to let me know your thoughts.

Chapter 22: From Dusk 'til Dawn

Chapter 22: From Dusk ‘til Dawn

The air had become stuffy and awkwardly tense inside Knobs’ little home on the hill. Crossfire was leaning back with her hind legs propped up on the table, crossed, and her forelegs bending behind her head in a pose of relaxed disinterest that I suspected was faked, because the sable coated mare’s golden eyes never left me. Her expression was impossible to read. Knobs had politely retreated from the living room, citing a need to check up on Blasting Cap. That left me and my friends to gather around each other uncomfortably and try and parse out just what this latest development meant.

B.B’s face was still, almost too still, as she said, “My Pa wouldn’t let nothin’ happen ta them folks from Saddlespring. Ain’t no way no how.”

LIL-E’s mechanical voice’s monotone somehow seemed more strained, though perhaps that was just my own emotions bleeding in, coloring the otherwise bland machine tone, “Right now all we know is that neither he nor the refugees arrived in Skull City. Or if they did, they somehow managed it without being seen by anypony. However, if that’d been the case, I still believe Doc Sunday would have left some kind of message for us at the inn we were supposed to meet him at.”

“More to the point, what can we do about this?” I asked, keeping my voice to a nice, neutral calm I didn’t at all feel, “What are our options?”

“I tell ya what our options are,” said B.B, wings spreading, eyes glancing towards the door, “We got git lookin’ fer ‘em!”

LIL-E floated around and down to the pegasus mare’s eye level, the eyebot’s cold black carapace facing B.B firmly, “I’m all for looking, but I should be the one to go, and just me.”

B.B visibly bristled at that, raising her head in challenge, “An’ just how do ya figure that? It’s my Pa that’s up an’ vanished! Could be...” her eyes flicked away, voice lowering to a whisper, “Could be my other family issues caught up with him.”

Arcaidia, who’d taken up residence on the couch with her long silvery tail wrapped around her comfortably, pipped in, “Even if ren bruhir’s other weird family make problems, still make more sense to recon one robot than whole big group. Send tiny machine, and if big trouble, we go quick to help, but have other things of much importance to do here, yes?”

B.B’s head snapped around to look to Arcaidia, at first with a fierce gaze, but one that quickly softened at the sight of the sympathy and concern on the unicorn’s face. B.B hung her head, blowing out a sigh, “I ain’t likin’ this one dang bit. I can’t figure nothin’ that’d slow up my Pa other than a straight up brawl wit some o’ my other family.”

“That’s kind of an exaggeration, B.B,” said LIL-E, “I’ve known Doc a long time, and while I know he’s a damned good fighter, there’s no such thing as being invincible. Not in the Wasteland. Anypony can be taken down by a streak of bad luck, and there are a lot of dangers between here and Saddlespring.”

“Maybe,” I said, “But he wasn’t alone. Those Saddlespring ponies were armed, too, and there were plenty of survivors in that group. They wouldn’t go down easily.”

“No,” said LIL-E, her buzzing voice dropping an octave, “But that still doesn’t mean an ambush by a big enough pack of critters, or a run in with a decent sized group of Raiders, couldn’t wipe them out, or at least scatter them bad enough there’d be no easy way to regroup. We can’t discount any possibility.”

She was right, and it got me thinking. Barring the misfortune of encountering a large pack of radscorpions, or Hellhounds, or Balloons, or anything else of that nature, and also barring the very real possibility that they ran afoul of Raiders... what else might Doc Sunday and the Saddlespring refugees run into that’d stop them from reaching Skull City.

I could think of two groups that might be responsible, neither one a delightful prospect.

“What if either Odessa or the Labor Guild found them?” I put forth, my tail flicking with my pent anxiety, “Either one might have gone after those refugees. There were freed slaves among them, and Crossfire, you said the Labor Guild wouldn’t leave them alone.”

The mare gave a small, sharp nod, eyes unblinking as they gazed at me like twin gun barrels, “That I did. Labor Guild isn’t in the habit of letting its property go, which those ponies still are. Only took a couple of days for me, Shard, and Brickhouse to get back to the city and report in after everything went to shit in Saddlespring, so by then the Labor Guild could have sent out a team to hunt those slaves down.”

B.B’s eyes narrowed to a razor gleam, “It’d take more than a’ bunch o’ Labor Guild lackeys to git the better o’ my Pa.”

Crossfire shrugged, not a hint of concern on her face, “If you say so. Anypony can get outnumbered, no matter how good they are. Also, just tossing this out there, the Labor Guild might have hired another Drifter team to go after them. Not me and my crew, because Brickhouse is still down and out recovering from injuries, but there are a lot of guns for hire in the Drifter’s Guild that wouldn’t think twice about a contract to go recover lost slaves for the Labor Guild.”

“That possibility aside,” said LIL-E, “Longwalk, what makes you think Odessa would go after them?”

It was my turn to shrug, “It's a long shot, but it just occured to me that since Odessa is after Arcaidia, they might also go for anypony who might’ve had contact with her. Its not as if Odessa has needed a lot of motivation to strike anypony we’ve been around, and they might’ve thought to use the refugees as hostages against us or something. But... I guess it’d be pretty unlikely. If Odessa had grabbed Doc and the refugees they would’ve used them against us already.”

“No use talk of things we can’t know,” said Arcaidia with a toss of her mane, “Just make our heads hurt with worries. Let LIL-E robot go search. Find evidence. Know more then.”

“She’s right. Speculating won’t get us anywhere. Longwalk, I can fly to where we last saw Doc Sunday. Won’t take me more than a day, if I just make a beeline straight for it,” said LIL-E, floating over towards me, “My... this eyebot has a long enough com range I can get in touch if I find anything.”

I noticed she avoided directly mentioning Stable 104 or the spider ponies, who she’d likely have an easier time reaching than my Pip-Buck. On top of that Misty Glasses could arrange a portal to open between us and LIL-E’s position, in case of an emergency. I assumed LIL-E didn’t say any of that because of Crossfire listening in. The Drifter’s loyalty was still pretty clearly just to herself and her own ends, through perhaps I conceded she seemed to have a genuine fondness for Knobs, but there was still no reason to trust her with details about the Stable or its capacity to create portals my friends and I could use to get around faster. So I just nodded to LIL-E, “That sounds like the best option we’ve got. Just be careful out there.”

“How ya gonna look fer ‘em?” asked B.B, not in a challenging tone, but just strained with worry for her father and fellow townspoines, “It's a big area fer just one robot ta be searchin’...”

“Like I said, I know your father well,” replied LIL-E, “We worked together a lot when he was a Drifter. Because of that I know some of his prefered shortcuts for getting around the Skull City Wasteland. I’m not going to search randomly. There’s one route between Saddlespring and Skull City that I suspect he might have taken, one that goes... well, it goes through a Ruin.”

“What!?” B.B exclaimed.

“We’d cleared it years ago. It should’ve been safe, but, well if something did happen it probably happened at the Ruin,” said LIL-E, “I’ll know for sure when I get there.”

B.B blew out a heavy sigh, “Wish I was goin’ wit ya.”

“I’ll move faster by myself,” said LIL-E, turning to face me with her dark, grilled faceplate looking particularly solem. That or my own perceptions were going too far to color expression onto a robot, “And if time happens to be of the essence I better get my sleek metal ass moving, shouldn’t I?”

I quirked an eyebrow, “Sleek?”

“Oh shut up, I’m- I mean this robot- is a fine example of high quality engineering! The best tech the NCR put together over the past decade.”

“I thought you said a friend made the robot for you?” I asked.

“Uh... yes, a friend in the NCR. Anyway, I’m off! If things turn out horrible, which by Celestia’s own plush plot hole I hope not but I know our luck, I’ll shout and holler for help in my most damsel-in-distress voice.”

I chuckled, gesturing at my current attire with a hoof, “I’m more dressed for that role, but I’ll do my best to come running to the rescue after hiking up my skirt.”

After the kind of excitement, mortal terror, and pain that’d been accompanying my typical days for the past couple of weeks it was almost surreal to have a day where there wasn’t anything to do. LIL-E’s departure had been hours ago and it’d be at least a day before we’d hear anything from her. Crossfire had also left after going back to have a brief conversation with Knobs I hadn’t been privy to. The Drifter had trotted off, her massive rifle slung across her back, with a saunter in her step and a promise she’d be back tomorrow morning to collect me for introduction to the Drifter’s Guild. Knobs in the meantime had made sure to feed our little Raider captive.

Blasting Cap seemed only marginally less aggressive and murderous, and I think most of that had to do with the small filly being even more exhausted than I was. Her glare of pure death towards me had been underscored by dark circles under her eyes and clear tear streaks. My friends and I had vacated the house, to give Knobs and the filly some space. I was worried a bit about Knobs’ safety, but the ghoul had assured me she had things well in hoof. I had little choice but to trust her on that count.

Since B.B and Arcaidia had run afoul of local gangers during their shopping trip it was decided we wouldn’t wander too far from Knobs’ home for the time being. Arcaidia retired to the Ursa, fiddling with her Pip-Buck as she lay on one of the bunks. B.B went to perch on the roof, and I heard the occasional thump from up there as she shuffled around. I didn’t know if she was guarding, napping, or what, so I went to take a peek through the top hatch of the Ursa. I saw B.B standing stock still, eyes calmly closed in concentration. A deck of those strange cards I’d seen her use in her magic performance back in Saddlespring were balanced on the tip of one of her wings. As I watched she began to deftly use her wings to shuffle the cards, flipping them between each wing in sweeping, fan-like motions.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just a’ little exercise o’ my wing dexterity,” she said, flipping the cards in one long flapping line from one wing to a hoof, then fast and smooth used another hoof to sweep the deck in an even spread onto the Ursa’s roof so that they were face up, “Care ta’ pick a’ card, Long?”

I chuckled, clambering onto the roof and trotted over, looking the cards over, “Guess you gotta practice a lot to learn to do these tricks.”

“Ain’t about ta let myself git rusty, that’s fer sure,” said B.B with a small smile, one that seemed a bit strained as she said, “Pa taught me ta practice twice a’ day, way back when. Ain’t been too good ‘bout keepin’ up wit that, what with all the trouble we’ve rustled up fer ourselves.”

I chewed my lower lip, slowly picking up a card that showed six red diamonds, “So, your father... he’s not the same father you had when you were living in the Enclave, was he? He’s a unicorn.”

B.B swept up her cards and held the deck out to me. I took the hint and slipped my card back into the deck. She gave me a wink as she began to rapidly shuffle the deck around again, flipping the cards between her wings with growing speed.

“Ya caught on ta that, huh? Yeah, Doc Sunday ain’t my biological father. I call ‘im Pa ‘cause he raised me the... third time around.”

“Third time?”

“Long story, Long. One I’ve been meanin’ ta tell ya’ll ‘bout, since you an’ the others have earned the right ta hear it all. Just haven’t found the right moment, ya know? So, is this yer card?”

She flourished the deck and whipped out a card, holding it between the feathers of one wing. It was a card with the letter A and a black spade like shape on it. I blinked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Uh... no. Is this the trick?” I asked, confused.

B.B grinned, “Whoopsie. How about now?” she flicked the card with the A and black space with her other wing, and in a flash it seemed to change before my eyes, switching to the card with the six red diamonds. I gave a sharp whistle of appreciation and stomped my hoof in short applause as B.B took a bow.

“Okay, that’s a cool skill,” I said, and glanced around thoughtfully at the sight of the city around us, “Were you thinking of doing a show or something?”

B.B’s eyes were also thoughtful, through also carried some reservation, “Be nice ta’ put some smiles on a crowd. Lot o’ these ponies look like they could use it. Land’s sakes, I could use it!”

She heaved out a sigh, shaking her head and letting the cards fall to the roof in a small splatter of flipping numbers and shapes, “I shoulda made LIL-E take me wit her. Gunna drive me ta’ distraction wonderin’ what coulda’ happened ta my Pa and the other folk from home.”

“She’ll find them,” I said, as firm and reassuring as I could, “LIL-E knows what she’s doing.”

B.B gave a shallow nod, “Yeah, yeah, yer right. Anywhose, Long, what’re ya plannin’ ta do wit the rest o’ the day?”

An excellent question, that. I made a vague gesture with one hoof, “Not really sure. Half tempted to just pass out on one of the bunks. Last night... sucked.”

“Ya’ need ta git anythin’ more off yer chest?” she offered, voice inviting, not judging.

It took me several long seconds to manage a tiny shake of my head, forcing my ears to stay nice and contently perked up instead of flopping to the side of my head, “No. No, I’m good. Thanks, though. I appreciate that you’re still willing to listen, even if you know it’ll just be me venting.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with ventin’ what ya got inside. Most ponies, most sane ponies, don’t find it easy bein’ square with takin’ a life, in self defense or not. Just don’t try ta act like a tough buck, ya hear? Or I’ll smack ya good right upside yer fool head.”

“Fair enough,” I said, and gave her a quick hug, squeezing my hooves around her withers. She returned the hug, and we broke apart. Glancing around, I realized something. We were down one member of the group besides LIL-E.

“By the way, have you seen Binge? Just realized I haven’t seen her in a bit, like she just up and vanished.”

“Hmm? Oh, she’s around,” said B.B, sniffing the air with her nose wiggling, her face screwing up in a faint look of disgust, “Yup, no mistakin’ that mare’s particular odor. She’s ‘bout due fer another bath, I’m thinkin’. Ain’t sure ‘xactly where she’s at, but I’m smellin’ her close by.”

Without any warning, and rather violating my sense of personal space and physics at the same time, Binge literally appeared from behind me, hopping onto my back like she was a tiny filly as she placed her hooves on my head.

“I’m right here! Were you cute little beauties looking for Aunty Binge?”

B.B blinked a few times, violet eyes faintly bewildered before they quickly switched to exasperated acceptance as she waved a wing, “Yeah, in fact I was, ya right daft mare. Somepony’s due fer a cleanin’.”

Binge was off my back as fast as if I’d been lit on fire, bouncing back towards the edge of the Ursa’s roof while looking for all the world like a bristling cat, “Oh nonono, no bath time for this filly! You wanna get sudsy with Lonkykins I’ll go grab the rope, but there will be NO soap in my future! You subjected me to your hygienic tyranny once already! Not happening again, birdy!”

“Nopony’s going to force bathe you, Binge,” I said, giving B.B a sidelong look. The pegasus’ return look told me she was in no way in agreement with my statement but that she was going to let me handle the touchy ex-Raider for now. I turned to Binge with my most diplomatic smile, “But we are in a place that doesn’t like, uh... Raiders. The less you can look like one the better, right?”

Binge got a stubborn look on her face, tail twitching, “Everypony’s dirty around here. Inside and out. I blend in better than you do, bucky.

I paused, then nodded, “Point taken. Still, you’ll have to clean up eventually. Doesn’t have to be now, but one point or another. I won’t let B.B or Arcaidia force you through it. Instead, as a favor to me, could you do it yourself sometime soon?”

A contemplative spark entered her eyes, “Favor for a favor. When I get all wet and clean... you clean up with me.”

A distinct feeling of uncomfortable warmth seeped through me and I coughed, “A-at the same time? Uh, as in, bathing together?”

“Yuuuuup.” That smile of hers managed to be both childishly innocent and sinfully suggestive at the same time. I gulped, glanced back at B.B. Rather unhelpfully she gave me a snickering look that seemed to say ‘you got yourself in this one, you can get yourself out’. Thanks B.B. Thanks. Well, Binge had backed off when I asked to her before, and it wasn’t like we didn’t walk around naked all the time anyway, so how much worse could it be to bathe at the same time? Hm, when would we be able to clean up again anyway? Next time we stopped back at Stable 104, I supposed.

Taking a deep breath I gave Binge a firm nod, “It’s a deal then. From now on, we clean up together. In exchange you don’t make a fuss over it.”

I held out a hoof, and Binge, giggling, took it with a firm shake. I shivered a bit when her hoof lingered a bit longer and caressed me just slightly before withdrawing.

“Looking forward to it, Longy. It’ll be fun. Heheheh.”

Dear Ancestors, what did I just agree to? I wondered bleakly, but put the thought aside. No point worrying about it until it happened, which might not be for awhile anyway. Still, couldn’t entirely shake the sensation I’d regret this later.

Most of the rest of the day passed with a shocking lack of incident. I didn’t get as much sleep as I’d hoped to. I fell in and out of short naps, my dreams thankfully brief and indistinct, for once. Images of the fight with the Raiders mixed with previous battles. I saw Blasting Cap’s mother, Gramzanber transfixed like a silver branch sprouting from her flesh. Blood ran like rain, and the image melted, Gramzanber remaining, yet the image of the pony dissolving into another. Glint? If it was the armor of Odessa hid the truth of it, but the image was washed away by the black currents of fitful sleep and I remembered nothing else.

Hunger drove me to food as the day was turning dark with the onset of evening. Curious, I decided to try out some of the carrots and apples we’d packed from Stable 104. They were packed away in small, plastic sealed containers made from a soft, light material that B.B explained to me was called ‘styrofoam’. The packaging kept the fruits and vegetables fresh, not just from the hermetic sealing, but from light magic enchantments that slowed decomposition. It certainly explained why the apples and carrots tasted so crisp. I felt revitalized, despite my lack of solid sleep.

We hadn’t heard from LIL-E yet, but I didn’t think there’d be much reason to worry unless another day went by without word. By now the eyebot would probably just be reaching the area around Saddlespring.

I sent a silent prayer to the Ancestor Spirits to aid her in finding our missing refugees.

Stretching, rising from the bunk I’d been napping on, I headed for the back hatch out of the Ursa.

“Where ya goin’, Long?” asked B.B, who was sitting across from Arcaidia at the dining table. A bunch of her cards were stretched out on the table, and both mares seemed to be holding a set of the cards, B.B expertly in her hooves and Arcaidia in the soft, frosty glow of her magic. Where they playing some sort of game?

“Just out for a walk. Can’t seem to get to sleep for long, so might as well go burn off some of this energy.”

“It’s gonna be dark soon,” B.B warned, “Don’t wander far, ‘kay?”

Arcaidia gave a firm nod at that, eyeing me with her fierce silver eyes, “Stay close to base. Not want to search all trouble city for you, ren solva.”

I raised my Pip-Buck clad hoof, “Anything happens I’ll call for help. I got your frequency, Arcaidia. Wasn’t planning to wander too far.”

Mostly true. Well, sort of mostly true. Neither of these mares were as familiar with me as Trailblaze was, otherwise they might have noticed the way my tail bounced a bit in anticipation. I’d been far too tired earlier in the day, and too busy just getting us settled, to consider doing any exploring. Now that things were quiet, with no immediate issues requiring my attention, my wanderlust and need to poke my nose into places was rising. I truly didn’t intend to wander far, but this was my first real city and I wasn’t going to waste a chance to look around now that I didn’t feel like ten different shades of death.

Trotting out into the chilling dusk air I found that Skull City wasn’t certainly going to sleep. The city around me was springing to life with hundreds of flickering flames from torches and sparking electrical lights. Windows from every street cast a sickly yellow and orange shade over everything, making the world look hazy even before one counting in the wisps of smoke from the street torches.

Knobs’ home was similarly lit, and on impulse I trotted towards it, thinking I’d ask Knobs about if there was any interesting sights in the area, and if there was anything I needed to avoid. When I got up to the door I could hear voices speaking inside, and though the door muffled them somewhat I could tell one was high and shrill and likely belonged to Blasting Cap. Curiosity pushed my ear to the door, rather than go in and interrupt the conversation. With my ear pressed firmly to the wood the indistinct voices gained enough definition to make out the words.

“-on’t care! I’m not stayin’ with you or anypony!”

This high pitched declaration was responded to with an even, calm voice. I didn’t even have to see Knobs to know the ghoulish mare was likely smiling in an understanding manner. It just filled her voice.

“If you’re set on leaving I won’t be able to stop you, Blasting Cap. But this city isn’t a kind place to anypony who’s by themselves.”

“So what!? I’m strong! I’m tough! Tougher than any stupid city bitch! I’ll just kill anypony who tries to hurt me and take what I want!”

“Well, you could try that. But even if you are stronger and tougher, there’s a lot of ponies out there, and they’re all smart enough to have friends. Gangs. Guilds. Communities. We may fight each other a lot here in Skull City, but we never fight alone. Even the foal gangs won’t go easy on you if you mess with one of their own.”

Blasting Cap’s voice lost a lot of its immediate, shouting momentum, her muffled voice abruptly sounding much less sure of herself.

“I... I can take ‘em. I’ll make it without your stupid help! And then I’ll kill that dick that took...took away mama.”

The following silence was only broken up by a few sobs, like quite, distant gunshots. Guilt landed on my shoulders like a gristly old cloak, and I did my best to weather it, accept it, and not hide away from the feeling. I knew that killing Blasting Cap’s mother had been my only real option, but I didn’t want to fool myself into believing I didn’t bear the responsibility for the consequences of that choice. Guilt was a good reminder. A reminder to do better, or at least never forget to try. I owed the filly on the other side of the door that much. Well, that, and the chance to become better herself, if she could get past her upbringing. I wished I had a better notion of how to help her do that other than leave her in Knobs’ care.

The silence was cracked by Blasting Cap’s voice shouting, “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m sorry, couldn’t help it. I hate seeing foals cry.” Knobs said, voice both kind and embarrassed at the same time.

“I wasn’t crying! Badass Raiders don’t cry!”

“Of course. My mistake. Still, between running away into the city to starve, or staying here with me, doesn’t the latter seem like the better choice? You won’t have to stay forever, and you’ll be warm, and fed. If you’re so set on revenge doesn’t it make more sense to stay alive as long as you can, first?”

“I don’t need anypony’s help,” Blasting Cap’s voice had lost more of its strength and conviction.

“No, I don’t imagine you do. Don’t think of it as help,” said Knobs, tone filled with understanding, “Think of it as... Oh! You’re taking advantage of me. Think of it like that. Taking advantage of the ‘stupid city mare’. I mean, if I’m going to give you free food and water, why not take it? Your revenge isn’t going anywhere, and you can grow up bigger and stronger if you let some kind, gullible sort like me take care of you for awhile, right?”

“You... you are really stupid, and gullible,” Blasting Cap’s voice was filled with that uneasy waver of a pony letting themselves be convinced that something was their idea, “Yeah, I can take whatever I want from you! I’m a smart filly, mama always said so. That’s why she kept me alive instead of tossing me away. That dumb, asshole buck is... kind of big right now, but I’ll get bigger than him! Then I can kill him.”

Knobs cleared her throat, perhaps to hide a laugh, “Yes, well, if that’s what you want, I guess I have no choice but to look after you for awhile then. So, you hungry?”

“... No.”

This was followed by a loud gurgling sound. I heard Blasting Cap make a small, irritated whine.

“... Yes.”

“Well,” said Knobs, “Then let’s heat up some soup. Be a good filly and come help in the kitchen. Oh, don’t make that face, you’ll still have to work for your meals, Blasting Cap. It’ll help you grow bigger and stronger. That’s what you want, right? For revenge?”

“Y-yeah! Revenge!”

I heard the filly’s tiny hooves scampering across the floorboards, following Knobs into the kitchen, presumably. I leaned back from the door, deciding I’d not cause a fuss by going in to talk to Knobs. It seemed like she was handling the Raider filly well enough. I wasn’t sure how thrilled I was about the way Knobs was using Blasting Cap’s desire for revenge on me as a motivation to keep her under control, but I supposed it was better than letting the filly get riled up to the point of running away into the city. Besides, it’d be a long, long time before she grew up enough to come after me. A lot could happen in those years, both good and bad.

I might be dead in three months, for example.

Turning away from Knobs’ house I came face to face with Binge’s grinning visage, her blue eyes like twin, glowing blue needles in the dusk gloom.

“Aaah! Binge, stop doing that.” I took a few seconds to get my breathing under control while Binge’s smile glittered like a yellow dagger. Blowing irritably at a stray strand of mane I said, “How do you do that anyway?”

“I don’t let myself get seen or heard, silly filly. Duh.” Binge said with a happy chirp, “What’cha doing dropping eaves all over the nice dead mare’s front door, hmmmmm?”

“Dropping what? Nevermind,” I shook my head, trying not to let myself get too flabbergasted by Binge’s... Bingeness. I trotted around her, letting my wanderlust pick a direction for me, heading for one of the many streets leading to what I was pretty sure was the east, along the same path that’d follow the massive wall to the Inner City. I heard hoof steps behind me and sighed, glancing over my shoulder, “What are you doing, Binge?”

“Following you, of course, of course. You look like you’re planning to do fun, secret thingies and can’t let you do do that without a chaperone. No that wouldn’t do at all,” she mimed having her throat choked with her hooves, “If I let you wander away and you got your pretty head hurt then birdie or the icy one will kill ol’ Binge dead.”

I didn’t think for an instant that fear or B.B or Arcaidia was her motivation for wanting to come with me on my little exploratory trot. Binge had just thoroughly demonstrated her proficiency with stealth and if she wanted to she could easily make herself swiftly impossible to find or track, especially in a city this large and labyrinthine. Even if something did happen to me while I wandered it wasn’t as if Binge couldn’t just deny having ever seen me leave. She was safe. No, I was pretty sure she had some other reason for wanting to tag along. The question was if it was something harmless, like alleviating boredom, or something that would make my night more interesting than I’d generally prefer. I didn’t think anymore than she wanted to hurt me... mostly. No, I was worried her interests were a little too much of the opposite.

I’d left Gramzanber in the Ursa, so the only defenses I had at hoof were the various non-lethal grenades in my saddlebags. That, and my own four hooves. I suppose it’d be enough, if something did end up going wrong. In an extreme situation I could toss a smoke or stun grenade and make a run for it. If that “extreme situation” happened to end up being Binge, well, I’d cross the canyon if and when it came up.

“You want to come, then fine, I’m not going to stop you,” I said, managing a small smile, “I don’t mind the company, and wasn’t planning to go far. Just enough to satisfy my need to aimlessly explore. You’ll probably be bored to tears.”

Binge gave one of her bursting titters, eyes glinting, “Oh, with you, bucky, I don’t think I can ever be bored.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage it eventually,” I said with a half hearted chuckle, taking a second to note Binge’s general lack of garments, not unusual in and of itself, but... “Sure you don’t want to go grab your armor, just in case? I’m stuck with this damn dress, but you could suit up, on the off chance we get shot at.”

“Nah, the spiky armor is super nice for times I know I’m going to be playing inside somepony’s intestines, but for strolling in the moonlight with my favorite puppy I think it’s a bit much. Besides, if we get shot at, you make a great meatshield, bucky.”

It was probably a sad state of affairs that I couldn’t even fault her logic on that last point. I didn’t say that, however, and instead just shook my head as I turned and started off at a brisk canter. My exhaustion from earlier had been beaten back by the combined forces of partial sleep and surprisingly tasty food for something that wasn’t meat, so my legs were bouncy with energy as Binge and I started wandering through the winding streets of Skull City.

Near as I could tell there wasn’t a lot of order or reason to the way the streets and buildings were set up. I’d seen plenty of the chaos during the trek with Knobs, but then we’d only been moving in one direction, following a fairly straightforward path of streets the Knobs had seemed to know so well she probably could have driven her wagon through them in her sleep. Now I was wandering around as my legs would take me, though always keeping that massive, intimidating dark wall as a easy to use landmark to my progress and general position.

In less than ten minutes I was utterly turned around. I had a sense of where Knobs’ house was, but it hadn’t taken long to get to a point where her hill was nowhere in sight. The night was beating with life, the torchlights and irregular electrical lights leaving murky shadows in every alley we passed by. I began to notice that, despite the seeming chaos, there was an underlying pattern forming to the buildings around me. The metal shacks were often built upon with second, third, and even fourth ‘floors’ consisting of even more shacks, with randomly assorted roof space. Yet these taller buildings often formed the center of any given cluster of streets, with smaller homes built radiating outward from the larger building in the middle. That building, I noticed as I passed my third such of its type, was almost always some kind of tavern or market on its bottom floor, like a little community center.

The moment I realized that, finding my way became so much easier. I quickly came to understand I could mark my path through the city not by the streets, but by the position of those taller, center buildings. Wracking my memory, I recalled Knobs’ house was at an equal point between three such community centers, and I’d passed four so far in my exploring.

“You’re smiling,” Binge said, trotting up next to me, “See something good?”

“No. Well, yes,” I quickly explained what I’d noticed. Binge looked about at the city around her, her eyes seeming to withdraw slightly. Did she look suddenly less energetic? Her poofy mane a tad more droopy, like a sagging waterskin?

“Yup, I see it too, bucky. Ponies like to make homes, don’t they? Gotta herd. Circle the wagons. Make a home. Even if we bloody it up and then tear the throats out of anypony who isn’t a part of the home we make.”

“Binge?”

“Oh! What’s that!?” Binge, ignoring my concerned query, instantly perked up and bounced off towards a clearing made by a small section of three adjoining streets. In the middle of it somepony had set up what looked to be a big tent stretched across a huge beam of metal that might have at one time been part of some large building but now served as the centerpiece of what appeared to be an outdoor restaurant and market stall. I saw that, up the center metal beam, a rough metal ramp wrapped along it, leading to a few platform shacks built above the huge, open tent. At ground level the metal beam was encircled by a square of counters made from welded salvaged metal, and dozens of tables and chairs, barely any two alike in shape or construction. Hanging above the establishment was a flickering pink neon sign showing the figure of a equine figure, though I didn’t think it was a pony; the face was too long and the ears too large and floppy. The figure had little popping bubbles above it as the lights flickered showing it drinking from a mug. There was a name painted in red on a wooden sign underneath the depiction, sporting some of the bone motifs of Skull City. The name made me quirk an eyebrow.

“The Drunken Ass?”

“Looks like fun. Let’s get some drinks!” said Binge, practically dragging me along towards the establishment, one of her legs bent around mine, leading us into a three legged hobble. I only half heartedly resisted. I was pretty thirsty. Some water would be perfect. The noise of the crowd of ponies, griffins, and ghouls gathered around the place enveloped me along with a tantalizing aroma that hooked my nose and drew me in faster than Binge could pull me. Meat. Roasting meat. The smell shot memories of home through me like an armor piercing bullet and I let my mouth salivate unashamedly. Fruits and vegetables were fine and all, but meat, meat was where my stomach’s true loyalties were.

The sharper scent of alcohol filled the air along with smoke, as it seemed practically half the seated patrons were sucking on strange little paper sticks. The smoke from them smelled terrible and caused me to cough, but I ignored it for the most part. The smell of meat had awakened my hunger and put me on a mission. My brain didn’t even think to send an inquiry as to where these ponies might have gotten their hooves on meat, or that there certainly weren’t any geckos to be seen anywhere near Skull City.

The place didn’t have any real entrance per se, since all of its sides were open to the street save for a number of metal poles holding up the perimeter of the tent tarps. Each pole also sported a lamp, often capped with the skull of some Wasteland critter. Strings of smaller electric lights cast the interior under the tent in sharp light, its patrons fully illuminated. Them, and the massive creature standing just at the threshold that arrested my attention very quickly as I took in the sight of it. The thing stood on two cloven hooves, balancing a thick, broad shouldered body that sported a pair of arms that were longer than my whole body, ending in wide, meaty hands. Its chest was covered in a thick set of metal welded armor, including a rounded helmet sitting atop its head. The face of the creature reminded me of the brahmin ghouls that’d pulled Knobs’ wagon, bovine with a wide snout and beady yellow eyes. A pair of huge curved horns swept back from its head. In its fists the creature clutched a gun that looked like it’d been pulled together with random scrap and duct tape, its stock like a spiked club complete with little nails jutting from the bottom. Judging from the two wide barrels it might’ve been a shotgun, but the makeshift nature of it made it hard to tell just what I was looking at, not unlike the beast holding the weapon.

“Heheh, close your jaw, Longy, or you’ll make him feel bad,” said Binge.

I clamped my open jaw shut, self-consciously scratching my head. I barely remembered to keep my voice pitched like a mare’s, “S-sorry, I just... uh...”

The beast, glancing at me, cracked a smile that might’ve either been friendly and forgiving, or simply terrifying. It wasn’t at all clear. It’s, his, voice was a banging baritone.

“Not a problem little lady. Don’t let yourself get all intimidated by your first minotaur. I’m actually a lot friendlier than I look. Unless you mess with the bar. Then I’ll snap your neck like a dry twig.”

That smile didn’t falter for a second, and I decided; terrifying, definitely terrifying. I gulped, managing to say past dry lips, “Uh, yeah, cool. So, we’re just here for food and drink?”

I phrased it as a question, just to be... you know... polite. It struck me as important to be polite to the minotaur. Especially for the sake of the continued privilege of having an intact neck bone.

The minotaur laughed, “Course you are. That’s what we’re here for. Go on in. Enjoy yourselves. Just don’t start nothing. Or, you know, neck snapping.”

I gave a nod and numbly trotted into the covered area, Binge following at my side with a happy bounce in her step.

Binge and I managed to find a clear enough space at the bar to sit side by side, and before long a bright eyed young griffin female came bouncing around after deftly sliding some drinks to the patrons next to us. She was golden furred beneath a worn blue apron with ruffles, and her dusky gray feathers were tinged with purple near the tips, a purple that matched her eyes perfectly. The griffin gave me and Binge a welcoming smile, her voice perky and filled with gusto.

“Evenin’ folks! Welcome to the Drunken Ass. Must be new ‘cause otherwise I’d know your faces, but pleasure’s all mine to have you here. Names Waunita, what can I get you fine looking lovebirds?”

I tried to turn my sputter into a simple cough, and I doubted I sounded convincing. “Lovebirds? We’re not, uh, yeah this is just my-” what was the story we were working under? “-sister! Yes, sister. Binge. And I’m Blueberry. That food smells fantastic. How much for a bite?”

Waunita’s beak turned up in a smirk as she looked between Binge and I, turning her head to give us an intrigued look with one of her dark purple eyes. “Well, foods scarcer and scarcer these days but the Drunken Ass is well stocked, so our prices are fair, far as it goes. Slice of meat is twenty caps, but we can do smaller slices for half that. Water will run you fifteen for a cup or filling up a bottle or canteen. Booze is cheaper, five for a shot of the hard stuff or seven for a bottle of beer. You looking for anything green, that’ll run you higher, starting at thirty and going up, but you won’t find a lot of places that even got veggies on the menu, so take it or leave it. Got an assortment of old world foodstuffs too, which is the cheapest we got, if you don’t mind sucking down some rads along with it. So, what’ll be folks?”

Binge was wagging her tail, licking her lips, with just a bit of drool leaking down her chin as she looked at me with eager eyes, “Can we eat some meat o’ holder of the leash and caps? I’ve been a good enough pony to earn a tasty treat, right? Oooh, it smells so goooood, I want that meat inside me right now!”

“I really wish you could choose a different way to phrase that,” I said with a sigh, “But I’m pretty hungry, and meat sounds really good right now. Waunita, we’ll take a slice apiece, and some water-”

“Booze for me!” said Binge, pulling out a small bag from her mane that jingled as she plopped it on the bar counter, “And I’ll pay, so Berrykins can’t complain I’m wasting our caps.”

I blinked at the bag, “Where’d you get those?”

Binge giggled, plopping an elbow on the counter as she began counting out caps, “Don’t be so surprised! Your Big Sis Binge does lots of scavenging when you and the others aren’t looking.”

Waunita took the payment while whistling a satisfied tune, and went trotting (do griffin’s trot?) to go get our food and drinks. I leaned back on my bar stool, taking a deep breath, almost choking a bit on some of the smoke. Watching the crowd fired up the curiosity centers of my brain, there were just so many different people gathered under this one tented establishment. There were ponies in metal and leather scavenged armor playing cards, the saddlebags at their table flush with what looked like salvaged equipment from the Wasteland. I saw a pair of ghouled unicorn ponies bearing more weapons between them than I’d seen on an entire Raider party, one ghoul even having half her face replaced with a set of rusty metal plates bolted into her flesh. There was a dapper looking griffin in a dusty suit and oddly tall pipe-shaped black hat who was running some kind of game involving dice and cups, a slick smile on his beak the entire time. So many strange ponies and other creatures, I had to wonder what their stories were.

My eye was suddenly drawn to a flash of yellow on black, and I blinked in faint bewilderment at the sight of a pony stallion wearing a stained white apron. He awkwardly balanced trays of drinks and food on his back, scuttling around between the tables. His coat was black like tar and his mane was a stringy, dark yellow. He moved skittishly, as if every loud noise set him on edge.

I had the strangest feeling I’d seen him before. I picked at my brain, trying to recall where I’d seen this stallion, but my little brain pony just shrugged at me blankly.

With a tiny frown I shook my head and turned back to the bar as Waunita returned with Binge and my food. Binge pulled back her lips in a yellow grin, more at the bottle of beer Waunita brought than at the food, and she cracked it open with and took a hearty swig. The brown liquid within seemed to vanish down her gullet at the speed of light and when she slammed the bottle down she wiped her lips and let out a moan that made my face heat up.

“Aaaah, that’s the stuff! That’s Bingey’s taste of paradise! Barkeep, another!”

“Shouldn’t you, uh, pace yourself a bit?” I asked, sniffing at the odd smell of the beer, “What is that stuff, exactly?”

Binge stared at me, one of the few times I could ever recall seeing genuine shock in her crystal blue eyes, “What is it? Bucky, I mean Sissy, have you never drank before?”

“Of course I have,” I said, tilting my head, “I drink water all the time.”

Binge smacked her face with a hoof. Waunita, glancing between us with a wry gleam in her eyes, said, “Lived the sheltered life, have we? Most ponies know what beer is. You’re telling me you’ve never smelled alcohol before?”

I twitched my nose, smelling the scent coming off the beer again, my eyebrow cocking up in thought, “It... kind of smells like the flame water Hawker used to make, actually. Not nearly as strong smelling, though. Never was allowed to touch the stuff.”

“So how’s your sis so comfortable with it? She a lot older than you?”

I coughed, looking away, “Sis and I, um... lived apart for awhile. She went out into the Wasteland, got very wordly, while I stayed home for awhile and lived... a quieter life.”

“What brought you out, if you don’t mind my asking?” Waunita said as she swiftly retrieved another beer for Binge, who with another eager groan went to work downing it. The smell of the stuff made my nose twitch, but Binge seemed to be enjoying it.

“Long story,” I said, pausing, mostly to think up a convincing enough lie, “Short version is home got boring, and Binge made Wasteland traveling sound... not boring. So I packed up and decided to join her in the scavenging business. That was weeks ago and I’m still sort of learning the ropes. Lot of things out here that we didn’t have back home.”

“Where was home?” asked the griffiness, leaning towards me, giving me another one of those odd griffin one-eyed stares. Did they do that because they saw better with one eye or something?

I gulped, wondering how much truth to mix in with lie. Chances were this griffin was just asking out of curiosity, but... well I was raised to be at least a tad xenophobic and my tribe had worked hard to keep the valley we lived in mostly secret. Even if the village was gone now, I still intended to see it resettled someday.

“A ways off,” I said, voice level, “up in the mountains to east.”

“You folk are tribals?”

“Is that bad?” I asked frankly.

Waunita waved a talon, “Nah, nah, just curious. We rarely get tribals down this far west. Also, neither of you got the markings. You Pale Hoof tribe? Can’t be from the Dead Water tribe, on account of them folk being, well, two steps from Raiders. Or... or are you from Baskar?”

My blank stare must have said a lot because Waunita frowned, “Must be from further north or south, then, if you don’t know any of those names.”

“Sorry, I don’t. Uh, how do you know so much about them?”

Waunita smiled and lifted one of her wings, showing me a odd spiral tattoo of white lines that swirled along the leonine half of her flank, “Skypainter tribe. Left home a few years back to see the world, and ended up here. I know most the tribes in the east mountains, enough to know there were a few smaller tribes that never talked much with outsiders. If you two are from one of them, then don’t mind my badgering. Just been awhile since I met any fellow tribal folk and it’s nice to reminisce. I sometimes miss the mountains.”

I felt a rising sympathy and understanding. I missed the clear winds and soft shade of the cliffs from my tribe’s valley. I didn’t regret leaving, and my interest in exploring the wider world was certainly growing, but home wasn’t something so easily forgotten. I smiled at Waunita after taking a moment to take a large bite of the meat on my plate. Any trepidation I might have been feeling about what the meat might’ve been flew away on wings of flavor as I chewed the juicy morsel.

“Mmmph,” I nearly imitated Binge’s noises at her beer as I savored the food, which had been cooked to tender perfection. Between bites I said, “So how did you end up here, Waunita? If you left your tribe to travel, seems odd you’d stop and take a job around here.”

Waunita’s smile gained a twinge of strain to it. “Like you I didn’t know much coming out here my first few weeks. Got in over my head fast. Raiders. Damned self-styled Beast Lords, same bastards that are out there fighting to the east as we speak. Was rescued from the worst of it by them V.E.C boys and gals, but... well, being pulled out by the Labor Guild pretty much landed my tailfeathers in a work collar. Indentured. Two years paying off the ‘debt’ the Labor Guild figured I owed it. By the time I was done, had no caps, or a scrap of clothing to my name. Took up a job here to start building up a little nest egg to get myself going again, but it’ll probably be another year at the rate I’m going before I can fly free of this city. So, my abridged life story worth a question of my own for you?”

I glanced at Binge, who was into her fourth bottle of beer by now and showing no signs of slowing or stopping as long as Waunita had bottles to dish out, and I shrugged. “Shoot.”

“Why were you staring at Braindead earlier?”

“Who?” I asked, and the griffiness pointed over at the black stallion with the yellow mane who’d been making my memory feel ticklish. I furrowed my brow. He really did look familiar.

“Oh, uh, well... can’t rightly say. He just looked familiar. Wait, did you say his name was Braindead?”

Waunita tapped a talon on the bar counter, giving me a strange, straight faced look, “That I did. You know him?”

“I don’t think so-” I began to say, but Binge, finishing a long pull on her beer, slammed the bottle down and wiped her chin, grinning at me.

“Loooongy, you oughta remember everypony who was there for your very first bloody fun time with me and my old family. I noticed ol’ BD in no time, but he looks so busy pretending to be normal I didn’t want to say nothing. HIIIII, BD! HEY! IT’S BINGE! HIIIIII!”

Binge’s shouting certainly drew a few stares from among the crowd, one of them from the black stallion in question. Braindead looked at us, his eyes blinking several times as he stared at Binge. Then his eyes slide slowly towards me, and I saw them go wide as saucers. Braindead started to back up, as if he was scared of me. I just looked on in bewildered confusion. What was going on? Binge knew this stallion? Was I supposed to know him?

“Wha...?” Braindead looked at Binge, then at me, then back at Binge, ears flattening as his eyes widened, “What are you here for?”

Binge tittered loudly, “Drinking! C’mon, join us BD! It’ll be like old times, just with less blood and guts and more booze and cooked meat. Well, I guess we cooked the meat back then, too, but this meat doesn't scream.”

Little bits of memory started to spark off in my head, like tiny fireflies dancing along in a line. I remembered the rotted out ruins of a school outside Saddlespring, and the psychotic, vicious Raiders that’d made their home there. My mind filled my nose with the recalled scent of charred bones and fresh blood.

I’d met Binge in that place. I’d spared her life that night, but hers hadn’t been the only one.

There’d been two other Raiders that I’d allowed to walk to freedom, unable to bring myself to take their lives, and now I remembered; Braindead was one of them.

I snapped out of my recollection with a start, shaking my head as if trying to clear out sand from my ears. Behind the bar counter Waunita was looking between Binge and Braindead with eyes lidded with concern. “Brain, what’s this all about?”

Braindead stammered. He was visibly shaking, staring at Binge, then at me, his jaw trembling as he started to babble out, “No. No you can’t be here. You’ll ruin everything! I’m trying so hard to... to... no.”

“What the hell is this?” asked one of the patrons, the mare slowly unslinging a firing bit for a battle saddle wrapped around her torso bearing a rusted rifle that still looked quite deadly. “Your server buck is freaking the fuck out.”

More than a few other patrons murmured unpleasantly, many of them eying either Braindead or Binge and myself with unfriendly gazes. Noticing the commotion the minotaur standing guard outside the tent turned his considerable bulk around, bending down to poke his head in, “There a problem in here?”

By now an aged looking blue stallion with a black mane salted with streaks of white had trotted out of the back area of the bar, his unicorn horn glowing green as he levitated a grease stained spatula about as if it were some kind of royal scepter. This stallion quickly shot a glance at Braindead, then at Waunita, “Your new recruit having an episode or some shit, Nita?”

Waunita started to move quickly, waving talong at the spatula wielding stallion while saying, “Don’t rightly know, Grill. Give me a sec!” She hopped over the bar with quite a bit of smooth agility and swiftly rushed over to Braindead, who by this point had fallen back on his haunches and looked ready to bolt, or have a mental breakdown. Possibly both.

I got off my own bar stool, quickly snatching up the meat from my plate to quickly start munching down. I had a bad feeling I needed to enjoy my food now before Binge and I would need to vacate the establishment. I was still reeling a little from remembering who Braindead was, and my curious mind starting asking all kinds of questions. How had he gotten here? Why was he here? Was that other Raider, the violent mare who’d basically sworn to kill me, around here too? What was her name… Red… Redsomething...

Waunita had approached Braindead and put a comforting talon on the shaking stallion’s shoulders. Braindead turned unblinking, bloodshot eyes towards her, flinching at the griffin’s look.

“BD, what’s got you freaked out about these ponies?” Waunita asked.

“Not freaked, not freaked,” he stammered out, and yelled at me, “See!? I doing nothing bad, so you shouldn’t be here. Go away.”

I held up a placating hoof, “Hey, we can go. I got no problem with that.”

Binge made a whining sound, tilting her fifth empty bottle as she stuck out her tongue and lapped up the last drop, “Aaaawww, I want more booze. I’m barely buzzed! I don’t know why Brainy is all in a tizzy just ‘cause we’re having a nice drink. He should come drink with us! We can talk about old times! Hey, Brainy! Remember when we were trying to kill Longwalk and his friends? That was fun.”

I swiftly gave Binge and elbow, “Blueberry, remember? I’m Blueberry right now.”

Which actually made me wonder how Braindead saw through my disguise. Then again, he’d recognize Binge, and how many tan coated, blue maned ponies could be hanging out with Binge? Waunita just looked between us with a cloudy, questioning expression. Braindead was grimacing, rubbing his hooves over his legs in rapid, compulsive movements.

“I don’t get what this is all about,” growled the stallion with the spatula, Grill, “But I don’t need disturbances in my home and business.”

I looked back at him, putting on a disarming smile, “Not looking to cause any trouble. Like I said, me and my sister can leave.”

Binge looked forlornly at the shelves of alcohol still undrank, and swiftly gobbled up her slice of meat, muttering with her mouth full, “Wush wrung? Auh wus stull thursty!”

“We can find other places to get drinks,” I said, starting trot away.

However before I got far I found my way barred by the two ghoul ponies I’d seen earlier, the walking arsenals. One was a stallion, the other a mare, both bearing similar stringy bits of black manes and tails, and patches of orange fur. Siblings? Either way the mare, patting one hoof on a snub-nosed energy pistol holstered across her shoulder, gave me a narrowed eyed smile and said, “Just hold up there a sec partner. Me and my brother couldn’t help be hear your sis there say something about this here stallion trying to put you six feet under recently. Care to elaborate on that bit of intriguing information?”

I frowned at the ghouls, suddenly feeling rather foolish indeed for wandering away from the rest of my group without Gramzanber at my side. Something in these two former ponies’ pale eyes left me feeling cold.

“What business is it of yours?” I asked.

The stallion ghoul spoke, his voice more gurgling and wet than his sister’s, probably due to the ragged hole in his throat, “Best you answer true, little lady. We’re Bounty Guild, and right now there’s a standing bounty on any Raider scalps; three hundred caps a pop! Now I ain’t an educated gentlestallion, but it sounds to my ears that this fella might have an unpleasant history of such dastardly activity. Might be you can clear that up for us, yes?”

I noticed a few other patrons were also moving hooves or mouths towards weapon holsters. The mood in the establishment had suddenly turned quite sour and an electric sense of imminent violence started to charge the air. I licked my now dry lips and met the looks of the two ghouls evenly.

“No, I don’t think I want to clear up anything. I don’t know this stallion. Now, would you please stand aside and let me and my sister pass without incident?” I said, surprised I could still keep up a mare’s voice while my own nervousness was skyrocketing.

Binge stumbled up to my side, some meat still clinging to her lips as she cast a lazy gaze about the bar. “Wow. Everypony’s suddenly looking all serious and mean faced. Why the shooty looks? Waaaaait, is this about BD and my being all Rai-”

Again I elbowed her. Harder this time. She made a slight ‘oof’ noise, then purred at me, “Oh Longy, if you wanted to have some rough fun why didn’t you just say so?”

The mare of the ghoul pair rolled her eyes, turning her head towards her brother, “Let’s just take them down, Double. We can let the Guild sort the bodies out.”

Letting out a gurgling chuckle the stallion ghoul said, “I do believe you’re right, Trouble. I do prefer confirming our target, but I think we’ve heard enough as is.”

“Now wait a sec-” I began to say but Trouble suddenly drew her energy pistol with a glow of pale yellow levitation magic and pointed the barrel at my face.

“Ah ah, don’t give Trouble any trouble and you get to keep your pretty features, missy. This won’t take but a tic.”

This said as Double was also using his magic to unsling a pair of small black sub-machine guns from holsters across his back, aiming one towards Binge and another towards Braindead, “Two dead Raiders, six hundred caps. Easy profit.”

Waunita stood up, moving in front of Braindead, a sharp look on her face, “Hold your horses! You can’t just start shooting ponies in our bar. We pay the Marshals protection and they won’t take kindly to you shooting folk up as you please!”

Double made a shrugging gesture, his sub-machine guns not wavering an inch, “The Bounty Guild has an understanding with the Marshals, as we do most gangs, that we can hunt bounties when and where we want, long as we can prove the bounty. We got plenty of witnesses here who can vouch for hearing these Raiders giving up what they are, right?”

There were a few murmurs of acknowledgment from the other patrons. Waunita glared around her, then with uncertainty glanced at Braindead, “Hey, tell them! You’re not a Raider, right? Say something!”

Braindead’s jaw worked soundlessly as he opened his mouth, then closed it, face twisting up with a series of emotions ranging from fear to shame to something bordering on the insane. I was very curious how he’d gotten here and why he’d been working as some bar server, but now was hardly the time for questions. The mood of the room was chilling quickly.

The minotaur guard was looking between the ghoul bounty hunters and Grill with a questioning grimace, one hand slowly stroking the double barreled shotgun he carried, “Should I just toss them out, boss?”

Grill eyed the ghouls, then Braindead, stroking his chin, “Waunita, girl, you bring a Raider into our bar to work?”

“No! Grill, you think I’d let a Raider in here after being a prisoner of them!? He can’t be a Raider. No Raider’s got a soft side to ‘em like Braindead here’s got!” Despite her words Waunita’s voice was sounding less convinced by the second.

“I don’t care who’s got what kind of side,” said Double, pale eyes narrowing to small white slits, “Bounty Guild will take our word over anypony’s here, and I’m not inclined to wait for permission to off a pair of Raider scum. Especially with caps on the line.”

Things began to happen very quickly, and all at once.

Double squeezed down on the triggers of his sub-machine guns. I threw myself into Binge as hard as I could as the world exploded with gunshots. Trouble’s magical pistol spat green plasma that burned its way past the back of my neck, searing flesh and causing me to scream. I heard Waunita shout something. Countless chairs scrapped dirt as ponies got up, either diving for cover, or drawing weapons to fire.

Landing on top of Binge, who was letting out a gleeful giggle, I rolled aside and kicked over a table just in time to have the rusty makeshift barricade soak rounds from the sub machine gun with a series of metallic pings. The minotaur roared and leveled his shotgun, letting out a double blast straight at Trouble. She’d seen the attack coming, however, and with a burst of energy from her horn surrounded herself with a bubble shaped green shield that took the buckshot effortlessly.

Diving behind another table, Binge hopping behind me, I was able to see that Waunita had followed my own example and had dove onto Braindead, pulling the Raider away from Double’s murderous hail of gunfire. They didn’t have much cover, however, and could only scramble away from the tearing storm of bullets. Only the fact that Double seemed to be trying to avoid the various running or diving patrons of the bar was saving Waunita and Braindead from being turned into involuntary bullet repositories.

Hastily I turned my head and dove into my saddlebags, muzzling about for the only weapons at my disposal; my grenades. Another plasma bolt flew by, melting a chunk of barstool next to my head and searing my ear with molten metal. Grunting I fished out a white rimmed, appled shaped smoke grenade and pulled the pin. At the same time Binge had sprung up from behind the cover of another table that had been turned over and flicked her hoof through her mane. From that motion a small metal shard of a knife blurred through the air at Double. The ghoul hissed as he ducked to the side, the blade slicing a rotten red line across the side of his neck; enough to bleed but not deep enough to do more than distract the bounty hunter’s aim.

“Waunita, take him and run!” I shouted as I tossed the smoke grenade.

The metal apple bounced between Double and Trouble, bursting in a field of thick gray smoke that quickly filled the bar with coughing and hacking ponies.

“Heheh, I knew we’d have a fun night, bucky!” said Binge with a laugh as I grabbed her and dragged her as fast as I could away from the bar.

“Yeah, fun, this is fun,” I said with dripping sarcasm, “I like having crazy cap grubbing bounty hunters shooting at me! I put on the damn dress to avoid this kind of thing!”

My words were punctuated by another blast of the minotaur’s shotgun, and a burst of sub-machinegun fire. Bullets tore out of the fog of smoke, zipping by our heads as Binge and I stumbled into the open night air. A lot of ponies were milling about outside the Drunken Ass, some of them patrons who were dazed by events, while others being locals drawn by the sound of gunfire and their own curiosity. Most of them had the sense to duck for cover as bullets flew out of the fog.
Hearing a sputtering cough to my side I looked and saw Waunita, dragging a scared and stunned looking Braindead, out of the field of smoke no more than a few paces away.

“Waunita, this way!” I shouted, tilting my chin down one of the side streets as I started a half trot while fishing out another grenade. The griffiness looked at me, a mixture of desperation and disbelief on her face, but she nodded and with rough talons hauled Braindead to his hooves and shoved him our way. He was clearly reluctant, but a green sphere of plasma burning its way out of the fog and nearly singeing his tail off caused the Raider to yelp and apparently decide that what was behind him was worse than what was in front of him. He began to run our way as I tossed my second smoke grenade.

In seconds a cloud of billowing gray fog covered part of the street as well, granting plenty of cover to run away with. I turned and began to haul my flank down the street, Binge skipping at my side and Waunita and Braindead following close behind.

I thought we were in the clear, just rounding the bend in the street, when two forms came rushing out of the smoke, their rotted heads swiveling this way and that.

“Sister, do you see our quarry!?” barked Double.

“There!” Trouble pointed at us, eyes flashing in anger as she began firing wildly with her magical pistol, which was now joined by a pair of other pistols, strange affairs with barrels made of glowing red coils. “You won’t get away you walking piles of caps!”

Her other pistols spat beams of orange energy at us. Her accuracy seemed hampered by floating three weapons at once, because many of the shots went wide, but one orange beam clipped close to my legs, burning a hole through my dress and singing fur off my flank. In seconds Double joined in, blazing away with his sub-machine guns.

I ducked my head low and galloped for all I was worth. If I slowed to try and toss another grenade I didn’t doubt either bounty hunter would draw a better bead on me. I glanced to see if the others were keeping pace. Binge was having no trouble keeping up with me, but Waunita was slowed by a hobbling Braindead, who I saw now had taken a stray bullet to one of his hindlegs. He let out small whimpers of pain with each bounding trot he made.

“Crapapples!” I grunted, looking around, and seeing little choice I pointed towards a nearby door to a series of multi-story metal shacks, “Inside!”

We couldn’t outrun the bounty hunters in the open streets with one of us wounded, so we’d have to slow them down another way. Waunita didn’t question me as she followed Binge and I inside the shack, bursting through the doors that fortunately hadn’t been locked or barred. Within I saw we’d entered some kind of communal living area, with old stained mattresses and patchwork pieces of furniture littered about a space filled with scared looking ponies.

I slammed the door closed behind me as Waunita and Braindead got inside, Binge already well ahead of us and bounding towards a far door. Several ponies demanded what was going on but we ignored them as we rushed past. All I said was, “Keep your heads down! Crazy ponies with guns chasing us!” and prayed they’d listen.

Rushing across the living area I tried to fish out another grenade, but ending up dropping it as bullets slammed through the door and forced me to drop to the ground. The grenade rolled away from me as I saw the door start to open, and on instinct, and a desire to buy the others time to get out the other side, I rushed the door and slammed into it full force. I smashed the door open towards the outside and I felt it impact on a body and heard a startled “Ooff” from the other side. I caught a glimpse of Double and Trouble falling over each other and the broken door, and immediately turned and ran before either one could recover enough to pick up their weapons and open fire.

I scooped up my fallen grenade along the way and pulled the pin, dropping it behind me. Ponies screamed and dove for cover, not knowing it was a smoke grenade I’d dropped, but they found out soon enough as it burst and filled the living area with its protective payload. I felt a little bad as I heard all the coughing behind me, but I knew the stuff wasn’t lethal and really, this was preferable to getting shot.

Up ahead there was a door hanging open that lead to a short hallway, then a set of stairs going up. I saw Waunita at the top of the stairs, Braindead standing nervously at her side, as she looked down the stairs towards me.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said as I rushed up the stairs to join her.

“Haven’t a clue!” I said, motioning her on ahead. Braindead trotted with her as I followed, but he turned his head to give me a fearful look.

“You’re not here to kill me?” he asked.

I stared at him, dumbfounded and almost forgetting to keep running as we rushed down another hallway to yet another set of stairs, or rather more like a makeshift ramp, that criss-crossed up towards what I figured was the roof. Before we got to it I heard a raspy female voice shout out, “Alright you motherbucker! You like grenades!? Then you’ll love these!”

I heard a pair of metallic tings from behind us and chanced a look. My eyes shot wide as I said a pair of little green banded apple grenades rolling down the hallway from the stairwell we’d just vacated.

“Shitrunshitrunshitrun!” I shouted, shoving Waunita and Braindead ahead of me in a scramble to get to the ramp to the roof, where I could see Binge’s tail wagging as if beckoning us onward.

There was a blast of heat behind us and a pressure wave that flattened me to the floor with a painful grunt, the air blasted out of my lungs. The flash of green and the searing heat that burned my backside told me just how close we’d come to being fried. Looking back I saw a melted hole in the floor and walls behind us, orange hot sheet metal still dripping molten metal with wisps of steam rising into the air. Plasma grenades. Crazy mare threw plasma grenades at us!

I stumbled to my hooves, hauling Braindead up with me, shoving his shaking form ahead while I reached over to pull out a flash bang grenade. “Go!” I gasped, pulling the pin and throwing the grenade even as I heard pounding hooves coming up the stairs. Waunita and Braindead scrambled up the ramp and I turned to follow, just in time too. Double and Trouble came rushing up the stairs behind us, each unicorn ghoul now floating an array of weapons around them as if each bounty hunter had sprouted a flower arrangment of firearms.

Every kind of magical energy blast and gunshot deafened me as I scrambled down the narrow hallway to the metal ramp, bullets springing by my head and beams and bolts of magic burning the air around me. There’s no doubt I would have been a shredded into a significantly less handsome and alive stallion if my flash bang grenade didn’t go off at that moment. The blast of sound and light caused both ghoul bounty hunters to let out shouts and colorful curses that didn’t bear repeating here, but more importantly broke their magical concentration on their numerous guns, many of them clattering to the ground.

I didn’t waste the chance to scramble my way up the metal ramp, where Waunita, Braindead, and Binge waited for me.

“Any bright ideas of where to go from here?” asked Waunita, “Those two aren’t going to stop because of a little smoke and light!”

Braindead let out a sobbing whine, “I’m sorry Waunita, I’m sorry! I wanted to try being normal, but you’re all going to get shredded to bloody bits. I.. .I oughta go turn myself in. They might let you all go if-”

“Shut it BD!” Waunita growled, “If you really are a Raider I’d toss you to those bloodhounds! But you’re not, so just shut up.”

“But-”

“I said shut it.”

Braindead shut up, ears flattening, eyes wide at the bristling griffiness, who looked almost more ready to tear into him than the bounty hunters chasing us. I didn’t quite know what was going through Waunita’s mind, but I could tell every inch of her was tense, her feathered crest rising, and her feline hackles standing on end as her tail lashed about.

Binge licked her lips, bouncing on her hooves, “We shuffling our hooves or we dipping into the bloodbath, bucky? I can gut and cut some dead ponies that don’t know how to be dead. I’m a good teacher. Just gotta take off my leash, right?”

“Huh?” I looked at her, blinking, and noticing she was bouncing around a pair of fresh knives between her hooves. I frowned. She was asking a simple enough question; fight or flight? I hated the idea of killing, but our options were dwindling fast. The roof we were on was high enough that I figured we could make the jump to another, lower rooftop, then get back to street level. We could still lose the bounty hunters, if we moved fast enough.

Dammit all.

“If we can’t get away, consider your leash off,” I said, “But I want to avoid blood on the ground if we can. Heh, don’t want to stain my dress, right?”

It was then Waunita blinked at me, “Hold on, why do you suddenly sound like a dude?”

“I’ll lift my skirt and show you later,” I said, approaching the edge of the roof. There was about two or three paces of space between us and the next roof. I backed up a bit and with a short gallop threw myself into the air. I landed heavily on the opposite roof, bending one of the metal sheet plates that’d been welded to form it. Grunting, I got up and turned, waving for the others to follow.

Binge made the leap with a lot more grace, landing lightly and rolling to her hooves all in one motion. Waunita proceeded to cheat by using her wings to lift into the air and snatch up Braindead, floating all the way down to street level off to our left. Binge and I exchanged a look and in short order rushed to follow her. As we reached the end of this roof I heard familiar voices behind us.

“Oh you little shits ain’t getting away, no way in Tartarus!”

“If you surrender we’ll only kill the Raiders among you, and just wound the rest of you!”

The ghoul siblings had managed to get to the higher roof we’d just been on, and were drawing beats with rifles just as Binge and I were getting ready to jump back down to street level. If we could just get down, I didn’t think those two would be able to follow us fast enough to catch up. Neither I or Binge bothered to respond to the bounty hunters or wait a single moment. We both ran and made the jump off the smaller building at the same time.

I heard gunshots behind us, and the heated snap of burning air from an energy gun.

I fell the eight or so feet to the ground and landed hard, pain shooting up and down my legs. Shaking myself, I stood and turned to Binge. My breath caught in my throat. She was laying on the ground, a hole punched through her side that was leaking crimson blood into the dirt.

“Binge!”

I knelt to her, not even hesitating to upturn my saddlebag to get at a health potion. Binge was breathing shallowly, her eyes a tad dazed as they gazed up at me. She gave a tiny chuckle.

“Ooooh are we going to play doctor now? Can I be the smexy nurse?”

“Just be quiet and drink this!” I shouted, uncorking the health potion and hoofing it towards her muzzle. She grimaced as she sucked on the bottle, drinking its contents.

“Ew. Medicine is so gross. Want more booze. Can I have another beer?”

“No. No more beer unless you stay alive and drink more medicine,” I said sharply, lowering my head and using my hooves to get her body onto my back. She was ridiculously light. Was she always this... light? She felt like she barely weighed more than my armor. Less.

“Ow... so we’re gonna play horsey instead? Hmm, I wanted to ride you, Longykins, but this wasn’t what I had in mind,” she said as she wrapped her forelegs around my neck in something almost like a hug.

I let out a short laugh, despite the fear now playing twister with my insides, “If you’re still able to think about that then you can’t be that bad off. So just hang on and try not to fall off!”

I could feel her warm blood coating my back as I broke into a full gallop, rushing down the street where I could see Waunita and Braindead had landed and were also running. It was at this point I remembered that I had a Pip-Buck on and that I could probably use it to not only find the fastest route back to Knobs’ place, but also maybe call for help.

Despite the fact that it slowed me down a bit I went into an awkward three-legged run as I raised one hoof, using my nose to flip through various switches on the Pip-Buck. I went to the radio first, and screwed around with the frequencies until I got what I hoped was Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck.

“Help! Emergency! Serious shit going down! Hello!? Arcaidia! Anypony!”

In mere moments I got a reply, Arcaidia’s voice sounding like the sweet voice of a savior angel to my ears. “Ren solva? What happen? Speak quick words of status!”

Upon my back Binge stirred and let out a pain laced laugh. “We went drinkinking, and it was a lot of fun until I got shot. Now I’m bleeding all over Longykun from a hole in my stomach. Ugh, totally not the hot, wet hole to my insides I wanted to show him tonight, lemme tell you!”

I nearly choked at that, almost stumbling over my own legs in my desperate run to keep up with Waunita and Braindead as we make tracks down the crowded night streets. By the lack of gunfire following us I guessed the bounty hunters had either given up or were busy trying to rush back down that building to street level in order to chase us. Either way we had a brief reprieve and with each turn and twist in the winding streets we made I figured we had to be safer from pursuit. Not that I could relax with Binge shedding her lifeblood all over my back...

… leaving a trail of crimson droplets that the bounty hunters could-!

“There they are! Brother, this way!”

SHIT!

Gunfire erupted behind us, sparking off sheet metal shacks and blasting the ground around my hooves. I didn’t even dare look back for fear of slowing down. I heard Arcaidia’s voice still, my Pip-Buck piping out her voice loud and clear.

“Get home to safe place now! I have you tagged on screen, will meet halfway with B.B! Use map toaster head!”

Map? Right! My Pip-Buck’s map function would have scanned and logged all the terrain Binge and I had crossed to get to the Drunken Ass from Knobs’ house! Instead of running around randomly we could use the map to make a line straight for there! Not breaking stride I rapidly switched to my map. Getting a clear look wasn’t easy while running on three legs and ducking around alley corners while energy beams and bullets whizzed by with murderous vengeance, but I was able to get a look at the map.

“Waunita, left!” I shouted.

The griffin twisted to look at me with one gleaming eye, “Where are we going!?”

“A friend’s place! Safety! I got back up coming to help!”

She looked less than convinced until a fiery orb of green plasma flew past her head like a comet, upon which she suddenly looked less doubtful, “Cool! Hope they have lots of guns!”

“Sort of,” I said as we rounded a corner into a much broader street, “One of them shoots ice from her forehead!”

“Huh!?” Waunita gawked at me.

“You’ll see, just keep running!”

We got several dozen paces down this broad road, lights and curious ponies passing by us. A glance at the map told me that if we went down another four streets we could turn right and find a path that’d led almost straight to Knobs home, which my Pip-Buck had in its mysterious ways conveniently labeled for me. I could only hope Arcaidia and B.B weren’t too far off. Binge had become disturbingly quiet, though I could still feel her hooves locked tightly around me neck and feel her breathing on my withers. Those breaths were getting more labored and ragged by the second. If only I could chance stopping to feed her another health potion!

We were almost to the point where we’d need to turn right when a gunshot cracked the air like a thunderous whip, the unmistakable report of a sniper rifle. I felt the round tear past me, ripping the air with a whine that pained my ears. Waunita gave out a sharp shriek as a blossom of crimson sprouted through one of her hind legs, the bullet boring a hole straight through. The griffiness hit the ground in a hard rolling, sprawl. Braindead skittered to a panicked halt, eyes wide.

“Waunita!” he cried out in a hoarse voice like a pony whose lifeline had just been severed. I saw him staggered towards her pained form and reach to try and help her up, only for a merciless bolt of plasma to sail into his outstretched hoof and melt off a good section of flesh in a searing glob of goo, the smell of acid and roasted pony meat filling the air. Braindead howled, clutching his hoof and falling to the ground. Without thinking or hesitating I rushed over to the pair, only catching a brief glimpse down the street to see Double and Trouble having emerged from the alleyway we’d come from. Double had a long barreled, large scoped sniper rifle floating in front of his face as he knelt at the mouth of the alley, while Trouble had charged forward, her energy pistols floating in a dizzying array around her as she blazed at us.

I put one hoof underneath Waunita’s arm and hauled her towards the nearest cover while grabbing Braindead’s tail in my mouth, ignoring the sour taste of sweat, and pulled him along as well. Waunita, blasted leg or not, still scrambled to keep up, while Braindead hobbled after a moment. Energy beams and bolts of magic plasma rained down around us as I shoved my way through to the narrow alley mouth and led the others into cover behind a pile of refuse.

Waunita groaned, putting both her talons on her leg wound, while Braindead breathed heavily, shaking as he looked at the melted flesh on his foreleg.

“Th-this ain’t looking promising,” said Waunita.

Upon my back I heard Binge murmur in a weakened wisp of a voice, “Have bleedy pony won’t travel. Hehehe, Mr. Happy s-says to drop the meat and run, run, run away to the safe place.”

“Nopony is leaving anypony anywhere,” I said, momentarily surprised at how easily I figured what Binge had just suggested. “Although, I do need to set you down for a sec, Binge.”

“Oooookaaaay… I won’t crawl away anyplace, heh. No tapdancing for me. Too sleeeepy...”

“Hey! Stay awake dammit!” I nearly shouted, carefully setting Binge down next to Waunita, who was looking at me with wide eyes. Binge’s body was slick with both sweat and blood, and though her eyes were open they were hazy and flickering about as if she wasn’t entirely seeing the world around her. The wound in her stomach looked like a yawning black and crimson crater, a stark contrast to the pink scars that covered the rest of her flesh. I sent a silent prayer to the Ancestor Spirits this wound would just become one more scar for her.

The heated fusillade of energy blasts was turning parts of our thin cover to ash, and I knew we only had moments before the bounty hunters would be on us, and running was clearly no longer an option. With a quick look at Waunita I hauled off my saddlebags and flipped both sides open, nearly upending them and shoving my remaining healing potions towards the griffiness.

“Get one of these into her,” I said, nodding at the fading Binge, “Then you two down one yourselves. After that, keep your heads down. Help is coming.”

“Wait, what are you going to do?” Waunita asked, picking up one healing potion with a firm talon, popping the top and turning the small vial of healing liquid up into Binge’s mouth.

I had picked up a pair of grenades from the pile of my saddlebag’s stuff, one smoke and one flash bang, and said, “Can’t run. Can’t hide. Only choice left is attack.”

Before any further comment or protest could be made I pulled the stem on the smoke grenade and lobbed it out over the refuse pile and into the open street beyond.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” I heard Trouble’s voice shrilly cry, “Not this shit again!”

The energy weapons fire intensified from outside the fresh screen of smoke, but was now wild and unaimed. I took a deep breath and strode into the smoke, the flashbang grenade held in the crook of one of my forelegs. I moved slowly, despite my heart pounding into my ribcage. I drew upon every memory I had of hunting geckos back home, keeping my head low as I stalked into the smoke. I couldn’t see anything, obviously, so I had to rely upon my ears. Fortunately pinpointing Trouble’s location was rather easy, given the ghoulish mare was blasting away with what sounded like no less than four different energy weapons.

No wonder this bounty hunters wanted caps so badly. At the rate they used up ammo I was shocked they’d had any caps left to go drinking at the Drunken Ass.

A hot orange beam almost burned a part of my ear off and I knew I was close to the wildly firing bounty hunter. I wasn’t sure where her brother Double was at, but one problem at a time. Barely daring to breathe for fear of revealing my position inside the smoke I prepped the flash bang grenade and gently rolled it along the ground towards Trouble’s location. I closed my eyes and plugged my ears with my hoof until I heard the flash bang go off, the proximity so close I felt the small shockwave rock my body.

Instantly following that I rocketed out of the smoke. I saw Trouble, stumbling about and shaking her head in a stunned stupor from the flash bang’s explostion, and I smashed into her with a full body tackle that sent us both crashing to the ground. She let out a growling snarl and thrashed in my grip, elbowing my face. I grunted and bore the blow and gripped her barrel tighter, and then with a wordless yell I lifted Trouble up and proceeded to let myself fall back; consequently dropping Trouble squarely on her head in a improvised suplex.

“Guugh!” the mare blurted, her array of energy guns clattering to the ground as she lost focus on her magic. I rolled away from her, bucking out with a hind leg. Even dazed, however, Trouble reacted quickly, knocking my hind leg away with one of her fore hooves, and going so far as to grab it with her other hoof and yank, pulling me off balance so I fell face first to the dirt.

“Oh, you little bitch, now you’ve really… huh?” Trouble looked at me with a cock-eyed stare. I realized that, given our respective angles, she had a rather direct view up the skirt of my dress. My face blazed, but I didn’t waste time on embarrassment as I turned over and used her distraction as a chance to buck once more, this time catching the stunned mare across the chin and sending her sprawling.

The smoke screen was clearing, but it still was some small cover, and I scrambled for it, but a gunshot rang out and a chunk of dirt exploded in front of my face. I turned to see Double rushing up to the scuffle, floating no less than four weapons himself, all of them pointed murderously at me.

Clutching her muzzle, which was dripping blood, Trouble looked at me again, her eyes both narrow in anger, but also in deep thought. “Brother, hold on a sec. Don’t waste him quite yet!”

Double paused, not taking his guns off me, nor looking away from my prone form as he said, “Just exactly why not, sister?”

I held, tense. The smoke screen was flowing away, and without it I was left stuck in the open street with no cover, no armor, no weapons, and a very slim chance of being able to do anything without being filled full of new, fatal holes. I could only hope that whatever delay I could cause was buying Arcaidia and B.B more time to get here. So I stayed still, and waited.

“This ain’t no mare we’re dealing with,” Trouble said, rubbing her chin, “This here’s a stallion. Well, more a colt, with that size.”

“Hey!” I said, “I know you’re trying to kill me and my friends but, seriously, that’s a low blow!”

Double frowned deeply, eyebrows drawn together in one crinkly expression that caused his decayed flesh to ooze slightly, “So he’s a freak that likes to dress up like a mare. What does this have to do with not blasting his ugly face off, exactly?”

Trouble sighed, “Brother, must I always remember the posted bounties? There’s been a price on the head of a young buck for the past week; tan coat, blue mane, green eyes. No cutie mark. Hey, buck, lift that skirt. Let’s get a look at that flank.”

I set my face to stone, slowly standing. Double’s guns all swiveled so that I was suddenly covered by floating firearms from all sides.

“No funny moves. Do what my sister bids. Now.”

Taking a deep breath to steady myself I hiked up my skirt and turned my flank towards them, “Enjoy the view.”

Both bounty hunters looked at me, then at each other.

“Blank flank,” said Trouble with a grin, “Can’t be no doubt. This is the dumbass the Labor Guild’ willing to pay a small fortune for! Hah! Brother, we’ve just struck the jackpot!”

“They want him alive, don’t they?” asked Double, sounding rather disappointed at the prospect.

“Oh, alive sure, but the bounty post said nothing about intact,” said Trouble as she trotted up to me and proceeded to smash me across the jaw with a hoof. It didn’t knock me off my legs, but it certainly stung and left my head dizzy. A part of me wanted nothing more than to return Trouble the same treatment she was giving me, but not only was her brother keeping me covered from multiple angles with his floating arsenal, I knew that every second these two were keeping their attention plastered on me was a second that they weren’t trying to kill my friends. Well, friend. Waunita and Braindead were basically strangers, but it wasn’t as if that mattered much to me. I prefered most folk around me not have bullet holes in them.

Damned if the world didn’t severely disagree with me on that point.

When I didn’t drop from her first punch, Trouble’s pale eye twitched like a undulating eggshell and she let out a spittle filled snarl. More hooves smashed into me, the ghoulish mare delivering heavy blows to my face and ribs. One of the few things keeping me on my hooves under the rain of punches was the growing feeling of pressure in my mind. That lovely, familiar pressure that I knew to be Gramzanber. If the ARM was getting closer, that meant Arcaidia and B.B were getting closer.

After what might have been a dozen solid hits I was sore, having trouble breathing, and bleeding from my nose and a split lip, but I was still standing, staring at the two bounty hunters before me. “Y...you know, if you care so much about caps, I don’t see how beating me senseless after you’ve caught me is getting you any more.”

“Oh shut it! Double, keep this waste of spit covered while I go finish off the rest of them.”

Fear shot through me and, guns surrounding me or not I was about to try tackling Trouble again in the hope that Double wouldn’t shoot if I was too tangled up with his sister, but right then an entire herd of ponies rapidly galloped onto the scene. There were easily twenty or more of them, all clad in leather armor and bearing the star badges of the Marshals gang. In seconds myself and the two bounty hunters were encased in a circle of angry looking armed gang ponies, many of them sporting revolvers or lever action rifles.

“Freeze!”

“Put your weapons down, now, or be filled full of holes!”

“Get on the ground, shitheads!”

“Hooves up, you get only one warning!”

A few of the gang ponies exchanged annoyed looks with each other.

“Hey, I thought we were doing ‘on the ground’ this time?”

“No, idiot, it’s ‘hooves up’! You got farts between your ears or what?”

“Uh, we still want them to drop their weapons, right?”

Before more arguing could occur one of the Marshals raised her voice and barked harshly, “Pipe down you meatheads!” I recognized both the red coat, short green mane, and leather hat of Pistolwhip quickly enough. The mare looked with slitted eyes towards me and the two bounty hunters, who’d both frozen in place at the arrival of the Marshals.

“Okay, any weapons go nice and gently on the ground. No twitchy moves. There’s gonna be some questions getting asked, but I don’t have the smallest qualm with dropping your corpses in the dirt you're standing on, so don’t give me the reason.”

I tentatively put on a smile, then immediately regretted it as pain shot all over my face, turning my expression into more of a grimace. “Hey, uh, Pistolwhip. Fancy meeting you again so soon.”

“Yeah, fancy that,” she deadpanned, giving me a flat, unfriendly look, “By the way, miss Blueberry, you’re sounding kinda different than I remember from this morning.”

I blinked. I had just forgotten to disguise my voice, hadn’t I? Well, multiple hoof strikes to the face will do bad things to your concentration. I offered her a small, sheepish shrug. “Would you believe it, or even care, if I tried to explain that the only reason I dressed up like a mare is because of an seriously unfair and unjust bounty that I don’t deserve to have on me?”

“Oh, I’d believe you. The caring part... that’s still up in the air, buck.” Pistolwhip said, turning her eyes to the two bounty hunter ghouls. “So, that’s what all this shooting was about? Chasing bounties?”

Double cleared his throat and said in a calm tone, “Yes, Marshal. My sister and I are sanctioned members of the Bounty Guild. You can check our papers to confirm this if you wish. We have full jurisdiction to pursue targets in any circumstance, so sorry if we didn’t immediately go to one of your gang when the shooting started.”

“You mean when you started shooting!” I said.

Pistolwhip didn’t look amused, though it was hard to tell who she was more pissed at, me or the bounty hunters. She licked her lips, then spat, ears flattening, “I don’t much give a single hard shit about Guild jurisdictions. Everypony on Marshals turf is under Marshals protection, until we decide they’re not.”

“That include Raiders?” asked Trouble with a sneer.

Pistolwhip’s eyebrow shot up. I tensed. The feeling of Gramzanber was getting close enough I was surprised I didn’t see either a blue unicorn or white pegasus tearing around the nearest street corner. Then again, with so many more armed ponies here, it occurred to me the sudden arrival of my other friends could cause trouble. I cleared my throat loudly, causing Pistolwhip to glare at me.

“What’s this about Raidres, buck?”

“Um, okay so first things first, just as a heads up, I called for help on my Pip-Buck when these bozos started chasing me, another friend of mine, and two people who were working at this place called the Drunken Ass-”

“Waitwhat!? These rothides shot up the Drunken Ass!?” cried one of the Marshals, “They’d better not have hit Grill! Fuckers the best damned cook in the entire Outskirts!”

“I think he’s fine,” I said, coughing, “Anyway, my point is I have friends who are coming, so please don’t shoot them?”

My timing couldn’t have been better, because at that point I heard the unmistakable deep growl of the Ursa’s engines echoing from down the road. Many ponies who had ducked into the various ramshackle buildings when the chase had torn through this street now poked curious eyes from window slits or tilted up sheet metal coverings to take a gander at the large, six-wheeled vehicle as it rolled towards the gathering of gang ponies, two bounty hunters, and my battered form.

The second the Ursa’s wheels grinded to a halt the driver’s side door flipped open and Arcaidia jumped out, tucking and rolling only to pop to her hooves with her horn pointed and her starblaster floating by her side, ready and aimed.

“Piss between leg spaces all toaster headed ponies who stand in path of mighty Arcaidia! Ren solva, speak words now so I may know your place and rescue you from badness!”

“Wait, Arcaidia!” I waved a hoof frantically, “Hold up, don’t shoot! Most of these ponies are... uh, kind of good? I think? I don’t really know, but no shooting! Binge is hurt bad in the alley over there, as are another pony and a female griffin. You’ve got to get to them and help them. Binge most of all! I don’t know how bad off she is.”

Arcaidia nodded firmly and began to trot towards the alleyway. B.B flew out of the Ursa’s top hatch, landing on the nose of the A.T.W. and taking in the scene. From the passenger side door I was surprised to see Knobs also exiting the vehicle. Her partially decomposed teal coat was covered once more by her dark Skull Guild cloak.

“Hold your sweetmeats there, filly!” said Pistolwhip with a snap in her voice, glaring at Arcaidia, “Don’t you go moving anywhere.”

Arcaidia paused, silver eyes narrowing like a pair of dagger edges. I could practically hear the kittens drowning. I might have sworn the ambient temperature had dropped. The Marshals, for a second, seemed like they weren’t sure who needed more guns covering them; the bounty hunter's, me, or Arcaidia.

“Please,” I said earnestly, “One of my friends was shot. She’s in a bad way and needs medical attention. Arcaidia has healing magic. She won’t try anything, but please, just let her look after my friend.”

“Pistolwhip, you got twenty ponies with you. These folk are no threat, you have my word on that,” said Knobs, stepping forward.

“Speaking honest truth Knobs, I ain’t exactly inclined to give anypony here the benefit of the doubt,” Pistolwhip said with a flat, impatient look, “I’m hearing claims of there being Raiders among this crew, and that more than anything has put my nipples in a right fine twist! We can let a lot of shit slide if we’ve got a mind for it, but the Marshals do one thing and one thing only with Raiders. So, buck, answer my question and I might let the little filly there work her mojo. Who here is a Raider? If I even catch half a whiff of a lie from you, I’ll be ordering my boys to start pulling triggers here and now.”

I felt sweat trickling down my face alongside the blood from my leaking nose. I didn’t know just how good Pistolwhip was at detecting falsehoods, but I wasn’t about to risk it. Any lie I’d manage to come up with would likely fall apart under any serious examination. I just had to make the truth work in my favor. I had to do it fast, otherwise Bine wouldn’t last long enough for any of this to matter.

“I have one companion who was once a Raider,” I said, hastily continuing when I saw Pistoldwhip scowl, “She joined my group after my friends and I wiped out most of the band she’d been with. She’d traveled with us since then and has done nothing since joining us to harm anypony that wasn’t also trying to hurt us. As far as I’m concerned, weird as she is, she’s one of my friends and is not a Raider anymore.”

“Well, besides that being a massive load of ghoulshit-”

“Hey!” said Trouble.

“-I can at least respect you didn’t try lying to me,” said Pistolwhip, then growled as she said, “But that doesn’t matter. Raider, ex-Raider, we don’t split hairs in the Marshals. If your friend is a Raider, she can bleed out. Or better yet, maybe we can get her neck in a noose before she kicks the bucket.”

“There’s another Raider,” put in Double, “The black coated fellow with the piss mane.”

“Two nooses then,” said Pistolwhip.

“I no like stupid shivol bir much at all,” said Arcaidia in an arctic tone, “She smell bad as... as... estu vi girange es mersir valkav. She smell bad as worst bad smelling thing. But she belong to ren solva. His thick skull bone take liking to smelly mare. Makes her our smelly mare. You have many guns, but not enough to stop many dead before killing us.”

“She’s got the right o’ it,” said B.B, “Ya might manage ta kill us, but not ‘fore losin’ a lot o’ yer boys there. Best ya just let us take care o’ our own and let us go our way, ‘cause ya don’t want no part o’ the trouble we can give ya iffin’ you want to turn this into a’ shootout.”

Knobs cleared her throat loudly, “Um, as a general point, I’d very much like us not to do any shooting, okay? Let’s just keep nice, calm heads here. Pistolwhip, could you maybe just let them go? They haven’t actually done anything to wrong your gang.”

“Knobs, you done right by us for all the years you lived here, but you’re asking me to go to my boss and tell her I let two Raiders out of our turf without being made into corpses. That’s every manner of wrong. Why do you even care about these ponies?”

Knobs just raised her eyebrow and stared at Pistolwhip. “Didn’t know I needed a reason. Did I need a reason to go help those poor ponies trying to get away from the fighting out there? Did I need a reason to help you out two years ago in the Coyote’s turf?”

Pistolwhip immediately froze, eyes flickering wide. Rather quickly the gang mare let out a strangled sigh and hung her head, “For fuck’s sake Knobs, I thought you’d forgotten.”

“I forget a lot of things, but not when ponies owe me. Guess its a habit I picked up from Crossfire. Consider the favor you owe me officially called in.”

“For a bunch of strangers you just met?”

Knobs simply nodded at that, and Pistolwhip heaved out a strangled sigh and said, “Even if I let them go here you understand I’m still stuck reporting this to the High Marshal? She sure as fuck doesn’t owe you any favors, Knobs, and as soon as she finds out you harbored Raiders you’ll be on the Marshals short list for a noose. You’d have to get your flank off our turf, and sure as shit not come back. You willing to lose your home for these ponies?”

“Knobs...” I said, gulping, “Maybe we can figure out another way out of-”

She raised her hoof, cutting me off by saying, “Longwalk, if Binge is dying over there we don’t have time to screw around with this. Its just a house. I can get another. Lives aren’t so easy to replace.”

I couldn’t argue with that, and wasn’t too inclined to when I heard Waunita shout from the alley, “If you guys are gonna do something, do it now, because I think she just passed out from blood loss!”

Double clearly didn’t like the turn of the conversation, because he tensed and growled, “You can’t just let these bounties off the hook! The buck alone is worth thousands of caps! You going to let that walk just because of some favor? My sister and I could split the bounty with you Marshals and still come out a few thousand caps richer, the price the Labor Guild’s offering for this dumbass.”

Pistolwhip turned a hard look towards him, “Caps don’t pay for my rep. A pony ain’t worth shit if they go back on a debt, and stupid as the reason she’s blowing it, I owe Knobs a favor for pulling my flank out of the Coyote's turf. So shut your stinkhole, Guilder. Only reason you’ll get to walk from this is I don’t want more bounty hunters crawling over our turf for any half-assed revenge. You want to blast Raiders or haul the transvestite to the Labor Guild, knock yourself out, just do it somewhere that ain’t Marshal turf! Now all you all get the hell out of here before I change my mind!”

“Arcaidia,” I said, nodding to the alley, and we both quickly galloped to it. I noticed Double’s magic flare for a second, his weapons twitching, but one look at the Marshals who all pointed their weapons his way caused the bounty hunter to grimace and start strapping his guns back to his decayed frame. Trouble looked almost like a confused hound, the mare’s stringy tail flicking about as she looked between her brother and me. She even let out a small whine, but Double just shook his head and Trouble snarled, heated eyes staring daggers at me.

Inside the alley Braindead and Waunita were still huddled behind the refuse pile where I’d left them. Binge was lying on the ground like a pale, blood soaked doll. My jaw clenched and cold pain clenched my chest, my legs feeling numb as Arcaidia and I rushed to Binge’s side. Waunita looked at me questioningly, while Briandead was huddle next to her, shivering and looking near catatonic.

“I, I fed her a healing potion, but I don’t know if it did any good,” Waunita told me, voice apologetic.

“Thank you. You did what you could. Arcaidia’s got it from here,” I said, my voice not nearly as sure as I wished it could be as I glanced at the filly in question, “You... do have this, right?”

“Quiet ren solva. I work hard to keep stinky shivol bir still among breathing ponies. Need mind focus time now, so no questions.”

I clamped my mouth shut, watching as Arcaidia’s horn flared to life with her luminous magic. Waunita gave the unicorn a curious look as magic crests flowed into a circle around Arcaidia’s horn and Binge was bathed in an azure aura. Binge’s unconscious form twitched, one of her hind legs flicking about as she let out an indistinct murmur. I tried to take that as an encouraging sign.

While Arcaidia was doing that I turned to Waunita and Braindead, “Time to go. Can you two walk?”

Waunita laughed dryly, “Even if I can’t, my wings work just fine. As long as assholes aren’t shooting at me, I can move, and carry Braindead if need be.”

“I...” Braindead’s voice came out as a choked whisper, and I didn’t know what to make of the stallion’s sweat soaked state. I mean, I knew fear was expected given the circumstances of just a few minutes ago, but he looked ready to have a complete breakdown. “I can walk.”

I took him at his word and offered my foreleg to Waunita to help her up. She grunted in pain, the wound in her leg still oozing a trail of blood. She took to the air with a few heavy wing flaps and I led her and Braindead out of the alley and into the street. The Marshals had split into two groups, one still covering the two bounty hunters while the other kept close watch on my companions. Pistolwhip looked at me with hard, particularly flinty eyes.

“Had a feeling you were trouble the moment I clapped eyes on you. Don’t know what your business is in Skull City, and don’t much care long as you don’t do it on Marshal turf... but piece of advice, don’t get mixed up with Raiders. Ain’t no such thing as an ex-Raider.”

“Strange, she hasn’t tried to kill me since she joined us. Can’t say the same for a lot of other ponies that weren’t Raiders,” I said simply and went to help Waunita and Braindead into the back of the Ursa. B.B flew over to me, landing and tucking her wings to her sides. Her eyes cast a concerned look over the blood covering my back.

“It’s not mine,” I said, voice hollow.

B.B’s nose twitched, “I know. I can smell it's hers. Why’d ya wander off like that wit her?”

“I was just...” I sighed, “I just wanted to explore a bit. I had no idea this would happen. What else can I say?”

B.B held up a hoof, “Weren’t makin’ an accusation, was just wonderin’. When ya said ya were goin’ fer a walk, guess I shoulda figured it weren’t gonna just be ‘round the block. Arcaidia’s doin’ her thing. Soon as she’s done I can git a look at Binge and figure how bad the damage is.”

Arcaidia might have had the powerful healing magic, but B.B was the one with actual medical skills. I gave her a grateful nod and glanced over as Knobs trotted up to us. Behind her I saw Arcaidia walking slowly, floating Binge’s still form in an aura of blue magic. I sucked in a breath until I saw that Binge’s chest was still moving with shallow rises and falls.

“Ren solva,” Arcaidia was looking straight faced but her posture was stiff, “Do much I can with spell, but shivol bir lose much blood. More than Crest Sorcery can make fixed.”

At my expression she hastily added, “She not expire yet. Much time to fix, yes? B.B, how best fix smelly one with this planet’s medicine?”

“Lemme give her a look, but let’s get her set down gentle like on one o’ the bunks,” B.B said as we all trotted into the Ursa. I noticed that the situation had drawn quite a crowd by now and I felt better once we got the doors closed. I stood there, watching nervously as B.B knelt next to Binge, pulling out a small yellow tinted medical kit with the faintly familiar pattern of three pink butterflies on it.

“Longwalk, why don’t you drive us back to Knobs place?” suggested B.B as she began to work.

“I, uh, okay...” I said, quickly trotted towards the front of the Ursa. Arcaidia stayed behind, her horn still glowing, maintaining a continuous aura of healing upon Binge. It reminded me of the first day I’d met her, waking up to find her doing the same with Trailblaze. A warm feeling managed to melt away some of the frosty grip that’d been scraping my gut. Binge would be fine. With B.B and Arcaidia both there, she... she had to be fine.

Knobs followed me into the Ursa’s driver’s compartment, settling into the front passenger seat next to me as I hopped into the driver’s seat.

“I’m sorry, Longwalk,” she said, brushing some red mane from her face, “I should have asked you to stick close to my home until I had a chance to better familiarize you with the dangers of this city. I should have gone with you as a guide.”

“This isn’t your fault,” I told her firmly as I worked out the startup sequence for the Ursa’s engines. I’d seen Iron Wrought do this plenty of times, but still had to fumble a bit to get the feel for the big A.T.W’s controls. Outside I could see the Marshals gradually dispersing, getting curious Outskirts ponies to go about their business or to go back into their homes. I saw Double and Trouble trotting away, the sister of the sibling pair turning only once to shoot a death glare at us. I had a feeling I hadn’t seen the last of those two.

“If anything,” I continued, “I should be apologizing to you. The Marshals are basically kicking you off their turf, aren’t they? For helping us?”

Knobs gave me a comforting, light punch on the shoulder. “Don’t you dare beat yourself up over this. My choice to help out the ponies I want, how I want. Besides, I can probably get my house back down the road, as long as I pay off the High Marshal with a tasty enough bribe. She’s got a weakness for Wild Pegasus whisky. I scrounge up a bottle or two and she’ll be cool. Probably.”

I finally got the Ursa moving, after only nearly crunching through the back of somepony’s shack house once or twice. Grimacing as a few ponies scrambled to get out of the way of my haphazard driving, I said, “You seem to know a lot about a lot of ponies.”

Knobs laughed, “I get around. Er, not like that, mind you, but I try to do ponies good turns where I can. Tends to rack up plenty of brownie points I can spend down the road, like I just did with Pistolwhip.”

“Well, you’re certainly earning points with me,” I said, chancing a glance her way to give her a thankful look, “Seriously Knobs, I owe you big time for diffusing that mess back there. If there’s anything I can do to repay you, just name it.”

“Heh, concentrate on getting us to my place without running anypony over and I’ll call us even.”

“I’ll, um, try my best.”

I’m pleased to say I only came close to unintentionally committing vehicular ponyslaughter three or so times on our way back to Knobs’ house, and only crunched through a fence once. I was pretty proud of myself, for having no experience with driving the Ursa. I certainly missed Iron Wrought, though. He had really had a knack for steering this thing.

“Might take me a bit to get my stuff sorted,” said Knobs, hopping out the passenger side door, “I don’t own too much and can get packed in, I don’t know, twenty minutes? Also got to get Blasting Cap ready to go. She’ll probably spit and bite about it, but hey, nopony said raising foals was easy. Especially vengeful, half-crazy Raider foals.”

“Would she still even be here?” I asked, “And not, uh, run off on her own while you were gone?”

“Nah. She’s trying to act tough but,” Knobs face fell a bit, her voice quieting, “She’s hurt bad on the inside, and honestly I don’t think she wants to be alone. That and she hates you. Er, sorry, but what I mean is, she’ll stick with me as long as she thinks it’ll help her get at you eventually.”

I nodded sadly, ears drooping, “As long as ‘eventually’ doesn’t happen for a good long while then I can live with that. Do you know where we’re going after this?”

“Only choice is to the Inner City,” Knobs said, “I have just enough pull in my Guild to get us accommodations, and your friend a spot of medical aid. Speaking of brownie points, this’ll probably use up most of what I’ve got in the Skull Guild. We’re not, uh, normally the type of group that takes in outsiders. But long as I explain things to Skinner, he won’t give us any trouble.”

“Skinner?” I asked, eyebrow raising.

Knobs got a strange look on her face, distant, “My... old mentor. He’s now assigned to the Skull Guild’s internal affairs branch. He’s the one who’ll need to approve any expenditure of Guild resources, or letting folk such as yourself past our front doors. But don’t worry! I can deal with him.”

A thought struck me, sending my brain pony for a loop, “You know we might have another option. I know some, er, ponies who also have good medical facilities, and they have plenty of free space. You need a place to stay, and we need to get Binge healing, so I could ask them to help.”

Knobs smiled knowingly, “You’re talking about your spider pony buddies from the Stable, aren’t you?”

“Yup. We could use their portal system to go to Stable 104. Binge gets help, you get a decent place to stay.”

“It’d be good for Binge if you got her there, but I can’t afford to leave Skull City. I do still have a job to do here,” Knobs said, “You could always meet up with me at the Skull Guild later. I can arrange you access to the Inner City. You still got a date with Crossfire tomorrow, after all.”

I stuck out my tongue to make an ‘ick’ face, “Can you not use the word ‘date’ and Crossfire in the same sentence? Makes me feel chilly all over.”

“Fair enough,” said Knobs, finally turning to head to her house. However she did pause to glance back at me with a wink, “Besides, Crossfire is all mine.”

She left me and my bewildered expression and trotted off to her house, her chuckle filling the night air.

“What do you mean you can’t?” I tried to keep the higher note of desperation out of my tone.

Misty Glasses scratchy cybernetic voice spoke over the Ursa’s communications unit, “I do apologize, but when Trailblaze and the rest of the Stable 106 expedition returned the portal device, for lack of a better term, ‘overheated’. They’re fine, but the device is temporarily inoperable until we can affect repairs. That will take a day or two. Keep in mind this is a hastily built prototype, Longwalk. Such instability is not unexpected.”

“I... I can accept that, sure, but the timing couldn’t be worse,” I said, “Binge could really use your medlab, right now.”

“I am truly sorry, but until we get the portal fixed, you’ll be on your own.” I heard Misty Glasses sigh, a sound like hissing static, “On a more positive note your Trailblaze has certainly done more than I had envisioned. Her work at Stable 106 was exemplary and she’s responsible for saving the lives of almost every mare, stallion, and foal who was trapped in there.”

“What exactly happened?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“She would likely tell you the tale far more completely than I can. The short version of events is that Stable 106 was under the control of an unstable medical A.I based upon the personality of Ministry Mare Fluttershy. This A.I had trapped the populace of Stable 106 inside some manner of VR simulation, apparently as part of some kind of attempt to recreate a perfect simulation of Equestria before the war. Trailblaze and the rest of the expedition were accosted by the Stable’s complement of security robots, but they fought through such ambushes until they reached the VR simulation room. According to the report my people filed Trailblaze herself entered the VR simulation to confront the A.I, and of all outcomes, convinced the A.I to relinquish control of the facility.”

I blinked, trying to absorb all of that, “How did this, er...”

“A.I. Artificial Intelligence. A computer mock up of an actual personality and mindset to a series of pre-programmed commands.”

“Right, computer brain thingy. How did it get control of the Stable?”

“When Odessa raided 106, the same way they did here at 104, they did a poor job of following any safety protocols when they sought to rip out any useful research data they wanted. They did minimal harm to the Stable residents, thankfully, but their brazen methods, especially with handling data extraction from 106’s computer core, disable the safety locks on the A.I. You see the A.I was already unstable, and had been kept under lockdown by the researchers in 106. They were looking for ways to adjust the A.I to a more stable state, however Odessa’s actions freed it... and well, things went downhill from there.”

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t entirely. “How did Trail talk it down?”

“I’m not sure ‘talked down’ would be quite the right term. I think she managed to intimidate the A.I into compliance after threatening to destroy the VR simulation by having her... unique spiritual passenger use its independent mana supply to fry the entire Stable’s computer system.”

“That sounds a lot more like Trail,” I said with a small laugh. “So everypony is alright?”

“Quite. Well, a few injuries among the entire expedition to be sure, but no fatalities. Trailblaze is as upset by the portal being out of order as anypony. She’s eager to get back out there and proceed to this supposed Guardian Shrine somewhere in the mountains.”

“Tell her I wish her luck,” I said, sighing, “If we can’t use your medlab, I’ll need to get Binge to this Skull Guild as fast as I can. Keep us posted if anything more happens on your end.”

“Of course. Speed of the Goddesses go with you. Stable 104, out.”

When the com unit went silent I leaned back in the driver’s seat, glancing back and forth out the windows into the night. The Outskirts glowed with enough erratic lights that it seemed the world outside was a series of black teeth backlit by a hellishly orange glow. It left me with the impression of being stuck in the jaws of a beast. Perhaps that was just my most recent experience with the city coloring my view. Not even here two days and already one of my friends had been shot.

I heard quiet hoof steps behind me and turned my head to see B.B standing in the doorway to the driver’s compartment. Her expression was... not encouraging.

“How is she?” I ventured to ask.

“Still breathin’. Mare’s got a will ta live I ain’t often seen.”

“So why are you looking like you’ve got bad news?” I asked, voice tight.

“Thing is, she lost a’ lot o’ blood ‘fore me an’ Arcaidia got to her. Binge is hangin’ in there somethin’ fierce, but unless we can git her some blood, she won’t last. Don’t know how long. The night, maybe a bit longer.”

“But Arcaidia’s healing spell-” I began, but B.B shook her head.

“Can’t make blood from nothin’, Long. Her magic repairs a lot o’ damage, can seal up all kind o’ wounds, but it don’t conjure fresh blood fer the body to keep pumpin’. Binge’s life is stretched to a’ thread, an’ that thread’ll snap without a’ blood transfusion.”

I opened my mouth, then swallowed what I was about to say, which would’ve been some ill chosen words of denial. Instead I forced myself to take a slow breath, and said, “What do you need?”

“Someplace that’s got the equipment ta do a blood transfer. That, and a pony wit the right kind o’ blood. Not all ponies got the exact same type, an’ while the medkit from the Stable’s got a’ scanner fer me to figure out if somepony’s got the right blood or not, I’ll need more gear to set up the transfer.”

I didn’t entirely get what she meant by ponies having different kinds of blood. Wasn’t it all red? But I wasn’t about to question the medical expert in the group. “Knobs is packing her stuff right now. We’ll be heading for her Skull Guild. She’s told me she can get us in and hopefully use a medical facility there.”

“What about the Stable?”

I shook my head, “The portal thingy broke when Trailblaze and Whetstone returned. The spider ponies won’t be able to fix it for a day.”

“Shit...” B.B said, then cast a look out the window towards Knobs house, “We’d better get Knobs packed up fast, then, because every minute counts at this point.”

She got no argument from me. Waunita and Braindead were left waiting inside the Ursa. B.B had helped patch their wounds as best she could once she’d done all she could to keep Binge comfortable. Arcaidia remained by Binge’s side, maintaining her healing spell, which was helping keep Binge stable and buy us time. B.B and I went into Knobs house, where the ghoul was hastily tossing stuff into various duffle and saddle bags. Blasting Cap was, to my surprise, helping the mare. The foal cast me a withering look of pure venom when I entered the house, but when Knobs asked her to help load up food and water from kitchen into a black duffle bag Blasting Cap went to it with fervor, pointedly ignoring me.

Between the four of us we had most of Knobs’ stuff, minus the furniture, packed and loaded onto the Ursa. When I told her about the situation with Binge and the inability to reach the Stable, Knobs gave me a solid, bolstering look.

“Let’s not waste anymore time then and get your pal the help she needs.”

With that I plopped myself back into the Ursa’s driver’s seat and got us under way. I may have started driving faster than would have been strictly safe. Fortunately the Ursa had some pretty damn bright headlights that gave ponies plenty of time to see us coming and get out of the way. Knobs stayed up front with me to provide directions, and the occasional yelp or shout of warning to keep me from running anypony over. A few more fences of bone or skull capped streets signs might’ve met untimely ends, however, at the hooves of my aggressive driving.

Yet every time I tried to slow down by taking my hoof off the pedal I saw a mental image of Binge’s pale body, not breathing, and my hoof just pressed down all the harder.

The Inner City flashed by as a series of briefly viewed images amid an increasingly worried haze. The massive wall had been nothing more than a solid, rusted shadow in my mind, an obstacle between me and getting Binge help. Every second we spent waiting outside the gigantic metal gates of fused together pre-war billboards and slabs of sheet metal had been agonizing. Knobs had talked to the heavily armed and armored guards standing outside the gate. I caught glimpses of ponies in thick armor of matte black plates and thick gray long coats. Machine guns and rifles aimed down from slits in the wall or from sandbag barricades along the wall’s base.

In minutes, too many minutes, Knobs was able to convince the guards we weren’t smugglers, assassins, vagrants, or any other brand of ‘undesirables’ and a smaller sub-section of the gate was opened up to allow us entry. There was a small tunnel, more a half-pipe of heavily guarded entryway, and another checkpoint to pass on the other side of the wall, but after that we were in the Inner City.

I saw shadowed sights of shockingly clean streets and buildings three to four stories tall of fine brick or metal. Not a single hint of rust, or blackened char to be seen. The streets were lit by tall metal poles with magical glow gems providing pools of pale light. There were ponies out, walking upon well maintained sidewalks, moving in and out of storefronts and taverns. It wasn’t much different than the Outskirts, save for how much cleaner everything appeared, and the general lack of gunfire. Then again, I saw armed guards in their gray long coats keeping the streets patrolled in pairs. That probably had something to do with it. The road I was driving along was mostly clear, but to my surprise I saw that the Ursa wasn’t the only vehicle using these concrete pathways. Most were wagons or small carts, being pulled by either more of those odd two headed bovine creatures, or even more to my shock, the emaciated, decayed bodies of ghouls. These ghouls looked little like Knobs or the bounty hunters. These poor ponies had milky eyes, devoid of any semblance of personality or intellect.

At a questioning look from me Knobs blinked and said, “Something wrong?”

“Is this... normal?” I asked, nodding my head out the window as we passed a big metal shod autowagon converted to a cargo cart, being hauled by a quartet of dull eyed ghouls as a bulky mare directed them with sharp commands from the head of the cart.

“Huh? Oh, yeah! Skull Guild trains up plenty of feral ghouls for simple tasks. Not every feral is trainable, of course, but enough are that the Guild doesn’t really run out of supply for the demand.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“After the training, not so much. Usually. As long as the pony who buys them follows the instructions for properly controlling the trained ghouls there’s little chance for relapse into a feral state...” Knobs trailed off, chewing her lip pensively, “Guess it’s not the thing I’m most proud of, where my Guild is concerned.”

I frowned out the window, watching the cart and the ghouls hitched to it turned off down another street. Aside from such wagons there were also the rare functioning autowagon, though not one of these contraptions was anywhere near the size of the Ursa nor in the same good condition. Most looked cobbled together, fused through patchworks of metal and gears as they puttered down the streets.

“Turn right here, head up this street. There’ll be a hill, go up it, then turn left at the next intersection,” Knobs told me, “That’ll take us past the Mechanics Guild district, then straight to the front parking lot of the Skull Guild’s tower.”

I nodded silently, my concentration on driving. I somehow doubted the guards would appreciate me running over any fences here. It took no shortage of willpower to slow down enough to keep from running all over the road as I directed the Ursa as Knobs bade.

“We almost there?” asked B.B, coming into the driver’s compartment in a flutter of feathers.

“Just about,” said Knobs, “Assuming Longwalk doesn’t drive us into a street post.”

I grumbled something ungentlstallionish under my breath, then, louder, “Iron Wrought made this look way easier than it is.”

“Yer bein’ a bit heavy hoofed wit the wheel. Ya can git a better response if ya don’t yank it so hard.”

“That’s what she said?” Knobs put out there.

B.B groaned, then turned her attention out the front windows, “Been a’ long while since I seen these streets.”

Knobs cast a curious glance at the pegasus, “You’ve been to the Inner City before?”

B.B’s eyes narrowed slightly, not at Knobs, but at the city passing by outside the window. “Once.”

She didn’t elaborate further, and Knobs politely didn’t pursue further questioning. We drove on in silence. I followed Knobs’ directions to the best of my ability, managing not to get turned around. On our right I saw the city open up into a series of long warehouses and short, squat buildings from which sprouted pipe stacks akin to the bones of a rib-cage. Inside these buildings or in open yards between them I saw the sparks and dancing flickers of light from ponies using torches to assemble or work on various machines or parts of machines, like scurrying ants over a dead body. The air outside was faintly hazy with smoke, and it seemed to me that a perpetual fog hung over the area.

“Mechanics Guild is working some serious overtime,” Knobs murmured, “Them and the Smiths Guild.”

“Because o’ all the Raiders tryin’ to bust their way inta the Outskirts?” asked B.B.

“What else?” replied the ghoul, “They’re probably blowing through ammo like nopony’s business out there, plus all the materials they need to build fortifications. The foundries will be working non-stop to keep the ponies fighting out there supplied.”

I chewed my lip, curiosity overriding my silent concentration, “What chance to the Raiders have of actually getting into the city?”

“Practically none,” said Knobs, who then frowned, “Which really makes this attack all the more stupid and pointless. No matter that somepony’s managed to get so many Raiders banded together, it just won’t be enough for them to crack open Skull City. Only reason I can think they’re doing this is because... I don’t know, Raider hormones? Haven’t had enough violence so they need to get a orgy bloodbath in once or twice a decade?”

B.B suddenly looked thoughtful, rubbing her chin, “Hey Longwalk, ya remember what we found after takin’ out Binge’s Raider pack?”

I furrowed my brow, thinking, “Kinda sorta? You’re talking about that letter on the terminal right? Didn’t it say something about somepony backing those Raiders in trying to infiltrate Saddlespring?”

“Yeah, just thinkin’... I don’t rightly know, yet. But just feels off that this big Raider attack would hit Skull City ‘round the same time somepony was lookin’ ta help out Raiders knock over one o’ the larger settlements outside the city.”

“What, like some kind of conspiracy?” asked Knobs, tail wagging, “Oooh, I like mysteries. Do you have any other clues?”

B.B looked at me and I shrugged, to which she said to Knobs, “‘Fraid not, hun. Somepony gave a bunch o’ Raiders outside Saddlespring gear to dress up like guards, wit the plan o’ sneakin’ in and Raidin’ the town from the inside. Got half a’ thought it might be somehow tied to this big army o’ Raiders attakin’ Skull City now, but damned iffin’ I can figure how.”

“Who’d benefit from Raiders going nuts all over the place?” I asked, “I mean, besides Raiders?”

“Plenty of folk,” said Knobs, pursing her lips in consideration, “The Protectorate would benefit by having Skull City distracted, allowing them to start up the war again with less risk. A lot of the Guilds actually benefit because of the caps involved in selling weapons and ammo to supply the fight. Then there’s the Labor Guild. They immediately offered up their Volunteer Enforcer Corps to fight off the Raiders, which is good for their reputation. Then there’s any number of gangs in the Outskirts that could hope the fight with the Raiders would weaken rivals so they could grab more turf after the Raiders are sent packing. So... yeah, plenty of candidates if you’re looking for folk who stand to benefit from all this.”

“Well... I guess it doesn’t matter,” I said, “Right now all that matters is taking care of Binge. Past that we got a whole mountain of problems to deal with that have nothing to do with those Raiders. B.B’s father and those refugees are still missing and we haven’t heard back from LIL-E. My tribe is still in the clutches of Odessa. And I still need a way south to the NCR for the sake of Arcaidia and her search for her sister. So... yeah, can’t really afford to aid Raider War Conspiracy to my list of secondary objectives.”

“Longwalk...” B.B looked at me with growing concern.

I grit my teeth, eyes on the road. We were leaving the smoke and welding sparks of the Mechanik’s Guild district behind us.

“If there was something we could do, I’d be all for it. I just want us focused, for once. If we stumble across some way to stop the Raiders, or answer just who’s behind them, then great, but I don’t think we can afford to go looking. Not while we got other things on our plate. We don’t even know what LIL-E will find about your father. We might need to go rescue him, right?”

“Course we do. Just worried ‘bout ya, is all. Yer kinda lookin’ haggard.”

I found myself gripping the steering wheel tightly and consciously forced myself to relax that grip, taking in a deep breath, “Binge didn’t have to follow me. Not when we first picked her up, or... or anywhere she’s decided to follow me around. If she dies, whose fault is that?”

“I’d reckon the sunuvabitch that shot her,” deadpanned B.B.

“I second that,” said Knobs, “Let’s not play the blame game with too many players. Nopony’s at fault for any of this except those that started pulling triggers.”

I paused, not entirely sure how easily I could toss blame off myself if Binge didn’t make it. Maybe blaming myself felt easier than trying to assign it anywhere else, because punishing myself was easy. I pushed those thoughts back to a tight, constricted part of my mind, and concentrated on the road.

It was only a few more minutes before we arrived at our destination.

The Skull Guild’s headquarters consisted of three towers, ancient pre-war skyscrapers that belittled all other remaining buildings in the center of what had once been downtown Detrot. They were arranged in a short triangle, two shorter towers in front and flanking a center, taller tower. Even the shorter pair soared upwards higher than any constructed edifice I’d laid eyes on, high enough to make guessing just how tall a dizzying prospect to my beleaguered mind. Much like many of the other buildings of the Inner City these towers were well kept, nearly pristine, with shining glass exteriors of segmented windows running up their massive vertical lengths. Dozens upon dozens of lights burned within, magical or otherwise, indicating these towers weren’t empty ruins, but were blazing with active occupancy.

The only part of the towers that existed as bare reminders of the world we lived in were the tops. Each tower’s top most floors were scorched to ash blackness, bare metal frames grasping towards the sky like emaciated claws. The largest, center tower’s darkened peak drew the eye with a series of fierce glowing fires, a collection of flickering bonfires that formed the pattern of a grinning skull.

“Somepony trying to make a statement?” I asked as we approached a huge, flat concrete plane before the towers. The parking lot was filled with dozens of carts arranged in neat lines, and I saw a fence of barbed wire and sandbags surrounding it with the road leading to a gate guarded by more of those ponies in gray long coats. Much like at the gate to get into the Inner City we were stopped and questioned, but Knobs’ presence cleared things through rather quickly. Most the guards seemed to know her well, one of them even wanting to stop and chat for a sec, but Knobs made it clear we had an injured pony in need of medical aid and we were soon waved through.

“Go ahead and park over by the doors. We can move this thing later,” said Knobs, already hobbling out of her seat and balancing on her back wheel-legs and moving with practiced dexterity into the back of the Ursa.

The front area of the parking lot led to a wide stone walkway flanked by dry fountains, leading to a rectangular two story building that ran into the base of all three towers, almost like a pedestal holding the towers up. I saw a huge concrete overhang before a long set of glass doors leading into the building, and in large chrome letters above this overhang was what I could only assume was another one of those acronyms ponies seemed to like so much.

OCP?

I didn’t question it, instead following Knobs and B.B into the back of the Ursa. Waunita gave me a worried, questioning look, and Braindead, sitting next to her, uncomfortably shifted as the dark coated Raider fidgeted with his hooves. His eyes darted about and it was hard to tell just what he was afraid of.

Arcaidia turned her silver eyes towards me, their shimmering stillness reflecting a still calm that I could now tell was Arcaidia’s way of dealing with unpleasant situations. She could force herself into a cold, inner stillness, and that now radiated off her like a chill air.

“She in poor status,” said Arcaidia, nodding at Binge, “Can move her, but better be to place of healing goodness, otherwise...”

“I know. Thank you for keeping her going so far. Just a bit longer,” I said, turning a glance towards Knobs, “Right?”

Knobs huffed a deep breath and said, “Follow me and we’ll find out.”

With that we opened up the back of the Ursa and as one gaggle of wounded, haggard ponies, plus one griffin and one unconscious ex-Raider, we shuffled out into the cold night and made our way towards the looming dark towers... which to my weary eyes and morbid mood suddenly looked all too much like gigantic tombstones.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added: Tag! (Unarmed) - Your Wasteland experiences have expanded your skillset, allowing you to pick another Tag skill and add +15 points to it! You’ve punched and bucked (not like that, but hopefully later in the future) enough ponies to have nearly gotten as good with your bare hooves as you are with a certain alien space spear.

Skill Notes:
Melee: 75
Unarmed: 50

Bonus Ex-File: "Boss Rush Stats! - Captain Shattered Sky”

Location: Ruined Church
Level: 20
HP: 500
DT: 13 (Oddessa Officer’s Armor)
Perception: 9
Attack Skill: 90
Colt OA11 “Meriam” Officer Sidearm: Damage - 40, Ammo - 11, Crit - x1.4
Special Ability “Artifical ARM ‘System Chronos’”: All attacks directed at Shattered Sky automatically fail unless an area of effect attack is used or no less than three different attacks target him simultaneously, in which case he must pass a Perception check to successfully avoid taking damage. System Chronos is an Odessa Artificial ARM in the shape of a silver watch. Its power is to “compress” time so that only Shattered Sky can move while the rest of the world slows to almost a complete stop.
EXP: 600
Loot: None
Weakness: Area of effect attacks.

Author's Note

Fun fact, I used Google Earth to get a good look around downtown Detroit to help me get a feel for how both the Inner City and Outskirts of Skull City are set up. The towers of the Skull Guild are based off of the real life buildings of the GM headquarters. In reality there are five towers, but I decided to go with three for simplicity. The rest of the city more or less mirrors its real life counterpart, except the river is positioned a bit differently.

In other news, I'd like to thank my two pre-readers, doomande and referee for the work they've put in to help me keep this story as smooth and error free as we can. Also of course thanks goes to KKat for creating this world to begin with.

I'm also starting something new in these notes; giving shout outs to the other FoE sidefics that I've read that have helped inspire my own writing. This chapter's shout out goes to The Last Sentinel, by Adder1. This is a heck of a tale with a protagonist whose got more layers than ogres or onions and has some fabulous world building in it. A lot of my desire to make Skull City seem as lifelike as I can manage is because of the thorough work Adder puts into his own world building. So go check out his story if you haven't already (though fair warning, his main character is pretty hardcore, so if your the sort who's not into torture or extreme moral ambiguity you might want to brace yourself).

And a final, final note: My pal doomande is looking for folk who have a interest in getting their RP on. Check out this forum here if you got the time and are in the mood to do some MLP/FoE related RPing.

Thanks all for reading, and as always leave any and all comments, critiques, and thoughts in the comments. 'Till next time.

Chapter 23: Complication

Chapter 23: Complication

We weren’t alone entering the front doors of the Skull Guild’s massive tower of flat gray concrete and steel. Ponies were bustling in and out even at this time of night, as if all the Inner City pulsed with the same sleepless heartbeat as the Outskirts. Much like at the fence line encircling the parking lot there were armed guards at the doors, a wide set of glass entryways where no less than six ponies in gray body armor and bearing battle saddles sporting rifles and machine guns watched us warily.

Knobs didn’t break stride, and neither did we. Binge was being carefully floated along by Arcaidia in a gentle cradle of levitating magic. B.B flew alongside the unconscious mare’s body, keeping a constant vigil upon her, and it left me feeling a shade less tense to know our group’s medic wasn’t slacking. Between us all there was the tiny form of Blasting Cap, the filly’s eyes shifting about constantly and her face sporting a perpetual scowl that deepened into a hate filled snarl whenever my eyes met hers. At least she wasn’t biting my ear or trying to scratch my face off. I would’ve thanked the Ancestor Spirits for that, but I knew that I actually had Knobs to thank for the filly not running off or trying to kill me currently.

“What’s this Knobs?” asked one of the guards, a burly stallion with a coat just a shade of gray darker than his armor.

“Emergency situation, Checkpoint. Don’t have time for playing twenty questions, sorry to say, but the short of it is that these are friends of mine and one of them has an extra hole in her that’s not supposed to be there. Need to borrow one of our docs up top.”

Checkpoint ran a hard stink eye over us, voice grumbling, “They can’t come into the tower armed or without being cleared by a head wrangler from internal affairs.”

“I know that, which is why they’ll disarm,” Knobs gave us all pointed looks as she said that, “And I’ll get it cleared with Skinner. But this mare needs help now. I promise you I’ll get all my paperwork stuff in order while she’s getting treated, and you can collect their weapons as we walk, but there isn’t time for having a long chat about this. C’mon Checkpoint, you know I wouldn’t bring anypony in here who was dangerous to the guild.”

I’d left Gramzanber in the Ursa, so it wasn’t as if I had much in the way of weapons to be disarmed of. Checkpoint looked like he was swallowing something sour but he huffed out a sigh and with a few sharply barked orders had some guards comb over us and start collecting our weapons. B.B gave up her pistols without any fuss, but Arcaidia pierced the guard that took her starblaster with her silver eyes glittering like poised spears.

“My blaster best be kept well and returned nicely otherwise I not a happy pony,” Arcaidia said pointedly.

The guard looked at her dully, “Noted.”

“We’ll get our stuff back, don’t worry Arcaidia,” I said, though immediately afterward I leaned over and whispered to Knobs, “We are getting our stuff back, right?”

Knobs flashed a nervous smile at me, “Probably. I mean, most likely. Er... fifty, fifty?”

“My confidence is not being boosted,” I commented dryly.

“Look at it this way, would you rather wait out here in the cold for a doctor to magically fall from the sky complete with surgery equipment?”

“... Point taken.”

My few remaining grenades were taken, and they even checked Binge’s floating body. Not much to my surprise they didn’t find any of the many knives I knew the mare had hidden in her mane and tail. More to my surprise when they searched Blasting Cap they took off a sharp kitchen knife that the filly had secreted away in her own tail (was this just a trick all Raider’s learned or something?). Blasting Cap hissed at the guards as they took it and Knobs looked at the filly with an embarrassed smile, scratching the back of her head.

“Note to self, keep a closer eye on my kitchenware from now on.”

Blasting Cap made a pffft noise and rolled her eyes, “I still got knives in places these wusses are too scardey to check on a filly.”

One of the guards blinked down at her, “We’re standing right here.”

Blasting Cap glared and lifted her tail, “Go ahead, check away.”

“Eeeehhh... go on in. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t hide anything in there that’d be dangerous with a bony, small ass like that anyway.”

I just blinked at the filly, “Are all Raider foals as mentally screwy as you?”

“I don’t know, are all dickless Wastelanders mother murdering fucktards like you?”

I decided further conversation with Blasting Cap was not a productive pursuit and clamped my mouth shut.

We were led inside under escort from two of Checkpoint’s guards. I gazed around with anxious eyes, my look flickering constantly towards Binge’s floating form, looking for the telltale sight of her expanding sides to let me know she was still breathing. I feared seeing her still permanently at every passing second.

The entry room of the tower would have seemed grander were we not in such a rush. I saw a high ceiling bearing hanging braziers of metal and bone, the fires within bathing the area in shifting orange light. A pair of strange stairways flanked a large front desk of black metal. On the wall above this desk was a sight that almost stopped me in my tracks; a skull tacked to the wall unlike any I had seen before. Whatever kind of creature this skull belonged to must have been colossal, as the skull covered most the wall, with a sharp, angled form containing a maw of dozens of fangs as long as spearheads. Two oval eyes sockets stared blankly from a bleached head that bore twin curved horns that were longer than three ponies standing end to end. Strange, etherally flickering blue torches burned from within the eye sockets, making the skull appear like an animated monstrosity.

“Okay, Knobs, who decided to mount pure nightmare fuel on your lobby wall?” I found myself asking.

“What, him? That’s just The Duke. Totally crazy long story behind him going waaaaay back to Skull City’s founding. You wanna hear all about it I’ll give you the tour when your friend isn’t bleeding on the carpet,” replied Knobs with a grin.

“Binge ain’t doin’ any bleedin’,” said B.B, “Least not fer the moment. Kinda all internal blood loss at the moment.”

I blinked, “Isn’t blood supposed to be on the inside anyway? How do you lose blood on the inside?”

“Long, do the world a’ favor an’ never git inta the medical profession.”

There was a earth pony mare sitting behind the desk, her necrotic flesh ragged save for a few neon purple patches of fur. Her thin blonde mane hung in loose clumps around her emaciated face, and yet her gaunt features she flashed a smile as white as pearl as we approached, blue eyes sparkling.

“Knobs, don’t see you coming into headquarters often! Oh my, what’s all this!?”

“No time for explaining, but yeah, good to see you Sheeny. Do me a solid and get Skinner to meet us at the eighteenth floor, will ya? I got to get this poor mare to Harshcare’s clinic, like, twenty minutes ago!”

Sheeny cast a wavering look towards Binge’s blood smeared body, biting her lower lip, but she nodded to Knobs. “‘Kay, I’ll give Skinner a buzz. Hashcare too, just so they’re prepped for you. Hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Much as I ever do!” Knobs said as she hastily trotted for the stairs, waving us along. The guards stayed on us, eyes unfriendly and watching our every move.

The next floor gave me the impression of a gutted belly, as if the Skull Guild had hollowed out the interior of this tower, ripping out its old world glit and finery, and replaced it with their own flame lit world. The ceiling had been torn out here, and countless walls knocked out, save for certain walls that I imagined were left solely for the purpose of keeping the rest of the place held up. The hole in the ceiling was easily fifty paces across and as we approached it I could see the hole actually formed a shaft that ran upward for dozens of floors, perhaps even to the top of the tower itself. At each concentric point along the circumference of the shaft there was an open lift consisting of a single wide platform surrounded by metal bars. The lifts were attached to a pulley system of cables stretching upwards into the shifting shadows of the shaft. Most of the area was lit by more of those ghostly blue torches. It gave everything this ethereal glow that left my spine shivering.

The area was hardly deserted, as ponies and griffins, both alive and ghouled, shuffled about either clearly on errands or merely hanging out in small clusters to chat. I noted a few ponies in black coats identical to the one Knobs wore directing a team of what I could only imagine were feral ghouls, or rather “tamed” ghouls, in pulling several big crates up from what appeared to be a ramp carved into the floor on the north end of the building.

“Curious?” Knobs asked, catching my look as she led us towards the nearest lift. “Most of our storage and ghoul training facilities are underneath the tower. That’s the main ramp we built to go to the sub-levels. All the stuff up top that these lifts go to are our living quarters, administration, and of course Guild services like the medical clinic.”

“Why the whole do-it-yerself elevators?” asked B.B as we shuffled onto the wide platform of expertly welded metal and pipes, “Ain’t this tower got elevators from ‘fore the megaspells?”

“Yup, sure did. Problem is all the nifty gizmos and widgets that made this tower sparkle back in the day went dark when the main computer that ran it all was fried by one of the megaspells that blew up over the city. So no elevators, instant coffee, or automatic toilets. Real shame. We’ve rebuilt as needed. This shaft doesn’t just make a nice spot for the lifts, it helps our winged friends get up and down easy whether they be pegasus or griffin. Anyway, I think it was some kind of big, super duper spark-pulse that did the damage way back when. Wasn’t able to shut down the shield that was protecting the city, but it zapped pretty much anything that was above a certain height, and wouldn’t you know it, OCP kept is main computer in the top floor of this tower. Funny, that.”

“What’s OCP?” I asked, glancing around uncomfortably as the lift began to rise after Knobs rang a bell dangling from a pole in the lift’s center, “I saw those letters on the entrance to this place.”

“Just some bigwig company from the pre-Wasteland times,” said Knobs as we continued to ascend the gloomily lit shaft. I could see that each floor had portions that were exposed to the shaft corresponding to each spot an elevator could rise to, while the walls were mostly intact for the rest of the floors, preventing me from seeing just what was on them. Knobs had said the tower was mostly living quarters, so I imagined most of the space we were passing was taken up by various personal rooms for the different members of the Skull Guild. Made me wonder why Knobs chose to live in the Outskirts at that house, if the guild provided a place to stay. She must have had her reasons. I looked at her as the ghoul mare animatedly walked around the edge of the lift, smiling as she answered my question.

“OCP stood for Orange Customer Products. They, like, practically ran the city of Detrot. Sponsored a lot of the businesses that moved into the area when the old war got so hot. I think most of the manufacturing stuff you saw the Mechanics Guild using was built by OCP. In fact I think pretty much everything around here was built by them or built by ponies sponsored by them. Heard they were ran by a family that was kinda sorta related to one of the Ministry Mares that were in charge of Equestria. Can’t remember which one. Maybe the pink one with the creepy smile? You seen any posters with her around? No? The reason for that is they were so creepy there was a city wide poster hunt to find and burn all of them out of Skull City. So, you know, you’re welcome.”

I blinked at her a few times, “Creepy smile posters?”

“Oh, wander long enough away from Detrot and you’ll see ‘em. Pinkie Pie seemed like a nice mare to me, but dang if she didn’t have a smile that could unsettle the bowels of the most hardened Wasteland badflank.”

The lift continued to rise on squeaking wires, and swayed slightly in the air as it did so. Arcaidia gave the entire thing a wary look, shuffling uneasily on her hooves. “This up going thing safe? It not look safe.”

“It’s mostly safe,” Knobs replied, flashing a confident smile. There was a jerking halt to the lift as something above in its pulley system shifted, causing all of the ponies aboard to grab at the hoof rails. I found myself looking down towards the ground floor, which was now a good fifty or so paces down, now. I gulped. Chances were a fall from this height would be unpleasantly fatal.

Knobs let out a small giggle as she let go of the rail herself, dusting herself off, “LIke I said, mostly safe. We only have an accident once every other month. Huh, now that I think about it, last one was a month ago? Two months? Are we about due?”

“Suddenly feelin’ real happy ‘bout being o’ the winged persuasion,” said B.B.

“Yeah, rather wishing my dad’s blood had given me a pair myself,” I said, wincing slightly as the lift resumed taking us upwards.

Looking up, peering into the gloom, I could finally see the top of the shaft. A series of scaffolds were built across the top floor, housing the series of pulleys and gears driven by small machines that were being watched by a small hoofful of ponies. There were still a number of floors between us and the top and the lift itself stopped well before we got there. The edge of the lift settled against a lip of floor that protruded out like a bridge from an open pair of double doors. Beyond those was some kind of well lit lobby area, complete with gray carpeting.

“Okay ponies, right this way!” Knobs said, “Eighteenth floor, stallion’s wear, shoes, and medical facilities galore.”

We all disembarked, trotting quickly into the lobby. Inside there were several ponies, one of which was a bleary eyed ghouled stallion whose wiry form turned to stare hard at Knobs as we entered.

“For fucks sake Knobs, what are you playing at here?” barked the stallion, trotting to meet us, a wrinkled scowl on his features. “Who are all these damn ponies you’re dragging in here? You know they can’t be in here without permission, and last time I checked that’s kind of my job, not yours!”

Knobs was smiling widely, though her face had a twitching undercurrent of strain to it that was also evident in her voice as she said, “Hello Skinner, good to see you. Yeah, uh, look, these ponies here really need our help. I know medical supplies cost a bunch, but I have more than enough Gella stacked up with the guild to pay off any-”

“Let me stop you right there Knobs,” said Skinner without losing the scowl from his face, not even looking at the rest of us but keeping his glare squarely fixated on Knobs, “It ain’t about money, it’s about procedure and security! What if these were saboteurs!? Or assassins!? Do you know we’ve got very important guests from the Protectorate here in the tower right now as we’re speaking? And you just let in a bunch of ponies who look like they’ve been dragged through the ass end of the Wasteland’s worst gutters?”

Knobs looked taken aback slightly, but she recovered fast, “They were checked and disarmed by the guards at the door. They’ve got me to vouch for them and to cover their medical costs. By the book that covers everything the guild cares about Skinner, save that I brought them here first before you could clear them, and we’re taking care of that right now, aren’t we?”

“No, because I’m not clearing these Wasteland scrubs for being in our headquarters. They’re turning right the fuck around right fucking now and leaving out the same doors they came in.”

I stepped forward at that, “Not meaning to step on tails here, but no, no we're not leaving. Not without my friend getting treatment.”

Skinner turned a hard look towards me, “I don’t know who or what you are, some crossdress freak that Knobs picked up off the street no doubt, but you aren’t staying-”

“Skinner we don’t have time for this!” Knobs suddenly snapped, getting close and putting her face barely an inch from Skinner’s, who tried to back up a step but Knobs simply followed him. “I’m not arguing with you further. You want to report me, go ahead, but you know it won’t hold up when they figure out I’ve got the Gella to cover this and that these ponies aren’t a threat.”

Skinner was silent for a moment, eyes narrowing to slits. With a whip like flick of his sparse tail he brushed past us, “You’re just as naive as you’ve always been, damn idiot girl. What’s this bit of altruism gonna cost you? Last time it was your hind legs. Sooner or later, it might be your head.”

He gave a pointed nod towards the wheeled artificial limbs attached to what was left of Knobs’ hindquarters before snorting and leaving, heading out through a side door that I could see lead to a concrete stairwell. He slammed the door behind him.

“Charming guy,” I said, then shook my head, looking at Binge with concern. Her body was looking more wane and pale, streaked with sweat that somehow made her sickly thin frame appear more fragile. Her breathing was shallow, erratic to my eyes. “Where’s the doctor?”

“Right here,” said a stallion who’d been watching the proceedings from the frame of a door directly across from the doors leading to the lift. He was a unicorn, sporting a golden brown coat and a short, neatly cut mane of black and purple streaks. He was wearing a gray leather vest lined with pockets, from which he pulled a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. His horn glowed a faint green matching his eyes as he summoned a flicker of flames to light the cigarette as he trotted towards us. He gave Binge a single quick glance, then turned back to us.

“I’m Harshcare. Closest thing to a doctor you’re likely to find in this tower of half dead ponies. Take your friend back through those doors. My assistants will get her situated. If she ain’t already dead I’ll see about maybe making her less likely to be dead before the night’s done. Knobs, best get your tail to my office so we can clear payments, otherwise the boss lady will have both our genitals mounted on her wall come morning. Fuck, girl, you think you can go a week without pulling these stunts?”

“You’re sweet, Harsh, being all worried about me. Don’t worry, I mostly know what I’m doing. Besides I got Crossfire and Skinner both to frown at me disapprovingly over my altruistic streak, and you don’t want to just copycat them, do you?”

“Perish the thought. I’m my own original act,” he said, then frowned at me, rather disapprovingly, “What are you waiting for, a fucking red carpet to roll out for you?”

I hardly needed further prompting. None of us did. Well, maybe Blasting Cap, who was keeping quiet as we all quickly trotted down a side hallway being led by a pair of ponies who I assumed were Harshcare’s assistants. I couldn’t help but notice that Blasting Caps eyes were narrowly darting around and that the small yellow filly was seeming to grow tenser the deeper we got into the tower. She wasn’t the only one. Waunita and Braindead had both been keeping pretty quiet since we’d arrived at the tower, trailing behind the group. The griffin and one-time Raider were both still sporting injuries that had yet to be properly dealt with, and I could see neither one was walking without limping. Knobs had already trotted off with Harshcare, and I hoped whatever business they had to take care of wouldn’t take long.

“Hey, uh, is there anything that can be done for them?” I asked one of the assistant ponies, nodding my head back towards Waunita and Braindead.

The assistant gave them a cursory look, pursing her lips, “We can give them a look in a sec, soon as we get the unconscious one checked out.”

“She needin’ blood,” B.B said plainly, “I’ll save ya that bit o’ diagnosis. She’s got a’ bullet wound in her side, an’ I’m thinkin’ it’s lodged somewhere in her opposite ribs. Might’a grazed her stomach, but I don’t think it ruptured any organs. Somethin’ is bleedin’ in there, though. Bullet might’ve nicked an’ artery. Magic sealed up the worst o’ it but without a transfusion she’s up the creek.”

“You a medic?” asked one of the assistants as they led us into a setril room of clean, plain tiled floor, and white washed walls. A plain white bed was in the center of the room and the walls were filled with cabinets of equipment. Arcaidia was directed to lay Binge down on the bed, which the unicorn did so with careful gentleness. Blasting Cap hopped up onto a chair in one corner of the room while Waunita and Breaindead quietly shuffled to the side. I noticed Braindead kept looking between me and Waunita, lips quivering as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t bring himself to get it out. Perhaps he just knew that right now wasn’t the time.

Within minutes the assistants had Binge hooked up to several machines and some sort of bag of liquid, not unlike what I’d been hooked up to back in Stable 104 when I’d been getting healed up. I tried to feel a bit of relief, but it was hard to settle my nerves. It felt like every slow second that passed was bringing Binge closer to death. I saw one assistant pull out a small cylindrical device and press it to Binge’s foreleg. The room was filled with the sound of a unsteady electronic beeping as one machine attached to a monitor showed the thready pulse of my friend. The assistant checked the cylindrical device after it, too, let out a short beep.

“Shit, just had to be O negative, didn’t it?” the mare muttered, glancing up at the rest of us, “If we’re transfusing into this pony, we’ve got an issue.”

Arcaidia’s long silver tail flicked angrily, “Speak fast then, time not of great amount!”

“Keep your skirt on. Your friend here has a tricky blood type. Universal for donating to others, but can only take the exact same blood type herself. Means we need another O negative. Problem is we don’t exactly have a huge supply of spare blood for this kind of thing. Especially not O negative. Its valuable shit because it can be used with any other blood type.”

“What does all that mean?” I asked anxiously, “Pretend you're talking to somepony who doesn't have a clue what ‘blood type’ even means.”

“Short version; we don’t have any spare blood of the kind that’ll save your friend. We need a donor,” the mare said, brushing some black mane out of her pale blue face. She held up the cylinder she’d been using on Binge, “This nifty arcanotech device checks blood type. Any volunteers in here, I’ll check your blood. If nopony here matches up, we’ve got to search the tower for a willing donor.”

“Well what are you waiting for, let’s get checking!” I said, voice near to cracking.

At that point Harshcare and Knobs arrived in the room, and it took less than a minute to bring Harshcare up to date. The stallion sighed, rushing to get another identical cylinder from the cabinet. “We only got two of these damned things, so if we don’t luck out, this is going to take time. I can tell just by looking at this mare that that’s time she doesn’t have. Everypony who ain’t a half dead ghoul stretch your forelegs out and pray to whatever hocus pocus you believe in you got the right juice in you.”

One by one we all raised our legs, even Blasting Cap after the filly got a look from Knobs. The assistant and Harshcare went between us one at a time, using the cylindrical devices to press them to our flesh. When the cylinder pressed onto my fur I felt a cold tingle from the metal of it, and a small itching pinch like the bite of an insect.

There was another slow minute of tense silence as Harshcare looked over the results of the testing.

Then his eyes rested on me, a small smirk on his face, “Lucky buck, looks like we’ve got a winner.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Only other O negative in the crowd. Pat yourself on the back later. Right now sit your ass over here and try not to squirm. Also it’s way too crowded in here, so anypony either not dying, helping, or donating blood go wait out in the hall. Hypoderm, why don’t you go look at the wounds of anyone else who needs patching. I can take care of this transfusion.”

“Yes doctor,” said the assistant mare, and in short order she led Waunita and Braindead out of the room.

B.B rested a hoof on my arm as I sat next to the bed. “Stay steady, Long. I reckon she’s been stubborn enough ta hold on so far, she’ll pull through.”

I gave the pegasus a thankful look, silently returning her gesture. B.B gestured a wing at Blasting Cap as she headed for the door.

“C’mon ya little monster, ain’t gonna be much o’ a show.”

Blasting Cap’s lips pulled back in an unpleasant smile, “Maybe I wanna watch her croak.”

This earned a quick whap upside the filly’s head from B.B, who now wore a glacial look and whose tone brooked absolutely no nonsense. “Out. Now. Before I put you over my knee. Ain’t got the patience Knobs seems ta got. I’ll knock ya silly, kid, ya keep up the attitude.”

Blasting Cap glared, but obeyed, following B.B out of the room. This left only myself, Harshcare, one of his assistants, and Arcaidia still in the room with Binge. Harshcare gave Arcaidia an expectant look, but instead of leaving she stayed right where she was.

Arcaidia looked at Harshcare with a solid gaze, “I stay.”

“You helping, filly?” he asked with a hard tone.

“Healing magic keep shivol bir living so far. Without magic, she died before get here. If doctor skills go wrong, magic still may save smelly one’s life. Not leave if ren solva still here.”

At her words Harshcare gave her a steady look, both searching and curious, but after a moment he nodded. “Fine, but don’t fuck around or do anything without my say so. Healing magic can only go so far, and can even cause harm if used at the wrong moment. You don’t pull any fancy arcane shit until I give the word. Understood?”

“My brain hears and standsunder,” said Arcaidia, taking a stop next to Binge at the opposite side of the bed from me. Harshcare cocked an eyebrow at her, but didn’t comment as he moved fast to start grabbing various bits of gear from the cabinets and floating them over to the bed.

“How does this transfusion thing work?” I asked, placing a hoof on Binge’s sweat soaked brow, feeling the chill clammy fur and hide with a clench of fear. Binge had alway seemed like a mare of infinite energy and vigor. I somehow figured that out of any of my companions she’d be among the last to be put in such a state. She had seemed to have a knack for avoiding harm, even in the craziest situation. Seeing her be dropped so easily left me with nauseating cold lumps in my gut.

Harshcare flicked a sharp glance my way as he floated another plastic bag like the previous one out, along with a series of syringes and tubes. “Not complicated. I hook you up to this bag and draw your blood. I hook the other tube to her. Blood goes out of you, goes into her. That goes until either she stabilizes, dies, or you reach the redline on how much blood you can give without croaking yourself. Throw in some magical healing spells to try and repair internal damage and you might have a living friend by the end of the night.”

I gulped, nodding. I kept looking at the shallow rise and fall of Binge’s chest, her ribcage visible through her thinly stretched flesh.

“Also got to get the bullet out of here. That’ll be the real bitch, if it’s wedged in there deep. Don’t fully trust your medics assessment that there isn’t damage to the stomach or any other organ. This is going to be a long, long night. Hope you’re prepared to sit there for awhile. You too, little blue.”

Arcaidia huffed out a breath and held her back straight, head high, “I last all night and more. Now do doctor work and not flap the lip movements.”

“Heh, I like her,” said Harshcare under his breath as he focused on his work. The room became painfully silent save for the constant, irregular beeping of the heart monitor.

I winced only slightly when the needle entered my arm, connecting a small clear plastic tube to the bag that Harshcare sat up on a pole above the bed. Another tube went into Binge’s leg, and in short order a steady stream of crimson blood began to flow from me and into her. While that was happening Harshcare brought out more tools and covered Binge in an aura of his gold yellow magic, eyes unblinking in concentration as he began to work on the bullet wound in her side.

Minutes passed without a word being said. Then, without warning, Binge’s body spasmed.

“The buck!?” Harshcare cursed, frowning deeply as he used his magic to hold her down. Binge twitched again, her head shaking back and forth a few times as a small moan escaped her pale lips.

I felt cold through to my core as I said, “What’s happening? Is that normal?”

“The fuck it ain’t,” Harshcare said, floating up another device, some kind of floating monitor that looked like an elongated Pip-Buck screen. The device seemed to react to his magic, flickering on and bathing Binge with a line of sharp red light that seemed to scan over her body. Binge’s spasms began to increase, reaching down to her hindlegs, which kicked about until Arcaidia stepped in with her own magic to hold them steady. Harshcare gave her a quick nod of thanks before resuming to concentrate on whatever readings were appearing on the screen of the device he was using.

“I don’t know what this is, but she’s reacting to something that’s entered her bloodstream. I can’t get a clear reading on what,” he looked at me, eyes narrowing, “Do you have any kind of diseases or conditions, buck?”

“I-I don’t know,” I stammered, “I’ve been pretty healthy. Haven’t gotten sick recently or anything.”

“Well your blood is carrying something into her body that’s causing a serious fucking reaction!” Harshcare said, growling as Binge continued to writhe and twist on the medical bed. Then suddenly she sat bolt upright with a cry of pain so sharp and piercing it hurt my ears.

“Shit!” Harshcare had to use his hooves to help push her back down as Binge started to thrash violently on the bed, “Shitfuck! We got to get you unhooked from her!”

Terrified as I was for Binge, a thought shot through me, “Wait! If you don’t have another donner how long can she last!?”

“Not long, but better than this shit! Whatever is up with your blood, it's clearly not working the way it should. She’ll die if we can’t calm her ass down!”

Arcaidia, face hard and still, like a blue mask, said “I hold her still. Keep doing work. She live if we keep going. She die if we stop.”

“How the hell do you know that!?” asked Harshcare, then paused as Arcaidia’s horn burst with intense azure light. Crest symbols formed instantly in a circle around her horn, dense and packed in geometric splendor. Binge’s spasming form suddenly went still, held firm by potent telekinetic force, while I saw a wave of healing aura pass over her. Arcaidia pointed at Binge’s face and I blinked, seeing something I couldn’t at first identify.

There were dark lines forming on Binge’s face, across the left side of her cheek. Hexagonal patterns like the lines of a honeycomb. Harshcare saw it too and blinked.

“Mind explaining what the fuck is going on with my patient!?”

Arcaidia shook her head, “I not know what do this, but I know that it too late to stop. Ren solva’s blood already in Binge. Only chance to live for her to be going until end. Work, healer pony. Work and do not stop.”

Taking strength from Arcaidia’s confidence I took a deep breath and placed a hoof on Binge’s mane, stroking it. She was not hot to the touch, but she seemed to still slightly at my tough. I looked at Harshcare, “Please, keep going.”

Harshcare only hesitated a second before he went back to work, cursing under his breath. Arcaidia kept holding Binge still with her magic and I could see the strain it put her through as she concentrated on using both her inborn unicorn magic for telekinesis while also maintaining a constant healing spell through her Crest Sorcery. I recalled the dream I’d had of her training with her sister and how unicorn magic had interfered with her Crest spells before and wondered how she’d ever resolved that. Right now her face was a mask of determined focus, and I noticed strands of blue aura streaming from her horn seemed to be flowing like tiny cobalt rivers into the circle of Crests that floated around her head.

Binge continued to let out unintelligible groans mixed with babbled words, few of them coherent. I heard her mumble for her parents, even her brother. Some of it sounded like pleading, but it just as quickly became… different.

“Please, don’t run, just wanna bite the flesh... hehehe, it hurts, so good. Can’t change the skin so easily. Hurting me. Binge isn’t good at playing pretend. Stop it.”

Suddenly her hoof shot up, wrapping around my neck, and for a second Binge’s eyes focused on mine, boring into me, “Stop being so good, bucky! It hurts to look at you. Don’t you understand!? I’m trying to save you before your kill yourself! You can’t beat it! Not... not...”

She fell back, eyes rolling up into the back of her skull until there was nothing but bloodshot whites, “Not... enough. Wrong room. Needs more chokey death gas. And Longykins is still here. Can’t save me. Don’t try, you’ll die. Hehehehe.”

“At least she has the strength to get delirious,” Harshcare said under his breath as he continued to work, his horn’s magic concentrated around the deep red bullet hole in Binge. The wound undulated slightly under the influence of his telekinetic magic, and I saw a faint glow from inside Binge, like tiny yellow streams of light. The black lines on her face were starting to recede, and I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one.

Minutes dragged by, and I kept holding Binge with one hoof. I started to feel a faint dizziness as time passed, and Harshcare glanced up at me.

“You holding up?”

“Y-yeah. I’m good,” I said.

“If you feel like throwing up or passing out, well, don’t. I got a bucket in here, but that’s it.”

“If I throw up I’ll aim in the bucket’s general direction.”

I watched as time moved past with the painfully slow speed of molasses. The smell of blood was overpowering and my lightheadedness only increased as minutes became an hour. Not once did Arcaidia drop her spell, despite her own long, smooth silver mane becoming tinged with sweat and her shoulders started to sag. Yet the focused luster never left her eyes, and she never ceased to give me small smiles of encouragement whenever I looked at her. If I could have I would’ve hugged her. Instead she mirror my own gesture, holding onto one of Binge’s hooves. It occurred to me that tonight was the first time I’d even heard Arcaidia call Binge by name. All the times previous it’d been ‘shivol bir’; low caste. I wondered if this meant Arcaidia now looked at Binge as one of the party in full. I’d never been comfortable with the idea that Arcaidia saw Binge as a sort of bonded slave to me. All I could do was hope that tonight wouldn’t be the last night I heard Arcaida call Binge by name.

When the bullet finally came out of Binge it hit a steel medical tray with a sound loud enough to make me jump. Harshcare wiped sweat from his brow and said, “.308. Lucky bitch. Round like this could’ve done far more damage, way more than what I could stitch back together. Now for the hard part.”

“There’s still a hard part?” I asked faintly, blinking past the growing dizziness flowing over me. I could almost feel the room tilting. I wondered how much blood I’d given.

“Got to fix up the internal damage now that the bullet is out of the way,” Harshcare said, “Blood you’ve given so far has kept her breathing, despite whatever weird shit that was at the start. Gonna need you to keep going a bit more until I know I got any holes inside her sorted out.”

Time once more became a sluglike crawl as I tried to not pass out as my body started to feel weaker and weaker and Harshcare’s magic pulsed along Binge’s body. Arcaidia started to look at me with worry as my breathing became more ragged. I licked my lips and shook my head fiercely as I felt myself swaying slightly, a fresh wave of nausea hitting me.

“Ren solva?”

“I’m okay...” I said, grunting, “Just... just tired.”

Harshcare’s face was carved into a deep frown, “Might need to unhook you. Too much blood loss is just as bad for you as it is for her.”

“Will she be okay if you do unhook me?”

“Nothing is certain, kid.”

To that I merely gave him a firm look, toking a deep breath before saying in a solid tone, “Keep me hooked to her for as long as it takes. Even if I pass out.”

He met my eyes for a moment, then gave a small nod, “Your call.”

I don’t know how much time passed, exactly, before I did pass out. I remember fading in and out several times, forcing myself back to wakefulness each instant I could feel myself nearly tipping over. My hide started to take on a ghostly, drained cast to it, the tan fur seeming incapable of hiding the paling skin underneath. I remember seeing Arcaidia look at me with suddenly wide silver eyes, and her magic switching places between myself and Binge, as if the blue aura of magic rolled like a fog over me.

I don’t think I remember hitting the floor, but I do remember, more than anything, that my hoof never let go of Binge’s, even as blackness overwhelmed me.

I dreamed of dust and fire. My body didn’t feel like my own as it crawled through a charred field of ash and swirling gray dust. I realized why quickly as I felt my hand instead of a hoof grasping at the ice cold metal shaft of a spear that looked so much like Gramzanber, yet was of a darker cast of metal. Heat and pulsing energy surged through me with the intensity of an electric jolt, my body moving on its own to brace itself upwards with the shaft of the dark Gramzanber acting as a crutch.

My vision swam, but by now I understood this wasn’t ‘my’ vision, or my body. This was the same steel blue giant that I’d dreamed of once before, and witnessed in the holographic recordings of Stable 104. The specimen the ponies of the Stable had recovered, the ancient alien bipedal monster; a Hyadean. It, he, stood, pain wracking his body. I could feel the unnatural strength of his metal form, the way the thick blue plates of his armor was bonded to his thickly muscled body as if it were his skin. I could feel the damage done to it, deep gouged cuts and burned holes, all oozing a viscous red blood that was splotched with black.

As he looked around past a visored helmet I could see the ash field was covered in bodies. Hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. Many of the bodies were of twisted, horrific monsters. Creatures that had too many legs or arms, or held misshapen wings, or long scythe like claws. Other bodies were of other bipedal creatures, yet these were clad in bright silver and white armor with featureless helmets, only a small amount cracked enough for me to see pale skinned faces underneath. I recognized these as Veruni, having recalled Persephone’s appearance from Arcaidia’s dream. Finally among the bodies were beings much like ponies, quadrupedal and short, but these had long tufted ears and long thin tails. All of their bodies were broken and strewn like broken twigs in a carpet of corpses so thick my host could barely take a step without crushing a piece of a body underfoot.

He walked forward with steady steps, with a long, smooth stride despite his injuries. A harsh wind kicked up, billowing a smear like cloud of dust and ash to obscure my host’s path. He ignored it, striding ever forward, as if being driven by some intense need. It occurred to me that even his breathing was steady, despite the pain that wracked him. His gaze swept left and right across the vast field of destruction where I could only imagine a battle of mythic proportions had taken place. At times the swirling clouds of dust and ash would clear enough for me to see that the field spread for miles upon miles all around me and my host. Valleys and hills broke up the bleach, scorched landscape, pockmarked with craters and the burning remains of what must have been some kind of war vehicles, their broken metallic frames pouring oily black smoke into the air. Some of the machines looked as if they may have once flown, only to crash into the ground in long furrows of blackened earth, while others were large, solid vehicles that dwarfed even the Ursa A.T.W.

Further in the distance I caught a glimpse of mountains, and they too were marked with streaks of smoke and flame, as if the battle extended all the way to their distant peaks. The body count rose in my mind from thousands, to... a number so much higher than that my brain didn’t know the right word for it.

A sound like a dying star split the air, a screeching cry that could be felt as much as heard. My host looked up, and I felt his stern features beneath his helmet scowl at the sight of something falling from the sky. It was a large sphere, unbelievable in its massive expanse. It was falling, yet so high in the sky that it seemed to slowly crawl its way towards the northern horizon. I heard my host scoff.

“The Photosphere… heh... even it couldn’t withstand the final weapon of the Elw and Guardians. Hahaha, I wonder if the Veruni ever suspected their ‘allies’ would betray them, come the end? Not that it matters. Talking to yourself, Zeikfried? Sure sign of madness. Ah, but we’re all mad, here, aren’t we? Nothing left to do but die as a Hyadean warrior should... bah, where’s something to kill?”

As the unbelievably large sphere of metal broke apart in chunks as it sailed is firey path across the sky to the north, I saw something else. The passage of the huge spherical...ship(?) had broken up the cloud cover of smoke enough that I could get a clear view of the sky. Hanging there in the pale blue expanse was a massive object, an even larger sphere of pale white stone. Was that the moon? It had to be. It matched descriptions I’d heard of it. But what was that other moon doing there?

It was only about a fourth of the size of the pale white moon, but this second moon hung in its larger sister’s shadow. It was just as perfectly round as the moon it shared the sky with, or the broken metal ship that had fallen through the sky to the north. Its surface was a dark, deep blue that seemed to shimmer and drink in the faint sunlight. As I looked at this second moon I saw small sparks and bursts of light around it, as if from distant explosions. I heard my host muttering some more.

“I wonder if the Elw find it as ironic as I do that in their desperation to beat us they built weapons that so resembled us and our vessels? Bigger. I’ll grant them that. Still, shooting down one Photosphere won’t make a difference in the long run. We have many more. Blazer will just send another fleet, and knock that replicant toy of theirs out of the sky. Hmph, still talking to yourself Zeikfried, bad sign... you’re not far from going into hybernetic shut down.”

Up ahead something loomed, a land formation that gradually resolved through the perpetual gloom of swirling dust. I saw a canyon wall, with a vast cleft in the uneven, rocky surface. Familiar pillars of stone covered in glyphs I’d seen before lined either side of a path that led to this wide cleft. The scene somehow felt familiar yet I couldn’t put my hoof on how. I felt the ground start to shade rhythmically and my host, Zeikfried, halted before the pathway to the wide canyon.

The shakes continued, like giant footsteps... for that was exactly what they were. From the shadows of the canyon emerged a colossal form, yet another giant of metal that dwarfed my host entirely. I recognized the Golem quickly as the same damaged machine that Odessa had recovered and loaded onto their airship. It was standing, now, unscathed and intact in this dream, blocking the path between my host and the way deeper into the canyon, the scorched battlefield around them testament to the conflict that had led both to this point.

This was the same region where Stable 104 would exist, thousands of years after the time of this dream! I was seeing a fraction of the events that had put both of these relics of a war long gone in the place that ponies of modern times would recover them. If I had breath I’d have held it as the huge, stone gray Golem raised one of its mighty fists menacingly and its crystal blue eyes flashed with potent light.

Zeikfried threw back his head and laughed, “Hahah! Yes! Perfect! I could not ask for a better requiem! What do you protect, Asgard? A Guardian’s Ley Line, perhaps? It matters not, let us embrace, war brother! The Elw built you to be a weapon we Hyadeans would fear, and succeeded brilliantly! Truly I regret never be able to tell the Elw how I admired them, even as I slaughtered them by the hundreds! Look, they’ve done what the Veruni could not, even after generations of war! They have made all of Hyades, even Mother herself, taste the bitter ashes of defeat! Glorious! Let us end it as gloriously, then, Asgard! To battle!”

I felt my host’s body coil, then spring forward with incredible speed and power. The Golem, Asgard, took one mighty step forward that made the earth shake. Its fist flew forward, angled down to crush my Hyadean host’s body. With a gleeful laugh on his lips I felt Zeikfried thrust his spear forward, the dark Gramzanber seeming to drink in the floating ashes around it. When the spear and Golem fist clashed it was with a crack like thunder that jolted me to my very core, snapping me-

-awake.

I jolted, my body trying to rise, but I soon fell right back down as a wave of disorientation and nausea washed through me. Thankfully I felt myself hit a soft mattress and pillow. I screwed my eyes shut tightly for a minute or two, waiting for the dizziness to pass, which thankfully it did after a time. Opening my eyes I found myself laying in a bed in a darkened room, with a single dim fluorescent light showing my surroundings. I was no longer wearing the blood stained dress I’d been in as part of my disguise, but I wasn’t too alarmed by that. My first thoughts were if Binge was okay.

I felt a moment of dread, but as I looked left and right I saw I wasn’t alone in the room. To my right Arcaidia sat curled up on a short leather couch, her small blue muzzle sticking out of the blanket of her long mane and tail. I could see part of her face, lined with worry as she slept, but I saw she had her starblaster back, holstered on her foreleg. More than that I saw the black cello case that held Gramzanber was laying carefully propped against the wall next to the couch, as if Arcaidia had brought it in with her.

A loud, grinding noise like grating steel and stone sounded to my left, the noise petering out into a high pitched little giggle as I looked over. Binge was in a bed next to mine, sleeping, her mouth opening and closing with the repeated sounds of her strange snores. Seeing her flush, colored countenance and the steady rise and fall of her chest flooded me with warmth and such fresh relief I had to choke back a sob.

She was alive, and I had to believe she’d be okay now. They wouldn’t have put her in here with me if she was still in danger, right? And those snores were loud enough to rattle door frames. There was no way she could be dying and be able to make noise like that. I was shocked I had slept through so much of it. I was surprised Arcaidia was sleeping through it. As if she could sense me looking her way I saw Arcaidia’s eyes flutter open, and she gave a tiny yawn much more dainty than Binge’s epic noises. When she saw me looking at her Arcaidia sat upright quickly and hopped off the couch, her silver mane and tail seeming to just flow out of the way of her movements like water.

“Ren solva, you awake. Feelling the good, yes?”

I ran a hoof over my face, trying to get rid of the last vestiges of nausea and tiredness, “I’m feeling less dead than I thought I was. How long have I been out?”

“Not big time. Middle morning time. Six, seven of hours you sleep. So does Binge, who makes much bigger noise than you. Hmph, no easy rest with blowhorn in room.

I let out a weak chuckle, propping myself up slightly in the bed, cracking my neck. The rapid popping of joints felt incredibly good. “Don’t be too hard on Binge. She’s earned some rest after what she went through. Uh... speaking of which, do you have any notion what happened? I mean, with what my blood did to Binge? She’s... she’s really okay, right?”

Arcaidia’s expression stiffened, turning still as she regarded me, “I not know, Longwalk. Could throw thoughts at you, but not stick. Don’t want to speak random suspicion without need. Suggest talk with spider ponies. They have equipment to check you and Binge for... things.”

That made a certain amount of sense. I gathered that Arcaidia had a theory as to what might have caused that strange reaction Binge had to my blood, but she was right, theories weren’t of much use to us and if I wanted to know more it made more sense to talk to Misty Glasses and see if Stable 104’s med lab could figure something out. Quite frankly as long as Binge was alive I didn’t much care what that had all been about. I was only worried in case it meant something bad might happen in the future. I had no way of knowing if the problem had been my own blood or something in Binge’s body.

“Good call. When we got time I’ll get ahold of Misty Glasses. Not sure when I’ll get a chance to, with everything that’s going on, guess I’ll add it to the ever growing list. I see you got your zapper back.”

Arcaidia smiled with a flash of white teeth, patting the starblaster affectionately, “Knobs good at word. Weapons returned to us. She sort out issues with guild and we guests for now. Talk of payment still in air. Knobs say she want to talk when you awake. Shall I go retrieve?”

I felt my stomach gurgle and I found myself grinning foalishly, “Actually, is there any food around here?”

“Yes yes, B.B raid guild mess hall for the foodstuffs. She and others in room few floors down, wait for word of you and Binge waking.”

I glanced over at Binge’s sleeping form, my tone turning solemn, a small smile on my lips, “Well, we’re halfway there. Figure we ought to let her rest for as long as she needs. Tough as she looks we... we nearly lost her last night, didn’t we?”

Arcaidia’s eyes also gazed at Binge, a contemplative light in their silver depths, “You care much for her, yes?”

“Huh? Well, yeah, I mean, she’s a friend, right? Of course I care about her,” I said, blinking at Arcaidia. I saw her eyebrow go up a quirk. She sat down on her haunches and stared at me, to the point where I started to squirm a bit uncomfortably.

“I not treat her much like friend,” Arcaidia said, her eyes contemplative as she looked away from me and instead gazed at our sleeping ex-Radier, “Not trust her much. Always worry she do something to hurt you, or others. Think to myself ‘I must always be ready to kill this shivol bir’.”

“Arcaidia-”

She held up a hoof, forestalling me as she returned her gaze to me. “Not saying will think that more. Not forget what Binge is, but not be blind to what she do now as part of group. Bullet in her could have been in ren solva. I maybe not ever like her, but can say now that I accept her as not bad."

I found myself drawing Arcadia into a hug, which caused her to give a short yelp of surprise, but she didn't pull away. I was reminded of just how short she was, my hug putting my head nearly atop hers. "Thank you for that, Arcaidia. I think... I think Binge has a lot of issues that she tries to work out in her own way, and what she need more than anything are ponies around her that treat her like a friend, even family. I can't ever say that it'd be the same for any pony who's fallen to being what Raiders are, but I think in Binges case maybe being reminded of what it feels like to be part of a family again can help her. Minus some, er, bumps along the way."

Arcaidia laugh had had a musical chime to it that somehow made my fatigue melt away. She shoved me away lightly, almost playfully.

“You say bumps, that Equestrian word for crazy head? I trust you not get too friendly thoughts, or more than friendly thoughts, when alone with Binge? Even if... strange and crazy friend, she still smelly.”

“Hey, I don’t plan on doing anything other than be a friend to her,” I said, perhaps a tad too defensively as I crossed my arms over my chest, “And we’re working on the whole hygiene thing. Seriously, I only found out showers existed a few weeks ago, and Binge probably hasn’t had easy access for most of her life. Cut us some slack!”

“Nope,” said Arcaidia, smiling and bobbing me on the head, “When feel better, go shower. They nearby and very nice. I use already. I go fetch Knobs pony now. I not take long.”

Binge was still out like an old campfire by the time Arcaidia returned with Knobs in tow. I'd had a good twenty minutes to just lay in bed and think, most of my thoughts muddy and swirling like a slow moving stream in summer. As far as I knew I still needed to go with Crossfire to the Drifters Guild today. I was still feeling rather craptastic but figured food ought to fix that problem. Besides the visit to the Drifters Guild I had two other concerns on my mind. One was whether or not we'd heard back from LIL-E yet. The robot would have been gone nearly a full day by now, so we should have heard some word from her, if only to tell us that she hadn't found anything of Doc Sunday's and the refugees whereabouts. The second concern was getting ahold of Misty Glasses to see about returning to Stable 104 so we could figure out what had happened with my blood transfusion into Binge. Sure she seemed okay right now, but what if something was wrong with her that would crop up later? What if she somehow now shared my three month expiration date? I wasn't at all happy at the thought that we'd saved her just to condemn her to death just a few short months from now. I didn't want to take anypony with me into death if I could help it.

I had to set my concerns aside for now as I managed to provide Knobs with a welcoming smile that she returned with a happy bounce of her tail. Her prosthetic wheel legs squeaked in a pitch that matched her cheerful tone as she said, "Welcome back to the waking world, Longwalk. I'm really glad you both pulled through. I know Hashcare has a bit of a mouth on him, but he's really good at his work and cares more than he'd ever bother to say."

“I’ll thank him myself if I see him again,” I said, stretching my legs with a few faintly audible pops. Arcaidia was carrying a metal tray that had a few dry looking vegetables on it and a hunk of bread that might have actually been fresh. I was still new to the concept of both types of food, but I was more than hungry enough to eat without complaint.

Knobs pulled up around to the foot of my bed and had a anxious tick in one of her ears. “He’s too surly to show appreciation, but he’d still probably like that. Anyway I need to knock a few things out with you pretty quick here. Sorry to toss all this your way while you’re just getting up, but the sooner it’s all worked out the better. Cost-wise I’ve got most of what needed covering last night covered. Had enough guild Gella built up that both the medical costs and greasing all the little wheels that needed greasing could be done.”

“Gella? That some kind of local currency?” I asked curiously around a mouthful of on unidentified vegetable that was brown skinned and kind of mushy on the inside. Bland but filling.

“It’s what the guilds call their specific credits, yeah. Don’t know why it's called ‘Gella’. Never actually thought to question it. So, things is, while I’ve got you guys covered for last night and today, I, uh...” her voice lowered to a whisper, “I’m kinda broke now.”

My mouth had gone rather dry and I felt a bit like I’d taken a brick to the gut. Knobs had done nothing but go out of her way to help me and my friends practically from the moment I’d met her. She’d taken us into her home without us even having to ask. Then I’d promptly acted like a reckless fool which had cost her that home. Now, helping us fix even more of the fallout of that fiasco she’d spent the rest of her money?

No, no way I was letting this go without paying her back. My brain kicked into overdrive as I sat up in the bed and set aside the tray of unfinished food. “Okay, Knobs, you’ve done way more for us that I could have ever expected, so let us help you now. Just how much did all of this cost?”

“Eeehhh, if we were to put a figure on it in Wasteland caps?” Knobs glanced upwards and murmured some numbers under her breath, “Somewhere around six or seven thousand caps.”

Ouch. Yet not the highest figure I’d heard in terms of caps. In fact I was worth more in terms of my bounty. A bounty that I couldn’t keep having to deal with anyway so... could there be a way to remove the bounty and pay back Knobs at the same time?

An idea started to form in my mind. A terrible, stupid idea.

“Knobs, what if I told you I had a way to pay you back for every cap you’ve spent on us, and as an added bonus I get that bounty removed from my head?”

She looked at me with a understandably worried expression, “I’d say I could ask Harshcare about checking you for further head trauma?”

“Well, it's a fair bet head trauma is going to be involved at some point, just hopefully not for me. Oh, we’re going to need Crossfire for this.”

That caused Arcaidia to scrunch her muzzle up, “Why we need angry shooty mare for Longwalk plan? What is ren solva planning?”

I grinned at the two mares in what I hoped was a confident fashion, pouring that confidence into my voice as I declared, “Why, I’m going to let her turn me in for the bounty, of course!”

A few hours later we were assembled in a meeting room Knobs had managed to get put aside for us. It was a decent sized room with a set of somewhat worn out couches arranged around a central, low table. One wall had this odd hanging thing Knobs told me was a ‘white board’. It was like a big picture frame covered in a white hard surface that apparently you could write on with colored markers. I found it fascinating, making random doodles with a black marker, then wiping them away with a hoof.

B.B stood by the door, leaning against the wall, while Arcaidia and Knobs had seats on one of the couches. Blasting Cap was sitting besides Knobs, squirming and glaring at most everypony present. Waunita and Braindead took up another couch, and awkwardness dripped from both griffin and the black coated Raider. Braindead looked almost like a caged animal, twitching randomly every few moments.

Finally Crossfire stood by the door, her eyes boring into me like a pair of golden bullets. Her tail swished behind her angrily as her tone darkly drawled, “You’re a fucking idiot. Just need to say that for the record.”

“Okay, okay, I know this was my mess I made,” I said with a diplomatic air, “That’s why I’m going to do everything I can to fix it. I just need to know that you’ll hear me out on this, first, because I don’t think this plan will work without you, Crossfire.”

“The only reason I’m standing here, instead of knocking your teeth out, is because of her,” she gestured a hoof at Knobs, “And believe me, my patience is still hanging by a thread with you, Mr. Hero. You’ve cost my best friend the house she worked years to get, and also convinced her to blow a lot of her savings just to save your Raider fucktoy when quite frankly trash like her deserves to bleed out in the street. So, yeah, better make this good, because I haven’t quite decided if I’m walking out of here with your head mounted on my bayonet.”

“Well, first off, the bounty is for me alive. Killing me is just going to cost you caps, and that’s what we need here, right? Caps? Enough to restore Knobs’ savings and get her a new place just as good if not better than the one she was at.”

“I didn’t help out for the sake of getting paid back,” Knobs began but Arcaidia interrupted her.

“If one thing ren solva understand in his toaster head, it is paying back debt. Not argue, ghoul pony. Longwalk need do this, yet as friends so do we. I claim his debt as mine too, so I help you and not hear any saying of ‘no’ to that.”

“Besides,” I said, “What I’m planning here is actually extremely simple. I’m trusting you a lot on this Crossfire, but once you hear the plan, I think you’ll understand there’s no drawback to you here. So, first things first, Waunita, Braindead, I’m sorry I dragged you two into all of this.”

The griffin started in her seat, as if surprised to be talked to. She looked uneasily towards Braindead as she said, “Weren’t your fault by my count. Wasn’t you who was a Raider in disguise.”

Braindead winced as if physically struck, his head drooping down along with his ears. His voice was a shaking croak, “I-I’m sorry. I...” he glanced between Waunita and me, finally resting on me with a look of fear. “After you lot killed off the old crew b-but let me, Binge, and Redwire go I thought about what to do. Redwire dragged me along for… for letting off steam. She wants to kill you. It was all she talked about, and I thought she’d kill me just to scratch her itch. Instead she just used me for practice. She can do shit with a knife or bit of razor wire that… fuck. When we heard about the huge ass raid on the city, and that all the Raider clans were being rounded up by some big boss for it, Redwire wanted to join. I think she figured you’d end up fighting against the raid at some point, so she’d find you on the battlefield eventually. Me… I… I decided rather than getting my balls shot off in a fight that big I’d try something new. I’d try to, I don’t know, make a clean break. Start over. Couldn’t be worse than what I’d been doing. So I snuck off from Redwire, mixed in with some of the ponies going into the city, and just tried to figure shit out. Waunita found me near starving to death in on the street and took me in... gave me a job... gave me a chance to be a pony again.”

Waunita took in a sharp breath and turned to stare at him, “I thought you were just a down on his luck ganger or some shit. If I’d known you were a Raider I’d probably have left you curled up in the gutter. For fuck’s sake BD, you could have told me!”

“I was scared,” he said miserably, “I’ve always been scared. Was easier to just fall in with the others and do what was expected of me, kill to eat, kill just to feel something... it was easier.”

“Oh, and that suddenly changed when someone managed to kill most of you fuckers back? At least most Raiders have the decency to just stay awful and get killed off. What’s with the sudden want of a heel turn?” the griffiness spat back at Braindead, who flinched away from her.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to not die! I knew I’d die if I stuck with Redwire, or went back to any other bunch of Raiders, so there just wasn’t any other option but to try and be normal, even if I knew it’d probably never work out. I still feel it, you know, the urges. I’ve been trying so hard to keep it hidden, but I lost count of how many times I wanted to kill one of the customers. I’d been having dreams about it....”

“Hey,” I said, stepping forward, “If there’s even a small part of you that’s trying to stop being what you were, then that’s all I need to hear. Here’s what I need to know, Waunita, you planning on going back to the Drunken Ass?”

“I figure I will. Grill won’t hold it against me that I ran off with BD once he hears the whole story, and it's not like I got anywhere else to go.”

“Perhaps, but you did say you were only working there so you could get up the caps to start traveling again, right?” I asked, and Waunita’s head cocked at me in that strange way griffin’s seemed to, with one eye focusing on me. I went on to say, “What if I offered both of you a new home, where you can both start up new lives? Braindead, you can figure things out there without having to worry about discovery, and Waunita, you can earn a shot at traveling the Wasteland again.”

“No offense but that kind of sounds too good to be real. Griffins got a saying; a fair breeze heralds a storm. So what’s the catch here?”

“The catch is that your new neighbors will be a tad... odd,” I said, chuckling, “That, and they’ll probably want you to do some work for them to earn your keep, but I imagine it’ll be fairer and faster than what either of you would find around the Outskirts.”

I spent the next few minutes rather rapidly trying to explain and summarize what Stable 104 was and the nature of the spider ponies who inhabited it now. I supposed I should have expected to get the strange looks I did, not just from Waunita and Braindead, but Crossfire and Blasting Cap as well.

“What kind of crazy ass drugs are you on?” asked Blasting Cap, “And is it possible to get me some of that shit?”

Knobs frowned, “Blasting Cap, no drugs at your age.”

Blasting Cap snorted, “Momma let me have drugs.”

“Yes, well, we’re going to try some restraint from now on. When you’re older you can put whatever you want in your body, but a filly your age needs nutrition, not hallucinogens.”

“Mushrooms have vitamins in them, don’t they?”

“I don’t think those are the right kind of mushrooms.”

I cleared my throat, “Anywhos, I’m not making this up. Either B.B or Arcaidia can corroborate what I’m sayin. I’m pretty sure the Stable’s residents would be willing to take you two in. They did so for some of my tribe after I rescued them from some rather... unreasonable ponies. The place is large enough to hold a population of hundreds, so they're hardly strapped for space. You’d just have to be willing to do something to help the spider ponies out in return, probably hunting, or exploring, or fixing things... I don’t know, whatever you happen to be good at.”

“Do they need anypony skinned?” asked Braindead, then blanched at the looks he was given, “It… it was a joke...”

Waunita still didn’t looked convinced, but she did tap her beak in thought, “If you’re not bullshitting us...might not be too bad. If they’re reasonable enough about compensation then I could do them some favors. I can cook, hunt, and do recon for them. Never been in a Stable before, but I’ve heard the rumors. Might not be a bad place to live, even as just a place to base myself out of for exploring. Okay, so let’s say I bite. How do you plan on getting us there?”

“That’s where this connects to my plan to help Knobs. You see, this Stable has access to a lot of advanced gadgets and doo-dads that the spider ponies built back when they were just normal ponies doing research. One of those devices can open up portals over a long distance. It, uh, heh, mostly works. They can open a portal here and you can walk right there in seconds. That’s also how I plan on escaping from my captors after Crossfire turns me in and collects the bounty.”

A pregnant silence followed for a few moments. I gazed at Crossfire, wondering what the mare might have been thinking. I had been hesitant for somepony like her to learn of Stable 104’s existence, simply because a mare so obsessed with caps as she seemed just struck me as a threat to a Stable filled with all sorts of advanced technology that could be worth a fortune to the Wasteland markets. But I had to repay my debt to Knobs, the same way I had to repay my debt to Arcaidia. I didn’t deny I had made a mistake wandering off last night with Binge. I should have realized how dangerous my situation was and stayed at the Ursa instead of goofing off. It’d nearly cost Binge her life, and it had cost Knobs her home and monetary stability. So if I had to take a few risks to fix things, I could accept that. Besides, Knobs seemed to trust Crossfire. That had to count for something. I’d only ever known Crossfire briefly as a ruthless mercenary, but even then we’d been able to work together against a common threat. I hadn’t forgotten her role in the events that had led to Shale’s death, but right here and now I needed her help. I had to be able to trust her... at least for now.

“There’s a lot of things that could go wrong with this ‘simple’ plan of yours,” Crossfire said with a cold, even tone. She strode towards me with slow, deliberate steps, never breaking eye contact with me. “For one, this hinges on these Stable friends of yours being able to form a portal at the right place and time to get you out.”

“They can track my Pip-Buck, and all it’ll take is one call to them so they know when.”

“Hmph, assuming you can make that call. What if the Labor Guild, after they got their hooves on you, take the Pip-Buck off, genius?”

“Er, well, I mean it takes special tools to remove this thing, right?” I said, scratching the back of my head. Crossfire was nearly in my face now, eyes blazing.

“Sure, assuming they don’t just cut your damned arm off! Even if they don’t, what makes you think they’ll keep you in any condition to make that call? They might dope you up, or beat you unconscious, or just tie you up so you can’t use the Pip-Buck. Seriously, you’ll be lucky if this ‘plan’ doesn’t fall apart in the first five minutes after I hoof you off to the Bounty Guild!”

“I track ren solva then, “ said Arcaidia with a firm nod, “I can do spell to mark Longwalk. If portal plan fails, we rescue him ourselves.”

B.B got off from where she’d been leaning against the wall and stood forward, “While I’m all fer chargin’ in to the rescue like good calvary, we ain’t gonna know where Long’s gonna be taken after these Labor Guild bastards git their hot little hooves on him. Might not be simple to pull him from the fire. Let’s not ferget that LIL-E ain’t called us back yet an’ we got no clue what’s goin’ on wit my pa. Rescuin’ Long will be a’ lot easier with LIL-E’s help.”

I gulped, thinking, “I admit the plan might need some refining, but we can work on the details while waiting for LIL-E to call in. Misty Glasses might not have the portal working again yet anyway, so we can probably sit on this for a day. Rest up, plan, hope LIL-E gets ahold of us.”

Knobs raised a hoof, “I second that, but my guild won’t put you guys up for another night without some kind of further payment.”

“Do you take barter?” I asked, to which Knobs laughed.

“Everypony in the Wasteland takes barter,” she said.

“Well we’ve got the Ursa still loaded up with plenty of supplies from the Stable. We can use that to buy ourselves another night here, right? I didn’t figure it’d be enough to pay back the debt we owe. Unless the Skull Guild is really into carrots and apples?”

“Weeeeellll,” Knobs said, licking her lips, “I like carrots and apples. Prices may vary among my fellow guilders. You might have plenty to barter for caps, but I don’t know just how much you’d end up getting. Still, might be safer than this whole bounty plan of yours.”

I shook my head, “Maybe, but problem is I’d still have a bounty on my head even if we did have enough to barter off the debt. I really need this dealt with otherwise its just going to get harder and harder to do anything while in this city.”

Crossfire rolled her eyes, “Did it ever occur to you that even if this plan of yours works perfectly the Labor Guild would just renew the bounty after you escape?”

“Matter of fact I did, but here’s the thing, just how much can whoever it was that put the bounty on me afford to pay for me? If he or she pays off the eight thousand caps I’m worth right now to you, then renews the bounty after I escaped, wouldn’t they go broke pretty fast themselves?”

To that the mercenary mare paused, then slowly gave a grudging nod, “You may got a point there. Even the Labor Guild isn’t made of caps, and I can’t imagine whoever wants you is going to be able to justify the cost to their superiors if catching you starts sucking too much money out of their coffers. Still a dozen different ways this plan of yours can go south, but it’s your head on the platter, so not feeling all that inclined to stop you if you’re insisting on following through with this stupidity. If you get your dumbass killed I’ll still have the caps to give to Knobs.”

“Believe it or not, Crossfire, that’s part of why I’m going with this plan,” I said, “Even if it goes wrong, Knobs gets paid back.”

For her part Knobs looked uncomfortable, frowning slightly as she ran a hoof over her thin red mane, “I don’t care about the caps, you know. I can always make more. I wouldn’t have spent the Gella or taken the loss of the house if I wasn’t okay with working to get it all back over time.”

“I know, Knobs, but I need to do this,” I said firmly, “Both for you, and to get this bounty dealt with.”

“And for one instance of pure insanity I actually agree with Mr. Hero here,” said Crossfire, giving Knobs a smile that made me blink at her. Most the time Crossfire just tended to sport a scowl or cocky smirk. Seeing that more genuine smile of affection was sort of disturbing to see on her.

Knobs looked between us before holding up her hooves in mock surrender, “Okay, okay, I give. Just make sure you don’t get hurt out there, any of you! Caps aren’t worth lives, so... just be careful.”

“So... plan now be hurry up and wait?” asked Arcaidia.

I smiled, “Hurry up and wait.”

I just hoped LIL-E wouldn’t keep us waiting too long.

I sucked at waiting. Fortunately B.B had something for me to do. We were back in the room where Binge was snoozing away. Spread out on the bed I’d formerly occupied were several sets of cloths which B.B was presenting to me with flourishing waves of her wings.

“Right, so since ya dun tore up an’ bloddied the dickins outta yer dress we’re gonna need a new disguise fer ya ‘till we kick off this plan.”

I looked at her dubiously, “Is this really necessary? I mean, by now word has to be out that I’m in the city somewhere, so won’t bounty hunters be looking for a stallion in disguise?”

“True ‘nough, but no reason ta make it easy on ‘em. If any hunters manage to figure we’re in this tower, which they may well given our Ursa kinda stands out, you ought to make it hard as ya can to be spotted. I mean, I parked the Ursa in the Skull Guild’s parkin’ garage, but it still coulda been spotted. Which means bounty hunters could be crawlin’ all over this tower!”

“I somehow doubt the Skull Guild’s security would be that lax. We got in only because we had Knobs’ help. Doubt many bounty hunters would have the same kind of advantage...” I sighed, “But if you insist, I’ll put on another costume. Thinking you just like dressing me up, though.”

B.B flashed a white grin, with just a hint of fang. She must have noticed me looking because she clamped her mouth shut fast, “Might be I git a bit o’ a kick from tossin’ outfits on ya. Put on more than a few disguise myself in my day an’ its fun ta practice. Amazing how different a pony might act when they got a mask on, ya know?”

Was she talking about me, herself, or somepony else? I put the question from my mind as I looked over the clothes she’d scrounged up. “Where’d you get all this anyway?”

“Skull Guild’s got a’ thrift market in one o’ its sub-levels. Use a bit o’ my own caps ta’ snag some outfits I thought would fit. Got ‘im pretty cheap. I ain’t no greenhorn when it comes to the art o’ the barter, ya know!”

There were three outfits lain out on the bed. One was a dark blue dress, almost as dark as my security armor. It came with a faded white hair ribbon and would probably do well to keep up the appearance of my being a mare. However Double and Trouble were on to that trick and if they told any other bounty hunters about our encounter they’d know to look for a stallion in a dress. The second outfit was rather odd, consisting of a bulky set of brown robes with a large hood and a set of cloth wrappings that apparently were meant to go around my face and head. I somehow imagined I’d look doubly conspicuous in that get-up, but I could see the advantage of robes that’d allow me to hide my armor underneath without any trouble, and B.B suggested the wrappings could be used to make me seem like a ghoul pony instead of a normal one.

The final outfit caught my eye, however. It was a long, long red coat that looked to button up the front with multiple black buttons. Its tail was so long it’d not only cover my flanks and front legs, but dragged almost to the ground around the backend. The coat had a high collar that looked like, when the coat was buttoned up fully, would wrap around and nearly cover my chin. There were several deep pockets on the coat which could hold even a bulky pistol, if I was the type to carry those kinds of weapons. The bright cherry red color was what drew my eye, along with the unusual size of the coat. It didn’t quite look like any outfit I’d seen in the Wasteland thus far.

“Kinda stands out, I know, but it’ll cover ya up enough that ponies won’t recognize ya straight off, an the coat’s loose enough that like the robes ya could fit yer armor under it,” B.B said.

I ran a hoof over the rough material of the coat, face contemplative. It wasn’t leather, but it wasn’t like normal cloth either. More like a smoother, thinner faximile of leather. “Easy enough to take off when I need to, and I’d prefer this over having to keep pretending to be a mare. Hope this didn’t cost you too much.”

“Ha, pocket change after I sweet talked the merchant,” said B.B with a wink, “So ya fancy the coat?”

I gave her a quick smile, “I think I do. Don’t know how well this will hide me, but better than walking around naked.”

I got dressed in short order. B.B had also brought my security armor and saddlebags, so I was able to strap the familiar gecko hide reinforced plates and dark blue cloth on first before slipping into the long coat. It felt heavy on me, but loose enough that I had little trouble moving. It did drag a bit in back, but I could swish my tail around easily enough. B.B helped me with the buttons. I kind of envied the unicorns with their magic, who no doubt had an easier time with clothes like this. No wonder my tribe mostly just went around naked. Finally the saddlebags and strap for Gramzanbers cello case went on my back. With a light chuckle I turned around and struck a pose for B.B.

“So, how do I look o’ makeover artist extraordinaire?”

“Hah, like a’ seasoned Wastelander, or at least somepony’s idea o’ one. The coat brings out yer eye’s color nicely.”

“Heh, never knew you were so into fashion,” I said, to which B.B stroke over and playfully smacked me upside the head with a wing.

“Just got a’ likin’ for things lookin’ pleasin’ to the eye. Ain’t like I’m plannin’ on settlin’ down fer a career in dress makin’. I’m a magician through an’ through! Speakin’ o’ which, hope LIL-E stops her disapearin’ act soon.”

I saw the slight manner in which her wings sagged and I gave her a quick, comforting nuzzle, “She’ll contact us. That robot’s better armed than most of us, and seems to know the Wasteland better than any other pony I’ve met.”

“Yeah, yer right. My pa ran about wit LIL-E since he was a young buck fill o’ spit an’ ready ta take on the Wasteland, and she pulled his keister outta plenty o’ jams in their time.”

“LIL-E has been floating around that long?” I asked, furrowing my brow, wondering. Just how long had LIL-E’s operator been stuck using a robot to explore the Wasteland? My curiosity started to jump about, considering what might have motivated a pony to send a robot like that out into the world to begin with, and why she’d use it to help ponies like B.B’s father, or myself. I’d never pressed LIL-E much about her past. Then again, I didn’t press any of my companions about their pasts.

“She sure has,” said B.B, giving a light laugh and gaining a look in her eyes of fond remembrance, “Was a good sixteen, maybe seventeen years back my pa ran into LIL-E near the border o’ the NCR. He got inta trouble wit a’ bunch o’ nasty critters called Mirelurks near the river that makes up the NRC’s northeast border. Surrounded an’ outta ammo, pa’d been near done for if LIL-E hadn’t come floating right ‘round the bend and blasted them beasties to pieces. She joined up with him on his adventures fer a good two or three years, helpin’ folk, bustin’ critters, explorin’, all that stuff. Then they separated not long after pa... found me...”

She went quiet then, drawing in a deep breath and sighing, “Still so much to tell ya, Long. I’ve owed ya some tales ‘bout me, an’ with Black Petal out there, an’ my Family loomin’ on the horizon somewhere, ya’ll deserve ta know who I was... and what I am.”

There was a weight in her voice like a large stone blocking her throat, and her deep violet eyes weren’t looking at me or anything else in the room. I could see a tension spilling from her spine all the way to the tips of her hooves and I just trotted to the front of her, making her look me in the eyes.

“You know that whatever you end up saying I’m not going to just suddenly stop being your friend, right?”

“Heh, Long, yer the kind o’ stallion that’d try ta make friends wit a rattlesnake after it bit ya in the plot. I git what yer sayin’,” she sucked in a deep breath and let it out slow, “Just ain’t had ta think ‘bout my days wit the Family fer a long time, an’ I ain’t much likin’ rememberin’ what kind o’ mare I was back then. All we were was a’ bunch o’ murderin’ bastards high on our own power. Tossin’ some horseapple philosophy of followin’ the natural order don’t make it smell no better...”

She trailed off, then shook her head with a hard snort. I could only imagine what might have been going through her head. Maybe she just needed something to help break up the snarl of those thoughts? A simple lead in?

“So, instead of telling me the gory details of just what you did or even how you became part of this Family, could you explain just what the blood drinking is all about? If you’re comfortable with that, that is. I mean, I’ve fed you blood once already and I can tell it benefits you, but you don’t seem to need it to live, either.”

The questions had the effect I’d hoped, breaking B.B out of her immediate funk and getting her to think of something a bit more clinical than her sordid past. Granted it still seemed a sour subject deeply connected to this Family of hers, but I hoped the more impersonal nature of the question would help her talk about things as a whole. After a moment of thought B.B bent a wing to point at her mouth, which she opened to display the slight fangs she had.

“What yer lookin’ at, Long, is a mutation. It ain’t common. We’re talkin’ one in a few hundred thousand, or more. The mutation is old as ponykind, an’ only barely documented fer most o’ history even back when ponies gave a lick ‘bout history books. What this mutation does is change a pony down ta thier genes so that their bodies can draw power outta blood. We’re drivin’ ta drink, an’ the blood tastes sweet as water after near dyin’ o’ thirst. Most o’ us just git a bit o’ power from the blood, healin’ simple wounds, maybe bein’ a’ bit stronger or havin’ heightened senses. A few rare ponies with this mutation, well, they’re somethin’ else. The blood they drink gives ‘em power akin ta magic. The more they drink, the more powers they git, an’ what’s more, it keeps ‘em young, lets ‘em live near forever if they ain’t straight up killed. These potent members o’ the Family are called Crimson Nobles and they... we, we run the Family as its elite caste, under the watch o’ the Mistress. She’s the oldest o’ us. The strongest. She’s...”

B.B shivered, taking in a shuddering breath, “I ain’t up ta talkin’ ‘bout her. She found me when I first got a taste o’ blood, an’ she... my parents, she...”

Her eyes went glassy, and I saw the violet of her iris begin to tinge crimson before she took a steadying breath and said, “I lost one family and was forced into another. Iffin’ we’re in a quieter spot, Long, I can tell ya more, but right now I’d rather we just git what’s on our plate cleared. I got too much junk bouncin’ around upstairs right now an’ just want ta focus on the tasks in front of us.”

“I understand. Believe me, I more than understand,” I said, “Thanks for telling me this much. You’ve listened to me any time I’ve had to get something off my chest, so you’d better believe I’m here for you too.”

B.B smiled and looked to be about to say something, but a high pitched giggle filled the room, causing us both to look over to the source. Binge was sitting up in her bed, knees pulled up to her chest and forelimbs laced under her chin as she gazed at us with wide blue eyes. Her mouth was sporting a cheek splitting grin of yellow teeth.

“Awwww, storytime is over already? It sounded like it was getting to the good, bloody bits!” Binge chirped, “I wanted to hear about all the nasty things the birdie did as a chupacabra.”

“An altogether risky plan, but I can at least give you some assurance that we have the portal device fully operational now,” Misty Glasses told me later that day. Binge, while awake, was still confined to her bed by orders of Harshcare. I had only donated blood to her, but she was the one with the recently healed bullet wound, so the doctor wanted her to stay down. I gave it less than even odds that Binge would stay in bed, but I got Arcaidia to promise to keep an eye on the sporadic mare in case Binge decided to go running around.

I couldn’t blame her. I was antsy myself. But wandering around too much was a strict no-no, now. I’d learned my lesson and was keeping to the Skull Guild’s tower, and even then was being cautious about where I went. Knobs had guided me down to the sub-level parking garage where B.B had parked the Ursa and she was now sitting in the seat next to me while I talked to Misty Glasses over the radio, bringing the spider pony scientist up to date on recent events. Including my offer to Waunita and Braindead for a place to stay at the Stable.

“As for these new residents, while there is certainly room for ponies here, I would like to be able to interview both of these individuals before I allow them to take up residence, temporarily or otherwise. I must ensure the safety of my people, you understand?”

“Of course Misty,” I said, pushing back a yawn, “I doubt they’ll object to talking to you first. Now, concerning my plan, how long does it take to warm that protal up once I get work to you to activate it?”

“Not long. You’ve seen it in action once. It should only be a delay of a few minutes. You can be certain I’ll have a security team on standby to help extract you once the portal is established. I do hope you know what you’re doing.”

“You and me both,” I said with a sigh. Then with a deep breath I moved on to the next subject, “Before I let you go, Misty Glasses, I had one more thing I needed to ask you.”

“Go ahead, I’m all ears. Well, I don’t have ears so much as audio receptive canals, but yeah, shoot.”

I hesitated only a second before saying, “When I transfused my blood into Binge something strange happened. She had some kind of reaction to my blood. She went all shaky and stuff, totally freaked out. There were these weird black lines, like hexagons, that appeared on her face. They went away, and she calmed down after a few minutes, but I wanted to know if you had any idea what that might be about?”

There was a long pause on the radio before Misty Glasses voice returned with a reserved, measured pace, “I believe I may have a workable theory on that, yes. I would not wish to discuss it over the radio, on the off chance anypony out there is listening. If Ms. Binge survived her exposure to your blood, then I don’t think there will be an immediate problem. When both of you are returned to the Stable at any point in the future I can explain my theory in detail, and provide some visual aid to better help you understand. For now I will only tell you that the condition I believe you, and no perhaps she, are dealing with is not... strictly harmful. It may in fact be beneficial, and in your case is something that is not a condition so much as long standing biological state.”

“I, uh, don’t know if I quite follow you, but you’re saying neither Binge or me are going to have our heads explode in the near future and we can chill until we find time to come back to the Stable and you’ll actually explain all this in a way that makes sense?” I asked.

“Essentially. I’m sorry, Longwalk, but trying to tell you more would be easier if it was face to face. I can say with some security that you don’t have anything to worry about in the immediate sense, so this conversation can wait until you’ve dealt with matters in Skull City.”

“That may take awhile,” I warned, “Way things are shaping up we might be here for a few days at least, or more depending on how soon we hear from LIL-E and how long it takes for me to arrange transport to the NCR. Oh, and I still need to dig up information on Odessa. I’m barely able to get my head wrapped around it all, but getting my bounty cleared seems a good start.”

“And I wish you the best of luck, to you and all of your companions,” said Misty Glasses, “Speed of the Goddesses go with you, Longwalk. Stable 104, out.”

“Ancestors watch over you,” I said, then clicked off the radio. With a sigh I leaned back in my seat, rubbing my forehead.

“Ancestors watch over me, too, because I’m going to need all the help I can get.” Next to me Knobs chuckled and gave my shoulder a small hoof bump.

“You’ll have Crossfire with you, so you ought to be fine. She’s a professional.”

I couldn’t help but give her a sidelong long, “A professional pain in the flank, maybe. Did I mention the last time I worked with her she shot me out the back of a flying machine? Okay, so credit to her, she only did it to defeat a psycho military officer with time warping powers, but still. Besides, her job is just to turn me in, collect the caps, then deliver them to your hoof. Past that it’s just me waiting for a chance to call for the portal and escape scott free.”

“Who’s scott?”

“... I don’t know.”

“... Annnnyway, I think you’re not giving Crossfire enough credit. I know you two had a real rough first meeting, and maybe she did some things that weren’t exactly kind to you-” Knobs began and I felt a short flash of anger. Not so much at Knobs, but at certain unpleasant memories as I spoke in a cold undertone.

“Kind? She sent an unarmed mare with a bomb collar around her neck down into a monster infested ruin with me just to motivate me not to cross her!” I closed my eyes and bit out the next words, “That mare’s name was Shale, and she died in that forsaken Ruin! I’m willing to work with Crossfire, I’m even willing to set aside the past and not look for payback for Shale... but I don’t think I’m giving Crossfire any less credit than she deserves. The only reason I made her part of the plan is because I think it’ll make the whole thing look credible to the Bounty Guild. If it's Crossfire that turns me in they won’t think my escape afterward was part of the plan. Not if mare with her reputation is the one that claims the bounty on me.”

I felt a little bad, seeing the way Knobs’ ears fell and she flinched, looking away from me. Before I could apologize, however, she said, “I know. I know Crossfire has done some pretty bad things. Not just to you, but a lot of ponies, over the years since I’ve known her. Please try to understand, everything she’s done, both the good and bad, all the work she’s put in trying to make caps... all of that is because of me.”

“You?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

Knobs patted one of her artificial wheel legs, a bitter smile on her lips, “Crossfire doesn’t think I know, but she never was good at hiding things. She’s been collecting caps all these years because she plans to buy me new legs. Fully cybernetic. The Medical Guild has access to an old OCP cybernetics facility, one they used to use for some kind of police program back in the day. The surgery is pricey. Crossfire’s been obsessed with affording it for me ever since I lost my legs. She blames herself for the whole thing. Mare doesn’t know how to let the past go, I think. I’ve tried so many times to get her to just forget about it and move on! I’m fine with these wheels. Sure I can’t dance a jig to save my life, and stairs, don’t even get me started on stairs... but I lost my legs because of my choice to help Crossfire when I first met her. My choice, and my fault. But Crossfire, she’d never hear of it. To her every problem is something she has to fix herself, no matter what she has to do, or who she ends up hurting, to do it.”

A frown passed over my face as I chewed on those words. Crossfire had never struck me as the sort to make friends in the first place, let alone one as kind hearted as Knobs had proven to be. Then again, I’d only known Crossfire a short time, and in some seriously extreme circumstances. Was it so unbelievable that I hadn’t encountered Crossfire while she’d been at her best? Did it matter, though? Whatever her reasons Crossfire was still a unscrupulous mercenary, and that was describing her generously. I didn’t disbelieve that Knobs and Crossfire shared a bond. Crossfire seemed to be willing to listen to Knobs, despite being a mare who by all other appearances only cared about herself. Could I buy that Crossfire had become the mare she was by obsessing over paying back a debt she felt she owed to who was quite possibly her only friend...?

Somehow that sounded familiar, and left me feeling uncomfortably self conscious. After all, I was on this insane journey to pay back a debt I felt I owed to Arcaidia. Even now, with this scheme to turn myself into the Bounty Guild, I was motivated by a sense of paying back a debt to Knobs.

Maybe me and Crossfire were more akin to each other than I wanted to admit. I’d only been out in the Wasteland a few weeks, and already had done things I’d never imagined myself doing; including taking the lives of others. Blasting Cap was living proof that under the right conditions I could be pushed to kill. Crossfire had been dealing with this world for many years more than me. If I too somehow lived that long out here would I become as jaded and ruthless as Crossfire was, only holding onto one friend and shred of honor to maintain any sense of virtue?

With a heavy sigh I looked at Knobs, “Okay, I’ll grant you that I don’t really know Crossfire the way you probably do. I don’t know what you and her went through in the past, or what she’s had to do over the course of her life. That doesn’t make her actions any better, mind you, or mean that I think she’s some kind of hidden paragon underneath all that grit. But... If you can believe in her, I’ll try to put a bit of trust in her too. Just don’t blame me if I keep one eye on her at the same time, just in case.”

Knobs gave me one of her gleaming, bright eyed smiles that could light up any patch of grungy Wasteland any day of the week and gave me a quick hug, “That’s all I ask. Give her a chance. She might surprise you.”

I was about to suggest we go regroup with the others and maybe grab some dinner as a group, but there was a violent quake that rocked the Ursa, throwing me out of the driver’s seat and causing me to smack my head against the dashboard. I heard an explosive crash of noise only partially muffled by the walls of the vehicle, and through the windows I could see off to the left a billowing cloud of thick gray dust filling the underground parking garage.

“W-what the...?” I blinked, rubbing my forehead as I blinked in surprise.

Knobs had kept her balance better and quickly leaned over me, sticking her head near against the window, her eyes wide. “Those sounded like explosions! Oh, no, that came from the direction of the market! Quick, we gotta to help! Ponies could be hurt out there!”

“Wait, Knobs!” I shouted, but she was quite a bit faster than I expected a mare with two missing legs. Like a swiftly thrown spear she flung open the passenger side door and hopped out, landing hard on her front legs and then wheeling off in smooth motions as her artificial back wheels caught up with her galloping front legs.

I scrambled after her, remembering just in time to snatch up the cello case with Gramzanber in it, which I’d set against the back of my seat when I’d sat down. Hoping out onto the cold concrete floor of the garage I coughed as bits of dust made their way into my lungs. I threw the cello case down and hastily flipped its laches open. At the moment I didn’t care if I was spotted, I didn’t want to take any chances if I needed Gramzanber.

The silver ARM seemed to hum as I lifted it from its case, as if it’d missed me and was purring. I tried not to be too weirded out by that as my mouth clamped around the shaft and went to catch up with Knobs. At the same time my Pip-Buck was going nuts. It’s E.F.S, something I had learned to tune out for the most part since arriving in Skull City, was now showing me a kaleidoscope of signals. A bunch of green and yellow dots were scattered and moving erratically in the direction the explosions had occurred, and now, blooming like a small wave of blood, was a solid line of red dots that were swarming.

“That’s not good. Really not good! Knobs! Slow down!”

I galloped after her, seeing the mare’s cheery red mane ahead of me through a shroud of clinging gray dust. I didn’t think I had time to slow down and use my radio to call Arcaidia for help. Knowing her she must have felt this explosion and I didn’t doubt my friends would be on their way. What had happened anyway? Was this some kind attack, or an accident, or what?

The parking garage was pretty large, with multiple wide concrete pillars that held up the ceiling. There weren’t many actual vehicles down here, at least none like the Ursa. Mostly there were simple wagons parked to either load or unload supplies. Ponies were standing around in dazed confusion, even more trained feral ghouls shuffling with nervous growls beside their masters. I’d done my best to try to ignore the sheer number of emaciated dead looking feral ghouls, as they made me nervous in a way a thinking ghoul just didn’t. I saw several ghouls and normal ponies in Skull Guild coats moving to control the ferals, casting spells or using lanterns that glowed with a strange blue fire to seemingly draw the ferals’ attention and put them in a trance-like state.

Several such Skull Guild ponies were also gathering in a group under the direction of a short yellow stallion who seemed to have taken charge. When he saw me running by he shouted for me to stop, but I only shouted back, “Sorry, can’t! Friend in danger! Go get help! You’ve got something down here that’s real unfriendly!”

My words couldn’t have proved more prophetic, for at that same instant the sound of screams could be heard from the obscured area where the explosions had occurred, the noise of dozens of ponies in panic and terror. This was followed by piercing wails and unearthly shrieks that couldn’t come from any normal throat. I redoubled my speed, rushing towards the sounds, and where I could just barely make out Knobs ahead of me.

I passed through a long, rectangular opening in the wall that led to another part of the parking garage, one that I’d only seen briefly when Knobs first took me down here. It’d been a huge underground market, where ponies both from the Skull Guild or visiting guests could browse various wares, including pens with trained feral ghouls available for purchase. Where there had once been a wide space of dozens of stalls there was now just a huge, sunken crater. It was as if the ground had sunk into a slope, dropping half the merchant stalls into a lower level, including scores of helpless ponies. As I looked I could see ponies crawling from the rubble, while many others lay broken, twisted, either dead or barely able to move as they moaned in agony.

At the very center of the sloped crater was a hole, smoking, and from that hole there were creatures pouring forth. I halted for a second, gasping as I recognized the creatures that rushed upwards into the crater and began to slaughter the ponies trapped there. Most of them were skeletal ponies, with their charred or bleached bones shot through with a veiny, purple substance. There were at least four or five of the large, metal plated monstrosities that I’d mentally termed BATs back on the Odessa airship, carrying their large halberd weapons. There were also several new monsters, strange four legged things whose limbs were little more than large, metallic spikes. They had upright bodies, also sporting a pair of spear-like arms, and small orb shaped heads that had single baleful glowing red eyes much like the BATs.

These were Hyadean shock troops, and a part of my mind wondered at what they were doing here or how they’d started this attack, but that part or my brain shut down fast as instinct took over. I saw Knobs rushing towards one of the skeletal ponies that had made the edge of the crater, raising its dark steel sword to strike at a stallion who was trying to crawl out. I rushed to help, but as it turned out it wasn’t needed.

With a wordless shout, Knobs galloped right up to the skeleton and with a smooth slide on one of her back leg wheels she lashed out with the other leg and smacked it wheel straight into the skeleton’s chest, sending it sprawling back down into the crater. “C’mon! Grab my hoof!” she said to the stallion, who looked dazed but he took her hoof and Knobs hauled him the rest of the way out of the crater.

Several of the other skeletal monstrosities took note of fresh ponies on the scene and pointed their blades in Knobs direction. I noticed the same dark concentration of inky magic I’d seen these things fire back on the Varukisas, and didn’t waste a second in charging the lip of the crater and throwing myself towards these horrid things. Unlike when I was faced with violence against my fellow ponies, here I had no sense of hesitation or doubt. These were monsters I could fight without reservations.

Gramzanber cut down, its brilliant edge cutting a clean path through the body of one of the skeletons while I landed hard on the sloping concrete rubble of the crater. I twisted so the spear’s edge knocked another skeleton’s blade off target as I also kicked out with a hind leg, cracking the leg bone of a third. My sudden assault threw the skeletons into momentary disarray, the magical beams of darkness slicing through the air harmlessly instead of burning into their intended victims. The one skeleton I’d sliced in half fell with its two parts clattering loudly to the ground, the purple ooze that animated its bones fizzing and popping like acid as it turned into vaporous smoke.

I pressed my attack, spearing one skeleton through the chest and heaving it bodily towards one of its companions, sending both tumbling down the crater’s slope like a collection of angrily tossed foal’s toys.

A hot red beam of power sliced by my face, its searing heat making my cheek hairs burn. I looked down to see one of the BATs aiming its halberd at me, its single red eye glowing brightly from the beam it had just fired. Its green armored plates clanked as its square, muscular body charged up the slope at me. I saw its eye flash again and I threw myself sideways, narrowly avoiding another of its scorching energy rays. I could see out of my peripheral vision that I was drawing attention from the new creatures as well, the strange spike-limbed ones. At least two or three were rapidly rushing my position with disturbing hopping motions, the metal spikes that made up their arms and legs seeming to effortlessly stab into stone to anchor them for each leap.

Spikers, I mentally dubbed them. Yes, I know, I’m not always a very imaginative pony. I blame the fact that I was in a life or death situation.

The BAT was closer and reached me first, its axe like blade cleaving right for my skull. I turned my body slightly, bracing with my legs as I brought Gramzanber in line to parry. Two different kinds of alien steel clashed and I was reminded of how stupidly strong these things I’d dubbed ‘Big Ass Troopers’ were. The power behind the monster’s blow knocked me to my knees and sent jolts of pain through my shaking bones. The BAT wasn’t slow, either, drawing back an armored fist and jabbing at me while I was off balance. I managed to roll with the blow, taking it on the shoulder, but the impact still hurt like a bitch and would no doubt leave quite the bruise, assuming I survived.

Shuffling my hooves I ducked to the left, underneath a follow up swing from the BAT’s large pole axe. I lashed out with Gramzanber, cutting a deep furrow in the armor plating of the creature’s midsection. Sparks and brackish violet goo spilled forth, filling the air with an acidic stench. As the BAT stumbled backwards from the hit I thought to press in and try and finish it, but I saw out of the corner of my eye the two Spikers coming my way. The beasts simultaneously leapt into the air, each easily clearing ten feet of height as they arced towards me. I thought I had until they landed to avoid any attacks, but these things caught me off guard. Each thrust one of their spiked arms forward and to my shock the metal spikes extended as if by magic, instantly spanning the gap of distance between us.

To avoid what could have easily been fatal blows I instinctively activated Accelerator. The world snapped into indigo focus just in time for me to twist one way then another to barely avoid being skewered by the spikes. I could see the spikes embed into the concrete slope and the Spikers were actually being pulled towards me rapidly, not unlike how I could use my Grapple line. Not wasting an instant of my Accelerator, I jumped forward, angling the spear upwards into a solid thrust at the chest of one of the Spiker’s as it passed overhead.

The spear bit deeply and I felt a sensation of satisfaction that seemed to stem both from myself and Gramzanber as the Spiker’s body was impaled, purple blood flowing down like a river. Yet even as I pulled my ARM free from the one Spiker’s twitching body I was caught by surprise again. The other Spiker, far faster than I would have expected anything to move while I was using Accelerator, managed to twist its body in midair, and it aimed all four of its lower spiked limbs at me. The limbs shot forward much like its arm spike had, creating a small wall of pointed death flying at me. Even with Accelerator’s speed I couldn’t move fast enough to avoid one of the spikes tearing through my new red coat and piercing the security armor underneath. Hot pain flashed through me, radiating from where the tip of the spike I’d failed to avoid had torn into my flank. To my shock the pain rapidly intensified as I felt what must’ve been barbs extending from the spike in my flesh, anchoring it to my flank as the Spiker itself landed from its leap and kicked hard with the spiked leg it’d just pierced me with.

I felt raw agony as I was thrown bodily through the air with the barbed spike attached to my flank heaving me like a tiny gecko. I experienced a moment of vertigo before I slammed hard into the concrete slope opposite where I’d just been, rattling my senses. Accelerator was still active, granting me just enough time to gather my wits before the Spiker could toss me again. Growling through my stunned state I lashed out with Gramzanber, biting down hard on the shaft to keep from screaming at the pain as I severed the Spiker’s leg from where it’d been stuck in my flank. There was still a piece of it embedded in me, blood soaking the black material of my armor, but I focused past the pain and stood.

I’d only been using Accelerator for a few moments and knew I could take it a bit further, and my charge had distracted the initial surge of Hyadean monsters that had erupted from the hole at the bottom of the crater. Now my main concern was making sure as many surviving ponies still stuck in the crater could get out alive. Looking around I spotted several ponies either crawling or hobbling for their lives, desperately trying to get out of the crater as monsters advanced on them. I still only say Knobs at the top of the crater, now having drawn out a semi-automatic pistol of a make I didn’t recognize. She held it in a field of levitation magic and was firing on the BAT I’d injured before, keeping the thing off balance for the moment. I was surprised to see her rounds actually penetrating the monster’s thick armor, and could only assume she was using some kind of armor piercing ammunition.

Of the ponies trying to escape the crater the closest to me was a mare and stallion, both hobbling as they tried to support each other despite injured limbs and the stallion having a profusely bleeding head wound. Two skeletal ponies were giving chase, quickly catching up. Without hesitation I leapt after them, gritting my teeth to ignore the pain in my flank as I hopped from one precarious part of the slope to the next. Fortunately with Accelerator active I made fast progress, getting to the skeletons well before they closed the distance to their intended victims.

I reached the first skeleton just as it was raising its black metal sword, magical crests forming in a circle around it in preparation to cast its spell of melding dark energy. Gramzanber smashed right through the skeleton’s skull, and I moved past it without thinking, turning so that the back end of Gramzanber’s shaft hit the second skeleton cleanly in the chest, smashing through ribs and spine.

For a second I felt elated, but that feeling turned to dust inside me as I turned to see that while I’d been taking out the skeletons the two ponies I’d been trying to help had been taken by surprise from a Spiker that had somehow crawled its way up onto the ceiling. The beast’s red eye had flashed as it lashed out with a spike arm, extending it unnaturally to spear through the helpless mare’s torso as if she were a piece of meat being picked up by a fork. With Accelerator’s slow motion I got the distinct horror of seeing her face twist in pain and her eyes widen in desperate fear as the Spiker lifted her bodily off the ground, pulling its arm back as easily as it had extended it. Her companion fell to the slope without her support, looking on in shock as the mare’s impaled body was dragged upwards.

Anger boiled inside me. I knew it was too late to save the mare, but raised my left hoof, aiming my Grapple. I knew I was risking using Accelerator too long, yet at that moment I didn’t care. I took careful aim and the hooked grappling hook shoot out, flying up and wrapping around the torso of the Spiker clutched to the ceiling. With a gesture I used the Grapple’s magic to lessen the Spiker’s weight and with a savage yank I pulled it from the ceiling. My satisfaction was dulled, seeing the Spiker hit the ground headfirst, its neck bending awkwardly in the process. I saw the mare’s lifeless body flop to the ground beside the Spiker, removing any sense of accomplishment. Pushing my feelings down I rushed the Spiker’s body, spearing it just to ensure it was good and dead. I spared a final, saddened look at the dead mare, whose eyes were still open lifelessly with the her final expression of fear, and I pushed down my own emotions. I didn’t have time.

Not wasting a second further I went to the fallen stallion, who barely seemed to register what had happened. I saw his fear as I grabbed him and began to haul him to the crater lip. With Accelerator on I imagined I looked little more like a blue blur to the stallion’s eyes, everything happened too fast for him to know what was happening. Still I brought him to the crater lip and sat him there, not pausing in turning around to look for more ponies to try and help.

Longwalk… too much... I heard that warning, feminine voice in my head, the one I knew was somehow attached to Gramzanber..

I know, I thought back, just a moment longer.

I saw three more ponies a few dozen paces away, two who were dragging an unconscious third away from the slow advance of a BAT. I aimed my Grapple and fired it the same moment I deactivated Accelerator. The world returned back to its normal color and speed as my Grapple line attached to the BAT. Instead of lowering its weight, I lowered my own. I felt myself lighten as the Grapple line pulled on me, drawing me across the space like a feather being yanked in the wind. The BAT, sensing something incoming, turned just in time to get a face full of Gramzanber.

My body impacted with the BAT’s bulky body just as I shoved Gramzanber into the joint between the monster’s squared head and the rest of its body. Pain, both from the impact and the backlash of Accelerator wracked my body as violet blood spurted in a small fountain from where Gramzanber’s silver edge bit deeply into the BAT’s neck. The broad, squat beast of green armored plates shuddered and stumbled backwards, hitting the slope hard and sliding downward in a shower of dust and loose concrete, with me still atop its body. I rolled off of it just as the monster fell back through the hole. I heard its body crash down to the bottom, perhaps ten feet down to whatever lower level was down there.

Coughing dust from my lungs I rolled to my hooves, dizzy with pain, but unwilling to consider so much as slowing down. Not while I still had any chance at all to save lives!

A shadow loomed in my blurred vision and I looked up to see another BAT had somehow managed to get right on top of me while I’d been getting to my hooves. Its massive pole axe was poised to smashed right down onto me. Desperately I rolled. I felt the axe blade impact right where I’d been a split second ago and concrete shards pelted me from the near miss. Even so I couldn’t get my hooves under me in time to avoid the BAT’s follow up blow, a heavy and merciless kick that caught me in the head and nearly sent me back flipping head over flank.

I heard nothing but a ringing in my ears and felt little more than nauseous spinning in my head. The taste of blood filled my mouth from a split lip. I could tell I’d lost my grip on Gramzanber, the spear having been knocked from my mouth by the vicious kick to the face I’d just taken.

I rose on unsteady hooves, looking up to see the BAT looking right at me with its single eye like a pool of blood as it glowed, preparing to fire an energy beam straight at me. Gramzanber lay just a few paces away, but it may as well been miles for all the chance I had of getting to it in time. With no other choice, and certainly having no intention of giving up, I threw myself bodily at the BAT, hoping to tackling it off balance and that against all odds its aim would be off.

It’s aim was off, but not because of my last ditch tackle. No, I saw a flash of green energy bolts fly from the dark hole in the bottom of the crater. I caught just a flash of a metallic body and an instant of orange mane in the shadows illuminated by the green bolts. The plasma slammed into the BAT’s head, knocking its aim off balance so the heated red beam slashed over me as I hit its left knee joint with the entire weight of my body. Despite its weight I was able to knock the leg out from under the BAT, causing it to stumble down for an instant.

I was confused about who had just fired on it, though the orange mane had looked familiar for an instant, but I had no time to think on it. Instead I made a leap for Gramzanber, clamping my mouth around it. I spun around, the world tilting just a bit as dizziness from my injuries tried to overwhelm me. The BAT was regaining its balance, turning its head towards me, red eye sparking with energy. I charged, turning Gramzanber’s broad blade so it shielded me from the BATs oncoming beam, which deflected off the silver spear into the ceiling to leave a hot trail of half melted stone.

Reaching the BAT I twisted myself to slash in a heavy crossdown path that cut deeply through the BAT’s chest piece. Sparks and blood flew and the BAT made a sound that was somewhere between a mechanical whine and an unearthly gurgle as it fell back, its red eye going dim. For a moment I glanced back at the hole where my savior had fired from, but it was black and shadowy now, showing nothing. Who had fired? Wait, could it have been...?

A scream from my left turned my head, and I saw that another Spiker had landed at the lip of the crater, blocking the path of the three ponies I’d rescued earlier. The Spiker poised to attack, but before it could its head exploded in a shower of metal bits and purple gore from a deafening gunshot.

“For the records, Knobs, I’m charging the Skull Guild a nominal fee for this!” Crossfire shouted as she kicked the Spiker’s twitching body aside and stood at the lip of the crater. Her massive rifle floated easily in her red magic aura beside her and the experienced Drifter’s eyes narrowed as she took in the scene, and without so much as batting an eyelash began to fire down at the remaining Hyadean monsters.

She wasn’t alone, easily ten or so Skull Guild ponies, more than half of them non-feral ghouls, all wearing the black coats of the guild arrived. They carried various weapons, but more than the added volume of gunfire the Skull Guild ponies brought those strange lanterns with the blue flames. I saw the horns of the unicorns in the group casting spells while the non unicorns brought out strange talismans that glowed with similar blue light ot the lanterns. The entire chamber was suddenly filled with a haunting, wordless singing, like the wails of long departed souls.

In seconds at least thirty or so feral ghouls, or rather trained ghouls, rushed the lip of the crater, following some unseen commands that I could only fathom were being conducted through that magical, ethereal song. The ferals poured down the crater without hesitation or care for danger. Red and dark beams flew up from the remaining Hyadean creatures, killing half a dozen ghouls in seconds, yet the ferals just growled and gnashed their teeth as they rushed into the onslaught. They ignored the living ponies still in the crater, how I have no idea, but they zeroed in on the monsters. I watched in fascination as five or six ghouls leapt upon a BAT, the same one I’d injured at the start of the fight, and with ripping hooves and teeth bore the armored beast to the ground.

A Spiker moved quickly, lashing out with spiked arms and legs, killing three ghouls in seconds, but it too was overwhelmed and covered by tearing ghouls that ripped at the monster with unrestrained ferocity. The remaining skeletons fared even worse, torn apart even as they slashed with their swords.

It was over faster than I would have imagined, my own tired, wounded body keeping me rooted where I was as I watched the combined fire from the Skull Guild ponies and the savagery of their trained ghouls finishing off the last of the Hyadean monsters within a mere minute. Knobs actually got the last kill, her pistol blasting the skull off the final skeleton with a well aimed shot.

In moments the tone of the magical singing changed and blue balls of fire, like small bugs, flitted about the crater. The floating flames hovered around the heads of the remaining feral ghouls and their snarling and growling gradually ceased until each ghoul’s milky eyes were staring off at the flames in a daze. One by one the ferals left the crater and the Skull Guild ponies started to head down to gather the wounded survivors.

Crossfire went down as well, alongside Knobs. Crossfire was focused on the bodies of the Hyadean monsters, and any that had an intact head she put a bullet in without hesitation. I couldn’t blame her, I wouldn’t want to risk one of these things getting back up either.

“Ren solva? Longwalk!?” I heard a cry from above and looked up to see Arcaidia there at the lip of the crater now, with B.B flying overhead. The pegasus mare pointed me out and Arcaidia waved and began to hop down towards me.

I just remained where I was, calling out, “I’m okay… ugh… mostly.”

“You’re a dumbass,” Crossfire stated bluntly as she reached me, Knbs trotting gingerly next to her. “Both of you.”

“Hey now, we were just the closest ponies Crossfire, no need to get hostile,” said Knobs.

Crossfire grunted, giving Knobs a look of mixed ire and concern, “How many times have I told you not to rush into shit like this? If the idiot meatshield wasn’t also here to soak up all the attention how long would you have lasted trying to fight these Ruin monsters off?”

Ruin monsters? Was that what Crossfire thought these were? I supposed it made sense. I’d run into weird monsters in Ruins already, and the Hyadean shock troops looked similar in a lot of ways. I didn’t bother to correct her as I took a step forward, “She just did what made sense at the time, Crossfire.”

The black mare snapped her head back at me with a sharp glare, “Run headlong into danger?”

“Try to help ponies.”

Crossfire snorted, then took in a deep breath and let it out as she looked towards the hole at the bottom of the crater, “Where’d these things come from? Any ideas, Mr. Hero?”

By now Arcaidia and B.B had caught up. I saw Arcaidia was looking at the remains of the Hyadean monsters with cold eyes, though I also saw a tightness around them that suggested at just how tense seeing the bodies was making her. She gave me a softer look as she saw my injuries. Without a word she began to tend to my wounds, using magic to heal the surface injuries.

“I don’t know, I-arrrgh!” I bit back a louder scream as Arcaidia removed the Spiker’s barb from my flank, then I continued on, “I guess they must have come up from some lower level. Knobs, what’s below here?”

“Just storage, on this end. There’s training facilities one level down, but that’s on the east wing. Below the market there’s just a level of storage rooms, then you hit the maintenance tunnels that lead to the sewer system and old metro tunnels,” Knobs said, and she cast a look at Crossfire that seemed to contain some meaning, “There’s a lot of unexplored territory down in the sewer levels and below. Not often ponies go down there. But there are monsters...”

Crossfire for a second looked... distant and thoughtful, “There are. Gobs and worse things. Nothing like these critters, but buck me if I haven’t seen worse down there. I’m more wondering why they came up and how they blasted a damned hole this size into the bottom of the Skull Guild.”

“Knobs!” called a Skull Guild pony from above, a ghoul unicorn stallion with a faded purple mane, “We need some help up here keeping the ferals calm. Too much blood in the air.”

“Coming!” said Knobs, and glanced at Crossfire. She suddenly gave the Drifter a quick hug, “Sorry, I know you hate it when I put myself in harms way.”

Crossfire looked stiff as a board but I almost saw a hint of a smile twitch on her lips, “Yeah, yeah I do hate it. Dumb mare. Let the trained professionals get their fool asses killed. Heroes are a cap a dozen. Can’t replace you.”

“Oh hush and stop being such a downer nag,” Knobs said with a final squeeze before she went to awkwardly trot and wheel her way back up the crater.

I turned to Arcaidia and B.B, mostly so I wouldn’t be tempted to stare in curious thought at Crossfire’s embarrassed shuffling. “Where are Binge and the others?”

“Binge is bein’ sat on by one o’ Harshcare’s nurses,” said B.B with a chuckle, “Can’t figure which one ta feel sorry for, there. That griffin lady an’ that skittish stallion took Blasting Cap to the mess hall fer lunch. We were all there when we felt the blast hit. Me an’ Arcaidia figured there was a’ good chance that whatever had happened you’d be rushin’ right inta the center o’ it so we started makin’ our way down. Had to argue with some guards that we were just wantin’ ta help. By the time we convinced them ta let us come down wit ‘em the fight was already done. Sorry ‘bout that.”

I shook my head, “It's fine. Things happened fast. Whew… thanks Arcaidia. Feel almost back in one piece again.”

Arcaidia lifted her head with pride as her magic faded from my body. I still ached, and had likely just gained a fresh new set of scars, but I wasn’t nauseous or dizzy anymore and could move my legs without my flank being pierced by pure agony.

“Ren solva getting easier to put back in one piece. Much familiar am now with body and where things go.”

I blinked at her, and she returned the blink. She coughed, face turning a faint tinge of rose, “What I mean is I know much of Veruni bodies, so magic good for heal them. Took time to get used to heal pony bodies, but much more with head experience now. Most due to constant healing of ren solva.”

“I get it. Thanks, as always I owe you,” I said before turning my attention to the hole. My mind went back to the mysterious shooter that had saved my life. I now had a suspicion about who it was, as I only knew one pony with an orange mane who used energy weapons like that... but what was Sunset doing down there, assuming it was the Odessa officer?

“What’s on yer mind, Long?” asked B.B

“He’s probably planning to do the idiotic thing, which would be jumping down that hole to see if there are more Ruin monsters down there,” said Crossfire with a roll of her eyes.

“Actually...” I said with a small smile, “Guilty as charged.”

Crossfire heaved out a disgusted sigh, “Yeah, figured as much. You have fun with that. I’ll stay here and listen for your death screams.”

“That’s fine,” I said, giving her a nod, “This isn’t something you’re being paid for, after all. Besides, pretty sure if there were more monsters coming they’d have already rushed out of the hole by now.”

“Then what’s the point of wasting time going down there?” shot back Crossfire.

“Call it... confirming a suspicion,” I said cryptically, and admittedly I kind of enjoyed Crossfire’s look of annoyance as she flicked her tail.

“Whatever. Just don’t get your foalish self killed. I still need you to turn in to the Bounty Guild and they want you alive... unfortunately.”

“You know, Crossfire, somepony seems to think you’re not so bad. Haven’t seen the proof of it yet, but I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

She gave me a strange look for a moment before scoffing, shaking her head, blue ponytail swaying as she muttered, “Idiot,” and with a flash of her horn teleported in a pop of red light back to the top of the crater.

Arcaidia watched her go with a deep frown, “I not like her.”

B.B shrugged, “She’s got a stick bigger n’ her rifle stuck up her plot, but fer now she’s kinda sorta helpin’ us, so guess I can ignore her bad attitude. Be happy ta kick her flank somethin’ fierce in any other circumstance.”

“We may have to at some point,” I said, turning towards the hole before us, “But for now I’m just as glad to not have to. We’ve got enough enemies and problems as it is.”

The hole was not all that large compared to the crater it was in. Perhaps two or three paces across it’d been just large enough for the broad shoulders of the BATs to crawl through. The edges of the hole looked torn and partially scorched, as if melted through with extreme heat. I had to wonder just how the Hyadean monsters had accomplished the blast that’d created it, but I knew so little of these alien menaces that I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had devices not unlike the explosives ponies had invented. The nagging question of why they’d attacked the Skull Guild like this bouncing around in my mind like a hyperactive little gecko. Could it have just been some kind of coincidence? Or had they been here for something specific? The monsters had attacked the Odessa airship Varukisas very deliberately, and Sunset had theorized at the time that it’d been to recover the remains of the Golem Odessa had discovered.

Did that meant here was some piece of technology from that ancient war between Hyadean and Veruni that the monsters had come to recover?

It couldn’t have been Gramzanber. If they wanted the ARM they could have attacked any number of times before now, assuming they even had a way to track the ARM. No, I suspected there was another reason. Perhaps there was somepony down there who might have answers, if my rescuer was who I thought she was.

“What do ya think yer gonna find down in that hole?” asked B.B.

“Not sure. Maybe nothing. Or maybe some answers,” I said as I turned on my Pip-Buck’s light and shined its green illumination down into the dark. My E.F.S wasn’t showing any activity other than the numerous green dots of the ponies of the Skull Guild... but then I caught, just for a second, a lone green dot somewhere off ahead of me. The E.F.S couldn’t tell depth or height, but I imagined the dot was down in the level below the hole, somewhere.

“B.B, give me and Arcaidia a lift?” I asked.

In moments all three of us were at the bottom of the hole, which was illuminated between my Pip-Buck and a light spell summoned by Arcaidia’s horn. We were in a concrete corridor wide enough to fit an autowagon, with the way behind us blocked by the collapse above us. The only way was forward, which we began to slowly and cautiously canter down, only our lights and shadows accompanying our hoofsteps.

Much as Knobs had told us we soon found metal doors lining either side of the corridor that were locked, and labeled things such as ‘materials storage’. Around thirty paces down the corridor turned a hard right, went on just a bit further until it reached a doorway that was ripped clean from the wall. The door itself was laying on the ground, practically bent in half from a huge gouge in its center. I assumed that was the work of one of the BATs.

The green dot on my E.F.S seemed closer now, perhaps in the very next room, so I held up a hoof to stop B.B and Arcaidia. I didn’t want them to shoot first. “Didn’t want to say anything in earshot of Crossfire, but I think the Odessa mare who helped me out back on their airship might be down here,” I whispered, “So just hold off on attacking unless there’s some kind of clear danger.”

B.B licked her lips, “What makes ya think anypony’s down here?”

“Because somepony shot one of those monsters when it nearly had me, and I thought I saw what might’ve been a pony. Rest is just kind of a hunch.”

With a twitch of her ears Arcaidia lowered her starblaster, “We still walk in group togetherness, yes?”

“Yup, just wanted to make sure there’d be no premature frying of potential allies. Let’s go in. I got a green dot on E.F.S. You got it too, Arcaidia?”

She nodded, brow creasing slightly, “I see dot. Very close.”

The room beyond the doorway was a fairly large storage room that had entire piles of crates stacked in neat rows on either side of the room, leaving one wide channel through the center to a door on the opposite wall. Some things in the room were covered in faded blue tarps, but otherwise there was nothing of note in here, and even the visible crates weren’t labeled in any manner I understood; just random serial numbers or short hoof markings that probably made sense to whoever made them but not to me. I could tell the door on the other side of the room had suffered a similar fate to the one we’d just walked through, indicating the Hyadean creatures had come through here as well.

I trotted a third of the way into the room, Arcaidia and B.B following on either side of me and slightly behind. I looked around, peering into the darkened corners of the room, and raised my voice slightly, “Sunset? You down here?”

There was silence for a second, then a familiar, slightly scratchy female voice said, “Glad to see you’re still breathing.”

The Odessa mare seemed to melt out of the shadows between crates, her form shimmered into view as if stepping from the surface of a pool, yet that pool was simply the thin air. I saw faint electric ripples across the metal plates of her cybernetic body and assumed that whatever she was using it was some kind of archanotech. Camoflauge? Sunset looked much as I’d last seen her, albeit conscious. Her cybernetic limbs barely gave of a hum or whine of machinery as she walked out to meet us, her orange and yellow toned mane bouncing as she glanced left and right, red eyes narrowing.

“You alone?” she asked.

I gave a quick nod, “Aside from my friends here, we should be. If anypony comes down here my or Arcadia’s Pip-Bucks out to pick it up.”

She gave the barest of nods, “Good, good. It’s risky for me to be here and I can’t let my presence this high up be known if I can help it.”

Her eyes shifted from me to my companions, resting only briefly on B.B before locking onto Arcaidia. The unicorn filly stared back without reserve and with a hint of open defiance, as if she were daring Sunset to try anything. The Odessa mare just stared a moment longer before letting out a breath she’d apparently been holding.

“So you’re what all the fuss is about? You look like a normal pony to me.”

“I be pony. Normal is relatives.”

“That’s relative, hun,” corrected B.B.

“Normal is relative,” said Arcaidia without missing a beat. Then with a certain heat in her tone, “You of shir esru vir masale dol eraim... those who hunt me? Odessa?”

“I am,” Sunset confirmed, and the metal wedges that were steepled over her back twitched, not unlike I’d occasionally seen B.B’s flesh and blood wings twitch, “For now you don’t need to worry about that. I’m not here because of you. I’m just curious. Official reports are that you're a Veruni infiltrator wearing a faux pony body. I have my doubts, but would rather hear it from the horse’s mouth. Just what are you?”

“She doesn’t have to answer anything, Sunset,” I began, but Arcaidia took a solid step forward, chest puffed out.

“I pony. Want know more?” Arcaidia smiled, thinly, “Classified.”

Sunset huffed out a short chuckle, “Right, like I haven’t heard that one before. Whatever, like I said, just curious. Catching you isn’t why I’m here, I’m here to tell Longwalk a few things and to give him something.”

“Why are you even down here?” I asked, “How are you down here? How did you even find me?”

“Geez, one question at a time,” Sunset said, as a twinge of annoyance crossed her face, through it was soon replaced with a more grave look, “After your escape the Varukisas managed to fend off the Hyadean attack on it, but suffered damage to its engines. It had to set down north of this city, hiding itself in the ruins of an old stadium. While it’s being repaired a lot of its crew, including part of the security detail, has been reassigned to temporarily assist the...” she hesitated a moment before continue, “Assist the underground base we have beneath Skull City.”

B.B looked taken aback, “You crazy assholes have a base down here!?”

Sunset shot her a glare, “Yes, we ‘crazy assholes’ do. Have for about ten years.”

“What’s the purpose of this base?” I asked.

She gave me a deadpan look, “Classifed.” At my expression she shrugged, “Look, Longwalk, I may be trying to help you out of friendship to your parents, but I’m still part of Odessa. I don’t want to compromise them any more than I have to while helping you. You don’t need to know why we have a base down here, or even where it is. But that is why I’m down here. I’m aiding the bases security forces in dealing with Hyadean incursions. They’ve been sending patrols of those bio-soldiers down here for the past few days. We’re not sure what they’re up to, maybe looking for our base, or perhaps something else. Either way we’ve had a few fights down in the sewers in order to keep the things away from our operations. That’s my current excuse to my superiors for being around this area. I’m on recon, following where the Hyadeans go in hopes of figuring out what they’re up to underneath Skull City. As it happens that coincided with my secondary goal of locating you.”

Sunset lifted one of her metal arms, and a panel on it slide aside, displaying a small screen not unlike what was on the face of my Pip-Buck. Showing it to me I saw that on her screen was a detailed map of the area we were in, countless corridors and tunnels marked in stark green contrast. Dots indicating all four of us were in the clearly marked storage room we stood in, only my dot was... blinking? As I looked at Sunset curiously she took on an apologetic expression.

“When you were captured I bugged your Pip-Buck with a tracking transmitter. It’s encoded to send out a signal only I know how to detect and decrypt. Anypony else stumbles onto the signal it’ll just look like scrambled gunk. Figured I’d need a way to keep track of you, since as it stands I’m the only link you have into Odessa that’s remotely friendly. I knew you’d probably end up in Skull City at some point, so while I’ve been doing recon down here I’ve been keeping a close eye on your signal. When it turned out the Hyadeans I was following ended up getting close to your position, I stuck close to them. Watched them plant some kind of charge on the corridor ahead and blow it out. The rest I’m sure you can figure out.”

“You just watched them buggers blow up a’ market! Dozens of ponies just died back there!” shouted B.B. Sunset turned a hard look towards her.

“I had no way of knowing what was above the point the Hyadeans were setting those charges. Hell, didn’t even know for sure they were charges until the little gooey balls exploded. Besides, I’m one mare, and there were a lot of Hyadean bio-troops in that group. What was I going to do? Attacking would’ve been suicide.”

B.B looked angry for a second longer, but she blew out a hard sigh, “‘Suppose yer right. Ya helped Long, here, too, right?”

“Was about all I could do,” said Sunset with a frown, “Couldn’t afford to expose myself, but couldn’t let Sand Storms colt die, either. Took the shot and hoped he’d spot me and come down to investigate.”

“Well, I did, so what was it you wanted to tell me, and give me?” I asked, trying not to look at my Pip-Buck. I wasn’t angry or anything that she’d bugged it, but it still worried me. If Sunset was ever discovered to be sympathetic towards me would her own comrades interrogate and torture her? Not only did the thought not sit well with me there was the more practical worry that if Odessa found out about the tracking device they’d have a way to find me quickly and easily. Not a good day for anypony involved, then.

“Yes. First things’ first, we know where your mother and the rest of your tribe is,” she said, and I nearly jumped on her, my hooves on her shoulders as I looked her in the face.

“Where!?”

“Hey!” she gave me a quick shove with her metal hoof and I was keenly reminded she was a cyborg, and quite a bit stronger than me as I was pushed back and nearly fell on my haunches. Sunset, grimacing, said, “Sorry, just, uh, don’t really react well to ponies suddenly in my face. As I was saying, we know where they are. Your father, he’s using all his connections in the command structure to get information. He learned that your tribe, including Sand Storm, were taken to Heimdal Gazzo. That’s our primary headquarters.”

“Heimdal Gazzo… where is that?” I asked. Had I heard that name mentioned before?

“Its mobile,” said Sunset, expression stone serious, “A flying, mobile fortress. Built on the remain of the first experimental sky mine created by the Grand Pegasus Enclave. Odessa stole it from the Enclave when the organization broke from the Enclave to go independent. Along with airship prototypes like the Varukisas and the Vesuvius. Right now Heimdal Gazzo is floating about eight thousand feet high, two miles off the southeast coast of the Great Sea. Getting there to affect any kind of rescue won’t be anything resembling simple.”

“I don’t care, I have to try!” I said, feeling faint with heated excitement. Finally I had an idea of where my tribe was! In some impossibly flying fortress, the center of power for a powerful organization of ponies and griffins who’d been trying to kill me and Arcaidia, but hey, at least I knew where they were now. “Um, how do you get to this fortress?”

“Without wings or an airship, you don’t,” said Sunset, but the mare cracked a small smile, “Lucky you, you have allies in, heh, high places.”

She paused, looking at us. She flexed her metal wings for a second as if to emphasis.

“That was dumb joke,” Arcaidia deadpanned.

Sunset sighed, “Whatever, humor isn’t my forte. Point is, Longwalk, your father is working on a plan. Knowing him it’ll probably be complicated and quite possibly insane, but it’ll probably be your best shot.”

“My father...” I said, looking at the ground, trying to imagine him. I was coming up blank. I was glad he was out there, helping, but I had a hard time getting my mind wrapped around the idea as well. I thrust aside the confusing thoughts, “Um, do you know why my mother and tribesmates were taken to this headquarters of yours?”

Sunset’s eyes were suddenly filled with a reserved fear that left me feeling cold. Her voice was solemn and quiet, “I hate saying this, but the only reasons landbound ponies get taken to Heimdal Gazzo is either to be held for extensive interrogations, or to be used as experimental fodder in the Red Sector.”

“Red Sector?”

“Classified research and development. Your father used to work that department until his opponents on the Council of Colonels were able to shuffle him off to the northern research facilities. Right now it's Captain Borealis who’s running the research in Red Sector...” Sunset trailed off for a second, her eyes meeting mine, “Captain Borealis is Shattered Sky’s mother.”

My memory briefly flashed back to three (or was it four) days ago to the fight at the church. I recalled Shattered Sky’s final moments, as he’d goaded Trailblaze into finishing him off. I remembered the blistering heat and watching the gray pegasus soldier be consumed by a massive flame shaped like a bird, one that had been conjured by my best friend in a moment of rage...

Now my mother and fellow tribesmates were trapped in a research facility being run by that stallion’s own mother?

“Shit...” I breathed.

Arcaidia gave me a worried, sidelong look, before turning a glare at Sunset, “What this mean? What be done in this Sector of Red?”

Sunset shifted on her metallic hooves uncomfortably, “I don’t know for certain. Only ponies with specialized clearance can get inside, and all Red Sector files are classified even to officers. Only Colonels on the Council or members of Cocytus could gain access.”

“Isn’t your husband a member of Cocytus?” I asked, “He could get in, right?”

Sunset blanched, “Right, Hammerfall could. But Cocytus can only access Red Sector when it’s part of one of their assignments. Right now he and the remaining two Cocytus members have been assigned to tracking you down. You killing Shattered Sky has lit a fire underneath the Council and they’ve made Target 02’s apprehension and your elimination as her protector a top priority. That’s the other thing I needed to tell you, to be very careful in how you move around the city. From what I’ve heard from Hammerfall they suspect you’re in the city. Lucky you Odessa doesn’t want to destroy this population center... yet. The city is large enough that they can’t find you through just aerial survey, but it’s only a matter of time before they figure out where you’re at. So try to lay low. Hammerfall is on your father’s side, but my husband has a... er... weird way of doing things. If you end up having to fight him, he won’t hold back, and he’s Cocytus’ strongest member.”

“Uh, thanks for the warning,” I said, perhaps a bit sullenly. It was good news to know where my tribe was and that there was a plan in the works to rescue them, but the rest was pretty dire. Sunset didn’t know what kind of experiments went on in Red Sector but my own imagination could easily run wild if I let it. I felt sick with fear, imagining what might be happening to my mother at this very moment. “Just how long do you think my tribe has to live, stuck in this Red Sector?”

“There’s no way to know for certain, but chances are we have some time on our side. What little I know of Borealis suggests she’s a slow, methodical type. Also, even in Red Sector certain protocols have to be followed. Your father knows more than I do, and his best estimate is that we have a few weeks before any of your tribe are going to be in real danger. Still, he’s trying to get something together as fast as he can… which brings me to the last thing...”

She reached up to her shoulder and tapped something, letting a panel on her medal hide slide open. A pair of robotic pincers extended from the tips of her hoof and picked up an object from the open slot and she held it out to me.

“I saw in your gear back on the Varukisas that you have a Recollector, so this should work for you just fine.”

In her grasp was a black, pearl shaped Memory Orb. I stared at it in wonderment as Sunset said, “It's a message from your father.”

Footnote: 50% to next level!

Author's Note

I have been informed that the end of this chapter requires a "Dun dun dun!", and so I bow to the knowledge of my prereader. As always I want to thank my prereaders for helping keep this chapters error free as possible. Doomande and refferee, you guys are much appreciated.

Now, continuing my new tradition of tossing reccomendations out there for other awesome FoE sidefics I'm going to spotlight Ouroboros. The story focuses on survivors of an auquatic Stable, and has a good balance of action and humor. There's also some intelligent engineering talk that adds an element of realism to a story of post apocalyptic ponies. Check it out.

As always feel free to leave any comments, criticism, or questions you want. I welcome them all. Thanks again for reading folks.

Chapter 24: Wild Bunch

Chapter 24: Wild Bunch

The onyx crystal orb reflected the dull light from my Pip-Buck and I barely noticed Arcaidia jostling me with a hoof. Belatedly I blinked back to coherent thought and lavished Sunset with my most utterly dumbfounded stare, blurting out, “It’s a what now from my father?”

The red eyed pegasus mare’s face twitched in what I could tell was barely contained humor. Sunset didn’t strike me as a mare who laughed often, and it showed in the way she seemed to have small face spasms whenever she was feeling the need to laugh and wasn’t quite sure what needed doing. “Ahem, a message. Colonel Winter Sun recorded it few days ago after I transmitted a coded report to him about my encounter with you. A courier that’s loyal to him smuggled the Memory Orb to me, so I could give it to you the next time I managed to make personal contact with you, which your father knew I was going to attempt to do.”

“I… see,” I said, eyes transfixed upon the small pearl of obsidian as if it was both the most precious thing in the world and the most dangerous.

“... You can take it now,” Sunset said after I failed to move for several seconds, clearing her throat and extending her hoof a bit more towards me.

“Y-yeah,” I let her plop the object into my hoof, eyes never quite leaving it, “Thank you. Seriously. I know coming to find me like this has got to be dangerous for you.”

“Yer comrades got ta be least a tad suspicious,” said B.B, “After ya busted Long outta that airship o’ yers can’t imagine folks in yer command structure were too happy wit ya.”

Sunset’s tail lashed, an orange on yellow flicker in the gloom. “It’s fine. I made sure there was no evidence proving my involvement with the escape. There’s some who look at the incident with suspicious eyes, yes, but after Longwalk killed Shattered Sky it's added a lot of credence to my story that I was overpowered by the tribals after damage to the Varukisias caused a short in the prison cells’ security shields.”

A less than pleasant feeling settled in my chest. I didn’t really like being thought of as the pony who killed Shattered Sky, especially given it wasn’t actually me that did the deed. Yet I wasn’t too tempted to clarify the point with Sunset either. I didn’t want Odessa focusing on Trailblaze for any reason. It was probably inevitable that Odessa would target her, since she was going for those Guardian Shrines which Odessa also had an interest in, but I wasn’t keen to add fuel to the fire by advertising she’d been the one to kill one of their top soldiers.

“If there’d been a way to take him prisoner, I would have,” I said instead, looking away from the Odessa mare, “I don’t know how many times I can get away with bloodless fights if Odessa keeps coming after us like this.”

There was a long pause, Sunset’s posture going still as the mare’s eyes met mine. I wondered what she was thinking. Her scarred features had this unfocused look of a pony remembering things from long ago. Finally she spoke, and it was in a subdued tone that was backed by something hard as the concrete we stood on. “I’m a soldier. Most of the time, for ponies like me, there isn’t much ambiguity when it comes to killing in the line of duty. But my definition of ‘duty’ has changed a lot over the years, otherwise I wouldn’t be helping you, a pony I’m technically under orders to shoot on sight. So I don’t know what to tell you. You’re probably right you’ll end up having to kill Odessa soldiers sooner or later.”

It wasn’t exactly the most comforting of words, but they probably carried more truth to them than any words of comfort would have. Still, I resolved to prepare myself as best I could to keep unneeded deaths to a minimum. After all, Odessa was in essence my tribe as well. Okay, seriously estranged and highly aggressive tribemates who thought of me as a lesser being because I lacked wings, but hey, we don’t choose our family.

“Thanks for being honest, at least. Um, sorry if this is too personal a question, but why are you willing to… well, basically betray Odessa to help me so much? I mean, I get that you’re friends with my mother and father, but you’re taking a huge risk by helping me.”

She laughed, and it was at once both a nostalgic and oddly bitter sound as she tapped her hard, metal chest with one cybernetic hoof. “Ever heard of the Enclave? Don’t worry if you haven’t, it doesn’t exist anymore. I was a soldier of the Enclave, once upon a time. I was loyal, and proud. Had comrades I cared about, and a cause I believed was worth risking my life for. Lost all of that in a matter of minutes. I’ll spare you the gory details, but a snap decision during a mission left me with most my body torn to shreds. I should have died. The only reason I didn’t was because something extraterrestrial intervened. Something Odessa had been tracking, and they found me while trying to chase it down.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. To this day I’ve never gained the clearance to access the files Odessa has on whatever they were chasing, the day they found me. All I remember was being... cold. My body was torn up. My legs, my wings, my chest and face. There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t breathe. Everything was just so damned cold. Then there was this sound. I can’t describe it. Like the air being torn, maybe. My vision was already fading and I couldn’t move my head, but I thought I saw a... box. A blue box. Then nothing. I’d passed out, and would have died if an Odessa patrol chasing whatever that thing was hadn’t arrived minutes later. They took me, thinking I was connected to the blue box.”

I blinked, sparks of my own memory flaring at her words. I couldn’t be sure, but something about what she said about a blue box sounded terribly familiar. I couldn’t quite snatch the memory, the recollection dancing just out of reach of my brain pony’s grasping hooves. I knew I’d seen a blue box somewhere before. I kept the fact to myself. I didn’t see any reason to bother Sunset with a half grasped suspicion, and she was still going with her story anyway.

“Even after Odessa realized I wasn’t involved they kept me alive.I spent months being put back together while being hooked up to machines that preserved me, despite missing more internal organs than anypony has a right to have missing and still breathe. More than my body, my spirit was pretty damned shattered. I had learned the Enclave was gone, and after nearly dying and realizing my home didn’t exist anymore I had lost my sense of purpose. If it wasn’t for your father and Hammerfall I’d have never gotten back on my hooves. Hammerfall...”

A soft, fond look passed over her face, the deep crags of her scars contrasting with the expression horribly, “My husband taught me that I was still a pony, even if most my body was machine. As for your father. Colonel Winter Sun gave me something to be loyal to again. I’m an Odessa mare, but I’m dedicated to creating the Odessa your father wants to create. One that works with the landbound, rather than seeks to treat them as disposable resources. Your mother, my friendship with her, only solidified that goal. So, yes, I’m willing to risk a lot to help you.”

I was taken slightly aback by the sincerity in her voice, and looked at the black Memory Orb once more with curiosity. I wondered what kind of stallion my father was, that he inspired loyalty like that? I gave Sunset an appreciative nod.

“Well, then I won’t question you further. We’d probably get back to the Skull Guild before they wonder what happened to us down here. Was there anything else you needed to tell me?”

She seemed to hesitate for a second, then said, “There is one last thing. Hold out your Pip-Buck.”

I complied and she took her metal hoof and ran it over the device, and I heard the Pip-Buck let out a short beep. I looked at her questioningly.

“I just uploaded my personally encoded frequency to your radio. I might need to contact you again and I want to be able to do it without having to sneak off for a face to face chat. It’ll let me warn you about any movements by Odessa that might cause a problem for you.” Sunset explained.

“That’s... wow, thanks. That’ll be useful!” I said, finding a quick grin spreading on my face.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m wonderful, I know,” Sunset said, turning to leave. She glanced over her shoulder as she made for the far doors out of the room, “Just be careful. Don’t want to be the one to report to your father that you got yourself killed.”

With that she pressed something on her leg and her entire cybernetic body shimmered with electric blue light, and in an instant she’d vanished from view, as if by some magic spell.

By my side Arcaidia made let out a small whinny, “I still no like her.”

Upon returning to the crater I found the site crawling with Skull Guild guards. Guns were turned on us but it was only a few tense seconds before Knobs quickly hopped to the front of the crowd, waving her hooves.

“Whoa! Whoa! Guns down, guys! They’re on our side!”

Some guards took longer than others to finally lower their weapons. I let out a breath I’d been holding, and beside me I saw Arcaidia’s horn cease to glow, the unicorn clearly having been ready to cast spells if any jumpy guards had been jumpy enough to shoot first and ask questions later. Knobs waited patiently at the top of the crater as we climbed out. I could see the bodies had been cleared out of the crater, mostly, but where I’d seen Hyadean monsters fall were now only strange piles of ash.

“Did something happen to the bodies of those things?” I asked Knobs as I clambered up out of the crater, dusting myself off.

“Yup. Weirdest thing. They all just kinda turned into char, like they were slowly burning from the inside out. Never seen a Ruin monster do that before,” Knobs said, looking with apprehension at one of the nearby piles of ash. “Find anyting down below? The guards wanted to send a team down but were holding off in case you guys found anything.”

“Nothing much,” I said, “Looks like they came up from the sewers. We found some busted down doors, but we didn’t explore too far. Didn’t the Skull Guild have any guards down there?”

Knobs frowned deeply, her voice melancholic, “That’s just the thing. We did have guards down there. You didn’t see any bodies?”

“No, nothing.”

The ghoul mare let out a quiet nicker, hanging her head, “Here’s hoping some of them are still alive. But if none of them radioed in we had monsters down below, chances are... well...”

I nodded solemnly, understanding her feelings all too well. These were ponies Knobs worked with. I didn’t doubt there were ponies she knew among the dead. Looking around I saw that just outside the remains of the market area a number of dead and wounded had been gathered in the parking garage. I spotted one of Harshcare’s nurses treating the wounded, and there were other ponies counting the dead. There were all too many covered corpses for my liking. I knew I wasn’t responsible for this, or for saving everypony, but the heavy weight of regret still hit me. I took a deep breath, embracing the feeling as best I could.

I didn’t see Crossfire anywhere, and I assumed the Drifter had left soon after the fight was over, though to where I couldn’t imagine. Hopefully she didn’t go far. What I did see, however, was an odd sight that had me poking at Knobs.

“Hey Knobs, who are they?” I asked, pointing.

B.B, landing next to me and folding her wings over her dress, cocked her head, “Now ain’t seen their like fer a long time round Skull City.”

Arcaidia shifted on her hooves, eyes widening with curiosity, “Fancy armor.”

Fancy armor indeed. Four ponies, or what I assumed were ponies based on the shape of them, stood in a rigid line not far from where the wounded were being tended. They looked like walking suits of armor, given vague equine shape. The dark gray steel was marked along the edges by steel rivets and the faces of the armor’s helmets had a black glass visor that reflected the dim lighting of the garage. Even the tails of the ponies within the suits were encased in segmented armor, and in place of manes the helmets of the armor had large crests.

The four armored ponies were standing near another pony who was moving among the wounded. She was a unicorn, surprisingly short and waifish even for a unicorn. Her coat was a dull black color, and she had a long wave like mane of white tinged just slightly with blue that was combed back to hang down one side of her neck in a neat pile. She was wearing a black and white dress smoothly and tightly cut along her frame. Button like features made her look young if not for the hard lines of mature concern on her face as she tended to the wounded, using her horn to wash waves of golden aura over wounded ponies. I saw wounds slowly close where that gold aura flowed.

Finishing healing a stallion whose face was covered in blood from a nasty cut along his forehead, the unicorn mare looked up and spotted us with a pair of large gold eyes. She blinked at Gramzanber and I saw a light of understanding flash across her features. Offering quiet words of comfort to the wounded she’d been tending she stepped away and approach us before my friends and I got more than a few steps into the garage area.

“Pardon my forwardness,” she said in a breathy voice that made me think she was somehow having trouble getting air in her lungs, “But are you the stallion I’ve been told helped drive back the monsters?”

I shared a glance with Arcaidia and B.B, neither of which were able to do more than offer me a shrug. I looked back to the odd black mare and said, “I lent a hoof, yeah. Wasn’t alone. In fact if you’re looking for the heroine then Knobs here is your mare. She charged in first, I just followed her lead.”

Knobs looked about, wide eyed, pointing a hoof at herself, “Me? Unless shooting a gun randomly and trying not to die counts as heroics I think you're exaggerating, Longwalk. Besides the only reason I charged in first is because I was closest.”

The unicorn laughed lightly, hiding her mouth with the back of her hoof, “Regardless, allow me to extend my thanks to you. The ponies I have been tending have spoken of how narrow their escape from death has been, and that it was the efforts of ponies, particularly one bearing a silver spear, that saved their lives. I hold great value in the sanctity of life and appreciate what you have done to preserve it.”

“Uh… okay...” I said, blinking dumbly. I felt a sharp elbow in my side and saw B.B giving me a rueful half smirk and I cleared my throat, “I mean, um, thank you, miss...?”

A short, graceful bow of her head was followed by a soft smile as the mare said, “Crown Princess Purity of the Neighlisus Protectorate Kingdom. It is a honor to meet you... Longwalk, was it? And Knobs?”

Knobs looked a tad flabbergasted as she stared at the mare in front of us, “Y-yup, that’s me. Knobs. Ghoulwrangler of the third tier, Skull Guild. I didn’t think the dignitary that’d come to visit us was Neighlisus’ Princess.”

Curiosity got the better of my mouth as I said, “What are you doing here?”

“Longwalk! Don’t just ask stuff of the Princess! It’s... rude,” said Knobs.

Arcaidia just blinked and said, “Ren solva make good point. What fancy pony doing in dead pony place?”

Knobs smacked a hoof to her face while B.B let out a quiet laugh, shoulder shaking as she hovered beside us. Princess Purity looked at us with blinking bemusement, and there was a metallic clang as one of the armored ponies took a step towards us but Purity raised a hoof, barely a fraction of a gesture, and the armored figure immediately returned to its original spot.

“It’s quite alright. I’m afraid I can’t discuss the particulars of my visit to your fine Guild, Miss Knobs. It is up to Guildmistress Star Soul to disclose that information to her ponies if she chooses. I will be departing... soon, but when I heard there was an accident down in this area it was my responsibility as a healer to lend what aid I could.”

Composed once more she bowed slightly to us once more, “Speaking of which, there are still those whose pain I can ease. Please, don’t let me keep you. I merely wished to thank you for your efforts. Good day.”

She returned to the wounded, bending over another to begin using her magic to wash away wounds. As she did so I watched her with open curiosity, although a small nudge from Arcaidia reminded me to get walking. Passing by the Princess I felt a strange sense of familiarity about her, but couldn’t place it. I did notice, however, that her dress had hitched up somewhat as she bent over her patient. I hadn’t intended to look, certainly not ogle or anything, but Purity’s cutie mark caught my eye as I walked by.

A blue gem, shaped like a tear.

A minute later, once we’d reached the ramp leading back to the room with the lifts I felt B.B’s wing give me a light whap upside my head. “You git a’ good look there, Long? Ain’t polite ta stare up Princesses.”

I rubbed my head, “Hey, I wasn’t looking at her like that. Just thought her cutie mark looked interesting.”

“If I had a’ cap fer every time a’ stallion made that excuse ta me... I’d probably still be poorer n’ dirt. Alright, I’ll buy it, yer were just starin’ at one of the Protectorate royal family’s plot ‘cause yer were curious ‘bout her butt tattoo.”

I let out a long, withering sigh, “She’s not even my type.”

“Do ya even got a’ type, Long?”

Arcaidia was now also looking at me curiously, which only increased my discomfort at suddenly being put on the spot. How had the conversation suddenly turned this way?

“Okay so I don’t know what my ‘type’ is, but I still wasn’t looking at that Princess because of that. Seriously, you guys are getting way too interested in my nonexistent love life, especially when we’ve got things that are several magnitudes more important to worry about.”

“And we can all worry about them in comfort and with full bellies,” said Knobs, “I’ve got one of the apartments set up for us to use, and I’m planning on cooking some lunch. Let’s get everypony together and we can try to unwind a bit. I think we could all use it.”

She didn’t get any disagreement from us. I could feel the Memory Orb inside my saddlebags, waiting for me.

The apartment was rather cramped with all of us occupying it, even if it was one of the larger apartments on the seventeenth floor of the tower. It had two rooms, one a spacious living space connected to an open kitchen, and the other a sleeping area with twin beds. Between myself, Arcaidia, B.B, Knobs, Waunita, Braindead, Blasting Cap, and Crossfire occupying the space things were... cozy. Binge was still sleeping off her recovering injuries in Harshcare’s clinic, and there was no word yet from LIL-E, but otherwise the whole crew and then some were here.

The place was technically Knobs’, the kind of housing most Skull Guild ponies who didn’t own a spot outside the tower slept in. The one couch and few chairs in the living room were packed, with Knobs having taken Blasting Cap into the kitchen to get the filly to help her make some lunch from whatever they could scrounge from the cupboards. I hoped Knobs would make sure Blasting Cap didn’t snatch any more knives. I didn’t need to be worried about violent fillies looking for a little midnight stabbing of a Longwalk.

“I got business to take care of at the Drifter’s Guild,” said Crossfire, eyeing me as I sat on one of the twin beds, bouncing the onyx Memory Orb from my father between my hooves. “I’ll be back in an hour, buck, then we make with this plan of yours. Since you got all spear happy down in the basement the word is going to spread quickly that you’re here. We need to do this before any bounty hunters start setting up outside like Raiders clustering a juicy trade route.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, staring at the orb.

Crossfire narrowed her eyes at me, voice turning to a vibrant hiss, “Hey!”

I looked up at her, eyes gradually focusing on her as if I was just realizing she was there. Which wasn’t really the case, but my brain was a thousand miles away and I had only been paying half a mind to what the mare had been saying. “Huh?” I frowned, “Sorry, I heard you. Back in a hour. Bounty hunters galore. Fun times to be had by all.”

“Take this seriously, Mr. Hero. Your plan might just involve taking you down to the Bounty Guild and turning you in, but that’s not a short walk, and even with the threat of the Enforcers stepping in there are plenty dumb as bricks bounty hunters that’ll take a crack as us if they can. I don’t want to get my ass shot off, personally. So whatever’s got your head cloudier than usual, deal with it. I need you thinking, much as you can think, when we do this.”

She didn’t give me a chance to respond, just sharply turning around and slamming the door to the bedroom close with a sweep of her blue tail. I stared at the door, wondering if there was ever going to be a point in time where Crossfire wasn’t a cranky damned bitch. I took a deep breath, trying to push away the bad mood that tended to crop up where Crossfire was concerned. Knobs had odd taste in friends. I turned my attention back to my father’s Memory Orb.

My hesitation to view it was wrapped up entirely in the fact that I’d never known how to feel about the pony that sired me. He was such a non-entity in my life, yet his shadow had always blanketed it. First by marking me as blood of an outsider among my tribe, leaving me with just Trailblaze and my mother as the only ponies I’d truly connected to for most my life, until I met Arcaidia at any rate. Then when Odessa had begun to hunt us I’d only gotten more confused. Who was my father, really? What was he like? Was he as arrogant as Shattered Sky? Or maybe he was more like Odessa herself, seemingly reasonably but ultimately uncompromising? Or was he going to be something else, maybe worse? I supposed it was silly to think he could be that bad if mother had fallen for him. He had to have some good qualities... right?

I knew I was overthinking it, but I couldn’t help myself. This was the first time I’d be meeting this damn stallion who decided it was a great idea to leave his mate and only foal so he could keep playing army with a bunch of crazy alien fighting pegasi and griffins...

Why was my life this weird?

Well, the Memory Orb wasn’t getting any more watched by tapping at it with my hoof. I had to just swallow my worries and get this done. Before I could second guess myself further I pulled out the thin band of the Recollector from my saddleback and got it settled around my head. Then with a deep breath I held up the Memory Orb and plugged it in.

oooOOOooo

The body I was in felt rather too much like my own, save for the wings, which were flexing nervously. In fact everything about this stallion screamed nervousness, from his fast heart rate to his back and forth pacing, and the way he kept glancing at the mirror on the wall. The face I saw there was so much like my own it left me wanting to blink in astonishment, despite not being able to blink. He had my same coat color and his eyes were my own bright emerald. His face was a bit more weathered, his mane cut shorter than mine, yet he also had a neatly trimmed beard of blue. So that’s what I’d look like with facial scruff? Not bad.

My father was wearing a Odessa white uniform, and a lab coat over that. I saw the silver crossed lightning bolts, and four swords underneath that pined to the lapels of his uniform collar. His wings protruded from holes in his lap coat, twitching once more as he looked at the mirror. Abruptly he halted pacing and I felt his body go rigid for a second. His brow had a Recollector wrapped around it, with the black Memory Orb within.

“Right then,” he said, staring into the mirror, his voice a deeper twang than my own with a hefty accent that was very akin to B.B’s, “So... howdy, son? GAH! Nope, that’s a dumb way ta start this, Winter, ya dolt! This ain’t t’all how I wanted ta be startin’ this. Got not time. Supply Vertibuck’s leavin’ in twenty minutes an’ got ta git this message on there so Sunset’ll git it to you! She’s a solid mare. She’ll git this to you, I know it.”

He took a deep breath, and I could feel him trying to force the tension from his face as he smiled, albeit very awkwardly, “Names Winter Sun. Figure yer ma must’ve told ya that already, but might as well start this off proper. I’m yer pa, an’... an’ I’m sorry, son. Gotta git that out first. I’m sorry I ain’t been there fer ya none.”

He paused, I felt his jaw clenching. His heartbeat was still fast, and I could feel his mouth going dry, “That’s lame, ain’t it? Pretty much ‘bout as worthless a thing I could be sayin’ to ya, right? Wish I had somethin’ to justify it all to ya. I mean, somethin’ that wouldn’t sound like a whole pile o’ excuses...”

I watched as he seemed to take hold of himself, taking long, deep breaths, and looking back into the mirror with a face that changed from a stallion looking two steps from a nervous breakdown to the mask of conviction I’d seen on Odessa’s face when she’d tried to convince me to join her army.

“Longwalk, I know ya been through a lot. More n’ any young pony should haffta deal wit, but I’ve heard it all from Sunset that you’ve... you’ve done good. Survived the burnin’ o’ that settlement, Saddlesprings. Faced down one o’ Cocytus, an’ that ain’t no small thing. Ya yanked Sunset’s son out o’ that mess wit the Hellhound, along wit his squad. I know I can’t take no credit fer rasin’ ya, but that don’t mean I ain’t proud o’ what I’ve heard.”

He took a step closer to the mirror he was gazing into and I saw the lines at the edge of his eyes and the dark circles underneath. I suddenly realized just how tired his body felt, as if he hadn’t slept in days. There was a tremble in his body but I could feel him locking his knees to keep himself standing.

“There just ain’t time. Ain’t never been time. Not ta spend wit yer ma, nor ta even see the face o’ my son. Odessa, it’s a’ twisted thing ta be sure, but it’s mah family an’ my life’s work. Longwalk, Odessa is yer heritage. Our fight, it's bigger n’ the dirt and blood o’ the Wasteland. My life, all o’ it, every wakin’ heartbeat, has been fer makin’ sure when the fight from the stars come a’ callin’ we’ll be ready fer it. An’ its here. No more time fer preparations, no more time fer long term plans. Our enemies are makin’ their play an’... an’ all of Odessa’s weapons gotta be ready ta be used in the fight. I’m sorry, son. There’s a lot I gotta tell ya, but this ain’t the way ta do it. Some things I need ta say ta yer face.”

He let out a short, bitter laugh, “Both you an yer ma are gonna wanna kill me when the truth comes out, but I decided a long time ago I’d accept that an’ not hope fer forgivness. But... that’s fer when I git ya here an’ we rescue yer ma from Red Sector.”

His shoulders slumped a bit and he shook his head, “Damn bitch Borealis ain’t gonna git my mare fer long, I promise ya that, son. I’m workin’ a plan ta git Sand Storm an’ her kinfolk out o’ Heimdall Gazzo, an’ I’ll be needin’ the help o’ you an’ that crew o’ friends ya got.”

He pulled back and turned, and I saw that he was in, of all places, a bathroom. A neat, clean, shiny bathroom, but still a bathroom, complete with toilet stalls. I would have facehoofed if I could. Great, dad. Have an emotional message recording in the toilet. Why was he even in here? Couldn’t he do this in his quarters or something?

My father bent down and used his wing with incredible dexterity to pick up a folded map, which he rolled out and displayed to the mirror. It showed a large chunk of what I assumed was the continent of Equestria. I couldn’t make out much, but didn’t have to as my father began to point things out with his other wing.

“This here’s the Detrot area,” he pointed to a location between two mountain ranges along the northeast portion of the continent, “Yer a’ good two hundred or so miles from where I’m at, here.” His wingtip brushed a series of white locked planes near what appeared to be a series of plateaus surrounding what looked like a large lake. “Northern Research Facility, code named: Giant’s Cradle. We’re a’ underground facility, an’ gettin’ to us won’t be a’ picnic. Especially considerin’ I need ya here in sixteen days. That’s roundabout when the next supply Vertibuck is comin’ in ta roost an’ that’ll be our ticket ta gettin’ ya smuggled inta headquarters. Still figurin’ out the details, but I’m sure I’ll git it all sorted by the time ya git here. Now, thing is, walkin’ two hundred miles in sixteen days is a tall order, so if that don’t got a’ way to speed up here I got an alternative.”

His wing traced to west, past the mountain range on Detrot’s west side and to a desert area beyond that. “This here land is the Protectorate. Two major kingdoms o’ ponies that’re workin’ together fer mutual protection an’ the like. Applehyde and Neighlesisus. We Odessa folk got an’ outpost hidden there fer monitorin’ the locals, but not much else. However, there’s somethin’ useful there you can take advantage of ta git on up north easy. Ya see there’re these Ruins built by our ancient forbears, called the Elw. Some o’ these Ruins have what’re called Reflectors in ‘em. These devices transport matter from spot to spot, fast n’ safe like. Odessa cracked this tech a few months back an’ have been doin’ live tests to make sure it works. This here’s the coordinates fer one of the Ruins with a Reflector that don’t have an Odessa presence at it, so it’ll be safe fer ya to use, and the location is just ‘bout forty miles away. Giant’s Cradle is built on top o’ a Ruin with a Reflector, so you can teleport straight here. You could make a’ go fer one o’ the Ruins around Detrot, but the only one with a Reflector in that area is heavily guarded an’ can’t imagine you’d be able ta bust in without a’ serious fight on yer hooves.”

He underlined the numbers next to a circled spot within the Protectorate, “Just memorize these here numbers an’ plug ‘em inta yer Pip-Buck’s map.”

With a small sigh he set aside the map and looked back into the mirror, his expression turning awkward as he kept glancing away, then back as if trying to decide what to say. Finally he said, “Wish I had more fer ya, son. The rest’ll hafta wait ‘till me n’ you are face to face. Sixteen days, remember that. We’ll git yer ma safe an’ sound together, I promise ya. Then we’ll talk. But don’t want ya distracted wit any surprises so that’s it fer now-”

Suddenly there was a pounding on the door, making my father jump and his heart skip as a young sounding female voice shouted from outside the door.

“Dad! Hey! You in there!?”

I never wished more that I had my own body, just so I didn’t have the odd sensation of trying to drop my jaw open in surprise without being able to move an inch. My father for his part went utterly still and stared wide eyed at the mirror, sweat trickling down his brow. The voice from the other side of the bathroom door continued.

“If you’re in there dad just say so! I don’t get why stallions are so weird about talking on the can. Look, the spectrum analysis on the new samples are done and we need you in the main lab to go over the data. Dad... seriously did you fall in or something?”

With an audible gulp my father blinked, once, and said, “I heard ya, Longflight! Be out inna sec, just don’t let Gabriel touch the terminals ‘till I git out there!”

There was a light, tinkling laugh from the other side of the door, “Too late, he’s already plugging in his own theorems. Better hurry up before he has half the department jumping in six different directions, old stallion.”

“Ya talk respectful ter yer pa, girl, even when he’s in the little colts room, ya hear!?”

“Yeah, yeah. See you back in the lab.”

After a few moments of quiet my father’s breathing went from rapid gasping to something resembling a steady form as he looked apologetically at the mirror.

“So, uh… heheh... guess I’ll have some ‘splanin’ ta do. Later. Much later. Yup… takecaresonbye!”

I felt him reach up and pulled the Recollector off his head and then everything snapped away like it was on a bungee cord, throwing me headlong back towards my own body.

oooOOOooo

I came out of the Memory Orb with a jerk backwards. I couldn’t quite focus on anything. Even the Recollector on my head was forgotten for a moment as my brain pony went out for a coffee break and left me hanging with jumbled thoughts.

I’ve got a sister? How!? Well, I know how, but when!? Does mother know? She’d better, otherwise she’s going to kill father. A lot. Wait, maybe this isn’t what I think it is? Maybe she said ‘dad’ meaning to say something… else... okay that’s a stupid train of thought.

There certainly weren’t any other ways to interpret what I'd heard. It was pretty clear the voice I’d heard had called my father ‘Dad’. Did that mean father had cheated on mother with another mare!? Or had mother had a foal with Winter Sun before me? Or... twins? Adopted maybe? The possibilities threw me for a complete loop, dazed and barely able to get my head wrapped around everything else my father had said.

I had sixteen days to get to some Ruin in the Protectorate to use an ancient Elw device to teleport to my father’s research facility so we could try to rescue mother. I hoped it’d be enough time to deal with business in Skull City and get Arcaidia into the NCR. If we found a fast enough method of transport, perhaps it would be. I had no idea. Focusing was rather difficult. I kept hearing the sound of my sister’s voice. Longflight? That had been her name. Apparently my father wasn’t Mr. Originality when it came to naming his kids.

You’re right, father, you do have a lot of explaining to do when we meet face to face.

Rubbing my aching temple I pulled of the Recollector and placed it and the Memory Orb back into my saddlebags. Feeling an oncoming headache I got off the bed and exited the door into the living room. I was greeted by the smell of something warm and delicious. Everypony was chowing down on what appeared to be bowls of a thick, mealy substance that reminded me of stew.

Arcaidia was quick to wave me over to a chair. It seemed little fold out mini tables had been set up and one was already waiting for me with a bowl of the hot, yet unidentified food.

“Sit ren solva, the eating has commenced!” Arcaidia said with a welcoming smile.

“I made sure it's safe,” said Knobs, “Blasting Cap only tried to poison the bowl once.”

Why did Knobs sound proud of that? Blasting Cap was sitting on the ground next to Knobs with her forelegs cross and with a distinct pout on her lips as she muttered, “Woulda worked if the dumb pegasus hadn’t spotted me.”

B.B, sitting laid out on the floor near the door, eyed the filly sharply, “Yer lucky I don’t tan yer hide missy. Coulda let them Marshal gangers have ya, see how well they treat ya. Here’s a’ hint; them gallows o’ theirs ain’t fer show.”

“B.B, don’t try to scare her,” Knobs said.

“Why not? She ain’t no innocent little foal,” said B.B with a faint bristle, “Don’t fergit she was part o’ the group that was killin’ them refugees you were tryin’ ta save. Loaded the missiles that blew up more then a’ few poor folks.”

Knobs looked away, “I was there, you don’t need to remind me.”

“Little shivol bir already punished with no supper,” said Arcaidia, then eyed Blasting Cap with a dismissive glance, “She learn lessons or not. If not, Knobs deal with problem. Not concern of ours.”

I eyed my bowl of food, which guessing from the open cardboard box in the kitchen was something called ‘oatmeal’. It smelled pretty good, despite the lack of meat. I spared a brief look towards Blasting Cap, who was making a point of trying to look tough while her stomach gurgled. I would have given her my bowl if I hadn’t already known she wouldn’t want any charity from me. The glare she shot my way made that pretty clear.

Sighing, I took a bite of oatmeal. It was a little bland but hot and filling. I looked over to Arcaidia, asking, “How long was I out?”

“Not big time,” her silver eyes looked at me warmly, “How was seeing father for first time?”

It took me a second or two to work up an answer as I glanced away, “It was... interesting.”

I briefly explained the basics of what my father’s message contained, only leaving out the bit at the end about the mare who might have been my sister. I was still processing that and didn’t really see the need to bring it up with my friends, here. The important part was the sixteen days we had to get to this Giant’s Cradle research facility and the fact that our apparent fastest ticket there was a Ruin in the Protectorate.

“Should be plenty o’ time,” said B.B, “Protectorate would be only a day away if we use the Ursa, an’ I know the roads ta git there. Gettin’ across the border shouldn’t be too tricky. They ain’t closed up the way the NCR is.”

“Just how bad is the NCR border anyway?” I asked, “Hasn’t been a lot of chance to actually talk about how we’ll be getting in.”

Knobs chimed in on that one, “They don’t let ponies in who are intending to settle there, due to their food and water shortages. But they do let merchants in for trade, and you already showed you got a source of goods with that Stable or yours. All you’d need to do is pose as traders and you could get in on a business visa.”

Braindead suddenly spoke up, his voice jittery, “There’d be no way any of you would survive the crossing... the Bleach is too deadly for anypony to cross on foot, or even in some shiny autowagon. Even we Raiders aren’t crazyass enough to try living in those haunted sands. It’s suicide with one of those big Steamships.”

“Is it really that bad?” I asked.

Braindead shuddered as he stared at nothing, fidgeting on the couch next to Waunita, who eyed the Raider with a guarded expression. “Boss Bloodtrail, he had us raid along the edge of the Bleach, few years back. Small villages that spring up on the edge of the dunes, taking advantage of little watering holes. Easy pickings. Except...”

He trailed off, shaking his head back and forth, “We lost a pony or two each night. Not to villagers defending themselves, but to the... the things in the sands. I don’t know how the villages stayed safe, but it was like the creatures in the dunes just knew we weren’t supposed to be there. Remember seeing Gutspike the morning of our first day out there. He’d been dragged right out of camp, not a peep heard by anypony. He was skinned. Limbs all twisted wrong, like they’d been caught in a bunch of gears or something. You try to cross that place, you’re good as dead.”

“Mechanics Guild runs the Steamships across the Bleach,” explained B.B, “Ain’t heard o’ them havin’ much trouble. Big caravans do it too.”

Knobs nodded, “There are monsters in the desert, but they’ll avoid tangling with the Steamships, and a large enough caravan of ponies is usually pretty safe. Passage on a Steamship is expensive, but not unreasonable. It’d be your fastest way south. I can put out some feelers, ask a few questions, see when the next Steamship is sailing out of Port Needle.”

“How long does the trip usually take?” I asked, trying to work out the timing of it all in my head.

“One day to Port Needle. Then, I don’t know, maybe two days crossing the Bleach? I’ve never done the trip myself,” Knobs said, smiling sheepishly, “Rarely left Skull City, actually.”

“Sounds about right to me,” said Waunita, looking between us as she offered a shrug, “I read up on the trip, since I was planning on trying going south myself once I had the caps to get out of Skull City. Three days is a decent estimate. Price to get on a Steamship is around eight hundred caps a head. Less, if you bring some kind of skill to the crew, like being guards. Caravans will run you a similar deal, at half the price. Takes longer, but that’s the difference between brahmin pulling rusty old wagons as opposed to a giant mechanical monstrosity with sails and tank treads.”

“Is that what a Steamship is? Sounds pretty… awesome, actually,” I said, envisioning the metal behemoth in my giddy little mind’s eye. “Three days there, three days back... leaves ten days out of our window. If we spend five days exploring the NCR looking for Arcaidia’s sister that’d leave us five to get into the Protectorate and hit up these Ruins to go north... hot damn it almost sounds like a reasonable timeframe.”

“Don’t fergit we’ll need at least a’ day or two ta deal wit yer bounty here, an’ arrange a way to pay fer the trip south,” said B.B, “Figure take off two days fer dealin’ wit yer crazy bounty plan, then earnin’ some caps. Drifter’s Guild might be our best bet fer that. If yer serious ‘bout chekin’ them out, an’ odd job fer the Drifter’s Guild would line our pockets ‘bout enough for going south.”

“Sounds like you ponies have a plan then,” said Knobs happily, looking at me with a grin, “If there’s anything more I can do to help, just say so.”

I returned her smile, holding up a hoof, “You’ve already helped plenty. This all goes right, we’ll pay you back, and be out of the city by the day after next.”

“Do you have a plan for if it doesn’t go right?” asked Waunita, avian eyes looking at me frankly.

I couldn’t help but just shrug at her helplessly, “Not at all.”

The shower felt pretty damned good. It was one of those communal affairs with multiple shower heads sprouting from a tiled walls. I’d tossed my gear amid the benches and lockers outside the showers and was letting myself just stand under a near scalding hot rain of water that was washing away the past few days of blood and grime. It was helping, but no lie, my tension was still high.

Crossfire had arrived not long after lunch with Shard, the unicorn she’d been partnered with back in Saddlespring. We’d be going to enact my whole ‘turn myself in for my own bounty’ plan as soon as I was done with the shower. I’d insisted on getting this done first, not just to clean myself off, but also to clear my head.

It wasn’t easy, the clearing my head part. Since the last time I’d showered I’d killed a filly’s mother, gotten one of my companion’s shot, cost a mare her home and most of her life savings, fought a small horde of rampaging space monsters, and learned my father was a very awkward stallion who was in the habit of keeping secrets; including a sister I’d never met.

Oh, and I had sixteen days to take my potentially alien pony pal down to a country I’d never been before to find her sister, who might well be dead, and track down a crashed spaceship that hopefully had information in it that would keep me from dying in less than a month... then go all the way back north to another country I’d never been to in order to use a Ruin built by ancient ponies to teleport to my father’s secret military research facility in the north so I could then rescue my mother and tribe from the flying headquarters of a massive military organization that had been hunting me practically since day one of my journey.

Suffice to say I felt more than a little… pressure. Leaning my head against the wall, eyes closed, I let the hot water flow over me and tried not to feel like the weight of the world was crushing me.

Abruptly I felt a warm, bony body hug me from behind. There was a pleasant but sharp nibble on my ear followed by a purring voice.

“Naughty bucky, you didn’t wait for me before stepping into the shower.”

“... Hello Binge. I thought you were still resting?”

I caught a flash of her bouncy dark green mane as she went for my other ear, giving it a tug with her teeth. Her hooves held me tightly from behind, and I could feel the steady thump of her heart through my back.

“Feeling more bouncy than I have in a lot of sunups and sundowns. Oh yes yes yes, the blood is hot and pumping strong in my tight little veins, almost like I’ve gotten an injection of the best kind of drugs. Do I have you to thank for that, Longy?”

I tried to ignore the way she was getting a little too bitey with my ear and carefully reached back to push Binge off of me. Thankfully she didn’t resist and let go. I turned to see her bereft of barding, just her and her scarred body and gleaming madlight eyes looking at me as she stood smiling at me in that way that always left me wondering if she saw me as a friend or a morsel on a hook. I could see her recent gun wound, its scar tissue a brighter, fresher pink than the many other dull scars covering her body.

“Are you sure you’re feeling alright?” I asked, trying to hide my tension, “You should probably just stay in bed until doctor Harshcare says you can move around.”

Her grin widened and she rubbed a hoof on my head affectionately, “Surer than a bone saw through a helpless neck. I feel like I could dance through a field of razors and have energy for a tango with an albino radscorpion. And I know you had something to do with that. I can… feel it.”

“Uh… feel what?” I asked, nervous at the look she was giving me. I had nowhere to back up, however, the shower wall right behind me.

“Your blood, bucky. It's in me, and I can feel it like a hot current in a cold sea. I wonder what it does in there? Is it playing tea party with the rest of my insides? Maybe, but right now all I know is that it feels good, I feel good, and I just had to give you a little ‘thank you’.”

“Th-that’s okay, I’m good. I, uh, I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I said, wanting very much to change the subject, “I don’t know what happened with my blood back there, but Misty Glasses told me she had a theory she’d tell us the next time we end up at the Stable. I was, well, I was really worried about what it might be doing to you, because it looked like it hurt, and I was seriously scared you were going to die-”

She moved faster than I could have expected. In an instant I felt her lips pressed hard against mine and my whole body went frozen and hot all at once. Her mouth was shockingly warm and she gave me a single, playful flick with her tongue. I was too shocked to really respond, and she pulled away from me almost as fast as she’d come in.

I just stared at her, blinking rapidly as if I’d just been punched. Binge giggled.

“You’re a terrible kisser, you know that, bucky?”

Before I could respond she went to the shower next to mine and turned the knob, letting a warm spray of water start to soak her body. A cheerful tune started to hum from her lips as she seemed to bounce in place, letting the water run over her. Her eyes slid back towards me with a lidded look, a half grin on her face.

Finally recovering my wits I huffed out a sigh and turned back to my own shower, “I was trying to be serious, Binge. I was really worried about you.”

“I know. It’s adorable. You just don’t see it. You don’t have to be afraid of me dying, because I died a long time ago. If my body goes to sleep, that’ll just be the end of simple, silly story. It’ll hurt you if you let it, but if if you don’t let the hurt in, then it won’t ever make you sad.”

“Is that how you put up with it all those years?” I asked, looking at the drops of water falling off my mane and trying not to see Binge out of the corner of my eye. The way she swayed back and forth was entirely too… distracting. I knew she was lifting her tail and bouncing it around on purpose. Why did she enjoy teasing me so much anyway? She already knew I wasn’t interested. Mostly. At the moment.

“Put up with what, Longy?”

“Being… a Raider. Being neck deep in all that. I mean, you did a lot of bad stuff, right? Is that whole ‘being asleep’ talk how you rationalized it all?”

She was silent for a moment, causing me to look towards her more fully, and I saw that she was looking up straight into the showerhead, the water rolling off her face. She wasn’t even blinking, even with the water hot in her eyes.

“Bad? Oh, you mean all the playtime with the other ponies we had. Stabbing and stretching, skinning and biting, screaming and pleading... I taught myself to laugh through it all. Smile, smile, smile. You do it enough and it’ll stick. It had to, Longy. We all do it. You do too, bit by tiny itty bitty bit! I’ve seen you, putting little parts of yourself to sleep so it doesn’t hurt so much when the blood gets on you...”

I grimaced, taking a deep breath, “I’m not trying to avoid feeling anything, Binge. I hate some of what I’ve had to do, and yeah, it hurts. I’m not going to pretend like I’m above the Wasteland’s dirt and blood, but I’m not using that as an excuse to roll in it. You shouldn't either.”

She raised a hoof and rubbed it across her face, smiling wide, “I know what you’re trying to do, bucky. You want to clean me up, polish me off, and put me on your shelf and say ‘Look! I made a Raider shiny and new! It can be done!’. But you’re wrong, my beautiful, silly puppy. You can’t clean off what’s stained. That’s not how it works. I can play by your rules, and take your leash around my neck, but Binge, the clean happy filly, died with her brother a long time ago. Big Binge knows how to play in the blood and shit and keep laughing it off, and she likes your spark because it reminds her of home...”

Her voice dropped to a hoarse, twisted whisper that almost didn’t sound like Binge’s normally bubbly tone, “But you can’t clean me up. It's pointless to even try.”

I stared at her for a long time. Then, with a hard look on my face, I reached down to a shelf set up by my shower. It had a small rubber cup that an earth pony like myself could hold with my mouth. It kept the soap from getting into my mouth as I snatched up the small white bar with it. Soap in mouth I trotted over to Binge, who tensed up as I approached.

“What are you-” she began to ask but I cut her off as I grabbed her, turned her around, and began to soap her back.

“Shut up.” I said, bluntly, scrubbing her shoulders, then down her back.

“H-hey! I said I’d shower with you but I didn’t say I’d deal with anything crazy like soap! Buuucky! Stopp iiiit!”

“No,” I said, holding her down as she started to struggle. Her struggles were somewhat half hearted, I thought, as she didn’t resist much as I kept her still and kept lathering her coat with a soapy wave of suds. “I don’t know what I can do to make things better for you, but I’m not giving up on you either. So just let me clean some of the dirt off, okay? I know there’s a pony underneath all that muck, even if she wants to pretend like there isn’t.”

I grunted as I started to scrub her mane, feeling a bite of something sharp on my fetlock. I saw a line of blood trickle from an open cut and the glint of a blade tied into her mane. I kept scrubbing, and Binge looked back at me, her eyes oddly sad.

“I told you, Longwalk. Trying to clean me will hurt you even if I don’t want it to.”

I ignored the cut and kept cleaning her, my strokes getting more gentle, “In case you didn’t notice, I can take some punishment. Now just sit still, there’s a lot of grime to get through, here.”

“... You have no idea how much,” she said, but I felt her tension gradually leave her as she laid down and let me work, “But if you’re set on trying, there’s no stopping you. I’ve figured out that much about you, Longy.”

For the next ten minutes I scrubbed Binge from head to tail. I… tried to be very respectful and polite around the plot-end of her, and while Binge kept quiet I could see her smirk the entire time at my discomfort, but my resolve was stronger than my embarrassment and in short order I had a mostly clean Binge laying before me.

“Mmm, I think you missed a spot,” she said, flicking her wet tail at me.

“Binge, we’ve been over this. I’m not doing that with you. Managing to steal a kiss when my guard is down doesn’t count.”

“Heh, you’ll hold a filly down to clean her up, but not to get dirty with her? You’re so weird. But...” she approached me, and gave me a quick peck on my cheek, a far more chaste gesture than her earlier ‘thank you’. “It's sweet of you. It's a rare kind of crazy. And-”

For a moment her coy, playful demeanour changed, turning into something else entirely. Her eyes went dull, as if they were a reflection of the gray bleakness of the Wasteland, yet there was a hint of warmth in there like the smallest of campfires set against the dark. Her smile was wane, a small flicker of a thing, and filled with a deep set sadness that tore at me, yet that one smile was a thousand times more real than all of her manic grins I’d seen up until that point.

“-thanks for thinking I’m worth trying to save. Even if you can’t, I know you’ll keep trying. I think that’s why I chose to follow you, and why I’ll keep doing it, until it kills me.”

With that her mask of cheer and crazed giggling was back, “Now I’m hungry! I think I’ll go find the birdy and bug her to cook me something tasty! Don’t worry, I’ll tell her about all the naughty things we did in the shower, heheh!”

She skipped off, tail bouncing about seductively, and leaving me a very confused little pony. I blinked blearily after her and put a hoof to run through my mane.

“One day I’m gonna make sense of you, Binge...”

“Do the ropes really have to be this tight?” I asked, craning my neck to try and look at Crossfire despite my rather awkward angle laying slung across her back like a sack of grain. My legs were tied pretty thoroughly in what Crossfire described as a ‘hogtie’. It was far from comfortable. I was wearing my security barding, but not my saddlebags or the red coat B.B had given me. The coat had gotten a bit torn up in the fight earlier so B.B had taken it so it could be repaired later. I was leaving my saddlebags behind, along with Gramzanber, though it’d been a tough choice with the ARM. I didn’t know if I’d end up needing the spear or not, but since the plan was to turn me in I didn’t want to risk anypony taking the ARM. At least by leaving it here I knew I could trust Knobs to keep an eye on it. I still felt bad about it. Not because of the danger of leaving behind the ARM, but because I knew Gramzanber wasn’t just a weapon anymore. It had a mind of its own, and it wanted to help me.

Before I’d left the apartment I’d put a hoof on the silver surface of the ARM and whispered an apology to it, explaining that it was too risky to bring along. I wasn’t sure if Gramzanber heard or understood me, but I hoped it had.

“Shut it, this needs to look real, right?” grunted Crossfire as she checked the slide on her bolt-action rifle before sliding the strap around her neck to let the weapon hang snugly along her side, the barrel brushing near my head.

“If it makes you feel better those are nylon ropes so they shouldn’t chaff,” said Shard. The unicorn stallion’s face was obscured by the same black scarf I’d seen him wearing in Saddlespring, and his similar black vest was lined with small throwing knives. I couldn’t quite see if he was grinning or not, but there was a light in his eyes that suggested he found this all far too amusing. “Really you’re in a lot better shape than most ponies who’ve ended up in that position.”

“... That’s reassuring,” I said dryly.

We were standing in a side hallway that led to a maintenance entrance to the bottom floor of the central building within the Skull Guild’s headquarters. There were a lot of small exits like this along the exterior of the building and this one in particular led to a road the Skull Guild used to move cargo down to the shore of the lake on the Inner City’s east side. The large river I’d seen while traveling to Skull City fed into that lake, and had another branch that flowed north then west. We wouldn’t be following the road to the lake but instead going across the road and into the alleyways between the buildings directly north of the Skull Guild, which I was told were part of some sort of ‘red light’ district. I didn’t know what that meant, but apparently we’d be cutting through there to make our way to the west side of the Inner City where the Bounty Guild’s headquarters was located.

“Just keep your mouth shut and try to look unconscious,” spat Crossfire, “You’re lucky you already look beat up enough that I don’t have to rough you up more to make this look real.”

“I’ll do my best impression of a limp body. I’ve had lots of practice with the real thing, so this shouldn’t be difficult for me,” I said as I relaxed myself.

“Stop lolling your tongue! That looks ridiculous.”

I tucked my tongue back into my mouth, “I thought it was a nice touch.”

I heard Crossfire growl, even feeling a bit of the vibration through her back. “I have no idea how you’ve survived this long.”

“Friends, mostly,” I replied, “There might also be some mixture of skill and luck at play, and possibly help from the Ancestor spirits.”

“Going to go with dumb luck with an emphasis on the ‘dumb’, now pipe down and get back to being limp, we’re moving out,” said Crossfire, and she made for the door, but was stopped by the sound of clacking hoof beats behind us.

“Hold up there,” said B.B as she trotted towards us. Arcaidia and Binge trotted alongside the pegasus, while trailing behind the trio I could see, of all ponies, Braindead. He was walking with his shoulders hunched and his eyes nervously darting around, as if he was ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. What was he doing here? In fact, what were they all doing here? Wasn’t the plan for them to wait until I sent the signal? Arcaidia had already put her tracking spell on me, which had felt slightly odd, like having my fur buzzed briefly by an electric current. The spell had left a small, frost blue mark on my shoulder in the same geometric patterns as the Crests for her Veruni sorcery, which was currently hidden by my armor.

Crossfire eyed my approaching friends with narrowed eyes like slivers of gold. "What are you lot doing here? The plan is for you to wait until Mr. Hero here is 'safe' in custody at the Bounty Guild."

"Well, thing is, hun," said B.B as she idly adjusted one of her revolver bracers, "Me an' Arc talked it over, an' came ta this notion that we ain't got no reason to stay behind. Better we shadow ya'll an' be nice n' close fer when we gotta git our rescue pants on."

"That is correct," said Arcaidia firmly, shooting a challenging look at Crossfire as if daring the other mare to argue, "Best to be close in case of much troubles happening, or plan going to the toasters. This ren solva's plan, so high chance of that being the happens."

Shard glanced over the group with a skeptical furrow of his brow, "Not to rain on anypony's parade but can the lot of you actually shadow us without getting spotted? Thought the whole plan here revolved around this looking like boss Crossfire is turning in your friend for real."

B.B gave the unicorn stallion a knowing smile, "Not ta worry there, I ain't shabby at keepin' a low profile. Arc can follow my lead, an' I know from uncomfortable personal experience that Binge can go ghost fastern' a' squirrely radroach." She then eyed Braindead with a slight frown, "Ain't so sure 'bout this here fella, though."

"Yeah, uh, Braindead, what's up?" I asked the nervous looking Raider, "I get why my friends might want to do this, but why are you here?"

He flinched as if my words were physical blows, which left me feeling more than a little confused. I knew little about this stallion other than our very brief and violent past together and the fact that, against seemingly all evidence suggesting such was rarer than a well of clean water, Braindead wanted to be a better pony. And if I was being honest with myself I wondered just how much we could trust that, but I wasn't about to backpedal on giving him the benefit of the doubt. Still, the guy looked... scared as hell. He couldn't even look straight at me as he spoke.

"Want to help. Or just be away from... from the tower. I... look I still have thoughts in my head constantly about... things. Fuck. I don't know how to make words that make sense of it all but I still keep thinking about all the bad shit I can do. I need to be away for a bit. Away from Waunita. Don't want to hurt her, right? You need quiet? I can be quiet, just like Binge. Not as good as her, she was always Bloodtrail's favorite sneak, but I'm a, was, a, Raider. I know how to sneak around. So let me help, okay? It's better than being cooped up inside with my thoughts and Waunita. Also that foal is driving me nuts. Smells too much like home, you know?"

I didn't, really, but I thought I had a small grasp of his reasoning. If he was having that much trouble with whatever was going on in his head it might be better to have something to do. Still, I had to make things clear.

"This is going to be dangerous," I said, "I don't mind you coming, but pay attention to what my friends say. Follow their lead. And, uh, try to not get killed, okay?"

Braindead gave me a strange look, as if I'd just said something in a foreign language. Maybe he wasn't used to ponies showing concern for him? Regardless, he nodded his understanding and Crossfire let out a huge sigh.

"Don't like last minute changes to plans. Never a good sign, but whatever, you idiots will do whatever you want no matter what I say, so let's just get this over with. Wait five minutes after me and Shard leave, then follow. Don't do a damned thing unless we get ourselves into serious shit. I mean it, even if other bounty hunters show up and a fight breaks out, hold off getting involved unless it looks like me and Shard can't deal with it."

With that, we got moving. I let myself relax on Crossfire's back and kept my eyes mostly closed as she trotted out into the daylight of what I estimated to be late afternoon. The road to the docks by the lake were actually busy with a number of ghoul pulled carts and a few autowagons, including one or two large ones with huge flatbed trailers loaded with crates. A few gray clad guards let us out a side gate in the Skull Guild's fence line and then we were out into the open streets of the Inner City.

Crossfire set a brisk pace, Shard following behind us and a little to the left, his eyes keenly darting about. For my part I did my best to look unconscious while also trying to get a decent view of the city through slitted eyes. I hadn't been able to really take much of anything in the night before during my mad drive to get to the Skull Guild tower, so I now took the chance to really absorb the size and scope of the Inner City.

It contrasted sharply with the Outskirts in almost every fashion. The streets were clean and well maintained. Buildings still had the dull grim of age, but none of the husk like quality I'd seen in buildings out in the Wasteland. Shockingly there were actual plants here and there, though still stunted and faded yellow or a very pale and drained green. There was a feeling of life around the streets as ponies, ghouls, griffins, and other creatures I was less familiar with walked the sidewalks or crossed the streets on their daily business. Carts and the rare working, jury rigged autowagon rolled along the main streets, and while the city had a lively feel to it there was also a tension that was hard to miss. Ponies moved quickly and didn't linger long on the street. I noticed more than a few passing pairs of ponies in matte black armor, carrying rifles or shotguns on battle saddles.

Were these the Enforcers I'd heard Crossfire mention? Probably. They didn't seem to do much other than patrol the streets and cause a few wary looks among the locals.

It wasn't long before I noticed Crossfire taking us northward through several tight alleyways that were strewn with a bit more trash than the main streets. As if we were passing through some kind of misty barrier we emerged onto new streets that had a distinctly different feel than the ones we'd just been on. Here ponies walked with greater ease, and I saw more and more congregations hanging outside building fronts with glowing neon sings, some depicting mugs or glasses of amber liquid, or the shapely forms of ponies both male and female.

The signs weren't the only visible temptation. I quickly took note that more than a few mares and stallions in various stages of suggestive dress walking the streets or hanging from open windows on several buildings.

"Close your damn eyes," hissed Crossfire, "Try to remember you’re unconscious. You live through today you can feel free to come ogle the Entertainment Guild's workers all you want, but for now stop gawking before I knock you out cold for real."

I stiffened and hung my head, closing my eyes and whispering, "Sorry."

I had been staring, so I wasn't too stung by Crossfire's reprimand. But I couldn't help but be curious. Was this entire area owned by this Entertainment Guild? I could guess at what some of the offered 'entertainment' was but I did wonder if they had anything else besides the obvious? Maybe B.B could set up a magic show here? While I kept my eyes mostly closed I will admit I snuck a few peeks as Crossfire and Shard trotted through the Entertainment Guild's district.

I didn't see my friends anywhere, so hopefully that meant they were doing a good job keeping hidden as they followed us. I did note a few spots of interest here and there that I made mental notes to ask about later. One was a flashy looking two story building covered in flashing neon lights, with a sign that read 'Seamy's Gaming Stable: Classic arcades refurbished from the Wasteland, all mostly working (no refunds)'. I didn't know what an 'arcade' was supposed to be but my curiosity was piqued.

The other building that stood out to me was the only one in this district that was akin to the skyscraper towers of the Skull Guild's headquarters, although this one was only half the size. Despite its smaller size this tower screamed for attention, practically grabbing the eyes and making it impossible to not look its way. Dozens upon dozens of red flame torches burned from windowsills and cast the tower in a bloody glow that mixed with the neon pink electric signs that flashed across the tower's walls. These signs depicted garishly blunt carnal scenes that left my face burning as red as the torches lighting up the place. The front doors were filled with a constant stream of traffic as people of all races bustled in and out of the tower, many of them staggering drunk or looking oddly dazed and happy. A heart shaped sign above the front doors burned red with crimson fire, and there was a scent in the air that was enticing and cinnamon-like wafting from it.

"Old place is certainly jumping today, ain't it?" commened Shard dryly. I couldn't see the unicorn's face but I heard a note of bitterness in his tone.

"Lots of folk trying to forget there's a Raider army practically in the front yard," said Crossfire with matter of fact steadiness, "Bet Madame Red is making a killing off of all the tension that ponies need relieving. Relax, Shard, we're just passing by, and they don't care about you anymore."

"I wouldn't be so sure," said Shard, "I didn't leave here the most popular of stallions, and last I checked the Madame didn't have a lot of reasons to like you much, either."

"We're Drifter's Guild now, Shard. Madame Bitch can't do shit to us without provocation. Just stay frosty, we're almost through. Now where was that old tram tunnel? I know it was just east of the Pleasure Tower..."

"This way, boss," Shard said, trotting up past Crossfire and myself to take the lead.

"Tram tunnel?" I found myself asking in a light whisper. I felt Crossfire's tail swing around and flick at me.

"Quiet," she said, then after a second answered me anyway, "We're taking an old tunnel used by Detrot's subway system. Got converted into cheap housing for a lot of Madame Red's street workers. It actually runs straight out to the east side near Gunner's Heaven, which is a short walk to the Bounty Guild. It should keep us out of sight of any roving bounty hunters."

Made sense to me. I went back to playing dead and let the pair of unicorns trot along. I hoped my friends wouldn't have any trouble following us down the tunnel. It didn't take very long at all for Shard to find the tunnel in question, which was marked by a set of wide stairs beneath a archway with faded paint and letters I couldn't make out. The stairs led straight down into an underground area with tiled floors and walls, but surprisingly bright lighting. The light fixtures did look somewhat jury rigged, but were clean and not sparking, coating the entire underground tunnel in a stark white glow that was easy on the eyes.

Unlike above where ponies and other beings put themselves on display to the pleasure and attraction of the passing customers, down in these tunnels the ponies were more normally clothed, or if unclothed weren't trying to attract anything. Instead I saw mares and stallions alike, along with griffins and a few ghouls, moving around surprisingly well maintained camps that were set up along the sides of the tram tunnel tracks. Bright cloth created dividers between homes, and the area suddenly took on an aura of warm family living that I hadn't felt since Saddlesprings. Most ponies were sitting around patched up furniture while conversing or sharing meals, and there was a buzz from both the conversation and the half dozen or so working radios ponies had set up to listen to. Here, I saw that foals ran around playing between the legs of adults and unlike the Outskirts there was no sign of squalor or starvation. Yes there was some wear and tear on the walls, and a few ponies eyed us suspiciously as we walked by, but overall the atmosphere was rather relaxed.

It left me smiling for a second before a terrible thought crept into my mind and I whispered, "Crossfire, there's a lot of folk down here. What if bounty hunters do track us down these tunnels?"

She was silent, and I craned my neck to look at her face. It was set in a cold mask until she glared at me and said, "Will you quit breaking cover already? If a bounty hunter does see us you won't be helping things by looking concious! Just let me and Shard deal with whatever comes up, you understand?"

Shard was quick to add, “If we’re going to be attacked, it’d be further down the tunnel. Most the Entertainment Guild’s workers pack heat, and picking a fight in their home?” The mask obscured his lips but I could see the somewhat nasty smile in his eyes, “Yeah, you don’t wanna know what they’d do to anypony that started a fight in their home. Lots of places to bury bodies down here... or parts of bodies.”

Before we’d trotted far down the long tunnel of makeshift tents and cloth divider homes we were approached by a mare flanked by a pair of the stallions. The mare was tall and lanky, and while I could only see her through my mostly closed eyes as I slumped on Crossfire’s back I could tell this mare had a shapely, sharp angled face. Her coat was alabaster white, and her mane was long, cropped around a short unicorn horn and colored something close to black but with just a slight sheen of blue. The stallions by her side were wearing smooth, well kept black leather barding and carried pistols slung on shoulder holsters.

“Shard, my dear boy, haven’t seen you back home in months,” said the mare with a tone that was somehow both warmly welcoming while also carrying a keen hint of steel. Her eyes reflected this as, without seeming to care about Shard’s obvious discomfort, she went up to him and wrapped the other unicorn in a tight hug. The mare’s eyes then sharply focused on Crossfire.

“I do trust you’ve been taking good care of him, Crossfire?”

“She’s been doing fine, Electrum,” said Shard, “And I can take care of myself.”

“Of course you can,” Electrum said with that faintly sarcastic lilt that reminded me a bit of Trailblaze. In fact the way this mare looked at Shard was giving me serious deja vu and I got the impression these two had a relationship very much akin to what me and Trailblaze had.

“We’re just passing through,” said Crossfire tersely, “Much appreciate it if you didn’t snag Shard for any kind of family reunion. We’ve got a tight schedule to follow.”

“Oh, I can imagine,” said Electrum, and her eyes fell on me. I went dead still and tried my best to appear as listless and limp as possible. “Handsome one you’ve bagged, through a bit young I would think, for a mare your age, Crossfire.”

“Cute. He’s a bounty. We’re just taking him through here to bypass the main streets. He’s a hot item and I don’t want him being poached by any of the Bounty Guild’s more zealous and stupid members.”

“I see. Well I certainly have no cause to stop you, so feel free to trot along your way. That said, I must warn you that the tunnels beyond the edge of our little community aren’t as safe as they used to be.” Electrum paused, and I chanced a glance to see a shadow crossing her elegant features as she eyed both Crossfire and Shard. For his part Shard had a sour look in his eyes.

“Is everypony safe? What’s been going on?” Shard asked, the worry like a murky undercurrent in his voice.

“Monster attacks have increased over the past week or so,” said Electrum, “Not just the usual Gobs or Balloons. There have been stranger creatures coming out of the lower tunnels. Our perimeter has held and Madame Red has certainly provided us with heavier weapons to defend ourselves, but we have... lost a few ponies. We’re safe enough for now, but if you’re going to follow the tunnel all the way to the east side of town, then I just want you to be careful, okay?”

“I will, Electrum. And I’m sorry. Wish I could stay longer, but, well, you know...” said Shard, trailing off. Electrum nodding with a sad smile.

“Yes, I know. Madame Red doesn’t carry as large a grudge as you think, but I suppose it’s best to stay on the safe side. Do consider dropping by sometime when you’re not so busy, Shard. You still have friends here that wouldn’t mind catching up.”

To that Shard just nodded, and then glanced to Crossfire who adjusted my weight on her back and said, “Okay, great, thanks for the chat Electrum, and the warning. We’ll be careful. One last thing. We’ve got... backup following behind us. White pegasus mare, with a blue unicorn, and some idiot green earth pony mare and black stallion. Just pass them on by too, alright?”

“Backup? You? My my my, Crossfire are you actually growing up and accepting help these days?” Electrum teased.

“Cram it. Just let them by without trouble. They’re following in case any bounty hunters do get frisky with us, and I don’t want them delayed,” said Crossfire with a hard look, “C’mon Shard, let’s go.”

We moved on, crossing over a small bridge of sheet metal to the other side of the tracks as the way ahead got more crowded with a fully built interior building that looked like one large restaurant and tavern. Beyond that was an actual tram, its surface tinged a bit with rust but otherwise remarkably intact. It had five cars, all strung along one after another, and its sides had been modified to be open store stalls where numerous goods were being hawked.

Beyond the tram car was an open area with little to no ponies until we got to a clear barricade. Steel beams and sheet metal were built up and welded together along with sandbags, crates, and metal barrels to form a solid defensive wall. Here around ten or so ponies in similar black leather barding to the guards that’d been with Electrum stood ready and alert, though a few sat and played cards or ate. They were all armed with a combination of shotguns or rifles, but I noticed one pony who carried some kind of hose and nozzle device with a pair of tanks strapped to her back, and another was loaded up with a pair of heavy machine guns on his flanks. At least one missile launcher tube was propped up against the wall for ready use, and I saw one crate had a number of grenades in it. These ponies were armed and ready to repel just about anything, and it made the dark tunnel that loomed beyond the barricade seem all the more ominous.

Then again, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of monsters might be lurking beyond that darkness, as I’d just fought a bunch of them back at the Skull Guild. Not that the foreknowledge left me feeling much better. Gramzanber was back at the Skull Guild as well, so if a fight broke out I was a lot less equipped to deal with it. I tried to convince myself leaving the ARM behind was the smarter move, but it was hard to feel that when staring at a dark tunnel while unarmed and tied up.

At least I knew Crossfire and Shard weren’t pushovers, and that my friends would be following us.

We were let by the barricade without much difficulty. It seemed the ponies were far more concerned with keeping things out than with keeping ponies in, and some of the guards seemed to know Shard and Crossfire. Few pleasantries were exchanged, a portion of the barricade was hauled aside, and we were sent on our way. It was all too soon before the light and warmth of the community we’d just left behind was banished by the quiet, cold, and encroaching dark that pushed in all around us.

Shard and Crossfire both lit up their horns, washing our surroundings with an oily mix of red and yellow light. Within a minute the only noise was the dull, echoing hoof steps we made as we passed down the slowly curving dusty tram tunnel.

“Hey,” I said, my thoughts turning towards the possibilities of danger, “I know I got to be tied up for the ruse to work and all, but while we’re in these potentially monster infested tunnels maybe you could untie me? You can wrap me back up once we’re out of the tunnel, but down here I can at least lend my hoof if we’re attacked.”

Crossfire snorted, but after a second said, “Fine, makes no difference to me, and it’ll be easier to fight without your heavy ass on my back.”

We stopped long enough for her to undo my bindings. I rubbed at my hooves and looked around for anything I could use as a makeshift weapon. Seeing nothing suitable I sighed and resigned to rely on my hooves if it came to a fight, starting to regret leaving Gramzanber behind. Shard offered me one of his many throwing knives, but I shook my head.

“Used to something with reach and heft. Thanks, though.”

“Suit yourself,” the unicorn replied, tucking the small dagger back into one of the many sheaths he had strapped around his barding.

“Why do you use those, anyway?” I asked, “I mean, to each their own, but seems like a weird choice of weapon for a place where ponies have machine guns.”

“Heh, says the stallion who fights with a giant metal stick.”

I found myself chuckling, “Yeah, well, spent most my life only using pointy sticks, so call it a matter of familiarity. Also my shiny metal stick has some pretty neat perks attached to it.”

“I bet. But, yeah, familiarity. That’s why I use the knives, to answer your question. Never could shoot a gun straight to save my life, but I learned knives since I was a little tyke. Besides, never have to reload,” Shard said as he danced a few throwing knives around with his magic, returning them to their sheaths with smooth ease after they’d floated through a few complex maneuvers. I had to admit he certainly seemed to know how to handle them.

Crossfire glared back at us both. Her rifle was unslung and floating by her side, “Keep it down. You’ll give away our position to anything listening down here.”

The sharp reminder of where we were got the quiet she wanted and Crossfire continued to lead the way down the shadow choked tunnel. I noticed more than a few rusted doors along the side of the walls, perhaps for maintenance? The signs were far too faded for me to make them out. We reached a spot where the walls opened up into a set of side platforms like the ones where the Entertaining Guild workers had set up their homes, only here the area was dusty, dark, and partially filled with a wall of broken rubble from where something above had collapsed down into the tunnel. It blocked half the tram track, forcing us to climb up onto the other, clear platform to keep moving forward.

Pillars holding up the ceiling cast long shadows from the unicorns’ lights and I found myself growing tenser as we troted forward, our hooves making louder clicking echoes on the grimey tiled floor. I was getting bad flashbacks to exploring Stable 104, and found myself glancing up for any ventilation shafts. Every little noise started to make me swing my head about, though more often than not it was just an echo from our own steps. Damn it, this area looked way too good for an ambush. Too many spots to hide.

I could tell Shard and Crossfire were feeling the oppressive and skittish atmosphere as well. Shard had drawn some of his knives again, only instead of playing around with them he had the weapons poised around his body and the blades turned with his head as he looked with searching eyes at every twisting shadow we passed. Crossfire didn't swing her rifle around, but her eyes did dart back and forth, her tail giving an occasional flick as we cantered forward.

The platform went on for a few more dozen paces until the rubble cleared up enough to allow us access once again to the tram tunnel. We were peering down to get ready to jump from the platform back into the tunnel when a creak of rusty hinges that sounded as loud as a gunshot made us all spin around.

A small, skittering shape paused briefly in the light of the unicorn's magic, its antenna waving in the air. A radroach, small and very uninterested in us. Its red dot appeared on my E.F.S, its signature apparently so weak it hadn't even showed up until just that instant. The dot was red, but the radroach made no move other than to extend its wings and flutter away. The door it'd come out of hung open, a sign above indicating it was a restroom.

Crossfire let out a small grunt and Shard sighed, "Damn bugs."

The real gunshot was ten times louder than the door opening had been and it was only because Shard had lowered his head in relief when he'd sighed that the bullet went over his head instead of through it. Part of a concrete pillar behind him blasted apart, and more gunshots deafened us as we all scrambled for cover. Abruptly my E.F.S was lit up with dots, both in front of us down the tunnel and behind us clambering up the platform. I couldn't quite count but I guessed five or six behind and twice that ahead of us.

I ended up sprawled behind a pillar, and glanced over to see Shard taking cover behind the pillar just ahead of me, his face wincing as a bit of blood trickled down his blonde brow. I wasn't certain but I thought maybe some concrete chips had cut him from the near miss.

Crossfire had jumped for the restroom and had taken cover in the doorway. Her rifle floated around and fired back at our attackers, it's loud retort making me flinch.

"Whoooweee!" shouted a voice from the group behind us, "I think that's Crossfire taking pot shots at us. Hi there, we catch you at a bad time?"

"Never a bad time to waste some scrubs," shouted Crossfire, "Who's the dead pony I got the displeasure of talking to?"

I waved my hoof to get her attention and when her eyes flicked to me I pointed down the tunnel ahead of us where the larger group of red dots were and made a gesture at my Pip-Buck then at my eyes, then rapidly tapped the ground about a dozen times while making a mean, angry face. Crossfire actually smiled and gave me a nod, indicating she understood.

Meanwhile the pony who'd spoken before, a stallion whose voice was now getting familiar, replied, "I do believe this is our first time meeting face to face. I'm Double, of the Bounty Guild as you no doubt have guessed. The fine mares and stallions with me are part of the Wild Bunch. We'd much appreciate it if you turned over a certain colt to our hooves without any more fuss, Miss Crossfire. If you do my associates and I won't give you any trouble."

Crossfire spat, "Yeah, sure. You just tried to bushwhack us and would've killed us without a care if you'd gotten lucky. Not that I'm complaining, this is a fair ambush. What, you use the sewers or side tunnels to come out and box us in like this? How'd you guess we were coming this way?"

At first I wondered why Crossfire was talking instead of shooting, since that seemed more her usual way of doing things, until I realized she was likely trying to buy time for B.B, Arcaidia, Binge, and Braindead to catch up with us to help even the odds. I looked around, hoping to spot better cover. Shard had another pillar between him and the tunnel ahead but I was exposed if anypony from that larger group came closer. I saw an old trash bin nearby and reached out a leg to start pulling it closer. A gunshot rang out and hit the can, tipping it over and away from me.

"Might be we used the sewers and side tunnels to get here, yes indeed," said Double with a smug tone oozing from him, "As for knowing you came this way, well, I don't mind telling you we got a hot tip from a reliable source. Once we heard you planned on jumping this bounty, well, the whole Wild Bunch wanted to come show you how much we appreciate Drifter Guild trash muscling in on Bounty Guild business!"

"Right, because the Wild Bunch are just the epitome of the Bounty Guild's hunters," drawled Crossfire sarcastically, "Everypony knows you're a bunch of the most useless two bit gutter thugs the Bounty Guild would deign to let into their ranks and you can only get anything done with numbers! You asses are a laughing stock, and I don't mind putting any of you six feet under! Bring it!"

"Oh my, it seems negotiations have broken down. Kill them. Just remember we want to colt alive," Double said, and I heard hoof steps on the platform's tiles as red dots began to move both ahead and behind.

Seeing no choice I waited until Crossfire let loose with her rifle again before scrambling to my hooves and galloping for the restroom. Gunfire filled the old tram platform but the bounty hunters were trying to aim for my legs to capture me, which threw off their aim considerably. Tiles erupted around my legs, and I could feel one bullet graze me, but a combination of my armor and my momentum kept me going until I crashed past Crossfire into the cover of the restroom. I'd caught sight of Shard flinging a few of his knives down the platform and heard at least one mare's scream indicating Shard had caught a bounty hunter, but that was all I saw before I was in the restroom.

Crossfire glanced back at me while still firing her rifle, her crimson magic working the bolt with blinding fast fluidity, "If you can't fight just hide and stay out of the way!"

"Hold on,"I said, eyes rapidly flicking about the restroom, "I'll find something to use."

There wasn't a whole lot in here. Most the toilet stall doors were so old and rusted they looked like they'd fall apart if I picked them up let alone stop a bullet or bash a head. The toilets themselves were mostly broken bits of porcelain, and what little looked solid enough to use was so covered in unmentionable muck that even I wasn't desperate enough to consider putting my mouth on it.

Then I noticed a few things in rapid succession. There was a old yellow tub on wheels which also had the long yellow shaft of a mop. The mirror above the sink had been broken long ago and several large shards of mirror glass littered the floor. A tiny maintainance cabinet nearby was left hanging open, and inside I saw a roll of gray duct tape. Ideas formed and in my usual Longwalk fashion I didn't really waste time thinking too hard about the plan that sparked in my head. I rushed to grab the duct tape, the most appropriately sized and shape mirror shard I could find, and the mop.

"What in the Goddesses asscheeks are you doing!?" shouted Crossfire as she leaned out just far enough to aim and fire, the retort answered by a death gurgle from one of the bounty hunters. She yanked her head back as gunfire ripped at the doorframe, splinters of tile pecking at her cheeks.

"Making a spear!" I said as I unscrewed the mop head and began to thoroughly tape the glass shard to the mop's shaft. Knowing the makeshift weapon I was crafting wasn't going to be all that balanced or hold up to more than one or two strikes anyway I didn't waste too much duct tape; just enough to make sure the glass shard will hang there long enough and stay solid for one good throw or thrust.

It only took fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, but that was more than enough time for the cluster of red dots that had been up the tunnel to reach the platform and I could see outside the restroom door as shadowy pony shapes began to climb up onto the platform not more than thirty feet from us.

"Crossfire!"I shouted in warning and the mare immediately moved so that she was taking cover behind the wall before gunfire flashed and exploded from our new foes, forcing me to scramble as well to avoid the hail that started to tear up the restroom.

Remembering I still had some grenades left I searched my saddlebags while setting my newly made makeshift spear next to me. I'd used up all the flashbangs on Double and Trouble the day before (which made me wonder where Trouble was at, she really didn't like me much) but I still had a number of smoke and tear gas grenades. Selecting one of the tear gas ones, marked by its purple color band around the grenade's apple shape, I yanked the stem with my mouth and guestimating the angle I tossed it into the air and then gave the grenade a swift kick, sending it sailing out the door.

Crossfire saw this and waited patiently until there was a soft popping noise followed by the sudden coughing and swearing of many ponies. Then she whipped her rifle around and with a savage snarl began to fire into the white gas cloud that had formed. I winced in regret at the sound of several pony's crying out in agony as Crossfire's rounds hit home, but there was nothing I could do but hope that the other bounty hunters might decide to give up.

No such luck, though, as a fusillade of return fire answered us and forced Crossfire and me back into cover.

“Not to alarm anypony, but this is starting to look a bit bleak,” I said, scrambling back further into one of the toilet stalls as gunfire ripped up the restroom floor in front of me, spraying me with dirt and dust.

“You got any grenades that actually, you know, explode!?” asked Crossfire as she changed clips on her rifle, slapping one into the weapon that had a familiar red band on it. She’d just loaded some of those explosive flechette rounds she’d used back in Saddlespring.

“No, I’m the nice pony around here, remember?”

“Right, you mean you’re an idiot. I remember that just fine. Whatever, just toss another of those gas grenades. Shard! You still alive out there!?”

“Mostly,” came the hoarse reply, shouted over the sound of gunfire while I got out another gas grenade and Crossfire opened fire on the group of bounty hunters trying to get onto the platform. Her round burst into a shower of metal flechettes and I winced at the sound of more screams, and even more so as a few return rounds tore at Crossfire’s coat, one round tearing past one of her forelegs and leaving a red tear in her flesh.

“Fuck!” she swore, ducking back while using her magic to fire her rifle blindly, “Get your ass over here Shard, we’re pulling a blink!”

A blink? What did that mean? Well, I figured I’d find out in a moment. I lobbed another gas grenade out into the tunnel area, catching a glimpse of our attackers as I did so. There were at least eight or nine ponies using the edge between the platform and tunnel as cover to fire every assortment of gun at us. They mostly wore a motley assortment of patchwork armor consisting of metal shoulder or chest guards sewn into trench coats or leather armor barding. A few bodies, courtesy of Crossfire, littered the edge of the platform, splatters of blood framing their twisted and unmoving shapes. The flechette rounds had torn one unfortunate stallion’s arm clean off and I could still see him twitching slightly as his lifeblood pumped out onto the grimy titles.

The sight made my throat constrict a little with nausea. I knew I wasn’t directly killing anypony, but I sure was making it easier for Crossfire to do so. Why didn't’ these ponies just run? Were caps really worth losing their lives like this!? Even if they caught us, half of them might be dead by the time they pulled it off. I just didn't understand the mindset that drove them to keep at this, even as their comrades died or bleed out around them.

I gulped and ducked back behind cover, grabbing my makeshift spear as my second gas grenade went off, filling the tunnel with its smoky payload. This was followed by another round of cursing from the bounty hunters. Seconds later, amid a wild blizzard of bullets, Shard scrambled into the restroom. Half of his knife sheaths were empty, though he still floated half a dozen around himself with several coated with slick crimson blood. He had a black, bruised eye and was favoring one of his hind legs, but otherwise didn’t look too worse for wear.

“I don’t know how ponies can carry that much ammo,” he said between gasping breaths, “They nearly chewed that pillar in half! Boss, if we’re blinking, can I suggest taking us somewhere far away topside?”

“Can’t,” said Crossfire, aiming her rifle and popping off the head of a bounty hunter mare who’d tried leaping onto the platform with a well placed shot, brain matter splattered through the air like sick confetti. “The more ponies I carry, shorter the range. Get close, you two, and try not to lose your lunches.”

As Shard and I gathered close to her we all heard a sound akin to a sharp hiss of air, followed by a mare making a whooping shout. That was all the warning we had before the entrance to the restroom exploded from what I could only imagine was a hit from a missile or rocket. The blast threw me back and through a toilet, pain lancing through my body from the concussive force. Luckily the blast must have been at least a little off target as the missile had destroyed part of the wall, but not actually blown up inside the restroom. My head was ringing and there was a small stream of blood flowing into my eyes from a cut brow as I looked up to see Shard groaning against the back wall. Crossfire was worse off, shrapnel having torn at her hide as the blast had slammed her hard into the restroom’s sink. She was still moving, and slowly inching upwards, but from the glazed look in her eyes I could tell she’d taken a harder blow than any of us.

Outside I heard bounty hunters cheering but over that noise Double’s voice growled, “Blast it Trouble we need the colt alive! No more missiles!”

Trouble’s voice answered back with a sarcastic, “Oh, yeah, because we were doing so fucking well so far! I’m just ending this shit faster, brother. Now let’s rush them before they recover!”

Crapcrapcrap, gotta do something! I thought, brain scrambling to come up with something to keep the still dozen or more bounty hunters from just ganging up on us while Crossfire and Shard were still dazed from the missile blast. With not a lot to work with I started yanking what few grenades were left in my saddlebags out, pulling pins without even looking at what they were before tossing the apple shaped objects out onto the platform. There'd only been three left, and I was pretty sure at least two of them were just smoke, but anything was better than nothing and in short order I heard a few grunts and shouts of confusion as bursts of thick gray smoke filled the area outside the restroom. I could hear ponies colliding with each other or concrete pillars as they stumbled to rush through the smoke and get at the restroom entrance.

Among the other objects in my saddlebag I saw a small pistol. It took me a second to remember I'd picked this one up at Silver Mare Studios, intending to give it B.B, and had simply forgotten it. Brief hesitation gripped me. I was a terrible shot, and didn't want to kill anypony, but I still needed to buy precious seconds. With a sharp cry I snatched up the pistol in my mouth and poked my head out into the cloud of smoke that now obscured most of the platform. I aimed high, hoping it was high enough to avoid actually hitting anypony. My mouth bit the trigger and the small pistol bucked in my mouth, sending small caliber rounds out into the smoke. I was hoping just to keep the bounty hunters ducking for cover for a moment or two.

There wasn't an immediate return fire, and the pistol clicked empty as it clip went dry. I ducked back just in time to avoid a shotgun blast that splintered part of the remaining door frame next to me. Spitting out the pistol back into my saddlebag I reached over and grabbed the spear and got the shaft into my mouth just in time to meet the first bounty hunter to come out of the smoke.

His shotgun was floating in a grip of pale white magic and the stallion glared at me as I rushed him with the spear. He sidestepped and I saw the shotgun aim downwards. I jumped back just in time to avoid one of my legs getting taken off by buckshot. I heard a cry of "Duck!" behind me and reflexively hit the deck just in time for three knives to go sailing past me. Shard's knives impacted the bounty hunter with a trio of meaty smacks and the stallion let out a choked cry as he fell back into the smoke. Glancing back I saw Shard breathing hard as he supported himself with one hoof while leaning against the wall. Meanwhile Crossfire had also gotten to her hooves, though I could see her shaking slightly as she loaded a fresh clip into her rifle and worked the bolt to load the first round.

"Blink, now!" she shouted, and Shard and I dove for her. I saw Trouble appear out of the smoke, the ghoul mare's face a mask of sadistic glee, at least the part that didn't have bolted metal over it. She was levitating multiple grenades in her own magic and I couldn't tell what kind they were, but had no desire to find out. As she pulled stem on one of the grenades grenades I threw my makeshift spear just as I put a hoof on Crossfire's shoulder.

I saw the spear sail in and clip Trouble's shoulder, cutting a deep gouge as the glass spear tip shattered on her thick ghoul hide. She screamed and dropped the grenades around herself, including the one with the pulled stem, and then there was a red flash of light and the feeling of pure weightlessness and a twisting in my gut as Crossfire cast her teleport spell.

An instant later I felt us drop a bit through thin air before we hit the tunnel ground, and behind us I heard a concussive detonation. Looking back I saw that Crossfire had teleported us ahead to the part of the tunnel we'd been trying to enter before the ambush, and now a cloud of smoke wafted from the obscured platform accompanied by the groans of pain from a whole bunch of bounty hunters. Amid that I heard Double and Trouble growling at each other.

"Sister you idiot! Did you just drop all those stun grenades on us!?"

"Ugh, shut up brother! Only one went off… fuck, can't see shit. Somepony figure out where they went!"

This was shortly followed by one pony sticking his head out of the smoke our way, apparently trying to get clear and shake the stun effects of the grenade off as he wavered, but his eyes glanced at us and widened. He managed to shout, "They're over h-" before Crossfire's rifle silenced him by removing most of his lower jaw and throat in one gory blast.

"After them!" shouted Double, and my E.F.S was entirely too filled with red dots still for comfort given our state of injury, my lack of weapons, Shard being down to just a few more knives, and Crossfire starting to limp.

"Move it!" she said, urging me and Shard on as we began a haggard gallop down the tunnel. The Wild Bunch didn't waste any time coming after us, still near fifteen or so stallions and mares piling after us into the tunnel with guns blazing in the darkness.

Bullets zipped by our heads like irate hornets and nipped at our hoofs with stinging closeness. Only the dark conditions in the tunnel, I believe, was keeping us from being easy targets as we ran for our lives. Even Crossfire wasn't bothering to do more than fire back once or twice, her eyes mostly focused ahead. It was a challenge to just not trip over any debris in the tunnel.

Things went from bad to worse when there was the high, ear splitting shriek of another missile. This time it flew over our heads and snaked up ahead of us in the tunnel, detonating on the ceiling. With a rumble and resounding crash that knocked us off our hooves part of the ceiling caved in, blocking the way ahead with a large enough pile of concrete and dirt that it'd take far too long to climb.

Looking to my left I saw an open maintainance door and went for it while shouting, "This way!"

Crossfire and Shard followed without any argument, and we were through the door just as the bounty hunters caught up with us. Crossfire slammed the door shut with her magic, having waited for Shard to get through first, and then turned the rusted lock closed with a screech of metal. We were in a narrow concrete hallway now that led a short distance forward until it opened up into some kind of pipe filled chamber. I didn't bother looking around much as we galloped into the room, searching for another exit.

… Rather dismayingly we found none. We'd just trapped ourselves. Again.

"Nice work, genius," Crossfire spat.

"Hey, did you want to try climbing that pile of crap and get shot!?" I shouted back, "There wasn't any other way to go!"

"Boss, can you blink us again?" asked Shard, dropping to his haunches, sweat pouring down his face. His black mask had slipped from his chin, and to my surprise I could see that there were strange tattoos on his upper jaw and neck. The patterns looked faintly familiar but I couldn't immediately place them. I knew I'd seen them somewhere before, though.

Crossfire, also breathing hard, growled out, "I can, but I don't have enough juice to take all of us far. We'd just end up right back where we were. Fuck it. This is a narrow hall. We hold them here until Mr. Hero's friends show up. Where are those slow ass bastards, by the way?"

I shook my head, "I don't know!..." I paused, then felt like an idiot and held up my Pip-Buck, "I'll find out!"

Switching to Arcaidia's frequency on the radio I began to broadcast, "Arcaidia! Where are you guys!? The plan has officially gotten derailed!"

There was a pause, then Arcaidia's voice spoke back, "Understood ren solva. Will move with fast hooves. Was held up in street by ponies with dumb coats and guns who ask questions, but we follow you down into tunnel place. Hear much distant popping. That you?"

There was an explosion as another missile blew open the now formerly locked maintenance door, sending the door flying down the short corridor to cartwheel just behind me.

"Yup, that's us. Outnumbered and near death. Much appreciate some help!" I had to dive aside as gunfire tore by me, "Sooner would be better!"

"Coming with accelerated fastness!" was Arcaidia's reply before gunfire drowned out anything else.

Crossfire had taken cover by throwing over what looked like some kind of rectangular machine with gauges on it. A number of these lined the wall, old, rusted, and clearly unused for a long time, but they looked solid enough to stop bullets and Crossfire used her magic to toss one of them in front of the corridor for makeshift cover. Her rifle spat rounds at the advancing bounty hunters, who’d wised up and were having their own unicorns push debris from the ceiling collapse down the hall to act as their own cover. The bounty hunters traded shots with Crossfire as they kept advancing behind their mobile cover of cement blocks and rubble. Shard was hanging back, saving his few remaining knives for when the enemy got close.

As for myself I rushed around the maintenance room looking for anything else I could use as a makeshift weapon. My previous success with the glass/mop spear encouraged me as I threw open old utility lockers and rummaged around quickly through their contents. I didn’t see anything I could cobble together into a doomsday machine, or even a makeshift bludgeon. The most dangerous looking thing in there was a bottle of something called ‘Turpentine’ and that only seemed dangerous because I had no idea what it was and it smelled awful.

Unfortunately before I could puzzle out how to combine duct tape, some scrap metal, a lightbulb, and the mysterious ‘Turpentine’ into a miraculous weapon to save the day I heard Crossfire shout, “Take cover!”

I didn’t even question why and dove for cover behind a set of vertical pipelines that ran down the center of the maintenance room. There was yet another shriek of air from an incoming missile and I watched Crossfire and Shard rush away from the corridor entrance just seconds before Crossfire’s impromptu cover get blown to bits. Just how many missiles did Trouble bring!? She had to be running out of ammo sometime soon, right?

“HAH! Take that bitches! I got a whole pack full of death for all of you so you might as well just flash your asses at me so I got a better target, because I’m not running out of missiles anytime soon!”

Well, thank you universe, screw you too. I needed to do something about that crazy mare before she brought the ceiling down on us. Again. Going with my gut I quickly unscrewed the plastic cap on the bottle of Turpentine The vapors were like having tiny needles digging at my nose and eyes, but I grabbed the handle with my mouth and charged past Crossfire and Shard, who were heading for the back of the room to look for fresh cover.

“The hell are you doing!?” shouted Crossfire as I rushed the corridor.

I didn’t respond, focusing on the sights ahead of me. I saw a number of bounty hunter were using the present lack of Crossfire shooting at them to clamber over their cover and rush down the short hallway. I saw ten or more ponies galloping towards me, most switching out their larger guns for smaller pistols or melee weapons. However behind all of them at the doorway back out to the tunnel I could see Double and Trouble, the ghoul siblings directing the last of the Wild Bunch into the hallway to rush us. My eyes narrowed, even as the lead bounty hunters got within ten feet of me. They knew they needed me alive, so as I’d hoped they weren’t shooting at me, instead focused on closing on me, likely to just dogpile me. It bought me the one or two seconds I needed to gauge the distance, toss the bottle of Turpentine into the air, turn around, and buck it with my hind hooves as hard as I could.

The pale white plastic bottle spun end over end through the air above the bounty hunters, showering them with the irritating and terrible smelling liquid. More importantly, the bottle impacted squarely on the head of the laughing Trouble, who immediately howled and fell back, shaking her head and rubbing at her eyes, screaming.

My sense of triumph was exceedingly short lived as the lead bounty hunters didn’t stop for the light sprinkling of Turpentine I’d given them and no less than three of them ploughed into me like living battering rams. We all went down in a painful tangle of punching limbs and I felt myself getting pummeled from all directions. One mare was trying to hold my hind legs down and wasn't being subtle about aiming a punch for my stallion bits. I thrashed my knees around, throwing her off, but her two companions both had a hold of my upper body, one stallion yanking a foreleg back painfully behind my back while another had me in a headlock.

"Keep 'em still dammit!" snarled the mare, "One hit to the danglies and this little colt's done!"

One of the stallions groaned, rolling his eyes, "It's always the 'dangly bits' with you! Seriously if I wasn't ploughing you every other night I'd think you were a full on filly fooler."

"Shut up, it’s just the most effective way to stop a guy cold. I'm not fixated or anything!"

"Tell that to the last three bounties you kicked in the nuts. I swear, you've got an unhealthy obsession!"

"I can do without the fixation on my groin as well, honestly," said while kicking out with one of my hind legs to catch the mare in the stomach and send her flying backwards. More bounty hunters poured into the room, but couldn't dogpile on me as I'd feared because Crossfire and Shard were both making very convincing arguments as to why that would be a bad idea. Crossfire's argument involved a round of scattering flechettes tearing up one bounty hunter and sending the others scrambling for cover, while Shard had the more pointed argument via a knife spinning into the leg of another and causing them to go tripping end over end into one of the metal utility closets.

This just caused most the bounty hunters to charge those two, however, while firing wildly in the tight, confined space of the maintenance room. Before I had to concentrate on wrestling the two bounty hunters still on me I caught sight of Crossfire's horn blazing red and her vanishing in a red pop of light, only to blink back to reality above a cluster of bounty hunters. She dropped right on them, swinging her rifle and slashing a crimson wake through one poor stallion and then I was too busy fighting to see anything else.

One stallion had gotten his headlock on me adjusted into something more of a choke hold, while his companion appeared determined to snap my foreleg off if need be. I braced my freed hind legs and bucked as hard as I could, slamming the stallion grabbing my arm into one of the vertical pipes. The pipe bent with a screech, followed by a hiss of steam and a grunt as the stallion lost his grip on me. With my foreleg now freed as well I reached back to get a hold of the fellow choking me and tucked my body low into his barrel as I rolled him into a body flip. My throat was bruised by the effort but I managed to send him flying into the wall with a meaty smack. He hung there for a second before sliding down to the floor like an ooze, groaning in pain.

I barely managed to get to my hooves before I heard an unpleasant, deep buzzing sound and turned to see the mare who'd been determined to nut-punch me now wielding a baton in her mouth that had a pair of magic blue crystals on one end that sparked with electricity.

"Fugghn guhhnu shuck yur nuugts uuff!" she mouthed incoherently around the baton in her mouth. Why was it so few ponies learned to speak properly while mouth holding weapons? Was it really that hard? My musing was cut short as she leaped at me, electric baton swinging.

I ducked aside from its cobalt arc and flinched as an electrical discharge from the weapon sent sparks flying as it hit a pipe next to me. The mare came on, head flailing back and forth as she wove a blinding blue pattern of shocking pain that forced me to backpedal and bob aside. The stallion who'd been knocked into the pipes recovered enough to lash out with his tail, using it with surprising dexterity to trip me up and land me on my back. The mare tried to take advantage of that and slammed the electric baton straight for my groin, but I rolled aside. The discharge of magical lightning from the baton still shocked through some of the ground and buzzed me, causing my muscles to spasm painfully for a second. Surging to my hooves I swung a hoof and caught the mare across the face, hoping to slap the baton from her mouth, but she stubbornly held onto it and glared at me with eyes sparking with anger. The stallion that had tripped me hobbled to his hooves and with a yank unsheathed a knife from a chest strap and both he and the mare came at me.

I scrambled to duck and dodge aside, but felt hot pain as the knife found a weak spot in my armor and cut a bleeding line through the black cloth of the security barding. The mare's buzzing baton flashed at my head and I barely ducked under it, the hairs of my mane rising at odd angles from the near miss of electric current. I sidestepped quickly and then shoulder rushed the stallion with the knife, blasting the air from his lungs and sending the knife flying as I rammed him once more into the bank of pipes that dominated the center of the room. As he crumpled to the floor I spun to face the mare, but she had moved in faster than I had time to react and this time I felt the baton jab straight into my chest.

The world went white with pain and my brain locked up as my whole body jerked about from the blast of electricity that ravaged my nervous system. I dropped like a brick and twitched on the ground, smelling smoke from singed fur fill my nostrils. Coughing and letting out a pained moan I rolled onto my back, barely able to feel the world around me for the pain cramping my muscles.

Through watering eyes I saw the mare spit the baton into her ready hooves as she reared up on her hind legs, holding the baton in both her forehooves in a ready overhead swing that was, terrifyingly, aimed straight for my crotch.

"Say goodbye to your balls, bitch!" she cackled gleefully, and off to the side I heard the stallion from before say,

"Seriously, dear, you have issues."

Time seemed to slow down for just a hair, giving me a chance to see that Shard was barely holding off four or five bounty hunters who were shooting at the unicorn as he dove between pipes and threw utility cabinets and shelves in the way with his telekinesis. He only seemed to have one knife left and was bleeding from a bullet wound to his shoulder that was slowing him down considerably. Crossfire had three bounty hunter corpses lying at her hooves from viscous bayonet slashes and punctures, but half a dozen more, including Double and Trouble, had cornered her back near a computer terminal bank that she had to rush behind before Double's rifle barked and nearly caught the mare as she dove behind the flimsy cover. Trouble, eyes blazing red from irritation, no doubt from the Turpentine bath I'd given her, had tossed her missile launcher aside and was floating a pair of magic plasma pistols on either side of her, and fired repeatedly into Crossfire's cover, the very metal of the terminal station starting to turn bright green and melt from the discharge.

All this I saw in the split moment before the bounty hunter mare with the electric baton began to swing down to crush little Longwalk and forever end my debate on whether to consider Binge's repeated attempts to get me in bed with her. With a spike of raw adrenaline driving my still spasming muscles I did the only thing I could; I kicked up with maximum force straight into the mare's exposed groin.

That was the moment I learned mares are just as vulnerable down there was stallions are. The more you know.

Her eyes popped wide as a gecko's and a high pitched "Eeeeee!" flew out of her lips, and she felt back to the ground twitching as if she'd been hit with her own baton. Speaking of which, said baton fell from her grasp and rolled across the floor, and almost as if by magic it reached my hooves and seemed to nestle there in a manner not unlike a puppy looking for a new master.

I didn't hesitate and forced my still twitching body to obey, picking up the stun baton and tossing it to my mouth. I didn't care if it'd just been in another pony's mouth, I immediately recognized the value of a backup weapon that I could shock ponies into submission with. Non-lethal weapons for the win!

The mare was holding her ground and still making that high pitched noise when her coltfriend finally recovered from his journey to the center of the wall and got to his hooves, giving me the stink eye. "Hey! Nobody pounds her there but me!"

"Look, I'm sure you two are a lovely couple," I said, "Which is why I'm going to ask you nicely to run away before my friends show up, who are a lot less likely to leave you alive than I am."

I had to duck down against the pipes for cover, as a few of the bounty hunters with Double and Trouble had noticed me and turned their guns my way, firing some shots I think were aimed for my legs, but at this point I was starting to think these ponies were getting tired of trying to take me alive, bounty or no bounty.

Double and Trouble were similarly forced into cover as Crossfire cut loose with another burst of flechettes that tore at Double's armor, knocked one of his rifles from his telekinetic grasp, and burst one of Trouble's plasma pistols as the ghoul hopped behind a knocked over shelf. I heard Shard wrestling around with a bounty hunter that must have closed in on him, but I couldn't see what was happening from my current position.

We really needed Arcaidia and the others here, but it'd literally been less than a minute since my call, so it occurred to me this might be over well before they caught up with us. We were putting up a good fight, but the bounty hunters still had the clear advantage. I had to do something to purchase much needed time!

"Is this really all worth it!?" I shouted, keeping an eye on the stallion who was still glaring at me, but not advancing as he was apparently deciding which of his melee weapons, a blackened machete or gleaming hatchet, to draw. "I mean, am I worth that much? Is eight thousand caps worth dying for!? Not even eight thousand, as you all have to split the damn bounty, so at best, what, eight hundred caps? How many of you have already died today for such a stupid reason?"

I honestly regretted that so many ponies had been killed in this fight, so I didn't have to fake the sincerity in my voice. This really was stupid to me. Even if I'd been worth a fortune I couldn't see how it'd all be worth it in the end. There were ponies today who'd just lost any chance at being anything, let alone enjoying the fruits of capturing me. The waste of it left me pissed off and sick to my stomach at the same time.

There was a brief pause where I thought maybe I'd gotten through to a few of them, but Double's voice rose in a mocking and practically calm tone, "Eight thousand caps fixes many of us up comfortably for months, my naive colt. Even split to up that is a sum to keep food on the tables of families or one drunk in vice for no small amount of time. You'll find everypony here is more than willing to risk life and limb for the hunt, even die if need be."

"Uh, for the record, I'd much rather live..." groaned the mare who I'd kicked in the plot.

Her coltfriend looked at me, then at her, his expression measuring, before he called out, "Hey Double, what was the split gonna look like, again?"

"My sister and I found the bounty, so we get a finder's fee on top of the usual percentage so we'd be taking the higher cut, naturally. 40% is ours and the rest is yours to divvy up amongst yourselves."

"... That deals starting to look a lot less sweet than it did a little while ago when you were saying this was a sure thing."

A razor edge entered Trouble's voice as she screeched, "Oh go buck yourself, this is still a sure thing! Little dirt humper is just talking because he knows we've got him and his Drifter' pals cornered!"

The stallion had come over to his mare and had helped her up, letting her lean on him as he frowned deeply at me, then at his fellow bounty hunters, "Cornered, yeah, but they've still got fight in them and Gelda here is hurt. I'm thinking I'm out. This looked better when we were supposed to take them down fast and easy from ambush. Rather cut my losses and get my mare out of here."

I saw him turn, taking his hobbling marefriend with him towards the corridor. Then there was a green plasma flash that sent a bolt slamming straight into the back of his head. The mare, Gelda, gasped as the stallion who'd she'd just been leaning on turned liquid green and melted into a puddle of sludge right next to her before she could even blink. I gasped, horrified at what I'd just seen as Trouble laughed nastily.

"Nopony walks out on me and Double! You got that!? Anypony else wanna try skipping out on us!?"

I watched as Gelda put a hoof on the puddle that'd just been her coltfriend, trembling more than when I'd just kicked her in the groin. Her eyes were wide and teary, her mouth gaping.

Anger snapped through me and I suddenly cared a lot less about how tired and battered I was. Nevermind that seconds ago that stallion and I were enemies, or that I didn’t know him at all. Cold blooded murder still wasn’t something I was ever going to witness and not be affected by it. Why did Trouble even do that for!? Raiders I could understand pulling shit like that with so little provocation, but ponies living in the Inner City? Did crazy just spring up anywhere in the Wasteland, no matter what?

With a roar I leapt to my hooves and went around the pipes like a compacted furry ball of adrenaline fuelled fury. I don't think any of the bounty hunters were expecting any of these turns of events, as most of them were still dumbstruck by Trouble's murder of one of their own. None of them had the time to react to my sudden charge. Even Trouble, who saw me coming because she'd still been facing in the direction of her victim, had actually been aiming for Gelda first and didn’t have enough time to correct her aim, letting off a snap shot at me that flew by my shoulder. The magical emerald flame burned through golden gecko scales and seared my shoulder, but I focused past the pain and slammed into Trouble with my full weight.

I felt her lift off the ground as I continued forward and crunched her straight into the same bank of terminals that Crossfire had been using for cover. There was a crack of shattered glass as Trouble’s body smashed a terminal screen and she rolled off with a snarl, injured but hardly out of the fight. She’d kept a telekinetic grip on one of her plasma pistols and unholstered a boxy laser pistol as well, but before she could take aim I was back in her face, swinging with the electrical baton.

Trouble sacrificed her plasma pistol to block the baton, the discharge of lightning crackling over the pistol and causing some of its tubes to burst with vents of green fire. The small explosion forced me to flinch away for a moment, and Trouble got off a shot with her laser that burned my leg, causing it to buckle.

Double had backed up, firing with both rifle and shotgun at Crossfire who’d jumped from cover while I’d been tussling with Trouble to make a dash for Shard’s position. Crossfire evaded the shots by blinking a short distance once more, her teleport spell popping her next to where Shard had been wrestled to the ground by a bounty hunter who was trying to get a pistol aimed at Shard’s head. Crossfire’s rifle impaled that bounty hunter, the blade ripping through the stallion and erupting out his other side. Crossfire lifted him and the rifle together, aiming the barrel through the impaled bounty hunter and firing at another, who managed to roll out of the way.

As Crossfire shook the body off her rifle and pulled Shard to his hooves both ponies had to throw themselves against the bank of pipes as the only cover from both Double and the remaining bounty hunter’s gunfire while I still fought Trouble.

My wounded leg didn’t want to support my weight so I rolled forward instead and tripped Trouble’s legs up, causing the mare to swear profusely as she landed on her side. I didn’t waste a second, rolling over as well and slamming the baton towards Trouble’s barrel. The mare’s leathery hooves reached up and caught my swing, and she levitated her laser pistol towards my face. I batted the weapon with my hoof, knocking its aim off just enough for its red beam to sizzle harmlessly into the ceiling instead of my face.

Trouble swung a hoof and caught my jaw, causing spit and blood to fly out of my mouth, and in response I rolled atop her and slammed both hooves down into her chest, knocking the air from her lungs. There was little coordination or skill involved as we both started to pummel at each other, her ghoulish limbs smashing into my chest and face and my own hooves battering her barrel and smacking her head. We rolled around, exchanging who was on top or bottom several times in our constant storm of punching limbs. Each blow rattled my skull or strained my ribs, pain bursting through me with each punch, but I knew I was giving just as good as I was getting, perhaps better as I felt her slowing down and her punches weakening with every second.

I’d lost the electric baton somewhere in the scuffle, and she’d lost all concentration for levitating any weapons, so it came down simply to whose stamina would give out first in the contest of hoofticuffs.

My head was throbbing and I was feeling faint, blood dripping from my snout and mouth in steady red streams by the time I realized belatedly that I was on top of Trouble, and was the only one punching anymore. The ghoul bounty hunter’s face was even more blemished and purple than her normal necrotic flesh was meant to be, and even the metal plates bolted to one side of her face were dented, one having come loose to expose raw red muscle beneath.

She was alive and breathing, but her eyes were glazed and rolled up into her skull and she wasn’t resisting me anymore, having gone limp beneath me. I could feel a dull ache past the bleeding numbness of my hooves, and my chest felt as if it'd been worked over by somepony with a crowbar. My breaths were coming in raspy, pained gasps, and I was dizzy enough to feel the room itself tilting. I clearly wasn't much better off than Trouble was, but at least she seemed down for the count, so I rolled off her and glanced back towards the rest of the fight.

Things didn't look good.

Between Double and the remaining bounty hunters Shard and Crossfire were boxed in, the pair using bullet riddled utility closets as the last of their cover as gunfire sparked around them. Crossfire looked drained, her horn's magical aura flickering. All of that teleporting must have taken its toll. She was measuring her shots, forcing bounty hunters to keep back to their own cover, but I could tell from her slowed rate of fire that she must have been close to being out of ammo. Shard was worse off, his face pale and sweat slicking his mane and fur. Blood soaked through his leather vest and formerly white shirt from his shoulder wound and he was moving lethargically as he levitated his last knife, sending it weaving forward to slash at anypony who exposed themselves, but it was clear his slashes lacked strength as his own horn's magic flickered wanley much like Crossfire's. It wouldn't be long before the bounty hunters wore the two unicorn's out and would be able to charge in and finish the job, though from the blazing look of determination and snarling anger on Crossfire's sooty features she wouldn't go down without taking at least a few more bounty hunters to the everafter with her.

Double looked back and saw me laying next to the dazed and near unconscious body of his sister and I saw the ghoul stallion's features turn even more stiff and cold than I imagined they already were. His shotgun swung around and I had to scramble to get out of the way of the first shot that exploded a maintenance panel behind me.

"Keep the Drifter's pinned down," I heard Double command the other bounty hunters, "I'm going to bag this mark once and for all."

I had little choice but to dive away from another shotgun blast, buckshot tearing at my tail as I ran the length of the bank of pipes and went around the other side. The mare, Gelda, was still staring at the puddle remains of her coltfriend, hooves slick with the green slime, and I saw her body was shaking. I felt for her, but didn't know what to expect from the mare. Would she blame me and come after me again? She seemed off in her own world of shock and denial, for the moment at least.

I hear the mystical chime of magic and chanced a glance through the pipes to see Double levitating Trouble up and floated her over out of the way and into some cover. His voice was glacial as he said, "I don't much appreciate those who rough up my sibling. Rest assured I'll be taking special care to keep you alive, colt, but the bounty never said you had to have all your limbs still attached to you when you're brought in!"

I was out of weapons, out of breath, and near out of options. I had a clear path to the corridor that'd lead me back to the tunnels, where I could possibly run to link up with my friends, but that'd mean abandoning Crossfire and Shard. That wasn't an option for me. No matter how I felt about Crossfire I wasn't leaving her behind, and honestly Shard was growing on me. I didn't want to bury another pony before getting a chance to even get to know them.

My eyes wandered up to the pipes I was hiding behind. They were all old, but pretty solid for the decades of disuse. Still, the fighting had damaged a few of them, one dented inward, while another's top housing looked ready to fall off. Double was almost in the right spot, if I could just...

"Hey, whatever," I said, pouring some taunting mockery into my voice, "Your sis barely put up a fight before dropping like a sick, lame legged gecko. How much tougher can you be, the one without any balls between the pair?"

"You certainly are begging to have parts of you removed, aren't you?" Double hissed and took a menacing step forward, his shotgun now followed by a revolver in his magical aura as he kept my position covered. A few more steps would bring him to a spot where he could shoot me with ease, but before that his last step brought him to just the right spot for me to plant my forelegs down and buck upwards at an angle. My body sent surges of pain through me in protest, my injuries both slowing and weakening me, but luckily the strike of my hind hooves on the pipe with the flimsy top housing hit solidly.

The old, rusted screws holding the pipe in snapped off and the pipe went crashing down. Double bit out a sharp curse as he threw himself out of the way, or tried to, but the pipe crashed home before he could avoid it completely. The pipe smashed into his hind legs and pinned the stallion to the floor with a bone crunching noise that made me wince. However while Double was down, he was far from out. Howling in rage and agony he whipped his guns around, his magic levitating more from the holsters that were covering his barding, and in short order a storm of bullets from rifles, pistols, and shotguns alike battered my hiding spot. Sparks and ricochets showered around me and I forced myself prone, hooves covering my head as the lead hurricane tore the air above me.

Then I heard a voice, a beautiful and entirely welcome voice that left me grinning even with a storm of death flying above me.

“Estu dol griz sin mas! Calvary is being here now, ren solva!”

Arcaidia came charging into the fray, B.B and Binge flanking her. Each had a flicker of energy about them that I recognized as Arcaidia’s defensive barrier spell, so it wasn’t surprising when a few ricocheting rounds from Double flared and bounced of the shields as the mares entered the scene. Arcaidia’s starblaster floated at her side and she wasted no time, silver eyes locking onto Double as she fired a brilliant white beam that would have hit the stallion squarely in the chest if he hadn’t hastily floated one of his rifles in the path, the weapon turning into a charred husk.

B.B flew off to the left, coming in behind the surprised bounty hunters on that side of the room as the pegasus winged towards the ceiling and then fired down from on high, her bracer revolvers sending lead fury at the exposed ponies below.

Binge, cackling in her usual mad fashion, hopped that direction as well and I saw her tail had once more the deadly and downright insane looking knife-whip attached to it, only now its handle was made from a length of leather bound femur bone and the knives were more evenly spaced. She was wearing her spiked security armor, giving Binge the look of a green giggling demon more than a pony as she bounced towards the bounty hunters and like a playful cat lashed her tail around. The bladed whip flew with almost impossible, snake-like accuracy to fillet a chunk of flesh from an unsuspecting bounty hunter, whose scream made my teeth rattle.

Double, despite his crushed legs, managed to pry the pipe off of him with his magic while firing a volley of shotgun and pistol rounds towards the advancing Arcaidia. Her horn cast the entire room in a rime glow of deep blue and I felt the temperature plummet and saw the ground frost over with ice. A blue pillar of crystalline ice rose up from the ground in front of Arcaidia and absorbed the bullets coming her way. She then made a flicking gesture with her horn and the pillar broke off from the ground and levitated up, turning horizontal like an oversized javelin, and she hurled it at Double. He just barely managed to raise the pipe I’d dropped on him to knock the ice shard away, but it clearly took most of his magic to do so as he lost his telekinetic grip on most of his arsenal and the guns began to clatter to the floor.

The bounty hunters were confused and taken utterly off guard by the arrival of my friends, and Crossfire and Shard took full advantage of the fact to break from cover and plough through the line of the now disorganized Wild Bunch. Crossfire’s rifle twisted about like a boomerang, cutting the legs out from under one mare while Shard dug his knife into the shoulder of another as both of them broke through the ranks of bounty hunters and rushed towards where B.B and Binge were.

In seconds the fight had turned completely around, with the Wild Bunch being forced back and cornered, most of them rushing into cover to avoid B.B’s pistols and Binge’s seeking knife whip, while only being able to send back a few scattered shots in response.

Double had managed to crawl his way back behind the now mostly destroyed computer terminal bank where he’d left his unconscious sister, a few streaking shots from Arcaidia’s starblaster chasing him back there.

Soon B.B landed near where I was standing, Binge right behind her. At the end of the corridor I saw Braindead peek his head into the room, scared eyes looking at us as if to confirm none of us were dead. He seemed content to stay out in the tunnel and wait, despite the nod I gave him.

“You doin’ alright there, Long?” she asked.

“Alive. Surprisingly few holes in me, all things considered,” I said, coughing and spitting out some blood, “Uhh, gonna swell up like a bad allergic reaction in a few hours, and probably look more purple than your dress, but I’ll live.”

“Bucky, do I get to play with the catatonic little filly over here, huh huh huh!?” Binge asked excitedly while pointing at Gelda.

“No, uh, leave her be Binge. She’s... really out of it,” I said, not sure what else to say about the mare who was still blankly staring at her lover’s remains. It was a small miracle she hadn’t been hit by any of the exchanging fire, really.

Arcaidia, erecting a small ice wall for her own cover from the very sporadic return fire from the bounty hunters, glanced towards me calmly. “We here now, we finish dumb ponies that attack you? I can freeze whole room shut if need be.”

Crossfire, who had taken cover with Shard next to us by the edge of the room’s central pipes, gave us a hard look, “Best we finish the lot of them off now. This isn’t all of the Wild Bunch. Not even half. Double and Trouble probably just snagged any of the group they could easily talk into coming down here, but if any live to get word back to the Bounty Guild then we’ll have a lot more ponies gunning for us.”

“Wild Bunch?” asked B.B, “Why’s that name ringin’ a small bell wit me?”

“They sound like a breakfast cereal,” said Binge, tittering, “Party of a complete bloodletting.”

“One of the biggest bounty hunter teams in the Guild,” Crossfire said, “All quantity but no quality. They just succeed by overwhelming marks with numbers. Most of them are scum. Nopony’s going to miss them.”

She said this while eyeing the catatonic Gelda, and I found myself gritting my teeth as I said, “Look, just let me try talking this through again. Nopony else has to die today.”

Crossfire snorted, but waved a hoof, “Knock yourself out, but killing them will be easier.”

I cleared my throat and called out, loudly, “Double! Hey, you still conscious!?”

After a second I heard him respond in a voice tight with pain, “I am.”

He didn’t seem inclined to say more. I think even he realized just how tenuous his situation had just become and how rapidly the situation had just changed. Just moments ago he and his fellow bounty hunters had a trio of tired and wounded ponies cornered and at the ends of their proverbial ropes, but with the sudden arrival of allies fresh to the fight with powerful weapons and magic that suddenly turned the whole situation around. Now it was the Wild Bunch that was tired, wounded, and cornered, if still not outnumbered. Knowing this I think he was waiting for me to make whatever pitch I was going to make.

I wasn’t even sure I knew what pitch I was going to make, but I wanted to talk this out if I could and prevent any more loss of life. I’d seen more than enough ponies die for one twenty four hour period, thank you very much.

“I’m willing to give you my word that I’ll let you, your sister, and anypony else still breathing back there go. I’ll even toss a few health potions onto the deal to make sure anypony who’s critically wounded can, if not walk out, at least surviving being carried out.”

“And what, pray tell, are you going to demand in return for such a magnanimous proposal?” he queried back, voice wary.

My brain worked quickly, picking itself for several key details about this whole affair, “First of all; tell me who tipped you off that Crossfire was taking me down these tunnels.”

“An anonymous source I’m afraid,” he replied, “And before you ask, no I can’t prove that to you. The pony, if it was a pony, who contacted us did so via radio and kept his or her voice hidden with some kind of scrambler. All I can tell you is that the first tip to your plans came a few hours ago, and we didn’t know you were coming into the tunnel until half an hour ago, just enough time to set up the ambush. Whoever informed us must have been watching you closely, colt, to keep us up to date on your movements so thoroughly.”

What did that mean? Was somepony spying on us? Whoever they were they must have been watching us since we arrived at the Skull Guild headquarters. But who there knew about the plan to have Crossfire turn me in at the Bounty Guild and could follow us once we’d left?

“I’m smellin’ a’ rat,” muttered B.B, “Knew somethin’ weren’t right when ya’ll got bushwhacked down here.”

Binge chuckled, “Lots of eyes saw us in the ghouly pony’s Guild. Any of them could have followed us. Ooooh, maybe there’s more than one? Spies can work in teams too.”

“Doesn’t matter for now,” I said, “I was just curious if he had a name. Okay, Double, next thing; I need you all to disarm.”

It was almost a full minute, and I heard whispering wafting from over their way, before I heard Double say, “If we do what’s to stop you from slaughtering us?”

Crossfire groaned, rolling her eyes, “What’s to stop us from slaughtering you right now, asshole?”

“... Fair point, Miss Crossfire. Very well.”

There were numerous clatters as weapons got tossed our way, or at least to the ground between us and the bounty hunters.

“Right,” I said, “Last thing, I want all of you to come this way, slowly, one at a time, and once we’re all in a nice, big happy group, we can talk face to face and tend to each other’s wounds, because I’m not going to do this whole damned negotiation thing while shouting across a room!”

About fifteen minutes later we were all gathered in one patchwork group out in the tunnel. Weapons had been gathered into a pile behind us while the bounty hunters were allowed to tend to their wounds. Double was mostly focused on his sister, who was conscious now and giving me a glare suggesting she was considering all the different ways she might skin me, but was keeping quiet at her brother’s insistence.

Off to the side I had B.B checking over Gelda, who was still uncomfortably unresponsive.

“How is she?” I asked as I trotted up to B.B, who’d been using a small flashlight to check the other mare’s pupils. B.B looked at me, features washed in gray shadows from the irregular light of several unicorn horns in the dark tunnel.

“In shock, but I’m guessin’ that’s now what yer askin’,” she said, wings fluttering as she floated back from the other mare, “She ain’t badly hurt none, but ain’t much I can say ‘bout her mental state. She’ll either snap outta it, or not, dependin’ on just how bad her loss is an’ how tough her heart is. Nothin’ I can do on a medical end, sorry Long.”

“It’s fine, I know you’d do all you could if it was possible,” I said, giving Gelda a worried look, “Just keep an eye on her while I talk with Double about what we’re doing here.”

“Will do, Long.”

The bounty hunters were being covered closely by Crossfire and Arcaidia, the two mares both sharing an almost disturbingly similar look of hard detachment as they kept their weapons trained on the surviving ponies of the Wild Bunch, who numbered only seven now, including Double and Trouble. I hadn’t been sure of their numbers at the start of the fight, but I guessed over a dozen ponies lay dead between the platform where the ambush had started and the maintenance room where it had ended. A lot of dead ponies for a mere eight thousand cap bounty, and a part of me felt a weight hooked into my chest like a barb wondering if this could have been avoided. Maybe if I came up with a better plan?

I took in and let out a deep breath, shoving back hard against those doubts. I had to focus on the present situation, which was still incredibly tenuous.

Double wasn’t exactly in any condition to stand. His back legs had been broken by the pipe I’d dropped on him, and though Arcaidia had at my request helped with a little healing magic it was clear he’d need to be carried out of here. He was currently propped up with his back leaning against the rubble pile in the middle of the tunnel, his now conscious sister standing next to him. Her face was like a tenderized piece of rotten meat, and it reminded me keenly of how bad off I was as well. Even with a healing potion and a zap of Arcaidia’s magic my entire body was bruised and sore. Every movement came slow and lethargic, with aching waves of pain. Arcaidia had explained to me that her magic still relied on my body’s own vitality to help it heal, and after all the injuries that I’d healed already from the fight with the Hyadean monsters in the Skull Guild’s basement my body was reaching the point where magic just couldn’t keep up with my rate of injury.

“Well, we all look like we’re having a pretty lousy day, don’t we?” I said to the two bounty hunter ghouls, “I don’t know about the two of you but I think I’ve reached my quota of being punched, shot, electrocuted, and exploded for one day. So here’s what I’m thinking. I still need to get to the Bounty Guild, and don’t really need anypony here tipping them off that Crossfire turning me in is actually a big ruse. She seems of the opinion we ought to put bullets in all of you and call it a day. I’m more inclined to think that’s not necessary. Now I don’t trust either of you further than I could throw you, which in the condition I’m in right now wouldn't be far at all. Here’s my solution that keeps you all breathing, and eliminates the need for me to actually trust any of you not to blab to the Bount Guild; we’re going to put you back into that maintenance room. Then Arcaidia’s going to freeze over the entrance. We’ll leave you some food and water to last a day or two, by which point Arcaidia assures me the magical ice will melt gradually on its own. By the time you get back to the Bounty Guild my friends and I will be long gone and then... well I suppose if you’re so damned desperate for revenge or whatever we can do this dance again. Maybe next time I won’t be able to stop my friends from killing you. Maybe I’ll be stuck doing it myself, because Ancestor Spirits know I’ve been stuck doing that several times already, much as I hate it. So, there’s the plan. Any questions?”

“Yeah, how much of a utter dumbfuck are you?” snarled Trouble, “You think this is over? The Wild Bunch won’t put up with anypony who’s fucked with us! This wasn’t even a quarter of the whole crew! Soon as we get back and tell the boss what you did, you’re a dead pony!”

I looked at her with tired, yet unwavering eyes, my voice strained by steady, “Might be you’re right and I’ll have to deal with you lot again, but I’m wondering, if your boss is going to care so much about the ponies killed today, what they’ll think about the fact that you murdered one of your own?”

That caused Trouble to blink then lose a touch of her ire as uncertainty spread over her face like a dark cloud, “Wrench was breaking contract! I had every right to off him for trying to skip out in the middle of a fight!”

“Well, that’ll be between you and your boss,” I said dryly, glancing at the other tired, wounded, and less than happy looking bounty hunters, “I’m just thinking that since this ambush was clearly you and your brother’s idea, and it’s cost this ‘Wild Bunch’ a lot of lives, that maybe the two of you should seriously consider how that’s going to reflect on you before you start making declarations about what the Wild Bunch is going to do to me. None of these ponies would’ve died today if you hadn’t come after me.”

“That’s part of the risk of the job,” said Double, grimacing, “Boss Holdem will understand that.”

He didn’t sound quite as convinced as I think he wanted to, but I wasn’t going to argue with him about it. It took a few minutes, but once the bounty hunter’s wounds were taken care of, at least to the point where we could be sure none of them would perish from blood loss or infection in the near future, we led them back into the maintenance room. We’d cleared the bodies out along with the weapons, so the place was mostly clear, and my friends and I double checked to make sure there was no other way out other than the short corridor.

The only pony we didn’t put in there was Gelda, who was too catatonic for my taste and I wanted to make sure was looked after. Arcaidia lit up her horn and I watched as she filled the open space the door had once occupied with a crystalline wall of ice as thick as my leg.

“You sure it’ll melt after a day or two?” I asked her, “I don’t want to leave them there to starve.”

Arcaidia snorted, holding her head high, “I know my magic much good, ren solva. Ice hold strong for at least thirty six of day hours, then melt so stupid bounty ponies can be free.”

She eyed me critically, expression pensive as she scrunched her nose slightly,”You not look very much of healthy. I think resting good idea before resuming plan.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, but yeah, I could use a moment to catch my breath,” I said, trotting back to the group.

“What’re we doin’ wit her?” asked B.B, one wing gently gesturing Gelda’s way.

Shard was the one who actually answered that first, “Electrum would probably be willing to look after her, if I asked.”

Crossfire looked at him sidelong, “Yeah, and would Electrum also keep the mare from wandering back to the Bounty Guild once she gets her senses back? She’s as much a danger as the rest of them.”

“If we explain the situation I think Electrum could keep her for at least as long as that ice is going to hold the others,” said Shard. He had put his black scarf mask back on, so those tattoos of his weren’t exposed, but I still wondered just what they were or where I’d seen them before.

“Okay,” I said, stepping forward, “B.B, Shard, will the two of you take her back to Electrum, then? We’ll rest up here until you finish, then we’ll resume heading for the Bounty Guild.”

With our plan of action set, I sat and watched as B.B and Shard led Gelda away back the way we’d come down the tunnel. The bounty hunter mare would walk if led, but her head was perpetually hung, eyes staring dully at the ground. I could understand to a degree. I’d gone into a similar state of shock when Shale had died. I tried to imagine how much worse that feeling would have been if the pony I lost was also one I loved. I whispered a quick prayer for her.

As Arcaidia had suggested the rest of us took some time to rest. Binge had found a perch on top of the rubble pile and was curled up there like a big cat, while Crossfire lay against one side of the tunnel and was cleaning her rifle and reloading ammunition clips. Braindead couldn’t seem to stay still, pacing about and constantly shifting his gaze around the tunnel. By the time Shard and B.B returned, reporting that Electrum had been willing to take in Gelda, I was only feeling marginally better in terms of my wounds, but I wasn’t quite as dizzy and ready for collapse as I had been.

I’d retrieved the stun baton before we’d sealed up the maintenance room and I’d spent most of the hour or so we’d been resting fiddling with it. The weapon seemed to have an easy, rubber grip that had a trigger underneath the rubber that if I bit down activated the twin electrically charged magic crystals that extended from the one end. The other end had a cap that if I opened it revealed a plug in for a small gem battery, near identical to the ones I’d seen fueling the magical energy weapons Odessa used. The baton itself was collapsable so it could fit easily into a pocket, then just be extended with a simple flicking motion.

“New toy?” asked B.B, noticing me fiddling with the weapon. Showing it to her the pegasus gave me a small smile. “Suits ya. Not a’ bad idea ta git armed wit somethin’ fer when you don’t got the super-spear to rely on.”

I felt a small stab of embarrassment, glancing away, “Do I really rely on Gramzanber that much?”

Crossfire huffed out a short laugh, “You barely took the damn thing off for most of the time I’ve seen you. So what’s the story with that? ARMs can be found in a lot of the Ruins around Skull City, but you’re the only one I’ve seen that wasn’t with Odessa that could use one without being killed by it after a few days.”

“I don’t know why I can use it,” I said, not wanting to really explain anything to Crossfire beyond that. I especially didn’t want to talk about my increasingly short expiration date. So far as I knew only Arcaidia knew about that, and I didn’t want my other companions to worry. “Maybe I’m just lucky.”

“Lucky isn’t among the words I’d use to describe you,” commented Crossfire with a half-smirk. Then to my surprise the smirk faded and she let out a long sigh, looking away from me as she said, “Suppose I’ll add ‘stupidly loyal’ to the list. You could’ve left me and Shard, back there, when the fight got bad. Smarter ponies would’ve made a break for the door when the opening presented itself.”

She looked back at me then, golden eyes unreadable, “Why didn’t you?”

I just stared back at her, “How am I supposed to answer that? Do I need a reason to not abandon ponies to death?”

“We’re not friends,” Crossfire said sharply, “So don’t act like you have a reason to care if we died.”

I rolled my eyes, “Fine, then if it fits your worldview better, assume I didn’t abandon you because I still need you for this plan of mine to work. That answer more to your liking?”

She was silent for a long few seconds, eyes locked with mine, before she shrugged and went back to working on her rifle. She didn’t say anything more and I couldn’t tell exactly what she thought. I almost wished I could read thoughts, just to pick at whatever was going on inside her head, but a part of me was afraid of what I might find.

Not long after that we were getting ready to move once again. We’d need to scale the pile of rubble to get to the other side of the tunnel, then according to Crossfire the tram tunnel would go on for another ten or twenty minutes before we’d hit a opening back to street level that would just be one short block away from the Bounty Guild.

“Before we go,” I said, jerking my head back the way we’d come, “I just need to answer a quick call of nature.”

“Make it fast,” Crossfire said.

“An’ be careful,” cautioned B.B, “These tunnels don’t smell right.”

“I’m just going to that restroom on the last platform,” I said, “If a creepy crawly comes out of the shadows while I’m watering the wall I’m pretty sure I’ll scream loud enough for you guys to hear it.”

It was only a couple of minutes to get to the platform, and I cringed at the bodies that were still strewn about both in the tunnel and on the platform itself. I wished there was something we could do to lay these poor ponies to proper rest, but we just didn’t have the time, not to mention any soft ground for burial. I paused, being cautious as B.B had warned as I went into the restroom, listening carefully for any unusual noises. I especially watched my E.F.S. I needed to get used to paying more attention to it, but it was always so periphery that I’d sort of learned to tune it out, especially in a place like Skull City with so many ponies on it that crowded the E.F.S with dots.

Relieving myself didn’t take long, but I certainly didn’t want to be bothered by this after I was turned in at the Bounty Guild. I somehow doubted whoever in the Labor Guild wanted me would allow me a rest break like this.

When I saw one of the yellow dots from my cluster of companions getting closer I didn’t think much of it other than to be vaguely curious. Finishing up I trotted back to the platform to see Braindead clambering up onto the platform as well.

“Braindead?” I asked, “What’re you doing?”

He looked at me, eyes wavering like little ghost lights, “Just thought I’d keep an eye on you, in case something popped up, you know? I, uh, I didn’t do much to help in the fight, so I figured...”

I chuckled, “Hey, no worries. Are you even armed? Probably smart to hang back in a fight like that. I’m surprised you even wanted to come along.”

He looked away, black coat blending so well into the shadows it was like watching a wild shock of talking yellow mane, “Yeah, well... I had to do something. Had to get... get away. From Waunita.”

I approached him, and he met me halfway on the platform. I could tell he tense he was, wound like a spring practically. Why was he always so nervous? Something was tickling my brain, a thought that was trying to get from the subconscious to the forefront of my brain, but just wasn’t getting there fast.

“What’s wrong with Waunita?” I asked, trying to focus on that stray, unformed thought.

Braindead’s ears drooped down, practically plastering to his skull, “You wouldn’t understand. Can’t just shut it off. Its... you don’t know how hard it is just standing here talking to you. It's like there’s a thousand little hooks in my brain, all pulling in different ways, all of them wanting to hurt something. There’s a reason Raiders don’t go back, don’t try to live normal; we really can’t. Not after what we do. Not after living like that. I don’t know how Binge is fooling you so well, and I just... I can’t stand the way Waunita looks at me now that she knows. I’d almost rather get shot at than deal with her eyes.”

I wasn’t at all sure what I could say to that, my tail flicking around as my brain tried to understand and not really being able to. Raiders had been a wretched mystery for me since day one of running into my first ones. I could never wrap my head around why they were so brutally, almost mindlessly violent, yet still seemed to have a cognitive understanding of just how messed up they were. It didn’t seem remotely sensible that ponies could even end up like that, even under the worst of conditions, but then I hadn’t lived my entire life in the harsh conditions of the Wasteland where food and water were luxuries and violence the easier way to survive than cooperation. Even cooperation had its hefty, harsh price, as evidence by the way the Marshals gang ran their turf in the Outskirts with brutal law. The Labor Guild could enslave ponies without reprisal, and even a good natured pony like Knobs was part of an organization that basically enslaved feral ghouls for labor.

Perhaps I was the crazy one, and the Raiders were closer to the true nature of things than I understood. It was a painful and unpleasant thought as I looked at Braindead, a Raider who was wrestling with even controlling his thoughts while among us “normal” ponies.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, “I can’t pretend to understand. Waunita told me she was a captive of Raiders, once, and I’ve seen what Raider dens are like. I’ve seen what Raiders do.” I gulped, “It’s not something I think I can understand. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be...” he said, hoof rubbing at his chest and his face grimacing, as if in pain, “Nothing you can do about it. Nothing I can do about it. Everything was fucked for me since I was born, no reason this should be any different. We’d better get back to the others.”

He gestured for me to lead the way, and I didn’t think about it as I trotted past him. If I’d been paying better attention then perhaps I would have seen his yellow dot on my E.F.S flicker to red before he’d already reached into my saddlebag with his mouth. I turned, surprised and about to ask what he thought he was doing, but by then he’d already snapped out the stun baton he’d lifted from my bags and the electric crystals flashed blue.

He shoved the baton straight between my eyes, the electric discharge so white it felt as if the sun had been shoved into my eyes. There was no pain, just a sudden, utter disconnect from my body. I didn’t feel my body hitting the ground, but I could see the world go vertical as I crumpled. I could see my forelegs twitching around in front of me.

Blackness edged around my vision and the last thing I heard before passing out was Braindead speaking, but clearly not to me.

“Its me... yes Redwire, I have him.”

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Gained - Hit the Deck!: Things have been exploding around you a lot lately. Your increasingly intimate relationship with hostile explosions has taught you how to better survive them. You gain +25 DT against all explosion damage.

Author's Note

It seems an unspoken rule with me that if I want to keep a chapter short, it will inevitably become one of the longest in the story. I just had a lot I wanted to fit in here. Longwalk's first glimpse of his father, the introduction of the Protectorate princess, more Longwalk and Binge awkwardness (this time as a shower sequence), then the inevitable complications in the tunnels beneath Skull City. A lot to get in but I'm pretty satisfied with it, hopefully you guys were too.

For this chapter update's side-story spotlight I'm going to be highlighting one of the earlier fics I'd started reading; Fallout Equestria: Brotherhood. This story is one of the few third-person written tales in the fandom and the author, Noakwolf, does a pretty decent job of telling a story about two oddly named brothers searching for their mother. It recently completed as well, so there's a bonus for you folks that are looking for a finished story to sink your teeth into.

As always my thanks goes out to KKat for the creation of the Fallout Equestria setting, and to my prereaders doomande and refferee, without whom there'd be a lot more typos and errors I'd be missing.

Also as always I'm open to all comments, questions, and critiques. Until next time, folks.

Chapter 25: Black as Sin, Red as Blood

Chapter 25: Black as Sin, Red as Blood

Mistakes. I knew I’d made my share of them. I knew I was often naive, trusted too easily because I wanted to believe in the better nature of those around me. Still, I couldn't blame anypony for thinking I was a colossal idiot for letting Braindead get the drop on me like he had. That small warning signal in the back of my brain had been my common sense screaming at me to be wary, to be vigilant while I was seperated from my friends, weakened from the fight with the bounty hunters, and vulnerable while alone with a stallion who I had so little reason to trust.

A part of me just wanted to believe that ponies could change. A part of me may always believe that. Without that belief what was the point of ever giving another pony a second chance? But there was no denying my mistake as I twitched on the cold tile floor while Braindead dragged me onto his back and started trotting fast back down the tunnel away from my friends and allies.

My vision was coming in and out. My consciousness was flickering like a bad light bulb. I briefly saw that Braindead was holding a small radio device with an antenna in one hoof as he rushed down the tunnel, a snarled female voice speaking from it.

"-down the second door on the right, dumbass. Follow the stairs down then turn left and hit the elevator. It'll still be working. Take it down to-"

I passed out for a moment, blackness clouding my mind, then blinked awake to see we were heading down dingy stairs into darkness, only a faint light from my own still active Pip-Buck lighting the way. My mind duly realized that with my Pip-Buck and the spell Arcaidia had placed on me she and the others could still track me. Didn't Braindead know that too? He'd been there while we'd planned this whole business with the Bounty Guild, so he had to know. Arcaidia and the others had to be coming after me by now.

Confirmation of this arrived when I heard Arcaidia's distant voice. I couldn't tell what she was shouting, perhaps my name, but she was clearly following us. I tried to shout, but I could barely work my throat and my head swam with pain and a foggy fatigue that pulled me under as surely as quicksand.

My next clear memory was of Braindead entering the dust filled box of an elevator, its small panel of barely operating lights sparking on and off as he jabbed a button that sent us lowering further into the depths beneath Skull City. Then the darkness swallowed my mind again, my last sensation being the sound of Arcaidia's desperate call of my name, somewhere above my descending form.

When I managed to crawl back up from the syrup of dark unconsciousness I quickly noted the fact that I was stripped of my armor and saddlebags. Naked save for the Pip-Buck on my left arm, I hung suspended from a ceiling of stone where a thick, rust spotted steel beam was looped with a set of solid chains that wrapped around my fore legs so tightly I could feel the metal gouging into my flesh. The chains were secured by a large padlock. My hind legs were similarly bound, pulled taut by chains that were bolted into the stone floor by large rivets. The result was that I was stretched and hung up like a slab of meat with little room to move my body except for my head and some slack to bend my legs a little.

I craned my neck left and right to get a look at my surroundings. I was in a dry stone chamber, its smooth walls and ceiling telling me that it wasn’t natural but rather dug. The steel beam I hung from was just one of many support struts that laced the walls and ceiling like the dark bones of some long dead creature. The wall directly across from me had a stone ramp carved out that led up to a second level where a tunnel mouth loomed ominously. The cave I was in was perhaps about thirty or forty paces across, oblong, and lit by a few electric lamps set hanging off the steel beams, casting the cavern in dim orange light.

My parched mouth felt sticky and sour, and glancing down I could see a dark trail of vomit I must’ve upchucked at some point while being dragged down here, stunned and dazed. I coughed, taking my first shuddering breath and felt a chill in my stomach as I saw a few more details about the cavern. At several points on the wall, including the one directly below the second level tunnel across from me, were sets of manacles and chains bolted into the stone. Dark red stains marked those chains and the floor and walls around them. The old coppery scent in the air left little doubt as to what the stains were.

Where was I? It had to be beneath Skull City still, but what could this stone cavern be? Glancing up at my Pip-Buck I saw the device’s screen was black and dead. I don’t know how my captors had turned it off but even if the Pip-Buck was still on I was in no position to reach its knobs to try and call for help.

I just have to trust Arcaidia’s spell can lead her to me... Ancestor’s damn it all, why did I drop my guard like that?

The shame burned, but I tried to think past it. Even if trusting Braindead had been stupid of me, I wasn’t going to escape by hanging there feeling sorry for myself. Experimentally I tugged at my chains. They clinked and jingled, the sound echoing loudly in the cavernous chamber. Gradually I pulled harder, straining my muscles. Five minutes of this was enough to show me that these chains weren’t going to conveniently snap for me anytime soon. I wasn’t too daunted by this, figuring that if I kept at it I might eventually loosen them, but thoughts of a quick escape were rapidly dwindling.

Then I heard hoofsteps approaching from the dark tunnel mouth. More than one pony was coming, and I could hear coming with the hoofsteps a strange, guttural chattering that sounded like a pack of wild animals barking at each other and trying to make words out of it. I watched the tunnel entrance with grit teeth, waiting until my captors appeared.

First came short, shaggy creatures I’d never seen before. They barely stood as tall as my chest, but that didn’t do much to lessen their intimidating features. Broad, pale green heads were covered in thick coarse hair that ranged from dark green to black. Sharp angled eyes held pin-prick pupils, and their faces bore wide mouths of numerous pointed teeth. They wore clothing of patchwork metal and leather, and the spiked nature of it reminded me immediately of Raiders, although these creatures weren’t ponies but rather had bipedal bodies, their grasping hands clutching at makeshift rusty axes or blades that looked like they’d been built from the liberal application of wire and duct tape to every piece of scrap metal with an edge these creatures could find.

Four of these creatures padded into the room and marched down the ramp, taking up positions that were clearly that of guards as they chittered with each other and looked at me with hungry eyes. Behind them were two ponies. One of them was Braindead, his head hung low, his eyes very pointedly avoiding me as he trailed behind the other pony like a shadow.

The other pony was Redwire. I barely remembered her, but seeing her now my memory did flare a bit brighter. The unicorn mare’s red coat and purple mane was much the same as I’d seen it when I’d let her and Braindead go free after the fight outside Saddlespring, her mane still sporting the same braids with bits of interlaced razorwire. However she now wore a stark white robe over her body, the voluminous garment shockingly clean for being donned by a mare whose lifestyle predominantly involved such hobbies as evisceration and disembowelment. When she cantered into the cavern it was with the confidence and ease of a mare entering her home, and the look in her eyes as she saw me awake and looking at her was coldly menacing.

“About time you woke up,” she said in a smoothly unpleasant tone as she strode down the ramp towards me, “I was starting to worry I’d have to start the party without the guest of honor.”

“Never was much for parties anyway, so don’t feel too bad if I decide to skip out on you,” I said, figuring that if she wanted to trade quips I’d keep her talking as long as I could. Every second bought for Arcaidia and the others was going to count. “Speaking of which, mind doing something about these chains? They’re kind of cutting off my circulation.”

Her features twisted into a nasty snarl as she got within a pace of me, Braindead still just behind her with his head bowed to the ground as he looked everywhere but at me. Redwire’s hoof shot out, a straight, hard punch square to my groin. Pain exploded through me and made me retch.

“Yeah, I wasn’t planning on playing the banter game too much, just so you know,” Redwire said with icy firmness as she sent another punch into my gut, causing me to cough and convulse, “You’re here to hurt. I’m going to hurt you. A lot. Not kill, yet. No no no, you don’t get to die for awhile. Remember what I told you? Back when you fucked up and showed me mercy like I was some kind of little bitch you couldn’t bring yourself to kill? I promised I’d kill your friends, one by one, and anypony else you remotely care about, and only after I’d broken you would I even consider ending your worthless fucking life.”

Her hooves reached up and squeezed my face from either side and I could see the raw madness and rage burning inside her dim blue eyes, “So I’m going to break you. Right. In. Here.”

One of her hooves tapped on my chest, right above my heart.

Recovering my breath I looked at her, struggling to keep my face neutral as I asked, “Are you coming on to me?”

This earned a hard hoof to my jaw that probably loosened a few teeth. Redwire was smiling at me, looking me up and down like a pony eyeing a particularly irritating bug they intended to step on. “I do hope you keep up the spirit. That’ll just make it all the more satisfying when I tear it out of you. Believe it or not, this isn’t all about you. My new benefactor, in exchange for performing some very enjoyably bloody tasks, has given me some unique... enhancements.”

As if to emphasize her words something moved beneath her robes, like a slithering snake’s body twisting under the pure white cloth. Seeing my confused and disgusted expression she laughed. Faster than my eyes could see something extended from the folds of her robes, swift and dark as it lashed across my chest. Blazing pain burst across me from a deep laceration that started to soak my tan coat red and I grit my teeth to keep from crying out. Blinking, I watched as I saw a dark, steel gray appendage like a long, vine-like tentacle wave in the air in front of me. Its surface was covered in thorn-like blades, glinting wet with my blood. Redwire extended her tongue and licked the blood off the tendril, which then retracted back into the depths of her robe, leaving no trace that it was there.

What in the name of all the Ancestor Spirits sweat soaked balls had that been!? Where had it even come from? She certainly hadn’t had freaky razor tentacles last time I’d seen her.

Redwire ran a hoof over the fresh bleeding wound she’d put on my chest, petting the torn flesh as I winced, “Now that we’ve established how fucked you are, I have some preparations to make. I know your little band of dipshit buddies are coming to rescue you. I’ve got quite the reception planned for them. You’ll get to see every second of it, I assure you; a front row fucking seat, in fact. Before that, though, we’ve got lots of fun activities planned for you, and now that I know you’re awake I can get things started.”

She looked back sharply at Braindead, who backed up a step from her, “Keep an eye on him and if he tries anything, fry him some. In fact, fry him a bit anyway, just make sure he stays conscious. I’m going to go get our first set of party guests.”

Braindead nodded, but then Redwire gestured towards him. All she did was raise her hoof slightly, and her horn glowed a fierce purple. Only then did I realize her horn, which last time I saw her had been cracked, was now whole. The moment she gestured at Braindead he let out a choking sound, breathing rapidly as he clutched at his chest. For a second I thought I saw something moving underneath his hide, like a pulsing bulge.

Redwire glared hard at Braindead, “When I give you an order, what’s the appropriate response?”

“Y-yes Redwire!”

She twisted her gesture and I saw Briandead convulse, dropping to the ground as he screamed, “I-I mean yes mistress!”

Nodding firmly she lowered her hoof and Braindead started to breath easier. She strode past him, giving him a hard kick with a hind leg that knocked him over onto his back as he went by.

“I’ll get you trained eventually, assuming I don’t just kill you. Don’t forget who holds the leash, Braindead. Without me, you’re nothing. You don’t breathe if I don’t command it. Don’t piss me off and you get rewarded, if I feel like it. Piss me off, and you’ll end up like the others.”

“Yes mistress. I’ll do anything you command. Please... just... just please take it out. You told me if I brought him to you that you’d remove this-” he pointed at his chest, coughing, and looked at Redwire in horror as she raised her hoof again. He recoiled, but nothing happened as Redwire laughed, a sound that echoed off the walls in a mad echo.

“Remove it? I never promised that. I told you if you managed to bring this dumbass colt to me that I’d consider rewarding you. And I have. By not killing you just now. So shut up your sniveling mouth and do as I ordered. I want him to be tenderised by the time I get back.”

With that she trotted out, braided tail flicking from beneath her white robe. The four hairy critters stayed behind, shuffling about in their guard positions in clear boredom as they chattered ceaselessly amongst themselves. With their bizarre chittering as the background noise I hung there looking at the terrified Braindead, not sure what to think of what I’d just seen. It looked like Redwire had some kind of magical hold over him, but what was it exactly? It was as if there was something inside him that tied him to her magic.

Anger and confusion fought back and forth within me. He’d betrayed my trust and my friends were in danger because of it. Yet I hated seeing anypony being controlled like that, and it was clear Redwire had leverage on him that he couldn’t control. Moreover, I needed information about where I was, what Redwire had planned, and just how she’d gotten into a position where she could do any of this. Braindead was my only possible source for answers.

“Hey,” I said, causing him to start and glance towards me, but he still refused to look at me, “Look, Braindead, I need info. Can you answer some questions?”

His eyes screwed shut and he shook his head, voice hissing, “Can’t talk to you. S-sorry, can’t. Redwire finds out she’ll kill me.”

“I just want to know where I am and what she’s doing down here. How’d she even set all of this up? I get it if you don’t want to risk answering, but if she’s not getting back for a few minutes you can at least answer that much, right?”

I saw him shudder as he got to his hooves, his eyes darting towards the hairy bipedals who had now gathered by the ramp and were playing some kind of game involving small chips of something white that I gradually realized was bone. Braindead took in a deep breath and slowly looked up at me with a wretched expression.

“I’ll answer, but it won’t help. Redwire is going to kill your friends, and then you. I wasn’t lying about everything I told you. She really does hate you for letting her live.”

I couldn’t begin to grasp the logic behind that, but I figured questioning why Redwire felt sparing her life was so enraging I instead focused on more practical questions, “I’ll just assume she’s consumed too much of the crazy sauce. So what is this place? This doesn’t look like the sewers.”

His hoof weakly gestured at the stone walls around us, “These tunnels are old salt mines. There’s miles of them underneath Skull City, below the sewers and tram system. Redwire read about them in some old book. I guess Detrot, before everything went to shit, got its start with these mines. Doesn’t matter now...”

His eyes went downcast again as he stared at the cold stone floor, “We fled, just like I said, and we even planned to join the Raider horde attacking the city. But Redwire wanted an edge. From boss Bloodtrail we knew where a Ruin was north of that town we were going to infiltrate. Redwire thought she could find a weapon or something there to use against you inside it. What we found instead was... was this monster. It captured us, but it wasn’t like other Ruin monsters. It was smart. It talked. I... I don’t think it actually was from the Ruin, but rather was there studying it or something. Redwire talked to it, and it... it decided to change her. It took her on as some kind of apprentice. Gave her power, and a task. It sent her down under this city to sow confusion and panic in the population with these monsters she can create.”

“Monsters?” I asked, feeling a cold sweat break out on my brow, “What kind of monsters?”

A haunted look came over his gaunt features, “There’s a few kind, but mostly it’s the skeletons. She uses ponies. Living ponies, captured from that huge shanty town outside the city, or from anywhere else she can, and she changes them into the skeletons. She plants this-” he touched his chest, “-seed inside a pony. Then all she has to do is use a little magic and it just melts the flesh off the pony, decomposes them, rots them alive, until they’re a skeletal fucking monster she can command. That’s what she’s going to do to your friends. She’s got a small army of those monsters already and is going to ambush your friends when they come to rescue you... then change them in front of you.”

I wanted to throw up, my mouth drier than the stone around me and my head swimming with fresh fear. Even so I had to focus, and get as much information as I could, as any of it might help down the road, assuming there was a ‘down the road’. “You said she got this power from a monster you ran into at this Ruin? What was it?”

“I don’t know!” he near shouted, “It floated around and had this huge golden mask with eyes redder than freshly gouged wounds. Its body wasn’t shaped right, all these odd angles, covered up by a white robe.. Same kind of white robe it gave Redwire after it took her on as a disciple. Only parts of it I could see past the robes were the giant, golden metal claws and a barbed tail. Fucking thing has this weird ass, choking laugh that made my head hurt. It called itself... fuck what was it? Alhazad. That was it. Alhazad.”

The name rang a bell with me. It was the same name of the Hyadean creature that Misty Glasses claimed had changed her and the residents of Stable 104 into spider ponies.

So, now the same Hyadean had changed Redwire somehow, giving her power so she could create an army of monsters beneath Skull City to sow chaos on the surface? Was that what the attack on the Skull Guild’s basement level was all about? It seemed plausible enough, but there were still a few things that didn’t make sense to me.

“What was this Alhazad doing in that Ruin?”

Briandead looked at me as if I’d asked him what the inner workings of an Odessa airship was. “No idea. Didn’t ask. I spent the entire time following Redwire’s lead and trying really hard not to draw attention to myself.”

“If there’s anything you can remember-”

“I don’t fucking know okay!?” he growled, stepping closer to me and reaching to where the stun baton he’d lifted from me now dangled from a leather cord around his leg. The weapon crackled dangerously with energy as he lifted it and pointed it at me, “You keep asking questions but has it sunk in yet what’s happening to you!? What’s about to happen!? You’re Redwire’s now, just like me. You can’t escape, and even if your friends managed to fight through all of Redwire’s ambushes and traps she’ll still kill you long before they can rescue you! You’re fucked! Boned! Screwed six different ways and the Goddesses don’t give a shit! So why are you so damned calm!?”

I just blinked at him, the pain from the bleeding, oozing cut on my chest still causing me to grimace, “Calm? I’m not calm. Not even close. Trust me, if it’s me being scared you want, the only reason I haven’t pissed myself is because I relieved myself right before you, you know, betrayed me.”

My words seemed to sting him, as I saw the way his ears wilted and the air seemed to leak from his bluster, and the stun baton lowered. “I don’t have a choice. I don’t. If I’d warned you about Redwire, she’d have killed me the second I didn’t report back or she even suspected I’d turned on her.”

His voice lowered to a pained whisper, a desolate tone of a pony who had watched their last shred of hope dry up before their eyes, “I was an idiot to think there was even a chance for me to have something good.”

When he looked at me again it was with a cold anger that made me flinch, “I get why Redwire hates you so much. Good ponies are supposed to die in this world. Why the fuck do you think we butcher and rape like we do!? Because we’d die if we didn’t! But here you are, trying to show that it can be some other way when it CAN’T! It… it can’t...”

With an almost desperate look in his eyes he suddenly raised the stun baton, its crystalline tips burning with cobalt electricity, and he jabbed it into my ribs just below the cut Redwire had put in me.

“It can’t!”

Pain sizzled through me, my body convulsing in its constraints, the chains jingling with the dance of suffering as Braindead shocked me several more times, each instant just a few seconds, not enough to knock me out but drawing out the pain. I groaned, coughed, nearly threw up again as I hung there. Braindead had backed up, his eyes wild and shifting between disgust and... and just looking tired. He dropped the stun baton and shook his head, looking more beaten and defeated than I did.

“She won’t make it fast. Maybe if you’re lucky you can piss her off enough she’ll kill you in a rage. But... you probably won’t be that lucky. Heh,” he let out a dry, desiccated laugh that was filled with more self hatred than anything else, “Heheh... nothing either of us can do...”

He went to the wall and slumped against it, his whole body sinking to the ground. He stared at me with dull eyes, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world than where he was. It was... hard to feel too sorry for him, given my situation, but I didn’t enjoy seeing a pony look that broken and lost.

As for myself, all I could do was conserve my strength and bide my time. Unlike Briandead, I wasn’t about to give up on hope.

The first sound to reach my ears from the tunnel was the echo of a pony’s pained cry. I had been twisting my forelegs around, not to try and break the chains but instead to see if there was any give in them to let me any amount of movement. Short of awkward hip thrusting I wasn’t going to be able to move much. Any further thoughts I had on how to possibly escape was drowned out at the sight of Redwire returning, and she wasn’t alone.

More of those bipedal hairy creatures prodded along a trio of ponies who were bound in manacles that allowed them just enough room to move but hardly run, and barely resist the armed creatures around them. The creatures weren’t gentle in their prodding, one hard stab from a knife cutting a bleeding gouge in one of the prisoner’s flanks that made her yelp, the same voice I’d heard just moments before. Redwire herself led the procession, ignoring the ponies as one of them, the youngest looking of the bunch, sobbed loudly. The other two held stronger looks about them, but their hollowed expressions could only hold so much defiance. Two of the ponies were mares, including the youngest one, and the other was a stallion. All earth ponies.

She’s not risking bringing unicorns in here, I realized. If Redwire had unicorn prisoners they were probably kept somewhere else, away from any tools they could levitate to use as weapons or a means to escape. Looking at the three prisoners I could see they’d already been abused, their naked bodies bearing wounds, some fresh, others old and scabrous, and in a few cases clearly infected from the purple flesh around the edges of the wounds.

As Redwire led the grim parade down the stone ramp the other creatures who’d been playing their game of bones quickly got to their feet and hobbled to guard positions. Braindead, who had barely shifted from where he’d been sitting against the wall, now blearily stood with a gulping expression of fear as Redwire looked his way.

“Enjoy each other’s company?” she asked with barbed sweetness.

Braindead shuddered slightly, stammering his reply, “W-what’s to enjoy? He’s just another dead pony.”

A knowing, thin smirk crossed Redwire’s features as she gesture for her minions to secure the new prisoners to the chains hanging from the walls. One ending up on either side of me, while the third was directly across, bound tight and drawn up to their hindquarters, forelegs stretched above them much like I was.

By now these ponies were looking at me, one of the mares with a light of recognition in her eyes.

“You!” she shouted, and suddenly she seemed vaguely familiar. “I remember you...”

I stared at the mare, whose coat and mane were a coppery color reminded me a bit of Sunset, although her eyes were pink and she was an earth pony, with a map for a cutie mark. I couldn’t recall where I’d seen her before.

“You do?” I asked, while Redwire looked between us while still wearing that annoying smirk.

The copper mare nodded, sagging in her chains, “I’m Copper Shell. I saw you when you came to Saddlespring. I gave you directions to the market.”

“...Saddlespring?” I asked as my eyes grew wide. I still didn’t entirely remember her, just that a nice guard mare had given me directions at the town’s front gate. This was her? But... but that meant...

“You’re the refugees from Saddlespring,” I breathed, then turned towards Redwire, whose smirk had turned into a full, vicious grin. “When? How!?”

I felt a sick shiver run through me. I’d sent LIL-E to search for the missing survivors of Saddlespring, and she hadn’t reported back. Had LIL-E somehow been captured too!? And what about B.B’s father, Doc Sunday? Had all the survivors been caught by Redwire? My distress was clearly Redwire’s pleasure as she laughed, the sound crawling over me like a slick oil.

“These tasty morsels stumbled into the same Ruin I met master Alhazad in, and capturing them wasn’t difficult. My master didn’t care what I did with them, and I knew that if I kept most of them alive they’d be useful in hurting you. Since the Ruin connected to these old salt mines it was easy to move them here and start my work underneath this putrid city.”

I remembered LIL-E saying something about Doc Sunday knowing of a Ruin that connected to Skull City that he could move the refugees through. The whole point would have been to avoid Odessa or the Labor Guild. Who could have guessed they’d run into something so much worse? A part of me wanted to ask about B.B’s father or LIL-E, but didn’t want to risk it. If LIL-E hadn’t run into Redwire and was still out there somewhere searching, perhaps even sneaking through the mines at this very moment. If that was the case, I didn’t want to tip Redwire off. As for Doc Sunday, if he was still alive I didn’t want to give Redwire a reason to target him over anypony else.

“I still don’t get something,” I said, willing to take advantage of any chance to keep Redwire talking, because I could already see where this was going and was desperate to stall for as much time as I could. “How did you know Braindead was going to find me? Skull City is massive. You couldn’t have known where to look.”

She approached me with sinuous movements, another one of those bizarre tendrils snaking its way out of her robe. I could hear ripping, fleshy noises with the tendril’s movements. Seeing it again I noticed it had this odd texture, like something that was both metallic and organic simultaneously. Its bladed, gray surface waved underneath my chin. The bio-metal was warm to the touch and I could feel Redwire’s pulse through it as she cupped my chin with the sickening appendage and forced me to look her in the eyes. There was terrible strength in the tendril, and I felt like she could break my neck in an instant if she wanted to.

“It scares you, doesn’t it? You know what I’m going to do and you want me to waste time blabbing meaningless details. Heh, but you know what, I don’t mind indulging you, because it won’t make a difference in the end. I didn’t know where you were, only that you’d end up in this city sooner or later. So I cast a wide net. Braindead was just one of dozens of ponies I... convinced to serve me. Them, combined with my friendly little army of Gobs were all keeping an eye out for you. It was only a matter of time before I figured out where you were. And when Braindead happened to run into you at that dive tavern, well, stroke of luck for me. I had him stick close to you, and he reported your movements, including that plan of yours to turn yourself in for your own bounty. Ballsy move, by the by. Stupid, but ballsy. If I hadn’t tipped off the Wild Bunch about your plan, it might’ve worked. I knew Braindead would have his best chance to get you to me either during or after your scuffle with the Wild Bunch.”

“How do you know those bounty hunters?”

“Ah, we aren’t all born Raiders,” she said with a snicker, “Braindead was born to it, but me, I was a bounty hunter before I was a Raider.”

“What?” I blinked, confused, “How in the flaming Ancestral Spirit teats did you end up as a Raider then? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Her bladed tendril slashed across my face, blinding pain shooting through me as my muzzle was cut from snout to cheek. Suddenly Redwire’s face was in mine, her eyes blazing as she roared, “Do I look like a mare who gives a fuck about making sense!”

I coughed as she slammed a hoof into my chest and she backed up, running a hoof over her barbed mane, “This isn’t storytime. This isn’t the part where you hear about my tragic past and try to convince me there’s a better way. Fuck that. Fuck you! You don’t need to know why I choose to live the only sane way a pony can live and you don’t get to ask any more questions. Now... now the screaming starts.”

She turned and started strutting towards Copper Shell, whose face started to go pale, and I pulled hard on my chains, “No! We are not doing this shit Redwire! You have a problem with me, you damn well do things to me! Hey! You listening you psycho!?”

Redwire tilted her head coyly, a dark smile on her lips and a hellish enjoyment in her eyes, “Hmm? You say something?”

One of her bio-metal tendrils slithered out of her robes and started waving through the air towards Copper Shell, who visibly gulped and recoiled in her chains from the sight. I felt the hackles of my mane rise as I stared at Redwire, feeling a white hot anger building in me that mixed poorly with the oily fear drenching me.

“I said if you want to slice up ponies, then do it to me!” I growled past clenched teeth, “I’m the one you’re pissed off at, right? I’m the one you hate for some stupid ass reason! So hurt me. I don’t care what you do! Cut me up more, or break my freakin’ legs with a hammer, whatever makes you grin. I’m not pretending to be tough, I’ll scream plenty the whole damn time. You want me to beg? I don’t give a shit about my pride, so I’ll beg all you damned want! Just. Leave. Them. Alone!”

“You really do care about other ponies, no matter who they are, don’t you?” Redwire asked, her tendril retracting from the shaking Copper Shell for a moment.

Then Redwire’s eyes narrowed to slits and the tendril shot forward, plunging deeply into Copper Shell’s shoulder, twisting and burrowing into the helpless mare’s flesh. Copper Shell screamed, a high pitched wail that echoed off the salt mine’s walls as Redwire laughed at my look of horror.

“That’s why I’m going to enjoy every second of this!”

I threw myself against my chains, no longer caring how strong or tight they were. I yanked and strained, muscles struggling against unyielding metal. Copper Shell’s howls of agony added a punctuation for every thrashing of my body as I tried to break free of my bonds, yet the chains and the steel beams they were attached to held firm. I was trapped in place, unable to look away as Redwire began her bloody work upon the helpless mare in front of me.

The pain of my own wounds were completely forgotten, and all I could feel was an overwhelming need to put a stop to what I was seeing. Redwire was digging her tendril slowly through the surface area of Copper Shell’s hide. I could see the bladed appendage worming like a cancerous bulge beneath the skin, and I knew every second those razor bladed protrusions were shredding furrows through Copper Shell’s body.

“It always amazes me how much punishment a pony’s body can take,” said Redwire casually, sliding up to Copper Shell and placing an almost affectionate hoof on the thrashing mare’s cheek as her tendril continued to torture her captive, “How much blood we can shed, how mutilated our flesh can become, and still our heart keeps pumping. Its as if we were born for the sole purpose of enduring pain. It’s beautiful, really. Even as a foal I figured that out. My cutie mark shows just how good I am at inflicting pain.”

Said cutie mark was little more than a set of blood drenched razor wires, and as she withdrew her tendril from Copper Shell’s body the crimson soaked appendage looked like nothing more than a twin to Redwire’s cuite mark. Copper Shell sagged in her chains, the wound in her shoulder leaking a river of red down her side as she sobbed ragged breaths. Redwire looked back at me, waving her tendril through the air as if to show it off to me.

“What do you think is worse? Killing her now, fast and clean? Or drawing this out for, mmm, hours? Days even? I can end her suffering in an instant.”

Suddenly a second tendril appeared from her robes, opposite the first, and lashed around Copper Shell’s neck. The mare’s eyes widened in terror as the tendril constricted, blades starting to cut into the soft flesh of her neck, but not quite enough to cut off air or break into anything arterial. Redwire held off, just a centimeter from inflicting fatal harm as the other tendril started to lash across Copper Shell’s belly, cutting shallow but painful lacerations across the mare’s exposed barrel.

“What do you think? You’re the ‘good pony’ here, after all. Should I kill her now, end the pain? Or should I keep her alive, keep hurting her, and hurting her, and hurting her on the small, miniscule chance that you, the ‘hero’ might find some way to save her?”

“Ancestors fucking damnit Redwire just stop! What do you want from me!?”

“What do I want?” Redwire asked innocently as more of Copper Shell’s blood coated the cold stone floor, “I want you to see. I want you to know. I want you to understand.”

“Understand what? That you’re a sick, delusional nutcase?”

“No,” she replied as her eyes fixed on mine, and inside those eyes I saw the barren expanse of desolation and ruin that was reflected in every patch of the dried up Wasteland, “I want you to understand that you can’t win against it.”

Her tendril around Copper Shell’s neck loosened, but only so that tendril could join its twin in lashing and flaying the rest of the mare’s body. Small splatters of blood flew through the air like tiny red jewels as Redwire said, “Nopony beats the Wasteland.”

“F-fuck...you, bitch. Just kill me and get it over with!” Copper Shell managed to gasp, her screams weakening.

“Ah ah ah, flattery gets you nowhere. You want the pain to stop, it has to be his call,” Redwire said in a sickly sweet voice, pointing back towards me while lifting Copper Shell’s chin with one tendril. I saw the agony swimming in Copper Shell’s eyes as she looked at me. Already her body looked like a swollen, red mass of cuts that shed a curtain of blood down her body, and it made me realize that Redwire wasn’t lying. Ponies could take an incredible amount of punishment without dying, and Redwire very well could keep this up for days.

But I knew she didn’t have days. Arcaidia and the others were coming. She had to know that too, otherwise she wouldn’t have turned off my Pip-Buck... although...

The thought struck me with sudden clarity. Redwire turned off my Pip-Buck, but why would she bother doing that if she also knew that Arcaidia had placed a tracking spell on me? She’d know my friends would search for me, perhaps even find their way down here, but the more I thought about it the more I realized she likely was betting on having days to work on torturing me. She’d assume my friends would need that time to search, without a way to directly track me. She didn’t know about the spell! But why? Braindead knew about it, and he would have...

My eyes glanced towards Braindead, who had shuffled off to the side of the room and was making a point of looking at the ground and drawing as little attention to himself as possible. He certainly didn’t look like he was enjoying any of the proceedings.

He didn’t tell her. He knows my friends are coming, and a hell of a lot sooner than Redwire is prepared for!

Had all of his words and anger towards me been an act then? No, I didn’t think so. It had seemed too real, too genuine. My guess was that Braindead was as conflicted and confused as anypony could be. He didn’t want to live like a Raider anymore, but it was so ingrained he couldn’t entirely escape it, either. He had to obey Redwire to keep from being killed, but he, perhaps on a whim, kept vital information from her that might lead to both her and him being killed by my friends, perhaps on the off chance he might escape and gain his freedom in the fight.

It was all guesswork, but I was grateful for this small stroke of luck. But it didn’t help the immediate situation, as Copper Shell’s eyes were losing focus, tears starting to stream down her cheeks. Her face was etched with the anguish Redwire was inflicting on her with every razor cut, but the mare hadn’t passed out yet.

I had to do something, even being chained up as I was.

“Copper, listen to me. Look at me, and listen,” I said, meeting her eyes and trying to pour as much conviction and strength as I could into both my voice and eyes, hoping to reach her and instill any kind of comfort, “I know it hurts. I’m so, so sorry this is happening. You don’t deserve this. But you have to endure it! Every single second you can hold on matters.”

As our eyes met I could see her struggling with the pain Redwire was inflicting on her, but I also saw something else, a spark of strength as she grit her teeth and nodded at me. Redwire merely laughed.

“Adorable. I think I just shed a tear. No, wait, that’s just some of your blood that’s gotten on my face,” Redwire said with a voice dipped in sarcastic amusement, “Now let’s see if you can keep this up after I’ve removed half your skin.”

Before she could do more, however, one of the shaggy bipedal beasts, Gobs I think Redwire had called them, shuffled from the tunnel and made a bunch of loud chattering noises. Redwire groaned, eyes rolling as she looked up at the thing.

“What is it!? I’m busy!”

With some animated arm flailing to compliment its guttural language the Gob excitedly pointed back down the tunnel, jumping up and down a few times like its feet were on fire. Whatever it said its words caused its fellow Gobs to start grunting excitedly amongst themselves, banging their rusted weapons together. Redwire’s below was punctuated by a whipcrack of one of her tendrils.

“Oh for fuck’s sake” she pointed at the one that had just shown up, “Go tell the rest of your clan to gather in the chapel chamber. Do it quickly. This doesn’t change anything, other than the main event is starting sooner rather than later.”

With a savage snarl she turned to Copper Shell, the tendril around the captive mare’s neck tightening for a moment, “Don’t get too comfy there cupcake. I’ve got lots left to do to you before you can even dream of getting any release, and you can thank the colt dangling there for every ounce of pain you’ll get to feel before you die, because the only reason I’m doing this to you is because I know it just twists him up inside. Oh, and you want to know the best part? He had a chance to kill me, once, and the naive little fucker let me live. So the only reason you’re here, and the only reason any of your friends have died, is because of his cowardice. Enjoy that thought, sweetness, and we’ll be seeing each other again real soon.”

She turned swiftly, giving Copper Shell one last, casual laceration with her retracting tendril, then trotted up the stone ramp. “Braindead, heel!” she snapped like a master commanding a dog. Braindead jolted to his hooves and with a nervous twitch to his steps followed Redwire out of the chamber. The Gob that had arrived went with them, but the rest remained on guard, watching us prisoners.

Had my friends shown up already? I hoped so, but I couldn’t rely solely on them, if it was their arrival that had caused this distraction and temporary reprieve. I pushed aside my own pain, which was still pretty damn intense from the nasty cuts across my chest and muzzle. Copper Shell looked much worse off, and I was scared at seeing how much blood she’d lost from the oozing wounds covering her now. Redwire’s words cut me deeper than any wound her tendrils could inflict. She was right, this was all happening because I’d let her live. She’d told me to my face, back then, that she’d hunt me and my friends, but I’d turned her loose anyway. I just... hadn’t wanted the blood on my hooves.

Seeing the blood coating Copper Shell’s body and splattering the floor around her tortured form I realized I’d only traded one kind of blood on my hooves for another, and this blood was innocent. I took a deep breath before I spoke.

“Copper, are you...?” I couldn’t quite finish the sentence, but she knew what i meant, and I saw her dredge up a small smile.

“I’ve... had better days...fuck...this hurts.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so-”

“Heard you th...the first time. Just save it,” she gulped, shuddering, “Save it for... for when we kill that bitch.”

She looked at me hopefully, “We do have a plan to do that, right?”

I looked up at my chains, tugging at them again. Yup, still stuck. I looked back at her, “Working on it. Umf, so far the brute force method isn’t working.”

“Th-they ain’t taking any chances with us,” said one of the other prisoners, the stallion, an older fellow with a leathery blue hide and a mane of dirt brown streaked with a single band of gray. His eyes had a haunted, sunken look to them, “That monster keeps most of us locked up in one of the mineshafts, been dragging folk off one at a time to do Goddesses knows what. Is it true what she said? You let that Raider live when you had a chance to off her?”

There was hot accusation in his eyes and I felt myself wither under the stare, but I didn’t look away. “I...yes, I did.”

“Why the fuck for!? I watched that bitch drag away my brother and heard his screams echoing through the whole damn mine! You telling me that’s your fault!?”

“That’s enough Bass!” said Copper, “Guilt won’t get us out of this mess.”

Her voice was strained and I could see how much she was trying to keep the pain off her face. While Redwire’s cuts had been shallow, they’d been placed to maximize pain, and the twisting of Copper Shell’s features as she spoke was just a hint of what I feared the mare was enduring just hanging there in the aftermath of Redwire’s hoofwork. Yet despite all that pain, suffered only because of my mistake, she was still defending me.

I didn’t know whether to feel even more ashamed, or be in awe of her own fortitude. It seemed I had this knack for running into ponies who had far stronger spirits than my own. I wanted nothing more than to become a pony worth knowing such souls, and to see them guarded against the Wasteland that seemed ever bent on claiming them through either death or corruption.

“How are we going to get out?” asked a wispy voice, coming from the last of the three prisoners Redwire had brought in. This was a small mare, a yellow coat marked with dirt and grime, and a long unkempt mane and tail of a tan not too far off from my own coat color. She’d been shivering silently the entire time Redwire had been torturing Copper Shell, and now she looked at us all with desperate brown eyes. “Even the doctor couldn’t save us. What chance do we have of escaping on our own?”

The doctor? Doc Sunday! I looked at the mare hopefully, “What happened to Doc Sunday? Do you know?”

The mare wilted from my look, looking away from me, “H-he led us into the Ruin. He said it’d be a safe way to get to the city. But it wasn’t. The monsters were waiting for us. He fought the one with the gold mask...”

She trailed off, shaking and sobbing. Copper Shell took in a deep breath and finished the story for her.

“Doc Sunday put up a hell of a fight against that masked sonuvabitch, even bought a few of us time to escape out of the Ruin, but the rest of us got caught and last I saw of the Doc he was knocked down this big chasm in the middle of the Ruin. Too deep and dark to see the bottom, and sad to say the Doc wasn’t any pegasus like his girl B.B, so...”

My heart sank into a cold bog, my head hanging. I hadn’t even known Doc Sunday very well, but I remembered the stallion’s kind demeanor. Just the fact alone that he’d taken B.B from whatever life of violence she’d known among her previous ‘Family’ and raised her to be the mare I’d met in Saddlespring was more than enough to mourn his loss.

“Even if he was here,” said Bass, “He’d be just as screwed as the rest of us.”

“We’re not dead yet,” I said, “And there may be help coming. We just have to make sure we can hold out until it gets here.”

“Rather figure out an escape myself than wait on others,” said Copper Shell, closing her eyes for a second, “Not to make you feel worse off than I figure you already feel, but I don’t honestly think I can take another session with that bitch’s freaky ass tentacles.”

“Let’s get thinking then...” I said as I cast my look around the room once more. If just pulling on my chains wasn’t getting me anywhere I needed a tool or some other advantage. Could there be something I’d overlooked so far?

The Gobs had been bordely ignoring us, instead chattering in their language among themselves, two by the bottom of the stone ramp and another two moving to the top of the ramp by the entrance to the tunnel. They didn't seem to care about us ponies talking, but I wasn’t sure if they could even understand what we were saying. The one who’d spoken to Redwire had seemed to understand the Equestrian she’d spoken back, but these other ones hadn’t reacted so far to any of the talk between me and the other prisoners. Maybe only a few of them understood Equestrian, then? I could only hope. I didn’t like the looks some of them were giving us. The eyes of these creatures expressed a hungry and violent light that led me to think these really were just Raiders of a different ilk, and they’d be as eager to mutilate and destroy as any pony Raider might. I could only imagine fear of Redwire was keeping them in check, and that Redwire wanted all the fun of harming us to herself, so these Gobs weren’t indulging in what many of them clearly wanted to do to four helpless, chained up ponies.

Each bore at least two makeshift weapons, and if we could somehow get out of our bonds and miraculously overpower these guards we’d be armed, but the chances of being able to take the guards by surprise and beat them in melee seemed slim. Perhaps our chains themselves could be used as weapons, but getting out of them would still need to be accomplished first.

I could only assume the padlock on my chains or the other’s manacles had keys to them, but I was willing to bet Redwire was the only one with those keys. I didn’t want to risk waiting until she came back for some half-assed attempt to snatch the keys off her if she happened to bring them along, so that idea was out.

This all would have been so much easier with Gramzanber. The ARM would make short work of these chains. I could feel my spear’s distant presence, the faintest pressure in my mind, but that was it. Even knowing it was a foalish notion I still tried to call out to the spear. I sent a mental plea towards the sensation of pressure, tried to focus on the image of Gramzanber in my head and will the spear to me. No such luck, unfortunately, though I did get a quiet, barely perceptible return sensation like feeling the lightest touch of wind across the back of my neck. I didn’t know if that was Gramzanber trying to reach out to me, but the feeling was at least a little comforting. I wondered if I died down here what would become of the ARM? Probably Arcaidia would reclaim it, perhaps find another wielder. I hoped she’d find somepony to help her look for her sister. B.B could likely be counted on in that regard.

Okay, I need to stop thinking about what happens if I die, it’s not helping! Think, you slow witted stone brained moron! There has to be a way out of here. Something that Redwire overlooked! She’s not that smart, and while you’re no mental giant you ought to be able to outwit somepony whose collective talents could be described as “being crazy evil”!

“Do you need to use the little colts room or something?” asked Bass dully as he grimaced at me.

“That’s probably just his thinking face,” said Copper Shell, breathing hard, and clearly trying not to laugh because laughing equaled terrible pain for her. “Y-you got any ideas yet, Longwalk? Sorry to say that my own plan of bleeding on the floor so much that the bitch slips and breaks her neck probably won’t work as well as I dream.”

“I’ll admit it was a lot easier to say we should escape than its so far been to figure out a way to do said escaping,” I said, taking another look around the room and at my own bindings, my eyes narrowing as I looked at my Pip-Buck once again. It being off had made me discount the machine, and more importantly what was attached to it. The Grapple attachment was still there, the shiny cuff with its magical node plugged into the back half of the PIp-Buck as if it were just a simple extension of the device itself.

Wait... does the Grapple work on its own, even if the Pip-Buck is off? I know the interface lets me use S.A.T.S with the Grapple, but I can fire it on its own, right?

I tried to recall if I’d ever used the Grapple without relying on S.A.T.S, and I thought I had back at Silver Mare Studios to climb to the roof. I’d just gestured in the right way and the Grapple had fired. Still, even with this possibility, what could I do with the Grapple here? I knew it had spells that could either lighten myself or the weight of whatever it wrapped around, but how would I use that to effect an escape? I couldn’t move my fore legs much at all anyway, so the range of things I could aim the Grapple at was limited. With the right twisting I could get the Grapple aimed towards only whatever was more or less in front of me and at or above head height. That didn’t leave a lot of potential targets, and I started to carefully examine everything in that area for any ideas.

At least two of the Gobs were in range, but what good would hitting one of them with the Grapple do? It wasn’t as if any of the guards had a set of keys on them, and their rusted looking weaponry, even if I could manage to snag one and pull it back to me, wouldn’t do much good in breaking the chains binding me.

Looking more carefully I could see that, atop the stone ledge that led to the tunnel out of this chamber there were some stacked crates and tools, all of which looked dusty and old. Likely that stuff was leftover from when the mine was still occupied. However among the tools I noticed a few were neatly stacked atop one of the taller crates. These tools were things like small saws or hooks, things that didn’t look like mining equipment, but rather... less pleasant instruments. Most of them had a reddish tint of bloodstains both old and recent.

Among those tools one stood out to me. While I wasn’t familiar with very many modern types of tools, my tribe having used next to none of them outside of the most rudimentary, I could still surmise uses for a tool just by looking at its design, and this one in particular looked like a pair of heavy sticks connecting to a thick metal cutting head, like a bladed clamp.

“Hey,” I asked my fellow prisoners, “Could anypony tell me what that tool leaning against the crate there with all the other bloody tools is?”

There was some confused silence as the others all strained to turn their heads and get a look at what I was talking about. Copper Shell wasn’t in a good position to see it, but Brass was, and said, “You talking about the bolt cutters?”

“Is that what they’re called? The thing that looks like Radscorpion pincers in reverse?”

“Weird way of putting it, but yeah... why? I mean, if you’re thinking to use those to cut the chains, nice thought, but we can’t get at them in case you hadn’t noticed,” Brass said in a dry, cracking voice.

“I might have an idea,” I said, frowning, “Though I wonder why Redwire even has those down here if they can be used to cut chain?”

Copper Shell looked at me with pained eyes, “Anything that can cut chains are also good at cutting ponies. Besides, if she loses the keys to these manacles she’d need another way to remove the bodies after she’s finished with her sick business. Brass is right, however. The bolt cutters are way out of reach.”

I wiggled my Pip-Buck clad leg, “I might have a device that can snag that tool and reel it back to me. Assuming I aim well enough, then can figure out how to use the tool while still mostly bound to cut my chains before our guards decide to do something to stop me.”

“If you got a device that does that, well, shit it might work,” Copper Shell said, her eyes shifting in a nervous glance at the Gobs, who were quite immersed in their own chatting and only gave the ponies in the room occasional, bored looks. “The guards might decide to stab us all before you can get free, but that risk sounds better than waiting for that crazy bitch to come back and keep playing redecorator with our insides.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Brass.

“I was. But really, what are our options right now?” asked Copper Shell, “I don’t see any of us coming up with any miraculous plans. You got any bright ideas Brass? How about you, Whisperwood?”

Brass’ face hardened but he looked away, and the other mare, Whisperwood, gulped and looked up at the ceiling. “I, um, well, I don’t think we have many choices, but can you really free yourself and deal with the guards all by yourself, Mr. Longwalk?”

Her voice had mostly been resigned up until this point, seasoned with fear, but now there was an edge of hope in it. I didn’t want to let that fragment of hope down, and I gave her my most confident smile, despite how much the motion caused the wound across my muzzle to hurt. “I don’t know, but by the Ancestor Spirits I’m about to damn well try.”

My answer got a confused if still hopeful look from Whisperwood, which was fine by me. She didn’t have to believe in or understand what I meant by “Ancestor Spirits” to feel that flickering, fragile spark of hope that we could escape from this wretched situation. If I managed to escape an Odessa airship then a monster ridden mine should be doable.

Yeah, ignoring the fact that I had a lot more help escaping Odessa, and even then not everypony got out of that alive... no, stop thinking about it. Just focus, and act. Take this one step at a time. First step; snag those bolt cutters.

I waited a few seconds until I was sure none of the Gobs were looking my way, then I wiggled my wrist into position. It was a painful angle, the chains digging like hard, rough coils into my chaffing hide, but inch by inch I forced my wrist into line with the distant set of bolt cutters. I mentally pictured the Grapple, its hooked end, and its trajectory once I fired it. I made tiny adjustments, accounting for the arc that gravity would create. I made further little adjustments, knowing I’d need the hook to fire at a slight curve to wrap around one of the handles of the bolt cutters.

It was sort of like planning the toss of a grenade, only about ten times harder with my fore legs chained up and my viewpoint at the target less than ideal.

Finally there was no more adjusting I could do and win or lose, I had to act, or risk the lives of innocents on the non-existent mercies of a psychopath. A psychopath I resolved to not allow to escape with her life to harm others a second time.

Deep breath, in and out, then I twisted my wrist just a bit more, activating the Grapple. The hook shot materialized from its compacted magical space and with a quiet *pfft* of noise it fired. The glinting wire and hook reflected the cavern’s dim light like a strand of spider silk, and I held my breath as I watched it go. The hook touched off the bolt cutters, wire wrapping around the handle four times before the hook settled around it. My blood alighted with adrenaline as the first Gob make a short, barking grunt of bewilderment as it noticed what was happening.

In the time that the Gob took to start jostling its companions to the point that they would ignore their game and pay attention I’d already twisted my wrist again to signal the Grapple to reel the bolt cutters to me. Even as the other Gobs began to also look at what was happening the bolt cutters sailed across the room and back to me, dangling from the Grapple line in front of my face.

I immediately reached out with my mouth and snagged one of the handles. Now the hard part. I had to bend my head at a upward angle to get the bolt cutters to tip upward, using the crook of my left elbow to snag and hold the other handle still while using my mouth to manipulate the tool. By now the Gobs had overcome their shock and realized what was happening, and were scrambling to grab up their weapons.

The seconds slowed to molasses crawls of time as I tried once to snag the chain links with the open bolt clamps, failed, and tried again. The first Gob was rushing me, a rusted hatchet held high. My second try managed to catch a chain link and without waiting I used all my neck strength to push down on the handle. I felt the metal resist, then part under the exceedly sharp and strong clamp, then snap altogether.

The Gob had reached me and snarling something in its own language hacked at my flank. The rusty axe head bit into me, eliciting a choked half scream from me. The creature hadn’t struck hard, as I imagined it was under orders not to kill me, but the wound was a painful one in a meaty part of my flank. As the Gob pulled the axe back to hack again, its fellows close behind it, I got the bolt cutters around another chain link and snapped that one.

That was enough to unravel the bundle and the chains came loose from around my fore legs, dropping my entire body down fast and hard. I landed right on top of the first Gob in a mess of limbs and grunts. I immediately set about flailing in hard punches at anything moving around me, first smashing one Gob’s gut hard enough to knock it off its feet and clobbering the one beneath me over the head.

Orders or no orders the Gobs turned immediately vicious and I was soon in a maelstrom of sharp rust covered weapons stabbing and cutting at me as I rolled away and desperately punched out to ward off the blows. My efforts kept the jagged, dirty blades from finding my vital spots, but my legs took several nasty cuts in return. As one Gob lunged at me, screaming incoherently as it thrust a stained kitchen knife at my chest, I grabbed up some of the freed bit of chain and lashed out. The chain smashed across the Gobs face in a shower of broken teeth and it reeled back, out of my range to pursue due to the chains still around my hind legs, but close to Copper Shell.

She didn’t hesitate. Moving with lightning speed for a pony as wounded as she was Copper Shell used her limited range of movement to still lash out with her head and crack the staggered Gob hard in the back of its skull with a fierce headbutt. The creature’s eyes crossed and it dropped like a brick.

The last Gob still standing was smashing a meat cleaver down at me as I blocked with the loose chain between my hooves. When one hefty blow knocked the chain out of my grip I had to grab the next swing bare hooved. For such a small looking creature with spindly arms it had a impressive amount of strength, and its lips curled in a snarling grin as it pressed the meat cleaver closer to my exposed neck. Looking around I saw the hatchet from the first Gob I’d knocked out earlier, just a few inches away.

Turning my head I snagged the axe’s filthy handle with my mouth, nearly gagging at the combined smell and taste of it, and thrashed my head back the other way. There hadn’t been any time to think about aiming, or turning to use the flatter end of the hatchet. I just swung, desperate to dislodge the Gob before it got its meat cleaver through my neck. My hard, reckless swing bore out bloody results as the hatchet blade hit solid Gob flesh. With a instinctive burst of horror I saw I’d hit the Gob in its own neck just as it’d been trying to do to me, and felt hot blood splattering across my face from the deep wound.

The Gob gurgled and howled in frothing agony, blood bubbling from its lips as it fell off me and weakly clutched at its hemorrhaging neck. I rolled to my hooves, face aghast, and I even started to move forward, thinking to perhaps stem the flow of blood with my own hoof... but the Gob thrashed one last time and lay still before I finished my first step, its eyes glazed.

I gulped. I hadn’t intended to kill any of the Gobs if I could help it. I knew I might have to depending on how the escape went, but the hope to avoid it stuck with me. I shuddered and took a deep, deep breath, letting it out slowly. Rescuing as many ponies a possible had to be my focus. I wouldn’t kill without need, but the line between “need” and “would make things easier” was getting blurred by a tint as red as blood.

Does that blurred line also apply to Redwire...? some back part of my inner self asked, and I told it to shut up and not bother me. Redwire was... a matter to deal with if and when I was in a position to do so. A sinking, cold, yet somehow solid feeling in my gut told me that only one of us was ever going to leave this mine alive. It scared me a little that the thought didn’t upset me like it may have once.

With the Gobs down and out nothing stopped me from grabbing up the bolt cutters and finishing with the chains holding me down. In seconds I was free and approaching Copper Shell to cut her own chains. She looked at me, then at the remaining unconscious Gobs.

“It’s dangerous to leave them alive,” she said simply.

I drew in and let out a ragged sigh, “If you want, chain them up and gag them go for it, but my only goal is to get us, and as many other ponies as I can, safely out of here. I’m... I’m trying to avoid killing until I’m out of options..”

“Do you think we’ll have the luxury of other options? Honestly?” she asked, a frank and open look on her face, if not without sympathy.

“No, I don’t,” I answered with equal frankness, and looked her in the eyes, “If it's between them and us...” I nodded at the dead Gob, the hatchet still in its neck, and said no more.

“Can we save this conversation for sometime never!?” shouted Bass, “We need to get going, now!”

I didn’t argue his point, and set about freeing both him and Whisperwood. All three Saddlespring ponies were quick to arm themselves with the Gobs’ discarded weapons, even Whisperwood who despite seeming so nervous gained a heated, fierce look in her eyes as she snatched up the meat cleaver. Bass took the kitchen knife, while Copper Shell armed herself with the nail ridden pipe the fourth Gob had held, leaving me with the hatchet. I retrieved the blood coated weapon with a final, apologetic look at the Gob I’d killed. I didn’t know if these creatures believed in an afterlife, but I said a silent prayer in my mind anyway, asking the Ancestor Spirits to look after any lost souls they might find in the everafter in the coming hours.

Somepony needed to carry the bolt cutters as well, so we quickly strapped those to me with some salvaged lengths of chain, securing the tool to my barrel for when we found more prisoners to free.

“This way,” Copper Shell said, “I think I can remember the way back to where the rest of us were being forced to work.”

She started to trot but almost instantly staggered, sagging on her hooves with a grunt of pain. It was little wonder. Redwire had left the mare’s body looking like a map of pain carved in wicked red inked lines over her tender hide. Looking at her, and at the wall and ground she’d occupied while chained, I was shocked cold by how much blood Copper Shell had lost. I was immediately at her side, letting her lean against me, feeling the sticky heat of her blood coated body against my sides.

“Are you going to be able to walk?” I asked, “It might be better if one of us carried you.”

She looked at me and the flash of heat in her eyes made me almost regret what I said, but I held firm and match her look with my own. She took a breath, then another, and grit her teeth hard. “I’ll live. It looks bad, I know, but the bitch didn’t do anything I can’t walk off. Earth ponies aren’t made of tissue paper.”

Her lips curled in a quick, if pained, smile, “Especially the mares.”

Thinking of Trailblaze and Binge respectively I let out a short laugh and nodded, “Don’t I know it? Okay, lead on, but if you collapse, I’m still carrying your flank.”

“Well... I guess letting you take some of the weight won’t crush my self-image as a tough badflank too much,” she said and let me take one of her hooves around my shoulders, allowing me to take half her weight as we trotted out of the chamber. Before we left we made sure to secure the surviving Gobs with the remains of our chains, binding them tightly and making sure they were gagged.

The tunnel beyond the torture chamber was a long, wide affair with metal and wood beams supporting smoothly carved walls. Magical lamps hung periodically from the ceiling, casting ponds of flickering orange light from their ever burning embers. It wasn’t long before a set of stairs, or more accurately a steep carved slope in the stone laden with log insets to provide steps, was to our left, but Copper Shell directed us past it.

“I think that goes towards a section of the mine that connects to a deeper shaft,” she said, “It might also double back towards the chambers above us, but I know it's not where we were being forced to dig.”

“What was Redwire making you all dig for?” I asked.

Whisperwood answered, her breathy voice quiet so I barely heard her over our own hooves on the cold ground, “To hurt us. To make us weak.”

Brass spat, face a scowling mask, “She sure as shit ain’t after the salt down here. The chamber we’ve been forced to dig in ran dry on its salt viens ages ago, but there’s something else in there. Some kind of ancient Ruin horsehockey.”

I frowned in thought. More Ruins from the ancient war between the Guardians, Elw, and the alien invaders. Redwire had already revealed she was working for a Hyadean alien, and that part of her mission was to disrupt the city above. Did she also have some kind of task related to the Ruins? Maybe she was digging for one of the Golems? I could only imagine what kind of damage a thing like that could do if let loose inside Skull City.

“Could you describe what this ‘Ruin horsehockey’ looks like?” I asked, mouth feeling dry as I dreaded the answer.

Brass’ face screwed up in a peculiar expression that I imagined was a mix of deep thought and perplexity as he tried to describe what I asked, “Kinda hard to explain. It’s like a bunch of pipes covered in lines and patterns that don’t make any sense, and the pipes themselves are all at mixed up angles too, like... like...”

“Circuitry,” said Whisperwood, shrinking back at bit at our looks, “It’s just, my brother used to repair terminals, and I kind of know what arcane circuit boards look like, and the pipes Brass is talking about kind of look like really big circuits to me.”

Well, it wasn’t a Golem, which was a relief, but I wasn’t sure if I liked the sound of this much more. What could these be about? Were they connected to something? If so, what? Clearly Redwire wanted them for something, or rather, her masters wanted them for something. I suddenly felt the urge to see if I could turn my Pip-Buck on. The thought had just occurred to me, among other things.

Stopping our slow trot with a quick word the others watched me curiously as I fiddled with my Pip-Buck.

“What are you doing?” Copper Shell asked.

“Uh, trying to turn this back on,” I said, turning the device left and right as I peered at its myriad buttons and dials. Fortunately the thing was designed to be all but idiot proof, so it only took me... several minutes of fumbling to finally find the giant red button with the ‘On/Off’ next to it.

...Oh, shut up.

I had to watch a scrawl of confusing green text flash across the screen as the Pip-Buck booted up, displaying a friendly and altogether too happy looking miniature pony giving me a ‘hoofs up’ sign before the main displays came up. Instantly my vision swam and the familiar compass display and E.F.S came online. I breathed a little easier seeing there were no immediate red dots nearby. I’d need to pay careful attention to that, to avoid us running face first into any patrolling Gobs.

Toggling through the menus I hit up the radio and keyed in Arcaidia’s frequency.

“Hello? Arcaidia? Can you hear me?” I spoke into the Pip-Buck. Unfortunately I only recieved static as my uncomfortably chilling reply. Copper Shell looked at me with a comforting nudge.

“That your blue friend you’re trying to reach? I remember she had a Pip-Buck too. Chances are this far underground you won’t be able to get a signal out. Way too much rock in the way.”

I sighed, “I know they’re on their way to find me. Arcaidia put a tracking spell on me, and I’m willing to bet my friends getting close is what drew Redwire away back there. I just hope they can deal with whatever that monster is throwing at them.”

“Let’s just make sure that we’re still alive for them to charge in and rescue,” said Brass.

“The others, too,” Whisperwood said, gulping but squaring her shoulders and gripping the meat cleaver even tighter, “We’re not leaving without them.”

“Didn’t say otherwise,” said Brass, then to me, “You done with that toy or what?”

I nodded, and we got going again. It was a shame the radio was useless. Besides Arcaidia I’d also seriously been considering calling on Sunset’s frequency. While Odessa and I weren’t allies, I could foresee the enemy of my enemy being, if not my friend, an ally of convenience. Odessa would want to know about a Hyadean servant down here, indeed the very source of the bio-soldiers that had Odessa concerned about the safety of their own base somewhere beneath Skull City. If I’d been able to call Sunset she could probably sick Odessa on Redwire’s little operation and wouldn’t that have been one hell of a surprise for the Raider to contend with?

It was just as well. Even if Odessa could help, it’d only be until Redwire was dealt with, and then I’d have heavily armed and angry pegasi to contend with. That would be a complication for another day, assuming I survived long enough.

The long unused mine tunnels widened at seemingly random points, showing ancient rest areas where the miners digging might have taken breaks, or kept currently used equipment stored. All that was left in these areas now were faded, empty crates, and a smattering of rust spotted fold out chairs. Some of the tunnels widened so large that one could fit vehicles down here, and I noticed the old faded lines of ancient tracks suggesting the ponies who mined these tunnels did exactly that. The air down here was stale and picked at my nostrils with acrid dryness.

Copper Shell’s breathing was getting more ragged by the minute, and I kept looking at her with worry, but she just shook her head when she saw that and wiped sweat off her brow and doggedly kept trotting on with my aid. Behind us Whisperwood and Brass trailed silently, Brass keeping a close watch behind us. After several turns and twists down the confusing maze of tunnels, making me wonder just how Copper Shell had remembered the way so clearly as I imagined I’d have gotten pretty lost by now, we slowed down as Copper Shell whispered, “We’re close, keep quiet and stay low.”

This was followed soon by sounds echoing down the tunnel ahead, sounds that made a nasty feeling of cold clamminess creep along my spin. Pained cries and hideous laughter.

The tunnel opened into the bottom of a large, irregular chamber roughly circular in shape, and with a ceiling of high walls stretching upward into a massive shaft. The walls were encircled by a thick patchwork lattice of wooden and metal scaffolds, stairs, ladders, and criss-crossing ropes. Chunks of wall had been dug out to form platforms and small clefts, some housing tiny shacks or fenced in sections between bridges of planks connecting platforms. Everything was lit by a haphazard scattering of magical lamps or a few brighter electric lights powered by small generators. At a guess I estimated the shaft was at least eighty or so paces tall, perhaps more. I couldn’t quite make out the top, through there were shadows of machinery up there, and the various stairs and platforms all gradually rose towards the top, with at least a few carved out curving ramps in the stone walls also granting upward access.

The floor was the site of excavation, with huge chunks of the floor dug out to reveal, much as had been described to me, a network of bright metal pipes. They were thickly set in the ground, crossing the chamber at sharp angles, some connecting back into one another, while others spread out like the webs of a spider. I wasn’t certain about the others “circuitry” analogy, to me the pipes look more like... like blood veins made of metal.

The chamber was hardly unoccupied. The source of the noise was immediately apparent, even as I and my fellow escapees crept behind a metal shack built into the side of the wall at ground level to provide cover as we watched what was happening.

There was a cluster of about ten Gobs, all sitting on barrels or crates and laughing amongst themselves, slapping each other on the shoulder or pointing in excitement, at a unpleasant and at first confusing scene in front of them. At least twenty ponies were chained together and kept under guard by a couple of Gobs armed with what looked like makeshift firearms made from welded pipes, nail boards, and duct tape. These ponies were beaten, bloody, and exhausted looking as they watched on with mixed looks of horror or despair at one of their companions, unchained, but unarmed, who’d been shoved into the center of the room.

This pony, a scrawny teal stallion with a dirt covered white mane and tail, was facing off against what looked like a small pack of three Gobs... only these Gobs were much smaller than the others, with spindly little arms and legs and smaller heads that somehow emphasized the size of their eyes. These three jumped and jostled one another, each armed with only a simple piece of sharp metal with a duct tape wrapped handle to make for a basic knife. At last one of the tiny Gobs got shoved forward by its fellows, and with a terrified squeak it made for a random slash with its knife at the pony. The pony, equally looking terrified, jumped back from the slash, backpedalling until one of the larger Gobs watching aimed its makeshift pistol and fired of a cracking shot that impacted just behind the stallion.

“Kill kill!” the Gob shouted, “Fight kill, dumb pony! Do or die!”

“B-but...” the stallion stammered, “Th-these are your kids! What in the Goddesses names is wrong with you!?”

The Gob with the pistol laughed, aiming his pistol at the stallion, “Gob child need kill, learn kill, or not Gob! Pony lesson. Pony die! Gob child can’t kill pony, then is no Gob!”

All the other Gobs, all the other adult Gobs nodded their heads sagely, some of them with solemn looks on their faces, others with simple amusement.

“Gob! Gob!” they chanted, “Gob kill! Gob strong! Gob! Gob!”

The Gob child who’d been pushed forward looked no less frightened, but I saw it gulp, clutch its knife in its tiny hands, and under the chanting of its adult kin I saw it gather itself up, puff out its tiny chest, and let out a howling little yell as it charged the stallion again. The stallion, looking sickened, punched out with his hoof, knocking the Gob child off its feet with a solid hit to the face. The child screamed, and the adults laughed, the other two Gob children looking at each other as if to decide who’d go after the pony next.

I felt sick to my stomach, turning a glance at Copper Shell, “What are these creatures?”

She shot back a subdued look at me, face cold, “Gobs. Worst pests Skull City’s ever had to deal with. Thanked my lucky stars there weren’t any tribes of these vermin down south by Saddlespring. Merciless little bastards, in case you couldn’t tell.”

“We have to stop this,” I said firmly, wincing as the Gob children started to circle the stallion who was starting to panic, looking left and right with wild eyes as the tiny Gobs began to flank him.

“How?” asked Whisperwood, “At least half of them have guns.”

We didn’t have long to plan anything fancy, as the Gob children were getting bolder, darting in and taking slashes at the growingly desperate stallion who tried to punch and buck the tiny creatures away and got a few deep bleeding cuts on his limbs for his efforts while the adult Gobs laughed. My eyes rapidly roved around what I could see from our hiding spot, and looking at the tangled maze of scaffolds and ramps above us, and the Gobs themselves, a mad plan sparked in my brain.

“If I draw off most of them can the three of you take down the remainder?” I asked, shuddering as the stallion managed to get a deadly back kick in on one of the Gob children, hitting it in the throat. The small creature fell back coughing and sputtering as it clutched at is throat, and the stallion’s face was a stony rictus of guilt mixed with determination as he backed away from the other two Gob children, who were staring at their fallen companion with fresh fear.

Copper Shell took a deep breath, eyes narrowing with deadly intent, “You’d need to get most of them after you, because I’m thinking even with the element of surprise we could only take three or four of these buggers.”

Whisperwood’s face was scrunched in fear, but she nodded, “I-I think we can, but what about you?”

“She’s right,” said Brass, “You’ll get your ass shot off trying to distract most of them, and then we’ll all be fucked.”

“If we do nothing then we’re just as screwed,” I said, licking dry lips as I picked out the spot I wanted to use; a long jutting metal pulley that looked like it’d been once used to haul crates further up the shaft. It was a good thirty or so paces above the cluster of Gobs watching the bloody show, just about the right spot for what I had in mind.

“Stay back and hidden until it’s clear I’ve got their attention,” I whispered to the others, and though they all exchanged nerve wracked glances, they did as I asked and backed up down the tunnel out of sight. I then took a deep breath that honestly did little to steady my racing heart, and with the pained shout of the teal stallion as he took another cut from a darting Gob child I crept forward.

Not letting myself think about it any further, I fired the Grapple upwards so it hooked around the pulley beam above the main group of Gobs. I then sucked in a breath and jumped out of hiding, shouting at the top of my lungs, “Hey! Guess what’s tan, blue maned, and totally escaping your crazy torture mine? This pony!”

Reeling myself upwards with the Grapple and a running jump I went flying through the air at a slight angle, arcing towards the stunned cluster of Gobs even as the Grapple yanked me vertically. The swing took me right over the Gobs at head height, and I kicked out with both hind legs to smash one of them across the face, sending the creature bowling over into a pile of crates as I sailed overhead. There was the railing of a platform in front of me and I halted my forward swing by kicking off of it, then let the Grapple haul me in a rapid ascent that had me nearly to the pulley before the first Gob had gathered its wits enough to even react to what had happened.

The first bullet snapped past my head as I reached the pulley, wrapping a hoof around it to start shimmying over to the platform and shack the pulley was attached to. Down below the Gobs had gone into a riot, the ones bearing the crude pipe, wood, and duct tape guns aiming them and firing in a stuttering series of sharp snap shots. With scrambling hooves I threw myself onto the platform, sparks of near misses showering around me as I rolled away from the Gobs’ line of sight. I heard their roaring shouts and gibbering snarls, bullets still impacting the wood and sheet metal of the platform as I crawled towards the further cover of the shack. There was no door, just an opening where the door would be, the shack little more than a small space for a few bedrolls and a table piled with random junk and empty beer bottles.

“Is that all you got!?” I shouted over the gunfire, “You morons couldn’t hit me if I stuck my butt over the side and waved it at you!”

The response was more gunfire and the sound of swift footfalls on planks as quite a few of the Gobs, having only seen one young, unarmed pony decided to go charging up the platforms after me. Which was exactly what I’d hoped they’d do. I was also hoping they didn’t have nearly as much ammunition as they apparently did, because my body was getting peppered by wood chips and other flying debris from the stitching of gunfire from below. I considered myself lucky that those makeshift guns didn’t seem to be firing high caliber rounds, and their jury rigged nature made them about as accurate as spitting into the wind.

Knowing I’d be swamped in homicidally pissed of Gobs in seconds I dashed to the table of junk and wiggled under it until it was balanced on my back, moving it to the opening facing the quickly growing noise of my enraged pursuers. The very second the first angry Gob face to appear around the corner of the opening got a bucked table straight to the face, sprawling it backwards into the Gobs immediately behind it. I was already scrambling out the other end of the shack making a break for a ladder leading to a higher platform, not wanting to get surrounded.

Ladders still gave me trouble but it’s amazing what a healthy dose of fear and adrenaline can do for my ability to move fast, even without Gramzanber to give that boost I’d gotten so used to. I was sorely missing the ARM now. It had made sense at the time to leave the weapon behind, though to be fair even if I’d brought it Redwire would have just taken it like the rest of my gear. Yet Gramzamber’s presence was still with me, and I could feel it sensed the danger I was in. The distant pressure of the ARM felt almost like a comforting hoof brushing over my mane, and I knew my ARM, while unable to help me directly, was giving me all the moral support it could.

Granted, moral support wasn’t much proof against bullets, but that’s what dodging and running around like a half blind, constipated gecko was for.

Behind me I heard Gob gibbering, including some of it in almost comprehensible Equestrian.

“Get back here pony so Gob make hat from tiny mating bits!”

My face flushed red as I reached the top of the ladder with long, hauling strides of my limbs, and shouted back, “Whoa now! Am I insulting your parts, buddy!? I know you want to kill me but can we keep this relationship professional-AHHH!”

The ladder broke under me, I assume due to shoddy craftsponyship, and I nearly fell right back down, only barely holding onto the ledge of the next platform and pulling myself up as a trio of Gobs arrived through the shack, two armed with pistols and another armed with a similarly shoddy weapon but with a long stock and barrel for a makeshift rifle. I rolled over the edge of the platform just as a hornets nest of riled bullets chewed the air around me, one of which was so close I felt my mane part from it.

This platform was narrow and long, bending around the curve of the stone ramp that also encircled the shaft. It immediately occurred to me that the Gobs could be using that too, and this was confirmed by the sound of more feet pitter pattering on the carved stone, loud and close. I beat hooves and went right back into a exceedingly awkward yet speedy gallop only achievable because I was a pony who up until the recent misfortune had grown accustomed to the benefits of ballistic armor and only now realized he’d just pissed of a whole room of violent individuals armed with guns.

Still, I wasn’t faster than bullets. Damn I missed Gramzamber. Gramaznber missed me back. The bullets just missed. Mostly.

Ahead of me this platform ended up extending underneath a much larger overhanging scaffold higher up, with a small forest of support beams stretching in front of me. Here it seemed the old mine ponies of ancient times had decided to lash up a number of barrels, as if this was just the most convenient area to stick them so they wouldn’t get underhoof. Lucky me these barrels along with the support beams made for a excellent gauntlet of cover to throw myself into as my pursuers spent more ammo trying to turn my flank into a lead repository.

My scramblings were getting less and less coordinated as I became more desperate to put distance between me and violent death, and I got a face full of barrel and/or support beam at least three or four times as I ducked and rolled and speed crawled forward as the Gobs formed a literal firing line behind me and started emptying their clips in my general direction. The barrels turned out to be either empty or filled with a sharp smelling clear liquid that I was guessing was some kind of booze, not that I was planning to stop to check.

By this point pain hot as coals was searing across my body. Redwire’s earlier tender treatment of me was taking a toll now that I was doing more than just a light trot. I wasn't as bad off as Copper Shell, but the deep lacerations across my face and chest, not to mention the sore groin from the low blow, was making my current mad running an exercise in agony. Fortunately, in a twisted sort of way, I was pretty experienced by now with dealing with pain. The trick to it was mostly just letting the pain hurt and accepting it as you would any other sensation. Don’t try to ignore it and instead let it be a part of you.

That way you can act and think without being crippled by the pain.

I got through the other side of the collection of scaffold beams and barrels and found myself facing a steep drop back down to the bottom of the shaft, not even a railing to protect against accidental falls. I managed to halt in time, glancing left to see the curving wall of the mine shaft bearing a large, carved cleft of stone that was part of the ramp swirling upwards, and that in the wall was the mouth of a narrow mine tunnel. This was all above me, across the gap in the middle of the shaft, but there was a railing along the edge of that cleft that my Grapple could attach to. I didn’t waste a moment doing exactly that and sent myself swinging across the gap.

In doing so I caught a glimpse of my plan’s progress. Down on the ground floor there were only three or so Gobs remaining, all staring up the shaft at the chase. Crawling over the mine shaft’s various scaffolds and ramps the rest of the Gobs formed a raving, frothing miniature horde that scampered like ants after me, split between two groups; one that was going directly after me through the barrels and support beams I’d just cleared, and the rest using the stone rampway to try and beat me to the next level.

More importantly, I spotted Copper Shell, Brass, and Whisperwood sneaking up on the Gobs left down below. Hopefully they could deal with that while I kept the rest busy chasing me upwards. What would happen when I reached the top of the shaft? Well, one thing at a time.

I hit the hard wall of the mine shaft with a jarring rattle, but held firm to consciousness as my Grapple reeled me up to the stone cleft. I got over the side well before the one group of pursuing Gobs got over all the barrels to draw a bead on me, but the other group rushing up the ramp had an angle and started taking pot shots, forcing me to duck and make a break for cover. It was then I noticed the stone rampway had an unusual feature, metal rails nailed into the floor, side by side. I wasn’t sure what they were for until I saw the large metal cart parked up ahead on a level portion of the ramp. As I galloped past it I gave the cart a hard kick, starting it on a slow roll down the ramp that quickly picked up speed as it careened along the rails. I didn’t even look back, putting my head down and running as hard as I could.

I heard a few quick howls and shouts from below, but I didn’t chance a look to see if the cart had hit any of the Gobs coming after me, my attention intent on the ramp ahead. I was following its spiraling path upwards, and could finally see the top of the shaft clearly. The stone ramp ended at a encircling overhang of stone where a wooden bunkhouse was built along one wall next to a large tunnel entrance. Two halves of a metal, mechanical bridge lay upturned across the shaft, the only possible way to cross from one side of the shaft to the other at this level. There was a metal stand with a terminal attached to it next to either side of the bridge, and I figured that must be the control for it.

Before I could reach that level, however, something flew above me and smashed into the stone ramp right in front of me. There was a shattering noise of glass and suddenly flames engulfed the path, forcing me to backpedal from the searing heat that nearly licked my hide. I let out a startled shout, and glanced back to see the Gobs were lower on the ramp, at a point just across the mine shaft, and that while the others drew a bead on me one of them had pulled out small bottles with stuffed rags in them, and lit another rag before throwing the bottle my way.

“If tiny bits can’t be hat, tiny bits be barbeque!” the Gob declared as it put its hands on its hips and watched proudly as the bottle nearly smashed into my head, only my ducking at the last second saving my face from being roasted. As it was the bottle still smashed into the wall right behind me and I yelped, galloping away as bits of glass and flame rained down around me.

“I told you stop it with the ‘tiny bits’ routine! Don’t you have anything better to insult me over!?” I shouted back down the shaft, then jumped back as bullets chewed up the stone around me.

“I insult stupid blue mane instead? Or ugly pony face?” the unusually chatty Gob shouted back in query, “I insult all you want if it make pony feel better-”

The Gob was cut off by one of its comrades who smacked him upside the head, chattering, “Shut face Gibble! Kill pony, not talk!”

Gibble snorted, crossing tiny arms over his chest, “Just want have fun, no need be mean.”

“Have fun by killing pony then!”

“That what we always do! Gibble want diversification of hobbies! Hat making sound fun, so Gibble make hat from pony. Then pony get killed and Gibble gets hat. All win!”

“How about I just, like, buy you a hat instead, and you let me go?” I shouted back as I looked around for cover. This scaffolding at this level lacked any convenient shacks like down below but there was another pulley that had some stacked crates near it. It was better than nothing, and the flames were still burning hot and blocking the stone ramp.

The Gobs caught up to my level just as I dove behind the crates, and a storm of bullets chased me, tearing up the wood in splintering chunks as I curled up behind them. Over the gunfire I heard Gibble’s voice surprisingly loud and clear.

“How nice a hat?”

“A good hat! The best hat!”

“Hmm, sounds nice- Ow! Hey, stop hitting Gibble!”

“Then stop talking to pony!!!”

“But pony buy Gibble best hat!”

“Pony is lying dumb, ugly Gibble!”

“...now that just hurt Gibble’s feelings.”

The back and forth banter, while leaving me with a surreal feeling, also bought me time to look about for anything useful to use against the Gobs. The crates were light and felt mostly empty, which meant while they were only subpar cover, they could make for excellent projectiles. I also noticed that across the shaft and directly above us was platform that extended out from the scaffolds towards the center of the shaft, from which a larger pulley crane was set up that looked as if it was set up to move cargo up and down the whole length of the shaft. Its ropes were attached to a wood plank laden with crates like the ones I was hiding behind, and the pulley crane itself was on a swivel that let it move that platform in a nearly three hundred and sixty degree angle.

I glanced at my Grapple, and at the pulley, with its crate filled wood platform nearly at the same height me and the Gobs were at.

On the bright side, I’ve had worse plans, I thought as I turned around and proceeded to buck the crates I was using for cover, one after another, like I was skipping rocks across a stream. My legs propelled the crates straight at the Gobs, seven of them I saw now, who all gave out various colorful expletives as the crates smashed into them. Several were knocked off their feet, while others scrambled out of the way. One with another flaming bottle, I could only assume he was Gibble as it was hard to tell the Gobs apart physically, dropped the bottle and hopped back from a crate that almost crunched his face. Instead he dodged the crate, but also had to dance back from the broken bottle that now spewed out a blanket of flames. He managed to avoid being doused in the fire and ended up only with smoking feet he hopped about on, trying to blow out the flames while giving an entirely too detailed description of what he intended to do to my mother, most of which I didn’t think was possible for a bipedal species to do with a quadrupedal one.

I hadn’t been staying still while the Gobs recovered from my crate barrage. I immediately fired my Grapple to latch onto the end of the arm of the big pulley and let the Grapple use its magic to reduce the pulley’s weight. This made it much easier to haul on as I put my back and legs into yanking on the Grapple line as hard a I could.

The pulley swung, along with its platform full of cargo.

The Gobs had gotten back to their feet and were aiming their guns again just in time for the sizeable wood plank and its dozen or so crates to smash into the wall above their heads and rain down a storm of shattered wood and tumbling crates on their heads.

Most of them went down under the pile, and I, with a echoing hunter’s cry, charged straight into the confused mess and tackled the first Gob that was still standing. The creatures didn’t weigh that much and I bore the first one down to the ground in a series of swift punches that left the thing cross eyed. I rolled off that one just in time to avoid a swift pistol shot from another Gob trying to extricate itself from the pile of broken wood and it received a backwards kick from one of my hind legs. I felt its jawbone snap as the Gob went limp. Suring onward I saw another Gob trying to get out from under a crate and I jumped, landing on the crate with a full body slam that broke the crate, and smashed the Gob underneath. I wasn’t sure if it survived, and while a part of me hoped it wasn’t dead, I was too drenched in adrenaline and blood at this point to slow down and check.

Another Gob had managed to get out of the wooden rubble and came at me with a swinging cleaver of blood stained rust; who knows how many ponies it might’ve cut into with this weapon before for it to be stained so red? I bounced on my hooves, sidestepping the blow, then head butted the Gob in the side, sending it sprawling even as my head swam from the blood loss of previous wounds and exertion. I heard a scuffle behind me and saw another Gob aiming one of their makeshift pipe rifles at me and I ducked on instinct.

The shot went above my head and hit the Gob with the cleaver who’d been getting back up. That Gob screamed and went tumbling over the scaffold rail. I heard its scream echo all the way down the shaft.

The Gob with the rifle flinched, and I learned it was Gibble as it said, “Meh, Gibble no like him anyway. Now give me groin bits pony for hat!”

Gibble aimed the rifle again as I charged him, the bullet grazing me but not stopping me as I tackled Gibble. He was shockingly slippery, however, and managed to wiggle away from my grip before I could drag him to the ground. He swung his rifle around and I kicked at it, knocking the barrel off course as it fired, sending the bullet zipping off into the black.

“Seriously what is it with you and hats!?” I shouted, grabbing the rifle's length with my mouth and yanking it from Gibble’s wiry, fur covered hands. The Gob in response tackled me in turn, wrapping spindly arms around my back as he jumped on my back as if meaning to ride me like a mount into battle.

“Gibble is very insecure about his bald spot!” Gibble replied as he began pulling at my mane and then sank his teeth into my ear.

“Gaaaah! My ear! Why always my ear!” I shook around and spun, bucking my legs for all I was worth to try and throw Gibble off, who seemed entirely happy to keep chewing on my poor ear as he held on tight. It didn’t help this was the same ear Crossfire had shot a part out of way back when, and that Binge also had an unhealthy focus on. It was perhaps the most unlucky ear in the Wasteland, at least at that moment.

With a rabid Gob doggedly attached to me I galloped for the wall at full speed. At the last second I threw myself into a sideways slam that would put my back, and hence Gibble, straight into the wall. I felt the slick, slimy Gob move like a skittering spider and immediately crawl off me even while I was in mid-slam, hopping off me and leaving me to smack painfully into the wall, while Gibble landed neatly and without harm a few paces away.

“Ha! You think outsmart Gibble!? Gibble is best Gob, and he doesn’t care what Gibble’s mother said! ‘Gibble you’re so dumb I must have drunk antifreeze while pregnant!’ ‘Gibble you’re so ugly I dropped you on purpose to try and fix face!’ ‘Gibble you never be successful lawyer or president of big company without good education, which you can’t get because you stupid Gob!’ But Gibble showed her! Gibble is fifth in charge of an entire mine shaft, which... which doesn’t sound very impressive to Gibble really but just you wait Gibble has plans to build a giant drill filled with molotov boom boom bottles to drive right into middle of Yolo’s bunkhouse on poker night then we’ll see who cheats who out of Gibble’s money... where’d pony go?”

While Gibble had been having his... moment, I’d slinked off around behind him, picked up a piece of broken crate to act as a makeshift club, and in Gibble’s moment of confusion I popped up behind him and gave him a solid smack across the back of the head. The wood plank broke and Gibble looked back at me. His beady Gob eyes narrowed.

“Now you make Gibble very ma... oh, unconscious now,” he tettered over, hitting the ground out cold.

In fact, looking around, I saw I’d managed to down all the Gobs that had chased me up the mine shaft. I panted fow a few seconds, sweat dripping off me, as the adrenaline rush played its course and my heart started to return to a normal rate. Realizing how quiet things had gotten I looked over the side of the scaffold and peeked at the bottom of the shaft.

I could see ponies moving around down there, and Gobs on the ground, and more than a little splattered blood. It was hard to make out any further details, and with a deep breath I started to head back down. I paused, only long enough to quickly double check to make sure all the Gobs around me really were unconscious and not just playing dead. I wasn’t in the mood for surprises. Luckily, aside from the one Gibble had shot, it didn’t look like any of them were dead. In bad shape, especially the pair I found a few levels down that’d been hit by the mine cart, but not dead.

So what? You’ve already killed one of them. Is this a numbers game now? One out of ten is an okay score? some growingly cynical part of my brain pony chimmed. I told it to mind its own damn business and not bother me unless it had something useful to say.

At the bottom of the shaft I heard raised voices and saw a troublesome sight.

Of the Gobs that had been left behind when their companions had chased me the four adult ones were all quite thoroughly dead. Their bodies were beaten to crimson and pink pulpy smears, in one case with limbs torn straight from its thin body like the wings snapped from a fly. The ponies who had moments before been prisoners were the clear culprits as evidenced by the blood coating many of their limbs and chains, chains that looked as if they’d been used to beat and strangle. Many of them stood with shell shocked looks, except for a bulky brown stallion with a blood spattered blonde mane who stood shouting with the teal stallion from before, and Copper Shell.

Behind Copper Shell I saw Brass and Whisperwood were guarding the three Gob children, who were backed into a corner, disarmed, and all looking horrified and scared out of their wits as they clung at each other.

“Monsters are monsters,” the brown stallion was saying, his blue eyes tired by steadfast, “Doesn’t matter that they’re young ‘uns, it’d be like leaving alive a baby Radscorpion in yer yard!”

The teal stallion shuddered out a heavy breath and shook his head, “I am not letting you kill them Softheart, so leave it be.”

“That goes double for me,” said Copper Shell, her face coated with sweat from the exertion of just standing. I saw she’d replaced her spiked club with one of the makeshift pipe guns, a rifle not unlike the one Gibble had been using. She’d slung a bandolier of bullets across her chest and held the rifle in the crook of one fore leg as she stood firm in front of the Gob children. “I’ll kill a Gob to free us from this hellhole, but child murder isn’t on my to-do list, either by participating or standing by and letting it happen. We tie them up and leave it at that.”

The stallion, Softheart, grunted, “And leave them to grow up and kill more ponies a few years from now. Buckin’ brilliant. I know you ain’t a violent type Coal, but this ain’t the time fer being soft.”

“I suppose we could have just snuck out on our own and left you all here,” I said, stepping into the conversation as I trotted over to the group. “Would have been a lot easier than trying to rescue you all, but what can I say... I’ve got a soft heart.”

Softheart glanced at me, “You get all them Gobs? Shit, figured we’d only have a few minutes before them assholes came back here, but if they’re dead and gone that’s one problem out of the way.”

“They’re not dead,” I said, “Not all of them anyway. Knocked out most of them.”

Softheart blinked. Then he blinked again before saying, “You don’t mind my askin’, what the hell for? You kill ‘em and we got less to worry ‘bout down the road.”

“Only road I care about is the one that leads out of here,” I said, and looked to Brass and Whisperwood, “Hey, uh, we don’t got a lot of time. Can you got gather up the weapons and gear of the Gobs I left up there?”

Brass nodded, “We’ll be fast. C’mon Whisper...”

As they trotted off I was left to stand between Copper Shell, Coal, and Softheart. They and the rest of the chained up ponies were looking at me. Even the three shaking Gob young were looking at me. I felt suddenly uneasy at all the eyes on me, but I didn’t have time, we didn’t have time for slowing down.

“Look, all of you, we don’t have time to argue or discuss things. Any minute Redwire, the crazy ass pony that put us all here, could figure out there’s an escape going on, then we’ll all be swamped by more Gobs than we can deal with. Now, I have friends fighting their way down here but I don’t know how long it will take them to get here. If we move fast and don’t stop for anything then we can find an exit and link up with them.”

I unslung said bolt cutters and held them out for all to see, “So anypony who wants to follow me out of here, step up and we’ll get this get-the-fuck-outta-here-train underway!”

As it turned out there wasn’t much argument, and the ponies lined up one after another for me to cut their blood soaked chains. Softheart was the last to step forward, and when I cut his chains free he looked down at me with an odd expression of guarded reserve.

“Fine talk but there is one problem with your plan, kid. This ain’t all of us. Redwire snatched some of us less than an hour ago for... for one of her ‘sermons’ at the chapel.”

The way he said ‘sermon’ had a frozen edge to it and I saw many of the other ponies, Copper Shell included, shiver at it. Brass and Whisperwood had come back with a bunch of the Gobs guns and assorted melee weapons on their backs, and set them down in a pile next to the gathered group as I looked among them and asked, “What are these sermons supposed to be?”

Whisperwood suddenly let out a whimper and curled up, Brass frowning and putting an arm around her in a comforting hug.

Copper Shell had her eyes closed as she said, “It's where she changes ponies into those monsters. She’ll take ponies and make them play twisted fucking games just to figure out who gets to watch the others die... oh Goddesses if she’s doing that right now...”

Softheart nodded, then looked at me, and picked up one of the Gob guns from the pile, a pistol he checked the load on and snapped the clip back into with a firm hoof, “Alright, kid-”

“Longwalk.”

He nodded acknowledgment, “Longwalk. Some of us might want to try and escape right here and now, but I can’t do that. One of the ponies that got taken fer today’s sermon is my wife, and I know there’s friends and family fer a lot of us survivors that got taken too. So I can’t go nowhere...”

I stepped up to him and with a heavy weight pulling at me I said, “I’m not one for leaving ponies behind. Do you know where this chapel is?”

“Most of us do...” said Whisperwood, regaining a bit of her composure as she looked at me with glassy, haunted eyes that were filling with the phantoms of memory, “I...I had to watch my brother die. Redwire force fed him the seed and turned him right in front of me. She laughed the entire time.”

“Sermons take a few hours,” said Copper Shell, spitting, “Bitch loves her theatrics. Don’t doubt she planned to drag you into this sermon once it got to the nasty bits. Nastier bits. If we’re planning to break this sermon up it won’t be easy. She gathers up most the Gobs for it, we’re talking one, maybe two hundred all packed into a gigantic chamber. We’d be outnumbered ten to one.”

“We got the element of surprise,” said Softheart.

“That won’t be enough,” I said, my brain pony turning my mental gears laboriously. The ponies around me, even Softheart with all of his seeming stone hard determination, were all bruised and battered from their captivity. While I saw in many of their eyes a burning desire to strike back against their tormentors and rescue their kin, feelings I could more than empathise with, it was clear the few weapons we had combined with how drained all of us were would lead to disaster if we struck without some kind of significant set of advantages.

“Alright,” I said, “All ideas on the table, no matter how crazy they might sound. If some of you have been in that chapel chamber is there anything in there we can use or take advantage of?”

Whisperwood spoke up, biting her lips pensively, “T-there’s a couple of old abandoned vehicles in there that I think used to be military. I don’t think they drive or anything and I have no idea why they’re down here, but they had big machine guns mounted on them. if somepony could sneak to one of them that’d help, right?”

“Anypony sneaky around here?”I asked. As a pony who’d spent a good chunk of his young life hunting I could sneak around some, but it wasn’t my specialty.

There was a lot of silence before Whisperwood, looking even more nervous, said, “I can, sort of. I used to play hide and seek a lot when I was little and was always pretty good at it.”

“Can you even use a machine gun, Whisper?” asked Brass.

“No, but, it’s a machine gun. I just sort of have to hold it in the direction of the bad guys and hold the trigger down, right?”

“Oh sweet Celestia we’re boned,” said one of the other ponies, who promptly got smacked upside the head by one of her fellows.

“Right, so there’s one possible advantage, any other ideas?”I asked.

“How about some of those molotovs these Gobs love to use?” said Coal, face grim, “When a few of the Gobs were forcing me to serve them drinks while they were playing dice I saw a whole stack of those in their bunkhouse up top. We snatch them and we can lob them into the crowd.”

Softheart looked at Coal incredulously, “First you defend the snot nosed kids, but you’re now cool with burning the adults alive? Not complaining, mind, but how do you figure that logic?”

Coal’s eyes swam with troubled ripples, and I could tell he was a pony much like myself who abhorred the idea of killing, but like me he was also learning slowly and hard the times it might be needed. His voice reflected this with a steady calm that only wavered slightly, “I don’t relish the thought, Soft, but if we’re saving your wife, everypony else, and getting out of here alive... we do what we have to. Doesn’t mean I condone murder when it isn’t life and death. Saddlespring was a town of peace, and I don’t want that dying with our old home.”

Softheart heaved out a sigh, “Fair ‘nough. So we grab the molotovs, set up an ambush firing line at the tunnel entrance at the top back of the chamber, then what, wait for Whisper to sneak to one of these military trucks and get on the machine gun?”

I’d been thinking during the conversation on how I might best help, and had come to my own inevitable, unpleasant, messy conclusion. “That’s fine, but you let me be the signal to start the attack. Above all, more than the Gobs, its Redwire we need to deal with. She uses her magic to activate these... seeds she plants in ponies to turn them. If we’re going to save anypony from that fate the only way I see to do it is to... kill Redwire.”

“Obviously, kid, but how are we going to do that without killing all the Gobs she’s got between us and her?” asked Softheart.

I took a deep breath, scared of the plan I had, but having no idea what else might work, “I get close to her. She’s after me to torture, to hurt, to break. So I go back to the chamber she had me in and wait. She won’t come herself is she’s doing this sermon thing, but I think I know who she’ll send to retrieve me.”

When Braindead returned to the torture chamber he was alone. I could see the etched worry on his face and hear him talking to himself as he walked, hidden as I was behind the few crates in the torture room, with Copper Shell and Brass at my side.

“It’s crazy,” Braindead was muttering, “All crazy. Aliens and prophets, and she’s just fucking nuts, but what do you do Braindead? You can’t kill her, it has to be the others that do it, if anypony does it, or you’re a dead pony. Do you want to be dead? No of course not, that’s why you had to do it, turn the colt over to her, fuck fuck fuck. Never ever going to change are you? Betrayal is all you’re good for, all your cutie mark ever meant-”

He stopped mid rant as he reached the edge of the top portion of the chamber that looked out over the rest of the room, seeing the empty chains and the tied up, still unconscious Gob guards, and the one dead one soaking in a pool of its own blood. I saw the black stallion’s fur turn a grayish shade paler and his eyes pop out wildly. Before he could shout or react we were on him, charging out from behind the crate.

He had the air knocked out of his lungs as Copper Shell and I both tackled him at the same time, with Brass close behind to hold his back legs down as he tried to struggle against us. However three on one we had him easily and Copper Shell shoved a hoof into his mouth while I kept his upper body pinned with my own. The fear in Braindead’s eyes was palpable, like twin beams of white terror and I almost saw him pass out from it, but I got right in his face and spoke in a firm, low tone.

“We won’t kill you but if you make a single sound without our say so then you won’t give us much choice. Now, I have things to say to you, are you going to listen quietly?”

Braindead looked at me and I could feel his whole body trembling, and the cold dampness of his fur. Gulping visibly he nodded slowly, and I looked at Copper Shell. With a shrug she took her hoof away from his mouth but she patted the pipe pistol she now had holstered across her shoulder as if to emphasize what would happen if Braindead tried anything. She was almost as pale as he was, and I had to wonder if she was doing any better. We’d scavenged some medical supplies from the Gob bunkhouse just minutes ago, among which was a pair of healing potions I’d all but had to force Copper Shell to take. She had been far worse off than me, after all, than practically any of the freed prisoners. After downing the two potions most of her wounds had scabbed up, but she still looked like a freshly raised corpse than a living pony.

Turning my attention back to Braindead I steadied my breathing and my thoughts. It was not lost on me how screwed up it was that my plan now hinged on a pony that had betrayed me once already, but Iet me just say that I wasn’t trusting Braindead’s good nature any longer. Instead I was placing my bet on his clear desire to survive, at any cost, by any means. That, and the fact that he was the only one who could get me close enough to Redwire, past her army of Gobs, to take her down.

“After what you’ve done I have every reason to hate you, Braindead, but this might come as no surprise that however I might feel about you, Redwire is the real problem here. For both of us. I... am not forgiving what you did to me, but in a strange way it’s been a stroke of luck. I wouldn’t have known what was happening down here, or been in a position to help these ponies, if you hadn’t brought me to Redwire. Now I have a chance to stop her, and you’re going to help me.”

He began to shake even more, started to shake his head as well, face screwed up in terror, but I continued on, putting a hoof on the side of his head and fixing him with a hard look.

“Think about this, Braindead. Think about it real hard. You know Redwire. You know what kind of pony she is. No matter how good a toady you are to her, no matter how hard you work for her, do you really believe she’ll ever take that seed out of you? Do you honestly think that she won’t eventually one day get tired of you and kill you simply for the fun of hearing you scream? You know the answers to those questions; otherwise you wouldn’t have already betrayed Redwire by not telling her about the spell Arcaidia placed on me.”

At last Braindead spoke, voice a choked whisper, “I... I don’t want to die. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Every day is just more ways for me to die. I have to betray everpony I’ve ever met to stay alive. It’s my talent. Betrayal is all I’m good for. All I’ll ever be good for.”

“Redwire knows that, which is why she’ll eventually get rid of you,” I said, putting my other hoof on Briandead’s shoulder, “Help me, and use that talent to free these ponies from her cruelty. I can’t promise any of us will live through this, you included, but I can promise that if you help us take out Redwire it may be the one good thing you can do with your talent... and maybe survive another day. You sure as hell won’t if you stay with Redwire, and I think you know that.”

Seconds dribbled by at a glacial pace as I awaited his response, this pony I had every reason to mistrust, to hate, but who in this moment held the fates of myself and every pony in this forsaken mine in his trembling hooves.

I saw him make his decision as a small spark of light in his eyes as he said, “What do you want me to do?”

“We’re both going to die. Horrifically. Like, nightmarish screaming horrifically. You know that, right?” said Braindead as he lead me down a narrow mine corridor towards an increasingly loud by still indistinct sound of a large, unruly crowd.

“Think of it like this,” I said, “It’s either risk dying horrifically now, or guarantee dying horrifically later. Neither of us are exactly drowning in stellar options at the moment.”

His fearful, jittery posture didn’t change much, and I could hear his rapid breathing reaching near hyperventilation levels. I was back in manacles, but they weren’t properly locked and as long as nopony looked at them too closely to see that I’d be able to free myself of them in a few seconds. I didn’t appear armed, but the shock stick Braindead had taken from me was returned now and hidden inside my tail, tied by a few blue strands amid the large unruly mass. Getting to it would be as simple as flicking my tail around, clamping my teeth down on the weapon, and giving a good tug to free it. It was the best weapon for what I needed to do. One of those pipe pistols would just be dead weight to me; I was a horrible shot even with guns that were well made and had sights. The hatchet might be more deadly, but if I was off the mark by a few inches then Redwire wouldn’t go down. The shock stick, on the other hoof, could drop her even if I just grazed her with it. Chances were I was only going to get one shot.

The plan was simple and only somewhat suicidal. As Braindead led me to the chapel chamber where Redwire was conducting her “sermon” the rest of the escapees were taking position at another entrance to the chamber, one that was higher up the wall and would give them a commanding view of the room and a good position to fight from. Despite my misgivings Whisperwood still seemed determined to be the one to sneak to one of the military vehicles supposedly parked in the chamber and take control of its machine gun.

Ideally if I got the drop on Redwire and took her down with the shock stick then the combination of the escapees opening up on the unsuspecting Gob crowd might well cause a route before the fight even started.

Ideally.

I wasn’t counting on things to turn out ideally. It was the best plan any of us had, however, and I didn’t think we had time to concoct another. Instead I just focused on mentally preparing myself for my part of it; taking down Redwire.

Or, to use the harsher phrase Softheart had used, “Killing the absolute shit out of her.”

His parents must have huffed some serious herbs when they named that stallion. The only thing soft about him had been his willingness to downgrade from murdering unconscious Gobs and Gob children to just throwing them headfirst into a tool shed bound with enough chain and rope to gag a whale.

Much as his choice of words might’ve grated on me I understood he was right. I knew what I needed to do, and knew I had every reason to do it. It was just a long, hard drop from the high road I’d been trying so hard to walk. I’d taken lives several times so far, but each time, even the recent Gob who was unlucky enough to get a hatchet to the neck, had been the result of either an accident, or just being out of options... and they’d all been spur of the moment in the heat of a fight.

This was different. I was planning to murder Redwire. No clean way to put it; this was premeditation. Monstrous bitch that she was, much as she clearly needed to be removed from the world’s collective gene pool, I was planning a murder. Once Redwire was knocked out by the shock stick I’d still be my job to finish her off... probably by crushing her neck. It’d be the swiftest, cleanest way, but the thought left my stomach churning.

It wasn’t even really a question of keeping her alive. There was no telling when she’d recover, and if she did, she could use her magic to murder a lot of ponies, not to mention what those razor tentacles of hers could do. I’d spared her once already and this present screwed up situation was the result, so I couldn’t even use the excuse that everypony deserved a second chance. Redwire had pissed hers down the drain and had laughed while doing it.

This was what I kept telling myself as the sound of hundreds of gibbering voices echoed louder and louder down the tunnel like a babbling brook, if it was filled with garbage. The smell hit me next, almost making me retch. The sour meat smell of so many unwashed bodies, excrement, and the old coppery slick smell of blood mixed with bile.

Braindead must have heard me make a slight gag sound because he said, “If you think the smell is bad, try not to puke at the sight. Redwire went a bit overboard on the chapel, even for Raider taste.”

Before I could I ask what he meant by that the question was answered as the tunnel opened up into a vast chamber. The stench redoubled and the sound hit me like a wall, but Braindead was right. The sight was worse.

The ceiling was sloped down from right to left, like the room was one large cut out wedge, about two hundred paces lengthwise and a hundred wide. The far right wall was covered in the same kind of scaffolding as the mine shaft had been, and I could see a tunnel opening up there where I knew Copper Shell and the others would be sneaking to. Whisperwood might even already be stealthing her way down the scaffold, but I couldn’t see her, which was of course a good thing.

Across from the tunnel Braindead and I had emerged from was a square building with a slanted roof, brick walls, about two stories tall. This was the chapel. I recognized the sun and moon symbol carved into the roof above the doorframe. There was a vehicle parked next to it, a large green autowagon with an open back bed, and I saw the mounted machine gun on the roof. I might have wondered both how and why there was such an autowagon down here, but my eyes were drawn to the far less mundane aspects of the room that my brain had registered.

First of all there was a teeming mass of Gobs occupying much the center space, at least two hundred of them. They all stood in a bouncing, tightly packed crowd that jostled and gibbered at each other in excited voices that combined to pound the ears with a constant blast of noise. They seemed violently charged, hitting and biting each other or even using their rusted weapons to make shallow cuts on their flesh just so they could toss about some blood like it was paint.

There was no shortage of blood. Ropes and chains dangled from the walls and ceiling, coated slick with congealed gore. The viscera ran like old rain stains down stone, and the origin of it all was dozens upon dozens of bodies. Most looked only days old, and each of them had been strung up or nailed somewhere. I saw empty, black eye sockets and gaping mouths with swollen tongues frozen in screams I felt I could hear even through these dead ponies had long been silent. Not all were ponies, there were a few griffins among the dead, and more than a few whose state of decay suggested they were ghouls before they were rendered fully and truly dead.

Each body I saw felt like a hammer blow. Every single life destroyed by Redwire in this hellhole was partially my fault. Redwire was the one truly to blame, I knew that, but she wouldn’t have been able to cause this much harm if I hadn’t let her go in the first place.

It was a mistake I had to take responsibility for by correcting it here and now.

To the left of the chamber, where the slanted ceiling began to reach the floor, metal posts had been erected, like a small field of rusted trees. Here bodies had also been lashed together, but the state of them was harder to grasp. Parts weren’t where they were supposed to be. Either there were extra limbs or they’d been moved, sewn or otherwise surgically rearranged. Instead of the more conventional mutilation of the bodies on the walls, these poor folk attached to the posts looked as if they’d received specific attention, as if somepony had decided to test different ways to pull apart and put together the equine anatomy. Tables had been set up between the posts where I could see specific organs, limbs, or bones had been set, perhaps for later use... and everywhere the ground was coated with a layer of dry or drying blood.

The chapel itself seemed almost humble by comparison, until I realized that what I thought were normal curtains around the windows wasn’t at all made from cloth, but the patchwork of countless pony and griffin hides.

Though this wasn’t much worse than the other Raider den’s I’d seen, the volume of it was overwhelming, as if Redwire had gone out of her way to try and explode every ounce of uncaring celebration of violence all over the chamber in an orgy of unnecessary gore.

If I wasn’t so sickened by the sheer amount of suffering it all represented it might have found it comical.

I couldn’t have been further from laughing. In fact as close as I was to toss what little bile I had left in my stomach I was also growing hot with a rising sense of choleric anger. Braindead must have sensed something because I saw him flinch and shake his head at me, as if to remind me I was supposed to still be a prisoner and to look the part. I ground my teeth but nodded at him, but also hissed through the noise, “Why? Why all this? Who are all these ponies?”

As he led me forward to the left, going around the side of the mass of Gobs and heading for a spot near the left end of the chapel, he said, “Because she likes it. As for who; refugees the Skull City gangs don’t care enough about to look for after they go missing. These are the lucky ones, the ones who either get tossed to the Gobs for fun, or pulled apart so Redwire can practice better ways to hurt.”

I felt cold despite the sweat breaking out on my forehead, “What happens to the unlucky ones?”

Braindead’s voice felt dry and lifeless as the corpses around us, and his hoof rubbed at his chest as he gained a sickened look, ”The seed gets planted in them, then...” he shook his head, “You’ll see. She won’t let this end without showing you what she intends to do to your friends.”

When the first Gob saw him the excited clamour rose to a fever pitch, as if they’d been waiting for me to show up. It left me feeling like I’d just stuck my head in the mouth of a hungry gecko as it growled, getting ready to snap down on my neck. Above that din rose Redwire’s voice, snapping like a whip.

“Clear a path! Don’t want our esteemed guest feeling too crowded, do we?”

The Gobs backed away, opening a way through the crowd straight to the chapel. As I trudged forward, Braindead beside me, I saw that Redwire was waiting for us there on the far side of the building. There she’d set up more of those metal posts, a wide circle of ten of them, all evenly spaced out, forming a ring maybe ten paces wide. Ponies were tied to these posts much like the others, only these ones were still alive, their forms coated red from fresh wounds.

Despite all the blood in the air Redwire’s white robes remained immaculately clean, and her eyes blazed at me and her mouth cracked a feral smile at the sight of me. Her voice was sharp as fangs.

“Welcome, Longwalk. So glad you could make it...” she trailed off, eyes narrowing at Braindead, who froze in place, “Where are the other ones?”

“D-dead,” he stammered, “The guards got bored. You only told them not to touch this one.”

Redwire made a scoffing sound, and didn’t press any more questions, “Too bad. Would have enjoyed finishing things with that smug bitch. No matter. Bring him here.”

Braindead shoved me forward, forcing me to stumble into the middle of the circle of posts draped in bloodied ponies. I caught sight of their faces, most of them wearing taut masks of desperation and fear, a few looking so drained and hollow that they appeared resigned to death. Their bodies were abused to the point where there was more torn and bruised red and purple flesh on them than colorful pony hide. I couldn’t even get a clear view of any of their cutie marks, for all the blood caking their fur.

If If it means rescuing any of them from this hell, then I can kill... I can.

The thought was a stray one amid the anxiety and fear trying to push its way into my mind, but it stuck and left itself hanging there, not fully realized, but waiting for something.

Despite the vast distance separating me from Gramzanber I could still feel the ARM. The pressure had become hot in my brain, like Gramzanber was trying to lend me some strength, sensing the danger I was in. Maybe it also sensed my intentions towards Redwire, and was perhaps disappointed, if the weapon could feel that emotion, that it wouldn’t be here to plunge into the Raider itself.

I was snapped out of my thoughts by a sharp pain that cracked across my cheek, along with a small spray of blood, as one of Redwire’s barbed tentacles took a chunk out of flesh. She made a ‘tut-tut’ sound and walked in front of me, our eyes locking.

“If you keep staring off into space like this a mare might start to feel ignored,” she said, her cold tentacle wrapping around my throat and pulling me close to her face, “I want you to take this seriously. I went through so much trouble to prepare this stage for us. So. Pay. Attention.”

Each word was punctuated by a tightening of her tentacle around my neck, until the razor barbs drew blood. Then it withdrew quickly and she stepped back, leaving me coughing and catching my breath. I almost went for the shock stick, but her eyes were glued to me, and I knew I wouldn’t make it if I went for her now. I had to wait until she was distracted.

“Good boy, that’s more like it. Let’s begin,” Redwire said, strutting around me like I was some kind of display item at a merchant’s stall. Suddenly her voice got louder, reaching out across the chamber as she addressed the Gobs, despite her eyes never leaving me.

“Strong Gobs of Skull City, you have for generations been trapped living beneath the surface dwellers! These very ponies whose bodies coat our hallowed hall spent their lives lording it over you, enjoying clean water and food while literally shitting on your entire race!”

These words were met with raucous and angry shouting, not directed at Redwire, but at the entire surface of Skull City as the Gobs spat and roared, shaking fists and weapons at the ceiling. Redwire’s voice cut over it all like a peal of thunder. I could see her horn glowing; she was using a spell to augment her voice.

“But the suffering of the Gob race will soon end! The holy ones from the stars have come to deliver all the strong from the oppression of the weak, to peel away the lies of the world and leave only harsh, bloody truth! You have seen the blessed body the Hyadean masters have granted me, their prophet! Soon such power will be yours as well! You have seen the loyal warriors that serve me, and hence the holy Hyadean masters, whose forms are born from the flesh of your oppressors!”

Redwire stamped a hoof and I saw, shuffling from the deeper shadows of the chamber, lines of creatures. Hyadean bio-soldiers. The skeletons were the most common, pony and griffin shapes whose bones were infused with that violet goo that seemed to give the skeletons unnatural life. There were a small number of the creatures with spear-like arms, but I saw none of the Big Ass Troopers around. That was a small comfort, at least, but not much so as I saw easily more than two score of the skeletons, arrayed like troops ready for inspection.

The Gobs cheered and stamped their feet, growling and roaring in pleasure.

“With every pony you steal from the surface our army grows,” said Redwire, “Soon there shall be enough to launch a unmitigated attack on Skull City. You will not need to hide and fear any longer, but instead unleash your justifiable rage on the ones who force you to keep living in the sewers and caves where there is so little food and nothing but suffering and disease. Gobs, you will have vengeance and it will be I that delivers it to you.”

I consoled myself that Redwire’s grandstanding speech was at least making enough noise that Whisperwood could have sung a ballad and still been able to sneak around unheard. Unfortunately I couldn’t risk looking to see if the others were in position, as it’d tip off Redwire that I was planning something. If she wanted to talk, I’d let her do it as long as she liked, play along as best I could, to buy time until we were ready and she let her guard down.

“And now, here before us, we have ourselves a pony who thinks he’s some kind of hero!” Redwire continued, bringing all the eyes of the Gobs to glue themselves to me as she stabbed at hoof in my direction.

“This pony seems to think he’s above all the blood and shit of the vast, uncaring Wasteland. He came here to rescue all his fellow ponies. Wasn’t that sweet of him? Not to do anything about what you Gobs have suffered, nope, he’s just here for his fellow ponies. A born hypocrite if ever there was one!”

The Gobs howled and jeered at me, seemingly easily led by Redwire’s words. I somehow doubted anything I said would matter, but I spoke up anyway, shouting into the crowd, “She’s just using all of you! Do you really think she cares!? Attacking the surface, even with these monsters helping, will just get you all killed! If you want a better life you’re not going to get it this way!”

It was useless. They weren’t listening. Redwire looked at me with cold amusement as the Gobs spat and yelled obscenities at me. She strode closer to me, pitching her voice so I could hear it, but it wouldn’t likely carry over the sound of the Gobs. “Learning anything yet, Longwalk? Gobs, ponies, griffins, doesn't matter. We’re all the same. Violence, lust, rage, it’s all there, just waiting for the bullshit facade of civilization to get torn away like the fucking scab it is. This is the simple truth the Hyadeans are going to bring this world.”

Her eyes glowed with viscous intensity, though her voice, for a second, was oddly serene, “Everything will finally make sense.”

She then turned back to the crowd, and I almost went for the shock stick as her back turned to me, but I saw two more of her barbed tentacles flow out of her robes and both hovered around me like snakes waiting to strike. Could she see through those things? Or maybe she just sensed movement with them? Regardless of either possibility I couldn't risk making a move yet, not while she was clearly still paying too much attention to me.

“So we’re going to have some fun with our guest, aren’t we my friends? A good show to get the blood boiling for our attack on the city above! What’s even better is that Longwalk here brought friends! That’s right, he has a group of friends who are right now trying to fight their way here,” Redwire chuckled dryly, “Of course they’ll have their work cut out for them.”

Her horn glowed and seemingly sent a command through it, for all the Hyadean bio-soldiers as one turned and went to march out of the chamber through a side tunnel I could see at the back of the room. This tunnel was right next to an even wider opening, one that took up almost the entire center of that far wall. Beyond that opening was a short span of floor that then dropped off into... well nothing. It looked like just black, unlit space, as if there was a huge open shaft that went up and down into darkness. I only caught a slight hint of something monolithic and metallic in that darkness, but I couldn’t make out what.

Mostly because Redwire’s tentacle had gripped my face and turned me towards her, her visage a stained grin in front of me.

“I know your friends might fight their way through all those, but by the time they get here they’ll be wounded and tired, and still have a few hundred riled up Gobs to contend with. They’ll be captured, and you’ll get to watch every second of me taking them apart. But first I want you to have a preview of that will be like.”

She looked up at Braindead, “Cut down one of these fine ponies. Oh, that one,” Redwire pointed at a mare, whose coat was so stained with blood it was hard to tell if she was actually red or if that was just the stains. What was once maybe a flouncy blonde mane was now a tangled mess, and her teal eyes blinked in confusion and outright fear as Braindead undid her bindings and let her drop to the ground.

Braindead, a sour look plastered on his face, glanced at Redwire.

“Go retrieve a seed and a knife.”

He sighed, nodded, and trotted towards the chapel. Meanwhile the mare seemed to recognize what was happening and began to babble.

“P-please, no!”

She tried to get up to run but Redwire wrapped a tentacle around the mare’s barrel and dragged her to the ground. My face was still being held by another tentacle, so I couldn’t even move to go for my shock stick. My only consolation was that, out of the corner of my eye, I briefly caught sight of a darting pale form on the roof of the chapel. Whisperwood. She’d somehow gotten up there and was making for the autowagon with the machine gun. She was there and then gone into the shadows before even I could be sure I’d seen her, but it gave me hope.

Braindead quickly returned. He was carrying thick sackcloth on his back, and a knife... no, two knives in his mouth. Before Redwire looked his way I noticed him tuck one of the knives into a sheath he had hidden behind his left fetlock. When Redwire did looked up at his approach he just had the one knife in his mouth, and no sign of the second one.

“Fast and efficient,” Redwire said, smiling, “See, there are a few reasons I haven’t killed you yet. Now, I’ll take those.”

Another pair of tentacles extended from beneath her robes (how many of those things did she have!?) and wrapped around the knife and the sackcloth. The prisoner mare, upon seeing the cloth, redoubled her struggles, “NO! Get that thing away from me!”

“Shhhh,” Redwire’s voice cooed in mock sympathy, “Don’t be so ungrateful. I’m a very generous pony and I don’t like having my gifts turned down. You see, I’m giving you something I haven’t given many lately. I’m giving you a chance. So, what’s your name?”

“Huh?” the other red mare blinked behind her blonde bangs, confusion clouding her features.

Redwire constricted her tentacle around the mare, causing a squeak of pain, “Your name. Don’t make me ask again.”

“V-Vanilla Shot.”

“Cute. So, Vanilla Shot, see this knife?” Redwire dangled it in front of Vanilla, whose eyes tracked its sharp edge back and forth, “I want you to take it. I want you to use it. To kill him.”

She gestured at me. I stared in mute surprise. What was she playing at!? Vanilla seemed just as shocked because she didn’t say anything either, just staring at the knife. Redwire shook her head, chuckling with dark amusement. “For fuck’s sake, you’d think this would be obvious. Neither of you have ever been in a good old fashioned pit fight? Who am I kidding, of course you haven’t, but trust me, it’s easy. Kill or be killed. Or in your case, Vanilla Shot, it’s kill or be... transformed into something more useful.”

As she spoke one of Redwire’s free tentacles wiggled its way into the sackcloth and wrapped around something, withdrawing an object that looked like a strange, deformed fruit. It was spherical, with numerous spine-like protrusions extending from its dark purple form. As Redwire held it I saw the object pulse and shiver as if it had a heartbeat of its own. When Vanilla Shot saw it her eyes went wider than plates with tiny black pin pricks, her voice a whisper, “Please don’t...”

Redwire just grinned, “It’ll only hurt for a second. Or ten.”

She then shoved the object onto Vanilla’s Shot’s chest, the spines piercing the mare’s hide. The second those spines made contact I saw the object pulse again and glow with a inner violet light. Vanilla Shot screamed, a sound long and piercing as the mare’s body flailed in the grip of Redwire’s tentacle. My whole body tensed, wanting to do something, but Redwire’s other tentacle tightened around my face, holding me still and forcing me to watch.

The object, the ‘seed’ as I now understood, began to spin as it burrowed its way into Vanilla Shot’s chest. I thought for sure this would kill her, but while the hole was bleeding profusely and seemed like the kind of thing that would be fatal, the ragged hole began to actually knit up and close behind the seed as it drilled its way into her chest. Once it was fully inside the hole actually mostly healed up until all that was visible was a raw, fresh scar where the hole had just been.

Vanilla Shot was very much alive, and breathing rapidly, drawing in fearful gasps of air as her horrified eyes looked at where the seed had entered her. Redwire looked pleased with herself as she waggled the knife in front of Vanilla Shot again.

“Like I said, kill the colt here, and I’ll remove it. Fail, and you’ll join my growing army. Oh, and just for funsies, I’ll say you’ve got, oh... three minutes to do it,” Redwire stepped back, dropping Vanilla Shot and the knife both, and said, “Starting now.”

She’d released me as well, though she’d stepped back far enough that rushing her would be risky. I was sorely tempted to try anyway. This was twisted. I wasn’t surprised, but I was still sickened by what she was doing here. I understood that this was a game to her, meant to test and hurt me. She knew that Vanilla Shot probably couldn’t kill me, not unless I let her... but if I didn’t do anything to stop this then this innocent mare would die anyway, and in a manner more horrible than anything my imagination could conjure. I really didn’t want to know what a transformation into one of the skeletal bio-soldiers looked like.

Three minutes wasn’t a long time, but maybe it’d be enough for me to find an opening to get at Redwire. I had no intention of just letting Vanilla Shot kill me, or watching her die as a result.

Vanilla Shot was looking at the knife at her hooves as if it were a live radscorpion, face torn in a cascade of conflicting expressions of horror and desperation. She looked at at me as if I might give her an answer. I didn’t have one, not that I wasn’t trying my hardest to think of something. Redwire’s voice cut at both of us.

“Tick tock ponies. Twenty seconds wasted already. I imagine you’ll look a lot better as a mindless skeletal monstrosity. Easy wardrobe, not much need for hygiene. A real load of your mind, aside from the agony of the transformation itself,” Redwire teased with the casual air of a mare playing a game.

“I...” Vanilla Shot gulped as she reached for the knife with her mouth, “I’m sorry.”

She was talking to me, shaking as she picked up the knife and then lunged at me. It wasn’t an uncoordinated or sloppy strike, either. Whatever life Vanilla Shot had led up until this point, she clearly knew how to use a blade. If I hadn’t been exposed to constant life or death situations since leaving home, sharpening my own combat skills, she would have gotten me with that first move.

I managed to sidestep her, barely. My movement was little more than an awkward shuffle due to the manacles still on my legs. I could only move so fast without risking the manacles slipping off and giving away just how free to move I actually was. Even so I shuffled back away from Vanilla, putting a little distance between us. Around us the other ponies tied to the metal posts watched on with wide eyes mirroring each other’s despair and hopelessness, knowing that one way or another they’d have to watch another pony die.

Pain wracked my body from all the injuries I’d taken, no healing potions or the soft touch of Arcaidia’s magic to heal any of it. The injuries slowed me almost as much as the manacles, but I pushed aside the pain and kicked my brain into overdrive. I had an idea on how to save this mare’s life and buy me a little more time, though it was going to hurt.

I licked my dry lips and focused all of my attention on Vanilla Shot, who was circling me with a desperate, pained look on her face that was slowly transforming into a expression of violent concentration. I moved with her, keeping her in front of me. I saw Vanilla tense just a split second before she came at me again, this time feinting to my right with fast hoofwork. If she wasn’t also being slowed by injuries from Redwire’s torture this would have been a lot harder. As it was I could see her feint and shifted my own weight to my left to meet her real attack. I ducked under her swing and pressed my body into her chest, hooking her right foreleg and yanking her into a throw that slammed her down onto her back.

The knife came free of her mouth and I caught it with my own. Before she could recover I jumped her, wrapping her into a grapple that I hoped to Redwire looked chaotic, but I had a plan. Vanilla fought back, punching at me, but amid our struggles I whispered, “Play along, I have a plan.”

She blinked confused eyes at me as we wrestled around, and I whispered, “Keep fighting, make it look real. Just trust me, please.”

She gulped, then punched me, but I saw right before that her quick nod and hopeful look. Right, now for the hard part. A few more punches and kicks as we rolled around landed me on top of her. My back was to Redwire, so she wouldn’t be able to see everything that was happening. More importantly, my tail was tucked underneath Vanilla Shot, including the shock stick. I saw her flash a worried look at the feel of the weapon. I leaned down over her, wedging my left fore leg between her chest and throat as if I was holding her down. I brought the knife close, but rather than touch it to her throat I pressed it against my leg, “Struggle, then play dead. I’ll take care of the rest.”

She responded by flailing about, wildly and convincingly as if she was trying to keep me from slitting her throat. In reality I winced as I cut my own fore leg, spilling blood across Vanilla’s throat. Second, as she did a fairly good job of pretending to go into death spasms, even adding some praise worthy gurgles to the mix.

I had to make the cut deep, feeling the searing pain of the cold knife through skin and muscle, so there would be enough blood to make it look as if I’d cut Vanilla Shot’s throat. I had to tighten my jaw shut to keep a scream from escaping my lips as I finished the cut. She helped a bit by lolling her head to the side and letting a fall of her blonde mane cover most her face and neck, so unless Redwire got close to inspect the “body” for a wound, it’d look real enough. Vanilla Shot just had to play dead.

Panting, I schooled my face into one a look of horror, not hard considering the circumstances, and got off of Vanillas “corpse” and, still holding the bloody knife in my mouth, turned to glare at Redwire. Her cold eyes regarded me, expression like chewed granite. Her voice betrayed a wisp of surprise combined with barely contained rage.

“That didn’t take long, did it? Thought you’d hold out until the last second, but no, you just straight up killed her. Where’s all that moral fiber you’re supposed to be spewing out your ass about? Put your life in danger and suddenly you’re as cold a killer as anypony, hm?”

Her eyes bored into me, and i met the stare with my own shaking gaze, ad libbing for all I was worth, “What did you expect Redwire!? I wasn’t going to watch you turn her into one of those things, and there wasn’t anything I could do to save her... so I at least tried to make it quick.”

“Mercy kill, is that it? Amazing how fast even the righteous can make up horseshit to excuse all the blood they get on themselves. Me, I’m an honest pony. Never bothered with the excuses. Kill for food, kill for caps, kill for fun, in the end it's all the same and it's all any of us ever do. Some of us are just better liars than others about why we do it. Don’t tell me a part of you didn’t get a little thrill watching the life drain out of her just now. Only thing more intimate than sex. Well, looks like you survived the first event... let’s see how you deal with the next one.”

There’s not going to be a next one, I thought as I watched her turn to Braindead, presumably to tell him to go get whatever she needed for her next “game”. For an instant her eyes weren’t on me. In her mind I was injured, manacles, unarmed, and probably too tired to even move.

She was right about the injuries and being incredibly tired. Unfortunately for her she was wrong about the manacles and me being unarmed, and tired as I was, there came with that a certain numbness that let me ignore the pain in order to move. I wasn’t Accelerator fast, but I pushed myself faster than even I thought I’d be able to move, leaping to my hooves and tossing off the loose manacles in the same moment. I then rushed the distance between Redwire and myself before she even began to turn back my way.

I dropped the knife and flicked my tail forward, twisting my head back to grab the firm form of the shock stick, tearing it free in the same movement. By the time Redwire had turned around, her tentacles raising around her like ashen gray vipers, I was already in striking range.

My teeth bit down on the trigger, sending a bright azure flare of electricity through the prongs of the shock stick, thrusting the weapon right for Redwire’s face.

There was a flash of light as the prongs struck, Redwire convulsing and her eyes going cross as the electric currents flickered and flowed like cobalt rivers over her body. I imagined I must have looked the same when Braindead had hit me with this thing. Her tentacles danced and shivered, and a little too late I realized the danger of being this close to her while those razor sharp appendages flailed around.

Several deep cuts lacerated my sides, but worse than that, one of the stray tentacles knocked the shock stick from my mouth, sending it sailing away.

Redwire, body smoking, staggered, but my blood froze in my veins as I saw that, unlike with me, she soaked the blow and remained standing.

Okay, so the Hyadean’s did more than just give her new, freaky limbs. She’s tougher than a normal pony too.

Breathing hard, clearly in pain, Redwire raised her head and piercing me with eyes that practically glowed with violent intent, “That... was a mistake-”

Before she could get out the last word the entire cavern was filled with deafening thunder. The machine gun mounted on the autowagon was firing, sending a deadly stream of high caliber rounds into the tightly packed crowd of Gobs who had all of their attention riveted on me and Redwire, rather than the rest of the cavern. Blood sprouted from bodies being torn apart like kicked twigs, the Gobs taken utterly off guard by the fierce assault. I could see Whisperwood barely holding onto the machine gun, her teeth chattering and eyes wide as she tried to control the spray of powerful rounds slamming from the weapon she swiveled across the front ranks of Gobs.

Before even a few seconds had passed even more gunfire filled the cavern with ear splitting cracks. Copper Shell, Brass, Softheart, and all the other ponies who had remained hidden at the cavern entrance up the wall and scaffolding now rose from their hiding spots and began firing into the Gobs with their captured guns. While these jury rigged weapons didn’t have the raw destructive force as the machine gun the combined fire of nearly twenty guns dropped over a dozen Gobs in just a few blinks of an eye.

Amid that chaos I was stuck facing off with a very pissed off Redwire.

From the look on her face I didn’t think she was interested any longer in toying with me, let alone keeping me alive. I was fine with that, because the feeling was mutual. Blood dripped from my body as I stood before Redwire, the cacophony of gunfire and screams echoing around us as the Gobs began to organize and return fire at the escaped prisoners that had been raining death down upon them. I saw Whisperwood forced to jump from the autowagon as several Gobs lobbed some of those burning bottles at it, bathing the vehicle in fire. I didn’t know if Whisperwood got out in time or not. Despite the withering fire pouring down from the ponies up on the wall opening the sheer volume of Gobs now returning shots was forcing them to duck back, and I saw at least one pony cry out as a round struck him and caused him to fall down and through a tangle of the scaffolding in a shower of dust and splintered wood.

With the element of surprise gone things were quickly looking to turn dire, but I had no time to dwell on that. Redwire’s tentacles shifted in the air, then cracked at me like whips. I backpedalled, feeling the barbed appendages snapping at my hide, drawing blood even as I evaded the initial brunt of the mare’s attack. I turned and dove for where I’d dropped the knife, but a tentacle lashed out and knocked the weapon away from my grasp, while another lashed around one of my back hooves. I felt the sting of the barbes digging into flesh, then monstrous strength lift and throw me like a foal’s toy. I hit and bounced off one of the metal posts with a still captive pony, who cried out at the impact, but there was little I could do as I slid to the ground, coughing.

“You know, I have to wonder, just where did you get that taser from, hm? Or slip out of your manacles so easily?” Redwire said in a tone like frosted needles. “It’s almost as if a certain somepony got really stupid and decided to help you.”

Braindead, eyes wild and filled with desperate terror, appeared behind her with the second knife he’d hidden on himself raised to strike at the back of her neck. In a blinding flash her tentacles slashed behind her, cutting into him and wrapping around him tightly until he was bound up like a bleeding caterpillar in a horrific cocoon.

“But that would just be crazy, wouldn’t it Braindead?” she cooed as she swung him around in front of her, bringing her sweetly smiling visage of promised death close to his cringing expression.

I struggled to my hooves as I heard Braindead say, “You were going to kill me anyway...”

Redwire laughed, a howl of pure joy, “Of course I was, eventually. Now you won’t even get that. I knew your talent was betrayal, but I thought you’d have the sense to try it for a better reason than helping this idiot.”

Her horn started to glow and I saw Braindead’s eyes go wide as his body started to shake and convulse in the grip of her tentacles. An agonized scream tore itself from his mouth and I saw purple veins pulsing across his hide, his eyes starting to leak the violet liquid.

I hauled myself forward into an awkward charge, shouting, “Stop!”

Whatever he’d done to me, I didn’t want to see this. I galloped headlong at Redwire. One of her tentacles struck out, fast as an angered asp, but I jumped over the strike and tackled Redwire head on. She let out a grunt as my body slammed into hers, and I felt her body beneath her robes. It didn’t feel right. LIke it was made from a writhing mass of ropes rather than normal flesh. Though I managed to knock her to the ground she fought back with terrific strength, wrenching me off of her in moments and kicking me hard with a hind hoof that blasted the air from my lungs and sent me sprawling.

But she had been distracted by me, her grip on Braindead loosening just enough for him to free a hoof. Redwire’s magic was still going, still triggering the seed planted inside Braindead to transform him from the inside out, yet even as his body began to melt and deform he moved in an act of admirable willpower for a pony who told me he had trouble even controlling his own thoughts.

His free hoof, managing to still grip the knife in its fetlock, lashed out and buried itself into Redwire’s horn in a sound of cracking bone.

Redwire’s scream mixed with Braindead’s as her magic went haywire, spewing magical sparks and light over the room like a strobe.

She let go of Braindead and his body hit the ground, and she staggered to the side, howling in pain and shaking her head like a mad pony.

I caught my breath and once more stood, and rushed to Braindead’s side. His body was still shaking and spasming, and to my stark horror I saw his flesh was slowly turning into a viscous, bubbling purple goo. His eyes were filled with fear and pain as he coughed up the violet bile, and he looked at me as if pleading for me to do something to help. I didn’t have anything I could do. Even with Redwire’s horn broken the spell had triggered the seed enough to see it finish its work, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Braindead managed to get one more word out from his melting throat, “...kill...”

I saw bone now beneath his rotting flesh, the bones becoming interlaced with the purple ooze that seemed to becoming solid in places, like artificial muscle, the same kind that drove the skeleton bio-soldiers. I felt like time had frozen, through Redwire’s pained howling mixed with the thunder of gunfire echoed around me as I stared down at Braindead. He couldn’t get out any more words but the way his desperate eyes looked at me, it was clear what was asking me to do, and it was clear there wasn’t much time left for him. I looked around and saw the knife Redwire had knocked away from me nearby and with hooves feeling like lead I rushed to it, taking it up and quickly returning to Braindead just as his chest was starting to expose the rib cage, and the pulsating seed lodged into his heart. The process of his transformation wasn’t complete, and he was still alive, in unimaginable pain. He looked at me holding the knife over him... and he smiled, nodding once. This was what he wanted.

And damn me I wasn’t about to deny a dying pony his last request.

I drove the knife down hard, the steel piercing the seed, sliding through it’s pulpy alien flesh, and Braindead’s frantically beating heart.

He went still mercifully quickly, and the seed along with him. The last look in his eyes was one of tear streaked gratitude.

Pulling the knife free I looked up to see Redwire still alive and pulling the other knife free from her sputtering horn. Somehow the mare was still staying standing, though from the random crackles of energy spraying from her horn it looked like her magic was out of commission. Braindead might not have intended it, but he’d probably just saved anypony else from suffering his fate, at least at the hooves of this psychotic mare.

Now I just had to finish the job.

Footnote: %50 to next level!

Author's Note

Whew... this one took awhile, didn't it? Part of it could have been factors like the holiday season, not to mention a certain game coming out that sucked out my free time like a vacuum made of other, smaller vacuums. But here we are, and I sincerely hope you folks enjoy.

Many thanks to my pre-readers, referee and doomande for helping me out finding errors and smoothing things that needed smoothing. Of course if there's any we missed, folks, don't hesitate to let me know post haste.

Now, for my customary shout out to another FoE sidefic, this chapter I'm shining the spotlight onto Infinite Potential, by Borsuq. This is a relatively newer story, with a interesting premise as it follows the journey of a scientifically minded, but morally twisted, mare who has an interesting personality.

Thanks for reading folks. As always I welcome any and call commentary, criticism, questions, or random thoughts about the nature of the universe. 'Till next time.

Chapter 26: The Shining Spear Pierces the Darkness

Chapter 26: The Shining Spear Pierces the Darkness

The writhing flames still burning across the bed of the old military autowagon lent a hellish backlight of deep orange and shifting shadow, coating Redwire like a cloak and leaving only her glittering green eyes to stab at me with baleful hatred as red magical aura poured from her broken horn like spurting blood. Tendril after razor covered tendril sprouted from the depths of her robes like the awakening of a nest of snakes, the tentacles of alien bio metal convulsing and swaying around Redwire’s body, for a moment almost making her look like some devilish marionette.

I stood before her naked, body already covered in so many wounds I imagined I’d be catching up to Binge’s level of scarring if I managed to survive this. My only weapon was the knife I’d just used to end Braindead’s life, and his pain. The thought of what I’d had to do tore at me, but I shoved the feeling down, knowing I’d need all of my concentration to deal with the mare in front of me. Horn damaged or not she was still the most dangerous thing down here and none of us, myself, the escaped prisoners now desperately fighting for their lives against the army of Gobs, nor my fast approaching friends who no doubt caught in battles of their own against Redwire’s bio monsters, had any chance of surviving the day while Redwire remained standing.

My mouth tightened around the hilt of the knife, every muscle tensing like a bending tree branch.

One of Redwire’s tentacles shot out, but it wasn’t aimed at me, but Braindead’s body. It stabbed the corpse and pulled it back to her, holding it up like a puppet that she shook at me while grinning in a wide, macabre smile, like a twisted crescent moon.

“Wasn’t very ‘heroic’ of you, killing poor Braindead here. I thought you were all about mercy?”

“You killed him,” I told her simply, not in the mood for her word games as I sprang into a charge, closing the distance between us rapidly, “All I did was end his pain.”

She flung the body at me, Braindead’s corpse flailing through the air like a ragdoll. I side stepped, avoiding the body by inches while not slowing down. Redwire’s laughter pealed out like insane thunder as she lashed out with her tendrils, “He was a dead pony long before he met either of us. We’re all born corpses, Longwalk! Just takes different amounts of time for that bit of truth to catch up to us.”

As I closed in on her Redwire’s tendrils flew into a frenzy, whipping about like a barbed barrier. I noticed her control of the alien appendages didn’t seem nearly as precise as before, and I wondered if her damaged horn was causing her so much pain she couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t a unicorn so I had no idea just how much agony a damaged horn could cause, but I wasn’t about to second guess some good fortune coming my way. Fast as they were, the attacks of the tendrils was uncoordinated, their metallic lengths jerking about randomly even as Redwire snarled in frustration as she tried to make them converge on me. I side stepped one flashing tentacle and ducked another, pressing inward to thrust my knife at her chest, a potentially lethal blow that I knew I could follow through with now, because I just couldn’t see any other way to end this other than to put Redwire down the same way my tribe’s hunters might put down a rabid gecko.

Even with all she’d done I still didn’t like the idea of having to kill her, but my choices were few and my determination to see this madness ended was only growing. Unfortunately Redwire wasn’t going to cooperate, and injured or not wasn’t without insane determination of her own. Despite the lack of precise control she flailed her tendrils in a thick storm of slashing barbs, cutting at my face and one strike managed to hit the blade of the knife hard enough to knock it from my mouth and send it spinning away before I managed to drive it home. I had to leap back to avoid even more tendrils that tried to wrap around my barrel, just barely avoiding being caught as I backpedaled.

It seemed as long as I kept my distance and dodged to the side at the last second I could keep the sharp barbs from lashing me, but I couldn’t get close to her either. There were too many tendrils and if I got too close even their random flailing would catch me. I saw Redwire’s eyes light up as she realized this and growled in low satisfaction, “What’s wrong, don’t want to get any closer? How about I come to you then?”

Redwire practically pranced towards me, skipping along with a merry mad giggle, tentacles forming a writhing storm of barbed death in front of her. I had to back up, stepping rapidly backwards as she advanced. I glanced around for the knife but I hadn’t seen where it’d landed. Dammit! If only I had Gramzanber with me I could have ended this fight in an instant! I’d even settle for trying my luck with a gun, no matter how bad a shot I was.

Desperate, I looked around quickly while still backing away from Redwire. Behind her was the military auto wagon. Its cabin was still intact, and the fire from the Gobs’ flaming bottles was slowly dying out, leaving the back bed almost clear. The machine gun Whisperwood had been on was still intact, if a little blackened from the flames. Did it still work? If it did, it’d probably make short work of Redwire, assuming I could aim it straight. Not seeing many other options I broke into a gallop, making a wide circle around Redwire.

“Where do you think you’re going!? Didn’t your mother ever teach you it's rude to leave a mare alone on the dance floor!?” Redwire said derisively as she gave chase, lashing out with a trio of tendrils as I tried to run past her. I ducked one, then barely dove over the other two, feeling some of the barbs from one of the tentacles gash my leg as I passed over it. I went into a roll and came up galloping, heading straight for the auto wagon, Redwire in hot pursuit.

A voice in the back of my mind was still chiding me, still questioning if I really had it in me to kill Redwire, but I kept shaking the distracting thought off as best I could. Still, I felt this strange pressure inside myself. Not like the pressure in my head that was my connection to Gramzanber. No, this was different. Deeper. This felt like a pressure at the core of myself, like two colliding storm fronts. It felt like something had to snap, and it was going to happen soon, but I couldn’t let this distract me. Right now distraction meant death, so I just let my vision tunnel until I only saw the auto wagon in front of me and only felt the burning pain in my legs as I pushed my wounded body to gallop even faster.

Before I reached the auto wagon, however, I was nearly blinded by a flash of light as the headlamps on the wagon flared to life. I stumbled to the side, and I heard Redwire let out a harsh “Fuck!” as no doubt the sudden light nearly blinded her too, and then I heard the roar of the auto wagon’s engine. I then heard the wavering voice of Whisperwood shouting, “Hurry! Get on!”

I barely had time to blink away the spots from my eyes and let out a short yelp as the auto wagon, the back of it still on fire, suddenly leaped forward with a screech of tires. I saw a terrified, wide eyed Whisperwood, her face bearing a few singe marks, sitting behind the auto wagon’s wheel and seeming to desperately keep the vehicle under control as it rolled towards me and Redwire. I had only seconds to roll to the side of the several tons of metal barreling at me, reaching out and snagging the passenger side door just in time to avoid being ran over.

“Are you insane!?” I shouted, barely holding onto the outside of the auto wagon, then decided to add, “Glad you’re alive!”

“So am I!” gulped Whisperwood, and I could see the flames that had hit the auto wagon had not left her unscathed, some of her hide sporting painful looking blisters. “Sorry for almost hitting you but I didn’t know what else to do! W-where’d she go!?”

Good question. I didn’t see the auto wagon hit Redwire, and looking behind me I didn’t see the madmare anywhere, not until I heard a metallic *thunk* and saw several of her tendrils rise above the back of the wagon, quickly followed by the mare herself as Redwire hauled herself onto the back of the moving vehicle. I swore under my breath and said to Whisperwood, “We’ve got an unwelcome passenger! Try to keep this thing steady while I go inform her that we’re not giving free rides!”

“No promises!” Whisperwood shouted back, wrestling with the wheel as the auto wagon swerved hard to the left and started plowing through the ranks of Gobs that, up until that point, had been paying sole attention to the gunfight with the other escaped prisoners. I heard shrill cries of pain and fear as Gobs started to get sent flying by the renegade auto wagon rolling through them like an avalanche smashing through brush.

Swallowing back bile and trying to ignore the sound of crunching bones and flesh as the auto wagon bounced, I strained to pull myself along the side of the auto wagon and scramble into the back bed. Flames still licked at the wooden side frames, but it was safe enough to to stand there without burning myself. Across from me stood Redwire, breathing hard, eyes blazing hatred and murder at me like twin pools of glowing malice. It suddenly occurred to me that fighting her in close quarters on an unstable, swerving vehicle was probably not my brightest choice, but I was committed and there wasn’t any turning back.

“Pfft, what are you going to do, huh? Slap me to death with your bare hooves?” Redwire chided in a mocking snarl, tendrils menacingly snaking forward.

I cast a quick glance around the back of the auto wagon. It had several small metal cases in it that might have once been neatly stacked along the sides but were now jumbled about the floor at random. I didn’t have time to read the faded white print on the top of the cases, but they were made of metal. The machine gun behind me was unfortunately useless right now because its mount clearly didn’t swivel all the way around. Before Redwire’s tendrils could cross the distance between us I turned around and kicked out with a hind leg, sending one of the metal cases sailing at Redwire.

She batted it aside with derisive snort, her tendril strike breaking it open. Out from the lid scattered dozens of small, silvery rectangular packages with the black letters MRE printed on them. I kicked another case and Redwire similarly swatted the thing side, spilling more of the strange aluminum squares all over the auto wagon’s bed.

They made rather hefty thunking sounds when they hit the floor, which gave me an idea as I grabbed one in my mouth. I didn’t know what an MRE was, but it was hard as a rock and felt fairly aerodynamic to my sensibilities. Redwire raised an eyebrow at me.

“The fuck you going to do with that, feed to me? Just lay down and let me gut you alre-OW!”

I’d thrown the MRE package straight at her face. The much smaller object was clearly much harder for her to deflect as her tendrils snapped through thin air, missing the stone-like little silver square as it smacked into the side of her head. She growled, purple mane bristling like a living thing as she charged forward, “Your balls are mine!”

Again with the balls? Was I doomed to constantly fight mares that wanted to destroy my most sensitive parts? I hadn’t even used them for anything yet!

In response to an angry, insane Raider with razor tentacles coming for my dangly bits I started snatching up every MRE I could see and started fast balling them at her as quick as I could. Redwire’s tendrils flailed in front of her, appearing like nothing more than a spastic blur of motion that did manage to deflect a few of my impromptu projectiles. Other MREs struck home, smacking her in the chest, face, and legs, causing her murderous charge to turn more into a awkward stumble that still managed to prove dangerous as a pair of her tentacles shot forward like miniature spears.

I threw myself to the side, nearly crashing through the burnt wooden railing, but just barely managed to catch myself before tumbling off the auto wagon. I could see it had swerved and curved in a circling zig-zag pattern under Whisperwood’s direction, nearly making a full circle of the battlefield. Gobs had scattered away from the center of the chamber and instead were clustering along the walls, taking whatever cover they could while either firing at the ponies who were still holding their positions at the cave mouth up the wall, or now firing at the auto wagon that was running dozens of them down.

I didn’t have long to absorb that sight as Redwire had recovered her balance and slashed out with more tendrils, forcing me to roll aside. One barbed appendage nearly cut clean through the wood railing I’d just occupied, and I felt splinters pepper my face as I scrambled to get to the other side of the auto wagon bed, blindly throwing MREs as I went. I really needed a decent weapon.

Redwire let out a sound that wasn’t so much a growl as it was a raw noise of pure rage and bloodlust as she turned around and stalked towards me, her tendrils slashing at the floor and railing around her as if showing me what she intended to do with me. A little blood seeped from a cut on her brow where one of the MREs had hit, joining the blood that had trickled down from her damaged horn.

Gulping, I backed up until my hooves nearly tripped over the back end of the auto wagon. On instinct alone I reached out with a hoof to grab the wooden railing next to me and yanked as hard as I could. The wood was ancient, barely intact and only just so due to the fairly sterile conditions down in this mine cavern. The wood board tore free of its metal and nailed down housing and before I knew it I was reared up, standing unsteadily on two hind hooves as I held the wood board between my fore hooves like a makeshift club.

Redwire chortled and rushed forward. I thought I saw a flash of surprise on her face as I rushed to meet her rather than cringe or try backing away. Her tendrils swept forward, metallic barbs glinting. My mind flashed to a memory of Glint fighting the Hellhound in Silver Mare Studios, the way the Odessa pegasus had rushed and slid beneath the monster’s claws and between its legs, weapons blasting away. I didn’t pull the exact same maneuver, but I did keep rushing forward in my awkward two legged gait, then suddenly bent my upper body backwards as I slid to my knees. The move saw Redwire’s tendrils flash over my bent back body, barely grazing my belly and chest. Redwire was still moving forward, her momentum too much for her to stop or try to dodge when I snapped my upper body straight again, swinging away with the wooden board with an overhead strike.

The wooden board snapped into wooden shards over her head and she stumbled into me, her body weight carrying her into me in a crash of tangled limbs and flailing tendrils. For a moment I could feel her body beneath the white robes, feel the strange bumps and ropy protrusions that didn’t feel like they belonged on any equine body, then I felt pain as tendrils flailed at me, cutting flesh as Redwire let out a vicious hiss and battered me with her limbs, biting with her teeth, leaving me feeling like I was wrestling with a hundred pound gecko.

Wait... hundred pounds? Wow, Redwire actually was kind of light, I realized. Grinding my jaw and ignoring the pain I grabbed Redwire around the waist with my fore hooves and lifted her up, causing her to yelp.

“The fuck!?” she cried out as I hurled her to the side as hard as I could.

She crashed through the already weakened wooden railing and went flying off the side of the auto wagon. However my sense of triumph was very short lived as I saw three or four tendrils snap into place along the side of the vehicle and then Redwire, dragged along the side, quickly start to reel herself back up. I gasped for breath and shouted, “Whisperwood! Go right! Scrape her off the side!”

It wasn’t exactly playing fair, but we were well past the point of fair play.

Whisperwood heard me and I saw her turn the wheel, maneuvering the auto wagon towards the right wall, where the chapel was. If Whisperwood could aim it right she could knock Redwire straight into the chapel wall without crashing the auto wagon. I doubted it’d kill Redwire, but it might put her out of the fight. Bullets whizzed by me like pissed off little flies and I ducked down, heading for Redwire’s tendrils, intend on knocking her back off if she tried to get back on before we reached the chapel.

Redwire had a different plan in mind, I found out, when I looked over the side of the railing and saw her grinning at me with a mad, dangerous light in her eyes. She waved one of her tendrils in the air above her head, pointed it at one of the front wheels of the auto wagon, and I found my eyes going wide.

“Oh shi-”

Redwire’s tendril darted forward, spearing the tire and nearly tearing it off the auto wagon entirely. I had a brief moment of pained realization of how bad this was about to hurt before Whisperwood lost control of the auto wagon entirely and the vehicle turned harshly to the left. It kept going forward, however, skidding with a screech of metal on stone as the whole thing tipped over and began to roll. I was thrown forward like a yelling pony projectile and sailed straight through one of the chapel windows. Glass shattered, cutting at my hide, and I felt the world spin for a second before hard floorboards greeted me harshly.

I rolled, hit the inner chapel walls, and lay there for a second, upside down and bleeding, eyes spinning in my head.

I heard the auto wagon outside a second before it hit the chapel doors and broke through in a twisting wreak, sending stone dust scattering everywhere like one of my smoke grenades.

My right foreleg was all but screaming in pain at me, and was hanging rather uselessly. I let out a sharp hiss as I tried moving it, only to find I could barely put any weight at all on it without raw agony tearing its way through the whole limb like a red hot spike. I didn't know if the leg was broken or not. The bone might have just been fractured. Regardless, I wasn’t going to be able to use the leg for much anytime soon. Despite the pain I managed to half hobble, half drag myself towards the auto wagon wreck, calling desperately, “Whisperwood? Whisperwood!? Are you okay!?”

I heard a pained moan in response, followed by a series of coughs. I managed to get through the dust to the driver’s cabin, which was on its side, and saw Whisperwood dangling loosely in the seat. She’d at least been smart enough to put on the seat belt before she’d started driving the thing, but her face was covered in blood from a gash across her forehead and the frail looking mare had a dazed look on her face as she blinked at me.

“I… I’m never doing that again… seriously,” she said, coughing, “Why did I think this was a… ugh... a good idea?”

“C’mon!” I said, wincing past horrific shooting pain in my leg as I reached up with my one good foreleg to undo her restraints, “We can’t stay put. Crazy mare still trying to kill us!”

Whisperwood let out another pained moan, but didn’t argue with me as I hauled her out of the auto wagon and we both stumbled, barely standing, into the chapel’s main chamber. I blinked, taking stock of our surroundings. Given the flagrantly sickening manner in which Redwire had decorated the cave and outside of the chapel in gore I had thought the inside would be even worse, but that wasn’t the case.

Immaculately clean, like the white robes Redwire wore, the chapel’s interior was bare of clutter save that which had just been created by the auto wagon crash. Neatly ordered pin boards lined two of the walls, the corner where they met playing host to a sizable metal desk, on which sat a large terminal. Crates and boxes were neatly stacked along another wall, some open to reveal orderly stacked firearms and ammo boxes, enough to equip a small army. An operating table took up part of the center of the chapel, a bleak metal affair with a medical tray next to it with a number of tools. There were no bodies, and while there was no blood, the overly polished nature of the table suggested it’d been cleaned thoroughly several times.

There was a neatly made bed placed in one corner, with another table set up at the foot of the bed where half a dozen monitors were hooked up. My eye was drawn to movement on those monitors and I gasped when I realized what was being displayed.

“W-what is it?” asked Whisperwood.

“My friends!” I said, hobbling towards the monitors with Whisperwood leaning against me. Getting a better look I could tell the monitors must have been hooked up to a number of different cameras that had been set up in the sewer system. Each screen showed four different views, and while most of them were blank of any action, I could see one of them showed a scene of a wide, curved sewer tunnel leading to the entrance of a mine shaft. Here I could see the gray image of my friends fighting their way through a small horde of Hyadean bio monsters. Arcaidia was leading the charge, throwing skeletal creatures aside with blasts of ice. Binge and B.B flanked either side of her, Binge’s tail twirling about to strike at monsters with her ridiculous knife whip. I could see her laughing maniacally and could hear it clear in my head despite the mute monitor. B.B kept to the air, darting aside from beams of black magic from the skeletons while returning withering fire with her revolvers. Behind the trio I could see Crossfire and Shard, the Drifters working in tandem to dispatch any of the bio monsters that managed to get around the flanks of Arcaidia’s charge.

“Your friends are kinda badass,” said Whisperwood, through her voice was a bit weak and her eyes still dazed.

“Only wish they were here now,” I said, but felt a spark of hope rose in me, “But it looks like they’re getting close. We just gotta hold out a little longer.”

I briefly wondered why Redwire hadn’t set up any cameras inside the mine itself. If she had she would’ve spotted my escape attempt before it got anywhere. Maybe she only had so many cameras and had wanted to spy on the sewers around the mine more than worry about what was going on inside her lair? Whatever the reason I was glad for it, but the thought also made me realize it was probably a matter of seconds before Redwire came barging into the chapel, so I turned my attention to the rest of the room.

Upon the boards were pinned papers of various sizes, bearing maps of detailed city streets and twisting alleys, and with a shock I realized I was looking at fairly complete pictures of various parts of Skull City, both the Outskirts and the Inner City. Other papers held figures and names, lists of goods or services... certain ones underlined in red marker. Pins of various colors were stuck amid the map, each seemingly at important facilities. I recognized the Skull Guild’s headquarters tower as one of the buildings with a pin in it, and guess many of the others might be headquarters for the other guilds of the city.

I was looking at detailed plans for how Redwire intended to attack the city, including all the key locations she planned to strike with the Gobs and Hyadean bio monsters she was creating from the captured refugees. She had information on how many guards various locations had, lists of response times for fire brigades and local security... far too much information to have been gathered by herself in the time she would have had down here.

Someone or something had provided her with this information. Her Hyadean master, Alhazad? Not having time to think about it I instead made my way for the crates of weapons, while letting Whisperwood lean against the bed. Checking the crates I ran into a problem very quickly. None of the guns were loaded, and all of the ammo boxes had the bullets separated from any easy to load clips. I’d have to hoof load rounds one at a time, and I was hardly familiar enough with guns to even quickly guess which bullets went with which gun.

Before I could even pick one gun up to try fumbling with loading it there was a harsh crack of wood that snapped my attention to the right, where the chapel’s main doors were suddenly bashed inward, heavy wood splintering into fragments. In the threshold stood Redwire, bleeding and battered from the crash she had caused, but seeming all the more animated for the lustful hate and killing intent pouring from her.

“It's not polite to enter somepony’s home without permission.”

I looked at her and, despite every nerve in my body being alight with pain, turned to face her and deadpanned, “You’re the one who crashed the auto wagon into this damn place, so I’m counting that as an invitation. You mind if I rifle through your stuff when this is all over?”

One of these days I ought to learn not to crack wise at ponies that want to kill me, especially when I’m unarmed and horribly wounded.

Redwire roared and went into a headlong gallop at me, a thorny, bleeding dervish of death. I pushed Whisperwood towards the desk, panting, “Hide over there, and wait for an opening to get away!”

As she stumbled that way with a nod Rewdire snarled, “There is no getting away!”

One of her tendrils flashed out like a whip, aimed straight for Whisperwood. Clenching my teeth and shouting through the piercing pain in my leg I forced myself into a rapid hybrid between a trot and a leap that put me between the bladed tentacle and the defenseless mare. With a flash of inspiration and recalling just how light Redwire really was, I reached out with my one good foreleg and snatched the tendril in mid-air. Its thorn-like blades tore at my hide, but a little more pain was just a drop in the bucket at this point as I gripped the tendril tightly and then yanked it as hard as I could towards myself. I felt a bit of resistance, then heard Redwire shout indignantly as I pulled her off balance and had her face plant on the floor.

Not wanting to give her a chance to recover I hobbled towards her, raising a hoof to strike, but she was far faster than I gave her credit for. She rolled to her hooves, a storm of tendrils flailing around her, aimed in my general direction. I jumped to the left, evading a few tendrils, but feeling the harsh bite of others all over my body as I hit the floor rolling and stumbled into the wall. I was getting dizzy, my vision going dark around the edges as exhaustion and blood loss started to catch up with me. I knew I couldn’t keep this up for much longer, yet I pushed down the cold grasping coils of fear and despair welling up in me and focused on the hard reality that if I slowed down, if I stopped, if I died, then it wouldn’t just be me that paid that price.

Redwire was just a small piece of a much larger darkness that was going to eat everything I loved alive and shit it out as rot and bones if I let myself die here.

So no matter how much Redwire hurt me, no matter how much blood she ripped from my ragged, torn body, I was not dropping before she did!

Taking a deep breath and roaring past the pain I hauled myself off the wall and, head down like a battering ram, charged Redwire. My broken leg was pure agony, useless to support any weight. So I let my strange instincts kick in again, knowing that while equines were never meant for two legged movement, I had something buried in my mind that made the motions feel natural. So it was on my two hind legs I rushed Redwire, much to her confused look.

Her tendrils cracked at me, metal whips of sharpened pain, but for all their ability to flay flesh they were still affected by Redwire’s damaged horn, clearly difficult for her to control with precision, especially the more she tried to employ. They cut at me, but couldn’t stop my two hundred pounds of barreling Earth Pony muscle, fueled by desperation and adrenaline.

I rammed her head on, pushing her light body right off the ground with my momentum, and carrying her forward into the opposite chapel wall.

We hit the wall hard, sending cracks splintering up and down the old brick like spiderweb. The impact left me staggering backwards, tripping onto my back. The fall sent a jolting pain flashing through my broken leg and I barely held back a scream. Sputtering, the entire world spinning in my head, I blinked past dizzy spots and managed to flop onto my stomach. My heartbeat felt weak as a thread and even getting one leg underneath me was a monumental challenge. While I struggled to stand I saw Redwire in a similar state, groaning and slowly rising to her hooves, shaking dust off herself. Unfortunately, despite taking my battering charge head on and taking the brunt of our trip into the wall, she still looked far less injured than I was. In fact she looked vigorous, as if every wound I managed to inflict on her was only adding to her energy and madness.

“Now you owe me for damages. Were this the distant past, I’d sue you, but since this is the Wasteland and I’m a cockmothering Raider I’ll just take my dues from your screaming flesh, okay? Okay!”

She came at me with a storm of tendrils slashing dangerously. I barely had the energy to move, making a dodging limp that was as much me falling over as it was an actual evasive maneuver. Tentacles cracked the floor next to my head as I rolled away, then I let out a half choked yell of pain as another tendril lashed my shoulder before I could get out of the way. Redwire was relentless, eyes wild and gleaming with joyous bloodlust as I kept scrambling away from her, leaving a trail of blood in my wake.

“Yes, keep running, bitch! I want to run you into the damn ground until you’ve got nothing left! This is what it feels like to be helpless. This is why you never play fucking games with the Wasteland. It ends like this every single time. You can’t change that!”

She was stalking towards me, body seeming to write with her tendrils, eyes a pair of burning pools filled with the very spirits of hatred and rage. I regained my hooves, reaching the chapel’s destroyed front doors, and turned to face her again. I couldn’t run without Whisperwood, who I could see hiding behind the desk at the back of the room. Redwire was now between me and her. I think Redwire realized this as well because her face gained a nasty smile and her eyes narrowed in sadistic pleasure as she cocked her head to glance back at Whisperwood, ears flattening against her skull.

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten about you. What do you think? If I pull some organs out of your screaming belly will that maybe get the point across to our moronic wannabe savior over here?”

A growl tore itself from my throat, “Don’t even try it! Whisperwood! Run!”

Whisperwood made a wide eyed face at me that seemed to convey the message ‘Yeah, no shit!’ as Redwire turned on her and charged across the chapel, tendrils flailing at the desk Whisperwood was using for cover. The metal desk bent and buckled under the assault, but Whisperwood to her credit wasn’t just cowering. She dove from behind the desk, flinging something at Redwire, a bottle of booze I noticed as it arced through the air to smash against Redwire’s shoulder in a shower of glass shards and cheap whiskey.

“Fuck! Gah, that was my last bottle I had down here you cock gargling twat! That earns you an extra missing organ! Liver or kidney, which do you want me to feed you?”

“Eat your own damn organs you freak!” shouted Whisperwood, ducking and diving as tentacles whipped at her darting body, cutting swaths of masonry from the wall behind her. Whisperwood let out a pained yelp as one tendril hit her hind leg and wrapped around it, tripping her to the floor before it lifted her off the ground painfully. I saw blood trailing down Whisperwood’s leg and flank as the tendril dug in and held her upside down.

Luckily I’d had time to cross the distance between myself and Redwire, despite my lame leg, and tackled her from behind. I felt her unnaturally misshapen body beneath her robes as I tried to get my hooves around her neck from behind, but she began to twist and buck, forcing me to do everything I could just to hang on.

“Did I say you could mount me asshole!? Get your dead ass off of me! Graaaah!”

Temporarily forgetting her hold on Whisperwood, Redwire writhed her tendrils around to lash at me. I’d been kind of hoping she’d try that. I immediately slipped off her, letting go and letting myself fall to the side just as the tentacles slashed at where’d I’d been. Because she was still lacking precise control of the alien appendages I was briefly satisfied to see her strike herself, cutting her white robes in the process. The pain startled her and I saw her drop Whisperwood. At the same moment I bucked out with my hind legs, hitting Redwire squarely in the side and propelling her into a few weapon crates in a crash of metal.

Whisperwood, limping, but still managing a full gallop, went up to me and helped me to my hooves. We didn’t need to exchange words to know that running was our only option and we both began a fast, wounded hobble towards the door.

“I didn’t say either of you could leave, did I!?”

Tendrils shot at us from behind. On instinct I pushed Whisperwood ahead of me, turning just in time to have multiple of the cold, clammy bio-metallic tentacles wrap around me. One constricted my barrel, while another wrapped my one good foreleg. I was lifted into the air and was forced to look down at Redwire, who stood now in the center of the chapel.

Her robes were gone, now just torn white shreds on the floor. Her body underneath barely looked equine. It had four legs, certainly, and a body roughly shaped like a pony’s was supposed to be, but that was where the similarities ended. Her flesh was bulbous, covered in pulsing, fleshy nodules like metal roots growing out of pitted, gunmetal gray flesh. Tendrils, dozens of them, writhed and slithered around her like slugs, impossible to tell where one ended and another began. Several dark purple veins, like glowing blood vessels, traces along her ruined flesh, seeming to glow brighter in time with some inner heartbeat.

“What the... what happened to you?” I breathed, a little too dumbstruck for a second to do much else.

Redwire laughed, spitting out the sound as if it were acid, “I already told you. Master Alhazad enhanced me. Made me more than just a weak, helpless little pony. This is their endgame for all of us, every last pissant on this planet. We’re going to be their new army, their new glorious fucking army! They’ll take us to the stars, Longwalk, to a war beyond our imagining! It's going to epic. At least for those who survive the conversion process. The rest get to enjoy being mindless cannon fodder, but the few special ponies who are strong enough will get to become so much more. Do you get it now? This is bigger than you, and you can’t stop it.”

“Yeah, I think we heard enough,” said a familiar mechanical, monotone drone followed by a cracking gunshot.

Redwire spun around, blood blossoming from an impact hole on her chest, and I felt the tendrils around me loosen, dropping me to the floor. I grunted as I hit the ground, but scrambled away from Redwire’s tendrils, which were still flailing about, indicating she was far from dead. I got to my hooves again with a wince and looked over to see Whisperwood standing next to my savoir.

LIL-E bobbed in the air unsteadily, her round metallic form sparking from several clear gouges of damage around her battered, robotic frame. Her under-slung pistol mount was still smoking.

“You look like shit, Longwalk.” LIL-E said bluntly, “Better let me take over here.”

I coughed and stumbled towards her, “LIL-E? Where did you come from?.”

“We can play catch up later, after I’ve murdered the fuck out of this taint licking Raider. You on the other hoof need to get your battered flank out of here.”

“Ooooh?” said Redwire, rising to her hooves like some kind of grotesque alien zombie, “The flying metal ping pong ball is here to play too? And here I thought master Alhazad took you apart like the cheap knock off heroine you were built to be?”

I glanced at LIL-E, wondering just what Redwire was talking about. I hadn’t seen LIL-E since she’d vanished to go find Doc Sunday, and while I’d suspected she might have picked up his and the Saddlespring refugee's trail, perhaps even followed it to find me here in these mines, I hadn’t known for sure just what she’d been through. The damage to her chassis was clear to see, like something huge and sharp had gouged cuts through her sides, exposing circuitry within... but LIL-E was hovering solidly and looked fully functional.

She ignored Redwire’s barb and instead said to me, “There’s still ponies out there that need help Longwalk, so go help them. I’ll keep her busy.”

My eyes strayed to Redwire, who didn’t seem in a rush to attack us, instead taking up a defensive stance with her tendrils coiling around her like a protective sphere. LIL-E’s chassis kept sparking from the damage it’d sustained, I could only presume in some earlier battle while we’d been out of contact. It was clear the robot was in bad shape, even her hovering not entirely steady. I left me with a cold feeling I couldn’t fully explain.

“LIL-E, we should take her on together,” I said, “I know I’m beat to crap right now, but I’ve got to finish things with her. The only reason she’s here is because I let her go before-”

“Give it a rest,” said LIL-E, her bland machine tone filled with popping static, “I could’ve shot her ass dead back then, too, but I decided to let you make the call. This is as much my fault as yours.”

Her volume lowered, so only I could hear her, “My targeting systems are fucked right now, I’m stuck on manual control. I meant to hit her in the head just now, but only got the chest. Can’t aim worth shit. I can only keep her busy for a few minutes... enough for you to get those poor ponies tied to those posts out of here. Arcaidia and the others are close, just link up with them, then come back and finish this bitch off.”

The cold feeling in my chest only turned to deeper, blacker ice as I realized LIL-E was fully intending to fight until the eyebot was destroyed, if only to buy me and Whisperwood time to escape and rescue the ponies Redwire had tied up outside the chapel. I knew it was just an eyebot in front of me, not the real pony controlling it in danger, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of fear I’d have if this were B.B, Binge, or Arcaidia trying to do the same thing.

The worst of it was that she wasn’t being unreasonable. I was trashed to the point I was barely conscious, and Whisperwood wasn’t much better off. We’d just be liability to LIL-E without a weapon or a lot of extra hooves to help. LIL-E knew what she was doing, and had already weighed that the worth of one robot wasn’t as much as that of ponies lives.

It seemed simple enough... yet...

The thought struck me right then that, while I knew little about radio signals and how they worked, I did understand that countless tons of rock from us being underground ought to interfere with the radio signals needed to remotely control a robot. If that was the case, then how was LIL-E...?

I understood then the cold feeling in my gut. I knew a friend’s life was in danger, that she was intending to put herself in horrific danger and likely die, just for me and a few others to get away.

“Whisperwood,” I said, startling the mare, “Go.”

“Huh?” she asked, blinking.

“Get the other prisoners out of here,” I told her, “Head for the side tunnel and try and link up with Copper Shell and the others. Just gallop and don’t look back. Can you do that?”

She gave an experimental shake of her legs, one by one, wincing in pain, but nodding, “I... I think so.”

“Longwalk, what are you doing?” asked LIL-E, “You both need to go!”

“No,” I said, then just nodded to Whisperwood, who looked confused for a second, glancing between me, LIL-E, and Redwire, but then with a gulp nodded and galloped out of the chapel. I hoped the Gobs were still too busy to take notice, but if Whisperwood had been able to sneak her way through when the place had been filled with them, then she ought to be able to sneak away while they Gobs were still distracted with all the fighting.

As for LIL-E, I turned to her, keeping one eye on Redwire who remained watching us like a hawk, but still wasn’t attacking. Was she waiting for us to make the first move? It must have been LIL-E’s guns. Redwire didn’t want to drop her guard, and wasn’t yet aware LIL-E’s targeting system was damaged. LIL-E, her voice somehow dropping a dangerous octave despite its mechanical tone, said, “What the hell Longwalk!? I told you to run!”

“I can’t,” I told her firmly, “I’m not leaving a friend behind, no matter what.”

“I’m just a robot you idiot! I’m not in any real danger! The real me. I’m a pony a thousand miles from here for Celestia’s sun bleached teats sake!”

“No, you’re not,” I said, causing the eyebot to wobble in the air as if slapped. I glanced at her, gulping, “Are you? You, that body, the memory orb I saw inside you... that’s you, isn’t it?”

She didn’t immediately respond. She just floated there, unsteadily.

“LIL-E, this is really you. The robot.”

“... How did you figure that out?”

I just gave her a helpless shrug and half smile, “Mostly just realized this far underground you couldn’t get a remote radio signal through. Really only leaves one possibility for how you’re still functioning down here.”

“Well... shit. Can you keep this a secret?”

“If we live through this? Sure. I won’t tell anypony. They might just piece it together themselves, though.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll take a chance on them not thinking about it too hard,” LIL-E replied, the static in her voice almost making it sound like her voice was wavering, “Let’s survive first, then I’ll worry about my impending identity crisis.”

‘Or,” interrupted Redwire, “You can worry about your impending impalement crisis.”

In a blinding flurry Redwire instantly switched from the defensive to the offensive, surging forward as half a dozen of her tendrils flicked through the air with the speed and intensity of a hurricane wind. LIL-E and I had to dodge in opposite directions to avoid the brunt of the tearing, murderous swarm of strikes, LIL-E opening fire without hesitation as her rifle extension popped out of her side and laid down a blazing series of shots alongside her pistol turret. She hadn’t been exaggerating about her targeting system, however, because most of her shots went wide or narrowly missed Redwire, only one or two striking the Raider’s side. The rounds impacted into the hard, tainted flesh and while the wounds bled, they didn’t seem to hit Redwire as hard as they should have and barely slowed her down.

Seeking a weapon I dashed past her, moving as fast as my three working legs could carry me as I made for the crashed auto wagon. If I could rip off more of its side boards I’d at least have something to hit her with. Redwire turned to follow me, several tendrils flying in my direction, slithering through the air like snakes. Others whipped at LIL-E, who darted left and right, bobbing about erratically as she kept pouring rounds at Redwire, trying to land a telling blow. Having to evade Redwire’s tendrils was making LIL-E’s aim even more problematic and a round actually buzzed past me, blowing out masonry from the wall above my head.

“Shitfuckcunt!” I heard LIL-E shout on high volume, speakers popping with squealing static, “Just stand still you puss stained Raider!”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll totally do that. Let me carve a bullseye onto my skull too,” chided Redwire in a sarcasm stuffed tone as she charged after me, tendrils now mere paces from catching up with my hide.

I reached the auto wagon just as Redwire’s sharp tentacles were slapping at my flanks, and I leapt for a loose looking board on the side of the flipped vehicle. I ripped the board away from its frame with my only good fore leg and spun around, smacking away the tendrils spearing towards me. I had to stand unsteadily on my hind legs, following my instincts as I balanced on them and side stepped one tendril while swinging hard as I could with the board at Redwire as she closed with me. She raised her own hoof to block my strike, taking the board nearly head on. She didn’t even so much as wince as she blocked the board and continued on into me with a headbutt to my gut that sent me flying backwards.

My whole body exploded with pain, blackening my vision for a second. I groaned and saw Redwire rearing up on her own hind legs in front of me, clearing intending to smash me with her forelegs. I’d managed to keep hold of the board, so I swung up hard and smashed it into the knee of her left leg. I don’t know if it hurt or not, but it caught her off balance and she tumbled over with a surprised shout.

LIL-E floated up quickly, firing away at Redwire’s prone form. Redwire’s tendrils flailed in the air around her, forming a shield. A few bullets were caught by the web of tendrils, while others got through and slammed Redwire’s torso and belly. Again her knotted, thick gray alien flesh absorbed the shots like some kind of spongy armor, still bleeding but just not stopping the mare like being shot ought to. Instead, seemingly strong as ever, she surged to her hooves and flung all of her tentacles at LIL-E, filling the air with razor sharp barbs that lashed at the eyebot from all directions.

LIL-E had no way to dodge, so instead she took a harsh battering that swatted her out of the air the way some ponies might swat a bug. She went bouncing away, frame letting out a shower of sparks.

“LIL-E!” I yelled, but soon saw she wasn’t down for the count yet, as she floated back up, wobbling in the air and letting out a small trail of smoke, but still functional.

“Not down yet!” she said, reorienting herself on Redwire and firing away with both gun mounts, heavy rifle deafening in the confined space of the chapel and drowning out the lighter pops of her pistol.

Laughter exploded from Redwire in response as she laced her tendrils in front of her into an even thicker shield, absorbing the rounds with seemingly little harm, “I didn’t think it’d be this good! I mean, master Alhazad told me I wouldn’t need to fear bullets anymore, but a part of me didn’t believe it. A whole life spent learning to be afraid of a gun isn’t easy to ignore, but I’m getting it now. I’m more than a pony. Ponies have to fear guns, but not me... not a Hyadean!”

Her shield of tentacles split apart in a flash and swarmed again at LIL-E, who anticipated it better this time and floated backwards rapidly, getting out of the swarms lashing range. LIL-E’s voice spat back at Redwire. “That right? When I put a shot through one of your fucking eyes we’ll see if that statement holds up!”

Fortunately for me LIL-E had managed to distract Redwire for a second, buying me precious time to slink around towards the crates of firearms. I knew the guns would be useless, unloaded as they were, but I had a thought that where there were guns, there were also usually grenades. If Redwire was stockpiling weapons it’d make sense she’d have at least one crate of those around somewhere. I was almost to the crates when Redwire cocked her head to the side, spotting me and grinning.

“Trying to sneak off? I thought you wanted to ‘finish things’ with me. Or was that just bluster?”

Several tentacles whipped across the space separating us, and I dove forward, tucking myself into a roll that jolted my broken arm with mind stabbing pain, but the move got me out of the way of the deadly lashes that would have flayed entire chunks of me away had they hit. As it was the tendrils hit a stacked group of weapon crates, busting open lids and scattering their contents across the floor. My eyes caught sight of what I’d been hoping to find, the small apple shaped metal forms of several grenades.

Scrambling like a spastic grasshopper I half hobbled, half jumped for the grenades. I scooped one up and pulled the stem from the top just as Redwire aimed more of her tendrils my way. LIL-E swooped in from the side, barrels blazing with muzzle flashes, forcing Redwire to back up and direct her tendrils to form another shield to block the hail of lead. It gave me just enough time to judge my toss.

I sent the grenade sailing towards her in a solid arc, but to my horror she wheeled around and used the shield of tendrils like a catching mitt, snatching the grenade right out of the air, spun it around, and lobbed it right back at me!

“Whoashit!” I blurted and made a break for it, ignoring the searing torment in my leg and breaking out into as fast a three-legged gallop a I could towards the door. LIL-E, seeing what had just happened, immediately turned and began rapidly hovering the same way, because the grenade had landed right among all the other grenades, not to mention several spilled boxes of ammunition.

I saw Redwire’s chortling expression slowly turn into a wide eyed mask of realization, and managed to catch that she literally was cocooning herself within a mass of her tendrils just moments before the explosion.

I was propelled out the front door of the chapel like a screaming pony shaped missile. LIL-E, smoking, followed me, a smoking gray satellite to my pony mass. I landed hard about a dozens yards from the blown out chapel, my back taking the brunt of the fall. LIL-E landed next to me, her gray chassis now charred black in several places.

“Longwalk, remind me if we get out of this that you’re no longer allowed to use grenades,” LIL-E stated as she bobbled unsteadily back into the air.

“I… ugh... think B.B would probably agree with you on that point,” I said, groaning as I stood once more, my mind recalling my first less than stellar escapade with grenades.

“She dead?” LIL-E asked, turning to face the smoking chapel, which was still mostly intact.

“Have we ever been that lucky?” I queried back, knowing better than to expect Redwire to have been done in by that explosion. For all the injuries she’d taken so far the alien modifications to her body seemed to make her beyond just ‘hard to kill’.

My suspicions were confirmed as I saw Redwire’s dark form emerge from the smoke of the chapel, her tendrils casually dusting her off as if they were her own hooves. She had a few bleeding lacerations across her sides and face, and a couple of charred bits to her, but her eyes were still filled with violent lust and energy.

“Okay, my fault that time, I’m mare enough to admit that. Shit, I’m going to need an entirely new home after this. You have any idea how hard it is to find a clean bed with all of its springs intact in the Wasteland? Do you!? Hmm, you know what, I bet your corpse will make for a halfway decent bed.”

“Does she ever shut up?” asked LIL-E.

“I’m going to go with ‘no’,” I huffed, taking in labored breaths as I struggled with a heady combination of blood loss and pure exhaustion. I felt as if my body was slowly turning to stone, getting heavier and sluggish. I was running purely on adrenaline and stubborn determination.

I took a quick look around. I saw Whisperwood and the other ponies that had been tied to the posts now free and making a straight gallop for the side tunnel Braindead had led me through to get to this chamber. There were still Gobs around, but most of them were at the other side of the vast stone cave, either trying to scale the scaffolds to get at Copper Shell’s group of fighting escapees, or taking cover behind piled bodies of their comrades as they exchanged fire with the ponies they’d held captive.

I could see that up inside the tunnel opening high on the wall that the pony escapees had pushed out onto the top of the scaffolds, using a few metal barrels for cover, and were splitting fire between the Gobs climbing upwards, and the ones shooting below. I couldn’t tell how many were still alive, but I only saw one or two bodies of fallen ponies either laying on the ground where they’d fallen from the tunnel, or hanging from the scaffolds. I hoped the casualties were that few, at least.

The Gobs had certainly taken the worst of it so far. Between the gunfire and Whisperwood’s driving the auto wagon through the cavern there were dozens upon dozens of dead or wounded Gobs strewn about. I felt cold at the sight, but reminded myself of just how few options there had been except to go this far to rescue the remaining prisoners.

A few of the Gobs did seem to notice me and LIL-E, but I also saw fear in their eyes as they saw Redwire, and they just looked away to focus on fighting Copper Shell’s group. Were they so scared of Redwire they wouldn't even try to interfere with her fight? Whatever the case I wasn’t going to complain. LIL-E and I were in a tough enough spot as it was just keeping Redwire busy.

It was then that I heard a familiar voice penetrating the hazy din of combat. The voice was faint, but cut sharply through the noise and immediately lifted my spirit to hear.

“Estu dol firivta mas, vi golvai! Ren solva!”

Arcaidia stood out among the escaped prisoners not only for her bright azure coat and brilliant silver mane, but the fact that her horn was already burning like a beacon with pale blue light forming a multi-layered set of circular crests. A rain of ice shards appeared in the air and fell upon the Gobs climbing up the scaffolds, spearing several and knocking off others to fall in spinning messes to the ground.

Beside Arcaidia I saw Crossfire with her distinct crimson jacket, her huge rifle instantly taking aim and filling the cavern with its hefty, echoing blast, each shot striking home upon some poor Gob down on the cavern floor.

Over the heads of those two mares B.B’s form darted out, the pegasus flying straight out over the battle and diving down low. I saw her spin and dart like a sparrow, each move punctuated by fast paced snap shots from her fore limb mounted revolvers, Gobs scattering in her wake.

I saw Binge and Shard, but not up above with the others but instead emerging from the side tunnel that Whisperwood had been heading for alongside the last of the escaped prisoners. While a small group of Gobs had been turning their guns on the fleeing group Binge and Shard both charged in, intercepting the Gobs with a wall of flying knives, some levitated by Shard’s magic, others just expertly thrown by Binge. This created just enough of an opening for Whisperwood and the other prisoners to escape down the side tunnel, while up in the higher tunnel on the wall I saw the fighting prisoners rallying behind Arcaidia and Crossfire. The arrival of my friends had put the Gobs on the defensive, their return fire flagging as some fell and others decided to flee.

Still, there were a lot of Gobs, and enough were still fighting that our friends weren’t going to reach me and LIL-E for at least a couple of minutes.

The flat look of annoyance on Redwire’s face matched her voice, “Thought they’d take longer.” Her tendrils continued to form a constantly shifting barrier of thick bio-metal between herself and LIL-E, one or two flicking out to swat at the smoking eyebot. I saw one tendril also snap towards me, forcing me to stumble aside in a haphazard dodge.

“Not a problem though,” said Redwire, placing one tendril against her lips almost like one might a hoof, and she blew out a shrew whistle that echoed through the entire cavern. She gave me and LIL-E a particularly malicious grin, and then to my surprise she turned and began to gallop away, using her tendrils to keep shielding herself from LIL-E’s gunfire as she went. I just blinked in surprise.

Was she trying to escape? But there wasn’t anything in the direction she was galloping except for the giant hole in the wall that led to nothing but empty blackness, like a giant underground chasm.

“Luna’s silver buttplugs, bitch is trying to get away!” LIL-E growled, as much as a machine voice could growl, and she began to float after Redwire, swaying unsteadily in the air as she trailed sparks.

“Wait, LIL-E, we should wait for the others!” I shouted, stumbling after her. I didn’t want Redwire to get away either, but if we could catch a break and wait for our friends, that made a thousand times more sense than chasing after Redwire while we were both barely able to put up any kind of fight.

As it turned out Redwire wasn’t running away. Quite the opposite.

She was just going to meet her backup.

I heard it as a shrill screech that was so high pitched it felt more like a scalpel across my eardrum than an actual noise. This was followed by the loud thumping swoosh of massive wings, and a shadow descended from the black hole at the far end of the cavern.

I had to assume this beast was some kind of Hyadean creation. I couldn’t imagine it was a natural being from this world, at any rate.

It didn’t have eyes in its bulbous, elongated head. Just a half dozen glowing black feelers like the ends of some rubbery onyx centipede graced its “face”. A mouth with needle thin teeth opened and emitted another piercing shriek that made me want to cover my ears as it landed on a pair of long, bent backwards legs that bore webbed talons like some enormous water fowl. The creature's neck was long and ridged, undulating with unnatural movement that seemed to go beyond mere breathing. Its thick muscled body was more like that of some deep sea manta than that of a bird’s, wide and flat, lined with strange gill slits, yet it still had two gigantic black wings sprouting from this body like the leathery appendages of a bat. A pair of tails twitched behind it like two large whips.

The beast met with Redwire and bent low, as if bowing its head like a submissive dog. Redwire just cackled and whistled at it again, vaulting onto the creature’s back at the base of its long neck, and she pointed at us with one of her own tendrils.

“Night Gaunt, KILL!”

With another of its haunting, mind stabbing cries the monstrous Night Gaunt took to the air, gliding on its black wings towards a startled LIL-E and myself. Her internal mechanisms let out harsh grinding sounds and further sparks as LIL-E’s hover systems struggled to change her course away from the diving beast, her pistol mounting sputtering out a few wild shots.

One whip cord tail snapped through the air and cracked alongside LIL-E’s chassis, sending the eyebot spinning away like a smacked golf ball. I shouted for her but could do little else except throw myself painfully to the side as the other whip tail of the Night Gaunt launched itself at me, smashing the ground where I’d just stood in a shower of stone chips.

The beast landed heavily just a few paces from me, its webbed talons slicing into the ground as it turned in lumbering steps to face me while Redwire laughed atop its back.

“I love it. You feel a spark of hope with your friends showing up, and I can just take it away again. Keep crawling on the ground like that, Longwalk. That’s all ponies can do. Lose their hope, then crawl. It’s why we need the Hyadeans. They’ll lift us up from the dirt and give us something so much better than fake hope.”

“Is that what you call what’s been done to you? Being ‘lifted up’?” I asked, standing up unsteadily, “I don’t see it. I just see a pony too weak to do anything other than make everypony around her miserable, to drag everypony down to the ground with her because she’s too afraid to stand up on her own!”

My words were met by the slashing of Redwire’s tendrils and her derisive, anger laden voice. “Too afraid!? This from the blankflank colt without the balls to kill his enemies when he’s got them down and beaten already? How many ponies have I been able to kill because you were too afraid, huh!?”

I tried to dodge around the wildly swinging tentacles, but I didn’t have a lot of strength left and my stumbling evasions were barely enough to keep the slashes shallow as I backed away from Redwire and her massive new ally. The Night Gaunt stalked towards me on unnaturally rolling steps, the feelers on its face extending towards me alongside Redwire’s tendrils.

I had a half baked idea to try and lure her back towards the chapel, then perhaps find a way to collapse the damaged building on top of both Redwire and this monster she was riding, even if I got caught in the collapse as well, but I was rescued from trying that bit of craziness by the timely arrival of a beautiful swooping pegasus mare.

B.B flew by, fast as a snow flurry, all three of her revolvers going off at once in a triple blast that struck the Night Gaunt squarely on its feeler filled muzzle and caused the beast to rear back and let out a splitting, air rending cry. While Redwire struggled to bring the monster back under control B.B flipped about in the air in a swift maneuver that sent her streaking right back at us, and she swung low to snatch me up in her hooves and jet away at high speed.

For a moment I was disoriented by the sudden feeling of flight, but it ended fast as B.B banked hard and landed us both right in the middle of where Binge and Shard were finishing up the pack of Gobs they’d charged into earlier. I saw Binge mercilessly stabbing around her with a knife in her mouth and her tail flinging about her insane knife whip, blood spraying from Gobs left and right. Shard had more precise control of his own replenished supply of knives, eyes narrow slits of focus as his yellow aura of levitation magic picked off any of the bipedal creatures that Binge’s swirling dervish form missed.

At the last of that brief bloodbath, just as B.B was setting me down on my hooves, Binge twirled around and smiled broadly, face running with dripping red, and said cheerfully “Hiya bucky! Told ‘em all you’d still be kicking. Hah, and to think Miss Icy McBluedeath was sooooo worried you’d be all dead and stuff before we got to you!”

“Binge, we was all worried,” B.B said after she holstered the .44 revolver she’d been using in her mouth, instead firing off a quick shot with one of her lighter hoof revolvers at a fleeing Gob without even looking. I noticed she was breathing heavily and her eyes had already turned pure crimson, with even small hints of fangs protruding from her mouth. I could only imagine what all the thick smell of blood down here was doing to her.

“Glad you all showed up when you did, but we don’t really have time to talk,” I said, gesturing back to where Redwire had regained control of the Night Gaunt and was directing the creature to take to the air, aiming straight or us.

“So what the bloody hell is that thing supposed to be?” asked Shard, ears flattening, “Gobs I can deal with, but nopony said anything about giant manta-ray bat monsters with tentacles!”

“We’ll jabber ‘bout that after we dun well killed it,” growled B.B, her own body shaking slightly as she looked towards me, “An’ just so I know I ain’t crazy, was that LIL-E I saw down here, too?”

I nodded, eyes casting about worriedly for the eyebot, not sure where she’d landed after getting hit, “Yeah, she’s pretty badly damaged and I don’t know where she is.”

“The bot was whacked over there,” said Binge, pointing towards the vast expanse of the hole at the back of the cavern, “Not quite a hole in one, so the baddie will have to switch to a putter to finish the job. Ooooh, is that Redwire!? Heeeeey! Redwire! Over here! Remember me!? It’s Binge! We used to go to work together until my career change! Wanna go get coffee!”

Redwire’s shouted reply as the Night Gaunt began to dive bomb us was a garbled, “I am going to wear your skull as a fucking hat and use your spine as my new sex toy!”

Binge smiled, “Oh yeah, she remembers me.”

Shard’s voice was glazed with a sardonic coating, “Lady, I barely know you and I’m trying to forget you.”

“Awww, that’s so sweet! Makes me wanna not stab you in the throat multiple times. Well, maybe once.”

“Guys! Imminent danger!” I shouted, pointing at the Night Gaunt as it opened its maw. I saw a strange distortion in the air around its mouth and a sound like an loud, screeching intake of breath. I was already trying to dive aside but B.B was even faster, hauling me aside as she beat her wings. Binge and Shard also dove away as a beam of warbling force seemingly forged from pure sonic vibration sliced through the ground where we’d been. The distortion of the air was followed by a feeling on my eardrums like somepony jabbing a needle into it. I saw the stone of the cavern floor was cut clean through, all the way to the wall and then up the wall itself, leaving a thin but deep gouge.

“Thing ain’t a’ joke, that’s fer darn sure,” said B.B, red eyes looking me over, “An’ yer in a state like fresh death. Ya better beat hooves, Long, an’ let us take over ‘till Arc gits some healin’ on ya.”

It was just like LIL-E all over again. I didn’t want to leave my friends to fight while I was stuck having to run away. The only difference here was that LIL-E had already been damaged and wanted to take on Redwire alone, which could have been suicidal. B.B, Binge, and Shard were all relatively fresh by comparison. I could see they had all taken a few light wounds fighting through the Hyadean bio monsters to get here, but they all seemed a lot better off than either I or LIL-E were.

I wouldn’t leave a friend behind to fight a battle they couldn’t survive, but I wasn’t going to drag down friends who needed to fight without having to worry about me at the same time. That’d just make things more dangerous for them. B.B was right, I had to get to Arcaidia and receive some healing. She wasn’t telling me to abandon the fight, just pull back enough so I wouldn’t get in their way until I was in better shape to help.

“I’ll be fast, and then we’ll all take her down,” I said, holding a hoof out.

B.B grinned, bumping it with her own hoof, “Take yer time. Got a’ bit o’ steam I need ta blow off an’ this mare just volunteered fer the job.”

There was an intense light in her eyes, their blood red iris’ seeming to be glowing with a predatory fire that left me almost backing away on instinct. Every line of her lithe body was brimming with a tense energy and even her voice had a low, darkly intent quality to it. I gulped and gave B.B a quick nod, no more time for words as Redwire directed the Night Gaunt into a floor skimming flight that was taking her right for us.

I turned and began to gallop for the scaffolds where I could see Arcaidia and Crossfire battling their way down to the cavern floor, while B.B took flight and darted to meet Redwire’s charge.

I didn’t look behind me, even as I heard B.B’s guns roaring, only matched by the Night Gaunt’s piercing cry and Redwire’s crazed laughter.

As I ran, or more accurately swiftly hobbled on three legs, I saw the Gobs were all but scattering now. I could see that Copper Shell was leading the remaining escaped prisoners in supporting Arcaidia and Crossfire’s charge down the scaffold, their guns barking out a steady squall of fire that was forcing the Gobs to either remain pinned down or to outright seek to flee down any side tunnel they could find. The few that were shooting back were being quickly picked off by expert sniping shots from Crossfire, or barrages of ice shards from Arcaidia. I wasn’t sure how many Gobs were alive or dead, but where there’d once been a horde of a couple hundred I now saw mostly bodies, or fleeing forms. Many might have survived, as the dozens of bodies I saw couldn’t account for even half of the horde that had been down here. It seemed that once the odds of the fight ceased being heavily in their favor the majority of Gobs decided survival beat out any loyalty to Redwire. .

This meant I met with no opposition as I made my way to the scaffolds at the cave’s other far wall and tunnel entrance. I was even able to find a weapon among the fallen Gobs, a makeshift spear that was formed from a mop handle and a duct taped pair of kitchen knives. Hardly a replacement for Gramzanber, but it’d do to finish things with Redwire. I could still feel my ARM’s presence in my mind, the spear having been silently encouraging me the entire fight. Maybe it wasn’t just adrenaline keeping me going, but the continued aid of my partner, even at such a distance.

Don’t worry Gramzanber. I don’t intend to leave you behind like that again, but just feeling your thoughts is helping. I’ll put an end to this nightmare and then, together, we’re going to go even further.

I knew this wasn’t going to be over after Redwire. Far from it. The Hyadeans were acting through her, but now more than ever I knew they were out there and a threat that had to be dealt with. However things went in the NCR, or in rescuing my tribe from Odessa, beyond all that this alien menace had to be confronted and stopped, otherwise Redwire and this little den of darkness beneath Skull City was just a preview of what was going to come.

When Arcaidia saw me coming she called out to Crossfire and pointed down towards me. The Drifter mare gave a quick nod and jumped across and down a scaffold to land next to Arcaidia. The next thing I knew I saw a flash of bright light followed by a loud popping noise and both mares appeared in front of me, forcing me to skid to a painful halt.

“Longwalk! Estu ti shora vi malleti vas!”

My forward skid was immediately halted by a telekinetic aura that lifted me up as Arcaidia galloped up to me and began turning me around, examining me with wide, silver eyes. Crossfire, her face a pressed scrunch of anger as she spun her rifle around, firing at a few Gobs that had tried to shift their attention to us, just growled, “A lovely damn mess you landed us all in, colt. You mind explaining how you got your ass captured in the first place!?”

Arcaidia waved a hoof back at Crossfire as if to shush her, “Silence mad one, I need fix Longwalk, then we kill everything down here not us, then make shout noises at him, yes?”

Crossfire shrugged, working the bolt action on her rifle and firing off another shot, “You’re entirely too easy on him. Probably why he let his guard down in the first place. Hey, Mr. Hero, you still awake?”

“Mostly. Glad to see both of you,” I said, letting out a relieved groan as Arcaidia washed my body in healing magic, although that soon turned into a short yelp of pain as she used her telekinesis to set my busted leg. “Arg! Oh, oh that smarts.”

“Hmph,” Arcaidia gave a toss of her head, silver mane twirling, “Lucky ren solva not worse off. I see what you fight. Hyadean make pony like them. Stronger than normal pony. Big monster also Hyadean creation. Killing not be easy.”

“I know,” I said, sucking in a deep breath as I let Arcaidia do her work, the healing energy slowly knitting wounds back together, but only so much, so fast. “Just do enough so I can move. We need to help the others as fast as we can.”

“Even healing Crest can do so much.” Arcaidia’s tail swirled around as her face creased with concern, “Maybe sit out this one, ren solva? We can finish instead.”

“Your blue weird talking lady friend has a point,” Crossfire said, reloading her rifle, “Even with healing you don’t look like you’re in much shape for continuing the fight. Especially not against that.”

She pointed and I tilted my head to look behind me. B.B, Shard, and Binge were holding their own, but only just barely. Redwire was flinging her tentacles about haphazardly around the Night Gaunt to try to keep them at a distance while the monster itself hopped around with hefty flaps of its wings, slashing out with talons or making fast bites with its toothy maw. Its tails whipped around, a meaty crack following each strike. Shard was mostly on the defensive, running more than fighting, slashing his daggers at the Night Gaunt but unable to pierce its hide. Binge dodged in and out like a spider striking from its hidden hole, but while she scored a few light cuts, it didn’t seem like she was doing more than making the Night Gaunt more angry.

B.B was focused on Redwire, clearly trying to knock the Raider off with a well placed shot, but Redwire was keeping the pegasus’ aim off with the flailing storm of tendrils that kept forcing B.B to duck and dive aside.

I took a deep breath and looked back at Crossfire and Arcaidia, “I have to finish things with her, okay? This is my responsibility, and I won’t run from it. So please, Arcaidia, finish healing me, then let’s go put an end to this.”

Our eyes met for a moment, and Arcaidia’s magic pulsed over me, a final cold wash of healing, and then she set me down. I still felt utterly drained of energy, and my wounds still ached, but the worst of the wounds were closed and my leg could support my weight once again. I gave the filly in front of me a swift hug, to which she just gave me a small, playful shove and nodded her head at the fight, brandishing her starblaster.

“Come, ren solva. We finish together.”

Crossfire chortled suddenly, for some reason, causing me and Arcaidia to look at her, but she just waved her hoof, saying, “Nevermind. Knobs will get a kick out of that one later. Let’s go kill a bitch.”

All three of us galloped together, Arcaidia on my left, and Crossfire on my right. Behind us Copper Shell, Soft Heart, and the remaining prisoners secured the area, forcing the last of the Gobs into fleeing down side tunnels. Now it was just me, my friends, and Redwire left. Well, that and her terrifying alien monster pet.

Really could use you here, Gramzanber, I thought as we closed the distance where the Night Gaunt had landed and was spinning around, lashing out with its tails, catching Binge with one of them and knocking her backwards. Binge bounced back to her hooves quickly, teetering for a moment before shaking herself and jumping right back into the fight.

As we arrived, Crossfire dug her hooves to stop sharply as she took aim with her rifle, its bayonet glinting as she fired. The round struck the Night Gaunt’s left wing joint, snapping the limb back and sending a purple spurt of blood into the air. Arcaidia opened fire with her starblaster, the bright streaks of light stitching a path over the monster’s hide, the small smoking holes seeming to both hurt and enrage it.

I rushed in to join Binge, the mare panting in a grinning manner, tongue hanging out the side of her mouth as she gripped one of her countless knives and charged one of the Night Gaunt’s knees. I drove in right beside her, both of us shoving our respective weapons at the creature’s black, rubbery flesh. My makeshift spear hit home hard, sank into the unnaturally tough hide with a small spurt of viscous purple blood, then the shaft almost immediately snapped under the weight of my momentum.

“Sunuvabitch!” I spat as I let go of the weapon and ducked away as the Night Gaunt raked at us with its webbed talon.

“Not a good time to not have your shiny stab-stab, eh bucky?” Binge said breathlessly as she wove around the Night Gaunt’s sword like claws, her puffy green tail twirling as she used her knife whip to cut the creature’s leg again.

“Well, seemed smart at the time to leave Gramzamber behind,” I said, running around to try and get behind the Night Gaunt. Maybe if I could climb up its back I could get at Redwire and knock her off her mount?

“Ain’t time fer worryin’ ‘bout hindsight!” shouted B.B, twirling by as she pumped a staccato of lead from above, raining it at Redwire and the Night Gaunt both. Redwire’s tendrils slithered upwards, interlacing to meld into a barrier against the attack, but I saw a few rounds pass through and impact on the Night Gaunt, and one round blast a bit of twisted alien flesh from Redwire’s shoulder.

“So all of you are just feeling confident enough to be chatty, eh?” said Redwire, reaching out with a hoof and pointing it at B.B as she flew by, “Already took down the bot, how long before I get another?”

Her tentacles snapped outwards, stabbing like daggers at B.B’s darting body. B.B twisted, bobbed, and rolled away from the attacks, but one tendril caught her tail, wrapping around the brown and pink streaked appendage in an instant. B.B let out a hard curse as the tendril spun her around and launched her to the ground, B.B bouncing and rolling along the hard stone with a hard smack.

She stirred to her hooves, but was clearly dazed. Redwire patted the Night Gaunt’s head and it began to charge another of its sonic beams, aiming its murderous mouth at the fallen pegasus, but its head was knocked off course by a combined attack of Crossfire’s quickly firing rifle and Arcaidia throwing a cone of icicles into the creature’s side. The sonic beam still discharged with an ear grating scream, but the line of deadly vibrations flew up into the ceiling instead of B.B, giving her enough time to take to the air again.

By now I’d gotten behind the Night Gaunt and with careful timing I jumped upon the back of one of its twitching tails. It's skin felt cold, oily, and unusually hard and unyielding. I could feel a pulse under its skin that might have been a heartbeat, but it was utterly irregular and strange as I tried climbing up the tail towards the creature’s back. It wasn’t taking my presence on it lightly either as the monster began to thrash its tails around, forcing me to clamp my legs to keep from getting shaken off like so much dandruff.

“You just have to do things the hard way, don’t you?” I heard Crossfire say as she rounded behind the Night Gaunt, her horn flashing as she teleported straight onto the creature’s back. Redwire whipped a tendril at her but Crossfire kept her balance and batted the attack aside with her bayonet.

“For fucks sake will one of you just die already!?” yelled Redwire, sending more tendrils at Crossfire, “You’re not even one of his friends so why risk your neck for him?”

“Risk?” Crossfire snorted as she worked her rifle like it was a spear, spinning it and knocking aside tendrils with either the bayonet blade or butt of the rifle with furious speed. “I have a stomach for risk, and this has nothing to do with friendship. This buck is worth a lot of caps and can’t having that payday dying until I collect.”

I felt Crossfire’s telekinesis wrap around me and haul me up alongside her, the Night Gaunt’s back barely broad enough for the two of us. Redwire was just a few paces away at the base of the creature’s neck, dividing her attention between sending her tentacles at Crossfire, and others slashing down at Shard, Binge, and Arcaidia who had gathered at the front of the Night Gaunt, even as it bit at them with quick, fierce teeth. It nearly snatched up Arcaidia, who barely protected herself with a small wall of ice that the Night Gaunt still shattered with its bite, forcing her to back away. Shard appeared next to her, just as the Night Gaunt’s face feelers reached out towards them, and he slashed with a flurry of daggers while Arcaidia cast another Crest spell that coated the daggers in sheaths of sharp ice.

Several feelers were cut away by the blow as the ice broke upon impact and scattered about like grenade fragments, but other feelers got through and lashed at the pair. I wasn’t sure what the feelers did but it was clear just a touch caused horrible pain, as both Shard and Arcaidia let out pained screams, not falling but clutching at the red welts where the feelers had lashed them. The feelers snaked in again, and Shard shoved Arcaidia back, but at the last second Binge came in, spinning like a top as she flicked her tail, knife whip slicing again and again at the feelers and leaving several as ruined stumps.

The Night Gaunt screamed, rearing back, forcing both Crossfire and I to do everything we could just to keep our perches on its back. It spread its vast wings, even with the wound its right wing had taken, and took to the air. I almost rolled off its side but Crossfire dug her rifle’s bayonet into the creature’s back and grabbed me with her free hoof, hauling me back.

“I’ll distract her, you rush her. Try not to screw it up,” she said, yellow eyes locked onto Redwire like a targeting laser. I felt a distinct sense of deja vu, remembering the first time I fought alongside Crossfire it was also while on something that was flying, with a not dissimilar plan.

“Going to shoot me this time?” I asked.

“Hey, that was mostly an accident, and don’t tempt me,” Crossfire said, switching out her current clip with a clip of red marked special rounds, her flechettes. “On three.”

She aimed at Redwire, who had been directing the Night Gaunt around to try and strafe my friends still stuck below, but looked back in time to notice what Crossfire was doing and sneered as she began to wrap her razor tentacles around herself protectively. Crossfire finished loading, chambered a round, and said, “Three!”

She fired, the round bursting into a cloud of cutting shards that pelted Redwire’s shield, which subsequently kept her view blocked from me rushing across the Night Gaunt’s back. Crossfire was right beside me, and we both hit Redwire’s tendril shield at the same time, me with a hoof strike and Crossfire with her thrusting bayonet. Redwire’s lightweight nature worked against her here, as our combined strike, while not actually getting past the tendrils to damage her, did serve to thrust her right off the back of the Night Gaunt.

“Oh for fucks sake!” Redwire grunted as she fell, and what satisfaction I might’ve felt was rather rapidly scrubbed out by the manner in which her tendrils reached out and wrapped around me and Crossfire, razor barbs digging into both our hides as we were hauled off the Night Gaunt as well. I tumbled in pained freefall for a second, but I had just enough time to see Crossfire reached a hoof towards me and to grab for her. The moment our hooves touched she managed another teleport that turned my eyesight into bright crimson light followed by pure vertigo before I felt us hit the ground, a lot lighter than we would have otherwise.

Rising dizzily beside Crossfire we looked to see she’d teleported us back among the rest of our comrades, just in time for an enraged Night Count to finish turning in the air and aiming its open mouth our way, a beam of sonic vibrations rocketing down towards us. My heart thundered in my chest and I felt like was swimming through cold syrup as I saw Arcaidia throw herself between the Night Gaunt and the rest of us. Things happened too fast for me to react.

Arcaidia didn’t flinch from sight of the the Night Gaunt’s beam of unrelenting sonic force cut towards her. Face woven into a expression of concentration as still as freshly fallen snow Arcaidia began to cast her spell. Her horn became a cerulean beacon surrounded by swirling Crests circles, their geometric patterns thickly weaving around her. At her hooves the stone cracked from the frost that cut through it and with a sound like a small avalanche a wall of ice easily three paces thick sprang upwards in front of Arcaidia. The thick blue frost valiantly held against the sonic beam for all of two second before the ice shattered like a point blank mine exploding, sending shards of ice flinging everywhere, one cutting across my cheek as I stared, dumbfounded.

The sonic beam had been mostly diffused by the ice barrier, yet not without going through, at least in part. Arcaidia was still standing, but there was something wrong by the way she was blinking in mild shock, the frozen mask of her face paling as she cast silver eyes downward at her right fore leg. Or rather where her right fore leg should have been. The rest of her body had escaped harm remarkably well for deflecting the beam and being at the center of her exploding ice barrier, but whether it was a thick ice shard that was responsible or the remnant of the beam itself, Arcaidia’s leg had been severed just below the knee, leaving a red ragged stump that was pumping blood onto the stone floor.

The severed limb lay like a blue log a few paces away.

”Arcaidia!” The scream tore itself out of my throat as the slow feeling of being stuck in mud left my limbs and I seemed to scramble in fast forward to her side just as she began to teeter. I caught her, setting her down gently. I heard Redwire howling with laughter in the background of the terrified buzz in my head.

“Oh that’s beautiful. That’s one down. How about we shoot for two?”

Redwire’s tendrils arced up into the air and then shot towards me and Arcaidia, but a rapid series of gunshots blasted away several, forcing Redwire to pull them back as B.B flew by, unloading with her revolvers and forcing Redwire back on the defensive.

“B.B!” I shouted, “Arcaidia’s hurt!”

“I’m seein’ that! Just stop the blood for a sec an’ I’ll be right there!” she shouted back, reloading her weapons almost faster than I could see and firing away more at Redwire, trying to force the crazed, mutated Raider back. For the moment, at least, I had time to see to Arcaidia, whose blood was already soaking both of us.

Hooves shaking I put a hoof to the stump, trying to stem the flow of my friend’s life seeping out onto the cold floor. I knew I needed something to tie off the limb to act as a tourniquet but I had nothing that’d work for the purpose. I was dimly aware that Crossfire was shooting at the Night Gaunt, emptying the rest of her flechette clip to keep the monster haphazardly flying, unable to launch another beam while under the punishing fire. Then I saw Shard, who was looking around with tense confusion as he couldn’t quite decide what to do, attack the Night Gaunt, go after Redwire, or head over my way. I made the choice for him by looking his way and calling out for him, mostly because I realized the bandanna he wore around his face was perfect for use as a tourniquet. To his credit Shard was at my side opposite Arcaidia in an instant, ripping off his face bandanna without me even having to ask.

“We need to move her out of here,” he said as he used his magic to tightly tie the bandanna above the wound, pulling it tight. I could see the blood flow slowing considerably, if not entirely stopping, and I swallowed acid bile back down my throat as my stomach clenched in fear.

“Longwalk,” Arcaidia said in a strangely bewildered voice, “I think I have missing leg.”

“It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay,” I said, just as B.B landed, the pegasus’ stance wary and shaking with raised hackles and crimson eyes blazing. Her revolver’s barrels were smoking, and I looked up to see Redwire was advancing on us, a hungry look of bloodlust glowing in her eyes.

“B.B?” I asked, and the pegasus gave me an apologetic shrug, her red eyes narrowing.

“Outta ammo, Long,” she said as way of explanation for why she wasn’t shooting anymore, “Been burnin’ through rounds like a’ darn Dash addict all day. It’s down ta hoofticuffs fer me.”

Redwire stood off at about twenty paces, eyeing me and Arcaidia with a satisfied, smug look twisting her already crazed features.

“It hurts, doesn’t it? More than anything I can do to your body, this is what hurts most. Watching ponies you care about suffer.”

I felt like my veins were pulsing out of my skin and my blood roaring in my ears was making it hard to think straight as I shot a glare at Redwire that only made her smile deepen. “Ready to kill me yet? Or are you still going to pretend being kind and merciful has any fucking use in this world?”

“It has a use,” I said, voice strangely still as I felt my pounding blood meld with the pounding pressure I was now feeling from distant Gramzanber. I held Arcaidia tightly, but I felt her put a hoof on my leg and I looked down to her. She was sweating, bits of silver mane plastered to her face, but she just smiled at me and held up her bloodied stump.

“Ren solva... do you feel your ARM?”

The pressure of Gramzanber intensified in my head, a beating drum that mingled with my heartbeat, and I nodded. Arcaidia, despite her life blood still seeping out of her, lit her horn up and aimed it at her wound. Her healing spell lit her whole body up in a soft blue aura, and while the wound didn’t even come close to closing, the bleeding slowed to nothing more than a small seeping trickle, and Arcaidia’s body went from a clammy cold to almost warm. She looked at me, held me with her eyes, and despite her injury I could feel her pouring her courage and confidence into me.

“Then go kick dumb talking pony’s butt and not worry about me. I not fall because one leg gone. Not when battle still need be won.”

Redwire’s laugh echoed across the cavern, “By the Goddesses I hate your guys’ optimism so much that I almost admire it. You just keep picking yourselves up. It's pointless. Even if you kill me, it’s pointless. This same shit will just happen again, in another time, another place. How long before it eats you? How long before instead of a leg, it's her fucking head? One bullet is all it will take, some random battle in the future. That’s the Wasteland. Why can’t you just fucking accept that!? With the Hyadeans in charge at least that might change!”

“I’ll be right back, Arcaidia, just rest easy,” I said as I sat Arcaidia down gently. B.B took over looking after Arcaidia for me while I strode towards Redwire.

Crossfire was behind us a few dozen yards, Shard having galloped back to her to help with keeping the Night Gaunt at bay. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Binge had snuck off to climb on top of one of the many metal posts dotting the cavern, many still bearing the bodies of Redwire’s victims. Binge waited until the Night Gaunt flew by before flinging herself upwards and hooked one of the creature’s leg’s with her tail whip, giggling insanely as she was lifted off the ground, but her own weight acted as a means for her knife whip to start sawing at the leg it had wrapped around.

The Night Gaunt screamed as the rubbery flesh of its leg was deeply cut into by Binge’s whip of blades. Vicious purple blood spurted to the ground like rain and the monster began to spin out of control as it went mad from the pain. Meanwhile I took a step towards Redwire, feeling Gramzanber’s energy coursing through me, its distant pressure getting so strong that it felt like my skull might split apart. I looked straight at her, Redwire seemingly unconcerned with my approach. If anything she stood patiently, waiting for me to come to her, her body now having sprouted dozens of tentacles that waved in the air with their bladed points all aimed straight for me. I ignored them as I spoke in a low, clear tone that didn’t match the inferno beating through my veins.

“It doesn’t matter how many times the Wasteland knocks us down.”

Arcaidia, even with her missing limb only just frozen by her own horn, still found the strength to aim her horn towards the ground and cast a blaze of blue light into the floor. From the stone ground a large spike of frost erupted upwards, directly underneath where the Night Gaunt was falling. The spike of ice punctured through the monster’s side, the pointed pike of magically hardened ice erupting from the side of the beast’s chest in a fountain of violet gore. The creature was still alive, and thrashed around, whipping at Crossfire and Shard with its tail as they advanced on it. The two Drifter’s jumped apart at the same time, avoiding the whipping tails, and retaliating with fierce blasts from rifle and slashes from levitated daggers.

Binge hopped onto the creature’s stomach, lightly bouncing from hoof to hoof as she stabbed down again and again, even as the Night Gaunt screamed and fired a sonic beam at her that forced her to pirouette away, losing a few tail hairs but otherwise escaping unharmed.

As the Night Gaunt screamed again, making my ears feel as if they were bleeding, I took another step towards Redwire.

“It's not the Wasteland that’s the problem. Its us. We’re the ones who can either choose to endure the suffering and be better for it, or succumb to the suffering, and become monsters.”

Redwire rolled her eyes at me, starting to take steps to match mine as we moved towards one another, a sense of purpose in both our strides. I think we both knew that this fight was going to end in the next few seconds, yet from the way her eyes met mine I think the real battle was not the exchange of blows, even the final deathblow to come, but the words we had for each other, we two ponies who had made very different choices in life.

“That’s horseshit, especially coming from a colt barely old enough to know what his dick is for! Nopony can ‘endure’ what this world does to them, not forever! It’s better to absorb it. Become it. That’s survival. But you know what, I’m part of something even better and bigger now. This whole world can change, and those who can survive it can finally leave this festering fuckhole behind!”

As one her tendrils moved, a flurry of piercing metal fangs that converged on my position in a move clearly meant to skewer me from all sides. In response to this I did the only thing I could. I charged directly at her, a full blown gallop that took me into the heart of the storm. Several tentacles had their razor tips aimed for my chest, and from my gallop I launched into a leaping arc, the tendrils slashing fresh wounds on my barrel and legs but not managing to puncture my chest. I landed on those same tendrils, stomping down on them hard, ignoring the sharp thorns, feeling the alien cartilage crack under the weight of my hooves. I jumped again, this time to the side, immediately springing forward after landing, closing on Redwire.

She snarled, spinning to face me, tendrils lashing like claws. I ducked, brow taking a nasty cut that filled my vision with hot blood, but I blinked through it and came in hard at Redwire, letting my instincts combine with the pulsing thunder of Gramzanber’s presence in my mind, louder and louder as if I could almost reach out and touch the ARM. Instead I got on my hind legs in a rising uppercut that rocked Redwire back on her hooves as the blow checked her chin.

“That’s just running away Redwire!” I shouted, not letting up, not giving her space as I stepped in and punched hard with my left hoof, then followed it up with a swift fright, both shots scoring glancing blows as Redwire flung tendrils to defend herself, balling them up as if they were her own extra hooves.

“The fuck it is! You’re the one who runs, you fucking coward! You ran away from the responsibility you had to kill me when you had the chance! All you do is run from the fact that there is no point being a good pony in this miserable shitstain of a world! Anything you gain can just get taken like its nothing!”

Her tendrils drew in around her front, forming a thick mass that then shoot out at me like a thick tree trunk of spinning death. I sidestepped, my shoulder catching the edge and losing a chunk of fur and flesh. Then Redwire swept the huge tangled limb of tendrils at me like a great scythe, forcing me to leap again to get over it without being swept under and ground to bloody chunks. Now on her opposite side I rushed in and delivered a headbutt straight to her ribs, feeling her thick alien flesh recoil under the blow as her light body was sent skidding. She growled viciously, like a cornered animal.

“Yes, anything can be taken from you, at any time,” I said, heart pounding heated blood through me, even as it made my wounds bleed more profusely, the numbing cold only barely held back by the rising tide of anger and epiphany within, “The world’s unfair. That’s why it’s our job to make it better, even if we risk losing what we care about along the way! Saving lives is what matters to me. It's who I am. And I’ve been terrified of taking lives because of it. With you, now, I finally get it. I’ll never stop trying to save lives, as many as I can.”

I felt a strange sense of certainty and understanding overcome me, and didn’t notice it at the time but there was a faint white glow that suffused me, if only for a moment, “If that means, on rare occasion, I’m left with no other option than to take a life, I can accept and learn to live with that weight.

Redwire spat, laughing darkly, “Then what makes you different than any other hypocritical asshole that tries to ‘save the Wasteland’ by murdering anypony in it that happens to be against them? Because killing me is the only way this ends for you, if I don’t kill you first.”

I nodded to her solemnly, “I know. And no words from me will ever get across to you how much I wish that wasn’t the case. Even the hypocrisy is something I’ll have to learn to live with, because I’ll still be trying to spare lives from here on out, even long after I’ve buried you.”

A shark like grin spread over Redwire’s face, eyes flashing with eager light, “You can only bury me after you win, buck, so how about we both give our mouths a rest and finish this!”

I nodded, a deep rooted sigh escaping me. Even with my new sense of certainty it didn’t mean I liked what was about to happen. First of all I could still lose, though I somehow knew that even if I fell my friends would finish the job in my stead. But second, and more importantly, I felt it, him, I suppose. Gramzanber. The pressure was so intense in my brain that I was shocked my head hadn’t split open like a ripe melon.

How long have you been this close? I asked, even in the few seconds as Redwire tensed to charge at me.

Not long, was the strangely resonant and masculine voice of my ARM, its words more natural and less robotic than I remembered, The link between us has been strengthening since the beginning, but there are limits to the parameters I have been able to set, master. Even now our synchronization, the bond between your soul and mine, is strained and still causing potentially fatal damage to your body if we cannot gain the calibration data on your species soon. But for now our bond is strong enough that I can dematerialize into my base components and follow our link to your location. Do you require your ARM, master?

Redwire let out a shrieking battlecry that outdid anything the Night Gaunt had uttered, and rushed me, a whirling tornado of slicing tentacles. I gulped, but held firm, resolute.

Now would be a fanbuckingtastic time to demateralwhatever to me! And none of this ‘master’ crap. We’re partners.

Very well, partner.

My heartbeat synced up with the pulse of Gramzanber in my head, and it felt like there was a doorway opening up within my chest, a channel into my very spirit. I reared up on my hind legs, instinctively holding out my hoof, eyes closed in concentration as Redwire closed the last few bounding steps between us.

It was like a hot flash of lightning through my body, though visually all that happened was that a spectral, silver mist seemed to materialize into the air in front of my hoof, like small glittering metal particles of sand. Then in a flash the particles swirled together and coalesced into the firm, very real shape of my ARM. Gramzanber’s broad blade was pointed downward, its shaft resting against my hoof. The moment that metal touched my limb I felt my connection to Gramzanber solidify, like being immersed in scalding water that rather than burned me, filled me with focus.

The look of surprise on Redwire’s face was complete, though her charge didn’t halt, and her mass of tendrils were inches from skewering me. In that single instant of time I had I thought just one word to Gramzanber.

Accelerator

The cavern crystallized into a cobalt blue world. Redwire, less than a pace from me, was now slow as if she was swimming through ice water, her tendrils surrounding me. I bent and twisted through their mass, so thick that even with my speed it was impossible to get past all of them without some of their sharp edges cutting across my hide.

Gramzanber’s hefty weight in my hooves felt different. Heavier, despite having no trouble moving the great spear around. I sliced in several curving arcs, sweeping away tendrils in neat, severing cuts that sent them flying away like decapitated serpents. More erupted from her body, slow yet driving towards me from all angles. Even with my increased speed I had to take a few steps back, not questioning how my two hooves held the spear’s shaft and kept turning it this way and that, my hind hooves spinning my body around as I made several more wide cutting slices that deflected or cut through Redwire’s tendrils. I could see literal sparks flying from where the bio-metal of the tendrils’ razors cut along Gramzanber’s edge, like tiny glittering snowflakes.

Redwire pressed forward, her whole body wiggling as the changed alien flesh produced more and more tendrils. By volume alone could she keep pace with my speed, dozens upon dozens of the misshapen appendages slicing at me as I cut around my body in a furious storm. A few got through, grazing me, my slowed vision and senses drawing out the agony of each cut, yet I could see the strain was worse on Redwire. Her body seemed unable to keep up with how many tentacles she was trying to produce. She got thinner and more gaunt with each passing second as more tendrils lay behind our rampaging path like discarded hoses. Yet she pressed me relentlessly, even with the speed of Accelerator on my side, even with Gramzanber’s unnaturally sharp edge allowing me to cut down her tendrils almost as fast as she produced them.

It was just a question of which one of us would give out first. If I ended Accelerator, I wouldn’t survive the torrent of attacks Redwire was barraging me with right now. If she failed to keep up the tempo of lashing tentacles, I’d just need one single opening to end her in turn. Neither one of us could afford to back down from the fight, or the beliefs that brought us to it in the first place.

To her, I had to be destroyed to validate what she felt was a hopeless world worth hating, along with everypony in it.

For me, I had to end her as the only path left to protect the lives of every single pony who was trying to escape this hellhole.

Those equally potent beliefs fueled the storm of strikes between us, wickedly sharp tendrils clashing dozens of times in the span of a mortal eyeblink with Gramzanber’s flashing edge.

My world collapsed into a space no more than a hoof length around me, tendril blades enveloping me from all sides in a seemingly eternal dance of my own constantly slashing spear. I saw droplets of my own blood floating in slow motion through the air as more and more painful lacerations reached past my guard and savaged my hide. Redwire’s snarling visage glowed blue in my vision, her body dripping now with small rivers of its own blood, running from growing wounds as her body sacrificed more of its own mass to create more tendrils. Her little remaining pony hide and fur seemed to melt away to expose raw muscle beneath as more flesh turned into yet more slashing, thorn covered tentacles.

Then it happened. Through the seemingly endless waves of frantically striking tendrils I saw a clear path, a single moment where there was an opening between myself and Redwire.

I slashed hard at that point, hooves wrapping around the shaft of Gramzanber and raising the spear high to bring it down more like an axe than a spear, cutting away half a dozen tendrils in the process. The blade cut along Redwire’s chest, but she had pulled back at the last second, pulling her tendrils back with her, but I pressed the advantage, not letting up. I adjusted my grip on Gramzanber, planting my hind hooves in a wide stance, feeling for a strange instant as if my body was not my own, but rather something altogether taller and more bipedal.

With a final shout I burst forward, thrusting Gramzanber forward with all my might.

Redwire formed a shield in front of her, tendrils snapping together in a thick concave mass.

Gramzanber pierced the shield, slicing through it, and impacted squarely with Redwire’s chest. I pressed forward, hard, shoving the entire blade through the tendrils, and further through Redwire, until the silver, shining tip burst forth from her back at a upward angle, temporarily lifting her off the ground.

Unless she was even less of a pony than I thought she was, it was a fatal blow.

I deactivated Accelerator, the world of color and sound rushing back to me like a tidal wave. Exhaustion and wracking pain cut through me as the backlash hit in full, dropping me to my knees, and causing Redwire to also slip to the ground like a limp doll.

There were a few seconds of silence. I duly realized that the Night Gaunt was dead and unmoving, the creature’s head having a fresh hole through it, courtesy likely of Crossfire’s rifle as I saw the mare prodding the dead thing with the bayonet of her weapon, likely to confirm the kill.

With a cool wash of relief I realized we’d won, and my friends were safe... if not all entirely intact.

“Heh… heh...”

I turned at Redwire’s choking, bloodstained laugh. She wasn’t moving, her body shuddering as the mass of tentacles she’d created began to wither and turn to dust like rapidly decaying plants. Yet she still chuckled, looking at me with eyes that were suddenly older and more tired than they’d seemed before.

“Look at… your flank..”

Too tired to do much else I glanced down at my flank as she bade. She was dying, after all, I could humor her. What I saw made my blink several times in mute surprise.

Upon my flanks were now a clear image. A tribal spear, pointed upward. On either side of the spear’s shaft, as if sprouting from the wood itself, were a pair of wings. The left wing was pure white like unblemished clouds. The other was black as soot. Both wings were upward turned, their tips even with the tip of the spear they flanked, almost as if to form a specific pattern.

A cutie mark. My cutie mark.

Even if the image’s symbolism was a little obtuse to me, I knew what it meant, because I’d just felt it moments earlier when I’d resolved to finish Redwire. My talent was saving lives. Even in the instances where that meant taking them. I may have killed before, but it wasn’t until now that I’d accepted that doing so might, in rare cases, be the right choice.

Redwire’s voice was fainter now, barely a whisper, one that none of my friends could hear as they trotted towards us.

“Congratulations on earning your cutie mark, asshole... and every time you see it, you can remember... me.”

A laugh transmuted into a coughing gout of blood, joining the spreading pool around the gaping wound through her body. Any normal pony would have died by now, and while I could tell Redwire wasn’t much longer for this world, it seemed like she was madly determined to cling to a few more seconds. I kept a keen eye on her, both feeling it my duty to watch her last moments, and also because I wasn’t foolish enough to fully believe she couldn’t be dangerous, even with the last few heartbeats of her life ticking away.

Seeing my stare, she rolled her eyes, sassy even to the last. “Flattered you still think I’m... I’m worth being cautious around. Fuck, lucky bastard... without that spear I’d have had you.”

I shrugged at this, “Probably. My plan was to just keep punching you until either I broke or you did. Gramzanber just cut that short.” I looked at her, no sense of satisfaction inside me. I didn’t regret the choice I’d made, only the chain of events that had led to me having to make it. Even now, after all was done, I couldn’t hate this pony. No more than I could hate a rabid gecko that needed to be put down to protect the safety of my tribe. If only...

“I said I’d bury you,” I said, not unkindly, “I can do that much for you. Do you have a preference as to where?”

“Nah... fuck it. Leave me in this hole. Some lucky scavenger gets a treat.” Redwire laughed weakly, as if at some private joke.

I shook my head. A difficult mare to the end. “Treating the bodies well has always been a thing with me. I could bury you at one of those old churches that’re scattered around?”

“No,” Redwire said vehemently, another spurt of blood coating the ground, “No church. No Goddess… never believed in them.”

Her breathing slowed, and a final, rattling laugh escaped her lips like a prisoner feeling itself unsteadily from bloody chains, “If they do exist... I wouldn’t get to see them anyway. Too bad... wanted to tell them to their faces how much I hate... them for-”

I didn’t get to hear what Redwire hated Equestria’s old Goddesses for. The mare went still, and didn’t say anything more.

It was a few moments before I heard hooves approaching next to me, and I glanced over to see Crossfire with a stern but satisfied look on her face. “Didn’t think you’d do it, for a minute there. Jobs done, Mr. Hero.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking a few deep, shivering breaths, “Jobs done.”

I looked up suddenly, my brain sluggishly catching up with other concerns now that I wasn’t locked in a death struggle. “Arcaidia!?”

I saw her, on her three remaining hooves, being partially carried along by B.B. as the pair approached us. Off to the side Binge hopped along as well, smiling cheerily. Then again she was covered in blood and surrounded by visceral carnage, I supposed this all counted as a pleasant afternoon for her. Shard hung back, still eyeing the corpse of the Night Gaunt as if he expected the creature to rise up and attack again at any second. I could hardly fault him for his caution.

Even further back I saw Copper Shell and Softheart, along with Whisperwood and the twenty or so surviving escaped prisoners all congregating. I imagined that once the sound of battle had quieted that Whisperwood had led her own small group back. The slight mare saw me looking over their way and gave the barest of smiles and a wave, looking as if she was about ready to collapse. I knew exactly how she felt. I noticed Softheart was embracing the mare that Redwire had forced me to fight, Vanilla Shot. Had she been the wife that Softheart had spoken of earlier? I felt a small burst of warmth, glad to see something good come out of all this. Of course she still technically had one of those monstrous Hyadean seeds stuck in her, but with Redwire gone the immediate danger seemed over. Still I made a mental note to talk with the pair about going to Stable 104, as I didn’t doubt Misty Glasses would want to see if it was possible to remove the seed, and probably examine it for... science or something.

Some of of the former prisoners were covering tunnel exits Gobs had fled down, prepared for the possibility of the Gobs returning for another round. The rest just looked tired and shell shocked, sitting on haunches or laying down, more than a few crying either silently or loudly as personal preference dictated. I knew more than few had lost friends and family down here. Bodies were strewn around the area, and with the focus on the battle gone the horrific smell of the cavern was overpowering.

Still, my attention was rooted on Arcaidia, the unicorn’s pale face reminding me of a overcast sky more than her proper vibrant azure color. Her eyes were strongly alight, however, silver beacons that gave me hope as she looked at me, smiling.

“I’m here, ren solva. Also, my leg,” she levitated a block of ice that had her severed limb encased in it. At my shocked look she licked her lips gingerly, flinching while still maintaining her smile, “Not sure if leg be reattached easy, but maybe keep for... B.B, word?”

“Sentimental value, hun?” suggested B.B.

“Mmm, yes, sentimental value. Ha, not look so good as mantel piece. Maybe just get rid of, get shiny fake limb. Need time to think,” Arcaidia said, looking more tired than I felt despite the front she was putting up. I just wanted to go over and hug her. I managed to stand, at least, if unsteadily, while taking up Gramzanber in my mouth. It’d felt strange to have held it in my forehooves like I had just a minute ago. I had been so caught up in the fight I had hardly been thinking about it. Now that I was I had no idea why I fought like that, instead of my more usual mouth held style.

I put the thought aside for later examination, heading over to join my friends, while Crossfire lingered a few steps behind me.

“Woohoo!” cheered Binge, grinning at me, “Bucky is still rocking a pulse! Hm, and Redwire ain’t. Sweet. How many that put you up to now? Three? Still waaaaay behind the rest of us. Oh well, work in progress. So, she got any nice loot on her?”

“Binge, leave it be,” said B.B, breathing heavily. Her eyes were practically glowing red, and I saw she kept pointedly avoiding looking towards any open wounds. Instead she focused on me, eyes soft. “Glad ya came out of it alive, Long. Real glad.”

“Me too,” I said, my eyes flicking to Binge briefly, “Loot, if any survived the explosion, would be in the chapel. Why don’t you go get a head start on that while the rest of us catch our breath, since you're so energetic?”

“Heehee! Can do, buckaroo. If I find anything juicy I’ll only keep some of it for myself without telling any of you,” Binge said, giving a quick mock salute before bounding off towards the church. She called over her shoulder merrily, “Nice spear! It looks just like your old one!”

I facehoofed. I heard Gramzanber’s voice in my head.

She is an extremely odd member of your species. I cannot tell if she is lacking in intellect or is simply skilled at acting as if she is.

I’ve been trying to figure that one out since the first day I met her. At this point I’m willing to just let Binge be Binge and not worry about it anymore.

Will that logic apply the next time she attempts to mate with you?

Whoawhoawhoa! Who said anything about that!? And what does a alien space spear know about mating anyway!?

A spear’s purpose is to penetrate. I cannot imagine the mating process is much different from battle, in that regard.

We are so not having this conversation right now. Or ever.

“Huh, she’s got a’ point,” said B.B, a goddess of mercy interrupting that bit of awkwardness with my ARM, “How’d ya git yer hooves back on yer ARM?”

Arcaidia, face pale but voice managing some strength to it, answered before I could say anything, “Not unusual, just sign that Longwalk bond with ARM now strong. Many Veruni who use ARM can do same.”

I would have done so significantly sooner, but was unable to do so until your own synchronization energy reached a sufficient peak to allow me to transport myself to your location. In the future the act will come easier and require less energy, but for the immediate timeframe I recommend not relying upon it and keeping me close to you at all times, said Gramanber apologetically.

Right, I’ll keep that in mind. Believe me, I wouldn’t have left you behind if I had any notion something like this was going to happen. We were supposed to be turning me in for a bounty so I could get rid of the dang thing, then make a quick escape. Being captured, dragged into a mine for a torture session, then battling a mutated crazy pony was not part of the plan.

I have noted that this is not uncommon with your plans, Longwalk.

Did... did you just sass me?

I do not know what that word means.

I grunted, wincing. “Gramzanber and me are pretty much joined at the flank anyway, so hopefully I won’t need to rely on the teleport trick too often. That aside, Arcaidia...” I looked her over, eyes lingering on her wound. She closed her eyes, shaking her head for a moment before opening them and putting on a strong face.

“Bleeding has stopped, ren solva. Hurts lots, but I not crying. What is one leg when much more still need doing?”

A shudder ran through me, and I felt the sting in my eyes of hot tears pushing against my tightly closed eyelids. With the battle over and my own bone dry exhaustion overwhelming me I could feel my own emotional control slipping, and the realization of what Arcaidia had just lost was hitting my brain like a brick upside the head.

“Arcaidia, we’ll get you to the Stable. I’m sure they can... figure something out.”

“Time for that soon, but must get out of dank, dumb hole in ground first,” said Arcaidia, eyes glaring around her as if she could blame the entire mine itself on the present situation, “Getting much tired of being underground.”

For a second her expression of forced toughness wavered and she said, “Be nice to be on ship again, with stars all around...”

“Right,” said B.B, “Well guess we oughta git everypony organized an’ figure a’ way back topside. Can ya walk, Long, or do ya need a minute ta git yer legs under ya?”

I held up a hoof, “I’ll live, but LIL-E took a hit earlier. We need to find her.”

“I take it this is the robot you’re talking about?” asked Crossfire, who had trotted off as I’d talked with my friends and now returned with LIL-E’s still form floating in her magical aura. LIL-E looked completely inert and I swallowed dry fear. I didn’t know anything about robot repairs, but I had to believe that the techs at Stable 104 could fix the damage and get LIL-E functioning again.

“Yikes, she’s lookin’ pretty beat,” said B.B, “Hope she ain’t freakin’ out too much. Must be real worryin’ ta be sittin’ wherever she’s at, with her bot down, an’ not knowin’ if the fight’s won or not.”

Right... nopony else knew yet that LIL-E wasn’t a pony controlling a robot remotely, but was the robot herself. I had promised not to let that secret out, so I just clenched my teeth and said, “We’ll get her fixed as soon as we can. Crossfire, do you mind carrying her for us?”

Crossfire shrugged, “I’m tempted to charge you for it, but I’ll let it slide this time.”

“As fer you, Long, I’m thinkin’ ‘bout scroungin’ up a potion or two ta keep ya from keelin’ over on us,” said B.B, smiling, but the expression was more than a little strained a she looked about, eyes narrowing, “Don’t ‘suppose ya seen that turncoat ‘round here?”

It took my beleaguered, tired mind a few seconds to figure out she was talking about Braindead. I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of regret affixing itself squarely to my shoulders, but I weathered it and met B.B’s gaze steadily. I was surprised at the calm in my voice, “He’s dead.”

Arcaidia picked up on my downcast look immediately,”You finished traitor off, ren solva?”

She sounded surprised, and I clarified, “He’d been infected by these damned seed things that Redwire was using to transform ponies into monsters. There wasn’t any stopping the change, so I... I ended the pain for him.”

“Gettin’ the feelin’ there’s more to it than that, Long,” said B.B.

“Yeah, well, whatever he might’ve done to me, Braindead tried to do what was right in the end,” I said, eyes looking across the cavern to where I knew his remains still lay, “I’m going to put his body to rest, and say a few prayers to Ancestor Spirits for him.”

“You plannin’ on doin’ the same wit this one?” B.B asked, nodding towards Redwire’s corpse.

I heaved out a sigh, “She... didn’t want to be buried. Guess I can say the prayers, regardless.”

B.B's eyes turned downward for a moment, face still with what I thought might be introspection before she looked back at me with a wan smile. “I git ya, Long. You do what you feel you gotta do,” she said, then her eyes finally shifted towards my flank, and I saw those blood red orbs shoot wide. “Well will ya git a’ load o’ that! Long, ya notice yer sportin’ some fresh flank decals?”

I chuckled, which sent painful jolts all across my body and caused me to almost collapse then and there, “Heh, ow, y-yeah, I noticed. Finally got my cutie mark. Wish it hadn’t been in a place like this, but guess we can’t choose when our marks show up, eh?”

“I know that all too well,” said B.B.

Arcaidia was also looking at my cutie mark now, a strangely mixed look of pride and faint jealousy on her sweat soaked features, “Do you know what mark means?”

I nodded, “Saving lives. That’s my talent. Guess it never appeared back home because I never had any lives to save while everything was simple and peaceful. I don’t think it appeared until now because even when I was saving lives, I was holding back an important part of myself... the part that has to know when it’s needed to take lives in order to save more. At least, that’s what my best guess is. Cutie marks are weird like that.”

“We’ll hafta git together ourselves a Cutecinerea fer ya when we get back topside,” said B.B with a joking smile, and I just shook my head.

“Don’t think I’ll be up for any partying anytime soon. Kinda just want to find the nearest partially soft, flat surface and faceplant in it for a week,” I said, eyes slowly sliding towards the bloody stump of Arcaidia’s missing leg, finding myself feeling queasy at the sight. “Are you sure you’re okay, Arcaidia?”

“She’ll be fine,” said Crossfire with a hard tone, coming up behind me, “I can tell you that wasting time down here won’t be doing her any good. Missing limbs are no joke, even with healing magic, so you should look to getting her back to the Skull Guild, fast.”

I didn’t disagree with the Drifter mare on that notion in the least, so I didn’t even mind her gruff tone and just nodded, “You’re right. I’ll go grab Binge, then we can get out of here. We can always come back later for anything we missed.”

B.B and Arcaidia didn’t argue the point either, the pair slowly moving to join with the gathering of now free prisoners. As I trotted towards the chapel, I felt Crossfire put a hoof on my shoulder and turn me towards her. I was met by her starring yellow eyes, which while still hard as ever, held a small spark of... understanding?

“Once we’re back on the surface, you get her looked after,” Crossfire said with level seriousness, “After that, you and I will talk. This shit went south, but lucky you with that Raider fragged and her little operation down here busted we might be able to pull some profit out of this whole mess.”

“Profit, right,” I said, rubbing my head, “This was all about the caps.”

“Knobs still needs to be paid back,” Crossfire hissed sharply, “You’re just lucky that even with turning you in for a bounty being put on hold we might get plenty of caps out of this fresh hell you got dropped into.”

She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, her next words coming out only with slow, biting effort, “I know it cuts deep, Mr. Hero. Believe me. Every time you see that damn stump where her leg was you’ll remember it was you that brought her down here, and the only way to even come close to making it right is going to be through earning the caps to fix it. So just focus on that for now.”

I could only stare at her for a moment, then slowly nod myself, “Right. I... let’s just get out of here.”

The chapel was in a sorry state after the explosion. The terminal was a charred wreck, and all of the neatly ordered boards with their detailed plans on them were torn ash. There was no evidence left of what Redwire’s plan was or how she intended to use her small army of Gobs and Hyadean engineered monsters to destabilize Skull City. Even so I hoped somepony on the surface among the Guilds would listen to me about what had happened down here so they could be prepared for any further dangers like this springing up.

Binge in her usual energetically bouncy fashion had plucked up as much of the intact weaponry as she could, piling the few remaining crates that weren’t too badly damaged. Among the gear that was found was, to my relief, my gecko scale security armor and saddlebags, stuffed in the bottom of one of the crates. I hastily, if painfully, donned the armor and saddlebags once more, and placed Gramzanber within its sheath straps. My saddlebags did have some remaining health potions and I choked down one, if only to help me walk faster than a slow stagger.

Crossfire checked over the weapons, cherry picking the ones that were most intact and having me and Binge consolidate it all into two of the most intact of the crates. Crossfire floated those two crates out of the chapel as we trotted out to join the others, cracking her first smile in a while.

“I can fence these off for a decent profit,” Crossfire said, almost sounding happy as her tail wagged slightly, yellow eyes glittering, “Raiders usually carry shit weapons that aren’t worth anything, but this bitch was packing some serious gear. Wish more of it had been in one piece, but fuck it, this’ll work for now.”

Binge made a small growling sound, starring a sidelong set of dagger glares at Crossfire, “You’re gonna share the goodies with us, riiiiiiight? Bucky got his clean hoofies all covered in blood for that phat loot and you won’t be stealing it Miss Grumpypants.”

“You and your little band of merry ponies will get a cut,” Crossfire said with a roll of her eyes, “After I’ve made the fence and tallied up what you owe Knobs.”

And so we gathered, us survivors, battered and weary. Bodies were gathered, carried on the backs of those still living. I carried Braindead’s myself. As one long, tired procession the freed refugees began to slow trek through the tunnels, but before I joined them I had one last bit of business to take care of. Crossfire and Shard went ahead to act as escorts for the refugees, LIL-E’s still nonfunctioning slung from one of Crossfire’s saddlebags.

B.B, Arcaidia, and Binge remained behind with me, staying a distance back while I did the last thing I felt I had to do before leaving this nightmarish place behind.

I stood over Redwire’s body, having closed her eyes. I didn’t say any words aloud, just closed my eyes, sending my thoughts to the Ancestor Spirits.

I don’t understand, said Gramzanber, Are you doing this for your slain enemy, or for yourself?

I found myself smiling in weary exhaustion, “Both. I pray so her soul doesn’t get any more lost than it already was, and I pray so I don’t... become lost myself. Its funny, I never paid the Ancestor Spirits much mind before wandering into the Wasteland with Arcaidia. Now I find myself sending them little prayers all the time. Guess I just need to believe there’s something up there that might care enough to listen.”

I still do not understand, but if it gives you peace of mind, then-...wait, Longwalk, be wary. Something is coming. I’m sensing a distortion.

“Huh?” I blinked, confused, then froze in place as I heard a voice laughing from seemingly nowhere, and yet, everywhere.

“Khhk, khhk,khhk, please don’t mind my poor taste in showing myself during such a solemn moment.”

In the air above Redwire the very fabric of space seemed to twist, like muddy water swirling down a drain. From that rippling distortion a figure emerged, levitating with a slight up and down bobbing.

The creature wasn’t anything remotely resembling a pony. A bulky, broad shouldered mass was covered by a stark white cloth that was trimmed in patterns of green and red. The creature’s indistinct bulk was given a face only by the vast golden mask on the front of the cloth that covered its body. The mask was incredibly ornate, covered in gilded patterns, with three pointed crests rising from its central portion. In the center a black slit allowed for two glowing red eyes to look at me with what I could only describe as cold amusement and intense interest. The bottom of the creature’s cloth was open and black, but from it emerged two golden pairs of claws, three fingered and tipped in blades like curved sabers. A longer appendage, like a scorpion’s tail, waved between the two claws, tipped with a large pointed blade like a spear.

When the creature spoke again its voice raked across my ears, distorted and unnatural.

“Forgive my rudeness. I had considered remaining hidden until you had left, but felt that, at this juncture, it might be more appropriate to meet face to face before you encounter any of my comrades for a less... pleasant exchange. I am Alhazad, what you would know as a Hyadean.”

“Longwalk!” I heard Arcaidia shout, alongside B.B. The pegasus looked torn, as she was still holding up the three-limbed Arcaidia, who looked like even without one of her legs she wanted to run to me. I saw raw fear on Arcaidia’s face mixed with pure anger she was directing entirely at the Hyadean, Alhazad.

Binge just looked faintly bemused, bouncing in place as if unsure if she ought to rush forward or hang back.

I gulped, looking back to the creature before me, “So you’re the one responsible for all of this?”

“That depends on what you mean by ‘all of this’, my young friend. If you’re referring to her,” he pointed with his scorpion-like tail at Redwire’s body, “Then yes, she is one of many pet projects of mine. I’d assigned her a simple task and was quite pleased when she managed to catch you. You see I’d hoped for this very event, a fight between you and her. An excellent test for her abilities. Alas, she has fallen short of my hopes, but as they say ‘back to the drawing board’.”

At those words his tail wrapped around Redwire’s body, lifting it from the ground. I stepped forward, “What do you think you’re doing!?”

“Reclaiming what belongs to me, nothing more. Her present form was not as optimized as I’d hoped, so I’ll use the data collected from your battle with her to make adjustments so the next model is a significant improvement. Do look forward to that, I’m hoping to get even more useful data out of you in the future.”

“Wait!” I drew Gramzanber, who was all but burning in my mind as I felt the ARM’s sudden and vicious bloodlust. Gramzanber recognized its Hyadean enemy, the being the Veruni had programmed the ARM to combat, and the spear was ready and eager to be used. “I can’t just let you desecrate that body however you please.”

“Oh dear, are you under the impression you can stop me? Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. I am under orders from lord Zeikfried not to unduly interfere with you, but that restriction does not apply if you recklessly attack me. You really should be satisfied with your victory over my pet and walk away while you can, my friend.”

As he spoke more distortions swirled in the air, from which emerged more than a dozen of insectoid constructs. Their bodies were made from a gray material somewhere between chitin and metal, flat and beteelish, with front pincers and buzzing translucent wings. Half of them bore large blue gems mounted on top of their bodies, while the other half bore crimson gems. The insect-like constructs flew and hovered around Alhazad in a small swarm. I pensively looked at them, still gripping Gramzanber in my mouth, unsure of myself.

“Hesitant? Good, that means your survival instincts are not entirely dead.”

“...Shit,” I swore under my breath, wanting nothing more than to attack, but seeing clearly just how insane that would be. “What do you need her body for? You’re the one that sent her down here to attack Skull City, right?”

“Fishing for information? Cheeky, but I’ll throw you a bone or two, as it won’t make any difference in the long run. Skull City is a nuisance to myself and my compatriots, if only because it is built atop of something that is very important to us. If you’re curious, take a peek in that dark hole over there and you’ll see what I speak of.”

He pointed, using Redwire’s body in a most morbid fashion to do so, at the vast open space at the back of the cavern. As if Alhazad was well aware I couldn’t see in the dark he sent one of his bug-like servitors flying in that direction, and the blue gem on its carapace glowed brightly. It revealed that within the vast darkness was a space larger than I imagined, as if the cavern merely opened up into an infinitely larger underground chamber.

Inside the chamber was a building, or rather what I could only guess was some kind of building. A tower, its walls massive and curved beyond my field of vision. I couldn’t tell how deep it went, but I could tell it went much higher than what I could see, perhaps almost to the surface itself. The walls of the tower were made from a deep violent metal, crossed with vast orange channels of sculpted metal, like blood veins.

“What is that?” I breathed.

“The Elw called it Ka Dingel. A silly name, but it more or less translates to ‘Demon Tower’. That’s what the Elw called us, the ‘Metal Demons’. Quite the theatrical race, the Elw,” Alhazad said with an amused chuckle that made me wince. “At any rate, my pet here was to have her fun with you and with the people of the city above, but her real task was to keep an eye on the tower and excavate the veins that connect it to the Ley Lines surrounding this land.”

I blinked, “And you’re telling me all this? What’s stopping me from warning people this thing is down here?”

“Khhk, to what end? The veins cannot be destroyed by any weapons ponykind possesses and the tower itself is inaccessible to your most advanced technology. You can do nothing to it, although I shall admit part of the reason I’m telling you this is that I’m curious to see you try. Unlike Zeikfried I’m quite interested in seeing if your species can accomplish more in your present state before we... alter you to something more suitable to our needs,” Alhazad said, and began to float higher into the air. Redwire’s body was pulled upwards until it disappeared under Alhazad’s cloth, and I wasn’t sure just where he put the body as I saw no change in the mass beneath the white robes.

“At any rate, that’s enough chit chat for now. I do hope the next time we meet you’ll be even stronger, because I shall have plenty of experiments to try out on you. Until then, farewell! Khhk, khhk, khhk!”

At those words and final rictus laugh the air swirled and churned once more, swallowing up the Hyadean being and his swarm of servitors, leaving me and my friends once more in the darkness.

It was several long moments before I could gather my thoughts enough to turn to my friends, blinking blearily in a state of shell shock.

“Well... that happened.”

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Gained - Cutie Marked: Blank flank no longer. Having discovered your special talent for saving lives you gain the benefit of your LUK stat being considered three points higher whenever engaged in actions that would directly lead to the preservation of other’s lives.

Quest Perd Added - ARM Bound Stage 4: Your connection to your ARM has reached a new plateau, allowing you to summon your ARM to your location at will as long as your Force Gauge is at least at 25% capacity.

Chapter 27: Understanding the Vastness of the World

It never ceased to amaze me the bountiful number of places on my body could experience pain. The torture might have now been over and done with, but I was going to be feeling the results of my run in with Redwire for days, healing potions or not, and that was just the affects on my body. How the rest of me was faring I was less certain of.

I was collapsed on my bed in Stable 104. About half a day had passed since my friends and I along with a score of battered and tired survivors of Redwire’s insanity managed to crawl our way out of the depths beneath Skull City. Since it was impossible to house all the refugees at the Skull Guild without serious questions being asked and caps being spent it only made sense to bring them here to the Stable using the portal device. It also made for a safer feeling place for us to recover, especially Arcaidia, whose missing leg was a image that was plaguing the overactive parts of my brain, making it hard to find sleep despite being dead tired. Between the physical torture, the emotional drain of the death I’d both witnessed and caused, and the final hammer of guilt over Arcaidia’s lost leg... well it was a miracle I got any sleep at all.

I did manage a few fitful hours of rest here and there, my dreams filled with shadows and the smell of blood. I would’ve welcomed a visitation to one of my friend’s dreams at that point, or another cryptic dream about the Hyadeans, but I wasn’t so lucky and only nightmares awaited my tired mind. After a particularly unpleasant episode involving the repeated, slowed image of Arcaidia’s leg being torn off by shards of her own ice, I decided I’d had enough sleep and instead just laid on my back, staring at the ceiling and letting the events of the past day sink in.

I occasionally glanced at my flank, blinking at the fresh cutie mark that was stamped there brightly and clearly. It was still hard to believe I’d finally earned it, or that the way I’d earned it. I never wanted to have to end somepony’s life. It was the one thing above all else I’d striven to avoid since walking into the Wasteland alongside Arcaidia. Redwire had taught me when to recognize and accept when I had no better options. I suspected she might have wanted somepony to kill her, a kind of weird suicide by proxy. In performing that act I’d come to accept that it wasn’t always the most wrong course of action to take a life, if it meant saving others.

Or ending their pain.

Braindead was buried now, his own soul hopefully set to rest. I’d seen to that myself before allowing myself any rest. I’d picked a spot at the top of the canyon above the Stable, with a halfway decent view, using a local boulder to mark the grave. It was difficult work compared to creating a funeral pyre, but I didn’t feel quite right using my tribe’s methods on others unless there wasn’t time for proper gravedigging. I’d had help with the grave. Along with the survivors from Redwire’s hellhole another had joined us at the Stable, Waunita. The female griffin had a dour silence about her as she’d helped with laying Braindead to rest, beak clenched tightly and her face a hard mask that made it hard to tell if she angry, saddened, or some volatile mix of both. The only thing she’d said when she’d learned what Braindead had done, both the betrayal and the last act of redemption, was that she wasn’t surprised. Binge also helped with the burial, not even tossing any quips or innuendos my way while doing so. She’d actually had a wane look of melancholy as we’d filled the grave. The only words she said after we were done were, “Sleepy time now BD. No more fear or hurting, just a nice nap.”

Myself, I had little to say, other than a sincere prayer that wherever Braindead was now, he was at peace.

There were other burials that day as well. Of the ponies that had fought to escape Redwire's clutches five had died, and another four badly injured enough that they were still in the medical lab alongside Arcaidia. Copper Shell had taken charge of the refugee group and had organized a burial for their dead while I'd been taking care of Braindead. Those graves were just north of the canyon mouth, and after I'd finished burying Braindead I went and visiting those graves as well. I might not have known those ponies, but I'd be damned if I wasn't going to offer respect to those who didn't make it, but still gave their lives for friends and family to be free. The wind through the canyon was cold, and is dry whistle reminded me chillingly of whispering voices.

After that I’d spent a lot of time in the medical ward with Arcaidia, or in the mechanic bay to check up on LIL-E. The remainder of my time had been spent with the aforementioned fitful sleep. Arcaidia was holding up, but Misty Glasses had already informed us that they didn’t have the resources to just re-attach her leg, or build her a new prosthetic. Cybernetics were out for awhile too. It was Stable 105 that had the equipment for building cybernetics, and they’d been out of touch with that place since losing contact seventeen years ago after Odessa’s raids. Stable 106 might be able to handle a simpler medical prosthetic, but it would be a day or two at least before a team could be sent there to recover what was needed, and our own schedule was tight already...

Arcaidia was insisting we go without bothering with the prosthetic. It left a sour feeling in my gut and I wasn’t sure what to do. LIL-E was being repaired, and the spider pony techs assured me she’d be operational again by morning, so there was that at least.

We did need to be back in Skull City by morning. The plan to turn myself in for my own bounty was botched, but before we’d gone through the portal to the Stable Crossfire had told me to meet here at Knobs’ room at the Skull Guild tower and that she’d “clear up some issues” then. I wasn’t certain what she meant by that, but if she was going to try and pull anything, well, I’d deal with it when and if it happened.

You should attempt to get more rest. It is still four hours until dawn, said Gramzanber’s voice in my mind, the spear resting against the wall next to the bed. I nearly jumped out of the bed, startled by the sudden voice in the stillness.

I did not think my voice warrants such a reaction, Gramzanber said as I took a few steadying breaths.

“N-not exactly used to you being chatty, yet,” I said, shaking myself and rolling out of bed, streaming my sore limbs with a wince, “Besides, I’m not sleeping well.”

I have noticed this. It is important that you rest, to regain your lost strength. Even with my abilities I will be of little use to you if you are too drained to fight properly.

“If I could sleep, I would,” I said, somewhat irritably, starting to pace, because walking seemed better than standing still, “Just can’t right now. I keep thinking about Arcaidia.”

She is a trained member of the Veruni Space Fleet. Suffering grievous injury, even loss of limb, is part of what she was indoctrinated to face in the course of her duties. Give her more credit.

I cast a quizzical glance at the ARM, “You sound like you know a lot about her. I mean, about where she comes from and stuff.”

I am a Veruni Weapon-Class ARM, and was in 1st Rank Specialist Arcaidia Luminariaso’s possession prior to her evacuation of the Long Range Exploration Cruiser ‘Ark of Destiny’. While unable to connect to the Veruni Galactic Communications Array to download more extensive data on Veruni culture, military, and technical specifications on equipment including my own classified functions, I do possess a smattering of knowledge about the Ark and its crew prior to the ship’s crash on this planet. Would you like to know more?

I rather desperately did. Arcaidia was still such a mystery to me despite the many challenges we’d faced together. 1st Rank Specialist? What did that even mean? And her family name was Luminariaso? That was a bit from her long, long introduction, as I recalled. Yet a part of me felt like seeking this kind of information from a second party like Gramzanber was a little dishonest.

“If Arcaidia wants me to know this information, she’ll tell me herself,” I said, shaking my head, which made the room spin for a second before I steadied myself on the foot of the bed, “I mean, I’m curious, yeah. I want to know more about her. She’s been there for me so many times, saved me so many times, and has just sacrificed her leg to protect us. Of course I want to know her better, as a pony and a friend. But it's not right for me to get it out of you when it's clear she doesn’t want to reveal this stuff herself, not yet at least. Do you understand where I’m coming from?”

Admittedly, no. It seems more sensible to obtain whatever information you want in the most direct and simple manner available. However there is much of your species interactions I don’t understand, such as your regret over slaying an enemy, or your refusal to mate with a compatible partner who shows interest in you. However I will not go against your wishes in this matter, and truthfully my knowledge is not that extensive. I know things such as Arcaidia’s rank and role on the ship, but not the ship’s actual orders or mission in exploring this world.

“That’s probably for the best,” I said, “She’ll tell me when she’s ready, and given where we’re going next, that might be soon.”

I sensed a change come over Gramzanber, a sort of easing back, like a unwinding of muscles even though the spear certainly didn’t have any muscles to unwind.

The NCR. A goal you’ve been seeking since the start. We will both need to be ready, so for now I’ll enter standby mode.

“That your version of sleep? Well, rest easy Gramzanber. Since I’m having trouble with sleep myself, think I’ll go grab a bite to eat,” I said, trotting out of the room while doing my best to ignore the aches and sores consuming my body.

The Stable was a fair bit more lively now, and I passed more than one former refugee pony who was settling into their new home, cleaning or rearranging quarters for themselves, or going about errands to help the spider ponies with Stable maintenance. I even bumped into a couple of my tribemates on the way to the cafeteria, a stallion and mare sporting fresh hunter’s tattoos and carrying along a dead gecko strung up on a pole between them, spears tied to recently cured leather harnesses.

The mare was Stone Carver, her bulky body seeming even larger in the cramped corridors of the Stable. She gave me a small smile as I passed by, patting her spear, “Good hunting in these parts, and while our new hosts are strange in shape, they know interesting ways to cook fresh meat. We shall eat well tonight.”

For a moment a painful wave of homesickness hammered into me, at just how simple and familiar it was to see hunters coming home from a fruitful excursion, bringing home food for the tribe. I hoped my smile wasn’t pained as I said, “Looks like you’ve gotten a good feel for the land, then.”

The stallion, Snapped Twig if I recalled correctly, a short sandy colored fellow who was remarkably stealthy, making the name seem all the odder to my mind, made a sour face and said, “I miss the waters of Shady Stream, but I suppose this land isn’t too bad. The geckos are plentiful, and there are these other creatures as well that burrow in the ground, little naked rat things that they are, but they make for decent eating as well. It’s the giant sting-tailed creatures I fear.”

I tilted my head, “Radscorpions?”

Stone Carver nodded gravely, “There are packs of them out there. I’ve given each hunter strict instructions to avoid them, but Rock Roller...” she trialed off, shaking her head, “Since Snowdrift’s death he has been seeking his own, I think. He tried to hunt one of these ‘Radscorpions’ and was badly hurt as a result. Our eight legged friends have healed him, but he seems more and more determined to find his place among the Ancestor Spirits, so he can be with Snowdrift. It is foolishness, but I know his grief.”

She looked at me hopefully, “Has your quest to recover our kin made any progress?”

I found myself wishing I could tell her that I was charging off right that instant to rescue them from the clutches of Odessa, but as short as the actual timetable for that rescue was, it still felt a long ways away as I had two whole countries to cross before I even reached my father to enact that plan. To Stone Carver and Snapped Twig I said, “I’ve discovered where they are, and am working on how to rescue them, but it's going to take time.”

“Where!?” asked Stone Carver, large body nearly knocking me over as she leaned closer, “Where are our tribe being held? We can all go to mount a rescue!”

“It’s not that simple,” I said, taking a step back, and hitting the other side of the corridor wall as a result, “The flying tribe, Odessa, has them held inside their fortress. A fortress that flies in the sky. I can only reach it with the help of...of my father.”

Snapped Twig’s eyes narrowed, “Your father the outsider? Your father who is of the very tribe that has stolen ours?”

A bead of sweat broke onto my brow and I gulped, “H-he’s not blindly following Odessa. Near as I can tell he’s at the center of some kind of, I don’t know, rebel group inside of Odessa. He wants to save our tribe, and will help me do it. I just have to reach him. He’s, uh, he’s really far to the north.”

Stone Carver took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, the sound like a heavy night wind, “Then I shall pray that your father is a truthful stallion. Excuse us, Longwalk, we must get this catch to the kitchens.”

As they departed down the corridor I didn’t follow them, despite the fact that the cafeteria was the same way they were going. I’d suddenly lost my appetite.

My wandering through the Stable eventually brought me to the medical lab. I’d been there plenty of times to check on Arcaidia already, but I was still drawn there with thoughts of just taking a seat by her bed and perhaps shooting the breeze for a bit if she was awake, or trying to take a nap if she was sleeping.

As I approached the doors I heard voices, and paused, ears flicking as I listened in.

“I ain’t comfortable wit doin’ that, Arc, I’m tellin’ ya fer the last time,” said B.B’s twanging accent.

“Esru di shobal, ren bruhir! You are almost toaster headed as Longwalk. If it make you strong, and I offer, what reason to say no?” replied Arcaidia in a stubborn, frustrated tone.

“Look, it took me a’ long time ta learn ta live without the blood, an’ I aim ta keep it that way. Arc, ya don’t know what the stuff’ll do ta my head iffin’ I start makin’ it a habit ta suck some, ‘specailly if yer the one offerin’ it up.”

“Yet you say your Family is coming and they strong. Strong with blood. You need be strong with blood too, if we are to win all the many battles we head towards. My leg gone, slow you all down, must make sure we all strong.”

I could hear a certain level of stubborn desperation in both mares voices, and it sounded like they might have had this argument already. I heard a stamp of hooves and B.B’s voice raise, “I’ll deal wit my ol’ Family when the time comes, don’t ya be frettin’ over that. Just drop it, will ya! I ain’t sucking yer blood, or Long’s blood, or even Binge’s blood again iffin I can help it. I just... blast it ya darn icecube head don’t ya git its like touchin’ a pool o’ water through an oilslick! I could do it, an’ git what I need, but my hoof would still git dirty in the process. More I drink, the more I... I’d remember what I was, Arc. My pa went through a’ lot ta teach me ta be somethin’ better n’ that.”

I heard Arcaidia sigh, a long winding down sound of defeat, “I know, ren bruhir. You love your father much. You want to be much better than dirty past, put smiles on pony’s faces rather than terror. I admire that about you, crazy mare.”

“Heh, ain’t half as crazy as you, Arc. Gettin’ yerself all tore up ta save our hides. Ya tryin’ ta steal Longwalk’s schtick?”

“Pfft, I much more sensible than that. Longwalk have harder head for such things. Also doesn’t know when not to drop bees.”

I blinked, confused, then B.B said, “Drop bees?”

“He be listening at door.”

“Ooooh, you mean drop eaves, otherwise known as eavesdroppin’. Hey, Long, ya can come in now, I smelled ya the second ya got close,” said B.B with a dry chuckle.

Guilt, for two reasons, swept through me as I entered the medical lab and saw my two friends in there. B.B was standing by Arcadia’s bed, the unicorn sitting up while propped up on her one fore leg. Both mares looked at me with small, amused smiles. I just felt more out of sorts as I slowly trotted to them, nodding. My guilt was only in part due to my eavesdropping on them. The other, more important bit of guilt was because I hadn’t yet spoken to B.B about her father.

“Hey guys,” I said, working up my courage, “I didn’t mean to listen in, just kind of, uh, habit?”

“Sure, Long, sure,” said B.B, “Come ta’ keep Arc company fer a bit?”

“Well, yes, but... but I’m glad you’re here to. B.B, I need to talk to you about something,” I said, looking towards one of the small sitting stools strewn about the medlab and parking myself there, “It’s about your father.”

Before I could say more B.B raised one of her wings, holding it up in a quieting gesture, “Ain’t no need, Long. LIL-E was reactivated less n’ an hour back an’ she told me ‘bout what happened.”

“LIL-E’s better!” I near shouted, jumping up from the stool, “I thought she’d be down until morning?”

“Seems like the bot’s got a’ more durable an’ quick ta’ repair internal system n’ the spider pony techs thought. They were able ta git her turned on an’ talkin’, through she ain’t yet ready ta float around,” said B.B, “Now like I was sayin’, LIL-E, she tracked them refugees and my pa ta the same Ruin that Hyadean, Alhazad, was at wit Redwire an’ Braindead. There was a brawl, an’, yeah... my pa lost,” she grit her teeth, nostrils flaring, but shook her head and went on, “Only he didn’t croak it. LIL-E found him hangin’ on ta a spire down a’ pit, and helped float him ta safety. Right now my pa’s in Skull City, chekin’ in wit his ol’ buddies at the Drifter’s Guild. We’ll probably see him tomorrow.”

A cool wash of relief flooded me at those words. I hadn’t looked forward to telling B.B I thought her father was dead, so it was good to hear the old stallion was alive. It was also good to know LIL-E’s repairs were going faster. It sounded like we’d all be ready to go back to Skull City come morning and finally get ourselves off to the NCR.

“That’s great, B.B, I’m happy for you. Heck, I’d like to get to know your father sometime.”

“Well, ya might git a chance then, an’ I bet he’ll be happy ta chat it up wit ya,” said B.B. Meanwhile Arcaidia was eyeing me up and down, a small frown passing her features.

“You no look so good, ren solva. You not sleep? Grr, is it shivol bir causing trouble again in bed?”

I coughed, taking a deep breath to clear my thoughts before I said, “No, no Binge is causing no problems in bed. Or is ever even in my bed! I just... um, I’m too antsy to get to sleep. Figured I’d stretch my legs.”

“Rest would be better,” said Misty Glasses synthetic voice as the spider pony clicked her way into the medlab, her many legs skittering her black and orange body along with smooth grace. She looked at me with her two pony eyes and six additional glittering black eyes and smiled with only a hint of fang. “Still I’m glad to see you up and about. You surface ponies certainly can take a beating and keep right on going.”

She laughed, and there was a slight nervousness to it as she went over to a computer terminal and began to click away at its keys. Something was scratching at the back of my mind and it came to me rather abruptly as I blurted, “Hey, didn’t you say you had something you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Huh?’ Misty Glasses, had to turn her rather bulky body to look back at me, “Oh, uh, yes, that.”

She paused, running a long spidery leg over her flaring orange mane, “I suppose I did, didn’t I? To be honest I’m not as certain of it as I was just the other day. It's probably for the best you just forget about it.”

I frowned, exchanging looks with B.B and Arcaidia. B.B just shrugged, but Arcaidia had a curious, intrigued look on her face. I looked back at Misty Glasses, “Are you sure? I mean, just what was it about?”

“Nothing!” Misty Glasses said, far too quickly, and the spider pony twitched in an agitated manner, but she seemed to calm herself fast enough, “I mean, it's not nothing, exactly, but I don’t know if it’s something I need to bother you with yet. Not without more conclusive information. About your body.”

“Misty,” I said, “If there’s something wrong, please, just tell me. I’ve got a lot of my mind, yeah, but ignorance isn’t always bliss.”

“I too want to know if Longwalk has problem with body,” said Arcaidia, curiosity transmuting into worried creases across her brow, “More than is there already.”

Yes, like the ticking down time limit until I died from overexposure to my ARM. It was nice being able to talk to Gramzanber now but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly miffed that the spear was still technically killing me, bit by bit. Then again, my survival day to day was constantly in question, so it wasn’t too hard to shove the larger time limit to the back of my mind. What was one more issue on top of that, whatever it was? Misty Glasses still had a reluctant look on her face, but I saw that slowly resolve to a nod as she said, “Very well, I’ll try to keep this simple.”

She clacked a few more keys on her terminal and turned the monitor to show it to me. On the screen was a green and black rendition of my own body, and a side screen showing what I could only guess was some kind of up close look at... my blood?

“Longwalk, ever since we first medically examined you here, my fellow scientists and I noticed an anomaly in your blood. The recent incident you had with Binge only made me further believe that this anomaly represented a fundamental difference between your body and that of other ponies. Look here,” she pointed to the image of a bloodstream, with little ring-like cells flowing along naturally.

“Your bloodstream has all the normal characteristics it’s meant to have, save for one addition,” Misty Glasses clicked a few buttons and the image zoomed in more, to reveal that amid the blood cells were several star shaped objects, metallic and of a dark gray color. I felt myself turn cold.

“What in the name of the Ancestor Spirits are those?” I breathed.

“Nanomachines,” said Misty Glasses plainly, “Specifically they’re nanomachines of the exact same bio-metal type that can be found inside a Hyadean organism.”

The room couldn’t have gotten more still and chilly if Misty Glasses had turned the place into a freezer. Arcaidia said something in her own language that I was pretty sure had to be very unladylike, and B.B gulped, saying, “What’re ya tryin’ ta tell us, that Long somehow got alien machines stuck in his blood? How? When? When fighthin’ them weird critters them aliens use as soldiers?”

Misty Glasses shook her head, “No. When Longwalk was wounded by that scavenger pony after the battle with Midnight Twinkle , that was when we first noticed these nanomachines in his blood. I didn’t want to say anything back then because I wasn’t entirely sure of what I was looking at. These nanomachines are bonded to him different than they are in us.”

I blinked at that, “Wait, you spider ponies have these nanomachines too!?”

“Of course. The Hyadean you just encountered, Alhazad, was the one who created us. Transformed us from normal ponies into these arachnid shapes. It was with these type of nanomachines that he did such grisly work. The basic structure of the nanomachines is the same in my body as they are in his, the only difference is that the nanomachines are bonded to his genetic structure in a manner that’s utterly seamless and may well serve several functions beyond what they do inside us arachquines.”

I was shaking my head, feeling dizzy and abruptly sat down on my haunches, “Then how did I get these things inside me?”

“If I was to make a guess, Longwalk, they’ve been a part of you since birth. Perhaps introduced at the moment of conception. I can’t be entirely sure on that point, but the manner which the nanomachines interact with your body in pure symbiotic balance suggest to me that they’ve been there for your entire life.”

“What this mean?” asked Arcaidia quietly, “You say Longwalk have Hyadean filth in his blood, but why!? How!? He... he’s...” Arcaidia seemed furious and terrified at the same time, looking at me with her silver eyes so wide I thought I was looking into twin pools reflecting the moon.

Misty Glasses sighed, “This is why I didn’t want to bring this up. I just don’t know enough to make any real educated guesses beyond what I’ve said. The only other thing I can say is that Longwalk’s rapid recovery rate is largely thanks to these nanomachines. They accelerate his natural healing rate rather impressively. Its why he’s been able to recover from wounds that should have kept him bedridden for weeks in just a day or so. I also suspect they’re responsible for his rapid rate of skill growth in such a short span of time.”

My head felt like it was about to crack but I still had enough sense about me to look up with confusion, “Wait, my... skills? What are you talking about?”

Misty Glasses waved one of her legs at me, “Well, consider this. Two weeks ago you were a young hunter from a low tech tribe, and your experience with combat were minimal at best. Now, today, you’ve bested in combat trained soldiers, experienced bounty hunters, faced down a Hellhound, various mutated monsters, and even defeated one of Odessa’s elite Cocytus officers after enacting an escape from the depths of one of their airships. Do you really thing any of those feats would have been achievable by a pony whose only experience prior to that was hunting geckos?”

At my blank look Misty Glasses scratched her head, but B.B stepped in, saying, “I git what yer tryin’ ta say. Yer sayin’ them nanomachines are somehow helpin’ Longwalk learn skills to survive, right?”

“Essentially,” Misty Glasses said, “Each of these nanomachines contains vast amounts of information. It's impossible for me to even come close to decoding just how much, or of what type, of information they contain. However, large clusters of these nanomachines are lodged around his brain, all along centers controlling memory and learning. They’re literally helping build pathways of knowledge inside his brain. My guess is that for every battle or new experience he faces Longwalk learns faster, becoming a more capable fighter in a span of time exponentially shorter than what it’d take him to normally learn. All of those battles he’s been involved in have given him the kind of training that would have otherwise taken years.”

I felt an uneasy queasyness through my whole body, and even my skin felt itchy, like it wasn’t mine anymore. I licked my lips, trying to get some moisture on their even though my mouth had gone drier than the Wasteland. My brain scrambled to absorb and make sense of what i was being told, and my brain pony had decided the best solution was to lock itself in the closet with the rest of my fears.

“Okay...” I said, “So... short version is, what? I’m not a pony?”

Misty Glasses made a snorting sound, that coming from a spider pony sounded more like a wheezing clack, “That's not what I'm saying at all. No, not at all. Genetically you’re as much a pony as anypony else. Your D.N.A hasn’t been altered, far as I can tell. It wouldn’t even be accurate to call you a hybrid. What you are is a normal, healthy young earth pony male who has had alien nanomachines incorporated into his body like... like a natural enhancement process. Whoever or whatever did this to you at conception seems to have done it to increase your abilities without changing your underlying nature. Honestly the blend is so seamless we wouldn’t have detected it if our medlab wasn’t already set up to search for these kind nanomachines already due to our work with the Hyadean Specimen we had held here all those years ago.”

“So who did this ta him?” asked B.B, a little heatedly, “Ya said this had ta be done when he was conceived? Don’t that kinda narrow down the possibilities?”

I looked over at her, still feeling numb from shock, “You’re saying my parents did this?”

B.B’s face tightened in shame and concern, but she still nodded, “Ain’t sayin’ it’s the only possibility, but it does figure, don’t it? Unless yer parents had someone else fiddlin’ with yer ma’s plumbin’ while she was pregnant, who else could’ve ‘sides yer pa? Might’ve been possible some sneaky bastard was able ta’ do it without them knowin’ but...”

“All smoke,” Arcaidia said firmly, voice still as a iced over pool of water, “We just talk of smoke. Nothing solid. Longwalk is Longwalk... yes, no matter where Hyadean filth come from. Not make Longwalk different.” A part of me wished she sounded less like she was trying to convince herself, but I still appreciated the words and gave her a small nod of thanks.

“Ain’t gonna hear nothin’ ta gainsay that,” said B.B, who then fixed her eye on me, “How ya holdin’ up wit all o’ this, Long?”

I just blinked at pegasus, and I imagined I must have looked rather rattled if the dry mouth and slight shake in my limbs was any indication. I then looked over at Arcaidia again, who's expression was difficult to read even when she managed a reassuring smile. I took a deep breath, still feeling like I wasn’t entirely connected to my own body anymore. What am I, then? Father, did you do this to me? Why? Does mom know? Too many questions. Too much, on top of everything else. Suddenly I felt a lot more tired than I had a moment ago.

“I don’t know, B.B. I really haven’t a clue how to feel about this."

What are you supposed to feel when you're told your body isn't quite what you thought it was and that its very likely one or both of your own parents were responsible for it? That you were used as a test subject before you were even born? Mostly I just felt kind of numb, like my mind and heart were both on shutdown, just to keep the overflow of crap that'd I'd been through over the past day or so from overwhelming me.

"I... I just need to get to my father. He can explain it to me. He has to.” I hung my head, laughing helplessly, “On the bright side, least now I’ve got an idea why I keep trying to fight on two legs.”

“Hm?” Misty Glasses leaned forward, “How did you come that conclusion.”

“Well, it figures, doesn’t it? You said these nanomachines are helping me learn to fight, but they’re Hyadean in nature. Well... I know at least one Hyadean who uses a spear like mine, and fights on two legs, using his hands.” I said, thinking of the Specimen that’d escaped Stable 104, the Hyadean I now knew was named Zeikfried. The one Alhazad had referred to as ‘Lord Zeikfried’. One who I’d already had dreams of that seemed to be his memories. Misty Glasses had said that the nanomachines contained vast information inside them, and that some of them had attached to my brain’s centers of memory.

Even a relatively dim pony like me could connect those dots.

“When they raided the Stable back then, did Odessa take any samples from the Hyadean you had here before it broke free?” I asked, recalling that raid had happened about seventeen years ago. Only a year or two before I was born. I felt my jaw tightening.

“Well, yes,” said Misty Glasses, “The Colonel who was conducting the raid took the samples himself, departing before the Hyadean broke free of its containment.”

“You don’t happen to have a video record from the security cameras of the event? Perhaps an image of this Colonel?” I asked, knowing full well the rank my father held then, and still held now.

“Oh, um, yes, let me pull it up. Here, a video image of when the Colonel and his troops entered the Stable,” Misty Glasses said, showing me the monitor. I wasn’t surprised to see a squadron of heavily armored Odessa troopers marching through the front doors of the Stable, several other pegasi and griffons in lab coats flanking another stallion in a stark white officer uniform. A stallion I instantly recognized from the memory orb I viewed just one day ago.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head, feeling as if the floor was gaping open beneath me.

“Dammit all, father, what else haven’t you told me?”

I felt a strong hoof squeeze my shoulder, soon followed by another hoof on the other side. I opened my eyes to see B.B and Arcaidia both holding me, Arcaidia nearly leaned over double in her bed to reach me. The feeling of near falling was replaced by a sense of finding some solid ground and I was able to pull my mind from a spiral of questions, managing a wane smile for both my friends.

“Me and my father are going to have a lot to talk about when I finally meet him face to face,” I said, trying to get out a light hearted laugh, though it came out sounding heavy as lead.

“Both us have much to say to father,” said Arcaidia with a fire in her silver eyes, “Not know what toaster headed thoughts make him use you for experiment, but I give him much earful!”

“Ta be fair, an’ not sayin’ I’m defenin’ him or nothin’,” said B.B, “But we don’t rightly know what’s goin’ on with these nanos inside Long or why his pa decided to stick ‘em in there, iffin it really was him that done it.”

“It is possible,” said Misty Glasses, “That your father merely acquired the nanomachines from the Hyadean Specimen and another took them for their own research without his knowing. I’m afraid speculation is all we have at this point.”

Speculation, and educated guesses, yes. It didn’t change the fact that my body suddenly didn’t quite feel like it belonged to me anymore. A part of me just wanted to go crawl back into bed and pretend I hadn’t learned this. Another part of me was both sick and furious at my father for altering me without my consent... or mothers? Did mother know about this? Had she agreed to it? So many questions, and the ponies I desperately wanted to ask were so far away.

I took a very deep breath and let it out slowly, only somewhat relieving the knot of stress building inside, “In the end, we still have to focus on what’s in front of us. As long as you're sure these nanomachines aren’t hurting me, I can learn to deal with this. I mean, I’ve lived with them my whole life, apparently, so I’m still the same me. If I start sprouting alien appendages, I’m sure you’ve got a salve for that, right?”

Misty Glasses body shook in a laugh, “If your sense of humor remains intact then I’d say you’re as fit as usual. I will endeavour to continue my research here to determine more about these nanomachines. One last thing to note, in case you did not make the connection... I believe these nanomachines are also now inside you’re friend, Binge.”

That got me blinking all over again, “Binge, but how-...oh. The transfusion.”

“Yes, I believe these nanomachines entered her with the blood transfusion to save her life. I confirmed it during the medical examination I did on all of you after returning here. They don’t appear to have bonded with her the same way they are in you, but that could just be a factor of time. For the moment I don’t believe they are a threat to her, but I can’t be certain exactly what they may or may not do to her body over time, either.”

That was more than a little concerning. I didn’t save Binge’s life just to have my blood be what killed her down the road, “Is there any way you can remove them from her?”

“To be honest I wouldn't want to risk it without a lot more research on just how these nanomachines operate,” said Misty Glasses, “Give me time and I may come up with a few ideas, but for now, I can only recommend you keep a close eye on her.”

B.B chuckled dryly, “We try ta do that anyway. Ain’t always easy, with that one.”

“Have you told her about this?” I asked Misty Glasses, not wanting Binge to be in the dark about something concerning her own body.

“I have, but as you can imagine that one has a mind that does not respond to things like most others,” said Misty Glasses, shaking her head, “She if anything seemed pleased, rather than worried.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Binge,” I said with a small, helpless laugh. Binge wasn’t one to worry about much of anything, but at least she knew, and if something started to go wrong with her body we’d both know the likely cause.

Afterwards, when Arcaidia had lain back down to rest and B.B had left to go stretch her wings in the vehicle hangar, I stayed behind with Misty Glasses, having one last thing I wanted to talk about. My brain felt already swelled to bursting with all I’d had done to me and learned about both that day and the previous with the whole business with Redwire, but I still couldn’t imagine getting any rest right now.

“Tomorrow we’ll be trying to work out a way to get the NCR,” I told the spider pony scientist in a quiet voice as not to wake Arcaidia, “I don’t know what kind of trouble we’ll run into there, maybe none. But afterward I still have to get to my father, then rescue my tribe from Odessa. There will probably be a lot of fighting involved.”

“Yes, that is very likely true,” Misty Glasses said, her spindly spider legs picking at her keyboard as it looked like she was typing a report on Arcaidia’s condition and ideas for limb replacement.

“I’ve had to end a few ponies lives since I started this journey,” I said, glancing back at my cutie mark, “I’ve learned sometimes it has to be done. Even so, my responsibility to myself, to my own morals, is to always strive to save lives that don’t have to be lost. I can’t keep being reactive in that responsibility. I have to be proactive. So I wanted to ask you about a couple of things. First, do you think there might be something you smarter scientist types might be able to build that’d let me use Gramzanber more effectively a non-lethal weapon? Like a shock device that’d let me knock ponies out?”

“Ah, was it that shock stick you brought back that made you think of this idea?” asked Misty Glasses, referring to the taser I’d recovered from the cavern after the battle with Redwire.

“Yes, actually,” I said, smiling at her guessing at what I wanted, “I’m keeping it as a backup, but I thought it’d be useful to do something similar with Gramzanber. I mean, how much easier would it be to take down ponies if all I had to do was give them a quick whap or cut and shock them unconscious?”

“It might be harder than you think, Longwalk. Many armors insulate against that kind of shock, and even then particularly tough or adrenaline filled ponies can keep fighting even while being tased. Amping up the jolt only risks actual injury or death. Hmm, I have a better idea.”

As Misty Glasses talked she opened her mouth, exposing her fangs, which dripped venom. I backed away, gulping, but she closed her mouth and chuckled, “Our venom you’ve felt yourself. It weakens a pony until they can barely move. With a little chemical tampering I can increase its effectiveness to act as a quick paralytic agent you can apply to your spear. One cut ought to slow down if not outright paralyze most normal ponies. The process shouldn’t take long and I could whip up an experimental batch for you to use before you left tomorrow.”

“That...” I paused, thinking at first that it’d be slightly creepy, but the more I thought of it the more the idea sort of sounded neat, “That actually sounds like a plan. Don’t suppose you guys have more smoke and flash grenades? I pretty much tapped myself out already.”

“Stock up all you need. Was there anything else?”

“Um one last thing... have Trailblaze and Whetstone been back, lately?”

Misty Glasses’ tone, through synthesized by cybernetics in her throat, still held sympathy, “Not since they last departed. We did receive an update from them from our ponies working to restore Stable 106, but it was brief and not very descriptive. They found a Guardian Shrine at the mountain summit they were going to, but also encountered a Hyadean themselves. They survived the battle, but so did the Hyadean. Trailblaze said she was able to contact the Guardian in the Shrine and from them learned another Shrine existed in the waters south of Port Needle. That was where they were heading next.”

“At least they’re still alive,” I said, happy enough to know my friend was managing to keep herself safe out in the Wasteland, but worried now that her own journey seemed like it was filled with its own dangers, including attracting the Hyadean’s attention, “Did she mention anything about this Hyadean they encountered.”

“Only a little, and it didn’t sound like Alhazad,” said Misty Glasses, “The report’s description was of a bipedal armored creature wielding a boomerang-like weapon and... and with a large wolf creature as a companion.”

At first I’d thought she might have been speaking of Zeikfried, but he didn’t use a boomerang or have any kind of wolf monster as a companion. A new Hyadean then? How had Trailblaze survived running into one? Well, she was Trailblaze. She was a lot tougher than I was, and had the power of the Fire Guardian, Moa Gault, to aid her. I should probably have been more worried about Whetstone, following Trailblaze around.

“I guess I won’t see them for awhile,” I said, thinking of how I was soon leaving the region, and how Trailblaze’s own travels were taking her to new places as well. How long might we be traveling apart on our own respective quests? When I saw her again, if I ever saw her again, would we be two completely different ponies by then?

“You will see her again,” Misty Glasses said, adjusting her glasses, “She is a very resilient young mare. They both are, and they now have a capable medical robot with the A.I of a Ministry Mare with them.”

Ah, right, I’d almost forgotten about that. Well, Trailblaze was gathering her own cadre of oddballs it seemed, and I was happy enough to know she wasn’t alone out there. I gave Misty Glasses an agreeing nod, “I know. There are just times I wish I...”

Wish I what? Wish I’d convinced her to come with me instead? I shook my head, banishing the notion, “I wish I could get to sleep easier.”

Misty Glasses absentmindedly reached for a drawer and pulled out a bottle of pills and gave them over to me, “Try these. Knocks me right out when I need to make my brain stop spinning for a spell.”

I was dubious, but took the offered bottle, and since I’d lost my appetite I decided to return to my room. As it turned out the pills worked just fine, more than fine. The sleep I fell into the moment I hit my bed was so deep that my nightmares were only passing globs of shadow that couldn’t quite catch me as I sunk into a slumber that was, for once, restful.

Crossfire met as at the steps leading up to the Skull Guild’s front entrance. The gray sky was already turning from darkness to pale light with the sunrise, and the air had a frigid coolness to it that made my fur rise. The Inner City was already alive with noise, and I saw a few rare functional autowagons rolling along the mostly repaired streets. The noise from the Mechanics Guild’s factory to the south filtered in like a steady river of buzzing and clanks.

The Ursa was still parked in the Skull Guild’s basement. We wouldn’t need it today, or so Crossfire had said. Myself, B.B, Arcaidia, Binge, and LIL-E were all gathered there on the smooth stone walkway right in front of the steps, as Crossfire walked up to use, her red jacket marking her out in the dawn gloom. She was of course still armed with her rifle slung across her back.

I opened my mouth to greet her, but Crossfire cut me off with a sharp, “Here.”

With a glow of red magic she tossed me a bag that clinked with caps. Crossfire had a sour look on her face as if parting with caps physically hurt her. “There’s just under fifteen hundred in there. That’s all the cut you got left after paying back Knobs what you owe her, and a modest accounting fee for me.”

I peered at the caps, surprised. Honestly it’d been more than I’d expected to get, “This is from those weapons you sold?”

“No,” she said, jerking her head, “Follow me, I’ll explain on the way.”

“Is that gonna be safe?” asked B.B, “Ain’t we still worried ‘bout bounty hunters?”

“Not anymore,” said Crossfire, “Now shut up and follow. Or don’t. At this point I could care less what happens to any of you.”

Shard gave us an apologetic look as Crossfire brushed past him. It was a tad odd seeing the unicorn without his face scarf, the odd tattoos on his chin and neck plainly visible. Arcaidia shuffled forward. She had a simple, metal leg crutch and harness around her missing leg. It was far from a proper prosthetic, but it let her walk, albeit much slower than normal and I doubted she’d be able to move more than a canter if it came to it. I couldn’t look at the crutch without a sharp cut of guilt. It wasn’t right that she’d been the one to lose a part of herself, while I was the one who came with her on this journey to protect her.

“Here, estu dol balvirae mi gricai. I return to you what you use to aid me,” Arcaidia said as she floated from her saddlebag the long black scarf Shard had used to tourniquet her wound. It looked freshly cleaned. Shard looked taken slightly aback, but smiled and nodded his thanks as he took the scarf in his own yellow magic aura and wrapped it back around his face.

“I appreciate this, miss Arcaidia. I’ve never liked walking around with my Baskar marks showing.”

“Baskar?” I asked, but at that same time Crossfire’s annoyed voice rang out.

“What are you all doing, sharing life stories!? Get a move on!”

Shard shook his head ruefully, “Another time, kid. Another time.”

Off we went, trotting down the street openly, apparently with no fear of attack from bounty hunters. The street was already filling with a few ponies, living and ghoul alike, going about their morning business. There were still heavy patrols of the grim faced and armored Enforcers, but they gave us no trouble as we moved along the winding sidewalks, passing storefronts opening for business.

I caught up to Crossfire, who was trotting like a mare on a mission, and said, “Okay, what’s the deal? Why aren’t there swarms of bounty hunters after my tail right now?”

Crossfire glanced at me, golden eyes glittering, but her expression unreadable. “My boss has arranged for that bounty to be taken off your head.”

“Your boss?”

“The head of the Drifter’s Guild Whiteheart. He’s been in contact with the Labor Guild, and sorted out a deal with them, a deal I’m not entirely privy to the details of. Part of the deal was removing your bounty. Before you ask, I don’t know what the cost of that is going to be. That’s part of why I’ve been asked to escort you to the Guild. Whiteheart wants to speak to you, personally.”

That nearly made me stumble in my walk. LIL-E floated up beside me, swiveling to face Crossfire as we walked. “Why is Whiteheart interested in Longwalk? I’m not interesting in seeing a friend get coerced into being used.”

“Relax, rustbucket,” said Crossfire with a snort, “Far as I know the big boss just wants to talk to the buck. Any deals that get made through that is going to be between them.”

“Do I need to be worried about being coerced?” I asked, feeling more and more uncomfortable with the idea of meeting this Whiteheart.

“Depends on what this fella’ is gonna be tryin’ ta talk ya into,” said B.B, taking wing and flying to slowly hover beside Crossfire, looking down at the mare suspiciously, “How’d this Whiteheart learn ‘bout Longwalk’s bounty an’ that he was at the Skull Guild?”

Crossfire didn’t even look back at the pegasus, “I told him, obviously. That’s where I went yesterday.The buck plans to join the Drifter’s Guild, so I went to smooth that over by...” she grunted out a sigh, lips pulled back in a sour grimace, “So I decided to sponsor him myself. I set it all up with Whiteheart, and that’s when he decided, on his damned own I’ll add, to contact the Labor Guild’s leader and hash out the bounty situation. I didn’t plan any of that. Couldn’t even believe it when I saw it. Soon as he was done arranging that, Whiteheart asked me to bring you to him when I got a chance to.”

Gears started turning in my brain, comparing times. Crossfire had vanished yesterday for a bit, maybe an hour or two before we’d tried to enact my plan to turn myself in for the bounty that led to the whole debacle with Redwire. My face became shadowed by a deep frown as I realized something.

“Crossfire... are you saying Whiteheart arranged for my bounty to be removed before we left to turn myself in.”

“...Maybe.”

The whole party stopped, all of us staring at Crossfire’s back as she walked on a few more paces, only stopping when she noticed we were all staring at her, even Shard who looked as surprised to hear this as any of us. Crossfire looked between eyes, yellow eyes challenging, unapologetic.

“It would’ve taken at least a day for the news to trickle down to the Bounty Guild,” she said with a fierce, defensive tone, “We could’ve still gotten your bounty, and not long after they would’ve had to let you go anyway when news of the bounty’s cancellation hit. We could’ve gotten paid and you wouldn’t have been in danger on top of that, so don’t you all go giving me those dirty looks! That bounty was worth a lot of caps! I had to take a shot at it...”

She flicked her tail angrily. B.B had put a hoof to her face, shaking her head, while Arcaidia had a cold look in her eyes, only somewhat counterbalanced by a equally tired strain in her face. LIL-E hovered silently for a moment, before saying, “Conniving bitch.”

“Sit on a fucking electrode,” shot back Crossfire, “It was the buck’s own dumb plan anyway, and it would’ve worked just fine if he hadn’t gotten his ass captured. Don’t blame me because shit went south. I did my part, and dammit I’m still trying to help you, against my better judgement!”

I held up a hoof, “It’s... fine, Crossfire. I get it. You smelled caps slipping away and you wanted to make a grab for them. I might’ve agreed to go with the plan even if I’d known about the bounty being canceled, because the fact was we still needed to pay back Knobs and needed the caps. So,” I looked at my companions, “Let’s all try to get along here.”

LIL-E made a sound that might have been a scoff, but was hard to tell with her robotic tones, “Right. Get along. I can do that. I’m the most getting along pony controlling a flying robot you’ll ever bucking meet.”

For a second I thought it strange the way she referred to herself that way, but I had to remind myself I was the only one in the group that knew LIL-E’s secret. B.B settled back down to walk, grimacing slightly but seeming to quickly accept things. Arcaidia still hardly looked warm towards Crossfire, but she strode on at her awkward pace, seeming content to focus on relearning how to walk than brooding on Crossfire being Crossfire.

We resumed our trek across town, the tall, old buildings around us keeping the early morning cloaked in shadow even as the sky turned brighter shades of gray. We passed several clusters of ponies around exterior dining areas or outdoor bars, all wolfing down their respective breakfasts as they chatted among themselves. Though most of these groups quieted down as we passed a few ignored us entirely, gossiping away as we trotted by. I caught a few snippets that stood out in my mind.

“-heard they lost the bridge. Damn Raiders are pouring around to the north and might threaten the farmlands.”

“-are the damned gangs thinking, not sending more ponies? You’d think those violent nutjobs would jump at the chance to fight some-”

“-just glad the V.E.C is out there. Always kinda thought the Labor Guild’s army was a bit scary, but if they’ll fight where the gangs won’t, I ain’t gonna complain.”

“Heard that Protectorate ‘princess’ is still in down. Why the Guilds talking shop with some tart from those bastards? They forget what happened in the war?”

“-telling you those monster attacks aren’t normal! There’s gotta be some Ruin below us one of the Guilds fucked with. Where else do Goddess damned living skeletons come from?”

The conversations floated in and out as we walked, leaving me to wonder at the bits and pieces I heard. Was the fight with the Raiders going poorly? It kind of sounded that way, but it was hard to tell. The V.E.C I recognized as the Labor Guild slave army Shale had been a part of. Seemed ponies were gaining confidence in it as a force to combat the Raiders, mostly because the gangs weren’t sending as many fighters as usual. I wondered why that was? The Protectorate princess I knew was Purity, the mare I’d met in the Skull Guild. It didn’t sound like too many ponies were happy she was here in the city, but I could only remember that she was very kind, and had been doing nothing by trying to help ponies who were hurt.

I noticed Crossfire flinched when the ponies we passed had mentioned Purity, and I asked, “Is something wrong?”

“Not a damned thing,” muttered Crossfire.

“Do you feel the same way they do? That the Guilds shouldn’t have a princess from the Protectorate here?” I pressed, genuinely curious.

“I couldn’t care less about the Protectorate, now will you kindly shut it, buck?”

I sighed, and fell back a few steps to let the brooding mare lead us along. Any time I thought maybe I could break through and get Crossfire to soften up a bit she just seemed to draw in on herself harder. A part of me wondered why I cared. Then I reminded myself of what Knobs had told me. No matter how jagged her edges, there had to be something decent buried underneath all that snarling and cap obsession. Even if she hadn’t told me my bounty had been canceled, she had gone to the Drifter’s Guild to sponsor my membership there.

Passing underneath the wide concrete pillars and bridge of a raised highway we reached a set of broad avenues where most the buildings were shorter, many with faded flecks of paint still clinging to their concrete bodies. One building out of this cluster stood out the most, much taller than any of the others. I could tell at one time this building might have been as tall as any of the local skyscrapers, but its top half was a jagged skeleton. It wasn’t hard to see where the broken top half had gone, as that part still lay broken across the ground, through still occupied and rebuilt with scrap metal and concrete slabs. Both buildings, the part still standing and the fallen half that lay on the ground in front of it were strung with bright lights and clearly occupied. I saw ponies coming and going from both buildings. On the tall, still standing half there was a sign forged from painted and welded together pieces of sheet metal.

Drifter’s Guild - All parties welcome.

Arcaidia looked at the buildings with her cold look gradually fading to curiosity, “This be Drifter’s place of business?”

“The standing portion is,” said Crossfire, nodding her head towards one building, then the other, “The bit that fell over is the lounge, bar, and barracks. Lower class Drifter’s sleep there, but if you hit A-rank or higher you can move to a suite in the standing portion. Way better beds. And drinks. Move it. Don’t want to keep Whiteheart waiting.”

The road up to the Drifter’s Guild wasn’t quite as well maintained as the others of the Inner City, perhaps because it was closer to the massive wall that enclosed the whole area. Just beyond the guild building the Inner City wall rose like a small mountain of concrete and metal, several bonfires burning at regular intervals along its length, tended to by guards. The road we walked went right between the two halves of the guild building. The fallen top half had its entire side exposed, though awnings of cloth attached to metal poles provided extra shade and protection from the elements. Within I could see countless tables set up filled to the brim with ponies, griffins, ghouls, and even a few more of those strange minotaur creatures, all going this way and that in a boil of carousing, drinking, and playing at cards or dice. I saw multiple bars buzzing with patrons, and servers rushing about keeping each table filled with flowing liquor.

Binge made a small, eager noise, “No fair so many ponies getting to have fun so early in the morning when Bingey hasn’t had a drop for herself.”

“Well,” I said, “If you really want you could go have some fun. I mean, I don’t know that we all have to be there for this meeting.”

“Technically only you are going to meet with Whiteheart,” said Crossfire, “So the rest of you can do whatever you want.”

“Now hold on a’ bleein’ sec!” said B.B, “Why can’t we stick by Long fer this meeting?”

Crossfire’s glance backwards was filled to the brim with exasperation, “Because that’s what Whiteheart wants. Now try to wrap your bird brain around this, but what the leader of the Drifter’s Guild wants, on his turf and in his own home, he tends to get.”

“Can’t you just ask him if it’s alright if some of my friends are with me?” I asked plainly.

“Ugh, okay, fine, I’ll ask.”

Binge blink, “Does that mean I’m going with you, bucky, or can I go get plastered and play?”

I nodded towards the bar, “Go, knock yourself out.” I paused, glancing questioningly at Crossfire.

“It’s fine,” Crossfire said, “The Drifter’s Rest is open to the public, the front half anyway. Back of the place is members only, but long as your filly friend doesn’t light the place on fire, she can do whatever.”

“Awwww, but fire is so pretty,” said Binge.

I looked at her with a level stare, “Behave, Binge. Enjoy yourself or whatever, but I want the building intact when I come back out, okay?”

She made a tugging gesture at her neck, “I feel the leash, Longykins, nice and tight. No fires, no blood. I promise.”

After that Binge happily bounced towards the bar. B.B, pursing her lips and sighing, said, “Guess somepony oughta make sure she don’t git inta no trouble.”

I nodded, “Good thinking. Don’t worry, B.B, I’ll be fine.”

“Think I’ll join them,” said Shard, “You need me for anything boss?”

Crossfire shook her head, “Do what you want, I’ll let you know if I need you.”

After B.B had floated off after Binge, Shard trotting along in her wake, that left myself, Arcaidia, and LIL-E to follow Crossfire up to the front doors of the Drifter’s Guild, the main building having a wood and metal welded gatehouse of sorts built around the building’s main doors. At least six armed ponies stood guard at this makeshift gatehouse, each wearing a rough assortment of armor and weapons, no two exactly alike. One stallion, a wiry fellow with white and brown splotched fur and a messy black mane, carrying a long sniper rifle over his shoulder looked us over and then said to Crossfire, “This the pony you were talking about? He’s a fucking colt, Crossfire. How the fuck did he give you any trouble.”

Crossfire paused in front of him, glanced back at me, then turned and with a swift hoof strike knocked the wiry stallion to the ground with a punch straight to the chin. “I don’t know, guess he just doesn’t have a glass jaw like you, Hawkeye. Now open the fucking door.”

The stallion, Hawkeye, spat out blood and a swift curse, rising with an angry look in his eye, but one glance at the other guards, none of which so much as made a twitch in response to Crossfire punching him, he just growled, “One of these days, Crossfire, you’ll catch a bullet and I won’t have to deal with your shit anymore.”

The gatehouse opened up and we were allowed to trot through. I noticed that while each guard eyes our weapons, especially Gramzanber set in its harness at my side, there was no call for us to disarm ourselves. There was no reception room or any kind of formal spot for us to check in once we were inside. The well lit halls on the interior almost immediately split between a more subdued and quieter lounge on our left and a set of broad stairs on the right, while to the front of us were door leading further into the building.

“This way,” Crossfire said, leading us to the stairs.

Unlike the other building with its packed, loud tavern, this building was almost disturbingly quiet. I did see ponies trotting about, here and there, and each of them eyed us sharply as we went by, but nopony stopped us as we ascended the stairs, which switched back upon each other again and again heading further and further up, each time reaching a landing on each floor while still going up.

“These floors correspond with Drifter rank,” Crossfire said, “Bottom floor is open to all D-ranks to collect their missions and pay. Higher up is C-rank all the way to the S-rank suites near the top. Beyond that is Whiteheart’s penthouse. Those boards you see just beyond these landings? That’s each individual rank’s job board.”

I did notice those, big boards set up on the wall at each floor’s landing where papers and fliers were posted, some with what looked like pictures others with just written text. Many had big numbers circled at the bottom, presumably the payment for any given job. The higher the floor we went, the bigger those numbers got, but also the fewer the jobs.

The one that supposedly corresponded to the S-rank hunters didn’t have a board at all, and at my curious look Crossfire said, “The S-rankers get their jobs straight from Whiteheart. There’s only four of them, and they get this whole floor to themselves.”

She sounded almost envious. We continued on, until the stairs ended at a landing with a single pair of double doors at the top, flanked by two heavily armed guards much like the ones from down below at the gatehouse.

“This here is Longwalk,” Crossfire said, “Whiteheart is expecting him.”

“He is,” said a mare, bright red with a bright blonde mane cut short, her unicorn horn glowingly slightly with a green aura that brushed one of six revolvers holstered along her chest, “But not the cripple or the bot.”

Arcaidia bristled at the word ‘cripple’ and I found my own face tighten in a scowl, but the blond mare didn’t seem to care, or even notice. Crossfire simply said, “They wanted to ask if the boss would see all of them. Would you pull the icecube out of your ass and go ask, Sunshine?”

Sunshine? That mare with the eyes like deadly flint, with a face that looked like it’d never once smiled, was named Sunshine? Somepony’s parents were waaaay off the mark. Sunshine’s eyes narrowed lips drawing down in a deep frown. She stared at Crossfire, and Crossfire stared right back. After almost a minute of this uncomfortable scene Sunshine gave a quick, sighing hiss, and opened the door, going inside and slamming it behind her.

The other guard, a plain gray stallion who looked more amused by the proceedings than anything else, didn’t say a word.

After another minute Sunshine returned, holding the door open, “Boss says it's fine. You can all go in.”

The way she said it sounded like she was dropping rocks with her words. I wondered if every Drifter was some kind of attitude case. Then again most the laughing had been happening down below in the other building. Maybe it was just the upper ranks that attracted the ponies with issues? Either way I did my best to ignore Sunshine’s death glare as I followed Crossfire past the doors, Arcaidia and LIL-E right behind me.

Beyond the door’s threshold was a remarkably clean and well kept office that was not as large or ostentatious as I was expecting from somepony who ran one of the city’s Guilds. Aside from a few bookshelves and filing cabinets the only furniture was a plain metal desk behind which was a high backed, swiveling leather chair. Behind this there was a window that looked out on the city, the view seeming to frame the stallion in the chair with the rising spires of the Inner City skyscrapers.

The pony in the chair was a unicorn, his coat almost painfully white, and his mane hung long past his shoulders in well groomed waves, its color a washed out, off red. Eyes even more intensely gold than Crossfire’s looked up at us from a stack of papers he was reading through and he smiled. It was a simple smile, yet it seemed to contain a hint of sharpness to it, like the stallion just saw some particularly tasty treat to sink his teeth into.

“Welcome,” he said in a smooth alto voice, “I apologize that I don’t have much seating in here. Last set of chairs were broken by a rather unruly client, who is no longer a client. In any case, please, make yourselves comfortable.”

The best we could do was sit on our haunches in front of the desk, which suited me just fine. Arcaidia shifted uncomfortably as she tried to figure out how to sit with her crutch, but she stubbornly kept shifting until she found a somewhat comfortable position. LIL-E remained floating just behind us, and Crossfire stayed standing, leaning against one of the filing cabinets.

We sat there for a minute, the white stallion starring at us. I felt uncomfortable under that stare, as if this pony was peeling away my skin and looking at everything underneath. His eyes trailed towards Gramzanber, but his expression didn’t alter from its small, eager smile. Eventually I cleared my throat, “Y-you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, my apologies if I stare. It’s rare to see a pony willing to risk death to make use of an ARM, rare enough weapons as it is. Moreso, I’ve been hearing of the ripples of your presence in this part of the Wasteland ever since you first stepped into Saddlespring. Did you know the Labor Guild was convinced you were an agent working for the Skull Guild, trying to sabotage their operations?”

I licked my dry lips, “I, uh, hadn’t heard that.”

“Oh there’s other rumors as well. That you’re working for the NCR as a spy. That you’re a foreign mercenary with delusions of taking over the local Raider tribes to to carve out your own little kingdom. I think my personal favorite is that you are an alien invader from the stars in the guise of a mere pony.”

My head felt light and dizzy as I shook it, “I have no idea how any of those rumors could get started! I didn’t even set hoof in this city until a couple of days ago!”

“True, but the destruction of Saddlespring was no small event, my young friend. It was the largest of the southern settlements besides Port Needle, and there were spies, agents, and friends of almost every Guild living in that place. The fact that you entered the settlement, and no less than twenty four hours later Saddlespring burned, well that alone put you on the radar of every Guild in Skull City. Despite your efforts, Longwalk, it still became known that you entered the city recently, and that alone increased the rumors of who you were and what you intentions might be.”

The stallion leaned forward, crossing his hooves in front of him as he leaned on his elbows, placing his chin atop his hooves. “Now, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Whiteheart, guildmaster of the Drifter’s Guild. I have decided to lend you aid in clearing up the fog of rumors around you, including pulling in some favors among the Labor Guild to have their guildmaster remove the bounty she placed upon you. I have also considered Miss Crossfire’s request to sponsor your membership in my Guild. Do you know why I am doing these things?”

“N-not exactly. I mean, I’m grateful, I really am. But I’m guessing there’s going to be a price tag to all this. Nothing’s free, right?” I said, then blinked as certain things he’d said sunk in, “Wait, it was the guildmaster of the Labor Guild that put the bounty on me!?”

Whiteheart laughed lightly, “Yes, well, Begonia has always been a rather salty mare. I do think she took the loss of her operation in Saddlespring a bit too personally, and very much wanted you in chains and a bomb collar. I imagined, had she caught you, you would have vanished into the deepest, most deadly mining shaft she could find and let you work yourself to death... after amputating a few of your legs for her collection.”

Arcaidia spat, “Sound like charming mare.”

“She has her positive qualities, but we’re not here to discuss my fellow guild leaders. As you say, Longwalk, my aid is not without its price, but I think you’ll find the cost well within the range of what you’ll be willing and able to pay.” Whiteheart said. “First of all, I trust Crossfire has already provided you with some caps in compensation for your part of the bounty.”

I glanced at Crossfire, who coughed and looked away, “What bounty?”

Whiteheart raised an eyebrow, “Oh, she didn’t mention that? Crossfire you really must learn to share pertinent information. I am referring to the mare you killed beneath my fair city. Redwire, was it? Yes, that was the name. You see, Crossfire gave a full report on what happened in the those abandoned salt mines. We’ve been suffering seemingly random attacks from both Gobs and strange creatures that most suspected were stemming from a Ruin beneath our city. The Guilds had combined some resources to place a bounty on the root cause, to be paid to anypony who dealt with the matter. Since you dealt with the matter by driving that ARM of yours through this Redwire mare’s heart, well, that bounty got paid out. The caps you received were what was left after deducting costs of having Begonia remove your other bounty, and paying your membership fees, not to mention several other expenses. I suppose Crossfire didn’t think it needed to be mentioned, but I wanted to thank you personally for removing such a burr from this city’s hoof.”

After a moment I simply nodded, “I only did what I had to. Nothing more.”

“So what is Skull City going to do about the Ruin that is down there?” asked LIL-E, suddenly. “That tower is gigantic. It's hard to believe nopony knew it was down there.”

Whiteheart tilted his head to regard the eyebot, “Oh, ponies know, just not many. You see Crossfire herself discovered that tower Ruin over six years ago, which was when it was brought to my attention. I think a few others might know of it, but it makes no difference. Nopony can enter the tower. It is protected by a magical barrier quite beyond any means we possess to bypass. Besides, Odessa occupies the area around that tower now.”

“Odessa!? You know about them!?” I shouted, nearly leaping back.

Whiteheart just blinked at me, smile amused, “You are an excitable one, aren’t you? Yes, I know of Odessa. My Drifter’s Guild has even had a few dealings with them in the past, though not so recently. They’ve become even more reclusive the past few years. Such an odd bunch of pegasi and griffons. I usually don’t credit their paranoia of an invasion from space with much thought, but perhaps after hearing of what happened in those salt mines I’ll have to revise that opinion.”

I sucked in a deep breath, trying hard not to think too much about my encounter with the Hyadean called Alhazad, or the recent knowledge that inside my blood were Hyadean nanomachines. I had to push those thoughts down hard and focus on the matter at hoof, “Well, as long as you’re not working for Odessa, we’re good. So, what is it you want me to do for you? That’s where this is leading, right? You have a job for me and my friends?”

Whiteheart’s smile deepened, even warmed, “Smart colt... or should I say stallion now? I see the cutie mark you have now. Earlier reports had you as a blank flank.”

“I... just got it,” I said, “Now, about this job?”

“It’s simple enough,” said Whiteheart, “I’ve already arranged the paperwork.” His horn lit up with a golden hue and a drawer in his desk opened, removing a small leather bag. From inside it he floated out a hexagon shaped metal disk, upon which was stamped the image of a spread winged hawk, the letter ‘B’ etched onto the center. He showed me the back, upon which was etched my name, and an image of my cutie mark.

“Normally there would be tests to ensure your capability, but given Crossfire’s report and sponsorship, that won’t be needed. As of this moment you are a B-rank Drifter of the Drifter’s Guild, Longwalk, with all privileges and responsibilities this entails. The first of those privileges will be access to all B-rank resources, such as the provisions store and a room on the B-rank floor for yourself and companions, if you want it. The first responsibility will be a mission I have for you, that begins this evening, so I hope you’ll take advantage to supply yourself and rest before then.”

I took the offered badge, unsure if it was going to be an asset or a leash, but placing it in my one of the pockets of my security armor, “Alright, glad to be working with you, but what is this mission, exactly? I need to get the NCR and am kind of on a tight timetable.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Longwalk,” said Whiteheart, “You’ll be departing for the NCR before the sun sets. That’s where the mission takes you, after all.”

I had to give Whiteheart credit, when he said something, he meant it. I was almost dazed by how quickly things seemed to be going, because it was still the afternoon when I found myself alongside my friends atop the upper flores of the Skull Guild, right where the burned out portions of the building’s upper floors took on the shape of the skull. I saw that the lights within that skull shapes eyes were formed from bonfires kept magically burning by a unicorn tender. The area wasn’t entirely open to the sky, but the top of the building had been burned off in the flames of the Great Fires, leaving many of the metal structure beams burned black and melted to points like old wax candles. Tarps and tent canvas was strung up to form a rough roof that kept the rain off.

There was plenty of open space on this top floor. There were stairs at either corner of the floor, built straight into the ground and wide enough to allow for cargo crates to be moved through to the roof. That was what was happening now, with a number of ponies actively loading crates of supplies aboard a vessel that was docked along the side of the tower. It was a long, wooden airship, its long cigar shaped canvas balloon sporting several long fins. Underneath the balloon was the airship’s main body, a familiar fish shape of thick wooden planks with large, rounded windows placed along the hull. Two decks high and easily over a hundred paces long, the airship was quite the sight, and one that had only just arrived. I’d watched it sail over the city from the south before reaching the Skull Guild’s headquarters tower, tying itself down with long chains while ponies went about loading it across a wide, thick docking plank forged from welded sheet metal.

It was an airship I’d seen before, from a memory orb. The Sweet Candy, the very same airship that the mare called Trixie had sailed on in the time before the Great Fires. I had no idea what to make of the fact that not only was the airship from two hundred years ago still intact, but was here in front of me, my ride among many others for what was a mission of the utmost importance. Or at least Whitemane certainly made the job sound that way. I still felt like my head had been stuffed with wool, trying to absorb it all.

Myself and my companions were, among several other Drifter’s, including Crossfire and her team, were assigned as escorts for what was going to be a diplomatic delegation consisting of representatives and leaders from not only every Guild in Skull City, but several of the most prominent gangs in the Outskirts, and the Crown Princess Purity of the Protectorate.

They were traveling to the NCR to participate in talks of what Whitemane described as a alliance of mutual protection and trade that would solidify the ties between the Wasteland’s three largest powers in the region; NCR, the Protectorate, and Skull City. If talks went well it’d apparently clear up bad blood between all three budding nations, between the Protectorate and Skull City for the war a number of years ago, and between NCR and its neighbors due to the NCR closing its borders to any and all immigration.

I barely understood the politics but I grasped that it was a big deal that the NCR was willing to host these talks and try to work out an alliance with its neighbors. The job of the Drifter’s Guild would be to provide protection to the delegates both on the way to the NCR, and during the talks there. According to Whitemane the talks would likely take several days, and that during that time there’d be some opportunity for the Drifter’s assigned to the task of security to also explore the NCR somewhat, since they’d be expected to work in shifts. I had no way of knowing for certain how much time we would have, but I had to hope it’d be enough for me to help Arcaidia track down the signal her sister had been sending.

We were waiting off to the side, as much out of the way of the ponies working to load up the Sweet Candy. There was thankfully a safety railing around the edge of the roof area, so I could put up my hooves and peer over the edge without too much fear of falling. It was quite the vista to see, the relatively intact and clean buildings of the Inner City stretching out below me, encased inside the bounds of the colossal wall that separated the Inner City from the Outskirts. The Outskirts themselves were a blur of hazy lights, a morning fog blanketed much of its boiling mass of uneven shanty shacks.

Lots of ponies just trying to live their lives the best they can. If I can look past the violent gangs, bounty hunters, and the fact that there’s a giant alien tower of unknown purposes buried beneath it, I could actually learn to like this city.

“It very strange place,” said Arcaidia beside me, her own silvery eyes gazing out at the view.

Behind us LIL-E floated around in a slow, unceasing pace, flying ten paces one way, then turning and floating back ten paces the other way. Not far from there Binge and B.B sat on their haunches, playing a card game, one in which Binge only seemed to half know, or care, about the rules, much to B.B’s increasing chagrin if the little growls and mutters coming from the pegasus were any indication. Still, the two seemed to be getting along, and I was glad for it.

“I don’t know,” I said to Arcaidia, “I haven’t seen any cities besides this one, so can’t really say if it's strange or not. I just find it amazing so many ponies can live in one spot and build all of this. A few weeks ago I couldn’t have even imagined a place like this.”

Arcaidia let out a light giggle, a sound that both made me feel relieved she could still laugh like that, and punched me with guilt that I just hadn’t been able to keep this mare completely safe from harm.

“In time, ren solva, you see much, much bigger city place than this. Just wait bit more of time,” she said as her eyes cast wistfully up towards the sky, then she seemed to shake herself, “I need stop thinking of home. Not good form for me to get... hmm, B.B, what phrase for thinking of home place fondly but with pain?”

“Homesick, hun, that’s the term yer lookin’ fer,” said B.B, then grimaced at Binge, “Got any fours?”

“Go fish.”

“Grr, are ya sure? This is the tenth time ya aid ‘go fish’ an’ I’m pretty sure I’m workin’ through every dang type o’ card there is! Ya ain’t cheain’, are ya?”

Binge just smiled wide with a flash of yellow teeth, her tail wagging, “Well we’ve been playing this game for half an hour, birdie, and you haven’t caught me a single fish yet! When you do, maybe I’ll give you a card.”

While B.B groaned, rubbing her forehead, I kept my attention on Arcaidia, “You’re, uh, homesick? I know a bit about how that feels. I think a lot about Shady Stream. I guess maybe you’ve got it worse, given how far away home is for you.”

I pointed a hoof up at the sky, and Arcaidia gave me a small, content smile, “Someday, Longwalk, I show you home. When this all over, you come with me to see it, yes?”

“You can count on it,” I said with resolve.

At that point it seemed the loading of supplies aboard the ship was nearly done, and I saw a mare appear at the top of the stairs following the last crates up. She was a dark shade that seemed to me a blend of dull purple and red, not quite either color. I’d never seen anything quite like it. Her mane and tail were a light gray in color, her mane done in two neatly tied back pigtails. She wore a long leather coat a shade darker than her own fur, lined in white, and across her back was a wide bladed sword. The weapon itself wasn’t the rusty, cobbled together variety I was used to seeing a lot of Wastelanders carry, but rather something that looked professionally forged from high quality metal. I didn’t see a hint of a firearm anywhere on her.

This mare, rather than join the ponies loading the last of the supplies, instead began to trot our way. Not just our way, but ours and the several other gathered Drifters. Crossfire and Shard were a dozen paces away by the other set of stairs, Crossfire leaning against a concrete support pillar and seemingly napping on her hooves while Shard busied himself sharpening one of his knives. They were the only Drifter’s I knew, but there were four others, including the skinny stallion Hawkeye who all milled about bored until the mare with the sword showed up. At that point everypony, Crossfire included, rooted their attention to the mare, some looking nervous, others, like Crossfire, looking on with calculating eyes.

When she got within a few paces between the various Drifters the dark coated mare stopped and looked among us with golden eyes that didn’t seem harsh, but were far from soft, as if she was measuring everything and everypony that she saw. When she spoke it was in a strong, almost cultured voice.

“The delegates will be boarding now. As at this point anything can have the potential to go wrong I am going to have us begin our duties immediately. The ship was swept clean for bugs and explosives already, but we’ll do one final check before the first delegate boards. After that we’ll rotate guard shifts while we’re airborne, starting with Crossfire’s team, followed by Hawkeye’s team, and then Longwalk’s team. I’ll take final watch. Two hours apiece. Questions?”

Nopony spoke, but I couldn’t help myself, I raised my hoof, and then felt exceedingly self conscious as most the other Drifters started at me.The mare looked at me and said, “Yes, what is it?”

“Um, well, just curious is all, but... who are you?”

Crossfire actually snorted out a laugh. If the gray maned mare felt any insult towards me not knowing her she showed no sign of it as she said, “My name is Applegate. I work for the Drifter’s Guild as one of the S-rank Drifters. Whitemane has placed me in charge of this operation, so you’ll be taking your instructions from me. As I understand it you’re just inducted into the Guild this day, so I’ll formally welcome you into the fold. If you have any more detailed questions about the Guild I can try to answer them, but for now we have work to do.”

I hadn’t known quite what to expect from an S-rank Drifter, but I found it easy to follow along with Applegate, who seemed to have a fairly formal but still friendly enough attitude. She led us aboard the Sweet Candy and assigned each team a part of the ship to search for a final sweep of any suspicious objects or activity. As we crossed the metal docking ramp I noticed LIL-E dragging behind a bit and fell back to walk alongside the eyebot.

“You okay there, LIL-E?” I asked cautiously. She’d been repaired, but still had a slightly battered look about her. It was clear to see where the metal had been patched up, not unlike the scars we flesh and blood ponies could get.

“I’ll be better once we get past the border,” said LIL-E, her volume lowered so even I could barely hear it, “I don’t think a lot of ponies know about me, even in the NCR. Most danger will be getting through any inspections at the border. Don’t know how thorough they are there. Plenty of eyebots still around, even if I’m not a standard model. Still, part of me is wishing I’d just sat this out and stayed at the Stable.”

I frowned a bit, wondering why she was so nervous about going the NCR, “Well, I’m glad you decided to come. And don’t worry, we can keep your secret safe,” I whispered, then Applegate was directing our search and I didn’t have much time for talking.

Arcaidia seemed to have a much clearer idea of what to look for than the rest of us, and took to the task with the kind of speedy, cool efficiency of somepony well trained in what she was doing. We’d been assigned the bottom deck, which was mostly filled with cargo rooms where the supplies had been just loaded. There were a few ponies aboard who I assumed had to be crew, trotting about and securing lines of cord or rope around the piled crates, tying them down tight. We checked every little nook we could find and B.B even went outside to fly around the exterior of the hull. We found no suspicious devices, certainly nothing that looked like a bomb. I wondered who would want to blow up the ship in the first place. Wouldn’t everypony benefit from an alliance being formed?

Well, I didn’t claim to understand how political matters worked, and my only job was to help keep the delegates safe, not reason out why somepony would want to sabotage this diplomatic mission in the first place.

LIL-E had taken the lead for the search, her robot body much better equipped with the kind of sensors that saw much and missed little. Arcaidia ensured we triple checked everything. Binge mostly hummed and whistled off key tunes. When we were as sure as we could be that the job was done we reported back with Applegate, who was waiting up on the deck. When we saw her she was speaking with a male griffon whose bulk made him almost twice as wide as I was, though he held a steady grace despite his girth. He wore a dark blue if faded and tattered uniform shirt and a white cap with a black bill, and underneath the clothes I noticed his fur and feathers, both a light shade of brown, were also molted or missing in places alongside the rotted flesh that indicated the griffon’s state as a ghoul.

When he spotted us the griffon gave a quick smile and a boisterous voice said, “Welcome aboard! Happy to have as many of you Drifter folk as I can on this voyage. The skies are safe enough between here and the New Canterlot Republic, but can’t ever be too careful I always say. Captain Bartholomew at your service folks, and once more welcome aboard my precious Sweet Candy.”

I halted a moment, blinking. It was less Bartholomew’s quickly friendly demeanor that caught me off guard so much as the name. I’d heard it before. I had to pick at my memory for a sec to recall where. The memory orb from Silver Mare Studios. Bartholomew was the name of the Sweet Candy’s captain back then, too... and he was a ghoul. Could he be the same captain from two hundred years ago? While it might not have had any immediate bearing on what me and my friends were presently doing, I had to admit I was curious what had happened back then to Trixie and Money Shot, and what had become of the movie they’d intended to film up north.

Both Bartholomew and Applegate gave me strange looks and I felt Arcaidia tap my shoulder.

“Ren solva, introductions?”

“R-right! Yes, uh, hi! I’m Longwalk, and these are my friends.”

Names were given, Arcaidia stepping forth first to give a saluting gesture and her full name. I wondered what all it truly meant. Luminarisio was a rather pretty and elegant sounding family name. It suited her. But what about the rest? Her rank, maybe? Still, Bartholomew took the long name in stride and bowed to Arcaidia, B.B, Binge, and LIL-E in turn, the smile never leaving his face or his eyes. However I did notice that when he looked at Arcaidia there was a spark of recognition followed by confusion that Bartholomew quickly wiped away to resume smiling jovially.

“Applegate was just telling me that the other Drifter’s hadn’t found anything lurking to blow up my ship. I’m hoping the news is similar from you?”

“I didn’t detect anything that could be explosive,” stated LIL-E, “And no listening devices either. I’d say our search was thorough. If we blow up mid-flight, feel free to blame me on our way down.”

Bartholomew chortled, “A robot with a sense of humor. I like it.”

LIL-E paused, then said, “I’m... not really a robot. I remote control this robot from... elsewhere.”

“Really?” the griffon’s eyebrow shot up, “Well, among Drifters I suppose it takes all kinds. At any rate we’re casting off as soon as all our VIPs are aboard. Feel free to enjoy the view from the deck, or I can have one of the crew show you to your cabins.”

At a glance I could tell most of my friends wanted to stay on deck. B.B seemed to be enjoying the height and fresh air. Binge was all but bouncing off her legs while giving the deck rails a look like she wanted to perch on them, and Arcaidia held a glint of curiosity in her eyes that said she wanted to enjoy the sights as well. Only LIL-E accepted the offer of a cabin, and floated off to leave the rest of us to find spots around deck that would be out of the crew’s way. Applegate stayed up top as well, but I think more to keep guard on things. Her eyes remained sharp and seemed to drink in everything around her. She moved with a strange stillness that seemed both smooth as running water and hard as stone at the same time.

I found myself wondering how skilled she was with that sword. I didn’t really have a good sparring partner among my friends. Even Binge, the only other melee fighter, was a little haphazard in her style for me to really get a lot of good practice in with her.

I located a nice spot near the corner of the ship’s stern where a set of small steps led up to a raised portion, a forecastle I later learned, and I could nestle up against the forecastle wall and railing. Skull City stretched out to my right and I could watch the boarding ramp to my left. B.B and Arcaidia made for the ship’s bow, while Binge hefted her upper body onto the rail near me, licking her lips and closing her eyes as a breeze blew by, ruffling her messy poof of a mane.

My eyes wandered and I almost didn’t realize what I was doing until I starting thinking how nice she really looked when just leaning there on the rail, looking content rather than crazy or bloodthirsty. If she cleaned up a bit more... and she wasn’t too skinny. If she ate healthy and regularly those bones might fill out with a few curves, and what was there was hardly bad to look at; the scars were actually kind of fascinating.

“You shouldn’t look unless you also plan to touch,” said Binge with a playful lilt to her voice and small, happy smirk.

I coughed, looking away, “Sorry, I was just, um, thinking. My mind was wandering was all, and you happened to be there, that’s all.”

“Mmmhmm,” she hummed, flicking her tail playfully.

I pointedly didn’t look back at her, fixing my attention instead upon the boarding ramp, which thankfully gave me something else to look at as the first of the delegates began to board. Most of them were ponies I didn’t recognize, though many stood out in various ways, allowing me to mentally guess at which Guild’s they represented.

The first batch were a trio, two mares and a stallion, all earth ponies, who wore heavy, soot stained clothes and even though they looked as if they’d tried to clean up there were still smudges of oil here and there on their coats. Not a one of them had a cutie mark that didn’t involve a tool or gear or something similar. Mechanics or Blacksmith’s Guild, surely.

The next was a pair, griffon and unicorn pony. The unicorn was a mare with a short cut blond mane that was straight as razors, but not half as sharp as her eyes, blue gems that looked at everything with hostile scrutiny. She was clad in matte black combat armor and had several weapon holsters for pistols and a snub nosed sub machine gun. The griffon, if anything, looked like he was half asleep, yet somehow that didn’t change the air of ready violence that covered him like a cloak. He was dark gray upon his lion lower half and white with dusty brown tinged feathers up top. He wore a leather poncho with short tassels, and the only visible weapons he carried were a large chambered semi-automatic pistol with a curved leather wrapped grip holstered on his left hip, and a sword at his right that caught my eye because, much like Applegate’s larger blade, this sword looked professionally forged from steel rather than carved from rusted metal.

“Wonder who they are,’ I said aloud, and Binge made a small humming noise as she glanced at the pair out of the corner of her eye.

“Enforcer’s Guild. Hmm, no, both Enforcers and Security Guild.”

I wrinkled my brow, “What’s the difference?”

“Enforcer’s guard the Inner City like happy little watch dogs, chewing on the bones of the citizens that make the Guilds unhappy. Security Guild are plucky cats that strut as mercenaries; direct competition to the Drifter’s only they do guard work exclusively. Fought Security Guild ponies lots of times back in bloodier, messier days. Always guarding caravans or tiny settlements. They strut, but scream the same as the rest.” Binge frowned slightly, her eyes casting back over the railing to look at the sky, “Mr. Happy could tell you stories, bucky, but this is too nice a day for it. Not until the rain comes.”

I gave her a quizzical look, then resumed watching others board. More and more came, until I wondered if the Sweet Candy had enough room for them all. There were ponies in clean suits, flanking a heavyset mare whose graying mane was done up in an intricate bun like wasp nest, who wore all black and white in her slim cut suit. She had gray fur as well, and I spotted a unicorn horn sticking from her bun. I also noticed her cutie mark was a set of chains wrapped into a pair of interlocking circles; the symbol for infinity.

She had a glaring look, but I barely noticed her as beside her, among the ponies following her in suits, I recognized somepony and nearly stood up.

“Iron Wrought!” I didn’t quite shout, but I was loud enough that the procession of ponies, including Iron Wrought himself, all looked my way. He looked well, with his black mane clean cut and combed and wearing a set of well tailored leather armor that looked in much better condition than the last set he had. He was the only one in his group that was armed, his 10mm submachine gun slung over his back.

His blue eyes regarded me with wide recognition and something almost like panic for a moment before he wiped the look on his face and replaced it with hardened calm. The mare with the gray maned bun eyed me and Binge like we were piles of unpleasant slime she nearly trod underhoof, then turned to Iron Wrought.

“Do you know them?” her voice was as smooth as sweet honey and didn’t fit the sneer on her lips.

Iron Wrought nodded, and I could see his sigh from across the deck, “Yes, Guildmistress. He is the one in my field report. Longwalk. The mare with him is a... former Raider, named Binge.”

He didn’t sound like he was enjoying saying even that much but it was clear who his boss was, and I felt my mouth turning dry. So this was the Guildmistress of the Labor Guild? What had Whiteheart named her? Begonia? The name did not suit her. At Iron Wrought’s words she flicked her tail, which was done up in intricate braids, and turned her nose up towards me and Binge. She said nothing, and didn’t have to. Whatever deal Whitemane had made to have my bounty removed there was a promise of retribution burning inside that mare’s flat, black eyes. I suddenly realized I’d need to watch my back on this trip.

Iron Wrought said nothing to me, and seemed to pointedly not look my way as he and his comrades from the Labor Guild went below decks. I breathed a little easier with Begonia out of sight, but felt a pang of regret my reunion with Iron Wrought was so overshadowed by his boss seeming to still want my head on a platter.

“She’s filled with spit and brimstone bucky,” said Binge, her eyes narrowed to slits, “Another Redwire waiting to happen. So much better if she falls off the ship on the way to make a hefty splat on some poor radscorpion’s nest... that’s what Mr. Happy says,” she pulled out the dirty sock puppet, which nodded at me, and I swear I thought I saw the thing wink. My imagination had to be getting to me. Not enough sleep.

“Well, tell Mr. Happy that we want this diplomatic mission to go smoothly and mid-air assassinations probably won’t help with that. Also, no murder. Didn’t I explain to you no murders?”

“Not murder, just a... friendly accident.”

She was keeping her voice down but I still looked around, just in case. Luckily there was nopony listening in, but I gave Binge the stinkeye just the same and she gave up with a playful laugh and a shrug. I sincerely hoped she wouldn’t try anything. No matter what trouble Begonia might cause, murder was off the table. Self-defense, certainly, but only when and if it came up.

I heard the sound of heavy hoof falls, the distinct clank of heavy metal and hydraulics preceding the arrival of a set of ponies clad in encasing shells of power armor. It was the honor guard for Crown Princess Purity, the polished metal of their power armor seeming to stand in defiance of the grim of the Wasteland. Of the four armored ponies one was wearing a cloak over their power armor that was deep blue lined in cornflower yellow, and bearing a sigil of a bird in flight clutching a flower, also stitched in bright yellow.

This pony spoke in a deep stallion’s voice, only somewhat scratchy from being piped out through a speaker built inside the muzzle of the power armor, “Make way for her Highness!”

A polite voice then said, “Please, Phalanx, you don’t have to bark at them. We’re not back home, remember? We must strive to be more understanding.”

The speaker was the small, wispy Princess Purity. She was wearing a similar, elegant but simple black dress to the last one I saw her in, though this one was joined by a thick, black wool cloak that draped across her form. She glanced about the ship with her wide gold eyes and had a happy smile on her face. “We don’t have anything like this in the Protectorate. What a wonderful relic of the old age.”

The power armored stallion, Phalanx, made a grumbling noise, then, “Please, Princess, we must secure you in your cabin. There are too many ponies with... ill looking countenances on this ship.”

Though I couldn’t see the stallion’s eyes I could swear he specifically swept his gaze over me and Binge when he said that. Purity herself also looked our way, and her smile widened, “Oh! Sir Longwalk! Hello!”

She took a step towards us but Phalanx’s metal shod hoof came up to gently stop her. “Princess, your cabin is this way. If you wish to socialize with the locals perhaps it can wait until after you’ve settled?”

I saw Purity’s lips purse into a tight pout, her eyes giving her apparent caretaker a stiff glare, but the impassive stance of Phalanx seemed to gradually subdue her. She gave me an apologetic smile, calling out, “We will speak soon, Sir Longwalk. I’d like to meet your friends as well.”

As Phalanx led her away alongside his fellow armored ponies I heard him say, “You should not use the honorific ‘sir’ with one who is not a knight, Princess. It is not proper.”

I didn’t hear Purity’s reply a they went below deck, and I was left blinking. Beside me Binge gave a tittering laugh, “This ship is being stuffed full of all sorts of pretty ponies, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think the big guy was very fond of us,” I muttered, wondering what had that Phalanx guy in such an uptight mood. Maybe he was just trying to keep his charge safe. Still, the guy could stand to loosen the rod from his rear end. Thus far we had one pony on this trip who clearly still wanted me dead, and another one that looked as if he’d scrape me off the ship like I was a bit of stray trash as soon as speak to me.

The last group to board, however, made me forget about the rest for a moment. First was Whitemane, but I’d expected to see him, as he’d already told me he’d be coming to represent the diplomatic end of things for the Drifter’s Guild. It was other ponies in the group that surprised me.

One was Knobs, moving along with her somewhat awkward skill as she pulled herself along on forelegs, balancing her rear prosthetic leg wheels with remarkable ability. I hadn’t expected to see her, but she gave me a wide grin when she saw me and Binge. She was wearing her black Skull Guild coat, laden with saddlebags. More surprising than seeing her was that Blasting Cap was perched on Knobs’ back, looking almost content, until she saw me at any rate. Blasting Cap’s tiny faced scowl was the polar opposite of Knobs’ grin, like a bizarre, twisted mirror.

There was another pony in the group who arrested my attention even further, one who was speaking softly with Whitemane in a smooth, almost regal voice that carried far even though I got the impression she was trying to speak softly.

“It shall be as I say, Whitemane. You are more suited to these talks than most, and I do not wish Begonia or Rupert running roughshod over the other representatives. You shall lead these talks, and I shall support you,” this pony was saying, while Whitemane was nodding slowly, his own expression unreadable.

The pony who was talking was taller than any I had seen, twice or more the height of even big ponies like Brickhouse. However she was also slender, with long legs and sharp, defined features. Beautiful, in a strangely unreal way, like she was a painting or drawing instead of a real, flesh and blood pony. Her coat was a dark shade of purple, with a long, straight mane and tail just a shade lighter, the same as her eyes. A vast horn sprouted from her forehead... and a pair of equally large, sweeping wings extended from her back.

I blinked, stunned. What was she? I’d only seen ponies like that once, in the mosaics of the church I’d battled Shattered Sky in. But it couldn’t be... the Princesses, the Goddesses of old Equestria were dead.

Beside me Binge had gone very quiet, her eyes glittering as they fixed on the... on the alicorn as well. Binge’s tail had gone still and I noticed her ears had flattened against her skull.

Whitemane was replying to the alicorn, saying, “I understand, Star Soul, but I’d prefer not to be caught between the other guildmasters as the sole vanguard of reason.”

“If I step in too much you know what will happen Whitemane,” said the alicorn, Star Soul, her voice filled with calming reason, “They will accuse me of attempting to take control, again and everything will fall apart to more pointless infighting. I shouldn’t even be coming along with all of you. I was cast out of the Followers, and I know my sisters will not be happy to see me again.”

“The Followers of the Apocalypse do not rule the NCR, no matter how well loved their mistress is,” said Whitemane, “And I need you here. If you stayed behind it’d just give the other guildmasters the boost of ego they need to try taking over. All Guilds must be represented, and you are the Guildmistress of the Skull Guild.”

“Be that as it may, you are still most suited to leading the negotiations...” Star Soul said, then trailed off as her eyes fell on me. I felt suddenly exceedingly self conscious, as if I was covered in too much dirt and my mane wasn’t properly brushed. But the look passed and all Star Soul did was gain a small, knowing smile, and lean over to whisper something to Knobs, who all but nodded her head off. Star Soul gave me one last look, and I heard Binge growl slowly under her breath, before the alicorn continued on with Whitemane towards the door to the lower decks.

Knobs in the meantime wheeled herself over to us with her smile never wavering, just the same as Blasting Cap’s glower never faltered. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Arcaidia and B.B returning from the bow, trotting towards us.

“Heya Longwalk, Binge! Good to see you guys here. Oh, hey, looks like the crews all here!” said Knobs brightly as Arcaidia and B.B joined us, “Is LIL-E around too? Crossfire told me you guys managed to find her. I’m happy for that...”

She quieted for a moment, mood seeming to slightly somber, “Crossfire also told me about what happened beneath the city. I’m sorry you had to go through all that, Longwalk. If I’d known that would happen I would have never agreed to you trying any crazy plan to pay me back a few lousy caps.”

“Knobs, it's fine,” I said, all too aware of the lingering pains in my body and trying not to recall all the ways I got them, “Things might not have gone how I’d planned, but the fact is, if I hadn’t been caught by Redwire, then there’d still be dozens of ponies trapped down there, being forcibly turned into monsters. We were able to put a stop to that, so even if I’m coming out of it with a fresh set of scars, I can live with them because we got some good to come out of it all.”

“Besides, Longykins looks good with scars,” said Binge with an appreciative grin, to which B.B gave her a smack upside the head with a wing. “Ow, birdie, what? He has a nice butt, and the scars make it look better!”

Arcaidia turned flat eyes towards Binge, raising her crutch leg, “I have metal peg for leg now to smack with, so behave, otherwise bath time moved up to today, when we find nice rain cloud to toss you through.”

“Yeesh, the protective big sister act doesn’t suit you at all, Icyblue.”

Knobs just laughed, “Glad to see you’re all still getting along as well as ever. It’s good to know you guys will be working security for this trip. Makes me sleep easier.”

“Yeah,” said Blasting Cap in a leaden tone, “Just don’t trip and fall over the railing, now. That would be terrible.”

I looked to the filly, frowning, “I already have a pony on this ship who wants me dead, so what’s another? Just if you’re going to sneak up behind me and push me off the ship, could you do me a favor and wait until we’re actually in the NCR? I want to feel like I accomplished something before dying.”

Blasting Caps tiny face scrunched up, her little forelegs crossing over her chest in a surly gesture, “Are you making fun of me, asshole?”

‘No, I’m just really tired,” I said truthfully. Even with Misty Glasses sleeping pills I hadn’t gotten that much sleep the other day. My excitement at the prospect of flying on an airship to the distant NCR was helping keep me awake, but I was going to hit a bunk as soon as it was possible.

Knobs had a soft frown on her face, an expression that didn’t suit the mare’s usually smiling features at all, and looked back at Blasting Cap, “Let’s go inside, hm? You’re hungry, right? We can get something to eat.”

“...F-fine, I guess, if it means I don’t have to look at his ugly face,” growled Blasting Cap.

“Before ya’ll go ta feed the little hellion, I’m kinda curious Knobs, what’re ya doin’ on this whole diplomatic mission?” asked B.B, “Not that it ain’t a good thing ta have ya around but I’m curious why the Skull Guild would bring y along.”

“Oh, well, I’m kind of an important witness,” Knobs said, rubbing her hoof in circles on the deck, “You see Guildmistress Star Soul wants to impress upon the NCR the dangers many ponies still face beyond its borders, and, well, I’ve been both involved in helping refugees get away from the Raider army, not to mention the recent Ruin monster attacks in the city. The Guildmistress felt having a pony who witnessed it all and could give a personal account might help the NCR understand our plight and be willing to open up their border again.”

“I guess bringin’ the little bundle o’ violence was unavoidable, eh?” B.B said, nodding at Blasting Cap, who just growled like a tiny canine creature.

“Well, she’s my charge now, and I can’t just leave her by herself. Besides I thought seeing the NCR might do her some good, right Blasting Cap?” said Knobs, smiling back at the filly, “There are clear skies in the NCR. You’ve never seen the real sky, right?”

“...No,” the filly said with a grumble, looking torn between wanting to keep glaring at me and almost looking excited at the idea of seeing a sky that wasn’t made of gray, brooding clouds.

After Knobs trotted off to go to the ship’s mess hall the rest of us stuck together to watch the last of the passengers boarding. I didn’t take too much notice of them, save for one mare, who gave me an appraising look as she cantered across the deck. She had a granite gray coat, and a long wave of honey gold mane. She wore a tight fitting black set of leather barding, and I noticed her cutie mark was a string of musical notes. She didn’t quite seem to fit in with any of the other delegates, which was part of why she stood out. However other than the one look she shot towards me and my friends she didn’t say anything, just passed by and went with all the other delegates below decks.

The crew ponies brought up the metal ramp and secured it to the deck, then Bartholomew strode around, giving quick orders to his crew and glancing towards us, “We’re about to cast off. Anyone is free to enjoy the view on deck, but be watchful of the railings. When the Sweet Candy moves, landfolk like yourselves can get a little unsteady on your hooves.”

“We’ll manage, Cap’n,” said B.B with a wave, and I added, “I’ve only fallen out of one flying machine so far, so I’m good.”

We were joined on deck by Crossfire, of all ponies, who strangely enough looked a tad harried as she came up on deck, glancing back at the hatch behind her. Curious, I trotted over to her. “Something up?”

“What? Ugh, no. Not that it’s any of your business if there was,” she said with a gruff tone, brushing past me, “I just need some fresh air. It’s way too crowded down below.”

Watching her head to the back of the deck, I just blinked in wonderment. What had gotten under her hide? Well, perhaps I was overthinking it. Crossfire being grumpy wasn’t exactly a new thing. Even if we seemed to have something of a tentative truce going on between us I supposed I couldn’t pretend that we were actually friends. Setting her from my mind I just gave my friends a shrug and then tilted my head towards the bow of the ship, where if there was going to be a good view, it’d definitely be there.

They joined me there, though I noticed B.B was gazing at the sky with a critical and nervous eye. Seeing my look she said, “Keepin’ an eye peeled fer any Odessa pegasi or griffons that might be flyin’ about. You haven’t fergotten they’re still lookin’ fer you an’ Arc, right?”

I actually kind of had, for a moment. Being reminded of it made me suddenly quite nervous, glancing around at the skyline, half fearful of seeing an Odessa patrol raining down from the clouds. “I hadn’t thought of it, sorry. Do you think me and Arcaidia should go below deck? Keep out of sight?”

“We should be alright,” said B.B, “I’m thinkin’ if they got any spotters posted around that they’re all focused on the city below us, an’ ain’t paying much mind to this rickety skyboat, and iffin they were, we’d already be gettin’ swarmed by Odessa troops by now. Nah, I think we’re good.”

I tried to relax a little, though I kept eyeing the sky as the chains keeping the Sweet Candy moored to the Skull Guild tower were one by one unhitched and reeled in. There was a guttural blast of air from the engines as the propellers mounted along the hull and balloon flared to life, pipes spewing gusts of black smoke. On the aft deck there was a wheelhouse with a wide open window in front, inside which I could see Bartholomew at the helm of a large wooden wheel, and several crew members at smaller instrument panels beside him.

The griffon ghoul was looking at Arcaidia, for just a moment, before his eyes focused on the helm and he turned the wheel in a long spin that shifted rudders all over the ship. Pace by pace the Sweet Candy rolled away from the tower, and picked up speed as it glided along past the few remaining skyscrapers of the Inner City. I felt the wind pick up, rushing past me and ruffling my long mane, in desperate need of a cut, but I’d come to actually rather like its length at this point. Beside me B.B ruffled her wings, clearly enjoying the feeling of flight even if it wasn’t her doing the flying. Arcaidia had a wistful look in her eyes, fixed upon the horizon ahead of us. Meanwhile Binge had her eyes on the ground below, humming a sketchy tune under her breath.

Slowly I let my fears and worries, built up over the crush of the past few days drain out of me. There’d be time enough for all of them later, for now I just enjoyed the view. The hundred pace high wall that surrounded the Inner City passed beneath us, and I could clearly make out the heavily armed guards that patrolled the rusted metal spine of welded metal and concrete. Many were looking up at us, an airship a rare enough sight, and a few ponies even waved up at the Sweet Candy as it flew overhead.

The vast boiling expanse of the Outskirts stretched around the city, a carpet of metal shacks and huts, built into and atop of one another like metal waves in a roiling sea. The dirt streets like muddy veins teamed now with thousands of ponies, ghouls, and griffons, even more that it had seemed just a few days ago when I’d passed through. Fires and electric lights both dotted the Outskirts and filled the air with a smokey haze. Even as the Sweet Candy passed over I could hear the distant pop of gunfire, one gang or another fighting over territory, even as the city faced the threat of the Raider army to the east.

Soon the Outskirts gave way to the expanse of dead ruins of what was once Detrot’s miles and miles of suburbs. I could still make out the piles of skeletons lining the roads, and seeing the forest of broken concrete and burned out homes I could see the roaming packs of feral ghouls now and again picking through the ruins like specters.

Then, when I gazed east, I could see in the far off distance the battle lines where Skull City’s forces still held a line ten or so miles east against the Raider horde. I could see no details, just the faint pops of light from the occasional explosion and the coiling bands of black smoke from campfires. The large river that fed Skull City’s reservoir snaked out that way, with its two bridges, one of which was apparently now held by the Raiders if rumors I’d heard were true. I hoped that the Raiders didn’t make any headway in the time I’d be gone, or that the fighting might be done by then. I didn’t like the idea of the Raiders breaking through to reach the Outskirts. Even if the gangs would fight back viciously and make the Raiders pay in blood for every inch of street, there’d be far too many deaths, far too many ponies caught in the fighting, for me to want anything other than for that to be avoided.

“Outta your hooves, bucky, out of all our hooves,” said Binge, seeing my look, to which I just gave a sad sight and smile.

“I know. Even if I stayed, I’m not sure there’s much I can do against an army.”

“Not yet,” said Arcaidia with a light laugh, silver mane getting in her face from the wind, to which she brushed it aside, “We find sister, find Ark of Destiny, get you fixed. All make more sense and be better then, ren solva. You see.”

I hoped she was right. It was almost surreal, finally being on our way to the NCR. How long ago was it that I’d first left Shady Stream with Arcaidia with that simple goal in mind? Two weeks? More like three, now. I was losing track of the exact days. Such a short span of time, but so much had changed for me, and I’d seen so much.

Thinking about it, I turned my eyes back to the world floating by below us, and realized something that both amazed me while at the same time made me feel rather small. As the Sweet Candy climbed higher, keeping just below the ceiling of thick gray clouds, I got a very wide view of the landscape below us. I could pick out the lay of the land and though the details were limited at this height, I could see almost every step of my journey so far.

To my left, far to the east and south, I saw the huge range of mountains that stretched north to south like a wall. Somewhere in those mountains was Stable 106 and the Guardian Shrine Trailblaze had found, but more than that, I could spot the small valley pass where my home of Shady Stream was. Empty now, but I had to fervently hope I could rescue my tribe and bring them back to that valley. To the west of that I could spot the highway Arcaidia and I had first met Crossfire on, her caravan of Labor Guild slaves being attacked by Balloons. From there it was easy to turn my gaze a little further west and south to see the remains of Saddlespring, like a blackened patch in the reddish brown desert of the Wasteland.

I suppressed a sigh and a feeling of regret for the town’s fate, and looked a bit north of it, where suburban ruins became thicker. I couldn’t quite figure which building was the school I’d had my first fight with Raiders in and had run into Binge... and both Braindead and Redwire. I never would’ve imagined sparing those lives would have had so many consequences for my life, both terrible and... I turned my glance towards Binge briefly... and good.

Much further west of Saddlespring’s remains I saw the stretch of canyons that melded into the hills at the base of a smaller range of mountains than the eastern ones. Among those canyons was the hidden entrance to Stable 104, a strange new home for myself and my friends, with interesting occupants who had started out as enemies but now were both allies and friends. I gave a fond pat on my saddlebags, where I was freshly stocked with various grenades, and Misty Glasses recently concocted jar of paralytic toxin. The spider ponies had really gone above and beyond the call of decency, not only helping us, but housing refugees from both my tribe and Saddlespring, turning the Stable into a growing community probably more diverse than anything in this slice of the Wasteland.

I had to shift to the other side of the bow to look back eastward and a bit north. I couldn’t spot Silver Mare Studios, but I thought I recognized the general area it was in. It’d been such a impulsive decision to go there to answer a plea for help from Odessa, yet I couldn’t regret the choice. Glint and his squad had needed the help, and thinking of him now, and his mother Sunset, perhaps my only real allies inside the organization that was hunting me and Arcaidia besides my father... well I’d willingly face down a Hellhound again if it came down to protecting others.

From there I had no real idea where the church I’d battled Shattered Sky and Black Petal in, though I knew it was a good deal further east and just a bit south of Skull City, which by now was just a distant line of metallic brown and red. And on the Sweet Candy flew, leaving it all behind.

“It wasn’t very far... was it?” I found myself saying, wonderingly. So much had happened, yet seeing it all now from this height, I realized I’d only seen the barest fraction of the world. It was so vast, so unbelievably large, it almost made me lose my balance.

I felt a steadying hoof on my shoulder, Arcaidia next to me, a knowing, wry half-smile on her face, “Be steadfast, ren solva... it gets bigger still. The world, the galaxy, it is all bigger than you can know, but be steadfast. You can see it all, one day.”

Looking into her bright silver eyes, I could only nod, “Together, I hope.”

She just laughed, nodding in return. Then suddenly Binge was beside us, grinning in crazed delight, “Okay, now kiss!” Her hooves came up and tried to shove me and Arcaidia together, but B.B was on the ball, hopping over and sliding behind Binge, managing to get the mare into a double leg bar that swept Binge to the deck with a grunt.

“Now now, ain’t no need ta be playin’ jokes on ‘em, Binge! Besides ain’t ya the one always tryin’ ta git Long inta bed wit ya?”

“Well, duh, but c’mon,” Binge pointed at Arcaidia, “She’s hot too. Threesome!”

B.B groaned and gave Binge a smack on the head, while me and Arcaida had stepped back from each other. I could see her scrunching her muzzle and looking away with her mane hiding the red in her face, while I didn’t need a mirror to feel the heat in my own.

“Well, that was awkward,” I said.

“Yes, awkward is word that fits,” Arcaidia agreed, eyes starring icy daggers at Binge and face still red in a way that was hard to say if it was embarrassment or anger.

“Awww, they’re so cute, like tiny kittens booping snouts,” said Binge, giggling while still held by B.B, “This is going to be a fun trip. All nice and cooped up like packed sardines rotting in the same can.”

“I could toss her overboard, ya know,” brought up B.B, sounding only half joking. Arcaidia waved a dismissive hoof.

“No, ren solva only complain at us if we get rid of silly green one. If she so heated, we give her cold shower.”

Before Binge could get too far in her protesting whines about the idea of showers, cold or otherwise, if they didn’t involve me, we all heard a loud clearing of a throat nearby and turned to see Applegate standing at the head of the steps up to the bow, looking at us with incredulous amusement.

“I’m not interrupting anything am I?” the mare asked, an eyebrow slightly raised.

I rubbed the back of my head, grinning sheepishly, “Uh, not really. This is pretty normal for us.”

“Far as ya can stretch the term ‘normal’,” said B.B, narrowing her eyes at Binge, “Ya gonna behave so I can let ya up?”

Binge’s face scrunched up a look of what could either have been serious thought, or desperate need for the little filly’s room, “Hmmmmm, I suppose I can pretend to not be mentally envisioning a scenario with me, Longy, Bluefrost, and a tub of unidentifiable lubricants.”
That was probably about as good a response as B.B was going to get and by the look on her face, she knew it, and let Binge go, who sprang to her hooves like a snapped rubber band. Applegate was still giving us an odd look, but slowly fixed the gaze on me.

“I came to talk to you about two things. One, now that we’re leaving the relative safety of Skull City airspace I’ll be having each Drifter team working sentry duty on deck for alternating six hour shifts. It's not likely we’ll run into any trouble, but it's not impossible that we might run afoul of either a rogue dragon or pirates.”

“Pirates?” I asked, unable to hide my ignorant, blank stare, which soon turned into an even more wide eyed look, “Dragons?”

“Ah, yes, you haven’t traveled much, I understand,” said Applegate, “In brief, dragons are rare, but not unheard of dangers that are highly territorial and will randomly stake their territory just about anywhere. As for pirates, they too are rare, but ever since the Enclave fell apart there have been a few bands of former soldiers or citizens among the pegasi that turned to banditry of the skies. Most have been driven from NCR held airspace, but we’ll be crossing uncontrolled parts of the sky before reaching NCR borders, so it’s possible we may encounter a group of such brigands desperate enough to attack an airship.”

“I see...” I said, not quite holding back a sigh, “Guess no matter where we go there’s going to be ponies getting desperate.”

“It is my firm hope to avoid such a complication to this journey, but vigilance is a small price to pay for safety,” said Applegate, her eyes flicking towards my side where Gramzanber was sheathed, “Now, the second thing I wished to talk to you about. Whitemane has explained to me that you are experienced in combat with your unique weapon, but lack any formal training. As a favor to the Guildmaster, I have agreed to extend an offer to provide a few...lessons, during your off time during this mission. If you wish.”

“Huh, that sounds like a pretty good idea, actually,” I said. Even if the strange nanomachines floating around inside my head were imprinting information there that helped me learn how to fight faster than normal through the battles I’d been going through, I’d be crazy to say now to a few actual lessons from somepony who probably knew a lot more about combat than I did. “So Whitemane asked you to do this?”

Applegate’s face remained politely formal, but I saw a quirking twitch in her eyes, as if she was resisting the urge to look behind her. But the only pony back there, pacing around the aft deck, was Crossfire... and now that I was looking at Crossfire I noticed she was stiffly trying not to glare at Applegate.

Okay, what’s going on there? I wondered, but shook off the thought.

“Whitemane hinted at it being a good idea to help our guild’s newest member survive his first assignment,” said Applegate, “But I will also say that I have an interest in teaching you some skill myself. Or at least seeing how skilled you are and how I can steer you towards improvement. It will be just under two days to reach the NCR, then we shall be there for at least three more. We shall train two hours on each of those days, at your earliest convenience. While not much time, it should be enough for me to aid you somewhat.”

She made an oddly formal bow to us, “With that, I take my leave. You all have the third guard shift, so I suggest you get some food and rest before then.”

With that she departed, leaving my friends and I to own devices. One by one hunger called my friends below deck to the mess hall, B.B going first while dragging a reluctant Binge nearly by the tail. Arcaidia stayed on deck with me a time longer, as the ruins of Detrot gave way to a wide plain of dry red desert Wasteland, and ahead on the horizon was a shining white belt of bleached dunes, still many miles off.

We didn’t say anything to each other, just enjoyed some companionable silence that reminded me of our first day trotting into the Wasteland. When Arcaidia glanced over at me with a small eager smile, she raised her Pip-Buck, its shiny smooth screen showing it’s map. The map that had a dotted line leading steady south, where we were now traveling. The line that’d lead to Persephone, or at least a clue as to the fate of Arcaidia’s sister, somewhere in the NCR. It’d taken a lot of twists and detours, our journey, but we were finally on our way.

Next stop, the New Canterlot Republic.

Footnote: 25% to next Level.

Author's Note

So yes, at long last Longwalk and Arcaidia are actually going to the place they'd originally set out to go to in the first place. It'll be fun to get to the NCR and deal with a different environment than the Skull City Wasteland. Keeping in mind this story takes place roughly eighteen years post the original Fallout Equestria I can explore ideas on what the NCR would be like with that much time to develop.

For this chapter's story spotlight I'd like to toss a recommendation to check out New Roam: Innovatus, written by Delvius. Its a rather interesting take on the zebra lands that puts a strong emphasis on the Roman influences in the culture, which makes it pretty unique. The main character also has more of a introspective and philosophical bent than most FoE protagonists I've seen, and I dig that.

I want to thank you all for reading and hope you folks continue to enjoy the story. As always I thank my prereaders, Dommande and referee (now going by a slightly more sans-ish moniker) for their help with the chapter.

Of course leave any and all comments, critiques, or questions you want, I appreciate any and all feedback.

Chapter 28: The Sweet Candy

Chapter 28: The Sweet Candy

I spent the remainder of the time we had left that first day after departing Skull City out on the deck. Part of it was I simply liked the feel of the constant wind blowing through my mane, and part of it was because I wasn’t eager to get cooped up in the tight spaces below decks with at least two ponies I knew that wanted me dead. At one point or another my friends had all gone down below for one reason or another, either for food or to grab a spot of rest in our bunks. B.B had told me we were given only one room to ourselves, so we’d have pretty cramped sleeping arrangements, but I could live with that. For one it’d keep Binge from trying anything. I hoped.

Eventually I’d have to go down, if for no other reason than to answer the call of nature, but I was fine for now just enjoying what I could of the view. By now the sun had become little more than a liquid line of gold dusting the horizon as the land turned to dark twilight, purples fading to darker blues as the light faded bit by bit. The only point of light I could make out was a series of faint flickering dots of white and orange to the southeast, where I noticed something odd about the landscape change, as if a line cut across the even Wasteland desert and turned it into two shades, one almost black, the other rolling and white.

“Confused, buck?” asked Crossfire, surprising me with just how quietly she’d come up behind me. Crossfire and Shard had been working their guard detail on the deck, which I knew my friends and I would be up for soon. I knew I needed to go get a few hours shut eye before then, but I hadn’t wanted to miss the sights while there was sunlight to see them.

“Well, a bit, I suppose,” I said, tilting my head towards the strange land features I couldn’t recognize, “I’m not sure what I’m looking at out there. Maybe if there was more light I could make it out, but- hey, stop laughing!”

Crossfire was snorting out a scoffing laugh, but it didn’t last long as she shook her head, “I keep forgetting you’re one of those tribal ponies that’s lived most his life thinking sharp stones and sticks are the height of weapons technology.”

“Yeah, pardon me for my ignorance,” I said sardonically, “You going to explain what I’m looking at out there or are you just going to keep making fun of me?”

“I can’t do both?” she quipped with a snarky smirk.

“Is there ever going to be a point where you stop giving me a hard time?”

“Probably not,” Crossfire said, but soon enough her smirk faded and she nodded towards the distant, strange terrain features, “What you’re looking at out there is your first gander at an actual ocean.”

“... A what?” I asked, picking my brain for what the word meant. I’d heard of it before. Ocean... ocean... my eyes snapped wide, “Wait, you mean one of those mythically huge bodies of water? Like, so big it crosses the world?”

“Just about. That’s the edge of the Celestial Sea you’re looking at. The coastline runs south all the way towards our destination in the NCR capital, Manehattan. The other weird terrain feature you’re seeing out there is the Bleach, the desert of white sand and death that separates the NCR from the Skull City Wasteland. And that little collection of lights sitting right where the sea meets the edge of the desert, that’s Port Needle.”

I could barely make it out, especially with dusk turning darker as the minutes ticked by. My mind turned towards Trailblaze, remembering that my friend, last I’d heard of her, was on her way to this ‘Port Needle’ In search of another Guardian Shrine. “What’s Port Needle like? Is it anything like Skull City?”

“Oh, the Port is its own little slice of hell,” Crossfire said with a mirthless chuckle, “The Mechanics Guild holds some power there, but it’s mostly gang run, each gang based out of one or more of the boats that run the coast. Little more than slightly organized pirates, but they play ball with the Mechanic’s Guild because they open the door to food, water, and other goods being transported down from Skull City. Town is mostly filled with warehouses, whorehouses, gambling dens, taverns, and about one decent pony for every hundred that’d slit your throat soon as give you the time of day. Fun place, if you got caps to spare and enough guns to keep the smarter thugs at bay.”

And my best friend is walking straight into such a place? I thought with dry bitterness. I knew Trailblaze was capable, able to take care of herself, but Crossfire’s assessment of Port Needle didn’t leave me feeling a great deal better for knowing Trailblaze’s journey wasn’t going to be an easy one. She had Whetstone with her, sure, but that just meant I had to worry about Whetstone’s safety alongside Trailblaze’s.

She’s the one with the magical fire bird inside her granting her superpowers, Longwalk. If anything it’s probably the ponies of Port Needle I ought to worry about more than her. If any of them got in her way they’d be lucky their town doesn’t end up burning down around their ears.

I tried to take some comfort in the thought, but mostly I just wished there was some way I could be in two places at once. Crossfire was looking at me, lips pressed tight in a frown.

“What?” I asked.

“You should get your ass down to your bunk and sleep. You’ll be up for guard duty soon and I won’t be getting any easier shut eye if I know you’re up here being half asleep on the job,” she said, “That’s why I came over, to tell you to go get some damned sleep. Which I shouldn't have to be doing, by the way. I’m not your foalsitter, kid.”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning wryly and letting out a quick chuckle, “I didn’t know you cared.”

“I could throw you off the ship and probably only get docked to half pay,” Crossfire said coldly, yellow eyes flashing dangerously and her tail swishing angrily behind her. I just kept grinning.

“What, and lose all those caps just for a moment’s satisfaction? Not the Crossfire I know.”

She hung her head with a growling snort, ears flat to her skull with a thin frown on her face that matched her thoroughly annoyed tone, “My life was so much simpler before Saddlespring.”

My mirth died rather quickly at the memories her words brought up and I let out a small sigh, my thoughts of Shale and the town that was no more, “So was mine.”

Her eyes looked at me sidelong, narrowed, but thoughtful, and she raised her head to look me over from snout to tail. It was an oddly penetrating look, leaving me feeling uncomfortable and I shifted away from her a bit. Crossfire didn’t seem to notice. Her gaze only lasted a moment longer before she made a small scoffing sound in her throat and looked away.

“You got the look of a real Wastelander about you, now. Not quite the same greenhorn tribal I met a few weeks ago. You’ve shed some real blood, both yours and others.”

I winced, then hardened my look, meeting her eyes, “Never because I wanted to, and never for any reason less than keeping others from harm.”

“Yeah, you’re blooded, but still got that hero complex,” Crossfire muttered dryly, “I’m thinking you won’t lose that flaw until you’re a corpse. And even then I suspect you’ll die doing something stupidly heroic. Trying to, anyway. But you know how much that shit hurts, now. You’re understanding there’s a cost, even if you haven’t paid the highest one, yet.”

She drew in a deep breath, letting it out in a long, almost sad sigh, “You square with what happened to your nutty blue marefriend? Losing a leg like that isn’t something to shrug off.”

Shame and anger sparked inside me with near equal measure, my voice snapping, “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

She just gave me a flat look, and I belated recalled that Crossfire had personal experience of her own with a friend taking such a terrible injury. Knobs’ condition flashed through my mind and I grimaced. Crossfire didn’t know that I was aware of her guilt over Knobs losing her hind legs, but she definitely was seeing a parallel between myself and her in regards to Arcaidia’s recent, similar loss.

“I’m making it my business, buck, because I’ve been where you are myself. Like it or not, that bunch of headcases follow you, the icemaker included. You know damned well whose fault it is she got a leg torn off, and it’s not because of that crazy Raider bitch. She was just the same kind of nasty shit that’s everywhere in the Wasteland. No, your friend got taken from having four nice, pretty limbs to just three because you screwed up and dropped your guard.”

Her words sliced into me as thoroughly as if she’d snatched up Gramzanber from my side and laid into me with it, and I found myself grinding my teeth together hard enough to nearly bleed my gums. “You think I don’t know that!? That I haven’t been thinking it over and over again since it happened?”

“With you it can be hard to tell when you’re thinking at all, but I’m not telling you this to just piss you off, even though that is kind of fun,” Crossfire said, smiling briefly, but only half heartedly as her expression turned serious, “I’m reminding you so you understand something I need to make damn clear to you, now that we’re both Drifters, and on the same job together. You can’t afford to fuck up like you did with that Braindead asshole. You can’t afford to be that naive and trusting anymore. Next time it could be far worse than somepony losing a leg, and now that I’m here, now that Knobs is here, I’m not accepting anything less than your best while on the job. You make another mistake on the level you did back in Skull City...”

She turned away from me, trotting away, only pausing briefly to look back at me with hard, golden eyes, “I’ll kill you.”

I stared at her with a level look of my own, “Good to know where we stand with each other, Crossfire. And here I was just starting to think we might be becoming pals.”

“Hmph, you don’t need more friends, Longwalk. You need somepony to keep you from fucking up again, and if I got to step up to the plate, I’ll do it, because I’m not taking any chances when Knobs’ safety is on the line. Now go get your flank in bed and sleep, before I drag you to bed myself...”

She paused, then made a sickened, choking sound, “Okay, that sounded just plain wrong, didn’t it?”

I nodded emphatic agreement, “Wrong on every level. I’m going to bed now. Now dragging needed.”

“Good. Ugh... need brain bleach.”

I left Crossfire to her mental scouring and further guard duties, and made my way to the hatch leading into the Sweet Candy’s below decks. The first deck was almost entirely comprised of crew and passenger cabins, along with the galley towards the back. The hallways were cramped, to the point where I’d need to flatten myself against the wall just to let another pony pass, though there weren’t many ponies moving about at this point, most of the passengers having retired to their cabins. There was still some noise filtering down the hallways from the galley, however, and I went there first, hoping to grab something to eat before heading to sleep.

The galley took up most of the aft section of the first deck, an open kitchen at the back of a room set up with a number of short tables. Each wall had at least one large, circular window, though most the light was now being provided by small lanterns hung from the ceiling. There were a few crewponies here, and a hoofful of the delegates grabbing late dinners like myself, and I recognized Knobs sitting at one of the tables next to the starboard window. She was talking with another mare, the one with the honey colored mane who’d given me a curious look when she’d come aboard. Knobs was laughing at something the other mare was saying, but when she spotted me she smiled warmly and waved to me.

“Hey Longwalk, over here!”

I trotted over, noticing that the gray coated, blond mare next to Knobs was looking at me once more with intense curiosity. Somewhat self consciously I took a seat, “Evening, Knobs. The food here any good?”

It looked to me like she was scarfing down something out of a can, some kind of oatmeal that I suspected was one of those preserved pre-war kind, but it looked warm and didn’t smell half bad. I despaired at the apparent lack of meat. In response to my question it was the blond mare that spoke, in a smooth, pleasant alto.

“Captain Bartholomew keeps a well stocked ship, if somewhat lacking in flavor. A little spice could go a long way, but the food is filling, and oftentimes that’s about all one can ask for,” she said, and then extended a hoof to me, “Wellspring Whistles, official representative of the Skull City Radio Guild.”

I accepted her hoof, giving it a firm shake, which for some reason seemed to surprise her and made Knobs chuckle lightly. Shrugging it off I just said, “Longwalk, uh, I suppose I’m officially part of the Drifter’s Guild, now.”

“Just so. Knobs has been telling me some interesting stories concerning you and your friends,” Wellspring said with a quirking half-smile, leaning her chin upon one hoof as she eyed me, “It sounds as if you’ve performed some noteworthy heroics, saving Knobs and those refugees from a Raider attack on the road. Then before you were a guest in our fair city for more than a few days you rescued yet more ponies from the clutches of another mad Raider from the depths of a true hellhole. Now you’re assigned to this prestigious venture in diplomacy to the NCR. Quite the rising star, I’d say.”

I fidgeted in place, glancing towards the kitchen and wondering if I should just go ask for food? Wellspring’s words just made me feel nervous, for the most part, as I hadn’t done any of that with a desire for recognition. If anything recognition was the last thing I needed, given that I was being hunted by Odessa. “My friends and I were in the wrong place at the right time to do some good, so we did. Any of them deserve as much if not more praise than me for it.”

“Oh if I can I’d like to interview all of them,” said Wellspring with an eager light in her eyes, “As the Radio Guild’s premiere story correspondent I have a keen interest in keeping folk informed of tales like yours. It's the kind of proof ponies need every day to remind them the world isn’t all toil and torment. Knobs has been kind enough to tell me what she knows, but I always prefer to get the story from the proverbial horse’s mouth, if you have time?”

“I, umm... well it's not that I’m not flattered by the idea, but I’m not much of a storyteller, and I’d probably get all sorts of details wrong,” I said, waving a hoof haphazardly, as if to ward off the eager mare leaning towards me.

“No worries there, Longwalk,” she said with a wink, and seeming to magically produce a notepad and beat up old pen from seemingly nowhere, “I’m an expert at ferreting out the facts and filling in the blanks. I won’t take up much of your time. How about just some basic questions to start us off?”

Knobs looked at me, then shook her head with a helpless laugh, “I think you’re scaring him, Wellspring. Maybe you could tone down the reporter instincts a bit?”

“Now, Knobs, I’m certain that if Longwalk really wanted to say no, he’d just go ahead and say so, wouldn’t he?” Wellspring said, reaching over a hoof to pat at mine gently, batting her eyes, “It’s okay that I ask a few teensy little questions, right? You don’t mind, do you?”

“Oh good Goddesses,” Knobs said, giggling under her breath, “You never let up.”

“Not when I smell a story.”

I gulped, and carefully, gently, removed her hoof from mine, then said in as firm a voice as I could, “While I don’t have a problem answering questions, Miss Whistles, I can’t really go into too much details of my story, if you plan on putting it out there on the radio. I’ve... I’ve got ponies out there that are looking for me and my friends, and not for any pleasant reasons. I can’t have anything out there that’d point them in our direction, you understand?”

Wellspring gave me a long, considering look, then nodded, “I can only assume you’re talking about something other than your bounty, as I know that was removed before we departed. Very well, I understand. I give you my word I won’t put anything you tell me into a story, printed or put on the air. Still, my curiosity is sparked, and I would like to quench some of it. If you wouldn’t mind a few questions while we eat?”

I sighed, then nodded, “Fine, but just keep in mind I wasn’t lying when I said I’m not much of a storyteller.”

I first went to the kitchen to get a bowl of the oatmeal that was being served, along with a few small, rather puny carrots that were apparently common fare from the farmsteads north of Skull City. Munching away I let Wellspring ask her questions and did my best to answer them between bites. I left out a lot of the more fantastic or bizarre elements of my journey. Arcaidia went from a mysterious space pony in a metal pod Trailblaze and I found in a cave to a pony who merely wandered into our tribal lands while in search of her sister. Saddlespring was hard to talk about in general, and I skipped over a lot of it, but I think Wellspring still picked up on the fact that Odessa was the group hunting me and Arcaidia. Strange that she even seemed to know what Odessa was. I tried to skim over Stable 104, but Wellspring had an uncanny talent for pulling details out of me.

“An entire Stable occupied by intelligent pony/spider hybrids? Fascinating. And instead of wiping them out, you managed to strike up an alliance, even after all that violence? Impressive,” she said, pen scrawling away at her notebook.

“They wanted to be free from Midnight Twinkle. I mean, I think they really want to reconnect with the surface, they’re just... nervous about it. The surface is a dangerous place.”

“It certainly is. Sadly. Now what happened next?”

I pursed my lips, hoping I could skip over most of the details of what occurred at Silver Mare Studios, but once more Wellspring had questions that were like spiked barbs, dredging up the truth before I even realized what I was telling. I gave Knobs an imploring look, but she just kind of sheepishly shrugged at me as if to say, ‘sorry, you got yourself into this’.

“Surviving an encounter with a Hellhound is no mean feat, and you faced that terror all for the sake of saving the lives of those who were your enemies? A rare quality of compassion to see in anypony, though I suppose Crossfire would simply call it foolish.”

Knobs snorted a chortling laugh, “Crossfire would use much harsher language than that, Wellspring.”

“You know Crossfire?” I asked, to which Wellspring nodded with a long suffering expression capped by a wane smile.

“I do. I met her around the same time Knobs did, six years ago. Quite the little adventure that was...” Wellspring’s eyes turned briefly sorrowful, glancing at Knobs’ wheeled back legs, “You probably don’t need me to tell you that Crossfire can be rough around the edges and takes a bleak view of the world. I imagine a kind hearted stallion such as yourself irks her to no end.”

I laughed bitterly, “Yeah, that’s an understatement.”

“Still, interesting that you happened by Silver Mare Studios. One of the more intact landmarks out in the surrounding Wasteland. I went there once, in my more adventurous youth.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Really, with a Hellhound there?”

“Oh, there was no Hellhound back then. Raiders, yes, but I can handle myself around that sort. I went to there to retrieve any intact cameras and film equipment I could find. Half of the gear the Radio Guild still uses came from that salvage excursion. Heh, interesting bit of trivia, but did you know the last official voyage the Sweet Candy made before the balefire bombs fell was part of a film production originating from Silver Mare Studios?”

I recalled the memory orb where I’d last seen Trixie, departing with Money Shot aboard the Sweet Candy, “I, uh, may have noticed something saying that while I was there. There was a poster for a movie, umm... Daring Do and the something-something...”

“Daring Do and the Search for the Guardian Shrine,” Wellspring supplied, “Sadly a doomed production. I actually have some of the old Daring Doo radio plays, and Guardian Shrine is quite the popular one. The film version would have been something to see.”

“Doomed production?” I asked, curiosity piqued, my food momentarily forgotten as I leaned forward, ears perking forward keenly, “Do you know what happened?”

Wellspring cleared her throat, suddenly looking a bit embarrassed, “To be honest I hardly know the full story. You’d be better off asking Captain Bartholomew about that. He was there, after all. However I doubt you could get the old bird to talk much about it. I’ve been trying for years to get that scoop out of him, and he’s very tight beaked on the subject. The most I know is this; the film crew, along with the Sweet Candy and a small team of mercenaries, traveled to the Frozen North to film on location. Two weeks into production radio contact with the expedition was lost. A week after that search and rescue teams found only four survivors out of what had been an expedition of over fifty souls. One of them was the Captain. Another two were among the mercenary team, though I don’t know their names. The final survivor was one of the actresses, a mare of no notable reputation named Trixie Lulamoon. There are no official records of what happened in the Frozen North, and Captain Bartholomew has never told me more than what I’ve just told you.”

“That’s... pretty damn mysterious,” I said, feeling a tad depressed. I knew those ponies had all been dead for centuries anyway, with the exception of the ghoulish Captain Bartholomew, but I still felt bad thinking of those faces I’d seen in the memory orb and knowing now that so few of them had returned from their expedition to the north.

The north, where you’re going to end up going as well, to where your father’s lab is. That has to be coincidence, right? But that film title... the Search for the Guardian Shrine. It hadn’t meant anything to me back then, but now that I know who the Guardians are, could the expedition have actually stumbled across one of their shrines up north?

“I hope that’s enough for now, Miss Whistles-”

“Please, just Wellspring,” she said, finishing jotting down some final notes. For somepony who wasn’t going to put my story out there she sure seemed to want to jot down as much as she could.

“Alright, but yeah, think I need to turn in so I can rest up for my guard shift,” I said, rising from the table, “It was good meeting you. And Knobs, always a pleasure.”

“Same to you Longwalk. I’m happy you managed to get into the Drifter’s Guild and were brought along for this trip,” said Knobs, her thinly haired tail wagging behind her, “It should be a breeze, and after all you’ve gone through you could use a break.”

“I’m not certain how much of a ‘breeze’ it will be,” said Wellspring, a thoughtful look in her eyes, shaded by a shadow of concern, “We’ve got something of a melting pot on our hooves, with so many Guild representatives in one place, all set to meet up with the heads of both the NCR and Protectorate, both of which we Skull City folk have bad blood with.”

Knobs frowned, holding out a hoof placatingly, “Hey, the whole Red River incident happened a long time ago, and we can’t hold it against the NCR ponies. As for the Protectorate, isn’t it a good sign that their Princess could visit our city and not get harassed or attacked?”

“Only because she was under close guard by her own elite guards, and had the further protection of the Skull Guild itself,” said Wellspring in a almost lecturing tone, “Do remember, Knobs dear, that your Guild is feared for good reason. Not a single Outskirts gang or another Guild would risk moving against Princess Purity while the Skull Guild had her under its protective gaze. In fact, I’d dare say this whole diplomatic endeavour would be impossible without your guildmistress dragging everypony along by the ears.”

“Aww c’mon Wellspring, it's not like that!” said Knobs, “Star Soul might be the one who started the move for this alliance between all the big Wasteland powers, but none of it could have happened if the other Guilds didn’t want to back it. It's not like Star Soul is forcing anypony to do something that don’t want to do.”

“All I’m saying is that, less than a year ago we were all poised to restart the war against the Protectorate, and the streets are still filled with ponies who resent both them and the NCR enough to never consider coming to the negotiating table,” insisted Wellspring, “Yet now here we are, desperate for a chance at forging an alliance with former enemies and ponies who hadn’t given a single, and pardon my language, flying fuck about us until now. Why do you think that is?”

I’d considered leaving the table to just go get some sleep, like I’d said I’d do, but I was interested to hear what Wellspring was saying. I didn’t grasp much of anything about politics, but during my time in Skull City I’d gotten the distinct feeling something was off about the way events were unfolding there. No, even before I’d arrived in Skull City, I’d been encountering hints of something unusual going on in the city. I mean, besides the whole alien menace issue. Binge’s Raider group had been working for somepony else, I remembered. They’d been set up to take over Saddlespring, given aide by some outside force. Even Redwire had been unusually well supplied, beyond what I would have thought the Hyaden aliens would have bothered giving her. Then there was the Raider army putting pressure on Skull City, no doubt one of the main reasons the Guilds were willing to fall in line with Star Soul’s plan to negotiate an alliance with the NCR and Protectorate.

“Do you think somepony intentionally created all the problems Skull City is facing because they want this alliance to happen, or at least the talks to negotiate it?” I found myself asking, though mostly I was just musing out loud to myself.

Wellspring and Knobs were both looking at me now, Knobs with confusion, and Wellspring with a contemplative and approving expression. “That was my conclusion as well,” the Radio Guild mare said, “While it’s speculation with no proof, I’ve looked it over from several angles, and our present circumstances smell manufactured to me.”

“But surely not guildmistress Star Soul...” said Knobs, “She wouldn’t put the city at risk for something like this.”

“Why not?” Wellspring asked bluntly.

“W-well because she’s always gone out of her way to help Skull City and all of its inhabitants!” said Knobs, “Ever since she arrived she’s only worked harder and harder to make Skull City, both the Inner City and the Outskirts, safer and better to live in!”

“Yet the Outskirts remains just a few steps short of pure anarchy, and the Inner City maintains its calm only through the constant vigil of the Enforcers, while more and more Ruin monsters appear both in the Wasteland outside our walls, and most recently inside the wall,” replied Wellspring, “You can’t tell me that the corresponding troubles appearing alongside this recent push for an alliance is coincidence. I’m not saying it’s your guildmistress that’s responsible, Knobs, but my nose is twitching with certainty that somepony has pulled a lot of strings to make sure events followed the path that’s led us to this point. Personally I’m not a fan of being a puppet.”

Knobs made a small whining sound, looking down at her food, “I just don’t want to think that something that’s as good as everypony finally being willing to take steps towards establishing a lasting peace is because of some... some kind of creepy, manipulative conspiracy. Can’t we just be doing the right thing because its right, and not because of some ulterior motive?”

Wellspring smiled, though it was the long-suffering smile of one who was talking with the naive. “Your altruism is, as always, an inspiration.”

“Why do I feel like when you say that you’re just making fun of me?” said Knobs with puffed out cheeks and an onry look in her eyes.

“Not at all, Knobs, I do honestly admire that ceaseless optimism of yours. A trait I think you and our young friend here share,” Wellspring said, gesturing at me.

“Optimism isn’t such a bad thing,” I said, glancing briefly at my cutie mark, thinking of the contrast between the white and black wings, “Just as long as you balance it out with something else.”

“Like what?” asked Knobs, and I could only grin at her sheepishly.

“Not sure what words to use, honestly. Practicality? Pragmatism? It's just a matter of being able to feel out when pure optimism won’t be enough and it's time to get a little harder with things, you know?”

Knobs looked at me for a few seconds, then cracked a grin that lit up her teal features even past the leathery ghoulified flesh, “You know, you really just reminded me of Crossfire, just now.”

I blanched at that. Of all ponies quite possibly the last one I wanted to be compared to was Crossfire. “Okay, on that entirely spine chilling note, I think I’m going to bed.”

“Sleep well,” said Knobs, Wellspring also bidding me a goodnight.

It wasn’t hard to find my group’s cabin, as most of the passenger space was located along the same stretch of the ship. A simple wood door led into a small room with just a single bed, a few shelves and a trunk for storing gear, and a single manalamp hanging from the ceiling, though that was currently turned off so my companions could sleep. Arcaidia and B.B were sharing the bed, sleeping back to back Binge had claimed the patch of floor at the foot of the bed, curled up like a cat, lazily twitching her tail as she snored away. LIL-E was set against the wall opposite the bed, the eyebot gently rocking back and forth with the sway of the airship. I wondered if LIL-E, being truly a robot, actually needed rest? Regardless, I kept as quiet as I could as I walked into the room, closing the door behind me and picking a clear spot to the right of the bed to take off my saddlebags, pulling out a small comfy sleeping bag that I’d picked up from Stable 104.

I took off my armor, piling the pieces of gecko hide backed security armor in a neat pile beside my saddlebags. I set Gramzanber down alongside the sleeping bag next to me, patting the spear affectionately as I snuggled into the bag.

“G’night, partner,” I whispered to the spear.

I do not sleep, but I accept the sentiment, and shall remain vigilant for threats while you and your companions recover your physical energies.

“Hey...” I said, feeling sleep rapidly take over my tired body, “Do you know if I’ll.. have any more weird dreams?”

I cannot say. But the probability is...

I fell asleep before Gramzanber finished telling me.

One thing I could count on with these more unusual dreams, I could always recognize when they were happening. Going from falling asleep on the Sweet Candy to standing in a the bleak stone corridors of Skull City’s salt mines was a good sign I was dreaming. I wished my dreams had taken me to a less depressing place. I shivered slightly, calling out, “Gramzanber? You here?”

No response. Great. Well, as strong as our bond was getting I suppose there was no reason to think the ARM would be able to get into my dreams. Maybe that other spirit that was attached to Gramzanber was here, though?

“Anypony else?”

It sounded like little more than a whisper at first, but in a few moments I heard the distorted female voice of the spirit that Gramzanber had absorbed into itself to help interface with me. “I’m here, Longwalk. It's hard to do this while you’re dreamwalking towards your companion’s dreams.”

“Is that what’s happening? I can’t see you anywhere,” I said, looking around. Last time the spirit had appeared in a misty, obscured fashion, but now all I could hear was her faint voice. The mine shaft kept stretching in front of me, but I could not see offshoots going off to the left and right, one from which a strangely sterile, bright light shone, and another that flickered with orange light, akin to flames.

“I can’t...” the voice floated in and out of audible range, “... not fully... dreams of Arca... blaze.”

The voice then faded entirely, leaving me facing the two branching mine shafts with a frown on my face, “Well, I suppose it’s either go see what my friends are dreaming about, or sit here until I wake up.”

I had no way of knowing whose dream I’d be walking into, and a part of me was hesitant to do so. There was an issue of privacy, here. I couldn’t help seeing my friend’s dreams before because I hadn’t been fully aware of what I was doing. Now that I knew, I could just choose to do nothing, and let my friends dream. I didn’t actually have any right to peek into their heads like this. Now that I knew, perhaps staying put was the right call.

“Yeah, I’ll wake up eventually, and I won’t be seeing things they might not want me to see,” I said to myself, sitting down and wondering just how I’d pass the time until I woke up for our guard shift. However the moment I sat down I felt the mine shaft heave beneath me and throw me bodily forward, tumbling me towards the shaft of white light.

“Oof!” I landed hard on what felt like cold metal, my eyes temporarily blinded by extremely dense light. Groaning, I started to pick myself up, hearing a series of beeps and a gentle hum in the air, alongside voices rapidly speaking in a language I quickly recognized as Arcaidia’s native tongue.

“Esru dol tiagoz vi shirai est hri...hro... hrai!”

“Corzian esru gorlmazai, chirshi Luminarsio, ti mira.”

“Mas, chirshikai Feryedoon..”

Looking around at my surroundings I was amazed to find myself in a wide, oval shaped room, made of shining silver metal and bright white plastics. One wall was dominated by what looked like a huge, wall hugging screen that showed a vast, shining blanket of stars. In front of that screen were two different consoles with plush white chairs. At one of those chairs was Arcaidia, wearing her blue dress, but also a slim, narrow brimmed cap with a insignia consisting of several inclined dashes. She was using her horn to manipulate buttons on the flat console in front of her, the same way the being in the chair beside her was using its own odd appendages to touch keys on its console. That being I knew was a Veruni. I’d seen one before, when I’d seen Arcaidia dream about her sister Persephone. This one looked different, shorter with a mane of neatly cut, black hair reaching to her shoulders. I think it was female anyway. It was hard to tell with these weird bipedal creatures with their pale, hairless skin and flat faces, with odd, if somewhat cute, little snouts.

There were other Veruni in the room as well, some operating consoles along the back wall, and others seated on a set of chairs towards the middle of the room on a raised platform. I was reminded of the bridge of the Varukisas that Odessa controlled. This had a similar feel, if not nearly as huge, but much more streamlined. All the Veruni were wearing tight, skin hugging uniforms in blue and silver colors. None of them were quite like Arcaidia’s dress, but then again she was the only pony on the bridge.

Sitting in the center most chair of the bridge was who I guessed had to be the captain, a tall Veruni with broad shoulders and a hard lined face. He had a gray mane, unkempt and short, held up by a strange circlet of dark blue metal, set along its length with blue gems. It was this individual, a male I thought, whom Arcaidia had been speaking with. I had landed against one of the walls, just behind a console, and I don’t think she saw me as she glanced back at the captain.

“Corzian esru di mas, tivion dol divrehkol est tulzun.”

The captain nodded, as if approving of what Arcaidia had said, “Ti dol.”

One section of the wall towards the back slid open suddenly, barely making more than a light hiss of noise, and another Veruni strode onto the bridge. I recognized her from her purple mane and similarly colored violet and white clothing immediately as Persephone. The Veruni female made a saluting gesture to the captain, speaking in Veruni. It was around that point I started to wonder why I was only hearing them speak in Veruni. I mean, I understood of course they’d be talking in their own language, but the last dream I had with Arcaidia and Persephone, I’d been able to understand them.

It was like thinking about it had flipped a switch in my head, and the unusual sounds of the Veruni tongue started to resolve into understandable Equestrian.

“We’ve just come out of warp, Sentinel Persephone,” said the captain, “We’ll be passing the planet’s moon in a few minutes, then enter orbit. Specialist Arcaidia was just starting the long range scan of the planet so we can get an idea of what its condition is after twenty years.”

“Thank you, Captain Fereydoon,” said Persephone, her flat features breaking into what I thought was a smile, “It feels good to return, at last. There are few things that left as bad a taste in my mouth as leaving my previous task unfinished, having to abandon my mission back then.”

Fereydoon nodded in understanding, “You were needed elsewhere, and the expedition had taken many casualties-”

“I don’t need the reminder, Captain,” said Persephone, “Let’s just focus on the present, shall we?”

“Of course. Take a seat, if you wish.”

“I’ll remain standing, if it's all the same,” Persephone said as she strode over to where Arcaidia was at her console. The unicorn lit up happily, smiling widely at her sister.

“I’m finally here, Persephone. I can’t wait to see my homeworld. If it's half as beautiful as you described it will be a jewel of the Empire, once it is brought into the fold.” She spoke with the sing song happiness that I’d only rarely heard in Arcaidia’s voice since meeting her. She was vibrant, beaming with palpable anticipation and joy that brightened her whole face. There was also the clear gleam of admiration in her silver eyes as she looked at Persephone.

I found Persephone hard to read. She seemed more reserved than Arcaidia, satisfied and eager in her own way, but there was tension in those bipedal shoulders. “Let’s remain focused, Arcaidia. We still need to finish a full survey before we even begin planning for this planet’s annexation. The last attempt at this led to a failure of which you were the only good thing to come out of it.”

“I... I’m sorry, sister. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories,” Arcaidia said, ears drooping slightly, but soon they perked right back up as she used her horn’s magic and push a few buttons on her console in response to some flashing signal, “Captain, we’re passing the moon’s orbital path. Shall I bring it on screen?”

Fereydoon nodded brusquely, “Do so.”

The large wall screen flickered and showed the sight of a shining gray and white expanse that seemed to cover half the view. The moon’s surface, this close, looked like a pockmarked ball of silver-gray canyons and rolling mountains, a faded, otherworldly landscape devoid of any color besides pale, cold shades.

“Scans show some interesting formations,” said the Veruni with darker hair in the chair next to Arcaidia, “Consistent with the reports from the previous expedition. Hard to believe primitive pre-space flight civilizations managed to put actual facilities on their moon.”

“You’ll find much of this world and its civilizations are not like what we’re familiar with,” said Persephone in a cool, measured tone, arms crossed beneath the odd mounds on her chest, “One of their potent, magical monarchs was imprisoned on that moon for over a thousand years. That palace you’re detecting near the northern regions belonged to her.”

“A fascinating species, the ponies,” stated Fereydoon, “Naturally occurring dimorphism creating multiple subspecies, including a ruling caste. That kind of thing is almost unheard of outside of insectoid species. I wonder if they were victorious in the conflict that was still ongoing when your previous expedition was forced to leave the planet?”

A pinched, sour look crossed Persephone’s face, “There didn’t seem to be an easy end in sight to that war when I left. Both sides remained evenly matched. That said, in twenty years I can’t imagine they’d be able to continue to maintain that war. It’s likely over, by now. Personally, my bet would have been on the ponies.”

Arcaidia gave a small grin at that, while Fereydoon simply asked, “Why do you say that? I’ve read your reports thoroughly and it seemed to me the more naturally militaristic zebra had the superior instincts, not to mention numbers, to eventually win what appeared to have become a war of attrition.”

“Adaption,” said Persephone, “Ultimately the whole of ponykind demonstrated an uncanny talent for adaption that I suspect the zebra lack. Then again, it’s a moot thing to speculate upon. We’ll know one way or another, shortly, what’s happened in the past twenty years.”

“Passing the moon’s gravitational pull, making final approach to planet LV-996,” said Arcaidia, her eyes now rooted to her console. There were several long minutes of silence before she spoke again, “Visual range confirmed. Scan commencing.”

“On screen,” Fereydoon said, and blinked at the image that appeared on the monitor. I blinked as well, and I think just about every Veruni on the bridge stared at the screen with equal parts confusion; save for Arcaidia who alongside her confusion had a look of painted horror seeping into her features.

“Persephone, is this what the planet is supposed to look like?” asked Fereydoon in a dry mouthed voice.

“No...” Persephone responded, tone hollow, “No, this isn’t right at all. Is there some kind of interference with our visual feed? Arcaidia?”

“I...uh,” Arcaidia gulped, pressing a few quick buttons, “N-no, ma’am. The visual is clear. And the scans are r-returning their data now. There’s... there’s lifesigns. Initial estimates show an approximate population of around...” Arcaida’s face paled visibly, her voice uneven and barely above a whisper, “Eight million.”

“Didn’t the previous report show a planetary population ranging closer to two billion?” asked Fereydoon.

Persephone’s eyes closed painfully, “Yes. Give or take. Stars preserve... what happened here!?”

I, of course, knew exactly what had happened. The world I saw on the screen was a dry, dead looking ball of sickly brown and gray colors. Huge swaths of continental mass were covered by little more than white cloud, but in other areas the land was like baked dirt, all in shades of burned brown or faded red. Only a few, small patches here and there, often on offshore islands or far away locations nearer to the poles showed any green, and only in small quantities. The seas even looked less a vibrant blue and more a muted greenish gray. The world, my world, looked like a sick and dying thing, hanging in the black void like a lonely, diseased fruit.

That was what the Great Fires, the balefire bombs, had done to the planet. I wasn’t sure just what the Veruni had expected to find, but this clearly wasn’t it. Most of all I felt a horrible stab of pain as I saw the look on Arcaidia’s face, like a clear window breaking. She had the look of devastation being covered up by a wet blanket. Her eyes were barely keeping in welling tears. She was holding onto her discipline, but only by a thread. Persephone reached down with a pale hand and gripped Arcaidia’s withers in a gentle, comforting gesture.

“Captain, we need to prepare for a landing party immediately,” said Persephone, “This is no longer a matter of infiltration, but of damage assessment. I need to find out what’s happened to this world.”

Fereydoon’s face was grim, “I can’t authorize that just yet, Sentinel. Until we know more I don’t want a single Veruni setting foot on that planet’s surface. Specialist Arcaidia, I want you to start a deep scan on all energy spectrums immediately.”

“Y-yes sir!”

Persephone made a frustrated noise, eyeing Fereydoon coldly, “Scan all you want, but I can already tell you what you’ll find. Excessive levels of residual magical radiation, right down to the bedrock. Most of it is probably faded to background levels by now, except I’ll bet in certain major cities or key areas where military facilities were located.”

“What do you know?” asked Fereydoon.

“You read my reports, Captain. The very last thing my team discovered before that damned rainbow maned maniac managed to force us off planet was that both sides of the war had developed new, experimental magics that could magnify the power of conventional spells to unbelievably destructive levels,” said Persephone, turning eyes brimming with heated anger at the image of the planet on the screen, “Megaspells. They must have used them. I can’t think of anything else that could have caused this amount of destruction.”

“Captain!” called Arcaidia suddenly, “I’m detecting an energy reading, three degrees off the port bow, distance three kilometers.”

“What? What didn’t we detect anything earlier, that close?” Fereydoon said in frustration, “Give me visual and signal a yellow alert.”

“Yellow alert,” said the black haired Veruni, “Raising shields.”

“Getting visual now,” said Arcaidia, sounding alarmed, “Captain, the energy is spiking higher!”

The screen flickered, showing a closed in view of the orbital horizon of the planet, but also an object sitting in space. It looked like a long, telescopic tube with several large, gleaming panels of glass flowing off it like wings. Those panels were glowing with white hot energy, and a large, gathering pool of that same sunkissed light was forming at a needle point at one end of the tube... not unlike a giant laser gun, I thought. Then I paled. Oh, shit.

“Captain, it just locked on to us!” said Arcaida, “And I’m reading two more energy readings at differing locations!”

“Shields are up Captain,” reported the Veruni with black hair.

“Its firing!” Arcaidia shouted.

“Brace for impact,” said Fereydoon in a tight voice as the object cut loose with a brilliant white beam of energy that looked like it was launching a spear from the sun itself. A second later the entire bridge shook, hard, nearly pitching Veruni from their chairs and making me bump my head against the console I’d been hiding behind. None of the Veruni noticed me, but I smelled smoke and saw one console across the way had sparked and fizzled out.

“Damage report, begin evasive maneuvers,” commanded Fereydoon “And get me a damned weapon lock on those satellites! Arm all missiles and particle beams.”

“Front shields down to fifty four percent, Captain. Power fluctuations across all decks, and engine room reports a drop in sub-light drive speed,” reported the black haired Veruni in a rising pitch, belying her fear.

“From one hit?” Fereydoon breathed in disbelief, “What kind of weapons are those? Persephone, when did the ponies develop anything like this?”

“Megaspells,” Persephone muttered, as if that explained it all, “Captain, we need to retreat. The Arc of Destiny is not equipped to handle excessive combat and those satellites, if they’re equipped with magic of that power, will tear a ship like this to shreds.”

“I will not run from primitive satellites!” said Fereydoon in a hard tone, “Arcaidia, get me those lock ons, now!”

“Yes sir! Locking weapons now! Enemy satellites finishing charge. They’re firing again!”

The whole ship felt as if it lurched, and I held tightly to the console in front of me to keep from being knocked around like a rag doll. I heard Fereydoon shouting, “Return fire!” and then Arcaidia gleefully reporting, “Direct hit. One satellite destroyed. Re-arming missiles. Starboard particle beam nonfunctional.”

“Damn it all Fereydoon, I’m ordering a retreat as my authority as a Sentinel appointed by the Queen herself!” shouted Persephone, and that seemed to throw ice water upon Fereydoon’s fire. However, before he could respond Arcaidia cried out, “Another barrage incoming!”

“Sir, the shields are below twenty percent,” said the black haired Veruni, “They can’t handle-”

Then the whole front of the bridge seemed to explode in sparks and flame. I heard Arcaidia scream, and others cry out in pain. I was thrown back and skidded across the cold floor to slam into the far wall. Dream or not, this hurt, cracking my head and filling my vision with stars. The acrid scent of smoke and sharper, more chemical smells punched my nose, and I started coughing as it burned my lungs. Shaking the daze out of my head I looked around, fearful for Arcaidia, even though I knew this was just a dream.

The front viewscreen had exploded, and a portion of the ceiling had collapsed in a combination of metal shards and sparking, phosphorescent cables. Fires burned briefly but small robotic drones descended from panels in the ceiling to rapidly flit about and shoot off small jets of blue liquid that rapidly put out the fires.

I saw Arcaidia, her face smudged with only a bit of blood from a cut cheek. She was otherwise unharmed, but she was now desperately trying to heal the black haired Veruni who’d been sitting next to her, Arcaidia’s horn a blazing beacon of light. The Veruni had a metal shard impaling her chest, dark crimson blood pooling like ink beneath her limp body. The vacant eyes already made it clear the woman was gone, but Arcaidia was trying, regardless. I recognized that determined, rigid look in her eyes, the kind that reminded me of frost covered steel. She’d try until there wasn’t anything left in her. Fortunately her sister was there, Persephone’s hand gripping hard on Arcaidia’s leg.

“She’s dead, Specialist Arcaidia. On your feet.”

Arcaidia grit her teeth hard, only reluctantly dropping her magical field from her dead comrade and following her sister’s instructions, standing and wiping unshed tears from her face.

Other members of the bridge crew were injured, but none of them dead, it seemed, most recovering from the hit the ship had taken, but they all had worried looks many looking towards Captain Fereydoon, whose expression was pained but schooled to almost impossible calm.

“Someone get me a damage report. Arcaidia, what’s our weapon status?”

Arcaidia moved like a machine, all forced self control as she checked her console, which miraculously was still functional. Her voice was cold, muted, like a snow covered plain. “Shields are down and the generators overloaded. We’ve lost all but one dorsal particle cannon. Missile bays have been destroyed. Those last hits tore hull breaches across decks four through ten. Overall hull integrity is down to forty percent.”

The ship started to shake. I could feel the vibration humming through the cold deck floor beneath my hooves. Arcaidia’s voice continued to read off her report, “Engines have lost almost all power, Captain. Sub-light drives are only at six percent capacity. We’re being...” she breathed deeply, face a frosty mask, “We’re being pulled into the planet’s atmosphere. The Arc of Destiny doesn’t have enough engine power to avoid crashing into the surface.”

The bridge was quiet for a moment, save for the growing vibrations running through the bulkheads, and the soft whine of an alarm that accompanied flickering red lights along the walls. With a heavy sigh Fereydoon reached to his chair arm, pushing a button. “This is Captain Fereydoon to all hands. The ship is critically damaged and losing orbital stability. This is a priority one order; abandon ship. Repeat, all hands; abandon ship.”

He then said, “Arcaidia, contact the Com-Sat and relay a distress signal back towards the Empire.”

She nodded, but after only a few key presses, all while the shaking of the ship got more and more intense, Arcaidia visibly gulped and looked back, “Captain, I cannot reach the Com-Sat! I think it’s no longer there.”

“How? Stars curse it did the enemy satellites destroy it? We followed its signal here, so it must have just happened.”

“I’m detecting debris where the Com-Sat was located,” reported Arcaidia, “Likely, yes, the satellites that fired upon us destroyed it as well.”

“Why haven’t the satellites finished us off?” wondered Fereydoon.

“They appear to be cooling off after suffering overheat from repeating firings,” said Arcaidia, her eyes maintaining calm as they scanned her readouts, “Temperature data suggests as much.”

“It's all a moot point,” said Persephone, “We must get to the escape pods.”

“But without a Com-Sat, we can’t send a distress signal back to the Empire,” said Fereydoon, “And worse, no rescue attempt could locate this world again without the Com-Sat’s guiding signal. Arcaidia, launch another Com-Sat, we should have enough time to deploy it before our orbit entirely decays.”

“We have minutes, Fereydoon,” urged Persephone, voice hissing.

Arcaidia pursed her lips in a tight frown, “The launch bay doors for the Com-Sat backups was damaged in that last hit, Captain. We can’t deploy.”

Fereydoon struck his armchair with a hard fist, “Damn! Very well, we’ll have to deploy from the planet’s surface, assuming the Com-Sats can be salvaged. Arcaidia, place a maximum strength stasis field around the Com-Sats. It should help them survive, even if the Arc falls apart. Any survivors that make it to the planet’s surface will have to make getting to those Com-Sats a top priority, otherwise we’ll be stranded on this planet permanently.”

A few more keystrokes and Arcaidia chirped, “Done!”

Fereydoon nodded and stood, casting a solemn gaze among his bridge crew, “Then there is nothing more we can do. Everyone, get to your designated escape pods. Stars and Queen willing, we will meet on the planet’s surface. Arcaidia, set the autopilot to try and plot as stable a landing course as possible.”

By now the deck was vibrating so badly that it was rattling my teeth. I saw Arcaidia made a quick series of final adjustments on her console, then all but threw herself out of the seat as she joined her sister, Captain Fereydoon, and the rest of the bridge crew as they rapidly vacated the bridge. I was pulled along like an unwilling ghost, spectrally slipping through bulkheads as I followed Arcaidia down shining silver corridors tinted with warning lights of neon red. At points debris and flame choked some hallways, but always the Veruni ran faster around smaller side halls, and before long they were in a circular, tube-like chamber that stretched dozens of paces ahead, with circular platforms lining either side leading to spear-shaped pods... identical to the one I’d found Arcaidia in, weeks ago.

Persephone paused next to Arcaidia as other Veruni were clambering into their pods, one by one the pods descending into tubes at the bottom of the corridor. The purple haired Veruni knelt down, her red eyes hard and serious as she put one hand on Arcaidia’s shoulder.

“Take this,” Persephone said, reaching to a side pocket and pulling out a familiar silver sphere, the base form of Gramzanber that I remembered Arcaidia throwing to me on our fist meeting. Arcaidia looked at it, wide eyed.

“Is this the ARM I was assigned?”

“Yes, but the data wasn’t fully downloaded to it yet, so don’t use it unless you have to,” said Persephone, removing a small blue pack from the small of her back that I hadn’t noticed before, but also recognized as Arcaidia’s saddle bag, “I’d been packing for our first landing. I thought I’d give you these as a present. Now you’ll need it to survive. There’s a device in there that’s mocked up to look like what the ponies call a Pip-Buck, but it's also a field agent PDA that should pick up any Veruni signals. I’ll send this Pip-Buck a signal once I’m on the surface. Use it to find me.”

Arcaida nodded, face twisted with concern and sisterly love as she took the saddlebag, looped it over her shoulder, and placed the ARM sphere within it. “I will, sister. I’ll find you.”

Persephone smiled, ruffling Arcaidia’s mane, “I know you will. But above all else, remember who you are. You are First Specialist Arcaidia Luminasario of the Veruni Exploration Fleet. Your top priority, first and foremost, is to survive, and to serve the Empire's interests. If you can’t find me, find the Com-Sats, and get a signal back to the Empire.”

“You can count on me. I won’t fail you,” Arcaidia said firmly, sniffing as she held back unshed tears. The two shared a quick embrace, while dull vibrations and the sound of distant explosions rocked the ship. The two then quickly parted, Persephone to her own pod, and Arcaidia to her’s. The pair shared a final look, Arcaidia waving as the pod closed on her. Then the pod dropped into its tube and as it descended, so did I, a hapless passenger dragged along with Arcaidia’s dream of her own recent past.

I saw little else coherent as the pod was flung from the ship. I got the impression of a blue horizon, the blackness of space, then the rush of air and clouds as the silver streaking pod rocketed towards the surface. I caught a brief glimpse of the mountains of my home, and the sight of burning debris rocketing down alongside the pod towards the barren, dry forest of the foothills where I’d found Arcaidia’s pod.

There was a crash of intense noise like the striking of a sledgehammer on a boulder magnified to a factor of one hundred, then there was darkness and silence. All I could make out was the faint impression of the pod, lodged in the wall of the stone cave where Trailblaze and I had been chased by geckos. I approached the pod, and out of curiosity, stuck my head inside.

Arcaida rested, secured tightly in a vertical bed, and looked like she was sleeping. I saw a small screen bathing her in blue light and could read on the screen-

Dangerous radiation levels detected. Lifepod distress signal active. Malfunction in release mechanism.

It repeated that message in a ongoing scroll over and over again. Whatever the pod was doing, it looked as if it was keeping Arcaidia asleep... but for how long?

How long had it been since the pod fell here, and when Trailblaze and I stumbled across it? How long had Arcaidia been kept asleep, due to some sort of pod malfunction? I had no way of knowing, but I got the impression that it was a long time. A very long time.

I backed away from the pod, feeling as if I understood Arcaidia a little better now. It really must have been hard for her, waking up in a world completely different than the one she’d expected to see. She’d come hoping to see Equestria as it’d been once long ago, still green and vibrant despite the war that was being waged on it. In short order she’d seen her world as a barren husk, then had been thrust into an emergency that, from her point of view, had only just happened. And yet despite all that she had persevered through only having a couple of local tribals who couldn’t even speak her language as a guide, followed me into the unknown Wasteland in search of her sister, stuck by my side through one danger after another, and all the while learned my language and aided me in my crazy side-tracking adventures even when it might have been much easier for her to just go her own way.

“You’re really something else, Arcaidia,” I said, chuckling, “I really hope we find your sister.”

I was just starting to wonder if I was going to be pulled into anypony else’s dream when I felt a sudden shake on my shoulder, and when I blinked-

-I was looking up at Arcaidia’s face as she smirked down at me, giving my shoulder a shake.

“Up ren solva, the sleepy time has now come to end and we perform duties.”

I yawned, stretching in my sleeping bag, still feeling the heavy weight of fatigue on my body that said it still wanted more sleep, but I rubbed at my face with a hoof to banish the thoughts of snuggling back down and instead sat up. “Already? And only you got a turn tonight.”

“Turn?” Arcaidia asked, her head tilting curiously.

“N-nevermind,” I said, wishing my brain pony was as awake as I was, now. Everypony else was up as well. B.B was already waiting by the door, looking far too bright eyed and bushy tailed for whatever early hour it was.

“Up an’ at ‘em, Long,” the pegasus said with a grin as she stretched her wings, “Might be yer first shot at catchin’ a real sunrise, an’ it’d be a right shame fer ya to miss it.”

“Real sunrise?” I asked, curiously, “I know I like to sleep to sleep in, but c’mon, I’ve been awake at sunrise before.”

I felt something swat the back of my head and glanced over to see Binge wagging her tail at me as she trotted past, “The sparrow is talking about the gold lights, silly. The Goddess’ Eye, all blinding and judging. There’s no blanket out here to hide it from us.” The mare shivered, her smile turning sickly, “I’ve never seen it either.”

“I still don’t get it,” I said as my companions and I shuffled out of our cabin, LIL-E brining up the rear as she slowly floated behind us.

“We’re far enough south by now,” said LIL-E in her machine monotone, “That we’ve reached the edge of the zone where the cloud cover is cleared up.”

I looked at the eyebot incredulously. The constant blanket of overcast clouds had been a feature of my life for as long as I was able to remember. The only time I’d ever seen anything other than a sky painted in shades of gray and black was when I’d been briefly above the cloud cover in the Odessa warship, Varukisas. Even that small glimpse of blue sky had fascinated me, driven a spike of longing into my heart. I suppose it should have occurred to me that I might see something like that again, being once more on an airship, but I didn’t know what LIL-E meant by a zone where the cloud cover was clear, so I asked her.

“The pegasi, as a race, closed up the sky with clouds after the balefire bombs fell,” LIL-E explained briefly, with a hesitant pause before she said, “The NCR found a way to remove the cloud cover, one that extends over a wide area.”

“But not up in Skull City?” I asked.

“Or any of Equestria’s most outlying regions. The entire center of the continent is clear, but fringe areas like Detrot are outside of the range of...” LIL-E paused, “Well, they’re just out of range.”

“But now we’re enterin’ that range,” said B.B as we came out on the top deck, the air cool and crisp, a solid breeze doing wonders to wipe out the last of my fatigue. B.B turned and grinned at me, fluttering her white wings in an eager gesture, “So you’ll be gettin’ an eyefull o’ proper sun this mornin’.”

“Well, not good smartness to look direct at sun,” said Arcaidia, “Just look quick before eyes go bad.”

“Orrrrr,” Binge rummaged in her tail and seemed to materialize from the depths of its poofy tangel a pair of dark glasses that she plopped onto her snout with a smirk, “You wear protection! Important rule to remember, Longy.”

“Uh, where did you get those?” I asked in a deadpan voice, looking at the odd, dark glasses, wondering what function they might serve and why I thought they looked kind of cute perched on Binge’s snout like that.

“I found them!” she answered happily.

“Where?”

“In somepony’s saddlebags. When they weren’t looking.”

Arcaidia let out a hissing sigh, snatching the glasses off Binge’s nose with her magic and folding them, hanging the glasses off her dress hem while ignoring Binge’s whining protest. Arcaidia then shot the mare a stiff glare, “I return stolen property when we find who is missing sunglasses, stick hoofed one.”

“You’re such a rules lawyer,” said Binge with a huff, then seemed to forget her indignation with a smile as she licked her lips, “You know, if you’re so hard into discipline Arc, you should get a whip and some tight, sleek leather number to wear- Aaah! Cold!”

“Arcaidia, please stop freezing Binge,” I said in a tired voice, causing Arcaidia to grumbled as she stopped the ice and dropped Binge back to the deck, trotting away with a snort.

It was still dark outside, but nowhere near as much as I expected. It seemed the entire ship’s deck was awash with a faint silver glow, and when I went to the side of the deck to peek over the rail I was amazed by two things. One was that we were now sailing over a seemingly endless stretch of rolling white that glittered in the night like a carpet of gems sprinkled amid an ocean of sand. I’d only seen the edge of this great desert earlier, but now we were truly in the Bleach, each edge of the horizon nothing but bone white dunes. The other thing that lifted my heart into my throat in awe was the sky above.

There were still a few wispy bits of cloud here and there, but otherwise the sky was a dark blue bowl as endless as the desert beneath us, and just as sprinkled with gems of light that shone above like diamond dust. Then I saw, amid that black ocean of glittering lights, was the pale orb of the moon, blazing full in the sky and illuminating the night clad world in a coating of silver. I gulped, sitting down on my haunches. Not only was the sight beautiful, but given my recent dream-peek into Arcaidia’s memories, it was an overwhelming thought that she had passed by that moon on a ship not unlike what we were riding on, only vastly more advanced.

“Alright, git yer jaw off the deck, hun,” said B.B, “Show ain’t even started yet.”

“I...uh, is the sky always like that, without the clouds?” I asked.

For a moment B.B’s eyes dampened with a deep rooted sadness, “Most the time. Kinda weird ta think the sky don’t change much, no matter what we down here, huh?” She shook herself, as if tossing whatever sad thoughts she had aside, “Which means it's good ta appreciate it when we can take a’ break from the dirt an’ grim down here. Figure after all ya’ll went through back in Skull City ya could use somethin’ bright ta look at.”

I wished I had a way to show my appreciation for that sentiment besides just grinning at her like a dork. She seemed to find that thanks enough, returning my grin with a knowing smirk. Our duty on deck was to act as sentries, and it wasn’t quite sunup, so we got to work taking watch posts at each cardinal direction, Binge taking the port side, Arcaidia starboard, B.B aft, and me at the bow. We’d agreed to switch positions every hour for the four hour watch shift, not that we were really expecting a big shift in scenery for today. B.B explained to me that we wouldn’t be out of the Bleach until it was evening again, and then by tomorrow morning we’d be entering the NCR. The Bleach itself was entirely devoid of settlements, with not even a single oasis or rest stop from one edge to the other.

When I asked why the desert was like that, completely sand without any sign of the usual Wasteland ruins and clutter of the pre-war civilization, B.B just said that nopony knew for sure, but most rumors said the zebras had used something other than a balefire bomb in this stretch of land, and whatever it was had utterly crushed and stripped the land until not even the barest hint of life remained. Apparently stories of the large caravans and Mechanics Guild steamships that used to regularly cross the Bleach told stories of there being monsters in the Bleach’s sands that were viscous beyond most Wasteland critters, and that there were hidden Ruins buried beneath the dunes.

I couldn’t help but gaze down at the unending stretches of white sand and wonder if there was anything looking back. I remembered that the Golem that’d destroyed Saddlespring had marched in this direction, afterward. Was it still down there, somewhere in this massive desert? Why had it gone this way, in the first place?

Ruins beneath the sands... the zebras used a different kind of weapon here... hmm... my thoughts wandered, and I suddenly felt Gramzanber speak, his voice resonant in my head.

You’re wondering if the zebra knew about the Ruins the same way it seems the Equestrians did, and if they specifically targeted this area to try and destroy any Ruins in this area.

“Huh?” I said aloud, almost jumping at the ARM’s sudden voice, then with a face tinged red with embarrassment whispered, “Sort of. I mean, yeah, why not? I remember Rainbow Dash was forced to kill to try and keep some kind of secret with the Ruins, so it makes sense the Equestria of old knew something about the Ruins and their connection to alien threats like the Hyadeans. Why wouldn’t the zebras have known as well?”

It is a plausible theory. Sadly I lack information concerning the Veruni’s previous visits to this planet, so I cannot confirm anything for you, Longwalk.

“That’s okay, Gram. I was just musing, anyway. I’m more worried about the here and now than the past. If that Golem is down there in that desert somewhere, it’d be a serious threat. I mean, I know we’re all the way up here in an airship, but I remember that monstrous thing firing on an Odessa airship, after surviving a bombardment that flattened what was left of Saddlespring. Running into it again would be seriously bad.”

My data on the Golem weapons forged by the Elw is exceedingly limited. I know there were eight; Lolitha, Barbados, Lucifer, Sado, Berial, Diablo, Leviathan, and Asgard. The one you encountered beneath Saddlespring I believe was Diablo, code named ‘Roaring Metal’. However that is all I know. The Golem’s individual capabilities are not information I possessed, but I would recommend avoiding combat with one if possible.

“Yeah, no shit,” I said, eyeing the horizon to the port of the bow as the sky started to take on a distinctly lighter tinge.

As the minutes passed my eyes became rooted to that distant line between earth and sky, and the growing light of dawn began to grow brighter. The sky slowly became painted with strokes of warming blue and enchanting purple, while the horizon itself started to blush with a rose and flame tint that belied what was coming. I’d never truly seen the sun before. I knew it was a ball of light in the sky, but the constant cloud cover I’d known my whole life had cloaked the truth from me. The blinding, golden light of life that was cresting the horizon pierced me. It began as a liquid blaze of light that caressed the horizon with brilliant spears of light, then grew into a rising point of shining gold that washed all the sky in vivid hues of intermixing blue and red that dazzled my eyes.

Then there was the warmth of it. I’d never felt the sun’s naked rays on my fur and flesh before, and I shivered in their kind, warm touch. That light and warmth spoke of a never ending, always present gift inherent in being alive, and I just stood there in awe of it for a few minutes, forgetting all of my fears and worries while feeling that warmth of a true sunrise for the first time in my life.

Then, very suddenly, I didn’t want to be feeling it alone. I turned grinning, trotting from the bow towards the port deck where Binge was sitting, staring out towards the sunrise as well. Arcaidia joined us from the starboard deck, and I saw B.B slowly floating our way on lazy wing flaps.

“It's amazing! Hey Binge, you haven’t seen this either, right? Its... great?”

When I got a look at Binge, I paused, tilting my head. She was staring into the sunlight, the gold rays lighting her tired, scarred face in a way I had never really seen before. Everything about her seemed to pop out more clearly and stark, the horrible scars on her body standing out against the few clear patches of her green fur. Her blue eyes were dull, her mouth oddly slack, and even her poofy mane seemed somehow deflated. When she looked at me, I couldn’t tell what she was feeling, as if her emotions were being shoved down somewhere deep in her eyes.

“Its pretty,” she said, voice somehow subdued, “Is it real? It doesn’t feel real.”

Arcaidia had a strange look on her face, looking at Binge as if unsure just what to do wit her, “Sun is big real, I give you words of truth. Just like star but close to planet.”

“Binge, what’s wrong?” I asked, hesitantly.

She looked away from the sunrise, seemed to fix her gaze southward, and shook herself, patting her face with a hoof, then suddenly was all back to normal; feral grin and all. “Nothing’s wrong, silly! Big Sis Binge just had a teensy little brain spurt and forgot herself for a sec. Too much shiny, burns the soul.”

“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay...” I said, not really liking the way she’d seemed to zone out there and look so desolate for a moment. Arcaidia and I exchanged worried glances. Even Arcaidia seemed concerned, but was equally baffled as I was. B.B sensed our mood but didn’t bring it up as she landed next to us.

“Figure it's time fer a’ spot shift. Hope ya ‘liked the view Long.”

I managed a smile for her, which wasn’t too hard as I had genuinely loved the sight of my first sunrise. I just wished I knew why Binge had seemed so bothered by it. “Sounds good to me.”

We shuffled guard spots, and I ended up taking the port side, with Binge heading for starboard. Arcaidia took aft, and B.B the bow. LIL-E floated around on a roaming pattern around the deck, using her scanners to keep an eye for anything the rest of us might miss. Slowly the hours crawled by. The sky became painfully blue as the sun rose higher, and the only real noise for a good long while was the regular hum of the engines and the whir of the propellers cutting the air as the Sweet Candy continued to sail southward. Crew members would pass along the deck going about their business, not that the ship seemed to need much regular tending to keep its course. Captain Bartholomew rarely left the wheelhouse, keeping a steady eye on our progress. I did catch him occasionally looking at Arcaidia, however, and once more wondered why.

I’ll ask him soon as I’m off guard shift, I mentally resolved, but as the final hour of our guard duties were coming to a close something else came up. The first I heard was Crossfire’s raised voice, even before the hatch to the deck opened, practically being slammed by Crossfire’s crimson magical aura.

“I told you Applegate, drop it!” I heard Crossfire snarl in a voice of utmost scorn. She trotted out, shoulders hunched like a cat with its hackles raised, head lowered as if she wanted to skewer something with her horn. Right behind and beside her was Applegate, trotting with the stiff shoulders of a mare being patient with a young, ornery adolescent.

“If you’d just talk to her you might find something of value besides what comes from the clink of bottlecaps. She only wants to reach out to you.”

“What am I to her? A name even I don’t give a shit about? She doesn’t know me.”

Applegate’s eyes gazed at Crossfire levelly, “A fact she most fervently wishes to change, Crossfire. You won’t even give her a minute to speak to you. You can’t always run away from this. It’s a part of you. She’s a part of y-

“I don’t need you lecturing me!” Crossfire’s voice rose to a dark, heated pitch, the kind that sent warning shivers down my own spine. Applegate took it in stride, only halting to face Crossfire with a even, stone carved expression. Crossfire continued to speak, each word acidic, “You left, the same as me, and how’s that knightly honor holding up after so many years, huh, Applegate? I was just a soldier, and my duty was done. You? What made you leave your sworn duties for the mercenary life? Last time I checked Whiteheart pays you the same way he does me, so where the fuck do you get off lecturing me?”

“There’s more to duty than following the strict codes of honor,” said Applegate, voice steady, but there was a twinge of regret in her face, “My duty has carried me here, through many winding paths. Yet through all of it I remain a loyal servant of the Twin Thrones of Neighlesusis and Applehyde. I am still a sworn knight of the Protectorate. Do not mistake my work with Whiteheart for the petty pursuit of wealth. And do not change the subject.”

“No,” Crossfire said, her eyes finally glancing around as if only then realizing their conversation was audible to just about everypony on the deck, including me. Indeed her eyes fixed on me for a second, narrowed, then returned to Applegate, “We’re done talking.”

With that Crossfire stalked towards me, and Applegate sighed. I then noticed Shard stick his blond maned head out from the hatch.

“Is it safe to come out?” he asked, to which Applegate nodded with a disgruntled look.

“Yes, Mister Shard, your companion and I seem to be done with our... discussion, for today.”

“Oh, good, was worried you two were about to have it out right here on deck,” Shard said, trotting out, noticing my friends and I and gave us a quick wave.

Meanwhile Applegate grimaced and started towards me, reaching me just behind Crossfire. The two mares still had an electric tension between them that felt like I could cut it with Gramzanber. Crossfire, pointedly ignoring Applegate beside her, said to me, “Guard shifts up, me and Shard are taking over.”

That rather surprised me. “Weren’t you guys just on the last shift?”

“Yeah, but Hawkeye is indisposed,” said Shard, rolling his eyes, “Apparently he didn’t mention to anypony that he gets motions sickness. Only thing he’d be spotting on guard duty is his lunch going over the side.”

Crossfire snorted, “It's fine by me. I wouldn’t trust him or those mooks he brought along for his team to do much more than fiddle with their privates instead of keeping an eye out for trouble.” She eyed me, “Half surprised you and your hero squad didn’t have some kind of circle jerk up here yourselves.”

By now my friends had come along, and LIL-E spoke up in a sharp monotone, “Even if we did we’d keep a better watch than somepony whose nose is buried so deep in their own bullshitting asscrack.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, before anypony else could speak, “Let’s all pretend we’re adults here for a second, and leave the insult competition for when we’re not trapped together in a confined airship for the next day and a half. I’d like to get to the NCR without any explosions, if I can.”

LIL-E whirred around to face me, “But explosions can be a lot of fun.”

Binge nodded enthusiastically, “And hydrogen inside an airship burns very nicely.”

Arcaidia blinked, “Shivol bir knows this how?”

“Don’t think it matters how Binge knows much o’ anythang,” drawled B.B, then glanced at Crossfire, “So iffin’ yer talkin’ over, might as well git to it ‘fore somepony catches us wit our tails raised.”

“Indeed,” said Applegate, looking to me, “And I hope you are prepared for your training session, young Longwalk?”

“Uhh... sure?” I said, “Right here?”

The mare nodded to me, inclining her head back towards the open portion of the center deck, “There shall suffice.”

Crossfire had a strange smirk on her face, “This ought to be good for some on duty entertainment.”

“Hey Long, why don’t we go ‘bout rustlin’ up some grub in the mess hall while you do yer training bit, an’ we’ll bring somethin’ up fer ya?” suggested B.B, and I nodded to her, knowing I’d probably be starving before long.

“Sounds like a plan to me. You guys go eat. I’m certainly not going anywhere.”

As my friends went off down below decks and Crossfire and Shard went to take up slowly patrolling watches along the sides of the deck, Applegate and I went to the very center of the airship. There was a lot of space there, easily a good fifty feet of clearance between either side of the ship, or before the fore or aftcastle created a wall. It was sort of like standing in a little wood arena. As we stood across from each other I could see up into the pilothouse, noticing Captain Bartholomew handing over control of the wheel to another crewpony. The grizzled ghouled griffin slowly walked out onto the aftcastle’s higher portion of the deck to look down on me and Applegate with a curious look, pulling out an old wood pipe and sticking it in his beak as he watched us.

It made me a bit self conscious, but I supposed the old bird had been staring at the horizon all night and might want something else to do to break up the routine. I focused my attention upon Applegate, seeing her, strangely enough, not using her mouth to unsheath the large blade on her back but rather reaching over with her right hoof, gripping the weapon with a fetlock and drawing it forth while keeping a surprisingly tight looking hold on it.

Then, surprising me further, she reared up on her hind legs, balancing on them with seeming ease as she held the sword with her fore legs. My shocked look must have been quite obvious, for she smiled slightly and said, “I imagine you haven’t encountered many ponies who fight using this style.”

“You’re literally the first I’ve run into who does,” I said, shaking my head, “I mean, I’ve done it a bit myself, but that's for... well I won’t go into the reasons, but it’s weird. Ponies aren’t really meant to do that, are they?”

“You’d be surprised at how flexible a pony’s body is,” said Applegate, doing a quick, elegant flourish with her sword as if to emphasis her point, keeping her balance as she shifted on her hind hooves to move with the flourish. “Or I should say an ‘equine’ body, since this fighting style originated from the zebra, at least the version that was taught to me.”

“What’s the benefit, though? Why fight in a way that looks so uncomfortable?” I asked, for the moment ignoring the fact that when I’d done it it’d actually felt rather natural, in a strange way. I knew now that was because the alien nanomachines inside me were imprinting knowledge into my brain, including fighting techniques, from an alien creature that was bipedal. I’d assumed that whatever changes that made inside me also made it so fighting on my hind legs didn’t feel too wonky, but apparently equines had fought this way before and it wasn’t too outside the realm of what my body could do.

Applegate held her sword up, balancing its blade on her shoulder, “There’s two key upsides to bipedal combat. First is that while our neck muscles are plenty strong, we can simply get more power out of strike by using our forelegs.” To demonstrate she slashed downward, not close enough to hit me, but even so I felt the air whoosh by me from the force of the strike, and got the impression that she could split a pony in half with ease.

“The second benefit is the ability to rapidly move over a short distance, with much better agility,” Applegate said, nodding to me, “Attack me, and I’ll show you what I mean.”

I was a bit hesitant, as Gramzanber was the kind of weapon where if I misjudged my strike or she mistimed a dodge, I could end up doing a lot of harm. One slip up could get somepony killed. Namely Applegate. Yet the confident poise with which she held herself, watching me patiently to unsheathe my weapon and attack her, told me I needed to show a little trust in her. She wouldn’t be asking me to do this if she didn’t know what she was doing. I hoped.

I didn’t use the same bipedal stance Applegate was. I wasn’t really comfortable with it yet, especially knowing that the reason I could do it so easily in the first place was because of the Hyadean nanomachines in my blood. The whole notion just left me feeling itchy in my own hide. I drew Gramzanber, holding it in my mouth, and tensed myself to strike. Applegate waited for me, eyes still pools.

When I lunged I tried not to hold back. I somehow felt that doing so would insult her. I needn't have worried. She moved like a whirlwind. Gramzanber struck nothing but air and in the blink of an eye I felt the cold steel of Applegate’s sword resting on the back of my neck. She’d somehow moved to the side of me in an instant and lowered her sword in what would have been a perfect, decapitating stroke if she’d been serious. I just gawked at her, almost losing my mouth’s grip on Gramzanber.

Applegate stepped back from me, still poised on her hind legs, and asked, “Did you see how I did that?”

I just shook my head, numbly. She nodded as if expecting the answer and said, “Come at me again, more slowly. Watch my hind legs as you do.”

I did as she bade, tensing and lunging once more, but checking myself and making sure I moved a bit slower, and specifically kept an eye on her legs. As I watched she took her left hind hoof off the deck and used her right one to pivot. Her whole body swung around with incredible ease, avoiding my blow with the bare minimum of movement, yet fluidly putting her place beside me to strike down with her sword wielded in her fore limbs. It was so simple, yet elegant, graceful as a swirling dust devil.

“On my hind legs I can shift my weight much faster than I can if I’m standing on all fours,” Applegate said, stepping back from me once again, “Once balance is achieved, it's possible to maneuver in ways few ponies are prepared to counter. On four legs we’re fast in a straight gallop, and can charge with great strength, but on two legs a trained fighter can avoid blows far easier while striking with versatility and power.”

“It’s impressive,” I said, “You say the zebras came up with this?”

“Its origins go back to their tribal roots, though the style I use has been modified over the centuries and adapted for ponies. In Applehyde, my hometown, the style is traditionally taught to all who are appointed the rank of knight.”

Thinking back to the conversation between her and Crossfire I found myself asking, “Is that where Crossfire is from too? Applehyde?”

Applegate’s eyes shifted to glance towards where Crossfire was patrolling along the bow of the ship, well out of earshot. “I shouldn’t have spoken so loudly of private affairs. I forgot myself. Truthfully I feel I can’t speak much on Crosssfire’s past. I can tell you that she is not from Applehyde, but rather its sister city-state, Neighlsius. The twin cities that form the Protectorate have stood against the ravages of the Wasteland since the falling of the Megaspells. Survival built upon strong traditions of mutual trust and self-sacrifice of souls willing to shed blood to protect our land. None represent that more than the Crown Princesses; Princess Purity of Neighlisus, and Princess Goldring of Applehyde. It is a noble land of good, hardworking ponies, who know the importance of the ties that bind families together.”

There was a hard look in her eyes now, a long simmering frustration that made her features seem like rough cut granite, “Crossfire refuses to acknowledge who she is, and has stubbornly done so since I first met her so many years ago.”

“I... can’t really claim to understand what you mean,” I said, blinking in confusion, “I’ve only known Crossfire a short time, and that first meeting didn’t exactly go over smoothly. Kind of convinced me she’s a cap grubbing mercenary. Only Knobs has given me any reason to think there might be something decent about her, and while she’s fought beside me, I’m still leagues away from being able to call her a friend. So, even if you’re from the same country she is, I’m not sure I get why you’re so worked up about her.”

Applegate smiled sadly, “I suppose from an outsider’s perspective it would seem strange. Never mind it, young Longwalk. We have training to focus upon.”

“Young Longwalk?” I asked, “You don’t look that much older than me.”

“Sometimes just a few years experience can add up to a lifetime,” said Applegate somewhat mysteriously and gestured at me with a free hoof, “Now, come. Hold nothing back.”

We began to spar in earnest, and I lost track of the time. Applegate continued to move like a twisting viper, pivoting away from my attacks with the kind of agility that’d make dry leaves on the wind envious. She struck back with equal speed and grace, yet I was able to work myself into a rhythm of bocking and counter attacking that kept her large blade from touching my hide, at least most of the time. She never wounded me, but she did strike a few glancing blows, pulled back just so I knew that if she’d wanted to injure me, she’d had the opening. It only encouraged me to try harder, push myself faster. I didn’t use Accelerator. I wanted to learn the skills of combat in this instance, not rely on my ARMs power to win. This wasn’t about winning, it was about learning.

Again and again my spear met with her blade, a high shriek of striking metal cutting the air with each blow. Sweat was pouring off of my body in heated rivers and only the swift, cool breeze of the Sweet Candy’s flight kept me cool as Applegate continued to press me, ever forcing me to move and react faster to keep her blade from tapping me. I hadn’t at first noticed, but before long we’d drawn a crowd.

Not only crewponies, but a number of the passengers had come up on deck, either just to see the view from the airship rails, or specifically drawn by the sound of my sparring with Applegate. Besides my friends, who crowded up on the forecastle to watch me with Arcaidia and B.B trading bets on whether or not I’d ever hit Applegate or Binge lustily cheering me on, there were others who watched us intently. I noticed Iron Wrought by the starboard railing, watching me with quiet intensity. Whiteheart had joined Captain Bartholomew, exchanging quiet words with one another. Knobs was there as well, with Wellspring and Blasting Cap. The Raider filly was scowling like usual, propped up on Knobs’ back, while Wellspring had a notepad out, jotting something down.

Then there was Princess Purity, gliding up on deck like a pale ghost, peering around at everything with open curiosity, her guardian Phalanx trailing her like a power armor clad shadow. I couldn’t help but notice Purity exchanged a brief look with Crossfire, glancing away as Crossfire snorted and pointedly turned her back on the young monarch.

Also among those watching us was the poncho wearing griffin I’d seen briefly when passengers had been boarding the ship. I didn’t know his name, only recalling that Binge had suggested he was either with the Enforcers or Security Guild. He was the only one besides Applegate who was armed with a sword. Perhaps that’s why he was watching us so intently?

I must have been too distracted by noticing the crowd because Applegate snuck in a swift blow past my guard, reversing the hold on her sword and striking me across the jaw lightly with the pommel. “Watch me, Longwalk, not them. Distraction in battle is a rapid road to defeat.”

“Nice slogan, ought to be hung on a sign,” I said, a tad sore over the hit to the jaw and retaliated by focusing all of my attention back on her and attacking with abandon to try and finally get her on the defensive. I’d continued to watch the way she pivoted with her hind legs, and was getting the timing of her movements down. While the pivoting was swift, it was still limited in where she could go. She could only really pivot to my right or left, and stick within a pace’s distance.

Hoping to catch her off guard I swallowed my pride and discomfort and when she pivoted away from a fainting lunge, I pulled back, reared up on my hind legs, and spat Gramzanber out into my waiting fore limbs. I shut out the thinking part of my brain, letting my ingrained skills and instincts from the Hyadean nanomachines help guide the unusual bipedal movement, pivoting with Applegate to match her speed. I’d intended to use the back of Gramzanber’s shaft to trip her... but the moment I moved to strike it was like my body refused to follow the plan and my brain lanced with images, memories not my own.

-the Veruni warrior pivoted, meaning to strike me down with his blazing ARM, trailing brilliant thermal heat energy from its superheated edge. The fool had underestimated my reach, however, and Gramzanber’s dark, bloodthirsty edge. I pivoted with the doomed warrior, ignoring the howl of battle around us, and pulled Gramzanber back, deflecting the Veruni’s ARM and then thrusting Gramzanber forward in a blow that-

Would cut right through Applegate’s throat! I threw the aim of the deadly blow aside at the last second, even as she herself reacted to the strike with incredible speed, jerking aside. Gramzanber still cut a red, painful looking mark across her right foreleg, the crimson droplets of blood spattering the deck as we jumped apart.

I was breathing hard, the sweat on my face now running ice cold as I stared at Applegate, and the fresh wound on her leg that could have easily been something far worse had it not been for her quick reaction and me being able to pull out of the memory at the last second. There was a collective series of gasps or sighs of relief from the crowd watching us, only Binge sounding happy as she shouted, “Woo-hoo, first blood!”

Arcaidia rolled her eyes, reaching over to whap the other mare.

Meanwhile I stared at Applegate, gulping, despite a very dry mouth. “Y-you okay?”

Applegate examined her wound, face remarkably calm for somepony who had nearly lost a throat a moment earlier. “It isn’t deep. A little stitching and bandaging ought to suffice.”

“Please,” Princess Purity said, stepping forward, horn already lighting up with magic, “Allow me to tend to that, Dame Applegate.”

“That isn’t necessary your Highness, it's little more than a scratch.”

“Nonsense. Now, please be still. Phalanx, if need be, sit on her,” said Purity, managing a stubborn look she still somehow managed to make appear regal. Phalanx, obeying his mistress’ command, stomped over, his blank power armor helmet staring at Applegate until she sighed and sat down on her haunches to allow Purity to tend to her. Meanwhile I awkwardly shuffled away, but Applegate spoke up.

“Longwalk, that last strike...”

I turned to look back at her, guilt and nervousness twisting my features. Applegate looked at me squarely, but not in a judging manner, merely curious.

“That didn’t come from you, did it?”

I could only shake my head helplessly at her, answering honestly, “I don’t know.”

She accepted my answer with a slow nod, “We can speak of it next time. For now I’d say we’ve trained enough, this day.”

I hardly had any desire to disagree with her, feeling shaken down to my bones as I slowly trotted up the stairs to the forecastle to join my friends. LIL-E bobbed towards me, turning to her side and opening up a side compartment on her chassis. Within was a small paper plate with a pile of small vegetables, and a bowl of steaming stew that I could smell the chunks of meat in. Disturbed as I was by what had just happened, the food did wonders to settle me, setting my stomach growling.

“LIL-E, you’re an angel.”

“Of badass wrath, but yes,” said LIL-E, “You look like you could use it.”

I could. Even putting aside the nerve wracking close call that could've led to me accidentally murdering somepony, I had worked up an appetite. I took the plate from inside LIL-E’s compartment (there had to be a euphemism somewhere in there but I’m a gentlecolt, thank you very much) and set it down to munch away and try to forget what had just happened. Unfortunately I wasn’t going to be allowed to do that because not more than ten seconds later, before I could even get to the meaty bits of the stew, there was a shout from the aftcastle of the ship.

“We’ve got something incoming!” shouted Shard, waving from the back railing.

There were a few murmurs of concern from the crewponies as several scrambled back that way, along with the Captain and Whiteheart. Crossfire passed by, already unslinging her rifle from her back. I exchanged looks with my friends.

“Don’t suppose your Pip-Buck is picking up anything?” I asked Arcaidia, and she shook her head. “Yeah, mine neither. Guess whatever it is is outside the range of the E.F.S. Should we go take a look?”

“Its our job ta protect the ship, so I’m thinkin’, yeah we oughta see what’s comin’,” said B.B, taking to the air and winging towards the back of the ship. We all moved to follow her, but I noticed Binge pausing, a strange look coming over the mare’s scarred features.

“Binge?” I asked.

Her eyes looked like they weren’t seeing anything for a moment, before she blinked and shook her head, ears twitching fiercely, “Ghosties don’t want to be giggled at, bucky. They’ll reach out and choke you if all you do is laugh. We got ghosties in us, and something dancing in the air here wants to make them come play hardcore.”

“What are you talking about?” That was starting to become a common thread between me and Binge. Puzzling out what the mare meant could become a full time job to anypony crazy enough to try. Oh, wait, I was pretty much already doing that. Well, I already figured I was at least partially crazy, so no worries there.

Binge just sniffed the air, ears still flopping about like they were itching, “The bits in you that dream different than you, the air here makes ‘em sing. I can feel it too, because you bleed into me. The tiny bits from another ghost.”

“Wait...” my eyes widened slightly, “You’re talking about the nanomachines, aren’t you?”

“Duh, bucky, I felt them. Almost made me sleep forevers when you put them in me. They’re making you see ghosties. Like just now, a ghostie almost got you cutting the throat of the apple mare. I’m seeing ghosties too.” She sniffed, again, licking her lips, “Bad things happened here, bucky, way back when. Blood in the air, so old, but not gone.”

More shouts came from the back of the ship, and I saw Arcaidia looking back at me and Binge with worry in her eyes. I put a hoof on Binge’s leg, gulping, “Let’s worry about ‘ghosties’ later. Right now I think we’ve got something else to deal with.”

“Mmm, fun fun fun, in the sun sun sun,” murmured Binge, and I took that as agreement. She followed me, at any rate, as we joined Arcaidia and all trotted along to get to the aftcastle where we found B.B alongside Crossfire and Shard as they all peered out at the sky behind the Sweet Candy’s path. Captain Bartholomew was there too, with a long brass tube pressed near one eye, Whitemane standing stoically beside him.

“What do we have, Captain?” asked the leader of the Drifter’s Guild.

“Looks like an old Enclave Raptor,” said Bartholomew, beak tight around his pipe, “Engines stripped, replaced with twin dirigible balloons. Full retrofit. Red paintjob, and I’m seeing a black emblem like a bird. Yup, it’s the Black Swans.”

“The what?” I blurted, blinking. I couldn’t see much, only that there was a dark dot on the horizon behind us and a little to the north. I couldn’t really make out any details.

“A band of pirates, or rather I should say ‘privateers’,” said Whiteheart, eyes calm and contemplative, “Not the usual riff-raff that occasionally prey these skies. They usually operate much further to the east, around what’s left of Griffinstone. They’ve only come out to our neck of the Wasteland once or twice to raid shipping out of Port Needle, and I’ve never heard of them coming out over the Bleach.”

“Damn well armed,” growled Bartholomew, “One of the few intact Raptor’s outside the NCR’s airfleet. Lost their engines about ten years ago and have been running those balloons with coal powered engines ever since.”

Crossfire frowned, “Sounds to me like you know these pirates pretty well.”

Bartholomew shrugged, “Ain’t a lot of folk ply the airways, missy. You do it long enough you tend to rub shoulders with just about everyone in the business. I know the Captain of the Black Swans. Georgia used to be Talon before she took over the Raptor from its old Enclave commander and turned the crew into her own merc outfit. Hard, tough bird, and merciless while on the job. She won’t be reasoned with if she’s here to sink the Sweet Candy.”

“Can we outrun them?” asked Whitemane.

“The Raptor, yeah. She must’ve run the engines ragged to catch up this much with us. The Sweet Candy is lighter and swifter than that bucket of bolts. Problem is, it ain’t the Raptor we need to outrun,” Bartholomew said, peering through that brass tube again and he bite out a sharp swear, “Shit, that’s what I figured. She’s launching fighters, and those we can’t outrun. Alright! All crew, battlestations! We’re in for an old fashioned brawl!”

I had difficulty making it out, but it looked as if a small swarm of smaller dots had dropped from beneath the larger, distant dot, and were rapidly approaching. I felt a cold unease settle in me as I watched them approach, gradually and making out the shapes of small machines flying through the air on black, canvas wings, two sets stacked atop each other on either side. Single buzzing propellers were mounted at nose of each craft, and a small tail extended out behind them with stabilizing fins. I couldn’t see weapons yet, but no doubt each ‘fighter’ was armed, otherwise they wouldn’t be clearly on their way to attack us.

“Alright, you heard the Captain!” shouted Applegate, her wound bandaged and clearly not giving her any problems as she cantered towards us, “Prepare to defend the ship. Crossfire, Shard, take the starboard side. Longwalk, your team take the port side.”

Crossfire gave the other mare a dry look, “And what about you, knight? Going to throw your sword at them?”

Applegate just smiled thinly, reaching into a pocket of her coat to expose the handle of a leather wrapped semi-automatic, “While I dislike using guns I do have a practical side, Crossfire. Not all battles can be ended with a blade.”

“Practically from you? I’m fucking shocked,” said Crossfire, eyeing the gun with a critical eye, “That looks like one of Rupert’s. You actually borrowed a gun from the Enforcer Guild’s head honcho?”

Applegate sighed, “Like I said, practical. He offered, I accepted.”

“Bet the bastard just ate that up.”

“There was a certain smugness to his smile when he tossed me the gun,” Applegate admitted.

To that Crossfire just laughed, then cast a sharp glance at Shard, “Let’s go.”

As we took up our positions I saw it wouldn’t just be us Drifters fighting. The crew of the Sweet Candy had also broken out an impressive assortment of weapons. Many were armed with rifles, but several were also mounting machine guns drawn up from below decks, setting the heavy belt-fed weapons up at several intervals along the railings. At least two of the crew also carried rocket launchers, though I had difficulty imagining them hitting a swift moving fighter with those. Captain Bartholomew had gone back into the wheelhouse, but I saw him also carrying some kind of large weapon that looked like it was designed to fire small harpoons.

There were several of the delegates armed and staying up top to fight as well. Phalanx, stomping around in his power armor, looked ready to jump off the ship to physically tackle the pirates. The griffin in the poncho was joined by the blond unicorn mare in the matte black armor I’d seen earlier, the unicorn floating at least four different guns around in a dull green aura around her, while the griffin just spun a pistol in one talon casually. I noticed him smugly smiling at Applegate as she trotted by and he tipped an invisible hat at her.

“Enjoy the loaner, I want it back intact, Lady Applegate,” said the griffon.

“You’ll get your gun back in good order, Rupert, don’t worry, and thank you for your kind consideration for loaning it to me,” replied Applegate cooly, and then she nodded to the unicorn, “Armitage.”

The unicorn just nodded once, eyes unblinking past blond bangs, paying more attention to the guns she was floating around herself, loading them one by one. “Applegate.”

There was a bout of coughing from one of the hatches down into the ship and I saw the gaunt form of Hawkeye trot out with his cadre of four other ponies. He had his long sniper rifle on his back, but the stallion looked incredibly pale.

“Glad to see you decided to stop throwing up for a few minutes,” said Crossfire, to which Applegate gave her a hard glare before approaching Hawkeye.

“If you’re up to it, take the bow,” Applegate said, “We’ve got pirates just minutes away.”

The stallion muttered something under his breath and nodded with a slack, tired look, but set his jaw tightly and led his team to the bow.

Among those gathering for the defense I also saw Iron Wrought, and I felt a strange sense of relief when he looked my way and trotted over, already arming his sub-machine gun.

“Iron, it’s good to see you again,” I said, just glad to be able to talk to the other stallion, even if we were about to be tossed into a pitched fight.

“Not now,” he said, expression drawn in a deep frown, “We can catch up when we’re not about to get shot at.”

“R-right,” I said, playing off my disappointment with a nervous laugh. Iron Wrought glanced at me and let out a frustrated sigh.

“Fine. Good to see you too. Try not to get killed in the next ten minutes.”

That put a grin on my face, which only made Iron Wrought roll his eyes as he took up a position beside us. We all had our weapons out, though I was lacking in any ranged weapons. Even Binge had acquired a firearm, and I had to raise my eyebrow at it.

“Binge, did you get that from the Gobs?” I asked. The gun she had whipped out from the wild mass of her tail was one of the jury rigged weapons the Gobs had been using in the mines beneath Skull City. However this one seemed somehow even more madly cobbled together than normal. Its mouth grip was wrapped in black tape, and its barrel was longer than normal, dotted with holes. A nasty, rusty looking knife was mounted beneath the barrel, and instead of a normal clip the “gun” had a drum mounted into its firing chamber.

Binge smiled at me, “It's beautiful as a fresh corpse, isn’t she? One of the big Gobs had her in his cold dead hands, and I just couldn’t leave her behind. She called to me, a kindred soul cobbled together in gunk and blood. I named her Miss Sunshine.”

Iron Wrought grunted, “They’re coming in. Chitchat later.”

By now I could hear the incoming fighters. Their engines generated a hollow buzzing noise in the air, like a swarm of large, irate insects. Peeking over the rail towards the aft of the ship I could see the flying machines coming up fast. There were ten of them, each split into two groups of five in a V-formation that looked like they were circling out to the sides of the Sweet Candy so they could coming in from both sides at once. I could make out the small open spots behind the propellers where pilots sat, ponies in leather caps and goggles obscuring their features.

I swallowed, steadying my nerves and taking a deep breath. Slowly I drew Gramzanber, sending my thoughts towards the ARM. Gram, if I throw you at any of those craft can you teleport back to me?

I can, but I’ll warn you to be careful doing so too often in too short a time. I estimate you have about eight or nine throws before the energy needed to return to you will start to impact you physically.

That’ll do for now. I get the feeling this will be over before I get off more than a few tosses, assuming any of these things get close enough for me to hit the mark. My intentions were to maybe get the engines or clip a wing. I was only a little hesitant. While the idea was to disable the fighters, they’d plummet down to a very explody destruction on the desert below. My hope was that the pilot’s were pegasi or griffins that could abandon their craft and fly to safety. And if they weren’t...?

I glanced back at my cutie mark and took another steadying breath. I would do my part to defend the Sweet Candy. I prayed to the Ancestor Spirits that the number of deaths would be small, because I was no longer naive enough to believe there wouldn’t be any. With some good fortune I wouldn’t be causing it myself, but I wasn’t going to stand there and do nothing either.

There was a strange quiet among the crew as we waited those last few moments before the Black Swans attacked. All was still save for the buzz of the fighter’s engines and the throater, deeper sound of the Sweet Candy’s propellers. Then, quite suddenly and sharply, the fighters knifed in at us. Just as they did so I heard Captain Bartholomew’s voice shout over the ship’s speaker system.

“Light them up!”

The air roared with gunfire, both ours and theirs. Machine guns from the Sweet Candy barked out streams of tracers at the incoming fighters, and I heard the loud retorts of rifles and other small arms firing away, including the harsh blast of Crossfire’s massive rifle. Arcaidia’s starblaster cut silver streaks through the air, and my ears became deaf for a moment from the coughing blasts from B.B, Binges, and Iron Wrought’s guns beside me.

In return the Black Swan fighters cut loose with machine guns mounted on the lower set of wings, and I flinched as bullets tore into the deck below and the railing beside us, showering me with wood chips. I saw at least two of the fighters were actually aiming upward, stitching bullets into the Sweet Candy’s balloon. I tried to ignore the sounds around me, including the sharp scream of pain from a pony a ways down the starboard side towards the bow, one stallion being knocked away from his machine gun by several bullets ripping bloody gouts through his body.

I saw Arcaidia’s starblaster beams burn holes through one fighter’s wings, but it kept on coming. Binge was firing rapidly with her new gun, and I had to wonder how much ammo that drum held, because she was shooting almost as fast some some fully automatic weapons could. Still the fighters kept in on us, tearing into the deck and the balloon above us with machine gun fire. Still too far away for me to make a throw, so I set my legs and waiting, teeth tight around Gramzanber.

To my left I saw the unicorn, Armitage, levitating her own cadre of guns around her in a tight cloud, clustering them together to fire upon the same pirate Arcaidia had hit, tearing more bits out of its wing. When machine gun fire slammed towards her I saw Armitage raise a bubble shield of green light and deflect the rounds, all the while with a calm, almost disturbingly blank expression.

Then, finally, the pirate’s were close enough for me to hit them.

I narrowed my eyes, focusing all my attention upon one of the fighters shearing towards us. Each craft bobbed in the air, some diving to go beneath the Sweet Candy, while others sought to climb above it. I picked one heading down, judged the distance, speed, and wind, and then threw Gramzanber with all my might.

The spear sailed down, but didn’t quite strike the wing full on as I’d hoped, but instead tore through the edge of it. The blow still caused the fighter to rock in the air, but I couldn’t tell if I’d accomplished more than that as it zipped beneath the Sweet Candy. With a call of mental focus and held out a hoof, and with a shimmer of silver light Gramzanber returned to me. Doing so caused a lance of discomfort to hit me, not unlike using Accelerator, but much more manageable.

That’s not so bad, I thought, and Gramzanber quickly responded.

It will get worse each time. As I said, don’t overly rely on this ability until I gain your species’s calibration data.

Just as one group of fighters had vanished beneath us on the starboard side, the other group flew out from both above and below, heading out from us, having coming in on the port side. I chanced a glance behind me to see how they were doing over there. I saw one of the crewponies was down, clutching at a bleeding wound in her leg, while another was flat on his back, staring upward with glassy, dead eyes. Others of the crew went to the wounded, dragging them away from the line of fire, and another got on the machine gun the dead pony had been on.

I couldn’t tell if we’d gotten any of the fighters at first, but as I counted the ones coming in at us on the port side again, I only saw four. The fighters circled out and towards the bow of the Sweet Candy, just as the ship itself shifted and the deck tilted slightly as it turned hard to the port. I glanced back to see Captain Bartholomew hard on the wheel, aiming the bow of the ship towards the four fighters. I heard an eruption of gunfire from the bow, more machine guns and the sharper retort of a sniper rifle, probably Hawkeye.

I saw one craft get hammered by machine gun fire, its engine belching out thick black smoke and a trail of fire as it spun out of control and started to fall earthward. I didn’t see if the pilot got out or not. For all I knew they’d been chewed up by the gunfire as badly as their machine. I didn’t have time to pay more attention as the other group of fighters, still a full five, had come up behind the Sweet Candy and were pouring bullets into the rear of the ship and its balloon. Bullets tore past us, and I felt one, perhaps a ricochet, slap into my armor, knocking the breath from me.

Arcaidia glanced at me, then lit up her horn, “Shield time is now.”

One by one me and my companions shimmered with Arcaidia’s magical energy as she placed her shield spell upon us. I could feel the crackling, protective field of force settle over me, faster and more snug than the previous times I’d felt Arcaidia use the spell. She must have been practicing at some point. A good thing too, because while the fighters weren’t specifically targeting my friends and I, the wide burst of gunfire was impacting all over the back of the ship and some rounds were snapping towards us, regardless. I saw B.B take a hit to the chest that would have been a lot worse without Arcaidia’s spell dispersing the force, though it still knocked the pegasus on her butt.

“Argh! Dangnabbit, that smarts! I gotta invest in a’ longer range gun,” B.B said, glancing at her revolvers with frustration.

Arcaidia, scowling at the fighters, began to stride towards the aft of the ship, but then we all saw somepony else step up to the aft railing amid the hail of enemy gunfire. Applegate and Phalanx stood side by side, the power armored stallion ignoring bullets bouncing off his thick, metal carapace, while Applegate seemed to have an instinctive sense of where to stand to avoid the bullets ripping the air around her.

Both ponies acted as one, Applegate drawing the gun she’d borrowed from Rupert in her mouth and rearing up on the railing, taking careful aim, while on the sides of Phalanx’s armor boxy attachments cracked open and the shapes of twin, multi-barreled gatling guns extended.

With Phalanx it was a hissing thunder of rapid gunfire that shredded one of the fighters head on. In Applegate’s case, it was just one, single blast that must have gone right to the pilot of another fighter, because all I saw was a streak of blood and that fighter rolled over to start diving towards the ground. The other three fighters broke off their attack, banking hard to the starboard side of the Sweet Candy. Though they’d lost two of their number in that pass, I couldn’t help but notice that smoke was now trailing from one of the ship’s engines, it making coughing, sputtering sounds as it struggled to keep going.

“Everypony starboard side!” shouted Crossfire, “They’re grouping up for a big pass! Let’s take ‘em down!”

There was no hesitation in responding to her call. Crewponies mounted machine guns from the port side and rapidly ran them over to the starboard, while the rest of us gathered up in one long line, weapons ready. I even noticed Deadeye and his team rushing over to the starboard side of the bow, though they stayed up on the forecastle. Arcaidia looked along at the line of ready ponies and I heard her say under her breath, “Too many to cover the all, but have to try.”

Her horn became overlaid with additional layers of magic, a rapid circle of crest symbols appearing around the horn as she cast her shield spell again, only this time the protective energies snapped into place around over a dozen more ponies in the line around us. Many of them looked at themselves in confusion, but Arcaidia spoke up, despite the strain in her features, “No fear fellow ponies, I cast protection spell. Ugh, c-can’t cover more than this.”

They seemed to accept this, mostly because there wasn’t any time to question it. The pirate fighter craft were coming in fast, the remaining six having joined up into a formation with three on bottom and three on top, spread out so we couldn’t easily catch multiple fighters in one strafe of machine gun fire. Everypony readied their weapons. Gramzanber was a hefty weight in my mouth, and I picked my target as the middle bottom fighter. My plan was to try and take out its engine.

I breathed deeply, calming myself and focusing my attention on my target as everything else got drowned out by gunfire. The combination of the fighters cutting loose with their machine guns and every one of the Sweet Candy’s defenders opening fire at the same time created a deafening storm of noise and tore the air apart with bullets, streaking rockets, and Arcaidia’s starblaster beams. Bullets ripped into the deck, and even with Arcaidia’s protective spell I heard screams of pain. The fighters were soaring closer, and I estimated they were almost in range for me to make the throw.

I heard a sharp shout of agony right next to me, and caught out of the corner of my eye B.B’s shield being overwhelmed as several machine guns rounds raked over her. The shield held until the last bullet snapped through her right wing, causing her to fall back to the deck with her face twisted in pain, even as her eyes turned red and she growled, still firing at the oncoming pirates.

My attention stayed rooted on my target, but now I felt a tighter, cold clench in my gut as I reared up, prepared to throw my spear to try and disable the-

-Veruni starfighters strafing the mountainside. Rapid fire particle beams tore apart the cliffside above and below me, but I ignored the rocks bounding off my hardened armor, raising Gramzanber in my hands and sneering at the oncoming silver, dart-like starfighters. Laughing uproariously at the heated joy of war, I hefted Gramzanber’s dark edge and poured magical power into its hungry blade. The Veruni fighters came on, unaware of their impending doom as I muttered one word: “Impulse”

I cast Gramzanber forth to smite the fools before me-

And blinked, unaware of what had just happened. I was standing on my hind legs, my forearm already extended, having just thrown Gramzanber with incredible force. I could see the ARM streaking away from me, and its distinct, intense blew glow, like it was wreathed in azure fire.

I just used Impulse!? But I didn’t mean to!

The charged spear flew like a blue comet, and while the pirate fighter I’d been aiming at tried to roll out of the way, the pilot wasn’t nearly fast enough. Gramzanber slammed straight into the fighter’s engine, then cut deeper into the hull before the energies of Impulse were released. I gaped, watching helplessly as the fighter craft exploded in a flash of azure energy. I was too stunned to do more than stare at the pieces of flaming wreckage as the pieces fell to the world below.

The other fighters had broken off their attack after Gramzanber had struck the lead craft, though the intense gunfire from the Sweet Candy’s defenders had severely damaged one of the other craft to the point where its smoking engine stalled and it too began to fall, through from that fighter I could see a pony shape bail out, spread wings, and start to fly away from the falling craft. The surviving four fighters didn’t loop around for another pass, but instead started to fly back towards their distant parent ship, still following a long distance behind us.

I just stood there, still gawking in stunned, cold shock at what I’d just done. More than a few of the others around me were staring too. I heard a sharp whistle of appreciation coming from Rupert, the poncho wearing griffin rubbing his chin, “Damn, so that’s a real ARM in action, huh? Not bad.”

I felt exhausted as the strength drain from using Impulse hit me, but I barely noticed it, still too baffled and disturbed by what had happened to really feel it.

Longwalk, do you intend to summon me back sometime before I strike the ground? asked Gramzanber in my head, and I blinked, shaking my head to try and get my brain jump started to working order. I held out a hoof and called Gramzanber back, the ARM appearing once more in my waiting hoof.

Sorry about that... I just... what happened back there? What’s going on? I felt chilled inside. First Applegate, now this? What was going on with me? I kept getting these flashes of memory from what had to be the Hyadean, Zeikfried, but why was it that this was happening now? Somepony had just died because of it, and while I was willing to deal with the necessity of killing on my own terms, I wasn’t about to start letting it happen by accident.

I am unsure. It is an anomaly born of the Hyadean nanomachines within you, and I cannot influence nor comprehend more than that. However it is obvious that something recent has triggered these memories, as you did not have this issue until now.

That wasn’t encouraging. I still had a cold feeling tickling my insides, and whispered a prayer to the Ancestor Spirits to look after the soul I’d just inadvertently sent their way. I’d have to figure out just what was wrong with me and if I could control it, because I couldn’t afford to lose control of my own actions in the middle of a fight. For the moment, however, I pushed that thought aside and turned to B.B. She was grimacing in pain, her wing bent at an awkward angle around the bullet wound that’d torn a hole through it. I sucked in a breath, seeing bone.

“B.B, we need to get that looked at,” I said, moving towards her and reaching to pull out a healing potion from my saddlebags, but as I did so she held up a hoof, her voice low and strained.

“Stay back, Long, don’t git close ta me,” she said, teeth grinding, and scooting away from me as she held one hoof to her nose, “Dang it. Everythin’ is smellin’ like blood.”

All I had to do was glance around the deck to see the problem. The pirates might have broken off their attack, but they’d done plenty of damage in the few passes they’d made on the Sweet Candy. At least six of the crew were down, and I could see two of them were dead. Blood trickled across the wood deck in small rivers from the dead and wounded, and despite the breeze there was a tangy scent of blood touching the air. B.B’s thirst had to be getting to her, especially with a fresh, painful wound like that. Her eyes were pure red now, and she was breathing heavily, near panting.

Still, while I understood why she didn’t want me getting close, we had to take care of her wound. Other ponies were already moving to tend to the wounded, including Applegate, who once the pirates had ceased attacking had pulled out a small medical kit to start tending to the ponies still breathing. I also noticed that from the hatch below deck Princess Purity raised her head, trotting up with a determined look on her face as she marched towards the nearest wounded. Phalanx saw this as well and moved to intercept her.

“Princess, you must return below deck. It is not safe here, yet.”

“I hear no more gunfire, Phalanx, and there are those that need my healing magic. Let me pass.”

A grumble issued forth from the power armored stallion, and he stepped aside, “So be it, but you return below the moment the pirates attack again.”

“How likely are they to make another go at us?” asked Hawkeye, shouldering his sniper rifle as he came down from the forecastle with his team of Drifters. He halted at the bottom of the steps, and I saw him eye B.B with a strange expression. He hid it quickly and looked away, but for a second the Drifter had looked almost... haunted? Like he’d seen a ghost, his white and brown splotched coat turning paler.

“I doubt they have more fighters to throw at us,” said Crossfire, frowning as she glanced up at the Sweet Candy’s balloon, “Of course they might not have to.”

Arcaidia had come up to me and B.B by now and was looking at B.B’s wound with intense concern. She met B.B’s eyes and said, “Let me help?”

B.B winced, closing her eyes in pain, “J-just keep yer guys’ distance fer a bit, Arc, Long. I gotta-” she stumbled to her hooves and almost drunkenly started for the hatch, “-just gotta be alone fer a bit. I’ll be okay.”

Arcaidia moved to follow, almost stumbling over her metal peg leg in her haste, and I reached out a hoof to both steady her and stop her. “Arcaidia, wait.”

“But she is bad hurt! Can’t let wound fester!” Arcaidia said with equal parts outrage and desperation. She looked genuinely fearful for B.B, and I felt the same way, but unlike Arcaidia I’d seen how bad B.B could get when wounded.

“We’ll help her, but we need to give her a few minutes alone first,” I said, suspecting that B.B was getting out of view of anypony else for good reason. I knew Misty Glasses had kept some blood packets in Stable 104’s medical lab, and while I hadn’t asked B.B, because to do so would’ve been pretty untactful, but I imagined B.B had brought along some of those blood packs in our supplies. I knew blood helped her heal, perhaps better than an actual healing potion. If we just gave her some time, I was willing to bet B.B would be feeling better and be willing to let Arcaidia finish the job of healing what the blood started.

Instead I asked Arcaidia to go help Princess Purity with the other wounded, which she did so reluctantly, hobbling along with her fake leg and three flesh and blood ones. I felt a flash of guilt at the sight, both for the leg and the fact that I had to ask Arcaidia to hold off on going to B.B. At least the peg leg hadn’t gotten too much in the way during the fight, but then again, we hadn’t needed to move much.

“Hey, Longwalk, we got a problem,” said LIL-E floating beside me and bobbing to point at Crossfire. Looking over I saw Crossfire still gazing up at the ship’s balloon, and I trotted over to check what was wrong. Iron Wrought joined me, as did Binge, the two exchanging looks with each other. Binge just grinned at Iron Wrought, who frowned at the mare deeply.

“Isn’t it always fun around Longykins?”

Iron Wrought grunted, “At least I got a couple days peace and quiet before having to deal with this shit again.”

Ignoring the two for now I came up beside Crossfire, glancing up at what she was looking at. I saw it immediately. One of the engines mounted on the starboard side of the ship had been torn apart by the pirate's strafing, and large portions of the balloon had been stitched full of bulletholes. There was smoke trailing from the dead engine, leaving a oily slick cloud of black in the air like a trail of blood.

“Yikes. That, uh, that looks bad,” I said.

“Brilliant deduction,” said Crossfire, “Those fighters didn’t need to blow us out of the sky, just slow us down enough for their main ship to catch up to us.”

I glanced back at the sky behind us. I couldn’t tell if the pirate airship was getting closer or not, but it certainly wasn’t getting any further away. “Great, so we’re not out of trouble yet?”

“Wouldn’t count on it,” Crossfire said, turning to look as Captain Bartholomew came out of the wheelhouse with Whitemane, the Captain looking grim and Whitemane looking... generally unconcerned, all things considered. Bartholomew came down to the main deck and approached Applegate, Whitemane still trailing behind him.

“I just got off the radio with Georgia,” Bartholomew said, “She’s demanding our surrender.”

“Expected,” said Applegate, eyes still focused on wrapping up the wound of a crew pony with a bullet through his leg, “Can we still outrun her?”

“Not with the damage her flyboys did to us,” said the Captain with a hard look, his rotted wings flapping once in frustration, “I can keep us airborne, but we’ve lost enough speed that her Raptor can catch up to us in less than an hour. When that happens there’s not a lot I can do. That thing’s plasma cannons are still operational and can knock us out of the sky easy as slapping down a parasprite.”

“She has guaranteed the safety of the crew and the majority of the passengers,” said Whitemane, brushing some errant strands of red mane from his face, “Provided we hoof over one particular passenger.”

“Who?” Applegate asked, and Whitemane nodded towards Princess Purity. Applegate’s response was an immediate, “Out of the question!”

Purity, hearing this, raised her head, eyes wide, “They’re only after me?”

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Phalanx, “Who’s hired this skybound ruffians to come after our Princess?” He stomped towards Whitemane, “Is this a Skull City plot to take one of the Protectorate’s leaders!?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, my good stallion,” said Whitemane, “Why would so my Guild leaders put themselves in harm's way just to hand over one Princess to a gang of pirates?”

“If you were in collusion with the pirates your danger would be minimal, and with the Princess in pirate hooves she could be used as leverage against us!” growled Phalanx, but Purity put a hoof on his armored shoulder, gently stepping forward.

“Sir Phalanx, stand down. Such paranoia is of no use to us and only taints the purpose of our mission.”

“But your Highness, I-”

“Guildmaster Whitemane, I believe you when you say Skull City has nothing to do with this,” Purity said, taking a deep breath, “The Protectorate and Skull City both have enemies, and there are many who’d benefit to taking me for ransom. There’s no need to go pointing hooves in blame for this. If there is no way for us to escape those chasing us, then you can tell the pirate Captain that I shall obey her demands, so long as she keeps her words to harm nopony else.”

Captain Bartholomew raised a talon, shaking his head, “A fine enough gesture, but trust me, I wouldn’t put it past Georgia to just blow us out of the sky as soon as you were on board her ship. Just because we can’t outrun her, and can’t outfight her with the Sweet Candy, doesn’t mean we’re out of options.”

“That was what we were discussing before coming out here,” said Whitemane, demeanour as calm as ever, “The Raptor is only a threat due to the fact that is currently faster than us. Disable its engines and we’ll be able to outrun it just like before.”

“That’s all well and Dandy, Whitemane, but how do you plan on pulling that off?” asked Rupert, idly twirling his gun in his talons. Beside him Armitage hadn’t put away any of her own firearms, the weapons lazily spinning around her in a green telekinetic field. “We have no means to strike at them at this distance.”

“Can’t we just teleport over there?” I asked, blinking and feeling very self-conscious as many eyes suddenly turned to me. I gulped, “I mean, uh, Crossfire, you can teleport, right? So you could pop us over there, we blow up some engines, and then we just, you know, poof back?”

Crossfire looked at me like I was asking if she could sprout wings and fly, “You’re talking about teleporting, accurately mind you, onto a moving object that still miles away, with only minimal visual means to even aim where I’m going... yeah, no. Just, no. Try again, buck.”

“Actually,” said Whitemane, smiling knowingly, “Longwalk has hit upon the plan most aptly.”

Crossfire just raised one eyebrow quite high at the Drifter Guildmaster, “You’ve got to be kidding Whitemane. A teleport of that distance and accuracy can’t be done. Not by any unicorn on this ship.”

“Quite correct, I’m afraid,” said a smooth, regal, voice as Star Soul joined us on deck, the tall, dark purple alicorn spreading her wings and looking at us all gravely, “That is why it falls to me to perform the act myself.”

All eyes turned to the Guildmistress of the Skull Guild, and Crossfire narrowed her eyes slightly, “What, you can read minds, too?”

Star Soul laughed dryly, “No, but I have exceptional hearing, and the moment I heard Whitemane mention what was needed I could guess what his intentions were.” She looked to Whitemane, expression serious, “I assume that is what you intended? To have me take a group onto the pirate vessel to disable its engines?”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” said Whitemane with a wry look in his eyes, “We are, after all, somewhat deprived of other options.”

Star Soul nodded, stretching her wings and craning her neck to get a glimpse of the approaching pirate vessel, which I could tell now was indeed slowly catching up to us. “I can take, three, perhaps four with me, and still make that distance accurately. I will only take volunteers.. Teleporting is draining, evening for me, so taking more than four would be problematic. I’ll need to save some magic to aid in disabling the pirate ship’s engines.”

“We only have to destroy one or two engines, right?” I asked, “I mean, we’re not going to fight the whole crew. We pop in, smash an engine, then get out.”

“Are you volunteering?” the alicorn asked me, and I felt suddenly rather small as the ludicrously tall Star Soul turned her full attention to me. Her eyes were bizarrely piercing, the violet orbs seeming to stare straight through me.

“I... yes, yes I am.” I said, and Star Soul nodded in acceptance.

Arcaidia almost immediately stepped forward as well, “Where ren solva go, so go me.”

Star Soul glanced at Arcaidia’s leg, to which Arcaidia just stiffened and held her head higher, but the alicorn said nothing and just said, “Very well. We need two more.”

Binge bounced up and down, holding up a hoof, “Oh! Oh! Pick me! Pick me!”

Crossfire rolled her eyes, “We’re not sending all of the buck’s team. You need somepony with a bit more practical experience in blowing things up.”

Binge stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry, “Balls to that, Binge knows how to explode all of the things! It works best with fire.”

Crossfire just glanced at Star Soul, “Take me and Shard as your other two.”

After a moment’s consideration the alicorn gave a final nod, “So be it. We’re short of time and cannot argue the matter. I shall take you four, now. Gather closely, and put your hooves upon me. And do not move too much, if you can.”

I glanced at Binge, “Sorry, just, uh, keep an eye on things here for me, okay? Especially B.B. She’s injured, and I think she went to our cabin to look after herself. Just, like, give a knock or something to make sure she’s alright.”

She gave me a scrunched faced frown and said, “I’ll check on the injured birdie. Better not have too much fun without me.”

“I’ll bring a souvenir,” I said, trying to play off the situation lightly despite the fact that I was actually rather terrified. But I’d volunteered and I wasn’t going to back out. With luck I could just make sure we took out the engine quickly and kept it fast enough that we could get out with minimal loss of life on either end of things. Assuming I could keep control of myself. Assuming I didn’t have another random flash of memory to an alien warlord’s life that left me lethally slaughtering anything in my path. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead as me, Arcaidia, Crossfire, and Shard gathered around Star Soul.

Gramzanber, hope you don’t mind, but for this I’m going to use the shock stick. At least until we figure out what’s with these memory flashes. I thought as I secured the ARM back in its sheath and got into my saddlebags to pull out the taser I’d recovered after the fight with Redwire.

A logical course of action. However I would recommend you don’t hesitate to use me if the situation demands a greater response than what you could garner from that... inferior weapon.

Are you jealous of the shock stick?

... No.

I just shook my head in wonderment, while Star Soul spread her wings as we each placed a hoof on her withers or sides, and her long, pointed horn began to glow with fierce amethyst light. A dome of energy swirled around us, and I felt my fur prick up and tingle as Star Soul’s magic surrounded us with deep violet light sparkling with twinkling motes of energy.

Then the world flashed deepest purple, and I felt like I’d dropped right off the face of the world.

The inevitable disorientation from going through a teleport spell thankfully wore off fast and I found myself standing in the archway of a connection hallway to the open wood deck attached to the side of one of the massive dirigible balloons that looked as if it had been welded onto the side of the steel hull of the massive pirate airship. The wood deck extended along the length of the balloon for well over a hundred paces, and above me I could see the airship’s main hull rising about two or three decks above my head. I hadn’t really gotten an appreciation for how large this ship was compared to the Sweet Candy until then, and it made me gulp in realization that if we didn’t do this fast, chances were we’d be in big trouble with what was probably a very large, exceedly well armed crew.

Fortunately our sudden appearance on this side deck took the few pirates in the area completely by surprise. There were five ponies, all pegasi clad in patchwork armor that looked like a mix of leather and ceramic plates, many wearing bandanas dyed combinations of red and black, who were milling around the front rails of the deck, paying more attention to the slow chase of the Sweet Candy than to the deck behind them when Star Soul and the rest of us appeared. The pirates were hooting and hollering at each other, pointing at the distant Sweet Candy.

“Whoohee! She’s slowin’ down good! We’ll be on her in no time, and then we’ve got ourselves a serious payday!” shouted one stallion, stomping his hooves.

“Shouldn’t have taken so many of our damn fliers to do it,” muttered another, scratching at an eyepatch, “Who’d imagine that little ship would pack that much firepower?”

“Eeh, those bi-planes are easy to rebuild,” said a pegasus mare, licking her lips, “With the kind of scratch we’re making on this job we might actually be able to get one of the Vertibucks up and running again!”

As they chattered among themselves I glanced at the others with me and whispered, “Can we sneak past them?”

Crossfire aimed her rifle at the group, face steely, “It’d be faster to kill them.”

“And make noise that’d alert literally everypony on the ship that we’re here,” I pointed out.

Arcaidia looked hesitant for a moment, unholstering her starblaster, and said, “Engines making much noise already. Gunshot not be immediately noticed, ren solva. We must take engines down fast, so sneaking take long time and maybe not so good plan.”

She didn’t sound happy about it, but she was already adopting that cold, eerily still expression she got when she was both prepared and able to do what was needed. It was only slightly tinged by a certain sympathy for me, but I understood as well as she did that she was probably right. Stealth took time, and time we didn’t have. Especially when one of the pirates, a dusty brown mare, heard the magical pop of the teleport spell and glanced back at us, eyes wide. I heard Crossfire working the bolt action of her rifle to fire, but I moved first. If stealth wasn’t an option, then I was willing to fight. Even kill, if it came to it, but I still had options, so I was going to use them.

Accelerator.

I didn’t need to be holding Gramzanber to use the ARM’s power when it was still attached to my side. The world snapped into slow, azure blue focus, everything moving in slow motion. Even weakened as I was from the earlier use of Impulse I still felt strong enough to rush forward in the slowed world of Accelerator, shock stick at the ready. The brown mare went down from a hard, electrified slap to the face, and I didn’t slow down moving among the other pirates, jabbing the sparking weapon hard into any exposed area I could find. The pirates had barely had time to turn around and start clearing weapons from holsters before my high speed attacks had rendered most of them twitching and unconscious on the deck. Only one I didn’t get to before he’d gotten a gun, a snub nosed revolver, drawn and ready to fire, but even as I turned to try and knock him out with the shock stick I saw a large caliber bullet sail slowly into the stallion’s head. I got an unpleasant slow motion rendition of the round, fired from Crossfire’s huge rifle, tearing the pirate pony’s head into wet, bloody chunks, some of it splattering my face even as I backed away and shut down Accelerator.

The world returned to its normal color and speed as the pirate’s convulsing, headless body dropped to the deck, and I grit my teeth both against the backlash pain from Accelerator, and the sudden need to vomit. Crossfire glanced at the other, unconscious pirates, and gave me a brief, shrugging look.

“Let’s make this fast, before the whole crew wises up to us being here,” she said in a hard tone, already galloping for the dirigible balloon, which I noticed had several rope and wood plank walkways strung up along its top. Arcaidia, starblaster out and floating beside her in a blue glow, gestured at the archway behind us. “I buy us some time.”

She didn’t wait for a response, instead going to the archway and lighting up her horn as she began to fire a magical beam of frost to start sealing the opening with a wall of ice. Star Soul watched her with a curious look in the alicorn’s eye.

“Strange, I don’t recognize that brand of magic she’s using,” Star Soul said, almost to herself, “Were the Goddess still alive, she might have found it intriguing.”

“We don’t exactly have time to stand around and shoot the breeze,” said Shard, “Even with the filly blocking off that area, there’s other spots the pirates will be able to get here. Move it, folks.”

He was right and we didn’t waste any more time. I just gave Arcaidia a quick nod, telling her, “Catch up quick.” Then we were galloping after Crossfire. Well, me and Shard were galloping. Star Soul took to the air, her huge wings helping her sail after Crossfire faster than any of us could run. As we hit the walkway arcing over the top of the dirigible we heard the hard bark of Crossfire’s rifle firing. I saw only a flash of her tail going over the top edge of the balloon, so I couldn’t see who she was firing at, but I heard the chattering stutter of return fire and knew she’d run into trouble up there.

The walkway swayed in the wind, making my run turn into a bit of a stumble, and I had to use one fore leg to grip the rope to keep myself steady as I went. My eyes sort of naturally wandered downward and I could see the walkway actually suspended us over the vast desert below. There were large steel beams the kept the bottom of the dirigible balloon bolted to the side of the Raptor, but I could easily imagine bouncing off of one of those if I fell off the walkway. There were similar steel beams also stretching across from us, steadying the top of the balloon, and I noticed those beams had another set of upward angled beams that attached to the roof of the ship... Where I couldn’t help but notice several ponies looking at us in surprise. Then start to draw guns. Shit!

“Shard, behind us and above!” I shouted, fumbling into my saddlebags in search of a flash grenade. I saw him turn and look behind us as well, groaning at the sight of the pirate ponies aiming assault rifles at us and opening fire. Fortunately the shaky, swaying nature of the walkway worked in our favor here, as the bullets tore the air around us, but didn’t manage to hit. At least not yet.

“Go!” I shouted, pushing Shard ahead of me while I got the flash grenade into my hoof, having to hold the shock stick in the crook of my other arm while I pulled the stem from the top of the apple-shaped grenade. It wasn’t a short distance to throw, but I generally had faith in my throwing arm. However I also underestimated the drain on my strength from Impulse, and when I threw the flash grenade it landed far short of my intended target, bounding off the hull a deck below the firing ponies on the airship’s roof and exploding in a flash of light that was effectively harmless.

“Aw hells,” I muttered, scrambling to follow Shard as more bullets rained down from above, one snipping by and grazing my flank. The armor held, but there’d be a nasty bruise there later, and the blow almost knocked me off the walkway.

Arcaidia had finished with her ice wall and seeing me and Shard in trouble she ran across the deck to the walkway and then spun around, her starblaster blazing several silver streaks of light up at our foes. I saw them duck back from the deadly blasts, and Arcaidia backed up onto the walkway, following me and Shard as she kept up a suppressing fire with the starblaster.

We rushed as fast as we could up the rest of the walkway, which was also strung across the top of the dirigible. There was a circular platform here, like a big wooden lookout point. There were two dead pirates here, one a pegasus, the other a griffin, the former with his chest blasted out and the later with her throat cut through. Crossfire’s bayonet was covered in blood as she fired at a machine gun emplacement built along the outer side of the dirigible, where another pair of pirates had taken cover and were returning fire with pistols. Star Soul was still in the air, flying further down the length of the balloon where I could see half a dozen engines with swiftly spinning propellers mounted.

“We’ve got company behind us,” I told Crossfire as I came up behind her, “Kind of forgot to ask before we bamfed over here, but how are we taking out those engines?”

“Leave that to the freakin’ alicorn, buck, and help me deal with these assholes!” shouted Crossfire, floating her rifle over the downward curve of the balloon and cracking off another shot at the pirates below. I managed a quick peek to see the pirates were using some sort of hatch into the interior of the balloon as cover, the machine gun emplacement actually having an overhanging roof that made it easier for them to hide.

“I’ll handle it, boss,” said Shard, glancing at me, “Toss another grenade.”

“I’m heading down too,” I said firmly, fishing out another flash grenade. When I tossed it down there I heard the pirates swearing profusely, then heard the loud bang and saw the burst of light from the grenade going off. Shard and me both went over the side, where a wide ladder of rope and metal planks gave access to the top of the machine gun emplacement. I judged the drop and let myself fall the last bit of distance, hitting the sheet metal roof above the machine gun, Shard not far behind me. The emplacement itself was little more than a wood and metal platform about two paces wide, with a large double-barreled machine gun mounted on the edge on some kind of swivel mount. I jumped down onto the platform, seeing the hatch behind me where two pegasi were rubbing at their eyes and swinging pistols towards the hatch, despite being both blind and deafened. I didn’t have time to think, so I just tackled the first pegasus, hitting him in the chest and sending us both rolling along a metal catwalk that spanned part of the interior of the dirigible.

He elbowed the side of my head, and buffeted me with a wing, but I held firm to his midsection and hauled him into a body slam that made him lose his mouth’s grip on his pistol, the weapon skittering away. The pirate swore, breathless, but managed to smack me with his wings and then get a hind hoof into my gut to kick me off of him. I landed on my back, then saw the pirate pulling out a large, nasty looking machete from a belt sheath as he flew up, near to the roof, then turned to dive bomb me. I staggered up, and thinking of my sparring match with Applegate, I rose to my hind legs. Just as the pirate was about to dive into me, machete first, I pivoted on my hind legs, swinging my body just out of harm's way. The pirate wasn't prepared for the move and ended up smashing gut first into the safety railing of the catwalk. He nearly went over but I hauled him back at the last second from a potentially fatal fall.

"Ugh, t-thanks," he said, think blinked at me with his face twisting up in anger as he remembered we were enemies. I then smashed him squarely in the face with my shock stick, sending him to unconsciousness with a blue flash of electricity. The other pegasus started firing randomly, his semi-automatic weapon sending bullets sparking around, which struck me as extremely dangerous in an area close to potentially highly combustible gas sacks. Whether by luck or some built in safety precaution the bullets didn’t actually ignite anything, but one of the rounds did hit my leg, knocking me to the grating of the catwalk. Pain exploded through my leg and I found myself slipping off the catwalk, only hooking myself around one of the vertical rails at the last second to keep from falling off into the latticework of beams and canvas gas bags filling the interior of the dirigible.

By now Shard had come down onto the machine gun platform, and knives literally burst from him like a cloud of spores, all of them spinning like buzzsaws in his yellow magical aura. They shot forward, impacting among the still standing pirate in a shower of blood and screams. I winced at the sight, clambering back up onto the catwalk in time to watch the pirate’s body fall limply with entirely too many knives sticking out of his flesh. The knives then rather sickeningly slid out of the body and floated back to Shard in a bloody swarm as he glanced left and right to make sure there weren’t any more pirates around.

“Have I ever told you that your method of fighting is actually kind of disturbing?” I said, trying to choke down my feelings bitter chill.

“That’s part of the point,” said Shard, “Intimidation tactic.”

“It works,” I said, “I’m feeling plenty intimidated.” I glanced at the dead pirate’s body, “Pretty sure he is too.”

Shard went through a rather smooth set of motions in cleaning his blades off, wiping them on his barding, and he shrugged. Then the entire dirigible shook violently, causing both of us to almost lose our balance. I heard a sound of metal being torn apart, a high pitched squeal of sound beyond anything a pony’s throat could make, and then several explosions. Suddenly the sound of gunfire from outside intensified, and Shard and I exchanged looks, both of us making for the ladder back to the top of the dirigible.

There, I saw that one of the engines mounted along the side of the dirigible had been torn free, its propellers bent and ripped, and the metal casing of the engine wrenched open where flames and smoke poured out. I saw Star Soul swoop along the side of the ship, her horn blazing purple, and another engine became wreathed in violet light, the alicorn’s telekinesis spell tearing into that engine too and ripping it free from its metal mounts. At the same time other pirates in machine gun mounts further down the balloon were opening fire, trying to knock the alicorn out of the air. Then I saw one machine gun emplacement suddenly turn frosty blue and then explode with shards of ice, and I looked up to see Arcaidia and Crossfire running along the top of the dirigible, Arcaidia’s horn flashing blue with magic and crest symbols.

I felt the whole dirigible shake, Star Soul ducking and diving through the air to avoid streams of machine gun fire as she ripped apart the second engine with her magic. Shard and I climbed up the ladder, wind shear buffeting us both. When I got to the top again I gulped, seeing that the roof of the main airship’s body was now a lot more crowded, over a score of pirates having arrived there now, most of them taking to the air and winging right towards us.

“Okay, engines ruined, time for us to go,” I said, and me and Shard started galloping across the top of the dirigible to catch up to Crossfire and Arcaidia. I put away the shock stick and drew Gramzanber with a grim determination. I was still concerned over the risk of control, but with so many more pirates showing up, I needed the edge. Crossfire spotted the incoming pirates and started firing, dropping one or two before the mix of pegasi and griffons started strafing us, bullets tearing into the dirigible roof. I didn’t hesitate to activate Accelerator, returning to the world of slow moving blue.

I let Shard slowly gallop past me, and then kept pace with him as I saw the bullets now raining down on us in syrupy slowness. Any that would have hit me or Shard I knocked away with Gramzanber’s broad blade, feeling each impact jarring me like pushing on a boulder, but even so I could handle the strain. What was probably just a span of a few seconds took from my perspective more than a minute, deflecting a veritable storm of gunfire before the pirates finished their first pass and gave me a brief reprieve to deactivate Accelerator. I grit my teeth hard against the pain of the power’s backlash, feeling a bit of blood dribble out of my nose, but I kept standing.

Crossfire glanced at me, but only for a second, her rifle blasting away until her clip rand dry and she slapped in another. Almost each of her shots had been accompanied by a pegasus or griffin pirate being jerked out of the air in a spray of blood, some screaming as they spun towards the distant desert below, others more mercifully silent. Arcaidia’s starblaster joined the rifle in putting out a withering fire at the pirates, less accurate, but no less deadly when it struck, some of the pirates being turned to little more than glittering cinders by the weapons lethal beam. The number of pirates was too many to stop them from coming around for another pass, however, and we were incredibly exposed on top of the dirigible balloon.

Star Soul landed among us, tall and silhouetted by the sun above us. It somehow struck me as wrong, in that moment, that even with the sun out and shining and the sky so beautifully blue that there was still ponies killing each other. If anything the stark sunlight just made the blood seem more harshly real than ever. The thought passed quickly under the urgency of the situation.

“If we’re leaving, now would be a good time for it,” I told Star Soul.

“Indeed, we’ve done sufficient damage,” the alicorn said, horn flaring as she threw up a bubble-shaped shield around us to absorb the new fusillade of gunfire that smashed towards us from the circling pirates. Her face became strained, wincing. “Unfortunately I am not as talented or strong in magic’s use as some of my sisters. I... regret to say I don’t think I can teleport all of us back. Ugh, I’m sorry, but I can’t maintain this shield and teleport us all at the same time. I underestimated how much strength I’d need to destroy the engines.”

“Great, just fucking great,” muttered Crossfire, and before any of the rest of us could say anything she added, “I’ll stay.”

“The hell you will, boss,” said Shard, closing his eyes, sucking in a deep breath, “You know I’d never be able to look Knobs in the face again if I let you do that.”

I shook my head, brain working a mile a minute, “Before you volunteer yourself Shard, let me do it first. I’ve got experience escaping from airships. I can get out of here on my own after you guys teleport back to the Sweet Candy.”

Arcaidia literally growled at me, “You no do toaster headed ideas this time, ren solva. You stay, I stay, and we just... just... take over airship for ourselves!”

Star Soul smiled down at all of us, “It is good to see all of you little ponies are brave enough to take such a risk, but no. This mission was facilitated by me, and it shall be ended by me. I have wings, after all, I may well be able to escape on my own. Do tell Whitemane, in case I don’t return, that I leave the success of the negotiations with the NCR in his capable hooves.”

“Whoa, waitasec-” I started to say, holding up a hoof, but Star Soul lit up her horn even brighter than before, almost blinding me with its violet radiance. I felt as if my body was being stretched out for a moment, the world falling away beneath my hooves, and then suddenly the world returned into sharp focus and I was being dropped, along with Crossfire, Shard, and Arcaidia, onto the deck of the Sweet Candy.

… Star Soul was nowhere to be seen.

Footnote: 50% to next level!

Author's Note

I love airships. They're pretty much a staple of almost every JRPG that came out in the 90s and early 2000s. Strangely enough the Wild Arms series has had kind of a weird track record with air vehicles though. In the fist game the Gull Wing was pretty standard, but in the second game you got a freakin' flying castle. The third game skipped out on flight to go with steam ships over the desert. The fourth had airships, but not as a vehicle for your use but instead one served as the enemy's main base. Then in the fifth game the airship was pretty much window dressing.

Fun fact, the Sweet Candy is a reference not to an actual airship from the games, but a sea going ship from the first game of the same name.

So despite hitting a snag, the journey continues onward to the NCR. Don't worry, I don't intend for it to take forever to get there. Very likely by next chapter, in fact, but there's still a bit more to do before our party makes landfall once more.

I'd like to thank Doomande and Referee (currently 'the other sans' but he's always going be Ref to me) for helping me out with smoothing out errors of the spelling and grammar variety. I cannot overstate how much I appreciate the help. And thanks to everyone for continuing to read along with this long, odd adventure. I very much appreciate it, and as always feel free to leave any comments, critiques, or questions you may have.

Chapter 29: The Calm During the Storm

Chapter 29: The Calm During the Storm

“What do you mean she stayed behind?” Whiteheart’s voice was sharp as a razor, perhaps the most emotion I’d seen in the Guidmaster since I’d met him. Granted that had only been yesterday, but for that whole time he’d mostly been calm minded, seemingly unflappable. Hearing that Star Soul had teleported us back to the Sweet Candy while remaining upon the airship of the Black Swan pirates was making him look pretty damned flapped from what I was seeing. Not that I blamed him. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the alicorn’s choice either, as self sacrificing it had been.

Crossfire, having moved forward to take the brunt of delivering the news, repeating what she’d just said, “Star Soul stayed on the pirate’s ship, Whiteheart. She said she only had enough magic to get four of us back, and while each of us damned well volunteered to do it, she popped us over here without hearing any of it!”

Whiteheart’s jaw trembled and his eyes looked like burning pools of rippling water. I could see him working to get his temper under control, like trying to cool heated metal, and he let out a light hiss. “I see. Yes. She’d do something so monumentally stupid wouldn’t she? Always looking to make up for past sins in the least efficient means possible.” He turned a curt glance towards Bartholomew, “We must turn back for her.”

The ghoulish griffin just looked at Whiteheart askance, chewing on his pipe, “You’re joking, right? The entire point of them going over there in the first place was to give us a chance to get away. I understand that alicorn is an important member of the delegation, but if we turn around to try to rescue her we’ll just end up being prisoners ourselves. The Sweet Candy ain’t able to fight the Black Swans’ ship claw-to-claw!”

I cleared my throat, stepping forward, “Star Soul did say she’d try to escape on her own, but there were a lot of those pirates about to swarm her. I’m all for doing something to try and help her, if we really do want to try and make a go at that ship. I’ll be the first one jumping over, if that’s the case. But she did say she’d try to escape on her own...”

Whiteheart looked at me, and it was like he’d finally gotten his calm mask placed back on his face as he smoothed over his mane and said, “Indeed, but I doubt she could affect her own escape. Star Soul has often overestimated her abilities. I should not have allowed her to go but... I saw no other solution to our dilemma but to let her try her heroic attempt at sabotage.”

Guilt rose in me like a acidic gas and I found myself bowing my head, “I’m sorry we lost her like that. Crossfire’s right, we all tried to volunteer ourselves. I would have stayed behind, it's just she didn’t give us a chance.”

“Teleported us out while ren solva was still speaking,” Arcaidia added, her face placid and controlled as still ice, although I knew her well enough to tell the slight flick in her tail showed how agitated she was. “Brave, but too fast headed thinking for good plan. Should have let me and Longwalk stay and make pirates have bad day.”

While I appreciated her support, I wasn’t certain that Star Soul hadn’t simply recognized there was little chance any other pony who stayed behind wouldn’t have been quickly killed. She’d probably saved all our lives. It left me confused on how to feel. I didn’t know anything about Star Soul other than she was Knobs’ boss, head of the Skull Guild, and apparently just as willing to put herself in harm's way as I tended to be in order to save pony’s lives. I seethed at thinking what the pirates might be doing to her and prayed she’d managed to get out alright.

Whiteheart looked like he was chewing on something made out of pure bile, but he had a grim, accepting look as he slowly nodded, “I am loathe to even consider leaving her behind, but she wouldn’t want more lives being wasted trying to rescue her, either.”

“Sir,” called one of the ponies on Bartholomew’s crew, “The Raptor, it's changing course!”

“What bearing?” Bartholomew asked, flying back up to the aftcastle.

“North by northeast, sir,” said the crewpony, standing aside as Bartholomew scanned the sky with that brass tube of his. The griffin heaved out a sigh.

“Damn, you’re right. There she goes. I guess Georgia figures the Guildmistress of the Skull Guild is as valuable a prize as a Protectorate Princess. On the bright side, that probably means Star Soul is alive. If she’d been killed the Black Swans would’ve kept on us to get somepony else to ransom.”

Whitemane’s lips pressed thinly together and he said in a frosty voice, “Where do the Black Swans usually dock for repairs?”

“New Griffinstone, usually. Across the narrow edge of the eastern sea. We’re not chasing after them if that’s where they’re heading,” said Bartholomew, shaking his head and tucking away his brass tube through his belt, “Bottom line is that she’s lost, for now. You’ll probably have to pay out the ass to get her back in a few weeks, if Georgia is just after ransom. That, or she’s got a buyer out east. Either way, our best course is to continue on to the NCR. If your treaty with them goes through at least you might count on the help of some NCR Rangers to mount a rescue on some other day... but for today, they outfoxed us.”

It left a bitter taste in all of our mouths, if I was gauging everypony’s mood. There really wasn’t anything we could do. Even if the Sweet Candy could catch up to the pirates, they had the firepower to blast us out of the sky before we could board them. Even if Crossfire teleported another team on board, the Sweet Candy would still be destroyed before we could finish rescuing Star Soul, because the ship would have to get close for Crossfire to pull off a teleport like Star Soul had. Apparently alicorns had magical specialties based on color, I was told, and purples were uniquely gifted in teleportation. It’d been the only reason Star Soul could pull off a teleport at that range and accuracy from one moving airship to another.

In short, all we could do was carry on. The fact left me in a bit of a funk, but I had plenty of other things to occupy my attention; like B.B.

LIL-E had come to retrieve me and Arcaidia, having little to say about what had happened with Star Soul other than “Celestia crap on my chest.” which for LIL-E was fairly restrained. She then told us that B.B was locked up in our cabin and wasn’t letting anypony in. Or at least not her or Binge. In fact when Binge had tried to pick the lock on the door there’d apparently been something akin to a death threat issued. Arcaidia and I exchanged worried glances and followed the eyebot to the cabin, where Binge was waiting with impatient, twitchy pacing.

“Sweet, you’re back!” Binge said, happily hopping over, “Where’s my souvenir?”

I slapped my forehead, “Sorry, forgot,” then pulled my hoof away, which was a bit sticky from bits of blood from the pony whose head Crossfire had blown off in front of me.

Binge just tittered, touching my bloodied hoof, “That’s okay, I’ll figure out a way for you to pay me back later.” She licked her lips, and then flicked her tail at the cabin door, “The birdie is being cranky. Almost bit off poor Binge’s nose when she tried to peek inside. She should know that if she wanted to get all scratchy and bitey then all she needs to do is ask.”

She licked some of the blood that she’d gotten on her hoof from me, and then tilted her head towards the door to the cabin, “If we all go in at once we can pounce on her and tie her to the bed. For safety reasons.”

I gave Binge a level look, then turned to LIL-E, “You know B.B’s father pretty well, did he ever tell you anything about her and what to do if she get’s... uh... ‘bitey’?”

“Doc Sunday never did say much about B.B, even where he adopted her from,” said the eyebot, her chassis floating around so it was positioned between me and Binge, “Maybe you’d like to bring us all up to date on what’s going on with her? This isn’t the first time she’s acted weird.”

“It’s...” I hesitated. B.B probably would have prefered to talk about her condition herself, not have me blabbing about it. Fortunately I suspected LIL-E would more than understand, given her own secret. “It’s complicated.”

“Right,” said LIL-E, “So what do you plan to do?”

“Just find out if she’s okay,” I said, turning back to face the door, “I’m worried about her wound more than I am if she’s, uh, feeling a bit peckish.”

Arcaidia took a step towards the door, shouldering past me, “Then allow myself to do talk to ren bruhir. I good talk to her and see she in good way. If need healing, I use magic. If she is very bitey, I also use magic. Magic solve many problems.”

A mental image flashed through my mind of B.B as she’d been beneath Silver Mare Studios, growling and out of control, fangs flashing at my face before I’d managed to tackle her down and feed her a bit of blood to calm her down. I didn’t know if B.B was that bad again, and I didn’t like the idea of sending Arcaidia in their alone. She must have read my thoughts because she reached out a hoof to pat my shoulder and said, “Trust, ren solva. I do this because B.B good friend and I want help her. If she... out of normal mind state then more ponies just make her more trouble. Just me, calming. Understand?”

I sort of did. Too many ponies crowding her might just make B.B worse. Better just one pony check on her, and Arcaidia was well equipped to defend herself, perhaps the best out of all of us. I still didn’t like it, but I wasn’t going to argue Arcaidia’s sound logic. I gave her a nod, “Alright, just shout if you need help.”

“I be fine,” she said, and my eye wandered to her prosthetic metal peg leg, feeling my throat tighten. Yes, she’d be okay. Until something went wrong again. Would it be another leg? An eye? What would she lose next?

Her life?

I shook off the thoughts, pushing away the dour mood like trying to beat back a flow of tar in my head. I knew we were always going to be in danger, at least for the immediate future. I couldn’t guarantee anything, not my safety, not hers, or any of my friends. Letting those fears bubble up in me was pointless, yet not necessarily something I could entirely prevent. I just had to trust Arcaidia and B.B in this instance. B.B didn’t want to hurt anypony. She was just... an unusual circumstance. A pony whose body was a bit different due to some mutation of the blood. It didn’t make her any less a pony, or our friend, which was why we were all worried about her.

Really, between all of us, she was probably among the most stable and level headed. As long as she wasn’t badly injured, leading to a hunger for blood.

I watched as Arcaidia knocked on the cabin door. At first there was no answer, but when Arcaidia’s dainty blue hoof knocked again I heard a muffled voice say, “Go away.” It didn’t sound like she was using her accent, which was a pretty solid red flag as to how bad off she was.

Arcaidia sighed, speaking up, “B.B, it is I! You have much painful injury, yes? Let me use spell to fix wound.”

B.B’s voice got louder, and it sounded hoarse, “Won’t matter, I’ll still feel it. It’s gotten bad. I don’t know why, but I just need to be alone!”

A stubborn look came over Arcaidia’s face, “Alone help how? If you hurt, I make hurt go away. If you hunger, I make that go away too!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” said B.B, her voice wavering through the door, “If I lose control, I could really hurt you.”

“You no hurt me, B.B,” Arcaidia said, with surprisingly strong conviction and tenderness, “You one of best friends I make on this world, and I trust you muchly, ren bruhir. So much nice begging of please with bowed head I ask you let me in.” Arcaidia actually did bow her head then, even if B.B couldn’t see it.

There was a long, pregnant pause before there was a clicking noise from the door. It opened only a crack, enough for B.B’s tired, frustrated, but relenting voice say, “If you come in, it’s better that it's all of you. So if I lose it, you guys can jump me. I’m... I’m tired of hiding it all anyway.”

She left the door open, and after quickly exchanged looks where Arcaidia and I were nervous, Binge seemingly excited, and LIL-E as unreadable as a robot tends to be, we all shuffled inside. I closed the door quickly behind us, making sure the hallway was clear. The moment I turned around the smell of blood hit me like a thick, coppery curtain. There were three blood packs emptied, two crumpled, the third literally torn to shreds. I think only about a third of that pack’s blood ended up in B.B, the rest was painted across the floor, bed, and walls.

B.B herself sat on the edge of the bed, fore legs hugging herself, her wings bent tightly around her, even the injured one. I could still see the bullet hole, torn and ragged in that wing, though it was partially scabbed over. B.B’s violet dress and white fur were stained down the front with the deep red of the blood she’d been feeding on, her face and lips a crimson stained mess. Her eyes were so dilated that they were like twin black pools rimmed with blood, and fangs were pronounced and clear in her mouth.

“Okay, so, what in Celestia’s white hot solar farts is this?” asked LIL-E bluntly. Arcaidia gave the eyebot a cold glance, then turned to B.B and approached with slow, easy steps.

“May I look at wing?” she asked gently. B.B’s eyes twitched, but she nodded and slowly extended the wounded wing, lips curling in pain.

“Blood should’ve healed it, but... but it's not fresh enough,” she said, all hint of her accent gone, her voice pain filled, and not just from the obvious physical source if the desperation in her tone was any indication, “Thought maybe blood packs would be enough. Worked at Silver Mare Studios, when I got that bit of spar in the gut. Hunger’s gotten stronger since then. Not as easy to satisfy.”

“What is she talking about? What happened at Silver Mare?” asked LIL-E, turning towards me. I sighed, flicking my tail, not thrilled to have to recount those events.

“When B.B and I fell from the collapsed floor she took a wound to her stomach. A bad one. When she woke up...” I hesitated, looking to B.B. She just nodded for me to continue. “She was feral. Tried to attack me. I had to keep her pinned until I figured out she was after blood. Managed to feed her some from a blood pack and that calmed her down. Brought her back to normal.”

I frowned, “Why isn’t that working now?” I asked, gesturing at the blood packs.

B.B grit her teeth, closing her eyes, “Like I said, the hunger is getting worse. My body isn’t being satisfied by old blood preserved by magic in a plastic bag. I... Goddesses help me, I forgot how much it hurts, when the craving comes.”

By now Arcaidia was working her healing magic upon the wing, flesh slowly smoothing over, but Arcaidia’s face remained frowning. “Bad wound. Many tendons damaged. Best not to use wing for some time even with magic. I sorry I no make repairs better.”

The pegasus shook her head and let out a helpless laugh, “Its fine, Arc. It feels better already. I just... I need to focus. Remember what Doc Sunday taught me to keep the hunger in check.”

“So this is what the Doc meant when he told me you came from unusual circumstances, just like me...” said LIL-E, bobbing slowly up and down, her monotone voice gaining a contemplative note, “He never told me much about you, B.B. Now I’m seeing why. Don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Binge, “The sparrow is actually an eagle who can snack on littler birds. A predator instead of prey.”

B.B laughed, but it was a dry, humorless sound, “Can’t really gainsay you, Binge, much as I want to. You got it worse from me than anypony else.” She licked her lips, looking at Binge with those dark, red rimmed eyes, and the expression made my blood curdle. “You tasted so good, back at the church.”

Binge didn’t flinch from the look, but I saw her stance subtly change, knees slightly bent, ready to move. “I didn’t mind you taking a sip. Helped you boot the blackbird out of our way.”

“Yeah, Black Petal could never take me after I’d fed...” B.B said, looking away from Binge, seemingly through force of will. She then turned her gaze to LIL-E, “You asked what I was? Well, I’ve already told Longwalk. I’ll bring the rest of you up to speed. It’s long past due, especially if I’m losing my self control.”

She kept it brief and covered the same points she’d covered with me back in the Skull Guild tower. Her mutation, the Family, the fact that she’d broken from the one she called the Mistress after meeting Doc Sunday. She kept from going into much detail. Like before I got the sense that she was terribly ashamed of most of the things she’d done while part of the Family. Her ears were drooped along with her wing, like a wilted flower. Somehow even her rose and blood cutie mark seemed to shrink in upon itself.

“I was the Mistress’ enforcer for a long time. Doc Sunday, my pa, he... he took so much time and effort to pull me out of where I was to give me a chance at a different life. Now I’m failing him. I’m slipping right back to where I was.”

“Like hells you are,” I said, feeling heat rise in my voice, “The mere fact that you’re so torn up over this is proof enough you’re not going back to however you were back then.”

“You don’t even really know what I was like back then,” B.B said, eyes downcast, “You think Redwire was a bad pony? She would’ve fit right in with the Family, and I would’ve probably found her methods... quaint and inelegant. I liked hurting ponies, back then, Longwalk. I didn’t just go for the kill, or the blood. I went for the pain. It wasn’t enough just to kill those the Mistress told me to. I took great, personal pride in destroying anypony she pointed me towards. A heartless, vicious weapon-”

Arcaidia growled, “Stop it.”

B.B blinked at her, “Huh?”

“I say stop talking of dumb past things that don’t matter,” said Arcaidia, her silver eyes frosty as she fixed B.B with a bewitching stare, “I not care what you do before, just what you do now. You bad pony now, want to hurt and kill for no good reason? No, you’re not. You brave, smart, funny pony who help me learn to talk my own race’s speech and save many lives alongside us as comrade. That the only B.B I know. So you hunger. So you have mutation that make blood food for you. So what? Ren solva eat meat, and I find that sick, but I not judge him. What so different if it blood instead of meat? You want blood, you need blood? I have plenty for you.”

She stood with her head held high, and even bent her neck a little towards B.B for emphasis. B.B just stared at Arcaid’as bared, azure neck, and I saw her gulp, lips trembling, “You don’t know what you're saying, Arc. I don’t know how well I can control myself if I feed on fresh blood. It’s been so long. It's a miracle Binge survived it when we fought Black Petal.”

“But you did control yourself, right? I mean, Binge would be dead if you hadn’t...” I trailed off, feeling a bit of a shudder run through me thinking that B.B had taken such a risk, even in the heat of a battle. Still, Binge was alive, so it was obvious B.B had some control over her hunger.

“It ain’t that simple, Long,” B.B said, a trace of her accent returning as she seemed to be slowly calming herself, “What went down wit Binge was a’ calculated risk, but feedin’ on fresh blood, while it’ll ease the hunger for awhile, also makes it harder ta suppress down the road. I start feedin’ on any o’ ya’ll an’ I’ll need ta keep doin’ it. Nah, Arc, I ain’t takin’ yer blood. I... I just gotta push it back. Git the hunger whipped proper, like I had it ‘fore things went south at Silvermare. That’s what started it. Just one slip an’ the hunger came crawlin’ right back ta sit on my shoulder like o’ whisperin’ demon.”

LIL-E floated around to B.B’s other side, lowering to eye level with the pegasus, “Are you sure you can get it under control again? Just how did Doc Sunday teach you to control it before.”

“Its a’ meditation kind o’ thing. I gotta git my mind clear an’ face some inner soul stuff,” B.B said with a wry smile, almost looking like her old self, even with her eyes still doing its rather unsettling black and red display, “Gotta do it every night, I’m thinkin’, from now on. An’ avoid gettin’ hurt like wit my wing today. Wounds make the hunger flare up somethin’ fierce. Its my body’s way o’ tryin’ ta heal itself by forcin’ me ta feed and git patched up.”

“Are you going to be okay then?” I asked, voice a bit unsteady. It’d been a rough day so far, and I was starting to feel the drain of it, that kind of weary bone ache that comes from a lot of stress and not enough food or sleep to really compensate. In the span of a few hours I’d gone from almost killing a pony who was trying to teach me, being in a deadly battle where I did end up killing somepony by no intention of my own, to teleporting into another battle where some of the blood of that fight still spattered my face, to having to comforting one of my close friends who was having a nervous breakdown due to a growing bloodlust she wasn't certain she could control.

And I hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet.

B.B’s eyes locked on mine, and I saw them slowly, bit by crawling bit, return to almost normal. They weren’t dilated to dinner plates anymore, at least, but the iris’ remained a vibrant crimson. “Fer now. Hunger’s still burnin’ in me somethin’ fierce, but I... thanks ya’ll. I thought bein’ alone would be best, but I’m thinkin’ havin’ the reminder that I got folk who’re lookin’ out fer me is helpin’ keep my head focused more n’ sitting here in the dark. So, thanks, I mean it.”

Binge giggled, bouncing over and somehow managing to rope me and Arcaidia into a hug that had us nearly bowling into B.B. Her poofy tail also wrapped around LIL-E and managed to drag the eyebot in too as the former Raider glomped us all together, and gave B.B a playful bite on the ear.

“We’re all in the mess, birdie. All bitable, and bloodsoaked together. No need to smell the stink if we’re all filthy in one big happy pile, right?”

B.B had an exceedingly flat look as she drawled, “Feelin’ better already, Binge. Can ya stop nibblin’ the ear now, for I fergit I’m supposed ta be exercisin’ self control?”

Arcaidia separated us with magic, a bit more forcefully than was probably needed, yet for all of her glaring at Binge I saw a ghost of a smile on her face. “You want I stay with you, B.B?”

“I’m... yeah, I think the company will help. Maybe I can show ya the meditatin’ technique my pa taught me.”

That made me think of something, “Hey, did you see him at the Drifter’s Guild before we left? He was supposed to be there, right? Things moved along so fast I didn’t even think about it.”

B.B gave the barest of nods, scooting back on her haunches so she was sitting towards the back of the bed. She looked around the bed, and all the blood, “I need ta clean all this up,” she muttered, then looked back at me, “I saw my pa, yeah. Ya remember me an’ Binge hit up the bar wit Shard while you talked shop wit that Whiteheart fella? My pa was there at the bar, an’ we did some catch up.”

“Sorry I missed it,” I said wholeheartedly. I really did want to get to know B.B’s adoptive father sometime.

B.B seemed to read what I was thinking, “Ye’ll git a chance ta say hi ta him sooner n’ ya think. After tellin’ him what went down below Skull City he’s right convinced somepony is tryin’ ta make a play ta spark war ‘tween the city an’ the Protectorate again. He left the same time we did, heain’ west ta the Protectorate. He’s gonna snoop ‘round those parts and meet up wit us when we go that way after these negotiations.”

That was good news. We’d need all the help we could get to make the trip through that country smooth as possible. I wasn’t sure what, if anything, might be standing between us and the Ruin we needed to get to that contained the Elw teleportation device my father had told me about. Doc Sunday’s help would probably be invaluable. “I’m just glad you got a chance to talk with him,” I said.

“Same here,” she said, and then hopped off the bed, “Alright, I gotta git this mess cleaned up an’ then focus on meditatin’. I’m pretty sure Arc’ll be okay. I ain’t... ain’t as twitchy as I was a bit ago. Thinkin’ her healin’ helped out there. Ya’ll best git back ta doin’ whatever needs doin’ round the ship.”

She still looked tense, having that stiffness to her wings as they were folded close to her side, but she seemed leagues better than she had a few minutes ago. I turned to leave with Binge and LIL-E, only pausing long enough to give B.B one last hug and a meaningful look to Arcaidia that more or less said, ‘be careful’, before heading back out into the hallway. I halted out there, finding Hawkeye out there, watching our door.

The white and brown splotched stallion was looking at our cabin door with an intense gaze that he quickly hid with a arrogant, nonchalant tilt of his chin, quickly turning to walk away, but I caught up to him.

“Hey, wait!”

He barely paused, only casting half a look back towards me, “What?”

“Why were you watching our door?” I asked, as Binge and LIL-E came up to flank me, Binge kicking our door shut with her hind hoof first.

Hawkeye just shrugged at me, something in his tone sounding cold and unsettling, “I smelled blood. Saw the pegasus in your crew took a hit in the fight. Was just wondering if she was alright.”

“She is,” I said, not sure what else to say. Something about Hawkeye’s posture was triggering a warning signal in me, but I couldn't place my hoof on what. His cold, flat look didn’t give much away other than he hadn’t been watching out of pure concern.

“Good,” was all he said, then trotted away.

LIL-E hovered there for a moment, then said, “I don’t know if you were watching your E.F.S, Longwalk, but that stallion went hostile for a few seconds there.”

“Mmm, he looked ready for murder,” said Binge, licking her lips, “I could smell the violence coming off him.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, “Why would he be so hostile towards us?”

“Not us, Longwalk, B.B,” said LIL-E, “At least that’s what I’m guessing. He was asking about her, after all.”

I took a deep breath, letting it out in one, long, frustrated sigh. “Great. LIL-E, do you mind keeping an eye on him until we get to the NCR? If he does anything strange or makes a move towards B.B, I want us to be a step ahead of the shitstorm, for once.”

LIL-E bobbed, “Consider it done. I’ve already marked his signature in my own E.F.S. He won’t get anywhere close to B.B without me being there too.”

As we headed back towards the hatch leading to the top deck I couldn’t help but muttered, “I wonder what else is going to go wrong today?”

It actually felt entirely justified when Binge proceeded to smack me upside the head.

Shockingly, despite my blasphemous jinx, the rest of the day surprisingly went by without incident. Well, no life threatening incidents. I had to duck some more questioning form Wellspring. Not that I didn’t want to keep telling my life story, but I tried as politely as I could to convince the eager journalist that I didn’t really want to answer too many more questions. She was incredibly persistent, never quite crossing the line of rudeness, always pleasant and not in a disingenuous way. Lucky me, Crossfire came to my rescue and got Wellspring to stop pestering me for any more juicy stories. Mostly by hauling Wellspring bodily back below deck, much to the report mare’s consternation. I got the impression the pair had gone through this routine before, given that Wellspring didn’t seem particularly angry at being colthandled and just gave Crossfire a rueful smile before calling it quits for the day.

“If you let her she’ll mine your entire life story like a Labor Guild slave desperate to make quota,” said Crossfire, “Do yourself a favor and learn how to ignore her.”

“I think she means well,” I said, feeling oddly like I ought to defend Wellspring.

“Oh, she does, but that won’t stop her from walking all over you if you let her.”

Applegate showed up for another training session, and understandably I wasn’t eager. I still didn’t know what had caused the strange memories taking over my actions when I used Gramzanber, and didn’t want to risk hurting her again. Applegate simply agreed that instead she could teach me some hoof-to-hoof techniques. I didn’t have any reason to say no to that one, and so we spent an hour sparring. Or more accurately I spent an hour getting my butt tossed around like a punching bag while occasionally learning something new about how to use my hooves to make other ponies have a bad day. She fought on her hind legs once more, and asked that I try doing the same, to help get me used to the style of movement. She claimed that over time I’d build muscles to help me move better while using just my hind legs, but for now it just ached.

In the middle of that sparring session Applegate asked me about Gramzanber.

“It is an ARM, yes? Fully functional?” her hoof hooked under my overextended leg and flipped me head over tail to the deck with a cracking thud. As I rolled to my hooves I said, “Yeah. I’ve always kind of wondered how rare those are around here.”

“Rare. Weapons like your spear can be found in Ruins all over the region, but few are willing to use them due to the deadly side effects,” Applegate said, “The Protectorate has one, the sword Iskender Bey, used only by the royal family or the Captain of the Royal Knights.”

“Why?” I asked, “I mean, if an ARM will kill a pony who uses it for too long, why would the Protectorate let anypony use one, let alone ponies that important?” I tried to catch her with a jabbing feint, but she read the move and intercepted my real attack, a quick side-buck, and I found my hind leg caught on her hoof and she swept my other legs out from under me. As I picked myself up again she circled me.

“Noblesse oblige; the noble obligation. The noble families of the Protectorate exist to protect the people; that’s what it means to be a Protectorate. Iskender Bey was discovered in the Ruin beneath Neighlisius and was used by the first Princess to defeat the Raider hordes that sought to destroy her people in the first days of the nation’s founding. Though it cost her her life, the sword, and the duty to use it where it ever needed to protect the people, was passed down to her daughter. Later, the duty was extended to the Royal Knights, in order to better preserve the royal bloodline in case there was no Princess with an heir to take her place, should Iskender Bey be needed.”

“Yikes. So part of being a Princess in that country means you might have to sacrifice yourself to save the nation if anything big and bad enough came along to require that ARM?” I asked, feeling a shiver down my spine. I thought of Purity, with her kind eyes and soft, helping nature, and couldn’t imagine her in such a position.

“It is a burden to rule, not a privilege. A sacred duty to the land and the people that cannot be forsaken,” said Applegate, “Princess Purity knows this. Fortunately for her, without a sister to share her burden, it would fall to the Captain of her Royal Knights to take up the sword, if she allowed it. As Princess she has the right to choose who would wield Iskender Bey, were it ever needed.”

She sent a snap kick at me, spinning, using her tail to obscure the blow of her hind hoof. I managed to move quick enough to get a hoof up to block, but the blow still rattled me down to my bones. I countered with a quick uppercut, but she smoothly danced away from me, “What if there’s more than one of the royal family? Could a brother, sister, or parent do it?”

“Yes, and it's not uncommon for the position of Captain of the Royal Knights to actually be held by such a member of the royal bloodline,” Applegate said as she began to press me with a rapid series of hoof strikes, I practiced pivoting, awkwardly avoiding her blows which seemed meant to force me to move more than to really hit, but I couldn’t get my balance enough to counter attack.

“So what does Iskender Bey do exactly? Gramzanber’s powers have developed along with me, but if this sword has been used by different ponies over time, I don’t see how it could build up the bond I got with Gram,” I said, ending the sentence with a swift curse as I mistimed a pivot and took Applegate’s left hoof to the chest, making me stumble and fall to my back. She stood over me, but slowly backed off to give me space to stand back up.

“The sword’s power has always been unwieldy. Besides the first time it was only used in four other instances over the course of the Protectorate’s history. Each time was to stop a major threat, like a rampaging dragon, or an army of killer robots.”

“Killer robots?” I asked, gulping.

“It happens,” Applegate said with a shrug, as if murderous robot armies were just... sort of a thing. Like bad weather. “Each time Iskender Bey was used, it drained the life from its user to create unbelievable unleashing of destructive force. For the span of a day its wielder could become death incarnate, though the price, as you can imagine, was the life of the wilder.”

I thought about that for a moment, then said in a quiet tone, “Is that why you’re asking about Gramzanber? The fact that I’m using an ARM, but haven’t paid for it with my life, yet?”

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t incredibly curious as to how you’ve achieved that feat, yes,” said Applegate, “The burden of Iskender Bey is one of the largest weights upon the Protectorate’s royal families. It would be a unimaginable boon if a way could be found to wield the sword without the certainty of death to the wielder. There’d be few things that could threaten the nation or its people, then.”

What could I tell her? That the only reason Gramzanber’s bond hadn’t killed me was because I had alien nanomachines fused into my blood, and that even then I only had couple more months to live if I didn’t get some calibration data from a crashed starship? Not exactly the solution I imagined she’d be hoping for. Assuming she believed me.

“I can’t really tell you anything useful,” I said, not exactly being untruthful, “Far as I know, me and Gram are kind of a unique circumstance, one I don’t really understand fully yet.”

“I see...” there was a shade of sadness in Applegate’s eyes before she resumed a more calm and relaxed stance, “No matter, let us continue.”

Luckily nothing went wrong with freaky memories of an alien warlord popping into my head and I ended my training session with Applegate sweat soaked and aching, but feeling like I might’ve learned something. Besides a little Protectorate history.

“Hey, I, uh, I don’t want to sound like I’m prying, but you’re a Protectorate knight, right?” I asked, and Applegate gave me a wary look, but didn’t discourage me, instead just nodding. I took that as a good sign and went on, “So how did you end up in Skull City working as a Drifter? I mean, there was that war with the Protectorate years back, right? Weren’t you, you know, having a conflict of loyalties there?”

The air was even more chill than normal due to the sweat, and I shivered a bit, waiting for her to answer. I could see the wheels turning in her head, She took out a small cloth from one of the pockets of her coat and wiped her face off, then tossed it to me so I could do the same. As I did so she said, “I never truly left. Not in heart. I am still a knight of the Protectorate. I’ve merely been on a long assignment, given to me by one I respected more than anypony else. I can’t tell you more than that, Longwalk. My task required I travel to Skull City and that I make myself indispensable to one of its Guilds. The Drifter’s Guild was the one where I could raise in the ranks the fastest, with my skills. I fought in the war, yes, but I refused any mission I deemed too likely to result in high casualties. I instead took jobs where I felt I could best minimize losses on both sides. Even so, it was not easy to raise my blade against my own countryponies, but the task I was given supersedes every personal misgiving I have had over the years.”

She looked at me and something in her eyes made me feel like I was being measured. “I will tell you now that I think there is danger in this diplomatic mission beyond the obvious. I think you can possibly be trusted, but I can’t risk telling you more. Just take heed, Longwalk, and be watchful.”

“Of what?” I asked.

“Everypony,” she told me bluntly, “Watch everypony, even the ones you think you know. There are those on this ship who are not what they seem.”

With that she trotted away, leaving me to my own thoughts, which were more than a little confused. Ponies not being what they seem? What could she possibly mean by that? I tried to not let it weight down to hard on my mind while keeping the cryptic warning in mind. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t trying to be watchful for danger anyway.

The rest of the day went by quietly enough. I got lunch and checking in on Arcaidia and B.B, who were in the middle of some kind of strange meditative ritual when I poked my head in the door. B.B was sitting across from Arcaidia, both of them in exceedingly awkward looking positions with their hind legs crossed beneath them and their fore legs held overlapped in front of them. The blood from earlier was mopped up, but there was still a faint scent of it in the air. I didn’t want to disturb them so after B.B let me know she was feeling better I just left them to it. It might’ve been my imagination but Arcaidia’s face had seemed oddly red. Hopefully she wasn’t coming down with something.

By the time our guard shift came around again B.B seemed as if she was in better spirits. She wasn’t exactly as talkative or outgoing as I was used to, but she showed up, having cleaned the blood from herself and kept her wounded wing bandaged and carefully close to her side. More telling, her eyes were back to their normal violet color rather than crimson. It looked like, for the moment at least, she had things under control. I just hoped it would stay that way.

As the afternoon turned to evening I got to discover that sunsets were as heartening and beautiful as sunrises. No wonder ponies used them as names. Next time I saw Sunset I might tell her she was named after something pretty awesome. I’d never seen so many shades of red, orange, and purple flowing into one another, like the whole sky was bleeding.

...Okay, I need to change my lifestyle at some point, because blood was becoming entirely too much of a fixation in my mind these days.

With night falling and our guard shift done, I met up with everyone on the deck to discuss plans. “I’m thinking we all hit the galley at once for dinner and turn in early.” I said, Binge, B.B, Arcaidia and LIL-E gathered around me, “We’ll be reaching the NCR tomorrow morning and I figure we all need to be rested and at our best. B.B, how are you feeling?”

“A little less like wantn’ ta tear sompony’s throat out, but truth be told it ain’t more n’ matter o’ time fer I’ll need ta git a fix o’ blood,” she said, hanging her head a bit, “Sorry Long, I ain’t gonna go all fangs on ya unless I git hurt again, but even so, this’ll git worse ‘fore it gits better.”

“I keep saying I willing to let you take what need from me,” said Arcaidia, but B.B equaled her stubborn stare with one of her own.

“An’ I keep tellin’ ya I ain’t riskin’ yer life on it, Arc. Was bad ‘nough I did it ta Binge once already...”

Binge just shrugged, “You could take a bit out of ol’ Binge anyday birdie. Buuuut if you’ve gotten all softy in the heart over this, well, just wait until we get into another bit of fun with some playful ponies with guns and sharp things. Eat one of them.”

B.B shuddered, “Binge, if I do it in the heat o’ battle then there really won’t be no stoppin’. Was a miracle I didn’t tear yer own neck n’ half, last time. Nah, if I feed, I gotta do it calm n’ controlled, an’ wit somepony who I can stand takin’ the risk wit.”

“Then I’m the perfect choice, aren’t I?” said Binge with a smirk, raising a hoof with her bloody sock puppet suddenly there in all its crusty, creepy glory. “Mr. Happy agrees too, don’t ‘cha? ‘Oh yes, Binge’s blood is super tasty and she’ll even find it kinky. Last time gave her such warm fuzzies and fun dreams.’ See? How can you say no to Mr. Happy?”

“I think the NCR does have a mental health institution, if you want to commit her while we’re there,” said LIL-E, “Just saying.”

I rubbed my forehead, staving off a headache, “B.B, if push came to shove, could you feed on Binge? I’d offer myself, but with the nanomachines in me I have no idea what that’d do to you.”

“Doesn’t Binge have them too?” asked LIL-E, “Isn’t the risk the same, either way?”

Binge and I exchanged looks and we both shrugged at LIL-E in response. B.B just shook her head, her uninjured wing twitching out slightly, “I appreciate all the offerin’, but I gotta put my hoof down an’ say no. I’ll... figure somethin’ else out. Just need some time, is all.”

That seemed to be that, as B.B made it clear she wasn’t going to hear any more argument on the matter. We all went to the galley to get dinner, and Ancestor spirits be praised I was able to get another bowl of meat stew. I didn’t care what kind of meat it was, it was salty and juicy and that was all my taste buds cared about. Iron Wrought was there, and we invited him over to our table. He joined us, looking a bit reluctant, but he relaxed soon enough after spending a few minutes chowing down beside us.

“Is family well Iron Wrought?” asked Arcaidia, “No harm done to them by Skull Guild?”

Right, I’d almost forgotten the details of that. It was strange. Star Soul had seemed like a courageous and kind sort, having risked, and ultimately sacrificed, to save us from the pirates. Yet she was the leader of the Skull Guild, which had taken Iron Wrought’s family hostage to force him to be a double agent against his own Labor Guild. We’d managed to get the research data from Dr. Lemon Slice’s work at the Saddlespring Ruin, so Iron Wrought could deliver it to the Skull Guild and get his family returned. It was hard to reconcile the image of Star Soul’s willingness to stay behind and be captured by pirates to save us, and the notion that she’d authorize a plan to manipulate another pony in such a fashion.

Applegate’s words came back to me, about ponies not being what they seemed, and I shivered a bit.

“They’re good,” said Iron Wrought in his usual gruff manner, “And I plan to keep them that way. Its the only reason I’m on this job. Guildmistress Begonia has me working as a witness to detail the Raider threat facing Skull City. I’m to help convince the NCR how serious we are about an alliance.”

“Huh, Knobs has the same job for the Skull Guild,” I said, pondering, “I wonder what will happen now that Star Soul’s been abducted by pirates. Is Knobs going to have to speak for the Skull Guild?”

“Probably,” said Iron Wrought with a shrug, spooning some more stew into his mouth, speaking around the food, “You’d be best off not thinking too hard about the politics, kid. It’ll just get you in trouble.”

“Well, I can manage not thinking pretty easily,” I said jokingly, and Iron Wrought gave me a strange look, his blue eyes meeting mine with a oddly solemn and measuring look. I shifted uncomfortably under that look, “What?”

“It’s just strange,” he said, “I saw you blow a pirate out of the sky today with that freaky spear of yours, and last time I remember you killing anypony you looked depressed as hell. Now you’re eating dinner and cracking jokes.”

I froze, the mouthful of food suddenly turning to bland ashes in my mouth as I blinked at him. B.B shook her head with a heavy sight, “Iron Wrought, why’d ya need ta bring that up? Long’s got ‘nutff on his mind as is.”

“I also saw him nearly take the throat out of that other Drifter with the sword,” Iron Wrought pressed, never taking his eyes off of me, “What’s going on with you?”

“Bucky’s got ghosts in his head,” said Binge, and Arcaidia gave her a sharp look, to which Binge raised her hooves defensively, “But don’t we all?”

“Listen Iron,” I said, licking suddenly dry lips, and speaking in a quiet tone in case there was anypony trying to listen in, “I’ll level with you. I’ve been having weird... mental flashes, like bits of memory that aren’t mine. Nearly hurting Applegate... killing that pirate, both of those were because I had one of those weird flashbacks and it just made me do things without knowing it.”

Iron Wrought stared at me for a moment, then looked uneasily at Gramzanber, which was still strapped to my side. “The ARM fucking with you?”

I shook my head, “No, not Gramzanber. Something else. I... I’d rather not talk about it. I’ve just got to be careful from here on, until I figure out just what’s happening to me, and I appreciate it if you kept this between us.”

He nodded very slowly, “I see. I can do that. Still, I’d think you’d be moping about like usual, even if the kill was just an accident.”

To that I could only sigh sadly, feeling a tiredness creep over me. He was right that I wasn't in a depressed rut, which would have been normal given the way I'd acted after the few times I've had to take lives during my journey. The thing was, I still felt a sense of loss, and regret, like a cold stab in the gut. Yet since the fight with Redwire, since killing her and earning my Cuite Mark, I had... gained some perspective. I looked at Iron Wrought, meeting his eyes level. “Don’t think I don’t regret the death of that pirate, but I’ve... I’ve learned to cope, recently, when things get out of my hooves. I didn’t want to kill any of those pirates, but it happened, I can’t change it, and come the end of the day I got to keep facing forward, otherwise I won’t be in the right state of mind next time to save lives. I won't kill if I don't have to. Believe me, my mind is always on how I can get through things without it getting to that point. But I can't stop, either. Not when others are counting on me.”

Iron Wrought appeared to mull that over, looking contemplative as he took a swig of some beer, “Huh, it’s almost like you’re maturing.”

“Don’t tell anypony, otherwise my reputation as an immature blockhead will get ruined,” I said, managing a small smile.

Not long after that one of the crew approached our table, a young stallion of the earth pony variety with a deep blue coat and a frizzy purple and white streaked mane. “Excuse me, are Drifter Longwalk and his associate Arcaidia at this table?”

Me and my friends blinked at each other, and then I turned to the crew pony, “I’m Longwalk. This is Arcaidia.” She waved, smiling curiously at the stallion.

“I was asked by the Captain to tell you that he’s invited you to share a drink with him in his cabin.”

“O...kay? Did he say why?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I’d been meaning to talk with Bartholomew about the way he kept watching Arcaidia, and now he was inviting both of us to his room? That sounded both strangely fortuitous and somewhat ominous.

The stallion shook his head, “All he told me to tell you, if you seemed hesitant, was that ‘The Guardians are always watching’. Before you ask, I have no idea what the Captain meant by that, but that’s what he told me to tell you.”

I stared at the stallion incredulously. The Guardians!? What did Captain Bartholomew know about the Guardians? As far as I knew knowledge of the Guardians was restricted to only a few groups, like my friends and I, Trailblaze, the ponies of Stable 104, and Odessa. Well, this certainly got my attention. I could hardly refuse to see Bartholomew now, and by the look on Arcaidia’s face she had no intention of saying no either.

“I guess you can take us right there,” I said, and blanched as my stomach growled in protest, “Uh, as soon as we’re done eating.”

The crewpony nodded and waited until the meal was over, which didn’t take long. After that Arcaidia and I left the group at the galley to go follow the stallion. He led us all the way to the other side of the ship, to a space at the very aft where only a single door led into a room that took up a good chunk of this portion of the deck. I didn’t know quite what to expect from this meeting, and could only guess at how or why Bartholomew knew anything about the Guardians. If I was being honest, I hadn’t thought too much about them myself, being so busy bouncing from one dangerous situation to the next. It was still hard to fully get my head wrapped around the idea of such beings existed at all, even though I’d met one face to face, had my mind nearly crushed by it, and the very same spirit was now bound to my best friend’s soul.

The crewpony knocked on the door and called out, “Captain, I’ve brought them.”

I heard Bartholomew’s voice from within, “Send them in, then watch the door.”

The door was opened for us and Arcaidia and I exchanged looks with each other before shuffling on inside, myself going first and Arcaidia following close behind. The crewpony shut the door behind us once we were through and I looked around the captain’s personal quarters with open curiosity. Bartholomew’s accommodations weren’t exactly luxurious despite the impressive size of the cabin. Crates and shelves were stacked about at random, tables of various scavenged states from old rusted metal ones to faded and stained plastic standing tables littered the cabin like mushrooms. Almost every surface was covered in maps, scrolls, old dusty books, and piles of scrawled upon notebook papers. Several larger shelves shoved up against the walls were filled with odds and ends, curios of random objects that looked like they’d been collected from a hundred different cultures and locations. A bed was set up at an awkward angle in one corner of the room, half covered by more papers and books.

Bartholomew himself was seated at a table where he was shifting some maps around, apparently looking for one in particular, and he looked up at us with an open and inviting, if somewhat embarrassed looking grin. “Find a seat if you can. I should have a chair or stool or two around here somewhere.”

I looked around at the general chaos of the room and decided such spelunking could wait, “I’m good standing.”

“As am me,” said Arcaidia, eyeing Bartholomew suspiciously, silver eyes glittering with faint mistrust, “You call us here with strange mention of something few know of.”

Bartholomew took a deep breath, eyes flickering over his maps for a moment before looking back at us. “Yes, I imagined mentioning the Guardians would get your attention. I wanted to talk to the two of you sooner than this, but it would have been suspicious to call you to my cabin on our first day out, and this morning that damn surprise attack from the Black Swans shook everything up.”

I streak of guilt flashed through me and I found myself saying, “I wish we could have done more. Are you certain Star Soul is going to be okay?”

“Certain? Not at all. However, Georgia isn’t a fool,” said Bartholomew, the feathers along the crest of his aged, necrotic head bristling, “She’ll keep Star Soul alive, if not comfortable, so she can ransom the alicorn back to Skull City. She lost a lot of those makeshift bi-planes today, so she’ll want to recoup losses and give her crew a decent payout. I wish we could’ve done more too but Georgia’s Raptor would’ve torn the Sweet Candy into burning shreds if we tried anything other than running. But talking about that isn’t why I invited you two here.”

He reached up to the breast of the buttoned up blue wool coat he wore, slowly undoing the gold buttons one by one until he could open the coat to expose his bare chest. It didn’t take me more than a moment to notice that branded onto the fur of his chest was a black marking, like a tattoo. The mark was vaguely shaped like a book with a blade piercing it, and while this was my first time seeing this particular mark, I recognized the similarity to the flaming claw mark that Trailblaze had gained when she’d become Moa Gault’s medium, and I found myself gawking at Bartholomew.

“You’re a... Guardian’s medium?”

“That’s right,” he said, patting his chest, “I’m connected to Solais Emsu, Guardian of the Sky. Have been for over two hundred years now. Being a ghoul has a few perks.”

I sat back on my haunches, blinking in a perfectly dumbfounded fashion as my brain pony did a bit of a mental cartwheel. “Wait, so Trailblaze isn’t the first pony who’s gotten this whole medium gig? That crazy fire bird dude kind of made it sound like there weren’t any others yet.”

“Communication between the Guardians has been spotty at best, Longwalk,” said Bartholomew, gesturing at his piles of maps, “They’re energy beings, spirits bound to the leylines of this world. However while those leylines are all connected like big, magical highways, the damage done over the course of the ancient war with the aliens, and the more recent war between Equestria and the zebras, has turned those highways into broken messes. Most of the Guardians can’t talk to each other, at least not clearly or reliably. Moa Gault and his brother Elemental Guardians are close enough in nature to speak to one another, but Solais governs a body of energy far enough removed that Moa Gault wouldn’t have known he’d found a medium. However your friend Trailblaze has already gotten another Guardian connected to a medium, and the leylines are starting to slowly spark back to life. Now the Guardians are starting to be able to connect to each other again. That’s how I learned about you.”

Arcaidia had a worried, sour look crossing her face like a ripple in an otherwise still pool. Her silvery tail twitched irritably. “So more Guardians waking up? That mean they getting stronger, yes?”

“Slowly, yes, but they won’t be anywhere near their true strength until all the leylines are rejuvenated with the presence of mediums...” Bartholomew paused, reaching beneath the table and pulling out an old, leather satchel that looked as if it’d been worn to a frayed mess by many decades of use, “Including the leylines of the four most potent Guardians; the Guardian Lords.”

Opening the satchel he pulled out several stone statues, perhaps about as large as a bottle of Sparkle Cola. Each one was roughly hewn, showing vague shapes, as if long spans of time had worn away the details. One looked somewhat like a humanoid being with feathery wings, while another looked more akin to a bipedal, armored beast holding a sword in front of it. The third and final statue had the appearance of something draconic, with curled wings and tail. There were only three statues, which made me raise an eyebrow. “So, uh, what are these? There’s three statues, but you said there’s four of these... what?”

“Guardian Lords, the leaders of Guardians, and yes, there are four, but I only have three idols. The fourth is... irrelevant, right now,” Bartholomew said, placing a talon the head of the draconic idol, “Look, the reason I’m showing these to you and telling you this, is because you need to understand that you and your friend Trailblaze aren’t alone in trying to revive the Guardians. I’ve been trying to accomplish that task for a long time, ever since I became Solais’ medium before the end of the war. Even in all that time I’ve only found a small number of shrines, and no one suited to be their mediums. You’ve done more in a few weeks of wandering the Wasteland than I’ve managed in two hundred years. That’s why I want to entrust these idols to you.”

“Wait wait wait, slow down,” I said, holding up a hoof, “You’re blowing through this stuff way too fast for my brain to keep up here. I’m not the brightest of ponies, so bear with me. First off, why are these idols important? What are they, exactly?”

“Think of them like keys,” Bartholomew said, “The Guardians have to work through mediums to affect change in the world, and normally just a appropriate candidate being in proximity to a shrine is enough to establish a connection. However the Guardian Lords are different. Their power is too potent and at the same time quite finicky. Not just anyone with a halfway decent soul will do. The virtue of one who would be a medium for a Guardian Lord has to be a league apart. The idols were created by the Elw to act like measuring devices for the virtues each Guardian Lord would seek in their medium.”

“Like what?” I asked, taking a closer look at the stone idols. They didn’t look particularly magical to me, but then again I supposed there wasn’t any rule that said an enchanted item had to glow, or be covered in sigils. Bartholomew leaned forward, placing a talon on each idol in turn.

“Justine, Guardian of Courage,” he said, patting the one that looked like a bipedal, armored feline beast creature bearing a sword.

“Raftina, Guardian of Love,” his talon lit upon the humanoid figure with the feathery wings springing from her back.

“And Zephyr, Guardian of Hope,” he proclaimed, touching the final idol of a draconic creature with leathery wings.

“Okay...” I said, raising an eyebrow, “So why is this fourth ‘Guardian Lord’ irrelevant? That sounds kind of dodgy to me.”

Bartholomew frowned like he tasted something foul and let out a growling breath, “I wanted to spare you this detail. It’d only make you worry about your friend Trailblaze.”

“What? Why? Is she in danger?” I suddenly found my heart beating faster with fear, wondering what kind of trouble Trailblaze might have gotten into.

“The fourth Guardian Lord is named Lucied,” Bartholomew said, “She is the Guardian of Desire, and is a traitor to the entire cause of the Guardians, for she turned her back on her brethren and joined forces with the Hyadeans during the ancient war.”

“Why would she do something like that?” I asked in confusion, “Aren’t these Guardian spirits supposed to be tied to the lifeforce of the planet or something? Wouldn’t the Hyadeans be, like, completely the opposite of what a Guardian would want to help?”

“It's not that simple,” Bartholomew said sourly, “Guardians are so intimately tied to the ideals they represent that it becomes an overriding force in their personalities. Lucied is tied to the emotion of Desire, and she found the strongest desire among the Hyadean menace, in one particular warrior whose bloodlust surpassed all others. Even his own kind feared him, calling him the Cannibal, for he would slay his own kind alongside the Veruni and Elw. He just didn’t care what he hunted, as long as it proved a worthy challenge.”

“Riiiight, so in other words, he was nuts. But what does this have to do with Trailblaze?”

“Because the Cannibal still walks this world with Lucied by his side, seeking ever worthy prey to hunt, and has targeted Trailblaze,” Bartholomew said with a grim cast to his features, “She must have told you, didn’t she?”

“Uhh, I seem to recall her mentioning something about having a tussle with Hyadean at the last Guardian shrine she found,” I said, picking my brain for the memory, “Some dude with a big metal boomerang for a weapon?”

“That’s the Cannibal. The only reason Trailblaze and her companions would have survived her first run in with him is because she managed to impress him. Made him want to follow her and continue to challenge her until she gets strong enough to prove a true challenge.”

“Whoa, how do you know so much about this guy anyway?” I asked, already regretting I couldn’t go to Trailbalze’s side right now to help her deal with this psychotic sounding Hyadean. He didn’t sound like the other two I was familiar with. Alhazad had been nothing short of a creepy scientist type that had left me with chills, but he definitely wasn’t interested in ‘worthy challenges’. And Zeikfried, from what little I knew of him from our shared memories, was that he was a boisterous warrior, but he used a spear identical to mine, not a boomerang. So this was a new player on the scene, and one who now had an unhealthy interest in hunting my best friend.

Fucking great.

“I ran into the Cannibal two hundred years prior,” Bartholomew said, “Though he had no interest in me or my friends back then. He was after the head of the Ministry of Awesome, who happened to be leading the team that recovered me and my friends after the filming disaster up north. Solias filled me in on the rest.”

“Right... well... shit, there’s nothing I can do is there?” I said, deflating, “Trailblaze is out of my reach, and has to deal with this insanity on her own, doesn’t she?”

“I’m afraid so, but she has good companions of her own, and the power of Moa Gault backing her,” said Bartholomew, “She’ll manage.”

Arcaidia was frowning deeply now, probably just as worried about Trailblaze as I was, but leave it to Arcaidia to keep her focus on the here and now. “Not to be changer of subjects, but how you get idols?”

Bartholomew gave a simple shrug, laughing under his breath as he gestured with a talon at all the maps, then at the many random artifacts lining his walls, “Two centuries of travel and hard searching, my little pony. Even if I’ve had rotten luck finding mediums, I’ve found a number of Guardian shrine locations, and tracked down the three remaining idols.”

“What happened to Lucied’s?” I asked, and Bartholomew grimaced.

“To be honest, I don’t know. Destroyed, maybe. Listen, kid, both Solais and I agree that if anyone we’ve run into recently has a better chance of finding mediums to fit the bill for the Guardian Lords, its either you, or Trailblaze. Since we can’t reach Trailblaze right now, we’re giving you the idols. If you meet with Trailblaze later and want to hoof them to her, that’s up to you. It's just that after two centuries of swinging and missing, I figure its time for someone else to come up to bat.”

I rubbed at my head, feeling the pressure mounting there as I eyed the three statues, “I don’t know. My own luck has been real hit and miss lately too. You’ve got an airship and the backup of an actual Guardian. Not sure I can do any better than you could...” I paused, my brain tickling me with a few new thoughts, “Hey, if you’re a Guardian medium that means you’ve got powers, right? Like with Trailblaze’s fire?”

“Yeah, sort of. Each Guardian’s power manifests differently, and Solais’ power comes in the flavor of control over the winds... but before you ask what I think you’re going to ask, no, I couldn’t have used Solais against the pirates today. Like I said, the Guardians aren’t anywhere near full power yet, not while the leylines still mostly lay broken. I couldn’t work up enough of a wind to do anything to a Raptor on my best day.”

“Damn, okay, fair enough,” I said, still eyeing the three idols warily. I really didn’t know if I was up to adding more to my plate of already full responsibilities. The simple truth was that even if I did agree to carry these things around it wouldn’t change anything about what I planned to do. I had to get Arcaidia to wherever her sister’s signal was coming from in the NCR, then after that travel to the Frozen North to my father’s lab so I could enact a potentially suicidal rescue attempt of my tribe from the clutches of Odessa’s headquarters. After that... maybe then I could go hunting for ponies with potential to be Guardian mediums, as I could see how the Guardians would be a big help in dealing with any trouble the Hyadeans were trying to cause. However that was a future that felt far off and hard to contemplate when I had the more immediate issues of my current job as a Drifter, and B.B’s growing problems with her bloodlust. Oh, and my impending demise via my alien space spear if I didn’t manage to get some data downloaded from a crashed starship.

My head hurt just trying to think it all over and I think Bartholomew saw the distress on my face because he smiled sadly and said, “I understand this is a lot to have dumped on you on top of everything else, kid. How about this, you just focus on what you got to deal with in the NCR, and when all's said and done, you can tell me if you’re up to taking these idols with you. I wanted to talk to you because I thought you deserved to know you and your friend Trailblaze weren’t alone in this fight. I’m on your side.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“So you say much to ren solva, all is good, but why I here?” asked Arcaidia, looking at Bartholomew square in the eyes, “Not think I not notice you watching me since I come onto ship.”

A good point, and one I felt a bit stupid for not thinking of sooner. I’d been meaning to ask Bartholomew why he’d been observing Arcaidia pretty much from the first second we’d boarded the Sweet Candy. So far all he’d told us here had been relevant only to me, and even then only because Trailblaze was my friend and I was by extension something of an ally to the Guardians. Arcaidia wasn’t really connected to any of this save for the fact that she was traveling with me.

Bartholomew’s expression became very difficult to read. His eyes narrowed a bit, but not with any hard edge to them, but rather softened and became filled with a long aged melancholy. He turned and went over to a shelf by his bead, hauling out a thick but small wood and iron banded chest. He set it on the table in front of us and pulled out a brass key, unlocking the chest and opening it silently. He turned the chest towards us to show us the contents. Inside I saw three memory orbs, covered in dust.

“I want you to have these,” he said plainly.

Arcaidia just rose a silver eyebrow at him, “Why?”

“Look just... just take them, okay? Watch them or don’t. I’m not even sure if you’re really who I think you are, and if you are, I...don’t know if I should even try explaining things to you. Just understand that I know why you’re here and who you’re looking for, Miss Arcaidia, and I hope you find her. I can’t do much to help, and these memory orbs might not answer many of your questions, but I’ve held onto them for a long time and if anypony deserves to have them, it's you.”

Arcaidia’s expression remained heavy with suspicion, but she slowly took the chest, sliding it over to her, and plucked out the memory orbs one by one with her hoof, careful not to touch them with her magic. She placed them in her dark blue saddlebag and turned hard silver eyes to Bartholomew, “I may watch them, or not, but stop staring at me all the same. It very creepy.”

“Yes, well, sorry about that. You just look a lot like a pony I knew, who had a daughter she never got to meet, or even remember...” Bartholomew shook his head, “I’ll leave you be, Miss Arcaidia, and if you do watch those orbs and have questions, I’ll be willing to try and answer what I can.”

He turned to me, “As for you, I’ll hold onto the idols until you feel comfortable taking them. Consider it carefully. No matter how things turn out with negotiations with the NCR, or how your own personal quests pan out, the fact remains that the whole world faces a serious danger in the shape of the Hyadeans. Sooner or later that danger is going to escalate to a full blown war, and when that happens we’re going to need the Guardians to stand a chance. All of them.”

“I... I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, feeling suddenly very, very tired. “Let me clear up my to-do list a bit, then I’ll think about doing something about this world spanning Guardian scavenger hunt, okay?”

Bartholomew let out a humorless laugh, “Fair enough. I suppose I did throw this at you out of nowhere, but I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think you were suited to the task. I may have only met you ponies the other day, but I’ve heard enough about your previous exploits and seen how you handled yourselves today to convince me you're worth trusting on this.”

He sounded sincere, and it wasn’t as if he’d given me any reason not to trust him. But this was less about trust and more that I wasn’t at all sure I could handle the extra responsibility of finding individuals to be mediums for the Guardians yet. I wanted to help, of course. Trailblaze was already roped into this gig and doing all I could do to help meant making her burden easier, but I just had too much on my plate right now. The idols were better off with Bartholomew, who not only had been doing this searching for a lot longer than I had, but had a snazzy airship to do it with. Still, he seemed so intent on this that I didn’t want to flat out tell him no right here and now. I could afford to wait until the trip to the NCR was over before giving my answer, though I didn’t think it’d change. But who knew, a lot could happen between now and then.

Arcaidia and I left his cabin shortly thereafter, after bidding good night to the Captain. Arcaidia stood hesitant in the hallway after we’d gone a few paces out of anypony’s earshot. The deck corridor was quiet and I didn’t see anypony about, and Arcaidia was looking at her saddlebag with a pensive cast to her features. She had to be wondering what was on those memory orbs and why Bartholomew was so intent on her having them.

“Are you going to watch them tonight?” I asked, and she turned a guarded set of silver eye smy way.

“No,” she said, “Not tonight. When things settled in NCR, I take a look then, maybe. I not know. This very strange. He said he knew why I here, but he couldn’t know that unless...” she trailed off, her face scrunching up in thought. I let her complete whatever mental gymnastics she was doing, and eventually she said, “Sister Persephone tell me little about her time on this world, but she did mention having... friends, here, that she made long ago. I am daughter of one of those friends, that she took off world as a favor to friend. I never ask why, or how.”

She glanced back down the corridor towards Bartholomew’s cabin, “Maybe he one of those friend my sister make in the past? Maybe he knows my blood parents?” She cast a worried look back at her saddlebag, “Maybe memory orbs even have my parents in them?”

“If that’s the case, perhaps you ought to give them a look. I mean, it can’t hurt, right?” I said, trying to give her a confident, encouraging smile. She returned my smile with a smaller one of her own, letting out a calming breath as she shook her head.

“It too distracting, ren solva. I must keep mind focused like butter knife on mission. No allow for second thoughts.” She held up her head and seemed to become her normal, confident self once more, having apparently banished her worries to a back corner of her mind, “Come, we go back to quarters, see if B.B still okay.”

I nodded, “Alright then, I guess I’m still pretty worried about her, too. How’d that meditation session go?”

For some reason Arcaidia turned her face away from me, hiding it behind long falls of her silver mane, her voice sounding oddly quiet and squeaking for a moment, “Went very well! Yes, B.B able to control self, if she just stop being stubborn and let me, er, us help her.”

I tilted my head at her, “You won’t hear any argument from me. I wish I knew how to help. She’s kept this blood drinking thing under wraps for so long, and she wouldn’t have lost that control if she hadn’t come with us. I can’t figure all this constant fighting, exposing her to a whole lot of blood being spilled, is helping her keep this hunger under control.”

Arcaidia pursed her lips , frowning, ‘I know not, ren solva. I will help her. She done much for me, and I can’t leave her to face pains alone.”

I put a hoof on her shoulder with a comforting pat, “We’ll just need to be there for her, whatever else ends up going down. Today it was pirates, tomorrow, we could be facing anything Arcaidia. Literally anything.”

“Why is it raining...?” I miserably muttered to myself as I sniffed, letting out a light sneeze as I stood watch on the bow of the Sweet Candy during the tail end of my morning watch shift. The previous clear blue skies of yesterday had been replaced by a overcast bank of clouds that was now steadily pouring out a heavy, wet and cold drizzle that seemed to cut right through my armor barding and fur and leech the warmth from my hide.

Beside me LIL-E chuckled, a rapid mechanical buzzing noise, and said, “The NCR might control its weather, but that doesn’t mean they can afford not to have rain. That farmland isn’t going to survive without water. The cycle of nature must go on.”

I sneezed again, “Could it have gone on some other day? Like, when I’m safely indoors and dry?”

“Oh suck it up, cupcake, are you a tough, badass Drifter, or a little wimpy noodly colt?”

‘I have [i[literally fought giant mutant spiders and alien monsters, I don’t need to prove my masculinity to falling water!” I said, shivering, “Though I will admit that dress you guys had me wearing was really comfortable and kind of cozy warm, you know? Ugh, why have I not invested in a cloak or something? Or at least a hat!”

“Because you’d look silly in a hat, Longwalk,” said LIL-E, “I’ve only known one stallion that could rock a hat and make it look good, and no offense, you don’t quite have his style. Huh, have the same messy, long mane though. You should think about getting it cut.”

“What!? No way! I like my long, flowing mane,” I said, running a hoof through it, and wincing as I got it tangled in some of the more snarled up bits. “Although I’ll admit maybe a trim wouldn’t hurt.”

We enjoyed some companionable silence for a minute before my curiosity got me asking, “So who’s this stallion you know with the epic mane and hat rocking skills?”

LIL-E didn’t respond, and I turned to see the eyebot just floating there, staring at the gray horizon for all I knew. I leaned closer to her, “LIL-E?”

“Sorry, just realizing I don’t actually know the stallion in question. I just... remember him.”

Awkward seconds ticked by like very heavy grains of uncomfortable sand, and eventually I said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I should, but I won’t,” LIL-E said, managing to make her machine monotone somehow sound hard, “I never wanted anypony to know I was a robot to begin with. I’m not sure I’m up to talking about memories that aren’t even mine.”

“Hey, you and me have that in common. I got stuff rattling up in my brainpan that doesn’t belong to me either,” I said with an encouraging smile, tapping the side of my head.

A mechanical laugh, like a burst of static, came from LIL-E, “I suppose that’s true, but I’ve never really been good at the whole heart to heart thing.”

“I don’t know, you did just fine when you tried to help me work through my issues after the fight with Midnight Twinkle,” I said, sighing at the memory, “I was pretty messed up afterward, but you talked me through it all, and I really appreciate the fact, LIL-E. Maybe now I can return the favor?”

“Thanks but... I’m sorry Longwalk, but I’m not sure I’m up for it. It's hard for me to even think about, and it’ll be rough enough returning home after so long and being reminded of all the things I am,” LIL-E said, and after a moment somberly added, “And everything I’m not. I was built in the NCR, Longwalk. My creators might still be looking for me. If that happens, I don’t know what will come next. They might try to take me back.”

“What will you do if that happens?”

“... I don’t know. I’m hoping it won’t come up.”

We relapsed into silence once more, a bit more sullen than before, but I shuffled more closely to LIL-E and put a comforting hoof on her cold metal chassis. Even if she couldn't feel it, per se, I wanted to show my support, one way or another. She didn’t move away from me, so I suppose she didn’t mind. I didn't really understand what it was like to be a robot, or really what that even meant, but it was clear LIL-E was in distress, and I didn’t like it when my friends were down in the dumps.

Which seemed to be the case with all of my friends lately. B.B had her blood hunger to deal with. Binge had been acting odd lately too. Arcaidia had those memory orbs to chew over, and now LIL-E was facing her own issues with returning to the land of her... birth? Construction? Was it one and the same thing with robots?

I spent quite some time just sitting there next to LIL-E in the misty rain, watching the last of the Bleach fade out beneath us as the landscape began to change. White sand dunes gave way to rocky bluffs and rolling hills, and slowly, bit by bit, my eyes picked up on something strange. Colors I’d not seen as part of the natural landscape in all my lifetime. Below us the desert had bled away into hills capped with washes of... green. Grass, tall and unchecked, grew in fields between and on the hills. Then there were sparse groupings of tall, green puffs of trees, actual trees, not the dry gray and dead kind I was familiar with, but ones whose branches burst with green. It kept spreading out ahead of us, miles and miles of hills and fields, so much of it carpeted with verdant color that It made my eyes hurt.

“Well, Longwalk,” said LIL-E, “The plantsplosion we’re looking at confirms we’ve crossed officially into the territory of the New Canterlot Republic. Welcome to the NCR.”

It was hard to tear my eyes away from the swaths of verdant color painted the world below me, but I felt I had to, because I wanted to share this with the rest of my friends. I quickly scampered over to the edge of the forecastle, and waved down to the others. Arcaidia had been covering the port side of the deck, and B.B was watching the starboard, while Binge patrolled around by the aft, but I got all of their attention with a quick shout and soon they all trotted over.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly, “Just thought I’d be cool to watch the trees go by together for a sec. I don’t know if any of us have seen the living variety before.”

Arcaidia gave me a short, chiming laugh, “I see many trees on distant worlds, but this first time seeing green trees of this one.”

“Gotta admit I ain’t been down this way since the NCR got its land purified o’ radiation an’ started growing greenery again,” said B.B, peeking over the bow, “Kind o’ like lookin’ at a bar table somepony’s vomited green all over.”

Binge giggled, but I noticed it was more subdued the normal as she looked at the passing landscape, “Life is trying to grow back through all the death, but I wonder if you can still smell all the blood down there? After so long it had to seep into the soil. Maybe that’s why the plants grew back so fast, fertilized by all the corpses?”

LIL-E groaned, “For Celestia’s fucking sake do you have to get morbid on everything that’s remotely not related to sex or death?”

I expected Binge to either giggle again or throw some nonsensical quip LIL-E’s way, but instead the earth pony’s poofy mane seemed to droop a bit, her ears giving a weak set of flicks as she whispered, “I don’t know. It hurts more than I thought it would.”

“Binge?” I looked at her with concern, “Is everything... okay?”

She looked at me, and for a few seconds our eyes met and in those blue orbs of hers I saw a reflection of devastation, like she was in an incredible amount of raw pain and was desperate for some kind of release. The look vanished in the span of those few seconds and her eyes gained an almost glassy luster to them, her smile suddenly looking uncomfortably forced, “No worries bucky. I’m here. The ghosts are whispering, getting louder, but I’m super good at whistling myself to sleep.”

She turned to look over the railing again, whistling a merry sounding tune to herself, but to my ears there was a painful note to the whistles, and I felt a sudden powerful desire to just go over there and hug her tightly. Unfortunately before I took more than a step I head LIL-E say, “Huh, I’m picking up something coming our way on my scanners.”

Distracted, I turned to her, frowning, “What is it? More pirates?”

The eyebot bobbed about for a few seconds, a strange series of humms and beeps coming from inside her chassis. “I don’t think so. I’m picking up too much heat, and the motion is all wrong for a ship, though the size is about right.”

“B.B, go alert the Captain,” I said, “Let him know we might have incoming.”

“No might ‘bout it, Long,” B.B said, pointing up at the cloudcover above us, rain pelting her face that she ignored, “Look!”

I craned my neck to look up, and gulped as I saw the clouds roil and shift as an immense object dropped down from the ceiling of white and started to descend towards the Sweet Candy. I saw great, purple wings with thin leathery membranes spread out wide as our own airship, attached to a thickly muscled body of light purple scales. Four powerful limbs, each tipped with deadly looking claws long as a pony extended from the body like tree trunks, and a long sinuous tail flowed out behind the creature, straight and lightly waving in the wind. Green spikes ridged the creature’s back, tail, and long serpentine neck all the way to a tapered face with a maw large enough to bite a Vertibuck out of the air and the fangs to do the job proper.

I had only heard about dragons in tribal legend, with the roughest of descriptions in the tales told around the campfires at night of giant lizard-like monsters that breathed fire and craved gems and flesh alike. My foalhood dreams and nightmares born of those tales didn’t come close to the living, breathing reality I was seeing flying out of the clouds and descending to level out beside the Sweet Candy. As the dragon came to fly next to the ship it turned its head towards us, and I noticed that while it had one large green eye, its other eye was covered by a huge black eyepatch that only partially covered a ragged scar over one side of its face.

“So, uh, does anybody know how if dragons can be reasoned with? Or are we just boned?” I asked, voice just barely above a squeak.

“Actually,” said LIL-E, “I think we’re okay. This dragon isn’t a threat, at least as long as we’re polite and don’t do anything stupid to piss him off.”

I glanced at her with a question on my lips, but I then heard Captain Bartholomew as he came up the stairs to join us on the forecastel, “Ah! Our escort showed up earlier than I thought. Stand down, Drifters, this fellow is with the NCR.”

“He is?” I asked, blinking in surprise, and feeling rather quickly relieved that I wasn’t going to have to find out if dragons actually breathed fire like in the tales.

“Indeed,” Bartholomew said, then came up to the railing and raised a talon to cup his beak as he shotued, “Ahoy Spike! Long time no see! You having fun giving my passengers a scare!?”

I heard a rumble like thunder and it took me a few seconds to realize it was the dragon’s laughter. The dragon’s maw pulled back to reveal dozens of large fangs, a smile that didn’t do much for my nerves. When the dragon spoke his voice boomed out clearly, easy to hear even over the wind of the airship’s movement.

“If I really wanted to give them a scare, you’d know it, Bart. Now I can’t help but notice your ship looks a bit shot up. What happened?”

“Pirates! The damned Black Swans!”

“Shit, for real? I thought those buzzards operated further east? Everyone okay over there?” the dragon rumbled back, his one good eye narrowing slightly.

Bartholomew took off his captain’s hat, holding it to his breast, “Sadly lost two of my own crew, and one of our passengers was captured. All told it could’ve been a lot worse, but a sad state of affairs nonetheless.”

The dragon spat out something in a language I didn’t understand but sounded like a sincere and nasty curse, “Knew I should’ve gone out earlier to meet you guys halfway! If I’d been there those pirates would be enjoying new careers as fresh piles of ash. Look, I’m coming aboard, you can fill me in on the details.”

Wait, coming aboard? Coming aboard!? This dragon was damned near as big as the ship! How in the name of the Ancestor Spirts’ blazing balls was he planning on coming aboard!? Even as I was thinking this I saw the dragon reach with his left foreclaw over to his right, and touch something he was wearing on one of his talons. The dragon’s entire vast body was then encased in a bright green glow, and then he began to rapidly shrink. Before the change was complete he banked his wings and flew right for the ship. I took an involuntary step back, as did most of my companions, save for LIL-E.

Rather than smash into the Sweet Candy, Spike the dragon finished transmuting his form from a gigantic, fierce, fire breathing, eat a pony in one bite dragon, into a cute, two foot tall, somewhat chubby baby dragon that landed lightly on the deck, brushing himself off with one claw while twirling an amulet in his other. The amulet was made of a gold disc set with a bright green gem, held together by a chain of thick gold links, and the amulet finished glowing with magic just as the dragon did. When he spoke now his voice was higher, more childish, but still distinctly male.

“‘Sup dudes?” he said, looking at us as if nothing at all in the world was out of the ordinary about at giant dragon suddenly transforming into a baby one.

“I... uh... bwhuh?” I said in my usual eloquent manner.

Spike just chuckled and rolled his eyes at me, “What, never seen a dragon as manly as me before?”

I just blinked, my brain still made of sludge. Confused sludge. “Never seen a dragon before.”

Arcaidia, unlike myself, was less flabbergasted and more fascinated, suddenly approaching Spike like a magnet and peering at him up close, her silver eyes sparkling. “Are you real giant lizard or hologram? Wait, was tiny lizard riding on big lizard and you keep big lizard in gem? Can I see gem?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up lady! Personal bubble,” Spike said, backing up a few steps from Arcaidia’s eager, curious face, “The amulet’s just a magic trinket a pal found for me that lets me reverse my age when I want to. Makes going to meetings a lot easier since I can actually fit in buildings this way.”

“Huh, that’s extremely convenient, do you got a lot of magic trinkets like that?” I asked, unable to stop my own curiosity, to which Spike gave me a level look, somehow making his small dragon voice carry about as much force and menace as I imagined he could pull as a hundred foot long killing machine.

“Lots. A whole hoard. Don’t even dream of touching it or you’ll get real personal with your inner barbecue, you feel me?”

I managed to nod, smiling nervously, “Was just curious.”

Spike eyed me for a moment, then shrugged with a small laugh, “S’cool.” He puffed up a bit, grinning, “I guess I can’t blame you if I’m your first dragon. I know I cut a pretty majestic figure. Who wouldn’t be curious about me?”

Bartholomew put a talon to his beak with a polite cough, “Spike, perhaps we should head back to the wheelhouse? You know, bring you up to speed on what happened on our way over here?”

“Yeah, to business I guess. I also got to radio ahead to the border guard and let them know I’ve made contact with you guys,” Spike said and turned to walk off with Bartholomew, waving a claw behind him, “Nice meeting you guys, guess we’ll do proper intros later.”

I watched them go, and after a second shook my head, “Well, that happened.”

Arcaidia still looked rather energetic and happy, eyes shining with bubbly light, “I knew sister tell me stories of dragons on this world but never quite believe them. So amazing to see real one, yes ren solva? I want to see him breath the fires!”

“I, uh... would be just as well not seeing that,” I said, but it was hard to not get a little infected with Arcaidia’s enthusiasm. If one could get around the intimidating aspects of his massive claws, fangs, and capacity for roasting somepony alive, I supposed the dragon was a pretty awe inspiring sight. He still made me a bit nervous, however. Even in his small, baby form there’d been an air of ready violence about Spike that set me on edge.

“Neat trick with that amulet,” said LIL-E, “I didn’t know he had anything like that.”

B.B glanced at the eyebot, “Ya know ‘im?”

“Not really,” LIL-E swiftly replied, “Its more like I know him by stories and reputation. Hero of the war against Redeye’s slaver empire and the Enclave, way back when.”

“He smelled like brimstone and burnt flesh,” said Binge, licking her lips and wagging her tail, “He’s killed a lot of ponies.”

“Aaaand on that fun note, I’m going back to sightseeing,” I said with a sigh, “And keeping watch for danger, I suppose. If we’re already into the NCR, I wonder if we’re still needed for that?”

“Best not ta’ tempt fate, eh Long?” said B.B, “We can’t drop our guard until we’re landed, an’ probably not after that either.”

It was a sobering thought, but I knew B.B was very likely correct. Even if we we were now in friendly territory, it was just inviting trouble to relax now. The delegation had already suffered one attack, and there was nothing that said it couldn’t suffer another at any time, even once we were in the heart of the NCR. I took up my position back at the bow of the Sweet Candy and took a deep, steadying breath, and resumed my watch. My friends returned to their own posts, Arcaidia chatting excitedly with B.B about the dragon, while Binge bounced along behind them. LIL-E stayed at the bow with me, hovering silently.

“So...uh... about Spike,” I said, “That one of those memory things you don’t want to talk about?”

“And a half,” she replied, “Longwalk, why are you so adamant about asking about these memories of mine anyway?”

“I’m just worried about you. We’re heading back into the land you were... born in? Built in? I don’t know if this is hard on you or not, but I can’t imagine its easy either, and there’s some risk involved, right? Like, whoever built you might want to take you back, right?”

“A bridge I’ll burn when I come to it. I’ll admit I never planned to go back to the NCR,” LIL-E said, hovering a little lower so she was more at eye level with me, “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’d planned to ditch you guys once we got to Skull City and go my own way, but I guess... things just kept happening that made me think you still needed my help. Of course it was easy to justify because helping out Doc Sunday was involved, and I owe him.”

“Heh, seems he does that for a lot of people,” I said, ‘You, B.B, the folk of Saddlespring. Wish I had a chance to get to know the stallion at some point.”

“You’ll find life pulls us all in different directions and there isn’t always the convenient time to really know the folk whose paths we cross,” LIL-E said, her mechanical voice managing to take on a faint solemn note, “Try to treasure the time you’ve got with the ponies, the people, in your life Longwalk. You never know when they won’t be there anymore.”

We fell into a simple, comfortable silence after that. I wasn’t going to push her to talk about the memories inside her. I figured they had to be tied to the memory orb I’d seen fused into her circuitry when I’d seen her repairing herself back at Stable 104, and I thought I’d seen fragments of them in her dreams as well, but it was clear LIL-E wasn’t ready to open up about it all yet. I hoped there wouldn’t be any trouble involved with her returning to the NCR. I supposed she wouldn’t have been willing to come along if she felt there’d be too much danger. I just had to trust her, the same way I trusted all of my friends with their own issues.

I mean, logically I had reasons to be worried about all of them. Arcaidia still essentially served an alien empire that may well be more interested in conquering our world than helping it. B.B could at any time lose control of her hunger and start tearing throats out with her teeth. Binge was... Binge, and from day one of meeting her had been an unhinged, potential danger.

Yet I trusted all of them. So I’d trust LIL-E too.

I mean, they trusted me, right? Despite the fact that I was always getting them into dangerous situations. Not to mention I now had unstable memories in my head that were making me stab and blow things up I wasn’t intending to. If they could keep following me, despite that, then I owed the same support and trust they were giving me.

And who knew, perhaps the pirates had been the worst of the danger we’d face on this trip and it would be all smooth sailing from here?

“LIL-E, I’ve never been to the NCR, but is any part of it normally supposed to be on fire?”

My question was prompted by the sight of several plumes of black, oily smoke that curled up into the horizon, reminding me like blood spilling upwards. LIL-E’s reply was terse and filled with a rough tension. “No, it’s not. That’s the border fort, Lightbridge. It's the only safe crossing over the north Canterlot River. Something’s happened.”

“Keep an eye on it, I’ll go report to Bartholomew,” I said, feeling a tightening in my gut as my tension rose. I had no idea what to expect, but clearly something had gone wrong. The landscape had remained largely the same, with small rolling hills, mostly covered in short grass and the occasional copse of trees. But further to the south, where the smoke was, I could see the wide bending, blue band of a river flowing from northwest to southeast. There was a huge carpet of something thick and green further south and a bit west of the smoke plumes, an actual honest to spirits forest, and beyond that, like a small dark shadow, was the very distant shape of a lone mountain rising from a large chain of foothills.

As I made my way swiftly across the deck I noticed that there were a number of ponies who’d come up either to watch our approach to the NCR or just get some fresh air. One of them was the large, imperious looking mare Begonia, guildmistress of the Labor Guild, with Iron Wrought looking sullen at her side. She turned to me as I trotted across the deck hurriedly and said, “You there, colt, tell me what is going on this instant! Why is there smoke on the horizon?”

“Don’t know, going to tell the Captain right now,” I said in hasty reply.

“Not good enough. Surely you saw something?” the tall, broad mare said, all but getting in my way. I had to dance around her, and did my best to keep my irritation out of my voice.

“Look, er, ma’am, I don’t know what’s happened. All I see is smoke, same as you.”

Begonia snorted, “Then go along, report to the good Captain then. I’ll find somepony who actually knows something of value. Iron Wrought, to the bow!”

Iron Wrought grimaced, but hid the expression quickly behind a mask of simple obedience as he nodded and joined her in going to the bow of the ship. I continued on towards the aftcastle, but caught looks from Arcaidia and B.B as they filed in behind me, and we found Binge waiting for us at the top of the stairs to the aftcastle.

“Smelled the smoke,” said Binge, and Arcaidia glanced at the distant trails of black on the horizon.

“At least twenty miles distant. Take us an hour at least to get there. Too late to do much helping, except clean up mess,” she said, her face taking on a hard, steeling look to it.

By the time I got to the door of the wheelhouse it was already being thrown open by Spike, who all but bowled past us as he rushed out, eyes blazing with rage.

“Out of the damned way! BFD comin’ through!”

He nearly knocked me over, shocking strong for such a little guy, and ran right for the edge of the deck. I barely had time to blink at him before he threw on his magical amulet and jumped off the deck of the Sweet Candy like some kind of purple cannonball. There was a billowing swirl of green smoke and in seconds the tiny dragon became a full on adult again and with an air splitting roar spread his wings and banked hard to the south, swiftly pulling ahead of the Sweet Candy as he made a straight course for the pillars of smoke. He’d get there before we did, but probably not much before. As I watched the dragon go, I felt a distinct twinge of apprehension.

Turning to go into the wheelhouse I found Bartholomew standing at one of the side tables on a radio while directing one of his crew who was at the wheel, “Keep her steady on our current heading but bring us up to full speed. If there’s trouble I want us to be able to get past it, fast.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” said the crewpony, holding the wheel with one hoof while the unicorn used some magic to operate a lever next to the wheel, pushing it forward, and I felt the Sweet Candy gradually pull forward faster.

At my entry alongside my friends Bartholomew looked to us and said, “Already spotted the smoke. We got radio contact with Lightbridge just minutes ago.”

“Any idea what’s going on?” I asked tentatively, jerking my head in a pointed gesture behind me, “I just saw the dragon take off like he was ready to murder somepony.”

“More like some[i[thing,” Bartholomew said, holding up a talon to point at the radio, “I just got off the horn with the fort’s surviving commanding officer. Seems like just a couple of hours ago they were attacked by something the survivors described as a ‘giant, red metal monster that shoots fucking fire’, to use the exact wording.”

I felt my breath quicken and my heart skip a beat, all in cold fear as my brain instantly put pieces together and came up with a highly unpleasant picture. I felt Arcaidia put a hoof on my shoulder and heard her whisper, “The Golem.”

“Yeah, sounds like it,” I said, trying to order my thoughts as I spoke up to Bartholomew, “Is the, uh, monster still there? Is the fort still being attacked?”

“No,” Bartholomew said and I felt a small easing of the fear that had risen in me, but not by much as the Captain went on, “It smashed through the fort, but far as the soldiers there could tell it wasn’t even interested in them and once it got through the defenses it just kept marching on, straight into the Everfree Forest.”

I exchanged looks with my friends. Both Binge and B.B looked as if they recognized the name, but Arcaidia just gave me a shrug. “What’s the Everfree Forest and why would it be going there?”

Bartholomew gave me a searching look, then a voice, fuzzy with popping static, spoke over the radio, “Captain Bartholomew, I just finished speaking with the commander of the Patriot and they’ll be en route within the hour to render assistance to us, and Spike the Dragon just landed outside. I think we’ll be okay here, so while we all appreciate the offer of you and your crew lending us some help, there isn’t anything you can do here. That thing has done its damage and moved on. Best you continue to Autumn Memorial Airfield and get that delegation to Manehattan. Goddesses watch over you.”

“You too, Major Tripwire,” Bartholomew replied and then set the radio speaker down and ran a talon over his crest feathers, “Bloody hells, this is a mess.”

Applegate suddenly appeared at the door, striding in quickly and with an air of quiet, calm command, “I just heard of the smoke spotted ahead. What’s the situation?”

She was looking both at me and Bartholomew, and the griffin gave a gesture at me to go ahead. “Uh, well, the NCR fort ahead of us got attacked by monster.” I hesitated a second, then decided not to bother hiding anything, “I have reason to think it's the same one that destroyed Saddlespring several weeks ago. A Golem.”

Applegate raised an eyebrow at me, “Golem?”

I waved a hoof haphazardly, “It's a name I heard. The thing is huge, made of metal, and is basically an ancient robotic killing machine. Bad news all around.”

“Okay, but what makes you think this Golem is the one responsible for this attack?”

“Well, the description fits, and the last anypony saw of that thing it was marching south into the desert, the very same one we just crossed. Stands to reason it might’ve kept on marching until it reached the NCR border.”

“That was weeks ago. Why would it not have reached the NCR border earlier than today?” Applegate asked.

“Don’t see that it much matters,” said B.B, frowning deeply with her wings flapping with agitated energy, “Maybe it just took its time strolin’ along, or coulda been some desert critters in the Bleach slowed it down? Who cares? It burned a fort an’ is now lose runnin’ around in the NCR! We gotta stop it!”

“According to the base commander it went into the Everfree Forest,” said Bartholomew with a heavy shrug, “That forest is denser than my third wife’s stew. If your Golem went in there, it won’t be easy to find it. Besides, that’s not our job. Let the NCR military and Spike deal with it. We’re heading onward to Manehattan.”

Applegate sighed, “Very well, still I need to report to Whiteheart. Perhaps the Drifter’s Guild can offer our help dealing with this Golem if the NCR makes the request. Longwalk, resume you and your team’s guard positions, just in case anything else happens.”

“Wait,” I said, stepping forward, “Look, I’ve seen what this Golem can do up close and way too personal. It survived a direct bombardment by some pretty heavy ordinance from an Odessa airship, and just walked off after torching an entire town of innocent ponies. It’s way more dangerous than pretty much anything else I’ve run into. Maybe if you just dropped me and my friends off here we could go help deal with-”

Applegate cut me off sharply, “Longwalk, remember your duty. You are a Drifter, and on contract to guard this delegation. If Whiteheart negotiates and agrees to us going to aid the NCR military in dealing with this threat, we shall do so without hesitation, but until then our task is to continue acting as guards for the guests of the NCR and watch over the talks. Understood?”

“I... But... yes, I understand,” I said, hanging my head.

“Good, then resume your posts.”

As my friends and I walked out of the wheelhouse to return to our guard positions I felt Arcaidia nudge me, her eyes soft with understanding, though her tone was reserved, “She right for more reasons than duty, ren solva. We not help much against Golem. It made to fight armies. We not an army. If it goes into forest, it must be have reason. Leave be trouble we don’t need.”

“She’s got a’ point, Long,” said B.B, grimacing, “I’d like ta scrap that monster somethin’ fierce, git some payback fer Saddlespring, but I also remember that last time all we could do was make a’ run fer it. Ain’t sure we got the firepower ta take it on.”

“I know,” I said, taking a deep breath, “Still, we let that thing out... so...”

My voice trailed off as we marched along the side of the deck and I saw that we were rapidly approaching the remains of fort Lightbridge. I halted, looking at the devastation, and feeling my heart clench. There were murmurs now, as more and more ponies came up on deck to see what was happening, and it seemed word traveled from some of the crewponies because in short order I heard whispers about a ‘monster attack’ and a ‘Golem’.

I saw Crossfire and Shard coming to take a look as well, and I exchanged a meaningful look with Crossfire, who I didn’t doubt would’ve recognized the description of the Golem and realized the same as I did that this was the same monstrosity that we unleashed in Saddlespring. That was what made looking at the destruction passing below the Sweet Candy hit harder and more painfully than it normally would have. I knew that the Golem was walking the surface of the world because my friends and I had let it out.

Lightbridge had been an impressive fort. It clearly got its name from a wide metal bridge that had probably once been part of a pre-war highway across the shining expanse of the Canterlot River. The bridge had gone through seemingly many repairs over the years, and the NCR probably went well out of its way to maintain the wide highway with multiple cement pillars holding it up over the flowing river waters. The river itself was larger than any I’d ever imagined seeing, and had I not had the ocean in recent memory to compare it to it would’ve been the most water I ever could have grasped seeing at one time. I estimated it had to at least be five hundred paces across, but honestly that was just a spitball guess on my part.

Beyond the bridge the fort consisted of a thick wall of concrete and metal bracing surrounding a compound of nearly a dozen metal warehouses and shacks, with a single tall tower in the center from which several communication dishes speared upwards. The wall was smashed down, however, on the south side, and I could see that more than half of the buildings inside had been either crushed or burned into smoking piles of char, the source of the pillars of smoke. I could see ponies trotting around down there, but not nearly as many as there should have been in a fort that size, and the blackened husks littering the ground amid swaths of burned and blackened ground told me all I needed to know.

Roaring Metal, aka Diablo, one of the eight Golems forged by the Elw in ancient times, had smashed right through Lightbridge, torched or stomped anything that got in its way, and moved right on through the rest of the fort as if it’d been made out of sand. Aside from burned bodies I also saw several burning husks from what looked like vehicles, small autowagons that might’ve mounted weapons, and even what looked like a crashed Vertibuck. There were several craters in a haphazard pattern around the edge of the river and the fifty or so paces to the fort walls, where I could also see the steady tracks of what had to have been the Golem’s path. The soldiers at the fort had put up a fight, but I wasn’t seeing any evidence they’d even damaged the Golem, let alone slowed it down.

How many had died down there, I wondered?

“It's awful,” said a voice from nearby, and I saw Princess Purity had come up on deck and was looking at the damaged fort, eyes seeming to reflect the smoke with a downcast light. “Shouldn’t we go and help them?”

Beside her was the armor-clad Phalanx, who said, “There is little we could do to help, your Highness. Our place is elsewhere. Come, you do not need to look upon this.”

“Yes, I do,” Purity said with a hint of fierce conviction entering her otherwise soft tone, “I will not look away from suffering merely because it doesn’t affect my own people.”

“That isn’t what he said,” growled Crossfire suddenly, “He’s just trying to keep you from muddling your head with too much of this shit when you need it clear for negotiating an alliance for the Protectorate. As a damned princess you ought to know that it takes more than sympathy to make a difference.”

Purity looked at Crossfire with surprised eyes, and suddenly looked off balance. Phalanx turned to Crossfire and said with rough, sharp words, “I don’t recall asking your opinion, outsider, and I’ll not have you speak to her Highness in such a disrespectful manner!”

“No, Phalanx, it’s alright,” said Purity, holding up a hoof, and giving the devastated fort passing below us one last, sad look, “I shall follow your advice and return below, since it seems there is nothing we can do here. I merely... wish there was another option.”

After I got back to my guard post, with B.B, Binge, and Arcaidia splitting up to head back to their own positions, I caught LIL-E up on what we’d learned. By now I’d finally spotted Spike, who apparently after making sure there was nothing more to be done for the fort had flown on towards the distant forest, which I learned was what everyone was calling the Everfree Forest.

“Bartholomew doesn’t seem to think they’ll have an easy time finding the Golem in there,” I said as I watched the far off form of Spike circling over the edge of the forest, apparently searching for wherever the Golem had entered from.

“He’s right,” LIL-E said, “Everfree is massive, with trees tall enough to hide a dragon. You could fit a city in there and leave nopony the wiser for it. So if the Golem went inside, you’d probably never spot it from the air. You’d need to go in and track it on foot.”

“Will the NCR do that?”

“They just had one of their main border forts trashed like it’d gone through a hurricane from Tartarus. Yeah, they’ll send some serious firepower after it. Not sure if it’ll make a difference, but I can’t see the NCR, least of all President Grimfeathers, taking an incident like this laying down,” said LIL-E.

I sighed, “I wish we’d been able to stop that thing back in Saddlespring.”

“From what I saw of what was left of Saddlespring you’re lucky you got through that situation alive.”

“Still, if it's out there, wandering around in the NCR, it's only a matter of time before it causes more death,” I said, glancing at Gramzanber strapped to my side, “I can’t just ignore that.”

LIL-E was silent for a second, before saying, “Neither can I. Of course we are somewhat stuck doing what your new boss says, aren’t we? I bet you didn’t quite think ahead to that when you signed on with the Drifter’s Guild; that you’d have to follow orders.”

I hunched my shoulders, somehow wincing and smiling at the same time, “Granted I hadn’t really thought about it too hard. At the time I just figured we needed a way here to the NCR and that it could be helpful to have the resources of a Guild at our disposal. I mean, sure I figured we might need to do some jobs for them, but Crossfire sort of made it look like she picked her own jobs and did things her way. Guess I didn’t count on my first job being a big joint operation with somepony in charge over me...” I glanced back towards the wheelhouse where I could see Applegate conferring with Bartholomew, “Not that I mind Applegate being in charge, but, yeah, it kind of sucks suddenly not being able to do my own thing.”

“Otherwise you’d already be going after that Golem, wouldn't you?”

I looked inside myself, at my own fear, and felt that beyond that cold, sweaty feeling there was a stronger burning core that said I’d do everything I could to stop that thing from taking more lives. It was my responsibility, and more than that, it was right. I nodded solemnly, “Damn straight I would be. I understand why Arcaidia and B.B are hesitant. Shit, they were right there with me the last time, and we couldn’t even scratch that Golem. Running was all we could do. But we’re... we’re stronger now, I think. I’ve got a better understanding of my bond with Gramzanber, and I’m pretty sure Arcaidia’s magic has gotten better since then. We might be able to take it down.”

“And you feel like you owe it to all the ponies dead because of that thing, because you let it out in the first place.”

“Well... yeah, that too.”

“Longwalk, whatever ends up going down, keep it in perspective,” LIL-E said, “Stopping that Golem would be a good thing, but only if you’re doing it to save the people it might still hurt, not because you’re trying to make up for past fuck ups.”

A part of me, the better part I wanted to believe, knew she was right. Defending others should be my only motivation for throwing myself into the breach. It was impossible to deny there was still guilt lingering in me concerning the destruction of Saddlespring, so bluntly mirrored in the similar ruin I’d seen visited upon fort Lightbridge. But LIL-E knew what she was talking about. If I got too wrapped up in taking down that Golem out of a gnawing sense of guilt, then I’d likely end up making even more mistakes that’d get good folk killed. I couldn’t afford that kind of immature thinking. I had to swallow my guilt, keep focused on the good I could do when the opportunity arose, and do what needed doing because it’d save lives, not cleanse me of past mistakes.

“Thank’s, LIL-E. You’re right. I’ll keep my head on straight, and if the Golem shows up and we’ve got a chance to deal with it, we’ll do it, and for the right reasons.”

“Fucking skippy,” she said, “I’ll be right there beside you to kick that thing’s ugly ass, then.”

I gave her a thankful smile and offered up a hoof to bump, which seemed to confound the eyebot for a second until she recalled she did have a manipulator arm, which she extended to complete the bump. It helped lift my mood considerably. I still felt no shortage of regret that one of my earliest mistakes had shown up here and now and had caused pain and death. I knew also I wouldn’t let that regret chain me to obsession.

For now I had a mission to complete as a Drifter, and the NCR still awaited. I put thoughts of the Golem from my mind and looked ahead, letting the smoking remains of fort Lightbridge fall behind us. The wind picked up, managing to blow away the scent of smoke. I saw the distant form of Spike finish circling the edge of the Everfree and return, the huge dragon taking up an escort position a few hundred meters off the starboard side of the ship. The dragon’s form looked stiff with anger and tension and I could well imagine his frustration at not being able to find the Golem to vent his fury upon.

As we continued south I saw two shapes in the air fast coming in from the southwest, not coming at us, but instead angling towards Lightbridge. Soon they resolved into the shapes of airships, and I recognized the same general design of the Black Swan’s pirate vessel, but these Raptors were different. Instead of having cobbled together dirigible balloons holding them aloft these ships had boiling storm clouds flanking either side of their sleek, black hulls. Lightning forked and danced inside the clouds, and I could only guess at what kind of magical power was at work keeping the ships skybound and sailing. They moved rapidly past us, and as they went I saw a sigil painted, large upon their bows. It looked like an intertwined image of the sun and moon, twin half circles brought together by a blazing sword of golden light, all painted upon a square field of deep blue.

The flag of the NCR, no doubt. I liked it. Looking upon the image somehow filled me with an odd sense of hope and optimism. I silently wished the crews on those ships good luck in aiding their brethren at the fort, and their likely oncoming hunt for the Golem. I whispered a prayer to the Ancestor Spirits to watch over them in that task, and that wisdom would prevail in short order and the NCR would ask the Drifter’s Guild to help in that endeavor. Until then, my duty was elsewhere. Duty... strange, I’d never seriously considered the word and its meaning before. Responsibility and obligation to something beyond my own immediate impulses and desires. I could see how it could be a hard thing to follow, especially when the thing you owed duty to did not necessarily represent all of your own beliefs or wants.

I wondered if Glint or Sunset, or anypony or griffin in Odessa felt at odds with their duty. Clearly it must have been hard to help me at times, to bend duty to do what they felt was right. Harder still for common soldiers in Odessa to go against orders when they might have had no reason at all to think their superiors were in the wrong. It was hard enough to point my blade at Odessa troops, without also gaining a better understanding of the difficulties of those bound by duty. Still, a worry for another day. There was a lot between me and my future rescue attempt of my tribe. No reason to burden myself with worries of the future when I had enough staring me in the face. Still, I found myself hoping they were well, the ponies I knew in Odessa, just as much as I hoped my family and tribe were well. If only there was some way to get through to Odessa that we were on the same side, come the end. That we both wanted to protect this world from the alien threat.

My thoughts wandered, but only until something new drew my attention. The Sweet Candy had skirted around the eastern edge of the vast Everfree Forest, and I finally saw to the east that the ocean had rolled in, forming a wide, curving bay. In the land between the forest and that distant bay I saw something I hadn’t imagined; farms. At least, I had to assume that’s what the ordered, square fields were. The fields seemed to consist largely of some kind of tall, waving golden grass, that rolled like waves of water under the warm winds. Occasionally there were other fields, some with small greenish sprouts, others more like orchards of small trees bearing glittering red fruit. Spaced about among the fields were small clusters of buildings, new looking buildings, made from actual painted wood instead of cobbled together bits of the old world. As the Sweet Candy passed overhead I could see its shadow running along the fields, and that there were ponies down in those fields, working the land. Many of them looked up at our passage, and to my surprise many waved happily. Even with the drizzly, wet weather the sight lifted my mood.

“Spirits,” I breathed, “Its like they’re not afraid of anything.”

“There hasn’t been any serious danger in the NCR’s land for well over a decade,” said LIL-E, “There are some young ponies down there who have grown up never once knowing the sound of gunfire or the fear of prowling Wasteland creatures. This is what peace looks like, Longwalk.”

It was incredible, heartwarming, and nothing short of amazing... yet it left a question burning in my mind. “Why isn’t the area around Skull City like this? What makes the NCR so different? How did this peace come about here, but not anywhere else?”

“That is a long story. Short version is that this was a Wasteland like any other part of the world, until a lot of folk bled to make it otherwise. Some will say there was one hero who did most of it, but the truth is that she was just a... spark. A catalyst. Without a lot of others doing their part, that one spark wouldn’t have gotten far. There’s also the fact that someponies long ago built something that could use our world’s greatest magical artifacts to cleanse the land. Without that the NCR would still be barren Wasteland, but now things can grow, and because of something else built long ago the weather is under control and can be used to aid in keeping the land healthy. Still, it took... a lot of bloodshed to get things this way. And it isn’t enough to really share with the rest of the world.”

“Why not?” I asked, starring at the fields, “There looks like there’s so much food down there.”

“And its enough to feed the NCR’s current population, and not much more,” LIL-E replied, “That border fort we just saw wasn’t there for no reason, Longwalk. The NCR closed down its border a ways back to stop the flow of folk moving in from places like Skull City. There’s just not enough food to cover so many extra bodies. Lightbridge has seen its own share of bloodshed just because there were ponies desperate enough to try to break through the border...”

“Shit,” I said, shaking my head, “I remember B.B telling me about that. The Red River incident, I think she called it.”

“Not a proud day for anypony,” LIL-E said, “It was never clear who fired first, the refugees trying to get in, or the border guards trying to do their job as best they could. Either way, once the first bullet was fired, shit snowballed quick. Lot of people who didn’t have to die, did. Remember that and be careful. Things are peaceful here, but the people of the NCR are still jumpy about outsiders, and you can get killed by a bullet in peaceful territory just as easily as out in the Wasteland.”

It was a good thing to remember and I gave her a grim nod as the ship continued southward, then began to gently curve into a southwestern course; the same direction the two NCR Raptors had come from. By now the mountain I’d seen before had gotten closer, and much larger. It seemed to spear upwards into the sky like a lonesome sentinel, its peak vanishing into the rain laden clouds. There were a few smaller peaks amid the hills around it, but largely the lone mountain stood apart, like a cloud wreathed sword of stone. I squinted in curiosity as I noticed that on the southern slope of the mountain there was an odd formation, like a large pile of broken stone, only some of the stones were colorful; swaths of purple and gold, some of it shaped into what might have been spires.

“What is that?” I asked, and LIL-E took several long seconds to answer.

“What’s left of Canterlot, the former capital of Equestria. It wasn’t exactly a hospitable place, being covered in a deadly necromantic cloud of magic, but now its rubble because the Enclave blew it to pieces in the opening moves of their attempt to ‘pacify’ the Wasteland.”

“Enclave, right, the military pegasi and basically the big cousins to Odessa.”

“Sort of. Your Odessa is a lot smaller, but I’d say a bit more versatile than the Enclave military. Those Raptors we saw are re-purposed Enclave ships. Most the pegasi are equal citizens of the NCR, but even after eighteen years there’s some prejudice against them for keeping the sky covered for two centuries.”

The Sweet Candy moved past the Everfree Forest, and I spotted a number of what looked to be small settlements scattered around a wide expanse of relatively flat land, with actual roads winding between them. I could see the small moving forms of actual wagons on the roads. Then as I looked east towards the bay, I saw something that looked almost depressingly familiar amid the relatively new scenery of the NCR.

Old ruins. The Sweet Candy was turning towards them, and as we closed I saw these ruins were very much like those surrounding Skull City. The remains of ancient buildings, largely empty and reduced to rubble, stretching for miles. Yet despite the surface similarity to the miles of ruins outside Skull City I began to note a distinct air of difference as the Sweet Candy drew closer. In the Skull City Wasteland it was almost as if those living there had embraced the deadly nature of their surroundings. The ruins there had been prowled by feral ghouls, lined by bones, even to the point where those living there had used the skulls of the dead as decoration.

Here, in these ruins, I saw rubble neatly cleared away, clear streets, and even among the burned out old buildings there were small gardens and planted trees, where ponies had clearly sought to cultivate new life from the remains of the old world. Amid the miles of the remains of vast suburbs there were pockets of settlement where ponies had set up tents, rebuilt walls and roofs, and formed into clear communities that worked together to support building something out of the materials they had at hoof. It gave the ruins a sense of life and regrowth. There were only a few places around the edges of the ruins, especially on the northern end, that looked untouched by rebuilding efforts, and even there those regions of the old city looked more still and quiet than carrying the hint of menace the ruins back around Skull City did.

And this was just the periphery ruins. As the Sweet Candy reached the edge of this vast city remains I saw that the ruins ran all the way up to the bay where a bridge led to a wide, long island where the real city had been. Like Skull City there were large towers and skyscrapers here, many of them torn or shattered about halfway up, but it was also clear the rebuilding efforts had been redoubled in this area and on both ends of the bridge, and inside the island itself, buildings had been built back up and streets cleaned of rubble. I could see ponies in the streets, and others flying between buildings, and the center of the city seemed to pulse with activity. This was the beating heart of the NCR, vibrant and alive, with the shining flag of the NCR fluttering from the roofs of many of the recently rebuilt structures.

“Manehattan,” LIL-E said, a hint of wistfulness in her otherwise mechanical monotone, “It's been a long time since I last saw it. They’ve repaired a lot more of it since I was here.”

‘Its beautiful,” I said, smiling.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. Still a lot of broken, charred city out there.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said, gesturing a hoof at the ruined suburbs leading up to the main city, “Look. There’s no wall. No gang ridden slum. Everypony down there is pulling their weight together. Its... I don’t know what else to call it but beautiful.”

“You’re kind of a sap, but I can’t say you’re wrong,” said LIL-E.

The Sweet Candy changed course once more, following the western edge of Manehattan’s suburbs, until we reached an area that consisted of many long strips of concrete next to what looked to be a huge wishbone shaped building that looked like it had undergone recent reconstruction. A tall concrete tower rose from the building, and I saw a few flashes of light, like some kind of signal, coming from the tower. Along the edges of the main building I saw a vast camp of tents and a few sheet metal shacks, with numerous ponies trotting around a number of parked vehicles I quickly recognized as Vertibucks, along with a number of smaller wagons that at first I thought were the normal land bound type until I saw a few pegasi hook up to leads on the front of one and take off with it.

Then there was the trio of parked Raptors sitting along one of the vast concrete strips, and I realized what I was looking at was an airfield.

My pulse increased with a sense of excitement as the Sweet Candy pulled around the airfield’s control tower and flew lower, making a final, slow circling pass before slowly lowering towards the landing strip closest to the main building. Crewponies scrambled around the deck and began to toss off landing lines to be tied down by waiting airfield crew that had come out to meet us. LIL-E and I joined the rest of our friends on the main deck, and Arcaidia rushed up to me, a bright, excited smile on her face and her eyes glittering at me.

“We made it, ren solva. We’re here!”

Yes, despite everything that had happened, all the detours and obstacles, we’d made it. I pulled Arcaidia into a tight hug, which she returned twofold, and I found myself laughing, for the simple happiness of seeing Arcaidia smiling. It felt good to finally made at least partial good on the debt I owed her and to get her such a long step closer to finding her sister. I had no idea what kind of challenges were about to await us here in the NCR. Political intrigue abounded. There was a homicidal flame Golem lurking, no doubt to cause all manner of mayhem. And there was the looming threat of the Hyadean aliens, plotting who knew what dangers? Not to mention the lingering threat of Odessa, who I had every reason to think was still hunting for us.

But we were here, in the NCR at last. Could you blame me for wanting to, just for a moment, feel like things were going our way?

...Yeah, I suppose it was a forlorn hope, but I had no idea what was coming.

None of us did.

Footnote: Level up!

Perk Added - Bipedal Battler: You’ve trained yourself to fight while standing on your hind legs, using your forelimbs to wield melee weapons. While this reduces your movement speed by 20% it increases your chance to evade attacks by the same amount, while also allowing you greater strength in dealing blows, granting a temporary +5 to melee damage while using this stance. Also you look weird. Ponies weren’t anatomically designed for this. What are you going to want next, hands?

Author's Note

And here we are in the NCR at last. Hard to believe its been so long since the story started, and I'd had the arrival here as a major story goal from nearly the beginning. Of course its not going to be a relaxing trip for our protagonists, as all sorts of trouble is waiting in the wings for them, but that's what makes it a story, right? As you might have noticed, the cameos also begin here. Kind of part and parcel with the characters being in the NCR now, we'll see some familiar faces from the original Fallout Equestria cropping up. Here's hoping I can do them justice.

As always my sincerest thanks to Doomande and Referee (aka the other sans) for helping out with pre-reading. And thanks to everyone who continues to read along as I write this foray into the world KKat created. I appreciate the time you guys take to check out this silly words I type. As usual I welcome any and all comments, questions, or critiques you folks might have for me. 'Till next time.

Chapter 30: The New Canterlot Republic

Chapter 30: The New Canterlot Republic

Disembarking from the Sweet Candy took about half an hour, and we Drifters spent most of it standing guard while watching the reception from the NCR roll out for us. There was a lot more tension in the air than I would’ve at first expected, but considering that news of the Golem’s attack upon the fort was probably spreading, and I could imagine a few ponies were probably wondering just why that attack just happened to correspond with the delegation from Skull City arriving. Hell, I could imagine more than a few of the NCR’s higher ups were wondering just what the Golem was. It had to be unsettling to have your nation attacked by some massive war machine that literally comes out of nowhere, crushes one of your larger border forts, and vanishes into the forest in your literal backyard.

That being the case I could understand why a number of the NCR troopers who were keeping watch on us as the delegation unloaded from the airship had itchy looks about them, as if they were expecting another attack at any moment. Most the troops were equipped with simple but effective looking battle rifles, each having a sort of uniformly clean and rust free look that made me think the weapons had been pretty recently built. The soldiers uniforms were primarily of a light gray color, with blue trim, consisting of a heavy looking flak vest and rounded helmet. Each had a patch with the NCR’s symbol on the shoulders, along with what I assumed were rank insignia. The soldiers looked competent enough, but I noticed that there was a clear age gap among their ranks, with a lot of soldiers being pretty young, perhaps even younger than me, with only a hoof-full of older looking troops.

As the ponies representing the different Skull City guilds and Princess Purity’s group were coming down the ramp from the ship a number of ponies arrived from the side of the airport, riding upon a set of skywagons pulled by a few pegasi and griffins, the first griffins I’d seen in the NCR. Spike had remained airborne above us, the dragon slowly circling, but at the appearance of those skywagons I saw him move to a descending arc that let him land heavily beside the Sweet Candy at about the same time the skywagons did. The impact of near a hundred tons of dragon landing less than fifty paces away nearly shook me, and everypony else for that matter, onto our flanks. From the wry, fang filled half grin that Spike sported he knew it, too, and took the sort of gratification in the fact that I think you needed to be a dragon to understand.

Arcaidia was watching Spike with awed appreciation for the rather majestic spectacle he made of himself, but her eyes also gleamed with curious and eager appreciation for all the new sights around us. I had to admit it was impressive to see any place as well maintained as this airfield after spending so long traipsing around the remains of old Equestrain civilization. Even the skywagons that were landing had a new, fresh painted look about them, all sparkle and polish. I didn’t know if this was standard in the NCR, or if these ponies were just trying to show off to us.

While Arcaidia was on my right, B.B and Binge were on my left, both looking alert, although Binge was worrying me with the extra tension she seemed to be carrying in her shoulders and tail. Usually her fluffy if poorly groomed tail bounced around like it had a mind of its own, but now it was stiff as a board, and her eyes had a flat, guarded edge about them. LIL-E hovered a bit behind me, keeping quiet, but bobbing in a way that made me think the eyebot was on edge as well. We were covering one side of the area along the Sweet Candy’s boarding ramps, with Hawkeye and Crossfire’s groups on the opposite end making a sort of corridor for the delegates to walk between. Applegate was at the head of that group, sword on full display and her ears perked up with keen attention. We weren’t expecting trouble, really, but the Drifters were here to be guards, so that’s what we were doing, presenting a competent and deadly presence, even if it was all simply for show, no different than the NCR soldiers watching us.

As the skywagons landed, hatches opened up on their aft sections. Each skywagon was a slim, long box shaped affair with a pair of pegasi in NCR uniform pulling them from metal spokes. A trio of wheels gave the wagons something to balance on when landed, and their metal hulls were painted in white and blue. From the open hatches a number of ponies emerged, and a pair of griffons. Most of them wore actual well tailored clothing, or at the very least clothes that didn’t look as if they’d been patched up or moth eaten. Most of these individuals didn’t leave a huge impact on me, but there were two who immediately stood out and arrested attention, simply by the way they carried themselves.

First was the griffon in the lead. She marched with the solid, panther grace of a hunter and had the bearing of someone who knew they were in charge and didn’t particularly care of anypony else agreed with this assessment. There was a zero bullshit tolerance gleam to her eyes that told me this griffin would generally treat obstacles like most armor piercing bullets treated drywall. She was the only one there not wearing a suit or blouse/skirt combo, and instead was clad in a set of well maintained, black combat armor that looked ancient, but so well cared for that it was practically a second skin the griffin wore. A pair of pistols hung from holsters strapped to either side of her chest, the curved leather handles hanging loose and ready to draw at a moment’s notice. My limited knowledge of firearms couldn’t even guess at their caliber, but the barrels looked... intimidatingly large, for pistols.

Walking beside this griffin and just a step behind was the other one who caught my attention. She was a unicorn mare with sooty, near charcoal black fur. She was wearing a slimming and very well cut gray blouse and suit skirt that flattered her figure. A very well groomed mane and tail hung long and mostly white, save for noticeable and striking stripes of yellow and orange that ran through the otherwise snow colored hair.

Both the mare and the female griffin looked to be in the middle aged years, the griffin closer to the later part of those years if not older, while the unicorn carried her years with a still fairly youthful air that could of probably let her pass for younger. They led the group of NCR delegates to meet the entourage from Skull City, Applegate, Princess Platinum, and Whiteheart leading that procession. They met between us and the NCR troopers, pausing a few paces away. There was a brief pause before the female griffin spoke, her voice solid and tough sounding as she looked.

“I am Gawdyna Grimfeathers, President of the New Canterlot Republic. On behalf of my people I welcome you to our nation in the spirit of goodwill and hope for lasting peace and prosperity between our territories.”

The words were a bit stiff, as if President Grimfeathers wasn’t used to speaking in a diplomatic manner. However when the unicorn mare beside her spoke it was with a singing chime of a voice that made it sound as if she’d been born to use her words to make anything she said sound reasonable and inviting.

“I too extend our warmest welcome to you who have traveled so far, and I hear through great peril, to meet us in the open desire to negotiate a strong and lasting partnership between our peoples. I am Velvet Remedy, Chairpony of Diplomatic Affairs and member of the Advisory Council. It is a pleasure to meet all of you.”

Whiteheart was quick to respond with a warm smile and bow of his head, “We thank you for your kind welcome and it is an equal pleasure to finally be able to meet you esteemed leaders of the New Canterlot Republic. I am Whiteheart, Guildmaster of the Drifter’s Guild. The mare beside me is Miss Applegate, my head of security for this endeavor.”

Applegate nodded, only briefly meeting eyes with President Grimfeathers, both of them having the steady but wary acknowledging look in their eyes that two hardened warriors shared off the battlefield.

Purity stepped forward, dipping her head in an elegant bow, a wide smile on her face that made her golden eyes all but sparkle, “I am Princess Purity of the Kingdom of Neighlesisus, representing the interests of the Protectorate. I have long heard stories, since practically fillyhood, of your noble deeds, President Grimfeathers, Chairpony Remedy. It is an honor to meet you in the flesh, and I truly hope our negotiations prove fruitful for the sake of creating a better world, recovered from the pains of the past.”

Introductions went on from there, taking a bit of time as each representative from our end and theirs took turns exchanging words, bows, hoofshakes, ect. The NCR had brought a number of ‘Chairponies’ like Velvet Remedy, most of them seeming to head up groups not unlike the Skull City Guilds. There was a Chairpony of Agriculture, a wrinkled yet hard looking yellow stallion who made me think of ancient tree roots from his reedy form, and a Chairpony of Domestic Affairs who looked almost as young as I was, a bubbly mare with a pink coat and bright blonde mane who smelled faintly of something sugary. Most of the Chairponies sounded fairly normal, except for one who stood out, an elderly pegasus mare with a lime green coat and tightly pulled back black mane peppered with white. Her name was Blue Moon and she was Chairpony of Pegasi Integration... whatever the heck that meant.

With introductions out of the way President Grimfeathers’ expression turned stormy, a hard lined frown forming on her beak, “While the plan is to show you around the Capital Building and do a brief tour of the facilities, I’m afraid I must first ask what you may know, if anything, concerning the attack on Fort Lightbridge. As of now our military is on full alert and seeking the attacking party, and any information you might have would be useful.”

Hearing that made me blink, feeling a bit like a fool for not really considering that point earlier. After all, my friends and I had been there when the Golem had awoken. We knew what it was, and even a decent grasp on its capabilities. That would probably be pretty useful information for the NCR right now. The only problem was that volunteering that information might lead to a lot of awkward questions concerning just where the Golem came from and how we knew what we knew. It might come out that we had a part in awakening the Golem in the first place, or that Arcaidia wasn’t exactly a normal pony from this neck of the woods. How would these ponies respond to knowing that? Could I risk jeopardizing our own goals in order to provide the NCR what might be vital information?

While I hesitated, I felt Arcaidia bump my hoof with her own. While I could see worry swimming in her silver eyes, there was also conviction there as she nodded at me encouragingly. I gulped, nodding.

“We may have come from the north,” Whiteheart was telling President Grimfeathers, “But our only encounter was with some unfortunately tenacious sky pirates, which is sadly why we are presently lacking Guildmistress Star Soul from our company. As to what attacked your fortress, I-”

To be honest I had no idea if Whiteheart was planning to volunteer information or pretend ignorance. I knew he was at the very least aware of what the Golem had done to Saddlespring and that I was involved with it, as Crossfire would have told him the whole story. Regardless of what he was intending to do, I’d made my choice after Arcaidia’s encouragement, and spoke up loudly.

“I know what it is. My friends and I were the ones who first encountered it, uh... Madame President?”

Grimfeathers eyes fixed on me, and I felt a cold sweat bead on my forehead and a sudden desire to hide behind something. There was a distinctly unnerving nature to the NCR President’s stare that I felt could probably strip the nerves from the most jaded Wastelander. Her voice was, in a word, intense. “I want details. The friends that were with you, they the same ones with you right now?”

“Y-yes ma’am,” I stammered.

“Good. I want to speak with you all privately. Remedy, you can handle the rest of the diplomatic crap?”

Velvet Remedy coughed politely, affecting a long suffering smile at the griffon. I got the impression these two had similar conversations like this often, “Why yes, Gawd, I’ll take care of the... diplomatic stuff from here. You will be gentle with this young stallion, please?”

Whiteheart cleared his throat, not quietly, casting half a glance my way that I couldn’t tell if he approved of what I’d done or not, as he said, “Longwalk is a Drifter under my supervision, and if he and his team are to be interrogated I would insist that at least one other member of my staff be present for the duration.”

“Not interrogated,” muttered Grimfeathers, “Questioned. If he’s offering information I value I’m not going to harm him for fucks sake. But something killed a lot of my soldiers this morning and I’m, put simply, pissed the fuck off about it. I’ll play diplomat with you all later when I don’t have something out there that likes killing my people and blowing up my forts. You, kid, grab your pals and follow me.”

She turned with a near whip crack of her tail and started marching off towards the airfield’s main building. At a gesture several NCR soldiers peeled off to follow her. I looked to Whiteheart nervously, and said, “Sorry to cut you off like that, just figured you’d want them to know what we do. Might create some goodwill, right?”

Whiteheart sighed, nodding, “Yes, you made the right call. I was going to offer anyway, so go, and see if you can say anything that might unruffle the President’s feathers. Crossfire, go with them.”

Crossfire gave a sour look, but nodded and trotted over. I exchanged quick looks with my friends. None of them had any objections, so with Crossfire tailing us we marched off after President Grimfeathers. Behind us Velvet Remedy started to recover the situation and start leading the Skull City delegation to the skywagons, presumably to go the Manehattan Capital Building to begin their initial tour of the area. I imagined we’d join them later, once the President was done with us.

I sincerely hoped we’d still be intact by the end of that.

Lucky us, we were. At least for the moment. My friends and I were seated around a large metal conference table in a brightly lit, faded gray meeting room somewhere tucked into the center of the airfield base. A pair of surly looking NCR soldiers stood guard at the door, but I somehow doubted President Grimfeathers even considered them necessary. I had a feeling if we’d had any reason to offer the old griffon any violence, she could have taken the lot of us together. Even with Crossfire there.

President Grimfeathers was seated at the head of the table, her talons steepled before her and her eyes making unreadable thoughts as we explained what we knew about the Golem, aka Roaring Metal, aka Diablo, aka Really Bad Fucking News. I’d tried to do most of the talking, but Arcaidia slipped in any chance she got to try to make the affair sound more like she was responsible for the Golem’s release from the Saddlespring Ruin and that I was just along for the ride. Crossfire was surprisingly cooperative as well, though she painted a dry picture of events and her own involvement with it, merely stating the facts and keeping any emotional context out. She made it all sound like a simple job that went severely off the rails, which I supposed was technically true, but most ponies botched jobs didn’t involve towns burning to ash.

The only real element that was left out of the story was any direct mention of Arcaidia hailing from an alien, space faring civilization, and any of the broader connections to our travels after Saddlespring. We kept it pretty much focused on the Golem and how dangerous it was.

A quiet and uncomfortable minute followed our story as the NCR President regarded us with those hard, calculating, and exceedingly unsettling eyes. When she spoke it was with a tone matching her look. “I’ve been around this dustball for awhile, and seen some remarkable shit in my time. My threshold for what I’ll believe to be possible or not has gone up considerably since my simple mercenary days. My ability to detect horseshit is finely honed as well. So I can tell that you’re not lying. Not giving me the whole truth of it, but not lying either.”

She leaned back, slowly, unlacing her talons from one another and started to tap one of the claws lightly upon the metal desk, making a slow but steady *tick* *tick* *tick* as she looked at me. “A less understanding individual might blame you for releasing a powerful and destructive machine from a bygone era upon the world. They might even hold you responsible for the deaths of fifty three good NCR soldiers. Mares and stallions with families who died defending Fort Lightbridge from a menace that wouldn’t have been walking around if not for your presence in that Ruin. They might also take you to task for any further damages this monster might inflict on the nation they’ve sworn to protect and have spent the better part of two decades trying to build up from the ashes of the Wasteland.”

Her eyes pierced me as hard as Gramzanber itself could have.

“What have you to say to that?”

Arcaidia opened her mouth to speak but I held up my hoof to halt her. She gave me a worried look, jaw clenched tight, but she nodded reluctantly and let me speak. I won’t say I wasn’t scared, or that I had an entirely steady voice, but I did meet President Grimfeather’s eyes as I spoke.

“The only thing I can say is that I’m willing to take responsibility for my mistake. No matter what ways one might try to look at that situation, come the end the call to try and open up the Golem’s coffin was mine. I could make all kinds of excuses to try to shift blame. I could say Crossfire forced us down there, or that the Labor Guild would have eventually sent somepony else down there to open it thinking there’d be something of value to loot. But none of that matters, because I was there, I told Arcaidia to try opening it, and that’s the simple truth of it.”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves, “Whatever you decide to do as punishment should then also be mine alone to bear. I offered this information because you needed to know about how dangerous that Golem is, so more lives aren’t lost dealing with it. I knew that’d likely mean taking responsibility for unleashing that thing in the first place, and I accept that. It’s more important that you know what you’re facing, rather than more ponies and griffons die tackling an unknown foe.”

I almost couldn’t stand Grimfeathers’ silence. She didn’t take her eyes off me, holding me transfixed as easily as if she’d had me already bound in chains and was being marched off to the gallows. I could all but feel her weighing me on her mental scales, and I had no idea what tally she was receiving from the process. Finally, after what felt like a cold eternity, but was likely less than ten seconds, she leaned forward.

“In your estimation, if I sent my troops in after this thing, once we find it, the death toll is going to be a high one?”

I gulped, mouth dry, and nodded, “Your people will no doubt fight bravely. They’ll die just as bravely. Roaring Metal is a monster. It survived a bombardment from an airship using railguns and just walked away. Maybe... maybe if you had every airship and soldier in your military surround it on an open field and hit it with everything you had, you could take it out. But going into that huge forest where you’d be stuck taking it at close range and limited numbers? It’d be a slaughter. I’m not even sure conventional weapons can hurt it.”

Arcaidia did speak up then, a stubborn, sharp note in her voice, “Magic can damage Golem. So can ARM. I have big magic, Longwalk have big ARM. Responsibility for past wrong need be taken, let us take it by destroying Golem.”

Grimfeathers glanced at Arcaidia, hard griffin eyes meeting cold unicorn filly’s. “I could just as easily have the lot of you tossed in prison, or have him executed, then afterward take that weapon of his to have somepony else deal with this. I have trusted, highly skilled soldiers who abilities I know and can rely on. You lot are an unknown factor.”

Arcaidia’s eyes turned to silver frost, and though her horn didn’t light up or anything, I swear the room became several degrees colder. “Then I give you knowing of one factor. If you bring harm to ponies I care for, then NCR will need new President, as old one will be enjoying new job as holiday lawn ornament.”

There was a shifting of leather and the click of readying firearms as the guards by the door started to move, but President Grimfeathers simply raised a talon, halting them. She met Arcaidia’s eyes for several heartstopping seconds... then closed her eyes and chortled, gasping out a series of short, choking laughs as if she wasn’t really used to doing so. This went on for about a minute, as I and Arcaidia exchanged glances, and the rest of my friends just looked equally bemused.

Eventually Grimfeathers got her laughing under control, shaking her head, “Ah, okay, after the absolute shit day I’ve had so far, I needed a decent laugh. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed about the loss of good people under my command, but I’m not a fucking idiot. I could bring you up on all kinds of charges, but that wouldn’t accomplish dick for those already dead and even if you all swung from a noose, I’d still have a giant, ancient death-dealing warmachine to deal with. So here’s the deal. You want to take responsibility? Good. You and your merry crew will help my troops take that Golem to the scrapheap. We need to find the damn thing first, and with the Everfree’s size that might take awhile, but you’re here as honor guard for those Skull City folk, so you’ll be here for a bit anyway. I know Spike is chomping his claws off wanting to go after that Golem, and he can probably sniff it out quick enough. A day or two, tops. When that goes down, you go in alongside my best Rangers, and take that metal motherfucker out. Do that and we’ll call the scales balanced.”

She looked at me expectantly, and I didn’t make her wait long before extended my hoof, nodding gravely, “Deal.”

Her talon was rough and sharp, like a thorny branch, and gripped my fetlock tightly as she shook it. For the first time I was able to read something in her eyes; satisfaction.

“Deal. And on that note, welcome to the New Canterlot Republic.”

By the time we caught up to the rest of the delegation they were already being shown the room where the majority of the negotiations would be taking place. It was in the very center of the NCR’s Capital Building, which in turn was almost directly in the center of Manehattan itself. Manehattan was mostly built upon an island, but one so large you would never imagine it was one while you were wandering the city streets. The skywagon we rode flew low over the buildings, most of them showing the old signs of damage from the Great Fires of the war, but heavily built upon by newer construction so that much of the city breathed with color and life. Not a single building was entirely intact, but there also wasn’t a single one that wasn’t sporting fresh sheet metal or wood panel walls, flashing neon signs, colorfully painted artwork, or actual functional roofs of either canvas or shining metal.

The streets teamed with the rainbow pattern colors of hundreds of ponies, and the city pulsed with life. I couldn’t wait to explore it, but business came first. The Capital Building was a tall, three story structure of solid stone, with only its upper roof showing any residual signs of the damage from the old war. In front of the marble columns of its front entrance stood a tall pole with the flapping flag of the NCR. A long stretch of actual green grass made a lawn in front of the building.

To either side of the building there was a raised set of of what looked at first like concrete streets, but I noticed there were actually metal rails set into them. Much of these tall bridges looked like they’d undergone recent repair, and I soon learned their function as I saw a set of boxy metal cars all hooked together moving along the rails. These cars moved past the Capital Building and proceeded further into the city, moving along their track’s winding path to apparently make their way towards one of the city’s largest remaining towers in the distance. This tower drew my eye, as unlike most the rest of Manehattan, this building didn’t look like it’d taken any real damage from the balefire bombs.

“Tenpony Tower,” LIL-E told me as I’d stared at the building, her synthesized voice oddly quiet, “One of the only buildings to survive the balefire bombs due to the magic that shielded it. Used to be one of the few points of light in the Wasteland, before the NCR came around. Still is. Wonder if she’s still broadcasting?”

“Her? Her who?” I asked, and LIL-E told me to check my Pip-Buck’s radio signals. I usually forgot the thing could even pick up random radio signals, given I wasn’t much for tuning into static, but upon checking I found there was a new channel available. Republic Freedom Radio. Curious, I turned it on, and a rich masculine voice came on.

“-and that was the weather, now with one hundred percent less gunfire and chance of radiation poisoning. And no, I never get tired of reminding myself of that, my fellow post-apocalypse survivors. Unfortunately kiddos I do got a nasty spot of news to go along with what’s been otherwise a spectacularly and gloriously peaceful day. I hate bringing this stuff to you folks, but if I don’t bring the truth, what’s the point of tuning in? At around seven o’clock this morning contact was temporarily lost with our northern border outpost, Fort Lightbridge. Now we don’t yet have an official statement from the government on what the cause of this disruption in communication was or what the status of the fort is, but all roads heading north have been closed off and there’s been a noted increase in military activity, including two of our Raptors heading towards the Everfree. Now I’m not here to cause alarm, I’m just telling you what I know, which isn’t much, but it's better than nothing. Soon as I do get word from up top what the situation is, rest assured I’ll be telling you. Until then, folks, keep calm, think of your loved ones, hold tight, and I’ll bring the truth to you soon as I can. This is DJ Pon-3, and to help ease up the tension, here’s Velvet Remedy’s sweet, sweet voice.”

With a flicker of static the newscaster’s voice was replaced by the smooth, gentle notes of a mare singing her soul out, and it took me only a few seconds to recognize it as belonging to the NCR Chairpony of Diplomatic Affairs. I’d thought her voice had sounded musical before, but that had just been her talking normally. Her actual singing voice was the audio equivalent to dunking my head into fresh water after not having a drink in days. Cool, soothing, and shockingly intense all at once. I barely even heard the lyrics. That mare’s voice alone could have made me believe in anything she told me.

Arcaidia had seemed equally impressed, turning her own Pip-Buck to the same channel, and I think she actually started recording the song. Binge, if anything, seemed a bit disturbed by the singing. No, strike that, a lot disturbed by it. She was holding herself with her fore hooves, and seemed to want to curl in on herself, shaking slightly.

“Binge? Binge what’s wrong?” I scooted closer to her, but she just scooted away and shook her head.

“Bad, old thoughts, bucky. The voice from the past digs right to the nasty spot. Please, turn it off.”

“The song?”

Binge closed her eyes, nodding, voice turning small, almost foal-like, “Please...”

I glanced at my Pip-Buck, and didn’t hesitate more than a second before turning it off. I looked to Arcaidia, who was looking at us strangely, but she relented and with a reluctant looked shut the song off on her Pip-Buck too. I tried to coax what that was about from Binge, but she just clamped her mouth shut and didn’t say anything else the rest of the trip. I exchanged worried looks with the rest of the group, B.B just giving me a helpless shrug and Arcaidia shaking her head in baffled confusion that echoed my own.

What was going on with Binge?

I hadn’t time to think on it, as we’d been shuffled out of the skywagon after it landed and led into the Capital Building, where we’d caught up with everypony else. President Grimfeathers led the way, clearing us past all the security checkpoints like a breeze. In short ordered we entered a large chamber where the crowd of delegates were being shown around, and as soon as we entered Knobs spotted us and waved merrily, splitting off from the crowd to wheel over to us.

“Hey guys! Isn’t this place amazing!? It's so clean and way more official looking than anything we’ve got back home! I think they’ve got actual working robots that keep everything dust free.”

I had to admit she was right about how impressive the seat of the NCR government looked. The interior of the Capital Building was as pristine and clean as near any place I’d been to in my journeys so far, with varnished walls of dark paneled wood, floors of polished marble tiles and clean, consistent electrical lighting that bathed everything in warm, yellow tones. The room we’d entered in particular was grand in scope. Stadium seating filled much of it in a downward slope towards a huge set of curving tables set in a circle in front of a raised stage with thick blue curtains covering it, like a theater. A second floor was formed from an encircling of wooden balconies with more seats that looked down upon the rest of the room. Security here was tight, with guards at every entrance and more than a few armed robots that, while shaped like ponies, rolled around on wheels instead of walking on hooves.

I gave the room an appreciative look, then noticed Knobs didn’t have Blasting Cap with her.

“Where’s the murder scamp?” I asked with a bit of a wry smile.

Knobs blinked, then chuckled, “Anypony not directly part of the negotiations had to be taken to the hotel in that Tenpony Tower place, which is where we’ll be staying while we’re here. I made Blasting Cap promise to be a good little filly, otherwise I wouldn’t cook her dinner.”

“The horror,” I said.

Arcaidia nodded sagely, “Food is best lever for exertion of control. Knobs is smart mare to extort filly’s good behavior with power of cooking.”

“Longwalk, so glad you and your team could rejoin us,” said Applegate as she approached, giving us all pointed looks, “I take it your discussion with the President went smoothly?”

A fidgeted on my hooves, “Well, about that-”

President Grimfeathers had stepped back to let us chat, but now stepped forward and said, “Your Drifter comrades have generously agreed to help us deal with a security issue concerning the thing responsible for attacking my border fort. I’ll be talking with your boss soon enough to work out details, but I’d say keep Longwalk and his team on standby for that operation in the next couple of days and keep their security duty here light.”

Applegate’s eyes narrowed slightly, her tail swishing, “I see. I’ll have to inform Guildmaster Whiteheart as soon as possible, and I’m sure he’ll happily discuss the matter with you, Madame President.”

“Seriously, just Gawd, until you’re stuck talking to me in an official sense. Titles make me gassy,” the griffiness said with a dry grumble, “Speaking of official crap, I’d better get this damn tour finished so we can actually get down to business.”

As she swept by, heading towards the delegation, Knobs hung back and said, head cocked slightly, “She’s kind of odd, isn’t she?”

Crossfire just grinned thinly, “I like her.”

Knobs flicked her tail at Crossfire with a laugh, “Of course you do. Oh, hey, guess what? There’s going to be a special, formal dinner party tonight, hosted in an actual ballroom they’ve got set up here in the Capital Building!”

Crossfire blinked, then narrowed her eyes suspiciously, “Yeah... so?”

Knobs’ smile turned devilish as she bumped Crossfire’s flank with her own, “Soooo, it’s the perfect chance to dress up and have some fun! C’mon Crossfire, we’re in one of the biggest cities in the world, and there’s going to be a party with fancy food, music, and dancing. And I bet I could find a decent dress for you to-”

“Nope.”

“Awww, Crossfire, you’d look good in the right dress! Please?” Knobs turned on the wide, puppy eyes, sticking out her lower lip in a pout. Even as a ghoul, it was hard look to resist. Even I kind of wanted to just nudge Crossfire encouragingly. Crossfire, stubborn as ever, still kept a flat look on her face.

“No. Dress.”

Knobs let out a deep sigh, hanging her head. Crossfire, cheeks taking on a faint brush of the lightest red hue, conceded, “Maybe if you can find one that isn’t too... glitzy. Something sensible, that I could still fight in.”

Knobs’ grin returned and the whole room seemed a brighter place for it, “I’m sure I’ll find something perfect for you! How about you guys?” she asked, turning to us, “We could all go shopping for outfits together.”

I coughed politely, “I’ve had enough dress wearing for one lifetime.”

B.B elbowed me, “Ya could always try wearin’ a tux, Long.”

I just looked at her sidelong, “What’s a tux?”

“A penguin suit,” Binge said. She still had this subdued look about her, but some of her spark seemed to enter her deep blue eyes once more, her tail giving a small wag, “I’d dress you in red, personally.”

“Maybe we can discuss party plans later,” said LIL-E, “Let’s catch up with the delegation before they start thinking that we’re being anti-social over here.”

What in the name of the Ancestor Spirits is a freakin’ penguin? I wondered as I joined the delegation and started following along with the tour of the Capital Building.

I can’t say it wasn’t informative. the Capital Building was huge, and largely consisted of administrative areas from which the rather mind bogglingly monolithic task of running an entire nation was mounted from. The whole place was divided into wings that handled different aspects of the nation’s affairs, from the military to the domestic. The NCR had over thirty different settlements, each larger than Saddlespring had been, scattered across a fairly vast territory that stretched from one end of Equestria’s heartland to the other. Communication between these settlements and the capital were largely handled by an extensive service of dedicated couriers who ferried messages. This was largely due to the fact that actual radio communication was limited to the area between Manehattan, and the nearby industrial center, Fillydelphia. Longer range communication was possible, but spotty due to the still limited availability of radio equipment. That meant that there was a lot of the space in the Capital Building given over to a filing system that kept paper records of all physical communications.

Aside from file rooms and administrative rooms there was the ballroom where the dinner party would be held later that evening, on the top floor of the building. The conference room we’d first entered was in the very center of the building, directly below the ball room. Then there was the President’s personal offices, situated on the top floor as well, as well as her personal quarters.

Finally there was the basement sub-levels, but we weren’t taken down there, merely shown the thick steel doors that were the entrance to them. Apparently that whole area was restricted, and more heavily guarded than even the President’s office. I didn’t even want to guess at what they might have down there.

The tour served well to get us all familiar with the building’s layout, and I could hear Applegate whispering discussions with Whiteheart on the best ways to deploy us Drifters for security during the negotiations. The main issue was that there weren’t many ways in and out of the building; just the main doors, and a set of emergency exits on either side of the building. Sure, it limited the ways someone might break in, but it also meant evacuation would be a bitch. I got the feeling the NCR probably had some tricks up its sleeve for that, we just weren’t being told yet.

Once the tour was done President Grimfeathers informed us that we had about four hours to get settled into our rooms at Tenpony Tower, then wander the city to do as we liked, until the first round of negotiations would kick off at three o’clock in the afternoon. I was still a little iffy on how the modern concept of telling time worked, but Arcaidia was nice enough to point out that my Pip-Buck tracked that. Left to our down devices, the vast majority of the delegates decided to head to Tenpony Tower. The odd set of metal boxes I’d seen traveling along the bridge rails around the city were called a ‘tram’ and apparently we could ride it right to Tenpony.

Standing in the Capital Building’s main lobby while the larger chunk of the delegates headed out to await the tram to board, I turned to my friends.

“So what do we want to do? Head to this Tenpony place to rest, or see what there is to the see around town?”

“Town!” was Arcaidia’s swift and eager reply, her eyes shining, “I want to see what city with more friendly ponies is like.” She then seemed to think of something, her eyes darting towards her saddlebag, “Hmm, Captain Bartholomew did give memory orbs for viewing. Have not had time yet.”

“Ya could always catch up wit us later if you wanna take some time ta check out them orbs,” said B.B, pointing at Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck, “Ya can track Long wherever we end up roamin’.”

Arcaidia hesitated for a moment, thought creasing her brow, until she sighed and nodded slowly, “Should watch orbs. Don’t know why griffin gave them to me, but better I learn sooner than later. I catch up with you all later.”

“I might join Frostyblue in the hotel,” said Binge, eyes glancing nervously at the doors leading out towards the city, “They have booze there. I could use a bottle or twelve.”

“Binge, seriously, are you okay?” I asked, stepping towards her, “You’ve been acting a bit off.”

“Off? Hehehe, I’m always off, right? Yup, crazy Binge, just being weird,” she said with a throaty, yet somehow forced, laugh. I stared at her, my worry only magnifying. She must have noticed it, because her nervous smile faltered and her ears curled to the back of her skull, “If it’ll make you feel better, Longykins, I’ll bounce along with you through the city. I just don’t really like this place.”

Before I could ask why, a pony approached us. He was an older stallion, with a deep blue coat and a head of frizzy black mane peppered with gray, from which a stubby unicorn horn protruded. He wore a plain gray suit over his slim frame, and on his flank was a cutie mark that looked like a brain that was half organic, and half like a chrome chip of circuitry. He had a wide eyed, friendly manner about him, but also jittery as he spoke in a halting voice.

“Excuse me! Excuse me. Yes, um, hello. My apologies for interrupting you, but we really must speak.”

We all turned to face him, and I heard LIL-E make a strange choking sound and say, “Professor Breakthrough?”

The stallion smiled, showing teeth with a slight overbite, “Ah-ha! You remember me! Fantastic! Your memory banks are fully functional even after so many years of unsupervised field action! Marvelous! I can’t wait to get you back to the lab to do a proper shakedown and analysis, Number Eight!”

“Number Eight?” I asked, glancing back at LIL-E, while Arcaidia scratched at her head and B.B frowned. I tensed, realizing that this stallion, Professor Breakthrough, must have been one of the ponies in the NCR responsible for LIL-E’s construction. I’d been keeping my mouth shut about her true nature, but now it looked like her cover was blown. I knew she’d been afraid of this happening, but I’d figured if anypony was going to come for her it would’ve been when we’d first landed. I looked at Breakthrough, taking stock of him. He hardly seemed aggressive, and certainly not the least bit angry. He didn’t have any guards with him to haul LIL-E away. Perhaps we could talk this out.

“What’s this guy goin’ on ‘bout LIL-E?” asked B.B curiously.

Breakthrough smiled brightly, “Oh, did she never explain what she was? How odd. She’s programmed to introduce herself fully upon any first contact with new individuals, but I imagine the accident may have damaged that core programming. I was ecstatic beyond belief when we detected her signal returning to the NCR! I thought you were returning her to us...um, you are returning her, yes?”

“Hold on a moment,” I said, keeping my tone level, “We don’t know anything about any Number Eight or whatever you’re talking about. LIL-E has been a companion and friend to us for awhile now, and is part of my Drifter team. Now, could you please, slowly, explain. If it's okay with LIL-E, that is?”

LIL-E lowered in the air until she was eye level with Breakthrough, slowly floating towards him. Her voice had a resigned note to it, “Professor, my... companions don’t know what I am. I’ve been pretending to be a pony remotely controlling a modified eyebot.”

Breakthrough blinked, “Why, whatever for?”

“It doesn’t matter,” LIL-E said, her mechanical voice sounding tired, “Because you’re not going to allow me to continue operating independently, are you?”

“Well, you weren’t meant for entirely independent function, Number Eight. At most the Littlepip Interception and Longrange Enforcement robot was designed for perhaps six months of field operation without maintenance. I’m very curious how you managed to go years without a repair bay.”

“I learned to repair myself, Professor,” LIL-E said, “And I modified myself as needed as time went on.”

“Amazing!” Breakthrough exclaimed, “Those skills aren’t part of your programming, so I can only assume you drew upon them from your memory orb control core? How did you access... well, nevermind, I’m sure I’ll find all the answers once you’re safely back in the lab.”

“Professor, I... I don’t want to go to the lab,” LIL-E said.

“Hm? But why not?” asked a clearly bewildered Breakthrough.

“I’ve operated independently for a long time, Professor, and have been able to fulfill my function better doing so than I would locked away in a lab,” LIL-E said, “And because I don’t want to.”

I stepped between the two, holding up a hoof to get the Professor’s attention, “A further point, she’s with us, and I wouldn’t look favorably upon a friend of mind being taken anywhere against her will.”

“Against her will? But...” Breakthrough shook his head in clear bafflement, “She’s a robot. Robots, no matter how sophisticated the A.I guiding them, do not have ‘wills’ my boy. It’s just corrupt programming, probably from too much sustained damage out there in the Wasteland. Number Eight is merely behaving on damaged code. Once I’ve got her back in the lab I can correct any errors.”

“I don’t think you’re listening. She’s not going with you to any lab,” I said, my voice hardening. I was keenly aware, however, that there were a number of NCR guards hanging around the lobby, and they were taking note of the heated turn of the conversation. I frowned, reminding myself that we needed to talk our way through this, not start a fight in the seat of a nation’s government. I kept my tone firm, but put a more understanding note into it, “If you want to examine LIL-E, then if she gives you permission you may, but try to understand that to us, she’s a friend who’s saved our lives. We don’t want her taken apart or ‘fixed’. Anything you do, is only if it’s something she approves of. And you do it at Tenpony Tower, where my friend here,” I gestured at Arcaidia, who smiled coldly at the Professor, “Can make sure you behave.”

He stared at me, saying bluntly, “Number Eight is still technically property of the NCR. I could get an order for you to turn her over to us, as stolen property.”

“Actually, I’ve studied up on some NCR laws in preparation for the trip here,” said the smooth and dulcet tones of Wellspring Whistles as the Radio Guild mare trotted up to us, wearing a pointed smile. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation. Now, as I was saying, I’ve gained a familiarity with NCR law, and I believe that there is a expiration clause concerning salvage rights to NCR property if it is lost in the field beyond NCR borders. I believe the stipulation that any equipment lost outside NCR territorial borders for more than one year's time is to be considered legal salvage for any who find it. This is to prevent claims of stolen property on salvaged materials merchants from beyond the borders might bring in, yes? Well, LIL-E here, or Number Eight if you want to call her, was lost more than year ago, correct?”

Professor Breakthrough sucked in a breath, lips compressed tightly before he admitted, “Yes. Closer to...um... eight years now.”

“Then I think by the letter of your laws LIL-E is legally salvaged by whomever claims her as such. Longwalk, this robot is your legal salvage?”

I hesitated a second, glancing at LIL-E, but she didn’t really give me much of a response to go on, still silently facing the Professor. I quickly stammered, “Y-yeah, I found her,” or rather she found me, “And she’s been my, er, salvage since then.” A friend, actually, but I guess the legalities we were dealing with required the word ‘salvage’ instead valuing the far more personal word ‘friend’. Either way, I’d take what loopholes I could get.

Wellspring turned to the Professor with a satisfied and thin smile, “Well then, if I’m wrong feel free to correct me, but I believe that means LIL-E belongs to Longwalk, by law.”

“She is a valuable and nearly unique prototype weapon!” Breakthrough said, flustered and red faced, “Only one of ten we ever built! You can’t expect me to just ignore her presence here as if she were some common eyebot! Number Eight belongs here.”

“Look, I told you if you got her permission you could examine her or whatever, but you’re not taking her,” I said.

Breakthrough made a sound like steam slowly escaping an pressurized pipe, but composed himself and said, “Without my equipment in the lab it would be pointless to examine her, as I wouldn’t be able to do a proper diagnostic of her systems. I know the laws this mare is quoting and I’m certain they don’t pertain to top billed government R&D projects.”

He looked at me with a frustrated shiver in his eyes, but a certain amount of sympathy as well, “I know you must think you’re doing the right thing by defending what you see as a friend. I can even appreciate the sentiment and the fact that you’ve apparently established some connection of trust with Number Eight. However the LIL-E series was never designed to behave in such a manner, and if she is operating with that level of independence, it’s due to errors in her programming that could prove dangerous if left unexamined. I cannot in good conscience allow a well armed and deadly prototype combat robot remain in the hooves of freelance mercenaries, not without doing all in my power to get her back where she belongs. I cannot force the issue now, but I will take this up with higher authorities and if need be obtain the warrant I need to bring her home.”

His eyes turned to LIl-E one last time, his tail twitching, “Please, Number Eight, I implore you to avoid such a confrontation and come with me willingly.”

LIL-E answered only with silence, and after a moment Breakthrough hung his head, sighing, and turned away with equal silence to trot away.

“He’s gonna be causin’ us trouble soon,” B.B said, frowning, then glanced at LIL-E, “Is all he just said true?”

LIl-E’s mechanical voice quavered slightly as she said, “Yes. I’m... sorry, to deceive you for so long B.B.”

“I just don’t git why. Ya think we would’ve thought less o’ ya if we knew yer were a’ bot instead o’ a pony?”

“Maybe you would have, maybe you wouldn't, but I spent so long convincing myself that I was a pony that by the time I accepted the truth, it’d become habit to let others think I was a flesh and blood pony like them,” LIL-E said, hovering around to face all of us, “Can you blame me for wanting to keep things simple?”

Arcaidia, peering at LIL-E with fresh curiosity, said, “My brain is lost. If you artificial mind, why this matter? Still mind, yes?”

“It’s complicated, Arcaidia. My series was built with something special inside us, meant to give us an unique edge over other robots,” LIL-E said, hovering down slightly and facing me, “You’ve seen it, Longwalk. The memory orb.”

I recalled that day I’d come upon LIL-E repairing herself after the struggle in Stable 104, and the memory orb fused into LIL-E’s circuitry. I nodded to her, “Yeah, I didn’t want to pry at the time, but I thought it weird you had one inside you. Whose memory is in that orb?”

LIL-E’s voice dropped a few ticks of volume, her version of a whisper, “The orb is a copy. It took specific memories out of another memory orb, distilling them, rearranging them, emphasizing certain ones... it was meant to make us LIL-Es the best defenders of the downtrodden and weak that we could be, with all of her skills, and more importantly, all of her determination and drive to protect others. To sacrifice to protect others. That, and her wrath to destroy the wicked.”

Arcaidia and I exchanged confused glances, but B.B blinked in shock, putting a hoof over her mouth, “Dear Goddesses, you’re talking about her aren’t you? The Lightbringer? They took her memories and put them inside you!?”

“Me, and all the other LIL-E series robots. Not a complete memory, just the recordings from the memory orb she used to create a record of her actions during the war against Red Eye and the Enclave,” LIL-E said, “We only had access to her skills and specific, key memories meant to emphasis our programming to defend lives or destroy certain targets like Raiders. The idea was to create a robot that had the capacity to operate over long periods of time to secure trade routes or wild territories against all the common Wasteland threats, with all the zeal and skill she had.”

“Soooo, uh... I’m feeling a bit clueless here,” I said, shuffling on my hooves, “Who’s this Lightbringer again?”

B.B smacked a hoof to her face, “I keep fergettin’ how outta the loop ya are, most the time. Coulda swore we brought this up before.”

I shrugged, “You might have, but with everything that’s been going on I probably forgot. I just don’t know how all this matters. LIL-E is LIL-E. I don’t see how whose memory she’s got fused into her really makes a difference, and also I don’t care that she’s a robot. LIL-E, you’re part of the tribe, far as I’m concerned.”

There was a sound akin to a sigh from the eyebot, “I really wish I had hooves sometimes. I can’t really hug you, but I’m thinking about it really, really hard. Still, I’ve been needing to get this out, Longwalk. All of it.”

B.B winced, her ears drooping, “I can’t say I don’t understand that sentiment. The need to get a secret out, most of all to the ponies you trust. Still, to have the memories of that pony bouncing around inside you. That’s got to be... heavy.”

“It wasn’t so bad at first,” said LIL-E, “In the beginning I was exactly what Professor Breakthrough still believes I am. A robot, driven by programming. I still had emotions, and in some twisted way I, like every other LIL-E, thought I was the pony whose memories they shoved into us. But it was like being in a dream, where the things that didn’t make sense, like being a floating metal ball, just didn’t register as out of the ordinary. Where our directive to obey commands from our handlers didn’t break our mental illusion that we were... a pony whose primary drive in life had been to defend good ponies from the horrors of the Wasteland.”

“What changed?” B.B asked.

“An accident, during our fifth test run in the field,” LIL-E said, or rather began to say, but halted herself as she noticed that Wellspring was leaning in rather closely. The Radio Guild mare smiled sweetly.

“Don’t mind me. I’m not even taking notes yet.”

“I... would prefer you didn’t put this into any news stories, please,” said LIL-E flatly.

“Perish the thought. Well, for the immediate future at any rate. I can’t imagine the NCR would like to have any bit of dirty laundry aired during a delicate diplomatic visit, so I have no reason to want to shout out over the airwaves that they lost one of their prototype weapons to any kind of accident. Besides, you might want to put the rest of your story on hold, considering we’re still in such a public space.”

She had a point. While the main lobby of the Capital Building was large and mostly devoid of ponies save for a few guards by various doors, and we were keeping our voices down, we’d also drawn the attention of the few ponies trotting by on government business, and the guards were also staring at us rather intently. I was as eager as anypony to know the full story behind LIl-E’s current condition, but here and now probably wasn’t the time and place for it.

“Yeah,” I said, “Might be we should get moving.”

“Okay, point taken,” said LIL-E, “I’ll finish the story tonight when we’re safe in our hotel room.”

“Assumin’ that Professor fella don’t git a’ warrant to nab ya ‘fore the day’s done,” said B.B, “Just what’re we gonna do ‘bout that anyhow?”

It was a legitimate question, and I didn’t have an immediate answer for it. Going against the NCR authorities was not something I wanted to do if I could at all help it. Yet there was no way I intended to let anypony take any of my friends anywhere against their will. I couldn’t think of any way to stop Breakthrough from going to get his warrant from some higher authorities that could overturn that salvage law that Wellspring had brought up, so the only idea I could think of was to hide LIL-E when the time came, or cover for her so she could make a getaway on her own.

“Don’t suppose we can just skin the science pony and dump his body in the sewers?” suggested Binge, to everypony giving her staring looks, to which she smiled and shrugged, “It was just a suggestion.”

I might’ve been more disturbed by her ‘suggestion’ if it didn’t make me feel relieved and actually a bit warm inside to see her actually smiling. I could tell it was strained, however, like she was forcing on a mask that wasn’t quite fitting right.

Nopony else had any ideas on what to do if and when Breakthrough came for LIL-E, so we ended up quietly agreeing that if worse came to worst that LIL-E would try to stow away back on board the Sweet Candy and hide in its cargo bay. It wasn’t exactly a foolproof plan, but it was the best we had.

After that we headed out into Manehattan, Arcaidia taking the tram alongside Wellspring to go to Tenpony Tower, while I, B.B, Binge, and LIL-E took to the streets to see what there was to see of the NCR’s capital city.

Putting aside my growing worries, both for Binge and now for LIL-E, I was able to quickly let myself become lost in the awe and energy of the sights of Manehattan. I’d seen Skull City, so this wasn’t my first time encountering a place with so many ponies packed together, but comparing Skull City to Manehattan was like trying to compare fire to water.

However if I had to make a pick as to which city I preferred, well, Manehattan hadn’t tried to kill me yet. Emphasis on the ‘yet’. In Skull City there was a clear divide between those with wealth, and those without. The Outskirts with its boiling sea of cramped together folk trying to survive, divided into competing gangs, and the Inner City comprised of the powerful Guilds and their members living well but under strict rules. Skull City wore its Wasteland heritage openly, displaying the bones of the dead as decoration, and always poised for conflict, like a tense animal ready to strike the unwary.

Manehattan was like somepony had taken the Outskirts and washed it of most of the blood and mud, and replaced the skull motif with the colorful repair work of a thousand different builders all trying to wipe away the scars of the Wasteland and create a place that was vibrant as it was busy. Yeah, busy was a good word for the streets of Manehattan, as if everypony who lived in the once-ruined city was single mindedly determined to remove the taint of the old war by sheer force of willpower and optimism.

It did wonders to energize me as I walked along the lively streets alongside B.B, Binge, and LIL-E. I was still worried for LIL-E and how she was handling our recent encounter with Professor Breakthrough, but the eyebot deflected any of my questions and instead took on the role of tour guide as she showed us around the city. Apparently she’d been programmed with a fair amount of detail about the present city’s layout, with all the newly constructed homes and businesses that turned what was once little more than charred city ruins into a bustling capital of one of the world’s newest, growing nation.

Beyond the government district center there was a bustling market area situated at a major crossroad of main streets, what LIL-E told us was once called ‘Time Square’. Dozens of open tent stalls filled the sidewalks and many of the buildings, even the ones still missing sections of wall, had been appropriated to house storefronts where ponies of all shades hawked their wares to an eager crowd of browsing civilians. What caught my eye was that most of the ponies I saw walking about weren’t wearing armor or carrying weapons, and instead tended to either trot around without clothing or with a few simple shirts or hats. There were still a few more rugged looking folk about, and there didn’t seem to be any laws against wearing a firearm, as I did see a few guns strapped to flanks or chests, but these were the exceptions, not the rule.

In fact I was pretty sure myself and my companions were the most heavily armed people out and about, and we were definitely getting looks, not all of them friendly. First of all my ARM was drawing more than a few gawking eyes. Even among the heavily armed ponies of the Wasteland the oversized, silver spear was not a normal sight, and I heard a few whispers as I trotted past. Binge also got a fair number of unpleasant looks. It was as if the civilians of the NCR could smell the Raider in their midst, or at least sense the aura of unstable violence that tended to cling to Binge even when she was being fairly ‘normal’, by her standards.

I found myself trotting a bit closer to her, actually, feeling an urge to show some solidarity. She was mostly ignoring the stares and stink eyes being shot her way, but Binge’s normally bouncy steps seemed flat and less lively than I was used to seeing. It was hard for me to believe, but I kind of wanted the crazy, erratic Binge back. She might have unnerved me, but she was usually also vibrant with a kind of lust for life I was now sorely missing from her sallow features as we walked the Manehattan streets.

B.B seemed to sense the group’s unease, and she flew in front of us, gesturing a hoof towards a nearby building from which the sweet scents of cooking food wafted. “Hey, whaddy’all say ta grabbin’ some grub? Ain’t a’ good idea to go trottin’ all over town on empty stomachs, right?”

“Food sounds good to me,” I said, turning to Binge, “Hungry?”

She responded with an absent nod, licking her lips, “I could nom. I could also not nom. Everything is too shiny around here. Its like its all wrapped in plastic.” Her nose wrinkled, sniffing, “If you sniff real hard you can still smell the Wasteland underneath it all. They put in nice new rugs, but that doesn’t get rid of the corpses beneath the floorboards.”

I blinked at her, “I’ll take that as a yes?”

She smiled at me, a flash of sad, yellow teeth, “Yes, bucky, let’s eat.”

The restaurant was built into a wide, three story building that lacked a roof, and most of its top two floors, but that hadn’t stopped the ponies who owned it from turning it into a warm and welcoming spot to sit and grab a bite. Colorful cloth strung up between metal poles covered the empty gaps in the ceiling, and makeshift electric lights hung between the folds of this cloth roof rained down multi-colored light onto a well swept tile floor below. A score of tables, salvaged from a dozen different places judging by their varied shapes and sizes, filled the floor space and about half of them were occupied by happily eating and chatting ponies.

A few conversations went quiet as we entered, and I felt an awkward need to smile at the room and wave. B.B, bless her, cleared her throat and did the talking for me, giving the room a sweeping look and said, “What, ya’ll never seen hungry travelers before? C’mon folks, we’re just here to eat and shake off some dust from beyond yer borders. Any o’ ya are feelin’ chatty might be we’ll even share some tales o’ far off places ya ain’t even heard of!”

Her tone was friendly but firm, and it seemed to put a number of the ponies present at ease, but at least one or two still looked at us askance as a mare with a bright blue mane even more sharply neon in shade than my own trotted up to us. She had equally harsh, neon pink fur covering her plump body, and glittering gray eyes. A cutie mark of a steaming bowl of soup graced her flanks as she gave us a short bow of her head and said, “Ah, um, welcome to the Scarf Stop. I’m Ladle. Please, take any empty seats you like and I’ll be with you shortly. Menu’s are at each table.”

“Thank you,” I said, and let my companions to one of the available tables, finding that I unconsciously had chosen one towards a back corner of the room where we could keep our backs to the wall and watch the door. Wow, Longwalk, you getting paranoid much? Well, considering the last time I went out to explore a town and stopped at an eating establishment I ended up being chased by bounty hunters... yes.

Once we’d all settled into our seats, with the exception of LIL-E who just sort of floated along the edge of the table, B.B let out a sigh and looking around to see that most of the restaurant patrons were now trying to ignore us. “Ain’t the most friendly reception we’ve gotten lately, is it?”

I kept my voice down as I responded to her, “I’m guessing they don’t get a lot of travelers around here.”

“Most o’ these folk remember a’ time before the NCR,” B.B said, equally quiet, “They remember wakin’ up each mornin’ not knowin’ who or what might kill ‘em that day fer their food and water,” a glance at Binge, “Or just fer kicks. Ain’t suprisin’ that most o’ ‘em don’t got a’ lot o’ joy to share at seein’ folk like us that still got the stink from the Wasteland on us.”

“Makes them scared,” Binge said, staring at her forehooves, “They want to believe the Wasteland is dead and gone. They don’t like reminders that outside the fence they’ve penned themselves in it's still there... waiting.”

I found myself glancing at her, asking uneasily, “Waiting for what?”

She looked back at me, and her eyes stared right through me. “To come back.”

Just a moment after that perplexing response Ladle trotted to our table. We hadn’t taken a look at the menus yet, but she only wanted to know if we wanted anything to drink. I just went for water, while B.B asked for some Sparkle Cola. Binge was unresponsive for a few seconds, but then asked of Ladle had any alcohol. The Scarf Stop didn’t have any hard liquor, but they had a solid stock of beer, and Binge ordered a bottle.

We settled into a silent few minutes of checking over the menu’s, a concept that was a little new to me. The list of food items was enticing, however, and the prices all listed in standard bottle caps, a currency the NCR still used, seemingly for convenience as opposed to the difficulty of trying to generate a new currency of their own. We were still pretty flush with caps from the bounty paid off on Redwire, and the selling of weapons from that battle, so I didn’t much worry about what we're spending. I ordered the largest, juiciest sounding meat-based product on the menu, a moderate steak sandwich. My stomach started to growl and gurgle at the very thought.

“Yer droolin’, hun,” B.B warned me with a wry smile, and I quickly wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my armor.

“Sorry, just, steak sandwich. Just the name alone makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside,” I said, envisioning the delicious meat experience that awaited me. My friends also ordered some food, and as we waited I took another look around the room and felt a nervous jolt through my spine as I felt something was suddenly, undeniably off. It took me a moment to realize that the reason for that was because all the ponies in the restaurant were suddenly behaving strangely. They still talked and “ate”, but they kept repeating conversations, and nopony actually chewed or drank anything, merely mimed the motions.

“Guys...” I began to say, and B.B was already turning in her seat, and Binge drawing out a knife into her hoof with the casual flick of her tail bouncing the weapon to her waiting grip. LIL-E had also turned, the pistol turret on her undermount tracking left and right.

“What’s wrong with everypony? “ askd LIL-E, “It’s like their brains just got hornfucked.”

Binge’s nose twitched, “There’s blood in the air.”

B.B reacted with a stiffened back and her eyes turning wide like violet moons, “I know this.” Her voice had lost its accent, speaking now in clear crystal chimes, “I’ve felt this. They’re hypnotized. There’s a spell dropped outside too, warding off anypony from even glancing this way, or hearing anything.”

“How do you know that?” I asked her, standing from my seat and reaching for Gramzanber.

Longwalk, I’m sensing a magical field around this building. I believe your pegasus ally is correct in her assessment, the ARM stated, and I sensed its ready energy, prepared to sync with me in battle.

B.B in the meantime went still like a alabaster pillar, face set in a grim and frightened mask, “I’ve seen this before.” She took a breath and spoke loudly, not to me, but to the room, “Come out Scythe! If you’re here to take me, I’m not going quietly!”

In response to her words the air rippled at the entrance to the restaurant, like a stone dropped into clear and still water. Then as if moving a curtain a rich brown hoof moved aside the very air itself, unveiling a unicorn stallion who’d been standing there and now appeared from behind some magical barrier that’d been obscuring his presence. He had stark blonde locks of mane moving in smooth waves around his strong, masculine features. Even I, a completely straight male, had to admit this stallion oozed a potent, sensual grace just standing still, with long stately legs and a well muscled body that looked custom made to attract others. He had swirling, dark tattoos covering his chest and limbs, like flickers of black fire. He wore a crimson red vest that matched his eyes, and he flashed us, or more specifically B.B, a white smile.

“Take you, big sister? Perish the thought. If the Mistress wanted us to use violence against you she’d have sent Black Petal again, with about half a dozen of our best soldiers. No, Blood Bloom, I’m not here to fight with you. I’m here to talk, if you’ll agree to a civil Accord on this neutral ground, by your binding word.”

There was a certain resonance to his voice, making it sound like it wasn’t just being heard, but felt, like something hot and slippery was sliding down my ear canal. It made my head feel fuzzy, but the sensation was broken as B.B said, in an equal resonate voice, “Stop it Scythe. I won’t have you bewitching them like that. If you seek to talk under an Accord, you leave their minds untouched, otherwise we fight here and now.”

Just like that the slippery feeling in my brain vanished and Scythe gave a warm, disarming smile as he raised a hoof in a peaceful gesture, “So be it. Can’t blame a stallion for trying. Truthfully I don’t want any of your herd listening in on matters that don’t concern them. This should be between us Family members, but you seem to insist on staying attached to your food.”

“They are not food. They are friends,” B.B said, and I recovered my own wits enough to talk.

“We also have names,” I said, shaking my head to clear the last of the buzzing cobwebs from whatever Scythe had been trying with his voice. I turned a hard glare on the stallion, putting on my best ‘don’t screw with me’ face. “I’m Longwalk. Who in the damned hell are you?”

He looked at me with an expression that gave me swift and unpleasant flashbacks to Shattered Sky. It was the same, faintly sneering way that he looked down his snout at me, as if I were a dung covered critter that just crawled out of a rock and he was sincerely debating if I was worth crushing under hoof. However unlike Shattered Sky he managed to wipe the look away with a cordial smile that was so drenched in poisoned honey that I felt a bit sick to my stomach.

“As you have already heard, my name is Scythe. In our dear sister’s absence from Family affairs, a rather foolish self-imposed exile I might add, it has fallen to me to take up her duties as our Mistress’ chief enforcer. Now, please, I would appreciate it if you would keep silent as I’ve come only to speak with Blood Bloom and could care less about those she’s decided to cling to as some surrogate family in place of her true Family.”

“B.B?” I asked, glancing at her, “You got this?”

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes closing as she gave me the smallest of nods, “Yeah, let me handle this. No offense, but if everypony played twenty questions with him this will take all day, so it’d be best to just play along with him and keep quiet until I sort this out. Alright, Scythe, I’ll agree to an Accord, by my sworn oath of blood, but only on the condition that you swear to me that you will do no harm whatsoever to any of the innocent ponies in this country until we’ve settled matters between us.”

His smile thinned to something akin to razors, “Ah, but you remain appropriately cruel, Blood Bloom. Do you expect me to torture myself like you do? I shall not abstain from partaking of the sweet blood you deny yourself, however I know how your mind seems to pine for the lives of the food. I shall agree only to not taking any lives of innocent ponies in this country, as long as they are not attacking me, until our affairs are settled. However I also require your oath that you shall not reveal my presence to the authorities of the NCR, and agree to meet me in two days time, alone, at the ruins of Canterlot, where we can settle this matter.”

B.B grimaced, her wings twitching, but she nodded grimly, “Not alone. My friends will be there, Scythe, but I will swear to you they won’t interfere. Agreed?”

Scythe gave a curt not, “Agreed.”

“So be it. The oath is given, the Accord is in place.”

Rather abruptly a glowing sigil of crimson light appeared on the chest of both B.B and Scythe, a symbol in the shape of a curved, jagged rune. It pulsed several times with an audible thump of a heartbeat, then the symbol faded and both of the ponies of the Family seemed to relax, as if a tension had faded from them. Scythe brushed his chest as if to remove some errant dust and sauntered towards our table. Not a single one of the ponies present in the restaurant responded to his presence, all trapped in their cycle of mindless conversation and not eating.

“Good, we can talk cordially now. It’s been a very long time, sister-”

“First of all, stop calling me that,” B.B said harshly, “We’re not siblings. Not anymore, not ever.”

A look of genuine hurt seemed to cross Scythe’s features, but it vanished in an eyeblink as he shrugged, “Delude yourself as you like. You may have turned your back on the Family, but we never turned our backs upon you. If you insist I not call you what you are, I shall, but only as a token gesture. Truly, pretending to be one of these normal ponies has done terrible things to your mental state. You’re little more than a shadow of your old self, Blood Bloom. You didn’t even sense me following you through the city. You had to see me controlling the minds of these weak herdlings before you even realized I was here.”

B.B growled, a low menacing sound deep in her throat, “Get to your damned point, Scythe.”

“Only that you’re diminished, Blood Bloom. Terribly so.” He sat down a few paces from us, gesturing his hoof at B.B, up and down, as if to indicate the whole of her, “You couldn't feel my presence, whereas in the past you could have tracked me across an ink black night for miles, despite my best efforts at concealment. I’m certain your physical state is horrifically weak as well. I remember when you could tear asunder steel with your bare hooves and dance through a storm of gunfire without taking a mark upon your flesh, yet now I hear Black Petal of all ponies gave you trouble? In times past she would have soiled herself at the thought of challenging you to battle. You’ve fallen, Blood Bloom. Without blood, without feeding, you’re little better than the chattel you now claim as companions.”

“Still now hearing a point anywhere in all this verbal diarrhea,” B.B said with a hard tone, mane bristling.

Scythe’s lips curved downward in a tight frown, eyes flashing like crimson stormclouds, “You know that the Mistress wants you returned to your proper place. There are some among the Family that would rather see you dead for your betrayal, but the Mistress’ love extends its protection to you and she is willing to give you a chance at redemption if you would but accept that love for the gift it is. I am her emissary in this, extending this final offer to you. Come home. Come home and be accepted back within the light of our Mistress’ love, and take your place once more at her side. Do this, and all shall be forgiven. There will be no retaliation against you, or the ponies that have been involved with your... excursion among the masses. Even that cursed stallion that turned you from us in the first place shall not be targeted, on the Mistress’ word.”

“Well that sounds all very well and good but you can tell the Mistress she can go shove a-”

“I’m not finished,” Scythe said, interrupting B.B, who shot a dagger filled glare at him, but waited for him to continue, which he did by saying, “Beyond ensuring your companions’ safety from retaliation, the Mistress also offers to lend the Family’s aide to them in their quest to defeat the menace from the stars that threatens us all.”

That got my attention enough to blurt out, “Are you serious?”

He turned heated eyes towards me, “It is no lie. The Mistress recognizes the threat of the creatures from the stars. It is why she sought alliance with the organization called Odessa. It is only proper, after all; we Crimson Nobles were created in the distant past to battle the enemy from the stars.”

“That might be true, but there’s a problem with what you're proposing,” said B.B, “Longwalk’s tribe is held hostage by Odessa, and they’re still hunting our friend Arcaidia. Is the Mistress willing to turn on Odessa, just to get me to come back?”

“No,” Scythe admitted, “But the aide she proposes does not contradict our alliance with Odessa. We would prepare some of our own soldiers to come to his assistance, but only when doing battle with the alien menace, not when he makes his foolhardy attempt to rescue his tribe. In that battle we shall not interfere, and if Odessa captures him or the one called Arcaidia, we will not assist there. But when battle is joined against the Hyadeans, we would be there. As would you, as our Mistress’ enforcer once more.”

I didn’t like it. Even if it might be useful to have some super-powered mutant, blood sucking ponies show up at the right time to help out fighting the Hyadeans, if it meant B.B had to go back to a life she clearly didn’t want to return to then I couldn’t support the idea. Everything B.B had ever told me about the Family, and judging just by Scythe and Black Petal’s attitudes towards normal ponies, I wasn’t at all sure I’d want help from them in the first place. They clearly didn’t think of ponies outside the Family as anything other than a source of food. They didn’t want to fight the Hyadeans out of anything other than a desire to protect their food supply.

B.B apparently agreed with me, because after a moment’s consideration she said, “No. It's a more generous offer than I expected out of the Mistress, but my answer is still no, Scythe. I won’t be returning.”

He was silent for a second, then said, “Don’t be so quick to decide. I shall be here for a time longer, watching, and your mind may change before this issue between Skull City and the NCR is resolved. There are benefits to returning to us, Blood Bloom, not the least of which is ending your own torment. I know it must be painful for you. Denying the thirst. Hearing the blood beating in their hearts, hot and sweet-”

“Stop it. Right. The fuck. Now.” B.B was growling once more, and her eyes had bled to crimson orbs, her breaths coming in quick pants.

Scythe looked at her with true, pained sympathy, “You see? How long can you last? Why do this to yourself? That Doc Sunday poisoned your mind so thoroughly, but surely you can see it... you don’t belong with them. You belong with us. But I can see you won’t listen to reason yet.”

“Are you done talking?” B.B asked, visibly struggling to get herself back under control.

“Almost. I have one last thing I wanted to do; to give you a gift. The Mistress wouldn't approve, but I personally cannot abide the idea of you going into battle so weakened, so I pulled some strings with our Odessa allies to acquire something that will be of use to you. Of course they didn’t know that I was going to give this item to you, but by the time the find out, I doubt it will matter.”

He reached to his side, and much like when he revealed himself in the first place, he pulled the very air aside as if drawing back a veil, and revealed a large black suitcase sitting next to him. He must have carried it along with levitation, though I hadn’t seen his horn light up. He gestured for B.B to take the case, but at her hesitance he rolled his eyes, a very brotherly expression, and said, “If I was going to be so crass as to trap a gift under an Accord of peace the Mistress would have my head and you know it. Stop being squeamish. It doesn’t become you.”

B.B snorted, but bent to examine the case, picking it up and setting on the table. At this point Binge bent forward, sniffing at it, “I don’t think its going to pop on us, and I do like presents. Does the scaly unicorn have any more?”

Scythe sneered, “Scaly pony? I don’t need nicknames from gutter trash. Even your blood smells rancid, wench.”

Binge bounced her knife up and down in her hoof, “And you smell like oil and dead things. Coating your mouth with sugar doesn’t make you any less a snake, scaly pony.”

It was Scythe’s turn to growl, and LIL-E responded by opening her side hatch and extended her rifle barrel, “Go ahead. Give me a fucking reason.”

B.B held up her hoof, “It’s alright, guys. I don’t smell any chemicals for poison or explosives. It's probably safe. If not, well, at least I won’t have to listen to him talk anymore.”

That said, she opened the case, and curiosity got all of us peering inside. I blinked at the contents, at once impressed and concerned at the same time.

“Odessa seriously gave you this?” I asked, disbelief practically bursting from my tone, “And now you’re giving it to B.B?”

“Of course. Odessa has finished its first generation trials and now can produce these second generation models quickly enough to afford giving several to its allies, such as the Family,” said Scythe, smiling smugly, “I don’t mind giving one to Blood Bloom. Even if she ends up turning it upon the Family one day, it's more important she live long enough to decide to return to us. Consider it a gesture of goodwill.”

Inside the case was black padding that housed a pair of shining silver objects, the metal clearly the nanomachine material of an ARM; particular the artificial ARMs built by Odessa. The two objects were shaped the same, like smooth, cylindrical gauntlets meant to fit over fore hooves. Circular bands with blue crystalline cores wrapped around the gauntlets in a spiral pattern, ending at the open slots where hooves would fit inside. The top portion of the business end of the gauntlets contained large, snub nosed pistol barrels, hexagonal in shape. At the bottom end of the weapons were smaller housings, from which extended slim, segmented silver blades, with sharp, square tips.

Written in barely visible silver script just a shade darker than the rest of the ARMs, each gauntlet bore the name “Twin Fenrir”.

Binge’s eyes sparkled, “Ooooo, shiny.”

B.B looked at the ARMs, then up at Scythe, “You do realize this doesn’t change my mind. If I take these, I’m just as likely to use them on you as anypony else.”

“A risk I accept. As I said, you’re too weak Blood Bloom. Without feeding you may well not survive the battles to come. Even if you refuse me now, or even kill me... I must hold faith that one day you will see the light and return to our Mistress’ loving embrace. To facilitate that I gift you these weapons to help keep you alive until then. If I must face you in battle thusly armed, so be it. After all-”

Scythe gestured once more, pulling aside yet another veil of illusion. It revealed that floating by his other side, in a tight grip of red magic levitation, was another ARM, this one in the shape of a massive silver scythe. The huge, curved blade of high-tech looking silver metal bore the name “Azrael” in gleaming script.

“-I too will be well armed for our confrontation.”

Damn. Odessa was seriously stepping up its game if it was producing new artificial ARMs fast enough to give two away to the Family. Maybe even more. I had no way to be sure. I set my jaw in a tight clench, reminding myself that no matter the opposition I couldn’t let myself even think of turning back. Still, not encouraging to think my friends and I might have to deal with even more foes equipped with the deadly power of ARMs. Then again, having B.B well armed would help level the playing field, especially if we were soon to go after a Golem.

The hesitation was clear in B.B’s eyes, however, as she said, “This could still be a trap, Scythe. Odessa could have put a tracking device in all their fancy toys. You could have set this thing up with any number of unpleasant surprises for me.”

“Your paranoia knows no bounds,” Scythe said with what sounded very much like a groan of brotherly frustration, “Must I open a vein to convince you of my sincerity!?” His horn glowed crimson, and I saw the magic shape itself into a small knife of raw arcane energy. We all tensed, but the blade didn’t go towards us, but to his upturned hoof, cutting red line across his brown hide. A welter of blood rose, and B.B stiffened, her nose going wild. Scythe offered her the hoof, “Go ahead, taste my lifeblood. Tell me then if there is any deception within me.”

B.B’s tongue darted out, seeming unconsciously, to lick her lips, but she shook her head. “Scythe, you’re insane. You know that, right?”

He smiled thinly, “Sanity is a matter of perception. To me you seem quite mad for turning from the charmed life you led, on the weak philosophy of an old stallion with a soft heart.”

Her voice was hard as gunmetal as B.B said, “That ‘old stallion’ had the integrity and compassion to show a foolish, self-destructive monster that she had the freedom to choose to be something better than what she was. It's a choice I make every day of my life. I won’t return to the Mistress. Ever.”

“You may feel differently, soon enough, but I can see I can’t get through to you here and now,” said Scythe, “But please, take the gift. Use it to protect yourself, at least. I can do that much, even if I fail to convince you of your errors.”

B.B eyed the twin ARMs in the case, frowning, then with a heavy sigh nodded, “Fine. Now go. I don’t have the patience to listen to you anymore.”

Scythe bowed deeply, “By our Accord, I will bring no harm to anypony in this nation until our conflict is settled. I shall see you in two days, Blood Bloom. Remember, the ruins of Canterlot is where I will await you, and you know that failing to show will have dire consequences, for that will break our Accord. Farewell for now, Blood Bloom. Hopefully in due time you’ll learn to see things from the perspective of my sanity, rather than yours.”

I stepped towards him, causing Scythe to looked at me sharply, and his lips pulled back to bare fangs at me. I ignored that as I said, “I just want to make this clear, in case you had any funny ideas, if you hurt anypony around here I will personally see to ensuring you pay for it.”

“I see. You think you could kill me?”

“I didn’t say kill. I said pay. And yes, I can.” I held his gaze steadily, despite the fact that I felt more than a little unnerved by his unblinking red eyes. At length Scythe gave a small huff of a laugh and turned away from us with a flick of his blonde tail.

“We will see, won’t we?” And with that his form shimmered, along with that of the silver scythe ARM at his side, and he vanished behind a veil of illusionary magic. B.B closed the case with the Twin Fenrir in it and set it next to her, glancing at the crowd in the restaurant. Less than a minute after Scythe departed the ponies in the Scarf Stop resumed talking and eating normally, not even missing a beat. It was as if Scythe’s mental interference had simply never happened. Admittedly it was rather unsettling to see.

“Your family is made up of some seriously creepy pieces of work,” said LIL-E.

“And that was Scythe on a good day,” said B.B in reply, shaking her head and with a cough adopting her accent once more, “I gotta wonder how he tracked me down.”

Binge gave me a bump with a hoof, “Longy made a big splash in Skull City. Probably just followed the ripples.”

“Huh?” I asked in my usually eloquent manner.

B.B rubbed her chin, “Guess he could’ve been keepin’ an eye ‘round the Guilds an’ spotted us at any o’ the times we were headin’ in or out of the Skull Guild or Drifters Guild. Lends a bit o’ credit ta his word if he ain’t called in a squad of Family soldiers ta bring me in wit force.”

“Still, how’d he follow us all the way to the NCR?” asked LIL-E, “That’s not exactly a quick trot across the park.”

“Willing to bet Odessa had something to do with that,” I muttered, “He could have hitched a ride on one of their ships, if one was heading for this region. Given how important this whole diplomatic delegation is it wouldn’t surprise me if Odessa had a ship in the area to monitor things.”

“Too many birdies in the sky,” whispered Binge, then made a small whining sound, “Where’s the beer? Binge needs to wet her innards and feel the numbing hug of Mr. Inebriation!”

Fortunately our food arrived shortly, with Ladle cheerfully delivered our order with a smile, and only a casual and curious glance at the black case now by B.B’s side. She didn’t say anything about it, however, only shook her head as if convincing herself the case must’ve already been in our possession and she’d simply missed it. As if by some unspoken agreement my friends and I delved into companionable silence as we tore into our food. I didn’t want to press B.B about Scythe too much, at least not until we got back to the hotel and could bring Arcaidia up to date. Besides, it was hard to think about talking about much of anything while my mouth was being made love to by the delicious, succulent, utterly satisfying goodness that was my steak sandwich.

I had never tasted anything so good, and I actually ended up thumping my leg on the floor in a kind of pleasured, rhythmic twitch as I ate. I may never have had sex before, but I was pretty sure it couldn’t be much better than this steak sandwich. I didn’t even know what molerats were, but I wanted to eat more of them. Whoever said ponies weren’t meant to eat meat apparently had never sat down for a meal at the Scarf Stop.

After paying our bill and profusely thanking Ladle for the unbelievable meal, which may or may not have involved impromptu proposals of marriage amid a food coma stupor, we headed back out into the downtown Manehattan afternoon. There was some brief discussion of beating around the market, or going to wander the residential areas further out, but the mood turned quiet and I could tell my companions weren’t as interested in wandering as I was. LIL-E floated around almost listlessly, while Binge had gone back to a quiet, faint morose manner. She had gone through half a dozen bottles of beer before we’d left the restaurant, and had a bit of a stumble to her trot. B.B now was also tense, glancing at shadows that weren’t there, carrying the case with the Twin Fenrir in it like it was still some sort of bomb about to explode.

When I made the suggestion to head to the hotel in Tenpony Tower there was no objection.

I had to admit, Tenpony Tower was a lot more impressive up close than when I’d casually glanced at it during the short flight to the Capital building. It was by far the tallest building in all Manehattan, at least, in terms of it still being fundamentally intact. It wasn’t quite as large as the Skull Guild’s headquarters tower, but it was honestly in much better repair, comparatively speaking. We entered from a set of well guarded front doors, just beneath the overhanging tram tracks above us. Apparently the guards were well informed on our identities as part of the Skull City delegation, but even so we had to go through a lengthy process of checking our identities before entering.

I thought this a tad strange, given we didn’t have to go through this at the Capitol building, where you’d think security would be tighter, but apparently whoever ran Tenpony Tower took no chances with outsiders and there were rules to be followed. I didn’t mind so much, despite the questioning. Both my ARM and B.B’s newly acquired case got careful and delicate examinations by the guards, who apparently had never seen anything like the ARMs before. Since I didn't imagine they'd believe the truth about the weapons I simply used the line everypony in the Skull City Wasteland believed about the weapons, that they were relics from the Ruins dotting that region. Technically true, if nowhere close to the whole truth.

Once we’d been poked, prodded, and questioned until our identities were confirmed, we were allowed inside the tower. The front foyer of Tenpony Tower was larger than most homes I’d seen, and had the kind of sharp lighting and chill air that reminded me of being inside Stable 104. There weren’t many ponies inside the tower, and most of the ones I saw trotted about in surprisingly clean and elegant clothing, most of them giving me and my friends sidelong looks that carried hints of either disapproval or outright mistrust. It made my hide crawl a bit, but I tried to shake the feeling off as I led my friends towards the elevators we were told led to the hotel floors. We’d been given our room number by the door guards in a tone of voice that said they expected us to go their swiftly and not bother the tower residents.

As we approached the elevators along one side of the main entryway, I spotted Wellspring Whistles standing there, speaking in quiet tones to another mare I didn’t recognize. This mare was fairly petite, with dark gray fur and a bright mane and tail of shining blue. I couldn’t see her cutie mark because she was wearing heavy saddle bags that covered most of her flanks and sides with a quartet of pouches, laden heavily with some kind of electronic equipment.

Seeing me and the others approaching, Wellspring turned to me with a smile and nod, “Ah, there you all are! I was just beginning to wonder if you’d be dropping by here or not. Enjoy the sights around the city?”

I flicked my eyes towards B.B, who saw my questioning look and gave me the smallest of shakes of her head. Okay, so not mentioning Scythe yet. I gave Wellspring a return nod, “I’m hoping to see more of it soon. We hit up a nice spot to eat called the Scarf Stop. If I could somehow bottle their food and bring it with me wherever I go I’d probably die a happy pony.”

Wellspring laughed, as did the other mare, though in her case it was more a knowing chuckle as she said, “I’ve been there. Ladle knows how to whip up some unbelievable meals from practically nothing.” She glanced at all of my friends in turn, and I had the impression she was cataloging every detail about us, filing it away for future reference. “I’m Homage. I assist the local news jockey with his work.”

“That guy we heard on the radio?” I asked, the Homage gave a quick nod, and I went on to say, “So do you and Wellspring know each other from the radio or something?”

“Or something,” Homage said, tilting her head at Wellspring, “The airwaves have always been ridden by a pretty exclusive club of ponies, so those of us on the air tend to hear about each other. Wellspring’s Radio Guild has been instrumental in arranging this whole political pow-wow, and the broadcasting station here in Tenpony Tower has been a go-between for the NCR government’s communications since practically day one.”

“I got to know Homage a little via something of a information exchange,” said Wellspring, “Since her, ahem, ‘DJ Pon-3’ is always looking for news just as much as I am, we’d exchange stories every now and again when we managed to cross airwaves with each other. Kind of a long distance relationship. Star crossed voices passing in the night.”

Homage smirked, “Yeah right, more like you trolling for scoops while I had to constantly sort fact from fiction from your own tall tales. I still don’t buy that you found an alien machine tower underneath your city. How gullible do you think I am?”

“It’s absolutely true,” Wellspring said, jutting her chin out, then winked at me “Right Longwalk? You can corroborate my story. You’ve seen the tower too, after all.”

This got Homage to glance at me sidelong, raising one neon blue eyebrow, “Is that right?”

I licked my lips, not sure I liked the intense way either mare was staring at me, and said, “It’s, uh, yeah, kinda true. I mean, there is a huge tower underneath the city, at least.”

I didn’t think I could technically call it an ‘alien’ tower, given that from what I understood the tower was actually built by the Elw, who weren’t aliens, just our ancient pony ancestors. I also knew that the Hyadeans wanted to get inside that tower, as did Odessa, and that they couldn’t only because of a magical barrier keeping them out. Kind of important information, I suppose, but I wasn’t sure I should go around spouting off that kind of stuff to just anypony. It did sound rather insane, if I stood back and tried to look at it from an outside perspective.

Homage had a very strong poker face, as the moment I was done talking she looked at me with an entirely inscrutable look. This expression changed drastically to one of mute shock as Binge stumbled forward and sniffed her, still smelling faintly of alcohol herself.

“Heheh, you smell like wildberries and secrets. Also sweat. Sexy sweat.”

“Excuse me?” Homage blinked rapidly, and LIL-E floated forward to literally bonk Binge on the head.

“Stop smelling ponies without permission! For fucks sake, could you act normal around other ponies for five minutes?”

“In some cultures smelling is considered a traditional form of greeting,” said Binge in a slight slur, wagging her tail.

“What cultures!? You don’t even- You weren’t ever... ugh, does not compute.”

“And on that note I think I’ll get this gear back up top, before DJ Pon-3 starts wondering what’s become of me,” said Homage, edging towards the elevator and tapping the button, perhaps a bit faster than was strictly needed.

Wellspring rolled her eyes and said, “I do hope the repair parts do you some good. The Radio Guild is always stocked with more than it needs, and if this treaty goes through we’ll be able to drop by more often with better parts for you to use.”

“True,” said Homage, still eyeing Binge sidelong, warily, “But I’m not sure a treaty is going to happen. There’s a lot of ponies in the NCR that aren’t keen on playing friendly with a slaver city.”

“Oh please, Homage, we’ve been over this so many times. Skull City is not a slaver city. We have indentured servitude via a perfectly legitimate Labor Guild.”

“Semantics, Wellspring, semantics.” Homage said dryly as her elevator arrived, and she stepped inside, “I’m just saying, while I’m a proponent of peace, certainly, I don’t know how long such a peace can last as long as you’ve got ponies in your city that don’t possess the same rights to freedom and liberty that the rest of you enjoy.”

The elevator doors slid closed, and I saw Wellspring puff out her cheeks in a small huff, smoothing down some of her stray blonde mane. “Stubborn mare, always has to have the last word...” Wellspring muttered.

I coughed, “She, uh, kind of has a point, doesn’t she? I mean, if the NCR doesn’t have slavery, won’t the Labor Guild be kind of a sour point in the negotiations?”

“Perhaps, but ultimately a pointless one,” Wellspring said with a deep sigh, “The Labor Guild provides for far too much of Skull City’s ore to just be abolished outright. Then there’s their V.E.C to consider. That ‘volunteer’ corps of trained killers is on par with both the Security Guild and Enforcer Guild in terms of military power. We can’t just dismantle the Labor Guild without tearing Skull City itself apart in a civil war we wouldn’t survive. The best we can hope for is to mitigate their power, do what we can to ensure they follow guidelines of minimum well treatment for their contracted laborers, and... hope for the best.”

Wellspring sounded suddenly very tired, as if she’d had this kind of argument hundreds of times before, and had used the same counter arguments each and every time. There was an undercurrent of pain and frustration in her voice too, as if she wished she didn’t have to make the argument, and herself wished that there was another way. I could completely understand. I’d seen both ends of the equation, through admittedly as still something of an outsider. I knew a pony who worked for the Labor Guild, and had seen the lengths Iron Wrought went through to protect his family. He was a good pony. Rough around the edges, but a solid stallion who was just trying to make a life for himself in a tough world. The Labor Guild was probably full of ponies like him; fundamentally decent folk who just ended up in a hard, unpleasant job that was still necessary to feed themselves and their families.

I’d also seen the Labor Guild’s ‘contracted laborers’, and knew for a fact that it was nothing short of slavery, plain and simple. Shale had been a good pony as well, a courageous mare who’d had far too hard a life that ended too soon, all because of the Labor Guild. How many more like her were out there now, with bomb collars around their necks because of a ‘perfectly legitimate indentured servitude’?

I could understand why Homage thought the NCR would never accept Skull City as an ally as long as the Labor Guild existed, yet I could also understand Wellspring’s position and frustration. After all, how could the Labor Guild be removed without a fight? A fight that would lead to the deaths of many a good, decent pony.

No easy answers in the short term. And here I was with far too much else on my plate to even consider how I might help. Instead I just put a hoof on Wellspring’s shoulder and gave it a comforting pat.

“Hey, at least you can still hope, right? That’s better than nothing. Maybe an alliance with the NCR will put pressure on the Labor Guild to ease up on its practices? They could treat their ponies like actual employees, instead of slaves.”

She gave me a faded smile, “A nice thought, but probably a pipe dream. Begonia isn’t letting up on her control of the Guild any time soon, and I’m not sure if anypony who replaced her would be much better. But I think that’s enough talk of politics for now. Going to be plenty of that soon enough, and I think I need a palette cleanser. Something bubbly and inebriating.”

Binge pumped a hoof into the air, “Hear hear! Preach it sister! Salvation in a bottle, for all us lost souls.”

“Eh, I think you’ve had enough already Binge,” I said, to which she gave me a stubborn pout and stomped a hoof.

“Never! Give me booze or give me death, for this is the hour of my discontent, and I declare in one loud voice that I shall not walk quietly into soberness! You can take my life but you can never take my... uh... what was I talking about again?”

I rubbed my face with a hoof, “Okay, everypony into the elevator, before my brain dribbles out of my ears.”

Our room was rather spacious, though with two beds at least one of us was going to be using the floor. As usual I volunteered for that position, because I was fairly comfortable on the floor, and with the way my brain had occasionally gone gutter diving lately I wasn’t sure I wanted to try sharing a bed with any of the mares in the group. It was either a sign of the underlying problems troubling her, or a minor miracle, that Binge didn’t even try to convince me to hop into bed with her.

There was an adjoining bathroom, and when we entered I heard the shower running in there, and assumed it had to be Arcaidia cleaning up. By the time the rest of us were done settling in this was confirmed as a still mostly wet Arcaidia, using several towels levitated in frosty magic to dry herself off, trotted into the room.

She paused upon seeing us, a hesitance in her features before she said, “Hello fellow companions of travel. Was city nice?”

“Yup, disturbing family visitations aside,” B.B said, and laid out the encounter with Scythe in short order, to which Arcaidia immediately went over to the pegasus and leaned towards her with a concerned look.

“You are well, ren bruhir?”

B.B licked her lips, sitting on the bed and taking several deep breaths, “Much as I’m gonna be. Wound tight as a spring, but ain’t nothin’ fer that ‘till Scythe makes his move. Thing is, I wasn’t expectin’ him. I figured the Family would send a hit squad after us. Deadly as radscorpion venom, but straightforward. That kind o’ threat I know how ta deal wit. But Scythe... he’s the kind o’ guy that’s gonna hit us sideways. Today was just him sussin’ us out. When I go ta face ‘im in two days, all bets ‘r off, an’ I don’t know what kind o’ tricks he’ll have up his sleeve.”

There was a stark current of genuine fear in her voice, but also a strain of hot anger as well, B.B’s eyes rimming with a circle of red as she growled, “All I know is that I ain’t lettin’ him hurt none o’ ya! Ain’t no way I’m lettin’ nopony get hurt on account o’ me.”

Binge, rolling onto her back on the other bed, made a sort of neighing exhale that was one part forlorn, two parts resigned, “Ponies will always get hurt birdie, no matter what. You can’t be everywhere, and your little bloody bro can do quite the ghost act. Maybe you could sniff him out and put a gory end to him before the meeting?”

B.B turned a sharp gaze towards Binge, “It ain’t that simple. In order ta git him ta agree not ta hurt nopony I also had ta agree ta show up fer the meetin’ in two days. Swore it via a blood oath, and a blood oath made under an Accord can’t be broken by either party.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s blood magic, Long. Ancient stuff the Mistress taught all us Crimson Nobles. Ya felt it when ya fought Black Petal, remember?”

I thought back to the fight with Black Petal at the church, and the way it felt as if she’d tried to worm her way into my thoughts with just her voice. It was eerily similar to how Scythe had mentally controlled the ponies at the restaurant.

“So... that ability to screw with the mind is blood magic?”

B.B gave a grim nod, “Part o’ it. Consuming blood makes my kind stronger, an’ some o’ that is from the magic we can work through the blood. It ain’t like unicorn spells. It’s all more subtle stuff than that. But it's powerful, an’ bindin’. I can’t break my oath to Scythe any more than he can.”

“What will happen if you break oath?” asked Arcaidia, eyes wide.

“My blood’ll turn against me,” B.B said, licking dry lips and shuddering, “First it’ll hurt. Then it’ll hurt a lot. Then, if I’m lucky, I’ll die ‘fore it hurts so much I go insane.”

“Well... shit,” I said, “I guess we can’t do much until the meeting.”

“At which point we might as well brace ourselves fer whatever tricks he’s got fer that encounter,” said B.B, “I’m sorry Long, we ain’t got a lot of options. Scythe didn’t show up the way he did without plainn’ ta git that agreement outta me, and if we’d fought then and there in the restaurant... he’d have killed most everypony there.”

“And we can’t even tell anypony else about him, can we?” I asked, “Because he made that part of the Accord or whatever, too?”

“Just ‘bout the size o’ it,” B.B said.

I ran a hoof over my mane, grunting, “I don’t like the idea of you having to deal with him alone. Are you planning to try using that ARM he gave you?”

B.B grimaced, eyes uncertain, “I ain’t inclined ta trust he’d just give me such a potent weapon... but ya remember him asking if I wanted ta taste his blood?”

“Yeah, which was exceedingly creepy and kind of gross,” I said flatly.

“Well one bit o’ blood magic I could still do is read the feelin’ and intent o’ those who blood I drink. I’d have known if he was meanin’ ta make them ARMs as some kind o’ trap. Still, he’s a slippery sort. Coulda found a loophole.”

“Could you beat him without the ARMs?”

B.B gave me a wane smile, and beneath the aura of calm she was trying to project I could see the icy undercurrent of fear in her eyes, “Ain’t even sure I could beat him with the ARMs. I’m way outta practice fightin’ my own king, Long. Black Petal was tough enough an’ she ain’t in Scythe’s league.”

Her eyes hardened with fierce determination, “Still, I gotta try. It’s high time this matter was put ta rest. I can’t run from my Family no more. So one way or another, I’m ending it.”

Arcaidia looked at B.B with a stern gaze, “You will be much careful, yes? Do nothing foolishy and let us help however we can?”

B.B put a comforting wing around Arcaidia’s shoulder, pulling the shorter blue filly close, and the two shared a tentative look as B.B said, “I promise I won’t do nothin’ ta git hurt, Arc.”

“Alright,” I said, “We’ll deal with Scythe when the time comes. For now we’ve got a job to focus on. The peace talks start soon and we’ll need to be sharp and ready for playing our part. On that note, uh, Binge, maybe you should stay here and rest?”

She eyed me with what I could only describe as ‘grumpy eyes’, “Whyyyyyy?”

“Uh, because you're a bit drunk?”

“I’m not even close to drunk, bucky. You haven’t the faintest clue what I’m like when I’m actually proper drunk.”

“Even so,” I said, “Maybe you ought to stay in the hotel and rest for now, Binge. I mean, you’re not exactly at a hundred percent, right? So why not relax here while the rest of us do the security detail this afternoon?”

Binge made a face, “Are you going to tether my leash here, bucky? I don’t like being left behind.”

I shifted uncomfortably, meeting her gaze with a concerned one of my own, “For one, Binge, even if you deny it it's pretty clear you're a bit drunk right now. I’d rather you sleep it off and get sober for when we’ll need you alert. For second, you’ve been acting weird ever since we got here. Why?”

I could see the doors slamming closed behind her eyes, the way she mentally and emotionally turtled up and set a stubborn pout on her face, “Don’t wanna talk about it. Big Sis Binge is fine. You go play security. Binge will just sit here and sort her collection of stabbies. And I’m not drunk. I’m buzzed. Pleasantly. I’d need to knock back half a factory’s worth of harder shit than that beer to get really smashed. But no, that’s fine, I’ll stay here and think squishy thoughts.”

I took a deep breath, “Blast it, Binge, we’re friends. If there’s something wrong, you can tell us. That’s part of the gig.”

Binge just shook her head, a few small knives tumbling from her poofy mane to bounce on the bed. She began absently sorting them, from smallest to largest, muttering unintelligible things under her breath. I didn’t even question the fact that she’d gotten those knives past the tower’s front door guards. Sure they’d pattered her down like the rest of us, but Binge was Binge. If she didn’t want you finding the sharp objects on her, you wouldn’t find them.

With a frustrated grunt I glanced at the others, but none of them had any helpful advice to offer.

I knew I could try pushing Binge, but dammit I wanted her to open up willingly. I could tell something was hurting her, more than any physical pain I’d seen her in, and I couldn’t figure out what. I gave Binge one last worried look, feeling something twisting about in my chest as I did so. It wasn’t as if I could force her to talk, and it wasn't as if I didn’t have literally a dozen other problems pressing in from all sides, including the recent development with Scythe, but somehow Binge’s weird mental state was bothering more than all the rest combined.

If I’d been examining my emotions more closely I might’ve realized what that meant then and there, but at the time I was just too confused and frustrated to think straight.

Instead I was distracted by Arcaidia changing the subject, her chiming voice cutting through the malaise and fog settling over my mind.

“If nothing else to be spoken of, I had want to look around city too,” she said, hopping off the bed and shuffling over to her saddlebag, where she got out her simple, deep blue dress and slipped it on over her head. “Now that I done looking at memory orbs, I can go enjoy looking at sights.”

I blinked at her, having completely forgotten about those memory orbs Bartholomew had given her. “Right, those! How were they? I mean, what was on those orbs and do you know why the Captain gave them to you?”

Arcaidia, adjusting her long silver mane to smooth it out over the back of her dress, gave me a puzzled tilt of her head, “Is very confusing. Orbs all about ponies who make movie, and bad things happen to them. There is Elw shrine they film at, and...” her face flushed cherry red, “... and some ponies get very close, during bad situation. Then rainbow mane pony show up and capture them all, and take to strange place. Last memory is of mare talking to rainbow mane mare about an...” she made a vague gesture, frowning, then glanced at B.B, “B.B, what word for place with tiny foals without family?”

“Orphanage.”

“Mmm, that, last conversation in memory is about an orphanage. I not know why it important. Bartholomew strange griffin, to give me such memory orbs.” She looked at me and pointed at the drawer next to her bed, “If you want look, they in there.”

“I kind of do, now that you’ve described them,” I said, as baffled as Arcaidia was, but at the same time intrigued. It sounded like the memory orbs pertained to that film Trixie and Money Shot were making, centuries ago. What did any of that have to do with what was happening now, and why did he give the memory orbs to Arcaidia of all ponies? “Well, I don’t have any time for it now, but maybe later.”

Arcaidia nodded and trotted for the door, looking over her shoulder at me, “I know you just get back, but any of you want to come and see more city?”

I cast a hesitant look back at Binge, who was stubbornly pulling out yet more knives from hidden places in her mane, tail, and barding, arranging them in ever more complex and hard to understand patterns on the bed. My eyebrow shot up in pure puzzlement as I also saw her add a spatula to the dizzying array of sharp objects growing around her. LIL-E floated a bit closer to me and bobbed up and down, as if to assure me she’d keep an eye on things. B.B got off the bed and said, “I’ll come. I’d go stir crazy stayin’ put anyhows. Long?”

I bit my lip, and said, “I think I’ll stay here and catch a nap before the negotiations begin. It’s going to be one of those days, I’m thinking.”

I said I was going to nap, but honestly I couldn’t. My mind was too much of a mire of rather useless, circular thoughts. I kept worrying about everything from what would happen when we went to face the Golem, or Scythe, or whether Odessa would end up tracking us down. And when I wasn’t worried about that my brain kept turning towards my friends, examining each and every one of them in gut churning circles of concern. Would the NCR scientists take LIL-E away from us, dragging her against her will to laboratories to be disassembled into tiny mechanical pieces, destroying whatever spark of life and personality she had gained for herself over years of independent operation? Would Scythe prove too strong for us to defeat, or worse, might he somehow plant enough seeds of doubt in B.B’s mind to convince her to return to her ruthless former Family? Would we be able to find any trace of Arcaidia’s sister in the limited time we’d have to search between the negotiations occurring here in the NCR, and how would what we found affect the blue filly from the stars?

And then there was Binge. What was getting under her hide so much, and what could I do to help? Why did it bother me so much to see her like that? As I lay there on the bed, trying to force myself to relax, I could hear her shuffling about on the other bed, along with the small scrap of knives as she began to sharpen her collection.

For some reason it started sending less than virtuous thoughts running through my mind, thinking of her sitting there, lithe and stretched out. If LIL-E wasn’t here... if me and Binge were alone together...

I turned on my side, back to Binge and LIL-E, hoping to fall asleep before my mind’s strange thinking started causing certain reactions I didn’t need in my body at the moment.

Eventually I gave up on sleep and with a huff I rolled out of bed and mumbled something about a shower, not even waiting for a response before I quickly trotted into the hotel rooms adjoining bathroom. The compact little shower was a bit different from the roomy communal showers at Stable 104, but it operated the same way, and I for a time just let myself enjoy the wondrous invention that was indoor plumbing. I didn’t think I could easily return to tribal living if my tribe didn’t figure out some way to bring the joys of hot showers to our otherwise simple lifestyle.

Unfortunately my brain continued to betray me, even in the shower, briefly imagining Binge in the shower with me, her tongue caressing sensually along my-

“For Spirits sake, what’s wrong with me?” I growled in frustration.

It wasn’t that I disliked Binge or anything, but I literally had a mountain of other issues I ought to be worried about more, but it felt like every spare bit of room in my head was being taken up either worrying about what was bothering Binge and how I could help her, or fantasizing about bending her over the nearest available flat surface.

Nope! Just gonna go ahead and suppress this whole pile of nope right here and now.

I fail to see how this is productive. said Gramzanber, the ARM resting on the wall outside the shower. You continue to overanalyze what is otherwise a set of simple problems.

“Oh, that right? Tell me how simple they all are, o’ wise space stick.”

You are concerned over the Golem; then destroy the Golem. You are concerned over the new enemy Scythe; defeat him. You fear Odessa discovering you once more; defeat their efforts to capture you. You are fearful of the mental state of the female, Binge-

“If you suggest ‘destroying’ her...” I grunted, half jokingly.

Some modern forms of slang might refer to the act of copulation in that fashion, depending on how much force is used in the physical act.

I groaned and planted my head on the shower wall, “Gram, could you not? Please?”

I fail to understand your reluctance on this matter, Longwalk. It is unhealthy, both physically and mentally. You do not understand how complete my awareness of you is, and I can tell that you exhibit all of the signs of a healthy young adult male ready to mate. You furthermore exhibit specific signs of desire to mate with Binge, who while older than you is still within a healthy age range as an acceptable sexual partner, who also exhibits signs of desiring you as a mate. Wherein lies the issue?

“I... I...” I just stammered for a moment, mentally reaching, “I just don’t know how I feel about her, Gram. Just because my nethers get stiff doesn’t mean I should ‘mount up’.”

Why not? Is not arousal the primary method of determining when to mate?

“No, dammit! It’s not! It just means-” I halted my sentence as I realized I was raising my voice. The last thing I needed was for Binge or LIL-E to hear any of this. Luckily the shower was loud. I took control of my voice, lowering it back to normal, “It’s not that simple. Or at least I don’t feel like it should be. Maybe for some, it is. For me, though, I want to be sure. It’s... it’s just important to me that if I do that with a mare, it's because we share something that goes beyond just being hot and bothered. I don’t want to screw up something that important. Not just for me, but for her too. I don’t want to use Binge like that. Even if she’s willing, she’s too important to me to just relieve my stress on like that, as if were just a matter of convenience!”

I paused as I said that, thinking. Gramzanber too was silent for a moment, and it said out loud the thoughts that were going through my own mind.

If Binge is important enough to you to warrant that consideration, does that not answer the question of how you feel about her?

Shit, he had a point. The thought hung in my mind, glittering and dangerous. Was I actually falling in love with Binge? I shook my head, trying to dislodge the notion, but it stuck like a particularly pesky itch.

“Do you think it's that simple, Gram? Could I really just let it happen, and see where things went?”

Again, I have no practical experience to draw from. My only concern is your well being, which by my estimation means finding a way to alleviate this confusion and tension inside you concerning this cognitive dissonance between your overstimulated sex drive and your rather stringent romantic ideals. We are facing multiple battles soon, while needing to remain vigilant for further dangers. You being distracted by sexual fantasies about a prospective partner who has already demonstrated a willingness to fulfill those fantasies strikes me as counterproductive to having you prepared for the conflicts to come.

“I see what you mean. It is kind of hard to focus with Binge running around in my head. Just don’t rush me on this. I need a chance to talk to her, alone, and before I even try to get our feelings figured out I got to get to the bottom of what’s eating her right now.”

Clearly not you.

“Gram!”

Sorry, I am attempting to learn how to properly use humor to disarm awkward situations. Clearly I require more practice. In the meantime I would advise that you at least relieve yourself while you are in a position of privacy. As I said, sexual distraction could prove fatal in a combat situation.

I felt raw heat flush to my face as I gulped, “Dude, seriously, I’m not doing that in front of you.”

You are not in front of me. You are in a shower with the curtain drawn.

“That’s besides the point! You’d know! You could, like, hear me and... and stuff. It’s not happening! At least not while you or anypony else is nearby.”

So be it, but I believe this is a tactical error.

“Duly noted, now please give me some peace so I can finish showering off without any more awkward conversation?”

Gramzanber went quiet, but I got the distinct impression that somepony was laughing at me as I continued to shower, and wrestle with the maelstrom of conflicting emotions inside me.

We managed to go the rest of the time until the beginning of the treaty talks without incident. Arcaidia and B.B returned from exploring downtown Manehattan, Arcaidia herself trailing an extra saddlebag containing freshly bought fruits and vegetables from the NCR farming market, and a few knick-knacks she was happy about which included a folding paper fan with the design of a scaly creature I’d never seen before painted on it. It was a weird silver thing with fins, and when I asked what it was Arcaidia rolled her eyes and told me it was a fish.

I had to ask about what a fish was. Apparently they were weird scaled things that lived in water. Like geckos, only in the ocean or rivers. We’d never had any in the stream my tribe had made its home next to, so this was the first I’d heard of them. I wondered if they tasted good?

Binge had hidden all her knives away back on her body, and I’d been rather shocked at the sheer number she’d had out to sharpen and clean by the time she’d been done and started putting them away. When I asked how she’d collected so many, she only gave me an empty look and said, “They find me. They know I’ll take good care of them.”

She still smelled a bit of alcohol, but wasn’t as obviously tipsy as before. “Look, Binge, if you don’t want to stay here, then I won’t force you-”

“It's okay, bucky. I was mad for a bit, but you’re right,” Binge said, giving a big, wide yawn, “I don’t like being left behind, but it’s just going to be a lot of mouths saying big words that mean nothing of what the hearts behind them feel. I can skip that.”

She came up to me and I felt her neck nuzzle up against mine in a touch so brief I almost didn’t realize it happened.

“Go do boring guard stuff and stop worrying about me. I think I know what I should do now. I’ll make the ghosties stop, and get back on my own.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, but she just shook her head and didn’t say anything more. I was stuck puzzling over that for the entire walk back to the Capitol building.

Applegate didn’t seem too bothered if my team was down a member. I got the impression she wasn’t particularly convinced of Binge’s dependability anyway. In short order she brief us and the other two Drifter teams on our jobs. Crossfire and Shard would work alongside the NCR guards at the front doors giving access to the conference room. Hawkeye and his team were joining a group of NCR Rangers on the roof as long distance surveillance and eyes on the sky. Me and my friends were assigned to the conference room interior, where we’d each take a corner of the room and keep an eye out for signs of intrusion. Applegate would be in there as well, ready to respond to any emergencies.

I found myself in the southwest corner of the conference room, standing just beneath one of the second floor set of balcony seats and within spitting distance of the front meeting tables. The peace talks between Skull City, the Protectorate, and the New Canterlot Republic began with surprisingly little fanfare or formality. On one side of the meeting tables the representatives and various guild heads from Skull City took their seats, with extra guests and witnesses taking seats in the conference room stadium seating. Princess Purity and her entourage took up another third of the meeting tables. Next to her was a giant, bulky brute of a pony with deep brown fur and a bristling black and white mane that after a moment I realized was Phalanx without his power armor. He looked like a slab of stone, a living boulder next to the slim and pale form of Princess Purity.

President Grimfeathers and a group of ponies that represented the entire NCR cabinet of representatives took up the other side of the meeting table. Most of them I’d seen during the introductions when we’d disembarked from the Sweet Candy, including Velvet Remedy, who had a spot on President Grimfeather’s right side.

“So,” Grimfeathers intoned, “Let’s get down to business.”

There was a charge to the air in the room as everypony (and griffin) present seemed to become more alert. It almost felt like the stirring of tension that came right before battle, as if everypony at the negotiating table was preparing for something as draining and deadly serious as lethal combat. Given that the following talks would affect the futures of thousands of people across the Wasteland, one might say the stakes were higher than any one battle might be.

“It’s been the policy of this government for some time now to avoid entangling ourselves without affairs outside our borders,” said the NCR President in a heavy tone, casting a glance sideways at Velvet Remedy, “However there has been enough voices speaking out within various communities of our nation that say it’s time we try to extend the good will and hope for a better future we all fought for eighteen years ago to the lands that are not as fortunate as the New Canterlot Republic. We’ve agreed to these talks with representatives of both Skull City and the Protectorate in good faith and that, with some work, an agreement can be reached on terms of a treaty that will solidify relations between our respective nations.”

The elderly griffiness took a deep breath, tapping one talon on the hardwood table, “That being said, there will likely be several concerns that need to be addressed before any such treaty reaches the first draft stage, not the least of which is the continued utilization of slavery in Skull City, and the remaining tensions between Skull City and the Protectorate. The NCR does not nor will it ever condone any form of forced labor, within its borders or with any group, organization, or nation it would consider an ally. It will also not be pulled into a war not of its own making. Before these talks go any further than this I would have the representatives of Skull City and the Protectorate state their own view on this matter, otherwise we’re all wasting our damn time sitting here.”

A bit of President Grimfeather’s earlier impatience and irritation was already visible, and to me it looked as if she was struggling to maintain a diplomatic air. I suppose it could’ve been worse. There was a stir of exchanged looks among the delegates from Skull City, and I saw Begonia stirr, the large mare composing herself and leaning forward with her hooves held calm and steepled in front of her, elbows resting on the table. Next to her Iron Wrought was sitting, looking like a sour statue.

“Madame President, mares and gentlecolts of the NCR, I am Begonia. I am the Guildmistress of the Labor Guild, and I believe it falls to me to answer your concerns regarding the methods utilized by my guild and its labor force.”

“Labor force!?” suddenly spat another pony at the NCR table, a reedy looking earth pony stallion with scarred yellow fur and a stringy brown mane, “Call it what it is; slavery!”

Velvet Remedy, through looking no less disgusted than the stallion, looked to him and said in a calm, gentle voice, “Please, Chairpony Shamrock, I understand your feelings completely but we must give the mare a chance to speak.”

“But-”

“Pipe down,” said Grimfeathers, casting a sharp looking at Shamrock, until the stallion took a deep breath and sat back in his seat, glaring heatedly at Begonia. The Labor Guild leader took a moment to let things quiet down before nodding to Velvet Remedy.

“I understand the concerns of your compatriot, Chairpony Remedy. After all, your fine nation rose from the ashes of a most deplorable and brutal regime under the notorious Red Eye. I am all too aware of the utterly hellish conditions he kept Fillydelphia under, and his slaver empire was a blight upon the land in every sense of the term. However I assure you the Labor Guild is quite different. Every single pony under my guild’s employ is an indentured servant under a legal and binding contract to serve as adaptable labor for any number of needed business ventures until such time as their contract is paid up. We offer numerous means to shorten their contract terms via performing additional work shifts, performance bonuses, or volunteering to help defend everypony’s home in Skull City by becoming part of the Volunteer Enforcer Corps. While not ‘paid’ per se, our employees are not slaves, but contracted laborers. We provide for their training in various vocations, ensure they have adequate room and board, and that they receive medical care when needed. The average Labor Guild laborer is significantly better off than anypony who had the misfortune to live as a slave under Red Eye’s order.”

I had to stop myself from growling as I heard Begonia talk. It was an utter load of gecko shit, but she spoke it with such eloquent conviction I would’ve believed it if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes how the Labor Guild treated its slaves. The rational part of my mind kept kicking my brain, telling me to keep my mouth shut, but it wasn’t easy. With every word Begonia spoke I could only remember seeing the miserable slaves that I’d seen Crossfire and her team escort to Saddlespring all those weeks ago. How many had died underneath those Ruins? Had the Labor Guild looked after their well being then!? I remembered Shale, how desperate she’d been for freedom, sold to the Guild as a foal and barely knowing any other life than their hard labor until she’d died saving me and my friends.

Could I just let Begonia spout that crap without saying anything? Yet... if I did, wouldn’t I be jeopardizing the peace talks? How many ponies, thousands of them, would benefit from the alliance that might come about as a result of these talks? If I risked that, if I derailed this whole conversation because of my anger, I’d be throwing countless lives to the proverbial wolves. Not to mention that if the Labor Guild as ever going to be changed or confronted, it needed to happen via negotiations exactly like this. I couldn’t just personally go to Skull City and start cutting down the entire Labor Guild, and even if I could... would it be right? As horrible as it was, a lot of ponies depended on that guild, along with all the others, to keep things running in Skull City. Change, if it was to come, might happen faster at the edge of a spear or barrel of a gun, but would the bloodbath that resulted be worse than waiting to do it the slow, peaceful way?

I didn’t know if it meant I was a coward, or if I’d grown more mature, that I managed to keep my mouth shut and wait. That as much as I hated the Labor Guild and what it did, I wasn’t about to throw away the value of these peace talks to satisfy my outrage.

Shale, I don’t know if this is right or wrong... what would you have told me to do, I wonder? What would you have wanted?

Perhaps I shouldn’t have worried so much, for it seemed Velvet Remedy was several steps ahead of me and Begonia both, “I am pleased to hear that you take the well being of your... employees, so seriously. That being the case I’m certain you’d have no objection to the Followers of the Apocalypse setting up aid stations at various Labor Guild operations, yes? If you are unaware, the Followers are a rather large organization of volunteers here in the NCR who dedicate themselves to traveling out into the world to provide food, medical aid, and various forms of other succor to those in need. I’m sure they’d very much enjoy serving the needs of your laborers, and would ensure that your assertions of looking to their well being are... accurate. And of course if there are inconsistencies, I’m certain those could be corrected swiftly, couldn’t they?”

Begonia smiled, but her eyes had a cold flash of anger in them. If Velvet Remedy cared at all, she didn’t show it, and merely returned a thin and steady smile that also didn’t touch her eyes. I could almost see sparks leaping between the two mares. Begonia eventually nodded, saying, “I would be honored to allow these Followers set up aid stations. I’m sure they’ll find my guild’s operations to all be as I’ve described them. If there are... instances of inadequate care, they may be due to lower level managers being overzealous in their desire to meet quotas. Any such instances will be dealt with, I assure you.”

Somehow I felt as if Begonia wasn’t giving up her guild’s practices of forced labor so easily, and thus far there’d been no mention of the bomb collars that all of the Labor Guild’s slaves were forced to wear, but I wouldn't be shocked if Begonia had some sort of back up plan for that. Regardless, with that point cleared up for the time being the negotiations moved on to other matters.

First, Princess Purity spoke on the matter of the recent war with Skull City that happened a number of years back. Technically both groups had been under a cease-fire order without there being an official end to the war, but the Protectorate was willing to put a permanent peace agreement on the table under the condition that Skull City agree to a trade deal in which Protectorate ore could be traded for food from both Skull City and the NCR. Apparently food was the commodity the Protectorate was shortest on, despite having several small patches of farmable land, but they had more than enough ore mines in the mountains between them and Skull City. The war itself had started over some sort of confusion over seizure of farmlands, but Purity was willing to put that matter to rest as long as she could ensure her people were fed.

I lost a little track of the talks from there. Not only was I focused on keeping alert for possible dangers, but the details of the talks started to seriously go over my head. Numbers of crop yields, discussion of trade value on different ores, or how Skull City’s Mechanics Guild could offer machine parts that the NCR’s own industrial base in Fillydelphia lacked, all of these were minute details that just made my eyes glaze over. Its not that I didn't care, its just that much of this talk went way over my head. Like when the representatives of the Mechanics Guild started talking about the NCR's severe lack of stable energy and the possibility of repairing old pre-war power plants I just couldn't get my head wrapped around the details. I paid a little more attention when Knobs was called down to the table to speak on behalf of the Skull Guild, with Star Soul no longer there to do so herself. The nervous ghoul-mare had slowly wheeled herself to the front of the table to speak in a nervous but still exuberant voice on the methods of the Skull Guild, using magic and alchemy to tame the many feral ghouls in the Wasteland around the city to serve the people of Skull City.

This also led to questions concerning the reason Star Soul had gone missing, and Knobs, along with several others including Whiteheart himself, gave testimony as to the pirate attack upon the Sweet Candy. President Grimfeathers only said that if there was to be a rescue attempt, it’d have to come after the treaty was signed, and then she’d be open to ideas on a joint operation to deal with the pirates.

It was a bit of a sour note to end the day’s talks on, but after five hours of talking it seemed like things were moving along smoothly, and President Grimfeathers adjourned the meeting for that day amid a series of hoof shakes, and hopeful smiles. Maybe they’d really do it. Whatever bumps in the road were to come, it could just be that I was witnessing the start of a long term alliance between the Wasteland’s biggest powers.

It was us Drifter’s job to escort the delegates back to the hotel, so Arcaidia, B.B, LIL-E and I waited alongside Applegate for the Skull City delegates to gather to leave. Whiteheart came up to use, alongside Knobs, looking at us with an appreciative smile.

“Fine work today, but the job is only half done, my Drifters,” said Whiteheart, “The talks may be done for today, but we have another appearance to put in tonight. At eight o’clock, which should be in about three hours, there will be a dinner and dance at this building, and I do expect all of you to attend.”

“Uh, just gonna point out that we ain’t technically all Drifters here,” said B.B, “An’ I ain’t exactly in a partyin’ mood, Mr. Whiteheart.”

He glanced at her, but before he could say anything Arcaidia leaned in to B.B and whispered something I couldn’t make out, but caused B.B’s face to flush slightly red. “Then again, guess I could use the excuse ta unwind.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Whiteheart and as we began to escort him and the other delegates out of the building, Knobs came up beside me, her wheeled hind legs squeaking.

“Whew, that was pretty nerve wracking. I’ve never had to talk in front of so many ponies before.”

“Sounded like you did pretty good to me,” I said, to which Knobs nodded gratefully, then turned her eyes to Arcaidia.

“Oh, how are you doing with the replacement limb there? Still giving you trouble?”

Arcaidia tossed her mane a bit, holding her head high, and waggled the metal peg leg as she trotted along, “Is not always easy to step right. Feels like weight is off, but am managing. Have not yet galloped much. Hope not to trip on face if that happen. Hope not to trip at dance, tonight, either.”

Knobs winked and gave Arcaidia a wide, toothy smile, “Well if you want once I’m done checking on Blasting Cap at the hotel I can help you practice! I know a lot about moving with a fake leg, so I bet I can show you a few tricks to help get used to it.”

Arcaidia returned Knobs’ smile with a warm one of her own, “I like that, yes.”

I found myself gulping in a slight fit of nerves, “Are, uh, all of us going to be expected to dance at this party?”

Arcaidia turned a wide eyed, innocent look to me, “Why ask, ren solva? Dancing is fun!”

“Y-yeah, if you don’t trip over your own tail,” I muttered, recalling memories from back home. My tribe generally made it a point to find an excuse to have a celebration around once a month, whether due to a birth, or a bonding ceremony, or some young one’s first hunt, or just a good hunt. Dancing was an inevitable part of such celebrations, and early in my youth I discovered that I had about as much talent for dancing as I did for doing complex surgery. In short, any such attempts were complete messes of tangled limbs and possibility for internal injury.

Knobs let out a laugh, but not a mocking one, just a rather bubbly one of encouraging amusement, “It’s okay Longwalk, I have wheels for legs so its not like I’m going to be cutting an expert rug out there. Just relax and sort of shake around a bit in a vaguely dance-like pattern, and we’ll both have fun looking silly together.”

Arcaidia nodded firmly, “Yes, ren solva, we just have fun. Not enough fun in our lives of late, so we make time for it, yes?”

“I suppose so,” I said, rubbing the back of my head, not entirely convinced it was a good idea, but it was hard to say no to the combined power of Arcaidia and Knobs. I suppose with so much danger and doom hanging over our heads it might not be bad to spend at least one night cutting loose and unwinding. Maybe Binge would want to dance? If she wasn’t busy going after any available booze. Then again, maybe a party was just what might pick her mood back up?

The return to Tenpony Tower was swift and without incident, the Skull City and Protectorate delegation dispersing to their hotel rooms swiftly, most of them to prepare for the evening's upcoming festivities. I spotted Crossfire and Shard in the tower’s main entry, along with Hawkeye and his team of Drifters. Hawkeye saw us approaching and with a hard look turned away and stalked off into the deeper corridors of the tower.

“What’s his problem?” I asked as my friends and I came up to Crossfire, Knobs wheeling along behind us.

“Hawkeye?” Crossfire said, shrugging her shoulders and making a small scoffing noise, “Beats me, and don’t really care. Guy’s been pissy since day one of this job. As long as he doesn’t let it get in the way of the payday, I could care less what kind of mood he’s in.”

“C’mon Crossfire, he’s your comrade, right?” said Knobs, “You should buy him a drink or something. Help him relax.”

Crossfire sighed, “I’ll... take it under advisement. Be plenty of drink at this party tonight. Ugh, at least I won’t have to wear a damn dress.”

“I still think you should. You'd look amazing in the right dress,” Knobs said, looking crestfallen, to which Crossfire winced slightly.

“Whiteheart still wants one team on security, even at the party, and I volunteered me and Shard for the job. We’re still stuck wearing something formal looking, but we’ll still be in full gear.”

Knobs seemed to consider this, then said, “So technically you could wear a dress, you’d just need to have your gun on hoof?”

To this Crossfire looked a bit panicked, backing up a startled step, tail flicking, eyes wide, “Uhhh... kind of?”

Shard snickered, “Oh, boss, you shouldn't have said that.”

With hopeful noise and a shining look in her eyes, Knobs stepped towards Crossfire and pouted, “So you'll reconsider the dress? Please?” She put in just the right amount of tail wagging, and fluttered her eyes, "...For me?"

Crossfire gave me a pleading look, but I just held up a hoof and said, “Don’t look at me. You’re on your own. Near as I can tell I’m slated to get stuck in a penguin suit, whatever that is, and dance at the very real risk of breaking my neck. I’ve got no help for you.”

Crossfire blew out a neighing noise of resignation, eyeing Knobs flatly, but with a relenting nod, “As long as it’s not something too ridiculous, then fine, I guess I’ll...” she made a look as if she was throwing up a bit, “wear a dress.”

Seeing that look on her face was more than enough to lift my spirits. What? If others could have fun at my expense it was high time I got to feel some amusement at the discomfort of somepony, especially if that somepony was Crossfire. I did manage not to laugh, though, and instead just grinned at Crossfire as she let herself get dragged off by a squeeing Knobs, presumably to go check on Blasting Cap and then dragging that poor filly into the dress seeking shopping excursion Knobs had planned. Crossfire gave me a withering stare in return, and Shard did his best to hide his own amusement behind his bandanna mask.

My steps were a bit lighter as my friends and I exited the elevator on the floor of our hotel room, but my light mood vanished as I opened the door and found the room in complete disarray.

“What the...?” I stepped into the room, feeling a clammy, sickly feeling creeping up my spine as I saw the room’s table overturned, one of the chairs broken, several knives I recognized as Binge’s embedded in the wall, and several smears of blood both on the floor and wall.

Arcaidia saw it and let out a sharp breath, “Dis mas! What happen here!?”

“Binge!” I called, looking around with frantic eyes, quickly checking around and under the beds, but she wasn’t there. Even the restroom was empty.

LIL-E floated towards the window, which was slightly ajar, “This was opened up from the inside...”

“Is she...?” I began to ask, fearing the answer, but LIL-E just swiveled in the equivalent of a head shake.

“No body at the bottom, and if she had jumped I think we would’ve seen something on the way in.”

B.B, frozen at the door, had her nose flaring as she sniffed the air, “No... shit, no, I’m such a bucking idiot!”

She’d completely lost her accent again and I turned to look at her with fearful eyes, “B.B, what is it? Do you know who did this!?”

“Scythe! That bastard, his scent is all over this room along with Binges. He must have taken her. Why didn’t I think things through better!?”

“What do you mean? How could he have done this!?” I was near shouting, “I thought that Accord thing meant he couldn't hurt anypony!”

“Innocents... dammit all, Long, the exact words I had him swear by was he couldn’t harm innocent ponies while he was in this country,” B.B said, her voice tight with self reproach as she shook her head regretfully, “I’m sorry. I was careless. Too long not dealing with my treacherous Family, I should have thought of that loophole. Binge, she’s pretty damn far from innocent, so by the word of the blood oath, she’s fair game to him.”

“Longwalk,” Arcaidia said, standing at the smaller side table between the two beds. She was levitating up a note that had been sitting there. “Read this.”

I looked at the note, which was written in blood... probably Binge’s blood, and swallowed past a suddenly very dry mouth. The script was elegant, clean, and with the kind of flare that I felt somehow fit a narcissist like Scythe.

”If you would like to see your rather less than innocent friend alive and well, the ponies named Longwalk and Arcaidia, and the robot designated as LIL-E shall come alone to this mare’s old homestead. Arbu, I believe the place is called. Abandoned, still, after all these years. I’d advise against alerting the authorities as to what’s happened, as by the word of Blood Bloom’s oath that would violate her word and have the appropriately dire consequences. And no tricks, Blood Bloom. This is a game for your friends and I to play. You stay on the sidelines. If I so much as catch a whiff of your scent, I’ll end the Raider mare’s life. Consider this a taste of things to come, if you continue to resist the will of the Mistress.

Now, Longwalk, Arcaidia, LIL-E, I eagerly await your arrival at Arbu, as I know Miss Binge must also be quite eager to show you around her hometown. Ah, the scars of the past cut so deep. I think you’ll find our game an enlightening one. Do be quick, however, as I am starting to get ever so hungry, and I do not know if I’ll have the patience to wait long before making your companion my evening meal.

-Cordially, Scythe.

I read the note twice, just to make sure I got it all. I could all but hear the bastard’s smarmy, smug voice in each perfectly curved letter written in my friend’s blood. I felt my hooves shaking with a heady mix of cold fear and piping hot rage as I set the note down and emphatically growled, “Sunuvafuckingbitch!”

Now, I’m not expert on... well, pretty much anything; but least of all the intricacies of international law and politics. I was pretty sure if I took this to any level of local authority it’d raise questions that would swiftly land me and my friends in a pile of steaming shit with the NCR. What was that? You brought a psychotic raving, bloodsucking unicorn into our borders, because he’s chasing his estranged reformed sister, and he’s ponynapped your ex-Raider not-marefriend? Why sure we’ll help, and not even ask how or why that mess got started in the first place. Not to mention it’d probably trigger that stupid blood oath thing on B.B and start killing her in an excruciating manner. Something I’d rather avoid.

So that meant we were dealing with Scythe on our own. That was fine by me. The things I wanted to do to him right then didn’t need an audience. I mean, yes, I have this thing about avoiding unneeded killing. Recent experience notwithstanding I was generally pretty good about not making a trail of corpses wherever I went.

That being said, Scythe had just risen on my threat gauge from “kind of annoying jerk” to “just how much of Gramzanber can I fit down his throat without him immediately dying?”

... huh, the murderous feeling in my gut was probably a fairly solid indicator as to what my feelings towards Binge really were, but I wasn’t thinking terribly straight at the time. All I knew was that whatever ill-defined method I had for estimating threats that I could safely take down without lethal force and which ones needed to be impaled violently on my glowing space spear had identified Scythe as somepony that fell more closely to the later category than the former.

“B.B, do what you can to clean up here,” I said, already turning for the door, “If anypony asks, Binge just got a little too drunk and wild and is sleeping it off in the tub.”

B.B gave me a look somewhere between the realms of understanding and deep concern, “Long, it's a trap. Ya know he’s gonna be ready fer ya’ll. An’ Binge, she... she might not even still be alive.”

I clenched my jaw, sucking in a breath, my heart scrambling like a freaked out gecko in my chest. My mind's eye was being a total dick and showing me images of a still, unmoving Binge, her eyes empty of any lively spark. My voice was tight and clipped. “That thought had crossed my mind. I’m going anyway.”

“I... figured ya’d say that,” said B.B, taking a deep breath, “I’ll do what I can ta keep things under wraps here. Ya’ll, be careful. Avoid direct eye contact an’ don’t let him get a’ taste of yer blood. He'll try ta mess wit yer heads, an' back it up wit illusions. ”

Arcaidia, her eyes hardened to shards of silver ice, had already joined me at the door, her saddlebag slung over one shoulder and her starblaster holstered on the other. “We be careful, ren bruhir. You know this pony well, yes? How we best fight him?"

B.B bit her lower lip, sucking in a breath, "Its been long 'nough since last time I saw him in action that I can't rightly say what new trick's he might have, especially considerin' he's got an Odessa ARM ta play wit. His magic is all 'bout weavin' illusions, so don't trust nothin' ya see or hear. He's specializes in mind manipulation. Ya'll feel it if he stars tryin' ta root 'round in yer skulls, but ya can resist as long as ya stay focused." She sucked in a breath and shuddered, "But if he gets a' taste o' yer blood, its over. He can use the blood ta forge a bond 'tween him and his victims that make it impossible to fight against his mind powers."

She looked at me then, fearful and serious at the same time, and not a small hint of sympathy, "Which is why ya gotta be prepared Longwalk, in case o' the worst. Even if Binge is alive, she might not be... herself, anymore. Not if Scythe's gotten in ta her head."

I closed my eyes and nodded slowly, "I can't do anything until we face him, which is why I'm going now." It was hard to keep a certain manic note of desperation out of my voice and I was ready to start literally carving holes in the floor just to get out of Tenpony Tower faster.

Arcaidia gave me a look and said, "But, Longwalk, where we go? I never hear of this Arbu before.”

I had, but only because of the dream I’d witnessed in Binge’s mind. I knew it was an old settlement, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it was in the New Canterlot Republic, or rather had been. It couldn’t be far, however, otherwise Scythe would never had told us to meet him there. It had to be somewhere in or near Manehattan. I figured if I asked some locals I could get directions.

Then LIL-E solved the issue by simply stating, “I know where Arbu is.”

Her mechanical voice held a strange note of grim finality to it as she floated out the door, “Follow me, I’ll take us there. It’s not far.”

I followed LIL-E out the door, while Arcaidia gave B.B a final, quick hug before following me. I saw B.B watching us go with fearful and guilty eyes. I just gave her a shake of my head, wanting to tell her this wasn’t her fault. I was the one who told Binge to stay behind at the hotel, alone. I should have realized there’d be danger, but being in the NCR had made me drop my guard. The general peaceful air of the country, and the friendly bustle of Manehattan, had made me forget that my friends and I were targets of more than one group that wanted to do us harm.

Well, no point in doing anything other than charge face first into the problem and smash it apart, hoping to come out the other end with myself and those I cared about intact.

Footnote: 50% to next level!

Author's Note

Hello folks and thank you all for coming, hope the wait wasn't too long for this chapter. Been a rather busy holiday season for me. Anyway the plot thickens here in the NCR and several plot threads from the past rear their heads, including the Golem set free all the way back in Saddlespring and B.B's ties to the Family coming to finally bite the party in the collective rear, while Binge has her own past issues to face, a home long gone and its many ghosts.

As some of you might have picked up on, I've kept up the tradition of using song titles from the various Wild Arms game soundtracks for chapter titles, each linked to appropriate piece of music. In this case I deviate, however, as The New Canterlot Republic clearly isn't a Wild Arms song, but it is linked to one that is very special to me, the "Town" theme of Wild Arms 1. To me its the quintessential rpg town theme. I've listened to it countless hundreds of times. Its my zen music. What I put on when I'm feeling down and out, tired, or frustrated. it always perks me back up, makes me think of hope. Its what the NCR is supposed to be, post Sunshine and Rainbows. Not perfect, but a beacon of hope in a still harsh world. When I first started this story so long ago, this was one of the few chapters I knew what song I was going to use for, even if I couldn't just call the chapter "Town" but would have to name it something else.

Anyway, I thank you all for reading, and as always give my sincerest thanks to those that have helped me get this far, and hopefully all the way to the end. Ref, Doomande, thank you both.

'Till next time, folks.

Chapter 32: Healing the Scar

Chapter 32: Healing the Scar

I didn’t know what to expect, being pulled soul-first into the mind of Binge. My senses were scattered at first, the pain from the slash across my face spreading over me along with the disorienting sensation of being spun head over hooves down a cold, swirling drain. Thankfully my senses regained their balance quickly, if harshly, as I fell face first onto a flat, dusty surface. Spitting out dirt and groaning I rolled onto my back and looked around. Then I looked up. And up. And up.

“Binge, if we survive this, we’re having a talk about your state of mind.”

I was looking upon a tower monument to crazy. It was Arbu, in a sense. Rather, I was seeing a monolithic fortress tower that was using Arbu as its basis, alongside a wide string of mad imagery. A wide, infinite and dark desert spread around me, like the Wasteland given an endless plane to grow upon. The sky loomed smoggy and gray above, lanced by flashes of sickly green balefire born flame and lightning. Before me was Arbu, but grown large and misshapen, its walls and buildings twisted together in a growing spire of interlaced architecture that quickly ceased to resemble a humble settlement and instead melded into a towering bastion. The walls were illuminated by shifting flickers of hungry orange and red light, as if fires still burned unseen inside the fortress walls. The corners of the fortress bulged out in the distorted shape of a huge grinning face painted in streaks of red blood that still dripped. I knew that leering visage with its wide and mad grin, its pupiless red eyes staring down at me.

Mr. Happy. Binge’s mind was guarded by the huge, spotlessly peering face of the bloody sock puppet Binge had kept since I’d first known her, like some grotesque yet somehow comical gargoyle.

Higher up, beyond the strangely twisted amalgam of distorted building parts, there was a single spire that went up towards the dark sky. Was that were Binge was? Would I have to climb up the entire fortress, then that spire, just to reach her? How much time did I even have, in this mental landscape?

I do not know the exact limits on your time here. said Gramzanber suddenly, nearly making me jump out of my fur. But I can estimate that roughly every twelve hundred and ninety six seconds in this mentally linked space equals one second of time passing in ‘real space’. Even so, I would suggest taking action swiftly.

“Gram, you’re here?” I looked around, then blinked as the ARM glittered into existence across my back, snug in its sheath. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s one piece of good news.”

Not the only piece, as I detect another mind made the link here with us.

Before I would question what he meant by that I heard hoofsteps behind me and I turned to see Arcaidia trotting up to me, her face alight with curiosity but also stony resolve, which lit up with a clear hint of eased tension as she saw me.

“Ren solva, you are alright. I saw...” her expression darkened with fear as she shook her head. “I saw you get hurt. Tried to grab you with magic, then felt my brain head get zapped by swirly thoughts. Now I am here.” Arcadia looked at the massive, bizzare tower fortress and blinked. “Where is here?”

“Binge’s mind.” I said, gulping slightly as I looked at the imposing edifice before us. “Apparently she’s got some issues.”

Arcaidia’s eyebrow might as well have flown off her face, given how high she raised it. I managed a disarming smile, although I was more than a little daunted by the task in front of us. “Look, Gramzanber told me he could link me with Binge’s mind, and by doing so I might be able to break Scythe’s control on her. I didn’t know anypony else was going to get dragged in with me.”

“Better that I did, so somepony can keep eye on you, ren solva.” Arcaidia said, silver tail thrashing behind her as she scuffed her hooves on the ground and eyed the front of Binge’s mind fortress with a dangerous gleam. “Understand I want shivol bir to be safe too. Came with you this far, Longwalk, I not abandon you now.” She paused, a light smirk gracing her face, “Still, next time we find saner mind to jump into, maybe?”

“I’d be just as fine not having to do crazy mind shenanigans at all in the future.” I said, looking over the front of the fortress until I spotted the entrance. It was a tall, narrow gate, bent like a tree under a heavy wind. Its warped, wooden surface was painted a faded, rusty red that I suspected would more and more resemble blood the closer we got. I saw no other ponies around, or strange wraith-like apparitions, but I had the distinct and pointedly cold feeling of being watched. I didn’t think we were at all alone.

As Arcaidia and I trotted towards the fortress gate I asked Gramzanber, “Hey, Gram, can you sense anything about Binge’s mind? Any information that might make this easier?”

Arcaidia glanced at me questioningly. “You talk to ARM here too?”

When Gramzanber’s voice spoke I saw Arcaidia react to it as well, making it clear that in this mental space she could hear him too.

Hello Specialist Luminasario. Or do you prefer Arcaidia? I recall your extreme preference for formal titles during introductions and this is our first time speaking to each other.

Arcaidia blinked several times rapidly, then smiled brightly. “Arcaidia is fine. I am glad to speak with you ARM Gramzanber. You have done well in mission to protect your wielder, for which you have many of thanks.”

Protecting Longwalk has been a fulfilling if equally difficult task, Arcaidia, and I will continue to do so until my functions cease, or his do. Now, as to your question, Longwalk; I cannot tell you anything definitive concerning Binge’s mental layout. I am maintaining the connection and can communicate with you easily enough, but my senses cannot pierce deeper than your own presence. I barely sensed Arcaidia’s location, and only because she was close and approaching. What is within that tower I cannot guess. My only recommendation is to be careful of everything you see. I can verify that Arcaidia is indeed herself, her mind pulled through her magic that linked with you, but anything else you may see is suspect. Even if you see Binge do not assume it is her, or at least, the whole of her. In all likelihood her mind is fragmented here, with different aspects active. Also, be careful of using violence. Damaging any part of Binge’s mind could damage her in permanent ways. The same applies to you.

“So, just another incredibly simple situation that doesn’t put us under any pressure at all.” I chuckled despite my strained voice, “Well, I knew it was going to be rough going in. What do you say Arcaidia, you ready to save Binge’s mind?”

“No, but I’ll do it anyway.” Arcaidia said with a helpless laugh and wink, showing she was just as nervous as I was, but she was going to hang in there to the bitter end, staying by my side. Couldn’t stop myself from halting a moment to give her a big, crushing hug.

“You’re the best, you know that?”

Honestly, if I wasn’t already incredibly confused about my feelings for Binge, and if she didn’t remind me of the little sister I never had, I could easily fall in love with Arcaidia’s smug, satisfied smirk.

“It is something I could hear more of. Some other time. When not in mortal danger. Come, we save crazy friend from fortress of madness now.”

I would suggest hurrying your pace. said Gramzanber, Not only is Scythe a present threat here, but I detect multiple spirit energies here that are separate from Binge’s mind. I suspect the wraiths possessing her are also here and will be just as dangerous in this mental landscape as they are in the physical realm.

“Got it, let’s get our hooves shaking then.” I told Gramzanber, then glanced at Arcaidia, who gave me an encouraging nod as we picked up our pace and reached the massive front gates reaching up the fortress walls. I stood in front of the thick wood doors, ten times my height, and started to reach out a hoof to try pressing on them, when the twin wooden gates started to open on their own with creaking groans that almost drowned out the voices beyond them.

In a matter of a seconds a vomitous wave of gibbering voices, all in Binge’s high and strained peal, flooded out of the gates at me and Arcaidia.

“Splatter the pretty guts everywhere, heheh!”

“Eat the eyes, I want the eyes! They’re the juiciest!”

“The heart, cut it out, feel it beat and bleed, yay!”

“Smash the balls into shiny red paste and lick it up!”

And those were just the more mild quotes my ears could cherry pick out of the tide of screaming madness that came boiling out of the gates at me and Arcaidia, our eyes both equally wide and ears wilted in mutual terror at what was coming at us.

A veritable army of Binges had been waiting behind the gates in the midst of some vast, cavernous entry hall. I caught sight of bonfires within and huge, rust metal torches plastered across blood stained walls, but that was all the detail I could make out before the room beyond the gates belched forth several dozen Binges like a swarm of ants rushing from the mouth of a corpse.

They all had Binge’s basic look. The matted, heavily scarred hide that was near as much pink scar tissue as dull green fur. The wild rat’s nest mane, poofy where it wasn’t caked with filth and frizz, sporting all manner of hidden sharp objects braided in. Most of all the eyes were unmistakably Binge’s, a blue so bright it may as well be azure fire. And each set of eyes carried the wild, pinprick pupiled look of madness.

However that was where the similarities to the Binge I knew ended. These Binge’s were all clad in the classic menagerie of dead, stitched hide leather and rusted spiked metal plates of Raiders. In all styles and configurations, it was like seeing a Raider horde descend towards me, only if every blood coated, filth stained, spike wearing madmare was replaced with a version of Binge. Each one carried some sharp implement of death, mostly different knives, but a few favored spiked bats or heavier, cleaver-like weapons.

There was nothing I could do but quickly draw Gramzanber in a shining blaze of speed, rearing up onto my hind hooves to brace myself beside Arcaidia, who lacking any of her usual equipment instead lit up her horn in a cold blue flash.

The first one to fling herself at me was retching out a insane cackle while slashing with an already blood soaked butcher’s knife that judging from the wounds already covering her fetlocks I think was her own blood. I slapped that Binge aside with one hefty swing of my fore hooves, smashing her into several others like a big green bowling ball. I spun, pivoting on my hind legs as I’d been taught, evading a giggling Binge that went for the back of my legs with a hook shaped blade. Kicking that Binge across the face I felt a burning hot pain lance my side as another Binge, licking blood off her lips, had bitten me with what looked like filed down teeth.

Arcaidia had thrown a blast of freezing cold across the ground in front of her, icing up the legs of half a dozen maddened Binges, who all howled like braying wolves as their progress was halted. Other Binges surged around their frozen comrades and went for Arcaidia with deadly light in their eyes. Arcaidia refused to back down, holding her head high as she reared up for a moment, then slammed her horn towards the ground and unleashed a flowing wall of ice that scattered yet more Binges. Still, more and more of the slobbering, cackling copies of our disturbed friend came rushing from the gates, and despite my best effort to clobber and bluntly beat aside every madly laughing Binge I saw, and Arcaidia’s hefty and liberal explosions of icy prowess... we were quickly surrounded by no less than a hundred Binges, all giggling and cackling for our blood.

In moments I felt grimy hooves snaking around my hind legs, pulling me off balance. I heard Arcaidia yelp out in pain as she too was tackled off her hooves. I was yanked to the ground, pinned by rank smelling bodies, scratched by sharp hooves and knives as I was held down, spread eagle, with dozens of crazy faces leering down at me with unrestrained bloodlust. Arcaidia’s cries suggested she was in similar dire straits.

Pinned or not, I still held Gramzanber, and was about ready to trigger an Impulse right then and there, regardless of the risk of injuring myself, when a voice bellowed out.

“Bring them to me! Don’t rip them up too badly yet! I want to see their faces myself! Do it! Do it! Do it! Bring them! Hehehehe!”

It was also Binge’s voice, just like they all had, but a bit louder and more commanding, tinged with high strung tension as if this Binge was even more unhinged than the one’s holding me down, one of them with a rusty knife centimeters from my eye, although that held my attention less than the knife coldly pressed against my... er... lower parts.

Almost like a flock of disappointed foals the Binges holding me and Arcaidia all collectively groaned and with various profanity laden complaints on their lips they started to haul me and Arcaidia to our hooves, enough weapons pressed to our vulnerable pony flesh to keep both of us firmly from considering trying anything. I saw Arcaidia flash a look my way that was somewhere between fearfully worried and royally pissed off, making her eyes look like liquid silver. I don’t think either of us expected to get mobbed by an army of Binges, right off the bat.

“G-Gram, question,” I managed to grunt out while being roughly shoved and jostled by a field of pointy knives into the vast cavernous entry hall of the fortress, “What would happen if I had to kill any of these, uh, copy Binges?”

My best estimate is that the effect on her psyche would be minimal. These mental constructs, like everything else here, is representative of different aspects of her mental state. Large scale damage to key objects or beings here may cause equally large scale damage, but these ravenous, violent examples of her personality may be relatively expendable. Gramzanber said, having been taken from my grip and held aloft like a prize by one of the Binges parading me and Arcaidia through the gigantic main hall.

“Relatively?” I asked, wincing as one Binge cut her knife across my cheek and shouted at me.

“Stop talking unless we ask you to scream in that yummy voice, meat stick!”

...Relatively. Gram replied dryly. He’d been yanked from my hooves by the ravenous Binge mob, and I could see a pack of them off to the side fighting over who’d get to carry the spear. A fight that very quickly got unpleasantly bloody as one Binge used Gramzanber to skewer another in a bloody display. I would not risk yours or Arcaidia’s life on trying to keep these particular manifestations of Miss Binge’s psyche alive. If you see an opening, take it. I remain a part of you, so you can summon me to your side with a thought... but I suggest waiting for the best moment to capitalize on that fact.

Sound advice, and advice that was looking more and more viable as I took in more of our surroundings. It was as if somepony had cobbled together a creeping mold consisting of every Raider dwelling the Wasteland could spit out and spread it like congealing blood over the stone belly of the fortress. The camps of stitched hide tents were cloistered around roaring bonfires that licked the air and filled it with the thick scent of burning flesh, leaving me little to wonder about what might be roasting over those fires.

Gaggles of Binges lent their laughing, cracking voices to the air of sick madness that pervaded the space, and any glance to the left or right greeted my eyes with visions of Binges doing horrible acts of violence to themselves, as if it were all some twisted party. I could all but choke on the combined smell of blood, vomit, and feces. Clearly whatever this part of Binge was didn’t believe in anything resembling hygiene. Then again, Binge rarely displayed any interest in hygiene so no surprise there.

Still, what was this? Had Binge just taken every Raider inspired impulse she ever felt and shoved it into one place? I knew the mare I’d traveled with all this time had more to her than this madhouse display. Was this what she kept leashed inside her mind, or had Scythe’s influence pulled more of this side of her to the surface and then amplified it?

My musings were cut roughly short as the Binges slammed me down atop some sort of table, cold, metal, and coated with rust and old caked viscera. They kept me held down, two per limb, while I saw Arcaidia given similar treatment on another metal stable directly down from me. Her horn was bright with magical energy, but she hadn’t unleashed it yet, likely due to the multiple knives poised at her throat. She chanced turning her head just enough to look at me with a questioning gaze. I could only gulp and give her an encouraging nod.

Not that I had a plan yet, but I was working on it. This was a mental space, after all, not a physical one. I’d learned in my confrontation with Moa Gault that enough focused thought and will could change the nature of things in places like this. Granted we were in Binge’s mind, so her will held dominance, but in theory Arcaidia and I weren’t limited by our physical abilities here.

Still, there were a lot of violent Binges around us, so whatever we came up with needed to be big.

My thoughts on what that could be were forestalled by a ringing scrape of something large and metal and a hacking, giggling laugh that echoed from somewhere to my left, where the back of the fortress hall was.

“Hoohoohehe, its so nice to have you here squirming and so tenderly helpless bucky!”

The crowd of Binges parted ways to allow one particular Binge through. She shared little with the Binge I knew besides basic appearance, her mane so heavily worked through with blades and razors it looked like she had more metal up there than hair. Her eyes had a shaking, bloodshot quality to them, like her blood was swimming with some high octane drug. She wore a form hugging set of bloody leathers that dangled dozens of sheaths for knives of every size and description, but the largest was bouncing up and down in one of her hooves, occasionally held to scrape along a sharpening stone attached to her right shoulder.

“Um, hi?” I said, licking my lips. “That you, Binge, or am I just talking to another weird part of your brain?”

As casually as one flicks a card onto the playing table Binge, or rather Raider Binge as I was naming this one, tossed her large knife right between my outstretched legs, almost nicking some important parts of me down there. Before I was done staring goggle eyed at that Raider Binge was right next to the table I was held down on, running a hoof clad in sharp, bladed bracers over my stomach, giving it shallow but painful cuts.

“Am I Binge?” she mimic in a mocking tone, then hacked out another bitter laugh. “More Binge than any of the other bitches in the upper levels. They keep me down here like I’m somehow the lesser one, but the balls shrinking truth is I’m the most real Binge here! I’m the one who kept us alive all these years! I’m the one who did every sick, twisted, fucked up-” every word was punctuated with a harsh cut across some part of my body, the bladed bracer ripping bleeding cuts in my limbs, my chest, and a trio of red marks across my face, “-and necessary thing she’s ever had to do! Her survival is all thanks to me! And what do I get? Shoved down here like trash, as if anything she built up wasn’t going to have a foundation built on corpses.”

Angry mutterings rolled through the ocean of Raider Binge’s like a wave, a murmuring tide of rage. The leader seemed to soak it all up, sucking in a breath and letting out a purring growl. “We’ve always been here, bucky. Little Longykins. Did you know how often, when she looked at you, she dreamed about driving a blade into your ribs? Right here-” she touched her knife to my side, pressing the sharp, rusted point into my flesh until blood welled up. “-In and under, right until she could feel your heart squirming underneath?”

She leaned over me, teeth scraping across my throat as she continued to purr in a cold, deadly fashion. “Or how about the times she imagined ripping your throat out, just to taste the blood? After strapping you down and cutting on you for awhile.”

I took a deep breath, shuddering, but kept my voice at least a little steady. “You think I don’t know that Binge still has thoughts like that? I get it. She was a Raider, it’d be naive to assume this stuff wasn’t still in her head.”

“Not was a Raider, shitstain, is Raider!” the phantom of Binge’s Raider nature roared in my face, dragging her knife across my chest, welling up more blood. “She can’t stop being this! No matter how high she tries to build this tower, it’ll all come crashing right back down. Down to our level!”

She tittered, licking the blood from my chest. “But once we get rid of you, she won’t have anything to hold onto to. I’ll be in charge again, just like it should’ve always been. Should’ve always stayed.”

Raider Binge reared, up poising her knife to drive right down towards my stomach, but in that moment I focused my thoughts, my willpower, and forced them out into the mindscape around me. The first thing that happened was that Gramzanber vanished from where he’d been getting used as an oversized playing dart in one end of the room, being tossed at one unfortunate Binge being used as the dart board, and in a flash of light appeared in my waiting mouth. With a hard twist of my head I cut the knife right out of Raider Binge’s hoof, severing the front part of the limb right along with it.

As she howled the next thing that happened was that both metal tables Arcaidia and I were held down on shot upwards upon rising pillars of stone, similar to the pillar I’d created in my battle with Moa Gault. The Binges holding us down were scattered, tossed aside by the rising pillars. Only one remained doggedly dangling from Arcaidia’s table, but she lanced that Binge in the face with a shard of ice that sent the Binge flying off, screaming. Even though I knew she was just some mental phantom, an expression of Binge’s Raider life before meeting me, I still winced at the sight.

Arcaidia got unsteadily to her hooves, maintaining her balance atop the table as she looked at me wonderingly. “Longwalk, how you do that?”

“This isn’t real, Arcaidia! At least not, like, physical real. Our minds and souls are what matter here. We can use more than our bodies. Just, um, think and feel really hard about something and you can make it happen. Kind of.”

As I shouted to her I noticed several Binges, under the barking shrieks of the lead Raider Binge, yanking out firearms and taking aim.

“Shit, incoming!” I yelled at Arcaidia, ducking down to give as small a target as I could as bullets starting ripping through the air around me. Some smacked into the stone pillar, sending chips flying, or bounced off the metal table. I saw Arcaidia also duck down, but her horn flared, crest symbols forming, and in moments she had a bridge of ice connecting our two pillars, along with a rising barrier of frost surrounding our respective tables.

“O-Okay, that buys us some time.” I said, looking around, “Now we just got to find a way out of here.”

“Get the boomy-booms!” I heard Raider Binge shouting down below, and I found myself peeking over the ice barrier in worry.

“Boomywhat?” I grunted, which turned into a full blown groan as I spotted a group of Binges yanking the unmistakable form of explosives from stacked up crates and hauling them towards our pillars.

“Arcaidia, big problem!” I pointed out what we had coming our way and Arcaidia gave me a reassuring look and nodded. Closing her eyes, I saw Arcaidia’s brow furrow as she concentrated. Was she taking my advice and trying to manifest something from her own mind? My answer arrived when, in a series of snapping flashes, a swarm of starblasters emerged from thin air in a cluster of about twenty, hovering around Arcaidia. With a thin, lethal grin Arcaidia winked at me, then unleashed her glittering barrage of energy laden death down upon the Binges.

Silver-white streaks of starblaster beams cut into the Binges like hot embers through paper. One of the beams struck a Binge carrying some of the explosives, and whatever those explosives consisted of clearly didn’t appreciate being dropped, because they detonated in a concussive fireball that sent more Binges flying like flaming green balloons. My wince turned into a full on grimace.

“I really hope this isn’t actually hurting the real Binge.”

“Perhaps she not need all these filthy versions of herself, ren solva?” Arcaidia mused. “Like doing spring cleaning inside head.”

“Here’s hoping.” I said, looking around, and then gazing up at the ceiling. “Right, I’m going to try to open up the ceiling and move us over there. Whatever’s on the next floor has to be better than this.”

An especially accurate assessment given what is presently entering the fortress. Be quick, Longwalk. warned Gramzanber, The wraiths are here.

His words were shrilly punctuated by the undulating wail of wraiths, and I looked to see the shifting dark flood of Arbu’s restless dead boiling into the fortress. It didn’t look like they could phase through walls, here, as they all had to come in through the main gates, but that did little to reduce their speed and ferocity as they set upon the Raider Binges. However I noticed that while they could physically tear into the Binges, the wraiths themselves seemed more solid, more real, in this place. Not only did I see Raider Binges fighting back, wounding wraiths in their own jibbering ferocity, but the wraiths themselves were more defined, with recognizable features. They were like ponies cloaked in a writhing aura of shadow, rather than just dark specters, their bodies visible amid the swirling darkness that wrapped them.

And at the head of the wraiths I recognized the mare leading the charge. Binge’s mother, Heartchime, screeched unholy fury into the swarm of Raider versions of her daughter, as if their very existence offended and enraged her.

If that wasn’t enough, further chaos erupted into the vast hall as several entryways along the sides of the room exploded, a number of thick wooden doors getting literally blasted off their hinges. From these doors several dozen more Binges came pouring in, only these Binges were less dressed in modern Raider chic and largely consisted of Binges either wearing nothing at all, or... uh... very distracting pieces of clothing. I caught sight of everything from lacy socks in red or black colors, or bodices of black leather straps, even a few sporting studded collars.

These Binges were armed with an assortment of knives as well, and a few pistols or rifles. As one this group crashed into the back flank of the Raider Binges, all of them shouting into the fray.

“Save the smexy!”

“Don’t let the taut flanks of desire be taken!”

“Death to all that is not down for sexy times!”

“And booze, don’t forget the booze! Get back all of our booze!”

Well, okay, I think we just found the part of Binge’s mind that was connected to her more base wants, minus the violence. The mare was literally at war with herself, torn up on the inside between various desires, and the wraiths possessing her soul. I had to put a stop to this insanity, and the only way I could think of to do it was find Scythe and break his influence over her.

Focusing on the ceiling, I pushed out with my thoughts once more, hardening my will. There was resistance, Binge’s very mindscape pushing back against anypony interfering with it, but while her focus was scattered across many fragments and layers of her mind, all of my will was right here, in one spot. I pushed past the resistance and in moments a stairway formed from the very ceiling, reaching down to the bridge between the pillars Arcaidia and I were on.

“Arcaidia, let’s go!” I shouted, hopping onto the bridge and carefully making my way towards the stairs. Arcaidia leaped onto the bridge as well, meeting me at the bse of the stairs.

“I make stern suggestion we get shivol bir much therapy when this all done.” said Arcaidia, eyeing the Sexy Binges as they violently battled with the Raider Binges below us. “This can’t be good for healthy mind.”

“I don’t think we could find a pony in all the Wasteland who’d want to tackle this case.” I said, managing a tired chuckle, “I think Binge is going to be our special barrel of crazy to deal with.”

”Monster!” came a wailing howl, like some twisted wind force gale from below. ”Leave my daughter alone!”

The voice was coming from the pack of wraiths, from Heartchime herself. Within her cloak of deathly shadows the dead mare’s eyes blazed with literal points of white, ghostly fire as she looked up at me. Her face was wracked with such a palette of colorful rage, pain, and deep rooted despair that I could only blink at her in a dumbfounded stupor for a second, before Arcaidia grabbed me and hauled me up the stairs.

“Arcaidia, did you hear-?”

“Yes, ren solva, I hear. Binge’s mother pony is crazy like daughter, and we not stay around to chat. Run!”

Kind of hard to argue with that, but I had to wonder just why Heartchime was angry with me specifically. Did she think I was the one hurting Binge? It was Scythe doing all the damage here! Regardless, Arcaidia and I hoofed it up the stairs. We entered a small room draped in velvet curtains and a smoky haze that held a strange scent to it that made my nose wrinkle. Not taking much time to look around I turned to concentrate on the stairs I’d formed, closing them up behind us and shutting out the roaring noise of the battle in the main hall.

We’d survived getting into Binge’s inner mind... but what now?

My head hurt, as if with each attempt to assert my will here was draining me. I hung my head a moment, just trying to breathe and let the pain fade. Beside me Arcaidia lit up her horn, shedding more light into the dimly lit room we were in. I glanced up blearily, taking stock of our new surroundings.

It looked like a padded room, with the walls, ceiling, and even the floor heavily covered in thick, soft pads of what felt like soft cushions. They were all in deep shades of red, and a heady scent of sweat seemed to cling to the air like a fog. Arcaidia wrinkled her nose at it, her voice quiet. “Now what place are we in?”

“I don’t know, but we can’t afford to stop moving.” I said, noticing that on one of the walls there were seams between some of the cushioned tiles that looked like a door. I started trotting towards it. “Those spirit wraiths are going to keep coming after us.”

Reaching the door, I pressed my hoof against it and gave it a firm push. The door yielded, opening with only minimal resistance. Nearly the second I got the door open my eyes got hit with a flood of light, and smooth hooves wrapped around me, yanking me out through the doorway. Binge’s bubbly voice spoke to me while my eyes were still swirling from the blinking light.

“Aww, you came to the show, my tasty chunk of fresh cut bucky! Gimme a taste!”

Before I knew it hot lips locked around my own as I was spun around in warm, strong grip. Binge was kissing me, and wasn’t being gentle about it either. Her tongue lashed into my mouth, while she all but bit down on my lips. I felt her body pressed so hard against mine I would’ve toppled over if she wasn’t also steadying me. With a belated moment of semi-clear thought I realized she had us both in a bipedal stance, and with an eyeblink clearing the flashing white haze of light blindness from my eyes I could see we were on some kind of smooth, black and white titled dance floor. White strobe lights stabbed down on us and in one corner of the room there was an entire group of Binges playing in a band, one on a piano, others using instruments I’d never seen before, but many made of brass and piping out soulful tunes.

The room was filled with other Binges as well, some dancing, others lounging around huge cushiony couches lining the walls, which were draped in thick red curtains. Drinks were being consumed en mass, usually guzzled right from the bottle, while other Binges were gorging themselves on trays of piled foods, most of it slabs of meat, some cooked... some still raw and bloody.

Then there were other Binges who were, for lack of a cleaner description, engaged in acts of self love that would’ve had me mindlessly riveted any other time than now. Seriously, I didn’t even know Binge could stretch her hind legs that far behind her, nor that a mare could produce that much, er, ‘fluid’ from down there. Before my eyes could boggle out any more, or just possibly explode across the room, the Binge in front of me spun me out in a slick dance move I could barely follow, then pulled me right back in to stare into me with piercing blue eyes radiating desire.

“So what’s you’re pleasure, Longy? With you here I can make you feel good forever and ever, and trust me...” her hoof went down towards my groin as she licked my chest with a tongue that seemed entirely too long to be Binge’s natural one. “It’ll blow your mind”

“Cease pawing him at once!” shouted a dominant clarion voice, Arcaidia’s magic frosting in a pale blue around the Binge that was groping me and yanking me free of her. As that Binge was dangled in the air like a squirming, green eel Arcaidia strode boldly into the room, a nimbus of blue arcane energy swirling around her as she glared about. Her face paled a bit at some of the sights, but most of the Binges present had halted, or at least slowed, their activities to turn sharp gazes towards her.

“We are here for fixing of your dumb, stupid brain toaster!” Arcaidia declared firmly, “We are Brain Toaster Repair Ponies and you shall accept our help without debauchery! Or so help me by stars in sky above I shall start being very cross!”

“Buzzkill.” one of the Binges started to chant, and soon the whole room took it up, some of them growing menacing looks as they started crowding towards Arcaidia. “Buzzkill. Buzzkill. Buzzkill.”

“Uh-oh,” said the Binge who was still dangling upside down, “Somepony is being a party pooper. Why so angry, Frosty Blue? You can join in the fun too. You’d look so good in the right light we could just eat you up.”

Suddenly the white strobe lights snapped to flashing colors of dark red, flooding the room with crimson light. The instant that happened I could feel a hammering on my mind that was like getting it dipped in heated water, flooding me with... well very warm, intense feelings that made every Binge in the room suddenly look all the more alluring. I abruptly couldn’t get my eyes off of their curves, the way their waying rear ends drew the eye. I could feel the fire flooding down to my nethers, and knew there was an embarrassing hardness forming there, and I gulped.

“B-Binge, wait, we don’t have time for this!” I stammered, trying to control my breathing. It was getting hard to think. Several Binges surrounded me, and unlike the violent Raiders below, their touches were smooth, gentle, yet sensual. One nibbled at my ear, while another drew her thick, wet tongue down my chest. A third went under me, and a burst of hot warmth flowed around me down there with slick slurping noises that left little to imagine just what she was doing down there. At that point any words I might have had to say melted away with a whimper that was anything but pain.

I would have fallen then and there. Pain, battle, terror, I was used to that stuff. The Raiders from below had been easy enough to understand and deal with. What Binge was doing to me now destroyed my mental resistance like an armor piercing bullet tearing through paper. I collapsed under a pile of moaning, licking, slurping Binges who were doing things to my body that nopony ever had, and I certainly hadn’t even dreamed of.

Through a red haze of barely coherent thought I saw Arcaidia also getting surrounded. Her face was flushed, even under the red light I could see the deeper color to her cheeks, see the heaving of her chest as she breathed hard under the lustful strain of the room’s power. Binges were pulling at her, tongues licking across Arcaidia’s pale face, limbs, and flanks.

The dangling Binge fell as Arcaidia’s magic let her go, and that Binge laughed. It wasn’t the violent, blood craving cackle of the Raiders, but it was no less... twisted, in its way. It was a richly dark and hungry laugh. It was the laugh of a mare lost to pleasure, to excess, to consuming every scrap of personal enjoyment she could from the world around her. Far from evil, but definitely without restraint it was a maddening sound to hear, that laugh.

“That’s right my yummy friends. Feel it all, and let go. This is all that makes life worth it, even putting up with all the nasty bits. Mmm, just the endless pleasures you can suck out of it. This is who I am.”

“No.” Arcaidia said in a frozen tone, her eyes flashing with a terrible, enraged glint that turned the silver orbs to something burning like the sun. “This is not Binge I know. She is more than stupid animal that only want pleasure. Stop this, now!”

She closed her eyes, and not just her horn, but her whole body flared up with arctic blue light. She wasn’t just casting magic, she was doing as I’d done down below with the Raiders. She was making her own will manifest, and in seconds the room’s red lights started to shatter as ice ripped through them. Ice tore up through the floor and walls, thick sheets of rime and spikes of glacial frost rolling up over us. In moments the Binges pinning me down were coated with a thick sheet of ice, torn away from me by tendrils of deep blue frost. The heat and pleasure that had been overwhelming my senses now turned starkly chill, like I’d just been dunked in ice water. With a shocked shout I jumped to my hooves, stumbling away from... well from the orgy pile I’d just been stuck in.

The Binges around Arcaidia had been blown back by a burst of frost around her, my unicorn friend now surrounded by a curved wave of ice that looked almost like a throne for a second before she stepped down from it. Binges were either encased in ice along the floor, or plastered up against the wall. Most were completely frozen over, only the lead Binge still having her head free, as half her body, the lower half was wrapped in a thick pillar of ice.

“Oooooowwww! Heeeeey!” Sexy Binge whined, “This isn’t fair Frosty Blue! I’ve waited so long to get bucky into some hot, wet sexy time and you have to go and vag-block me!? I would’ve shared him, if you really wanted a piece!”

Arcaidia sucked in a sharp breath and let it out in a withering sigh, starring cold daggers at Sexy Binge. “He is not for sharing. Longwalk not pie. He is friend who cares about you and is wanting to save your dumb pony butt, shivol bir!”

“He is also standing right here with the worst case of blueballs in recorded history,” I muttered, shivering as I clenched my hind legs tight. “Did you have to freeze me too Arcaidia! Yikes, they might have gotten frozen off!”

Arcaidia huffed, flipping her mane and looking at me levelly, “Is improvement in this case, ren solva. You needed cooling off. Pfft,” she scoffed and looked away, cheeks bright red, “You looked to be having too much of the funs.”

I blinked, and then felt my own face ignite like a bonfire as I stammered, “I-I know I just... I haven’t ever... I mean, its the first time... look it felt good okay!? At this point I’m more used to being shot than I am to having a mare.” I took a second to catch my breath, taking a second to run my hoof through my mane before meeting Arcaidia’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, and thanks, Arcaidia. I needed you to get me out of that mess.”

“Grr, it would’ve been fun.” groused Sexy Binge, muttering, “Now we can’t have anything to enjoy while stuff burns down. Mama is really angry, and the Master up top is going to make everything hurt even more.”

Arcaidia and I exchanged puzzled looks, and I turned to Sexy Binge. “Wait, what ‘Master’, and why is you mom so damned pissed off?”

There was a shiver that ran through Sexy Binge that had nothing to do with the ice covering her. Her eyes gained an unfocused glaze, and her voice became strangely echoing, like multiple Binges were talking at once. “Master showed us what bad ponies we were. Heheh, he made us see that we shouldn’t have abandoned mama and home. Gotta fix it. Gotta keep home safe from other bad ponies. Home home home, it's where the heart gets torn out.”

She tried to lunge forward then, teeth gnashing, snarling at us with spittle flying from suddenly dry, caked lips. Arcaidia’s ice held her firm, but the insanity swimming in Sexy Binge’s eyes mirrored moments I’d seen in the real Binge. Pain, anguish, so much of it wrapped up within a tight knot.

“Stay away from mama and brother! Stay away from my home! You can’t be here!”

“Ren solva, we must go further.” said Arcaidia over the sound of Binge’s ravings. “Find root of sickness. Find this Master.”

“Scythe.” I muttered, simmering rage in my tone. He had to be here, somewhere, still controlling and tormenting Binge. I wouldn’t let him do this to her anymore! I was going to free her! And the spirits of her family! This had to end!

“Alright, let’s go Arcaidia.” I said, turning around, then paused and glanced at her with a dopey look crossing my face. “Uhh, I don’t suppose you know how to get out of this room?”

Arcaidia sighed, rubbing her forehead with a hoof, then looked to the still raving Sexy Binge. “She not much help anymore. Let’s eyeball place for exit door, yes?”

Sifting around the room we ended up finding that one of the curtains covering the wall actually concealed an archway that led out into a dark stone hallway. We left the room which I suspected was Binge’s libido, or at least her pleasure center, and explored the hallway. It had a strange chill to it, and I had an odd feeling in my gut as we trotted down it like things were moving around us that I couldn’t see. There were turn offs in the hallway, snaking paths that curved off into darkness, but each time we passed one I hesitated to turn off the main hall. It seemed to me like we could easily get lost in Binge’s mind if we kept taking side paths.

“Gram, do you have any idea if we’re going the right direction?” I asked.

I cannot tell with complete accuracy. I can detect little now that we are this deep inside Miss Binge’s mind. However I can tell that you are getting closer to her higher brain functions, so I suggest remaining on the path you currently are.

“Thanks.” I said, then flushed with embarrassment, “So, nothing you could’ve done to help out back there? Like help my mind fight off, uh, what those Sexy Binges did to me?”

Arcaidia paused in her own trot at my side, glancing at me askance, “Sexy Binges?”

“W-well, that’s just what I was naming them in my head.” I gulped, “I mean, she’s... kind of is you know? I mean, for all her bad hygiene she’s actually, um... cute?”

Arcaidia’s tail flicked, once, her silver eyes staring. Then she looked away. “Not my business.”

To answer your query, Longwalk, I was in fact trying to help, you just didn’t notice. I was attempting to shield you from the effects of Miss Binge’s sex drive, but was only minimally successful. However had I not be doing so, you may have been... more adversely affected than you were. It is fortunate Specialist Arcaidia was there to deal with the situation most admirably.

Arcaidia actually beamed under the praise, cracking another smile and trotting a tad lighter. Was she skipping? Or at least prancing, at little. I sighed, but also smiled. “Yeah, you were pretty awesome back there, Arcaidia. Thanks again.”

“Much welcomes, ren solva.”

“Speaking of help, Gram, where is that other spirit you’ve got inside you? You know that mystery mare who’s talked in my head a few times before?”

The ARM didn’t respond for a few seconds.

The spirit in question has specifically been assisting in this case by maintaining the bonds between you and Miss Binge. As I explained in the past, she is an adaptor or sorts to help facilitate my bond with you. With that bond being stretched by this melding with Miss Binge, the spirit in question must use all her own focus on keeping that bond active. She is literally keeping yours and Arcaidia’s mind from being separated from your bodies and being trapped here permanently.

“Holy shit, really!? Is she okay?” I asked.

“What spirit?” asked Arcaidia, looking at Gramzanber sharply.

She is okay, but the strain will drain her eventually. That is why we must be quick about this. And Specialist Arcaidia, I shall allow Longwalk to divulge what he will about this circumstance.

Wow, way to leave me high and dry Gram, thanks. I coughed and met Arcaidia’s question gaze. “It's a long story.”

Her eyes narrowed, “That’s it?”

I laughed nervously, “Tell you later?”

“You say this a lot, ren solva.” she noted.

“Hey, I’m not the only one who keeps a few secrets.” I said back, defensively, “You still haven’t told me everything about your mission on my planet.”

Arcaidia blinked at that, then looked away with a soft nod, “True. Very true. As you say, ren solva, some secrets we have not all shared. So be it, we focus on task, and not ask any more questions of awkwardness.”

It was lucky that the conversation was winding down, as the hallway abruptly ended in front of us. A massive archway opened up into a vast interior space that was shaped roughly like a huge dumping ground. Buildings, or parts of buildings, piled up like trash amid segments that looked as if they’d been carved by a giant scalpel out of the Wasteland. I could see the room had distant walls stretching upward, and there was one big iron staircase spiralling up from the very center of the chamber, its bottom obscured by the piles of destris that filled the room like a labyrinth.

“Great, now where are we?” I asked, not actually expecting an answer, but one appeared in the form of a Binge who popped her head out of a nearby section of the towering garbage piles. This Binge’s mane was a wild mess, more strung out and frizzy and ever before, and she had a dull look in her eyes that didn’t match the usual vibrancy I was used to seeing from Binge.

“Can’t you tell, bucky? It's the dump! It's where all the useless stuff goes to be forgotten. Hehehe, only you can’t ever actually forget, so it just sits and rots. Piles and piles of rotten memories and feelings, buried in one smelly pit!”

Arcaidia took a small step back as a wave of odors assaulted us from the dirty Binge who clambered out of the garbage pile. She was coated with sticky bits of trash, dust, and stains I couldn’t identify. I managed to hold my ground, but my nose wasn’t thanking me for my bravery and my stomach churned at the scent coming off this Binge.

“This is where Binge keeps her memories?” I asked, looking to get some clarification. I had a hard time believing all of Binge’s memories got tossed into a place like this.

Dirty Binge giggled, but just like her eyes, it was a dull and drained sound, more like a tired rattle than a real laugh. “Hah, it's funny you ask that. She didn’t even care about this place until you popped up in her life, Longwalk. C’mon, lemme show you.”

She started to trot off through the mounds of trash and debris, and after Arcaidia and I exchanged shrugging looks, we followed. At least this Binge wasn’t trying to kill us or mount us. Aside from her smell, she was thus far the least aggressive of Binge’s mental representations we’d met. I didn’t see any reason not to follow her, especially because she was leading us in the rough direction of the spiral stairs thrusting up from the center of the cavernous room.

Dirty Binge took us down a few winding paths, until we reached a particular pile of mounded debris that, upon closer inspection, looked vaguely familiar.

“Hey, Arcaidia, am I going nuts or does some of this look like it came from the old ruined school we first met Binge at?” I asked, looking at the pile of rusted playground equipment that looked a lot like what had been in that school’s courtyard, the first time I’d ever used Accelerator.

“Mmm, yes, looks very familiar.” Arcaidia said, then glanced at Dirty Binge. “Why you bring us here?”

The stained mare tittered and made a sweeping, grand gesture at the ruin of the old school. As if by her command the rubble shuddered and moved, disintegrating into wisps of dust and oily smoke that transmuted before us into a swirling scene of violence. Two ponies fighting, and I saw the image of myself and Binge in our first meeting, in desperate struggle amid the minefield outside the school. It was a disconcerting scene, Binge’s knife seeking my flesh, and my own attempts to fend off the mad Raider mare. It ended up with her atop me, but with Gramzanber pressed against her throat.

“Ooo, you gonna do it?” Binge asked, wiggling on top of me, “I think Friendly Fire was an accident, but you gonna do it to me nice and dirty like, up close and personal so you can taste the blood? Hehehehehe, do it, do it, you’ll feel so much better afterward, I promise.”

“No, no, no, you silly goose. I don’t want to die because I’m already dead. Everypony in the Wasteland is dead. Dead, gone, buried, souls gone to sleep, hush now, quiet now. You’re still alive though and that’s a bad thing, because that means you’ll be hurt. So I want you to die, so you don’t have to hurt. Then you can be like me, and we can hang out, and have tea, and play games…forever!”

As the memory played out in front of us, as seemingly real as if it were happening all over again, Dirty Binge giggled and slid up next to me, leaning against my side. Her thick stink rolled over me from her mouth as she said, “Listen in bucky, listen to what she was thinking.”

Suddenly Binge’s voice echoed in a faint whisper from the memory in front of us, time seeming to slow down to allow the thoughts to play out with tar like slowness.

”Kill me. Kill me. Please be the one to kill me. You’re so close, all you have to do is cut. All over and quiet then. Why aren’t you doing it!?

As myself from the memory pushed her away, I heard Binge’s mind scream in greater desperation. ”Why won’t you do it!? Why are you looking at me like that!? Like I’m worth something. I don’t understand you. You shouldn’t look at me like that. Why? Why? Why?

As the images of memory froze, Dirty Binge whispered into my ear, “That’s how it all started, bucky. You confused her. Hurt her. She had to know why. So she followed you, tugged by the leash you wrapped around her throat without even realizing it.”

Arcaidia pursed her lips, shrewdly watching Dirty Binge with measuring eyes. “What are you? You not talk like Binge.”

“Hehehe! I’m Binge, just like the ones wanting all the sex and pleasure is Binge, and all the angry ones who want to kill are Binge. I’m the Binge who gets to deal with alllllllll the filthy memories she wants to bury so they stop hurting her!” Dirty Binge swept a forehoof around in a grand gesture at the massive piles of junk surrounding us. “There’s a lot of memories to deal with. Binge has got a good ten years on you Longykin. She’s such a cradle robber, heheh! Come on, come on! There’s more to show you!”

She literally bounced off, hopping on all fours with little springing noises, her sharp scent wafting along with her. Arcaidia and I looked at each other, Arcaidia’s face pinched with an uncomfortable look.

“I not like this, ren solva. We must find Scythe and eliminate him. Every second wasted may be most important.”

“I know. I agree, but... I don’t think we’ll find a way out of here by wandering around randomly. I think we have to follow this Binge, and see what she’s trying to show us. Maybe it’ll help.”

Arcaidia didn’t look totally convinced, but she gave me a short nod and we broke into a quick canter to catch up with the bouncing Binge. She led us deeper into the mountains of trash and rubble, until we found ourselves in a section that looked like it was made from discarded portions of a Stable, with long sterile hallways lying in tatters amid ventilation shafts, pieces of machinery, and discarded furniture from living quarters.

“She didn’t even want to bury this memory at first, so it’s pretty fresh.” said Dirty Binge, doing a hop and a skip that bounced her around so she was now walking backwards as she grinned at me and Arcaidia. With a small stamp of her hooves, Dirty Binge summoned up a memory from the rubble of the Stable... Stable 104, I now realized as the shape of my quarters there took shape before us, with an all too familiar and embarrassing scene.

Arcaidia made a little choking noise as we watched me, exhausted, flop into my bed, only to find Binge waiting for me there. The whole scene played out in front of us, Binge eagerly seeking to get me to mate with her and my own hasty and red faced attempts to ward her off. Once again I saw the hurt and confusion on Binge’s face, the way she’d looked at me when she’d finally accepted my rejection.

Dirty Binge made a ‘tut-tut’ noise and elbowed me. “So mean, bucky, pushing her away when all she wanted to do is make you feel good.”

My own face was as heated as that of my counterpart in the memory as I hastily said, “It wasn’t like I wanted to hurt you Binge, but I wasn’t ready for that. For more than a few reasons. I didn’t know how to feel about you!”

“You wanted her bucky, even a pony with their eyes dug out by rusty knives would still smell the desire on you.” taunted Dirty Binge, “And she sooooo wanted to give you that moment of release. Of contentment. You made her think that maybe, just maybe, she was worth being with... but you kept rejecting her.”

“It wasn’t... wasn’t like that.” I said, shaking my head. I felt Arcaidia’s hoof on my withers, a steady and bracing presence as she stepped forward.

“I not know all details, but Longwalk not the kind of pony to step on a mare’s heart. He’s just dumb.”

I sighed, rolling my eyes slightly. “Gee, thanks.”

“Quiet, ren solva.” Arcaidia cleared her throat, her eyes flicking to the memory scene of me and Binge, with me pressed up against the Stable wall, Binge right in my face, but with that injured expression of confusion on her scarred features. “Longwalk not know his own feelings, so how can he give to Binge what he doesn’t know he has? Is Binge such a dumb pony too that she not see she confuses Longwalk same as he does her?”

Dirty Binge laughed, noxious fumes billowing from her mouth that hit us with a wave of nausea. “Hah! Longy was confused by us!? We were being totally clear on what we wanted! He was the one playing hard to get! And what do you call this!?”

The rubble pile shook like a minor earthquake, and the memory of me and Binge in the Stable was washed away like a cloud of fumes and was quickly replaced by bits of rubble that formed into the shape of the showers from the Skull Guild. Binge and I were there under the roaring water from the showers, and I had her pinned down, scrubbing her with soap while going on my tirade about wanting to get her clean.

I gulped, face blazing to dark crimson shades. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I’d all but mounted Binge, back then. I’d been solely focused on cleaning her off, but to my utter mortification, I’d also be... hard, and pretty much scant inches from turning that shower scene into something else altogether.

Dirty Binge gave me a flat look. “Maybe bucky just didn’t realize how badly he was sending mixed signals of his own?”

“I, w-well, I mean... she was all soaked by the shower and, uh... I didn’t notice just what I was doing there. Look, I was trying to get across to you that I think underneath all that grime you’re not a bad pony and that I cared. As, you know, a friend.” My voice came out in a choked stammer, my eyes glued to the memory of those few minutes in the shower. I remembered the kiss Binge had given me, and while it had taken me off guard and I’d tried to brush it off... it wasn’t a bad memory at all. But did that mean anything more than my hormones getting the better of me?

Arcaidia had a look on her face as unreadable as a sheet of ice, but her tone wasn’t without a certain level of understanding sympathy, albeit tinged with a mix of surprise and embarrassment. “I not know, ren solva. The way you talk sometimes sound not like ‘just friend’ talk where Binge is subject.”

“H-hey, whose side are you on here!?”

She coughed politely and looked at me evenly, “Side that gets ponies I care about out of danger. You and Binge both in big danger, and can’t work out feelings is big problem for that.”

“Oh, heheh, I can simplify it for you Frosty if you want.” said Dirty Binge, licking her dust covered lips, “Bucky hasn’t seen sooooo much of ol’ Binge. She might wanna help him, but she can’t because everything she touches dies messily, eventually. So let’s cure this confusion boner he’s got going and show him some nastier memories.”

This time the trash piles behind us all but exploded outward, forming a wave of debris that rushed in behind us and swept us up like a filthy tide. Arcaidia and I clung together, her horn lighting up with magic that formed a protective cocoon of ice around us. Even then, it was a rough ride, with Dirty Binge riding a blood spattered slab of concrete like a surfboard along the flow of trash as it jettisoned us out into a wider clearing amid the garbage heaps. Arcaidia and I rolled around inside her ice cocoon, which softened our rough landing only slightly as the ice slid away and let us flop out onto the ground. Shaking my dazed head I saw we weren’t far now from the spiral staircase reaching upwards, its rusty iron from wrapping around until it vanished into the darkness above.

Dirty Binge skipped off towards the center of the clearing, shouting happily, “You got all these wrong thoughts about us, bucky. We’re not a bad pony? You really think you can clean us of all the stains covering us, soaked past the skin. She may still have a tiny shred of hope that you had the gall to plant in her, but I’ve been dealing with all her garbage memories for so long, I know better!”

She turned to face us in a harsh pirouette of motion, with the clear light of madness shining in her baby blue eyes, like a slick of oil coating the surface of an otherwise clean pool. Her mouth turned into a rotted, rictus grin as she laughed and shouted, “Look at the Binge you’re trying to save, the things she’s done, and keep telling us we’re worth saving, let alone loving.”

The garbage heaps of debris around the clear stirred like from the shaking of an earthquake and then erupted around us. Within the span of mere seconds memories formed across the clearing in a haphazard patchwork of horror that left my blood running cold and my mouth hanging open.

In one memory I saw Binge mounting an earth pony stallion whose skin was already half flayed off, her hips bucking as fast as she worked her knife across his skin as he howled in agony.

In another an old mare babbled in nearly incoherent pleas as a younger mare was dragged out of a hovel by Binge’s teeth around her throat, giggling the whole way as she carved shallow lines into the helpless mare with a straight razor.

I saw Binge happily capering around a fire pit, the roasted forms of ponies spinning on spits while other Raiders howled in glee with her at the coming feast.

My eyes started to fill up with tears as I watched scenes of caravans being slaughtered, Binge dancing like a blood soaked phantom amid the carnage, cutting throats and slitting open bellies with wild glee and abandon.

Dozens of memories, played out across what had to have been near two decades of bloody history living as a Raider. There wasn’t any detail being spared in the memories, no horrible thing that Binge didn’t do, laughing and smiling the whole time. As I tried to look away, Dirty Binge was there in a flash, her hooves clamping around my face so hard it made my teeth cut into my gums.

”Look at it, you stupid fuck. Did you think she didn’t do things like this!? Did you think she hadn’t murdered for fun, tortured for pleasure, and fucked bucks younger than you while peeling their damn skin off!? What the fuck is wrong with you!? Did you think she’d forgotten, because I can’t forget, Longwalk! She’s buried every single fucking memory right here in this dump and made me deal with all of it. And now you get to watch it all!”

She threw me with tremendous strength out into the middle of it all. I landed not two paces from a memory of Binge straddling a middle-aged mare, slowly cutting lines into the sobbing mare’s cheeks with a rusty knife, while the mare pleaded.

“P-please, don’t-” the mare cried as Binge kept cutting.

“Hehehe! Don't’ do what pretty filly? I don’t wanna hurt you too much, just take a little off the top. I wanna save you for later so we can play some games. Have you ever tried Twister with barbed wire? It’s super fun! I’ll show you. Oh, and later Mr. Happy will wanna try telling you some stories. He’s really lonely.”

The bleeding mare, eyes wild, managed to shake her head and say, “I-I don’t care what you do to me, just don’t hurt my foals.”

Binge tilted her head, “Oh? Ya got some tiny tykes around here? The rest of the fam hasn’t found ‘em yet, huh? You got ‘em stashed nearby?”

“...please...” the mare begged, and the image in the memory shifted just enough that I could see this was happening in some old shack, with a stained bed nearby. Binge and the mare were on the floor, and as Binge turned her head she could see two little foals, perhaps aged not much more than five or six years, hidden under the bed.

Something passed through Binge’s eyes, like a tiny flicker of light, and she laughed, more like a sigh than a giggle, and said, “Let’s play a game little foals. Hide and seek. Find a better spot to hide than the bed, and I’ll seek somewhere else to be.”

The foals just looked terrified, but the mare just stared at Binge in hopeful confusion. Binge rolled off the mare, licking her bloody knife, “Our games aren’t for teensy ponies, pretty mare. I’m gonna go for a leak and be back soon. There’s nowhere for you to hide, but there’s tiny holes a little filly or colt could never be found in. Hide them, so when my pals find you, they don’t find them. That’s the game we’re playing now, understand?”

As that one memory faded away, the terrified mare desperately coaxing her foals into a new hiding spot while Binge trotted away, I couldn’t help but notice that in several of the other horrific memories playing out around me there was one commonality. Binge never touched a foal. The few times foals were in the memories, they were either being hidden by Binge or let go, or in one memory she outright jabbed one of her knives through the skull of a fellow Raider who tried to touch a captured foal.

Even lost as you were, you still had that one last little shred of light, hanging on in the dark.

It didn’t necessarily make the terrible things I was seeing any less wrong, any less unforgivable by any common standards of right and wrong. But as shocking as it was for me to watch these memories play out, I’d already known that this had been part of Binge’s life ever since she’d fled the destruction of Arbu as a filly. I understood that the kind of stains this left on a pony didn’t ever just go away, and the crimes being committed here by all accounts deserved punishment.

But I was not a judge, a jury, nor an executioner. Other ponies might take up those mantles, but they didn’t fit me. The only task I ever wanted for myself was to save others. Especially my friends.

Seeing these memories hurt, but they didn’t change two important things; Binge was still my friend, and I was going to do everything in my power to save her.

I stood up amid the bloody chaos of Binge’s memories of life as a Raider, and strode through them with determined steps towards Dirty Binge, who glared at me with crazed eyes.

“What!? Are you gonna tell me it's all okay, that this isn’t me anymore!? That’s horseshit, bucky. This is all still a part of her. Me. Us. Arrrrgh, she can’t pretend its not here. She knows! If she’s near something, it just turns to garbage. And ponies can’t fall in love with trash. There’s no cleaning up this kind of filth, so you might as well just fucking turn your ass around and lea-”

I bonked her on the head. “Binge, whichever Binge you want to be, just shut up and let me help you.”

“Are you fucking blind!? Can’t you see what’s around you? How the flying horsefuck do you think you can help this hot mess!? All she deserves is a bullet through the skull, a blade through the throat, and some radroaches to pick her damn corpse clean. There’s your damned cleaning up, the bone’s that are left will be as clean as it gets.”

I bonked her again, earning a growl from Dirty Binge, who pounced on me with a ferocious snarl. I’d seen her coming and managed to hook her tackle into a body throw that had us both on the ground, me atop her with my forehooves pinning hers. We were snout to snout, her stink rolling up my nostrils, but I didn’t care as I stared into her crazed eyes.

“Binge, listen to me! I. Am not. Giving up. On you. No matter what you show me, no matter how much you try to hurt me, I’m not stopping until I make you see what I see.”

“What the fuck do you see, huh? A good pony? Horseshit.”

I shook my head, “What I see is you, Binge. The bad, and the good, and all the messy crap in between. And I accept all of it! The terrible things you’ve done. And the good things you’ve done.”

“What...good things.”

“The foals, Binge. You never let them get hurt. Not if you could stop it.” I said, looking at her body, at all of the scars covering it. “You didn’t get all of those fighting caravaners and settlers. You got them from other Raiders, didn’t you?”

Dirty Binge grit her teeth and sneered, but she also looked away from me, and the memories playing out amid the clearing shifted. Now each scene of Binge’s brutality as a Raider instead showed scenes of foals, victims of the Raider's attacks, and Binge standing between her fellow Raiders and the young ponies.

Sometimes she’d just have to kill one or two of her own to get the point across that the foals were to be left alone, but in more than a few memories I saw Binge having to fight off entire gangs of Raiders. She’d fight ten times more vicious against them than she had against her Wastelander victims, taking horrific wounds in trade for buying the escape of the foals.

“Never mattered...” Dirty Binge croaked, voice scratchy and weak, “Didn’t matter that I saved them. Still killed their parents. Still ruined their lives. Wasn’t mercy. Just being weak. Couldn’t ever forget... home. Watching it burn. Foals shouldn’t have to play games like that. Not fun. And every time I just ended up with another gang. Its where I belong, with the rest of the world’s trash.”

I pulled Dirty Binge into a tight hug, ignoring the smell, not even caring about it anymore as I said, “Not anymore. Now you belong with us. Your friends.”

The chuckle that escaped her was a small, tired thing. “That’s the bucky that she’s in love with. The stupid one who just won’t ever seem to stop caring about her...”

Dirty Binge looked at me with a light of real fear entering her eyes. “Do you love her, Longwalk?”

It was a question I’d been trying hard to find an answer to, almost as much as I’d been trying to pretend it didn’t exist. I gave Dirty Binge my most honest answer. “I don’t know yet, but I care enough to want to find out. Will you help me save her. Save yourself?”

“I’m just a fragment, bucky. A dirty piece of her mind, left behind to mind the garbage. But...” Dirty Binge gestured, and the memories faded to inert debris. The pile of garbage on the far side of the clearing moved aside, revealing a clear path to the spiral stairway of iron leading upwards. “Go. Go quick. There’s more memories up above. Things she couldn’t just dump down here. Then past that, you’ll probably find the core of her. The part the Master controls. You better gallop, bucky, because mamma and the family are here too, and closing in.”

As if her words had been a summons the wails of wraiths filled the air with a chilling chorus. Heartchime and the wrathful spirits of Arbu were catching up with us. I gave Dirty Binge a worried look, “Are you going to be alright?”

She just shoved me towards the stairwell with a snorting giggle, “Even if I got torn to bitty, bloody pieces it won’t matter if you don’t save our core. So quit that cute pouty worrying and go!”

Arcaidia pulled me along, and we both ended up breaking into a gallop for the tall, twisted spine of iron that was the jagged stairwell leading up towards the ceiling from the center of the memory dump. The wraiths’ chilling wails reached after us like a murderous wind, and I didn’t dare let myself look behind me as I bent my head down and pounded my hooves to reach the stairs, Arcaidia running right alongside me.

We hit the stairs at full speed and started the long, awkward climb up. The iron steps, grated so we could see through them, groaned and creaked as we went up. The whole spiraling stairway shook and swayed under our movements, making progress even slower, but Arcaidia and I poured on the speed as we clambered higher and higher. I chanced a glance down, only long enough to see the wave of dark wraiths crashing through the garbage dunes like a oily tidal wave. Heartchime was clearer than ever at their head, the darkness surrounding her soul like a flickering cloak of dark flames, showing more of the mare beneath. Her spirit still bore the headshot wound that had ended her life, a deep red hole in her forehead dripping ghastly blood and brain matter, yet her wraith eyes shined with fierce, wrathful blue light.

Beside her was another, slightly shorter wraith, whose form was still mostly cloaked in darkness but I could still pick out bits and pieces of his form... with the dark green coat similar to Binge’s but a shock of wild blue mane very much like my own. Binge’s brother Mug charging alongside his mother in their pursuit of us. A part of me felt a spike of anger, seeing those poor dead souls tied to Scythe’s will, being manipulated to serve his ends. They deserved to rest.

I made a silent vow as I rushed up the stairwell’s seemingly hundreds of steps that I’d see them all lain to rest.

The wraiths were slowed by the garbage piles in the memory dump shifting to form walls in front of them. In this mental space, where nothing was physical, the wraiths couldn’t bypass barriers like they could in the real world. Still, they were barely slowed down by the blocking piles of debris, flowing over them or around them with only seconds of delay. But it was enough. Dirty Binge was buying me and Arcaidia enough time to get up the stairs.

I could see the top above us now, the ceiling like a curved stone dome with a single well-like hole the stairs led up into. The wraiths wails reached up below us in haunting echoes, and another glance showed me that they were almost to the bottom of the stairwell, but Arcaidia and I had just reached the hole in the ceiling at that point.

Arcaidia paused within the threshold, turning to focus her horn and seal up the stairs with a solid wall of meter thick blue ice. I felt the air grow cold from her efforts, and Arcaidia let out a hefty sigh and rubbed her head once she was done.

“What I not give for restoring potion right now.” she breathed and teetered for a moment. I was at her side in an instant, steadying her. Arcaidia gave me a sidelong, grateful smile, then took another deep breath and nodded. “I’m good, ren solva. We cannot afford to slow.”

I knew she was right. The wraiths wouldn’t be stopped by her ice forever. Nodding to her, we both turned and continued going up the stair, which now spiraled up through a circular shaft of stone for what felt like at least another hundred feet. When the stairs finally ended they led us up into a wide, mostly open stone chamber. Most of the walls were bare concrete, with only one side containing open windows, or rather just slits in the stone wall, that showed the dark mindscape outside in all its clouded expanse. The rest of the walls, even the floor and ceiling, were covered in graffiti; but not the maddening and gorey graffiti of the Raiders on the first floor, but rather the foal-like drawings of a young, if still disturbed, mind. Drawn in chalk or old faded paint, the pictures etched all over the chamber’s various surfaces were simplistic and often chaotic, and I couldn’t make much sense of them at first glance as Arcaidia and I stepped further into the room.

There was a loud grinding noise behind us as the entrance to the stairwell was closed shut by a sliding slab of concrete, sealing us inside. I’d have been more worried, but I could see a large metal door on one side of the room, bolted with various chains, but still a possible way out.

“You came.” said a young, high pitched voice, and Arcaidia and I both looked across the room, where a old mattress was piled in one corner amid a bunch of old plastic and cardboard boxes, dirty pillows, all arranged in a foal’s play fort. Old dusty tarps completed the roof of the fort, and from the front entrance a little green filly with wide blue eyes that somehow carried a heavy weight inside them peered out at us.

“I didn’t know if you’d come.” Filly Binge said with a voice that held the wear and tear of many more years than her tiny body. She showed us a sad smile, “Was actually scared you would. It’d have been easier to let me go, Longwalk. Easier for us both.”

“I...” a soft sigh escaped me as I just shook my head and smiled helplessly, “I don’t really do easy.”

Filly Binge giggled, and crawled out of her little fort, small form looking thin to the point I could see the poking form of her ribs along her barrel. “Guess that’s part of why I like you. A lot of other ponies would’ve given up by now.”

She cast her eyes downward, as if seeing something me and Arcaidia couldn’t. “Momma’s going to be here soon with Mug and the rest of the family, but we’ve got time. Time for me to show you why, the real reason why, Binge is so eager to just... go to sleep forever and leave this living business to the rest of you too stupid to know better.”

My mouth felt dry as I stepped forward, gulping, “Yeah, I’ve figured out Binge has a bit of a death wish. Losing Arbu, all the things she did as a Raider, it's the kind of weight I can’t really fathom... but I still want to help her face all of it. Can you help us? Me and Arcaidia aren’t giving up until we get Binge free from Scythe.”

A pained and tired smile that was far too old to belong on so young a face crossed Filly Binge’s expression as she gestured at all the foal drawings around us, “All I can do is show you the colors that got stained on Binge’s soul, both bright and dark. The pictures that make up those colors, and all that they meant to her. She keeps them here, preserved with me, instead of burying them down below. You’re the only exception, Longwalk. Her memories of you are in both places, because she doesn’t know where you belong in her heart; as another stain of bitterness and pain, or a bright piece of color that reminds her of why life didn’t always hurt.”

She led us over to a part of the wall beside one of the tall, open windows, where she dusted off a picture of Binge’s foalhood self playing with an older colt, Mug, with a much older pony stallion watching them, one whom I recognized as Heartchime’s father. As I looked at the foalish, chalk drawings they started to come to life, bouncing around and moving on the wall like living pieces of color. I could hear the drawings as well, as if they were standing real and lifelike in front of me.

“Catch me Mug! Catch me!” the young Binge squealed as she ran around, her brother chasing her as he laughed. Binge looked only about four or five years old, her big brother about as many years ahead of her.

“C’mere you little scavenger and gimme back my knife! You're too young to be running around with it!” Mug shouted, although he was still laughing as he did so, and I saw that indeed the picture of Binge’s foalhood self had a tiny knife clutched in her mouth.

As their grandfather watched on, he moved with surprising deftness for his age, and caught Binge as she passed by him. She gave a little squeal of surprise but also general happiness at the game, even as the elderly stallion took the knife away from her.

“Aww,” she pouted, “I wanna play with the shapry!”

“No.” said the grandfather, setting her down and ruffling her mane as Mug caught up and halted beside her, “Now both of you go play somewhere else. Leave an old stallion to his thoughts.”

“Can I get my knife back first, Grandpa Rattle?” asked Mug, “Mom said I’d need to for today.”

The grandfather, Rattle, gave a visible shudder, “Already? She’s taking you out to hunt already? You’re barely ten years old...”

Mug just shrugged, smiling with obvious pride, “I’m big for my age. And we need all the hunters we can get. Food’s scarce, Grandpa, you know that.”

“I do know that,” Rattle said with a pained look, his mouth twitching in a scowl he was clearly trying to keep under control, “Do you know what your mother might make you hunt, yet?”

The young colt’s head tilted, and I saw his eyes take on a guarded sheen. “Mom told me last year, Grandpa. I ain’t a little foal any more. I can take care of our family, make sure we’re all fed, even if... there’s some things I got to hunt I don’t really want to.”

“I keep trying to tell your mother there’s another way-”

“Stop it Grandpa. You shouldn’t keep doubting mom like that. I’ve seen her cry sometimes, after you two fight.” Mug said, taking his knife back from Rattle and sheathing it in a leather holster at his shoulder, “You should just make up with her, and join the family properly. Anyway, I got to go. You okay to look after Binge?”

“Yaay, playing with Grandpa!” Binge shouted, giving the old stallion a hug, and oblivious to the larger conversation going on. Rattle looked at the little filly with the pain in his eyes only intensifying as he grit his teeth and nodded. Mug glanced at the two one last time before trotting off, leaving Binge to hop up and down on Rattle’s knee.

“I want to play chase some more! Can you chase me Grandpa?” Binge asked, but her filly eyes grew concerned as she saw the look on Rattle’s face. “What’s wrong Grandpa?”

“It’s... nothing. Nothing a foal need worry about. I’m just... so dang old, and your mother and I don’t see eye to eye on certain things.”

Binge’s foal face just smiled as she hugged him again, “Momma loves you. So don’t be sad.”

Rattle wiped at his eyes, and set Binge on the ground, “I know, little one, but there’s some things that just can’t be solved so easily. But no matter, let’s play...”

The picture went still then, and Filly Binge looked at me, eyes heavy with old pains. “It was so simple for me back then. Playing with my brother, exploring around our little home of Arbu. I couldn’t grasp what was going on between my grandfather and mother. I didn’t understand the knifepoint our home balanced on.”

She turned and gestured for us to follow her to another picture, this one up towards the corner between the wall and ceiling, and drawn larger than many of the other pictures around it. “I didn’t see what was happening to Grandpa Rattle, as the years wore on, and the feelings inside him began to twist him up, turning worse and worse... or that the same thing was happening to the rest of us.”

The jagged chalk outlines of color for the picture I now looked at had taken on a sour and faded look. I saw a mare I recognized as the merchant mare from years ago, Chancy, facing off with Heartchime and several other Arbu ponies, all with guns drawn and pointed at each other. Binge, a little older in this picture but still very much a foal, was standing near Chancy, the chalk outlines of her form showing tears. Beside her was a fallen sack with what looked like bits of cured meat inside it. Chancy’s gun was pointed at Binge, the rifle barrel inches from the filly’s face.

“Step away from my daughter, Chancy.” said Heartchime, “This doesn't have to end with bloodshed.”

“You expect me to believe you’re just gonna let me walk now that I know your town’s dirty little secret?” Chancy spat back, “Not a chance. The filly’s coming with me as insurance. Once I’m far enough away from you cannibalizing fucks, I’ll let the filly go. Only after I’m in the clear, got it!?”

The picture of Binge was crying, the Filly Binge cried along with her, mouthing the words that echoed from the picture. “I’m sorry momma, I didn’t mean to make Chancy mad. I just wanted to give her a gift for being so nice. I thought the meat was good.”

“Not your fault, Binge.” Heartchime said, eyes narrowing to chalk slits as she stared down the merchant mare holding her daughter hostage, “My father told you about us, didn’t he?”

Chancy’s expression darkened, “Thought the old stallion was rambling some crazy talk, until I took a closer look at the meat your kid brought me. Too damned tender to be from radgators. Also the leg bone was kind of a giveaway. How the fuck could you eat your own? Feed your own to your foals?”

“We only kill and eat what’s left of the bandits and Raiders that threaten our town. The rest we scavenge from the Wasteland. Chancy, I don’t expect you to understand why we live the way we do, but I don’t want to hurt you.” Heartchime said, words filled with growing, cold desperation, “Just forget what you learned here, and walk away. But you’re not taking my Binge anywhere.”

“No way. She’s coming with me. Get up filly, we’re moving!” Chancy prodded Binge with the rifle, causing the filly to cry.

“Momma, I’m scarred!”

Heartchime raised her own rifle, face scowling but also filled with fear. “Chancy, I’m begging you, don’t make me do this!”

Chancy, herself clearly filled with fear, snarled and tried to pull Binge close to her, maybe to use as a shield, maybe just to make Heartchime hesitate. It had the opposite effect. In surreal slow motion the colored chalk pictures moved in almost playful swirls, the sounds echoing faintly. A tiny blast of light and flame, the bullet moving in slow motion in the way only a child’s imagination might make it move. I saw the spray of red chalk in a gushing circle explode from Chancy’s head, and her body drop with almost comical Xs filling in for her eyes.

Binge screamed and cried, even as her mother went to her and comforted her, making small hushing sounds. Moments later one of the other Arbu ponies said, “Shit, Chancy was kind of a big deal in Friendship City. Others might come looking for her.”

“We need to hide the body.” said another, and Heartchime let out a long sigh as she kept holding Binge.

“Put the body in the basement.”

“You sure, Heart?” asked one of the other Arbu ponies.

“We... might as well not let the meat go to waste. I...” Heartchime sniffed, wiping at her own eyes for a second, “I figure it’ll remove the evidence as well as anything else. Binge, come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”

“B-but Chancy she...” Filly Binge sniffed, “It’s my fault.”

“Shh, no baby, no, it's not your fault at all. Bad things just happen sometimes. Momma will clean it up.”

Filly Binge, the one standing beside us and not the picture, sighed and shook her head. “Momma did keep trying to clean things up. Chancy wasn’t the only one, just the first. Others, over time, would stumble across our secret. Or they might be seen as threats for other reasons. Grandpa Rattle kept trying to warn folk away from Arbu. Making things worse, but in his own head I guess he thought he was protecting the young ones, like me and Mug.”

She ran a hoof over a drawing nearer to the floor, where me and Arcaidia had to kneel down to get a good look at it. I saw Binge’s filly self, close to the age I knew when Arbu was burned down, hiding behind a the side of a door into a bedroom, where Heartchime and Rattle were arguing.

“Dad, why do you keep doing this!? Don’t you understand you're just getting those ponies killed?” Heartchime said, near to tears and her voice filled with bitterness and anger, “How many more have to die before you give up?”

Grandpa Rattle’s voice was as bitter as his daughter’s, and far more tired and dried out. “How many more will you kill before you realize what you’re doing is wrong? Years now you’ve soiled yourself with eating pony flesh, is there anything left of my daughter in there to save?”

Heartchime looked as if his words were cutting right into her, even as she hardened her face and voice, “Anything left? I’m not a monster, dad. I’m just trying to keep us all alive out here. To keep our home safe. Why can’t you accept that?”

“Because what you’re doing is still wrong, and I... I can’t stand to look at you anymore. None of you. You’re all... not even ponies.” Rattle said, looking away from Heartchime. “Why don’t you just kill me and be done with it?”

That question alone seemed to hit Heartchime the hardest, her expression one of just mute shock. “How could you ask me that? I’d... I’d never hurt you, dad. I’d never let anypony in town hurt you, no matter how stupid and stubborn you’re being.”

“You might as well let the others do what I keep hearing them whisper about.” he said with a dessicated chuckle, “I know some of the others want me dead, so why hold them back? You know I’m just going to keep warning ponies off this town. I have to. I can’t let them be butchered by you.”

“I’m not butchering anypony! I’m protecting my family!” Heartchime cried, “That includes you, whether you like it or not.”

She stormed away, barely keeping her tears in check, and moving past where Binge had hidden herself up against the wall without seeing the young filly. Binge then entered the room just as Rattle was settling back into an old, worn out rocking chair.

“Grandpa Rattle?”

The old stallion blinked, “Goddesses, child, I... you heard all of that?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t get it. Why are you and momma always fighting?” Binge gave a nervous shuffle on her hooves, “Is it because we eat ponies?”

Rattle’s form sagged into the chair, eyes haunted. “You already know that? How old are you, little Binge?”

“Uhhhh...” Binge’s eyes screwed up as she thought about her age. Then she tapped her hoof about eight times. “That many? Maybe. I’m not good at counting.”

Rattle closed his eyes, face pained. “C’mere girl.” He patted knee, and Binge trotted up, looking curious. Rattle ruffled her mane once she was up close, and he sighed. “Ponies aren’t supposed to eat other ponies. It's just... against all the rules that were supposed to matter. Can’t even pretend to be civilized if our own flesh is on the menu. But your mom, my little Heartchime, she’s...she’s sick. Everypony in this damned, cursed, twisted up town is sick. In the head, you see? Like a rot on the soul that just eats away at you. I can’t make your mom or anypony else see how sick they are. So all I can do is warn other ponies about it, so they can maybe get away without being hurt.”

Filly Binge’s head tilted in youthful thought. “If ponies are sick can’t we get a doctor pony to come fix us up?”

Rattle’s laugh was utterly devoid of humor, “They’d just end up eating him, little Bingey. Nah, this ain’t the kind of sickness that a doctor can fix up. Its worse than that.”

“But if momma and everyonpy is sick we have to make them better!” Filly Binge said with the conviction of a child knowing that all in the world could be made right. She blinked, “Am I sick too?”

“No, little one, not yet anyway.”

“But I’ll get sick? Oh, and big brother Mug will too!? Just from eating pony noms? Then you gotta make momma listen and find other things to nom on! Or maybe find other ponies who are good at talking. Yes, there’s all sorts of ponies who come by, and some of them are super good talkers. They can help momma! And then you and her can make up and be happy again!”

While the young Binge’s eyes were bright and enthusiastic, Rattle’s eyes grew hard, distant, and thoughtful. “Maybe you got something there, little one. Instead of warning ponies away, if the right group of ponies showed up, the right hints could lead them to...mmph, if I can’t save my daughter, I can save the young. Have to be careful about it, wait for the right group...ones who’ll look after the foals, not just lump them in with the rest. Goddesses, Heartchime... forgive me.”

He trailed off, dark contemplations shadowing his features. The picture froze there, and Filly Binge looked at the still frame of colored chalk outlines with sadness weighing down her whole, tiny frame until I thought she might sink into the ground. Her voice was a small, exhausted whisper.

“He thought he was saving me and Arbu’s other foals. He might never have gotten the idea if I hadn’t talked to him. What happened after that is my fault.”

The scent of smoke hit me first, before the heat did. Arcaidia and I both turned to see the ceiling was now criss crossed by flickering tongues of scorching flame. Not every part of the ceiling was covered, however, and as I looked at the fires consuming the ceiling I also saw that the drawings up there were now moving and alive, and showing a scene of horror I knew.

Echoes of screams and gunfire, and the enraged shouts of a wrathful mare bled from the scene. The drawings of Arbu’s residents being slaughtered one after another by a small gray mare who looked hellish in the light of the fire burning across the ceiling. I once more saw Heartchime fall to a bullet through her head, her blood splashing across a young Binge. I saw Mug, older now, perhaps just a few years younger than me, try to protect his little sister even as bullets tore through him.

I saw Binge’s past self once more slip away from her brother's dying hooves and flee through their small secret way out through the town wall. I watched Binge’s filly form flee into the darkness as the town of her birth was consumed by fire.

The very real looking flames scorched the ceiling black, and bits of ash began to fall from it, like motes of dark snow. Filly Binge’s tears mixed in with that ash. “That’s why coming back here hurt so much. Being close to home, reminded me that its gone because of me.”

I looked at Arcaidia, who looked almost as lost as I felt. We both turned to Filly Binge then, coming up on either side of her, and we hugged her tight together.

“No, Binge. That wasn’t your fault.”

“Ren solva is right. Badness not because of you. Nopony make good choices there. Many faults, but not yours.”

Filly Binge sniffed, squirming in our grasp, but not really trying ot get away. Her struggles were halfhearted at best. “You guys don’t have to treat me like a little filly. I may look like this, but I’m actually the most mature part of Binge’s mind.”

“What, her sense of guilt?” I asked, ruffling Filly Binge’s head. She stuck her tongue out at me, while wiping at her tears.

“No, dummy, I’m what’s left of her sense of responsibility. Only thing keeping her in check sometimes. And, yeah, guilt, bucky. Lots and lots of guilt.” She shuddered in our hooves, her voice growing more childlike for a moment, “How can you say it wasn’t my fault, anyway? You heard that talk I had with Grandpa. He didn’t think about leading other ponies, ponies with guns, to Arbu’s secret until I gave it to him.”

Arcaidia snorted, bopping Filly Binge on the head, “I hear different conversation then. All I hear was nice filly worrying about family, and grandpa making own choices. Choices he likely make no matter what you say to him.”

Filly Binge blew out a snort, “Yeah, and don’t you think he was right? You hate what my family became, Frosty. It disgusts you, doesn’t it?”

Arcaidia held Filly Binge closer, hugging her more tightly. “That not matter. Maybe I no different than mare who burn home, maybe if put in same place I do similar thing, but that not mean I blame you for what happened. Still not your fault, all this horribleness. I think your grand parent right that your mother and family were sick in heads, but... not happy what happened to them. If Veruni were in charge, they have medicine to fix head sickness. And much good food besides. This world need Veruni.”

Filly Binge managed a ghost of a smile, “If your alien pals ever take over the world, do you think I could drive a flying saucer? I always wanted to.”

However the smile faded away just as swift as it had appeared. “I know you both believe what you say. It's what friends would say. But this weight, it can’t just go away with words. Binge has carried this pain for so long, I don’t know it can ever just go away.”

I turned Filly Binge’s face towards my own, wiping some of the ash away that was falling upon her young, yet tired face. “The pain, the weight, doesn’t have to go away. All Binge has to do is realize we’re here to share it. She doesn’t have to do this, face all this, alone.”

Tears broke out in Filly Binge’s tiny, exhausted eyes, and she buried her ash streaked face into my chest, sobbing quietly. Arcaidia and I held her tight, Arcaidia resting her head on my shoulder and mine on hers as we held the crying feeling between us.

The moment was broken by the sound of something ramming into the stone hatchway that we’d come through, followed by the muted sounds of the wailing wraiths. And just like that the moment ended and Filly Binge squirmed away from us, wiping her eyes and her face going serious once more.

“Times up. I’ve shown you what I can. The real fight is up above, where the center of Binge’s mind is... and the Master. You either get through to her and get past him, or he’ll kill you both. Destroy your minds, and do as he pleases with Binge’s.”

Arcaidia and I exchanged equally resolved looks and I nodded ot Filly Binge, “We’re not letting that happen. Can you buy us as much time as you can?”

Filly Binge smiled in a wane, sardonic manner. “Momma’s not in a listening mood, but maybe big brother will listen better. He’s not as angry as she is. I’ll... slow them down.”

The iron door leading out of the room shuddered, the chains around it snapping away. With a bellowing yawn of grating metal the door swung open, revealing a path upward that was forged of rickety looking wood and sheet metal planks. Filly Binge gave us a quick little head-tilt, telling us to go without saying another word as she faced the stone hatchway where the banging and wailing continued to emanate.

With a mirrored pair of deep breaths, Arcaidia and I went out the door. We found ourselves on a haphazardly built walkway of squealing planks and uneven steps, all circling a rising tower that went up into the dark, storm lit sky of Binge’s troubled mind. Together I scaled the walkway with Arcaidia, the young mare at my side a confident comfort as I took strength from Arcaidia’s determined hoofsteps as much as she seemed to take strength from my own.

Strange. I thought about my life before meeting Arcaidia, and wondered how I seemed to be missing so many things without noticing it. Trailblaze was, and always would be, my best friend. I loved her, but I was over the fact that that love would always be that of my dearest friend, no matter how far apart our lives strayed.

Arcaidia had become the sister I’d never known I needed in my life, and I loved her for it just as much as Trailblaze. She was a source of strength from day one of this mad adventure, always pushing me forward, always reminding me of what both patience and resolve looked like.

And Binge...?

Binge was...

I was about to find out.

The apex of the tower, the center of Binge’s mind, hadn’t been what I was expecting to see. Despite the darkness of a brewing storm above, there was a faded light, pale and gray, falling up the scene.

It was a garden. Torn and beaten by harsh weather, but grass still grew in a wet carpet, and tiny clusters of worn flowers grew in soft colors, some wilting, some seemingly dying, but others still fought on to grow. It was not a pristine place, or expertly grown, but the random and chaotic bursts of colorful placement of the flowers reminded me of Binge, of the bursts of laughter and bizarre joy she was capable of despite all that had happened to beat her down.

Despite it all, Binge had kept this small place inside her, at her core. And most telling of all, beyond the garden itself, was that at the center of it was a headstone. A tall, polished stone of granite that had a single mournful word carved into it.

Arbu.

Binge was chained to that headstone, forehooves pulled high, her body seeming more thin than I’d ever seen it, her mane hanging in a limp, ragged mass. She cracked open her eyes, their blue light looking pained and washed with exhaustion, and she still managed a small smile at the sight of us, a phantom of her familiar giggle filling the air.

“Hehehe... I can’t get away from you, can I bucky? You never stop. You either, Scary Blue. Tried to kill you both, and you still come after me.”

“Not going to call it quits on a friend just because they try to kill me.” I said, “I mean, c’mon, what’s a little homicide between friends?”

Arcaidia huffed out a snort, head held high, “I just need keep Longwalk from getting himself dead. Is full time job. The rest takes care of itself.”

Binge hung her head, “But you both shouldn't be here. He’s gonna make you both bleed. Heheh, he’s inside every thought. I can’t keep him out. Whispering the feelings of blood and viscera in my soul.” A wild look flashed through her eyes as she looked back up at us, thrashing against her chains, “Kill ‘em, is what has to be. Kill the ones who hurt momma and Mug and all my family! I can’t not do it Longy! I can’t! The blood sings and dances! He whispers and calls, and the blood calls back! Have to kill! Pleeease make it stooooop! Bucky, Longwalk, make it stop!”

She was crying, anguish in her voice. I surged forward. “Binge!”

Arcaidia leaped forward, yanking me back, “Ren solva, wait!”

She’d been just in time, pulling me back just before the scything blade of Azrael cut through the space my neck had occupied a moment ago. The scythe, glittering deadly silver, sat embedded in the garden floor for a moment before it was lifted away and floated to a point above the headstone Binge was chained to. There the air shimmered, and Scythe appeared, his dark brown form and blonde mane taking shape amid a haze like a waver of heat off metal. He smiled with gleaming white fangs at us, all power and confidence as his body was coated in a blood red glow of magic.

“I’m actually kind of glad you both are here. I figured the defenses I set on you inside this broken mare’s mind wouldn’t stop you. You’ve proven stupidly resilient. Still, just means I can get my own hooves dirty, and Blood Bloom always taught me the best kills are the ones that get the blood on yourself.”

The crimson light that played over his body like writhing vines of blood extended out in a smoky cloud to take the shape of multiple solid copies of Azrael, nearly a score of the lethal scythes hovering in the air now as Scythe himself smirked. “And in this place I’d say my blood magic gives me a distinct advantage.”

The scythes darted in, swirling in murderous arcs. Arcaidia and I moved as one, our minds both conjuring defenses that we pushed out into the mental garden around us. For Arcaidia her trademark ice sprang up in a thick, powerful wall before her. For me it was stone, shooting up in front of me in a shield as I drew Gramzanber from his sheath. The Azreal copies smashed into our barriers, rocking my mind with heavy blows. However things looked, this was a battle of minds and wills. Scythe’s killing intent smashed into Arcaidia’s and my own mental defenses, and in the next breath we went on the attack.

My experience battling Moa Gault in a similar situation helped me immensely with the ease and speed of my actions. I smoothed out the stone barrier I’d created into a ramp, speeding up it at a full gallop. Arcaidia rose on a pillar of ice, already conjuring dozens of sharp, pointed shards in a cloud around her wrathful form.

Scythe seemed faintly surprised we hadn’t be shredded by his initial attack, but in the next instant he grinned broadly and leaped upwards. He clearly knew his way around a mental battleground, because wings, wide and black like a bat’s, spread from his back and he took to the air with seeming ease, dozens of more scythes popping into existence around him.

I didn’t think I could pull off the same flight, confident or not, but I trusted Arcaidia to cover me while I put my will towards shaping a rising stone pathway that took my galloping form straight towards Scythe. With a contemptuous gesture he sent his conjured Azrael's towards me, and Arcaidia, just as I knew I could trust her to, leapt to my defense. Her spears of ice flew past me in a storm, smashing into the incoming scythes in a clamour of echoing crashes. Bits of ice pelted me as scythes fell to either side of my rising stone ramp, and Scythe himself snarled in frustration even as I got close enough to him to make a flying leap, Gramzanber swinging in my hooves.

Scythe had kept the original Azrael close to him, and with his horn glowing he swirled the weapon to meet Gramzanber. The two ARMs clashed, and in the instant they did my mind was filled with a flash of several images.

I saw a family of ponies hanging from the dead branches of an ancient tree, most of them dead with nooses around their necks. Only a mare bearing Scythe’s blonde hair and dark brown coat was still alive, a look of frozen pain on her face.

Another image showed me an view of a dark room of stone, with an open door blocked by a mare I barely recognized as B.B. She looked the same physically, but her eyes were devoid of the warmth and steady companionship I was used to seeing, but instead were flat and cold as a void. Her smile was cruel, displaying wicked fangs.

The last flashing image showed me bleeding hooves, the same color as Scythe’s coat. Was this from his perspective? He was drawing symbols with his own blood on a bare stone floor, while B.B... Blood Bloom, watched him from nearby, carrying a curved knife that dripped crimson.

The images had come and gone in an instant as Scythe had parried me in mid-air. I recovered fast from my disorientation, enough to adjust my grip on Gramzanber to block Scythe's brutal counter swing, which struck hard enough to knock me back like a pinball.

“You don’t get to see that!” Scythe roared, sounding genuinely enraged. “Filth like you is not allowed inside my memories!”

I fell the short distance to the garden floor, rolling with the fall and coming up with minimal damage from the oft impact. My brain tried to piece together what I’d just seen, even as Arcaidia unleashed her fury upon Scythe, conjuring images of her starblaster and firing a barrage of silver beams at him. In response Scythe summoned barriers of magical red symbols, absorbing the streaking white blasts in their multitude.

Meanwhile I wondered about what I’d seen. That family hanging from the tree, all dead save that last mare, who looked so much like Scythe. Then a confined room, a prison, with B.B as the jailer. Finally, Scythe, a young Scythe, learning blood magic under B.B’s teaching...

“She killed them,” I breathed, “Didn’t she? Blood Bloom killed your family.”

Scythe, surrounding himself with a blood red shield as Arcaidia hammered at him with a giant spike of ice, hissed, “She saved me from the mediocrity of my pointless life. The ponies that died that day weren't my family. I only have one Family!”

“You were forced to join that Family, just like B.B was!”

“No, I was uplifted, enlightened, just like Blood Bloom was! She showed me so many beautiful things, and erased the dull, worthless pony I was before that!” Scythe spat, voice edged with a streak of blood red madness as he dove towards me, smashing through another barrage of Arcaidia’s ice.

“Longwalk!” Arcaidia shouted in warning, even as I noticed Scythe’s descending from flicker and vanish, an illusion to distract me as he appeared behind me, Azrael raised.

I swiftly spun and barely managed to get Gramzanber in the way, but even then the deflected blow caught the edge of my shoulder, drawing a spray of blood. More images from Scythe flashed through me then. I saw him covered in blood, suckling on the neck of a freshly dead pony barely older than a foal, with Blood Bloom nearby feasting upon an older pony. They shared a red faced smile with each other before the image faded to another one, this of Scythe and Blood Bloom fighting creatures I recognized as Hell Hounds, both back to back and laughing into the rain of blood they exacted from the creatures with deadly curved blades.

The last image was of both of them sharing an embrace upon a bed in a dark room, alone and entwined, and I finally understood.

“You love her.”

Scythe snarled into my face as he pushed his blade against mine, sparks flashing between them. “I worship her! I will have her back, no matter the cost! I’ll bring her back home where she belongs! With me.”

I growled, deep in my throat, and pushed back hard, forcing Azrael up just enough for me to have an opening to take a hoof off Gramzanber and smash it into Scythe’s face. The blow rocked my arm, but sent him sprawling backwards, bleeding from a cracked lip. He sprang to his hooves in an eyeblink, however, and with a feral snarl he slammed his own hooves down on the ground and I felt a tremor as he conjured a mental wave of raw, punishing crimson energy that blasted into me like a runaway Vertibuck.

I felt everything tumble and spin, but was quickly grasped by Arcaidia’s magic which straightened me out and plopped me back down next to her as Arcaidia stared with deathly intent at Scythe.

“B.B not belong anywhere but where B.B want to belong!” Arcaidia hissed, far more vehemently than I had ever heard her before, her face frighteningly enraged. “You not care about her, only about what you get out of her.”

Scythe bristled, his smooth expression turning murderous. There was a bone chilling hiss in the air as Azeal hovered at his side and became engulfed in a thick aura of burning red flame. I didn’t think he was doing that bit consciously, just that his anger was taking shape in this mental battle as those blood red flames, the heat of which I could feel like a scalding wind on my face.

“You spend a few weeks with her and you think you know Blood Bloom? You think her act as a good little pony is the real her? You know nothing! I know who she really is, the beauty of her mercilessness, the genius of her violence. Seeing her deny herself is sickening, and worse to think she’s doing it for ponies who don’t even know her beyond the mask she’s wearing.”

He eyed Arcaidia, and a cruel look entered his eyes, “Oh, I think I see now. You care about her more than just a little bit, do you my frosty friend? Should I tell you things about her that you’re no doubt curious about? Like where she likes to be touched? The best way to make her sigh and shudder? We’ve shared a bed many times-”

Arcaidia’s eyes flashed with killing intent, and an explosion of ice, like a massive glacier, roared out of the ground at her hooves at Scythe. He responded with equal fury, swinging Azrael as it too explode with a giant wave of scorching red fire. The ice and flames collided, the personification of Arcaidia and Scythe’s equal rage warring in a eruption of steam.

Not about to remain idle, I hefted Gramzanber and focused my will upon the ARM. I immediately felt Gramzanber respond, more than eager to add his will to my own. The silver spear blazed to life with luminous azure light, vibrating in my hooves as I poured my strength into the spear and felt Gramzanber resonate with me.

Impulse

Gramzanber’s energy reached a fevered peak and the blue light flaring from it turned brilliantly bright, and I hurled the ARM. The spear streaked into the fray between Arcaidia’s ice and Scythe’s flames, and impacted into the middle of it. The will of my attack joined with Arcaidia’s, and as the Impulse attack exploded with a sphere of destructive blue force, the ice joined it in a swirling blizzard of ice shards.

Scythe’s fire was torn apart, and the unicorn himself impacted by the combined force of my and Arcaidia’s attack so that he was thrown bodily off the top of the tower, shouting in wordless rage and pain as he went.

I didn’t dare let myself believe that was the end of it, but perhaps we’d bought ourselves a minute or two to free Binge.

“C’mon!” I told Arcaidia, who was still panting from barely restrained anger, her face colored with streaks of hot rose. She nodded, snorting under her breath, and followed me to the headstone where Binge was chained up.

The chains crossed her body in multiple places, a mish-mash of iron that bound her tight to the stone in an awkward standing position. Both her hindlegs and forelegs were equally bound, almost stretching her taut over the cold stone. Up close Binge looked even more drained and haggard than before, her fur matted and drained of its vibrant green color to appear sickly muted. She seemed even more rail thin than usual, ribs pressing against her strained hide. Her face was gaunt and her eyes sunken as she looked at me. I saw the pain and despair inside her, and it wrenched at me. Her voice matched her eyes.

“Longy... hey. Will you do me a solid, and kill me? Just, nice and quick like? You have your big shiny spear, right?”

I barely had to think about Gramzanber for the spear to appear back at my side, but I didn’t so much as reach for the shaft as I put a hoof on Binge’s chains and started trying to tug them loose.

“Binge, shut up. I’m not doing anything other than save you. Period.”

Her face screwed up and she let out a choking sound, almost a sob as she hung in the chains, “Please bucky. I’m so, so tired. I’ve been trying to fight him, but I can’t. He’s got me, Longwalk. He’s got me, and my family, and he’ll use them and me to do really bad things to you and other ponies. I... I don’t want to do it. I’ve done so many terrible things, played terrible games, danced in all that blood. Maybe I even liked it. But I’m just... done. I’d rather go to sleep forever than hurt you Longy.”

“Then help me Binge!” I said, my throat catching with a lump of emotions I could barely get out, “Me and Arcaidia aren’t abandoning you. We can beat Scythe, but not if you’re giving up. C’mon, where’s that mare who giggles at every crazy, dangerous thing we’ve done and keeps on bouncing for more? I know you Binge, more than I ever thought I could, and you do not just sag there and let yourself fade. When you die, Binge, it’s going to be swinging and laughing, and... and I plan to be beside you, going down too. Because I won’t let you die any other way except with me.”

The words were spilling out of my mouth without me having much control of them. I’d gone beyond thinking things through, or wondering how I felt. I just needed Binge. If we were minutes from dying, I still wasn’t going anywhere without her.

There must have been something more in my voice than there ever had been before, because Binge looked at me as if really seeing me for the first time. Her sunken eyes blinked, and a sheen of brightness flashed through them, just a spark of something, but it was enough.

“You wanna die together?”

I touched her face with my hoof, “How about we live together? Leave dying for tomorrow.”

A few small tears crawled their way down her stained, scarred face, “Why, Longwalk? Why do so much for little ol’, dirty, tainted, crazy me? Bad things always bounce along behind me, like the Wasteland’s own poison. It killed my family, and I drank deep of all that filth. I’ve made so many others bleed, and giggled all the while. I’m scared, bucky. I don’t want it to happen to you.”

“It won’t. Binge, you’re better than you think, and no matter how bad your past has been, your future doesn’t have to be the same. You got friends, and you got me.”

A funny look entered her eyes, vulnerable yet utterly serious.

“I’ve got you? Does that mean...?”

She left the question hanging, and there was no avoiding the simple, direct query that was suspended there between us like a glittering knife that could cut either way. What did I say to that question, other than the truth I’d been wrestling with, half-denying, or just simply scared of for some time now. Strange as it was, when it came time to just say it, it was a lot simpler than I ever imagined.

I leaned in and put my forehead to hers, voice just a whisper as Arcaidia stood back a step to give us a bit of space.

“Means I love you, you crazy-ass mare.”

A sound halfway between a joyous laugh and a relieved gasp burst from her lips, and she thrust herself forward to kiss me with the desperation of a drowning pony. I returned fully in kind, feeling my whole body heat up.

She broke the kiss just long enough to whisper, “Love you too, my silly Longy. No fair telling me when I’m all tight and bound, and can’t jump you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll make it up to you once we get you free.” I said, yanking once more on her chains, “Uh, speaking of which, Arcaidia, any ideas?”

Arcaidia had been pointedly examining the sky and not watching me and Binge in a politely affected air of disinterest, but now she looked at me levelly and nodded at Gramzanber. I blinked, then slapped my forehead. “Right. Obvious.”

I hefted Gramzanber and glanced at Binge, “Um, just lean left, Binge.”

Actually Longwalk I should point out that- Gramzanber began to say, but I was already bringing the ARMs heavy edge down on the chains. The spear hit the iron bands, and to my surprise bounced right off in a flash of mystic red light that wafted up from the chains like a miasma.

“The hell!?” I said, almost losing my balance from the ricochet.

As I was just trying to say, those chains are formed from metaphysical constraints enforced by what I believe to be Scythe’s blood magic. I cannot simply sever them. Scythe must either be defeated, or another means of disrupting his magic enacted.

“Ugh, great. Just need to crush in Scythe’s skull some more. I’m remarkably okay with that, all things considered. He’s got a seriously creepy love-hate complex going on with B.B.”

“I not let him harm her ever!” Arcaidia said firmly, stamping a hoof, from which a patch of frost formed along the garden floor.

“I don’t think he wants to hurt the birdy, Blue.” said Binge, “Least not in the way you’re thinking.”

Arcaidia rolled her eyes, “Not everything be about sex, Binge!”

“I’m going to contest that soon as I’m not tied up.”

I gulped, hefting Gramzanber over my shoulder, “That aside, where’s Scythe? I mean, we knocked his butt off the tower, but figured dude’s got wings, he should’ve been back trying to tear our throats out by now.”

If I may suggest a theory? I believe he has gone to get reinforcements. said Gramzanber.

“Reinforcements?” I asked, “From wher-” I blinked in sudden, frightened realization. “Oh, shit.”

Scythe may as well have been waiting for his cue, judging by the fact that he chose that moment to arrive, flying high on his conjured bat wings. And in his wake, like a boiling dark cloud, were the wraiths. In all their wailing horror, the wraiths of Arbu rose like a horrifying wall of ink black shadows. The rushed around the garden in a wave, their haunting cries scratching at our ears. Within mere seconds we were surrounded, a tide of screaming, twisted phantoms pressing in towards me, Acaidia, and Binge. I held Gramzanber out, point ready to skewer the first wraith that got close enough. Arcaidia had conjured multiple starblasters around her, horn lit up as motes of frost creeped down her body.

Binge went quiet, staring with unblinking eyes at the faces of her long dead home.

“Momma? Mug?” Binge breathed with guilt laden pain that was only matched by the yearning in her voice. The two wraiths in question were right in front of us at the head of the pack, enough of the encroaching shadows of their wraith forms pulled back so that their faces were at least partially visible. Neither offered a response to Binge’s words, although I thought I saw a flinch cross Heartchime’s features, if only for an instant.

“They can’t hear you.” Scythe said as he landed amid the wraiths, who parted for him without being told to do so. They continued to part from his path as he strode towards us, all smug smiles once more. “They’re mine. As are you, you piece of gutter trash.”

His horn lit up red, and the chains around Binge glowed with an identical bloody glow, constricting around Binge’s body. She grit her teeth, holding back an obvious cry of pain. I saw her eyes flash with the same red light as Scythe’s horn as she growled, her voice strained, “I’m not... your... puppet!”

“Are you not? Your body will do as these vengeful souls demand.” Scythe said, making a grand gesture at the wraiths around him, “And they do as I bid. Speaking of which; destroy these two, now. Make it slow and painful, preferably.”

He nodded at Arcaidia and I, and the wraiths boiled up like froth from a cauldron, surging towards us. Arcaidia’s starblasters fired in a blinding silver storm, streaking into the onrushing horde. Formed from her mind’s will, the starblaster bolts impacted the wraiths solidly, forcing several back, yet more rushed on. With no other choice, I met them head on, Gramzanber springing into my hooves as I got in front of Arcaidia, standing on my hind hooves.

The first wraith to reach me leapt forward with yawning jaws, howling so loud I thought my head would burst. It was met with the tip of Gramzanber, impaling through the wraith. It felt as if it had solid mass here, the soul given physical form in this mental landscape. I winced as the wraith screamed, not so much bleeding as disgorging trails of white and black fire from its wound as I pitched it over my head. I had no time to wonder what damage I was doing to these poor ponies souls, and could only pray I wasn’t doing permanent harm as I tried to defend myself and Arcaidia. I pivoted on my hooves, my lessons with Applegate fresh in my mind, as I spun Gramzanber around in blazing arcs that cut into the wraiths trying to surround us.

Arcaidia covered my back, as I covered hers. Ice shot up in harsh spikes around us while other shards of crystal blue frost rained down like arrows, all conjured by Arcaidia’s will added to her magical might. The ice skewered wraiths as easily as they did real ponies, here, and her magic kept the horde from overwhelming us for a few moments.

I kept moving, not daring to let my hooves stop, spinning left and right with swift pivots that sent wraiths trailing by me as I cut into them, but I wasn’t escaping unscathed. Several times a wraiths jaws or striking hooves would touch much, and the black shadows covering them would feel as if they were freezing me to my core, wracking me with pain. Yet I didn’t let the pain distract me, and focused on staying alive. Gramzanber spun about me in shining silver arcs, but much like with the Raider Binges down at the bottom of this mind fortress, numbers were starting to tell.

I heard Arcaidia let out a pained yelp behind me, and I glanced to see a wraith had broken through her forest of ice shards to bowl into her, its shadows seeming to claw at her like living things. I shouted a wordless cry and turned, thrusting Gramzanber into the wraith and knocking it off Arcaidia, but my own distraction cost me as another wraith came in behind me and barreled into me at a full gallop. I felt icy pain piercing me, lifting me off the ground and then slamming me down at the foot of the headstone Binge was chained to.

The cold pain searched through me as the snarling wraith turned me over, keeping me pinned to the floor, and I found myself face to face with Heartchime’s twisted, snarling visage. Shadows clung to her face, yet her eyes burned clearly at me as she howled, “Leave my family alone! You won’t take my daughter from me!”

Her shadow clad hooves pressed down on me. Gramzanber was laying dropped beside us, just out of reach. Not far away Arcaidia was in a similar situation, barely getting her hooves under her before a wraith had emerged from the horde to pin her to the ground... one I recognized as Mug. Arcaidia, despite the pain she was clearly feeling from her twisted features, still growled at Mug and summoned one of her starblasters to appear in the air beside her, aiming it at his head.

“NO!”

Binge’s shout held more than just volume to it. It hit us all with the raw, hammer blow of pure desperate will behind it. Even the chains binding her shuddered at the force behind that one word, and for a moment all was silent. The wraiths had halted in their tracks, their shadowed faces all looking at the battered, chained mare who was one of their own. Binge, however, was looking right at her mother. Heartchime’s own confused, anger filled eyes looked up at Binge as if unsure what she was seeing, me temporarily forgotten under her hooves.

Binge took a shaking breath, and looked Heartchime in the eyes.

“Mama, no. No more.” Binge sobbed, but her eyes seemed too tired to give tears. “No more pain. Please... I had to watch you and everything else I loved go into flames and death. I don’t want to see you hurting anymore.”

She hung her head, sagging against her chains. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of it. Not Grandpa bringing the angel of fire upon us, or to become such a bad pony like the kind you hated. I... I just wanted to be with my family. But...”

Her head raised again, and a strong light had awoken in her pure blue eyes, her voice growing stronger, fuller. “Longwalk is my family now. He’s mine and I’m his, mama, and you will leave him alone. He’s family. Your family too. Will you keep hurting your family!?”

Heartchime remained completely still, yet her eyes displayed a battle of wills that left me equally frozen in place. I could see the hate boiling inside Heartchime, hate for the long suffering of herself and her home. Hate for all the trials and harsh blows life had dealt her and her kin. Hate for the killers of Arbu, and even hate for me, who’d dared create any turmoil inside her daughter. And fighting this hate was something else, something fierce and strong.

Sometimes I heard people sneer and laugh in chortling mockery at the idea of the ‘power of love’. For some it's a ridiculous concept, fit only for jokes.

I’ve seen the strength of love firsthoof, however, and I don’t mock it.

It was love that warred with hate inside Heartchime. Blood magic might have bound her soul to Scythe and hatred fueled her rampage, but the love she held for her family, especially of her tortured daughter who sat chained and pleading before her, was rising up in challenge to the forces seeking to control her. It kept her from finishing me, and the rest of the wraiths from moving in on me and Arcaidia.

Scythe let out a long, harsh hiss from his clenched teeth. “I’m impressed. Even for such hopeless ponies, who died useless deaths, the bonds of a mother to her children are strong. Yet this resistance cannot last. My blood magic binds these souls to me, and soon enough even your mother’s love for you won’t stop her from tearing the soul of this idiot colt apart!”

I could see he was speaking truth. As hard as Heartchime was fighting against the will of Scythe, for all the strength her feelings for her daughter gave her, she couldn’t keep it up forever. I saw flashing, spectral chains of blood red leading from Scythe to all the wraiths around him, pulsing with angry crimson light. The other wraiths, the citizens of Arbu who weren’t as strongly connected to Binge as Heartchime or Mug, started to slowly move towards us again, even as Binge’s mother and brother remained still.

Then, with a feral howl, Mug spun and hurled himself into the other wraiths, ripping against his own chains. Heartchime did the same, bowling into the wraiths coming in from the other side. Scythe growled and his eyes and horn both lit up red, pouring energy into the chains binding the two rebellious wraiths, and both collapsed in unimaginable screeches of agony. Yet their brief moment or resistance had cleared the way between Scythe and the other wraiths.

And it gave me my opening to get at Scythe.

I reached out, stretching my hoof, and grabbed Gramzanber.

Accelerator

Even in the mindscape, everything turned to pure azure blue. I leaped to my hooves, ARM in my mouth this time. I needed to be able to gallop on all fours, to reach Scythe as fast as possible. I saw him, amid the parted ranks of the wraiths. He had a bemused, frowning look on his face, as if he wasn’t sure what was happening.

I rushed forward, crossing the distance between us in moments. Even with Accelerator’s speed, Scythe responded with equal speed, like a crimson glowing wraith himself. Azrael cleaved in a gleaming arc just as I slashed in a blazing silver strike with Gramzanber. Both ARM’s clashed for a single, crystalline moment. This was no physical matter, no question of muscle and bone, blood and skill... it was just mine and Gramzanber’s will versus Scythe and Azrael's will, in one final moment to decide it all.

And just as before, I saw into Scythe’s soul. This image, this scene, was more vivid, visceral, and real than the others. I felt everything Scythe felt and thought with the same clarity of the blue, sunlit sky.

”Mistress, I’m begging you, let me bring her back!” Scythe pleaded, his head bowed to the cold stone floor, his whole body trembling. “I swear to you I will return Blood Bloom to us. I will make her see she belongs with us! You needn't order her death!”

A voice like the cold edge of a knife giggled, and spoke with a tone that somehow commanded infinite force while sounding as soft as a whisper.

“Oh do stop your groveling Scythe, it is unseemly. Raise your head.”

He did so, fear clogging his heart, not for himself, but for Blood Bloom. After so many long years of not knowing where his beloved was, they’d finally found her, and the idea that the Mistress would send others to retrieve Blood Bloom’s head, or worse go for it herself, filled Scythe with utter terror. He couldn’t allow it to happen! He had to save Blood Bloom, no matter the cost!

The Mistress sat upon her tall throne of red velvet and gilded gold, at the end of the vast mansion hall that was the Family’s home. Dressed in flowing silks of red and black, the young mare with the voluminous mane of gold curls was in sharp contrast to her pure white coat and eyes that glittered red as fresh arterial blood from a severed neck. She looked down upon Scythe with amusement, but he knew well it was a mask to hide the wrath, the horrible, terrible wrath that sat beneath her childish exterior.

“You beg for Blood Bloom's life. You say you can return her to the fold. Do you honestly believe that, my child? She has been gone so very, very long. Do you think if she held any affection for us that she would not have returned of her own accord by now? I imagine, instead of embracing you, she’d likely rather put a bullet through you, as her new ‘father’ has taught her.”

Anger boiled up inside Scythe beside his fear, “No! That will not happen, my Mistress! I swear to you on my own blood I can get through to Blood Bloom. That old stallion has clouded her mind, taken advantage of a momentary weakness, nothing more! Once I remind her of who she is, she will come back to us. Please... I would give my own life for hers. I won’t return empty hooved.”

Scythe didn’t see the Mistress move. There was just a gust of wind and suddenly she was not on the throne, but standing beside him, lowering her hoof to his chin to tilt his head up to look her in the eyes. Her eyes bored into him, her sweet smile as sickly as the promise of death itself.

“You sweet, smitten boy. Your love for our lost sister will be your death, I think, but I cannot deny such charming devotion. I grant you your chance, and only one chance, to bring Blood Bloom back to the Family. Fail, and both you and her will still be together, in a death that all will tremble to remember for centuries to come.”

Scythe trembled, his entire body shaking, both in absolute fear, but also determination to retrieve Blood Bloom in any way he possibly could. He didn’t care at all for his own fate, but he would never allow his beloved to die. He would bring her back from the clutches of her false mortal life and return her to where she belonged... by his side.

The memory shattered like glass, even as both our own ARMs shattered against each other. Scythe’s devotion was no less than my own, his love no less than my own. Yet there was one, small difference. He was fighting for someone he wasn’t certain shared his feelings for him any longer, while I knew the pony I fought for needed me as much as I needed her. That along may have been why, even cracked down the center, Granzanber still broke through Azrael and cut a bloody swath along Scythe’s side, spraying blood through the air.

He staggered back, roaring in pain and defiance, but Azrael's mental representation was broken along the center of its blade, and blood poured from the deep wound I’d given him, and he sagged, barely standing.

I didn’t know if wounding his body here weakened his blood magic or not, but it clearly did something, because I saw the red spectral chains tied to the wraiths flicker unsteadily. Heartchime and Mug both responded to this by roaring to their hooves from where they’d been curled in anguish moments ago. Both tore and tugged at their chains, ripping them apart with loud snapping sounds that echoed over the tower roof. This seemed to galvanize the other wraiths, and the whole herd went mad, ripping and tugging at their chains.

Scythe grit his teeth and growled, struggling to pull on the chains, to channel more magic into them to maintain control, but I was right there and I rushed forward, turning to buck him across the face. He went sprawling, and more wraiths freed themselves, chains snapping with clarion rings.

Eyes wide, Scythe rose again, glaring about as the wraiths he’d been controlling a minute ago now started to turn towards him, and their eyes were no more friendly towards him now than they had been towards me and my friends.

Even Binge’s chains weakened, slacking and allowing the exhausted mare to fall free of the headstone.

Scythe’s eyes turned towards me, filled with hate as he spat. “This isn’t done. Blood Bloom will come home with me, no matter what.”

With that, his form flickered and vanished in a red mist, wafting into the air, and then nothing. I stood there, struggling to catch my breath, legs shaking, and sat on my haunches.

“Gramzanber, where’d he go?”

He’s fled Binge’s mind. I believe he’s forcibly broken the connection, now that his blood magic has been weakened and the wraiths regaining control of themselves. I hazard to guess, but he may either choose to flee the scene in the physical world, or seek to attack us while we remain here. I suggest ending this mental connection ourselves as soon as possible. Even with the time dilation here, we may only have ten or twenty minutes, respectively speaking, before we are in danger again.

“Alright,” I said, shuddering and forcing myself to my hooves once more as I turned, “Arcaidia, Binge, we got to wake up from dreamland now, before...uh...” I blinked.

Binge was sitting on the ground, sobbing her eyes out. Heartchime, the flickering shadows of her wraith form barely visible now, held her daughter in the tightest of hugs, head buried in Binge’s mane.

“I’m sorry mama, I’m sorry...” Binge kept saying, “I tried to be a good filly, but I couldn’t... I just couldn’t. It hurt too much...”

“Shhh, it’s okay baby, it's okay.” Heartchime whispered, stroking her foal’s mane, “We were all hurt. There’s no shame. Nothing to be sorry for.”

“But Grandpa Rattle-”

“Hush now, Binge, don’t think on it. Your Grandpa did what he thought was right, just like I did what I thought was right...” Heartchime let out her own, small sob as tears made their way down her own cheek, “Maybe we were both wrong. All I ever wanted to do was look after my family. To make a home for us to live safely in. I think... I forgot what kind of home I wanted to make, and forgot what safe really meant. I’m sorry, Binge. I’m sorry for building a home out of... corpses. None of it would have happened if I hadn’t gone so far... can you forgive me?”

“Mama, I can’t ever hate you. I can’t forgive anything, because I never blamed you for anything.” Binge sniffed, hugging Heartchime tightly, then glanced over at her brother Mug, and the other citizens of Arbu, who all stood around, still and silent as shadows.

“Everypony... I love you all. I’m sorry. I don’t want to let any of you go.”

Mug, half of his face still obscured by wraith shadow, still managed a coltish smile for his sister. “I don’t get what’s going on, sis, but stop crying. You know I can’t stand to see you cry.” He glanced at me, “All I can see is that you seem to got some fine ponies looking after you, so maybe you ought to just try living for them, instead of bawling over us.”

I could only stare back at the wraith and give him my most sincere nod, “Nothing I want more right now than to keep her safe. Which means we can’t stay here long.”

“I know.” said Heartchime, holding Binge out at hooves length and gently wiping her daughter’s eyes clear of teras. “It's time for all of us to go.”

Already I saw some of the wraiths of Arbu were starting to vanish, their forms seeming to curl away like smoke drifting on a swift breeze. Many of their forms were still obscured by shadow, but what few faces of ponies I could see were wearing contented expressions, restful and accepting, now that their wrath was drained out of them. As Heartchime and Mug’s own forms started to fade, Mug came up to join his mother in giving Binge one final embrace.

“Goodbye mama, brother...”

“Goodbye, my little Binge.”

“Take care, sis.”

As their spirits drifted away, their souls no longer forcibly tied to Binge’s mind, Heartchime looked over Binge’s shoulder, right at me. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. Her eyes said it all. All the pain, hardship, and regret of her life, none of it tied Heartchime down anymore, but she was leaving behind one final seed of what had been good in Arbu and was entrusting me to look after it. To look after her daughter.

I looked back at Heartchime’s fading soul, my own words equally unneeded to convey the determination and love with which I’d fulfill that charge.

When Heartchime and Mug were gone, Binge wasn’t alone, for Arcaidia and I went to her and held her close.

“Gramzanber, take us back.” I said.

The ARM didn’t respond with words, it simply glowed with soft silver light, and even as I held Binge close, I felt our minds drift away from each other. Yet even so... I felt that our souls would always be connected.

When we awoke back in the underground chapel of Arbu, Scythe was gone.

LIl-E had been watching over the scene, and told us that no more than a minute had passed since we’d fallen unconscious. My face burned with unbelievable pain and I couldn’t see out of my right eye due to the blood clogging it. LIL-E assured me the eye was still there, but there was going to be a scar right down my face from the top of my brow to the bottom of my snout that would mark me for life, even with Arcaidia’s healing magic.

I didn’t care. Binge was safe. She’d awoken the same time me and Arcaidia did, and while she was quiet, the very first thing she did when she looked at me was grin with that lopsided smile I knew so well, giggled, and all but threw herself on me. She’d have kissed me longer if the pain from my wound wasn’t so horrific and Arcaidia pulled her off with telekinesis.

It took us a bit of time to collect ourselves as Arcaidia applied healing magic to all of us.

“I’d have shot that rat bastard through his sick skull, but I had no idea if that would have had some kind of backlash for the rest of you.” explained LIL-E, “So I waited, hoping to catch him when you all woke up. Problem is the cowardly sonuvabitch grabbed his scythe and teleported himself clear the second his eyes opened.” LIl-E extended a small robotic claw-arm to point at a smoking bullet hole in the floor. “Still tried to shoot him. Sorry I missed.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I said while wincing, the pain in my face burning even as Arcaidia’s healing magic washed over it.

Binge sat nearby, her tail wagging as she looked at me. “Bucky is so handsome, he’s now got a real nice face scar to show off!”

Arcaidia grunted, “It is very... distinguishing.” she said diplomatically. I think that just meant it was extremely deep and noticeable. I had gotten a brief look at it via my reflection in Gramzanber’s blade. It wasn’t a pretty scar. It nearly split my snout down the middle in a rough, ugly furrow. I wasn’t sure I’d ever pull off my feminine “Blueberry” disguise quite so well ever again.

“I’ll live. We’ll all live.” I said with a sigh, “That’s what matters.”

I looked to Binge, “Are you alright? Any... aftereffects of Scythe’s magic?”

Binge cocked her head at me, blinking. “Don’t know. Don’t care. He’s gone. You’re not. I’m...” she paused, as if unsure of the words herself, “I’m feeling very awake.”

She licked her lips as she looked at me, eyes burning. “And hungry.”

“We get food later when all safe back at hotel.” said Arcaidia firmly, but I rather gathered Binge wasn’t talking about food. My face burned hot as I coughed and glanced away, much to Binge’s giggles.

I then noticed the bones of Scythe’s magic circle, still arranged on the chapel floor. A frown crossed my face, despite the pain it caused, and I stood, “We have one last thing that needs doing, before we leave.”

It took a bit of doing, perhaps an hour or two. Arcaidia’s telekinesis helped a lot. We gathered in the courtyard area of Arbu, once a prison, once a settlement, burned both times. We’d collected every single bone we could find. Every single remnant of the citizens of Arbu that Scythe had exhumed for his vile ritual. It probably wasn’t all of their remains, but it was enough for what I had in mind.

The unnatural fog Scythe had conjured was long gone, and Arbu’s ruined shell lay under the dusky cast of growing evening. In the center of the courtyard, using wood taken from Arbu’s prison walls, we’d constructed a pyre. Upon that pyre were gently and reverently placed the final mortal remains of Binge’s family and friends. Behind the pyre stood a column of concrete I’d cut free from Arbu’s walls, placed up by Arcaidia’s magic, and inscribed using Gramzanber’s edge.

’Here rest the souls of Arbu.

Whatever their sins, love knows no judgment

May they find peace, and watch over their loved ones who remain.’

Old sawdust had been gathered along with smaller bits of kindling beneath the pyre so it could be lit. We were able to scavenge a lighter from the prison ruin and fashion a makeshift torch, which was now lit and held in one of Binge’s hooves as we looked upon the waiting pyre. Arcaidia stood a respectful distance away, while LIL-E floated further back still, having been very silent during this whole process. I imagined the robot was still having trouble reconciling the memories of the mare who killed Arbu, versus the thought of laying its ghosts to rest.

I stood beside Binge, placing a comforting hoof on her withers as she lowered the torch to the pyre, and set it to burning.

We both stood back from the flames as they crawled high into the clear evening sky, the kind of deep, welcoming blue that Arbu had never gotten a chance to see when it had been a home. Now its residents, so long forgotten, were laid to rest by one of its surviving daughters, and their spirits could rise into the restful heavens and be at peace at long last.

Beside me, Binge spoke in a small whisper. “Tell me bucky, these Ancestor Spirits of yours, do you believe in them?”

I nodded, holding her close as I felt her own hoof go around mine. “I do. I might not have once, but now I really do believe they’re watching over us. Your Ancestors and mine, together.”

“I’m not even a part of your tribe, silly bucky, why would your Ancestor Spirits look over me?”

I gulped, face reddening once more, “W-well, you... you could be part of my tribe, if you want.”

“Mmm,” she sighed contentedly, leaning against me, “That sounds like an invitation.”

I felt her tail lash against mine, wagging, and I returned the gesture, my own tail wrapping hers. “It is. I meant what I said, Binge. That I-”

She put a hoof on my mouth, “Shh, later. I wanna hear you say it later.”

“Later?” I asked, and glanced at her as she turned a mischievous grin plastered on her gaunt features.

“I wanna hear you scream it.” she said, all but breathing it into my ear, “Tonight.”

At my flabbergasted look she let out a joyous laugh, tears beading in her eyes. Not tears of so much regret and sadness, but simple released happiness. “Longwalk, you saved me from a madpony who enslaved the souls of my family, and freed them to find peaceful rest, while being by my side as I faced all the ugliness and pain inside me, and then just asked me to be part of your tribe while wearing the most beautiful scar I’ve ever seen carved into pony flesh.”

Her blue eyes shone like the sky above, but her voice was husky.

“I’m so wet for you right now I’m literally gonna burst, bucky. If you don’t take me somewhere with a bed, or other suitable flat surface, and mount me until I can’t walk straight, tonight, there is going to be murder involved.”

I blinked at her, fairly certain my whole body had just turned about as red as the setting sun.

“You’re crazy and a half.”

Her smirk was to die for. “And you love it.”

I could only smile back, because it was true.

We spent some time after that leaning against each other, watching the pyre burn, carrying the souls of Arbu off to final, welcome rest.

Footnote - 50% to next Level Up!

Companion Perk Added - "Love is a Crazy Thing" Binge's feelings for you and yours for her have extra benefits besides the obvious. While Binge is in your party you both gain a 10% damage bonus on enemies you're both targeting, and as long as you are adjacent to each other in combat you can split the damage being taken by enemy attacks between you. Furthermore, whenever you "rest" with Binge in the party you gain 15% bonus to your total HP for the next twelve hours. The bite and scratch marks gained from said "rest" have no mechanical benefit, they just make other ponies stare.

Author's Note

What can I say about this chapter other than man, did it take me a long time to get this one out, and at the same time has it been quite the hurdle to cross. Binge's backstory and her connections to Arbu were things I'd been planning to tackle since practically the day I put her in the party, so I'm glad to have finally gotten to these past couple of chapters. At the same time they have been rather hard to write, because Arbu is a touchy subject in general and giving it a fleshed out story that doesn't strictly contradict the original FoE's events isn't easy. But I'm happy to have gotten this far in Trigger, and not only get Binge and Longwalk to the point where she's putting her past and family to proper rest, but also she and Longwalk are moving forward together.

Not that their relationship is done developing. Its got lots of room to grow, and rough patches to come.

Scythe remains at large, and I'm hoping by now his own relationship with B.B makes more sense, and why he's going so far in trying to get her to return to the Family with him. We certainly haven't seen the last of that guy.

With this sort of mini-arc with Binge wrapping up we're moving into the next half of the NCR story-arc, which I'm thinking may go a bit faster. Fingers crossed on that. For those of you still reading along, my sincerest thanks and hope you guys continue to enjoy the story. 'Till next time!

Chapter 33: Only Because It's Important Does it Easily Break

Chapter 33: Only Because It's Important Does it Easily Break

Our return to the hotel felt numbly surreal to me. After what we’d just gone through my mind barely registered the walk back, although part of that had to do with the way Binge would keep giving my neck and ears little affectionate nips with her teeth. Highly distracting, let me tell you. I had no idea how she had any energy left after what had happened back in Arbu. I felt dead on my hooves. Yet for all the pain she’d endured, Binge walked with a lighter step than I’d ever seen. Her countenance had changed, as if a gray cloud had been peeled away and left her standing in a brighter light.

Putting her family to rest had restored something in the mare that had long been missing, and all I could think was that I sincerely hoped the change lasted. I liked seeing her this way. No, I loved seeing her this way, and if I could find a way to make it happen I’d keep her this happy for as long as I breathed.

I chanced to meet eyes with Arcaidia, who was walking a bit behind us, and she flashed me a knowing, small smile, winking at me. My face heated up and I focused my gaze forward once again. The sun was below the horizon now, with not much more than dusklight painting the sky darker shades of blue and purple by the time we reached the front of the hotel. There, seemingly waiting for us, were Crossfire and Knobs. I halted, blinking at the pair with surprise written all over my face, unsure of which mare I was shocked more to see. Not because they were there, but because what they were wearing.

Knobs’ craggy, leather-like features were now enhanced by a striking dress of emerald color, with wide, leafy pleats down the skirt. Lacy white embroidery formed spiral patterns along the edges of the dress, like waves of air, giving the dress a light and breezy look. She wore lighter green slippers on her front hooves, and I noticed that the dress had a higher skirt train than normal to allow the wheels of her prosthetic back legs to roll around freely. Her stringy, faded red mane was brushed up in a surprisingly stylish manner across the left side of her brow, held together by a simple but elegant white mane clip shaped like a flower.

“Wow, looking good Knobs.” I said, then glanced at Crossfire, “And you-”

“Not. A. Word.” Crossfire hissed, her dark furred face burning red as she bared her teeth in a grimace, looking away. “I look bloody ridiculous.”

Her dress hugged her undercarriage with a smokey gray silk fabric that went up to her chest but left her neck and withers bare. The main part of the dress covering her back and rump was an even darker black than her coat, hugging her body snugly, and both it and the front piece were enhanced with stylized waves painted in icy blue and white colors that popped off the material vividly. Crossfire still wore a dark leather holster over her shoulder for a slim automatic pistol, but her rifle was nowhere in sight. Her own mane was no longer in its practical ponytail, but instead was left loose and fell down her neck in a watery wave, well combed and bearing similar mane clip to Knobs’, only black instead of white.

I kept my mouth shut tight, as it seemed wise not to heckle an armed mare. However my friends were under no such pretense. Binge gave them both a wide yellow smile, bouncing up to them. “You two are looking all kinds of lickable, like a pair of shiny fresh lollipops!”

Crossfire’s obvious embarrassment was only eclipsed by her exceedingly sharp eyed glance at all of us, lingering on me like a targeting laser. “And you all look like warmed over shit kicked down a mine shaft. What the hell happened? Its like somepony took a hatchet to your face, Mr. Hero. Don’t even try to tell me you got that taking your little blue icemaker to see a fucking orphanage.”

Arcaidia stared at Crossfire with a deadpan stare. “They were very aggressive orphans.”

I gulped, one hoof self consciously running over the fresh scar running across my face, which I knew even with healing magic being applied to it still looked like a ragged crevasse of torn flesh. It still ached dully. “I, uh, tripped.”

“Tripped?” Crossfire repeated with flat disbelief, looking at me like I was an idiot.

“Yup, tripped. Onto something...” I glanced to my left, where Arcadia made an awkward chopping motion with her prosthetic leg. “Something sharp like an axe? Yes, an axe! Somepony left an axe just out in the open where anypony clumsy, like me, could just go and trip right onto it. Really horrible luck. I’m seriously traumatized by the whole thing.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that massive pile of horseshit?” Crossfire asked, but Arcaidia stepped towards her with a steady and arresting look.

“You prove otherwise, smart pony?” Arcaidia asked, pointing a hoof, “Longwalk hurt himself in accident. That is all you need know. Problem?”

“Yes there’s a problem.” Crossfire said in a seething growl, “We’re in the middle of a sensitive ass job and you lot are going off doing your own shit that’s getting your faces hacked in half, which in my book counts as dangerous for the success of my work. Which means jeopardizing me, the job, and my caps. So how about you all cut the bull and tell me what happened?”

“We can’t.” I said simply. “Crossfire you’re just going to have to trust us.”

“Well, I don’t.” Crossfire said heatedly, but Knobs put a hoof on her withers, causing her to look over at the ghoulish mare.

Knobs cleared her throat, pensively glancing between us and Crossfire as she said, “We don’t need to fight about this do we? I mean, it's a beautiful evening, we’ve all got a party to go to while all nice and dressed up for the occasion. Tonight’s a night we can all relax for a change and cut loose a bit, right? Crossfire, whatever they were up to today if it's that bad I’m sure Longwalk would’ve asked for our help, uh, right?”

It was hard having to meet Knobs’ eyes, as they had this way of doing up in a heartbeat. It wasn’t like I wanted to keep the truth from them, but Scythe’s blood curse on B.B meant I couldn’t involve anypony else in this situation. “Believe me, Knobs, if I could tell you and Crossfire what was going on, I would. There’s a good reason we can’t, and I’m asking you to trust that.”

“I do.” Knobs said with a smile, and then turned her puppish stare upon Crossfire, who blanched at the stare’s powerful impact.

Crossfire’s tail curled up in irritation as she glanced away and muttered, “I don’t, but since I’m apparently not getting any answers short of beating them out of ponies, and we do have a stupid party to get to I’ll drop it for now.” She glared at me with flashing golden eyes, jabbing a hoof into my chest. “Just get your ass dressed and don’t be late to the party. Drifter’s Guild needs to put in a good appearance for our NCR hosts, got it? At least comb your damn mane!”

“Right. We’ll be there.” I said, and Knobs and Crossfire headed on past us, Knobs giving us a parting wave and smile before she wrapped a hoof around one of Crossfire’s, trotting alongside the simmering mare as they headed towards the Capitol Building.

“Heheh, they’re an adorable pair.” grinned Binge, her tail lashing around behind her.

LIL-E floated around in front of us, her internal mechanisms making soft whirring noises. “I’ll go on ahead too. Not like I have anything to get dressed into, and I could use some fresh air.”

“Uh, LIL-E, you don’t breathe.” I pointed out.

The robot just bobbed up and down, facing me with her blank faceplate. “Figurative fresh air, Longwalk. Got some things to process. Meet you guys at the party.”

As she floated away I felt Binge press up against my side, brushing her mane up against my neck. “I kinda want to just skip their party and have a party of our own, all nice, gooey, and personal like.”

Arcaidia eyed Binge with an eye rolling gaze and peeled Binge off me with her magic, “Learn control of urges, Binge. Not save you just to paw ren solva all day. Work before play. And no pushiness unless Longwalk is okay with it.” She shot me a questioning look. “Is Longwalk okay?”

“I’m fine Arcaidia.” I said with a gleaming crimson face, coughing awkwardly as I rubbed the back of my head. “You don’t need to worry about me and Binge. We, umm, won’t be doing anything we both don’t consent to.”

Arcaidia accepted that with a trusting nod, although she still gave Binge what looked to me like a warning glare. It reminded me of Trailblaze. Arcaidia was worried about me and looking to protect me. It spoke volumes she wasn’t doing more than give a warning look, however, showing far more trust in Binge than she ever had before. I think Arcaidia understood the ex-Raider now just as well as I did, after literally crawling through some of Binge’s most intense personal issues. I think Arcaidia also understood that in a way both me and Binge needed each other, and had gotten close in a way that was new, exciting, and kind of dangerous. I think the warning was as much for me as it was for Binge, for both of us to be careful.

Despite looking younger, Arcaidia really was the most mature pony in the group most the time. I gave her a grateful smile and affirming, reassuring nod as we headed into Tenpony Tower to let B.B know we were okay and that for the moment Scythe was dealt with.

With soft, nervous twitches B.B’s wings flapped behind her as she hovered back and forth in our hotel room. She’d been ecstatically overjoyed to see us return, while also being incredibly fidgety over our injuries. She’d nearly burst into tears seeing my face, hugging me fiercely when I told her it wasn’t that bad and that supposedly if scars made a stallion more handsome then it was a net gain for me.

B.B had then become very silent and intense as we relayed the tale of our encounter with Scythe in Arbu. We left nothing out, although I’d hesitated a few of the more personal aspects concerning Binge’s past, but Binge herself had only given me an encouraging nudge in those moments. Even as I saw flashes of pain in her eyes, remembering what had happened to her and her family, and the terrible life she’d lived since then, I could see that she wasn’t hiding or running from it anymore either. Deep as the wounds were, healing had begun inside her, starting with the moment we’d laid her family’s remains to rest.

By the end of the story B.B was looking more than a little stunned, and it took a few minutes before she worked up enough frame of mind to speak. When she did it was without her usual affected accent, but her much clearer, soft chiming voice.

“I don’t know what I can possibly say to all of you. I... I’m sorry. Scythe is my mistake, my responsibility, and everything he’s done is my fault.”

Arcaidia gave a swift shake of her head, going over to B.B with a gentle nuzzle. “Stop blaming self. Not healthy.”

A wane smile passed B.B’s face, but she leaned away from Arcaidia slightly, which only made the other mare flinch. “I know you mean it, Arcaidia, but the blame belongs with me.” She hovered over towards the window, looking out of it towards the pink streaked evening horizon. “I made him. I murdered his family, forced him into mine, taught him every cruel trick he knows, and didn’t do a thing about him or the Family after I broke away from it. I was... I’ve been a damned idiot for thinking I could just keep running from this.”

Her voice grew exceedingly quiet, barely even a whisper. “Blood Bloom never went away, and calling myself ‘B.B’ all this time was a mistake. I thought if I just lived a decent life like Doc Sunday taught me that... that it’d balance things out somehow. That every horrible thing I did would fade away eventually. But it hasn’t, and it won’t until I do what I should have done from the start.”

She took in a deep breath, as if trying to draw in all of her strength for what came next as she turned back to us, looking at us with equal levels of warmth and sadness. “I have to face them. I have to go end it with the Family. Which means I need to leave the group.”

I felt my mouth drop open, but I wasn’t immediately able to say anything. Fortunately I didn’t have to, because Arcaidia was vocal enough for the both of us as she staggered forward and all but shouted, “No you don’t! Leave!? That is beyond toaster head talk! It’s super toaster head! Where will you go!?”

B.B’s features curdled in a pained pinch, but her voice was steady, insistent. “The Family’s citadel. Once I finish things with Scythe here in the NCR, I’ll go face them, and the Mistress. Arcaidia, it’s the only way. Even if I beat Scythe, which right now is a rather large ‘if’, the Mistress will just send more like him. Look, its okay Arc. I’m not suicidal. I’m not going there to die. But I have to end this myself, and I don’t want to involve any of you in it. You’ve done enough for me already, and if any of you died because of my past fuck ups, I’d hate myself more than I already do.”

It was my turn to find my voice as I cleared it and managed to bite out, “I don’t get this, B.B. You’ve stuck with us through a lot of crazy shit, and just because Scythe took a swipe at us you think it's a good idea to fly off on your own? Why would we even let you do that!? If you go anywhere, you know we’re following right after you!”

She gave me a pained look, but one that was also hardened. “Long, you don’t have time to follow me. Remember you’re on a time limit to get to your father’s lab up north and make good on rescuing your tribe. You can’t afford any detours after we’re done here in the NCR.”

“Then wait until after we save my tribemates from Odessa!” I shouted, “Once that’s done we’ll all go confront your Family together! You don’t have to do this by yourself.”

Her brown and pink streaked mane fell around her face as she shook her head, “Yes, I do. I didn’t just come to this as a snap decision, Longwalk. I’ve been thinking about this since we ran into Black Petal. It’s inevitable that the Family will keep coming after me, and you can’t afford somepony like Scythe to show up in the middle of trying to infiltrate Odessa to rescue your tribe. Long, can you even imagine having to take on both the Family and Odessa at the same time? At least if I go by myself the Mistress won’t even think twice about the rest of you and it’ll be one enemy you won’t have to worry about while taking on Odessa.”

Arcaidia stomped a hoof, “No, we only have friend to worry about instead! Much better, I see how not stupid plan is now.” Her silver eyes flared with fresh hurt and anger. “That being sarcasm in case I not speak Equestrian clear enough.”

“The birdie wants to flap away, but is she really dumb enough to think in her pretty predatory brainbox that she’s chained herself too tightly to all of us to just fly off into the big, empty sky?” Binge said, smirking and flanking B.B on side opposite Arcaidia. “I thought you were the smart one in the party, but wow, this is setting us a new low bar for dumb.”

B.B’s voice slipped back into her accent as she folded her wings close to her side, wincing slightly as the still injured one twitched. “Look fellas I don’t need ya’ll ta start gangin’ up on me. Ain’t fair. I just wanna do what’s right fer you n’ me both. All o’ this is ‘cause o’ my own sins, so it’s gotta be me that faces up ta the music. What’re ya gonna do iffin’ more like Scythe show up?”

“Same thing we’ve done with Scythe, take them on and take them down.” I said fimly, patting Gramzanber, “What else?”

B.B rubbed at her face with a hoof, looking at all of us as exasperation dawned across her features. “It ain’t that simple, fellas! I’m tellin’ ya’ll I got ta go to the citadel on my own. I ain’t... I ain’t gonna git myself killed. Least I ain’t intendn’ that. I ain’t no martyr. The Mistress wants me livin’ and breathin’, wants be back in th’ fold.”

“You’re not planning to... join back up, are you?” I asked, and she gave me a pointed look which made me immediately wave a hoof, “Right, stupid question, sorry I asked.”

“Look, ‘course I ain’t plannin’ ta join the Family again. I’m goin’ there ta end this! Ta end...” she choked up for a second, looking at the floor as she stood there. Arcaidia moved closer to her, one frosty blue hoof pulling B.B into a warm embrace, nuzzling the pegasus’ mane.
“I just gotta do this.” B.B whispered, “I need ta face what I was an’ what I’ve done, an’ the only way I can reckon ta do that is ta go back ta where it started an’ make it damn clear ta the Mistress that I ain’t ever gonna be her... her killin’ hound again.”

“She probably won’t just take that as an answer.” I pointed out.

“I know that. Thinkin’ I can git her ta face me one on one, without the whole Family jumpin’ me. Like ya saw with Scythe, we got a lot o’ laws an’ traditions, which I can use ta trap the Mistress inta a’ duel. She wants me back bad ‘nough to bite, if I dangle the bait just right.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t come with you.” I said insistently, sitting down and lowering my head to look into her eyes. “If anything went wrong we’d be there to do something about it. You can’t trust this Mistress of yours would play fair, no matter what rules your tribe has.”

“Yer right ‘bout that much. The Mistress is a’ deceitful bitch, ta be sure, but I still think I can take her.” She slowly returned Arcaidia’s hug, but then pushed the filly back and managed to compose herself by wiping away a few tears from her face with her uninjured wing. “If ya’ll want, I’ll agree ta... think ‘bout this some more. I’ll hold off on decidin’ fer sure ‘till after our business is done here. Can ya’ll live with that?”

I glanced between Arcaidia and Binge. Arcaidia looked like she was ready to pounce B.B and hoofcuff the pegasus to her, so much worry dancing in her eyes that I thought my unicorn friend would explode. Binge seemed less concerned and more just heavily bemused by the situation, looking at B.B like one might look at a particularly stubborn foal.

“I got so many fun and squishy thoughts bouncing around my brain for tonight that I don’t mind if B.B needs to rattle her own skull awhile to decide what she wants to do.” Binge said, her hoof lightly caressing mine. “So I say we all rattle and roll tonight and think dour thoughts another day.”

Arcaidia gave a small nod, “Shivol bir speaks sense, in her weird way.” She turned her eyes to B.B, meeting the pegasus’ uneasy gaze. “You not do anything crazy without much thought and talking to friends first, yes? Promise to me?”

“I... promise. ‘Kay, ya’ll can stop starrin’ at me now.”

It took a moment, but the tension slowly drained out of us, leaving me feeling tired to the bone. “Alright, alright, so aside from dealing with an insane, necromancy wielding unicorn, facing Binge’s mindscape, and this emotionally jarring conversation we B.B... we still have one great challenge we must face tonight; social activity. There’s apparently a party we all still need to go to.”

B.B blanched, her face sporting a distinctive grimace. “Ah, ya’ll sure I can’t just go face the Mistress right now instead?”

Arcaidia gave her a light and playful swat on the head. “No, if we all wear pretty dresses and dance, you must too.”

Binge grinned and bounced on her hooves, “Maybe we can get bucky to wear his pretty dress too!”

I shot her a look, shaking my head, “Nooooo way, I’m done with dresses Binge. Besides I think I’m supposed to wear a tux or whatever its called.”

“That still might be worth seein’.” B.B said with a heavy sigh, “Right then, welp, if we’re doin’ this we’re doin’ this. After a’ day like this, maybe a’ party won’t be so bad.”

I tugged at the collar of my tux, wincing. “My neck itches.”

There were few times in my life I’d felt as awkward and out of place as I did right then. Granted the bone deep weariness from all that had happened that day was dragging on me, but my uncomfortableness had mostly to do with how... how utterly clean and fancy everything was around me and my friends. The room was unbelievably spacious, with a shining and polished tile floor in the center surrounded by finely carpeted areas where white clothed tables were set up with trays of fresh cooked food. Ponies of all types and griffins mingled among the tables, or danced on the floor in a buzzing mix of good cheer and polite courtesy. The Skull City dignitaries were spaced out in groups, usually sticking to the members of their fellow Guilds, while chatting with members of the NCR’s government or important members of the citizenry invited to the party. On one side of the room a space was cleared where a full band was set up, playing a slow and smooth set of music the likes of which I’d never heard before but instantly started to get stuck in my head. Jazz, I heard one of the NCR ponies calling it. The band had a stallion as the lead singer, his voice carrying over the din of the party easily and clearly.

Everypony was well dressed, well groomed, and hadn’t spent an evening running for their lives from wraiths. Even with a quick shower and the best efforts of my friends all pitching in I still felt like a dirty and disheveled mess compared to most in the room. The tuxedo I wore consisted of a vest and waistcoat that just barely covered my flanks, with a tight collar and ridiculous bow tie that I couldn’t fathom the purpose of other than to make me look like an idiot, but since plenty of other stallions were wearing the same get-up I at least figured I couldn’t look like the only fool in the room. I felt a bit vulnerable without my armor, or with Gramzanber strapped to my side. The ARM was nearby, in a secure room where any large weapons were stored. Drifters and other quasi-security personnel were allowed small weapons, but since I didn’t have any I was unarmed except for my Pip-Buck and the Grapple attached to it. Of course I knew I could summon Gramzanber to my hoof with a thought, but I still wasn’t all that used to not having him on me.

The mares hadn’t shown up yet, sending me along so they could finish getting ready, so I was stuck here by myself aside from LIL-E, who hovered next to me with a fresh coat of polish on her black carapace. How she’d polished herself she wouldn’t tell me, but I suspected it involved a mirror and a lot of trial and error with one of her mechanical arms.

“Just stop tugging at it.” LIL-E said, “You’ll give yourself a rash.”

“What are we even supposed to do here?” I asked, looking around the party with wide, uneasy eyes. “Are we supposed to just, like... talk with ponies or what?”

“You could always retreat to the food tables and start stuffing yourself with appetizers.” LIL-E suggested, “Me, I’m just going to float by the door and hope everypony assumes I’m just here for security.”

The smell of food was alluring, but I was hesitant to just park my butt by the snacks and be anti-social for the entire evening. It wasn’t as if I disliked talking to ponies, and it might be fun to chat with some of the NCR folk I hadn’t had a chance to get to know. I was mostly just being exceedingly self-conscious and feeling drained, but those weren’t excuses to be a poor guest. This whole party was to welcome all of us who’d come so far from Skull City, and I was a member of the Drifter’s Guild now. I ought to try putting my best hoof forward, no matter how tired and dingy it was.

“Nah,” I said, drawing myself up with a bracing breath, “If we’re here to mingle, I’d best get to mingling. What’s the worst that can-”

“Longwalk for the love of the Goddesses do not finish that sentence.” LIL-E warned me, and I gave her a sheepish grin.

“Right, I ought to know better, shouldn’t I? Okay, I’m going in, wish me luck.”

“You’ll need it.” LIL-E said, a chuckling pop of static in her otherwise mechanical monotone as she floated towards the main doors to hover off to the side, leaving me to trot forth into the crowd.

Having no real idea what I was doing, but determined to put on my most friendly face, I managed what I hoped was a natural smile and a few casual waves as I passed several groups chatting amiably. I froze slightly as I noticed the Labor Guild leader, Begonia, speaking in smooth confident tones with several NCR ponies who were listening to the mare with rapt, if wary attention. Iron Wrought was with her, and he gave me a surprised, then cautious look as I trotted by.

“Ah, you there boy. You’re Longwalk, aren’t you? Whiteheart’s latest... acquisition.”

Begonia’s voice had a honeyed, smooth quality to it, although I could see in her eyes as she locked them on me that there was an acidic, scalding temperament beneath that friendly voice. I felt my hide crawl slightly as I paused and turned to look at Begonia, affecting as polite an expression as I could without actually smiling. Kind of hard to smile at the mare who was in charge of the organization that enslaved thousands of ponies, including Shale. In some ways I could easily blame Begonia for Shale’s death, and the thought stuck in my throat like a barb while I managed to say, “I’m Longwalk, yes. I don’t know if I’d call myself an acquisition. Whiteheart offered me a spot in his Guild, and I accepted. Far as I know if I don’t like the arrangement I can walk away any time I wish. The same can’t be said of every member of your Guild, can it?”

Begonia’s smile didn’t falter but her eyes grew ever sharper. “While it is true that many of the Labor Guild’s workers are under bonded contracts of service that they cannot legally ignore, they are compensated for their hard work with safe accommodations, adequate nourishment, and the opportunity to acquire work skills they can use elsewhere once they’ve fulfilled the terms of their contracts. Quite frankly given how... tenuous and unpredictable life can be for many folk stuck living in the Outskirts or the Wasteland beyond, serving as a bonded worker of the Labor Guild offers a certain appealing alternative. Safety, structure, a sense of community, and the knowledge one’s service is supporting the growth of civilized order rather than contributing to the ongoing barbarity that still infects our world, despite the best efforts of the fine folk of the New Canterlot Republic and our own Guilds. Barbarism that you were apart of until recently, no?”

Spirits above, what a piece of work this mare was! If I hadn’t seen the horrors of the Labor Guild’s slavery first hoof I might have bought into her lines myself. She didn’t just say it with a straight face, she said it with the honest fervor of somepony who honestly believed what she was saying. I think that, from Begonia’s point of view, the Labor Guild’s slavery was more benign than it actually was. That she was offering ponies a better deal working themselves to death in her Guild rather than taking their chances in the Wasteland. It was crazy, obviously, but it only made me more wary of her.

“I don’t know what you mean.” I said, shifting on my hooves. “I haven’t been a part of any ‘barbarism’.”

“Rather curious myself what you’re driving at, Miss Begonia.” said one of the NCR ponies, a middle aged, brown unicorn stallion with a droopy caterpillar moustache and faded yellow eyes. He glanced at me, nodding, “Sorry to interrupt son. Wagontrain, head of the NCR Railway Department.”

At my blank look he let out a rough laugh, “Not familiar with trains? Not a surprise, most ponies even here aren’t too familiar with them. NCR only has three working engines now, and we’re still rebuilding the old tracks. Still, the hope is one day to connect all of Equestria by railway again, and that’s what I’m in charge of. Now, back to my question...”

Begonia’s smile only deepened like a carving knife, “Well you see, Longwalk here hails from one of the more primitive tribes that still eek out an existence in the mountains east of Skull City. From what I’ve heard the poor colt wandered into the Wasteland and very quickly learned its violent ways. It's not his fault of course, the Wasteland is such an unforgiving and inhospitable environment, despite how hard the Guilds have worked to tame it around our city. So I can’t blame Longwalk too much for his... crimes.”

“Crimes?” Wagontrain asked with a raised eyebrow, and I shot Begonia a hard look.

“If you’re talking about what happened in Saddlesprings me and my friends were trying to save lives.”

“I don’t doubt that may have been your intent, but yet you still interfered with a delicate operation my Labor Guild was engaged in within a very sensitive Ruin, and as a result did the town itself not become a charred husk? A prosperous town of several hundred ponies, now gone, and only a mere day or so after your arrival there?” Begonia shook her head, “Again I don’t blame you. Youth like yours tends to lead to ill considered, rash action. And from what I understand you’ve been busy since then fighting Raiders and gangers, monsters and bounty hunters. Its that barbaris I refer to, that you’ve seen with your own eyes how dangerous and uncontrolled the Wasteland remains, even as it recedes from areas like the NCR. Surely you can then attest that the Labor Guild is a acceptable, if easily misunderstood, alternative to living with such dangerous uncertainty?”

I sure as hell couldn’t, and wouldn’t, atest to anything of the sort. However I could only say so much without causing a scene. Already more than a few eyes from other nearby chatting groups were looking our way with curious eyes. Openly denouncing Begonia here would have repercussions beyond just this conversation, but I couldn’t just let her twist things to suit her needs either. I owed it to Shale to not just let this mare say what she pleased. But I had to choose my words carefully, despite wanting nothing more than to tear into Begonia.

“I’ll tell you this much, regardless of whatever you believe, the ‘barbarism’ you keep talking about isn’t always as starkly black and white as you think. Sometimes it likes to dress up and pretend it's ‘civilized’, when really it kills ponies just as dead as a Raider’s gun. Ponies have died while wearing your Labor Guild’s collars around their necks. If you want my honest advice, Guildmistress Begonia, it’d benefit your Guild to take those collars off your ‘bonded workers’, before somepony gets it in their head that your civilization could use a bit more barbarism.”

Her smile turned as frosty as any of Arcaidia’s spells, her eyes like pointed daggers. “I’ll keep your advice in mind. Please, give my regards to Whiteheart. Now, gentleponies, if you’ll excuse me I think I could use some refreshment.”

She trotted away with a self confident air. Iron Wrought looked at me apologetically, shrugging his shoulders. He looked as if he was about to say something, but Begonia called for him and he winced, giving me one last look before quickly trotting after her. Wagontrain rubbed his moustache with a hoof, eyes curious as he looked me over.

“Well son, I think you might have ticked the lady off.”

I sighed with a helpless smile. “I can live with that.”

“I take it you’re not fond of her Guild’s practices?”

“I’ve had some... personal experiences that soured my view.” I said, shaking my head. “Look, I understand how important this treaty is, and I’m not trying to cause trouble between the NCR and Labor Guild. I have my issues with them and their practices, but the bottom line is they’re a part of Skull City. Much as I wish they weren’t, not everypony in the Guild is all that bad.”

Wagontrain raised a hoof, “No need to explain to me, son. I didn’t survive to my ripe old forties by being a woolbrained idiot who can’t see when situations are complicated.” He leaned towards me, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “Fact is, back in the day, I was a slaver in old Red Eye’s little empire. Did it back then because it was the work I was born to, and I’m grateful every day I survived the mess that went down back when Fillydelphia fell. I’ve been trying to make good on rebuilding something useful to the NCR to make up for all I did back then.”

“That’s... pretty noble of you.” I said, but he shook his head, grimacing.

“Ain’t my point. My point is I can tell this Labor Guild is just slavery with a shinier coat of paint. Hell, half of that mare’s lines could’ve been lifted off of old Red Eye’s speeches. The spiel is about the same. And most of the brass running the show, especially the President, can see it just as clearly as I can. They ain’t going to let the Labor Guild run free, even after we sign the treaty.”

“You are going to go for the treaty then?” I asked, surprised.

“Been listening to the others talking and aside from a few holdouts, I’m thinking it’s a near done deal. Fact is we need it.” His face darkened, his voice dropping to a grave octave. “Things may look pretty on the surface, but the NCR has its own problems. Nopony wants to talk about it, but we’re running out of certain supplies we need to keep building up our infrastructure. We’ve got the food for now, but to build more farms, and more importantly the trains and wagons we need to move supplies, we need iron. And we don’t got the mines for it. Skull City does. Trade is about our only option to get what we need, so even though we’ll have folk bitching and moaning about aligning ourselves with ‘slavers’, the bottom line is its either sign this treaty, or let our budding nation fall apart over the next decade or so.”

I absorbed that for a silent moment, then said, “I’m not much on politics, but that sounds about right. Skull City needs the NCR too. A lot. Food, water, medicine, its all scarce there still. At least for those stuck outside the walls living in that giant shantytown. I’d love to see it get better over there, and maybe if it does Begonia’s Labor Guild won’t have the leverage to entice ponies into letting themselves get turned into slaves just on the promise of safety and full bellies.”

“That’s what I’m hoping too. Either way, son, it was a pleasure meeting you. I hear Drifters are kind of an elite bunch of mercenaries from your neck of the woods. You look pretty young for that kind of work, though. Is what Begonia said true? That you’ve gone up against Raiders, monsters, and the like?”

I shivered briefly as my mind flashed through memories of what now felt like a near endless list of battles and bloodshed I’d endured in the time since leaving my tribe. “I’ve been in a few fights, yeah.”

He nodded, “Good. Might just be my old nerves, but I’ve been getting a bad feeling lately. Just this nagging thought that we’re not far off from something big. Last time I felt this way Fillydelphia went up in flames. Somehow the air just... feels charged the same way, like there’s a hammer waiting to drop.” The stallion shrugged, chuckling under his breath, “Well don’t let me depress you, son. Go on and find a mare to dance with or something.”

Speaking of the mares, I wondered how much longer they’d take to get here. I excused myself politely from Wagontrain and trotted further around the party, making a point to stay as far from Begonia as I could. I saw other Guild leaders mingling in the crowd, such as the slate gray unicorn mare with the razor straight blonde mane who ran Skull City’s Enforcer Guild, and the dusty male griffin in the leather poncho who was in charge of the Security Guild. I had no idea what their names even were, but I noticed the pair were rarely far apart from each other, and even now stood side by side while talking with President Grimfeather’s herself. From the sour cast to the President’s face she wasn’t thrilled with whatever she was hearing. Curious, I slipped closer to eavesdrop, snatching a cup of some fruity drink of a server’s tray to hide what I was doing.

“There shouldn’t be that many Raider’s left out there after we cleaned the last of the bastards out of the northern passes a few years back.” Grimfeathers was saying, her voice thick with irritation. “How did several thousand of those sick fucks manage to gather up near your city?”

“As I’ve tried telling other members of your government,” said the blonde, slate gray mare, her blue eyes sharply narrowed, “‘Raiders’ is a terribly inaccurate and borderline useless term. These ponies are violent tribes of numerous, long running traditions of mutual violence and xenophobia. They’re not the common psycho bandits you used to deal with fifteen years ago. They’re organized and been building their numbers generationally. Hell in fifteen years those whores have been able to raise a whole new crop of bastards who’ve grown up hating Skull City. The war we’re stuck with is because nobody listened to me when I told them we needed to cull those tribes when they were still small.”

She gave the griffin a hard look, and he just raised his talons defensively, but also with a bored look. “Don’t look at me, Steel. I was on your side in that argument, but the other Guild leaders voted against it.”

“Sure you were, Rupert. You just happened to also get countless lucrative protection contracts for your Security Guild over the years protecting our farms from those Raider tribes, but also showed your ‘support’ for my extermination initiative by... what, abstaining from the vote?”

“It wouldn’t have mattered, girl. You were way outvoted. Mine wouldn’t have made a difference.”

Steel snorted, “And now we have thousands of insane, well armed, well lead murders all but knocking on Skull City’s front door.”

President Grimfeathers stuffy interjected then, “If the NCR signs the treaty with Skull City, I don’t have an issue with lending air support to dealing with those Raiders. I hate the idea there’s so many still fucking out there beyond our borders. Pretty sure some Raptors plus a couple battalions of Rangers can help keep them off your city. It's just not going to be easy convincing m people here that it's necessary. Even though it is. Fuck, more Raiders. I thought I’d heard the last of this kind of crap...”

“Enjoying listening in?” asked a voice next to my ear.

“Not really, but it's kind of interest-wha!” I jumped as I turned to see a mare standing behind me, smiling at me with a wry look. I recognized her charcoal coat and white mane streaked with yellow and orange immediately. Quickly composing myself I gulped and said, “Uh, Chairpony Remedy. Uh, nice to see you?”

She let out a musically light laugh, “Relax, I’m not going to bite. Just curious to speak with you and couldn’t help teasing a bit. Is eavesdropping a common Drifter practice?”

“N-no, I was just curious...” I said, glancing back towards the President and the two Guild leaders. They were still absorbed in their conversation and hadn’t noticed me and Velvet Remedy, so I breathed a sigh of relief. “I guess curiosity is a bad habit of mine.”

The NCR Chairpony of Diplomatic Affairs nodded sagely, “It can be, but other times curiosity can be a virtue. It all depends on how it is used.” Her eyes turned solemnly serious. “Is it as bad in Skull City as I have heard? The Raiders truly still pose a threat to so many innocent lives there?”

I hung my head, nodding grimly, my mind flashing back to all my previous fights with Raiders, especially Redwire. “They are. My friends and I only skimmed the edges of that fight, but there really are thousands of them and they were pressing in on Skull City pretty hard last I saw. Even fought a few that’d snuck in below the city itself. They’re...” I paused, hesitant, thinking of Raiders like Binge herself, or even Baindead and Blasting Cap. Yet they were the rare exceptions. Redwire had taught me the rule. “They need to be stopped.”

“You’ll find no argument from me on that point.” Velvet Remedy said, but her voice carried a sad, distant tone. “Yet we are only just starting to let the memories of our own bloody past in this land fade into memory. Joining a new war won’t be easy for many to accept, even if much as I hate to say it we may have to do so. Allowing Skull City to fall would just encourage those Raiders to turn their attention south towards us anyway.”

“Yeah...” I said sullenly, “Be nice if there was a diplomatic solution, but talking to Raiders can be... problematic.”

Velvet Remedy hid her mouth with hoof as she let out a dry laugh. “An understatement if ever there was one. Now, I’m not certain we were ever formally introduced, so I apologize for my familiarity. President Grimfeathers spoke of you and your friend’s to me, and the fact that you’ve offered to help deal with the machine that destroyed our fort. I wanted to thank you for that. It's a brave thing to do. More than that, I heard from your Guildmaster that you were the last one to be with Guildmistress Star Soul before she was lost to the pirates that attacked your airship.”

Surprised, I blinked at her. “Y-yeah, I was right there when she teleported us off the pirate airship, but had to stay behind herself. She... really saved us there. I hope she’s still alive. Whiteheart talked about a rescue attempt at some point, but I have no idea when or how he plans to do that.”

Velvet Remedy dipped her head in a weighty nod. “We’ve already offered some of our Rangers to help recover Star Soul, if possible. We still have to locate the pirate ship and where it went. However I just...” she paused, looking wistful, “I just wanted to ask you what you thought of Star Soul? I haven’t seen her in years.”

“You knew her?”

“Yes, she was a Follower of the Apocalypse. Are you familiar with the organization?”

I shook a hoof, “Vaguely? I only know they originate here in the NCR, and, well, that’s about it.”

“The Followers are dedicated to making life better for any and all in the Wasteland. Doctors, researchers, explorers, warriors, whatever the path and creed a Follower uses their skills to help others and better the world.” Velvet Remedy said, and then sighed, “Star Soul was a promising member of the group. One of the strongest of the False Goddess’ old alicorns.”

“Uhhhh?”

She laughed, “Nevermind. It’d be a rather long story. Suffice to say Star Soul was one of many alicorns who joined the Followers after the war that formed the NCR. She was a very kind, caring individual but... very focused. Too focused.” Velvet Remedy’s expression fell, “When I learned she was using captured Raiders to perform medical research we got into a rather... spirited argument. I ended up casting her from the Followers. No matter how noble her goals were, or how horrible the ponies she used for her research, that kind of experimentation on living beings was just beyond what I could accept. That was over a dozen years ago. I’d always wondered where she’d ended up. I only learned recently, just a few months before these treaty negotiations, that Star Soul was a Guild leader in Skull City. I was hoping to see her, mend fences but...”

“The pirates.” I said, sighing, understanding what Velvet Remedy was likely looking for. Meeting her gaze I said, “I can’t speak for who Star Soul was, but I know the pony I saw, however briefly, was both kind and brave. She didn’t hesitate to put her life on the line to protect others, or to save me and my friends. Take that however you will, but I think she was doing the best she could.”

“...Which is all any of us can ever do.” Velvet Remedy said, swallowing and glancing away while brushing a hoof across her eyes. “Thank you, Mister Longwalk. I’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of the party.”

I watched her go, hoping that Star Soul could eventually be rescued and that those two would get a chance to reconcile.

Suppressing an urge to sigh, I started wandering the party again. For a few minutes I didn’t recognize anypony, but then caught sight of Princess Purity surrounded by an eager gaggle of young stallions (and a few older ones) who looked like they were captivated by the young monarch. The giant, burly form of Phalanx was always nearby, looming over the group and keeping any of the more enthusiastic stallions from being too forward. Purity herself seemed flushed and slightly bemused by the attention, but I could tell she was in her element. She talked smoothly and with an easy smile, seeming to warm the room around her.

Not far away I noticed Crossfire, her eyes locked on the Princess. She stared at the younger mare with a very unusual look on her face. Pained, angry, and with a tight lipped hint of indecision. Purty caught the look and smiled, waving to Crossfire, and the other mare pointedly looked away, scowling. Purity, a hurt look briefly crossing her features, soon recovered with a smile and resumed talking with those around her.

What was that about? It was obvious there was something between Crossfire and Purity, but what was the deal? Next to Crossfire Knobs was busily filling a plate with snacks from one of the food tables, happily wheeling along on her artificial legs as she animatedly tried different foods. Before long she was shoving some of the food at Crossfire and all but forcing the mare to grumpily try them out. When Knobs spotted me, she grinned ear to ear and waved me over.

“Longwalk you gotta try this! They have some kind of melty cheese that goes on everything! Here, try it!”

Trotting over I offered the pair an awkward smile, “Hey, you two enjoy-”

“Talk later, cheese now!” Knobs said, shoving a piece of what looked like celery towards my mouth with her magic. A thick, goopy wad of melted white cheese nearly dripped from the green stalk. Knowing Knobs wouldn’t take no for an answer I munched it down with one bite, and found myself pleasantly surprised!

“Mmm, that’s good. Where did they get it?”

Crossfire gave me a look that said I didn’t want to know, but Knobs bowled right along with a shiningly enthusiastic smile. “Can you believe they’ve figured out how to milk molerats!? They can make all sorts of dairy products from the stuff! We totally got to get these NCR folk to share the technique.”

I blinked, then nodded in mute acceptance. I suppose one kind of milk was as good as another. Glancing around I asked, “Knobs, where’s Blasting Cap?”

“Sleeping. I think.” said Knobs with a bashful grin, “At least she’d better be. I promised her I’d knick her some snacks for tomorrow if she was good and actually went to bed, but wouldn’t be surprised if she was rigging mines around your hotel room. So, you know, just be careful when you head back tonight, ‘kay?”

I rubbed my forehead, “I’ll keep that in mind. Have I thanked you yet for taking that crazy filly in?”

“Probably, but I don’t mind hearing more praise.” Knobs said happily, then Crossfire cut in with a sharp look.

“I saw you chatting with Begonia.”

I shot up an eyebrow, meeting he look. “Yeah, what of it?”

“...Be careful, buck.” Crossfire said, voice hard and ornery as every but also carrying a distinct hint of actual caution. “The bounty may be off your head officially, but I know a death glare when I see one, and that bitch has a ditch with your corpse’s name on it if you’re not paying attention.”

“Crossfire, c’mon, do we got to be super serious right now?” Knobs asked, to which Crossfire returned a flat look.

“I just don’t want one of my team dead before the job’s done, no matter how idiotically the buck seems determined to get himself killed. Going off to get into mysterious fights in the middle of the day, directly confronting and antagonizing one of the strongest Guild leaders in the room, its like this moron wants to die.” Crossfire muttered, turning her glare back onto me. “And when he does finally bite off more than he can chew I don’t want him taking the rest of us down with him.”

“Can Begonia even make a move in a place like this?” I asked, gesturing around us.

“Idiot. She’s not the type to pull a gun and do the deed herself.” Crossfire growled in a quiet voice, looking around as if to see if anypony was listening in. “But I wouldn't be surprised if she finds a way to slip some poison into a meal, or arrange some kind of ‘accident’ for you before we leave the NCR.”

Knobs looked at the celery she was munching on while dipping it into a bowl of the melted cheese, and slowly set it aside and stepped away from it. “Aaaaaand there goes my appetite. Thanks Crossfire.”

Crossfire had the presence of mind to look a shade apologetic. “Just making things clear.”

“And you have.” I said, taking a deep breath and trying to relax myself, “Believe me, I’m not about to take Begonia lightly, but if she’s going to get in my face, I’m not lying down for her either. Eventually she’ll have to deal with the fact that her Guild won’t be able to operate the way it has forever. Not if an alliance forms with the NCR.”

“You think she doesn’t know that?” Crossfire shot back, “I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that pirate attack we ran into was backed by her to try and stop this treaty from going through.”

A sharp cough sounded from nearby and we all glanced over to see Applegate approaching, with Wellsrping Whistles trailing close behind. Applegate was dressed in a gray formal suit and blouse combination with long sleeves down her forelegs with white lace at the ends. The front was buttoned up with gold buttons and a bright steel pin of the Drifter’s wing emblem was pinned to the left side of the chest. She didn’t have her broad bladed sword on her, but she did wear a formal looking short sword at her side. Wellspring was sporting a slimming yellow dress that hugged her haunches tightly and matched her blonde mane quite well. The dress had a low cut v-neck, and even in a formal setting a notebook and pen dangled from a cord where she could easily grab it to write notes.

“I hope we’re not interrupting too interesting a conversation?” inquired Applegate politely, although I noticed her eyes were drawn to the fresh scar on my face with a severely raised eyebrow.

“You two did look like you were having quite the discourse over here.” said Wellspring, eyes twinkling. She was more subtle in noticing my scar, saying nothing of it.

“Actually we were just finishing our conversation.” Crossfire said with a look like cold stone filling her golden eyes. “And I think this side of the party has gotten a little crowded all of a sudden. If you’ll excuse me, I’m getting some fresh air.”

“Crossfire, what’s wrong?” Knobs asked, but Crossfire had already brushed past Applegate and Wellspring, trotting from the room via the massive main doors with her expression like a mobile stormcloud. Knobs watched her go with nothing but worry on her face. “What’s going on with her lately?”

My own eyes glanced towards Princess Purity, who while still entertaining those speaking with her had given our group a look as well. I could see the faintly pained look Purity showed as Crossfire left, and the look only seemed to deepen when she saw Applegate. It was clear the three of them knew each other, but Ancestor Spirits help me if I could figure out how. Knobs had told me Crossfire was a Neighlesius soldier before she’d become a Drifter, and I knew Applegate had once been a knight from the same land. Aside from Princess Purity being the ruler of that country, I couldn’t see what linked the three together.

Well, was there any reason not to just ask?

“So, yeah, I’m with Knobs here. What’s up with Crossfire? She really seems like she’s got some beef with both you and the Princess, Applegate.” I said.

Wellspring let out a feather light laugh, “Subtle.”

As for Applegate, she met my eyes with a frank stare of her own, her voice understanding but steel clad. “It is not for me to say, Longwalk. Crossfire and the Princess both carry a burden none other but they can truly understand. One seeks escape through her duty to her people, the other escape through distancing herself from the past.” Applegate’s eyes turned a quick look towards Knobs. “Perhaps one day they’ll both learn that even burdens that can’t be shared can still be made lighter by the company one keeps.”

She paused, suddenly looking introspective as she brushed some of her faded gray mane from her face, “Not that I’m one to talk. Maybe that’s why Crossfire won’t listen to me. It must sound hypocritical coming from a pony who also left her homeland.”

“Did you know Crossfire from back home?” asked Knobs, “I mean, she doesn’t really talk about Neighlesius much, but you talk like you knew her back then.”

“I’ve already spoken on the subject too much.” Applegate said, then Wellspring bumped her shoulder with an elbow.

“Hey, I could always take it off the record, you know. You can’t expect us to ignore such a tasty mystery when it keeps getting dangled in front of us. Just a tidbit, hmm, Applegate? Something to wet our whistles with?” Wellspring fluttered her eyes and traced her hoof across Applegate’s leg, smiling deeply. Applegate just eyed her for a second flatly, then let out a small sigh.

“All I will say is that I did not know Crossfire personally until I came to Skull City, but I...” she hesitated a second longer, then seemed to make up her mind. “I knew her father. He was the one who trained me as a knight.”

“Oh ho? Interesting.” Wellspring said, “I take it he must have been a knight too, and a high ranking one to be in charge of training other knights.”

Applegate’s face dawned with a hint of embarrassed red, “I’ve said too much. Please, let us drop the matter. Besides, I have a question of my own. Longwalk, where did that injury come from?”

Damn. Well I knew it would come up sooner rather than later, so I adopted as straight a face as I could as I said, “An accident. Arcaidia healed me up afterward, so it's not a big deal. It looks worse than it actually is.”

“What kind of accident?” Wellspring inquired politely. Applegate’s own eyes narrowed slightly.

“I’ve seen cuts like that before. It looks like it was done with a large blade.”

A scythe, to be precise, wielded by my friend and possibly soon to be lover who was possessed by the ghosts of her dead family due to the psychotic scheme of another friend’s kind of sort of insane family member who was also a necromancer. But I wasn’t about to say that out loud so I just said the first thing that flitted through my mind.

“Binge accidently cut me while we were-” C’mon brainpony, make something up! “Make..ing...out?”

Brainpony, what’s wrong with you!?

Wellspring giggled with a sound like windchimes, “Oh my, that must have been a very intense makeout session.”

Applegate’s face turned even more red. “I...see. Very well, I will not inquire further. I believe I shall check the room’s perimeter for security reasons. Excuse me.”

The flustered Applegate quickly trotted away, while Wellspring rubbed her chin and continued to giggle under her breath. Once she got herself under control she joined me and Knobs with a satisfied smirk on her face and quickly changed the subject. “So, Knobs, did Crossfire ever talk about her parents?”

Knobs had been staring at me for a moment, eyes a tad wide, but she quickly recovered her wits and shook her head. “Not a lot. I mean, she told me she was raised on a farm. I guess maybe her dad retired from knight stuff and took up onion farming?”

“Hmm, possible.” Wellsrping said, then she nudged me. “What do you think?”

“Think? I think I’m just as confused by Crossfire as I was five minutes ago.” I said with a helpless chuckle. “But what else is new? Much as we don’t get along, I kind of hope she sorts out whatever’s bothering her. Lately I’ve learned from firsthoof experience how much keeping stuff locked up in your head can mess with it.”

“Maybe I ought to go find her. Talk to her.” said Knobs, “Not prying or anything, just making sure she’s not alone.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” I said, “You’re the only pony I know who she seems genuinely comfortable with. If anypony can help her out, its you.”

“He’s right on that, Knobs. Crossfire is probably finding a quiet corner to brood in as we speak, and I don’t know anypony other than you who can get her out of a funk.” said Wellspring encouragingly.

Knobs, face growingly determined, adjusted her dress and nodded firmly. “Alright, I’m going after her! No friend of mine is going to be stuck in angst-ville alone while I’m on watch!”

“Good luck.” I sincerely offered her and Knobs winked a pale eye at me and smoothly wheeled herself off, swiftly pursuing Crossfire. As I watched her go I found myself saying, “Those two aren’t bad together.”

“You noticed that too, did you?” said Wellspring with a short smirk. “I’ve told Knobs time and again to get more aggressive, or she’ll never get through to Crossfire.”

“Well, Crossfire doesn’t make it easy.” I said, then winced, “Guess I’m not one to talk, though. I can’t claim to get how relationships work. I only just started figuring out stuff on my end, let alone have any idea how it works for other ponies.”

“In my experience its different for everypony, and what makes sense for one pony won’t make any sense at all to another.” Wellspring said with a dainty shrug, still smirking. “Oh well, we’re all a little screwed up in our own ways. I suspect it was like that even before the Megaspells hit. So, Longwalk, what did happen to your face? I somehow doubt that happened from a little intimacy with your eccentric green companion.”

I coughed, “Well, you don’t know Binge. She’s got this thing for hiding knives and razors in her mane.”

“Kinky. Still, that scar seems rather large for a accidental run in with a razor. Are you sure you can’t tell me anything? I do so love a good story and I’m smelling a doozy here, somewhere.”

Taking a deep breath I fixed her with a firm look, my voice utterly level. “Please Wellspring, drop it. If I could tell you, or Applegate, or anypony for that matter, I would. But I can’t, and for good reason. You’ll just have to trust me on that.”

She held up a placating hoof, “Okay, okay. I’ll just content myself with relentless speculation. Hmm, speaking of your various marefriends, where are they?”

Feeling my own face heat up, I muttered, “I’m only involved with one of them, and we haven’t... look its none of your business. And I figure they should be here any...” I trailed off into an awed whisper as through the open main doors to the ballroom Arcaidia, B.B, and Binge all stepped through together.

“...minute.”

Wellspring saw them enter as well, and gave me a playful nudge with an elbow as her smirk deepened to apocalyptic levels. “Well, whichever one you're involved with, I’d say you’re pretty lucky.”

I barely heard her, my eyes glued to the three trotting into the room. I learned later that the dresses my friends got were bought from a local seamstress who apparently had a cutie mark specifically for being able to make outfits almost miraculously fast, or custom refit dresses on the fly. Given that my group had a decent chunk of a disposable caps by this point the mares had been able to pay the extra for a special rush job. From what I was seeing, it was worth whatever they’d ended up paying.

B.B had forgone her usual light violet dress in favor of a dark blue number that hugged her back and barrel tightly, but left much of her chest exposed save for an elegant thread around her neck. The long train was edged with white tufts that I thought were actually clouds, or at least small strands of cloud interwoven with white lace. Her sandy brown and pink streaked mane was done in an intricate, interwoven braid that hung down the left side of her neck, swaying with her steps.

Arcaidia surprised me by switching out her normal blue dress with one of a vibrantly bright mixture of silver and white. The dress had a high neck, nearly up to her chin, and long silver slippers with ribbons laced up the white legs. Silver designs wove through the stark white fabric to form patterns like the dustings of stars across the night sky, flowing along the dresse’s moderate train that ended in a trail of clear lace. Her incredibly long mane was well groomed and shimmered down her back, but the front was now done up with a circlet braid that almost looked like a crown.

Both of them were stunning, but my eyes became truly riveted and I felt my blood rush faster as I looked at Binge. Binge, who hated bathing with a firing passion. Binge, whose usual outfit either involved spiked armor or the blood of her enemies, often both. Binge, who for much of her life had lived in the filth of the Wasteland until it had seemed to become a permanent crust upon her, body and soul.

Not so permanent anymore.

I’d never seen her dark green mane nor lighter green coat shine quite so cleanly before, and while she did nothing to hide the scars that covered her, she somehow made them look like they belonged there as accents to her looks. She was wearing red, a dress that hung low and tight across her chest while leaving her neck and back exposed as the velvety material clung across her barrel, little red laces criss-crossing her back and a similarly red collar encircling her throat, sporting several gleaming steel studs. The ends of the dress flowed over her flanks like red water, cascading down but gliding around her haunches in such a way that you could see every muscle move as she sauntered into the room. Her legs bore red leather bands, studded like the collar she wore. Her poofy mane, now quite clean and somehow managing to avoid most of its usual split ends was left to hang naturally down her back, but she’d decorated it with glittering array of small metal razors. There weren’t too many, and she’d braided them in so they didn’t sway loose but clung tight, not cutting into her. She also wore several knives openly, sheathed at her hips or chest.

Binge was still Binge, however cleaned up and beautiful. Even her tail had a small, curved knife braided into its tip almost like a stinger.

“Well, are you going to stand there gawking, or go welcome them to the party?” Wellspring asked coyly, one hoof tapping my open jaw.

I nodded dumbly and stumbled towards my friends. I was spotted quickly, Arcaidia smiling and waving, B.B glancing towards the floor with a spot of embarrassment, and Binge grinning her wide grin and trotting to meet me.

“Heya bucky! What do you think?” Binge asked, twirling in place, flicking her tail to accentuate her flanks as her dress flowed, showing all of her curves on that end. “You wanna take a bite, don’t you?”

I gulped, breathless. “You look...” Incredible? Amazing? None of that seemed enough, nor really Binge’s style. “...very biteable.”

That made her smile so much warmer and I saw her eyes glow with it. She slide up to me smoothly, nuzzling my cheek and her hot breath whispering in my ear. “Good answer. Now let’s party.”

I quickly learned that for Binge that meant three things; food, drink, and dancing, in excessive amounts. Very quickly worries about Begonia’s possible schemes, the fears concerning Scythe and the Family’s future threat, or that of the Golem for that matter, all sort of melted away as Binge whisked me around to in a whirlwind of activity. Arcaidia and B.B followed in our wake, and I was able to compliment them both on their own dresses in due time.

“Is not quite traditional style I used to.” said Arcaidia, eyeing a glass of wine in her magical grip, “But B.B said dress makes me look frugal.”

“Regal, hun, regal.” B.B said, gulping down some wine of her own and wincing. “Usually don’t git inta this stuff, but ain’t half bad. Ya gonna try it Arc, or stare at it all night?”

“Is bad for mind.” Arcaidia said with a tentative sniff at the alcohol, “Not ever drink it before. Veruni have other drinks for buzzing feeling, not leave giant headache in morning.”

“Pfft, boooring!” said Binge, who had already downed half a bottle on her own and was encouraging me to do the same. So far I’d avoided doing more than a glass or two, which wasn’t affecting me yet. Like Arcaidia, I kind of wanted to avoid getting impaired. Binge didn’t seem to mind either way. “It's fun to get loose, and what we all need is fun right now! C’mon Longy, let’s get swinging! That dance floor is too empty, but that’s fine, we can rip it up ourselves!”

Arcaidia took a experimental sip of her win and glanced at B.B, “Shivol bir has point. Do you want to, um, dance B.B?”

B.B’s eyes went a bit wide at the question, but she quickly recovered her wits and managed a quick smile. “I guess so. Sure, why not?”

That seemed to settle it and in mere moments I found myself being pulled onto the relatively clear area of the dance floor alongside my friends. I caught sight of LIL-E, the robot still floating near the entrance area, watching us. At my look the robot tilted in what appeared to be an approving nod. Then all I could see was Binge as the mare got in front of me, her hooves around me and mine around hers.

I had danced before, at many of my tribes own festive occasions. I wasn’t exactly graceful, but I was usually enthusiastic, even if I had rarely had anypony to dance with besides Trailblaze. I didn’t know the NCR’s customs on dancing, though. However what I’d seen had seemed pretty fast and loose. I’d heard some of the NCR locals call it ‘swing’ and since I was used to looking like a fool anyway I didn’t mind trying to mimic it.

Neither did Binge, and she was grinning into me as we started to shake and swing around the dance floor, hardly looking elegant but both of us laughing at the fun of it. It was easy to just ignore the details and let myself move to the music. The band was playing a fast paced tune that seemed tailor made for dancing and I enjoyed just moving with it, Binge’s body pressed close to me as we swung around each other, gliding back and forth wildly.

I could feel her heat, and her sweat, and every time we got close her breath touched my neck and made me shiver. Her blue eyes shone like twin pools of pure water, and for the first time I saw not madness inside them, not twisted pleasure, but simple, clean and honest happiness. I think for the first time since foalhood Binge was letting herself be happy without the barbed chains of guilt or past pains and madness pulling at her. I could only hope it lasted, that I could help her make it last.

Eventually the music slowed down to something more casual and relaxing, and the various couples dancing slowed with it, us included. I saw Arcaidia and B.B slowly swaying together to the more subdued tune, both of them blushing faintly but smiling at each other. The stray thought wandered through my mind that I wondered if they were just having fun as friends, or if there was more there? It was hard to tell, but my friends were clearly happy, and quite frankly that was all I cared about at that moment.

As we danced, I felt Binge press herself close to me, her whispering voice husky in my ear. “Longwalk, I want to go to the hotel.”

My heart did a small leap as I could only think of one reason she want to do that. Heart starting to race I whispered back. “R-right now?”

A thick, promising giggle escaped her. “Heheh, if not right now I might just throw you on the floor and do it right here. That or we keep dancing and we’ll slip.”

“Slip?” I half started to ask, but realization kicked in and my face blazed to bright hot crimson. “Oh. Right. Hotel room it is.”

With an eager grin Binge actually grabbed my collar with her teeth and started to literally haul me towards the doors out. Arcaidia and B.B saw us going, and I think Arcaidia might have been confused because I saw her whisper a question to B.B, who whispered a reply and I saw Arcaidia’s own body go beat red in an instant. B.B then just looked at me and winked. Glad to know I was likely going to get ribbed on by my friends about this for a long time to come.

LIL-E, as we passed by her, simply said, “Don’t forget to wear protection.”

Protection? From what? The razor blades? I wasn’t too worried about those. I didn’t think Binge was planning anything that extreme this early in the relationship.

I hoped.

Back at our hotel room Binge barely waited for us to get the door closed and locked before whirling upon me and I found myself tasting her from a deep, frantic kiss. Her tongue pressed in, hungerily seeking mine, and I responded by holding her close to my chest, pressing the length of her against me as I found myself forced up against the wall. She raised her left hindleg and with a gasp I felt her grinding herself into me with needful motions and a deep, wanting moan starting in the back of her throat.

Pulling out of the kiss for a second to breath I managed to say, “B-Binge, slow down a sec-”

She bit my ear, stroking my chest with one hoof while her other started to rub. “No, bucky. Can’t do slow. Not now. Please. I want this. You do too... right?”

I couldn’t ignore the brief, scared hesitance in that last word, and I cupped her head in my own hooves, staring into her eyes as straight as I could. I kissed her again, lightly this time, a loving brush of my lips on hers as I said, “Yes, I want this. I won’t push you away, Binge. I just...”

I took a deep breath, trying to collect my wits. “I haven’t done this before. I want to do it right.”

She giggled again, giving me a playful whap on my head as she dug her hips forward again. I could feel her heat against my groin. There was literally nothing but a few small centimeters of fabric separating us down there. I could feel the hot wetness of her rubbing along me, and I was already practically primed to burst. Binge’s lips played over the base of my throat, then I felt her tongue lick up to my chin in a teasing dance.

“It's easy, Longy. Your body already knows what to do...” she pulled away from me, turning to display her rear to me as she smoothly walked towards the bed. Every motion of her hooves swayed her backside, and her tail lifted, throwing aside the back of her dress to show tantalizing glimpses of what lay beneath. She laid herself across the bed in a stretching, slow pose, forelegs splayed out, her rear raised just so, her tail still swaying about as she looked back at me with lidded eyes that burned bright blue with need. Her voice dripped as much as what lay between her hind legs. “...Just let nature take its course.”

I could barely hear past the thunderous pounding of blood rushing through me from my hammering heartbeat. Conscious thought was slipping away from me as I smelled Binge’s scent filling my nostrils, but I had enough frame of mind to control myself as I approached her, eyes flicking between her entrancing body and her painfully eager eyes.
“I, uh, just need to make sure... you’re not in h-heat, right?”

She laughed, licking her lips. “Would it matter if I was?”

Temporarily flabbergasted for a second I sort of stood there sputtering for a second, before Binge smiled at me reassuringly. “You’re so cute when you’re brain goes kableiwe, but that’s not the part of you I want to pop right now. Don’t worry...” her expression turned reserved for a second. “...I can’t have foals.”

I blinked at her, concern overriding hormones for a second as I went up to her, but slide up along her side, one arm going over her and pulling her close. “You can’t?”

“Nope. Done the sexy times a lot over the years.” Binge said as she turned onto her side, somehow managing to remain sultry as she ran a hoof down her body. My eyes couldn’t help but rove over her lithe form, still heated and finding nothing but more to be attracted to as I looked at this lovely mare. Her scars didn’t repulse me, they seemed to glow as marks of strength. Binge’s hoof rested near a bullet scar not far above her groin, and her voice’s husky nature grew soft.

“Think it was this one that did it. Don’t know, got a lot of holes put in me. One of them broke something inside, pretty sure. All that time, making the sexy with the willing and the not willing, but never ha a mini-me to pop out.”

I was silent for a second, and Binge’s eyes gazed at me. “Does that bother you, Longwalk?”

She rarely used my name without some kind of pet nature to it. I could tell this mattered to her. So I looked at her squarely back and stroked her mane, pulling her close. “No. Doesn’t change a thing.”

Her deceptively strong hooves sensually rubbed along my chest and turned me onto my back so I was laying on the bed with my hind legs dangling off the side, Binge rolling as well so that she was now between my legs with her upper body pressed against my chest. She looked up at me with heated eyes, nibbling my chest. I could feel her own heart beating away at a fast pace in her own chest as she slid lower.

“Good,” she said in a heavy, thirsty voice. “Because even if I can’t make tiny Binges and Longwalks, I’m going to drain you like I’m trying to repopulate the whole damn Wasteland.”

With that she left me no more time to speak. She went lower and lower on my body, trailing a line of hot kisses and tongue flicks along my belly until she reached my lowest part. Then a unimaginable heat and wetness engulfed me as pleasured shattered my senses, and I was at Binge’s mercy. But that was okay, because I trusted her completely now, and while I had no idea what I was doing, Binge was right; my body knew more of what to do than I did and soon nature took over.

It was a long time before either of us got any sleep that night.

The next morning I woke up aching and sore from snout to flank, yet feeling utterly content and satisfied in a way I didn’t even know had been possible to feel.

I was wrapped up in Binge, our legs intertwined as we were curled up on the floor beside the bed. We’d fallen off during our... exertions last night, but hadn’t particularly cared and had kept going. She was pressed flush against me, fast asleep and snoring peacefully in my hooves, her warmth radiating into me, her snouth nestled into my throat as her breaths tickled me. My own face was buried in her mane, narrowly missing a few of her razor blades. My snout bumped into something else tied into her mane, not sharp but some kind of blunt object, and without really thinking about how odd that was I nudged it aside and continued to lightly slip between dozing and wakefulness. Bit by bit, minute by pleasantly slow passing minute I woke up more and more, and slowly blinked at the rest of the room. Binge’s dress was torn off and tossed across the dresser on the other side of the room. I noticed what was left of my tux was strewn in various spots, including one bit somehow getting outside the open window, dangling off the side of the hotel.

My memory flashed across the previous night in red hot beats, making my heart quicken again.

I hadn’t known. I mean, I’d guessed mating was certainly enjoyable, it wasn’t like I hadn’t... taken care of myself before. But being with Binge had been beyond what I could express with words. She’d been relentless, surely, and rough. I saw one of the bed posts bent from... from what I don’t know. We’d gotten kind of into it once I was past the initial awkardward first few times.

Yes, few times. I had just been a virgin, so I, uh, popped fairly quick. Luckily Binge expected that and had compensated with knowing exactly how to keep the heat on, so to speak. I hadn’t really counted how many times, per se, but Binge hadn’t let me rest until she was satisfied, and no matter how tired I got I refused to stop too until I knew she was satisfied too.

I think we’d ended up on the floor around round four, or maybe five? Gah, as good as it had been I hadn’t known how sore I could be down there until now! Maybe Binge had been in heat? The thought made me look at her, peacefully curled up against me, spooned into my chest with her hooves intertwined with mine. Soaked in sweat and... other fluids, her mane now disheveled as it had ever been, I felt my heart lighten and flow with a soft, golden warmth.

No bones about it, I loved this mare. Maybe it was the hormonal drunkenness of youth talking, but at that moment I knew I wanted nothing more than to wake up like this every morning for the rest of my life and hers. If we could just scrap through all this insanity that had been occurring since I found Arcaidia, if someday the journey did finally come to an end, I wanted Binge in my life until we died as wrinkled, withered old ponies.

...Maybe with some grandfoals running around?

Despite what Binge had said, a part of my mind turned. I didn’t doubt what she’d told me, that she couldn’t have foals due to the many injuries she’d taken over the years. But I had recovered from all sorts of injuries that should have killed me, partially due to incredible medical magic and science, and partly due to the alien nanomachines in my blood. Who was to say that Binge might not be able to have the damage inside her repaired? One day, when we were safe, and had a home to raise them...

I shook my head. I was thinking way too far ahead. Me and Binge were just now figuring out how we felt about each other, and I wasn’t so naive I thought one night of admittedly incredible mating somehow meant things were going to turn out all clean and perfect. Who knew what the future held for us?

Well, whatever it was, I was damned sure I was going to face it with her, no matter what. I hugged her tightly, kissing her tenderly on the forehead, and she sleepily murmured into my chest.

“Mmm...Longwalk...love you...”

Her tail twitched, and her eyes were still closed in sleep, so I thought she was dreaming. I smiled, thinking, Aww, she’s pretty adorable when asleep.

“Mmm...harder... faster...zzzZZZzz...”

I blushed furiously, body heating up like a bonfire. Adorable, but still Binge. I fondly stroked her mane, careful to avoid the sharp objects hidden within. Glancing over myself I saw no small number of rough scratch marks from Binge’s frantic hooves, and more than a few bite marks accompanied them. She might not exactly have been gentle with me, but I couldn’t find any desire to complain. I was sturdy, and the pain had been far overshadowed by the satisfaction.

Really the situation felt a bit surreal, like a part of me couldn’t actually believe this was all happening. Ponies trying to kill me, I was used to that. Having a marefriend was new territory. Was there something I was supposed to do at this point? I mean, if this had happened back in my tribe and I’d lain with one of the mare’s of the tribe, then our responsibility would be to go to her parents and Chieftain Hardtack to announce that we were a mated pair. There’d be a brief ceremony, a celebratory feast where I’d have to go hunt a gecko to be the main course of the meal. Nothing complicated, but I got the feeling none of that applied here.

Should I cook her breakfast or something? I was pretty sure there weren’t any geckos for me to go hunt around here anyway. Maybe... maybe I was overthinking this. Binge wasn’t the sort to get caught up in the details, so why should I? We were together, and that’s what mattered. I’d just go with the flow.

Looking towards the window I saw gentle sunlight pouring in and a blue sky barely streaked with cloud. What time was it? Slowly turning my hoof to look at my Pip-Buck, I saw the time was nearing nine o’clock. I wondered where the others were? I suppose they knew me and Binge would be here at the hotel, so they must have found other arrangements for the night. I felt a bit guilty about that, but I supposed there hadn’t been any avoiding it. The thought certainly made me wonder how me and Binge were going to handle our new relationship while the party was on the move. Finding privacy wouldn’t always be this easy.

With a cattish yawn Binge stretched and her eyes flickered open. Seeing me she made a deep throated purring nose and nuzzled my neck. “Wasn’t just a squishy dream then. Good. Was kinda scared it was all little brain ghosts showing me what I wanted.”

She paused a moment, looking up at me with suddenly very serious eyes. “I’m not asleep, right Longwalk? This is real? We’re both awake, right here, right now, and there’s no more whispers and shadows playing games with my head?”

I smiled down at her, pulling her tighter against me, feeling the raw ache in my body. “This better be real, otherwise I’m going to be wondering all day who put these bite marks on me.”

Her laugh tickled my chest, followed by a tantalizing brush of her teeth as she nipped at me. “Everypony who sees you is gonna know you’re mine, bucky.” She gave playful little bites down my chest, sighing softly with each one. “Mine. Mine. Mine.”

Lifting herself over me she sat on my barrel, looking down at me with a look that was abruptly unsure, her voice oddly hesitant. “It wasn’t... too weird for you? I tried so hard not to hurt you. I didn’t, did I?”

I reached up, pulling her down over me and planting a firm kiss on her lips. She was tense, but I felt that tension drain out of her as we enjoyed a long, warm kiss, at the end of which I said, “You didn’t hurt me at all. I like these aches and marks.” Hesitantly I asked, “I was... good? You enjoyed last night?”

Binge’s tongue flicked out to lick her lips as she grinned and rubbed her hoof over my chest in a slow, sensual circle that made me start to warm up inside. “What you didn’t know, bucky, you made up for with enthusiasm. I popped like a fizzy Sparkle-Cola, don’t you worry.” She looked at me curiously, her expresion fond yet wondering. “It was actually really different.”

“Different?” I asked.

A flash of regret hit her face as she glanced away. “All my other smexy times were just flesh slapping flesh. Grunting and thrusting and sometimes lots of pain and screaming too. Some of it willing. Some of it not. All of it was just blood and the flesh, though. None of it hit deeper inside me.”

Her eyes locked on mine, her voice turning thick with mixed emotions. “But last night with you felt so different. It just felt so good, but not just in my squishy flesh parts, but deeper inside. I didn’t know it could feel like that. I didn’t know I even had parts of me that could feel that way.”

I looked at her with a reassuring smile and said, “But I made you happy, right?”

She buried her face in my chest, and I thought she was laughing for a second with her small shakes, until she looked up at me with sunlight shining off the tears in her eyes as she smiled at me. “I’m so happy it hurts like crazy. More than being shot or stabbed. I don’t even know if I should feel this happy, after the life I’ve lived. Is it okay, bucky? Am I allowed to feel like this?”

I took a deep breath and stroked my hooves down the back of her head, and caressed her back. “I think so. I think as long as you live right now better than you did back then, its okay to hold onto whatever happiness you can find. I sure as hell know I’m going to hold onto you for as long as I can.”

Her eyes warmed and she melted atop me, sighing contentedly. “Not letting go of you either. I don’t know what’s coming for us, Longy. There’s still a lot of dark places in me. But I feel you in there too, now, so much brightness washing up against the rust. So, please... stay inside me forever, okay?”

“Uh, are we talking metaphorically, or...?”

She burst out into a thick pile of giggles, and her eyes grew heated as she grinned at me and I felt her rub her enticing backside against my groin. “I could go for both, if you’re up for it, bucky.”

Despite my soreness, the way she was rubbing herself against me down there was rapidly heating up my body and making it respond in all the right ways. My breathing catching in my throat, and managed to stammer, “I, uh, w-wouldn’t say no, but I don’t know that we’ve got time to...aaah... go all out like last nigh-”

Before I’d finished speaking there was a loud, banging knock on the door and I heard Crossfire’s voice from outside, muffled but still understandable.

“Hey! You in there, buck!? Open up the door.”

Startled, I poked my head up beyond the bed, and Binge rose with me, still clinging tight to my body.

“Whoops, the Grump has come to kill all the fun.” Binge said with a pouting look and a huff, “And I wanted to show you so many more fun things today, too.”

“I’m sure we’ll have time for that later.” I said, sighing as well as I reluctantly slid out from under Binge and stood, helping her up with an offered hoof. “If we don’t find out what she wants, she’s just going to keep banging on the door.”

“Grr, why does she get to keep banging, but we have to stop?” whined Binge.

That nearly made me trip as I rummaged about for my armor, bumping into Gramzanber, who I noticed was propped up against the wall. I looked at the ARM, having utterly forgotten it was there last night. As if sensing my unasked question, I heard Gramzanber’s voice in my head.

I considered asking if you wanted to put me elsewhere before you and Binge became fully engaged in coitus, but I did not want to interrupt what appeared to be an already delicate mating process. If it makes you feel better, I tuned out most of it. However I am curious, what was the point of all that oral-”

“Gram, please, don’t finish that sentence.” I moaned, fumbling around in pulling my armor on from where it had been neatly piled next to my ARM. Binge, laying out on the bed with her chin propped in her hooves, waggled her eyebrows, tail wagging.

“What’s the spear asking, bucky? I wanna know!”

“N-nothing! He’s didn’t see anything and certainly isn’t asking about anything!” I yelped, and Crossfire banged on the door again.

“I can hear you in there! Move your ass. We got a situation and Whiteheart needs all Drifters geared up and assembled now! What are you doing in there, putting on your fucking makeup!?”

With a mischievous giggle Binge rolled off the bed and trotted towards the door. “I’ll answer it.”

“Waitasec Binge-” I said, but she was swifter than my words and unlocked the door, throwing it open.

On the other side Crossfire stood, wearing her usual red jacket and with her massive rifle slung over her back. “About damned time, what the fu...”

The Drifter mare’s words trailed off as she took in the sight of Binge in front of her, sweat soaked, mane ruffled, glowing like a lightbulb. Then me, half dressed, equally ruffled, with enough scratches and bite marks to look like I’d been through a feral ghoul attack. Our clothes from the party, strewn about the room haphazardly. The unmistakable, musky smell of the room.

“Good morning!” Binge chimed happily, “We’ll be ready in a sec. Bucky is just so tired you know? He had such a busy, busy night.”

Crossfire blinked, looking at her, then at me, back to her, back to me. Her right eye twitched. Her hoof scuffed the floor, then very slowly reached up to cover her face as she shook her head. Crossfire’s voice was entirely too level as she said, “I’ll see you two downstairs. Fifteen minutes. Get your asses cleaned up, you both reek.”

With that she trotted away down the hall, and Binge turned to me with her face lit up. “Fifteen whole minutes! Do you think we could-”

“No, Binge.”

“Awww, spoilsport. I was going to show you this trick with my tail.”

I paused, thinking. “Could you show me while we shower?”

To that, Binge just grinned.

I was still wringing out water from my mane and tail by the time Binge and I reached the main hall of Tenpony Tower, where I saw the other Drifter’s waiting for us alongside my friends. Crossfire and Shard were both not only fully geared up, but were sporting some new hardware I didn’t recognize. These looked somewhat like rifles, only much larger and bulkier than what I was used to seeing, with box shaped barrels with metal casings surrounding what looked like clusters of copper bunched up in tight packets and set up in twin rows down a narrow metal channel. Various little nodes sprouted from below the rifles, and they glowed with faint hints of blue magic.

Hawkeye and his Drifter team were similarly equipped, although I noted one of them, a bulky orange earth pony stallion with a close cropped mustard colored mane was carrying a straight up rocket launcher.

Compared to them my friends weren’t quite as loaded down, but I noticed B.B was carrying the black case that contained the Twin Fenrir ARM that Scythe had given her. I guess she’d decided to try using it, or at least was giving it serious thought. Arcaidia was wearing her usual dress, her starblaster holstered at her chest, but I saw her working on one of those metal objects she used to contain new spells, holding it in front of her with a wisp of her magic with a look of concentration on her face. LIL-E floated nearby, turning to see Binge and me approaching.

“Must have been some night.” the eyebot said, somehow managing to make a robotic monotone sound coy. “You’re walking a bit funny there, Longwalk.”

I immediately tried to straighten my posture and not show my soreness, although I think I ended up just walking more stiffly. Shooting LIL-E a look, face already burning, I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I feel perfectly fine and not at all sore from the waist down. Or the waist up, for that matter.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel great!” said Binge with a happy bounce in her own steps, casting a glowing look about the gathering. “So who are we killing today?”

“Not who, what.” Arcaidia said, not looking up from her concentration upon the small, silver metal rectangle in her magic as she slowly inserted it into her Pip-Buck. I saw a brief gleam of Veruni crests on the metal card’s surface before it went inside the Pip-Buck. Once it was in, Arcaidia worked a few switches on the hoof mounted device and then turned her attention to me and Binge. Her expression was cooly professional, but her silver eyes did linger on Binge and me a bit long, and seemed momentarily worried, but she cast it aside quickly. “Crossfire say wait until Whiteheart arrive to explain, but she already tell us basics.”

“Since the Guildmaster is going to brief us anyway I didn’t want to waste time trying to explain things to the buck.” Crossfire snorted.

“Ya’ll won’t mind if we tell ‘em ourselves then, since the boss ain’t here yet.” said B.B, turning to me with a flutter of wings. “It's the Golem.”

That word alone pushed away my soreness and riveted my attention instantly. I resisted the urge to go running out the door to check that the Golem wasn’t already attacking the city. Instead I schooled my face to remain calm. “Where is it?”

“Still in the Everfree.” spoke Whiteheart’s smooth and swift tone as the stallion appeared from the direction of the elevators that led further up into Tenpony Tower. He wasn’t alone, as two mares trotted alongside him; Wellspring Whistles and... Miss Homage? What were they both doing here? Whiteman strode to the center of our three separate Drifter groups, both mares following him. He looked around at all of us, a small and grim smile on his face. “It seems sometime in the early morning the mechanical being Longwalk’s party identified as a ‘Golem’ started to burn part of the Everfree Forest, revealing its position. Although under instructions from the NCR President to remain on standby, the local dragon, Spike, flew in and has engaged the Golem. However he has been unable to defeat it, and has already suffered injury. President Grimfeathers has two Raptors on site to strike, but since the Drifter’s Guild has agreed to aid in the matter we will be moving in first to try and deal with the Golem before it becomes necessary to risk NCR lives.”

“So we’re just risking our own lives for... what, a show of good faith?” Hawkeye asked, muzzle scrunched in a frown.

“You will be receiving substantial hazard pay, of course.” Whiteheart said, “Including being able to keep your new NCR manufactured hardware. I trust you’ll find the railguns to your liking?”

“They’re not exactly standard issue, that’s for sure. Why’d the local army ponies bring these to us?” asked Shard, eyeing his own weapon curiously.

“Another favor to the NCR. The weapons have been extensively tested in all conditions save combat against hardened targets.” Explained Whiteheart. “We get extra pay for providing live fire data on the weapons’ effectiveness against the Golem.”

I coughed politely, raising my hoof, “Mind if I ask why Miss Whistles and Miss Homage are with you, sir?”

Whiteheart raised and eyebrow, opening his mouth, but a dark gray hoof forestalled him as Homage offered me a short smile. “Let me explain. Whatever is going down out there, both Wellspring and I believe there’s good reason to make sure it gets documented. Both of us are going to be flown to one of the Raptors so we can cover the truth of what happens out there. The NCR citizens both want to and deserve to know what destroyed one of our forts and took so many of our ponies lives in the process.”

“Plus I should be able to get some amazing photos.” said Wellspring, nudging a camera she now had slung across her neck. “You know, assuming the Raptor doesn’t blow up.”

Whiteheart cleared his throat, “The Raptors should remain at fair distance from the fight, so hopefully the danger will be minimal to you and Miss Homage. In any case this is an extension of our official Drifter’s contract here. The President already has a group of Veritbucks preparing to convey us to the Everfree. If anypony intends to back out, now is the time.”

Nopony so much as made a peep about backing out, but Binge did raise her hoof with an energetic wave. “Oh! Oh! Do we get toys!?”

Whiteheart blinked at her with faintly baffled eyes. “Toys?”

Binge’s head bobbed ina blurr. “Yup, all the other pretty ponies got big new shiny guns, but I’m not so interested in the bangs as I am the booms. Unless you want me fighting giant metal death machines with these-” she flipped a knife into her hoof from seemingly nowhere, “-I need some toys.”

“Ah, I see.” Whiteheart nodded, “I’m certain we can arrange a brief detour to an NCR military armory for anypony feeling under equipped to properly arm themselves, but I must insist you hurry as we must depart within the next half hour. Are there any other questions?”

“Yeah, actually.” I said, “If it turns out we need it, is there going to be any way to call for backup, or a way to pull out? Not to sound pessimistic, but I’ve seen what this thing can do. If the fight goes bad, we’ll need a way out of there.”

“The Vertibucks will maintain a holding pattern nearby, and Crossfire and Hawkeye have both been provided radios to contact them or the Raptors. You can get the frequency to use for your Pip-Buck from them.” Whiteheart said, his tone calmly serious. “However I sincerely hope this situation can be dealt with. This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate the skills of the Drifter’s Guild.”

“Curious.” said LIL-E, “I don’t see Applegate here. Is she coming with us?”

Whiteheart didn’t miss a beat, his tone confident. “Miss Applegate will be leading the attack and is awaiting us at the Vertibucks. Now if there are no more questions, I suggest we hurry.”

Things progressed rather quickly from there. We didn’t waste any time, all of us heading out of the hotel in a rush amid no small amount of NCR civilians watching us go with uneasy curiosity. Apparently news of what was going on hadn’t fully spread yet, but the citizens could tell something was up. We took the monorail to the Capitol Building, where I could see the three, matte black forms of Vertibucks arranged on the front lawn with a collection of quickly set up military tents. A few dozen ponies in NCR military armor and uniforms were scrambling around the scene as we arrived. One pegasus stallion with a bright red coat and even brighter silver mane snapped off a salute to us as we got off the monorail and trotted up to the camp. He was wearing a large leather coat over heavier black armor plates compared to the other soldiers present, and there was a distinct red star on his armored shoulder.

“Lieutenant Wind Drill, NCR Ranger Corps.” he introduced himself, “I’m your liaison as an temporary auxiliary unit in the NCR military forces. While you’re not under my command, I’m to advise you in case you need it on any actions that might endanger-”

“Yes, yes, you’re the leash holding pony. Point me towards the crates of ka-boom!” demanded Binge. At Wind Drill’s confused look Whiteheart coughed politely.

“Some of my personnel wish to avail themselves of NCR military stock, much as you provided us with these delightful railguns already. Might the young miss be pointed towards your supply tent?”

“Oh... uh... over there.” Wind Drill pointed with a wing, still looking confused as Binge happily bounced off in that direction. I glanced at Whiteheart.

“I’ll go make sure she doesn’t try to pack up the whole tent. This shouldn’t take long.”

“You two better not get distracted in there.” said LIL-E.

“Hey, c’mon, give me some credit!” I shouted over my shoulder as I cantered after Binge, only to hear LIL-E’s mechanical chuckling chasing me. If nothing else, I appreciated her levity. I was starting to feel light in the stomach, realizing we were soon to be facing one of the most powerful and destructive forces I’d ever seen since entering the Wasteland. My mind was only now starting to scramble for ideas on just how we were supposed to beat that Golem.

Inside the supply tent Binge was already rummaging around lockers, chests, and metal shelves piled up with ammunition, weapons, armor pieces, and explosives. Three guesses as to what she was going for first. I eyed Binge carefully as I saw her start to fill up a dark green military pair of saddlebags with quite an alarming number of pear shaped grenades with white band on them marked ‘HE’. Then my worry doubled as I noticed her grabbing blocks of something labeled ‘C-4’.

“Biiinge, you’re not going to blow us all up, are you?”

“Psssh,naaaaaah.”

“Biiiiinge, that’s a lot of stuff that looks like it’ll explode really easily.”

“Relaaaaaax, Longykins. I only blow up things I want to explode. I even read some of a book once on how this stuff works!”

I rubbed a hoof over my face. “Oh, well, okay then. As long as you read some of a book I guess it’s fine. Binge! I only just started our relationship. I don’t want it ending with either of us blown to chunky bits!”

Once she had her saddlebags stuffed full of things that could not only kill us, but just about anypony else in a twenty meter radius, Binge turned me with her tail wagging about joyously behind her, face plastered with a wide smile. “Don’t worry, Longwalk, from now on I’m going to be extra careful not to trot off into the big sleep before you. That’s why I want to make sure I got something I can hurt the big robot with. My usual turkey carving methods just won’t do here.”

“Point taken.” I said, understanding that she was right, her knives weren’t exactly ideal for fighting something like the Golem. “As long as you’re careful. Keep in mind I’m going to have to get close to the thing to use Gramzanber on it, so make sure me or anypony else is out of danger before you go tossing those things.”

“Not to worry, bucky. You bite the boss’ ankles, while I’ll-” she rubbed one of the grenades lovingly, “-blow my load all over its face!”

We were airborne ten minutes later. This wasn’t my first ride in a Vertibuck, and I almost felt comfortable inside the stuffy metal cabin alongside my friends. Each Drifter team occupied a different Vertibuck, and with the side doors partially open I could see the other two vehicles soaring the sky alongside us. Crossfire and Shard, along with Lieutenant Wind Drill, Applegate, and Whiteheart, occupied the middle Vertibuck in our formation. Hawkeye’s team was on the far left Vertibuck. We were crossing north over the farmlands and slowly swinging west towards the edge of the Everfree Forest. I was only just starting to see the beginnings of a thick, dark carpet of ominous trees just a couple hundred paces below us. When we’d crossed over the Everfree before while riding upon the Sweet Candy we were too high up for me to make out many details about the forest, but now that the Vertibucks were skimming fairly low I could see more clearly.

I hadn’t seen many trees in my life, unless one counted the withered, dead things that had make up the forest near my tribe’s village. I hadn’t realized trees got this large or came in this many varied shapes. The clusters of thick greenery came in all manner of shades, most of them on the darker side of eerie. It couldn’t see the forest floor through how thick the trees were in some places. I started to wonder where we’d be able to land amid all of it, but soon I felt a hoof brush my shoulder and found B.B looking at me pointedly as she gestured with a wing out the Vertibuck’s side door. Tilting out to get a look, I saw that up ahead there was a thick wall of black smoke bordered by washes of flame that filled part of the Everfree Forest. I could see several swaths of trees burned to black cinders, some as wide as an entire town. Then, briefly, I saw a massive purple and emerald form with wings diving through the smoke to rake giant claws at something obscured on the ground by the haze. Spike pulled up from his dive bomb attack just in time to avoid a blazing counter attack of flaming cannon fire that I knew came from the Golem. Even as the dragon evaded, however, I could tell Spike was in bad shape from the way his flight pattern was shaky and awkward, one of his wings showing bleeding tears through its membranes. I couldn’t be sure but it looked like at least one of his forelegs was wounded from the way it hung limply, as opposed to how the other one was poised to strike.

“We’re dropping you off at the edge of the area ahead.” said our Vertibuck’s pilot through the compartment loudspeaker, the pegasus mare doing a remarkable job of sounding calm and professional despite flying headlong into a deadly combat zone. “We touchdown in less than a minute. Get ready.”

Beside me, B.B sighed and unslung the black case containing the Twin Fenrir in it. “Guess its now r’ never.” she said as she opened it, running a hoof over the pair of cylindrical shaped ARMs within. The silver of the twin weapons gleamed invitingly, but it was impossible to forget where they’d come from. I looked at her with a steady gaze.

“You sure you can trust there isn’t a trap attached to these things?”

B.B only hesitated a few seconds before shaking her head, the wind from outside causing her mane to obscure her features. “Ain’t ‘bout trust Long. It’s ‘bout need. An’ I need these right now. My ol’ shooters ain’t gonna cut in the fights ahead. So even if Scythe put a’ trap on these things, I gotta take a’ chance on ‘em.”

As if to prevent herself from second guessing, she shoved her right hoof into the first of the Twin Fenrir, the appendage fitting into the circular opening at the back of the gun-like ARM as if it’d been made to fit her. She then did the same with the other hoof and carefully removed both weapons. The barrels were squat already, but they automatically pulled back into the housing of the ARM to allow her to stand on them like gauntlets. The thin, square shaped blades extending from the bottom ends also pulled in in rectangular folding pieces, tucking up against the back of the ARMs, presumedly to deploy when needed. I saw faint coils of blue light moving in circuit shaped patterns along the silver metal for a moment, then fade.

Looking B.B over, who was holding one of the weapons up to examine it with cautious eyes, I asked, “Well?”

An unsure cloud passed her features as she shrugged, “I ain’t sure. I don’t feel no different. Almost thought I’d feel a’ tingle or somethin’.”

Hmm, hey Gram, when I first bonded to you, I definitely felt you in my head even back then. Can you tell if this ARM is active or what? Haven’t we felt, like, a mental pressure when dealing the Odessa ARMs before?

Those artificial ARMs were Odessa’s first-generation prototypes, with poor compatibility ratings with their users and a tendency to emit unstable energy we could pick up on. These new models seem significantly more stable. I doubt B.B would feel any noticeable difference or connection to these artificial ARMs the way you and I are bonded. There is a resonance connection there, but it's different than what the two of us share. I do not think this ARM is even sentient in the same manner I am, although I do detect an intelligence, albeit likely a more basic A.I. Likely what allows it to respond to its wielder’s will by deploying or retracting the barrels and blades.

“Gram tells me you don’t have to worry about voices in your head.” I said to B.B, “You’re basically sporting an improved version of what Odessa’s already cooked up.”

Arcaidia gave the Twin Fenrir a curious look, “Impressive Odessa ponies make fake ARMs so quickly, and even more Impressive they refine better ARMs with same fastness.”

“You sure you can use those things?” asked LIL-E, “It's usually not a good idea to take an untested weapon into a fight.”

In response B.B glanced out the Vertibuck door, leaned forward, and extended her right hoof. The Twin Fenrir’s barrel deployed and seemingly without any need for pulling an actual trigger or further gesture on her part the weapon suddenly fired. White muzzle flashes strobed the cabin as the ARM fired a rapid stream of rounds into the forest, leaving streaks of bright silver as all I could see of the projectile's path as they hammered a splintering path through the tree canopy. I didn’t know if the ARM was firing actual bullets or not, all I saw were flickers of silver, but they hit hard enough to crack through tree trunks like a hammer through plywood.

There was no smoke or other exhausted from the barrel as it retracted again and B.B gave a satisfied nod to herself before turning to LIL-E. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll be able ta handle ‘em.”

The half dozen trees that were busy falling over with severed trunks seemed to act as punctuation to her statement.

Binge let out a happy titter, “ARMs are pretty fun, aren’t they birdie! I was so disappointed I didn’t get to keep the flashy grim reaper blade your bromancer let me borrow. When you take him out, I’m calling dibs on it.”

“Bro...mancer? Ya know what, nevermind. Ya can have Scythe’s weapon when I finish dealin’ wit him. Ain’t no skin off my snout.” B.B said.

Further conversation ended as our pilot said, “Hang on folks, we’re coming in for a bumpy landing! I think we’ve been-” the Vertibuck suddenly juked harshly to the right, nearly throwing me off balancing and dumping me out of the flying vehicle at over a hundred feet in the air. I saw the angry streak of blazing crimson cannon fire pass by where we’d just been, close enough that I could feel the heat of the flame rounds the Golem’s arm mounted cannons fired.

“-spotted.” finished our pilot as she grunted and sent us into a sharp dive. I saw the other Vertibuck’s doing the same, juking through the air as they lowered themselves to nearly skim the forest canopy. All the while bolts of red cannon fire streaked the sky around us, and I didn’t doubt just one of those rounds could shred a Vertibuck to flaming pieces.

I’d felt helpless a number of times during my adventures, but for a few seconds this was the worst kind of helpless as I trusted my life and the lives of my friends to a pilot whose name I didn’t even know. I just had to pray to the Ancestor Spirits she could evade the Golem’s fire and land without crashing. All I could do was hold on to the seat and be ready to leap out when the time came.

Above the whine of the Vertibuck engines, the dull thumping of the Golem’s arm cannons, and the shriek of the wind, I heard a titanic roar of challenge followed by a crashing noise. The incoming fire slacked off and I realized Spike must have dived back in, buying us precious seconds to land and disembark from the Vertibucks.

I felt our Vertibuck dip in the air sharply, and I nearly screamed, thinking we were going to hit the trees, until a second later I realized we were beyond the intact treeline and instead in the vast burned out clearing where the Golem was and our Vertibuck was hitting the ground in a rough but stable landing.

“Move it!” our pilot shouted, “Ride’s over folks! Go kick that things ass!”

Neither my friends or I required any further urging. We piled out both sides of the Vertibuck, my hooves stomping down onto ashen ground that was still warm with residual flame heat. The air was choked with ash, and my eyes burned and watered from the sting of residual smoke. All around me was charred, blackened husks of felled trees and skeletal bushes. The wall of fire and smoke burned like a monolithic pyre about a hundred yards ahead. To my left the other two Vertibuck’s had also landed, disgorging the other Drifters. Only Whiteheart and Lieutenant Wind Drill stayed on their Vertibuck as the trio of vehicles lifted off in billows of ash and smoke.

For a second we all looked at each other, not quite seeing our target clearly, until the humongous form of Spike came sailing out of the dimness ahead. The dragon slammed back first into the ground as if he’d been thrown there, his giant body roughly tearing ruts through the field as he groaned. With heavy, earth shaking steps the Golem strode from the smoke from where it had tossed Spike.

One of the ancient race of Elw’s eight Golems, Roaring Metal, was just as I’d remembered it from Saddlespring. A forty foot tall, bipedal giant with crimson red armor covering most of its body, save for several parts that were lined with a more pearl white metallic substance. Its thick, armored head contained bright, glowing orange eyes that looked at first towards Spike, but then upwards at the fleeing Vertibucks.

“Oh shit!” I breathed, immediately drawing Gramzanber.

Behind me I heard Crossfire let out an even louder curse as she saw the Golem start to raise its bulky right arm. “Fuck! It’s going for the transports!”

Applegate, her own broad blade still strapped to her back, instantly broke into a headlong gallop towards the Golem, shouting in a commanding tone, “Open fire! Get its attention on us!”

Everypony who had a ranged weapon to use opened fire in roughly the span of the same couple of seconds. I broke into a gallop of my own, following Applegate in a charge that would take us past where Spike was slowly clambering to his clawed feet. Hawkeye and his team of five other ponies all spread out, using their NCR railguns to fire charged shots of metal shards with booming shrieks of speed while they simultaneously sought cover. Crossfire was using both a railgun and her bayonet rifle, floating both in her blood red magic as she galloped forward a few paces behind me, my eardrums rattling from the combined heavy bark of her rifle alongside the higher pitched shrieks of the railgun. Shard followed her, plugging away with his own railgun with measured shots.

Of my friends, most of them leaped into action in the same moment I had. Binge did her usual disappearing act, and I trusted her to keep out of harm’s way and find the right time to strike without endangering me or the others. LIL-E popped out her gun mounts and floated high, firing away while moving towards Spike. Arcaidia sent streaks of her starblaster’s white energy bolts towards the Golem, maintaining a more measured swift canter behind the rest of us charging forward. B.B had taken to the air, flanking LIL-E as they soared towards the Golem. The majority of the shots coming from everypony else were sparking off the Golem’s armor in a shower of glittering sparks and leaving small pockmarks on the armor’s surface, and not making it look our way.

When B.B extended both of the Twin Fenrir’s the air was split with heavy, high-pitched cracks of sound as each weapon of the paired ARM sent a flickering stream of high speed silver bolts into Roaring Metal’s right arm. B.B aimed for right where its multi-barreled rotary cannon was extending up form housing in its wrist, and I actually saw one of the barrels snap off from the barrage.

This caused the Golem to take an off balance step backwards, but its cannon still opened fire on the Vertibucks, it’s aim only slightly thrown off. I fearfully looked over my shoulder as the crimson cannon rounds stabbed the air around the Vertibucks in a wild stream. All three Vertibucks banked hard in different directions to avoid the fire. My heart clenched as I saw one of them catch a round through its center, just behind the cockpit. I was pretty sure it was the same Vertibuck that we’d been riding on. A cold gasp left me as I saw the Vertibuck spin, and split in half like a decapitated gecko, with its cockpit mounting tearing free of the main body, which blossomed with crimson flames at both ends as the Golem’s incendiary round burned it out.

The cockpit was still intact, but it spun like a top and went crashing into the forest with such speed and force that I had little hope that our pilot survived the impact. Gritting my teeth and gave a prayer to the Ancestor Spirits for the pilot’s safety and turned my attention back to my headlong charge at the Golem.

B.B’s attack had gotten its attention, and now it aimed its arms at us. Applegate and I both started to zig-zag in our charge, and behind me Crossfire’s magic swiftly switched clips out of her Sniper Shark XR, the rifle quickly firing a blinding phosphorus round at the Golem’s face. Whether that helped or not I don’t know, but when the Golem fired the storm of incendiary cannon rounds impacted between me and Applegate, blowing giant chunks of flaming debris out of the ground but narrowly missing us both. The Golem’s other cannon send a punishing barrage at Hawkeye’s team, but they weren’t incompetent warriors but experienced Drifters and had spread out enough and taken up good cover positions amid the uneven terrain. For the moment I didn’t see any of them get hit, but the battlefield was already filled with so much smoke it was hard to tell, but the railgun fire from their end didn’t slacken so I held out hope no one on our side was dead yet.

Arcaidia, closing the distance more slowly than the rest of us, let her horn fill with a bright corona of magic and massive crest symbols surrounded her in multi-layered circles. A huge barrier of ice extended out to guard Hawkeye’s team, with small openings for them to fire out from. Meanwhile Arcaidia also created a large, five meter long lance of ice and sent it hurtling towards Roaring Metal. The Golem seemed to sense the attack and raised a forearm, the gear-like drill bracer mounted there spinning up just as it had when it had smashed the doors in the Elw Ruin back in Saddlespring. Arcaidia’s ice lance was shattered on the spinning gauntlet, but this created a distraction that let Applegate and I close the distance.

“Go for the joints at its ankles!” Applegate shouted to me, and looking I saw that the area around the Golem’s foot, while heavily armored, still had one point at the angle where the crimson sheet of armor wasn’t able to cover the exposed joint within. Nodding to her I hefted Gramzanber in my mouth and pointed towards the right leg, while she nodded and angled for the left one.

I saw her switch from a four legged gallop to a bipedal stance with a shocking amount of agility, and Applegate coiled her hind legs under her before making an impressive leap that sent her sailing in a heavy downard arc right towards the left ankle joint, her sword reflecting the firelight light a shard of lava as she brought it down with the power of both forelegs.

At the same time I hurled in a headlong gallop at the other ankle joint. I was getting used to bipedal fighting, but I wasn’t good enough to pull a maneuver like Applegate was, so instead I put all of my earth pony might and speed into a charge, angling Gramzanber to tear its serrated edge along the targete joint.

Applegate and I hit at the same time. She brought her sword down in an explosion of sparks, a wave of air pressure coiling around her blade as she did so. The weapon cut a dark line through the joint, but I couldn’t tell if any significant damage was done. Mostly because I was busy rattling my own jaw as I dragged Gramzanber along the joint of the Golem’s other leg. This close I could feel the heat radiating off the Golem. It was as if Roaring Metal was one giant furnace, the very ground sizzling and steaming under its giant feet. I could feel my hide sweltering at this close proximity, but I ignored it as Gramzanber’s edge cut a sparking path over the Golem’s exposed ankle joint.

The Golem barely staggered, and what I thought might have been it taking a unbalanced step back in fact turned out to be the Golem raising its foot to stomp down towards me with punishing force. I barely got out of the way in time to avoid being reduced to grilled pony paste, the heated Golem foot smashing the ground and sizzling it like a hot grill. The impact still sent me rolling from air pressure alone, several burning bits of broken branches battering me as I rolled to my hooves.

Applegate was similarly forced to evade as the Golem raised its other foot to kick at her, smashing up an entire chunk of smouldering ash and dirt as Applegate expertly dodged aside. B.B and LIL-E both flew by the Golem’s head before it could resume trying to stomp us on the ground, both of them pouring barrages into Roaring Metal’s head. LIL-E’s side mounted rifle and turret mounted pistol both fired at the Golem’s eyes, the rounds sparking around the crystalline orbs to little effect. B.B’s ARM rounds created clear, if small, dents in the armored faceplate of the Golem, but if the ancient war machine cared about the superficial damage it certainly didn’t show it as its eyes suddenly glowed an intense and almost blindingly bright orange.

Sensing the attack, LIL-E and B.B both split up, the eyebot diving towards the ground while B.B pulled up to soar higher. Where they’d just been a thin but powerful set of twin eye beams shot out of the Golem and scorched the air. Choosing one target the Golem raised its head, looking towards B.B, and where it looked the twin orange beams firing from its eyes followed. Clearly it saw her as the the greater threat. B.B banked hard, the beams cutting so close to her I saw several of her wing feathers fly off and burn up like moths. I feared the beams would catch her, and was prepared to charge back in at the Golem, but the ground shook beneath my hooves as I heard a voice roar like an eruption.

“Don’t turn your back on me!” Spike bellowed, the dragon shaking the earth as he charged in and rammed into the Golem with the full weight of his draconic body. Even the massive metal machine was knocked back by this blow, slamming into the ground and sent skidding dozens of yards, not unlike Spike had been moment’s before.

With blood from a bleeding wound across his brow coating his face, Spike glanced at the rest of us and growled, “What you all doing here!? I got this!”

“Your government disagrees.” Applegate shouted back calmly, “They’ve contracted the Drifter’s Guild to assist in dispatching this target.”

Spike’s face glowered down at Applegate, but he snorted out flames and said, “Whatever. Just don’t blame me if I accidently squash or incinerate any of you. I ain’t holding back against this guy.”

“Has anything actually worked so far?” I asked with a loud yell, watching as the Golem started to get up. “It doesn't look too damaged to me.”

I felt a instinctive burst of fear as Spike’s massive, frowning visage turned towards me. I really didn’t want to piss the dragon off, but hey, we needed to know if Spike could even hurt this thing. With a snort Spike said, “My fire isn’t doing a damn thing to it. Claws don’t do much more, but if I can just get a damned grip on it I can carry this asshole into the sky and drop him. Terminal velocity has to do something.”

“Not the worst plan ever.” I admitted, “How about you let us get its attention, and when its busy with us, you swoop in from behind?”

“We’re out of time for plans, buck!” shouted Crossfire with a grim set to her charcoal dark features, “Here it comes!”

The Golem had regained its feet and focused its eyes upon Spike. It then proceeded to move with remarkable speed for its size and charged straight towards the dragon. Spike, with equal ferocity shining in his eyes, rushed to meet that charge. The two collided with the collosal force of a mountain crumbling. For a second the giant of metal and the titan of scales struggled with arms locked. Spike tried to get a good grip around the Golem’s arms, likely to try the very air drop he’d proposed a second ago, but Roaring Metal proved incredibly agile for a hulking, hundred ton machine. It managed to break Spike’s hold and cocked back its right arm. The gear bracer on the arm spun, the Golem’s fist becoming like a spinning drill as it hammered Spike across the face with a blow that I saw scatter a few of the dragon’s teeth.

Still the dragon refused to buckle under the blow, roaring back and raking the Golem’s face with his sword-length claws. Sparks flew as one of the Golem’s eyes cracked and went dark, but Roaring Metal responded with another punishing drill fist straight into Spike’s chest that was strong enough to lift the dragon off the ground and cause him to fall back down in a collapsed heap.

We hadn’t been idle, however, and the moment Spike was out of the line of fire Hawkeye’s team opened up again from the protection of Arcaidia’s ice wall. Railgun rounds concentrated on the Golem’s knees this time, ricocheting more often than not, but causing several sparking scratches on the weaker knee armor. Crossfire had switched out her ammo in her rifle for what I assumed were high explosive rounds, because when she fired this time the bullets exploded like grenades on the Golem’s head. She gave me a pointed look as she fired away.

“We’re not getting through that armor without something with a shit ton of punch! Can your shiny ass spear do it or not!?”

I wasn’t certain. I’d felt the armor on the ankle joint give under Gramzanber’s edge, but I didn’t know if it’d be enough on the thicker armor on the Golem’s chest or head. There had to be vital components in there that we could damage if we could just penetrate deep enough. B.B’s Twin Fenrir seemed to do some damage, and if Arcaidia could summon a large enough ice shard... and where was Binge and her explosives?

That last question was answered as something erupted underneath the Golem’s left foot, a massie explosive charge going off that made the Golem stumble as it had started to step forward. I saw Binge’s dark green form for an instant as the giggling mare vanished behind a fallen tree, making maximum use of stealth to avoid any counterattack as she faded out of view.

“I don’t know if Gramzanber can crack that armor by itself, but a combined effort might do the trick.” I told Crossfire. “We have to keep hitting the same spot until we wear the armor down.”

Crossfire’s golden eyes glittered with purpose, her rifle and railgun both rapidly reloading. “Go for the head then.”

With a swift nod I called to my friends as loud as I could, “Focus on the head! B.B, can you lift me up onto the thing’s shoulders!?”

“On it!” she called back, swooping down to me as Arcaidia galloped up alongside Shard, who was taking pot shots at the Golem with his railgun, joining his fire with that of Hawkeye’s tema.

Applegate in the meantime had heard us and gestured to me with her sword, “While you all strike at its head I’ll keep at its ankles. If we can immobilize it that will make this a lot easier.”

“Watch out ponies!” shouted LIL-E, amplifying her voice through her loudspeaker, “Incoming!”

The Golem had recovered from its stumble and now set its legs wide, arms pulled back, and the massive shoulders opened to extend a pair of nozzles each. The nozzles glowed with a deep orange fury as they pointed towards the ice wall Hawkeye’s team was behind. LIL-E’s warning had given the a few seconds to react, but no more before twin jets of flame flew forth. The heat was devastating, so hot that even as the flames roared overhead I felt my hide blistering. It was like everything was bathed in crimson light, and the jets of fire impacted with Arcaidia’s magical ice wall like a shotgun blast through paper.

I saw a few ponies, including Hawkeye, stagger out of a scalding cloud of steam as the ice evaporated. They were injured, but alive, but I only saw three of them make it out of the explosion of steam and flames. Hawkeye, shaking with pain and fury, shouted for the remains of his team to get to cover, but he started firing at the Golem once more, rushing forwards instead of back.

With no more time to plan the rest of us burst into motion. B.B grabbed me underneath the forelegs and lifted me into the air while Arcaidia started to cast another spell, this time creating a crest around her horn that contained a new set of symbols I’d never seen before. The ground shifted around Arcaidia, dirt and stone erupted upwards as she created a spinning array of pony sized boulders. Her horn surrounded with blue light as intense as a bonfire she then created a sheet of ice around each boulder, spikes forming from the ice to make each boulder into the equivalent of a giant mace. Then she launched them like cannon balls at the Golem’s face. Crossfire added her own explosive rounds and railgun fire to this barrage.

Roaring Metal tried to ward off the attack with one arm, but at least two of Arcaidia’s ice coated boulders got through and rattled the Golem’s head, aided by Crossfire’s own attacks. Meanwhile LIL-E floated towards Spike, checking to see if the dragon was unconscious or not. I heard her shouting at him, but didn't quite catch what the eyebot said. Whatever it was it caused the dragon to stir, an unbelievably loud and ominous growl emanating from the depths of his maw.

Meanwhile B.B had flow up above the Golem’s left shoulder.

“Hope ya know what yer doin’!” she said as she dropped me onto the machine.

I felt the Golem’s heat through my hooves, and grit my teeth against the pain as I said, “Never do! Hasn’t stopped me yet! Just keep shooting this thing in the head!”

Wobbling to get my balance I left B.B to go circle around to the front of the Golem while I made my way across the shoulder towards the side of Roaring Metal’s head. Knowing time was a serious factor, and having built up plenty of energy in Gramzanber I had no reason to hold back now.

Accelerator

The pain of the Golem’s burning metal surface was no easier to bear due to the world shifting into a tint of azure blue as my reflexes and speed magnified, but it did give me time to better assess the situation. Spike was slowly starting to rise, a look of murderous rage in his eyes. Whatever LIL-E had said to him had just lit a fire under the dragon’s tail, and he looked ready to tear the Golem apart, as if he hadn’t been trying to do that already.

Crossfire was galloping across the front of the Golem’s path, using the trunk of a split in half, burned tree to leap off of and gain some extra height so she had a better shot at the Golem’s face. She kept both her rifle and her railgun almost perfectly poised around her as she fired them in successive shots, each round soaring in with masterful accuracy to impact with the Golem’s eye that Spike had already shattered.

Arcaidia was working more magic, and even at a distance I could see my friend’s body shaking and coated with sweat from the rapid effort of her spellcasting. She was using stone once more, summoning up earth and shaping it into the form of a hammer that she was then combining with her ice magic, coating the hammer with a thick spike of ice. This ability to control earth was new for her, and I could only assume it was part of the magic she’d been working on before we’d come here. Still, from the strained look on her face the combined magic of ice and earth was taking a toll on her. I could only hope it’d be worth the effort in taking this monster down.

I didn’t see Binge at first, but a strange glow of light caught my eye and I then spotted her sneaking up behind the Golem, swiftly flitting from bits of broken tree or boulders as cover. Strangely, the glow was coming from inside her mane. I didn’t know what it was, but my mind recalled earlier that morning when we’d been cuddling, and I’d felt something solid and non-sharp there. What was it, and why was it glowing now? I wasn’t sure even she knew it was there, because all of Binge’s grinning, mad eyed focus was on the block of explosives she was carrying while sneaking towards the Golem, pressing buttons on a detonator to set it to blow.

I hoped she didn’t do anything to get herself hurt.

Applegate was keeping her word by going for the Golem’s ankles again, and even in slow motion she moved swiftly and with precise steps that impressed me even more seeing them slowed down. That mare didn’t waste any motion and had a sure-hooved grace that was almost as impressive as how much strength she put behind each swing of her sword. Even with Accelerator going, she was moving so fast, her strikes so powerful and swift, that she managed to get a hit in on the Golem’s foot before I’d even taken a few steps towards its head. Then the angle I was at left her out of view, but I didn’t doubt she’d be swinging away down there while I was taking care of business up top.

Speaking of up top, B.B was still more or less at head height with me as she flew around the other side of the Golem’s head. I saw that what the Twin Fenrir were firing were essentially miniature drills. The projectiles looked like small, silver cones with spiral patterns on them that made them spin like drills before they impacted with the Golem’s armor, tearing chunks from it or impacting the armor inward before flattening out. I also noticed there were small streaks of blue energy around each drill bullet, almost imperceptible.

Also what was near imperceptible was the other bullet that flew right by B.B’s head, not managing to hit her but still close enough to tear through some of her mane. I don’t think B.B saw it, because even in slow motion I saw no reacting on her face, but I sure as hell saw it and turned my head to see where the bullet had come from.

I couldn’t be sure amid the chaos of the fight, but I thought the shot came from Hawkeye’s directions. Yet when I looked at him he seemed focused on firing on the Golem’s knee, above where Applegate was attacking the ankle. Had I just imagined the bullet? No, I was sure of what I’d seen. But had Hawkeye fired the shot intentionally, or was it just a coincidence?

I didn’t have any more time to ponder that as I reached Roaring Metal’s head and with Accelerator's full speed I proceeded to slash into the side of the Golem’s face. Rearing up to my hind legs I transferred Gramzanber to my forelegs, and swung again and again into the hard, crimson metal before me. Sparks flew in a starburst pattern, their slow motion dance of bright embers oddly serene in the relative quiet of Accelerator’s cobalt embrace. I could feel my bones rattling with each strike. Gramzanber was unnaturally sharp, but the Golem’s metal carapace was equally unnatural in its toughness. My blows were leaving shallow scores in the armor, a little deeper with each subsequent strike, but I felt like my bones would crack before I managed to penetrate that metal flesh.

Knowing I had to pace Accelerator, after the twelfth strike I ended the effect and returned to normal speed. The side of the Golem’s face plate was badly scratched up between my and B.B’s efforts, but we hadn’t broken through the armor yet.

Then Arcaidia’s hammer flew in, spinning end over end in a field of her pale blue magic. It slammed into the Golem’s face, both ice and rock shattering even as it dented Roaring Metal’s faceplate inward. The blow rocked the Golem back a step, but only a step. It recovered quickly and raised one arm to swipe at me. I had to jump off the shoulder to avoid being crushed by that grasping hand, and as I felt I raised my left leg and fired my Grapple skyward. B.B saw it, and as I’d hoped she would the pegasus snatched my Grapple line and held me aloft as I swung upward. Still close to the Golem, I timed my swing and grabbed onto its other arm. B.B let me go and I balanced there as the Golem swung that arm around and aimed it at Spike, who was charging in again.

I saw the rotary cannon on the arm rev up and fire, spitting incendiary rounds into the dragon that blew off scales. Shouting defiance, I turned and focused on Gramzanber, pouring more energy into the spear. Its silver form responded with a burst of deep blue color as I hurled Gramzanber into the rotary cannon.

Impulse!

The wash of azure energy exploded out of the spear just as it impale the cannon, exploding the exposed weapon and gouging a huge portion of the Golem’s arm’s gauntlet along with it. I felt the drain of Impulse hit me like a punch to the gut, much harder to ignore than the backlash of Accelerator. Yet despite the weakness of Impulse’s drain, I didn’t mind it one bit as I saw flame and sparks billow up from the damaged, torn portion of the arm where the rotary cannon had been.

I leaped off the Golem as Spike slammed into its chest, claws first. He went down atop of the Golem, sending a shower of dirt into the air as both hit the ground hard. I saw Applegate backflip out of harm’s way, but fear shot through me as I realized Binge had been sneaking up behind the Golem where it had fallen!

“Binge!” I shouted, heart racing as I ran for the impact site, but skidded to a halt as Binge literally popped up right in front of me.

“What!?” she shouted just as loud as I had shouted her name. “I’m right here you know!”

“Bwhuh? Oh thank the Ancestors! I thought you just got smashed...” I panted, but she just smiled.

“Only by you, bucky.” she said, winking, and tossed the block of explosives up and down in her hoof. “You wanna help me shove this deep inside one of the robot’s holes?”

“For love of stars will you stop inuendoing!?” Arcaidia shouted from nearby, panting as she cantered towards us. The heat had plastered much of her silver mane to the side of her sweat slick face, but she still managed to look poised as she shot Binge a look. “One night indulging dirty mind with ren solva and nothing but sex talk all day with you!”

“I apologize for nothing!” Binge declared smiling.

“Can it, ya’ll, we ain’t done fightin’ yet!” shouted B.B, swooping overhead and then halting into a hover as she glanced down towards us. “Long, ya need another lift?”

Looking at where Spike and the Golem were thrashing upon the ground, rolling over like a pair of giant steam rollers that ripped up huge chunks of earth in their wake, I just blinked back at B.B.

“I’m not even sure we can get close to that, but I don’t think Spike can keep this up much longer either.”

Just the one use of Impulse had left me feeling weaker, with my legs shaking slightly from the strain of the fight so far. At a glance I could see everypony else was starting to feel the fatigue of the battle catching up to them, although adrenaline was still keeping them all alert. I didn’t know how much longer we could keep this pace up, but I wasn’t anywhere near willing to give up yet. I could almost imagine the spirits of Saddlespring standing behind us, reminding me that the Golem only walked Equestria now because my friends and I let it out of its ages old tomb.

It was time to set that mistake to rights.

With a nod of resolve to myself and looked back at everypony. “We’re not done yet. As soon as there’s an opening, we dive back in and finish what we started. The armor on its head is waker now, we just need one more big push to crack through.”

“If your pegasus friend can lift me up there, I can help with that.” Applegate said, having approached us with the rest of the Drifters. Crossfire hefted her rifle, loading a fresh clip into the weapon with a metallic snap of metal.

“I can drop every round between the sunuva bitch's eyes. Shard too, maybe.”

“Maybe? Boss, try to give me a little credit. Just because I prefer knives doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use gun sights.” Shard said, using his bandana to wipe sweat from his face.

“I don’t see how it’ll help.” grunted Hawkeye as he and the remainder of his team joined us, the ground shaking from the impacts of Spike and the Golem’s continued wrestling match no more than fifty yards away. He checked the load on his railgun, spitting to the side. “We’d be doing more damage by pissing on that monster than using these!”

I paused a second, giving Hawkeye a measuring look. He wasn’t even looking at B.B right now, but I couldn’t help but remember the way I’d seen him look at her back during the flight south on the Sweet Candy. I couldn’t shake the thought that the bullet that I’d seen fly by B.B’s head had come from his vicinity. Had he really taken a potshot at her, hoping to mask it in the confusion of the battle? Damnit I didn’t have time for doubting ponies that were supposed to be on my side!

“Even if it doesn’t look like you’re doing anything, you are.” I told him, “Up close I could see you guys were at least putting some scratches on it. A little damage is better than none.”

He didn’t look anywhere near convinced, but there wasn’t any more time for talking about it as Spike let out a pained roar. We all turned to see that in their struggles Roaring Metal had managed to get on top and pin the hundred foot long dragon to the ground, holding Spike’s arms down with its own while straddling him. Spike struggled and opened his mouth, instinctively breathing a tidal wave of bright emerald fire up into the Golem’s chest and face. However the dragon’s flames didn’t so much as leave a blemish on the Golem’s gleaming red armor. However it’s own flames...

“Shit, everypony hit it now!” I shouted, breaking into a breakneck gallop as I saw Roaring Metal angle the nozzles of its shoulder mounted flamethrowers down at Spike.

Dragons were resistant to fire, right? I admit I had no idea. Dragons were beyond myths, and Spike was the only one I’d ever seen. He breathed fire, so he had to be pretty near immune to the stuff. It only made sense.

Then again, Roaring Metal was a war machine built by an unbelievable ancient race of pony precursors to fight against alien invasions. Nothing about its weaponry was normal, including the very flames it seemed to be built to use as its primary tool of destruction.

The whole lot of us were galloping across the ashen black field now, every Drifter opening fire in a charging fullisade. A veritable storm of railgun rounds, high explosive shots from Crossfire, bolts from Arcaidia’s starblaster, and streaking silver shots from B.B’s ARMs all hammered into the side of Roaring Metal, most splashing against its shoulder and the side of its head. The flamethrower nozzles in its shoulders glowed bright orange, ignoring the barrage. I saw Spike’s eyes grow wide, as if even he was suddenly unsure if his scales would hold up against these unnaturally burning flames.

I heard Arcaidia’s strained, pained cry as the glow of flames was pushed back by a wave of blue from her blazing horn. She’d rushed on her relatively tiny legs to the head of our charging group. As circular crests appeared in gleaming symbols around her horn I felt Gramzanber pulsate with resonant power, the pressure inside my head flashing in time with the light of Arcaidia’s magic.

It was just like when she’d used her healing spell to infuse Gramzanber while fighting the wraith’s of Arbu.

Not questioning it, I followed my gut and surged forward, catching up to Arcaidia. She looked back at me, and I saw an understanding grin shoot across her face as she nodded to me, shouting, “Throw!”

She then lowered her horn and with a final pulse of freezing blue light, the crests around her horn expanded into a circle of icy blue energy that caused frost to spread out in a wide circle over the charred earth around us. Following what felt like instinctive commands from inside Gramzanber I hurled the ARM through the blue field of energy, aiming for Roaring Metal’s flamethrowers.

Gramzanber was covered in a jagged sheet of deep blue ice that trailed crystals of frost in an artic blast of wind as it soared towards its target, Arcaidia’s spell rocketing the spear to higher speeds than I ever could have managed on muscle power alone.

Just as Roaring Metal fired its flames down on Spike, Gramzanber streaked past it in a glittering trail of ice. At first it looked like nothing happened, then in a blast of sub-zero power a line was cut across all four flamethrower nozzles, from which erupted a growing sheet of spiky ice that tore through the nozzles and then into the shoulder pads of the Golem. Crimson armor turned frosty white, then cracked as the sheets of ice exploded off it in a shower of glassy shards.

The Golem staggered off of Spike, and although a part of me wanted to whoop in joy at the blow we’d just dealt, it was tempered by Spike’s guttural cry of agony. Some of Roaring Metal’s flames had still managed to strike him, and while he’d rolled aside at the last second, the clinging crimson fire still covered part of his face and neck, charing his scales in a manner I doubt the dragon had ever experienced before.

A Spike rolled on the ground, clutching at his face, the Golem took several more steps back, turning its head left and right to look at its frozen over flamethrowers. It then focused its remaining eye upon us, and I could all but feel the thing locking onto me.

“I... I think we just made it mad.” I said, holding out a hoof to recall Gramzanber to me. As the ARM appeared in a flash of light back to my hoof, I heard his voice in my head.

I calculate a 98% likelihood that it has identified us as the largest threat, instead of the dragon. I suggest either immediate evasive maneuvers, or eliminating the target immediately.

Our galloping charge had faltered somewhat, as many of the Drifters had skidded to a halt to stare at me and Arcaidia. Even B.B, Binge, and LIL-E had slowed to turn shocked gazes towards us.

“The hell was that just now!?” Crossfire said with about as much self control as she could muster. “When could you pull off stunts like that?”

Arcaidia, looking about ready to collapse where she stood, wheezed out, “Recent development. No questions please.”

“Indeed, there’s no time.” Applegate said, “Can you do that again?”

Arcaidia gave me a bleary eyed look. It was clear that last combined effort had taken all she’d had left. She was already floating out a potion of magic restoring blue liquid in a weak magical grip, but I didn’t know how fast the potion would recover her energy. Meanwhile Roaring Metal was taking menacing steps towards us, and the glow in its eye was growing brighter.

“I don’t think so! Everypony move!”

My warning was hardly needed, as everypony was competent enough to see the attack coming and scatter out of the way as Roaring Metal’s remaining eye fired an intense beam of burning orange energy across the field like a giant scalpel made out of laser. I felt heat on my tail and yelped as I saw the tip of it on fire from the near miss. I grabbed my tail and quickly blew the fire out.

“Long, c’mon an’ grab on!” B.B said to me as she circled around and lowered a hoof to snatch me up. However I saw Binge nearby and instead pointed to her.

“Lift Binge instead! She’s got a bomb to plant! I’ll use my Grapple to get up!”

B.B nodded and swooped to the left, grabbing up Binge, who giggled wickedly.

“Weeeeheheheh! Fly birdie, like bloody exploding valkyries!”

“Save the exploding for the Golem, dangnabbit! If that toy of yers so much as beeps ‘fore we git there I’m droppin’ yer horny butt!”

Hawkeye and his team, along with Crossfire and Shard had all taken to falling back, using what cover they could find, while sending up a hurricane of fire into Roaring Metal’s head. As Crossfire had promised, her high explosive rounds detonated right between the Golem’s eyes, each time, every shot. It seemed to get the Golem’s attention as it turned towards the cluster of Drifters. With its flamethrowers frozen over and out of commision, one of its rotary canon’s destroyed, and its eye grown dim, I wondered if the Golem had any other weapons to throw at us besides just trying to stomp on us.

I really shouldn’t have wondered that.

From the Golem’s back an eruption of steam billowed out, and there was a loud metallic sound of clanging gears and heavy ker-thunks as something unfolded from Roaring Metal’s back. Around and to the side of the Golem came two absolutely gigantic barrels of crimson metal, with darker metal forming extending bores as each barrel settled into mounted grooves along either side of the Golem’s hips.

Aimed squarely at Crossfire and the other Drifters, these barrels started a slow build up of power, starting with a faint glow of blood red energy in the depths of the barrels, followed by a stream of what looked like motes of fiery orange light gathering from outside and into each barrel.

I gulped past a dry mouth. I had no clue what kind of attack was coming, but I felt certain that if we didn’t stop it, then Crossfire, Shard, Hawkeye and his team were all dead ponies. Possibly myself and my friends too, even if we weren’t be directly targeted. I didn’t need to exercise any genius level of deduction to realize this upcoming attack was not the kind that cared much about proximity, and was likely to vaporize anything standing roughly this side of the Everfree.

With no more seconds to spare on planning or quipping we all knew this was the moment for desperate final fight, or to scatter to the wind and hope to clear ground zero.

Take three guesses which of those we choose.

With B.B and Binge airborne and soaring straight for the forty foot tall death machine, I hauled my partially singed flanks into a panting gallop towards Roaring Metal. Applegate joined me, as did the still exhausted but doggedly determined Arcaidia. She stumbled with her prosthetic leg, which had gotten bent when she’d leaped away from that last beam attack, but Arcaidia hobbled on and dredged up whatever fumes of magic she had left into her horn.

The ground shuddered beneath the Golem’s feet, and then buckled as a fissure cracked open, courtesy of Arcaidia’s new command of the element of earth. This caused Roaring Metal to stagger to its knees. The massive energy guns on its hips were still aimed squarely at us, but its forward motion had been halted however briefly. Its face tilted down towards us, even as Crossfire, Shard, and Hawkeye’s team battered it with gunfire.

Roaring Metal raised its remaining rotary cannon, the barrels spinning in a thick whine and then unleashing its thunder at B.B and Binge. The pegasus pulled up and spun into a tight barrel roll, weaving between the blazing cannon shots while keeping a tight grip on the whooping Binge. My heart tried to claw out of my throat as I saw B.B pass within inches of the stream of cannon fire, then shoot straight up into a ariel flip in which she tossed Binge like a green frisbee at the Golem’s head. I heard Binge’s giggles as she spun around and caught the top of the Golem’s helmeted head and waved her block of explosive down at me and Applegate.

“Punch a hole, bucky, and we’ll end this with a bang!”

One look at Applegate and the senior Drifter nodded, both of us reaching the Golem at the same moment. Where I fired my Grapple, momentarily dipping into the halted time of my Pip-Buck’s S.A.T.S to target the Golem’s head perfectly, Applegate just pulled a mighty leap that sent her soaring up to the Golem’s lifted arm. Then while I hoisted myself skyward with my Grapple line’s powerful pull, Applegate went bipedal and set her wide, shining blade pointed forward, held in both forelegs before jumping like a launched missile straight at Roaring Metal’s face. My own ascent with my Grapple propelled me to the same spot, and both Applegate and I struck the same spot in the same instant.

The armor here, right between Roaring Metal’s flat, gem-like mechanical eyes was already battered and weakened by continuous gunfire, Arcaidia’s magic, and strikes from Spike’s claws earlier. Now Applegate’s blade and my ARM smashed into that singular point, the tips of both weapons creating a fireworks burst of sparks as they cleaved into, then through the weakened armor. Gramzanber sunk in nearly halfway down the length of its blade, and Applegate’s sword penetrated nearly as far. Then, both of us shouting in wordless fury, we twisted our blades and tore them outward, ripping the hole open further like a giant metal gash.

Binge, balanced above us on the crest of the Golem’s head, grinned down at me and Applegate and with almost casual ease leaned over and lobbed her block of explosive into the open hole, where it stuck amidst the open gears and sparking circuitry within.

“Five seconds. Better move your pretty butt, Longy!” Binge said, and hopped off the back of the Golem’s head, sliding down its back armor like it was one big playground toy.

Hearing a faint, ticking beep coming from the explosive detonator, Applegate and I shared a look, and we both didn’t hesitate to jump off and simply roll with the fall. I struck the ground with my usual sturdy if rough tuck and roll endurance, while Applegate managed a much more graceful landing. Either way we both still made swift retreat from the Golem, which was trying to aim its rotary cannon at us, but B.B shot like a pale bolt of lightning across the sky and soared into a spread winged hover a dozen meters in front of its face.

The Twin Fenrir’s spat out a hosing of silver punishment, blowing out the Golem’s remaining eye and causing its arm to flail around, completely forgetting to pulverize me and Applegate. B.B narrowly avoided the huge limb, and darted off into the sky just in time.

Binge’s explosive charge went off with a ear splitting crack of sound, a blast of air pressure knocking both me and Applegate off our hooves. Shaken but otherwise unharmed, I got up and turned to look at the results of our hoofwork.

Roaring Metal’s head was little more than a few twisted metal fragments now, with flames and smoke jetting upwards amid a storm of arcing red and orange sparks of energy. Its whole body was seizing up into a jittery stillness, and I found myself staring at the spectacle with stunned eyes. I then pumped Gramzanber into the air in a victory leap and let out a deep tribal hunting cry the likes of which I had always felt too embarrassed to do back home, even when a hunt went spectacularly. Applegate gave me a weird look, one eyebrow creeping upwards, and I just gave her a bashful smile in return.

Suddenly a green, serious visage appeared before me as Binge, with her usual stealthy grace, rose up between me and Applegate from seemingly nowhere. “What’cha smiling a her for Loooongy?”

I was abruptly aware of the way she was idly playing with a grenade between her hooves and I quickly held up my own. “N-nothing! Just really relieved we’re all okay, is all!”

Keen blue eyes searched mine intensely for a nerve wracking moment, then Binge was all bouncy smiles again. “Hah, of course you are! I mean, if you started looking at other mare’s you know I’d be very upset, so there’s no way you’d ever do that. Hehehehe!”

“Hahah...hah...” I laughed nervously along with her, while I noticed Applegate now had both eyebrows raised at us as she carefully sheathed her giant sword across her back and brushed off ash from her long duster.

“Rest assured, Miss Binge, I have no interest in such matters.” Applegate said, looking around as the rest of the survivors gathered. “Is everypony alright?”

Hawkeye, who had several scalding marks on his face from the flames and steam he and his team had been hit with before, gave us all a heavy look. “Three of us went down. Didn’t have time to check on if they were dead.” He looked towards one of the two ponies on his team still standing, a marmalade colored unicorn mare with a spikey white mane. “Patchwork, go see if anyone is still breathing and hit them up with some first aid.”

The mare gave a sour nod and galloped off, pulling what looked like a medical kit from the saddlebag strapped to her leather armor. Meanwhile Crossfire and Shard both exchanged looks, the sharp eyed mare nodding to him as she said, “Go help her.”

I glanced at Arcaidia, wondering if her healing magic could also help, “Hey Arcaidia, do you have enough magic left for healing spells?”

Still limping on her bent prosthetic leg, and covered with her fair share of soot and sweat, Arcaidia looked paler than usual and a stiff breeze from collapse, but she gave me a gleamy eyed nod of determination. “If ponies still breathe, I do what I can to keep them breathing.”

“Good, then-” I began to say, but paused as I noticed a growing noise vibrating in the air. It was like a faint rumble at first, but it started to build into a higher and higher pitched trembling whine that made my ears twitch. It was accompanied by a dull red glow that soon grew brighter and brighter until all of us and the land around us was saturerated by the coating of bloody light. The source was plain for all of us to turn our heads and see.

The Golem, defeated and headless, was unmoving... but its body was glowing with a vast build up of internal energy. The armor of its surface carapace was starting to crack, spilling out jets of crimson flame as the power inside it, whatever generator had driven the ancient war machine, started to go critical. All the blood drained from my face as I stared into that destructive light. All the power the Golem had been building to unleash its final attack, without any place to go now, was overloading and about to explode! I didn’t even want to guess at how large a blast radius it might be, but it seemed a forlorn hope to think any of us could outrun it.

Things happened in a sort of sickening slow motion. I saw B.B fly down, reaching for Arcaidia. Maybe she intended to grab the unicorn and try flying to safety. Binge, without any hesitation, actually jumped on me as if she could protect me with her own body as she rolled us both into a nearby ditch. Up close like this, her body smothering mine, I saw the glow inside her mane again, and was able to make out what it was. It was one of the statues of the Guardian Lords that Captain Bartholomew had shown me. I couldn’t tell which one, but it was interwoven into Binge’s mane like a hidden ornament.

Shard and Patchwork, having trotted at least a dozen yards towards where the rest of Hawkeye’s fallen team had been, both froze in place, but Shard’s horn lit up and encased them both in a thin magical barrier, whatever good that might do. LIL-E joined me and Binge in the ditch, deploying a small mechanical arm to anchor herself to the ground. Applegate drew her sword and planted it in the ground in front of her, as if its broad blade could be a shield.

Crossfire, eyes wide at the overloading Golem, looked as shocked and unprepared as I’d ever seen the experienced Drifter mare. That look soon turned to a moment of pure, face twisting conflict and I saw her swear under her breath as she gave us an agonized look that finally settled on me before her horn lit up and she vanished in a flashing pop of teleportation magic.

I didn’t blame her. There was nothing else she could have done.

It didn’t seem like there was anything any of us could do as the Golem’s body started to erupt into an expanding ball of deep red, consuming plasma that would annihilate us all...

Then things went dark as a shadow loomed over us, blotting out the sky.

Spike roared as he swept his arms and wings out, grabbing Shard and Patchwork and pulling them into the ditch, while doing the same with his other arm to Applegate, B.B, and Arcaidia. He then curled his body, wings and all, around us. A second later the heat hit, the ground shook like it was being upended by a giant’s fist, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the air shredding roar of the flames or Spike’s seemingly unending roar of pain.

For what felt like a heart thudding eternity, but was likely no more than a minute, I could barely breathe through the stifling heat or hear anything other than the panicked panting of my companions. All was dark around us due to Spike’s bulk hulking over us, but then light poured in again as the dragon started to movie.

His limbs shook with agony, and his own massive breaths came in labored pants, but he rose above us and took several uneven steps to the side to let us out before collapsing onto his stomach in a groaning heap.

“S-Spike!” I shouted, clambering to my hooves alongside Binge and everypony else. We all gasped in a collective silence at the sight before us.

Spike’s back was scorched raw. His scales were mostly intact but easily a third of them had burned off or curled under the unnatural blast of Roaring Metal overloading. His wings, while still there, were shredded from the explosion. The left side of his face was burned badly as well, and I think the only reason the right side had stayed intact was because he’d buried that side into the ground to protect his one good eye.

Most of us were too stunned to speak, but Applegate kept her wits about her better and quickly ran up to the fallen dragon.

“Sir Spike, can you hear me? Are you still conscious?”

A growling groan escaped Spike as he barely turned his head towards her, “I think being unconscious might be the better option. Why didn’t anyone warn me that burns hurt this friggin’ much?” He tried to rise, only for his legs to give out and for him to flop back to the ground with a earth shaking crash. “Aaggh...yeah, okay, I get it. Not moving. Don’t suppose one of you could radio for a medic? Or an army of medics? Or maybe a few Raptors to air haul a giant vat of healing potion to dump on me?”

“Well, if you can still joke then I shall take that as a good sign.” Applegate said, reaching into her duster to pull out a hoof sized radio. “I’ll call in an extraction and medical unit at once.”

I found myself sitting down on my haunches as my friends gathered around me, slowly getting my own breathing under control. I had been certain, for a moment there, that this was it. That we’d finally run out our luck and were going to die. My hooves shook with a cold, numb feeling, until I felt a pile of warmth drape around me, finding Binge hugging me tight and giving my ear a hefty nibble.

“It’s okay bucky, we made it.”

“Yeah...” I breathed, leaning into her. We'd survived. It was little hard to believe. A month ago all I, Arcaidia, and B.B had been able to do was run from the Golem when we inadvertently awakened it. Now it was a smoldering pile of burning junk, and we were still alive. Mostly thanks to Spike's quick intervention. Looking at the dragon's wounded body I wanted nothing more than to go thank him for saving our asses, but he looked half ready to pass out and not exactly up for conversation. Once the medics had time to heal him I would make a point of giving him a proper thanks for literally being a living shield for us. If I could find a point in the future to pay the favor back, I would.

B.B and Arcaidia were similarly leaning against each other the same way Binge and I were, both sweat soaked and looking utterly drained, while LIL-E hovered between us. Arcaidia had something of a wide eyed, ecstatic look on her tired face as her tail wagged behind her. “We beat one of legendary Golems of old. My brain does not fully believe it possible. Sister will not believe me when I tell her!”

As if the words reminded her of it, she looked to me and pointedly raised her Pip-Buck, showing me the screen with the map she’d had on earlier. “Longwalk, look!”

Peering at the screen I blinked as I realized that the marker for Persephone’s signal was nearly on top of where we were! It was only a short distance, maybe only a hundred yards or so, to the north! While Applegate and the other Drifter’s gathered around Spike I could hear the distant sound of Vertibuck engines grinding through the air. The smoke stirred as the two surviving Vertibucks flew overhead of us. Further beyond them, higher in the sky, I also saw the large and imposingly dark forms of two Raptors. The airships’ stormcloud engines billowed great, lighting clad masses of cloud behind them as they approached the scene.

I didn’t know if we had time to look, but for the moment no one was telling us to not look, so I gave Arcaidia a knowing smile and nodded. “Let’s go check it out.”

B.B glanced at us, “What’re we checkin’ out?” Then she saw Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck and said, “Oh! Dang, I near forgot ‘bout that!”

LIL-E swiveled around to the north, “For the record, my scanners have been picking up weird readings from that direction. There’s definitely something large and metallic over that way.”

Binge hopped to her hooves, bouncing in place, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, I got a good and rumbly feeling in my guts about this! We’re about to find something both super shiny and dangerous! Let’s go, bucky, don’t want to keep Arctic Arcy from fulfilling her questline!”

My hooves trembled a bit as I stood, the adrenaline finally leaving my body, but the feeling of weakness was replaced by a happy warmth of anticipation. We’d survived, beaten Roaring Metal, and were on the cusp of finally finding the signal that had prompted Arcaidia and my journey out into the Wasteland in the first place. Despite all that had happened, I was riding high for the moment.

As my group started trotting north, Applegate called to us.

“Where are you going?”

“Just scouting the area out!” I shouted back, “To see if we can find out why the Golem was out here!”

She accepted that with a nod and turned towards where the two Vertibucks were already making their landing. There was a flash of crimson light as Crossfire returned, popping in not far from us. She looked around at the scene, taking in the sight of Spike’s injured body, and the fact we were all alive, and she let out a sigh that was half relief, half shame, half stubborn pride as she looked to me.

“Glad you all made it.” she said, looking away as she looped her rifle across her back and trotted after us, almost as if she was ashamed to be near Spike at the moment.

“Hey, so am I.” I said.

Crossfire grunted, still not looking at anypony. However she did notice we were trotting away from the group, which I assumed was why she’d joined us in the first place but now she seemed to realize we were going further than just a quick trot.

“You all going somewhere specific?” she asked as we passed by the gargantuan smoking crater that the Golem’s destruction had left.

“Just finishing something I started a lifetime ago.” I said to her cryptically as we all continued to trot north. Arcaidia led us this time, despite her limp. She moved with energetic steps, her silver eyes shining as they fixed ahead of us, only once or twice flicking down to her Pip-Buck to confirm our course.

Only a few minutes later we found what we were looking for. We stood at the edge of a colossal ravine. The Everfree Forest was more intact here, right at the edge of the Golem’s burning line of devastation. The land dipped, almost like a cliff, into a slope a good seventy or so feet down and three times that distance wide. Trees hung over the scene from the opposite side of the ravine, and thick bushes and lichen had grown along the ravine floor. Yet glancing to my right I saw the ravine stretched for miles into the forest, almost... unnaturally long and straight, and it was easy to see why that was because of the object half buried in the ground at the other end of the ravine.

“What n’ tarnation is that?” B.B asked.

“It looks like the Golem was digging it up.” I said, pointing. “Look, you can see where it was tearing up the earth.”

“But how in Celestia’s gloriously plump plothole has this been here for so long without anypony noticing!?” LIL-E blurted.

Crossfire frowned deeply, “The forest would have covered this for centuries, and most of it looks like it was buried until that damned Golem dug it up.”

Binge just cooed as she licked her lips. “It’s so shiny! I wonder what kind of ghosts are echoing inside such a pretty coffin.”

I already knew what I was looking at, because I’d seen enough in my dreams to figure it out, but I turned to Arcaidia to confirm it.

“Arcaidia, is this...?”

She nodded slowly. Her face was still beaming with excitement, but it was tempered with a heavy cast of solemness as she gazed down upon what lay half-buried in the ravine. The oval of incandescently bright silver metal was easily five meters across, the smooth metal hardly tarnished by the dirt and overgrown vines encrusting it. Slightly humped, the bulk of the metal oval showed only a few portions of broken glass leading to a dark interior, windows long since destroyed by the crash that brought the object here. One large metal spur towards the back was broken, revealing a intestine-like interior of metal rods and twisted coils. An opposite spur on the other side was intact, showing that the broken portion was meant to attach to a pair of cylindrical engines with thick spheres of blue crystal jutting from either end. On the oval’s starboard side I could see black scorch marks and twisted metal wounds from some ancient battle, although I was sure I’d seen the event that had led to that damage in a dream. While most of the object was sealed, there was a visibly open hatch on the lower rear end of the oval that dropped down to the ground and left a clear path into the interior. If we wanted in, the doors were open it seemed.

Choking back a rise of emotion in her throat, Arcaidia said, “This is a Veruni Imperial Starship.” She closed her eyes, raising a right hoof to her chest and dipping her head down in a mournful gesture. “Esru vol dolrara sha vos straza... all rest in stars embrace. This was my ship. My sister’s ship...”

Her voice dropped to a whisper, “The Ark of Destiny.”

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Now That's Hot: Either you're a born arsonist or you've just spent way too much time having to avoid being set on fire by natural born arsonists. Whichever the case may be you now enjoy an extra 50% resistance to all fire based damage effects and any time you are set on fire the duration is halved! Now to start that career in torch juggling you've always wanted!

Combination Art Added (Arcaidia Lvl.2) - Arctic Lancer: A powerful infusion of ice-based crest sorcery into Gramzanber turns the ARM into a harbinger of sub-zero destruction. Casting the spear generates a line of cold damage to everything in Gramzanber's path, inflicting 200% base damage, plus a chance of freezing all affected targets for a limited duration.

Author's Note

Just in time for the end of the year I bring you another installment of Longwalk and company's adventures in the NCR. This time Longwalk faces his biggest challenge yet; surviving a night with Binge! Oh, and something to do with a Golem of utter burninating destruction, but really Binge is the bigger challenge here. And on top of all that the party has finally reached one of the very first quest objectives ever set down in the beginning; finding the source of Persephone's signal, the crashed Ark of Destiny. What awaits inside the ancient, half burred Veruni starship? Hopefully I'll be able to bring you folks the answers to that sooner rather than later.

As always thanks to everyone who continues to read this story and is patient with my snail pace of writing. I really appreciate it. And thanks to referee (aka "the other sans") and doomande for continuing to support me in keeping this train rolling along.

Hope you folks had a Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year.

Chapter 34: From Beyond

Chapter 34: From Beyond

Gazing upon the shining wreck of the Veruni starship, the first question in my mind was whether or not we should just leap on inside now and start exploring, or wait until we’d reported its presence to both the NCR and Whiteheart. He was technically my boss now that I was a part of the Drifter’s Guild, so I imagined he’d want to know about the huge, crashed alien ship sitting in the middle of the Everfree Forest before my friends and I went and helped ourselves to salvaging its insides.

Still I could see Arcaidia all but buzzing with the eager need to go inside and start searching for the exact source of Persephone’s signal. Her eyes shone with energy, lit up like silver fire. I wasn’t sure I could stop her from going inside if she really wanted to, but I needed to see if I could at least get her to wait until we got the go ahead from the folks in charge.

“Hey Arcaidia, I know you want to get in there right now, but now that we know it’s here, the Ark isn’t going anywhere. We’d better report back to Whiteheart and get his okay before we do anything on our own.”

She snapped her head towards me, eyes wide pools of eager want and denial as she waved a hoof down into the valley where the Ark rested in its half buried state. “But it’s right there, ren solva! I must go inside. Does not matter what Drifter boss says. I go inside, even if he says no!”

“Look, I understand that, but we’re still technically on the NCR’s land and they got the right to decide who goes into that ship and when. I just don’t want to get us into unneeded trouble.” Even as I said the words I found myself blinking in a combination of surprise and deja vu.

It hadn’t been that long ago that Trailblaze had been standing where I was, trying to convince a friend not to rush off somewhere they shouldn’t be. Now I was the one speaking caution, trying to convince a friend not to go wandering where they might not be allowed. Amazing how much change could occur in such a short time. When had I grown a sense of responsibility and respect for the rules? Probably around the time my own recklessness started putting the lives of those I cared about in danger.

Arcaidia gave me the stink eye, but B.B put a comforting hoof on the unicorn’s withers. “Don’t ya fret, Arc. Long’s got the right o’ this. We oughta check-in wit the big wigs ‘fore doin’ nothing drastic. B’sides, ain’t like they’re gonna have a reason not ta let us check the place out. Who else would they bother sendin’ in?”

To my surprise Crossfire nodded in agreement, “She’s right on that. Whiteheart will want this ship explored, and we’re the most qualified for the job. Reporting to him first just guarantees we can secure our own salvage rights to any valuable inside.”

Right, of course she’d be focused on the money side of things. I wasn’t sure how valuable anything inside the Ark would be, given how much damage it had suffered in crashing into Equestria, but it was a star faring vessel from an alien culture many thousands of years more advanced than our own. Chances were even the broken stuff in there would be worth a lot to the right ponies. Not that I cared about any of that. My only interests in the Ark were in seeing Arcaidia finally finish her search, and of course to hopefully let Gramzanber download the information he needed to calibrate himself fully to my equine body. Any additional we got out of going in there would just be icing on the cake.

Given I’d never eaten cake before, I always thought that was a weird turn of phrase. Apparently cake was better with icing though, and looking at the Ark of Destiny, I imagined there was a lot of icing in there just waiting to be salvaged.

We started trotting back towards where we’d left the site of the battle with Roaring Metal, and the air stirred around us, the smoke from the still raging fires swirling in vast clouds. I heard the deep rumble of storm clouds and looked up to see the two NCR Raptors were descending over the scene, each one cordoning off one side of the clearing that had been burned out by the Golem.

Each dark, wedge shaped airship spewed forth dark rolling storm clouds, which I could only assume were somehow magically enchanted to keep the large metal warships airborne. Each one lowered itself to hover just a hundred feet off the ground before disgorging several smaller Vertibucks from belly mounted hangar bays. We watched as these Vertibucks flew down to land not far from where the heavily wounded Spike was resting, with Hawkeye’s Drifter team waiting alongside Lieutenant Wind Roll.

From two of the Vertibucks several teams of what I assumed to be medics, from the white garb and red crosses on their uniforms flanks, rushed out and all but swarmed on Spike. Within moments the worst of the dragon’s wounds were being treated with a combination of healing magic and more traditional medical techniques, huge rolls of gauze bandages rolling out to cover up some of his worst injuries. The burns looked especially bad, and I winced again, feeling I really needed to thank the dragon for his help in the fight.

I had no doubt in my mind that without Spike’s presence to soak up much of the damage Roaring Metal had been throwing out, myself and many of my companions would be dead. We certainly wouldn’t have survived the Golem’s final, destructive explosion had he not put himself between us and the blast.

Any thought of trying to thank him now, however, was dashed by seeing the way he all but passed out under the ministrations of the medics. I’d have to wait until he recovered before being able to speak with him. Instead I led my friends towards where I saw Lieutenant Wind Roll meeting with Whiteheart and several other ponies who’d arrived with the Veritubucks. I recognized Miss Homage and Wellspring Whistles, the former of which was looking at the injured Spike with open worry. Besides Whiteheart, there was another pony, a pegasus mare with dark, steel blue fur and a short clipped red mane. She wore a brown and gray leather uniform with a short billed cap tucked on her head, all bearing NCR military insignia. I saw Homage and Wellspring both quicky join the medics swarming around Spike, and the equal parts fear and relief were palpable in equal measures on Homage’s face as she went up to put a hoof on the injured dragon’s snout. I could see her talking to the dragon, but was too far away to hear what was being said. Meanwhile Wellspring, notebook in hoof, started to rove around the area, her eyes lit up with keen interest.

Meanwhile the pegasus mare in the military uniform wore a grim frown as we approached, her eyes focused on Spike. It wasn’t the most friendly of looks, but her voice held a crisp edge of professionalism to it as she spoke, “I want the Furious prepared to make an emergency extraction for the dragon in case he needs actual medical facilities. Lieutenant, see to it.”

Wind Roll saluted quickly, “Yes Captain Honorbound, I’ll return to the ship immediately and begin preparations.”

“Good. Now, would any of you Drifters want to explain just what the hell happened down here?” Honorbound asked, her voice never wavering from that professional cool despite her words. “Our monitors couldn’t pick up half of what was going on, but last time I checked that dragon could survive plasma cannon fire at point blank range-” her lips twitched and I got the feeling she knew this from personal experience, not just hearsay, “-so I’m trying to figure out how he’s this badly hurt. Aren’t dragons supposed to be immune to fire?”

“You can’t see the damned thing because it's currently a smoking bucking wreck thanks to us, but we were up against a forty foot tall death machine,” Crossfire said, lips pulled back in a tired but fierce glower, “Your wonder dragon kept our asses alive out there, and I’m going to label it a small miracle things went as well as they did.”

“Yes, but to be burned the way he is-” Honorbound went on, but I was fast to interject, stepping towards her.

“The Golem wasn’t using normal flames, ma’am. I don’t know much about dragons, but whatever resistance they have to fire didn’t count here against what the Golem had. We should be grateful he’s still alive,” I said with heartfelt certainty, “Without his help I don’t think nearly as many of us would’ve survived, if any.”

“Well said,” Whiteheart put in with a small, approving nod, “I’m proud of the job all of you have done, even as I regret those we have lost. Hawkeye, I assure you your team will be compensated for those killed in battle today.”

The tall, reedy stallion just gave a shallow nod, his own expression distant and distracted, “We’re all signed up for death bonuses anyway. Just see to it their family’s get the caps and that’s all the honoring they need, sir.”

“I suppose thanks are in order, regardless,” said Honorbound, her eyes shifting with laser focus onto the smouldering, smokey crater where Roaring Metal used to be. “You’ve spared us what I feared would be a very bloody engagement with that monster, and for that the entire Republic Army extends you its gratitude. Now, given you all look two breaths from bleeding out or collapsing on the spot, may I extend you an invitation aboard the Virtuous to recover?”

“That would be more than acceptable,” Whiteheart said with a gracious bow, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Arcaidia tense up, her ears flicking and one of her hooves scraping at the ground as she cast an imploring glance towards me. I took that as my cue to bring up what we found.

“Actually, before we do anything else I ought to bring up what we found after the battle was over,” I said, and both Whiteheart and Honorbound’s gazes riveted onto me.

“Oh, and what would that be?” Whiteheart asked.

“Well, it's probably easier just to show you both,” I said, nodding back towards the ravine, “If you’ve got a second, I think you’ll both want to see this.”

Honorbound looked a shade irritated, but there was clear curiosity in her eyes too, “Our radar picked up some strange readings from that area. Is this related to why that metal monster was in the Everfree to begin with?”

“I’d say so,” I replied quickly, “Can’t be entirely sure what it was trying to accomplish, but... well you’ll see in a minute.”

As a group we trotted back to the ravine edge, and in the process I saw Wellspring Whistles take not of what we were doing and the reporter mare quickly joined us, giving Crossfire and me both an intent look. “I don’t suppose anypony minds me tagging along?”

Honorbound grunted, “Not a fan of civilian press sticking their noses in things, but you’re a visiting dignitary, so I’ll hold my objections. Whiteheart?”

“I’m quite alright with Miss Wellspring’s presence. The Radio Guild provides the Drifter’s Guild with much needed and appreciated advertising back home,” Whiteheart replied smoothly.

When we reached the edge of the ravine there was a stunned silence from those who had yet to see the shining silver vessel locked within the earth, and I could see the incredulous disbelief on the face of Honorbound, the thirsty gleam that blossomed in Wellspring’s eyes as she started jotting down notes, and Whiteheart’s momentary uneasiness before the Guildmaster hit it behind a calm viel.

“This is amazing!” Wellspring’s voice broke the silence, “Somepony tell me this is what I think it is!”

“And what in the bloody blazing sky do you think it is?” Honorbound questioned, her gaze glued to the half buried ship with a purely disbelieving stare. Wellspring gave the other mare a swiftly raised eyebrow and sassy tilt of her head.

“What, the obvious huge engine pylons and space age looking metal aren’t big enough hints? Does it need to be saucer shaped to make it more plain?”

“You’re not seriously suggested that is some sort of alien spaceship?” the NCR Captain asked in a tone that while dismissive on the surface held a hint of underlying nervousness. Binge gave the Captain a thin, ominous smile, barring her yellow teeth.

“Oh but it is, my uniformed chicken bird. It’s a harbinger from the void beyond, carrying with it all sorts of tasty secrets from distant stardust. Can’t you hear its voice, calling to all of us to come inside and say hello to its empty shell?”

Honorbound blinked at her, and I put a hoof on Binge’s head, one part endearing pat, one part half-hearted bonk. “Binge, no scarring the nice military lady.”

“I’m not scared,” Honorbound said flatly, ruffling her wings, “Just understandably dubious.”

“Dang gal, what’cha need as proof, little green ponies with antenna walkin’ out ta ask ya ta take ‘im ta yer leader?” B.B said.

“It’d help,” Honorbound replied, then gestured at the ravine, “Either way I need this perimeter secured. Whatever that thing is, if the... Golem, you called it? If the Golem was digging this ‘ship’ up then it must be important, and beyond that many NCR soldiers’ lives were lost at Fort Lightbridge so I’m not about to let anything we can get out of this mess go to waste.”

“Speaking on that front I do believe it would be prudent to allow my Drifters to scout the ship’s interior,” said Whiteheart, heading off any need for me to bring it up first as he turned to Honorbound, “With the NCR’s permission, of course.”

The pegasus gave him a shrewd look, her tone hardening. “I’m hesitant to allow a civilian outfit from another nation into a clearly valuable piece of salvage that rightfully belongs in NCR hooves. How do I know you’re ‘Drifters’ won’t take anything we’d rather keep ourselves?”

“I could have it written up as a contracted job if you’d like,” said Whiteheart with a casual wave of his hoof, his eyes peering out behind his pale red mane with convincing sincerity. “Think of it as just hiring us for one more task to aide the NCR. We’ll secure the interior and ensure there’s no nasty surprises waiting inside, taking nothing from the ship. In exchange you merely pay us per a standard salvage contract and after the NCR has catalogued everything within the ship we agree to, say, a 15% salvage right to whatever technology or other useful items may be inside?”

Honorbound let out a soft grunt, “I’m not authorized to set up a deal like that, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll get on the horn and put your idea up to my superiors. If they like it I’ll let you know. In the meantime-”

“Actually, can I point something out?” I asked, and the mare gave me a sharp look. I met her gaze and after a second she relented with a slight nod.

“Say your piece.”

“Thanks. Now you can and should go ahead and put Whiteheart’s contract in as an idea to your superiors, but any time wasted might be costly. The Golem only just recently dug this ship up, which means it might have accidentally triggered security systems, even a self destruct device. For all you know while you’re waiting on approval from your bosses the ship will blow itself up, and you lose everything. Let us head in now and we’ll make sure it's safe and isn’t preparing any nasty surprises. If it turns out later your superiors don’t take Whiteheart’s deal, well the ship will still be clear and you don’t have to pay us; win-win for you.”

Crossfire frowned at me at the mention of no pay, but the mare flicked her blue tell and let out a begrudging whinny, “Buck’s got a point. You lose nothing by letting us clear the place while you’re dealing with red tape.”

“Perhaps...” Honorbound used one of her wings to rub her chin, “Still not sure I trust you folk not to run off with anything not nailed down in there.”

“Well let us hope your superiors see the wisdom of accepting my contract,” said Whiteheart, “That way you won’t have to be concerned with us deciding to acquire salvage on our own. After all the Drifter’s Guild never backs out of contract once it’s signed.”

Several long seconds drifted by as Honorbound considered, her voice low and contemplative. “You folks did take that monster down, and so far have been doing good at providing security at the negotiations. Guess you’ve earned the benefit of the doubt. Fine, go ahead and scout out the crash site and secure it if there’s anything dangerous inside. I’ll send Lieutenant Wind Roll with you to continue being a liason. That fine with you?”

Whiteheart pursed his lips, "If its all the same to you, Captain, my people do work better without having to account for the safety of the Lieutenant."

An angry flash passed Honorbound's eyes, "Lieutenant Wind Roll is an exceptional soldier."

"I'm certain he is," Whiteheart said with diplomatic calm, nodding his head "Yet if he were with my team they would still need to split their attention by trying to ensure his survival. It'd distract them from their task. Please trust that I'm only saying this for both my team and the Lieutenant's safety in mind."

Honorbound blew out a heated sigh, "Fine, have it your way."

Whiteheart nodded to her again in acknowledgment, then turned to us, “Now, I don’t want to send everypony inside. That would be a waste. Longwalk, would your team be sufficient for this task?”

Before I could answer Crossfire stepped forward, “I’m going too.”

Applegate, who’d been silently watching the proceedings up until then, turned to Crossfire and said, “There’s no reason to send more than just one team into the wreck. Likely the interior will be cramped, so having more bodies will just make things difficult. Also if Longwalk is right and the ship might self destruct, well, it’s better to risk fewer lives, is it not?”

Crossfire shot Applegate a glare, “The kid is still too inexperienced for a job like this. You want at least one A-ranker in there, and that’s me.”

Whiteheart raised one of his thin eyebrows, “I believe you’re underestimating the abilities of your fellow Drifters, however I suppose as impressive as the combat prowess of Longwalk and his companions are you do have far more experience under your belt in regards to complete jobs. Very well, Crossfire, you may go as an attachment to Longwalk’s team, but just you. Mr. Shard can remain here.”

“Fine by me,” said Shard, glancing at me and my friends, “No offense but I’m not eager to walk into an alien ghost ship, and after dealing with that Golem I could use a cold one. Or ten. Sorry boss.”

Crossfire shrugged, “Don’t worry about it. I just want to make sure the buck doesn’t accidently hit that self destruct button he was talking about.”

I blanched, giving her a snort, “I know I’m not the sharpest spear in the hunting party, but I’m not that dumb. I won’t touch any big, shiny red buttons.”

Arcaidia held her head high and proudly proclaimed, “Veruni self-destruct system not use big red buttons. Is voice activated and need many officers voice print. Impossible to accidentally trigger.”

Honorbound starred at her and I managed a polite cough and laugh as I elbowed Arcaidia, “Hahaha! That’s our Arcaidia. Always joking about having knowledge of alien civilizations that she shouldn't have.”

“Ow! Ren solva stop elbowing me! I was just...” she blinked, glancing at Honorbound, “Oh. Yes, um... is joke. About aliens. Which I am not. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

With a slow shake of her head Honorbound glanced at Whiteheart and said, “I’ll return to the Virtuous and contact command headquarters. If you come with me we can work that contract out, let your people not going into the ship recover on board, and oversee operations while your team checks the ship out.”

“Of course,” said Whiteheart, then turned to me, “Longwalk, make whatever preparations you need. You can begin exploring the crashed vessel in, say, half an hour. Agreed?”

“Works for me,” I said with a firm nod, “Half an hour will give us all time to catch our breath and figure out how we’re gonna do this.”

“Very good!” Whiteheart beamed an approving smile, “I knew bringing you into the Drifter’s Guild was a good choice. You’re taking to the work quite well. Do take this opportunity to continue observing Miss Crossfire as well. She may be rough around the edges-”

“Grrr.”

“-but she’s exceptionally skilled. Try to learn from her example. Now, Captain, shall we?” Whiteheart turned to Captain Honorbound, and with a nod the pair started to walk off back towards the distant Vertibucks.

Meanwhile Wellspring Whistles had finished jotting down notes and had taken out a small device with a black box attached to some kind of lens and silver, round protrusion. She pointed it at the crashed ship and pressed a button on the side of the box, and there was a flash of light and a snap. I blinked.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking pictures, of course. I’d have asked if I could join you inside, but I imagine both your Guildmaster and that Captain mare would’ve stomped on that idea flatley,” Wellspring said, sighing, “Such a shame. I can only imagine what must be inside there. Then again, perhaps some of us could imagine it better than others.”

That last part was said while giving a sly look and wink towards Arcaidia, who coughed and looked away.

“I have no brain notion of what you say, reporter pony.”

“Of course you don’t,” Wellspring said, then looked at Crossfire, “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you find in there, if I promise to slip you a bag of caps for any juicy info?”

“Show me how many caps, and I’ll let you know,” Crossfire said with a knowing smile, and Wellspring let out a warm chuckle, digging out a jingling bag and tossing it to Crossfire, who caught it in midair with her magic. I had to wonder where Wellspring kept pulling these things out from. She wasn’t wearing her dress from last night, just a simple beige vest with a few pockets and a single small saddlebag.

Checking the weight of the bag, Crossfire smiled, “I’ll tell you if I see anything interesting in there. No promises.”

“Anything I can turn into a story is fine by me,” Wellspring said, and turned her hungry, journalistic gaze upon the rest of us, “Same goes for the lot of you. Bring me anything juicy and I can make it worth your while.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” I said, “But for now I think we need to have a sit down and talk shop, just us Drifter types.”

“I get it, well don’t let me stop you. I’ll just go see what else I can get pictures of in the meantime. Hmm, perhaps that strapping Wind Roll fellow will be interesting in giving me a quick interview...” Wellspring mused to herself as she wandered off.

Applegate remained a moment longer, looking between me and Crossfire. The senior Drifter had a momentary look of worry in her eyes, but she resumed a calm mask as she spoke, “I’m sure I don’t need to remind all of you to exercise extreme caution in this situation? You may have some experience with the Ruins around Skull City, but I... I sense this vessel is different. It’s hard to put my hoof on what but it makes me very uneasy. I suggest you proceed cautiously once you’re within, and do not hesitate to retreat in case you run into danger.”

“We know how to handle ourselves, Applegate. Don’t need to play mother hen with us,” said Crossfire in an irritable grunt.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Applegate said, letting out a deeply held breath and her face softening somewhat, “Longwalk and his companions have proven capable fighters, and with you watching out for them, Crossfire, I’m sure I needn’t worry so much.”

“I’m not ‘watching out’ for anypony!” Crossfire muttered, “This ponies get themselves killed, that’s their own business.”

Applegate laughed, as if she didn’t believe Crossfire for a moment. I was less convinced, but then again for all her bitching and grumbling my now fellow Drifter had stuck by us so far. It was strange to think back to when I first met Crossfire that the same money obsessed mercenary would be somepony I’d be relying on, side by side in battle together. I wondered if it was I that had changed, Crossfire, or both of us?

After Applegate left the six of us, I looked at each of my comrades in turn. Before anything else happened I needed to bring something up.

“LIL-E,” I asked the eyebot, “You’ve got those fancy scanners installed in you, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

I hesitated a moment before asking. I wasn’t eager to cast suspicions on another Drifter we were working with, but I needed to know just what had happened during the fight with the Golem. “When we were tackling Roaring Metal, I thought I saw a few stray shots fly by B.B, maybe aimed at her... and I thought they might’ve come from Hawkeye’s direction. Did your scanners pick up anything like that?”

“Wait, what?” B.B’s ears perked up as her eyes took on a confused light, “Are ya sure ‘bout that, Long?”

I frowned, my own ears flattening as I recalled what I saw. “Can’t be one hundred percent sure. I mean, it was in the middle of a fight, so all sorts of crazy stuff was happening really fast. But I had Accelerator going, and I could’ve sworn I saw bullets coming at you, just barely missing. You didn’t notice?”

She shook her head, brown and pink streaked mane tumblng around her face, “Like ya said, fight was crazy. Was too focused on the giant hunk o’ flamin’ robot tryin’ ta scorch us all ta notice iffin a little bullet passed me by.” She cast a violet eyed stare off in the distance towards where Hawkeye and his surviving Drifter team were being looked over by NCR medics. “Been feelin’ like he’s got some serious issues wit me, though.”

Crossfire’s narrowed to golden slits, “Why would he have an issue with you?”

B.B’s expression turned to a porceliean mask, “Could be pleny o’ reasons. Ain’t you got plenty o’ ponies who’d be happy ta put a bullet in ya, fer some ill deed or ‘nother ya did in the past?”

A snarling twitch passed Crossfire’s lips, her tail bristling, “Yeah, might be there are. Good thing none of them are here right now, right?”

“Guys, let’s not get at each over this, I just wanted to see if LIL-E had seen anything or not. For all I know I was just seeing things myself,” I said, and glanced back at LIL-E expectantly. The eyebot hovered silently for a moment before her mechanical voice buzzed.

“Going over the record of the battle, I am seeing there was a couple of shots fired in B.B’s direction, but I can’t pinpoint exactly where they came from aside from it was in Hawkeye’s general direction. Don’t think it's him, however.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, tilting my head.

“Hawkeye was using one of those sexy new railguns. The rounds that streaked by B.B don’t have the same profile, according to my data. I... got no idea what kind of round these are, actually.” LIL-E’s usual monotone gained an irritated static tone to it, “Closest I can give you is they’re lighter caliber, more like a pistol or SMG than a rifle.”

“Could Hawkpony have used other weapon?” asked Arcaidia, her own face gaining a cold harshness to it, “We should confront him and make him tell us if he attack B.B or not. Why waste time theorying-”

“Theorizing, hun,” B.B corrected.

“-Yes, that word. Why waste time doing that when we can ask direct and make him tell us truth?”

I rubbed my chin, “We might have to, but let’s not be accusing about it. Just, you know, politely inquire. That’ll have to wait until we’re done here, though. Still, B.B, everypony, let’s keep our eyes extra peeled, in case we got an invisible sniper out there who’s gunning for us.”

Binge grinned, licking her lips, “If they follow us into the snug silver coffin that’ll make it even more fun. Like hide and seek, but with bullets.”

“Ain’t that a lovely thought?” B.B sighed, “Might as well git this show goin’, eh, Long?”

She was taking the news that she possibly had a mysterious sniper aiming to kill her quite well, but I supposed after having to deal with Scythe’s actions and the weight of having to face her Family and former Mistress once more, not much was going to phase B.B. I gave her an encouraging nod, and saw her thankful smile. Whatever was coming, we’d take it on.

“I’m all for getting started,” I said, myself and my companions turning our collective attention towards the sight of the Ark of Destiny, its silver surface awaiting us, vast and silent. It very much did look like some shining, untouched tomb, Binge’s description of a ‘coffin’ somehow feeling chillingly accurate. I glanced at Arcaidia.

“Arcaidia, this is going to be more your show than ours. You know what we’re getting into. How do we do this?”

I could see Crossfire’s eyebrow raise at my words, but there was no helping it. Crossfire might not have known yet what Arcaidia’s true nature was, but there was going to be no hiding it once we entered the Ark of Destiny. We’d need to rely on Arcaidia’s knowledge of the ship and the Veruni technology within to succeed, so one way or another that cat was going to be out of the bag. I just hoped Crossfire could keep focused on the job and not ask too many question.

Arcaidia must have had similar thoughts to my own, because she didn’t even spare Crossfire a glance of concern as she started to speak, “Depends on if ship systems still active. Ark’s reactor may be broken, but ship have multiple backups that keep ship powered indef...indiffer...for very long time. Reactor make clean power, so no radiation to fear, but other hazards problem. Chemical leaks for power conduits. Don’t let fluids touch you. Very bad. Possible security systems still active. Drones, may not recognize my... estu dol ivira vi milsa.”

She tapped at the back of her neck, “Chip for knowing me. Contains information ship systems can scan. May not work if ship damaged.”

Binge giggled, “It’s okay Frosty Blue, we’ve crept around dark places we don’t belong plenty of times now. It’ll be like the Stable, but with more robots and less spiders.” She paused, tail wagging, “Unless there are robot spiders.”

“Why do ya sound hopeful fer that?” B.B mused, shaking her head.

“I’m more curious how the unicorn seems to know so much about this ‘ship’,” said Crossfire under her breath, eyeing me, then Arcaidia, “But I don’t suppose either of you are going to explain it.”

“Honestly Crossfire, it’d take too long, and you can probably guess enough yourself already,” I said, hefting Gramzanber over my shoulder, “Alright, let’s do this. I’ll take point with Arcaidia. Binge and B.B will come in behind us, then Crossfire and LIL-E act as rear guard.”

Crossfire shrugged, “I’ll let you lead, but if shit goes south, and it probably will, I’m taking charge. Got it?”

“No objections,” I said, and with that we started down the steep ravine slope towards where the Ark of Destiny waited for us.

Binge was right, this did remind me of our first jaunt into Stable 104. There was the same feeling of coming across a place that was cold not because of the temperature, but because it was and old space once occupied by the living but was now silent and empty, and had been that way for centuries. The Ruin beneath Saddlesprings had the same vibe. The comparison left me uneasy as we explored around the curved underside of the ship, looking for a means of entry.

I’d lost my first friend in that Ruin, holding Shale as she’d died. I’d taken my first life in Stable 104, my spear ending Director Midnight Twinkle.

I didn’t have a good track record with places like this. I gulped, and prayed to the Ancestor Spirits the exploration of the Ark of Destiny would go much smoother than those other occasions. Up close the metal of the ship’s hull seemed of a slightly duller hue than the bright silver it gleamed at a distance. I could see patterns of geometric lines, almost like circuitry, running along the smooth, metallic walls, clean and shining even where the crash impact had buckled the metal inward. We quickly discovered what Arcaidia had meant by cable fluids, as in a few places where the ship’s damage left rent holes where piles of white fibers and gray, ribbed cabling hung out like guts there was also several pools of opaque, thick blue liquid.

Where it pooled on the ground I saw the dirt and grass nearby had been eaten away, and in some cases I saw rocks or logs that been melted together.

“Arcaidia, what is this stuff?”

Her muzzle scrunched up as she struggled for words, “Esri tu cathira dol tuvrai est hovai. Some is power fluid. Other is coolant. Like ship’s blood. Don’t touch. If burn does not melt flesh, it will still burn skin and poison blood.”

“There are a few holes here big enough to crawl into, but not without getting that crap all over us,” LIL-E noted, “My scanners are showing a larger opening further ahead, just on the other side of that big pylon.”

She was talking about one of the large, cylindrical protrusions that extended from the top and bottom of the hull, which I assumed were engines of some sort. Or maybe weapons? Arcaidia led the way, with me close behind, the rest of the party following as we deftly avoided and weaved between the still pools of blue liquid, making our way beneath the overhanging pylon of silver metal. This close I was struck by the immense size of the ship. This pylon alone was dozens of meters across and easily a hundred long, and half of it had to have been buried in the ravine floor.

“Hey Arcaidia, just how big was this ship anyway?”

“Ark of Destiny is Yivori-class deep space exploration ship, meant for long range missions. Is three hundred and fifty five meter long, one hundred and thirty five wide. Eight decks in total. Crew of one hundred and fifty,” Arcaidia’s voice dropped to a sad octave, “Far fewer now, if just me is left.”

Crossfire made a disbelieving grunt, but held her peace, for which I was grateful. She was a professional, I’ll give her that. She kept her head focused on the job rather than the mounting revelations about Arcaidia’s origins.

Beyond the engine pylon the hull of the ship curved deep into the earth, where the majority of it had buried itself deep in the terrain of the Everfree Forest. I could see clearly now various deep gouges in the dirt where the Golem had been digging the ship free. Why had the ancient, Elw built weapon been excavating this ship? Had it been following some final directive to seek out and destroy the Elw’s old, alien enemies? Or had it simply been following some corrupted programming that left it behaving erratically? Well, Roaring Metal was scrap, now, so I supposed I’d never know.

Along the lower curve of the hull I looked up to see that LIL-E’s scan was right, there was an opening into the ship, and strangely enough it didn’t look like the result of damage from the crash either. A rectangular shaped opening was about five or six meters up from the ground, as if a portion of the hull had just slid aside. Squinting my eyes I could see that it was some kind of exterior door, and a large one at that, easily large enough that a Vertibuck could pass through it. Arcaidia was looking at it as well, her silver eyes narrowing slightly.

“What is it, Arc?” asked B.B.

“Is secondary shuttle bay. It is odd it is open. Should have been closed during crash. Maybe short circuit in system make it open?”

“Maaaaybe,” said Binge, tilting her head towards the ground by the open doorway, “Or maybe we’re not treading on virgin ground. Lookie at the pretty little prints.”

“Prints?” I glanced down where Binge was indicating, and my tribal hunter training kicked in, showing me what my marefriend had already spotted. There were light tracks in the dirt by the shuttle bay door. As we gathered around I bent down and examined the tracks. These were hoof tracks, made by ponies. They were marred, as if somepony had tried to cover them up, but hadn’t had much time to do so. How old they were I couldn’t tell.

“Has anypony else been in this forest before?” I asked, “I mean, do ponies wander in on occasion? Could these be from somepony who came here years ago?”

“I don’t think so,” said Crossfire, “Last I heard the NCR kept the Everfree pretty damn well cordoned off. I imagine a few idiots might wander in anyway, but that seems really unlikely.”

LIL-E floated around the tracks, then looked up at me, “A long ways back the slaver Red Eye had a base in the forest, and there was even a Stable beneath it. But I seriously doubt he or any of his followers found this.”

I frowned in thought. If somepony had wandered into the ship, who could it be? Was it a long time ago, or would it be more recent? Would they still be inside? I shook my head with a rueful chuckle.

“Guess there’s not point speculating. Our job is to scout out the inside and secure it, so if there’s answers to be found, we’re not going to find them out here.”

Getting into the shuttle bay was easy enough. I sent my Grapple flying up to hook to the top edge of the doors, and offered Binge a hoof. “Shall we?”

She cracked a grin at me and soon had her hooves wrapped tight around me as I raised us up with the Grapple. B.B picked up Arcaidia and flew her up, while LIL-E could fly up on her own. That just left Crossfire, who with a snort let her horn blaze with crimson magic and teleported herself to the entrance in a flash.

We stood on the edge of the shuttle bay entrance, the hard and cool metal floor slanting slightly upwards ahead of us. The interior was filled with a soupy dark gloom, which was only penetrated as Arcaidia and Crossfire lit up their horns and I turned on my Pip-Buck’s light. So far my E.F.S hadn’t shown any signals, but I didn’t relax as we strode into the large chamber ahead of us, our hooves making loud and echoing clacking noises.

The walls to either side of us were curved, like we were entering a wide cylinder, and I saw that even the ceiling was similarly curved. Either wall was occupied by a set of metal alcoves, bisected by a platform about half again as large as a Vertibuck. Within some of these alcoves rested what I could only assume were vehicles, which bore a resemblance to a stretched out silver bubble. Each one had four smaller versions of the engine pylons outside, simply scaled down to the size of these “shuttles”, all mounted in a cross pattern at the back of each vehicle. The shuttles were held in place by metal clamps, but I could see where several had broken free in the crash, their forms strewn around the shadowed shuttle bay like dented tin cans.

A sticky, near solid stream of blue liquid poured from the gutted belly of one crunched shuttle, dripping off the edge of the open bay doors. Other internal components were scattered like the viscera of a slain animal across the bay floor, along with rounded silver boxes that I imagined were old supply crates stored here along with the shuttles. Fortunatelly our path forward wasn’t blocked by any of this debris so we were able to trot along unimpeded towards the back of the chamber, where a set of sliding metal doors hung partially open into a dark hallway beyond.

As we walked my companions all looked around, Arcaidia with eyes containing nostalgic sadness, while the others looked on with mixes of awe, interest, or in Binge’s case bemused curiosity.

“Goddesses, you could make a damn fortune on selling even one of those things to the highest bidder,” Crossfire grunted, looking at one of the shuttles, “If any of this tech still works, the NCR is going to be sitting on a game changer.”

“Assuming anypony alive today could figure out how any of this stuff works,” said LIL-E, “My scanners are going haywire now that we’re in here. Arcaidia does this ship have some kind of anti sensor tech that’s scrambling my scans?”

Arcaidia paused, no more than a few paces from the mouth of the darkened doorway out of the shuttle bay, and gave LIL-E a worried frown. “Should be no active countermeasures. Not unless... mas, tu mas esru ti yihafrae dol shim.”

“Arcaidia?” I asked, and she waved a hoof at me as she brought up her Pip-Buck and started switching a few buttons on it. After a moment she seemed to find what she was looking for and let out a hiss.

“Mas! Connect my device to local systems but locked out! Ship’s secondary generators powering security systems. Countermeasures make LIL-E’s sensors crazy. Defense robots may also be active.”

Crossfire’s eyebrow shot up and her expression tightened, “Robots? What kind of robots?”

Arcaidia held her artificial leg off the ground at about a pace worth of height, “This tall, many legs, climb on walls, shoot beams.” She unholstered her starblaster for emphasis, “Beams like this shoots.”

“That ain’t encouragin’,” said B.B, “Armor ain’t much good against the kind o’ energy yer blaster tosses ‘bout, Arc. How many o’ these buggers r’ gonna be active?”

A dainty shrug was all Arcaidia could muster, “Unsure. Not all may be functional after crash. Ship had full complement of thirty bots for repelling boarders or creating security perimeter if ship landed on hostile world. Now? Don’t know.”

“Clickity clack go the spider bots,” said Binge, licking her lips, “Just like old times, bucky. Spiders in the shadows, only these ones are shiny and go zap.”

“Look,” I said, “This doesn’t change anything. We still move forward, do what we can to secure this place. We run into any of these security bots, we take them down hard and fast. Crossfire, you’ve got a magic shield. Sounds like our best bet for defense against any of the robot’s energy weapons.”

“Good point,” she admitted reluctantly, “I’ll take point then, and your little blue friend joins me. She’s got the same kind of weapon, so that ought to even the odds.”

Arcaidia nodded, “That work. I cannot log into system yet, but if I get to security or administration panel, I can get into system from there. Shut down security alert.”

“Shouldn’t these robot buggers recognize ya as one o’ the crew?” asked B.B, but Arcaidia let out a sad sigh.

“Been long time for memory programing to degrade. Might not recognize facial features. Not taking risk. See bot, blast bot,” Arcaidia said with a firm nod and patting her starblaster for emphasis.

“Besides, even if the bots do recognize her and don’t shot at her, they still won’t give two fucks about us and open fire on us ‘intruders’, right?” said Crossfire, “So kinda a moot point.”

With that in mind we proceeded out of the shuttle bay and into the hallway beyond. As expected it was exceedingly dark, with only the light of our Pip-Bucks and the magical glow from the horns of the unicorns in the party illuminating the space around us. The hallway, much like the shuttle bay, had a rounded, cylindrical shape to it, and curved off to the left and right with very little to indicate what may lay in which direction. If we didn’t have Arcaidia with us we’d be lost, fumbling around blind, but fortunately the young unicorn was intimately familiar with the ship’s layout.

Without hesitation she nodded to the left, “This way. Fastest route to main security room. Best chance to gain access to ship systems.”

Shadows swallowed us as we trotted cautiously down the corridor, its rounded shape giving me the impression of crawling down the throat of some vast, metal beast. The hallway was smooth in its construction, but before long we started to encounter more damage from the ship’s blazing crash from orbit. The corridor became bent and twisted, with wires, tubes, and leaking bits of old fluids forcing us to slow our progress to a snail’s pace just to work our way around it. At one point the hallway was utterly collapsed, with a severed portion from above leading to a upper corridor.

Arcaidia stayed the course, keeping her eyes intently locked forward, making detours as she led us onward up to the next deck of the ship. We passed doorways that were nearly seamless in how they were blended into the walls, and I wouldn’t have noticed them if not for the fact that several were left silently hanging open, showing what looked like crew quarters.

Crossfire paused here, glancing into one of the open rooms. Arcaidia gave the other unicorn a disapproving glare.

“Not thinking of robbing the dead, are you mercenary pony?”

A rough snort came from Crossfire, “Oh, so when it's your own people, its ‘robbing the dead’, but when its, say, the Gobs down below Skull City, you didn’t say a damn word about me taking what we wanted off of those bodies? Hells, there aren’t even any bodies in here. I haven’t seen a single dead... whatever flew in this thing.”

“Veruni,” Arcaidia said with a chilled note, but a look of unease did skip across her features, “And I not know why there’s no bodies. Many crew escape on pods, but some would not have made it. But... have seen no bodies.”

“Maybe they were just lucky,” I suggested, “I mean, sure a few might have died during the crash, but it could be that most of them were fortunate enough to escape in time.”

“Regardless, can I take a look in here or are you going to pitch a fit, Snowflake?” Crossfire said, staring at Arcaidia.

“What are you expecting to find in these rooms?” I asked, “They just look like bunks to me.”

“Call it satisfying curiosity,” Crossfire replied curtly.

Binge licked her lips, her tail wagging behind her, “Yeah, c’mon let us defile the long untouched and private domains of your dead coworker’s homes! It’ll be fun!”

Arcaidia shot a sub-zero glare at her, and Binge held up a hoof, grinning, “Kidding! Kidding! After you were so nice to my home, it's only fair we be nice to yours.”

B.B nodded approval, and while Crossfire looked ready to argue, LIL-E was quick to interject, “Strictly speaking our job isn’t to collect salvage anyway. It's not like you’d be likely to find much worth selling in quarters like these. They look like they were for lower ranked crew. If there’s going to be any good stuff like weapons and armor it’ll be in the security station... right Arcaidia?”

With a reluctant nod Arcaidia said, “Correct. I not care if you take Veruni equipment. NCR will do the same. Just not like... my friend’s things rummaged through. That’s all. If you must look, look, but please not steal anything or I become very... upset.”

I remembered the dream of hers I’d shared of when the Arc of Destiny had arrived on my world, and ended up crashing after being attacked but unknown satellites. I recalled just how much pain Arcaidia had shown when she’d tried to save one of her fellow Veruni crew who’d been fatally injured during the attack. I wasn’t sure how long Arcaidia had served on this ship, but she’d likely had many friends and acquaintances among the crew.

And now she was essentially walking through their graves. She was putting on a strong face, clear and focused as I’d ever seen her, but being here couldn’t have been easy on her. I couldn’t imagine what she might be feeling right now, especially given we’d seen no sign of life so far. The chances we might actually find her sister here, alive after all this time, was rapidly dwindling. I reached out a hoof to her, and she responded at first by raising her artificial leg, liking using that limb out of old reflex. After a second of embarrassed and saddened surprise she lowered the metal limb and extended her flesh and blood hoof to touch mine.

“I am okay. No need for worry head, ren solva. You all my look around berths, but with respect.”

“Believe it or not I can manage to be respectful,” Crossfire said with a disgruntled twist of her lips, ears dropping along the side of her head.

“Nopony is saying you can’t,” I told her, “Still not sure what you’re looking for, though.”

“Honestly? I was hoping these aliens have something that might help Knobs,” Crossfire admitted after a quiet moment where she glanced away from all of us. That got me blinking at her, surprised by the openness from her, however brief it might be. I glanced at Arcaidia questioningly.

Arcaidia looked thoughtful, then shrugged, “Better place to search would be medical bay, but I think some crew have hover planks for sports in gym. If it for nice Knobs mare, then you may look.”

With an uncharacteristic sigh of relief Crossfire sighed and said, “Thank you.”

For expediency's sake we split up between the nearest rooms, myself and Binge taking one side of the hall while Crossfire and Arcaidia checked through the one on the other side. Meanwhile LIL-E and B.B would stand watch to make sure nothing snuck up on us while we searched.

As Binge and I entered the dark confines of the quarters I was struck by a strange sense of both the familiar and the alien. Which made sense, given what I knew of this place’s previous occupants. The Veruni were different from us ponies in many ways, yet from what little I’d gleaned of them from Arcaidia’s dreams the species still shared a lot of basic similarities to us as well.

The space was covered in a strangely springy carpet that felt much softer on my hooves than the hard metal floor of the corridors. The room was in a messy state, so it was hard to tell how it was originally arranged given the crash had thrown everything around. A smashed, glass globe about the size of my head was laying atop an overturned half-oval table of bent metal in one corner of the room. Another side of the room showed a flat counter surface with a shattered sheet of plastic above it that still sparked with small fits of semi-luminous light, making me think of a broken terminal monitor. One wall was fixed with an alcove containing an inclined mattress, a bunk I assumed, although it was large enough two ponies could easily fit in it. On the right side of the counter with the broken monitor was a rectangular box mounted on the wall, hanging off from a series of half severed tubes. There were smooth buttons on the box, but I wasn’t about to try pressing any.

Binge on the other hoof?

“Binge, what are you doing?” I said in a quick whisper as she trotted up to the box and started fiddling with the buttons.

“Why are you whispering, Longy? Afraid to scare the ghosts?”

I had no idea why I was whispering other than it felt like the right tone in this situation, but I cleared my throat and said, louder, “I don’t know and that’s not important. Just be careful with that thing. We don’t know what it is.”

“I’m going to bet it’s a space microwave. Ooooo, or maybe its a safe where the aliens kept their unmentionables? What do you think alien porn is like?”

“I’m sure I don’t want to find out,” I said, wincing as Binge started touching more buttons. Thankfully the box seemed to be out of power, and I breathed a sigh of relief as Binge lost interest in the inert thing and let it go. “Please be careful Binge. We’ve got no way to know what’s dangerous and what isn’t.”

She came up to me, baby blue eyes shining in the dark, and planted a small kiss on my snout, “No worries bucky, I ain’t leaving you on your lonesome so soon after entwining our jolly bits. The danger slinking around this big, shiny space coffin is close, yes, but we’ll sniff it before it snuffs us, trust me.”

“How can you know that?”

“Just a warm tingly I have, Longykins. Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”

With that we resumed searching the room, and with a bit of coaxing I got Binge to agree to sweep one side while I checked the other, no pressing of buttons allowed. Of course that said nothing about handles or levers, so when I found a few small handles mounted on the wall over the bunk I got curious and used Gramzanber to fish them open. A number of bundled bits of cloth and more rubber-like materials fell out as I discovered the Veruni laundry drawers. The fabric felt a lot like normal cloth, but somehow smoother, with less friction. Looking close I saw the slight shimmer of hex patterns in the clothes... the same kind that existed on Arcaidia’s blue dress.

Sorting through other drawers I found in the wall I discovered an assortment of random items, some of which seemed oddly mundane and familiar while still being quite alien. Like one object was clearly a hair brush, with a silver handle and black rubber grip, but there was a blue orb build into the back that when I touched it by accident the brush secreted a weird smelling green gel.

Binge let out a giggle, “Now who’s getting touchy with the buttons?”

“Hey, this isn’t a button, it's a weird orb thing. Big difference.”

“Wanna know what else is a big difference? This knobby thing here!” Binge cranked a metal knob mounted high on the wall on her end of the room, and a small alcove opened up in the wall. It was shaped like a tall, wide cylinder. Binge, to my relief, did back away from it just in case it did anything, but all we saw was a few sputtering blue lights try to flick on in the ceiling, then a square portion of metal extended from the top of the wall for a moment before spouting a small drip of water, then nothing.

“Huh... a shower?” I asked, looking at the square head that had dripped the water. I supposed this small cylinder would easily fit one Veruni, and if the thing was working properly maybe it’d shoot out a full spray of water.

“It’s funny. They come from the big black beyond, filled with stars and worlds we can’t imagine, but take away all the shiny space bits and they were just like us, huh Longwalk?” said Binge, voice cooing with awed musing. Then she grinned with profane impishness and elbowed me with a wagging eyebrow. “But they still probably had crazy tentacle porn.”

I sighed, laughing under my breath, “You’re impossible.”

She leaned close and gave my neck a nibble, “You know you love it.”

With that room more or less clear, near as I could tell, Binge and I moved on to the next one. I could see Crossfire and Arcaidia doing similar, methodically checking each quarters while B.B and LIL-E continued to keep watch.

“Weird,” I heard LIL-E say as we moved between rooms.

“Something up?” I asked, poking my head out of the quarters Binge and I were searching.

The eyebot was floating a bit down the corridor we came from, and didn’t turn back to me but instead kept focusing down the hall. “Sensor ghost. Had a blip for a second, now its gone. Haven’t been able to get any good readings since we got in here, so could just be my sensors acting up with all this alien tech around.”

“Yeah, because we’re that lucky,” I said, not eager to let us drop our guard. “You see it again, let me know.”

“You got it. You guys finding anything useful snooping around dead aliens’ homes?”

“Useful? Not really. Neat, well that depends on if you consider the idea of trying to decide if the green, fuzzy piece of unidentifiable biomass on an oval space plate is mold or some kind of alien cake is neat or not.”

LIL-E paused, then said, “Okay, you guys keep having fun. I’m going to continue to pretend to be useful.”

About ten minutes later we’d finished searching the rooms on our side of the hallway and met up with Crossfire and Arcaidia. My unicorn friend seemed somewhat calmer and less melancholy now, as if taking her time to go over the quarters had let her come to better grips with the long ago loss of her crewmates. Crossfire wore a faintly frustrated look, evident by the irritable tapping of her hooves.

“Didn’t find anything?” I asked, and Crossfire shook her head.

“Nothing that’d help Knobs.”

Arcaidia glanced at Crossfire, her icy expression softening, if only by a few degrees. “Best bet is Medical Bay. If anything there intact, it can be great, great cure for many problems and ailments.”

With a morose glance at her artificial leg she tapped the metal limb on the wall, “I might even make replacement for leg too. Can fix Miss Knobs up as well. Just need to make sure Medical Bay is in good condition.”

Crossfire glanced sidelong at Arcaidia, a look of reluctant gratitude there that she was trying hard to hide behind her usual hardened expression, “Here’s hoping the NCR doesn’t just try to yank all that tech for itself, then. Might have to smuggle something out if that’s what it comes to.”

She looked back at me and Binge, “What about you two? Find anything?”

I shook my head, but Binge smiled, holding up a strangely large and rounded cylindrical device with a smaller, secondary prong arcing off it. “I found this back massager! Watch!”

Binge flipped a orb-like button on the device and it started to vibrate softly, and she used it to rub her back with a pleased sigh. I shrugged, but then tilted my head in curiosity as I saw Arcaidia’s face had gone from blue to a glowing beet red. “You okay, Arcaidia?”

“Uh...um... yes, okay, very fine, thank you...” She cleared her throat and leaned towards me, whispering. “That is not a back massager.”

Blinking, I looked at the vibrating rod Binge continued to rub on her back, then glanced back at Arcaidia, “Looks like that’s what it's for to me. What else would you use something like that for?”

B.B, her face not tinged red like Arcaidia’s but rather looking like she was trying to hold in some laughter, flew up and patted me on the back, “Don’t worry ‘bout it, Long. Sure Binge’ll git some use outta it one way or ‘nother, intended purpose or not. Let’s just git ta movin’ on ‘fore poor Arc bursts inta flame.”

Arcaidida muttered something in her own language as she brushed by Binge. Crossfire just rolled her eyes and started to follow, while Binge just made a pleased humming nose as she continued to massage her back with the vibrating cylinder.

LIL-E then floated up to us, took one look at Binge, and said, “Why is she rubbing her back with a di-”

Before she could finish the sentence there was a loud, metallic groaning noise that filled the corridor. All of my companions exchanged glances, my own mane standing on end as the sound of rending metal was accompanied by a strange, gurgling wail. Abruptly my E.F.S lit up with a red dot directly behind us, just down the corridor we came from.

“The flying fuck is that?” Crossfire said, her rifle already aiming in that direction, where a vague and amorphous shape was crawling out of the darkness into the wavering light my party cast out from a combination of PIp-Bucks and glowing unicorn horns.

It was formed from the same neon blue goo that we’d seen leaking from various spots across the ship, yet this goo was living and quivering in a wave that crawled towards us with faintly limb-like pseudopods. The blue goop was filled out with hunks of sharp, jagged metal taken from the bulkheads of the ship itself, with various tubes and power cables twisting through the goo like muscles and bones.

We barely had a moment to respond before the... whatever the hell it was surged towards us, but a bare moment was enough for us. The corridor rocked with the sound of gunfire as Crossfire, B.B, LIL-E, and Arcaidia all opened fire at once. The bullets and starblaster bolts smashed into the amorphous living blob, yet it hardly slowed even as chunks of it were blown off.

I stepped forward, careful about not stepping into any of my allies line of fire, drawing Gramzanber with my mouth. The hall was too narrow to easily use the ARM with my hooves. In fact I wasn’t at all sure Gramzanber would do any good against something made mostly out of living slime. I also recalled Arcaidia’s warning about this stuff and that it’d burn and poison to the touch, so I’d need to be careful. As the thing reached us I tried to aim for the biggest clump of metal and cables inside the goo and slashed. Gramzanber cut through the slime and junk inside it with equal ease, but I had to rapidly backpedal as the creature didn’t even slow at my attack. Everypony else was backing up quick too, firing whenever they had a clear shot, but the corridor was so cramped that they were having trouble finding opportunities.

In the meantime I was forced to duck and dive aside as the monstrous living slime started slapping its pseudopods at me, blue goo splattering with every strike.

“Crapcrapcrap!” I grunted as bits of the gunk got on my armor, sizzling the ceramic plates and golden gecko scales. I cut through one pseudopod, only to get grabbed around the left foreleg by another. I felt a harsh, painful burn in my leg as the goo started to burn through the lighter armor there, and I was pulled off my hooves, the creature drawing me towards it. I swiftly fired my Grapple towards an exposed piece of metal hanging from the wall, anchoring myself in place so the beast of horrific slime couldn’t pull me any closer towards it, but that didn’t stop the corrosive goo from searing my leg. I grit my teeth against the pain, and felt a sickening feeling pass through me from whatever toxic crap was getting into my system.

Gramzamber’s voice spoke in my head with cold worry, Detecting unnatural chemical composition entering bloodstream. I recommend avoiding further contact with this entity.

“Gee, thanks for the freakin’ hint, Gram!” I shouted, slicing at the pseudopod holding me, but I had a terrible angle to get more than a surface cut as it yanked me about like a dog with a dishrag.

“Tentacles off the bucky!” Binge shouted, snarling as she flung a knife into the pseudopod grabbing me, momentarily pinning it as she jumped into the fray. She drew her chain-knife, revving it up with a deep purr, and sawed through the slimy limb holding me. Free, I limped up and slashed again with Gramzanber, ignoring the feeling of cold sickness washing through me from the toxic goo that still burned my leg. My strike severed another tentacle that’d been reaching for us. But now the bulk of the slime was rolling in our direction, and was about to overwhelm me and Binge before a burst of heat and light shot in and detonated in front of the slime, making it recoil.

“Fall back!” Crossfire shouted, firing another incendiary round from her rifle that burned apart more of the slime, “You trying to get your asses killed!?”

“No, we’re trying to keep this thing from rolling over all of us!” I shouted back, but I could see the logic behind Crossfire’s words. Bladed weapons like Gramzanber or Binge’s knives just weren’t any good for actually damaging this thing. We could cut the tentacles it was using, but I saw the goo from the severed pieces was just rejoining the main body as it kept crawling towards us.

Grunting, I grabbed Binge and together we started stumbling away from the slime, but Binge yelped in pain as a stray pseudopod grabbed her around both hind legs and started yanking her backwards. Fear lanced through me and despite the burn spreading through my leg from where the slime had touched me, making me feel sick to my stomach and causing sweat to break out on my face, I turned and grabbed Binge. I shot the Grapple again, sending the silver line out to wrap around a doorframe a dozen meters away to keep us held in place.

“Nope, not being in any tentacle porn today,” Binge said, face pale and sweat soaked as she held tight to me.

B.B’s ARM and LIL-E’s built in weapons blew chunks off the slime, alongside more incendiary rounds from Crossfire, but the slime’s massive body just kept coming even as holes were blown through it. Even Arcaidia’s starblaster, firing streaks of white death, only burned away small holes through the amorphous creature as it rolled towards us.

Binge’s hooves wrapped around me tightly, almost as if she was trying to protect me with her own body as the slime got within inches of rolling over us. I felt her breath tickle my ear as she whispered, “Love you bucky.”

Dammit I wasn’t about to let us get killed by living snot! I began to tap into Gramzanber’s power, the ARM starting to blaze with bright blue light as I prepared to fire an Impulse at point blank range. It’d leave me all but useless for the rest of the day, but that was better than letting myself and the mare I’d only just discovered I loved be eaten by space sludge.

Just before I was about to throw the spear, however, there was a intense gleam of white light from nearby. Blinking, I saw it was coming from Binge’s mane. Or rather from something inside her mane.

“What the-!?” I started to say, just as the slime closed over us.

Only instead of being devoured by a sea of toxic acid and agony, a flare of white light spread out from that gleaming object in Binge’s mane and hit the slime creature like a hammer. For a second I thought I saw a burst of white, incandescent feathers, which floated around us and then vanished into motes of light. Inside my mind I got the sudden impression of some tall, bipedal form enclosing wings around Binge and I, before the flare of white light vanished and we were left sitting in an empty corridor.

The light had blown the slime creature into shaking pieces. However it wasn’t dead. I was able to see those pieces slowly trying to pull themselves back together, gathering around the bits of junk it apparently used to form a loose skeletal structure. Then the corridor lit up with a colder, paler blue light as Arcaidia’s horn was surrounded by a complex set of crests, and a beam of arctic cold shot out of her horn. The beam lanced up and down the corridor, freezing the slime under a blanket of solid ice, finally ending the threat.

In the silence that followed I groaned, looking at my injured fore leg. The slime hadn’t burned away all the armor, but it’d gotten to my hide and I could see it burned raw in places, a unpleasant blue discoloration splotching the wound. Worry filled me as I saw Binge’s hind legs were worse, even if my marefriend was weathering her own pain with a wane smile.

“Hey bucky, would it be terribly unsexy if I barfed right now? Because I’m not feeling so good...”

I held her close, baffled by what had just happened. “Binge, what was that light?”

“Huh?” she looked at me with confusion for a moment, then she reached into her mane and pulled out an object, “Dunno. It came from this pretty statue I ‘borrowed’ from the ghouly griffin on the Sweet Candy.”

“Captain Bartholomew?” I looked at what Binge was holding and it took me a second to recognize one of the three statues of the Guardian Lords that Bartholomew had on the airship. I wasn’t sure which one it was, but the small statuette was shaped like an an armored bipedal creature with curled wings and bearing a straight blade in one gauntleted fist.

“A...Guardian?”

“Holy crap are ya’ll alright!?” B.B flew down next to us, Arcaidia rushing up as well, while Crossfire and LIL-E followed behind more slowly and carefully, eyeing the frozen slime creature.

“We’ve been better,” I said, gulping as I felt a similar urge to Binge to start upchucking my breakfast. Wait, I didn’t eat breakfast this morning, did I?

Arcaidia examined us closely, her horn staying a bright, multi-hued shade of blue as her magic coated me and Binge. Healing magic filled us as magical crests formed in complex sigils around Arcaidia’s horn. The burn marks on our limbs faded slowly, but the feeling of illness only subsided by a minimal amount, and Arcaidia frowned.

“Wounds easy to heal. Toxin harder to purge. Not kill you, but you both feel sick for some time. Stupid thick skulled ponies, both of you, fighting poison up close. May as well shove faces into it!” my unicorn friend said with a harsh, angry tone that I knew hid how worried she’d been for us. It was understandable. If that light from the Guardian statue hadn’t appeared, I wasn’t sure even my point blank Impulse shot would’ve have saved Binge and I.

It was... sobering just how close we’d just come to dying. I swallowed back bile and tried standing, helping Binge up to her hooves as well, who was still looking at the statue in her hoof curiously.

“We need to be more cautious, you’re right Arcaidia. Sorry.”

“So are we just going to ignore that light show just now or is this one of those things you and your little group already know about and are going to keep me out of the loop on?” said Crossfire, eyes narrowing as she shouldered her rifle. I looked at her, then back at the statue as Binge... sniffed at it and then licked it. My marefriend was weird.

How much should I even tell Crossfire? How much would she believe? Well, when in doubt, just hit them with the truth.

“I think that light was some kind of manifestation from a being called a Guardian. They’re ancient entities of magic that are tied to our world and protected it long ago from alien invasion. Odessa is after ways to control them, and some ponies can somehow link with Guardians as Mediums. My best friend Trailblaze is bound to one that way. Uh... crazy as it sounds I think Binge just connected to another, the one that statue depicts. Captain Bartholomew says these statues he has are keys to certain powerful Guardians and he wanted me to carry them around, but I kind of told him to hold off on that until we were done in the NCR... but it looks like Binge stole-”

“Borrowed,” she asserted.

“...stole one from his cabin before we left. Is that right Binge?” I asked, and she stuck her tongue out at me.

“I only rummaged through his stuff a few times before we hopped off the airship. I thought this statue was really shiny so I borrowed it. I was going to give it back. Eventually. What? It’s pretty, so I tucked it into my mane for safekeeping like I do most of the shinies I collect. It’s perfectly normal.”

Arcaidia was wearing a deep frown, her unease palpable as she looked at the statue, “Guardians are dangerous magic. Veruni legends speak of them as large threat, not to be taken lightly. And why one link with shivol bir and not another? Trailblaze make sense, she is amazing pony with much strength, but Binge...?”

“I feel like I’m being insulted, but lucky you I don’t care because I have an awesome new back massager,” Binge said, putting away the Guardian Lord statue back into her mane, withdrawing her ‘back massager’, and buzzing it over her spine. “Mmmm, vibrating goodness.”

Sweat still dripped from me, cold and unpleasant as If elt my body shudder. “Ugh, Arcaidia are you sure this poison is only temporary?”

Gramzanber responded first, Analyzing the toxin currently. You will experience weakened constitution for at least twelve hours, as will your mate. Arcaidia’s healing spells can lessen the effects, but I suggest limiting your combat activity until you can recover fully.

Arcaidia said much the same, only adding, “If we can get you two dumb, reckless ponies to Medical Lab on ship, we may find treatment.”

“Meh,” said Binge, shrugging, “I’ve felt worse after a three day bender. If I vomit I can use it as a projectile against our foes.”

“An’ on that lovely mental image,” said B.B “We’ve had ta detour a’ bit, but we can still make it ta the security room from here, Arc?”

“Yes, should be service tube leading back down several junctures ahead,” Arcaidia said, resuming her trot down the corridor, “This way.”

We got moving again, somewhat slower as Binge and I walked along side by side at a reduced pace. The feeling of illness was fading into a dull ache I could deal with, but I still didn’t want to push things too hard for either I or Binge. We passed several more corridor junctures in tense silence, each of us looking left and right down branching hallways and eyeing every shifting shadow as we went. We didn’t want another ambush from another slime monster.

“What do you think that thing was?” I asked, trying to imagine myself just what the living goo could have been.

“It's just a guess,” said LIL-E, “But it's probably a magical mutation. My sensors may be on the fritz, but I’m still detecting a lot of residual magical radiation around here. Not enough to worry about getting radiation poisoning unless we hit a dense patch, but there’s enough around that who knows what kind of weird mutations might have occured around here? I mean, all this alien technology and chemicals, interacting with Equestrian magic over the course of decades? I’m not that surprised we ran into a magic slime creature. Might be even more freakish things around here, so let’s keep alert.”

We continued onward on that ominous note. Every now and then there was a faint groan of metal that pulsed through the hull in a dull, ghostly echo. The stress on the hull from the dirt and rock piled atop it from the crash left the interior less table, and sometimes I thought I could feel the hull shifting from its century old deterioration. Arcaidia didn’t seemed worried, however, so I kept my growing unease at the thought of being buried under a sudden ceiling collapse to myself.

Soon we reached a four way juncture where one of the junture’s corners housed a bulging, rounded tube section going up and down. It had an open hatch revealing that there was a set of handles jutting from the wall of the inner tube. At periodic spaces the wall also bore a ring of light blue crystalline material, perfectly cut and rounded. Arcaidia paused at the mouth of the tube’s entrance, her youthful features turning quizzical and concerned.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Look, ren solva,” Arcaidia said, nodding towards the edge of the open hatch. The hatch itself was made from the same, light and silvery smooth metal as most of the ship, and I hadn’t really looked at it closely as we approached. Now that Arcaidia pointed it out I stepped up, peered closely, then blinked in surprise at what I saw. The hatch hadn’t been swung open naturally, instead the edges of it showed signs of having been melted away by extreme heat.

“Was this... cut open by something?”

Crossfire frowned and looked over my shoulder, yellow eyes narrowing after a moment as she said in a quiet but hard tone, “That’s the work of either a cutting torch or something really damn close to one. Hey Frosty, your ‘people’ the sort to cut open their own hatches or what?”

Arcaidia shot the mare a brief grimace, but shook her head, “No. No Veruni would need to cut open hatch. All crew have means to unlock manually.”

“Then who did this?” I wondered aloud, and then I heard B.B’s voice down one of the other hallways of the four way juncture.

“Fellas, I’m thinkin’ ya’ll wanna see this.”

I hadn’t even heard her walk down the corridor, but when I turned to look B.B was a good twenty paces away, just barely inside the range of our light sources. I could see her eyes were slightly rimmed with red, and imagined she must be using her Crimson Noble blood to see better in the dark than the rest of us could. We quickly cantered to where she was, and I didn’t have to ask what she meant us to see, because the sight was scattered about before us as our lights played over the grisly scene in dull flickers.

Blood spray marked the walls in colorful crimson, while dark scorch marks marred the metal surface of the corridor in dozens of places. Several bodies were laying in burned hulks on the floor.

Three of those bodies were monstrous looking creatures, and ones I was growing entirely too familiar with. I recognized the spindly, bipedal bodies, bearing metallic skins and long, spear like limbs. These were the same Hyadean monsters that’d attacked the Skull Guild basement back in Skull City. What in the world were they doing here!? Perhaps even more alarming than the sight of the dead alien beasts were the two other bodies we saw.

Unlike the Hyadean monsters, these two bodies belonged to ponies, and they were laid out carefully and in a respectful manner, clearly having been moved after their deaths. Deaths that couldn’t have occured very long ago, for the blood on the walls was still fresh, as were the state of their wounds. One mare’s chest had clearly been pierced by one Hyadean beast’s spear arm, while the other pony, a stallion, had half of his face burned off by some kind of energy attack, probably the same kind that marred the walls.

Both ponies were pegasi, and both wore the white colored combat armor and uniforms of Odessa.

“Oh shove a tube of toothpaste straight up our puckered plotholes, what the feathering fuck are they doing here!?”

“...Thank you LIL-E, couldn’t have said it better myself,” I drawled dryly, sighing heavily.

It was an excellent question. What was Odessa doing here? Well, perhaps that was a stupid question. This was an alien spaceship packed full of technology millenia ahead of our own. Of course Odessa would want it. But how did they get here before we did? The Elw Golem had been excavating this thing, and we couldn’t get near it without having to take out Roaring Metal first.

“Must’ve been watchin’ the whole time,” B.B muttered, and out our questioning gazes she looked back at us, her eyes still tinged red, and elaborated.

“Think ‘bout it. Odessa was there when that big ol’ Golem woke up! Them pegasi and griffin folk are obsessed with advanced tech an’ alien stuff, so stand ta reason they didn’t just ignore Roarin’ Metal after ‘e started walkin’ cross the Bleach.”

Binge opened her mouth in a wide ‘O’, “Oooooooooh, they were spying on it is what you’re saying, right bridie? All you flying sorts watching on from above like hungry little angels.”

“Creepy way o’ puttin’ it, but yeah, figure Odessa must o’ put some ponies on followin’ the Golem, tracking wherever it went. Until it ended up here.”

“Right,” said Crossfire, “Then once they saw this ship after the Golem dug it up, Odessa snuck a team in to see what they could salvage from this place. Makes sense, but what the hell are these ugly looking monstrosities doing here too?” Crossfire kicked one of the dead Hyadean beasts.

“Maybe Odessa weren’t the only ones watching the Golem,” I said, feeling a clawing feeling of fear put cold needles through my spine, “Remember that creature we ran into below Skull City? Alhazad? He, it, made it pretty clear these Hyadean aliens have been keeping watch on things. Maybe they’re after the same thing Odessa is, salvagable alien tech?”

Arcaidia eye’s widened with something approaching panic, “Arc of Destiny will not be touched by Hyadean filth! They will not have my ship!”

I could feel the temperature dropping around her, and before I could react B.B was there, putting a wing around Arcaidia and talking in a calming voice, “Relax there, Arc. Ain’t nopony here gonna let either Hyadeans or Odessa take this here ship.”

“This just became a different job,” I said with a firm nod, “We’re not just scouting this place anymore, we’re protecting it. If Hyadeans are here, then I don’t want to imagine what they might try to do with any intact technology here. As for Odessa, I’d like to hope we could talk them down, but given Arcaidia is still being hunted by them we’ve probably got a fight on our hooves.”

“You going to be capable of handling that, buck?” asked Crossfire.

Meaningfully I unsheathed Gramzanber, “I will, in my way.”

“If they’re already here ahead of us then we’re probably short on time,” said LIL-E, “They might already be securing key points like the bridge or engineering. We should pick up the pace.”

“If they cut their way through the same tube Arcaidia led us to, then they’re probably already in the security room,” I said, eyes pinched in thought. “Do you think that’s why we haven’t run into any security bots yet? Could Odessa have shut them down already?”

Arcaidia shook her head in a rigorous display, “No chance! They not able to hack Veruni systems! Not possible.”

I glanced at her, “Are you certain? I mean, I get that all this Veruni stuff is super advanced, but is it really impossible that Odessa could figure out a way to do it?”

There was a flash of doubt in her eyes, but she remained resolute as she looked at me and said with firm certainty, “I not see how. If possible, then they not have control yet, otherwise they already see us coming on monitors.”

“The ice bucket has a point,” Crossfire said, “If those flying nut cases had control of the ship’s systems then they’d be sicing those security robots on us already. My guess is that they’re either already dead, or still trying to take control of whatever systems they’ve reached. Either way, the eyebot is right, we need to move.”

That shelved any further discussion and got ourselves moving quickly back to the service tube. B.B went down first, using her wings to slowly hover downard with her new ARMs at the ready. Arcaidia went next, followed by Crossfire. They used the handles in the wall to steady themselves, then Arcaidia touched a button on a side panel beside the tube’s entrance. The crystal rings hummed to life, becoming suffused with a soft blue glow. Suddenly both Arcaidia and Crossfire started to float.

“The hell?” Crossfire said, and Arcaidia chuckled.

“Null gravity field. For moving cargo and other heavy things between decks.”

“Oh, then I guess Longwalk will be able to get his fat head through here just fine,” Crossfire said with a snort, and started to descend.

“Better a fat head than a fat flank,” I shot back in a flat tone a I hopped into the tube, feeling the weightlessness come over my body as I started to use the handles to pull myself downard.

“Careful buck, I got a real nice shot at you from down here...” muttered Crossfire, then Binge jumped into the tube, letting out a joyful titter as she tucked and rolled down the tube like a bouncy ball.

“Weeeeeee!”

“Binge,” I called after her, “Be careful. We’re both still feeling-”

I heard a retching noise down below followed by the unmistakable sound of barf splattering the walls of the tube.

“-...sick,” I finished with a grunting sigh, hoofing my face.

Crossfire rolled to the side as Binge went flying by, still trailing vomit, and the Drifter mare let out a withering sigh an scowled, “Arcaidia, could you turn the gravity back on, for just a few seconds?”

“Stop complaining greedy pony and keep climbing,” Arcaidia said flatly, and our descent resumed, LIL-E floating in last and bringing up the rear of our procession.

“I swear its like working with a bunch of foals,” the eyebot said, and I just grinned up at her.

“Bet this is still more fun than spending time getting poked at by Doctor Whatshisname.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” LIL-E replied, a hint of hesitance in her response as she added, “It might not be all bad to get some maintenance done by somepony who actually knows and understands my design specs and construction, though. Doctor Breakthrough knows my specs inside and out.”

An uneasy feeling crept into me, “Except he doesn’t want to ‘do maintenance’ on you, he wants to take you apart and figure out why you are the way you are.”

“Longwalk, I want to know why I am the way I am,” LIL-E said, and that gave me a moment of pause, long enough that we reached the bottom of the tube and the moment to respond passed. But I didn’t forget, and mentally made a note to talk to LIL-E about this more later.

At the bottom of the tube I found Binge floating in a groaning heap, a few bits of vomit still floating around her. I ignored the smell and floated down to grab her, patting her mane.

“Feeling better, Binge?”

“Not really,” she said, “My insides want to go play tag.”

She smiled, then, and gave me a quick kiss, which admittedly was a shade gross given the upchuck, but I was well beyond caring about those details. “I’ll be fine, Longy. Like I said, I’ve been worse, and I can deal with all the sick feelings in the world if I know I got you around to be my comfy pillow tonight.”

I smiled back, nuzzling her, “Same here. Let’s just try to be a bit more careful, okay?”

Above us Crossfire made a slight gagging sound, “You two done making out? We got work to do.”

The tube dumped us out into what looked like a large, oval shaped storage room. I assumed it was a storage room mainly from all the metal cubes floating around of various sizes. Some floated alone, while others were clamped together in blocks or other patterns. Why they did this I had no idea, but I was more focused on the fact that I, along with my friends, were still floating as we left the tube.

“Hey, waitasec, what’s going on? I thought only the tube had the floaty thing going on?”

“Does it matter as long as it's fun?” Binge said as she glided around, more slowly now as she took my advice and kept her pace down as she gently bounced from one floating box to another, giggling slightly.

Arcaidia, using her magic to pull herself to the ground, scrunched her muzzle in consternation and checked her Pip-Buck after plugging a small black cable she pulled from it into a wall console. “Crash damaged other anti-grav systems across random parts of ship. Making pockets of zero gravities. Be careful when floating-”

As she spoke Binge had launched herself towards the other side of the room, but about halfway she abruptly stopped in mid-air and proceeded to flump onto the floor, face-first, with a loud, “Oof!” and Arcaidia cleared her throat with a small, amused smile.

“-because anti-gravity ends at random and silly ponies might get hurt.”

“Aww, screw off, gravity, I was enjoying myself,” Binge said in a muffled voice, waving her hoof without getting up, her face still plastered to the floor. “Ugh... no more fun times for me.”

B.B, using the floating metal cubes to push herself to the floor and pull herself along it, using her wings like extra limbs to haul herself forward, reached the gravity holding section of the room and said, “Reckon we oughta stick low ta the ground an’ let Arc tell us ‘bout when there’s pockets o’ null-G. Is it just this here deck that’s like this?”

Arcaidia’s eyes scanned the readouts on her Pip-Buck, “Parts of this deck only. Anti-grav systems only damaged locally, so fluctuations only near here. Still, make getting to security extra anger making.”

“At least I seem to be able to hover around just fine,” said LIL-E, floating on by us towards the storage room’s only door out, “Hooray for having my own magic-based propulsion system.”

Glancing across the room, I aimed my Grapple towards a set of metal cubes that looked like they were attached to the wall. The Grapple line fired out and hooked to the cubes, letting me pull myself across the room with relative ease, even past the gravity pockets. Glancing back at the others still making their way across, I said, “We’ll just take it slow. As long as nothing gets between us and the security room we should be fine.”

Crossfire shot a pointed glare at me, “I swear to the Goddesses above if you just jinxed us...”

I was about to blow off her sentiment, but past experience told me that I probably should have just kept my mouth shut. With a sinking feeling I went to the sliding metal doors that’d lead out of the storage room and hit a few random buttons on the side panel to get them to slide open. I fully expected to get a face full of security bots shooting death lasers at me for my transgressions in tempting fate, but as it turned out I was only half right.

It wasn’t Veruni security robots waiting for us outside the storage room, but a quartet of Odessa soldiers; three pegasi and a griffin. All four were already aiming their weapons at me before I had the door fully open and I had all of one second to react before a withering hail of magical laser and plasma bolts filled the doorway. I rolled to the side as fast as I could, but even then I felt the searing pain as I was struck several times. My gecko-hide reinforced Stable security armor absorbed some of the blows, especially from the lighter, crimson laser beams, but one green bolt of plasma still burned through and left a painful welt of seared flesh on my shoulder.

“Wait!” I shouted as I took cover on the side of the doorframe, “We’re not here to fight!”

More energy bolts was my only answer, and Crossfire appeared on the opposite side of the doorway from me, eyes hard.

“They don’t much sound like they want to talk, buck,” she said as her horn lit up red and smoothly floated her rifle around to fire a few blind shots around the edge of the door, which forced the Odessa soldiers to back up and halt firing for a moment. This gave the rest of my friends cover to make their way to the side of the storage room with the door, hunkering up against the walls.

“The pretty birdies do like to screech and fling their magic disintegration poop at us,” Binge said, licking her lips as she reached into her mane and yanked out a large, wicked looking chain knife, “There are easy solutions to that problem.”

“Was really hoping to avoid this,” I growled, taking in and letting out a deep breath. The last thing I wanted was to see yet more people getting killed, especially if I was risking my friends lives in the same fight. But these soldiers were clearly not interested in chatting, as evidenced by the small, metallic *tink* of a small apple-shaped metal object that rolled into the room beside us.

“Shitcakes! Greande!” LIL-E shouted in warning, and Arcaidia reacted faster than any of us.

Her horn flared and one of the metal cubes attached to the wall beside us flew off with a hefty thudding noise. Her telekinesis hit a button on the cube and one side of it opened up a circular hole, which Arcaidia used to slam the cube down atop the grenade, trapping it inside.

“Will that even hold-” I started to ask, when a flare of green plasma energy erupted from beneath the cube, held down by Arcaidia’s magic. The plasma still burned along the ground, forcing us to jump and dance on our hooves to keep from getting burned, but the explosion itself was contained.

“Gonna go ahead an’ say that the time fer diplomacy has kinda passed, Long,” B.B said with an apologetic look.

With my heart feeling heavy as stone I nodded, “Alright, let’s do this. Let me hit them first. There’s only four of them. One good run with Accelerator ought to be enough.”

“Uh, Long, did ya even notice they was floatin’ around out there?” B.B said, and I blinked, chancing a quick peek. I didn’t get to look long before a splash of laser fire forced me to duck back, but I did see what B.B was talking about. The four Odessa soldiers had floated back down the hallway outside the storage room, back behind a curve in the corridor which they now used for cover. Floated, as in at least part of the hall was hit by the anti-gravity effect.

That’d make using Accelerator difficult. I kind of relied on having traction to move around, and if I was stuck floating through the air then having amplified reflexes and speed wouldn’t let me float any faster. If I was going to charge in on this I’d be a sitting duck the moment I hit the zero-G area. At the very least I’d need to get close to the Odessa soldiers first before Accelerator could do me any good. And there was no way I was going to try using Impulse. I’d already used it once today fighting the Golem, and was still feeling the drain on my strength from that. It wasn’t bad enough to disable me yet, but another use might have me barely able to walk, instead of just feeling tired.

Crossfire was watching me closely, and it was as if she’d picked up on exactly what my train of thought was, because she rolled her eyes and gestured at me, “I can already see you’re going to make this hard, so let me make the stupidity as painless as possible. Everypony grab onto me. We’re going to surprise the hell outta these assholes.”

“What’re ya plannin’?” B.B asked, poking one of her hooves around the side of the door to let off a stream of high-powered shots from one of her dual ARMs. Up close the sound of the Twin Fenrir firing sounded like the scream of a berserk war maiden mixed with that of a buzzsaw chewing through steel. I still marveled at how perfectly the gun-like ARMs fit B.B’s hooves like seamless gauntlets while still providing the range and punch of some kind of souped up submachine gun.

From the sudden swearing from the other side of the corridor I imagined the Odessa soldiers were just as impressed, albeit in a different manner. Crossfire just pointed at her already glowing horn.

“Going to port us right on top of them. Just get ready for a close range beat down,” she glanced at me with a flaring snout and grimace, “Disable if you can, but fucking kill if you have to.”

We all nodded, and with a few of us quickly dashing over to Crossfire’s side of the door we all touched her with our hooves, or in LIL-E’s case an extended robotic arm.

“Wait!” Binge shouted, using her hind leg to drag over the cube Arcaidia had used to contain the plasma grenade. She hugged to herself while wearing a devilish smile as she winked at me, “Okay, now I’m ready, along with Cube Buddy!”

“Is this a replacement for Mr. Happy?” I asked coyly.

“Bah, nothing replaces Mr. Happy, but since I’ve had a nice mental stress valve added in the form of a very sexy coltfriend with lots of stamina, Mr. Happy can take a bit of a vacation,” Binge said, and Arcaidia groaned.

“Crossfire pony teleport us into enemy’s faces now, before I bash shivol bir’s head with bat made of ice.”

“With pleasure,“ Crossfire said, and her horn sparked with bright, blood red light.

For the length of a mere millisecond I could feel my body being warped as that crimson light filled my vision and my senses were at once both torn apart and then merged back with reality before I could even properly register the event. As disoriented as teleportation was it did help that we all knew it was coming. The Odessa soldiers on the other hoof were taken completely by surprise as we popped into existence practically on top of them in a sparkling flash of red light.

Total chaos ensued for the span of a few seconds. We were in an anti-grav field now, but Crossfire had popped us out close enough to the wall and ceiling that we all had a means to propell ourselves forward, and we did so like a school of pouncing geckos.

I had Gramzanber out and clutched around my forehooves, and laid a hefty smack with the flat of the blade across the face of the nearest Odessa soldier. The mare’s eyes went cross as she spun around, her body floating along through the zero-G air to smack into and bounce off the opposite wall, completely dazed.

Binge, squealing like an entirely too hyped up foal, slammed her newly dubbed ‘Cube Buddy’ atop the head of another unfortunate pegasus soldier and proceeded to start smacking the cube, with the soldier’s head inside, like she was ringing a bell for dinner. I felt a stab of sympathy for the poor fellow and the headache he’d likely have later on, but I was also surprised and proud of Binge’s restraint. She could have just as easily carved into the soldier with her chain-knife, or any of her many other sharp objects, but she was-

Perhaps I spoke too soon. While the soldier was still stunned by the cube pummeling, Binge whipped out another knife with her tail and proceeded to pin it through the pegasus’ shoulder. Not a fatal wound, but I could only imagine the pain. Actually, scratch that, I knew exactly what having a sharp object shoved into me felt like, and I winced in even deeper sympathy.

But at least the soldier would survive. Probably. If he didn’t bleed out too quickly.

I suppose with Binge I had to be grateful for any slow steps of progress I could get.

Meanwhile B.B had taken full advantage of the anti-grav field to fly circles around the griffin soldier, bouncing from one wall to the next. The straight edged blades that sprouted from the bottom of the Twin Fenrir cut silver paths through the air, and in short order the griffin’s plasma guns mounted on a battle saddle on either side of his combat armor fell apart in sparking pieces. Soon too did the straps of his armor, his helmet falling off as B.B sent a buck straight into the side of his head. The griffin hit the wall, but rather than float away from the ricochet, a curtain of ice formed around his body, all the way up to the neck, from a beam fired by Arcaidia.

Three down, one to go, and Crossfire was already tangling with the last pegasus stallion. Crossfire’s first swing of her rifle sent the bayonet crunching through one of the Odessa soldier’s laser guns, and her follow up strike hit him across the gut with the butt of the rifle. Hes propelled to the floor while Crossfire’s motion sent her momentum back towards the ceiling. The two hit their respective surfaces at about the same time, and the Odessa pegasus twisted to get his other laser rifle to bear on Crossfire just as she was getting her rifle swung around as well.

I could see the calculation in Crossfire’s eyes and knew what was coming before she even pulled the trigger. The heavy rifle round found its mark in the soldier’s chest, punching through his armor and making goblets of blood sputter out in a sickening flurry. His eyes widened briefly as his mouth left the trigger for his battle saddles laser rifle and he became still, body floating limp in the air.

Crossfire took a deep breath and snorted, pushing herself back down to the floor while the rest of my friends hurriedly went about securing the other soldiers. I had some rope in my saddlebags, as did B.B, so we had little trouble tying up the survivors. Arcaidia went over to the soldier Crossfire had shot, or rather used her magic to pull him to her, and examined his wound and checked his pulse. After a moment she gave me a flat, emotionally controlled stare and shook her head. I sighed, but nodded.

Arcaidia turned her attention to the soldier that Binge had stabbed, as his injury was far more manageable. Bleeding like crazy and adding to the bizarre haze of floating globs of blood in the air, but as Arcaidia went to work with her healing magic I knew the soldier would survive. Out of the four soldiers only the griffin was still conscious, and he was silently glaring at all of us as we worked. I couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking, but the rage in his eyes wasn’t hard to miss.

I ignored the griffin’s angered stare for the moment as I looked around at everyone, “Anypony injured?”

“You, ren solva,” Arcaidia said, nodding towards my exposed shoulder. With the adrenaline fading from me now that the brief scuffle was over I could now feel all of the pain shooting into me from the raw wound. I’d had much worse in the past, however, and did my best to just grin and bear it.

“It's not bad. I’ll pop a healing potion in a second. How’s your patient?”

Arcaidia looked the soldier over, where her magic was slowly closing the knife wound in his shoulder. The pale blue aura concentrated around the torn flesh, knitting it gradually back together. A few globs of floating blood stained Arcaidia’s blue furred face, but she didn’t so much as flinch at it.

“Much blood loss, but he will live.”

“Good. B.B, could you cover the corridor ahead for us? I’m going to talk to the one who’s still awake.”

B.B waved a wing at me and floated off down the curved hall, the anti-grav field cutting out about seven or eight paces ahead as she dropped to the deck, landing on her hooves. She then took up a guard position further down, scanning the corridor for any further Odessa soldiers or other threats. Meanwhile Crossfire had approached the iced up griffin alongside me. She gave me a sidelong glance, gold eyes hard and unreadable. I wasn’t expecting her to say sorry or anything. A part of me didn’t even blame her. Her opponent had still been armed and had been aiming at her with lethal intent. In that circumstance she’d had no reason not to respond in kind, after having already chanced trying to disable him. Honestly I hadn’t expected her to try even that much, and much like I had with my other companions since practically day one of this journey I didn’t judge their actions in battle.

If anything a part of me still felt I was being too soft. But if I was going to keep getting blood on my own hooves I at least wanted to make sure it was on my terms.

“I know what organization you’re a part of,” I told the soldier, “I imagine you know who we are too. My first question is if you fired on us before you recognized us, or were you under orders to kill us on sight?”

I wanted to make sure I knew, one way or another, if the Odessa soldiers in the Arc of Destiny would consider us kill-on-sight, or if this was a matter of us surprising these four and they fired without thinking about it. From the tight beaked look the griffin gave me he wasn’t going to give up any answers without convincing. I briefly considered threatening to turn Binge lose on him, but dismissed the thought just as quickly. For one, I wasn’t interested in getting information that way, and for two, I didn’t want to encourage Binge to backslide.

Crossfire on the other hoof didn’t have my compunctions. I had an unpleasant flashback to being her prisoner outside the Saddlespring Ruins as Crossfire gained a thin and harsh smile on her face as she sauntered up and placed the point of her bayonet just short of the griffin’s eye.

“Look featherduster, the buck here is a sweetheart, but I have absolutely zero patience for any ‘tough and proud soldier’ bullshit. Start answering questions, or get used to the idea of flying blind from now on.”

A blob of spit smacked into her face, hocked from the griffin’s mouth, and that was all he opened it for as he continued to glare murder at us. Crossfire casually wiped the spit off with the cuff of her jacket, looking starkly unimpressed.

“Suit yourself. Better start looking into getting an eyepatch, polly.”

I raised my hoof, about to stop her from taking this too far, when a static crackle filled the air followed by a faint voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but the noise was coming from the helmet of the griffin, which was laying on the ground. Crossfire and I both looked at it, then at each other.

“Hold on the eye stabbing?” I asked, and she relented with a begrudging shrug and gestured at the helmet.

“Knock yourself out. He ain’t going anywhere. Just don’t screw us over.”

“Oh, whatcha going to do bucky?” asked Binge.

“It's probably somepony checking in with these guys,” said LIL-E, “They were standing sentry here. Be careful, Longwalk. If we don’t respond then it’ll at least buy us a few minutes while they work out why their sentries aren’t responding. You get on the line with them, and we lose any element of surprise we might still have.”

“I know. I just... think I recognize this voice,” I said as I picked up the helmet.

It was true that I couldn’t make the voice out in regards to what it was saying, but the tone of it was one that was familiar, and if I was right then it might be possible to still reason with the soldiers on this ship after all. Taking a deep breath I placed the helmet on my head and took a moment to find where the helmet had a small mic to speak into. As I did this I heard a young male voice speaking with greater concern through the helmet’s small speakers placed by the ears.

“Private Gabriel respond, what is your status, over? I repeat-”

“Hello Glint,” I said, cutting the voice of Sunset’s son off mid-sentence.

The silence that followed was heavier than a mountain. I waited with stomach knotting tension, for a few moments only hearing dead silence on the other end of the line. Then with a voice clipped to a fine edge of self-control, Glint said, “What have you done with my squad, Longwalk?”

Taking a deep breath I kept my own voice level and straight, with no attempt at sweet talk. Glint wouldn’t buy any of it, so there was nothing to do but lay it out bluntly, but honestly.

“We ran into each other and I don’t know if you gave them orders to fire on anyone they saw, or if they knew it was us, but they didn’t give me any chance to talk or explain. They fired on us, we defended ourselves. Three of them are still alive.”

Another moment of silence, then, “Who was killed?”

“None on my side. On yours,” I took a moment to look at the body of the slain soldier, “He has a purple tinted coat, brown mane, cutie mark of a... uh, forked stick thing with a band of some sort around it?”

“Slingshot...” Glint was silent for another few seconds, but I could hear him take in a gulp of breath and let it out in a slow, steam-like gust. “This is the second friend of mine you’ve killed, you know.”

It was hard not to feel a potent and sharp combination of both guilt and equal anger, both of which crept into my attempts at a calm tone as I said, “Do you want to compare losses, Glint? Your comrades gunned down one of my tribesmates right in front of me as we were trying to escape the Varukisias. Her name was Snowdrift. Should I hold her death against you? Should I make a vendetta out of every one of my tribe killed when Odessa attacked them, unprovoked? I’m sorry Slingshot is dead. Wasn’t trying to kill anypony here, but when the shooting starts, its not always possible to stop it before somepony ends up that way.”

Another long pause followed, then, “What are you doing here?”

“Probably the same thing you are. We’re here for the ship. The NCR has an army parked outside, and we’re just the team sent in to make sure things are safe. Which clearly they aren’t, since I saw the bodies of even more of your comrades, plus some slain Hyadean monsters a deck or two up. Now the real question is will you accept a truce so we can maybe both get what we want, or are we going to potentially lose more ponies we care about by pointlessly fighting each other?”

There was a strain in his voice, a mixture of pain and regret, plus a weighty tiredness as Glint replied, “It's not that simple, Longwalk. The NCR cannot be allowed to claim this wreck. I’m here with... a superior officer who is going to want to take the entire ship.”

Surprise washed through me, and my tone wavered, “Th...the whole ship? How? It’s half buried and near falling apart already. It can’t fly again.”

I glanced back at Arcaidia, “Right?”

Her own eyes mirrored my surprise as she shook her head, “Imposible. The Arc of Destiny is much damaged, with engines broken to many pieces. Even Veruni repair docks not fix her.”

Glint responded quickly, and I could hear in his voice he was regaining his composure, “The Vesuvius is nearby, using cloaking magic to remain hidden from NCR radar, or the SPP tower’s view. As soon as we can secure the ship from Hyadean influence and get its systems under control, the Vesuvius can use telekinetic tractor guns to lift this ship clear and take it back to our main base. Even if we can’t repair the ship, the technology here is priceless to our cause, Longwalk. There’s no way we’ll let it fall into NCR hooves without a fight. Even if that means fighting you.”

“There’s got to be a better way,” I said vehemently, jaw clenched, “Dammit Glint don’t you remember what we did for you and your squad!? You know I don’t want to fight you! Or anypony. Can’t we-”

“Longwalk, relax,” Glint said, taking another deep breath, “I’m just making it clear to you that whatever we... work out, you have to understand that Odessa isn’t letting this ship go. That being said, I’m under orders from my superior that if you did happen to show up that I’m to offer you an escort to the bridge.”

“Wait... huh?”

“She suspected you might turn up here. You have that Veruni with you, don’t you? The higher ups concluded way back when we first ran into the two of you that your Veruni friend might be leading you here. This ship is the only logical place she could eventually be trying to go, and once we were able to search its signal out after tracking the Elw Golem, well, it wasn’t hard to dispatch a team using Stealth Bucks to sneak in here past the Golem and start securing the place. She said that if you did make contact, to try and pacify the situation and bring you to her. I’m... sorry my squad attacked you. We’ve been repulsing Hyadean attacks, and they probably were on edge when you surprised them. What’s done is done. We still have problems securing this place. The team in engineering has gone silent and I haven’t been able to raise them. I’m trying to get the security systems under control, but by now we’ve blown up most the bots the ship sent after us. Now all I can do is take you to her and hope you two can work out a deal.”

My face screwed up in confusion as I absorbed all this, quickly asking, “Her? Her who?”

“The lady in charge. She wanted to command this mission personally. Odessa.”

Under Glint’s orders the survivors of his perimeter team “escorted” us to where Glint and the rest of his squad were holed up in the Ark of Destiny’s security room. The room itself was an oval shaped affair, something I was starting to notice was common for Veruni designs. Consoles lined the curved walls, their monitors long vacant and dark. One corner of the room was under the effects of the random zero gravity spreading through this deck, as several chairs and one of the monitor desks were floating in slow, lazy spins in mid-air.

The center of the room had a raised platform with half of it encircled by a railing from which several consoles and smaller monitors and strange node-like devices sprouted. One of these consoles was active, the node attached to it glowing with faint blue light that expanded into a holographic viewscreen upon which a menu with sharp alien text could be seen.

Cables were snaking from the console to several other devices, these of a more conventional Equestrian make. One was a generator of some sort, chugging along with a low hum of magic, and supplying the long dead alien console with power The other device was a cloud built Odessa terminal, at which sat one Odessa griffin whose talons pecked at the keys. She was rather small for a griffin, with blue tinted feathers and a dark gray coat on her lionine body. She barely glanced up from her owk at the terminal as my friends and I were brought in.

The rest of Glint’s squad was far more tense, energy weapons pointed our way the moment we entered the room. One mare in particular, a pegasus who I recalled was named Springbreeze, looked ready to open fire then and there.

“Are you sure about this Glint?” she asked, eyes locked like lasers onto me, “We’ve already lost too many because of this guy. We take him down now, even Odessa would have to see reason on it.”

Crossfire blew out a snort, taking in the sight of the Odessa squad. Besides the three survivors of the perimeter team there were only five others in the room. Other than Glint and Springbreeze I recognized the short, pale yellow form of the squad medic, Stitch, who looked far more uneasy and frightened than he was angry. I also recognized Nosedive, although the pegasus stallion had been little more than a wounded and delirious lump when we’d run into him at Silver Mare Studios. He looked better than he had then, but I winced slightly upon seeing the metal wings he now had in place of the flesh and blood ones. Seemed like the injuries he suffered back then had been too severe to save his wings. The last was the female griffin at the terminal, a new face in the crowd.

At Springbreeze’s words Glint held up a hoof, “Lower your weapons.”

The others did so, some with less than pleased looks. Springbreeze bristled but at a sharp look from Glint she obeyed and pointed her energy weapons down at the floor, but she never stopped fixing me with an red hot glare.

“I think she likes you,” Binge said teasingly, and I gave her a quick elbow.

Glint cleared his throat and took a step towards us. He was much as I remembered him, which I supposed was to be expected. It hadn’t been that long since the escape from the Varukisias. He still wore the simple white combat armor of an Odessa soldier, mounted on either side with the bocky shapes of laser-based magic energy rifles. His rust red face, very much like his mother’s, regarded me cooly.

“If you don’t mind, Longwalk, I’d like most of your companions to remain here with my squad, while you, me, and your Veruni friend there head up to the bridge to speak with the Colonel.”

“An’ why should we be agreein’ ta somethin’ like that?” asked B.B, “So ya can seperate us n’ make it easier ta take us on, that it?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” said Crossfire with a small, viper-like smile as she patted her rifle, “Honestly having Mr. Hero out of the way just means we’d get to cut loose more, if these bird brains are really dumb enough to try anything.”

“That kind o’ thinkin’ might work fer a arrogant cutthroat like you, but I ain’t keen on two o’ my best friends gettin’ marched off to chit-chat wit the leader of an army that turned my home inta a bunch o’ smokin’ craters.”

“All I can promise you is that Colonel Odessa has given her own word that none of you will be harmed unless you initiate an attack first,” said Glint.

“Then why does she just want to talk to Longwalk and Arcaidia alone?” asked LIL-E, “If she’s in such a reasonable mood I don’t see the point in separating us.”

Glint turned a raised eyebrow towards the floating eyebot, “Let me ask you this; if you were the leader of Odessa would you want to take the risk of meeting with an entire cadre of individuals who might have every reason to want to either kill you or take you hostage? She’s taking a big risk just talking to Longwalk and the Veruni. Having the rest of you there constitutes too big a risk. As far as I know, she just wants to talk.”

“And if we not like what words she speaks?” Arcaidia asked, and Glint sighed.

A heavy silence followed, ending when Glint admitted, “I don’t know. Might be it’ll become a fight. Might be she’ll decide to let you go for now. I just don’t know.”

“We’re not going to find out by standing here, so we should probably get a move on,” I said, trying to soften my voice somewhat and offer Glint a small smile, “I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances, Glint.”

“Yeah, me too. Springbreeze, you’re in charge here. Gale, keep trying to crack into the security system. I don’t want any more damned bots creeping up on us.”

The griffin at the terminal made an over the shoulder wave, not so much as twitching her attention away from her work. When she spoke it was in a light, scratchy voice, “I’ll get through one way or another, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant? He must have gotten a promotion since last we met. Looking closer I suppose there were a few more lightning bolts on his uniform insignia. As his squad settled into various guard positions around the room, I looked to my own team.

“Okay, Crossfire, let’s try to keep it cool while me and Arcaidia are chatting up Odessa. I don’t want any firefights starting that aren’t for self-defense. If this area gets hit by security bots or Hyadean critters, then pitch in to help them defend this room.”

She didn’t quite scowl, but it was close, “You’re getting awfully comfortable with giving the orders, aren’t you?” She held up a hoof to forestall me as I opened my mouth to reply, “Don’t bother. I won’t pull any pre-emptive strikes here, and play all nice with the sky terrorists.”

Her golden eyes flashed dangerously, “But if they start shit, I’m ending them.”

I swallowed past a dry mouth, “Fair enough.”

Binge slid up to Crossfire, smiling with devilish delight, “I like the way you think. Why don’t we hang out more often?”

“Because you’re a dirty ass Raider with terrible hygiene and I hate you?” Crossfire said, and Binge blinked, nodding slowly.

“Oh yeaaah, and you’re a uptight bitch with no sense of humor who keeps threatening my bucky. Why are we hanging out, again?”

I ran a hoof over my face, “Please, you two, behave.”

“Don’t worry Longwalk, I’ll keep an eye on them. If Binge does anything strange I’ll bonk her on the head,” said LIL-E, then turned towards Crossfire, “I guess I could just shoot her if she gets out of line.”

“Any day, any time, you’re welcome to try, tincan,” Crossfire said.

Glint gave me a sidelong glance, “They always get along this swell?”

“It's been a rough day. Giant fire Golem tried to kill us. Then a mutated slime monster tried to eat us. Then your people shot at us. Tends to put ponies on edge when they hit three life-or-death experiences before lunch.”

Glint stared at me for a second, then just nodded, “Then let’s do this before somepony twitches wrong and does something we’ll all later regret,” He sighed, “As if we don’t got enough of those already.”

“Hey,” spoke up Nosedive rather suddenly, taking a hesitant step towards me. He looked distinctly ill at ease with the way he fidgeted with his hooves, his ears half drooped. He gave Glint a neveros glance, as if asking permission to speak, and Glint wave a slight tip of one of his wings in some silent signal. Nosedive cleared his throat and met my eyes.

“Just wanted to say thanks for yanking my ass out of that Hellhound’s lair. Whoever’s side you end up on, I wanted to get that out before anything else went down.”

Springbreeze made a deep sighing sound, “Did everypony just forget these guys just killed Slingshot? We really just going to pass over that like its nothing?”

“Spring, drop it,” Glint said, and as she began to protest he spoke with heavier emphasis, “I’m not going to make it an order, but for sky’s sake just let it go for now. We fight here and now, even if we win, we’ll lose more squadmates. This was my fault for not telling Slingshot and the rest of you on perimeter watch to hold fire if another pony breached the perimeter. His death is on my shoulders more than theirs, so if you want to lay blame, put it on me.”

Springbreeze’s features twisted with conflict, clear caring for Glint mixed up with her equally obvious hatred for me. “Dammit Glint you know you couldn't have known they’d show up like that. Why do you cut these landbound so much slack? First my sis, now Slingshot... not to mention that damn robot shot me last time.”

“Damned straight I did,” said LIL-E, “You were a threat to the group. You pull anything here and I’ll do it again, only this time I’ll make sure it's between the eyes so none of that fancy Odessa medical tech can save your scrawny ass.”

“Enough!” my voice cut across the conversation as thoroughly as Gramzanber’s blade could cut steel. I felt my body shaking slightly from the residual effects of the slime beast’s poison touch, and had to strain to keep from throwing up on the floor then and there. I gulped, hardening my voice, “We’re not getting anywhere antagonizing each other, especially over what can’t be changed. Glint, let’s go. Sooner we talk to Odessa, the sooner we can be out of each other’s manes, one way or another. Arcaidia, follow me, the rest of you, for the love of the Ancestor Spirits, don’t start anything.”

If I looked half as ragged as I felt I wasn’t sure I struck much of an impressive figure, but my words seemed to sink in and my companions all gave murmured agreements and settled in against one wall of the security room while Glint’s squad backed off and gave them their space. Nosedive looked at me with one final, silent nod of thanks before joining Springbreeze and Stitch in quiet, whispered conversation with their squadmates while Gale kept working on the terminal.

Glint led us back out into the ship corridors, Arcaidia and I keeping pace with him as he started to take a route moving deeper into the ship.

“I’m sorry about Spring’s attitude,” said Glint, “But she’s got plenty of reason to feel that way. We lost two others besides Slingshot earlier, and she’s taking those losses pretty hard. Sling was our new recruit...” His eyes grew a tad more sunken and exhausted, “Kid was just out of training and didn’t even belong on an op like this, but we’re growing hard pressed to fill out squads after the losses we’ve taken lately.”

I exchanged a look with Arcaidia, then said, “We saw the bodies of the other two you lost. Looked like there are Hyadeans here, or were at least. Did you guys clear them all out? Do you even know what they’re doing here?”

Glint flinched, “Doubt we’ve gotten them all, but there’s been no word of further contact from the other teams. As for why they’re here, we don’t know. Might be the Hyadeans found this ship a long time ago and just posted some sentries to watch the place. Or they found it recently like we did and sent a group in to secure the ship. Either way, we see them, we shoot first, because these xenos aren’t much for answering questions.”

“They must be new,” Arcaidia piped in, “Security system would have destroyed them otherwise.”

“You folk run into any security bots?” I asked, “We didn’t on our way in. Just that freakin’ slime monster.”

Just thinking about it made my leg ache. Arcaidia’s healing spell had done plenty, but those residual toxins were still playing hell with me, making me feel feverish and half-dead. I hoped Binge was doing better. She had a solid amount of stamina, and we’d handled the scuffle with Glint’s perimeter team alright, so I was willing to believe Arcaidia’s assessment was corect and the poison wasn’t going to be fatal, just really, really aggravating until I had a chance to either sleep it off or get treated in the ship’s Med-Lab.

Glint’s eyes roved over me with partially disguised worry, “We ran into a couple, but not nearly as many as I thought we would. Odessa herself took care of most of them, and... and my father took care of the rest.”

“Hammerfall is here too!?” Great, not just the big griffin herself, but one of her Cocytus special forces agents was also here. I recalled Hammerfall’s artificial ARM was a giant chain-saw, and tried not to look as intimidated as I felt. Granted I’d fought a lot of tough battles lately, from Scythe’s crazed machinations to a Golem’s fiery fury, but I still didn’t look forward to possibly crossing blades with Glint’s dad.

A wry smirk lit up Glint’s otherwise haggard features, “Forgot you’ve met my father already. Yeah, he’s here. He took another squad to go secure the engine room while Odessa took the bridge. If there are any more Hyadeans here, chances are he’s already taken care of them.”

I could believe it. Hammerfall was a musclebound beast of a pegasus, and I didn’t doubt his lethality. If things did came to a fight with Odessa, our odds were looking less and less favorable. Here's to hoping that negotiations went well. Or as well as they could, considering I had no real idea what Odessa wanted to talk about. The last time we spoke she had offered a place for me within her organization. I’d flatly refused on moral principles.

If she made the same offer again, I couldn’t see myself having a reason to accept it, other than to avoid a fight. I still couldn’t approve of Odessa’s methods, even if after seeing far more of what the Hyadeans were capable of and realizing how much of a threat they might pose I also couldn’t fault Odessa for its goals. Perhaps I could convince Odessa herself to cooperate with me and my friends without needing to pledge myself to the cause? Surely she had to realize not that much had changed since we last spoke that I’d just join Odessa.

Unless this actually was a trap. I took a deep breath, preparing myself mentally for that possibility.

As we reach a branch in the corridors that had a ramp down one of its turns that lead upward, Glint paused and looked at Arcaidia. She looked back with a hint of budding annoyance at the scrutiny.

“What?” she asked, and Glint shook his head.

“Just... trying to decide if you really are a pony. We know Veruni use artificial bodies to infiltrate societies they target. It's what they did during the Equestrian war against the zebra. Its supposed to be possible to spot the fakes if you look at how they behave. That there’s just something slightly off about their mannerisms in a pony body. Got to admit I’m not seeing that with you.”

Arcaidia turned her head up, huffing, “I am pony, but that not matter. I am also Veruni.”

“She’s from our world, Glint,” I said, “She was just raised by the Veruni.”

Glint frowned in thought, “Why would the Veruni raise a pony? If they can already infiltrate with false bodies, seems redundant to train a spy from our own species.”

“I no spy!” Arcaidia snapped, “Sister Persephone take me from here because...” she paused, hesitating as she glanced at me. I recalled that Arcaidia had watched those memory orbs Bartholomew had given her, and had wanted to visit that orphanage back in Manehattan. What had she seen in those orbs, exactly? Taking a deep breath Arcaidia said, “Because my sister owed favor to my mother. Mother couldn’t raise me, so instead Persephone took me to give me life with her people. I was just tiny foal, never knew pony parents or life on this world. I was raised Veruni, so that is what I am. My flesh is pony but my spirit is Veruni.”

“Which means at the end of the day your loyalty is with your xeno origins, not with this world or its people,” Glint said, tone flat, resuming trotting forward, “Good to know.”

“Hey,” I said, catching up to him, “So what if she sees herself as a Veruni? Between them and the Hyadeans do the Veruni really seem like the bad aliens, here?”

“Frankly they both seem pretty bad to Odessa,” said Glint, “Both conquer worlds and reshape the planet and its inhabitants to suit their needs. Whichever race ended up conquering us, it’d spell the end of any freedom the species of this world would have, one way or another.”

I shook my head, tail twitching, “I’ve seen what the Hyadeans do to ponies. And I’ve spent a lot of time with Arcaidia and seen the kind of pony the Veruni raised. If I’m going to choose which group of aliens I prefer, the Veruni win that contest, hooves down.”

“Maybe they’re kinder in their conquests, but that doesn’t make it any less conquest,” Glint said, then sighed and shrugged, “I don’t know. Life was a lot simpler just a few months ago. Then I run into you and suddenly life gets way more confusing. I want to believe Odessa is doing what's right and necessary to protect the world. But with what the rumors coming out of Heimdal Gazzo are, and what happened with your tribe... I don’t really know what feels right anymore.”

“What rumors?” I asked, and his frown deepened and darkened.

“I shouldn’t say anything. If Colonel Odessa wants you to know, she’ll say it herself. We’re almost there, anyway.”

That was good news, because I was starting to get a fresh wave of dizziness and stumbled slightly in my walking. Arcaidia nearly stumbled herself, her artificial leg giving her a moment of trouble as she moved to steady me with her shoulder. Sweat beading my brow, I smiled at her.

“Thanks.”

“Poison not getting worse?” she asked, “I can heal you more.”

“No, its fine. Its not worse than before. Besides I’d feel bad using you to heal me when Binge is probably feeling just as bad and doesn’t have you nearby,” the thought actually bothered me quite a bit, “Hopefully we can get to the Med-Lab soon to get something to flush our systems with.”

Glint looked at me, hiding his concern poorly, “What’s wrong?”

“Stupid damned slime monster attacked us as we were exploring the ship. Blue goo it was made from was pretty toxic, and both me and Binge soaked up a dose. Nothing that’s going to kill us, but left us feeling like crap. You guys run into anything like that?”

“No,” Glint said, and he shuddered slightly, “But we did run into a real horror show when securing the ship’s medical facility.”

Arcaidia’s eyes narrowed, “Is Medical Lab intact?”

“Huh? Oh yeah. Well, most of it anyway,” Glint gave us a sheepish grin that didn’t seem to fit his otherwise tired and grim features, “Nosedive and Springbreeze both went a little hog-wild with the laser fire, and Slingshot...” a sad look crossed his face, “Slingshot saved me from getting my neck chomped by... well I think they were ghouls.”

Ghouls? Here? “Wait, how did ghouls get inside the ship?” I asked.

“They weren’t pony ghouls. They were Veruni,” Glint said, and Arcaidia faltered in her step, blinking at him incredulously.

“No... how many?” she asked.

“Maybe a dozen? The medical facility was intact, but still pretty wrecked from the crash. There were a bunch of xeno corpses lying around. It never even occurred to us they might have become ghouls from magical radiation seeping into the ship. When they struck the squad was taken totally off guard, and it was just quick reflexes, good training, and better armor and guns that let us deal with them.”

I took a deep breath as I saw Arcaidia’s eyes glisten with wet moisture, “Was one of them... purple haired? Female?”

Glint paused, thinking, “Uhh, I don’t think so. At least the ones that still had hair didn’t have any that was purple.”

Arcaidia let out a heavy sigh of relief. She must have been worried her sister might have been among the dead. We still lacked confirmation on that front, one way or another. I offered her a comforting nod as we continued on. The corridors became shorter and more narrow as we reached the front portion of the ship.

While I didn’t know the full shape of Ark of Destiny I got the impression of a half-saucer as one straight corridor abruptly became a sharply curving path that created a long quarter circle leading up towards an impressive set of doors. Structural damage was more severe here than in other parts of the ship, and we had to duck through several narrow gaps of broken hull and cables, but the doors themselves were intact. The large silver double doors were wedged open by a steel beam, and the doorway was covered by a pair of Odessa troopers in heavy power armor, their orange eye slits gleaming at us as energy weapons pointed our way.

“Don’t shoot,” said Glint, “I radioed ahead. Colonel Odessa is expecting us.”

One of the troopers tilted his (her?) head at us, before speaking in a female voice, “Go in, but you’d better let the damned Veruni bitch know if she so much as twitches wrong, she’s not leaving here alive.”

Arcadia snorted at that, and Glint let us past the two door guards and onto the Ark of Destiny’s bridge.

The bridge looked like one part disaster area, one part construction site. It was still the same basic shape I remembered from Arcaidia’s dream, but the damage from the crash had made a wreck of the place. Consoles were burst and left as nothing more than dark wounds in the walls, glass and shattered components littering the floor. The front viewscreen was a smashed mess, and most of the chairs had been tossed around, one embedded in the back wall. However it was obvious Odessa had been working to clear and repair what they could. A large portion of the center of the room was clear of debris and from here several cloud terminals were set up in similar fashion to what I saw in the security room, with cables lacing out like tendrils to plug into the few still intact consoles inside the bridge. Everything was lit by either the soft green glow of light from the terminal screens, or several stark flood lights that had been set up in the corners of the bridge.

I saw blood splattering the floor, ancient and dried to a stained dark brown, and remembered from my dream of Arcaidia’s memories where at least one Veruni crewmember had bled out. Yet other blood stains seemed out of place. My hunter’s mind kicked in, piecing together the sight of claw marks on the floor, and the way the walls were marked by both bullet holes and the more corroded markings of energy weapons fire. There’d been several fights here. One very recently, and another much longer ago, but both after the ship had crashed.

That struck me as odd. I could imagine Odessa had fought their way here, and maybe had to defend the bridge against security bots... but who had fought here before that?

As we entered the bridge I heard Gramzamber speak in my mind.

Longwalk, whatever else occurs here, it's important I inform you that the computer systems of the Ark of Destiny can be accessed by me from this bridge. I’ll need you to put me in physical contact with one of the intact consoles, if possible.

Wanting to keep my conversation with the ARM private I spoke back with my own thoughts, This is about that data you needed to download for being able to sync with me better, right? I haven’t forgotten. Just been seriously distracted by literally everything else happening right now.

I didn’t imagine you had forgotten, but yes, I can access the information I need to calibrate myself to your physiology better from the computer here. I detect at least one of the consoles is intact and active, and... Arcaidia is likely aware of this but the signal from Persephone is being broadcast from here.

Really? Does that mean she was here, sometime after the ship crashed?

Before I could ponder that question further my attention was drawn to the griffin standing in the center of the room, right beside the overturned captain’s chair in the middle of the bridge. While there were other Odessa soldiers present, a full squad of them in the heavy power armor, it was hard to pay attention to anyone other than Odessa herself. She simply had an intense presence, even standing still.

She looked just as I recalled from when we spoke on the Varukisias, yet this time she wasn’t a holographic projection, but here in the flesh. Which only made her presence hit harder as she moved to regard Glint, Arcaidia, and myself as we entered. Her eyes, a striking shade of sky blue, pierced right into me.

She was wearing a similar uniform to what I’d seen before, star white with golden tassels on the shoulders, but this one was covered in small, flexible ballistic plates of a polished metal sheen. She carried her sword at her right hip, along with a large semi-automatic pistol with an ivory handle in a shoulder holster. The blade was the same as I remembered, a silver handled artificial ARM with an X-shaped crossguard set with an emerald gem in the center, sheathed in a scabbard of blue and gold.

Upon examining us for the briefest of moments Odessa spoke in her shocking young yet resonant and intense voice, “I understand you ran into some difficulty upon encountering my troops. I apologize, I thought I’d given orders to ensure that if you appeared here, Longwalk, that you’d be conducted to me without incident.”

Glint, expression sullen, said, “The fault is entirely my own, Colonel. I failed to properly convey the importance of checking targets before opening fire to my perimeter team. As a result we’ve lost another soldier. I accept all consequences for this.”

“The death of another of our own is consequence enough, Lieutenant Glint,” Odessa said, her own expression showing genuine sadness, yet also iron firmness, “Punishment enough you’ll live with the memory of losing one under your command. Remember the feeling and use that pain to motivate yourself to do better.”

Glint saluted sharply with one of his wings, “Yes Colonel, ma’am.”

“Good. Now, Longwalk and... I’m to understand your name is Arcaidia?”

Arcaidia thrust her chin out in defiance, her whole posture radiating a certain level of aggressive assertion from the short filly, and I certainly couldn’t blame her. Here stood the leader of the organization that’d hunted and hounded her ever since we first set out into the Wasteland. Odessa was responsible for a lot of the trouble we’d had, actively hunting and trying to kill Arcaidia and anyone who’d chosen to travel with her. I imagined that between having to wander the corridors of her destroyed ship, contemplating the many possible fates of her sister, and now meeting her mortal enemy face to face, Arcaidia’s mood was probably less than stellar.

“I am Arcaidia. This ship is Veruni Empire property. You do not belong here.”

The soldiers around us visibly stiffened, and more than a few turned weapons towards us, but Odessa raised a talon and they backed off. The young griffiness regarded Arcaidia cooly, meeting my friend’s frosty stare on even terms.

“We belong here as much as the NCR, and you don’t seem bothered by serving them from what I’ve seen, Arcaidia. Estu vi curvae shae vai.”

Arcaidia took a step back as if slapped, her own voice dropping into her own language instantly in shock, “Esru dol venti mas. Ti mas, estu loshim golvir Veruni?”

Odessa smiled with a polite bow, “I’m not very well practiced, but Odessa does have sufficient records of your species’ language that we can get by. How do you think we got our computer systems linking with your ship’s if we didn’t have a grasp on your language? As to your question of ‘how’, you do realize you’re not the only Veruni who survived this ship’s crash, don’t you? Others landed on this world via escape pods like yours, only unlike yours they didn’t keep their occupants in stasis for decades. Most are dead by now, but we keep a few of the prisoners we picked up over the years in Heimdal Gazzo.”

Arcaidia’s jaw clenched tight, “You keep some of my shipmates prisoner? You will release them!”

“That’s not going to be a simple thing, I’m afraid,” said Odessa, turning her attention to me, “Before this devolves into pointless bickering, let’s get right down to the point of why I wanted you brought to me, rather than just ordering my people to shoot you on sight. Longwalk, I know you’ve already refused to join Odessa, and I accept that. What I want is to establish, if only temporarily, a truce with you.”

I looked at her with what I hoped was a halfway decent poker face. I’d been hoping for some kind of truce, but hadn’t actually expected Odessa to offer it first.”What would be the terms of this truce? Hate to say it but you do have an advantage of numbers of us, and if it came down to a fight you’d probably win.”

Odessa nodded in agreement, placing on talon on the hilt of her sword, not in a motion to draw it but rather what looked to me like a nervous gesture, “True. If we were to fight, here and now, with the way your group is split, and with the numbers I’ve brought with me into this ship, we’d emerge victorious. In some ways its still tempting. It’d ensure you’d no longer be a threat to my army, it’d eliminate the last free Veruni agent on the planet, and it’d ensure we could continue to salvage this ship in peace... at least until the NCR realized the mercenaries from Skull City weren’t coming back out.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes roving over the other soldiers in the room, Glint himself standing up straighter as she looked at him briefly before returning her piercing, yet somehow tired gaze to me. “The bottom line is that if I can avoid a fight that’d cost the lives of too many soldiers, I’ll take it. Odessa is being bled, bit by bit, by other battles elsewhere, and we need to marshal all our might for the larger fight to come. We don’t have lives to waste dealing with you, or Arcaidia, so if there’s even a chance I can reason with you and establish a short term truce, I prefer that over engaging in a battle I may know I can win, but will see many good soldiers lose their lives.”

“Alright... that’s a fair reason. More than fair, actually,” I said, my own exhaustion tinting my voice, “Believe it or not I don’t want to fight either, and I don’t want to see any more of your people die. But if we’re doing a truce there’s a lot of issues that need to be hashed out, Odessa. You have my tribe, including my mother as prisoners at your headquarters. Now I learn you’ve also got some of Arcaidia’s people held there too. How are we going to do a truce without some guarantee of their release? To top it off, we’re here on business from the Drifter’s Guild and NCR to secure this ship. Just letting you take it runs counter to our whole purpose in being here.”

I could tell the Odessa soldiers around me were agitated by my words, with only Glint seeming to maintain a relaxed stance while the others shifted aggressively, some wearing scowls on their muzzles. Odessa herself looked at me with her face bearing a deeply thoughtful, and somewhat troubled, look. Her voice kept steady, however, earnest but also sharp.

“Concerning your later point, just because you were sent in here to scout this vessel doesn’t mean you're beholden to stop us from taking it from under the NCR’s noses. You could easily just claim that once you saw how many of us were in here you decided the danger was too great and beat a retreat... which wouldn’t exactly be that far from the truth, would it?”

Her eyes hardened to steel pools, one talon pointedly tapping the hilt of her sword.

“Keep in mind, Longwalk, that if you choose to fight us, win or lose, you’ll likely lose more than we will, so it's in your best interest to seriously consider staying out of our way here. That said, here’s another point; we can make better use of this ship than the NCR can. The New Canterlot Republic is just scraping by and is hardly in any position to properly study this xeno-tech, let along reverse engineer it. However, if we acquire this ship, we can learn its secrets far faster and reproduce its technology much sooner than any other group in the world could.”

Arcaidia’s jaw tightened and I could all but hear her teeth grinding, “You use that technology to make war on my people, that is your brain plan, yes? Why let you do this?”

“Do you really think your in a position to stop me?” Odessa asked, “If you do, feel free to draw that Veruni blaster and take your best shot at me. Even if you got lucky, and managed to kill me, Odessa itself would go on. You and Longwalk would likely die here, along with most of your companions, and we’d still take the ship. I’m just trying to avoid unneeded bloodshed by offering a truce at all.”

“Arcaidia...” I said, touching her shoulder. She looked at me with a mixture of fierce desperation and boiling anger that was contained by a growing realization that we weren’t in a good position to make a fight of this. I could see her pain brimming in her silver eyes. She hated this. Hated having to let Odessa have the run of her ship, her home. Yet Arcaidia was an intelligent mare. She’d always had a bright head on her shoulders that usually could think things through faster and more clearly than I could ever match.

I could see her reaching the same conclusions I had, that talking things out with Odessa was better than risking it all on a fight we had only slim chances at winning. She hissed out a breath and looked away, saying nothing. I took a deep breath myself and turned back to Odessa.

“So you’ve made your point you can do more with this ship than the NCR, but this still doesn’t change the fact you have my tribe and Arcaidia’s surviving shipmates prisoners. Even if we can’t take you on easily here and now, you have to know I won’t stop until I free my tribe.”

“Yes, I do know that,” Odessa said, a helpless, small smile curving her beak and strangely warming her eyes, “I’d do the same in your place. I... regret that at times we must do things that are less than ethical in order to pursue the protecting of our world. Taking your tribe was, perhaps, a mistake. However I cannot so easily free them, and freeing our few Veruni prisoners is out of the question. At least for now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, eyes narrowing.

“I mean that for the time being our truce has nothing to do with them,” Odessa said firmly, “I can’t give you any promises that I can’t keep. I am Odessa’s leader, yes, but my authority is not absolute. Things are complicated, Longwalk, and I can’t afford to go head to head with the other members of the Council of Colonels. Yet. Look, its as simple as this; our truce means we’ll leave you alone. I will cease all pursuit of you and Arcaidia and rescind any orders still standing to do so. You’ll be free to do as you please... as long as you, in turn, agree to not interfere with any further Odessa operations. Including ceasing any plans you may have to try and rescue your tribe.”

“What, I’m just supposed to leave them as your prisoners!?” I shouted, now my own jaw clenching tightly in mirror of Arcaidia’s expression a moment ago.

Odessa shook her head, “Not forever. Give me time, Longwalk. With the Ark of Destiny as a prize, I can make a push against the other Colonels and perhaps get your tribe freed. They’re not much use to us anyway, since all of them tested negative for linking as a Guardian Medium. Just give me time, and I can get your tribe returned to you.”

“What about Veruni you have?” Arcaidia said with angry heat in her voice.

“That... would be more difficult. Most of them have been our prisoners for decades. We’ve learned all we can from them, true, but getting the other Colonels to agree to letting those xenos go is unlikely.”

Arcaidia’s eyes flashed like silver lightning, “Is one of them purple haired?”

Odessa’s head titled curiously, “I don’t believe so. It’s been awhile since I’ve checked those records, but I don’t remember any of our prisoners having purple hair.”

My unicorn friend’s shoulders sagged, perhaps partly in relief, or maybe just as much under the weight of still not knowing what had happened to her sister. If only we could get to the bridge computer, Gramzanber could possibly download some useful information on that front besides just getting the calibration data needed to keep me alive.

“Odessa,” I said, “If I agree to this truce, there’s two stipulations that I’ll need, otherwise I can’t do it.”

“What?” she asked, feathered brow raising.

I raised a hoof, “First, if you can’t get my tribe and Arcaidia’s shipmates free within two weeks, the truce will be off and I will be coming for them. Count on it.”

Her eyes flashed with a dangerous light, but I saw a hint of respect there as well, “Fair enough. If I can’t negotiate their freedom in that time then things would be going so poorly with the Council of Colonels it might actually benefit me if you and your allies stage a raid, if only because it would help illustrate to the other Colonels that their position is not as unassailable as they seem to think.”

I raised by own eyebrow at that. Just how poor was Odessa’s relationship with the other leaders in her organization? I couldn’t afford to give her any hint about how my friends and I were going to reach Odessa’s headquarters, but if she was fine we us making the raid to free my tribe then I wasn’t going to question that bit of good fortune. However I noted she hadn’t said anything about helping us, so if things did reach that point I imagined our truce would be off. For all I knew she might want me to make the raid just so she could capture me and Arcaidia then, and use that to pacify her fellow Colonels.

Regardless, I still had one other stipulation to address.

“Whatever your reasons, just glad we’re on the same page. Now, the other thing is that I want you to allow me to connect my ARM to the ship systems. Gramzanber needs to download some information that’ll keep my bond with him from eventually killing me.”

Suspicion wafted across the griffiness’ eyes, “If your ARM can access the ship’s computer, what’s to stop you from targeting us with its security systems, or erasing data we might want, or just outright activating a self-destruct system?”

“You’re just going to have to trust me, Odessa, the same way I’ll have to trust you won’t shoot us in the back the moment it's convenient for you,” I said, “This truce won’t work if we can’t show even a little trust. Besides, this is kinda life and death for me. Without that data, Gramzanber will eventually kill me from the strain of using him.”

She went silent, ruffling her wings and rattling her talons on the metal deck as she thought things over. Eventually she blew out a sigh and said, “You’re right. No point to this truce if I’m not willing to try trusting you. Very well, it's agreed. You can have your ARM access the bridge computer. Once that’s done, you and your group can leave the ship.”

“What about the NCR? How exactly do you plan to get the ship out of here with those airships in the sky?” I asked. I’d spent too much time trying to help the Drifter’s Guild make the diplomatic mission a success to just let Odessa create an incident. Odessa seemed to grasp my meaning, her expression turning a shade smug.

“You needn’t worry. It will take the NCR at least a day or two to mobilize sufficient personnel to begin salvaging this ship, and while I know they’ll leave some forces here to guard the area, when night falls I can use the Vesuvius to extract the ship with minimal difficulty. As far as I’m concerned you can report to your employers you didn’t find anything in here, and we’ll be long gone before they send their own troops in to check. Then when we take the ship, as far as the NCR will know there will be no connection between you and the sudden disappearance of this vessel.”

It sounded reasonable enough, although I couldn’t imagine how the Vesuvius was going to ‘extract’ the Ark of Destiny. My memory was more than a tad fuzzy, but I remembered the Vesuvius was the Odessa airship that had bombarded Saddlespring. I’d only seen it as a distant, sword-shaped, silver object in the sky back then. At a rough guess I estimated it was larger, and of a very different design, than the Varukisias. If Odessa rode it her personally did that mean the Vesuvius was the flagship? Well, larger or not, I still didn’t see how the ship was going to carry the Ark of Destiny out of here, but it was clear Odessa was completely confident. Ultimately it wasn’t any of my concern... well, aside from letting a ship of ridiculously advanced alien technology fall into the hooves of a military that didn’t think twice of destroying innocent lives in pursuit of power.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some serious reservations about that. I just didn’t see any other way to do this without starting a fight I wasn’t sure I could win. Sometimes you just don’t have the luxury of easy choices.

“Okay then, looks like we’ve got a deal,” I said, nodding towards one of the active ship consoles, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to let Gramzanber do his thing. Is it alright if Arcaidia accesses the computer as well? She came here following a signal that stems from here. I owe it to her to make sure she can finish what we started, before I ran into you Odessa folk.”

“If she so much as twitches a button that looks suspicious...” Odessa said, talon gripping her sword hilt tightly, “She’ll be dead before she has a moment to blink.”

“Well, that wasn’t a ‘no’,” I said with a dry chuckle, glancing at Arcaidia and making a gesture towards the console, “After you. I promised you I’d help you find your sister. She might not be here, but that signal is. Let’s see what she left behind.”

Arcaidia looked at me, a hopeful light in her silver eyes as she started to trot towards the console, me following beside her. It made me think of that night, what felt like so long ago, when we fled my tribal home together. Back then I didn’t know what we’d face, or how long our journey together would be. I just knew I owed this filly my life, and the life of my best friend, so helping her was just as natural as breathing.

We’d gone through a lot, just to get to one derelict ship in the middle of a forest, to access one computer console where the source of Persephone’s signal was located.

I watched as Arcaidia sat at the flat screened console beside the chair that had once been her station, before the crash. She raised her Pip-Buck and pressed a few buttons, its screen flashing a series of crests. The soldiers around ust tensed, and Odessa watched us with hawkish eyes, but Arcaidia ignored them as her Pip-Buck screen matched the screen on the console, which then hummed to life and projected a holographic image of a menu screen. I couldn’t read any of it, but one of the icons was blinking, and Arcaidia touched it with a shaking hoof.

The menu screen vanished to be replaced by a perfect holographic image of a Veruni woman. I recognized her curved, saturessque bearing, with the long mane of deep purple hair and intense red eyes. Her bodysuit, white and purple, was torn in places, and she was clearly wounded, with several deep cuts along her side seeping crimson blood. She held a large, silver colored starblaster in her right hand, a bulkier model than the one Arcaidia bore. She was breathing heavily as the hologram recording began, but quickly composed herself, looking down towards Arcaidia.

“Tivir, estu vol ti ren parvia est hurin...”

Persephone’s recording spoke in the Veruni language, but Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck started to pump out a synthesized voice that translated the words into Equestrian. That must have been why she had connected the PIp-Buck to the console.

“Sister, I really hope it's you listening to this recording...”

Persephone coughed, and there was blood on her lips. There was a distant sound like screeching metal and she looked up at something off screen, frowning and shaking her head.

“It wasn’t my smartest move, coming back to the ship, but I had to try and recover one of the nav satellites. They got here ahead of me. The Hyadeans,” Persephone’s eyes narrowed, “Arcaidia, listen to me. If you’re there, listening to this recording, then you’re the last free Veruni on this planet. Captain Feredyone was captured by a local military force that is aware of our kind and seeks to hunt us all down. Every other surviving crew member is either dead, captured, or... or worse. The Hyadean presence on this world, it’s being led by one called Zeikfried.”

The recording went fuzzy for a moment, and there was the sound of a distant explosion from the recording’s audio. Persephone grimaced.

“He’s... different than Hyadeans we’ve faced before. He intends to use this world as some sort of ‘testing ground’ for... I don’t know what. Conquest doesn’t seem to be his goal. He and his right hand, Alhazad, have been experimenting with this world’s native magic. I wasn’t able to find out what their end goal is, only that it has to do with an Elw facility in the Detrot region. A tower, beneath a place called Skull City. Arcaidia, whatever happens, do not let them access that tower. Use whatever means you can.”

There was a loud crashing sound, followed by a bellowing laughter that sounded too deep and warbling to be natural. Persephone aimed her starblaster at something outside the hologram’s ability to show. Pain lanced her face, and a deep sadness as she glanced towards where Arcaidia sat.

“I’m sorry to put it all on you, Arcaidia. You deserved better than this. You deserved to see your homeworld green and beautiful as I remember it. You deserved to see your mother. I wish... well, no point lamenting now, is there? We’re Veruni. We do our duty. Arcaidia, don’t forget who you are. Your best chance are those nav satellites. Failing that, the ship’s power core would carry enough yield to get the job done. Do me proud, sister. I love you.”

A final, titanic crashing sound combined with the whine of twisting metal was accompanied by a deep, gruff voice laughing off screen.

“Hah! Those security robots were a real fun warm up, but I’m hoping you can put up more of a fight, Veruni.”

Persephone smiled at the off screen speaker, “Oh don’t worry, you’ll get all the fight you want and more right here, Hyadean.”

The very last of the recording was Persephone firing her starblaster, which emitted powerful, thick bars of stabbing light, then the image faded away, leaving all of us on the bridge to sit in all encompassing silence.

Footnoet: 50% to next level!

Author's Note

One of these days I'll manage to get a regular update schedule going for my oldest story. I am dedicated as ever to finishing this, though. This chapter is laced with things being set up for what's going to be the rapid approaching climax of the NCR arc, ranging from Longwalk and Odessa meeting in the flesh, Arcaidia receiving the message from her sister, and Binge revealing a connection to the Guardian Lord statuette.

I want to thank all of you for your patience waiting so long for me to get these chapters done. I really appreciate it and hope you're all still enjoying the ride.

Chapter 35: Persephone

Chapter 35: Persephone

I watched Arcaidia closely, unsure of how she’d react to what she’d just witnessed in that recording. I was still absorbing it myself, an unpleasantly cold and numb feeling in my limbs that had nothing to do with the toxin’s still affecting me from the fight with the ooze monster.

I didn’t know Persephone. She was an alien creature that, quite frankly, looked pretty weird to me with her tall bipedal body, pale smooth skin, strangely flat face, and oversized, fleshy protrusions on her chest. I’d never actually met her, and knew nothing about her beyond that she was the one who’d adopted and raised Arcaidia as a sister. But that wasn’t the point. The point was that this was one of closest friend’s family, and the recording may very well have just showed us the last moments of her life.

I remembered that night in the tent my mother and I shared back in Shady Stream with my tribe. I recalled that moment Arcaidia had gotten that signal on her Pip-Buck and excitedly communicated to me, before she even knew a single word of Equestrian, that it was a signal from Persephone, her family, and that she wanted to find her. And as crazy as it seemed to me, even now, I’d been willing to leave my tribe that night, leaving beyond home and family to help this strange young unicorn filly. But Arcaidia had saved my life and that of my best friend, Trailblaze. I owed her. And I’d wanted to help her.

So we galloped out into the Wasteland, out into a wider world that I knew nothing about and was utterly unprepared for, but with the idea that somewhere, somehow, someway... we’d find that signal, and with it hopefully some sign of Arcaidia’s sister.

Well, here we were. Had it been... one month? Two? I couldn’t remember how much time our journey had taken, but it felt a lifetime. We stood here, on a mostly destroyed, dark bridge on an alien starship, surrounded by enemies who were only holding back from attacking us due to a temporary truce, and we’d just watched what may well have been Persephone's last stand against the alien menace of the Hyadeans, which even now continued to be a threat to the world at large.

I didn’t know what to do other than carefully watch my friend, and slowly scoot towards her and offer a hoof on her shoulder. Arcaidia felt cold under the fabric of her blue dress, which reflected the small lights stemming from the computer console in pale glimmers. She was still for a long moment, then leaned into my touch for a second. Just a second, however, before she pulled away and took a deep breath, turing silver eyes towards me that shone with barely controlled emotions.

“It not certain that Persephone is dead,” she said, “She very strong warrior. Not fall easily to Hyadean. May have escaped.”

I gulped and nodded. It was clear she was trying to convince herself, but at the same time it possible she was right. I didn’t know how tough a Veruni warrior was, but Arcaidia was certainly a pretty badass pony herself, and if Persephone was the one who’d raised and trained Arcaidia then it stood to reason Persephone was no lightweight herself. If she’d fought and won, or managed to survive and escape, then there was a big, big world out there and she could be anywhere in it. It may have been a long time since this recording was made, but from what I understood Veruni lived for centuries, so assuming something hadn’t killed her, Persephone might still be around out there.

Somewhere.

Thinking, I asked, “If she is still alive, would this ship have any means of tracking her location?”

I might not be anything resembling a tech-oriented pony, but I did know technology could do lots of nifty things, and it stood to reason that the Ark of Destiny might have some sort of communications or scanning system that could connect to devices like Pip-Bucks, or even ARMs, assuming Persephone was carrying either.

I saw Arcaidia’s eyes light up as she gave an enthusiastic nod, “Yes! If systems still work, can locate beacons on sister’s PDA or ARM. Even her warsuit have tracking beacon!”

As Arcaidia excitedly went to the console and started fiddling with it, Odessa walked up to us in a clack of talons on the metal deck and gave me a raised eyebrow, her eyes flicking suspiciously towards Arcaidia.

“What is your Veruni friend doing?”

“You saw and heard the same recording we did,” I told her flatly, “Arcaidia’s sister might still be out there. Could be the ship itself has the means to locate her, so Arcaidia’s checking. Have a problem with that?”

Odessa ruffled her wings, her lion-like tail giving a slight flick behind her, “It’s taking a long stretch of trust on my part to even let her use the ship’s systems, Longwalk. She’s the enemy of my people. A dangerous xeno agent, no matter her friendship to you. Only because I want to avoid an unneeded conflict am I going this far to give you some leeway. I just... prefer that trust not bite me or the soldiers relying on me in the ass.”

“Arcaidia is just looking for her sister. That’s it. Trust me,” I said, glancing sidelong at Arcaidia.

Longwalk, Gramzamber’s voice spoke in my head, I’ve nearly completed downloading the calibration data for stabilizing our link. I had a question for you, pertaining to what to do after that.

I blinked, then thought, Sure, what’s up?

Since I’m connected to the ship’s database, I have access to quite a large body of information pertaining to Veruni technology, history, culture, star charts, and military. Given the damage to the ship’s systems, this data has vast quantities of it that are corrupted and beyond recovery, but if I download the whole database I can later examine it in better detail to obtain whatever intact information I can on particular technology schematics, medicines, records, ect. I don’t know how much will be intact or if any of it will prove valuable to you, but I wanted to ask if you wished me to download the database or not.

I felt my tail wagging about in a small fit of excitement, and tried not to gulp as one of my ears twitched. Odessa gave me an odd look and I returned an awkward and hopefully innocent looking smile.

Uh, Gram, if you can do that, then go for it! Um, unless there’s a downside?

Gramzamber’s reply carried with it a note of hesitance, If I enact a download it will tie up more of my consciousness with the ship’s computer. Were the ship to take damage from some manner of power surge, shorting out the computer system, that may cause damage to me.

I winced at that, and thought on the matter for a few seconds, then replied, We’re not planning to fight anyway, so go for it. If a fight does break out, and there’s some risk of a power surge, then you can halt the download, right?

That is correct, Longwalk. In the event of need, I can stop the download, though doing so may lose us more data.

Fine by me. The data is a bonus, not the objective. We’re technically done what we’ve come here to do already. If we can just get our tails out of here without anypony else getting hurt, I’ll mark this day as a ‘win’.

Unfortunately my thought was punctuated by Arcaidia snarling out a sudden, harsh curse in her own language as she slammed a hoof on top of the console. The Odessa soldiers around us all raised their energy weapons in a rattle of plastic and metal, but Colonel Odessa herself raised a talon to forestall any further action, giving me a pointed look.

Clearing my throat, I approached Arcaidia, whispering, “What’s wrong?”

I could see the frustration painted on her face like a dark shadow, the feeling filling her voice with a thorny, pained quality. “Esru di gilvara ti mas! The ship scanners smashed. Only short range array still working. Find sister if she be standing two meters in front of hull, but no further! Maaaaas!”

She hunched in on herself, and I heard a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sob as my friend clearly tried to keep herself from crying, taking several deep, shuddering breaths. I couldn’t help myself and gave her a comforting nuzzle, to which she let out a bitter, small laugh.

“I’ll be rain as right, toaster head ren solva. Need to think. Sister Persephone must think to leave clue of where she go. Just need to find it.”

She gave my nose a little shove, but managed a quick if tired smile for me to show she was getting herself under control. I nodded to her, and stroked my chin in thought. Assuming Persephone had survived the fight her on the bridge, or at least escaped, where would be the logical place to leave a clue to where she’d gone?

“Would... she have left something in your quarters on the ship?” I asked.

Arcaidia tilted her head, then gave a firm nod, “Possible. Or her quarters. Must search both.”

Odessa let out a sigh, eyeing both of us with one talon tapping on the deck, “Now hold on a second, I haven’t agreed to let you all just have the run of the ship. How do I know you’ll just be searching specific rooms, instead of trying to undermine Odessa in some way?”

I rubbed a hoof on my forehead, and held up my other hoof to keep Arcaidia from shouting anything unfortunate, as I saw her turn a withering and frozen glare towards the griffiness.

“Look, Colonel Odessa, I don’t know how I can make this any clearer, any plainer to you. I DON’T want to fight you, or any of your soldiers. I never have. Not once. If you just leave me and my friends alone then your troubles with us would pretty much be at an end.”

Minus the whole situation with my tribe, but that was an issue for another day. Right now I just needed to keep violence from breaking out in the here and now.

I looked at Odessa in the eyes. Most people, pony or otherwise, tend to underestimate the importance, the impact, of eye contact. Its a lot harder to lie when looking someone in the eye. You see more of the person when gazing right into those open peepers, and whether you like them or not, there’s a connection made there, in that moment of eye contact.

Looking at Odessa’s eyes I saw the pressure around their edges, the mounting exhaustion, the pride, and the fear. She young. So damned young. As young as I was, but she was the commander of an army of hundreds if not thousands, with so much responsibility fit squarely on those shoulders I was amazed she wasn’t being crushed down by it. But I could see it was wearing on her. I could also see she wasn’t some mad or evil overlord, nor some cold hearted soldier concerned only with results. There was respect and care in those eyes, and while I imagined it was focused solely on her duty to her fellow soldiers, Odessa wasn’t as arrogant as Shattered Sky had been, or as rough edged as someone like Crossfire.

She was just a good soldier trying to do her job, and whether I liked it or not I was still technically her enemy. I was somepony who had been part of killing her soldiers in the past, and she recognized I might end up doing so again in the future, especially if she couldn’t deliver my tribe to me and I was forced to try and rescue them myself.

I could also see she had, at least a little, come to respect me. Or at least fear what I could do. Which surprised me because I was a hell of a lot more scared of her and what she and her army could do.

We kept up that stare at one another’s eyes for a moment before Odessa sighed, “So be it. You’ll have an escort at all times. Lieutenant Glint.”

“Ma’am,” Glint said, having been respectfully and quietly standing to the side the entire time.

“Your squad is being reassigned to escorting our guests as they take care of what they need to around the ship. As long as they don’t take any action that might threaten our operation here they are to be treated as friendlies. Understood?”

Glint saluted, but he was frowning, “What about Gale’s work on the security system?”

“With the terminal here on the bridge operational I can spare one of the techs here to take over at the security station,” Odessa said, “You and your squad have the most experience with Longwalk and his team. I trust you to keep matters... peaceful while they finish their own search, and to know when or if Longwalk or his Veruni companion might do something that would endanger our own work here.”

“Understood, ma’am,” he said, then he turned to look to me and Arcaidia, “Is there anything else you two need to do on the bridge?”

Gram? I asked internally.

Now that I’ve connected with the system, I can continue my download wirelessly. I have the calibration data now, and am installing it to my system. You might feel a few, minor tingling sensations, but don’t fear, that’s just my own astral resonance link re-adapting to your own in the proper fashion.

I smiled at that, which occurred to me might appear creepy to anypony watching who didn’t know why I was smiling and I ended up politely hiding my face with a hoof and a cough as I turned to Arcaidia, “I’ve got what I need. What about you? Anything else you can do on the bridge?”

Arcaidia gave the console a thoughtful look, “Wanted to get translation module for better speaking of Equestrian, but it take time to search for it in system, and might not be there after so much time and damage.”

“Translation module?” I asked. Hadn’t I seen something like that mentioned on her Pip-Buck a long time ago, back in Saddlespring?

“Data module that act as translator. Similar to Crest spell, but utility magic that take my words in Veruni and translate flawlessly into native speak,” Arcaidia said, a faint, embarrassed smile on her face, “I like learning Equestrian with B.B, but always wish I could talk better. Translation module let me talk perfect and not sound strange.”

To this I just shrugged and gave her a lopsided grin, “I dunno, I kind of like the way you sound. I mean, if you want to grab that translator, feel free, but I bet with another month of work with B.B you’ll be talking just as good as it’d let you, and you’d be doing it with your own voice.”

My words had the effect I hoped for, clearly brightening her mood, Arcaidia’s face losing some of its frustration and tension from before as she chuckled at me, “Hmm, you probably right, ren solva. Very surprising, you with good ideas.”

“I’ll try not to let it happen too often,” I replied with a smirk, “Wouldn’t want it to go to my head.”

Glint cleared his throat, wings twitching slightly, “Soooo, you two going to kiss or something, or are we getting on our way?”

Both Arcaidia and I managed to roll our eyes at the same time at him. We’re quite coordinated that way. I held up my head and said, “Arcaidia’s a friend, Glint. Besides, I’m taken already.”

“Uh-huh,” Glint said.

Arcaidia cleared her throat, suddenly finding a ceiling panel very interesting, “That all aside, if we are to be followed by soldier ponies, have them all and our peoples meet us at Medical Bay.”

“Why do you need to go to the Medical Bay?” asked Glint, but I already figured I knew the answer before Arcaidia even raised her artificial leg in a clatter of metal.

Glint blinked in surprise, “Huh, you know I saw that, but didn’t quite register that you’d lost a leg somewhere. Wait, are you saying your medical technology can fix a missing leg!?”

“Why not?” I said, “They travel to other worlds. Growing new limbs seems pretty simple in comparison. Besides, Odessa’s medical tech is pretty impressive to, right? Your mother’s cybernetics are incredible.”

“Yeah, but it took her months of rehab and adjustment in one of our hospitals before she could even move her cybernetic limbs, and that was after months more of reconstruction after Hellhounds basically tore her apart,” Glint said, shuddering, “I’m lucky she was even able to have me.”

Arcaidia tapped her artificial leg on the ground, “Veruni tech make new leg in an hour, maybe two. If surgery equipment still in piece, it attach leg in minutes. This world benefit much from Veruni if you not so stubborn about fighting us.”

Glint glanced away at that, but Odessa just circled around to Arcaidia’s front, and prodded my friend’s chest with a talon.

“Just do what you need to and let’s leave discussion about who’d benefit for what for some other day, Veruni. The price of your kind’s benevolence would be our freedom as a species, but I’m willing to bet you’ve never really talked with Longwalk about that fact, have you?”

Arcaidia was silent for a moment, sharing a cold stare with Odessa. Much as I’d been able to assess Odessa with that kind of eye contact, I got the feeling the two females were sussing each other out, seeing what the other was made off. Apparently something impressive for both of them, since both looked away at the same time.

“Another day,” Arcaidia said.

“Another day,” Odessa agreed.

Well, who says we all can’t get along?

Reaching the Medical Bay wasn’t particularly difficult, but I remained tense the entire trot there. I’d been in too many confined, dark areas with things trying to kill me to feel remotely relaxed while Glint led us through the pale metal corridors. After leaving the bridge we backtracked slightly before taking a side passage that led to a winding, circular ramp that down one deck. We had to traverse several shattered, broken rooms with bent walls or ceiling, rock and dirt from the crash sneaking its way in past torn cables and wires from the wall. A number of pools of toxic blue goo had to be avoided as well, but thankfully none of it was a mutated, living mass trying to eat us.

Every now and then we’d pass either the remains of a shot up and exploded security robot. The small, spidery constructs were made from the same silvery white metal the rest of the ship was, and looked as fast as they were spindly and fragile.

“Damned things were a bitch to hit,” Glint muttered as we passed the destroyed robots, “Never seen bots move that quick.”

Arcaidia nodded with an element of pride on her face, “Ship still protect itself even after so long abandoned.”

Glint turned a cold glance her way, but said nothing as he continued to lead us. I decided to try to ease the tension a bit with some small talk.

“So Glint, what was it like growing up in the Odessa tribe anyway? I’m kinda curious.”

Our hoofsteps hollowly clanking upon the metal floor was all that echoed in the corridor for a moment before Glint slowly, reluctantly answered, “Normal, I guess? I don’t know how it compares to the way anypony else grows up. Most of us are born on either Vanguard Island, or Heimdal Gazzo itself.”

“And island?” I asked, prompting him politely, but also genuinely curious. Odessa had been such a mysterious and dangerous overhanging threat in my life, it felt sort of good to get a chance to learn a bit more about the ponies who comprised the shadowy organization.

Glint grunted, “I probably shouldn’t say too much. A lot of this isn’t really meant for outsiders. But... ah, fuck it, if mom trusts you, I can too. Vanguard Island is where most of us live, and our headquarters, Heimdall Gazzo, floats over it. Higher ranked officers usually live in Heimdall with their families, and the majority of non-coms life on the Island, along with their families. Rank pretty much determines everything.”

He ruffled his wings a bit, “We spend our foalhoods learning to fly and getting basic schooling, but by age ten we’re expected to choose between what branch of Odessa we’re joining. Special Ops, Logistics, Research and Development, or the Combat Corps. Most try for Special Ops, since that’s where the fastest track to officer training comes, but most test out of it and end up in Logistics or the Combat Corps. Smart foals get hoof picked for Research and Development, sometimes way younger than ten, depending on just how smart they are.”

“Huh, that’s around the same age foals in my tribe start training to be a hunter,” I said, for a second feeling a twinge of homesickness as I thought back to my young foalhood days, getting shown how to track, skin, and cook geckos. My mother taught me, mostly by herself. It was common for foals to get taught by groups of the older hunters, but not a lot wanted to have anything to do with me because of my outsider blood. Even so, I didn’t mind. Those were good memories, and I found myself chuckling under my breath.

“Not that there were really many other jobs back in my tribe. If you weren’t hunting, you were fixing something, or crafting something for the tribe. Everypony had to stay busy.”

I saw Glint give me a curious look, his own mouth twitching slightly in what might have been a smile, “Not so different from Odessa then. Leisure time is usually limited. Once you’re in your branch, life gets pretty regimented. Daily training and classes, broken up by platoon. You’re platoon is basically your new family, your immediate squadmates your siblings. I mean, I still had time to visit my parents sometimes, but once I was in the Combat Corps, my life revolved around training with my squad. Heh... they weren’t bad times. Summerbreeze and Springbreeze always kept things lively, and Nosedive liked to get into enough trouble for all of us combined.”

His look of fond memory slowly turned to one of pained bitterness, and I glanced away from him. I had known he and his squad were tightly knit, but hadn’t quite realized it went to the point of family. Thinking back to every Odessa soldier I’d ever fought, it put things in a freshly real perspective that wasn’t all that comfortable for me.

“I’m glad you took the truce, Longwalk,” Glint said, breaking the awkward silence, “Even if it just lasts a little while, I’d rather not fight you.”

“Same here, Glint. For what it’s worth, I never wanted to fight to begin with, and still don’t.”

“Yeah...” he said, looking at the floor as he walked, “Still might happen, though, won’t it? We’ve still got your tribe.”

I gulped and gave a shallow nod, “You do. If Odessa can’t deliver them, I’m going to have to come for them myself.”

A tired sigh escaped Glint, “Good thing I’m not stationed on Heimdall Gazzo.”

The conversation petered out there, but it was just as well, because a minute later we reached the Medical Bay. It was located further back along the ship’s hull than I would have thought, though admittedly I was mostly guessing at where we were within the ship overall. Just by travel time I gauged we were maybe two thirds, or maybe three quarters of the way towards the stern, not far from one of the big engine protrusions. We were only one deck down from the bridge, so this had to still be pretty close to the top hull, but there were no windows for me to look out and check.

The Medical Bay itself was set at the end of a small promenade, connected to by three different hallways that I could see, with myself, Arcaidia, and Glint coming in through one of the passages along the north wall. Or what my Pip-Buck was telling me was north at any rate. Several padded benches lined the walls, separated by metal bowls with dirt in them, and the desiccated remains of what might once have been plants.

The doors to the Medical Bay were large, circular, and already standing open. Light from a number of chemical glow sticks cast sickly green shadows across the walls, remnants from when Odessa had secured the area earlier. Glint had radioed his squad and I’d contacted my friends via Pip-Buck to let them know the situation, so we were waiting for them to arrive. Glint had said it might take a minute as his squad was relieved by the techs Odessa would send from the bridge, and the route they had to take to get here was a bit longer anyway.

So we were left sitting in the dark, only a few glowsticks and the light of Arcaidia’s horn and my Pip-Buck casting an ever shifting glow of soft lights across the promenade that only barely kept the darkness at bay. The deathly quiet of the long empty ship didn’t help at all with relieving the tense, haunting atmosphere. I started to shift and cast sharp looks at every shadow I saw.

“Longwalk, relax, we cleared this area out pretty thoroughly,” Glint said.

“Yeah, and my friends and I still ran into a crazy ooze monster on our way in, so I’m going to stick with being paranoid if it's all the same to you,” I replied, one hoof resting comfortably on Gramzanber as I kept looking around. The entrance to the Medical Bay was looking more and more dark and ominous by the second, “You said you ran into ghouls in there?”

Glint cast a look at Arcaidia for a moment before answering, “Veruni ghouls, yes. We took care of them.”

Arcaidia twitched at that, but said nothing, having taking a seat on one of the comfortable looking, plush benches. Her starblaster hovered casually next to her in a pale ice-sheet glow of magic, and while the small unicorn looked alert, she wasn’t nearly as tense as I was. Maybe I should take a cue from her and calm down a bit, but for some reason my nerves were only getting wound up more, like some inner instinct in me was poking my brain about a clue I was missing.

Ghouls... ghouls... rotting corpses. They usually smell.

My nose twitched. I didn’t smell anything.

Curious, I turned to the open Medical Bay doors and slowly, carefully, shone my Pip-Buck light into it. The room beyond was large, and mostly cloaked in shadows still, making it hard to make out details. Tables, beds, various strange looking equipment, but I couldn’t see much. More importantly, I didn’t see any ghouls. Or rather, I didn’t see any bodies.

“Uhhhh... Glint? What did you do with the corpses of the ghouls after you killed them?”

“Huh? Just left them where we shot them. No point in moving them. Leave that shit to the clean-up teams once we got the ship out of here,” Glint replied, then paused and asked, “Whyyyy?”

I felt a bit of sweat bead my forehead as I said, “Because I don’t see any bodies in here.”

That’s when the stench hit me. It was like a physical wall of rotted flesh stink that billowed from the entrance to the hallway across from us, and we had all of a second to react before shambling shapes came barreling out at us. I tore Gramzanber from his sheath and barely got him crossed in front of me as I reared up on my hind legs, right before one of those shapes flung itself into a flying tackle that hit me in the barrel and sent me crashing to the cold floor with a horrific, moaning, dead thing on top of me!

I saw a flash of pale yellow teeth gnashing at my face, only Gramzanber’s shaft keeping the thing at bay as I pushed back at the ghoul. I could barely make out its features, but I could tell this was a Veruni. It had the long bipedal legs, scrambling to try to shove itself further atop me. It had those strange, long arms, with the many digits at the end of its rotted hand, the flesh peeled back to bare bones that acted as claws that scrapped at my chest and arms, only my armor keeping me from harm.

Its face was missing enough flesh that I could see more teeth than lip, and its eyes were like egg whites, leaking viscous green pus. It was wearing some kind of tight skinned, tattered uniform, and I couldn’t really tell if the ghoul was male or female, only that it was hungry. It turned its head to the side and lunged over Gramzanber’s shaft to bite at my shoulder, eliciting a cry of pain from me as the pressure of the bite bruised me, even if the teeth couldn’t get through.

With a grunt I managed to get one of my hind legs pulled back and braced against the ghoul’s chest and shoved. It went flying into the wall with a wet smack, and before it fell I rolled to my hooves.

The dark promenade flashed with red light, and I saw Glint flying backwards, his laser rifles blazing a crimson trail against a trio of ghouls that scrambled and jumped after him. The red beams truck the lead ghoul and punched burning holes through it, but it kept coming, its flailing arms grasping the air and its long, humanoid legs giving it ridiculous speed as it jumped to try to pull Glint down.

He rolled aside, but the promenade only had about a twelve foot ceiling, and he had little room to maneuver. He couldn’t stay out of the ghoul’s reach for long.

Meanwhile Arcaidia, eye’s like silver headlights, had leapt from the bench she’d been sitting on and quickly thrown herself to the side as a pair of ghouls had charged at her. One ended up smashing itself onto the now empty bench, screaming in a deathly wail as it scrambled to right itself, but the other had snagged Arcaidia’s dress and was wrestling to try and pull the short statured unicorn towards its snapping teeth.

Arcaidia, face twisted to a hard mask, growled something in Veruni and shoved her horn towards both ghouls, the glowing script of a Crest spell flowing around her horn a moment before she snapped out a burst of thick ice that speared through one ghoul, and pinned it to the other. But both ghouls still moved, as if the ice spears were only an irritation, and flailed towards Arcaidia once more as she backed away.

I had troubles of my own, as the ghoul I’d thrown into the wall had landed on its feet and was coming towards me again, joined by another, the last of the bunch that I could see. Fortunately these things didn’t seem all that smart, just hungry and fast.

Luckily I was faster, now that I was no longer taken by surprise.

Accelerator.

Cool blue flowed over my vision, bathing everything in smooth cobalt hues. My blood still pounded in fear from the sudden attack, but I’d be damned if I was about to let myself or any of my companions get taken down by some decomposed corpses that didn’t know how to stay dead! I moved between the two ghouls coming at me, their motions slow as drunks trying to swim through syrup. Gramzanber’s edge spun in my hooves as I made one, then two neat and clean slices that severed each ghoul in half at the waist.

I turned from them before their bodies were even done falling into two pieces and rushed the trio going after Glint, as from what I could see Arcaidia had her starblaster well aimed at the pair going for her and was already firing. I could see the sparks of silvery white energy flowing through then out of her starblaster barrel in a brilliant slow motion display as I passed her, seeing the streaking bolt of alien light like a fast flowing stream as it smashed into the head of the lead ghoul going after my unicorn friend.

Yeah, she had that. I was more worried about Arcaidia’s mental health than her physical health. The look on her face wasn’t its usual, calm and cool mask when she fought. There was pain in her silver eyes, a tightness around her lips as she grimaced. I didn’t have to think hard to understand why. These weren’t just random enemies she was fighting, not just some monsters to put down.

These Veruni were Arcaidia’s crew. Her family. She’d worked with these people long before I’d ever met her. Now she was having to destroy their corpses as they tried to eat her.

My jaw clenched as I focused on the ghouls ahead of me, just as two of them managed to leap up and grab onto Glint, bearing him downward to the floor. I didn’t give them a chance to start tearing into him. Gramzanber’s flashing edge took the head off the one furthest back from Glint, then that strike flowed quickly into a thrust that pierced one of the ghouls bending over the pegasus. I shoved and turned the spear, throwing the ghoul against the wall with most of its chest missing, then turned the back end of the spears shaft around and thrust its spike through the head of the third ghoul just as its teeth were about to reach Glint’s throat.

I yanked back, tearing Gramzanber’s spike end free of the ghoul’s head, taking with it a good chunk of brain matter and matted, faded red hair. For good measure I turned around and proceeded to plant Gramzaner in the ground to act as leverage as I kicked out and smashed a hind hoof into the side of the ghoul and knocked it off of Glint.

Only then did I deactivate Accelerator and let my senses and reflexes return to normal speed. I grunted slightly from the pain of backlash, but it was notably less severe than usual. Was this because of the calibration data Gramzanber had downloaded? Regardless, I was grateful for it as I turned to see how Arcaidia was doing...

...Only to get a flying ghoul to the face.

“Oh shit!” my eloquent self managed to say before the ghoul, which was only half a ghoul I noticed, as it was the upper torso of one of the ghouls I’d cut in half, sprang at me while using its arms like legs and started biting at my face.

“Aaaaah!” I continue to opine in a most dignified manner as the ghoul went about the process of biting the ever loving crap out of me. It seemed to have wisened up to the idea that it couldn’t get through my armor, bit it was unfortunately aware of how unarmored my face was, so that’s what it went for. My nose took a painful nibble first, followed by my cheek, blood spurting from jagged old teeth ripping flesh.

Not in any good position to easily use Gramzanber, I started whacking the ghoul’s head with one hoof while pushing back with the other, trying to keep it from taking any more chunks out of my admittedly already fairly scarred up face. My strikes didn’t seem to be fazing this thing, but I was managing to prevent any more of my bits from being gnoshed upon for the moment. The problem was that this wasn’t the only ghoul having trouble staying death.

I saw the other ghoul I’d cut in half also pulling itself only with its arms, quickly approaching to join its friend in feasting upon fresh Longwalk. On top of that the ones I’d just knocked off of Glint weren’t dead either. The one with the caved in chest was rising, its body flopping this way and that but still standing with a pitiful moan. The one I’d spiked through the head was twitching as it also stood, and I saw the wound itself slowly closing like it was being affected by a healing spell.

They’re regenerating!?

Even the ghoul I’d decapitated was still moving, its body flopping around and it’s head randomly biting as it glared at me.

I didn’t have time to question why these things weren't dying like normal, because the bisected buddies were now both upon me, one of them clawing and biting at my hind legs while the other continued to try to make a meal of my face. In a desperate move I reached over with my head and grabbed up the shock baton in my right saddleback, yanking it out with my mouth. The ghoul on my chest took a bite for my vulnerable neck, but I knocked it aside, then rolled over and shoved the shock baton into its mouth and triggered it.

Sparks flew and the ghoul spasmed and flailed. I yelled in pain as the other ghoul got a good bite through the armor on my hind leg, but then I heard Glint yelling, “Longwalk, roll aside!”

I did so, kicking as I went, shoving the two ghouls off. I ended up tripping the third ghoul I’d stabbed through the chest, sending it tumbling to the ground. I glanced over to see Glint had flown over to the side of the promenade to get a clear line of fire, and now his laser rifles blazed to the point of their barrel’s turning bright, cherry red.

Crimson lances stabbed at the ghouls, but while Glint swept his rifle fire over them, he ended up focusing on just one at the end, pouring shot after shot into the ghoul whose head was regenerating.

After a second the ghoul’s body flailed and turned into a reddish orange outline before it turned to ash. I somehow didn’t think it’d regenerate from that. However Glint’s rifles were almost smoking and he was scrambling to eject their dead batteries and reload fresh ones, while we still had multiple ghouls stalking towards us.

I then heard a loud, piercing shout, a cry of wrath and pain as Arcaidia charged to the center of the room. The two ghouls she’d been dealing with were still alive, but one of them was missing an arm, and both were pierced by ice crystals. Arcaidia jumped to the center of the promenade, at around the middle point between us and all of our enemies, and her horn lit up with a fountain of pure blue magic. Multiple layers of Crest circles appeared and Arcaidia almost snarled as she turned her horn around in a circle and proceeding to bath the room in bursts of flowing ice.

The ice only narrowly missed me and Glint, while the rest of the area was turned into a wintry ice box of sparkling blue. Every single ghoul was frozen over, slammed into the wall or all but glued to the floor by a thick sheet of ice, only leaving the heads exposed.

Arcaidia’s legs shook, her face flushed red as she huffed out tired breaths, sinking to her haunches after that display of potent magic.

Gulping, I stood and said, “Arcaidia-”

She held up a hoof, “Quiet. Not done yet, ren solva.”

I looked around, seeing that the ghoul were indeed still alive. Each one was encased in ice save for their heads, which twisted and twitched around, each one letting out mournful, hungry moans that filled the air with a shuddering chorus. It made me feel sick to my stomach, listening to these tortured creatures.

Glint finished reloading his rifles and with a hard look on his own face aimed them at the closest ghoul, but Arcaidia spoke before he fired.

“No. Not your crew, not your task. Stand aside. Veruni take care of their own.”

He glanced at her briefly, then with a sighing shrug nodded his head and backed off. I just stared at Arcaidia as she calmly approached the first ice entrapped ghoul and aimed her starblaster at it’s head. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I just stayed respectfully silent as she set about the grim task of putting her old shipmates to rest, one silvery blast after another.

The starblaster did its work well. A concentrated beam, to the head of each ghoul, gradually turned them to white dust, a point to which none of them could conceivably regenerate from. The question as to why they could regenerate in the first place went unasked for now. It wasn’t as if any of us could do more than guess, anyway. Was it just a property of the Veruni turning to ghouls? Was it something in the Medical Bay that got into their bodies? I had no clue, and honestly it didn’t matter much. I was more worried about Arcaidia.

Once the task was done she just slumped against one wall of the promenade and sat there. I approached her, looking at her worriedly as I lowered my head to gaze up at her. It was a little hard to talk because my cheek was puffing up from the bite wound on it, but I ignored the pain.

“Arcaidia?”

She took a moment to respond, slowly looking at me. She then took a deep breath and slowly holstered her starblaster.

“I...I will be alright, ren solva. Just... need minute or two.”

I wasn’t sure if I should press harder or not, but I doubted she’d appreciate it, so I just nodded and turned to sit next to her. I noticed that Glint was looking at Arcaidia, his face pensive and contemplating. When he saw me looking he glanced away, with something akin to a shadow of guilt on his rusty red features.

A moment later a set of dots appeared on my E.F.S, coming from the end of the promenade’s hall entrance. I stood, but not with any haste or readiness for combat. The dots weren’t red, after all.

“Okay, who’s screwing with my bucky and in need of a swift belly stabbing!?” Binge said as she did a surprisingly smooth somersault into the hall, the large gleaming form of a steak knife of the ‘Cosmic’ brand in her mouth, her poofy tail bristling.

Crossfire dove in behind her, rolling to the side and coming up with her rifle aimed in her crimson magic aura. B.B and LIL-E rushed in above them, the robot with its weapons deployed and my pegasus friend bearing all her revolvers, both wrist mounted and mouth borne.

They paused, looking at us, and the piles of ghouls dust. A second of silence passed, followed by the entirety of Glint’s squad piling into the room behind my friends with their own weapons out, all of them panting as if they galloped here.

“Glint! Are you okay!?” Springbreeze asked, pale white face seeking this way and that, “We heard gunfire and came as fast as we could...uh... what happened?”

“Good question,” said LIL-E, floating towards the center of the room, “My sensors had picked up a bunch of hostile signals. You guys look like you just had a fight.”

“Oooooh, is Longykins letting other ponies bite him now?” Binge asked as she sauntered up to me, “Makes me jealous I missed the fun.”

She licked the wound on my cheek, making me freeze in place for a second. I was getting exceedingly odd looks from Glint and the rest of his squad. It probably spoke volumes that my own companions barely gave Binge’s behavior a second glance, though Crossfire rolled her eyes as she approached and gave me a level look.

“Alright, let’s hear it, what’d you run into this time?”

Glint and I both took turns more or less giving the rundown on the encounter with the regenerating ghouls, while Arcaidia kept silent and remained sitting where she was. By the end of it B.B was giving the unicorn a look even more worried and sympathetic than I had, and glided over to Arcaidia to sit beside her.

“I’m sorry ya had ta deal wit that, Arc,” B.B said, gently brushing Arcaidia’s shoulder with a wing. Arcaidia closed her eyes and nodded.

“Its for best I did. Crew should not suffer unnatural life. Ended suffering...” Arcaidia sighed, rubbing one hoof over the other, “All I could do for them, now.”

“What’s with her?” asked the griffin on Glint’s squad, Gale, pointing with a talon in Arcaidia’s vague direction, “Sounds like she kicked some serious ghoul ass and saved us the trouble of cleaning up our own mess.”

Arcaidia flinched, but it was Glint that spoke up before anypony else could, “Private Gale, that’s enough. Those were her crewmates.”

Gale blinked, then coughed and said, “Sorry sir. Just saying...”

“That’s enough talk in general. We’ve got work to do here,” Glint said, turning to me, “Longwalk, my squad will guard the area out here, while your team takes care of what it needs to in the Medical Lab. Sound good?”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” I said, “Just give a shout if anything happens and we’ll come running.”

“Sir, one of us should still keep an eye on them in the lab,” said Springbreeze, eyeing me, then Arcaidia, “Just in case.”

“Just n’ case o’ what?” growled B.B, “Ya think we’re gonna try n’ attack ya with medical instruments? Lay off the dang suspicious already!”

“Hey, for all we know the Veruni have some kind of crazy plague or bio-weapon in there that she,” Springbreeze pointed at Arcaidia, “Could know how to activate. She could end up killing all of us.”

“That’s enough Spring,” said Glint, “If there was anything that dangerous in there we would have caught it in our first sweep. Let’s try to show a little trust here.”

Springbreeze looked like she wanted to argue, but she sighed and offered Glint a quick salute, “Yes, sir.”

I gave Glint a grateful look and after a minute Arcaidia was able to shuffle to her hooves. I could see her building her mental state back up, filling her eyes with sharp eyed focus once more as she pocketed the feelings of sadness and guilt that had been weighing on her. Together we all walked into the Medical Lab while Glint’s squad took up guard positions outside. I noticed Springbreeze took up a position very close to the Medical Lab doors, the squad medic Suture standing on the opposite side of the door. I supposed that made sense. Suture was medically trained, so he might recognize anything dangerous we did in here.

I suppose trust only went so far, but honestly I didn’t take it personally. I understood the hostility from Springbreeze, and Glint was likely just tossing her proverbial bone by letting her stand guard at the door, even if it was outside the door.

I put that from my mind as we got a proper look around the Arc of Destiny’s Medical Lab. It was a fairly large room, easily twice as wide as the bridge and nearly three times longer, and gently curved into an arc that bend towards the far hull. Comfortable looking beds covered in dusty white sheets lined up along the walls to our right, separated by panes of glass, most of which were partially broken or shattered in small crystalline pieces on the floor. Tables and cabinets filled up space in between the beds, and a semi-circular, wide desk sprang from the wall directly opposite the doors. On that desk was a set of those small plastic screen projectors, one bent over and partially melted.

Multiple parts of the wall or floor bore burn marks and splashes of blood, likely the remnants of the fight Odessa had here with the ghouls the first time. To our left the Medical Lab was less filled with beds and more filled up with tables of random, oddly shaped equipment that I could only assume was what the Veruni used for their medical research. It reminded me a lot of the labs I saw back in Stable 104, only everything here had that distinct tendency the Veruni tech had towards white and silver coloring, smooth metallic coating, and elegant and odd curves to the equipment.

The majority of it was damaged or in disarray, with several of the beds or tables tossed over or smashed up against the wall. Still, this room was more intact than many places I’d seen in the crashed ship, which I supposed was a good sign.

“Blech,” said Binge, “I don’t like this place. Tastes like old chemicals and broken hopes in here.”

“Don’t you mean smell?” asked LIL-E.

“No. Why would I smell that?”

“Why would you-!?...You know what? Never mind,” said LIL-E, making a whirring noise that might have been a sigh, “Hey Longwalk, I figure you guys got this in here. I think I’ll go patrol the nearby corridors.”

“Um...okay?” I said, glancing sidelong at the eyebot, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, I know you’re sensors are pretty awesome, but you’ve admitted that they’re a bit wonky in this ship, and we already know there’s a chance for wandering monsters in here. If you go patrolling, you’ll be alone, without backup if something attacks.”

“Won’t be a problem,” LIL-E said, floating closer to me and lowering her volume, perhaps so Glint’s squad couldn’t hear her, “I’m still picking up a sensor ghost out there. It might be nothing, but in case its not, I want to double back a bit and see if I can get a clearer scan on it. I promise I won’t do anything stupid, Longwalk, so don’t worry about me.”

She paused before adding, “It’s not like I’m really alive anyway.”

That made me look at her more fully in the dark face-plate. LIL-E might not have had a pony face, but it was just natural for me to want to look at her head on, even if I couldn’t really look her in the ‘eye’, so to speak. I put a hoof up and touched her metal surface, my voice going serious.

“You’re alive enough that I don’t want you taking any risks, LIL-E. I won’t say you can’t go, but be careful, okay? I’m not losing any friends today.”

The eyebot hovered there for a second or two, then said, “Celestia’s tits on toast, you’re a real sentimental sap, you know that? Relax, I won’t even go that far. Just want to check if that damned sensor ghost is real or not.”

I still didn’t like it, but I understood that LIL-E was probably going to go whether I agreed or not, and the eyebot was more than able of taking care of herself. Besides, it was just possible there was something to this sensor ghost, and LIL-E was the one best suited to scout it out. I hadn’t forgotten that mysterious shot that had nearly hit B.B during the fight against the Golem. I had a bad feeling about it, like there was something I’d overlooked.

“Alright,” I said, “Just give a shout on my or Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck if anything happens.”

I swear she gave a little waggle of her floating metallic chassis that looked like an exasperated hoof wave as she floated back out to the hallway and floated on by Glint’s squad as she headed into the deeper, darker corridors beyond. Glint poked his head into the Medical Bay to give me a questioning look and I shrugged at him.

“She’s just checking things out.”

He shrugged back at me, only he used his wings to do it, “She’s not my bot.”

“She’s not mine either. She’s her own,” I pointed out, and turned to see what my other companions were doing.

B.B was corralling Binge away from one of the overhanging cabinets along one wall, promptly putting away a silver container that was half open and had rows of some kind of blue tablets packaged in what looked like small plastic bubble-shaped containers. Binge already had one in her mouth as B.B yanked it out with a wing.

“Will ya stop tryin’ ta find new n’ creative ways ta make trouble?” B.B said, “Ya don’t even know what them pills do!”

Binge sniffed at the package, licking her lips as her tail did a twitching dance behind her, “I’ve got a nose for sweet, brain buzzing chems, birdie. I can tell this blue ones will sing sweet, dreamy songs that take pain away and make you feel like the sky is giving you some ‘down there’ time.”

“Now how’re ya even gonna tell me you can smell that when these thing’re still in the package? ‘Sides, they’re alien drugs. Even if they’re painkillers or whatever, they’re fer workin’ with Veruni bodies, not ponies. You’d as like ta foam at the mouth an’ have a seizure if ya took these.”

I cleared my throat loudly as I trotted up beside them, patting Binge’s withers, “B.B’s got a point, Binge. I don’t know how safe it is to take anything in here. Uh, Arcaidia?”

I figured I’d ask her, since she was the one who’d likely know. Arcaidia herself was across on the left side of the Medical Bay, shuffling through some of the machines over there and checking them over, probably to make sure they still worked. Her silver mane bobbed as she looked up from her work and tilted her head at us.

“What shivol bir doing now?” Arcaidia’s horn light focused on us, and Arcaidia saw the drugs on the cabinet table, and her eyes narrowed, “Huh, those strong sense taking medicines. Good for wounded who hurt greatly.”

I exchanged a look with B.B and Binge, the later looking particularly pleased with herself for sniffing out the drugs for what they were.

“Huh, okay but would they be safe for ponies to use?”

Arcaidia’s eyes glanced upward thoughtfully as she prodded her chin with a hoof, “Hmm, no, I think not likely much? I always need adjusted dosage when I here for treatment before. Doubt taking medicine would works same on pony without adjusting, but hey, if Binge want risk it, that her business.”

I looked back at Binge, and she saw the look in my eyes and she rolled her eyes, but smiled in a somewhat crooked manner, “Fiiiiiine, I won’t eat up the yummy alien candies...” she quickly snached up a few packages of the small blue tablets and stuffed them into her tail, winking at me, “At least not until I test them to make sure they won’t scramble me up too much. The spiders back in the Stable will like testing sciency stuff on these, right?”

“That’s... not a bad point,” I said, figuring Binge was right about that much. The spider ponies in Stable 104 would probably enjoy studying a lot of the things here in the Ark of Destiny, and it was just a few pills so I saw no harm in letting Binge take a package or two, just as long as she didn’t use any until they were properly tested.

As Binge continued to shuffle around the cabinets, with B.B keeping an eye on her, I did a quick canter over to see what Arcaidia was doing. She’d was moving between two machines in the far corner of the room, one of them looking like another Veruni terminal, and the other a rather odd looking device almost the size of two or three ponies together. It was a cylindrical edifice mounted on a sturdy swivel, with multiple seams across its silvery metallic surface. Glass lights, glowing faintly blue, formed two rings on either end of the cylinder, and a number of small cables plugged into one bottom end and snaked into the wall.

“So, is this what will help you get a new leg?” I asked, a little gingerly. I didn’t really like reminding Arcaidia about her leg, both because I think she was still a bit sensitive about it, and honestly I hadn’t fully forgiven myself for letting her get hurt like that in the first place. The strain of being here in the ship, with the recent event of having to put down the living corpses of some of her own crew, was showing on Arcaidia’s face as wane shadows under her eyes as she glanced at me.

“Secondary power barely functional, but enough to operate one re...reger...augh, B.B! What word for making new thing grow?”

“Regenerate?” B.B provided, then muttered something as she smacked Binge’s hoof, which was reaching for a table with what looked like some kind of ridiculous circular saw on it. I had no idea what it was for, but chances were Binge didn’t need to turn it on.

There was a small crash of noise which got all of our attention, and on the other side of the room Crossfire coughed and trotted around the edge of one of the bed partitions, her own saddlebags bulging with random bits of Veruni medical equipment and supplies. She blinked at all of us, then with an affected air of indignation said, “What? The NCR doesn’t need all of this stuff, and some of it might be useful for... things.”

“Selling?” I said, “I imagine there are ponies in Skull City that’d pay a lot for genuine alien tech, even if it was just the Veruni equivalent of a bandage.”

Crossfire snorted, “Or, like what your frosty friend is looking for, something that’ll regenerate whole limbs.”

There was a pointed, hard look in her eyes, mixed with a momentary flash of guilt, and I recalled that Crossfire’s real goal had less to do with caps and more to do with helping a certain cheerful, female ghoul. Little wonder she wanted to raid the Veruni’s medical tech. And given what Arcaidia was here to do, it also made sense when Crossfire trotted over to our side of the Medical Bay to watch Arcaidia with curiosity, golden eyes roving over the large, cylindrical machine.

“This thing here capable of growing you a new kicker?” Crossfire asked, waving a forehoof at it.

“Yes,” Arcaidia said, “As I trying to say to ren solva, low power mean regeneration vat not work as fast as normal, but terminal still work.”

She nodded at the terminal in question, which was covered in screens filled with odd, angular alien script I couldn’t read. Arcaidia pointed at some of it, a screen showing an odd looking helix shape. “Ship computer already have my D.N.A on file, so all I need do is put in information on what need regeneration. After vat grows leg, I use auto-surgeon to reattach. Takes time. Painful, if no drugs used.”

“How long?” I asked, anxious. I didn’t know how long we had to roam around in here before either the NCR folks or Whiteheart would start to wonder about us.

Arcaidia frowned at my question, and I could see the calculations going on in her mind, “Hours, maybe. Two? Three? I not know for sure.”

“But it’ll work,” Crossfire said with an intensity entering her town as she walked over to the machine, staring at it, “This here can just... grow new legs, as long as it has the right... what did you call it?”

“D.N.A.”

“Yeah, that. It gets that, it can grow anypony new legs. Then another machine here can hook them up, and they’ll work just like new?”

Arcaidia nodded, “That power of Veruni technology.”

I didn’t even have to look at Crossfire very closely to see her inner wheels turning. She was looking at the regeneration vat like it was some sort of sacred object now, and I could see the rise and fall of her dark furred chest as she started to breath a little faster. Crossfire raised a hoof to run over the machine, lightly, as if she was afraid of breaking it.

Arcaidia gave me a look, and I coughed, trotting over to Crossfire, “I get why you want this, Crossfire, but remember we can’t just haul it out of here.”

“I know that,” Crossfire said, “The NCR would never let us take it. And those damn Odessa skyrats would probably want to take this, along with the rest of the ship.”

She gave me a sharp look, those yellow eyes filling with a steel-clad resolve that was hard to argue with. Her voice reflected this, stone cold and filled with a lot more emotion than I’d heard from Crossfire in most the days I’d known her, “But I can’t just ignore this. I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time, buck. No way I’m letting it slip out of my hooves. Not when I’m this close.”

“I understand that, and believe it or not, I’m not disagreeing with you, for once,” I said, my face creasing in heavy thought, “Arcaidia, are the machines for this detachable?”

“Yes, but they are very heavy,” she said, “We could not move them with ease.”

“And it's not like we can do much with Glint’s squad right outside to watch us,” I whispered, but then I had a sudden burst of inspiration. I looked at Crossfire and Arcaidia with wide eyes, “Wait, I’ve got an idea.”

“Huh?” Crossfire looked at me strangely, but I was already turning to pat a hoof on Gramzanber.

Hey Gram, you’re downloading the ship database, right?

Gramzanber’s response took a second, Presently, yes. It will take some time, yet.

I nodded, Does that database included schematics for these machines Arcaidia is using to regrow her leg?

Another pause, then, ...Yes, details on construction and materials are present. Shall I prioritize that information in the download process?

“Go for it,” I said aloud, and at the quizzical looks I was getting I let out an embarrassed cough and said, “Uh, I’m having Gramzanber download a few things from the ship computer. Among them is going to be schematics to build the machines needed to regenerate limbs and such. I, um, figure the folk at Stable 104 might be skilled enough to build them.”

Arcaidia stiffened somewhat, her ears twitching, “I not know you stealing Veruni data, ren solva...but, if it help then I suppose it not worth arguing over.”

“Damn straight it's not,” Crossfire said, her own tail lashing as she looked at me sidelong, almost as if she was embarrassed herself to show me the gratitude on her face, “If you can get a copy of this machine working, kid, I’ll owe you.”

Her eyes narrowed to golden dagger edges, “But so help me if you’re blowing smoke up my ass, or you somehow screw this up and cost me the one shot I’ve got to...” she shook her head, “We’ll have one hell of a score to settle. Count on it.”

I could only nod my agreement, “Believe me, I want this to work, and I sure as hell am hoping it does.”

On the heels of my words, Arcaidia pressed a few buttons on the terminal, and with a smooth hum of energy the metallic cylinder machine glowed blue on either end as the rings there lit up. It turned on its swivel mount until it was standing upright, and some of the seams along its length hissed open. Inside the cylinder was a glass tube, filled with an liquid tinted an electric blue color. As streams of energy poured into the liquid from the glowing blue rings, the liquid bubbled and fizzed. Then from the bottom of the cylinder a tiny red orb was released, which I realized was pulsing like a miniature heart. Crossfire and I both exchanged looks with each other and peered more closely.

Inside the tube the small red glob, no larger than an eyeball, began to slowly grow, stretching outward, tiny fibers extending from it like waving feelers.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Bio-matter sphere,” Arcaidia said, pointing at the cylinder with her horn, “Blank flesh introduced to nutrient rich liquid. Combination of Crest Sorcery and nano-tech rewrite and guide genetic growth. Small bit of flesh grows into shape programmed into it. Organ. Limb. Whatever is needed.”

“That’s... neat,” I said, backing up a bit. Not that I wasn’t happy Arcaidia was growing a new leg for herself, or that we might be able to use this same technology to help Knobs. However I couldn’t help but note how eerily similar this technology was to what the Hyadeans used to create their bio-monsters.

I wondered if Arcaidia herself, or the Veruni in general, realized the similarity? Maybe it was just coincidence. Still, there was something faintly unsettling about watching that small bit of red flesh start to grow.

Arcaidia said the Veruni could grow it into anything. So what stopped them from growing flesh into monsters of their own?

I shook my head. I was starting to think like Odessa. I trusted Arcaidia. I didn’t know if I trusted the Veruni as a whole, but if Arcaidia came from them, then they couldn’t be all bad. Besides, any technology could be used for positive or negative ends. Just look at Gramzanber. I could technically use the power of my ARM to do horrible things. Instead I chose to use him and the power he granted me to try and help as many people, pony or otherwise, that I could.

My ruminations were abruptly interrupted as I felt the metal deck shift beneath my hooves, followed by a distant rumble of sound.

Everypony stopped, and we all looked at each other.

“That didn’t strike me as a good sound,” I said.

“No shit,” Crossfire replied tersely, unslinging her rifle in a harsh red glow of magic, “That sounded like an interior explosion.”

“How can you tell?” I asked, and she gave me a withering look.

“I got some background with explosives. Now stop asking stupid questions. You got anything on that fancy Pip-Buck of yours?”

Glancing over my E.F.S didn’t show any red dots, only the dense collection of greens from my companions and Glint’s squad. I reported as much.

“I have no hostiles on mine either,” said Arcaidia, her eyes hardening to a steel gleam as she flicked her tail, “But that not mean anything. Ship very big. If hostiles on board, they must be outside range.”

The deck beneath us shuddered again, and I heard once more a faint rumbling noise. I cocked my ears, trying to pinpoint the sound’s origin, but given the winding nature of the ship’s corridors, it could be coming from anywhere.

“If someponies are partying hard enough to make the floor shake and dance, then isn’t this fragile jigsaw of a steel coffin going to fall apart even more?” pointed out Binge, licking her lips.

That was an unpleasant point to consider. However since we couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, there wasn’t a lot we could do. But that didn’t mean we didn’t have options. I looked at my Pip-Buck and fiddled with the dials until I got to the radio, and located LIL-E’s signal. Pushing the button to broadcast, I said, “LIL-E? You there?”

A second later her voice came back over the Pip-Buck speaker, “I hear you, Longwalk. You feeling those tremors too?”

“Yeah, can you tell what they are and where they’re at from your location?” I asked, just as the deck gave another shudder and an echo of loud, metallic rumbling reached us. It sounded almost like metal being shredded; a high pitched, metal roar.

“Bet the Goddesses’ sparkling asses I can!” replied the eyebot, “My sensors are going wild. There’s a huge energy signature outside the ship, big enough that even with interference I can still read it. Its near the rear section of the ship, and if what I’m reading is accurate, this might be another Golem.”

I felt a distinct sensation of my stallionhood trying to vacate upwards into my stomach, and gulped. Another Golem!? I mean, I knew there were more out there, and at least one of them was under the control of the Hyadeans, but I didn’t think we’d be dealing with another of those metal monstrosities so soon. Had the destruction of Roaring Metal somehow triggered another one, like a distress signal? Or were the Hyadeans just pulling out the big guns here for another reason?

Well, Odessa is here. If they realized that, they could be sending out something as powerful as a Golem to try to deal a serious blow to their largest enemy at the moment, I mused, but the thought was a distant one as the rest of my brain was in the process of wanting to panic. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself as I glanced around at my friends.

Arcaidia was already on the terminal she had active, her face a mask of concentration as her hooves flew over buttons. Within seconds she had a screen pop up that showed an exterior view of the ship from the angle of one of the engine pylons. She turned the screen towards us with a soft curse under her breath.

Yup, that was a Golem alright. I recognized it from the escape on the Varukisias. This Golem had attacked the Odessa airship back then, while me and my tribemates had been trying to escape. It’d punched a hole right in the side of the ship and I’d damn near fallen out!

This Golem was smaller than Roaring Metal, now that I could get a good view at its whole body. Maybe two thirds Roaring Metal’s size, this Golem had a light gray armored exterior with a slim, humanoid body. Its legs dangled out from beneath a wide, armored skirt, and ended in sharp metal spikes. Its arms, equally spindly, also ended in spikes, which the Golem was presently spinning around like drills as it worked at stabbing an ever widening hole in the back of the Veruni ship. The Golem hovered on a pair of curved, blocky metal wings that issued forth a haze of faint blue-green light. Teal, gem-like eyes blazed brightly from behind a metal faceplate and beneath a crested helmet.

The Golem’s strikes on the ship’s hull were measured, and the armor of the Veruni ship was withstanding a lot of punishment, only yielding a small amount with each extra blow on its silver surface.

“The hell is that thing doin’?” asked B.B, “Tryin’ ta git inside?”

Arcaidia shook her head, pulling up a quick schematic of the ship on the computer and showing us a large compartment towards the back of the vessel, one that looked like it housed some kind of huge machinery. “No, it going for engine room. Trying to open up hole to ship power core.”

“Why would it be doing that?” I wondered aloud.

“Who the hell cares?” said Crossfire, “We need to be gone before it finishes getting to that core, because I’m willing to bet solid caps that whatever it’s plans are won’t be good for anypony still on board!”

True. If the Golem’s aim was to destroy the ship, blowing up the power core would probably get the job done and then some. Even if that wasn’t the Golem’s aim, messing with the ship’s engines probably wouldn’t mean anything good for the structure of the rest of the ship, which was already trashed from the crash. Staying on board was probably a bad idea. But at the same time I didn’t thing Odessa would give up this prize so easily, and I wasn’t exactly eager to abandon them to fight the Golem alone. On top of that, Arcaidia had just started the process to grow a new leg for herself! She’d said it’d take a few hours for that to complete, at least. I doubted the Golem was going to give us those hours, so naturally we had to stop it before it did something to the ship’s power core.

“We can’t leave,” I said, “Not without trying to stop that Golem.”

For a second I thought Crossfire might argue with me, but then I saw her think about it, and go through at least some of the same realizations I did. I knew she didn’t give two rusted caps about Odessa, but the regeneration vat was her ticket to helping Knobs get her legs back. Much as Crossfire might have been a practical minded sort, driven by self-interest and self-preservation in equal measure, Knobs was her one exception that I’d seen. Crossfire was willing to risk a lot for Knobs, and I could see it in her eyes when her mind switched modes from fight or flight survival, to wanting to preserve this ship and its technology at any cost.

“Shit,” Crossfire muttered, “I hate to say it, but you’re right, buck. I can’t let that thing tear this ship up. Dammit, we barely beat the last one.”

“And that’s when we had a big, nasty, scaly, burn a helpless screaming pony up in one breath of fire, dragon on our side,” pointed out Binge, but she didn’t seem disturbed by the thought and instead bounced on her hooves with a grin, “So this should be extra fun, right?”

“I’m a bit too far away, and I don’t have hooves, so could somepony please smack her upside the head for me?” LIL-E said over my Pip-Buck, to which B.B lightly swatted Binge’s head with a wing, rather immediately wincing as one of the many sharp objects hidden in Binge’s mane poked her.

“Heheh, my head is extra protected against retaliatory smacking!” Binge declared, and B.B sighed heavily.

“Gave it my best shot, LIL.”

“I appreciate the effort,” said LIL-E, “So what’s the plan?”

Before I could answer, Glint flew into the Medical Bay, most of his squad forming up behind him. He was just finishing up talking to somepony on his helmet’s radio, nodding his head.

“Yes, yes ma’am, we’re on it, Glint out,” he said and then looked up at us, jaw set in a tight grimace as he took in the sight of the terminal screen Arcaidia had showed us, which still had the image of the Golem outside attacking the ship.

“Guess that means you already know,” he said to me, “Colonel Odessa has ordered all available forces to engage the Golem. My father is already en route from the engine room to the top deck. Now I know you’re not under any obligation to help us but-”

“We’re in,” I said, and at his blinking look of mild astonishment I just chuckled, hefting Gramzanber, “I mean, what did you think I was going to do, Glint? Abandon you guys to face something like that alone? I’ve felt first-hoof how dangerous these Golems are. You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

Nosedive let out a small laugh, elbowing Springbreeze, “Told you so. Pay up.”

Spring responded with a sniff and a quick exchange of what looked like some kind of paper-based currency which I assumed was what Odessa used among their own kind, in lieu of caps.

Glint glanced back at his squad sharply, and they all stood at rigid attention, and the then turned back to me, “We don’t have a lot of time to work out a plan of attack. Follow us. If we’re lucky there won’t be any resistance on the way to the deck. My father will probably engage first. If you have weapons that can hurt the Golem, let us get it nice and distracted for you, then hit it from behind.”

“I’ve heard worse plans,” Crossfire said, checking her rifle, “Don’t suppose you Odessa flyboys and gals have any heavy ordnance to hit it with?”

Glint shook his head, “We could call in the Vesuvius, but it's railguns would risk damage this ship if it fired on the Golem with it this close to the hull.”

“What if we could drive it away from the hull?” I asked.

“Then whoever was still close to the Golem would still risk getting caught in the barrage. We might risk it if it comes to that, but that’ll be the Colonel’s call to make,” Glint replied swiftly, and the deck shook again under another blow from outside.

“Think that’s our cue to get our butts moving,” I said, “Which way to the top deck?”

“Follow us-” Glint began to say, but Arcaidia swept by him and with a hard glance, moved for the door.

“I know my ship better than intruders here to take her. You follow me,” she said, snapping her tail in a decisive motion and quickly heading out of the room. I cleared my throat and gave Glint a half-apologetic look and quickly galloped after her, my companions all moving as one behind me. I heard somepony in Glint’s squad mutter something, probably Springbreeze, but not what they said, and soon Glint’s team was following along behind us as we all moved out in one large group.

“LIL-E,” I said into my Pip-Buck as I rushed along in Arcaidia’s wake, “Lock onto Arcaidia’s Pip-Buck signal. She’s leading the way to the ship’s upper deck, where we’re going to give a go at taking out two Golems in one day.”

“Fun times,” LIL-E said, “I’ll meet you guys there. Don’t die without me.”

“Your vote of confidence fills me with hope,” I replied with a wry grin, and then all of my focus was on running. The steady clang and rumble of the Golem outside matched our steps, and the shaking deck only got louder as we ran down the darkened corridors towards our second clash with an ancient, deadly warmachine in the same twenty four hour period.

From the bodies we’d found earlier I’d known the ship might have had some Hyadean bio-monsters left on board. It was one of several reasons I’d double-timed it to catch up to Arcaidia as she led us at a breakneck pace through the ship’s winding halls, half of which were so wreaked or bent out of shape from the crash that we had to take quick detours through other compartments.

The creatures attacked in a trio from the shadows of one corridor on our left as Arcaidia had started to make a sharp right turn towards an open, small cargo bay that had a set of stairs leading up one level. The Hyadean beasts must have been waiting, hearing our approach. One came loping along the ceiling, its spiked claws jamming into the bulkheads as it moved. Another was on the wall to our left, ripping up glass panels as it came. The last one scampered along the floor, faster than the most hyperactive gecko I’d ever seen.

By all accounts an ambush like that should have caused us some serious trouble. Thank the Ancestor Spirits for E.F.S.

Both my and Arcaidia’s Pip-Bucks has picked up the dangers before we’d even turned the corridor, and what the Hyadean bio-monsters thought was their own ambush, swiftly became them stepping into our own trap. Only I and Arcaidia had run into the hall, and as we’d planned out beforehoof, we threw ourselves to the deck, Arcaidia casting a swift spell of ice that formed a thick sheet of frost in front of us.

Meanwhile Glint’s squad, along with Crossfire and B.B, all unleashed their firepower at once, having set up at the end of the hall just seconds after Arcaidia and I had run into spring the ambush.

The hall was filled with sound and fury as over half a dozen barrels from magical energy weapons, hefty rifles, and a pair of ARM pistols filled the space over my and Arcaidia’s heads with a storm of pure death.

Two of the Hyadean bio-monsters were torn limb, from clawed limb, their warbling howls filling the air as purple blood sprayed the corridor. The third beast, the one on the ceiling, avoided just enough of the hail of magical beams and bullets to leap down towards me and Arcaidia, but my friendly local bringer of arctic destruction let her horn flash briefly with a Crest symbol and the ice sheet she’d created a moment earlier now erupted with deadly spikes of ice that impaled the beast before it reached us.

It let out a pitiful little gurgle as it thrashed on the spikes, then a heavy rifle round form Crossfire’s Sniper Shark XR took its head off with one well placed shot between the eyes.

I coughed as I wiped purple blood and brain matter from my face, giving Crossfire a quick glare. She just shrugged at me, smirking slightly as she shouldered her smoking rifle.

“Hope that’s the last of those things on the ship,” Glint grunted as he and the rest of my companions caught up with us. “Last thing we need is a bunch of those coming up behind us while we deal with the Golem.”

I remembered the strange portals the Hyadeans had used back on the Varukisias and gave Glint a questioning look as we got moving again, the group shuffling into the cargo hold and heading up the stairs situated along the right side of the room.

“Can’t the Hyadeans just teleport more enemies onto us?”

“I'm not sure,” he said, smoke still trailing up from his near overheated laser rifles, “Odessa has never quite pinned down how the Hyadeans teleport in the first place. It's not like the teleportation spell unicorns use. We've seen them do everything from pin-point portals that could open up in enclosed spaces, to opening up large portals to bring in small armies of monsters. The only thing we know for sure is that they usually can only create a limited number of portals at any given time, probably due to some limit on the energy it takes to generate them. The only exception are their leaders, who seem to have the power to teleport themselves around at will.”

“But the Golem can't teleport on its own, right?” I said, and Glint gave a confirming nod, which led me to further ask, “So did the Golem just fly here or what?”

“Probably. It’s got wings, doesn’t it?”

Ah, right. Stupid question, meet stupid answer. I nodded and left it at that as we kept running.

“Couldn’t help but notice,” spoke up the griffin on Glint’s squad, Gale, “That those NCR lazyasses outside aren’t doing anything about the Golem.”

Glint waved a wing at her, as if to wave aside the question itself, “Their dragon is too injured to fight, and they only have a couple of Raptors on site. What are they going to do, Gale? They won’t send their soldiers to die uselessly, and bombarding the thing with the Raptors runs the same risk of damaging the ship the want to salvage, same as we run if we tried to call air support from the Vesuvius. Their wings are tied. All the NCR can do is watch.”

“That won’t last,” said Crossfire, “Stupid or not, they won’t wait forever while the Golem tears this ship up. Risky or not they’ll bring in reinforcements and make a move if we don’t do something first.”

“That’ll probably take ‘em some time, though,” said B.B, “Could be an’ hour or more ‘fore any backup arrives from the nearest base.”

“What about... you know... Her,” said Springbreeze, the emphases she put on the ‘Her’ making it clear she meant that with a capital H. “The Lightbringer.”

I perked my ears at that, and heard Binge make a small, gasping whine at the name. Glint, for his part, just shrugged.

“If our intel is anything close to accurate concerning the Lightbringer, she’s watching this whole scenario unfold from on high. But she’s in the same boat anypony else with big guns is. Anything she might do could damage the ship. Doubt we’ll see any fireworks from the sky unless we move the Golem away from the ship.”

“Uh, I don’t really know much about this Lightbringer lady. What exactly could she do?” I asked.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” said B.B, “Glint’s right that we ain’t likely ta see her doin’ anything wit the situation what it is. Were things different we might be seein’ some lightin’ an’ thunder comin’ down from the sky, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Okay then. That didn’t entirely make sense to me, but then I didn’t really get the full context of what they were talking about either. Chances were B.B and Glint knew more about this ‘Lightbringer’ than I did, so I’d trust what they said. It did leave me feeling a bit like an uneducated lout, however. Then again, what else was new? I kind of was uneducated, but most standards.

After a few more twists and turns in our route, we finally made it to a doorway that opened up to a very short hall and a steep ramp that led to a set of horizontal hatches across the ceiling. Arcaidia swiftly cantered up to the hatches and with her magic opened up a panel on the side of the wall, quickly pushing in buttons on a miniature pad that appeared there.

“Emergency deck access,” she explained, “Used for space walks, maintenance and repair, or escape in case of crash. Leads to ‘roof’ of ship.”

Right, I’d figured we’d be running across the top of the ship to confront the Golem. The ship was at a bit of an angle, but from what I’d seen outside the back portion of it was all exposed to air, and even enough that we could move across it without slipping as long as we didn’t completely trip over ourselves.

A tense moment passed as Arcaidia worked in the last few button presses to tell the hatches to open. Deep red lights flashed in a moving pattern across either side of the hallway and a monotone female voice said something in Veruni, probably some kind of ‘stand back’ warning before the hatches on the ceiling opened up with a sharp hiss of noise.

Daylight poured in, making me wince after spending what had probably at least been an hour inside the ship’s gloomy interior. Sweet smelling air blew over us, and suddenly we could hear the loud, metal CLANG, CLANG, CLANG of the Golem’s spiked limb pounding into the ship’s hull.

“Alright, let’s do this!” I said, and we all piled out.

The ramp led up to the smooth roof of the ship. The rocky face of the ground the Ark of Destiny had ploughed a ravine into hung to our left, less than twenty feet away, and then the rest of the ship’s aft section spread out to our right for a good distance, several hundred paces give or take. I could see the aft engine pylons looming overhead like huge, overhanging bridges.

And at the end of the ship was the Golem, its slim form hovering in the air as it jabbed an arm into the deck, sparks flying as the heavy, pointed end make the dent it was creating even larger.

It hadn’t looked up at us yet, so I didn’t think it’d seen us.

Glint, his red eyes casting about, said, “Where the hell is my dad?”

Almost right then there was a titanic crash of noise about halfway between us and the Golem, and I starred with utter astonishment as an entire ten foot section of the roof deck just exploded upwards, spinning like a kicked can. From the neatly torn hole in the roof a single pegasus flew up, hefting a huge silver chainsaw in front of him. The artificial ARM’s engine was creating a revving noise that was almost as loud as Spike’s roar.

Hammerfall, member of Odessa Special Forces Unit Cocytus, surveyed the Golem with a hoof shading his bushy brow, grinning merrily as he let out a whistle. He then glanced back at us and his grin widened.

“Oh hey, Glint my boy~! What’re you doing all the way back there!? The fight’s this way! Come on, don’t be slacking off when there’s a fight to be had!”

With that he flew towards the Golem in an aerial charge, bellowing a laugh that matched the revving howl of his silver chainsaw.

I glanced at Glint, who just hung his head and said in a deadpan voice, “I have no idea how he and my mom got together.”

Hammerfall, despite his muscled bulk, was in no way a slow flier. He crossed the distance to the Golem in the span of a few breaths, and as he did so I saw that around the teeth of his spinning chainsaw ARM, there was an ever growing aura of sharp white light. The Golem reacted just as Hammerfall reached it, raising its metallic, smooth head as he swooped up and then down like a meteor, leading with his chainsaw.

The Golem moved with speed that left my jaw hanging open. It flew to the side, as smooth and agile as a dancer. Hammerfall’s strike hit nothing but air, although even as he swung, the aura of white around his chainsaw exploded outward in a thin, viciously curved wave of energy that I saw cut through the ravine floor like an axe through wood.

Well, that was a far more direct ARM ability than Shatter Sky’s watch had. And I’m somehow rather glad I hadn’t had to fight Hammerfall at any time previous to this.

Unfortunately this Golem was so much faster than Roaring Metal had been I was wondering if I’d only be able to hit it by using Accelerator. Hopefully it’s armor was much thinner, to compensate for such a speed boost.

“Come one, we’d better help him, before he gets in over his head,” Glint said, and as a group we started either beating hooves, or beating wings to cross the distance.

“Arcaidia,” I said breathlessly as we ran, “Know anything about this Golem? Like did you read anything in Veruni records about it?”

Arcaidia’s face frowned in concentration, casting a protective spell around herself and our immediate group, then she said, “I know most Golem by old legends. This one look like Berial, the Light Lance. Fastest of Elw made Golems.”

“Figured that much by looking at it. Any weaknesses?”

“Not very strong physically. Armor is light. If we can pin down or surround, we maybe can break through defenses,” she replied, gulping down breath as she struggled to keep up. Arcaidia’s legs were already kind of short, and while her stamina had been improving over time, today had been almost nothing but one harrowing battle after another. Even I was feeling drained, and that was before one accounted for the fact that my limbs still felt weak from the slime monster’s toxin, which we hadn’t had time to find an antidote for in the Medical Lab.

Well, we’d just have to make do. I gave Arcadia a firm nod of thanks for the info. We’d nearly crossed half the distance to the Golem, and something Arcaidia had said piqued my curiosity, so I gulped a breath myself and asked, “So why is it nicknamed ‘Light Lance’?”

The answer came a second later as the Golem deftly evaded another hefty strike from Hammerfall, flying so low its spike shaped feet skidded across the ship deck in a shower of sparks. It raised its right arm, and the long, pointed limb split open. Within that spike was a smaller spike, which now was at the center of the four parts that split open around it. That interior spike glowed with a sudden, shockingly radiant gleam of light. Then that light shot out in an intense, thin beam no larger around than my own foreleg, yet it hissed through the air with a buzz of power.

Hammerfall turned his chainsaw sideways and caught the beam on the edge, deflecting it sideways. I don’t know whether to consider it a testament to the strength of his artificial ARM or the strength of the pegasus himself that he stayed stable in the air as the beam of light veered off and cut a heated pass across the far side of the ravine, boiling dirt and rock as it cut in a perfect line.

“Oh, that’s why,” I said, feeling somewhat more daunted.

“Just don’t get hit with light beam,” Arcaidia said.

“Think that’s goin’ without sayin’, Arc,” said B.B.

We were almost there. Another few seconds and we could join the fray. I was worried, fearful, as always when rushing headlong into a fight, but I was also feeling confident of our chances. We had this Golem ludicrously outnumbered, and even if we didn’t have Spike to handle the heavy lifting for us, I figured we could manage just as long as we-

The air distorted in front of us, bending and twisting unnaturally, as if somepony had taken a painting and thrown water over it to smear the colors.

All of us either skidded or flew to a sharp halt as from that distorted air a figure appeared, one I recognized.

“Hello. I apologize for the interruption, but I couldn’t help but feel the odds were askew here, so I thought it would be polite to liven things up somewhat,” said Alhazad as he floated in front of us in all of his creepy, alien glory.

He was just as he’d appeared back in the salt mines beneath Skull City, right after the battle with Redwire. There was no mistaking him for anything that naturally existed in Equestria, or any other part of this world. The bulk of his body was still hidden under what amounted to an elaborate sheet of white, edged in interweaving red and green embroidery. All I could tell about the body underneath was that it was misshapen and lumpy, with sharp, protruding shoulders and a broadness that made him seem like he was hunched. His ‘face’ for lack of a better term consisted of a wide, ludicrously ornate mask of gold that covered most of his front half. The mask had multiple, pointed spokes and edges to it, carved with odd geometric patterns. A torc of gold, containing red and sapphire orbs, hung below the mask. The only visible part of his face behind the mask were two solid, thin red eyes, lacking any iris’ whatsoever.

The only other parts of his body that could be seen were the twin pairs of ‘hands’, consisting of three golden claws as large as Gramzanber, and a long, sinuous golden tail capped in what looked like a cross between a blade and a scorpion’s stinger.

He just floated there, with no obvious means of how he was hovering, and looked at us with what I distinctly felt was genuine, if coldly malicious, cordial interest and amusement.

At our stares he spoke again, “Why, I feel embarrassed now. Being stared at like this, you’d think none of you had any manners at all. Is this how you treat guests to your world?”

Somepony, I wasn’t sure who, among Glint’s squad apparently gathered some courage and shouted, “No, this is how, xeno scumbag!”

They, I think it was maybe Nosedive, fired their plasma rifle. The green bolt of energy never reached Alhazad. In a flash, a thing that looked like some manner of bizzare, mechanical bug of comparable size to LIL-E, appeared out of nowhere and intercepted the plasma bolt with a small, blue barrier of light. Then near a dozen more of the mechanical bug creatures appeared around Alhazad. Each one had a bulbous body with sharp, bent mandibles. Four wings of shiny gossamer buzzed around their bodies, keeping them aloft. Each bore a huge gem embedded in their body, half of them bright sapphire, the other half deep ruby.

“I see Odessa remains as blunt and unchanging as ever in its response to simple discourse,” Alhazad said with a warbling, alien laugh, ‘Khhk, khhk, khhk. I do hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t respond to your petty attempts at challenging me. I’d rather talk, if it's all the same.”

“Like hell,” growled Glint, “We’re not here to talk, Hyadean.”

Arcaidia nodded and stepped up, horn blazing with a aurora of cold blue and frosty white light, “Rare I agree with dumb Odessa ponies, but they right. Hyadean shall not be given chance to talk!”

“Oh? And is that how all of you feel?” I felt a child as Alhazad turned his gaze towards me, “And here I thought you were the reasonable sort, Longwalk. My observations of you indicated you were usually more amenable to talking things over rather than resorting to violence.”

There was a pause as a few of my companions glanced at me, and I felt a bit embarrassed. I mean, yeah, sure, it was true, I did tend to prefer avoiding violence when I could, but that didn’t mean I particularly wanted to chat it out all the time. I gulped and made sure I had Gramzanber drawn in ready before I said, “Usually I am, but you’ve already made it pretty damn clear your no friend to ponykind, or any other kind for that matter. Oh, and there’s kinda a giant Golem back there already trying to fight us, so that tends to make me think you didn’t come here to be all friendly with us.”

Alhazad turned slightly, as if he hadn’t noticed the Golem yet. It was currently chasing Hammerfall around, trying to spear him with its spiked arms, while he responded with swift, punishing strikes with his chainsaw. So far neither had landed a telling blow on the other, but I could tell Hammerfall was getting pushed back, tackling the Golem alone. He needed help, fast.

“Ah, of course. Berial’s orders are to take this ship’s reactor core. I imagine if that overly muscled fellow with the half-baked Veruni knock-off weapon would cease attacking, the Golem would return to its task.”

“Why should we even think o’ lettin’ ya git away with this ship’s reactor, eh?” asked B.B, aiming the Twin Fenrir directly at the eye slot in Alhazad’s mask, “Seems ta me that might be somethin’ we don’t want no crazy conquering aliens havin’ their greasy claws on.”

“Ahem, firstly, you flying marshmallow, my claws are exceedingly well maintained. Secondly, I’m only offering you an opportunity to leave me to my business out of professional courtesy to my superior, who has expressed an interest in one day crossing blades with Longwalk here. I imagine I’d get an earful if I killed him here and now. Although I suppose I could kill the rest of you and leave him alive. Oh, and much as it pains me, the Veruni as well.”

Arcaidia looked a bit taken aback by that, “W-why me? I don’t have any connection with you.”

“No, indeed you don’t,” and Alhazad’s voice turned to a sadistically toned bell of enjoyment, “But I know someone who does, and I think I’d rather like to see what happens when you two meet. In fact, why don’t I invite her here? This should be most entertaining, khhk, khhk, khhk.”

His laughter was cut short by the clanking sound of Crossfire switching out the clip on her rifle from standard rounds to a set of armor piercing rounds, the Drifter’s eyes flat and unamused, “I think chat time is over.”

Her rifle swung towards Alhazad, but then just as quickly she adjusted her aim and a shot rang out as she fired on one of the metallic insects buzzing around the Hyadean. The heavy duty armor piercing round smashed right into the bug-like creatures’ hide, sparks showering off of it as one of its wings crumpled and it dropped to the deck. I noticed it was one of the insects with a red gem in their back, and Crossfire snorted in satisfaction as she glanced meaningfully at me.

“Get the red ones first. They don’t have shields.”

“Tch, how rude. I suppose I’ll have to start killing some of you now, as an object lesson in diplomatic etiquette,” Alhazad said, and in an instant the insects buzzed with a trilling noise that hurt the ears of everypony present, and they launched into the attack.

Three of the blue gem insects flew low and charged at us, myself included. Their mandibles gleamed like swords, and snapped with metallic snickering sound. I reacted fast, bringing Gramzanber to bear to block the insect coming for me. Its momentum and strength was impressive, hitting Gramzanber’s flat end and shoving me back despite the fact that I had my hind legs firmly planted.

As I was getting shoved back, I saw another of the sapphire insects barreling towards Binge, but my marefriend sprang out of the way, slapping her tail at the thing as it passed by her. A curved knife held in her tail bounced off a gleaming blue shield around the insect, and it zipped around to make another pass at Binge, but she danced away, giggling as she led it on a merry chase.

The third of the blue bugs went for B.B. Her eyes gleamed red as she barreled away from its mandibles, using the extended square blades protruding from the Twin Fenrir pistols to parry the insect’s sharp weapons. She then used the momentum gained form that to flip up higher into the air, forehooves extending behind her and downward as she completed the flip with a burst of silver gunfire. However those shields being generated by the insects with the sapphire gems absorbed the shots, and it flew away, angling for a new attack.

The other insects weren’t idle either. The five remaining red gem insects spread out in a fan shaped pattern in the air above. They may have lacked the shields of the blue ones, but they fast showed their own unique trait as crimson energy glowed between the tips of their own mandibles. In short order they were firing a barrage of beams that looked like the bigger, nastier cousins to the Odessa energy weapons, most of it directed at Glint’s squad, who scattered in various evasive patterns into the sky.

Most of them got out of the way in time, but Stitch wasn’t so fortunate. A bit slower to get off the ground than his squadmates, the medic was caught in the side of his flank by one of the red beams. It treated his armor as if it were mere paper, piercing through one side of Stitch's flank and out the other at a downward angle, cleanly severing his other leg in a burning, cauterized wound.

His scream was blood chilling and he flopped to the ground, still alive, but howling in agony. A horrific wound like that would be fatal, given time, but in the meantime Stitch would be in torturous pain as the cauterized hole through his lower parts left him crippled and slowly dying.

The reacting of Glint’s squad was instantaneous as the majority of them went from a scattered, evasive flock, to a gathered, tight formation. Swooping at the ruby insects, Glint and his fellow Odessa soldiers blasted out with a brilliant barrage of thin red lasers and thick, flying plasma bolts. Unfortunately the three insects with sapphire gems that hadn’t engaged yet all flew up, and with a flash of their gems worked together to form a triangular shield that absorbed the withering barrage of energy weapons. This barrier also forced Glint’s squad to bank sharply to avoid hitting it, which left them exposed to a follow up barrage from the ruby gem insects.

Or would have if Crossfire wasn’t darting beneath them, sliding on her back, and with her rifle poised in her forehooves and her magic working the bolt action she fired a shockingly rapid series of shots. Each of the five was hit, although only one dropped from the air to crash to the deck. Crossfire’s assault managed to divert and distract the insect’s own murderous beams, giving Glint’s squad the chance to evade without losing another.

I’d managed to finally grit my teeth and shove back hard enough on Gramzanber that its edge was able to cut through the mandibles on the insect. As it reared back I turned Gramzanber around and thrust forward with a rough shout. The ARM’s point smashed into a shield of blue energy the bug formed in front of it, but Gramzanber’s potent edge combined with my own strength, even weakened as I was from the toxin in my veins, was enough to penetrate the barrier. Then my ARM pierced between the bug’s mandibles, sinking into its body until the spear burst out behind the insect in a shower of metal shards, blue sparks, and what looked like purple blood. Were this things living, or metal? Like most things related to the Hyadeans, they seemed to be a twisted fusion of both.

Just my bad luck that the insect monstrosity didn’t die from that, but instead thrashed about, its wings buzzing as it lifted itself into the air... and me along with it! I let out a yelp as I clutched my hooves around Gramzanber’s shaft, wiggling like a worm on a hook.

Much as I wasn’t fond of getting dragged up, the situation did give me a good vantage point to see Arcaidia facing off with Alhazad himself, while the rest of us were dealing with his insectile servitors. I could see the anger flashing across Arcaidia’s eyes, even at a distance, and the corona of intermixing blue and white light from her magic grew to a nimbus around her as she sent a cascade of ice smashing towards the Hyadean.

In response Alhazad raised his golden claws, and between them a the air twisted. Script and sigils formed in a nauseating flow of green and purple lights. Unlike Arcaidia’s Crest Sorcery, which took the shape of flat, circular planes, the symbols of this Hyadean magic formed into a three-dimensional sphere of similar sigils. I had a second to wonder if the Hyadean actually was using Crest Sorcery, or something that only vaguely resemble it, before Alhazad’s magic was unleashed.

A cacophonous blast of wailing noise blew forth, unnatural in its dissonant ring, making me feel sick to my stomach even at a distance from the spell’s epicenter. The sound looked as if it was channeled in a direct line, smashing through Arcaidia’s ice and hitting her like a sonic wave. Arcaidia shuddered under the blow, although I could see a flash of white light ripple along her body from the shield spell she’d cast earlier, mitigating the blow.

Even so, her artificial leg gave way, the metal and plastic snapping like dry twigs and forcing Arcaidia to sink to one knee to keep the rest of herself upright. Her face grimaced in pain but she snarled past it and kept her horn leveled at Alhazad, already charging up another spell. Alhazad let out another warbling laugh.

“Khhk. Don’t push yourself too hard, my dear little unicorn. Or should I still call you a Veruni? Your mastery of the ice element of Crest Sorcery is impressive. Almost as good as your sister’s mastery of fire.”

I saw Arcaidia hesitate, her shock quickly masked by more anger as she shouted, “Don’t speak of my sister, Hyadean monster!”

It was around that point the insect I was stuck to decided to register that having about three feet of Gramzanber stuck through it was supposed to mean it was dead, and it twitched in mid-air, then proceeded to fall. Given we were about thirty feet up at that point I wasn’t particularly eager to feel the impact of that fall, so I rapidly activated S.A.T.S and let the spell slow down my perception of time for me while I looked for a way out of this mess.

Lucky me I still had my Grapple, and the ruby gemmed insects were still buzzing about, engaged in a tangled dogfight with Glint’s squad. So I targeted the nearest one with my Grapple gun, ignoring the listed hit-chance S.A.T.S was giving me, and fired. Time slipped back into sharp speed and focus, the Grapple line streaking out and wrapping around the insect creature’s body. I swung down along the taut line, and as I’d hoped the path of the swing took me right towards Alhazad.

I braced Gramzanber in my mouth, cocking back my head to slash along with the momentum of the swinging Grapple line. Alhazad saw me coming and the three sapphire insects buzzed away from Glint’s squad and swiftly formed a barrier between me and the Hyadean. When Gramzanber hit the translucent shield of shimmering blue energy, the ARM let out a burst of white sparks. My head and neck jared from the impact, sending me spinning around at the end of the Grapple. I saw the silvery deck of the ship rising to meet me, and turned my foreleg to pull myself up along the Grapple line to give me enough height to actually hit the deck comfortably with my forelegs, rather than painfully slam into it.

I tried to then yank the red gem insect my Grapple line was attached to the ground, but my legs trembled from the weakness of the toxin still in me. I found myself being dragged along for half a dozen yards, so instead I retracted the Grapple and let the insect go.

Glint’s squad was fighting evasively now, wheeling about in the air to avoid the scarlet beams that criss-crossed the sky in pursuit of them. They fired back whenever they got an opening, but it was clear the stray laser or plasma bolt that hit was only slowing the insects down. Crossfire was keeping up a steady amount of support fire from the deck, but had one of the insects she’d dropped earlier now scrambling across the deck after her on small, spindly legs. The unicorn had to teleport out of the way of one cutting, crimson beam that left a melted line across the deck, and she had to turn to focus on this new threat.

Meanwhile I saw Hammerfall get knocked out of the air by a particularly hard swing from one of the Golem, Light Lance’s, spear-like arms. While it may not have been the strongest of the Golems, it still towered over a pony’s height, and its mass had to be considerable. Even a burly pegasus like Hammerfall got knocked flat like a gnat being hit with a flyswatter and he bounced across the deck, letting out pained grunts with each bounce.

Explosions from nearby got my attention and I turned to see Binge was now throwing grenades at the insect that’d been pursuing her, lobbing them with swift kicks of her hind legs as she kept twirling and dancing away from the snapping mandibles of her foe. The insect’s energy shield kept absorbing the explosions of shrapnel from the grenades, but each impact sent it rocking back, giving Binge ever more space to toss another grenade. Just how many of those things had she hidden in that mane of hers?

B.B whirled around her own opponent, and in doing so revealed an weakness in the barriers the bugs could erect. She moved with the swift speed of a snowstorm, circling the bug that kept buzzing after her. She employed both the guns and blades equipped to the Twin Fenrir with equal ferocity, shooting and slashing in an ever faster blaze. The insect’s energy shield could protect its front, but not its sides or rear. In short order I saw B.B’s shots piercing the insect multiple times, while the slashes of the Twin Fenrir’s gleaming blades opened up metal rents in the thing’s hide which sparked and bled purple, brackish blood.

Soon it sputtered and fell, leaving B.B free to join me and Arcaidia as we faced Alhazad.

“Ya alright, Arc?” asked B.B as Arcaidia had withdrawn a blue glowing potion of magic restoring liquid, drinking it down in gulps.

Arcaidia tossed the empty bottle aside and her horn grew brighter, “Better once we kill this monster.”

Standing on Arcaidia’s other side, I kept Gramzanber in my mouth and said, “If everypony else can keep those other insects busy, I think we can take him down. The insects can only protect from one direction. Good work showing us that, B.B.”

A faint smile lit B.B’s face as she blew a bit of smoke haze from one of the barrels of the Twin Fenrir, “Just keepin’ pace with the rest o’ you.”

“My, aren’t you three such good friends, with battlefield banter and everything?” said Alhazad, his voice no more concerned than if we were sitting around a table for a cup of tea, rather than engaged in trying to kill each other. “It warms my heart. Well, technically I don’t have one of those, but rather a decentralized vascular system supported by nanomachine circulation, but I suspect none of you are experts on advanced bio-mechanics, so I’ll spare you the lecture.”

“Stop with the talking and make with the dying already,” Arcaidia spat, and she glanced at me as her horn started to form a multi-layered Crest, “Longwalk, time for big icy death attack with your ARM!”

Ah, right, the same move we pulled against Roaring Metal. She’d infused Gramzanber with a whole huge heap of ice magic, then I could trigger Impulse and cast the spear directly at Alhazad. It might not kill him, but a massive, frozen blast like that might take out all his shield generating insects at once. Even if he survived, B.B would be in a good position to hit him hard from the side.

I raised Gramzanber, getting ready to accept Arcaidia’s power into the ARM, but Alhazad just started to chuckle at us.

“Khhk, khhk, khhk, as fascinated as I am to see what it is you’re trying to do with that ARM and spell, I think it’s time I do the young unicorn there a kindness. I’m far more interested in seeing how you all handle it, and really, little Arcaidia came all this way, it’d be a shame to let it all end without her getting... closure.”

What in the name of the Ancestor Spirits was he going on about? I had no idea, but as Arcaidia turned her horn towards Gramzanber to imbue it with her ice magic, the air twisted and rippled once more around Alhazad. As the distortion took shape, Alhazad spoke again.

“I do hope you appreciate this. It's not often one gets to facility family reunions.”

The person who appeared from the distortion in the air, stepping from the portal like someone emerging from a fog, was neither pony nor Hyadean.

Arcaidia’s magic died on her horn, her silver eyes turning into wide, full moon’s of utter shock. I wasn’t far behind her, barely keeping my grip on Gramzanber in my surprise. B.B, who hadn’t witnessed the recording Arcaidia and I had seen on the ship’s bridge, only looked vaguely concerned and baffled out our own shock as she asked, “Who the hay is this supposed ta be?”

Not much had changed about this individual’s appearance that I could tell, rather than the tired, dark shadows under her eyes. Otherwise Persephone looked exactly as she had in the recording that had likely taken place decades ago. Veruni didn’t really age fast, far as I could tell. She was still a tall, statuesque, slim yet curvy bipedal female alien. Her body was covered in a suit of skin tight, gleaming pale metallic violets and deeper, dark purple and teal bands of color. Boots and gloves of a faintly metallic quality covered her arms and legs, and the suit extended up a slim neckline to her oddly flat and pale face, lacking any fur save for a long and lustrous mane of vibrant lavender hair. Her brow was adorned by some manner of headgear, a visor extending to circular nodes on either side.

Her eyes were sparkling pools of blood red color, and she took in the scene at one glance, giving Alhazad what I could only describe as a particular annoyed look before they lit upon Arcaidia and instantly mirrored the unicorn’s wide-eyed shock.

“A...Arcaidia?”

“Sister,” Arcaidia just said in a mind-numb whisper.

For a startled moment, nobody said or did anything. Then Alhazad laughed again.

“I do believe that if I had a recording device, this would be a remarkably good moment ot make use of it.”

Persephone’s body language was hard for me to read. Her bipedal nature and squashed, flat face, not to mention such small ears or lack of tail, meant I had little way of telling just what emotions she was feeling based on body alone. Still, the way she closed her hands into fists, trembling, and turned flashing red eyes towards Alhazad was indicator enough of her anger before she spoke ina fuming tone.

“You bastard! Do you have any idea what you’ve just done!?”

“Only what Lord Zeikfried has authorized me to do,” Alhazad said, raising a metal claw up over the lower part of his mask, as if holding it up over his “heart” in mock shock, “After all he did say I could call upon your support if I needed any assistance with complications during this delicate operation.”

“Complications with the ship you moron!” Persephone snarled, “This wasn’t how we were supposed to do this and you know it! She wasn’t supposed to know until...”

Persephone’s voice trailed off as she blinked and looked back at Arcaidia, as if only now realizing the full impact of Arcaidia being there right in front of her. I saw Persephone's jaw work in a silent, twitching motion, as if she kept trying to find words to say and was failing at it.

Arcaidia, for her part, took a step forward like a mare stuck in a dream that she wasn’t sure was a good or bad one yet, and said, “Persephone, I... why are... what’s happening here?”

The silence was punctuated by the sound of energy weapons fire and explosions. It wasn’t as if the rest of the fight had stopped without us, and I tensed up. I didn’t know how this was going to play out, but we couldn’t stand idle. Our comrades needed help, the Golem still needed to be taken out, and Alhazad dealt with. We couldn’t afford the extra complication of Arcaidia’s sister suddenly appearing, apparently on the enemy’s side.

Which I suspect was exactly why Alhazad had brought her in. It was clear from Persephone’s words that she hadn’t planned for Arcaidia to be here. That she hadn’t intended to meet with Arcaidia yet, but had somehow been aware Arcaidia had been out there, searching for her. I suppose if I’d joined the enemy faction for whatever reason, I’d be a bit hesitant to meet my sibling and try to explain things to them. In an instant I could see a dozen ideas whirl through both Arcaidia and Persephone’s minds, as if both were locked in a staring contest of mutual denial. Even not being remotely familiar with Veruni facial expressions I could still see the moment when Persephone decided to accept the situation for what it was and close down her feelings.

“Arcaidia, I know what you must be thinking, but trust me when I say that there are good reasons for my being with the Hyadeans.”

Arcaidia just blinked, eyes trembling, her voice oddly detached, “Oh, good... what are they?”

Persephone's eyes shifted towards me and B.B, narrowing in suspicion, then glanced towards the fighting between our other comrades and Alhazad’s insectile monsters.

“Not here, Arcaidia. If you want to know, then I need you to come with me. I’ll explain everything back on the Photosphere. Get your companions to lay down their weapons, let me and Alahzad finish our mission here, and I swear to you I’ll explain everything.”

“Okay, hold up,” I said, stepping forward, “Hey, hi there, my name’s Longwalk, and I’m thinking if there’s going to be any explanations they can happen while all sides have backed off, which would include Alhazad calling off his creepy bug minions and that Golem. Do that, and we’ll talk.”

“I know who you are,” Persephone said, looking at me with a very unusual expression that at once seemed grateful yet incredibly annoyed with me at the same time, “And while I appreciate what you’ve done to help my sister, that doesn’t change your an obstacle to our plans. We need that reactor core, and the Golem is taking it. Surrender, and I’ll convince Alhazad to call off his servitors.”

My own eyes danced around left and right, taking in the fight. Binge was out of grenades and the blue gemmed bug was still pressing her, its mandibles snapping at her tail as she ducked and juked away from it. Stitch had stopped screaming and I couldn’t tell if the wounded medic was still alive, or had perished from his horrific injury. Another of Glint’s squad, the griffin Gale, was also down, with a hole burned through her stomach. The insects with ruby gems were focusing their attacks on Crossfire, who was generating a blood red shield of magic to absorb the burning beams. This was giving Glint’s squad time to regroup and recover their wounded members. In the meantime it looked like Hammerfall was stuck on the defensive against the Golem, using his chainsaw to parry lightning fast blows from the incredibly speedy Golem, but wasn’t able to mount a counterattack of any kind. He clearly needed backup, and soon.

And if that wasn’t worry enough, a part of me realized that LIL-E should have caught up with us by now and joined the fray as well. The fight had only been going on a minute or so, but LIL-E wasn’t slow and she hadn’t been that far separated from us. Where was she?

Putting that worry aside, I seriously considered the situation in front of me. Should I have taken the offer Persephone was extending? It would end the fight before anypony else got hurt, and it might mean Arcaidia would learn some valuable information, depending on Persephone’s explanation. Was it even possible that there was more to the Hyadeans than we knew? Some reasoning behind their actions that warranted listening to what Persephone had to say?

I had a hard time believing that. I’d seen the results of the Hyadeans plans thus far, and it had led to things like Redwire’s maiming and killing of countless innocents beneath Skull City. Alhazad himself had twisted the ponies of Stable 104 into the creatures they were today, and he clearly had no regard for the sanctity of life. Whatever they were planning, it couldn’t be good for ponykind or any of the other races of the world.

I didn’t want to see Arcaidia like this though. I couldn’t ask her to fight her sister. Not after she’d spent so long looking for her. Yet I couldn’t accept the offer either, could I? I’d already formed a truce with Odessa, however temporary, and I knew neither Glint or his father were going to back down. Which meant there was no way I could back off either, because all that would mean was watching Glint, Hammerfall, and the other Odessa soldiers get slaughtered.

“No,” I said, shaking my head sadly, “I don’t think I can do that.”

Persephone’s eyes narrowed further, the red of them seeming to flash with inner fire, “Unfortunate. Yet you don’t speak for my sister. Arcaidia, come with me. Help me subdue your companions and I promise you they’ll come to no further harm. Once the Odessa soldiers are dealt with, of course. Then we’ll leave here and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. You have my word.”

Silence was the only answer that came from Arcaidia as she stood there, legs trembling. Persephone looked at her sister’s missing leg, and at the metal prosthetic in its place, her eyes softening. “We’ll regenerate your leg, too. I’m sorry you’ve suffered so much, sister. You don’t have to bear the burden of the mission alone anymore. I’ll take care of everything.”

Arcaidia twitched, and something came over her face, like water gradually freezing to ice. A look of pain and sorrow unlike any I’d seen on Arcaidia now frosted her features and she spoke in a tone like shattering ice, “I don’t know what is right, but I know you not like sister I remember. If you are Persephone, then you will know I can’t abandon mission, or friends.”

Pure blue magic swirled around her horn and her starblaster hovered at her side as Arcaidia aimed both at Alhazad and Persephone, “I am not going with you, sister, and this ship will not be violated by Hyadean monster any longer! I’ll destroy ship before I let them have it!”

As Persephone’s face became crestfallen, Alhazad laughed in mad delight.

“Khhk, khhk, khhk! I’d say that concludes negotiations! Well Persephone, what shall it be? Betray Lord Zeikfried, or betray your cute little adopted sister?”

Persephone spat at him, snarling, “You know I won’t betray Zeikfried’s trust, and damn you for bringing me here when you could have dealt with this yourself. But it’s no matter...”

I saw the Veruni raise her hand, and a blaze of flaming magic formed there, a deep orange crest of symbols as flame swirled into form upon her outstretched palm; aimed at Arcaidia. In response Arcaidia, tears in her eyes, brought forth her own Crest Sorcery, snowy white and blue symbols forming a crest that summoned forth ice shards aimed at Persephone.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Arcaidia,” Persephone said, sadness cloaking her words, “But if you insist on making this hard, then we’ll see how much you’ve grown since our last sparring match. Then, even if I have to beat you unconscious myself, I’m dragging you back to the Photosphere by the tail, and then I’ll explain everything to you.”

“I’m stronger than I was before, sister,” Arcaidia said, and Persephone gave her a waning smile.

“Show me.”

With a sharp cry, Arcaidia let loose her ice in a hail of thick shards, while Persephone unleashed her flames in a thick, continuous bolt of raw fire. As the ice and flame collided in a burst of conflicting magic and searing steam, B.B and I leaped away to avoid being boiled by the hot cloud of steam. Arcaidia was shielded by the force of her magic, as was Persephone, and I saw both of them immediately rush to the side as the steam started to clear. Persephone drew a sleek, gold plated weapon that looked like a bulkier version of Arcaidia’s silver starblaster, and as the both ran across the deck, both Veruni fired with their starblasters and spells.

Flame, ice, and blazing bolts of alien energy criss-crossed between the two. Arcaidia relied on summoning small barriers of ice to block the starblaster bolts and flames, though some fire got through to wash against the energy shield she’d cast on herself earlier. Persephone needed no such barriers or shields, as she flipped and spun through Arcaidia’s attacks with the agility of a sparrow, contorting her bipedal body in ways I didn’t think a pony would be able to duplicate.

Then I saw a flash of gold coming towards my face and had to tear my attention away from Arcaidia and Persephone’s fight to pay attention to my own, blocking with Gramzanber as Alhazad’s tail snapped towards me. The blow knocked me back a pace, even having blocked it, and Alhazad chuckled.

“Isn’t sibling rivalry just adorable? Now then, let’s have fun my little test subjects. Two ponies, both deviants from normal pony stock, and both wielding ARMs. This should prove enlightening for future experimentation.”

B.B snorted, “Ain’t nothin’ yer ‘bout to be enlightened on other n’ a whole load o’ pain, ya alien jackass!”

“Yeah, what she said!” I shouted. Truly a poet of the battlefield, was I.

Behind us Binge rode by atop the insect servitor that had been chasing her, having somehow managed to straddle the thing while she proceeded to stab at it with her ripper chain-blade. Amid that, she shouted, “Double what she said!”

B.B, myself, and Alhazad all just sort of stared at Binge riding by, then looked back at each other. After an awkward pause, we all collectively decided to attack at once.

Alhazad seemed well aware I had limited ranged options, so he was already floating backwards and away from me to try to keep distance between us, but B.B had my back on that front and soared higher than him, and much faster. She threw her hooves forward and rained down a hail of silvery bullets from the Twin Fenrir, forcing Alhazad’s personal trio of blue gem insects to rapidly form a shield against the torrent. This slowed his ascent long enough for me to get under him, ready to skewer him from below.

There was just two issues with that. One was his claws and tail were already poised to strike at me, the scorpion-like tail stabbing at me in a series of blurred thrusts while his claws raked at me from the sides. The other problem was that I caught sight of what lay beneath that massive white sheet Alhazad wore, and my brain had a bit of a fit trying to process it. It was like looking at a intertwining mass of contradicting organs and body parts, all of them slithering and alien, none of it recognizable as being from a familiar form of life. I couldn’t get a concept of shape or size, just an unidentifiable, writhing, mind warping mass of something.

The sight alone flabbergasted me enough that my ability to block was way off, and while I was able to fend off Alhazad’s claws, one of his tail stabs caught me square in the chest. The blow knocked the wind from me as I was propelled backwards and slammed to the ground, sharp pain exploding through my chest. I coughed, rolling to my hooves, swinging Gramzanber just in time to parry a follow up strike from the tail, then glanced at my chest.

Arcaidia’s shield spell saved me. There was a hole punched into my armor, but only a flesh wound on my chest, barely bleeding. But the white energy of the shield spell hugging my body fizzled out, the spell having expended the last of its protecting energy saving me from what would have otherwise been a much worse wound.

Using her own mobility to full advantage B.B was now circling Alhazad, trying to get around his protective bugs, but those insectile servant creatures were about as fast as she was, so she wasn’t having much luck. Luckily I had a way to deal with that issue, and tapped into Gramzanber’s power, letting it pump up my adrenaline and help dull the fatigue and pain that was trying to pull me down.

Accelerator

As the world burst into blue clarity, I hefted Gramzanber in my mouth, taking on a hunter’s throwing stance. The bugs were too high in the air for me to reach normally, but my connection with Gramzanber was strong enough these days that I felt I could try this. With a well aimed whip of my head, I threw my ARM at the highest of the three insect creatures. The spear sailed true and impaled the bug from behind. I could see its destruction disrupt the barrier it was forming with its two companions, allowing some of B.B’s shots to get through and strike at Alhazad properly. Even in slow motion the bullets from her ARMs were moving swift, and blasted into Alhazad’s sheet covered body.

I couldn’t tell if he was wounded. The shots just left small, dark holes in the cloth, and the few that hit his mask just seemed to bounce off, but it looked like he reeled back.

In the meantime Accelerator ended and I called Gramzanber back to me, the ARM appearing in a flash of light back to my waiting mouth. I felt a painful rush from the Accelerator backlash, and while I might have been getting more resistant to the negative effects of my ARM’s powers, I was running out of endurance.

“Well, that stung,” Alhazad commented dryly, “I can see you’re both rather exceptional. I suppose that’s to be expected, one of you bearing Lord Zeikfried’s nanomachine imprint, and the other a descendant of the Crimson Noble mutants strain.”

B.B bristled, “What do ya know ‘bout Crimson Nobles?”

Her question was punctuated by diving in with the Twin Fenrir’s blades, zipping around Alhazad and slicing at his side, which he blocked with a flick of his tail as he continued to speak.

“I know your ‘Mistress’ probably hasn’t told you much about where your kind actually stems from. Did you know that you have more in common with that Golem than you do your fellow ponies?”

“I ain’t listin’ to none o’ yer drivel! Longwalk, keep his tail busy!”

“On it!” I shouted, galloping forward and leaping up, slashing at Alhazad’s back. This forced him to lash his tail around to block Gramzanber, which freed up B.B to fly higher up above him, then dive bomb down like a white javelin, guns blazing all the while. The remaining two blue gem insects formed individual barriers to take on some of the damage, apparently unable to form a larger barrier without having three bugs together. More of B.B’s shots go through, striking Alhazad with oddly metallic sounding impacts, as if his body was more metal than flesh. His tail twitched as he took the shots, possibly because he was distracted by pain, and I took advantage by ducking in low and slashing at the long joints connecting the tail, trying to sever it in half.

However his tail coiled around Gramzanber’s shaft, halting it, and Alhazad spoke with a darker tone, “Funny enough, I killed a lot of Crimson Nobles back in the day. Back when they were first made by the Elw out of cave pony stock as slave warriors. Oh yes, for all their high and mighty talk of harmony, the Elw saw early ponykind as little more than fodder for their war effort.”

Purple and green lights flared and formed between his claws as Alhazad cast another of his strange, alien Crest spells. Instead of a focused beam, this time the sphere expanded into a massive dome of undulating sound and light that struck everything around Alhazad. It engulfed me and B.B, and as the wave hit me I felt like my head was about to explode from the piercing wails of noise that blasted my senses with a nauseating sound. It was like the sickening, extraterrestrial music grated on every nerve and twisted every synapse, making me want to vomit and collapse.

Only a pure effort of willpower kept me on my hooves. I saw B.B twist in the air, letting out a pained cry, and she almost crashed, only at the last second managing to turn away from the deck and maintain a low hover.

Alhazad turned towards us, commenting dryly, “I only bring it up because I am curious how your species has evolved over time, since the Elw made you all those eons ago. Won’t you consider coming with me to our little headquarters up north? I promise my experimentation on your body won’t be fatal. Painful, but not fatal.”

“Piss... off... “ B.B breathed.

“A shame. Oh well, guess I can always dissect your remains after we’re done here.”

“Dissect this!”

This came from Binge, who now standing atop a freshly mutilated and very dead insect servitor, threw a block of something that bounce once off the deck and landed in front of Alhazad. The block was beeping, and I seemed to recall that Binge had taken an undisclosed amount of high explosive material from the NCR munitions tent. I immediately turned and dove for B.B, knocking both her and myself as far as I could away from the beeping explosive block.

Alhazad clearly knew what it was as well, because he just as swiftly flew backwards while his two shielding insects rushed down to cover the block with their glowing blue barriers. Not that this helped much as the bomb exploded with a blast that sent me and B.B tumbling away. The insects were destroyed and Alhazad thrown backwards to smack into one of the ship’s engine pylons.

B.B and I rolled to Binge’s hooves, and I looked up at my marefriend, who was grinning in a very pleased-with-herself fashion.

“Wow, that exploded almost exactly how I timed it to! I should make the timer even shorter next time.”

“N-no! No next time! I mean, yes, thank you, that helped Binge, but warn me before you throw high explosives anywhere near me, please!”

“Oh bucky, how is our relationship going to remain interesting if I warn you about things?” Binge asked, fluttering her eyelashes at me.

I just looked at her with a flat stare, then shook my head with a sighing smile. I probably should’ve expected an answer like that. Putting that aside, with Alhazad momentarily stunned by the blast, I took a second to see how everypony else was faring.

Glint’s squad had knocked out all but two of the red gem insect servitors, Glint’s comrades were scattered between getting their wounded to safety, or already out of the fight. Only Glint and Springbreeze were still in the air, providing cover for Crossfire, who seemed responsible for taking out most of the bugs that were in twitching pieces on the deck. Nosedive was the one dragging the wounded away from the fight, using his teeth to yank each downed Odessa soldier to the cover of the engine pylon on the other side of the deck. From the way he was desperately rooting through Stitch’s uniform pockets, pulling out healing potions, things weren’t looking good over there.

Worse, Hammerfall was pinned up against the ravine wall by one of Light Lance’s spiked arms. He had his chainsaw up, grinding against the massive spike and keeping it from piercing his chest, but I could see the muscles on the powerful pegasus straining against the Golem’s mechanical might, his back getting further pressed into the ravine wall. I wasn’t sure how long he could hold out.

I could barely see Arcaidia and Persephone. A large portion of the ship deck where they fought was covered in chunks of ice, burning patches of flame, and billowing clouds of steam, creating a miasma that was hard to see through. I could barely make out streaks of starblaster fire and flaring aura of magic marking where their shadowy forms clashed, but I couldn’t tell who was winning, only that Arcaidia was still up and fighting, although what fighting her sister was doing to Arcaidia’s mental state worried me more than harm to her physical body. Persephone seemed to want to capture Arcaidia alive, which made sense of course, but I wondered what could possibly have gotten Persephone to switch sides like she had?

Things weren’t looking good. Alhazad was slumped against the engine pylon the explosion had thrown him into, but he was already stirring, and it would probably only be a matter of seconds before the Hyadean recovered and resumed the fight. Even a block of high explosives going off at nearly point blank range had only dazed Alhazad. I had a feeling it’d take all of us together to overwhelm his defenses, but to do that we had to deal with the other enemies first.

“Binge, B.B, help Glint and Crossfire with the last bugs!” I said, already galloping into motion, “I’ll help Arcaidia!”

“On it!” B.B said.

“Ripping out more bug guts for fun and profit,” Binge replied happily, bouncing off behind B.B’s swift flight as they went to support Glint’s remaining squad and Crossfire. That left me rushing towards the clash of fire and ice that had drifted towards the port side of the deck.

As I got closer a break in the cloud of steam showed me that Persephone had Arcaidia on the ropes. The Veruni woman was moving with surprising speed, evading Arcaidia’s blasts of ice with a sinuous grace. Meanwhile ever motion of her left hand created a new Crest of magic that spewed accurate bolts of fire that blazed through Arcaidia’s gradually weakening defenses. On top of that, Persephone’s starblaster was punching through the ice barriers Arcaidia was creating for cover, forcing Arcaidia to keep moving, which was difficult for her because of her artificial leg.

Just one look at Arcaidia showed me how tired she was, her silver mane plastered to her head, her eyes barely hiding the desperation and emotional torment wracking her as she tried to keep pace with her sister. Every motion she made, every spell she through, or shot fired from her starblaster, showed a hesitance and doubt that I’d never seen in Arcaidia before.

I redoubled my pace, charging headlong into that fray, shouting “Arcaidia! I’m here!”

That got both Veruni’s attention, Persephone giving me a harsh glare as she turned her starblaster towards me, “Don’t interfere, pony. This is family business.”

I activated Accelerator again just as she pulled the trigger. The silvery bolt of alien energy lanced out of the starblaster, and I saw it zip through the air towards me like a swiftly drawn line. I managed to duck it, the bolt singing my mane, and continued to rush forward. Persephone’s reflexes were beyond what I expected, and I could see her reacting to my high-speed motions, twisting aside as I tried to slash a hamstring blow at her legs. She flipped over the blow, swinging her arm around to aim her starblaster at my head. I turned Gramzanber, deflecting the bolt of energy by a fraction of an inch. Yet even with Accelator’s speed boost, I hadn’t seen that the starblaster shot was a feint, and Persephone’s flip turned into a flying kick that smacked me across the face.

I was shocked, but recovered fast, keeping Accelerator on just long enough to turn around and aim my own bucking double kick at Persephone’s gut. She pulled up a knee to block it, still managing to match my speed, but I could tell my blow sent her reeling back a bit, forcing her to tuck and roll to control her fall.

I ended Accelerator and reached Arcaidia’s side as my perceptions returned to normal speed and I absorbed another painful, draining stab of backlash that nearly made me stagger. I didn’t have much left in me.

“You...you okay Arcaidia?” I asked between panting.

She was panting herself, breathing hard as sweat dripped off her. Her dress and hide were signed with a few burns from the fires she’d been trying to avoid or counter. “Not very much, ren solva. Not very much at all.”

I could only gulp and nod, “We’ll get answers out of her after we win.”

“If we win,” she said.

“Hey, all we have to do is take on an elite Veruni warrior, another ancient and powerful war machine, then a insane alien monster. What’s to worry about?”

Well, at least that got a phantom of a smile out of her, “Your toaster head never think of giving up, does it?”

“Nah, I’d lose my reputation as a stone-headed idiot if I did that.”

A starblaster bolt snapped through the air between us and Persephone narrowed her eyes at us, “The option remains to surrender. I’ve heard enough about you, Longwalk, to know you have a habit of stubbornly refusing to recognize when you’re outmatched, but even you must see you can’t win this. The Golem alone would’ve been a challenging foe for all of you together. With me and Alhazad here as well, you don’t have a chance. Do the smart thing and yield.”

I grit my teeth, prepared to tell her exactly what I thought of her offer, when a noise pierced through the general noise of battle. It was a pulsing, loud hum, filling the air with an energetic sound. Suddenly my Pip-Buck’s radio crackled with a familiar voice.

“Sorry for the delay gang, but thought I’d go acquire us some air support!” said LIL-E as an object flew up from the port side of the ship, hovering upward swiftly.

It was one of the Veruni shuttlecraft from the hangar bay we’d entered the ship through! The sleek silver craft was flying on washes of blue energy from circular engines mounted on its underside, and through the clear front port I saw LIL-E hovering at the pilot seat, using the small robotic arm she used for self-repairs to manipulate the controls.

Quickly the shuttle turned to face the Golem that was crushing Hammerfall into the ravine wall, and a small section on the front of the shuttle opened to extend a weapon barrel. With a flash of light, a continuous silver beam, like the big daddy to the starblasters, opened fire from the shuttle and smashed into the Golem’s side. The beam burned a charred line across the Golem’s armor and knocked it away from Hammerfall. The Odessa elite soldier didn’t waste a second, revving up the chainsaw blade on his artificial ARM and unleashed a cutting wave of energy at the Golem while it was distracted. The strike hit with a burst of sparks, damaging the Golem’s armor further.

The Golem was still up, but it was staggered, and Hammerfall rushed forward, slashing away with his chainsaw while the Golem was still reeling. LIL-E brought the shuttle higher and hovering over the ship deck, and with well targeted bursts of the shuttle’s weapon she knocked the remaining bug servitors of Alhazad out of the air, leaving Glint’s squad, along with my other companions, all staring up at it.

“Holy shitballs,” I said, shouting into my Pip-Buck, “LIL-E, you beautiful flying pinball! I could kiss you!”

“I don’t have lips, and I think your marefriend might object to it anyway, but yes, I am awesome, feel free to praise me after we survive this.”

“But how are you even flying that thing?”

“Funny story, but I took a guess that since this whole ship was meant to explore and infiltrate Equestrian society, that they’d have made their tech compatible with our languages. Sometimes being a robot with a built in, wireless hacking tool and adaptive language processor really pays off. Helps that the controls on this shuttle are exceedingly user friendly.”

Persephone was, in a word, livid, her face contorted in a mask of barely contained anger, “I do hope you’re having fun joyriding in our technology, you damned backwater barbarians. But this doesn’t mean you’ve won yet. Arcaidia, this is your last chance to give up this nonsense and come with me.”

Arcaidia shuddered, took a deep breath, then said, “No. You... you gave me a mission. I will not abandon it, just because you have.”

“You don’t understand. That mission was before I learned the truth. But I can tell there’s no more point trying to convince you. I’ll make you understand afterwards...”

With that, Persephone’s hand raised, and she started to form a significantly larger Crest than before, an aura of fiery red energy gathering around her. Arcaidia planted her legs in a bracing stance, and began to draw forth power into her horn. I stood by her side, ready to support her in any way I could.

Alhazad had recovered from his stunned state and was flying towards us, but I could see Crossfire, B.B, Binge, and Glint all moving to intercept him. Meanwhile LIL-E was angling the Veruni shuttle towards the Golem, continuing to support Hammerfall.

Things were looking a shade or two less hopeless, or so I was thinking. Before Persephone and Arcaidia fired their magic at each other there was a burst of light from the Golem. Light Lance’s wings now exuded an even brighter field of radiant white light, and the Golem crossed its arms in front of itself as geometric patterns of energy flowed in sharp angled lines over its body to gather in its metal wings.

Then from those wings the Golem erupted with a dizzying array of light beams that cured and twisted around through the air at numerous targets. I saw LIL-E’s shuttle get struck several times, knocking it into a spin that then sent it bouncing off the deck. Hammerfall dodged several bolts, but one clipped his side and another beam exploded on him as he used his ARM to block it. The burst of energy left the burly pegasus flying backwards to smack into the ravine wall again, then slide off it and out of side beyond the edge of the deck.

“Dad!” I heard Glint yell, but as the other light beams rained down among my companions he was knocked out of harm's way by Springbreeze, one of her wings getting torn off by the bolt that would’ve pierced Glint.

Crossfire shielded herself while B.B picked up Binge and flew in a dizzying pattern to avoid the bolts that came their way.

As for myself and Arcaidia, I had to use Gramzanber to deflect one of the bolts that was coming towards us, and was knocked flat on my ass by the bolt exploding in my face, stripping away the last of Arcaidia's shield and hammering me with pain. Arcaidia used the magic she’d been pooling to attack Persephone and instead used it to erect a half-dome of ice around us, reinforcing it with a small wall of earth. The barrier protected us, if barely, portions of it blasted to pieces.

I groaned and stood, fishing into my saddlebag for healing potions for both myself and Arcadia. We both managed to choke the potions down while I peeked over the rubble of the ice barrier, only to get kicked in the face by Persephone, who leaped over the barrier.

“This ends now. I’m taking you both with me!” Persephone said, but Arcaidia whipped her empty potion bottle at her sister. As Persephone knocked the item aside with a flick of her hand, Arcaidia finally managed to tag Persephone with a bolt of ice, hitting Persephone’s shoulder and knocking her back. The Veruni woman’s right arm and shoulder were frosted over and she ended up dropping her starblaster, which Arcaidia then used her telekinesis to snag.

“No, you’re coming with me, Persephone!” Arcaidia shouted, then said something in Veruni, “Esru ti vira mas, yevkosa mishar!”

Persephone grimaced, then shook her head, replying in Veruni as well, “Estu ti virae, Arcaidia. Estu yevkosa mir sharven.”

The deck heaved beneath us, and I glanced over to see that Light Lance was aiming its arms at the ship’s rear deck. The spiked arms had split open, both of them charging powerful light beams. As the beams fired the Golem crossed the beams like a giant ‘X’, cutting a hole in the back end of the ship. It then quickly tore into that hole, ripping out gaping chunks as the deck shuddered and tilted under the strain.

Alhazad was ignoring my friends, who were still regrouping from the barrage of beams just a moment before, and was flying over to the Golem. His warbling, extraterrestrial voice called out.

“Persephone, we’re out of time to play. Come along, we’ve got our prize. You can collect your wayward sibling another day.”

Persephone shot a glare at him, then back at us, clearly wishing to finish things. However I saw her eyes flick between me and Arcaidia, and with a smirk she used her unfrozen arm to reach into a pouch on her belt, and flick something towards us, unseen by Alhazad. A small object hit the deck at Arcaidia’s hooves.

A small, silver metal sphere that looked rather nostalgically familiar. It was the same kind of sphere Gramzanber had appeared as before I’d manifested him. An unformed ARM sphere.

“Esru ren solva ti rivae, Arcaidia.”

With that Persephone nodded at her sister, then turned and ran with incredible speed towards the rear deck of the ship. Arcaidia seemed surprised enough at the object laying at her hooves that she didn’t even think to chase after her sister until a second or two later, shouting, “Persephone! Esru dol shea!? Wait!”

But things were simply happening too fast. I galloped after Arcaidia, spotting LIL-E exiting the crashed shuttle, and the rest of my friends watching in confusion as Arcaidia ran after her sister, who was entirely too damned fast for a creature with only two legs!

By now Light Lance had yanked an object from the back of the ship. It was a massive, cylindrical casing within which was housed a huge, pulsating blue crystal whose surface was smooth as a pearl yet had the color of a hundred different cerulean shades. Persephone reached the Golem just as Alhazad did, the Hyadean turning to look at us with a wink of his crimson eye.

“This was a pleasant diversion. I’ll inform Lord Zeikfried you’re progressing, but aren’t quite at the level he’d like you to be at. In the meantime, stick around the NCR a bit. I’d hate for you to miss the show.”

“Damn it, you’re not going-” I planted my hooves, hefted Gramzanber into my hoof, and let the ARM absorb more of my own life-force to ignite it into a beacon of cobalt energy. I activated Impulse and threw the spear, the weapon cutting like a shooting star towards the Golem and the reactor core it held.

Unfortunately I saw the air shimmer and twist as Alhazad used his alien magic to warp space and teleport himself, the Golem, Persephone, and the Ark of Destiny’s reactor core away into thin air just a split second before Gramzanber would’ve hit.

“...anywhere...” I finished lamely. Gramzanber teleported back to me, but I couldn’t even grab him as I sunk to the deck, utterly expended by the drain form using Impulse.

My last sigh before losing consciousness was Arcaidia, looking on with confusion, doubt, and regrets painted all over her face as she stared at the space her sister had occupied just a moment before.

All in all, not my best day.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Life Giver: With the kind of beatings you keep taking over and over again, your body is either adapting to getting constantly injured, or you're just getting better at ignoring pain. Regardless of the reason, you find yourself capable of taking even more punishment than before, and gain +30 HP. Yay?

Author's Note

Hey folks, I know its been awhile but hope you're all still enjoying the ride, however haphazard its updates may be. :twilightsheepish:

With this chapter we're quickly approaching the last stage of the NCR arc, which if my estimate is close should be wrapping up in a couple more chapters. With luck I'll be able to speed things up a bit and get the next chapter out sooner.

Thanks for reading folks, and by all means let me know your thoughts. 'Till next time.

Chapter 36: Flying in the Midst of the Storm

Chapter 36: Flying in the Midst of the Storm

I hadn’t fully lost consciousness, but I was fading in and out, getting only echoing images and faint sensations of what was happening around me. I was laying on sompony’s back, Binge’s. I could tell by her scent, sweat soaked, enticing, but the few snippets of noise my faded consciousness could make out forestalled any intimate thoughts.

In my experience, explosions are rarely a sign that things are going well, and the reverberation of distant booms of thunder left me wondering what was happening while I was doing my best impression of a sack of rocks.

Frustrated, I mentally reached out towards Gramzanber.

Gram? Gram!? What’s happening?

My ARM replied with relieving swiftness, although what he had to say didn’t exactly set my mind at ease.

Ah, you’re recovering. Good. It seems Odessa and the NCR are having an... altercation over possession of the Veruni vessel.

Like a claw of winter I felt a chill run through me at those words. I really didn’t want Odessa and the NCR fighting and had been hoping to avoid that very result. I shouldn’t have been that surprised by it. It would have been impossible for the NCR forces stationed nearby to not see the fight on top of the Ark of Destiny, and if they moved in, then Odessa would have countered in order to secure what was left of their salvage.

Ugh... I feel so heavy. Where are we? I need to get up!

Gramzanber’s response was calming in some ways, alarming in others, When the NCR sent soldiers to the ship, yourself and your companions were being taken into the Ark by Odessa. I believe Glint was trying to make it look like we’d been taken prisoner, as to provide a cover story to the NCR once we rejoin them. We’re currently inside the Ark’s medical bay, where Arcaidia dosed you and Binge with some antitoxins. She then left to secure us a shuttle while Odessa holds off the NCR troops, and Crossfire is arguing with the Cocytus officer over ownership if the regeneration tank. Those booms you heard were Crossfire arguing via use of her rifle.

Oh for fuck’s sake! Come on body, wake up! I started actively struggling to move, feeling the tingling wave of needle pricks across my limbs as I started to regain consciousness. Heavy eyelids rose like cement bricks had been attached to the, but slowly my bright green eyes managed to open and my ears flicked about as I could finally hear clearly again. Crossfire’s voice was in full snarl mode.

“Either you back the fuck off right now, or the next shot is going through that piss poor excuse of a mane style on its way out the back of your skull.”

In response to this I heard Hammerfall’s boisterous tone, which was good because I hadn’t been sure if he’d been alright after getting smacked into the ravine wall by the Golem as if he’d been a buzzing fly. Looked like Glint’s father was made of stern stuff.

“You think that peashooter scares me, Drifter? I’ve got orders from Odessa to make sure we recover everything we can before jetting out of here, and lady, you’re not even a bit of turbulence on the flight path, if you catch my drift.”

“Grab whatever alien bullshit you want from here, but this thing here is coming with us,” Crossfire said, and I could now make her out as she tilted her head in a pointing gesture towards the regeneration tank.

I was laying on one of the medical beds on one side of the lab. Hammerfall and about half a dozen uneasy but very serious looking Odessa soldiers were facing off with Crossfire, who had her rifle floating at her side in a wreath of crimson magic, its barrel still smoking from several holes she’d put in the wall by Hammerfall’s head. Behind her B.B was standing with her weapons holstered. Beside my bed, Binge was watching the unfolding confrontation with one hoof casually bouncing a knife. She must have put me on the table not too long ago, for me to remember the feel of laying on her back.

How long had I been out? It couldn’t have even been an hour.

“Enough!” I shouted, leaping off the bed.

Or rather, what came out was closer to, “Unuufh!” as I ungracefully flopped out of the bed and smacked into the floor.

“Bucky! You’re awake!” Binge tossed her knife back into her mane as she wrapped spindly hooves around me in a hug, while I just sort of flopped in her grasp like a half-dead gecko.

“Hah, knew he wasn’t dead,” Hammerfall said as he held out a hoof to one of the Odessa troopers next to him, who reluctantly hoofed over a few bills of Odessa currency. Hammerfall then looked at me with a jovial grin, as if he didn’t have a rifle in the grip of an irate mare pointed at his head. “How you feeling, kid?”

“Like my mouth is made of sand and I haven’t slept in a week. Now what in the name of the Ancestor Spirits are you two doing wasting time arguing?”

“This dumbass thinks he can keep us from taking what’s ours, and I’m re-educating him on the matter,” Crossfire said with finality, and Hammerfall looked back at her with a smirk.

“Do you really think we’re letting any landbound take a piece of xeno medical tech that’s that hot? Thing is straight up growing new limbs. I got a wife who could use that kind of tech.”

“And I got a friend who needs it too, so sorry about your wife, but fuck off, the tech is ours,” Crossfire said, “And I’m not opposed to walking over your corpse to make a point of it.”

“Crossfire...” I said, struggling to my hooves. Binge helped me, supporting my side as I got my legs under me. I still felt unsteady, but whatever Arcaidia had pumped into me from the medical bay’s supplies had clearly done some good, because that sickly weakness from the slime monster’s toxin was gone. In its place was a more clean, natural exhaustion, one I knew would go away with enough rest. Clearing my throat, I approached Crossfire, who looked at me sharply.

“Don’t try any of your peaceful diplomacy crap on me, Mr. Hero. There is no chance I’m giving up this little miracle machine...”

I leaned close to her so I could whisper in her ear without being heard by anypony else, “If we fight, there’s no guarantee we can win. I know why you want that machine. Trust me, I want it too. Here’s the thing... my ARM has downloaded parts of the ship database.”

Gram, do we have the regeneration tank’s schematics?

We do, he replied, I had to cease the download when the ship power core was stolen, to avoid dangerous feedback, but among the information downloaded was the schematics for building the regeneration tank. I believe the residents of Stable 104 could replicate it, given time.

Hearing that, I continued to whisper to Crossfire, “If you drop this, I swear to you I’ll make sure Knobs gets her legs back. I know people who can likely build their own version of this regeneration tank. So please, back down for now. If Odessa and the NCR are fighting, then we need to get off this ship fast so Odessa can pull out. Please, Crossfire...”

Her eyes bored into me like a pair of yellow corkscrews, searching for any hint that I might be lying to her. Since I wasn’t, it was easy to keep a straight face, although I was worried she might still stubbornly refuse to give up. I saw the frustration run through her like a tremor, her body shaking before she gave a harsh shake of her head and growled out, “You’d better be right, buck, otherwise you’re dead.”

“Fair enough,” I said, wondering if I should start keeping a mental tally of the number of times Crossfire had threatened my life. It had to be getting to the double digits by now. I turned to Hammerfall, breathing a sigh to relief.

“We’ll go peacefully, Hammerfall. Where’s Arcaidia?”

Gramzanber had already told me, but Hammerfall didn’t know that, so I had to keep up appearances. Besides, I didn’t know if the Odessa forces were even aware Arcaidia was going to get a shuttle.

“Your Veruni pal ran off with that eyebot of yours the second she dosed you and the green mare there with some funky xeno goo. Didn’t say where they were going, but my orders ain’t to detain you guys now that you’ve agreed to play nice with the Colonel,” Hammerfall said, shrugging his huge shoulders. It was only now, looking at him closely, I saw how battered he was, and i was amazed the pegasus was still standing. He held his own chainsaw shaped ARM over one shoulder easily, yet his whole back and left side was like one dark bruise. His mouth showed blood trickling down his chin, and one eye was swollen shut. He’d taken a real thrashing from that Golem, yet he was still alive, somehow standing, having fought that monster solo.

It honestly frightened me a little. Shattered Sky had been dangerous, but as far as Cocytus members went, it looked to me like Hammerfall was on a different level altogether. Was he even a normal pony? Might he have cybernetics underneath that skin? I didn’t think so, but I was at a loss to explain his obvious toughness and strength other than he was clearly more gifted than I.

I knew time was of the essence and we needed to get out of here, but I had a few more questions I wanted answered. “How about Glint and his squad?”

Hammerfall’s expression darkened, “Glint’s fine, save for the fact he lost another squad-member. Poor Suture didn’t really stand a chance, losing that much blood. Real shame, kid had talent as a medic.”

I nodded solemnly, saying a silent prayer for the pegasus medic’s soul. I hadn’t known him well, but he’d survived Silver Mare Studios, only to fall here. Shaking off the depressing feeling, I asked, “Once we leave, how is the Colonel going to contact me concerning my tribe?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Hammerfall said, winking at me, “When she needs to talk to you, she’ll find a way. She’s good at that. Now you lot better get your asses clear of the ship, unless you want to hitch a ride when the Vesuvius breaks through the Raptors to pick us up.”

I suppressed an urge to groan, “Please try not to blow those ships up, will you? The NCR soldiers are just doing their jobs.”

“So are we, kid,” said Hammerfall, neither boasting nor sugarcoating the situation for me, “One way or another, what’s left of this ship is coming with us.”

There clearly wasn’t anything more to be said. It left a sour taste in my mouth, but there was no helping it. Soldiers on both Odessa and the NCR side of this conflict were going to die before the day was done, but there was nothing more I could do to stop that. I had to get myself and my own friends out of here, and hope for the best. Flexing my legs, I got more feeling back into them, and looked at Crossfire, B.B, and Binge.

“Let’s go catch up with Arcaidia and LIL-E.”

Crossfire’s face was still set in a stubborn half-glower, but she nodded silently and was willing to follow me as I led everypony out of the medical bay. Hammerfall watched me go, and said over his shoulder, “Try not to die out there, Longwalk. Wouldn’t mind taking a crack at you myself, one day, and see how strong your Gramzanber is against my Nidhogg.”

I assumed that was the name of his artificial ARM, and I just shook my head, similarly calling over my shoulder, “No offense, but after seeing you fight, I’d just as soon never have to find out.”

His deep and booming belly laugh followed me and my friends down the hall.

I called Arcaidia on my Pip-Buck and she told me to meet her back in the hangar bay we’d entered the Ark of Destiny from. I didn’t ask exactly why she’d left earlier with LIL-E, but I had a feeling she was up to something. I trusted Arcaidia with my life, but I was worried about her. Being here in the Ark had already been rough on her, even before she’d learned about her sister joining the Hyadean aliens. I still couldn’t get my head wrapped around that.

Why would Persephone join the very aliens the Veruni had been fighting for countless generations? What had happened to her in the years between landing on this world and Arcaidia waking up from her escape pod that would have convinced Persephone to be on the Hyadeans’ side? She hadn’t seemed to be under any mind control, like what Scythe had done to Binge. Persephone’s words and actions had looked to be very much of her own free will.

She’d hinted at there being reasons for her choice, but certainly hadn’t explained any of it, and if I was confused and distressed over this, then I could only imagine how hard this was hitting Arcaidia.

My worries weren’t assuaged at all when we finally worked our way back through the tangled, mangled innards of the Ark of Destiny and returned to the hangar bay. I could hear the popping cracks of gunfire from somewhere outside the bay, and knew that Odessa’s soldiers were fully engaged in keeping the NCR troops at bay. There were more distant, yet heavier discharges that sounded like energy weapons fire. I assumed those were the Raptors firing on the Vesuvius, which was probably descending from wherever it’d been hiding.

Hadn’t Glint or somepony mentioned some kind of levitation beam that they’d use to move the Ark of Destiny? We needed to be off the ship before that happened. I didn’t want to be a guest on board another Odessa airship if I could help it.

We found LIl-E floating around by one of the shuttles still strapped into its scaffolding on the right side of the bay. The eyebot turned to use as we rapidly galloped up, and said, “Good timing. Arcaidia almost has this thing powered up, but... Longwalk, I think there’s something off about her...”

“Off?” I asked, and B.B mirrored my worry, flying up with a concerned etched all over her face.

“What’re ya sayin’, LIL? Is she hurt?”

“No, nothing like that. Just... look, when we left you in the medical bay, she had me follow her so I could watch her back as she did something. Instead of coming straight here to the bay, we diverted to some side chamber a floor up. It had all these tubes in it and she pried one open, pulling out this weird device.”

LIL-E led us to the back of the shuttle. It looked to have two compartments, not unlike the Ursa ATW. The front compartment looked to be the cockpit, while the back compartment was separated into a large cargo bay and a small seating area with two smooth rows of four metal seats on either bulkhead. On the floor, strapped in to the left side of the cargo hold was a device that looked like a silver flower pot from which sprung a conical shape of equally silver metal that looked vaguely like a missile tipped with a deep blue crystal.

“Oh, shiny,” said Binge, “What’s it do?”

“Luna’s teats if I know,” said LIL-E, “But Arcaidia refused to leave the ship without it. She didn’t even make a peep about leaving the regen tank behind and it’s got her new leg in it, but this thing, she insisted she needed it. Wouldn’t say why, and I didn’t think there was time to argue.”

LIL-E moved around, scanning us, “I see we don’t have the tank. How’d you convince Crossfire to give it up?”

“None of your business, you flying beer can,” said Crossfire, trotting into the shuttle and glaring at nothing in particular, “Let’s just get out of here.”

I looked at LIL-E and shook my head, silently pleading with her to drop the subject. LIL-E did so with a casual bob in the air that was her equivalent of a shrug, and soon we were all inside the shuttle, the metal doors sliding closed behind us with a silent hiss.

“I want ta check on Arc,” said B.B, and I nodded to her, both of us going to the cockpit while the others got comfortable in the passenger seats.

A simple button on the side of the door opened the cockpit, which was surprisingly spacious, with five seats arranged two up front with the controls, and three behind them. Arcaidia was at the main helm, her horn glowing bright as she manipulated the shuttle’s hologrpahic helm interface with her magic. When she turned to look at us I felt a rush of unease. Arcaidia’s eyes held an intense glow to them, their silver depths filled with an almost manic focus.

“Ren solva, B.B, good you’re here. Was going to come back for you if you not show up by now.”

“You were secruin’ our way out, Arc, so no worries,” B.B said, coming up to the co-pilot seat and settling into it as I trotted up to the middle seat of the back row and stood there, watching Arcaidia carefully.

“Arcaidia, are you okay-”

“I am fine! No need for talking about things right now, ren solva. We leave ship, then... then we talk. Much. With all of you,” Arcaidia’s eyes wavered as she gazed at nothing for a second, then shivered and shook her head, “But first, we leave.”

B.B’s light violet eyes wavered with uncertainty, and she cast a questioning glance at me. I could only just shake my head in unknowing concerning myself, as I said to Arcaidia, “Alright Arcaidia, when you want to talk, we will. Are we good to leave right now?”

“Almost,” Arcaidia said, “Shuttle attached to ship energy filler tubes. With main reactor core gone, very little energy left in ship. Not enough to fuel shuttle for long, but enough for... going where need to go. Just another minute until done.”

“Okay, so, um, what’s with that device you had LIL-E help you bring here?” I asked, and Arcaidia flinched, turning her eyes sharply towards me.

“Explain later, Longwalk. Soon, but later.”

So that was that, then. I wasn’t about to force her to answer. I trusted her, but this whole situation felt off, LIL-E was right about that. I left Arcaidia to continue with prepping the shuttle for launch, and B.B stayed with her. Checking back in the passenger/cargo area I saw LIL-E floating around the back, while Binge was playing with what appeared to be sliding windows on the wall of the passenger seating area. It looked like touching a button opened a long, thin viewport and Binge was having a blast opening an shutting it.

Crossfire was strapped into the passenger seat opposite from Binge and gave me a level look as I came in.

“You’d better be right about what you told me,” she said, eyes fierce.

“If I’m wrong, you can feel free to take it out of my hide. Pretty sure Begonia will still pay you for me, even if my official bounty got taken down,” I replied curtly, going past her into the cargo hold.

LIL-E was floating around, back and forth, not unlike when I paced around when nervous.

“What’s up?” I asked her, and the eyebot swiveled around to face me.

“Not sure. When Arcaidia and I were bringing this thingamajig onto the shuttle, I got more ghost readings on my sensors. Been trying to do a detailed scan before we leave, just in case. Haven't found anything, but it... bugs me. I’m convinced someone or something’s been following us the entire time we’ve been on this ship.”

“Could it have just been that slime monster? Maybe another one’s roaming around out there?”

“No, I don’t think so. Look, never mind about it Longwalk, it’s probably nothing.”

At that moment there was a shudder that ran through the shuttle. At first I thought something might be shaking it from outside, but I heard the hum of the shuttle’s engines and realized it was just Arcaidia warming them up for takeoff. I quickly returned to the cockpit, strapping myself into the middle seat as Arcaidia manipulated the controls with practiced ease.

The cables attached to the shuttle let go, and the scaffolding holding the shuttle in place slipped away back into recesses in the floor and wall. Then, under its own glowing blue drive engines the shuttle smoothly pulled out into the hangar bay’s main area, then turned and flew out of the open bay doors. I was surprised at how smooth the ride was. Once the engines were warmed up, the shudders ceased and I barely felt a hint of tremor in the deck beneath y hooves. The view port of the cockpit showed the bright afternoon outside. It’d been morning when we’d entered the ship, and I estimated maybe four or five hours had passed since then.

Of course the clear blue sky was the least of the noteworthy sights outside the shuttle. As we climbed out of the ravine, I could see the tracers and magical beams of exchanging weapons fire. NCR soldiers were stationed along the top of the ravine and were firing down on several portions of the Ark of Destiny where Odessa soldiers had set up barricades in open portions of the hull.

I couldn’t tell which side was winning, or if there were any casualties, and before I could Arcaidia pulled the shuttle into a sharp climb that took us up into the sky. I felt a sense of vertigo as I realized the shuttle was somehow generating its own gravity, making the upward climb feel as if the shuttle was still level. It made my stomach churn a bit, but I could hardly pay that any mind, because I saw the Vesuvius.

In the past, I’d only seen it as a distant outline, vaguely sword shaped. Now I had a much closer view as it descended from the sky, no more than three hundred feet off the ground.

It was easily around two hundred meters long. It’s ‘sword’ shape was more pronounced than I’d recalled, with a wide, delta-shaped hull that grew thinner to a point towards its bow, while the stern actually rose up several decks until it’s ‘hilt’ extended into two long, V-shaped wings from which clouds billowed out, forked with purple lightning. An oval shaped bridge caped the top of the back deck, and behind it extended a long shaft that I took for some sort of extra propulsion engine, given the way the shaft glowed with magical violet light that trailed sparks like tiny wisps.

The main deck on either side veritably bristled with weapon ports. I saw missile pods and stubby, round barreled energy canons tracking left and right as they fired thick gobs of energy or swarms of missiles. Their targets were not just the two Raptors that had arrived with us this morning, but an additional three of the NCR airships which had the Vesuvius surrounded. A brilliant storm of green plasma cannon fire was being thrown back at the Odessa ship, but unlike the Raptors the [Vesuvius seemed to have some kind of energy barrier protecting it, absorbing much of the Raptor’s incoming fire. The Raptors themselves were taking a beating, although I noted that for some reason the Vesuvius was not using its its most impressive looking weapon.

These were a set of a dozen, long, octagon barreled cannons lining both the upper and bottom hull of the ship. Each cannon had to have been around ten meters long by itself, and I suspected these were the ‘railguns’ that Shattered Sky had been so proud of when they’d rained destruction down on Saddlespring.

I didn’t know why Odessa wasn’t employing those big guns, but I was grateful for it. The Raptors wouldn’t have stood a chance against that kind of firepower.

“What’re they just sittin’ there fer?” asked B.B.

“Charging tractor beam,” Arcaidia said as she leveled the shuttle out and turned it so we could see both the Vesuvius and the Ark of Destiny on the ground. “I detect big energy readings from bow of ship.”

As she said that, I saw the tip of the Vesuvius bow light up with a bright purple light, and saw four prongs extend from it. Then a sheet of light wide enough to engulf the Ark of Destiny reached down from the bow and coated the entire Veruni vessel. My eyes went wide as I saw the ravine walls shake, several NCR troopers falling off it like ants shaken from a basket. Then the ravine walls crumbled and the Ark of Destiny, in all its mangled, silver glory, was pried free of the Equestrian earth and hauled upward into the sky.

“What do they even need the Ark for, if they have a ship that can do that?” I breathed, and Arcaidia snorted.

“That ship just fancy sub-orbital cruiser. It’s guns no match for proper Veruni ship. Even Ark just explorer-class, and it easily destroy that shiny can of nothing. They need what inside Ark.” Her face turned into an angry sneer, “Only good thing about Hyadean taking reactor is Odessa not get power source big enough to supply ship, even if they rebuild it.”

I wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a good thing. Odessa might have spent all this time hunting us, but with the Hyadeans becoming more active, I would have preferred Odessa have that power source over those alien tyrants. But what was done was done, and we had little choice but to watch as the Vesuvius raised the Ark of Destiny like a corpse from its grave, and floated it up to the underside of its hull. There, I saw clamps extend down from the ship’s lower hull and attach to the Ark.

The NCR Raptors didn’t let up their fire, pouring bolt after plasma bolt into the Odessa’ ship’s shields. In one or two places the shields did buckle, opening up ragged holes where a few plasma shots penetrated. However those shots did little more than superficial damage as they splashed against the Vesuvius armored hull. The Odessa ship wasn’t even slowed down as it turned its bow upward and began a rapid rise into the sky. The Raptors turned to give chase, all but one which remained circling over the site. From what I could see, the Vesuvius was too fast for the Raptors to catch, even when hauling the Ark’s bulk. I saw the ship heading north, and gain ever more altitude as it went, and as much as Odessa had been enemies in the past, and may be again in the near future... I silently wished them luck.

Against the alien threat, we all called this planet home, after all.

“Well... that’s that,” I said, letting out a deep sigh, “Suppose we should land and report back to Whiteheart and-”

My words stumbled as Arcaidia shook her head and with a few swift motions had the shuttle flying upward once more.

“Whoa, Arcaidia, where are you taking us? The ground is the other way!”

“I know, ren solva,” she said, not taking her eyes off the console’s holographic display as we soared ever higher, until all I could see through the viewscreen was endless blue.

“Arc, hun, what’re ya thinkin’?” B.B asked, “Where are we goin’?”

“Explain in a minute. Just wait, please,” she said, and a moment later Crossfire was poking her head into the cockpit, eyes wide like yellow headlights.

“I can’t help but notice we’re going up instead of down, and way faster than we should be. What the fuck is going on?”

“Uh... Arcaidia seems to want to take us on a joyride?” I said, utterly confused by the turn of events myself. At Crossfire’s less than amused, and quite frankly slightly alarmed, look I just tried to smile reassuringly, “She has a reason for it.”

I hope.

Crossfire did not look reassured, and she gripped the side of the doors into the cockpit with one hoof as if afraid she might fall, despite being perfectly safe in the shuttle, “She’d better have a damn reason! Whiteheart’s going to flip his shit if we bail on him in the middle of a mission!”

“Just wait, okay?” I said, although I was feeling a distinct sense blood draining from my face as I realized the blue sky was turning awfully dark, awfully fast. Could... could Arcaidia seriously be taking us where I thought she was?

It didn’t take long to receive an answer. Veruni technology was a scary thing, as the shuttle took less than a minute to get into the upper atmosphere, and half a minute later the ‘sky’ was no longer the sky, but a void of infinite black that I only knew because I’d seen Arcaidia’s dreams.

Space. We were in space. My stomach did a flip-flop and I gulped down bile in the back of my throat. This was too abrupt. I was not ready for this. Why were we in space!? Was Arcaidia out of her mind!?

I mean, okay, we were safe, sure. The shuttle was designed for this kind of thing, and I didn’t think we were going to just randomly explode for no reason. But... but... space!

“Dear sweet Celestia, Arc, whadd’ya doin’ bringin’ us up here?” B.B whispered, clearly just as uncomfortable as I was.

It probably spoke volumes that Crossfire was utterly silent, eyes wide, her face pale beneath her dark fire as she gripped the door-frame even tighter.

As if it was the most normal and casual thing in the world, Acaidia adjusted the shuttle’s orientation, checked a few monitors on the holographic display, and then smoothly rose from the pilot seat and said, “Good. We in stable orbit. Perfectly safe here. Okay, now we talk.”

Arcaidia gathered us in the shuttle’s cargo compartment. She was standing next to the device she’d taken from the Ark of Destiny and had it propped up on its bowl-shaped bottom. The rest of us stood in a rough semi-circle in front of her, either exchanging curious and confused looks, or starring at Arcaidia and the device with similar expressions.

“So... it’s a satellite?” I asked, trying to get clarification on what Arcaidia was telling us.

She nodded, “Yes. More like beacon-”

“Bacon?” Binge perked up, and Arcaidia glared.

“Bea-con. Beeeee...coooon. Nav beacon to be most of accurateness. Sends signal beeping that ships can use to navigate. Without nav beacon, ships not know how to chart course to location. Ark of Destiny was exploration ship. Only ship capable of finding planets and dropping nav beacons so other ships can follow. When Ark crash, failed to drop nav beacon, so no more Veruni ships find Equestria.”

“But if I’m hearing this right, if you launch this thing, that means more of these... Veruni can find our planet?” Crossfire asked, her face a hard mask that made it very difficult to read what the mare was thinking. She’d been quiet through most of Arcaidia’s explanation, and her deep yellow eyes hid any hints as to what her feelings were concerning this.

I’ll admit I was conflicted. What Arcaidia was proposing...

“Veruni can find planet, yes,” confirmed Arcaidia, “May take bit of time, but signal of beacons strong. Reach all the way to heart of Veruni Empire. They come. Come with fleet. Many ships, filled with troops, food, supplies, make all Equestria better place. No more Wasteland anywhere. No more Odessa. No more Hyadeans. All problems solved!”

“At what price?” asked LIL-E, mechanical voice buzzing with something close to anger, “What’s it going to cost the ponies and other creatures of this world to let the Veruni sweep in an ‘solve’ all our problems?”

“Nothing,” Arcaidia said, but there was a hesitant note in her voice as she looked at the deck, “Small bit of freedom, that’s it.”

“A ‘small bit of freedom’? What does that mean, Arcaidia?” LIL-E pressed, floating forward, “Because to me it sounds like you’re talking about conquest, not cooperation. It sounds to me like your alien Empire is going to sweep in, dominate this planet, and make everypony march to whatever tune they want. Well, I’ve already seen what a slaver empire looks like, and I’m not keen on seeing it with a shiny coat of sci-fi paint! I say we trash this nav beacon and call it a day!”

I held up a hoof, “Hold on a sec, let’s at least hear the details before we decide anything.”

LIL-E turned to me, “Longwalk, you can’t seriously be considering this.”

“Look, Arcaidia has never once given me a reason to doubt her,” I said, “Before I met anypony else here, she saved my life and the life of my best friend, when she could have just as easily saved herself and only herself. During this entire journey she’s never hesitated to throw herself into danger to protect us from harm. At one point or another I’m pretty damn sure she’s saved the lives of everypony standing here right now.”

I took a deep breath and then looked at Arcaidia, “I won’t lie. I’m just as concerned as LIl-E is about what you’re suggesting, but you’ve earned my trust, Arcaidia. You’ve earned my friendship. So you’ve earned the right to explain the details before we make any snap judgments. Just... just what would the Veruni Empire coming here entail?”

She licked her lips, suddenly looking more nerve wracked than I’d ever seen her, including the time she’d lost her leg. Her eyes darted to B.B’s, and the pegasus, who was remarkably calm, simply nodded, “It’s okay, Arc, just tell us what yer thinkin’, hun. Whatever happens, I’m with ya, an’ ya know Long is too.”

B.B’s words appeared to help Arcaidia relax, although she did give me a thankful look as well before she took a deep breath.

“In Veruni Empire, Veruni are at top of social rank. All other species lesser ranked. Not slaves, just lesser in view of Veruni. You still have freedom to choose job. Freedom to choose mate. Much more freedom than those who are slave like in Labor Guild. But no position of power. No command in military, no leader in government. That all belong to Veruni.”

“So, second-class citizens, basically,” Crossfire said, “Free, but not equal. What do we get in exchange for that loss? Just how good is Veruni tech and how much of it can non-Veruni gain access to?”

“Almost all, and very, very good technology,” Arcaidia said, eyes regaining their luster, “Ponykind able to travel stars, live centuries without disease, no more worry for hunger, and enjoy many luxuries even as lower ranked Empire citizens. So much suffering avoided, and...”

“And?” I asked, sensing the emotions boiling beneath Arcaidia’s eyes, “It’s okay Arcaidia, you can tell us.”

She gulped, “...and maybe my sister see sense and come back to Veruni side. I not know why she work with Hyadean, but if anything make her come back, it be Veruni Empire arriving.”

The pain was naked in her voice, even as she clearly tried to hold it back. I could literally see her fighting to keep her eyes from tearing up as she blinked several times rapidly and took an unsteady breath, “And besides that, if all of you keep going to fight Odessa, or Hyadeans, then eventually somepony die. Hyadeans powerful, ren solva. My sister very powerful too. You keep fighting, I not know if I am strong enough to protect you all. So please... please let me launch nav beacon. It save all of you!”

Thick silence hung like a fog for several long moments. I could feel the uncertain, charged tension among my companions. B.B’s marble white face was carved in a deep crease of concern, violet eyes focused with warmth and sympathy for Arcaidia, but also worry. Crossfire’s unreadable poker face was cracked only by the manner in which her blue tail twitched against her soot black fur, but I could see in her eyes that she was thinking at a furious pace about Arcadia’s words.

I felt Binge at my side, leaning against me. Of all of those here, she seemed the least worried, giving me a wink and a smirk that told me, whatever went down, she’d be with me the whole way. My love for her pulsed warm within me and I have her a little nuzzle, to which she giggled softly in response.

LIL-E remained silent, but she hovered lower, almost as if hanging her head in deep contemplation.

Her eyes darting furtively between us, Arcaidia waited for somepony to respond, a look on her face as if she were holding on desperately to a lifeline while teetering over the edge of a cliff. I couldn’t take that look for long, and was the first to speak my mind.

“Arcaidia, I understand exactly how you’re feeling. It’s a fear I’ve had pretty much since day one this whole journey started. I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve come close to dying out there, and I’m constantly worried about the moment our luck runs out. So trust me, what you’re offer... it’s tempting. The idea that the Veruni could just sweep in and fix everything? A part of me wants nothing more than to say go for it and launch this beacon. Your people could save my tribe, put an end to anything threatening us, and we might all be able to finally have peaceful lives.”

I swallowed past a dry mouth, shaking my head, “But you’re also talking about making a choice that will affect every single creature living on our world. Even if we’re ready to sacrifice some freedom for the sake of a peaceful future under Veruni rule, do we have the right to make that choice for everyone else on the planet?”

“For once in his damned life, the buck is speaking some sense,” Crossfire said, her own face breaking its unreadable mask to show a remarkable amount of regret and torn feelings in her eyes, “Nopony more than me likes the idea of having some hotshot alien tech come in and give back... give back things that’ve been lost. I’ve done some dirty jobs, scraping together what I needed to help a friend, and like Mr. Hero here, it’s is tempt to just say fuck it and let the aliens take over, as long as they bring the goods in terms of technology we can benefit from. But here’s the thing, the only pony I truly give a damn about would probably hate me for life if I sold out the planet to give her a new pair of legs... so, much as it shocks me to say this, I agree with Longwalk.”

I could see our words were striking Arcaidia like physical blows, her eyes growing more downcast with each sentence. Yet all of us hadn’t given our thoughts yet, and LIl-E spoke next.

“I’m not saying I don’t sympathize with your feelings, Arcaidia, but what you’re talking about is letting your people conquer this world in exchange for some gifts of technological advancement that won’t ever buy back the freedom we’d be giving up. I want to stop Odessa and the Hyadeans as much as anypony, but I’m not about to replace them with another enemy.”

“Is that... how you see me?” Arcaidia asked us, “Am I an enemy?”

“No!” I shouted, “Never! It’s just... your people, the Veruni, we don’t know them like we know you. Your a friend, Arcaidia, that will never change. But try to see things from our point of view. What you’re talking about would change everything, for everypony. Are we really the right ones to be making this choice?”

Suddenly Binge laughed, loud and hard. Everypony turned to stare at her as Binge held her sides, her tingling, chiming laughter filling the shuttle.

“Uh, is she cracked?” asked LIL-E.

“When was she not cracked?” shot back Crossfire.

“Um, Binge, you okay there?” I asked, not entirely concerned, but not unconcerned either. After all, Binge was still Binge.

“Ohehehe, sorry, heh, just thought that you guys are super funny the way you’re all agonizing over this choice like ‘oh noes, the fate of the world is in our hooves!’ when it’s not even a big deal.”

“Not a big deal?” B.B said, who hadn’t really given Arcaidia her own thoughts yet on the matter, “We are talkin’ ‘bout a choice that’ll decide whether hundreds o’ thousands o’ lives’ll be changed by bein’ ruled by an alien empire. Maybe one that’s friendly-ish, but also one that even Arc’s admitted will treat most o’ us like lesser life forms. An’, Arc, just so ya know, iffin’ it came down ta it, I might just be on yer side, but I’d wanna know a heck o’ a lot more ‘bout the Veruni culture an’ how they’d treat us all ‘fore we committed to this.”

Arcaidia nodded solemnly, but Binge just giggled again, smiling her madcap grin of yellow teeth.

“You sillyheads have some holes in your brains sometimes,” Bringe tapped her skull with a hollow, knocking sound, “Think think think! Why make the choice now?”

“Huh?” I asked, and Binge just smiled at me like I was the crazy one as she trotted up to Arcaidia and put a hoof around the unicorn’s shoulders.

“Frosty Blue, you know how to rig this beauty up with a remote trigger, right?”

Arcaidia blanched at Binge’s close presence, but calmly nodded, “I... yes, I could. Not hard at all, actually. Could modify here on shuttle to react to signal from Pip-Buck, both mine or Longwalk’s.”

“Then hey, here’s Binge’s crazy plan,” my marefriend said, “We stop worrying like a bunch of old nannies, let Arcaidia hook this puppy up with a remote trigger, and we push it on out the airlock. Let it sit up here with the stars and starbirds and starclouds, all nice and innocuous. Then, once we do as much soul searching, existential thinking, and whatever weird self-growth things we should be doing instead of nearly getting killed all the time, then we can decide when to pull the trigger on this here choice about the future of all ponykind or whatever.”

“Basically... we put it off until later?” I asked, and Binge nodded.

“Why not? Not like this nav becaon is gonna go anywhere. You wanna involve the whole world in the choice? Then why not do it? Once we kick everypony in Odessa ass, and put the hurt on the other alien bozos, we talk to all the big wig world leader types and be like ‘Hey, we got this thing that could totally help us out, but also enslave us to a bunch of aliens; pull the trigger? Yes? No? Maybe?’”

“Is it me, or does the crazy are actually make a lot of sense right now?” said LIL-E.

“What do ya think, Arc?” asked B.B, “Are ya willin’ ta wait on this? We set up the beacon now, but hold off until we know fer sure which way we wanna play this before makin’ a choice?”

I could see the uncertainty warring with desire on Arcaidia’s face. She so very desperately wanted to activate the beacon now, I could see it. I couldn’t say I didn’t understand. The desire for home, for certainty, to know that her sister, her friends, her family would be safe? Unlike the rest of us, Arcaidia had lived her whole life among the Veruni. She knew their ways, and was raised to accept them as normal and correct. To her it was probably not even all that bad a thing, the way Veruni treated other races as second-class. To her it’d be normal.

Yet she’d lived among us now, traveled with us, and seen much of this homeworld she never got a chance to know before. That new sense of friendship and familiarity was warring with her sense of Veruni pride and duty, and I wasn’t sure which way that struggle would go until she spoke again.

“It is... good compromise. Maybe... maybe if you take time to think, see how powerful and dangerous Hyadeans truly are, maybe later you see importance of Veruni help. I will set up remote trigger, then we deploy nav beacon, yes?”

“Yes,” I nodded, and went up to her, giving her a firm hug, “It’ll be okay Arcaidia. We’ll figure this all out, eventually, together.”

She returned the hug with strong, but shaking hooves, her voice whispering to me, “I hope so, ren solva, I hope so.”

With the choice made, or rather the choice delayed, it didn’t take Arcaidia long to jury rig the remote trigger to the nav beacon. The shuttle was a utility craft, and equipped with a fold out workbench in the cargo hold, complete with various parts, and Arcaidia took to the task with a furious focus. In less than half an hour we stood before the back hatch of the shuttle.

It was open, but a force field kept the air, and us, inside, while we all gazed out at the gleaming magnificence of our world stretching out below us. It was painfully dull in some places, the horror of the Great Fires and the Wasteland still leaving so much of it desolate and without color. Yet as I looked upon my home, I could see the places where life was returning, gradually. Streaks of green and blue upon mountaintops, the pale glisten of lakes and rivers. Even the oceans, incomprehensibly large to my mind, stretched out like a sapphire carpet, promising new life to a world struggling to recover.

With almost reverent hooves, Arcaidia pushed the nav beacon through the force field, which buzzed as it allowed the device out of the shuttle. It floated there, small and innocuous, holding steady in orbit...

A trigger to a tomorrow that we had not yet decided to pull, but one day... who knew?

We were returning to the world below, the shuttle shaking slightly from the turbulence of atmospheric re-entry. I could see heat blossoming into a stream of orange fire that we rode upon as the sleek, silver shuttle cut down into the upper atmosphere once more. Arcaidia was steady hooved at the controls, her expression now back to the collected yet vibrant focus I remembered her for. It was as if launching the nav beacon, even if we hadn’t activated it, had lifted the brooding clouds of doubt from her back.

I smiled at her, and she smiled back, the filly I knew once more. Beside us, B.B grinned as well, but then frowned as she pointed at the console in front of her.

“What’s that flashin’ light there mean?”

Arcaidia and I both looked to where a soft blue light was blinking in a circular pattern among the many symbols and buttons on the shuttle control console. I gave Arcaidia a questioning look, and her own eyes were wide with shock.

“It is a com signal,” she said, “Someone is hailing us!”

“Hailing? As in, trying to talk to us?” I said, adding a confused, “Who would even know how to contact the shuttle?”

Arcaidia took a deep breath, steadying herself as she said, “Only one person know frequency.”

Without another word, face set in a grim cast, she touched the blinking button and a holographic screen opened up, displaying the now familiar face of Persephone. The Veruni female’s pale features looked at us past the purple bangs of her hair, her expression still difficult for me to read due to her alien features. Her voice, however, was stuffed with tension over a layer of steel hard self-control.

“I figured that had to be you in the shuttle, sister,” Persephone said, “There’s not much time for explanations, but I need to know if you’re returning to the New Canterlot Republic’s capital.”

“We are, what that mean to you?” Arcaidia replied tersely, clearly reigning in her emotions as she looked at her sister with torn eyes.

“Arcaidia, please listen to me. Do not return to the city. Divert course and come north to these coordinates,” Persephone said, and a few numbers appeared on the display. “I can explain everything once you arrive.”

“If by ‘explain’ you mean ‘ambush us’, then sure, why not?” I said with a hint of sarcasm, “You haven’t given us a single reason to trust you, least of all Arcaidia!”

Arcaidia put a hoof on my leg, and she gave me a small nod, but said, “It’s alright, Longwalk. I know. Let me say things to her now.”

“Okay,” I said, keeping my peace as Arcaidia turned her attention back to Persephone.

“Even if I trust you, sister, which I am not certain I do, it not matter. Shuttle does not have enough power to make it to coordinates, only enough to get back to NCR. There is much that need doing still, there. So no, we will not meet. Not today...” Arcaidia’s eyes hardened, staring like implacable silver moons at her sister, “One day soon, we meet again, Persephone. If you still my sister, that day you put down weapons and surrender. If not, then...”

Persephone’s jewel red eyes met Arcaidia’s silver ones, and a silence hung between them for a short span, then the Veruni said, “I can’t do as you ask, and I can’t expect you to understand yet. All I can ask is that if you can’t meet with me, then land somewhere outside of the city and stay distant from it.”

“Why?” B.B spoke up, “What’re you n’ yer creepizoid pals plannin’ ta do?”

“It’s already happening. There’s nothing you can do to stop it, so for your own safety, and the safety of my sister, I’m asking you to stay away,” Persephone said, “That’s all the warning I can give.”

With that, Persephone cut the feet and her image vanished from the screen. However before we even had a moment to glance at each and ask what that warning was about, the console lit up with more flashing lights, this time with a sharp, chiming beep.

“Now what?” I said, and Arcaidia’s hooves started to fly over the console, changing viewscreens rapidly as they brought up images of the NCR from the shuttle’s height and viewpoint. My breath caught in my throat as I saw what looked like storm clouds starting to form over Manehattan, only the sky had been clear and blue a moment earlier. These storm clouds boiled black and gray, forked with flashes and arcs of neon violet lightning. There was no way in hell this was natural weather.

“What in tarnation is goin’ on?” B.B breathed, and an instant later Crossfire, Binge, and LIL-E, who could hear us through the open door to the cockpit, came in to see for themselves.

“Shit,” Crossfire whispered as the image of the storm on the screen continued to expand, cover the entire city, “Knobs is down there!”

“So are a lot of other ponies,” LIL-E said, “Arcaidia, what’s happening down there? What’s causing that?”

Arcaidia’s eyes were looking over her screens. We were still descending, and had leveled out at a height of several thousand feet while flying south and east towards the Everfree Forest. I could see on another screen that the Raptors the NCR had deployed over the spot where the Ark of Destiny had been were now coming back from their failed pursuit of the Vesuvius and were instead making headway towards Manehattan. Arcaidia was adjusting our course towards the city as well, but she wasn’t punching the engines yet to full speed as she scanned the shuttle’s sensor data of the storm.

“It is spacial disturbance,” she said, “Powerful magic and science combined making storm of spacial rifts.”

“Rifts? Wait, do you mean portals?” I asked.

“Yes, these energies same as kind Hyadeans use when making portals,” Arcaidia said, shaking her head in amazement, “But this much bigger scale than what any can do by themselves. It require huge power source...”

She trailed off, and both my eyes and hers went wide at the same time as we both came to the same conclusion at once.

“The Ark!”

“They took reactor core!”

So this is what the Hyadeans had wanted the Ark of Destiny’s power source for. They were using it to empower a massive influx of portals. But why center it over the city? Why Manehattan? What were the planning to do to the ponies living in the city?

“Look,” LIL-E said, “At the streets. Can this thing ‘zoom and enhance’ or whatever?”

Arcaidia nodded, touched a few buttons, and a second later the viewscreen zoomed in upon Manehattan, focusing on one of the central boulevards cutting across the center of the city. There, we could see the milling, multi-colored crows of hundreds of curious and frightened ponies. The citizens of the NCR were looking up at their boiling sky in obvious confusion and fear. And why wouldn’t they? They were used to the weather being on their side, controlled by the legendary Lightbringer. The skies over Equestria were meant to be clear and blue, now, not filled with angry black clouds thundering with alien energies.

Then we saw them, the portals. Just like the ones that had disgorged the Hyadean bio-monsters onto the Odessa ship I’d been captured on, these portals were like thin, circular shimmers of wavering light in the air. They appeared by the dozen, all over the streets. To my horror I saw one poor pony get cut clean in half by the appearance of a portal, other nearby ponies screaming in horror at the grisly sight.

The screams only increased when the Hyadean monsters came pouring out.

They were of all the varieties I’d seen on my deadly journey so far. The strange skeletal creatures that were vaguely shaped like ponies, and I knew were made from the ‘seeds’ that Redwire had once used, all armed with swords that hacked into the nearest innocents, or used Hyadean magic to cast black beams of light that cut ponies down where they stood. There were the spindly, metallic creatures with drill-like claws, hopping about and impaling the nearest ponies. Bizarre flying monstrosities with wings like diseased butterflies and tails like the stingers of scorpions took to the air, diving upon the now fleeing populace. Then finally, the giant brutes of metal armor and cyclopean eyes, what I had once termed a B.A.T (Big Ass Trooper) for their size, more than twice the height of a pony. These things carried massive halberds that hacked ponies into quivering pieces, smashing apart walls of buildings with ease as they moved into the city.

In the span of a horrifying half a minute, I saw the city of Manehattan being invaded, yet the horror wasn’t over.

The sky still roiled with dark clouds, and from that, I saw the air cracking and falling open like rotten eggshells. Within the hole being torn in the sky was a scintillating space of warped, purple energy. From this hole four pillars of light shot down, impacting upon the vast green courtyard in front of the Capital Building. I couldn’t make it out, but I saw four figures emerge, each from one pillar, and approach the Capital Building while NCR soldiers swarmed about to respond.

And indeed the NCR was responding. Even before the first minute of the attack began the streets, filled with panicking ponies running every which way, were also appearing squads of NCR soldiers. Before long the Hyadean bio-monsters were fully engaged by ponies of all races and even some griffins, all firing back with fierce abandon while also trying to evacuate citizens. In mere moments Manehattan was a blazing battlefield, and we were just a few short miles from it, flying right into the midst of the storm.

“Soooo,” said Binge, “Who’s up for a vacation? I’m thinking somewhere sunny.”

I shook my head, “Not the time, Binge. Arcaidia, how long before we get there? We have to do something to stop this!”

“Minutes,” Arcaidia said, licking her lips, “Shuttle energy very low. Can’t increase speed or we drop like toaster. Not even make it to center of city.”

“How are we even gonna make a’ difference in all that?” B.B asked, but LIL-E was quick to respond.

“This attack isn’t happening the same time all those Skull City Guild leaders are in town by accident. These bastards might be slaughtering innocent civilians, but I’d bet anything that’s a distraction so they can focus on taking out both Skull City and the NCR’s leadership, all in one go.”

“Fuck that,” Crossfire said, “Knobs is probably in that same building! We’re gong there, and murdering the faces of literally any alien fucker that gets between us and the Capital Building.”

“Not that I don’t generally agree with that sentiment,” I said, “We have to save as many ponies as possible. Wherever we end up landing, clearing out as many Hyadeans as we can is what we do. More than that, we need to call in some help.”

“Help!? From who?” Crossfire asked.

“Arcaidia, can you detect where the Vesuvius went?” I asked, and she gave me a startled look, but slowly turned and touched a few more buttons before pulling up a holographic screen showing a marker somewhere in the lower atmosphere about a hundred miles north.

“There,” she said, “It using magic to cloak itself, but Veruni scanners too good to be fooled, so we see it just fine. What you thinking, ren solva?”

“Contact them.”

“Are you nuts?” Crossfire asked, “What do you expect them to do!?”

I found my face creasing in a stern grimace, “Their damned jobs.”

A few moments later Arcaidia had brought up a communications screen, signaling the Odessa ship. Seconds ticked by, my stomach tying itself in painful knots. Ponies were dying down there with every passing moment, and it was killing me that the only thing I could do was wait for the shuttle to get ever closer to Manehattan while waiting to see if Odessa would even answer us.

When they did, it was Odessa herself, the young griffin appearing on the screen with a look that likely mirrored my own pained expression.

“Longwalk,” she said, and I could see from the background on the screen that she was standing on the bridge of her ship, it’s design similar to what I saw on the Varukisias. “I can guess why you’re contacting us.”

“Then what are you doing just sitting there?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice under control, “Manehattan is under attack! Innocent lives are being slaughtered!”

“I know that,” Odessa replied, voice tight with strain, “I ordered the Vesuvius to halt so we could turn around and engage the Hyadeans, but I’m also in contact with the Council of Colonels. They’ve given an override order that vetos my power. They want us to return to Heimdal Gazzo immediately with the Veruni ship.”

Odessa spat, anger boiling into her voice, “They believe the technology is too valuable to risk by sending the Vesuvius into battle, and since they’ve outvoted my authority...”

My own anger spilled over, “That’s bullshit! What’s the point of your tribe if you’re not going to do the very thing you exist for!? You people hounded me and Arcaidia across the Wasteland! You destroyed Saddlespring! You captured my tribe! And for what!? Everything you’ve ever told me to justify those actions was that you were doing it to protect this world from alien threats! Well... there’s one right now. Do something about it!”

“Longwalk, if I go against the Council’s veto, there are many who would follow me, but just as many would remain loyal to the Council,” Odessa replied, pain tearing across her words, “I’d be splitting Odessa in half. It’d be civil war. I can’t do that to my people.”

I wracked my brain, and I felt somepony shove past me. It was Crossfire. The mare’s golden eyes blazed as she stuck her face against the holo-screen, eyeing Odessa straight on.

“I don’t give two bloody shits about your people, but that’s not important right now. If you want to get your feathered asses down there and into that fight, then use your fucking brain and loophole that shit! This dumbass ‘Council’ only ordered that fancy ship of yours not to engage, right?”

Odessa looked ready to explode from anger at Crossfire’s insults, but she controlled herself and nodded, “That’s right... wait...”

“Yeah, no shit,” Crossfire said at Odessa’s look of realization, “Then don’t send your ship in, just deploy every single Vertibuck you’ve got and get your troops on the Goddess damned ground!”

“That would work,” Odessa said, her eyes suddenly lighting up as she looked to somepony off screen, “Hammerfall, prep all Vertibucks for launch immediately! Take only volunteers, but we’re deploying down there now! The Vesuvius is to remain here, cloaked, and on standby until further notice.”

I heard Hammerfall, off screen, swiftly say, “Yes ma’am! You heard the lady, boys and girls, anypony that want’s to ice some xeno scum, gear up and get your butts to the hanger bays, pronto!”

A flurry of activity could be heard over the holo-screen as Odessa looked back at us, relief and a new light of purpose flaring in her eyes, “We’ll be on the ground in no less than ten minutes. I presume you’ll be in the thickest part of the fighting?”

“That’s a fair bet,” I said, “We’re going to try to get to the Capital Building. Looks like that’s going to be where the most action will be.”

“Then we’ll meet you there...” Odessa said, offering a thankful nod, “Sky’s favor be with you.”

“Ancestor Spirits watch over you, too. See you on the ground,” I replied, and Odessa nodded, cutting the fed.

“Good thinkin’ there, Crossfire,” B.B said, and Crossfire just grit her teeth.

“Save the praise until we get through this shit alive,” the mare said, nodding at the viewscreen, “We’re flying straight into hell.”

It had only been a few minutes since the invasion started, but Manehattan was rife with pillars of smoke as fires began to burn across the city. The streets were filled with ponies screaming in panic and fear, running every which way to escape the slaughter and find safety. Meanwhile squads of NCR troops were erecting blockades and cutting off streets, caught between pitched battles with Hyadean bio-monsters and trying to save as many civilians as they could by herding them to any pocket of safety they could create.

Energy beams, spells, and conventional weapons tracer fire were criss-crossing the whole city, lighting it up in a hellish storm of explosions and carnage.

“You know...” Binge said, voice subdued to a whisper, “I might’ve once looked at that and thought, ‘wow that looks like a fun party’. Now... I really, really wanna stop it.”

“We’re going to do everything we can,” I told her, and she looked at me with a small smile that radiated an echo of her old madness, but was filled with a fresh strength of purpose.

“I know, bucky. Let’s get down there.”

I nodded, then turned to Arcaidia, “Is there any clear spot for us to land that you can spot?”

“Too much chaos to land in streets,” Arcaidia said, and she pulled up a zoomed in image of a location about a third of the way into the city proper, southeast of the Capital Building. I saw an old, dilapidated building of worn brick and slopped, shingled roofs, about two stories tall, and shaped like a big L. The building looked unused, with boarded up windows, but it had a large front parking lot that was mostly empty.

Arcaidia frowned at the image, “Old orphanage. Parking lot there closest I can get us. Energy in shuttle nearly gone. Can’t even activate shields or weapons.”

“Just get us on the ground. We’ll take it from there,” I told her, and B.B looked back at me.

“Don’t ‘spose we got an actual plan?”

Crossfire snorted, “Are you kidding? The plan is to make a straight gallop for the Capital Building, and try not to die on the way there. Anything more complicated than that is going to fly out the window the second we start having to fight our way through.”

“I was more thinkin’ fer when we got to the Capital Building,” B.B said, “There’s multiple Guild leaders there, plus the NCR reps and President. How are we gonna protect ‘em all?”

“If we’re lucky, they’ve already got a means of evacuating themselves,” I said, “All we have to do is buy them time.”

Suddenly the shuttle heaved to one side, a metallic crack sounding through the compartment. I was slammed into Binge and we both hit a bulkhead painfully. It bruised me a bit, but I managed to get my hooves back under me and helped Binge up, but I smelled smoke in the air.

“The hell was that!?”

“We get hit by ground fire,” Arcaidia said, “Hyadean spells. With no shields, shuttle can’t take much damage.”

I could see what she meant. On the screens several bio-monsters were flinging bolts of electricity or lances of shadow from crests not unlike Arcaidia’s Crest Sorcery. Their aim wasn’t great, but there was enough fire coming our way that a few spells struck the shuttle again, rattling it. I felt the shuttle lurch under my hooves, and the Manehattan skyline suddenly got a lot closer.

“Can’t maintain altitude,” Arcaidia said, looking back at us with a dire expression, “Better cover heads and hold onto something. We are landing hard, um, hitting ground fast... hmm, B.B, what is word I’m looking for?”

“Crashing, hun.”

Arcaidia brightened up a bit, “Yes, crashing. That is word.”

We all braced ourselves. The seats had safety straps, and there were just enough for all of us, except for LIL-E who, being an eyebot, wasn’t really shaped for the seats. Not that we ponies were either, but close enough that we could get the straps clicked into place. I grabbed LIL-E and held onto her like a ball, which was about the best I could do for her.

Arcaidia tried to keep the shuttle level as best she could, still aiming for the parking lot outside the orphanage, but we ended up skipping off the top of a three story apartment building across the street, taking out part of its roof. The blow jolted me, making my vision spin. Then I saw the street rush up to meet us and we leveled out just enough to hit it like a skipping stone. The shuttle sparked across the ground, spun around like a top, then smashed through a low brick wall encasing the parking lot.

Sparks exploded from a cracked console, and acrid smoke filled the cockpit, and I heard all of my friends groaning. Which was a good thing, because if they were groaning, that meant they weren’t dead. Coughing, I called out, “Everypony okay?”

“There aren’t words that adequately describe how much I hate working with you,” Crossfire said. So, she was fine.

One by one my other friend’s chimed in, confirming that while battered, they were all intact. No broken bones or anything, just a lot of sore, aching muscles. I unstrapped myself from my seat, as did the others, and we all made a hasty, awkward shuffle into the cargo area. There, I paused as I saw something I didn’t expect.

“What in the...? Iron Wrought!?”

Laying against the side of the cargo hold, clearly having been flung there by the crash, was Iron Wrought! His dark green frame was laying on his side, his short black mane plastered to his face with blood. He wasn’t wearing any of his usual leather armor or weapons. He wasn’t wearing any gear at all. But what was he doing here!? How had he gotten onto the shuttle!?

I shoved those questions aside, rushing to his side to check if he was alright. He was breathing in shallow breaths, and his head bore a nasty wound from where he must have hit the shuttle bulkhead. “Arciaida!”

At my call, she was there in an instant, eyes filled with the same questions I had, but not asking any of them as she started to cast a healing spell. The wash of soft blue magic illuminated Iron Wrought as Arcaidia’s horn was surrounded by a Crest, and in that light I saw something I couldn’t explain.

Iron Wrought’s body was flickering with green flames. The flames weren’t hurting him, but they seemed to change patches of his body from green fur, to black chitin, like that of an insect.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Binge commented, “Has he always been here and I just didn’t see him because I’m still crazy?”

“You’re not crazy, Binge, none of us knew he was here. How is he here?” I asked, and Crossfire looked at him, and grimaced.

“I have an idea, but we don’t have time for me to explain it,” she said, “Hey, Ice Maker, once you make sure he’s not going to croak, tie him up with something.”

I looked back at her, “What? We can’t just leave him here!”

“He’ll be safer here than out there,” she replied curtly, “We can’t drag him with us, and if he is what I think he is, then he can take care of himself. We’ll be lucky if he’s even still here by the time this is all over.”

“And you’ll explain what this is about then?” I asked.

“If we’re both still alive, sure. Right now, we need to get out of here and get moving before the assholes that shot us down home in on us.”

I couldn’t deny Crossfire’s logic on this one. In short order Arcaidia finished her spell and confirmed to me that Iron Wrought wasn’t likely to die, but his head had taken a serious hit. He’d be out for awhile, and she wasn’t sure even her magic would be enough to wake him up. Just in case we put him in the cockpit and sealed the door. I didn’t want to leave him tied up, so I vetoed that notion, but Arcaidia reassured me the cockpit was the most reinforced part of the shuttle, so if he was going to be safe anywhere, it’d be in there.

I was flabbergasted as to how to explain his presence on the shuttle, but as we gathered up at the hatch to the cargo hold, LIL-E said to me, “You remember those sensor ghosts I kept getting back at the Ark? I think that might have been him.”

“But how? He’s an earth pony, so he couldn’t use magic to turn invisible.”

“Longwalk, I don’t think he’s an earth pony,” LIL-E said, but before I could question her further, Crossfire unslung her rifle from her shoulder and approached the button that’d open the shuttle's back hatch.

“Enough chatter! We’re moving out. The second we hit the streets, keep moving! Shoot back at any sunuvbitches shooting at us, but don’t stop for anything. It’s going to be hell out there, and if you get lost in the chaos, you’re on your own!”

I didn’t exactly agree with her sentiments, but I understood the urgency of the situation. This wouldn’t be my first time running through a burning city, thanks to Saddlespring. I unsheathed Gramzanber and held the ARM in my mouth, body tensing up to break into a gallop the moment the hatch opened. My friends all got ready as well, preparing weapons, eyes grim but determined. However it was impossible to not notice how worn down we all looked as well, blood and sweat matting our fur, everypony’s breaths more than a little labored. I was so used to the sensation of feeling exhausted and hurt that it barely registered to me, but if I really paid attention it was easy to tell my body was reaching its limit.

Which made sense; we’d been fighting practically all day, with only limited time spent resting and recuperating. Sure there’d been healing spells and potions used to restore wounds, but wear and tear was accumulating. Arcaidia might have cleared the toxins from Binge’s and my own bodies, but the amount I’d been using Gramzamber’s powers today had left at probably half my usual strength.

It didn’t change what we had to do, but I was suddenly all too aware of how close my friends and I were riding the edge of our endurance. I sent up a silent prayer to the Ancestor Spirits to watch over us and give us whatever strength they could to help us see this day through to the end, because there certainly wasn’t time to take a break. The hatch opened with a sharp hiss, and we all galloped out into the smoke and flames of a burning, war-torn Manehattan.

The harsh scent of smoke was accompanied by a continuous background noise of gunshots and screams. Our hooves pounded down the streets, our course set to take us several blocks north until we hit a main street that’d lead all the way to the courtyard of the Capital Building. We only got half a block before a group of NCR civilians came rushing through a side alley to our left, several dozen ponies galloping in a full panic. The reason for their headlong flight was barreling right after them, a pair of the hulking Hyadean bio-monsters bearing halberds and cyclopean single eyes. One practically smashed out the wall of the building on the right side of the alley’s mouth, sending a shotgun-like blast of brick shards and mortar into the fleeing crowd.

Chunks of brick crunched bone and cracked skulls with equal brutality, and at least three ponies dropped from the shower of debris. The other bio-monster stomped forward on feet as wide as heavy crates and clad in thick, metallic plates of gray armor grated over red, pulsing muscles. As the monster raised its halberd to strike a stallion who’d fallen with a broken leg, but was still very much alive as he screamed in terror, I spun in place and targeted the Hyadean creature with S.A.T.S.

I knew these things were too tough to take take in one hit from anything short of a head strike, so while I rarely ever used my Pip-Buck’s S.A.T.S given I usually was trying to disable my opponents rather than kill them, I wasn’t remotely concerned about that in this case. The bio-monster’s eye lit up in my vision as time slowed to a trickle, and I liked my chances to hit. Triggering the spell, my body moved practically on its own as I whipped my head into a swift spear cast that sent Gramzanber flying.

The ARM struck like a silver lightning bolt, splitting the bio-monster’s head directly through its single eye, pouring out a shower of blood and gore from the gaping wound.

Flailing in spastic death throes, the monstrosity refused to drop in a dignified manner, despite having several feet of shiny space spear lodged in its cranium. The twisted metal halberd in its over-sized meat-sack hands glowed with dark eldritch energies and started firing blasts of black cosmic rays, essentially larger versions of the beams the skeletal creatures could summon.

“Oh crap!” I had to throw myself into a forward roll to avoid a beam that turned the street behind me into a melting pool of bubbling slag. Then blinding streaks of white energy slammed into the Hyadean bio-monster as Arcaidia unloaded into it with her starblaster, roaring in a dainty yet fierce warcry as she drilled enough holes in the thing to see out of it’s back.

As that beast fell, LIL-E and Crossfire opened fire on the other one. Bullets ripped chunks off of its flesh, or sparked off its armor, but thick as the armor was it didn’t cover every part of the creature, a fact Crossfire took full advantage of by swiftly teleported to pop in and out of existence to end up landing on the bio-monster’s back. With a deft twirl of her rifle, she inverted its humongous bayonet and thrust it through a joint on the back of the creature’s neck, the large blade bursting out of the front of the monster in a bloody shower.

B.B and Binge then finished it off, both mares coming at it from opposite sizes. Binge’s ripper blade growled as its chain spun, digging into the bio-monster’s stomach, while the extendable blades from B.B’s Twin Fenrir cut a deep gouge from its chest.

I would have felt elated we were able to dispatch the two creatures so fast, except even as those two creatures fell and I rushed to help up the wounded civilian, a smaller black beam cut in and took the poor stallion’s head off. Pulling up short, I let out a startled gasp as a small horde of deformed skeletal bio-monsters came charging down the street.

“Arcaidia! Ice wall!” I shouted, dodging to the side as several skeletons pointed blades my way, dark crests forming around the weapons to fire cutting beams of shadow at me. I narrowly dodged as Arcaidia’s horn sparked to life and she shot out a icy beam that formed a short wall of solid ice to act as cover.

I dove behind it and fished into my saddlebags. I had a few smoke and flash grenades left. I wasn’t sure these things used normal vision, but it seemed as fair a bet as any, even if they didn’t have eyes, per se.

“Flash out!” I warned my companions as I yanked out a properly colored, apple-shaped grenade and gave it a toss after yanking the stem out. I then reached out with a hoof and called Gramzanber back to me, the ARM flashing as it teleported to my waiting grasp. Crossfire and Binge got behind cover with me and Arcaidia, while LIL-E and B.B flew higher up, nearly reaching roof level. There was a sharp bang and flash of bright light as my grenade went off, and my friends took immediate advantage of the disorientation among the Hyadean skeleton monsters.

LIL-E’s rifle mount and pistol turret poured a hail of fire down alongside B.B’s ARMs, cutting down half a dozen in an instant. The skeletons recovered fast, firing black beams into the sky after the pair, who immediately went into evasive maneuvers. That gave the rest of us an opening to attack, Arcaidia conserving her magic as she opened fire once more with her starblaster, and Crossfire working the bolt on her rifle with smooth efficiency as she nailed one skeleton after another with accurate head shots.

Binge, still having plenty of explosive surprises tucked in her mane or tail, produced a frag grenade and used it to scatter a few more skeletons. The things weren’t all dry bones. As they’d been when I’d faced them on the Odessa airship Varukisias awhile back, these things had organic components, like purple, ropy muscles that interwove the bones, and pulsating, seed-like hearts. So when they exploded, they tended to splatter purple gore all over the place along with their bones.

My friend’s attacks had opened up enough of a hole in the skeleton’s ranks that I saw my chance to close to melee, and I hopped the ice wall and launched into a headlong charge. I held off on using Accelerator. I was tired enough that I knew I needed to conserve my ARMs powers for when we ran into the ones leading this attack. So it was just my own muscles and speed that let me barrel into the remaining skeletons, some ten or so, and I started layng about with Gramzanber.

The bastards were quick, but were disorganized. My spear severed two in half with one blow before they even got a chance to react. The others turned on me, bringing their blades to bear, and for a second I was stuck amid a prickly storm of sword chops and thrusts that left me twisting around like a slippery eel to parry and dodge. Several cuts struck my reinforced security armor, but the suit held up, leaving me with bruises but no serious cuts as Gramzanber sliced a silver rampage through skeleton after skeleton.

It pained me to think of how many ponies must have been killed to make so many of these things. I knew Redwire had been planning to build an army like this with the seeds she’d been given, but it seemed clear the Hyadaens had been building quite a force on their own, even without her help. How many hundreds of these things were swarming Manehattan already?

My exhaustion was showing, and despite the adrenaline high, I was definitely moving slower than normal. A back hoof slipped on some of the fallen skeleton’s purple goo and I missed a parry, one of the skeleton’s swords managing a heftier blow that got through my armor and cut a bloody line down my side. I cried out in pain around Gramzanber’s shaft, and whirled the spear into my forehooves as I got up into a bipedal stance. It was easier to shift my body’s weight now, and I spun the spear in a defensive pattern, shoving back several skeletons while turning the spear’s hefty edge to decapitate one behind me.

Then a black and green pair of blurs struck the skeletal host, Crossfire and Binge rushing into the melee fray. Crossfire’s rifle spun in her crimson magical grim, the bayonet shattering skeletons as easily as the rifle butt. Binge cackled gleefully, whipping her tail around to fling knives into one skeleton while goring another’s spine with her ripper-blade. With them relieving some of the pressure on me I was able to catch my breath then step forward into the skeletal mass, swinging Gramzanber in a blurring whirlwind of severing silver devastation.

Panting, I paused as I realized the last of the skeletons had been defeated, my friends and I standing amid the ruins of what had probably been around thirty of the damned things. I teetered on my hooves until I felt the cool breeze of Arcaidia’s healing magic flow over me.

“I said we can’t afford to stop and fight every single monstrosity we come across,” Crossfire growled at me.

“What did you want us to do? Let those civilians get slaughtered?” I said, and the mare just snorted at me, looking away.

“I hate to agree, but Crossfire not all wrong,” Arcaidia said, finishing her healing spell and pulling out a glowing blue Veruni magic potion to sip on, “We run out of energy if we fight constantly. Must learn to pick battles.”

“Whatever we do, we need to do it while moving,” said LIL-E, floating about ten feet above us, “My scanners show enemies tracking all over the place. I can try to lead us down paths with fewer of them, but that might take longer than just fighting our way through.”

I couldn’t disagree with her assessment. My E.F.S was so choked with red blips I was pretty much mentally tuning it out.

“Why don’t we use the tram?” suggested B.B, pointing off to our left. Down one of the streets in that direction I could make out the raised, concrete railway for Manehattan’s tram system. Miraculously, it looked intact, as if the Hyadean bio-monsters hadn't thought to attack it.

“Would that work?” I asked, “We don’t even know where the tram currently is.”

“I can pick it up on my scanners,” said LIL-E, “It looks like its parked along the main street to the north, and a few blocks east. Can’t tell what condition it’s in, though. We could go for it, but if it’s already been fucked up by something, then we’d have just wasted time for nothing.”

“If we’re gonna make a’ call, best do it fast,” said B.B, her nose twitching as she hovered next to LIl-E, “I’m smellin’ lots o’ nasty beasties nearby an’ our butts are still exposed out here.”

Eyes turned to me, and I made a swift decision, knowing every second counted, “We head for the tram, and if it’s operational, we use it to cruise right up to the Capital Building! Let’s move!”

Even Crossfire accepted the decision without complaint, although she still gave me a sharp eyed glare that said she wasn’t going to be tolerant of too many more delays, civilians or no civilians. I wasn’t sure at all if I cared what she thought. I knew time was of the essence, but I couldn’t leave ponies to die when there was any chance at all I could save them. It was the very essence of my cutie mark, dammit!

We resumed our headlong gallop, and quickly had to maneuver around a partially collapsed building blocking our path. Fire and smoke churned out of the fallen rubble of the building, searing the air with heat. With the smell of blood thick in the air, I saw charred bodies from ponies that had been caught by the building’s blaze, and burned meat made my nostrils cringe at the rank odor. My stomach was thankfully mostly empty at this point, but it was hard not to feel the need to vomit bubbling up my throat.

LIL-E used her scanners to chart us a new course, taking us down a alley that had smoke clogging it like a fog. We kept our heads low to try to avoid most the smoke, but we still ended up coughing like crazy as we rushed down the mostly obscured alley. With the heat and the sound of screams echoing off the alley walls, it felt like trying to stumble through a shrouded layer of hell. This sensation was only reinforced by a screeching sound, an undulating and unnatural wail, as several bio-monsters came bounding along the walls towards us, emerging from the fog like demons.

These creatures were the spindly limbed, quadrupedal types, their gray metal skin gleaming with sharp edges, their hands tapered to drill-like points they used to scramble along the walls. Wedge shaped faces bore maws of sharp teeth and swept back, pointed crests along the back of their skulls. They were already covered in blood from previous victims, and sought to add us to the number as they leaped upon me and my friends.

Unfortunately for them, we were helpless civilians.

The adrenaline was still going strong from our last skirmish, so we struck at the creatures like a moving blender. I’m not even sure the monsters had time to register that we weren’t unarmed, easy prey before one of them was frozen solid by Arcaidia’s magic, stuck to the wall like a modern ice sculpture, and another was blasted to bloody chunks by a combination of B.B and LIL-E’s gunfire. The third and last of the bunch was impaled in mid-leap by Crossfire’s bayonet, and with a purely tired-of-this-bullshit look on her face, Crossfire fired her rifle into the impaled creature at point blank range and blasted its chest clean out and flung its corpse to the ground without breaking stride.

We may have been wounded and tired, but the desperation of the situation was adding a whole new level of intensity to our movements and bringing strength to our forward momentum. Yet I feared when this rush might run out.

The alley turned a corner and we found ourselves crossing a small park between several apartment buildings. I heard screams coming from the right, and saw the dwelling there had its bottom floor caught up in an inferno, but the upper floors had yet to catch fire. On the roof a group of ponies cried for help, at least four or five families with foals desperately looking for aid, as there was no way off the rooftop, and the fire was steadily raising higher. I saw a pair of NCR pegasus soldiers were trying to ferry the civilians off the roof one at a time, but there too many civilians. They’d never rescue all of them in time before the fires caught the rest. The soldiers were wisely carrying the foals to safety first, but if we left things as they were, each of those foals was going to be an orphan before the day was done.

My companions all saw the situation as well, and I could all but see the hackles rise on Crossfire’s neck as she tensed up and shot a glare at me, “For fuck’s sake, Longwalk, we don’t have time.”

She almost never used my name. What caught me was the torn sound of her voice, the struggle in the pain lacing her words. Crossfire wasn’t heartless. She wasn’t a monster. She knew exactly what was at stake, and didn’t want those ponies to suffer any more than I do. But she was laser focused on the fact that her best friend was out there in this besieged city, probably in need of just as much help. Crossfire needed to find Knobs and keep her safe, and it wasn’t as if I could blame her for feeling that way.

I knew that there were ponies all over this city right now that needed help, that would be desperate for somepony to swoop in and save them. If I stopped to help all of them, then there would be no Capital Building left by the time we got there. Yet to turn away from anypony that needed help was so fundamentally against who I was, the thought of moving on while those trapped ponies screamed for help was akin to ramming a rusty blade between my ribs.

“Go!” B.B said suddenly, looking at all of us with a hard expression of understanding.

“What?” I said, and the pegasus shook her head, looking at me as if I were slow in the head.

“I’ll help these folk out! The rest o’ you lot, git goin’! I’ll catch up later!”

“By yourself?” Arcaidia said, looking at the flaming building with wide eyes, “There too many ponies! You never make it for all of them!”

“Tch, don’t go underestimatin’ me, Arc,” B.B said, licking her lips, “I’m a Crimson Noble, remember? I’m faster n’ stronger than I look. I’ll save them. I promise. Just stop standin’ around gawkin’ and move yer asses already!”

I grit my teeth but nodded, “I trust you, B.B. Make sure you catch up to us as soon as you can, and be careful.”

“No worries there, Long. Arc, keep an’ eye on everypony fer me ‘till I git back.”

“I will. Please not get hurt while alone, okay? I not losing friends today!”

“Cross my heart, hun,” B.B said, drawing an X over her chest with one hoof, then without another word she zipped off, flying in a white streak towards the rooftop of the burning apartment building. I didn’t wait to see exactly what she was intending to do, although from the look of it she might have planned to rip out some debris to use to make a bridge from one roof to the next. Instead I just told everypony else to follow me, and soon we were rushing across the park and making our way onward towards the tram.

We managed to avoid any further skirmishes with Hyadean bio-monsters until we reached the main street that ran the west to east course of the whole of Manehattan. It was utter chaos here. The street was choked with bodies, both civilian, soldier, and bio-monster. A clear look at the sky showed a blazing storm of energy weapons fire as the NCR Raptors dueled with swarms of flying bio-monsters in the sky, one of the Raptors already in flames and listing to the side as smoke boiled out of it like black blood.

Where’s Odessa? I wondered, coughing on smoke, and a if in summons to my thought, the storm of dark clouds above Manehattan was pierced by a squadron of swiftly descending Veritbucks. Alongside the Veritbucks were several hundred forms in white Odessa armor, pegasi and griffins that flew in tight formation and with quick precision split off into teams to start hunting the Hyadean bio-monsters that were dominating the air.

Soon the NCR Raptors were having the pressure taken off them by the flight of Odessa troopers, who’s long training, experience, and superior magical weaponry started to make the fight in the sky an more even match. Meanwhile the Odessa Vertibucks made a quick descent to the city itself, splitting off in twos or threes to land at critical points. The Vertibucks laid down supressive fire with missiles and gatling lasers, clearing landing zones as more Odessa pegasi and griffins exited the vesicles to engage the Hyadeans on the ground.

One such Vertibuck descended right towards our location. Its side weapon pods disgorged a swarm of missiles that streaked overhead to blast into a group of several dozen bio-monsters that had been surging up the street. Alien flesh and metal flew in chunks, and the Vertibuck’s nose-mounted gatling laser finished off anything still moving with a stream of crimson heat. The Vertibuck didn’t so much land as adjusted its hover-jets to remain a good thirty feet off the ground, stirring our manes in its artificial wind as side hatches opened and a squad of pegasi flew out.

They landed and formed a perimeter near us, looking outward for danger rather than pointing their weapons at us. One pegsus approached, and I recognized her in an instant from her distinctive cybernetics.

“Sunset?”

Her scarred face cracked a humorless, small smile, the artificial wings on her back now folded down as the engines mounted underneath them let out a magical buzz of energy.

“Seems I owe you twice now for keeping my boy Glint alive. Heard from my husband you’d be down here, somewhere,” she lowered her tone and winked at me, “Homed in on your Pip-Buck signal. Don’t tell anypony else. Now what can me and my squad do to help out?”

I blinked several times, “Weren’t you on the Varukisias?”

She rolled her red eyes at me, “I transferred to the Vesuvius after the Varukisias was called back to headquarters. Wanted to stay in the field. Now enough questions, kid, what’s the plan?”

“We’re heading for the tram, and then to the Capital Building,” Crossfire said, hefting her rifle and giving Sunset and her squad a suspicious look, “If you’re seriously here to help, then keep any of this alien freaks off us while we move and help civilians out. This idiot buck keeps trying to stop to help every pony in need.”

I cast a frown at Crossfire, but she just gave me a drool look as if challenging me to say anything. Sunset looked between us and gave a swift nod, “Got it,” she turned to her squad, “Okay boys and girls, we’re giving the landbound cover from the air. Clear a path to this tram. Don’t shoot any NCR troops, and if you see civies in trouble, provide support. Move out!”

The engines under her wings flared to life, miniature rockets that pivoted in their frames mounted under her wedge shaped metal wings, and Sunset took to the air much like a Vertibuck itself does. Her more flesh and blood comrades fluttered their wings and also went airborne, the squad taking up positions in the air above my friends and I to give us a field of cover fire as we began our rapid gallop down the center street, making our way to the tram station several blocks down.

It was less than a minute before we were engaged practically on all sides. Hyadean bio-monsters were crawling out of every corner, bursting from alleyways, leaping from rooftops, and rushing up from inside ruined buildings. There were skeletal foot soldiers, swift leaping quadrupedal skirmishing beasts, and the huge hulking B.A.T’s with their potent halberds. Too many to count, so I didn’t bother, I just tore into the first of them to get close with Gramzanber’s edge.

Sunset flew overhead like a thunderbolt, the engines on her cybernetic wings screaming like twin demons as she unleashed plasma bolts from side mounted energy rifles. Her squadron followed her lead, moving in a swift, flying wheel that unleashed energy weapons fire in a curtain all around us, doping bio-monsters like flies.

Yet my friends and I were still heavily embattled. One B.A.T swung a halberd down at Binge, making me gasp as I thought I saw my marefriend get hit, only Binge had simply sprung to the side and rolled beneath the hulking Hyadean’s legs, slapping her blade entwined tail across the back of it’s right leg to hamstring it. Then LIL-E unloaded both barrels of her mounted weapons into the B.A.T’s face, driving it back.

Arcaidia covered our rear by unleashing a swift combination of both ice and earth elemental spells, causing the street to erupt with rock spikes from below while raining shards of hardened frost upon a line of skeletons from above, simultaneously freezing and shattering half a dozen of them in one go. Yet there were still enough enemies to fire back with rays of black magic, forcing Arcaidia to dodge and erect barriers of ice in defense.

Crossfire was at the head of the charge with me, her bayonet twirling in spectacular displays that matched my prowess with Gramzanber as we worked to dissect another B.A.T. It would swing at one of us, freeing up the other to strike, which in turn would give the former a chance to dodge the blow coming their way. In such a tag-team fashion we were able to make short work of one, but then a pair of the brutes took the first one’s place and forced us to slow our forward momentum.

“Keep them busy a second,” Crossfire told me as she worked to switch out the magazines on her rifle. I nodded and leaped forward, standing upright in a bipedal stance as both massive bio-monsters bore down on me.

Their weapons descended like sharp edged comets, and it was all I could do to spin Gramzanber in deft parries, remembering the maneuvers Applegate hat taught me to redirect the force of the physically superior foes. Each hit felt like trying to push aside an avalanche, yet I held form, silver sparks flying as Gramzanber’s edge caught the halberds and turned them away from my vulnerable flesh.

“Get clear!” Crossfire yelled, her rifle freshly reloaded, and with high-explosive rounds this time.

I threw myself to the side, narrowly avoiding both halberds as Crossfire unleashed a swift series of shots. The high-explosive shells detonated on the B.A.T’s, ripping armor and flesh asunder. Both remained stubbornly standing, despite their grievous wounds, and aimed their halberds at Crossfire, preparing to unleash magical blasts at her. Only a second before they fired, Sunset streaked by, inverting herself in mid-air and spinning around to fire her plasma rifles point-blank into the wounds rent open by Crossfire’s previous shots. Both bio-monsters shuddered and melted from the inside out in puddles of green slag.

This opened the way forward, and with Sunset’s squad continuing to provide cover fire, we were able to get clear enough from the Hyadeans dogging us that we finally reached the block with the tram station. It was little more than a pipe-shaped building built along the side of the street between two tall, former office buildings now turned shelters. The tram itself was parked there, and surrounding the station’s base was a barricade formed from concrete barriers, overturned wagons, and stacked crates. Around forty NCR soldiers were holding the area, taking cover behind their barricade as they fired into ranks of Hyadean bio-monsters hounded them from the west side of he street. Other NCR troopers were funneling civilians past the barricade to what appeared to be the relative safety on the east side of the street, but the bio-monsters weren’t making it easy.

My friends and I, along with Sunset’s squad, were able to hit the Hyadean’s rear flank like a ton of bricks made out of explosives. The bio-monsters were so focused on trying to break through the NCR defenses that they didn’t notice us coming up from behind, so the barrage of bullets, grenades, and energy weapons fire, combined with Arcaidia’s spears of ice, all but broke right through the Hyadean ranks within moments. Granted the moment didn’t last, and in seconds we were stuck in a whirlwind melee.

Amid the confusion I ended up back to back with LIL-E, using Gramzanber to fend off three of the drill-armed bio-monsters while the eyebot was running her barrels so hot that both the rifle and pistol were glowing red at the tips.

“Hate to admit it, but I’m nearly out of ammunition,” LIL-E said, “Once I run dry, I’m going to be about as useful as a strap-on out here.”

I grunted as one Hyadean’s drill arm nearly stabbed into my shoulder as I blocked it and I had to plant Gramzanber and pivot to buck the bio-monster in the face, driving it back just in time for me to spin around and tear the spear out of the ground, chopping upward with it to split another monster in half. Panting, I said, “Don’t worry about it. When you run out, just hang back until we catch a breather, then maybe you can borrow ammo from some of the NCR soldiers.”

LIL-E’s rifle shot the head off a skeleton, while her pistol turret pivoted around to blast a flying bio-monster that had swooped low to strafe us with metallic spines it was firing from its tail. The pistol rounds drilled holes in its wings, causing it to spin out and crash to the ground in a flopping tangle.

“Better yet, if we reach the Capital Building, I know where the Professor’s lab is. It’s in a restricted access area beneath the building, and I still have the codes in my databanks. I can get in there and use the facility to rearm, maybe even upgrade myself.”

I bobbed my head down to duck a leap from another bio-monster, thrusting Gramzanber up into it’s belly to impale it’s dog-like form. Brackish, acrid smell purple blood showered over me, but I grit my teeth and flung the impaled monster around to throw it into another monster that was hounding Binge.

“If you can do that, freaking fantastic! We still need to get to the Capital Building first!”

A stray beam of dark magic caught me in the side, bowling me to the ground. My armor took a lot of the blow, but my flank burned with agony as the residual black beam scorched my flesh. I rolled onto my back, and chucked Gramzanber at the B.A.T that had fired at me, the spear lodging itself in the monster’s shoulder. It barely slowed down as it barreled towards me with thunderous steps, but LIL-E floated up to its head level and unloaded at it from a mere ten feet away. Her shots tore half its head apart in a gore-filled splatter, but I heard the eyebot’s weapons click on empty magazines afterward.

“Celestia blowing a fucking goat, I’m out,” LIL-E swore, and I staggered up to retrieve Gramzanber from the B.A.T’s corpse.

“Then just focus on keeping clear until we get through this,” I said, and flinched as I saw the Hyadean bio-monsters were now converging on my friends, having realized their rear was being attacked. Even with the help of Sunset’s squad, we would be quickly outnumbered and overrun.

Before I could give a shout to make a run for the NCR barricade, however, the NCR themselves took action. Around twenty troopers came pouring over the barricade, charging and firing as they came on. And they weren’t alone, they were being led by a semi-familiar figure wearing thick power armor. This power armor, seemingly old and enameled with bronze and gold, bore a stout gatling gun on its left flank, but a huge and sparking electric lance on it’s right.

It was Phalanx, Royal Knight of Neighlesius and bodyguard to Princess Purity. I had no idea why he was here, but he was leading the NCR charge intot he Hyadeans as he bellowed, “For Neighlesius, Applehyde, the Twin Thrones, and the Princess!”

He certainly lived up to his name, battering through and bowling over several bio-monsters as his gatling cannon roared streams of destruction into the enemy. His electrified lance impaled and fried a hulking B.A.T while his piston driven limbs crushed skeletons into bone fragments and purple gore. With him acting as a wedge, the NCR troops were able to cut a hole through the battle to link up with us, and in short order my friends and I were able to catch our breath while Sunset’s squadron and the NCR forces combined their firepower to drive back the bio-monsters.

The street was still clogged with dead, and smoke still obscured the sky, but for the moment, for however many minutes it lasted, we had a bit of a reprieve.

Phalanx stomped over to us, his face hidden behind the stern stare of his power armor helmet, but his voice managing to match the helmet’s sternness almost exactly. “I see you Drifters yet live. Well timed, arriving when you did. These metal demons keep coming.”

“We’re trying to get to the Capital Building,” I said, “We think the enemy is targeting the Guild leaders and NRC President. Is that tram working?”

“It is, but it’s being held in reserve as a means of evacuating mares and foals from the city,” Phalanx replied, “Any who are too wounded to move or too young to make it to the shelters. Princess Purity herself has insisted we remain here to aid these soldiers in guarding the evac zone until the tram is full and can be safely escorted out of the city.”

Well, that shot down the idea of using it to get to the Capital Building ourselves, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to argue with the use they intended for it. “Good,” I said, “We’ll get the rest of the way on hoof if we have to. You protect those civilians, no matter what.”

“Hmph, that goes without saying, young stallion.”

Crossfire eyed the knight with a measuring eye, “So the Princess is still here?”

He barely turned his head to look at her, “Yes, at her insistence. I’d have preferred she have gotten to a shelter by now or joined the evacuation, but she refuses to leave while others are in danger.”

“That idiot...” Crossfire muttered, then her eyes grew sharply intense, “Does she have ‘it’ on her?”

It? What was she talking about.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, ba-” Phalanx began to say, but Crossfire growled at him.

“So that means she does have it. You thick skulled moron, don’t you know she’ll use it if she thinks innocent ponies are in danger? Let me talk to her.”

“Now see here-”

“Take me to her, or get ready to take a bayonet up the ass, bucket brains!” Crossfire said with an air of authority that felt distinctly different than anything I’d heard before. She always had a bossy ‘my way or the highway’ attitude, but this was more a hard but noble edge of authority that simply commanded others listen, cracking not like a whip, but cutting like a blade.

Phalanx was silent a moment, then turned and said, “Very well, be it on your head.”

As we followed him back to the barricade the NCR troopers covered us, and one earth pony in an officer’s uniform looked up at Sunset’s squad hovering overhead and said, “Who the hell are they?”

“Is okay,” said Arcaidia in a reassuring tone, “They on our side for today. Tomorrow, who knows?”

“Seriously, no friendly fire today,” Binge chimed in, “Any other day, you pretty ponies can shoot deep, dark holes in each other all you want, but today all the pretty violence needs to go towards our shiny extraterrestrial guests. They’ve come a long way across the sparkly stars to be shot by you today, so show them Equestrian hospitality at its finest and purge the xeno filth!”

I gave her a weird look and she smiled at me, wagging her tail. I decided not to question her on the matter and let Binge be Binge.

The NCR troopers looked between us and the Odessa soldiers overhead with dubious expressions, but given Sunset and her squad had only been shooting up the Hyadeans, it seemed the NCR was willing to let bygones be bygones for the time being.

Behind the barricade a small camp had been set up beneath the tram rail, with marked medical tents where NCR medics were treating wounded civilians and soldiers alike. Crates of emergency supplies were being distributed, soldiers reloading weapons swiftly in the brief lull of battle. In the sky above I saw that at least two of the NCR’s Raptors had formed a protective circle above the center of the city, possibly providing protecting ot the Capital Building itself. Swarms of pegasi soldiers in both the darker uniforms of the NCR and the white uniforms of Odessa were no cooperating to keep the Hyadean flying monsters at bay, but it felt like there was no end to the creatures pouring out of the portals.

I did notice that while the sky above Manehattan was still a dark cloud broiling with purple lightning, there was another storm brewing around the city’s perimeter. This storm looked more... natural, for lack of a better term. Somehow the lighter gray storm clouds seemed smoother, more directed. From the edge of that natural storm I saw forks of blue lightning take form, and those bolts would streak out and annihilate any Hyadean bio-monster that strayed towards the edge of the city. There were so many bolts of indigo lightning, striking with such precision, it could only be directed by a conscious will.

I heard NCR troopers raising up a cheer as they say this, many of them calling out the name, “LIghtbringer!”

“Looks like the NCR’s hero is finally getting in on the action,” I heard Crossfire say, “If she can keep the edge of the city clear, some of these ponies might have a chance of getting out alive.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said as Phalanx led us towards the largest medical tent, “But what about you? What do you need to see Princess Purity for? I thought you said we didn’t have time for distractions.”

“We don’t, but I know her, and what she’s likely thinking, and I can’t ignore this. Hell, if she listens to me, then maybe...” Crossfire trailed off, her face gaining an oddly contemplative, even hesitant expression I wasn’t used to seeing on her face. Then she shook it off with her usual, arrogant snort, “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Couldn’t stay a secret forever, and I’ve got bigger shit to worry about. I’m not letting Knobs down again. Not again.”

I sincerely wished I knew the details concerning what had happened to Knobs, however many years ago. All I knew was that she’d somehow lost her hind legs during some incident after having met Crossfire, and ever since then Crossfire’s driving goal had been to restore her friend as best she could. Yet this situation with Princess Purity was unrelated to that, save for it seemed Crossfire saw this as another instant where she might fail to protect Knobs. But how did the Princess of one of the Protectorate’s two kingdoms relate to all of this?

I knew Crossfire was from Neighlesius, but that was about it.

Still, I knew Crossfire well enough by now to know there was no arguing with her once she was set on a course. The mare was nothing if not driven.

We followed her and Phalanx into the spacious medical tent, and we were assaulted by the thick scent of blood. The place was packed with wounded, stretched out on cots and mas as desperate NCR medics tended to those they could. The physical brutality and power of the Hyadean bio-monsters was ever more evident here, a I saw too many ponies with missing limbs, or grievous wounds too severe to likely be survived. The moans and cries of the suffering dug at me and I fought to keep my eyes clear of tears a we approached the back of the tent.

There, Princess Purity was using her magic to seal up a wide laceration on the side of a foal of no more than eight or nine years, gasping for breath a the Neighlesius Princess’ horn cast a steady stream of healing energies onto the wound.

None of us interrupted her as she worked, her own young face, no older than myself, strained in focus as she maintained her spell. A short minute later the wound was mostly closed, though the healed flesh was bare, red and fresh scar tissue. The foal thankfully had fallen unconscious, breathing shallowly. Purity’s sweat stricken face turned towards us, eyes blearily blinking.

“Phalanx? And... Crossfire? What are you doing here?”

“I’m going to ask you straight, Purity, do you have Iskender Bey with you?” Crossfire asked, and Princess Purity gave a reflexive glance towards a long metal case laying on the ground against the side of the tent. Crossfire saw the glance, and nodded with resolve, “I’m taking it.”

“What!?” Phalanx shouted, stepping between Crossfire and the case, “You cannot do that! It is forbidden for any but the Princess to wield it!”

Purity looked at Crossfire with wide eyes, “Even if I gave it to you, Crossfire, it’d kill you to use it.”

“And?” Crossfire snorted, “Don’t try to be noble here. It’d kill you to use it too. It doesn’t matter what your blood is, the thing drains anypony who takes it into battle.”

“Yes, but it’s been the duty of the Neighlesius royal line to fulfill that duty since the Protectorate’s inception,” Purity replied, gaining some measure of strength in her tired voice as she stepped forward, a pained yet determined look in her eyes, “And you’re not of the royal line. At least, not in the same manner I am. You’ve done nothing but rebuff my attempts to bring you into the family, so why do you now suddenly seek to wield Iskender Bey? Not for any sense of duty to your country, surely.”

My friends and I were exchanging confused looks, none of us having any clue what Purity and Crossfire were talking about, but we didn’t dare interrupt as Crossfire stepped closer to Purity, nearly getting in her face. Her tone was low and dry, like hard, cracked stone.

“You’re right, I don’t give a shit about ‘duty’. I paid my dues to Neighlesius and the Protectorate as a soldier, and when I left, I ever once intended to come back. I still don’t. But right now my friend needs me, and... and fuck it, I’m not strong enough as I am now to beat the real monsters that are raising hell out there. I need power, and Neighlesius’ national treasure is that power.”

Phalanx spat inside his helmet. I assumed he had some kind of filtration system to clean it up, otherwise, ew.

“Pfah! You’re a selfish knave of a mare! You’re not worthy to touch Iskender Bey’s hilt, let alone wield it! Princess, say the word and I’ll throw this ungrateful charlatan out.”

Purity held up a hoof towards Phalanx to stay him, her eyes remaining fixed on Crossfire, “You just wish to save your friend? Nopony else? You see this suffering around you? These ponies need protection. All of them, not just one.”

“Oh, and you’re doing a great job of it, sitting here healing wounded, but keeping that blade locked up here. Were you planning to use it when you were already too exhausted to fight? Do you even know how to fight?” Crossfire shouted, and Purity didn’t back down, her own voice raising in a sharp crack.

“I was taught by the head of the Fenril Knights, the same as you were. I may not have your experience as a soldier and Drifter, but I can still use Iskender Bey when the time comes.”

“Hate to break it to you, but that time has come, gone, and moved to another fucking time zone. If you’re too scared to take it up and get your royal ass out there to fight, then give it to somepony who can.”

“You insufferable cur-!” Phalanx moved towards Crossfire, but Purity stood in his way.

“No, Phalanx... she... she has a point.”

“Princess?”

Purity looked back at Crossfire, expression drawn into a tired, self reflecting mien, “The truth is, I don’t want anypony wielding that ARM. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want you to die, either. I don’t want anypony losing their life. Maybe... that’s cowardly of me. Are you certain you wish to wield it, Crossfire. Knowing what it will cost?”

Wait, ARM? Hadn’t I heard Applegate or someone mention something about this? I thought back, trying to remember. Iskender Bey... OH! I remembered then! It was an ARM the royal family of Neighlesius kept on hoof to defend the country in times of great danger! Applegate had mentioned it back on the journey on the Sweet Candy. Hm, but if it was an ARM, then what Purity was talking about was similar to what Gramzanber had been doing to me, slowly killing me due to lacking compatible data on pony biology to properly synchronize without side effects.

But Gramzanber had downloaded the calibration data on the Ark of Destiny. So couldn’t he...?

Yes, Gramzanber said in my head, If I interface with this ‘Iskender Bey’, if it is a genuine Veruni ARM, then I can upload the equine calibration data to it and prevent it from causing harm to any pony wielders.

“Fuck yes!” I shouted out of nowhere, and everypony turned stunned eyes towards me. Blushing, I coughed in embarrassment and said, “I, um, might have a solution to this problem.”

“Oh?” Princess Purity looked at me, “Please tell us, if you know something.”

“Okay, so it’s like this. Iskender Bey is an ARM, right? Just like my Gramzanber here. ARMs are weapons made by these aliens, the Veruni, and we were just on a Veruni ship earlier. While there, Gram interfaced with the ship computer and download a whole buttload of information, inducing data that’d let any Veruni ARM be used by a pony without any ill side effects. Or at least, not fatal ones. I still get a bit of backlash when I use Gramzanber’s powers, but I’m not going to die from it anymore. He’s telling me he can give Iskender Bey the same information, so Crossfire or you could use it without a problem!”

The look on Purity’s face was disbelieving, but her voice was more wondering, “Are... are your words true? I don’t wish to sound doubting, but what you’re saying sounds fantastical, to say the least.”

“I can confirm most of it,” said Crossfire, “We were on an alien ship, and these ARMs come from them. If the buck says his shiny spear can make Iskender Bey work without killing its wielder, then we’ve got neither reason nor time to lose. Purity, let me do this.”

“...Very well, but on one condition,” Purity said, and Crossfire grimaced.

“What?”

“You acknowledge who you are, and come home with me to Neighlesius. Help me put our country back to rights. Please... sister...”

Uh...what?

“Half-sister,” Crossfire growled in a stilted reply.

Uh... huh?

“It doesn't matter to our mother, Crossfire. It never did.”

Come again?

“Then she shouldn’t have sent me to live on that onion farm. Or hell, she should’ve never banged my dad in the first place. It was her choice to have an affair with the Captain of her Royal Knights, then send the foal away. I’m not her kid, or your sister. I’m just Crossfire, former Protectorate solider, now a Drifter who’s trying to save her friend and keep this city form burning. You want me to come ‘home’? My home is Skull City. Feel free to write, or visit whenever, but I’m not going back to Neighlesius.”

Purity hung her head, fresh pain entering her voice, but also resignation. “I suppose that’s the best I could have hoped for. So be it... take Iskender Bey. Use it as you will, and may its shining edge bless you with victory, sister.”

“You need to stop calling me that...”

“Consider it the last time I’ll say it openly, but I will always think of you that way, no matter what,” Purity said with resolve, and Crossfire just shook her head.

“Whatever. Longwalk, get over here, and let’s get your ARM talking to this other one. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

She went over to the long metal case and set it down lengthwise, using her magic to unlatch it. As I came to her I said in a quiet, whispering tone, “So, you’re a princess-”

“If you finish that question I’m going to tear your balls off and feed them to your marefriend,” Crossfire spat, opening the case, “I’m nopony but a mercenary. My parents are irrelevant. What is relevant is that I can use this to make a difference today, and you’re going to help me do it.”

Resting within soft black velvet inside the case was a weapon nearly as large as Gramzanber. It was a sword with a circular hilt, a red handle mounted within the circle, with silver and black metal making up the hilt itself. Two partial curves of metal extended from two sides of the hilt, like flanges, their edges coated in gold metal. The blade itself was a thick leaf shape, growing slightly narrower from the hilt before widening again to a heavy tip. The metal was a silver just like Gramanber’s, except towards the center the metal became gold, then black at the core with a single line of crystalline blue. Four nodes of similar blue were mounted near the tip of the blade itself. The entire weapon had a hefty look to it, emphasizing its weight, and its sharp angles and gleaming metal certainly gave it the alien appearance of a weapon of advanced technology.

I held out Gramzanber, asking my ARM, So what do I do? Just put you against the sword?

Yes, he replied, If this Iskender Bey is active, I will communicate, and transfer the necessary data.

“Alright, here goes nothing,” I said, and touched Gramzanber’s tip against Iskender Bey’s cold, shining metal.

Everypony watched as Gramzanber was suffused with a cobalt blue aura of light, a light which then transferred over to Iskender Bey. Soon both ARMs were glowing a soft, radiant blue, filling the tend with its ethereal light.

“Is it working?” Crossfire asked.

I shrugged at her, “How should I know? I’ve never done this before. Just let Gram do his thing.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, but waited patiently as everypony else continued to watch.

Soon, Gramzanber’s voice spoke again in my mind.

It is done. Iskender Bey has received the data, and is calibrating itself to function properly with a pony wielder. It’s intelligence component is not as refined as mine, due to lacking long term and regular exposure to a consistent wielder as I have, but it understands the situation and is eager to be used against the Hyadean foe.

“Good to hear,” I said and turned to Crossfire, “Iskender Bey is ready.”

Crossfire nodded, and reached out a hoof to the sword. There was a moment of hesitation, as her hoof hovered over the ARM. I wondered what might have been going through Crossfire’s mind at that moment. She may have vehemently denied caring about her lineage, and I believed her when she said her only motivation for doing this was so she could better protect Knobs. Duty or nobility had nothing really to do with this, for Crossfire. But I imagined she must have realized that, even if she didn’t care about ever going back to the Protectorate, that word of what she was about to do was going to spread.

If she survived the day, then likely everypony in Neighlesius and beyond would hear about the Drifter mercenary who took up the kingdom’s royal treasure, their fabled ARM, and used it against the alien invaders. Even if she wanted to avoid it, pretended it never happened, the knowledge of her true lineage would get around. She’d never really be just Crossfire ever again. She’d be Crossfire, Drifter, mercenary, and bastard daughter of the Neighlesius royal family. Changes to her life might come whether she wanted them or not.

I saw her confront that fact, take a deep breath, and move past it as she grabbed the sword and lifted it from the case.

I half expected there to be some kind of light show, but she just held the sword for a moment, balancing it on her hoof as she tested its weight.

“It’s lighter than I thought it would be,” she said.

“It’s the same with Gramzanber,” I told her, “The real weight comes later.”

“Don’t try to get poetic with me, buck” she said as her horn lit up and she held Iskender Bey with her magic, floating her rifle out so both weapons floated at her sides; the Sniper Shark XR on her right, Iskender Bey on her left. “Not used to dual wielding, but I’ll manage. This thing better pack the punch the legends say...”

“Be careful, Crossfire,” Princess Purity said with genuine worry, “Even if Longwalk has managed to make it so you can wield the sword safely, it may still have adverse effects. In times past, the blade’s wielders would perish within the day of taking it into battle. Please, if you feel it draining you, don’t overuse it.”

“I’m not even sure how i’m supposed to use it,” Crossfire said, glancing at me, “Did your fancy spear come with an instruction manual or something?”

I laughed dryly, “No, it just sort of... came to me as I used Gram to fight. It’ll probably be the same with you. Just do what you’d normally do, and when you start feeling a pressure in your had, and hear a voice talking to you, then you know your synchronizing with the ARM.”

“Hmph, fine, trail by fire it is,” she said as she turned around and starting marching for the exit, “Let’s get moving. We’ve used up too much time already.”

However, even at her words, she paused, and turned a strange look towards Purity.

“I don’t want you getting the wrong idea, Purity. We’re never going to be family. But... I’ll toss you a bone, this one time.”

Crossfire closed her eyes, and her horn cast a small stream of crimson magic towards her flank. The magic struck her cutie mark of three onions, and before my eyes, the cutie mark changed. It flowed like running paint, until the onions were gone, and a tear shaped, blue gem was left in its place. It was nearly identical to the cutie mark on Purity’s flank.

“I’ll wear my real cutie mark, just this one time. Just this one day, I’ll accept I’m your half-sister.”

Purity made a soft choking sound as her eyes watered, “...Thank you.”

Crossfire looked away from her, expression focused as a laser as she resumed marching out of the medical tent. My friends and I followed her, prepared to head out once more in the flaming, besieged city.

Footnote: Progress to Level Up 50%

Companion Perk Added! "Princess of the Sword" - Having come to partially accept her lineage, Crossfire has taken up the ARM Iskender Bey. While you have Crossfire in your party and she is equipped with Iskender Bey, both you and her generate Force at an increased rate of 25%.

Author's Note

Titles are a funny thing. When I named the story "Trigger to Tomorrow" it was one part 'silly anime title' and one part 'foreshadowing of important scene'. Just as I eventually envisioned the characters would arrive at Arcaidia's ship, I also knew she'd salvage a nav beacon from it and want to deploy it. I might not have planned everything else in detail leading up to that point, certainly not when I first started this story at any rate, but I knew the scene of the group talking on a shuttle in orbit about the virtues and drawbacks of deploying that beacon was something I wanted to do. It's an oddly simple scene for something that's essentially the characters trying to decide the fate of the planet with what would essentially be the push of a button, or the pulling of a trigger.

And there's a lot of other stuff that happens in this chapter besides. The attack on Manehattan is meant to be very much an homage to the attack on Addlehyde in the first Wild Arms game, and its far from done. Then there's the reveal of Crossfire's background, which I think some people might have already guessed at, but its essentially confirmed here, along with her acquiring the sword ARM of the Neighlesius royal family:

Iskender Bey is straight out of Wild Arms XF, and while in that story its kind of a Mcguffin, here it'll be a bit more active.

At any rate, while I know chapter updates are slow as heck, I remain ever committed to finishing this story, one way or another. With us entering the finale of the NCR arc, we're definitely getting there. Thanks for reading folks!

Chapter 37: Demon Spear

Chapter 37: Demon Spear

Heading once more into the infernally dusty, hot, and smoke choked streets of Manehattan, I was oddly comforted to have Crossfire taking the lead in this instance. For a mare who’d once been, at best, a dangerously opportunistic sometimes-enemy sometimes-associate of convenience, I felt like for the first time I might actually trust her. Her willingness, however reluctantly, to take up the ARM Iskender Bey in her sister’s stead, essentially protecting Purity from having to go into danger herself, in my eyes showed a change in Crossfire’s priorities.

After all, there weren’t any caps to be made by doing what she was doing. Whether she was focused on saving one or two lives that mattered to her, especially in Knobs’ case, didn’t matter. Crossfire was acting for a cause beyond money, and it left me finally seeing her as a pony I could call a friend. Whatever dangers and horrors were about to come our way, I’d have no hesitance facing them alongside her.

Of course it did help that I still had my other good friends at my back, with only B.B absent. I sincerely hoped my pegasus friend was alright and would catch up with us soon. Speaking of pegasi, I looked up to see Sunset and her platoon of Odessa soldiers keeping easy pace with us from the air as we exited the temporary NCR camp and started a fast canter down the center street leading towards Manehattan’s Capitol Building.

We still had quite a distance of city to cover to reach it, and from the coiling fog of smoke from burning buildings ahead, the pops and cracks of gunfire both magical and conventional, combined with the ghastly sound of shouts and screams... it was clear we were heading into the thickest of the fighting so far.

Arcaidia was on our left, her silver mane stained with soot and blood, but her eyes were keenly sharp for danger and she was the first to spot the danger ahead, shouting a warning that gave the rest of us time to sprint for cover right before a group of winged bio-beasts strafed us. The creatures had purple and gold wings like that of some mutated butterfly or moth, four of them spreading from a chitinous, centipede-like body ending with a long, stinger caped tail. The creatures lanced their tails at us as they buzzed overhead. I threw myself behind an overturned wagon on the side of the road, hearing the dull impacts of projectiles on the road behind me. I saw large, ten inch spines of bone sticking from the street, embedded into the concrete with ease, and each spine dripped thick purple goo that gave off a horrid stench like acid burning my nostrils.

Sunset and her squadron reacted quickly to the aerial threat, the well trained Odessa soldiers putting their anti-alien warfare skills to the test as they split up in expert fashion, the pegai wheeling through the air to engage the flying xeno monsters with withering hails of magical weapons fire. Sunset herself boosted through the air with a ridiculous hairpin turn that would have been impossible for anypony not cybernetically rebuilt like she was, the rocket thrusters under her metal wings burning the sky as she blazed in behind one bio-monster and unleashed a concentrated series of plasma bolts that shredded its wings and sent it screaming into the ground with a wet crunch.

I popped my head over the edge of the overturned wagon and reared up, hefting Gramzanber in my mouth and taking careful aim as several of the bio-monsters banked around for another pass at us. The massive ARM felt light as ever in my grasp as I took a deep breath and remembered my hunter roots, leading the shot as my mother had taught me, long ago. I hurled Gramzamber just as the first bio-beast started to fire, and the silver spear lanced it straight through the head.

At the same time I heard the crack of LIL-E’s revolver and rifle mounts, stitching holes in another beast that wobbled in the air, then was brought down by a well paced lance of ice cast by Arcaidia.

The beast still lived, even after hitting the ground, but Binge was on it in an instant, the ripper-knife in her mouth humming to life as it’s chain blade chewed into the wounded creature. It thrashed, and tried to stab it’s tail at her, causing my own throat to hitch in fear for a moment, but Binge twisted out of the way and flicked her tail, hurling a knife from it that knocked the tail stinger away and gave Binge time to jab her chainsaw knife into the creature’s head.

Meanwhile Crossfire stood in the open, drawing the remaining bio-beast’s fire. As poison spines struck around her, Crossfire took careful aim with her rifle and fired a shot that burst into a cloud of flechettes. The flechettes shredded two bio-beasts’ wings and caused them to stumble in the air and lower closer to the ground, but not quite crash. Then Crossfire brought her new weapon to bear, using her magic to spin Iskender Bey towards the still oncoming pair. The large silver blade proved itself Gramzanber’s match in terms of sharpness, treating the creature’s partially metallic flesh like paper and spilling thick purple blood and severed entrails across the street in a gory splatter.

When it was done she floated the sword back to her side, giving it a sour look, as if she wasn’t quite satisfied with it yet. As I teleported Gramzanber back to me and joined her and my other companions back in the center of the street, Crossfire looked at me.

“So how’s this thing supposed to work anyway, buck? Sure it’s sharp, but that’s what a fucking sword is supposed to do. When do I get the fancy super-speed or whatever?”

“I don’t think it works that way,” I said, still looking around for danger. There were a few of the flying bio-beasts still in the air, but Sunset and her squad were taking care of them with practiced precision. It was rather impressive to see Odessa doing the job they’d trained for, rather than having them coming after me and my friends. If only I could figure out how to keep it that way.

Crossfire was turning her sour look towards me, now, “This thing isn’t going to do me much good if I can figure out how to use it now. You must have some idea of how. You’ve been using that spear of yours since I met you.”

“It different with Longwalk,” said Arcaidia, “He take base ARM sphere and convert it to Gramzanber himself, so Gramzanber truly his ARM, with spirit synced to him. You take Iskender Bey after it take shape already, so sync rate not same. Takes time to re-sync in full.”

“How much time?”

“Not know. Maybe soon, maybe not. Just keep using ARM and synch shall rise,” Arcaidia said, then frowned as she looked further down the street, “Do other ponies hear that?”

I tilted my head, raising one ear up more to try and hear better. In the distance I heard... laughter? Bellowing, deep throated laughter, followed by the sound of some tremendous impact. “I don’t know what that is but it sounds like somepony is enjoying this hell way too much.”

“Can’t blame anypony for trying to have a little fun with the violence,” Binge said, wagging her tail, although her expression carried with it a serious cast, “If it was just me, I’d be tickled pink with this smorgasbord of bloodshed. Buuuuut, ponies I like are here, so it sours things because I really want all of you to keep your organs on the inside, now.”

“What, implying you didn’t feel that way before?” asked LIl-E, partially joking, I thought, but Binge just grinned at the eyebot.

“It was fiffty-fiffty back then, but they're different. I got my bucky, and all of you are part of the fam. Even Grumpy Guss over here,” Binge elbowed Crossfire, who growled at the ex-Raider with glaring eyes, but Binge just kept on grinning.

“Let’s keep moving,” I said, noticing Sunset’s squadron had finished off the flying monsters and were regrouping in the air above us, “And make sure we all stay alert. LIl-E, do you have a fix on B.B’s position with your sensors?”

I knew the eyebot had much better senses than any of us, even with my Pip-Buck’s E.F.S.

“I did, but she dropped off my sensors about a minute ago,” LIL-E replied, but before I could start to panic she added, “That’s not surprising. There’s a lot going on around us, so it’s a miracle I kept her on scanners as long as I did. She was fine, though. Looked like she’d gotten the last of those civilians off the roof and was making her way towards us. Might’ve gotten hung up by more of these ugly-as-sin flying warts.”

“She will be okay,” Arcaidia said, “I know it. She probably catch up at Capitol Building.”

“...Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go,” I said, and proceeded to catch a magical bolt straight into my side.

The pain exploded through me and I hit the ground hard, and I heard Arcaidia scream “Ren solva!” while Binge let out a string of swears I could barely follow. Groaning, I looked at my smoking side. My security armor had been penetrated right behind the right side of my rib cage, and a thickly layered sensation of burning accompanied the stink of singed fur and flesh.

I wasn’t sure how badly I was wounded, but I could still move my head, and saw my companions turning to face a contingent of Hyadean skeletal monstrosities that were charging out of the swirling smoke down the street. Many were firing off spells that conjured dark bolts of magic, aimed from the tips of their strangely purple tinted blades. I figured it must have been one of those that hit me. Normally my armor was pretty good at holding up against attacks, but after the past few days the wear and tear of all the fighting must have created some weak spots in the golden gecko scales.

Grunting in pain, I tried to push up with my hooves, but the pain grew too intense, even for my definitions of it. That bolt must have gotten deep. I was stuck watching as my friends hit the line of skeletal warriors like a living storm.

Arcaidia’s starblaster blazed brilliant lances of white energy through several skeleton skulls, then with an echoing shout she formed a multi-layered crest around her horn. Chunks of ice spun together to form a giant, Vertibuck sized shard that crashed down amid the center of the monstrous forces, smashing dozens to chips of bone.

Shots from Crossfire’s rifle shredded a dozen more, and then both the rifle’s bayonet and Iskender Bey flew in deadly tandem to smash through bones and bio-organic sinew. The Neighlisus ARM handily deflected black bolts of magic like swatting down mosquitoes, and Crossfire teleported about the street in pops of crimson magic, slicing apart anything she appeared next to.

LIL-E used her weapons to cover Binge as she dragged me off the street, Binge’s eyes filled with uncharacteristic fear and worry as she looked at my wound. She was dragging me with her teeth, and used her remarkably dexterous tail to fling a grenade at a cluster of skeletons that had gotten past Arcaidia and Crossfire. They were scattered by the frag grenade’s explosion, and LIL-E’s expert gunfire picked off the survivors.

Taken to cover around a pile of rubble from one of the buildings along the side of the road, Binge pulled out a health potion from her mane (how did she keep so much stuff in there) and fed it to my sputtering self.

“Hang in there, bucky, and drink up the healing juice. Get it all in,” she said, and I tried my best not to cough around the potion.

It hit my gut in a hot buzz, and it did help some in driving back the pain, but I still felt like my insides were on fire, even after downing the whole potion. “I’m... I’m okay,” I said, and I heard Gramzanber in my head.

You are not, in fact, okay. Analysis of your physical state suggests damage to your stomach and upper intestines that will require further magical or medical aid to repair.

I tried to laugh but it mostly came out as a groan, “Gee, thanks Gram, real confidence booster, you are.”

Binge looked at my spear and gave it a smack, “Don’t make Longykins feel bad, but if he needs more heal pots, I’ll get a beer tap and make him chug.”

“H-how many healing potions do you even have?” I asked, and she frowned.

“Not as much as I want to right now. Knew I should have been stealing more, but nooooo, you had to start making me want to be a better pony...stupid Longy.”

“It’s fine, I’ve got some in my...ugh... saddlebags...argh, why does this hurt so much? I’ve been shot before. It wasn’t this bad.”

Hyadean attack spells are designed to cause maximum pain by assaulting the nerves directly, as well as causing physical damage, said Gramzanber, and I gave my ARM an incredulous look.

“What’s even the point of thaaaaggh, Binge, be careful!”

Binge had rolled me over, admittedly as gently as she could, to get into my saddlebags to fish out more healing potions. I didn’t have that many left, but it was enough for her to start upending them down my throat like she was trying to get my drunk on the things. Every bit of weirdly carrot-tasting, purple substance made my stomach feel a bit warm and a bit less like I’d swallowed a bag of glass. Still, even with four healing potions now empty on the ground beside me, I still felt like I could hardly move.

Getting a look at my side a bit more clearly, now, I saw the magical bolt had burned a hole into me. The healing potions had closed the wound, but I had a good inch deep divot in my flesh, and I knew it was going to leave one ugly looking scar. Good, it could join the one on my face. If this kept up, me and Binge were going to be competing for who had the most patchwork body.

Oddly, I found that notion rather comforting. I wanted us both to survive this so we could lay together, comparing scars, and remembering getting through this insanity together.

“You’re gonna be okay, you hear me, Longwalk?” she said, leaning over me with worried eyes, and I just coughed a bit and managed a smile.

“Not planning to die quite this young,” I said and pulled her into a brief kiss.

“Ahem,” said a voice nearby, “If you’re able to do that, then you’re ass isn’t as badly hurt as I thought.”

“H-hey, I’m hurt. Super hurt. Actually, kinda still in agony... but, uh, you guys okay, Crossfire?”

Crossfire, covered in bits of bone and purple bio-goo, floated her rifle around behind her and fired off a shot. I heard a skeleton crack apart in the distance. Crossfire went about reloading her rifle and said, “We’re fine now. Cleared out those stupid ass walking bone piles. Can you walk?”

I tried to stand, with Binge supporting me. It hurt like an utter bitch, but I could get my legs under me. “Standing... check. Walking... ugh, I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Lonwalk!” Arcaidia arrived, LIL-E floating behind her, keeping her guns trained on the street in case more skeletons arrived.

“I’m sorry,” LIL-E said, “My sensors should have seen those bastards coming. I’m getting a lot of interference out here.”

Arcaidia came up to me and looked my wound over, her eyes narrowed to silver slits of concentration, “Hyadean bolt make for bad wound. I help heal, but it still slow you down.”

“I get any slower, I’ll be molasses,” I said, taking in careful breaths. Looking at my friends, I saw they were all feeling it too, the exhaustion. Most sported various small injuries, and were covered in sweat, blood, and dirt. Arcaidia looked ready to collapse. That huge ice shard must have taken a lot out of her.

And B.B’s missing. We’re not even at the Capitol Building and we’re down one of us, I’m barely standing, and the others aren’t much better off...

I thought about the Hyadean, Alhazad, and how powerful he was. How we’d struggled to keep pace with him, back at the Ark of Destiny. I thought of the Hyadean who’s nanomachines were inside me, Zeikfried. I’d only ever seen him through the video footage of his escape from Stable 104, but I’d never forgotten the way he’d torn through the place, or how he’d destroyed the Stable door built to withstand Megaspells.

Even if me and my friends were at 100% I’d be concerned about our chances of winning. In our present condition... if I asked everypony to keep moving forward, would I just be asking for the equivalent of suicide? I’d just taken a magic bolt to the side that I hadn’t seen coming, and it’d laid me out to the point that even draining all my remaining health potions still left me shaking on my hooves.

And I’d gotten lucky. What if that bolt had struck higher? Hit my heart, or my head?

“Guys...” said, seriously considering the idea of pulling back. We’d done our part. Tried our best. Nopony could claim we hadn’t fought. Nopony could reasonably expect more of us. I didn’t want to lose any of my friends.

But some of those friends were still in danger. Some of them were at that Capitol Building, like Knobs. Some were out there fighting, like B.B, wherever she’d gone. And there was an entire city of innocents still under threat from this attack, an attack spearheaded by an alien menace I was tied to by my father’s tinkering with my body and the ARM I possessed.

I was so close to breaking, to throwing in the towel, but I couldn’t. I still had more to do, even if it killed me.

“...Let’s go, this time without the ‘me getting shot’ part.”

Sunset and her squadron had landed nearby, waiting for me and my friends to get back onto the street. They’d been covering the alleyways with their magical rifles, and as I came out, leaning on Binge, Sunset took one look at me and winced.

“You’re going to need a med-tech after this,” she said.

“I’ve got the next best thing,” I said, nodding to Arcaidia as the unicorn put her horn to work and unleashed her healing magic upon me. Soft, cold blue flowed over me and icy cold assaulted the painful blaze in my stomach.

“I not able to heal all,” Arcaidia said, sucking down half of another magic potion, it’s blue glow reflecting off her lighter blue fur, “Enough for you to keep moving. Not get shot again, ren solva. Scars not look good on you.”

“Beg to differ, star pony,” Binge said.

Sunset shook her head, “I’ve got a Vertibuck on standby to provide additional air cover as we move forward. Reports show we’ve got a lot of enemies between us and our destination, but the NCR is getting its act together fast. Troops are mounting a counteroffensive all across the city, and the Rangers are here now, led by Calamity.”

“Who?” I asked, and Sunset offered a shrug.

“Big shot hero from the NCR founding days. One of the Lightbringer’s crew, so I hear. His Rangers got a good rep. City isn’t lost yet, kid. If you’re up to it, we’re good to move on your word.”

“Already gave it,” I replied, trying to keep my face from showing the pain still churning my gut, despite Arcaidia’s healing efforts and four health potions. We got moving soon after, Sunset and her pegasi and griffins taking to the sky. A few moments later I heard the distinct, throaty whines of Vertibuck engines and one of Odessa’s flying vehicles swooped above.

I’d been shot at plenty by those things, but now the Vertibuck turned its nose-mounted guns and side mounted missile pods on the streets ahead of us. The high pitched buzz of gatling laser fire was joined by the hiss of streaking rockets, and our path forward was cleared of clusters of bio-monsters that prowled through the smoke.

The next few minutes, or hours, it was hard to tell, flowed by in a pained haze for me. I had to focus so much on putting one hoof in front of the other that I couldn’t keep track of the details beyond the next moment to moment of trying to keep moving and stay alive. The streets ahead became ever more strewn with bodies and rubble, more and more of them the blood stained forms of torn apart or magically melted NCR soldiers. Bio-monsters were stalking through the alleys or climbing across buildings, rushing at us from swirls of black smoke and shadows. I could still swing Gramzanber well enough to fight, but every motion now brought a wave of pain alongside it that I desperately tried to ignore.

Arcaidia started slowing her shots with her starblaster to conserve it’s limited ammunition, and slowed her magic even more to preserve her strength. She kept close to me, eyeing my wound with constant concern burning in her eyes. Binge covered our rear, lobbing grenades at any monsters that snuck around behind us, and started to cackle with greater manic intensity as she went rapid on any bio-monsters that got too close, knives flashing through blood and fire.

Crossfire remained at the front of the group, marching like a grim, black reaper. Her rifle and Iskender Bey moved with mechanical precision in her magical grip, cutting and blasting the way forward through any beasts that survived the Vertibuck’s onslaught. Sunset and her squadron in the meantime flitted through the smoke above, wraith-like as they hit creatures on the buildings and rooftops, clearing out those trying to sling spells at us from those elevated positions. LIL-E floated up to help them, her weapons chattering almost ceaselessly, until at some point she floated back down and said in deadpan, robotic monotone, “Fuck my mechanical dong, I’m out of ammo.”

“Just hang back then,” I said, strained as I almost stumbled a step from a particularly nasty twinge of pain from my wound, “We got to be close.”

I hoped that was the case, at any rate. The first good sign was that now we weren’t alone on the streets. NCR soldiers were appearing with more frequency, often as we came across holdouts that had taken cover in storefronts or thrown rubble and wagons together to form barricades. Every such group we passed by started marching alongside us, adding their firepower to our forward momentum. At first it was just two or three ponies, but soon enough it seemed like we had a whole contingent or several dozen or more blood soaked, wounded, ash covered soldiers moving alongside us. They fired into the bio-monsters in our path with well trained if desperate skill, and when ammo ran dry, they resorted to clubbing with their gun hilts or pulling knives.

Some died to skeletal blades, monstrous claws, or poisoned darts from flying beasts, but it seemed whenever one NCR soldier fell screaming, there was another soot stained survivor joining us from elsewhere.

I’d lost track of the streets we’d passed, or if we’d made any turns. I was following Crossfire at this point, trusting the Drifter to know her path. I was starting to feel like nothing was going to stop her until she reached Knobs’ side, like she was driven by forces beyond mere magic or muscle. We all were, our bodies beyond the breaking limit, but we just kept moving forward through the fire and tide of enemies.

Then, finally, without me realizing how close we’d been, I found green grass under my hooves.

It was the front lawn of the Capitol Building. The white edifice loomed above us, less than a hundred yards away, across a green field strewn with the broken wreckage of Vertibucks, a destroyed NCR army camp, and countless scores of crushed pony bodies.

The building itself was still mostly intact, but I could see where its front doors had been torn apart, and several portions of its wall and interior had been smashed to pieces or it’s windows broken in. In the sky above I could see several Raptors hanging hundreds of feet up, discharging hailstorms of energy weapons fire at swarms of flying bio-monsters that darted through the dark clouds like locust. A Vertibuck was fall in a pulsing fireball in the distance, falling behind view behind the Capitol Building itself, who's NCR flag still flew high from it’s roof.

NCR soldiers, the survivors who’d joined us, spread out in a rough semi-circle, weapons trained ahead. At what was obvious, and my companions and I took a moment to stare at the sight before us.

“Bwahahaha!”

At least we knew where the laughter from earlier was coming from.

The creature stood easily at the height of five ponies stacked atop each other. It had a bipedal form, but it’s appearance was more akin to some mutilated cross between a frog and a gecko, with lizard-like, clawed feet attached to a huge pot-bellied body. Thick, burly shoulders and arms hung long and low from a torso clad in thick plates of green armor that looked physically grafted into muscle and flesh of a darker red shade, interconnected by veins of ropey pink tissue. A bestial face, wide like a frog’s, but tusked like a boar’s, bellowed laughter from it’s wide mouth. Solid yellow eyes gleamed from beneath a brutish brow, topped by a massive mane of wild, white hair that fell down the creature’s back.

This beast, a Hyadean I assumed, was laughing with booming guffaws as a group of pegasi flew about him.

The pegasi weren’t Odessa soldiers, but were rather armored in dark plated armor and wore thick, brown overcoats. Their rounded helmets were joined by gas masks with red eyes, and on the prominent black shoulder pads of their coats was the NCR symbol, and another sigil showing a winged blade, colored red.

“It’s the Rangers!” one NCR soldiers shouted in both amazement and relief, “General Calamity’s here!”

There was a ragged cheer from the soldiers, and I had to admit, I wanted to join in if I hadn’t been afraid how much cheering might hurt. It looked like the pegasi were giving the Hyadean monster one hell of a fight. There were only about six of them, but they were flying around the giant brute with incredible speed and skill, flipping in the air and darting about with the kind of aerial acrobatics I’ve only seen B.B pull off when she was on a blood rush.

They were armed with heavy looking rifles, fixed to their sides with battle saddles. The rifles bore long barrels with a square, knobby bit at the end, and when fired they boomed like a belch of thunder.

I could see the shots hitting the Hyadean, and felt my stomach drop at the realization that the rounds were mostly bouncing off his armored hide. One or two did draw a sort of thick, green blood, but from the way the creature stood there laughing, it was like he didn’t even care about the injuries.

Then, it spoke. Or rather ‘he’, based on the voice.

“Bwhahah! That’s some fine shooting and flying. Damn fine! You lot are way better than the lesser fodder I was dealing with at first. So, I’ll take my turn now, and see if you take it as well as you dish it out!”

I’d failed to notice at first, but the creature bore a rather odd weapon. In its hands hung a huge chain of dark metal, which was attached to what appeared to be a sizable ball as easily ten feet wide, covered in prominent spikes. It struck me as entirely out of the ordinary for an alien creature to be carrying what looked like such a primitive weapon, until I saw the creature swing it.

With almost casual ease the beast spun the chain, and sent the spiked ball flying. It moved like something that had an invisible, giant hand guiding it. It flew at angles that should have been impossible from the way the Hyadean had spun it, shifting at sudden right angles or spiraling in ungainly circles.

Regardless, three of the NRC Rangers were caught utterly off guard by the attack, their bodies splattered like balloons of blood that suddenly popped.

The other three narrowly avoided the same fate, one of them letting out a harsh, deeply accented curse, “Gorramit, ya ugly rat bastard! Yer gonna pay fer all o’ this!”

The pegasus in question managed a sudden stop and turnover maneuver that sent him hurtling past the Hyadean at breakneck speed. His rifles boomed in tandem, smacking the Hyadean square in the face with both shots and stumbling the creature back. The pegasus wasn’t done, flipping again and rolling with incredible speed and agility to fire another pair of twin shots that rocked the beast in the side of the head. It was impressed with the smooth, fast maneuvers the pegasus was pulling off, having only seen comparable moves from the likes of Shattered Sky, or B.B when she was on a blood high.

The pegasus’ two surviving comrades had flown higher and were backing him up with tossed grenades, which landed at the bulky Hyadan beast’s feet and detonated with flashes of magical green plasma.

Yet despite the hammering, this brutish monster was not only still standing, but the thick armor covering his bloated, muscled hide was only signed by the grenades. His head bore bleeding scratches where the earlier rounds had struck, but that was it. Knowing those huge rifles must have been firing some seriously high caliber rounds, the lack of apparent damage from them left my mouth dry.

“General Calamity!” shouted one of the NCR soldiers that had joined us in the rush through the city streets.

The pegasus in question flew about, hovering briefly to see all of us, and let out a sharp curse, “Oh gorramit, y'all need ta keep back! This walkin’ pile o’ warts is too dangerous fer regular troops ta handle! Fall back n’ leave this ta the Rangers!”

“Oh ho ho?” the Hyadean turned his solid yellow eyes towards us, letting a long, dark pink tongue loll out of his mouth to lick his lips and tusks, “I’m not against more fleshbags coming to play. Huh...? Wait a moment...”

Ignoring the Rangers, this Hyadean turned towards our gathered group fully and took a few lumbering steps towards us, his eyes peering directly at me and Crossfire. Or rather, less at us, and more at our ARMs.

“That what I think it is? Veruni ARMs? Hah! So Zeik wasn’t pulling my leg, there really are some of you squishy little ponyfolk traipsing about with genuine tech from those idiot Veruni! Bwhahaha! That’s hilarious! Look at you tiny horses, trying to use weapons millennia more advanced than your piss stain of a civilization! One of you is even holding one in your mouth. Can either of you even-”

The Hyadean stumbled forward as he was shot in the back of the head by Calamity, although the dual rounds from the pegasus Ranger’s twin rifles still only appeared to bounce off the monster’s ludicrously hard skull. The Hyadean wheeled about, bellowing, “Hey! Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking! It’s rude! Try this on for size!”

I heard a loud, deep sucking sound as the Hyadean opened his wide, toad-like mouth and drew in a massive breath that stirred the air around as if a literal wind was billowing past us.

At this point Sunset, who had taken up positions with her squadron above us, shouted out, “Pull up! That xeno bastard is using a sonic attack!”

Calamity and his fellow Rangers had a second or two to hear that and react before the Hyadean leaned forward and let out an unbelievable howl that blasted outward in a conical rift of wind and vibrating air. The sound was loud enough to make me clap my hooves over my aching ears, but it was clear the effect was much worse for those caught by the cone of unleashed wind and sonic force. Sunset’s warning had bought the Rangers the extra moment of time needed to pull up from the worst of the wave, but one of them still got caught with their lower half in the blast’s radius.

The wave distorted the pegasus’ hindquarters, and I flinched as I heard bones crack and the pony’s scream tear through the air. They started to fall, but their comrade swiftly dove around and caught them. I saw the cone of sonic sound waves continue onward to smash into the side of the Capitol Building with enough force to send cracks running up and down the building's walls and leave a circular indent nearly twenty feet wide.

“Smoke Cloud, git Yellow Stone outta here!” commanded Calamity, and the Ranger that had caught her comrade gave a sharp nod.

“What about you, sir?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout me! Git yer asses clear, now!”

As the Rangers obeyed their orders, the Hyadean glanced back at us, and then up at Sunset and the other Odessa soldiers and barked out another gruff laugh, “Hah, so it’s the self-proclaimed ‘defenders’ of this planet, popping in to say hi? I thought you didn’t deign to help out the poor little ‘landbound’ or whatever you call them?”

Sunset didn’t respond to him and instead looked at Calamity, “Hey, NCR! You mind if we cut in on some of your action, or did you want to kick this dipshit’s ass on your own?”

Calamity’s expression was impossible to see behind the Ranger mask he wore, but his posture was clear as he made an ‘after you’ gesture at the Hyadean, “Don’t know who you folk are, but long as yer aimin’ ta help, I won’t be sayin’ no!”

“Music to my ears! You heard the stallion, soldiers of Odessa! Open fire!”

With skilled and trained precision, the squadron of Odessa pegasi and griffins split up into smaller groups that started to surround the airspace around the hulking Hyadean. Green bolts of plasma and lances of crimson laser fire struck down upon the brute’s armored frame and he raised his arms to shield himself from the barrage. It didn’t look to me like the energy weapons were doing much more than ballistic rounds had, but there were some scorch marks appearing on those thick armored plates, so perhaps enough concentrated fire might do it?

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

I wasn’t sure which trooper was shouting, but in seconds the valiant NCR soldiers around us ignored Calamity’s order to withdraw, and instead set up a firing line and started pouring shots from battle rifles into the Hyadean, adding their firepower to Sunset’s squadron. The air was filled with the rapid chatter of gunfire as bullet tracers stitched into the beast, almost all of them simply bouncing off his armor like they were trying to shoot a tank.

“Their guns not boomy enough to work,” Arcaidia said to me over the cracks of gunfire, “That is Hyadean knight! Ren solva, need to pierce armor with Gramzamber!”

“What’s this thing good for then!?” Crossfire said, waggling Iskender Beye, “It’s the same as the buck’s spear, ain’t it!?”

“You not synced with ARM, so not as strong yet,” Arcaidia said, “But go ahead and try. I back you both up with magic!”

“Oh oh, what do I get to do?” asked Binge, and Arcaidia gave her a flat look.

“Not die by hiding or being out of way.”

“Awwwww, if only I still had that shiny scythe the birdie’s brother gave me. Wait, will this work?” Binge said, reaching into her nest of a mane and yanking out a brick of high explosives. My eyes bulged out a tad, as she also got out a detonator and started setting the timer for it.

“Just how many explosives do you still have in there!?” I asked, and Binge just gave me an immensely unsettling wink.

“A mare never reveals all of her secrets, bucky!”

I shook my head, trying to ignore the fiery pain that still plunged my side into agony from my earlier wound. Looking at the situation, with the Hyadean ‘knight’ all but engulfed in a field of gunfire from both the ground and sky, I couldn’t even see an opening for me and my allies to jump in.

“How are we even going to get in there?” I said, “We’ll get caught up in the crossfire if we charge in.”

Crossfire gave me a funny look and I blinked back at her, “What? I know it’s your name, but that’s not what I meant.”

She rolled her eyes, “I know that! I was staring at you because don’t you have super speed? Can’t you just dodge through all of that fire?”

“Normally yeah...” I trailed off, trying not to let pain douse my features. I was running on empty as it was, and that side wound was draining me by the second. I knew if I used Accelerator right here and now, I might not be able to do it again anytime soon. Crossfire seemed to read what was going through my mind and she came up to me with an intense look flaring in her eyes an poked my chest, hard.

“Then throw it you numbnuts!”

Oh. Right. I must have been dealing with some serious blood loss at that point if I hadn’t thought of that as my first option.

“Brilliant plan,” said LIL-E, “Maybe we should focus on dodging, first.”

“Dodging whaaaaaAAAHHH!” I started to say, then ended up screaming as Crossfire had to grab me and fizzle out my senses for a moment with a teleportation spell, due to the fact that a moment later the Hyadean’s huge spiked ball smashed the spot we’d just been in.

“Bawahahah! This is getting fun! Never anything quite like smashing up a bunch of low-grade fodder for an afternoon workout!” the Hyadean chimed happily, spinning his flail around with wind shattering speed. Arcaidia used her magic to pull Binge away from a strike that soared right overhead and then smashed into a group of NCR soldiers with the kind of force usually reserved for missiles. Parts flew and blood rained down, but the NCR soldiers bitterly kept firing.

Arcaidia’s horn didn’t cease being coated in ever more layers of blue light, her magic now creating sloped shields of ice to protect the soldiers from the Hyadean’s spinning flail. The ice often shattered on impact, but deflected the ball enough to allow some of the soldiers to get out of harm’s way in time.

Crossfire and I appeared on the Hyadean’s other side, my eyes dizzy from the teleport, but Crossfire steadied me.

“Just wait for a clear shot,” she told me, “I’ll try and help make an opening. Don’t Goddess damned miss!”

“Y-yeah,” I said belatedly and took several deep breaths trying to focus myself.

Arcaidia turned her magic towards the Hyadean, sending spears of ice flying towards him. He smashed several with a backhanded strike of his fist, while several other shards lodged into his armor. From his grunt I think one of the shards might have actually penetrated deep enough to hurt.

“Pfft! You think a little ice is going to slow down the mighty Berserk! I’m one of the sanctioned Quarter Knights directly appointed by Lord Zeikfried to subjugate this mud ball planet! I was killing Veruni Sentinels over this heap of rock before your species was even banging rocks together to make fire!”

“Put a’ cork in it ya loudmouthed freakish varmint’!” Calamity darted down below one of the Hyadean, Berserk’s, swinging flail strikes, and inverted himself in mid-air as he went between Berserk’s legs. This gave him a near perfect shot with his twin rifles that struck right under Berserk’s chin. Granted, I might have gone for the groin, but with these Hyadean aliens it might not have been the best assumption of a weak spot. The dual anti-machine rifle rounds to the chin, however, was like getting an uppercut from a freight train. Tough and armored hide or not, that shot knocked Berserk cleanly on his ass.

At the same time, Binge crept in from the side while Berserk was still dazed and said, “Boop!” as she attached her brick of high explosives to his back, complete with a sign she’d pulled from somewhere and scrawled on with blood (possibly her own) ‘Kick Me!’

“Get off me you third rate lower lifeforms!” Berserk bellowed, smashing out with a fist that nearly caught Binge, but she managed to dance away from the blow. A good thing, because that first crater the ground where it hit, further showing this alien warrior’s immense strength.

“Think you’re about to get your opening,” Crossfire said, taking aim with her rifle and popping off several shots. Her rounds didn’t do much more than Calamity’s did, but they sure got Berserk’s attention as he glared towards the two of us.

I gulped as I saw him draw in breath again, preparing another of those sonic howls. Wounded as I was, I wasn’t going to be able to dodge it, so instead I hopped to my hind legs, grasping Gramzanber in my fire hooves to prepare to throw. If I could get the throw off before Berserk let loose that fatal howl...

Luckily Binge also had my back, having set her detonator timer just right. The explosives went off in a concussive blast that nearly knocked me off my hooves. I managed to keep myself steady, and for a moment most of the shooting from both NCR and Odessa soldiers slackened as everypony waited to see if the explosion had done the trick.

“Bwahaha...hah...ugh...”

No such luck. Berserk emerged from the smoke and flames, gleaming like a metallic demon. He was wounded, certainly, with the point blank blast having mangled some of the armor on his back and left brackish, purple blood oozing from several parts of him, but he still looked as strong as ever as he spun around and unleashed the howling breath he’d been keeping in. The unsuspecting NCR troopers were devastated by the wave of sound and wind that tore through them. Arcaidia formed a barrier of ice, but only had time to protect herself and LIL-E, along with a few lucky soldiers who were nearby.

I saw Binge spring away from the wave as well, but even her bouncy agility wasn’t enough to get totally clear. The edge hit her and sent her rolling like a log.

“Binge!” I shouted, but Crossfire shouted even louder.

“His back is turned, dumbass! Hit him now!”

She was right. Berserk had turned his sonic attack on those across the area from me and Crossfire, so his back was momentarily turned. I wasn’t ever going to get a better shot, and neither was Crossfire. We both attacked at once, her charging in with Iskender Bey, while I threw Gramzanber with as much might as my weakened body could muster. Even that simple throw caused sharp pain to stitch through my side, causing me to cry out and nearly fall.

At least my aim was decent. Gramzanber struck Berserk with a meaty noise, the uncannily sharp ARM bypassing already weakened armor. Berserk cried out in the first noise of actual pain I’d heard from him and he spun around in time to face Crossfire leaping at him while bringing both Iskender Bey down with her magic, and shoving her rifle right into his face.

Her rifle shot him between the eyes, which didn’t actually penetrate but it did snap his head back while Iskender Bey’s edge slashed across his chest. The sword-shaped ARM drew both sparks and blood across that thick, armored chest, not going deep but definitely wounding.

“Graa! That was a cheap shot!” Berserk whipped the chain of his spiked ball around, the ball itself moving at an absurd angle to come at me while the chain itself coiled like a living thing around Crossfire’s midsection.

I could barely dodge. It was more accurate to say I half fell, half flopped away from the spiked ball that nearly crushed me. Meanwhile Crossfire was lifted up and slammed into the ground like an empty barrel, and I heard her stiffle a cry of pain as the impact hammered her. Yet she still had Iskender Bey gripped with her telekineiss and slashed it at Berserk, forcing him to block with his bare hand. The blade cut his hand, even taking a finger off, and he responded by driving a foot into Crossfire’s body and kicking her like a beer can for several dozen feet.

I’d gotten back to my hooves and mentally recalled Gramzanber back to me, the ARM flashing back to my grip.

Longwalk, your vital bio-metrics are reaching critical condition, Gramzanber warned me, I know this may be an unorthodox suggestion, but perhaps withdrawing from the battle is in order?

“N...no, can’t do that...'' I said, looking towards Binge. She was stirring, slowly rising from where she fell, so I knew she was alive, and felt a cold wash of relief at that. But I didn’t know how badly she was hurt either, and on top of that Crossfire wasn’t looking so good after that kick to the ribs.

I am not suggesting abandoning the situation completely. Merely retreating into the Capitol Building to find cover, regroup, and absorb some more healing magic, Gramzanber said.

It wasn’t a bad idea, overall. But that still meant leaving the majority of the Odessa and NCR soldiers to fight this Berserk bastard alone. That didn’t sit very well with me at all. However, at that same moment, it also stopped being just my decision.

Berserk was getting hammered again by the Odessa squadron, and the few surviving NCR soldiers had rallied with Calamity to fire at the Hyadean’s weakened armor. At the same moment, Sunset landed near me, her face a mask of dead seriousness.

“Longwalk, get your people into the building.”

“But-”

“No ‘buts’, kid! I’m not facing your parents again knowing you got killed when I could have stopped it. Besides, aren’t there ponies in that building you came here to save?” Sunset asked, giving me a hard look. I gulped, and nodded, and she gave me a small, wane smile, “Then get your team on their hooves, dammit, and get in there! Me, my squad, and these NCR folk will handle this xeno chump.”

For a moment I hesitated, if only because I’d already seen what Berserk could do. Even with his injuries, I wasn’t sure the Odessa and NCR soldiers could finish him off together. But my group and I were on our last legs, and if there was still a fight to be had inside the Capitol Building, we’d need every scrap of endurance we could muster for it. Gramzanber was right, and so was Sunset. With a deep, shuddering breath and said to her, “Alright, just... don’t die out here.”

Those rust red features of hers managed a surprisingly confident smirk, “Worry about yourself. I got backup coming.”

“Backup?” I asked, and she chuckled dryly, pointing up.

I looked, and saw a pair of Odessa Vertibucks coming in fast. They flew over the battlefield, and rather than open fire on Berserk, they deployed two additional squads of soldiers into the sky. Among those fleeting, white clad figures, I spotted two that looked familiar.

Hammerfall and Glint were both leading their separate squadrons of soldiers and were swiftly diving upon the fight, the former already revving up his artificial ARM, Nidhogg, with a throaty roar that filled the air.

“We’ve got this,” Sunset told me, “Now get your team in there and put an end to this mess!”

I could only nod at her, giving one last look to the battle before I rushed over to Crossfire. Hammerfall was living up to his name, coming down like a literal mountain of hammers on Berserk. The spiked ball and chainsaw ARM collided in a blaze of sparks, and in seconds the sound of energy weapons fire joined the chorus as Glint led his squadron in a strafing run against Berserk that added to the fire already coming in from Calamity and the NCR troops.

Crossfire looked a bit dazed, but by her injuries and the sight of our reinforcements, and she shook her head with a rueful grin, “I might not like those Odessa assholes, but damn if they didn’t show up at the right time to play fucking cavalry.”

“No complaints from me,” I said, and waved to my allies. I watched Binge carefully as she shook herself and started trotting our way, swaying about a bit. She was bleeding from her ears, which worried me, but her smile was as infectious as ever.

“We leaving the party so soon?” she asked me.

“Way too crowded here,” I said, “Not my scene. You okay?”

“Hehehe, my bones tingle like they’ve got tiny little bees with drills buzzing around my marrow, and I can’t actually hear anything, but I’m okay Longykins, thanks for asking,” she said, wobbling a little to the side as she spoke. I steadied her with a hoof, looking at her with a closer look of concern, but she just smiled back at me.

Arcaidia galloped as fast as her awkward gait with her artificial leg would allow, LIL-E floating alongside, the pair skirting the edge of the ongoing battle with Berserk. The Hyadean seemed entirely too capable of withstanding the punishment being thrown his way, and was matching Hammerfall’s chainsaw ARM with powerful swings of his spiked ball, but at least it looked as if he wasn’t able to break away from the troops surrounding him now.

“Arcaidia, you know what that thing is better than any of us,” I said, “Can they beat him?”

Arcaidia gave me a flat look, a tired depth to her silver eyes, “Don’t know. Maybe? Only Odessa fake ARM really do much, I think, but can’t give you certainty, ren solva. Just have to trust them, yes?”

“And we don’t have time to chat about it,” Crossfire said, “If we’re going, we got to go now.”

“Shitty time to run out of ammo,” LIL-E said, her underslung revolver turret spinning around in a frustrated motion, “I don’t have time to restock in my usual way.”

“Bitch about it later,” Crossfire said, turning with a swish of her blue tail and moving with a determined purpose towards the front steps of the Capitol building.

“She’s right, let’s get in there and save whoever we can,” I said, and with exhausted by agreeing nods exchanged between us, my friends and I broke into a ragged trot towards the damaged edifice of NCR’s Capitol Building, leaving a viscous ongoing battle behind us that I could only hope wouldn’t end up killing those I was leaving.

The interior of the Capitol Building was no longer lit by any electrical lights, the power having clearly been damaged or blown out by the fighting. The corridors were instead dark, lit only by the light of the burning city sifting in through broken windows, and the flash of occasional red emergency lights powered by backup generators. This cast each rubble and debris strewn hall in a ballroom dance of shifting shadows and angry orange and red pools of light.

I was tense, but it was hard to even feel the tension in my muscles at this point, my body having largely become numb save for several key points of pain, including my side. My breathing was ragged, and before we were even twenty paces past the shattered front doors I found myself stumbling over some rubble and nearly face planting.

Arcaidia caught me, using her magic to steady to as she said, “Ren solva, you need rest and more magic for wounds.”

“We all do, but every second we waste is a second the Skull City Guild leaders could be dying, or the NCR President, or... or Knobs...” I said, looking at Crossfire, who’d been marching ahead with grim resolve in her every hoofstep.

“I can go on ahead without you bunch,” Crossfire said, not even looking back, “Rest if you need to and catch up.”

“Don’t be a moron,” LIL-E said, “You got a shiny new sword, that’s nice, but you saw what that monster outside could do. You ready to fight another like that, by yourself, without a bunch of NCR and Odessa soldiers to take the hits for you?”

Crossfire didn’t stop, but she did slow down a bit, and LIL-E continued, “Whatever has gone down here has already gone down. We’re the clean up crew, more than rescuers. But if there is somepony to rescue, we won’t be doing it half dead and low on supplies. Look, I was programmed with some information on this building, since the LIE-E series was also considered for guard duty on this and other key NCR installations. The lab we were built in is in one of the sub-levels, and I still have the access codes in my databanks. I also know the lab has medical supplies. Let’s go there. I can re-arm and maybe even find a few upgrades, and the rest of you can use the place to heal up.”

“How much time would that take?” I asked, suppressing a half-cough from dust and plaster that fell from the ceiling from an explosion rocking the building from somewhere outside.

“Getting there? Just a few minutes. The access elevator is just down this hallway a bit further. You guys can take whatever time you feel is best to heal up. As for me re-arming or upgrading? Haven’t a Goddess damned clue,” LIL-E admitted, “If needed you guys should go on without me at that point, since I’m as useless as an empty roll of toilet paper at the moment. No ammo, and my weapons just aren’t cutting the fucking mustard anymore, either..”

“Don’t say that,” Binge said, “You’re a pretty little artificial soul riding a chariot of iron, and even without ever getting a weapon upgrade the entire story, you’re still always helping out!”

LIL-E turned around and stared, or rather aimed her face-plate really hard, at Binge. “Didn’t you just say outside that you can’t hear anything after taking that asshole’s screaming attack?”

“Oh, my left ear is still very silent, and possibly clogged up with blood, but my right ear is clearing up,” Binge said, twitching her right ear a few times for emphasis.

“At any rate, I think LIL-E is right,” I said between labored breaths, “If it won’t take more than five minutes, we should do what we can to shuffle a few steps further away from death’s doorstep. Crossfire, you okay with that?”

“...No, but you idiots are going to do it anyway, so I might as well save my breath,” she said, every inch of her coal black frame bleeding with barely restrained need to break into a gallop. I couldn’t really blame her. I felt similarly. I didn’t like the idea of stopping for anything, but we were all but done in terms of stamina. I’d barely even done anything against Berserk, and I was still one or two hooves from the grave. We weren’t doing anypony any good, unless we recovered a little.

But I was terrified that even spending five minutes doing that might cost somepony their life. If we found Knobs in any condition other than alive... I knew Crossfire would never forgive me, and I wouldn’t even hold that against her.

Fortunately, if nothing else, the Capitol Building seemed empty of any of the small fry enemies we’d had to fight our way through to get here. That meant we weren’t being besieged on every end as we walked down the hallways, but that had its own disturbing connotation to it. It meant that the damage we were seeing hadn’t been done by a horde, but by a single foe.

And from some of the bodies of NCR soldiers we were running into strewn about the entryway earlier, or down the hallway now, I had a sinking feeling I knew who that enemy was.

The bodies were severed into pieces by extremely clean, neat cuts. Armor and weapons were cut in halves as smoothly as sheared paper, with the flesh beneath just as evenly bisected, leaving rivers of blood and entrails to paint the floors and walls. The heavy front doors of the building had been blown clean off and rendered into splinters, and plenty of side doors were treated the same.

I’d seen this kind of brutal but efficient carnage before. In my dreams, and from the security footage from Stable 104.

The giant, menacing humanoid in steel blue armor, wielding a dark spear akin to Gramzanber. The Hyadean warrior who seemed to be the leader of the alien efforts to make this world their own, both in the distant past, and now in the present.

Zeikfried.

My heart was hammering coldly and erratically in my chest. I was as afraid for my friends as I was for myself. I didn’t know at all if we were ready for this. To make it all worse, B.B was still missing. What had happened to her? Our party was drained, and incomplete. We couldn’t win this, could we?

But there was no other choice. None other that I could make and live with myself. We pressed on.

The elevator was where LIL-E said it would be, just another couple dozen paces ahead and down a short side hallway. The steel doors were closed tight, but lucky for us the backup power generators were still giving it some juice. LIL-E extended a robotic arm from her chassis and pressed some buttons on a side mounted keypad. A green light flashed, and the doors opened. We silently piled in.

As the elevator moved down, Crossfire broke the silence.

“Hey, Frosty, so what’s the deal with these alien freaks anyway? You and the buck seem to know, but I haven’t exactly been brought up to date with this shit. Might as well explain it now, while we’re taking the breather...”

Araidia glanced over at her, “Long story. Short telling is Hyadean are ancient enemy of Veruni, my people. I raised by them after taken from here... long ago. Hyadean monsters make themselves powerful with bio-metal. Not really organic, even if some parts look or bleed organic. They conquer planets, make all life on planet like them. Strongest of Hyadeans are the ‘knights’. Each planet invasion, four are chosen to lead, the ‘Quarter Knights’.”

“Like generals, got it,” Crossfire said, “So the Jolly Green Jerkfest out front was one of those Quarter Knights, and there’s another one in here somewhere, trying to kill everypony. So was the masked freak from your alien ship also one of these knights?”

“Very much likely, yes,” Arcaidia said, and something struck me then.

“So that’s three knights accounted for... but who’s the fourth, then?”

“We’ll find out eventually, one way or another,” LIL-E said, “But didn’t your tribal friend, Trailblaze, say something about running into a Hyadean that had one of those Guardian entities following them around?”

“Oh... huh, I nearly forgot about that,” I said, rubbing my head, “There’s been so much going on. We could really use Trailblaze here. The power of a Guardian would be damn nice to have right about now.”

“It sure would,” said Binge, “Huh, too bad we don’t have any way to get some of that tasty otherworldly god-like magic being’s power. Wow, my mane’s itching a whole bunch.”

“That’s because you never wash it...” Crossfire said, then blinked at Binge, “Uh... am I going crazy or is the Raider’s mane glowing?”

Looking at Binge, I saw the familiar bright gleam of light and knew it was coming from the statue of one of the Guardian Lords that Binge had taken from the Sweet Candy. As Binge yanked the statue out of her mane, she held it up for all to see, “Oh, this? Heheh, I’ve just been holding onto it because I think it’s kinda neat. Makes me feel all warm and comfy like I’ve got a blanket made out of multiple Mr. Happy’s smiling away and hugging me.”

“That is... one of the more disturbing things I think I’ve been forced to imagine recently,” LIL-E said, “But whatever the case, it’s clear that the statue is reacting to you. Uh, you sure it’s not radioactive or something?”

“I doubt it,” I said, remembering when the statue had saved me and Binge from the ooze monster on the Ark of Destiny, “This statue is some kind of link to one of the stronger Guardians. Bartholomew explained it like it’s kind of a mobile version of that shrine Odessa was experimenting with in the cave north of Stable 104.”

“So, what, a Guardian can connect to us through it? Through... Binge? Like what your friend Trailblaze can do with that fire bird Guardian?” LIL-E asked.

“Okay, hold up, what the rip-roaring teabagging hell is a Guardian?” Crossfire asked.

“Umm, well...” I gave her a somewhat embarrassed look as I explained, “They seem to be extreme powerful magical entities that used to be tied to powerful and elemental parts of our world’s magic. They used to protect the world from dangers a long time ago, but lost a lot of their power during the war with the Hyadean and Veruni when they invaded... like, eons ago. They’re only now recovering enough power to communicate with some ponies that have special connections to their elements, and, uh... I think it has something to do with magical Leylines running through the planet? I don’t really get it. Trailblaze knows more, because she’s a Guardian Medium.”

“...Buck, if I didn’t know you were being serious, I’d think you’d have gotten your ass into a stash of Dash,” Crossfire said, shaking her head, “You know what? Sorry I asked. This alien and Guardian shit is way too over my head to give a shit about. I’m just going to shoot the things trying to kill us and let you sort out the rest.”

“Probably for the best,” said LIL-E, “And let’s hope if Binge turns out to be a freakin’ Guardian Medium of all the damn things, it turns out to be a Guardian of Murdering the Bad Guys. Because that’s what we could use a lot of, right now.”

“I’d settle for a Guardian of Sexy Times,” Binge said, wagging her tail.

As luck would have it, the elevator reached its destination just then, forestalling any further awkward conversation as the doors opened to reveal a very short corridor beyond, followed by sliding metal doors that were already open. Beyond them was a wide, rectangular room that was dimly lit by the emergency lighting, but between Pip-Bucks and unicorn horns, we were able to light up quite nicely. It looked like some kind of security checkpoint, with a sealed off room behind thick bullet-proof glass sitting alongside a heavy metal door with a pad set into the wall next to it. It looked like the pad required some kind of keycard, but LIL-E just floated right up to it, and I heard a series of brief screeching noises issue forth from her that left my ears twitching like ants had crawled into my eardrums.

With a soft clicking noise, a green light popped to life on the pad, and the metal doors slid open. Through the threshold we found a much larger room, one that looked like a melding between a mechanic’s workshop and a medical lab. It was empty of anypony save us, and thankfully unlike the rest of the building, this room was largely intact save for a few fallen pieces of equipment that probably got knocked over due to tremors from explosions from above.

LIL-E floated rapidly around the more mechanically oriented half of the room, scanning the equipment present before she came to stop in front of a station that looked like a large circular metal pad built into the floor, surrounded by various mechanical arms tipped with numerous tools and devices the likes of which I could only guess the use of. I was about as technically inclined as a rock, so I wasn’t even going to try and figure out what most of this stuff was for.

“You got what you need here?” asked Crossfire, and LIL-E bobbed up and down in a nodding gesture.

“This is a fully equipped automaton maintenance and manufacturing station,” LIL-E said, extending her small robotic arm, which in turn had a small wire she plugged into a terminal attached to the station, “Hmm... yeah, they still got my line’s schematics on here. Even if the LIL-E line was terminated, they had a few upgrade options planned that are still in the database.”

“How long?” Crossfire pressed.

“All the materials are here for a rearm and refit,” LIL-E said, “All I have to do is set the automated system to begin and hook myself up to the station. Should take... approximately ten to fifteen minutes.”

“Too long,” Crossfire said, looking towards the medical lab portion of the room, “We find whatever healing potions we can here, chug them, then we get our asses back up top.”

Arcadia gave the mare a briefly sharp look, lips pressed tight and ears flat, but she didn’t argue with the other mare as she quickly trotted over to several of the medical cabinets and started rummaging through them. I joined her, hoofing through various jars, cartons, and bottles looking for the familiar potions, and any other gear that looked useful.

“We need more than potions,” Arcaidia whispered to me as we searched, Crossfire stalking back and forth in the room behind us while Binge staked out near the entrance to stand guard.

The pain radiating from my side and gut, along with the draining, numbing sensation of exhaustion told me that Arcaidia was right, but so was Crossfire. “I know, Arcaidia. There’s no choice. Even these minutes feel like too much time wasted. We just have to make the best of it and push-”

“Ren solva...” Arcaidia said, turning towards me with her silver eyes shining with the moisture of tear she was holding back, her hoof lightly touching my fore leg, “You’re hurt. Bad. Magic not enough. You push, you might...”

I paused in stuffing a first aid kit into my saddlebags, and looked at Arcaidia’s hoof. I grasped it briefly with my own, my voice quiet, “We’re all bad off. We’ll manage.”

“You could stay here...” she suggested, “Let us finish things.”

I froze, my brain pony tripping and planting his face into the proverbial sidewalk. Stay here, while my friends went on to face the dangers ahead? I knew I was badly injured, perhaps worse than I’d ever been, but...

“I can’t do that,” I told Arcaidia, cracking open a healing potion I found amid the shelves and downing the contents as if to prove my resolve. If anything the fact that the healing warmth from the potion only slightly reduced the throbbing pain inside told me that Arcaidia probably was right. But even so, I couldn’t do what she suggested. I couldn’t stay here, nursing my wounds, while the ponies I cared about went on to face danger and death.

Arcaidia’s face registered a wave of internal strife, her eyes briefly shutting tight before she shook her head and blew out a freezing sigh, “Stubborn toaster head, if you die, I not going to cry! Dumb, rock skulled, sludge headed, ren solva!”

“S-sorry,” I said with a sheepish attempt at a smile, “Can’t really help it, you know?”

Arcaidia wiped at her eyes, grumbling, “I know.”

“Hey! You two done making out over there?” Crossfire said, and Binge perked up.

“Threesome?” the ex-Raider asked.

“NO!” both Arcaidia and I shouted, near simultaneously

“Aww, no fun.”

We worked in haste from there, chugging healing potions near as fast as we found them, and using the med-kits we could scrounge to bandage up any injuries that still bleed even after the healing potions. By the end of it we all looked like walking corpses held together by rolls of gauze, spit, and hope, but it was better than just looking like corpses, so I considered this a detour well spent. The brief break had also let us catch our breath a bit, for what little good that might do us.

LIL-E was set upon a robotic arm in the middle of the automaton manufacturing station, and I was slightly alarmed at the state of her. The mechanical arms moving over her had all but disassembled the eyebot into several portions, moving in a swift, arachnid dance of soldering and welding that caused sparks to fly in multiple showers. I could tell her revolver and rifle attachments had been removed, but I couldn’t quite tell what was being added to her, or indeed if what was happening to her was actually helping at all.

LIL-E’s voice spoke from my PIp-Buck suddenly as I stared at her.

“You’d better get going, Longwalk. This is going to take longer than I thought, but I will catch up as soon as the upgrading is done.”

“If you’re sure...” I said, and LIL-E’s voice chuckled in a dry, mechanical buzz.

“Oh, I am. I might arrive late to the party, but I’ll have some serious party favors to bring once this process is done. Looks like the doc really wanted to upgun the LIL-E series into effective one-bot armies, and while he didn’t get the funding for half of what he wanted to do, what is here that this station can jury-rig together ought to have some... explosive results.”

I couldn’t help but crack a small smile at the enthusiasm in the eyebot’s tone, “I’m looking forward to it. See you soon, LIL-E.”

“Don’t get dead in the meantime, Longwalk.”

We were back on the Capitol Building’s main floor in no time, but to me it felt like every heartbeat was a moment strained out too long. I hoped detour would prove to be worth it. Pressing on through rubble strewn halls, myself, Arcaidia, Binge, and Crossfire made for the primary assembly hall. Crossfire figured it would be where most of the action had gone down, since that’s where most of the bigwigs, NCR and Skull City alike, would have been when the attack began. The assembly hall would be across from the ballroom where the party had been last night, and it was surreal to think that not too long ago I’d strode down these very halls with my friends, dressed to impress and enjoying a rare evening of actual frivolity.

What? I can use words like ‘frivolity’. Just because I’m a tribal doesn’t mean I lack a vocabulary, okay?

Honestly I could have used some humor in those dark moments before we arrived in the assembly hall. All of us were running on frayed nerves, last legs, and desperate hopes. A city was in flame around us, countless ponies and other creatures dead or dying. Outside friends and allies were stalling a monstrous alien juggernaut, and inside we were on a limited timer to find survivors, friends among them I hoped.

Things didn’t look good as we passed the shattered doors to the ballroom, which some NCR soldiers had apparently barricaded and made a stand at. I thought I could maybe see one or two complete bodies amid the otherwise strewn pony parts. The walls were covered in strange, entirely too neat and clean holes as if something had just scooped the plaster and wood right out, or deleted it from existence. Some of the bodies had similar wounds. I had nothing left in my stomach to vent, thankfully.

A brief glance inside the ball room showed it mostly empty, with the majority of the bodies clustered near the entrance. It didn’t look as if the majority of ponies were here, so that probably meant Crossfire’s assumption about the assembly hall was right. From what she’d read of the building’s defenses and layout, it was the most reinforced room in the building and had several emergency exits as well. And it wasn’t far, just a short trot further along past the ball room.

We all braced ourselves for what we might find. Crossfire marched in front, raw, naked determination painting her face stiffly, like a death mask. Arcaidia stayed close to my right side, Binge on my left, both mares, friend and mate, seeming to want to both draw strength from being near me and have me draw strength from them in turn. For once, even Binge’s expression was focused and serious, as if she sensed what was coming. Her tail lightly brushed mine, a gesture of comfort and promise. My tail brushed hers back, matching that promise.

“Ren solva,” Arcaidia whispered, “Watch Pip-Buck sight.”

The E.F.S. I barely saw it, flickering on and off, but there were a hoof full of dots ahead of us, just past another set of broken doors. These doors weren’t merely wood, but thick, metal sheets that had come down across the normal doors of the assembly hall, but even this final defensive barrier had been torn asunder and rendered into so much twisted metal. I got a ghastly flashback to the remains of Stale 104’s main door.

Ahead, the flickering dots on my E.F.S registered as friendlies. Friendlies? Survivors! I wanted to bolt ahead, but restrained myself. I saw no red dots, but that didn’t mean anything. The E.F.S might not be picking up every threat.

“I see it,” I whispered back, nodding to Arcaidia then saying, a bit louder to Crossfire, “There’s somepony alive in there.”

Crossfire responded by increasing her pace, the blade of Iskender Bey hovering close to her side and her rifle hovering on the other as she broke into a faster trot that nearly became a gallop. I thought I was supposed to be the reckless one? But it was Knobs. I understood exactly why Crossfire might throw aside caution in this case. Without another word, I too broke into a short gallop, Binge and Arcaidia doing their best to keep pace as Crossfire burst into the assembly hall.

If the ball room had been a few soldier’s final stand, the assembly hall had been the pitched battle. The smell of blood, voided bodily fluids, gunsmoke, and death filled the air like a fog. The room was barely recognizable, with entire sections blown to pieces or ripped to shreds. No piece of furniture was left entirely intact, as if a hurricane filled with concrete chunks and metal blades had flown through the room. Bodies lay in broken, shredded heaps and pieces all across the hall’s remains, some utterly beyond identification, others still intact enough to tell they were soldiers or dignitaries. For a moment I was too stunned to even begin trying to identify corpses, or look for threats, my Pip-Buck’s glow just showing me a ghostly hellscape of blood for a few moments.

Then with a snarl Crossfire pushed ahead, sweeping her horn left and right with a fierce glow of blood red magic to illuminate the area.

“Knobs!” she didn’t quite shout, and it drove a painful punch to my gut to hear the hardened mercenary mare speaking in a voice that was nearly breaking with fear and held back tears, “Knobs please say something if you’re in here!”

We all moved further into the room, and I thought I heard a noise to my left. It was barely audible, but it sounded like a faint, feminine groan. I immediately swung my Pip-Buck that way and made for the sound. Everypony else saw me move and were following me in an instant, Crossfire all but surging ahead of me to get at the source of the sound.

Near the wall entire sections of the masonry had been torn apart and partially collapsed, along with what looked like part of the ceiling. I saw a glint of metal amid torn bodies, and saw a large, well crafted blade. I recognized the sword almost as soon as I recognized the length of gray mane peeking from beneath the fallen rubble, just beyond the fallen blade.

“Applegate?” I said, rushing to the rubble.

Crossfire noted the sword, her face becoming even more tense as she helped me move the debris using her magic, with Arcaidia joining in a moment later.

“Shit... how the hell did this happen?” Crossfire said with a grunt of effort as she hauled a large chunk of wall away from the fallen mare. I reached in and grabbed a warm hoof, wet with blood, and pulled Applegate out from under the rubble.

The S-class Drifter was breathing, but barely conscious. Her mauve colored fur was matted with blood and her mane streaked with the same crimson staining her gray locks. Her injuries mostly consisted of fine cuts, shallow but profuse in their bleeding. I also saw a raw bruise covering most of her left side that must have been from a tremendous impact. Her head had a painful lump on it, probably the main reason she was dazed.

I was honestly a bit surprised to see her here, specifically. The last time I had seen Applegate was back outside the Ark of Destiny, after we’d defeated the Golem, Roaring Metal. Then again, a lot had happened after my friends and I entered the Ark, so it was entirely possible Applegate had returned to Manehattan with Whiteheart and what had been left of Hawkeye’s team. There’d been plenty of Veritbucks available to give them a ride, after all. She might have been put on security duty here when the attack on the city started. There was no way to know the details without asking her.

“Applegate, what happened?” I said, gesturing for Arcaidia to help me lay her down in a more comfortable position. Arcaidia wasted no time in doing so, and her horn’s comforting glow covered Applegate with the application of healing magic.

“Mmmm...” Applegate made a weak sound, but her eyes remained unfocused.

“What’s wrong?” Crossfire asked Arcaidia, “Can’t that fancy alien magic heal her any faster?”

Arcaidia didn’t look up from Applegate, but her eyes grew into sharp chips of silver, “Head wounds not easy. Better you go find more survivors.”

“There’s more alive here,” said Binge, her tail twitching along with her snout, “I can smell them.”

I put a hoof on Arcaidia’s shoulder, “Keep healing Applegate. We’ll finish searching the room. If we need you, we’ll shout.”

Moving away from the fallen Applegate as Arcaidia continued to work on her, Crossfire motioned for me to follow her as we moved towards the center area of the assembly hall. Binge bounced off to our right, peeking at any intact bodies she found. I was already recognizing a few of the dignitaries from both the NCR and Skull City groups, although none whose names I knew.

“This is bad,” Crossfire said under her breath next to me, her voice hoarse, “Applegate’s one of the best. I could never keep up with her. I’ve seen that damn sword of hers cut through a full grown fucking Hellhound. Longwalk, what the hell are we up against that she lost to it?”

At that point my own dread certainty that the one who’d stormed the Capitol Building was the alien entity that had escaped Stable 104, and who’s memories I’d witnessed in my dreams, was all but hammered home. “I think it’s the leader of these weird ass space creatures. Basically the chief of their tribe.”

“Which also means if we fill his face full of lead, that cuts the head off the snake,” Crossfire said with a dry lick of her lips, “Buckin’ perfect. We can put an end to this here, today. But first...”

“Knobs,” I said, nodding my own affirmation that I didn’t want to go anywhere until we could confirm what had become of our friend. Crossfire might have known Knobs much longer than I, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t fully invested in the hope that we’d find her alive.

More bodies greeted us, the further back into the room we went, along with the signs of battle. Applegate and the other defenders must have put up one incredible fight, if the way most of the back area was devastated was any indication. The main meeting table was splinters, and most of the back wall was collapsed, save for a shattered open doorway that led to a set of steel stairs. The bodies weren’t in any great condition, and Crossfire spat out a curse as she came across one of them, a blonde mare who, even with her severed head laying upon the floor, was holding a glinting ivory-grip pistol in her mouth.

“Leader of the Security Guild,” Crossfire grunted, “I’ve spotted bits and pieces of her crew, too. Don’t see Rupert or Begonia anywhere, though.”

I wracked my brain for flashes of memory, and recalled overhearing this mare, Steel had been her name, talking with a griffin, “Rupert’s the griffin in charge of the Enforcers Guild, right? And this mare was named Steel. I saw them talking the other day. Hm, but you’re right, it doesn’t look like Begonia is here... I wonder if she ran off?”

“The head of the Labor Guild isn’t going to be caught in this mess,” Crossfire snorted, “We’re not that lucky. It’s suspicions both her and Rupert aren’t here.”

“Maybe they weren’t a part of the negotiations today?” I suggested, then paused. I heard another muffled noise, and by the look on Crossfire’s face, she heard it too. With both readied our respective ARMs and slowly approached the source of the noise. A number of bodies consisting of both soldiers and a few NCR government officials had all been seemingly tossed into the wall, where I could see red splats of gore from where they must have impacted. However it looked like three or four of them had been haphazardly pulled into a pile, and from that pile there was a slight whimpering noise.

“Who’s there?” I called out as Crossfire and I got close, “If you’re alive, please say something.”

“L...Longwalk?”

The voice was that of a mare, but was parched and scratchy, making it hard to identify. Crossfire and I wasted no time in rushing to the corpse pile and doing the grim work of separating the dead from the living. Blood coated everything and the stench clogged my nostrils, but I was so accustomed to this by now that I only gagged and came close to throwing up briefly. Amid all the gore and viscera a pair of bleary eyes blinked up at me from a blood smeared face. I didn’t recognize her at first, but a second later she cleared her throat and Wellspring Whistles said, “Thank the Goddesses. I didn’t know anypony would come.”

“Wellspring!” Crossfire reaching a hoof out to the mare, “Figured you might’ve scraped by, but where’s Knobs?”

“She’s right here,” Wellsrping said, voice going stiff and frightened, “She’s hurt.”

Those words filled my stomach with ice, and Crossfire’s horn lit up pure red as she used telekinesis to haul the bodies off Wellspring, and revealed that the mare had been covering up and protecting Knobs, who was lying unconscious in Wellspring’s grip. We hauled both mares free, and Wellspring stood on shaking legs. She was a mess, the nice clothes she’d worn to cover the diplomatic negotiations now stained dark red and torn. But she was alive and conscious, which was something. I didn’t see any major injuries on her, although with all the blood it wasn’t easy to tell. Knobs was even harder to tell her condition, because as a ghoul she already effectively looked like a corpse, and being covered in blood from all the other bodies didn’t help. All I could tell as Crossfire laid her friend out on the ground was that Knobs was unconscious, but still breathing.

“Wellspring, are you okay?” I asked.

“Fuck no,” she replied after a second of catching her breath, her eyes haunted but slowly regaining their focus, “I am as far from okay as I think I’ve ever been in my life, and that includes the time I was trapped with Crossfire and Knobs beneath Skull City.”

Huh, sounded like there was a story there, but I decided not to press on it and instead focused on the moment. “I mean are you injured. Do you need a healing potion? We stocked up on them.”

“I... I don’t think so,” Wellspring said, looking herself over, “Cut and bruised in a few places, but I’m okay. Knobs she... she tackled me to the ground when it all happened. When that monster broke in.”

“Of course she did,” Crossfire said with half of her voice rough with anger and fear and the other half soft with uncommon affection as she carefully checked Knobs. I came over, afraid to ask, but swallowing that fear as he knelt down to look at Knobs more closely.

“How is she?”

Crossfire made a frustrated, snarling sound in the back of her throat, “I... I don’t know. I’m not seeing any major cuts, no bullet wounds. Must’ve taken a hard hit somewhere. Shit, and since she’s a ghoul, she needs radiation to heal up. Potions or the walking icicles’ spells won’t do as much as just a straight dose of rads. I’m no doctor, so I don’t know how bad off she is. Shit.”

I’d never seen Crossfire this near to breaking down. The usually unflappable and rough mare, who’d I’d mostly only ever known to either scowl at weakness, danger, and most morals for that matter, now looked like she was struggling just to keep her fear for the life of her friend from overwhelming her and the frustration at her inability to help Knobs from crushing her.

“We’ll figure something out,” I told her, and she shot me a hard glare that didn’t hold for long as she took a deep breath and nodded. Binge bounded over to us, her tail drooping upon seeing Knobs.

“The ghoul isn’t a ghost yet,” she said, “And the half-deads don’t become all-dead that easy, so I bet we can find some glowing goodness around here for her to soak up all nice and sponge-like.”

“Oh yeah!? Where?” Crossfire spat, “Hate to break it to you but the NCR was cleaned of things like radiation by their Goddess damned Lightbringer, so there isn’t any convenient radiation nearby to heal Knobs with you brain-dead moron!”

“I’m Binge, not Braindead. Totally different character, grumpy. And who says there isn’t any radiation still around? What do you think powers up all them whirly birds flown about by Odessa? Magic. And when magic power stuff breaks, it leaks out the glow.”

Crossfire blinked in stupefied shock for a second, and Wellspring hobbled forward to say, “She’s right. A crashed Vertibuck would be leaking radiation from whatever is left of it’s engine. Did you see any outside?”

“There’s plenty,” I said, thinking of the intensity of the fighting outside the building, “There’s probably a few crashed Veritbucks. But it’s dangerous out there. We can’t just drag Knobs out there. On top of that we still need to find any survivors still here and deal with the one who did this.”

Wellspring gulped, “That armored giant? Do you know what it is, Longwalk? I couldn’t help but notice, as it was slaughtering everypony, that it was wielding a spear that looked a lot like yours.”

“Long story,” I told her, “Where is it now? Did you see where it went?”

“Up the stairs,” Wellspring said, nodding towards the partially intact stairwell past the back of the room, “President Grimfeathers was buying time for others to escape up the stairs to the roof, and I heard her fighting that thing all the way up to the top. I don’t know how long ago that was, or if anyone is still alive up there.”

As if to answer the unspoken question I felt a rumble run through the building’s walls, and heard the muffled whump of an explosion from the floors above us. Dust rained down on our heads, and Crossfire shot a look between Knobs’ unconscious form and the stairs leading up towards the roof. I saw the torn feelings in her eyes, and I raised a hoof towards Knobs.

“Crossfire, you should get her to one of the downed Vertibirds. Keep her safe, make sure she pulls through.”

Her eyes turned towards me, fierce, fearful, her lips pulling back in a rueful expression. “Don’t be a bucking idiot. You go up there alone, you’ll die. Whatever this alien sonuvabitch is will skewer you alive.”

“I won’t be alone,” I told her, glancing back at Binge and Arcaidia, the latter still focusing on healing Applegate, “I’ll have my friends with me.”

“They’ll die too,” Crossfire said, and she held Knobs tightly, looking at her fallen friend for a long moment before letting out a shuddering sigh. “Let’s not fool ourselves. The only shot we have at winning is if all of us are there. You’re going to need me, and this stupid Goddess-damned ARM.”

She touched Iskender Bey with a hoof, almost glaring at the sword, as if blaming it for all that had happened. Then with a swift motion of her horn she levitated my saddlebags off of me and tossed it to Wellspring.

“Huh?” I said, and Wellspring blinked in confusion.

“Healing potions might not do much, but they’ll do something,” Crossfire snarled, barely keeping her tears in check as she gently hoofed Knobs over to Wellspring, “Feed every single last one you can find in the buck’s saddlebags to her. Keep Knobs alive, and take her to the building’s entrance. If you can spot an opening, get her to a Vertibuck core, but if not, keep your fucking head down until me and the buck finish things up on the roof.”

“You’re seriously going up there?” Wellspring said with a breathy voice of fear and worry, “Crossfire, you don’t know what that monster was like! You didn’t see what it can do!”

“Well, it hasn’t seen what I can do either. Me or the buck, or his little ice filly-friend, or his crazy-ass Raider bitch,” Crossfire said, standing back up, the look in her eyes all but burning with an azure wrath, “And it’s high time this alien fuck learns that it came to the wrong damned planet!”

Binge let out a gleeful titter, bumping my rump with her own, “Hehehe, isn’t she so much more fun when she’s pissed, bucky?”

“Terrifying is the word I’d use,” I said, managing a weary smile as I looked to Wellspring, and in turn, Knobs. “Be careful, Wellspring. We’ll be back as soon as we can. Just keep her safe.”

“I will,” the newsmare said with a solemn nod, “Her and Applegate.”

On the subject of Applegate, the powerful swordsmare remained unconscious, but Arcaidia’s tender spells had her breathing easier, at least. My petite blue friend from the stars bore a wane look of exhaustion as she all but guzzled down one of her rare remaining potions to restore her magic as she levitated Applegate over to Wellspring.

“Wounds not take life, but still need much more healing,” Arcaidia informed us, “If we to still do battle, I save magics for mighty impaling of enemy’s skull with largest of ice spikes.”

“Finally speaking some proper Equestrian, there,” Crossfire said, flicking her pale blue tail harshly, her golden eyes now burning like embers in her soot black face, “Let’s go finish this.”

I nodded. We all did, as if to affirm to each other that this was it. This attack upon Manehattan, the one behind it lay at the top of the Capitol Building, possibly still trying to kill the NCR’s very leader, Gawdina Grimfeathers. We were the only ones in a position to stop the alien warlord, and possibly turn the tide of the entire battle. We were wounded, running on fumes, and our party was still not whole, but this is what we had, and with wounded and possibly dying friends left behind us, we marched forward to face what could well have been the most deadly creature currently on the planet.

The stairs were uniform and simple, an almost anticlimactic flight of steel steps leading up a concrete shaft towards the Capitol Building’s roof. The signs of battle were no less fierce here, testament to a running fight the NCR’s President must have fought against the invader as she acted as rear guard for any surviving dignitaries fleeing upward. Blasted holes from eplosives, stitched bullet holes from a high caliber gun, and even a few griffin talon marks intermixed with huge, even chunks cut out of the stairs and walls from what must have been a hectic running fight.

None of the damage was beyond our ability to traverse, with a few missing steps requiring a brief leap to get across, but otherwise the journey up the winding switchbacks of stairs was disturbingly smooth. None of us spoke. None of us had to. Arcaidia’s eyes bore a soldier’s determined calm, her horn lowered in equal resolve to match her gait. Binge bounced with an eager energy, her steps ever close to mine, her tail swaying near my own as if to draw strength from being near me. I felt the same, invigorated despite my exhaustion and fear just by being next to my mate and my friends.

Crossfire was in the lead, a dark valkyrie on a mission. Seeing Knobs in that condition had clearly affected the mare, leaving a blinding fire in her eyes and a wrathful grimace on her face. Both of her weapons floated at her side, ready to unleash that fury upon its proper target.

Gramzanber remained held loose in my mouth, the spear shaped ARM a cool reminder of all that I had done and all I had walked through to get to this point.

Yet, a part of me somehow knew, even in that moment of quiet ascension to the roof, that this wasn’t going to be the end.

Even if we won, much remained to be done. Even if we somehow managed to kill this Hyadean leader, this Zeikfried, this wouldn’t be the end of it.

I felt like I was walking up the stairs to reach a beginning, a new turning point. I could almost feel the gaze of the Ancestor Spirits on me, watching in silent encouragement. Or, stealing a glance at the faint glow of the Guardian statue that Binge kept tucked in her poofy mane, perhaps something else was watching us as well?

The stairs terminated in a simple metal door, which was ripped clean of its hinges. Smoke wafted through along with a breeze tainted with the scent of gunsmoke and blood. And beyond that open door, we all heard gunfire; loud, cracking retorts from a high caliber weapon. There were also screams, high pitched and terrified.

We rushed through, and came upon a scene of battle and flame.

Heat washed over us from the right, where a bulky vehicle that was similar to the bulbous shape of a Veritbuck, but stretched out lengthwise, with two sets of rotor-blades up top, was spewing flame from its ruptured side where it lay in a flaming heap upon a landing pad. Several scorched bodies lay near it, but living ponies were huddled further away behind a set of boxy ventilation shafts, taking cover from the fight taking place across the rest of the roof.

I recognized at least one of the ponies hiding in cover as Begonia, her eyes bugged out and terrified. Those next to her I also knew, if not by name at least by vague memory as other members of the Skull City delegations, or local NCR folk, including the head of the head of the Railway Department, Wagontrain. They hadn’t noticed us yet, mostly because they were all watching the fight taking place upon the wide, relatively flat majority of the Capitol Building’s roof.

President Grimfeathers was moving in bounding leaps while circling her foe. Her bloodied body and the cleanly severed stump of her right wing gave testament as to why the griffin wasn’t flying. Yet her wounds didn’t seem to slow her down that much, her leonine body providing her powerful strides even as she used one hand to aim and fire a prodigious pistol who’s retorts sounded louder than thunder.

The bullets, whatever caliber they were, sparked upon the armor of her foe, and my eyes fixed upon him, my heart pounding in equal parts fear and... a sense of overwhelming familiarity so intense it was akin to temporary vertigo.

I’d seen this being in my dreams. Witnessed his memories, in fragments. In my mouth, Gramzanber felt both cold and on fire, for my mind could not help but compare my ARM, my companion since the start of this journey, to the weapon held in one armored fist of the alien creature that stood before us.

Zeikfried, leader of the Hyadean forces on our world, head of the ones known as the Quarter Knights, stood in all his towering glory no more than thirty or so paces ahead. He had his back partially turned to us, as he was focused upon President Grimfeathers, but I could still see his full profile in the shady and flickering light of the flames. He was unbelievably tall, even more so than Berserk or Alhazad, although he did not have the former's raw bulk nor the latter's bizarre shape. Instead Zeikfried had a shape that was very akin to the bipedal forms of the Veruni, standing upon two legs, and possessing two arms stemming from a wide set of shoulders and a thick chest. His body was covered in a gleaming, steel blue armor, and I couldn’t tell if it was a suit that he wore or if the armor was truly grafted to him as if it were his own flesh, for there were no true joints or openings in the armor’s shining blue surface, conformed to thick muscles from head to toe. A flowing cape of deep purple flowed down his back, and his head was encased in a helmet that bore wing-like protrusions at its sides, but a long steel spike rising from the forehead. Of his face, I could see little save a small, dark opening in the front of his helmet that gave a hint of a pale, chiseled chin and smiling mouth.

And in his right hand was his spear, a dark mirror-twin to my own Gramzanber, yet larger to fit the towering alien warlord that carried it. The spear’s edge had a similar serration to Gramzanber, yet it looked a tad more jagged, with longer back-facing spikes, and a larger wave pattern to it’s tip. There was also a prominent gem of a dark violet color set in the base of the massive spear’s blade. Despite those differences, it was impossible not to see the similarities between this weapon and my ARM.

Blast marks dotted the area around Zeikfried, the origin of which became readily apparent as Grimfathers yanked a grenade from somewhere in her tattered presidential suit and yanked the pin with her beak, throwing the object at Zeikfried’s feet. The Hyadean simply drew his cloak around himself, the seeming “cloth” gleaming with a hexagon pattern a moment before the grenade exploded. Flame washed over Zeikfried, but he strode out a moment later and threw his cloak over his shoulder again, and directed his hand towards Grimfeathers.

“I believe I’ve given you sufficient time to vent your rage upon me, Madame President,” Zeikfried spoke. His voice was a deep, resonating baritone, filled with a rich, yet metallic quality to it, like a hammer upon pure steel. “I’ve honored your desire to fight me, but I cannot let this drag out. The sacrifice of your nation is a necessary step, and it’s nearly complete.”

“Shut your puss-ugly mouth you fucking pretentious, alien prick!” was Grimfeather’s reply as she swiftly reloaded her pistol with a fresh clip and reared up onto her hind legs, drawing a second pistol from behind her back. She took aim, but she was now standing on the opposite side of Zeikfried from us, and she spotted me and my friends. She couldn’t keep the surprise off her face, and even seemed to forget to shoot for a second, although thankfully Zeikfried did nothing about that and instead turned towards us.

I still couldn’t see his eyes past the shadows of his helmet, but his lips, already smiling, twitched even wider as he looked upon us.

“Ah... the experiment and his allies. I had heard from Alhazad you were in this city. So it’s true, your Veruni ARM has taken the shape of my Gramzanber. How surreal to see a weapon of the Veruni take on the form of my beloved spear, wielded by one so young. But I suppose I cannot treat you as I child, can I? Not after you’ve overcome so much to reach this point.”

“We not here to talk!” Arcadia shouted, leveling her horn and blazing forth with a storm of ice, thick crests of symbols forming around her horn. Lances of ice rushed Zeikfried, and he lifted his hand. I saw crests form around his hand, same as the Crest Sorcery that Arcaidia used. An incandescent barrier of violet light formed in front of Zeikfried and the shards of ice broke upon it, leaving him unfazed.

“I can see that,” he replied, “And I don’t begrudge your desires to fight. You’re here to save the lives I intend to take, after all, so our battle is quite inevitable. But why forgo the rare chance to exchange a few words, first? I may be in a bit of a rush, but not so much so I can’t satisfy curiosity. But then again, you are a child of the Veruni, who hate us Hyadean’s so fervently. Perhaps expecting a conversation is a bit much.”

There was more than one reason to buy a few moments, so I stepped forward, holding out a hoof to Arcaidia. She looked at me, but I gave a bare inclination of my head towards President Grimfeathers. Smart enough to recognize an opportunity when it presented itself, the griffin had taken out a healing potion from inside her suit and was drinking it down. The NCR’s President was no fool. If Zeikfried could be delayed to buy her a moment to catch her breath and recover, it’d make our fight against him all the easier.

Of course, Arcaidia wasn’t the one I should’ve worried about.

“Converse with this you son of a bitch!”

Crossfire’s words dripped acidic fury as she opened fire with her rifle while charging forward with Iskender Bey. I saw Zeikfried move with speed entirely unlike his size and bulk would have suggested he was capable of, his dark spear deflecting Crossfire’s bullets in fluid, graceful motions. Huh, so that’s what Accelerator-like speed looked like from this end of things? I gulped and charged in behind Crossfire just as her horn flashed red and in a burst of light she teleported into the air above and behind Zeikfried’s head. She swung Iskender Bey down, and I thrust forward with Gramzanber from the other side.

“Impressive,” Zeikfried said, and I barely saw him move as he turned on the balls of his feet. His own Gramzanber swung up as his liquid fast motion caused me to stumble past him. I felt the tip of his armored boot hit my gut like a runaway wagon, while there was a clarion ring and a spark of light as Zeikfried’s spear met with Iskender Bey’s edge.

“But also disappointing,” he finished, turning his spear sideways and slashing at Crossfire in a powerful arc. She managed to teleport away, and Zeikfried’s spear smashed into the roof, the blow cracking the concrete and cleaving not only a hole at his feet, but blasting an opening across the roof for half a dozen yards.

“I can tell your bodies have already been pushed past the breaking point through prior battles. I’d rather have fought you when you were fresh, but I suppose that would have been unlikely, given today’s planned attack.”

“Why attack!?” I demanded, coughing as I stumbled back from the kick he’d given me but not backing down as I pretended to rush in again. I thrust, but then abruptly pulled back when I saw him move to dodge again, and this time reared up on my hind legs, spitting Gramzanber from my mouth to clutch in my forehooves as I spun around and slashed at his knees. He surprised me by throwing his cape up, blinding me and ruining my aim, and on instinct I jumped back, narrowly avoiding another contemptuous kick from his boot.

“Strange question. Why would I not attack my enemies? Indeed, when the leadership of said enemies are all gathered in one place, would it not be foolish to let the opportunity to eliminate said leadership slip through my fingers?”

“Stop wasting time talking to him, buck, and fucking help me kill this bastard!” Crossfire shouted, having teleported atop a set of ventilation fan housings and taken careful aim with her rifle. She fired several times in quick succession, and each shot let out a round that burst in the air into a swarm of flechettes; all but impossible to block or dodge.

Zeikfried waved his hand, and I saw a circle of white symbols appear around it. Crest Sorcery. The symbols flashed and around him sprung a circular barrier of white light and wind as the air itself stirred and encased him. The barrier held fast against Crossfire’s flechette rounds, much to her frustrated growl. Then Arcaidia joined in, stepping forward with her own horn flaring into a blue corona. Rather than ice, however, now the roof in front of her shook and a series of stone spikes erupted upwards, the roof’s concrete itself reshaping into a wave of spearing rock that smashed into Zeikfried’s barrier and tore a hole in it.

He swung his spear and smashed the stone spikes to dust, his lips smiling beneath his helmet, “Ah, so you can use Geo as well as Cryo? It takes a skilled Crest Sorcerer to master more than one element. It seems the Veruni taught their pony pet well, but then your sister did tell me she was the one who trained you, so that makes sense.”

“What did you do to my sister!?” Arcaidia demanded, summoning forth more magic as her silver eyes blazed hatred at the Hyadean warlord. Stone rose in thick lances around her, and then became encased in further layers of ice as she combined both earth and ice elements together. The ice and stone spikes circled her rapidly before firing off one after another at Zeikfried. He kept his barrier up behind him, which protected him from Crossfire’s shots, which had switched to high-explosive rounds, while he used his spear to deflect Arcaidia’s spell, his voice never losing it’s casual tone.

“Nothing, other than save her when she was near death. Then we got to talking, one exile to another. Turned out we had quite a bit in common, especially in regards to how irritated and fed up we both are with the war between Hyadean and Veruni.”

That line gave me pause. He was ‘fed up’ with the war between the two alien races? “But if that’s the case,” I said, “If you’re so tired of war, then what are you doing starting another one here on our world!?”

He looked at me, and although I couldn’t see his eyes behind that cold, steel blue visor upon his helmet, I got the sense of a vast intensity of resolve which matched his own clarion tone. “It is not war I tire of, but stalemate. Veruni and Hyadean have warred for generations with no progress towards victory. And war without victory has no meaning. In your world, I see opportunity to change that dynamic.”

I saw a darting motion from the shadows of some fallen rubble near one corner of the roof. Binge’s dark green coat blended with the shadows there as she wagged her tail, eyes gleaming mad as she zeroed in on Zeikfried’s back. In a flash of revolving forehooves my marefriend chucked what had to be every grenade she had left hidden in her mane and tail at the alien warlord’s feet. Even he seemed momentarily surprised at the explosives now laying on the ground around him, and glanced at the giggling mare who had a whole wreath of pulled pins dangling from her teeth.

“It’s your ‘Welcome to Equestria’ gift basket, Mr. Alien! I hope you enjoy it!” Binge laughed as she waved.

I wasn’t entirely sure she realized I was standing rather precariously close to her ‘gift basket’ as well, but I was so used to dodging explosions at this point that I was already leaping back before Binge had even finished speaking. There was a series of deep, popping whumps as the grenades went off in quick succession, my body continuing to roll while avoiding shrapnel.

Coughing, I got back to my hooves, glancing to see Arcaidia had protected herself with a barrier of ice, and Crossfire had been far enough away to be untouched. Smoke cleared from a series of blasted holes in the building’s roof, and I almost dared hoped we’d gotten the bastard, but then his azure form leaped straight up from the flaming hole and landed no more than two paces from Binge’s position. Zeikfried’s armored body was slightly singed, but otherwise I wasn’t sure the grenades had done more than piss him off.

“Thank you for the warm welcome,” he said, and raised his spear, poised to impale a surprised looking Binge.

If ever there was a time to use Accelerator, it was now.

Even as I was mentally giving Gramzanber the command, I heard a roar of gunfire and saw a streaking dark form fly by my field of view. It was President Grimfeathers, still bloody and battered, but having recovered enough to re-enter the fray. Her pistols bucked in her talons, firing heavy rounds into Zeikfried’s back. I heard the shots ricochet off his armor, but it did draw his attention. Too much of his attention, in fact, as he spun around faster than I could imagine something his size moving. I recognized the grip on his spear, as it wasn’t that different from the throwing stance of my tribe’s hunters. I activated Accelerator just as Zeikfried threw his own dark mirror of Gramzamber.

Even then, the speed of force of his throw left my breathless as the world shifted to brilliant, electric blue in my vision. I knew time was slowed for me now, my reflexes vastly boosted, but even then I saw Zeikfried’s spear sailing towards Grimfeathers almost as fast as a normal throw. Which meant in reality the throw had to be even faster than a bullet.

I rushed forward, leaping up with my hind legs and chopping down with Gramzanber using my fore hooves. I just barely managed to knock Zeikfried’s spear off course, but then I felt a slow, grinding pain rumble up and down my body as the momentum of the blow caused a backlash through me that sent me sprawling and reopened my recently healed side wound. Fiery pain gouged at me as I hit the ground. I saw Grimfeathers in slow motion turn in mid-air. Zeikfried’s spear had been knocked off course, but not enough to entirely avoid her, and I saw the spear’s alien edge tear a wound through her right shoulder.

Time was still slowed for me as I rolled with my fall and turned towards Zeikfried. With his spear thrown, this might be my best chance to get a decent hit in on him while I still had Accelerator going. I rushed him, a dead on charge with Gramzanber now in my mouth, pointed aimed forward. I got within a few feet of him when in a blue flash, his own Gramzanber appeared back in his hands. It was the same teleportation method my own spear used to return to my hooves. Shocked as I was, I pressed in anyway, thrusting at his chest. My silver Gramzanber met the edge of his dark Gramzanber.

He was moving just as fast as I was! I saw him look straight at me, and pull back his own spear to slash it towards my neck. I ducked, feeling part of my mane getting shaved off, and Zeikfried didn’t slow down, pressing forward with a sudden thrust that I struggled to twist my head in time to deflect with my own spear.

Sparks of energy flew between our spears with each hit, and I felt my body shake from every blow. He was insanely strong, and before I knew it I was on the defensive, forced to scramble backwards while desperately parrying wickedly fast blows that could have cut me in half at any moment. Accelerator wasn’t giving me an edge. It was just barely keeping me alive. Had he just been toying around with me earlier?

I knew I couldn’t afford to keep Accelerator up for much longer. I was already in bad shape, and the backlash might knock me out. But if I shut it off now, I was as good as dead.

Longwalk, on our left, I heard Gramzanber’s voice in my head. A risky glance showed me a section of the roof that was partially collapsed and had only a narrow steel beam connecting it to the rest of the roof. Perfect. I dashed for it, almost feeling the edge of Zeikfried’s spear as it cut a narrow line through what was left of my armor, missing my flesh by scant millimeters.

I reached the steel beam and crossed it while slashing down with Gramzanber, cutting through the beam once, then again with a backswing. I jumped, and let the second fall behind me. Zeikfried, who’d been in close pursuit, had to halt himself for a second to avoid the gap, and make a leap across it. In that moment, with him suspended in mid-air, where his speed was dictated by gravity rather than his own reflexes, I had the instance I needed to shut off Accelerator.

Even as the rough backlash hit my gut like a cemento block made of cramping agony, I turned and hefted Gramzanber in a throwing stance. Planting my back hooves, and pulled up everything I had left in me and poured it into Gramzanber.

This is exceedingly dangerous, Longwalk. I recommend retreat instead of-, my ARM began, warning me of what I was doing, but I just growled back.

“No time! Just do it!”

I knew using Impulse after having used it back at the Ark of Destiny was risky. Even with Gramzanber recently attuning to my Earth Pony physiology, I was just pushing myself beyond the limits. I didn’t really see any other choice I had. I needed to at least wound Zeikfried, maybe enough to give my friends a chance. If I couldn’t do that much, then there was no point in coming here at all.

Gramzanber’s spearhead gleamed with a pulsating corona of blueish white energy as my own lifeforce drained into the spear to power it up like a portable bomb. With my muscles screaming in protest I chucked my ARM with every shred of remaining strength I had, sending the glowing bolt of light up into the descending Zeikfried. I swear I saw the bastard smile as he shoved his own spear down like he was riding the damn thing, point first into the Impulse.

There was a blast of light and heat that scorched the air. I swayed there on my hooves for a few seconds, refusing to drop until I saw what had happened. Zeikfried’s body fell from the air and landed on the roof opposite of the gap I’d crossed, his armor smoking. I then lost my own strength as the drain of the Impulse hit me and left me a numb, frozen heap of jelly, collapsing to the cold concrete of the roof.

For a second it was all I could do to draw in breath, and even then my body had a distant, cold feeling to it. Had I pushed myself too far? I heard my friends shouting, Arcaidia or Binge calling my name, I couldn’t tell which.

I lifted my head a bit, although no more than an inch.

Everypony was galloping towards me.

Then Zeikfried rose, like a steel nightmare.

He was wounded, at least. The armor plating of his chest had a rent in it, which bled a thick, purple colored ichor.

Gramzanber, my Gramzanber, was at his feet, with some of his blood on it. He picked it up, holding it in front of his face with a curious quirk on his lips that wasn’t quite a smile or a scowl.

“Color me impressed. I didn’t think you could mimic my techniques so admirably. It seems you really were made with my blood in your veins. Still, that wasn’t a proper Impulse. Allow me to demonstrate what that technique actually looks like.”

His voice resonated with firm power, and a dose of casual instructional calm, like a teacher about to show a student how to solve a difficult problem. I tried to get my screaming, drained muscles to move properly, but at best I managed to flop in place like a gasping fish as Zeikfried turned towards my friends. He raised his spear above his head, and I felt the air thicken from a blinding convergence of energy that writhed around the tip of the dark spear’s deadly tip. The colors of this energy slipped between a malignant, bruise-like purple to flashes of incandescent blue. My guess it was a combination of magic and the same lifeforce that granted me and my own Gramzanber our abilities. Whatever Zeikfried’s Gramzanber was, it was at least similar to a Veruni ARM, although not identical.

Regardless, he swept his spear in front of him with a powerful swing of one arm. Unlike my Impulse, which kept its energy contained in the spear until the spear itself impacted a target, here it was as if Zeikfried channeled that same power out in a concentrated burst from the spear’s tip. A rolling wave of power smashed across the roof, right towards my friends.

I saw Arcaidia’s horn light up like a beacon, ice and stone slamming together in front of her and the others to create a barrier, or at least try to. Things were happening so fast, I wasn’t sure the shield would form in time. Crossfire crossed Iskender Bey and her rifle in front of her as a last ditch guard. Binge scrambled behind Arcaidia, probably the smartest move she could make at that moment. President Grimfeathers, at least, had flown up and out of range of the blast, but given how her wounded arm sagged and her flank was soaked red with blood, I wasn’t sure how long she could stay airborne.

Zeikfried’s “Impulse” struck, and I saw Arcaidia’s barrier of concrete and frost get shattered like glass. Then I couldn’t see much of anything as purple light flashed and dust billowed out in a dense cloud, followed by a shockwave of force that rattled my bones, even at a distance.

I was left coughing on the ground, while Zeikfried’s voice echoed in my ears.

“Honestly it’s a crude method of attack, but while not every problem is a nail, one can never doubt the effectiveness of a hammer.”

“Fuck... you...” I managed to gasp. Not exactly my most witty comeback, I admit, but I was kind of running on less than fumes at that point. I saw Zeikfried’s helmeted head turned towards me over his burly shoulder.

“I suppose it’s my fault for expecting more, when you all are so clearly tapped out. It’s not precisely fair of me, is it? I can see the potential, but right now you’re simply not there yet.” He turned around as he spoke, kneeling down and picking up my Gramzanber with his free hand. My gut roiled at seeing my ARM in his hand, as if him touching the weapon somehow was like him touching my own soul. Growling, I managed to crawl a bit forward, pushing at least one hoof underneath me enough that I could raise my bleeding head towards him and glare. Or at least try to glare. Not sure the effect was all that impressive.

“Put... that... down!”

He tilted his head, a curiously normal expression of piqued curiosity, “I was merely comparing. Immature of me, I know, but I can’t help but compare it to my own weapon. Veruni ARMs are such fascinating devices. We never did get around to properly emulating them. Hyadean weapons such as my own Gramzanber rely heavily on our internal magic for fuel, and only take a little from the soul. Veruni ARMs are nearly the opposite. They’re quite versatile, in comparison. It’s just your misfortune that your ARM took its shape from the part of me that was used to make up your own construction. Oh, I’m sorry, ‘construction’ isn’t really appropriate for your race, is it? Birth, then? Well, no matter, it seems we’re nearly done here.”

He stood up from where he’d knelt to pick up my spear. Behind him the dust was finally clearing. I pushed myself up into not quite a standing position, but a slumped half-sit, gasping to catch my breath as I looked to see what had become of my friends.

The half of the roof they’d been on was now a rubble choked disaster area, with twisted concrete and steel sagging around a conical shaped dip from the roof itself nearly collapsing. I saw Arcaidia lying near the edge of it, her artificial leg torn off her body and her blue cape in tatters around her. I felt my heart freeze for an instant before I saw her twitch, and raise her head. Then I also saw a familiar green, scared hoof reach up from some rubble and punch aside a slab of concrete. Both Binge and Arcaidia were in bad shape, but were both still alive, the former managing to yank herself out from beneath some rubble while the latter rose on three, unsteady hooves.

Crossfire was worse off. She was laying with her back up against the concrete barrier around the edge of the roof. Iskender Bey was laying next to her, intact and smoking. I got the impression the ARM had saved her life, but only just barely. Her rifle, the Sniper Shark XR, was broken in half and it’s pieces sat on either side of her. Some of its metal bayonet had broken off and was now lodged in Crossfire’s side. I could tell she wasn’t dead by the simple fact that she still had her eyes open in a pissed off glare, and even as I stared in open shock she used her magic to yank the offending piece of bayonet out of her body and picked up Iskender Bey. She swayed as she stood, but ignored the blood leaking from her as she guzzled a healing potion taken from inside her torn jacket and smashed the empty bottle on the ground like it’ been a beer.

“That all you’ve got, asshole!?” she shouted, coughing up blood immediately afterward, but not losing her defiant expression for an instant.

If shit wasn’t so damned grim, I might have found the image funny.

“Remarkable,” Zeikfried confessed, “I’d believed that enough to do you in, but pony resilience proves to be worthy of respect. Still, it doesn’t appear any of you have much left to throw at me. Without an actual bond with your ARM, you can’t access enough of its power to turn things around.”

A bullet bounced off his helmet, and the alien warlord sighed and looked up, “And you, President Grimfeathers, have overstayed your welcome.”

The NCR’s President was clearly having trouble remaining in the air, given how the griffin’s wings were dipping and her whole body wobbled on it’s flight path. Yet even with the gaping wound in her shoulder and what had to be a serious loss of blood, she steadfastly kept her pistols on point and squeezed off rounds at Zeikfried. There simply wasn’t a single inch of ‘quit’ inside Grimfeathers, and between her and seeing my friends still standing, despite their own terrible injuries, I felt compelled to try and drag more from my own wounded body.

Without Gramzanber in my hooves I didn’t have a lot of options. I’d already seen grenades do next to nothing to Zeikfried’s armor, so the few I had in my saddlebags didn’t offer a useful means of attack. I could have tried calling Gramzanber to my hooves, but even if that worked, I didn’t have the strength left to throw or strike with the ARM. I also didn’t have time. Zeikfried coiled his legs and sprung up with a prodigious leap that took him sailing straight towards President Grimfeathers, pulling back his own spear to strike.

My muddled mind sought something I could do, even as my friends tried their own last ditch efforts. I saw Arcaidia’s horn alight, and a trail of frost gray from the tip of her hooves and snapped out beneath Zeikfried, forming a pillar of spiked ice that tried to skewer him. He smashed through the pillar and used it to spring off of, although I noticed the armor of his feet got coated in ice and even cracked in places. This delayed him long enough for Crossfire, her body still trailing blood, to teleport above and behind him. She gripped Iskender Bey with her fore hooves and brought the silver blade down hard. Zeikfried, to my stomach churning chagrin, used my own ARM in his left hand to block Iskender Bey. For a second the pair were suspended in mid-air, sparks flying between the two ARMs.

That was my moment to call Gramzanber back to me, causing the spear to flash from Zeikfried’s hand to my hoof. This allowed Iskender Bey through to cut along Zeikfried’s chest armor in a scream of showering metal. For once I hear Zeikfried actually grunt in pain as Crossfire’s blow sent him tumbling back to the ground. He landed on his feet, a fresh wound added to the one I’d given him moments earlier. Crossfire landed hard as well, her own injury causing her to cry out and stagger. Zeikfried, not hesitating a second, slashed with his spear, it’s edge cutting the concrete in front of Crossfire as she rolled away.

Several sharp kitchen knives went spinning through the air to smash into Zeikfried’s chest. Most bounced off his armor, but one lodged in the already torn open metal, drawing a small spray of blood. Binge, who’d been the one throwing the knives, let out a whoop and jump, “Bullseye! If Mr. Happy were still around, he’d congratulate me on a three point throw.”

“Allow me, instead,” said Zeikfried, pulling the knife from his chest like someone plucking a thorn from his side, and he threw the knife right back at Binge. She dodged admirably, but only enough to get the knife to sink into her left fore leg, rather than her chest. To her credit, she didn’t fall, but kept shuffling until she got behind some rubble for cover. By then Arcaidia had summoned up another spell, lashing at Zeikfried with a focused stream of winter blue cold.

He cut into the beam with his spear, splitting the frost into two beams that froze the roof around him. I saw Arcaidia’s magic peter out, her horn sputtering motes of magic as she began to run out of energy.

By now I’d managed to use Gramzanber to prop myself up, using the ARM as a crutch to begin hobbling. My aim wasn’t Zeikfried, however, but the edge of the roof. I had an idea, and it wasn’t my brightest, but all things considered, it was all I had left.

As Arcaida’s beam of arctic frost dimmed to a trickle, and she nearly collapsed in a gasping pile of sweat from exhaustion, I saw Crossfire stand in front of her to bar Zeikfried’s path. He began stalking towards them, brushing bits of ice from his hands.

“Commendable efforts. You do your species proud, and confirm what I have long suspected, that ponykind is worthy of standing among the stars as the third spacefaring race. Once this war is over, you will either rise to that height under my direction, or prove my better and do so after my defeat. Either way, I still get what I want; a new race to tip the balance of power in the long stalemate between Hyaden and Veruni.”

So, that’s what he was after. He wanted ponies to become the next race to reach the stars besides his own and the Veruni, and once there, break the stalemate in their generations-long war. He didn’t even care if we did it after defeating him or if we did it with him and his cronies in charge of things, just as long as it happened. Sad thing was, I could easily see how it would play out that way. Time and again I’d seen just how good at innovation and warfare my species was. If history was to be believed, we’d gone from relatively little technology to having the power to ruin our world in the span of a single pony’s lifetime. If Zeikfried pressed us into another war, with alien technology now running rampant...?

Odessa’s drive for new technology. The NCR’s rush for securing a better future for its people. Skull City and it’s Guilds, driving innovation forward and sitting at the center of conflict. The Protectorate of Neghlisus and Applehyde, too, would join in the rush for more advanced technology, especially with an enemy like Zeikfried out there to drive it.

He was going to forge all of us into his weapons to break the stalemate of an intergalactic war, and near as I could tell, he’d stacked the deck to make sure it’d happen even if he was killed. He wasn’t the only Hyadean on Equestria after all, and he even had a Veruni, Persephone, in his pocket. She must have been convinced by Zeikfried that this was the only way to break the Veruni’s stalemate with the Hyadeans; add a new space faring race to the equation.

And given us ponies talent for war, I couldn’t even say he was wrong.

I mean, obviously crazy and despicable in the sacrifices he was making of countless lives to accomplish his goal, but not necessarily incorrect in his assumption that once ponies got out into space we’d probably shake up the status quo significantly.

“If that’s what you wanted,” I said, reaching the edge of the roof, “You didn’t have to do it this way. You could have given us technology freely, explained things, asked us to go into space to try and end the war-”

“Don’t be foolish,” he interrupted me with a rough sigh, “Technology given through peace would be meaningless. Your kind’s power is the strength born from war. I will be the fire of war that forges you into a blade to pierce the stars. Whether you live to see that glorious tomorrow or not is yet to be seen, but this only ends in either your victory, or your death.”

“Eh...” I said, shrugging, “Why not both?”

I raised my left fore leg and fired my Grapple.

I don’t think he was really expecting a mere tool to be used like a weapon, as evidenced by the fact that rather than dodge, he merely instinctively blocked with his free arm. The Grapple line wrapped around his arm and secured itself there snuggly.

“What is this supposed to achompli-” he started to ask, but this time I got to interrupt him as I activated the Grapple’s unique weight altering magic. With the Grapple I could always either make myself lighter to make climbing with the Grapple easier, or make whatever it’s attached to lighter to make it easier to pull or drag around. Zeikfried clearly weighed quite a bit, but with that spell, his weight became a tenth of normal and suddenly he was rather light.

Light enough so that when I rolled off the edge of the roof, he got dragged right along with me.

“Longwalk!”

“Bucky!”

“Ren solva!”

I heard my friends calling after me as my body fell. The Capitol Building was pretty large, so the distance from the roof to the ground gave me a few seconds. Zeikfried tumbled through the air above me. Apparently while he was one hell of a jumper, flying wasn’t in his repertoire of powers. Good, otherwise this crazy maneuver of mine would’ve been a real numbskull thing to do.

Accelerator

Gramzanber responded to my call, shifting the world to a sheen of pure blue. With time seemingly slowed, I detached the Grapple from Zeikfried and aimed it for the roof. Despite the quip I’d given Zeikfried, I hadn’t intended to die or anything stupid like that. The Grapple shot up, and I watched it in slow motion as it wrapped around a protruding steel beam from a portion of the damaged roof.

Not wanting to deal with any more backlash than needed, I turned off Accelerator the second I was sure the Grapple had hit it’s mark.

As time sped back up to normal speed I saw Zeikfried fall past me, while the Grapple line pulled taut and I realized I’d sort of failed to calculate just how fast I’d be hitting the Capitol Building’s wall. That was a painful hello from our good friend concrete, let me tell you. Might have lost a tooth in that one. But hey, I was alive, dangling like a blood soaked rag doll from my Grapple line on the side of NCR’s Capitol Building, but at least I’d sent Zeikfried to a painful meeting with the ground.

*snap*

I glanced up at the sound of metal breaking and twisting. I’m fairly sure my eyes got wider than most plates as the steel beam my Grapple was attached to, already heavily damaged as it was, broke under my weight.

“Ohcrapcrapcrap!” I screamed, quickly switching the Grapple line to descend. It lowered me about ten, maybe fifteen feet before the steel beam came loose and I went right back into freefall.

Lucky me, I actually hadn’t been that far from the ground at that point, so my drop was only about another dozen feet. Not that my ribs really cared about the difference between twelve feet or one hundred. Still sent pure fire rushing through my nerves and left me a breathless husk on the ground for a few seconds.

Of course me being me, my luck didn’t last for longer than that brief few seconds. I heard a deep grunt filled to the brim with the kind of annoyance that reminded me of the sounds my tribe’s Chieftain would make when she’d gotten fed up with me. I raised my bleary head to see Zeikfried rising from the ground where he’d impacted. A sizable dent with spiderweb cracks in the concrete were beneath where he’d fallen, but the Hyadean warlord stood from his less-than-fatal fall and shook dust from his armor.

The place we’d fallen was on the opposite side of the Capitol Building from where the main entrance was. The back of the Capitol Building had what appeared to be a large parking lot and supply area. It was a wide expanse of flat concrete, surrounded by a tall series of chain-link fences wreathed with barbed wire. Metal wagons of varying sizes and shapes were lined up along aisles of marked parking spaces, while to my right along the fence were rows of about half a dozen sheet metal warehouses, some with open rolling doors which let me see the stacks of crates and barrels inside.

There were no other living creatures back here besides me and Zeikfried. A few bodies from earlier fighting were strewn about here and there, but otherwise no sign that this back area had even been touched much by the attack on the city.

Which meant I was alone, with no backup, injured and beyond exhausted, facing the most deadly enemy I’d ever encountered.

Yay.

Out of my group of allies, only Crossfire had a way to get down to me quickly by teleporting, but I couldn’t be sure she even had enough magic left for that. I knew Arcaidia had been nearly drained by the last spell she’d thrown at Zeikfried, and she didn’t know teleportation anyway. President Grimfeathers could fly, but last I’d seen of her she was barely staying aloft with her amount of blood loss.

Reinforcements seemed unlikely, at least anytime soon. And as for myself, I could barely get my hooves under me, and my body was a cross-stitching of either cold, dead numbness, or screaming agony. It was all I could do to just plant Gramzanber on the ground and use the spear to haul myself into a wobbling bipedal stance, leaning on the ARM like a cane.

Zeikfried took one look at me and I swear he actually face palmed. One armored, alien hand went to the face of his visored helmet and he just... shook his head.

“Incredible. Simply incredible. I keep underestimating you. Just when I think you have nothing left, you find a way to surprise me. You’re half dead and can’t even stand properly, yet you still face me. Well, you and your companions have managed to wound me several times, which is far more than I expected. The least I can do for you at this point is honor that spirit and give you a warrior’s death.”

“You really... like talking... don’t you?” I said past bloodied lips.

The bastard smiled, “Guilty as charged.”

He raised his spear. It’s jagged edge filled my vision. It wasn’t like I had any energy left to dodge or attempt to parry. I was standing purely on willpower and hope. Dragging him off the roof had been my last plan. Hadn’t really accounted for him and me both still being alive after that. Since evasion was out of the question, and attempting to block wouldn’t work with how little strength I had left, the only thing I could think to do was to take the blow. Maybe after he impaled me, I’d have a split second to do the same to him while his guard was down?

I readied myself, much as I could, to take the fatal blow, and tensed my forelimbs for my own thrust when it happened...

Only for a rain of silvery streaks to fall upon Zeikfried, impacting him with hammer blows. Right on top of that was an explosive tear of what I could only describe as gunfire cranked up to eleven and put on fast forward. Zeikfried staggered back under the torrent, his armor lighting up with so many sparks you might have thought he stepped on a live electrical wire. Then there was a streaking noise, a high pitched whine, until a trio of what looked like miniature rockets slammed down atop him in a series of short detonations.

“Longwalk, get down!” I heard one monotone, machine voice say, while another followed right behind it.

“Thank the Goddesses, looks like we made it in time.”

Two individuals descended from the air. I wasn’t sure precisely where they’d come from, but it must have been around the roof area I’d just been.

“Celestia’s bleeding teats, Longwalk, you look like you tried to make out with a bucking Deathclaw,” said LIL-E.

My eyebot friend certainly looked different from the last time I saw her, which made sense given she’d been undergoing upgrades from the lab she’d been born in. Her structure as a flying spherical robot was essentially the same, but it’s clear her body had been refurbished with fresh armor that was a little thicker than before, making her a bit larger in diameter. Her faceplate had an additional circular apparatus that glowed with some kind of laser targeting system. Where her usual underslung revolver had been was now a larger mounting bearing what looked to be twin, triple-barreled miniguns. Both her left and right side had new housings as well, one open to reveal a multi-warhead rocket system on her right side, while her left bore a cylindrical grenade launcher.

“Can you still move, Long?”

The question came from B.B. I had no idea what had happened to her since we’d parted ways when she’d gone to rescue those civilians. It wasn’t as if it could have been longer than maybe half an hour ago, although it sure felt like a lifetime. She carried her Twin Fenrir ARMs on her fore hooves, the source of the silvery bullets from a second ago. But something had changed. She wasn’t speaking with her fake accented voice, but her more natural one. More noticeable, however, was that her eyes had become a gleaming, pure red. Her mouth bore a prominent and noticeable pair of fangs. On top of that, there was an... aura around her. It was faint, but there was a noticeable curling of red mist about her body, it’s color an unnatural neon saturation that clashed with the muted colors around us.

“B.B?” I said, “Are you... okay?”

Her eyes, more red than freshly spilled blood, gave me a melancholic glance, but she nodded, “Enough for now. Time for questions later. For now, let me and LIL-E deal with this.”

“We saw the others up top,” LIL-E said, “They’ll be on their way down here in a bit, but we can kick this guy’s ass in the meantime. You look like you need a breather, so how about you have a sit while we take out the trash?”

“Bold words for a mere piece of machinery and a one of the Elw race’s pet mutants,” cut in Zeikfried, having placed up a magical barrier to guard himself from further attacks for the moment. His armor was scored in several places from the barrage he’d sustained, but for all his mounting injuries, he didn’t appear to be tiring yet. Even as I looked, I could see some of the flesh beneath the rent portions of his armor pulsating and knitting itself back together. So on top of being insanely tough, he could also regenerate his wounds? Bucking fantastic.

B.B cast a deadly glare at Zeikfried, “You know about Crimson Nobles?”

“I killed many of your kind in the first war for this world. The Elw created you to be weapons, but disposable ones. You share that much with the robot at your side. Replaceable tools of war, so easily used up.”

“Oh, just go and eat every dick, you chromed up walking dildo!” LIL-E shouted with her voice speakers at maximum volume, then followed it up by popping out a quartet of blinking green grenade rounds that arced right into Zeikfried.

He raised his magical barrier, but even that shield of luminous light wavered under multiple blossoms of emerald plasma from the detonating grenades.

“Very succinct, LIL, I think he really got the message,” B.B said, and then with speed I never imagined she had, she streaked right towards Zeikfried. The square shaped blades that extended down from the handles of her Twin Fenrir appeared to gleam with a blue tinted light, and B.B became a flying dervish as she hammered Zeikfried’s shield with a blindingly quick aerial combo of swift slashes followed by a fresh hail of gunfire after she flipped in the air to climb vertically directly above him.

Zeikfried’s magical barrier actually buckled under the assault, forcing him to leap back from not only B.B’s torrent of fire, but LIL-E’s continued shooting from her own collection of weapons. I saw him leap over some of the parked wagons in the lot, which exploded under the tracing fire from both LIL-E and B.B. For his bulk, Zeikfried was freakishly quick himself, and wasted no time in mounting a counter offensive. He threw his spear with the speed and precision of a master sniper, sending the wicked weapon flashing towards LIL-E. I saw that the eyebot’s upgrades extended beyond armor and firepower, as the hovering jets she used to fly extended and blasted out with suddenly intense thruster flames that caused her to go in a spinning evasion. The blade still cut her armor and opened a hole in her side, but LIL-E steadfastly reoriented herself and cut loose a few more rockets at Zeikfried.

Instantly teleporting his spear back to his hand, he charged it up with a flare of pulsating violet and blue power and cast out another Impulse wave, detonating the rockets in mid-air, and flipping over several more metal wagons that went sailing through the air. As if the sight gave him an idea, he dashed back to one of the intact wagons and with one hand demonstrated monstrous strength, lifting it and throwing it like a foal’s toy at B.B, who’d been trying to fly to get behind him.

She took aim at the wagon flying towards her and opened fire with both of her ARMs. A barrage of silver, streaking bullets tore into the wagon, slowing it down enough for her to roll over it’s trajectory. She then dive bombed Zeikfried, crossing the blades of her guns in an X pattern as she slashed at him.

He met the attack with his spear, causing an explosive wave of force from the clash.

“I see,” he said, “You’re not as strong as your predecessors. Is it because you’ve not fed upon enough blood, or is it simply due to being of such a later generation? Tell me, does that blond brat still live? She was the only one who ever gave me a decent fight on this rock, back in the day.”

“Blond brat? You mean the Mistress of the Family?” B.B said, teeth grinding as she tried to push her blades down enough to get the barrels of her guns pointed at Zeikfried’s face, “She’s still around. We’re not on good terms.”

“Well, if you manage to survive this, feel free to invite her to come see me in the North sometime. I’d love to finish our own inconclusive duel from the old war.”

He appeared to falter, letting B.B’s guns lower, but it proved to be a feint. The second she opened fire at his head he ducked to the side and hammered his left fist forward into B.B’s gut. She took the blow exceptionally well, knocked backwards but not dropping from the air and immediately flying up to narrowly evade Zeikfried’s follow up attack as his spear cut the air she’d just occupied.

All this time I myself was struggling to get all my hooves under me. My body felt like it was made from beaten rubber. Nothing was responding correctly, and that was the stuff I could still feel.

Longwalk, Gramzanber spoke in my mind, his voice filling with a deep note of fear, You cannot continue to fight. Your body has suffered too much strain. Please, Longwalk, you have to stay still, otherwise-

“Th...ey... they need me...” I sputtered out, ignoring the blood dripping down my chin, “Have to... keep fighting...”

Just one hoof in front of the other. C’mon body, we’re not done. That’s right, just move a bit more. Another step. Damn you, I said move! Lift, move that hoof! Now set it down and pick up the next one! Your friends are fighting for their lives! If you can’t help...

Longwalk, I’m telling you to stop! I’d never really heard Gramzanber scream before. It was like an explosion in my mind. Your lifesigns are hanging on by mere threads. I can do nothing to help you, especially if you sustain any further damage!

Then another voice cut in. It was one I’d heard before, rarely, sometimes in dreams. Feminine, somehow familiar. Warm, caring, but also filled with concern and fear like Gramzanber’s.

He’s right. You’ve done all you can. Leave it to your friends. Trust them. Believe in them. If you die here, then that’s it. You’ll make them mourn for you, having thrown your life away. Please don’t do that. Don’t die, Longwalk. I’d never forgive you or myself if you do!

Who...? The question hung in my mind, making me hesitate long enough for my legs to grow weary and give out from under me. I dropped like a burlap sack of rocks, Gramzanber clattering down next to me. It was like a cork had been opened up inside me, dribbling out what little strength I’d had left. I was stuck, barely conscious, a spectator to the final moments of my friends’ life or death battle with the warlord from beyond the stars and another age.

That, not being able to help in those moments, was a pain worse than any physical injury I had to endure. Tears filled my eyes as I watched, still trying to get my limbs to obey me, but they just wouldn’t respond. It was like trying to move while buried in sand. The only thing I was capable of in those horrible moments was to watch the companions I’d traveled with for so long fight in my place against an opponent who seemed unstoppable.

There was a flash of crimson light nearby, and I saw Crossfire appear from the flaring lights of a teleport spell. She landed without elegance, her injured body stumbling upon touching the ground, but her eyes shone with hungry, fury driven light as she stalked forward with Iskender Bey floating at her side. Arcaidia and Binge had been teleported with her, both frazzled by the disorienting spell, and looked no better off than Crossfire in terms of injury.

Seeing them only made me want to get my ass up all the more, but all I could manage was a weak twitch of my head and a groan. Stupid bodily limits.

“Bucky!” Binge was a green bolt of speed, reaching my side and wrapping her hooves around me like the idea of letting go was a foreign concept. “Please tell me you’ve still got blood jumping through those silly veins of yours. If you’re a corpse you have to tell me, okay!?”

There was genuine fear in her voice, tinged hard by a raw throated love that was heartwarming, if also somewhat undercut by the fact that we were in such desperate straights. I could see her lovely scar covered face gazing down at me, baby blue eyes brimmed with tears. I wanted to reach up my hoof to the face and give her a reassuring pat, tell her I was okay, but mostly I just twitched again and I think I managed a slight gurgle.

“I’ll take that as I ‘not dead yet’,” she said, and dug out a healing potion from her mane, “Stupid bucky jumping off roofs without my permission! Skydiving is not a hobby to try out without wings, my sexy not-pegasus. Now drinky drinky the life juice so your organs don’t fail.”

She upended the potion into my mouth, and I nearly choked on the off-brand carrot flavoring. A slight tingle seeped into my body, but my injuries were well beyond healing potions at this point, so the most it accomplished was allow me to turn my head a bit easier so I could more clearly see the battle unfold as Binge held me tight.

Arcaidia and Crossfire advanced on Zeikfried, although he gave them barely a cursory glance as they did so. Arcaidia’s horn was a sputtering thing, it’s regal length barely able to conjure a dim gleam of frosty blue light and a few fading sparks as she channeled what little she had left to summon a singular lance of ice that she hurled at Zeikfried. He crushed it with his free hand, while focusing on using his spear to launch another Impulse wave at B.B, who was nearly knocked from the sky by the energy wave’s sheer air pressure even as she dodged it. I saw her knocked like a flower petal by a gust of wind, spiraling to land hard on the ground. She landed on her hooves, skidding a dozen meters with the blades of her Twin Fenrir digging into the concrete to slow herself.

Crossfire used the brief distraction that Arcaidia’s ice had caused to rush in, pure adrenaline fueling her even as blood splattered the ground from her open side wound. She used both her magic and her forehooves on Iskender Bey, slashing the silver blade hard onto Zeikfried’s arm as if intending to sever it. He turned sideways with sickening speed, although Crossfire’s strike still managed to cut a line across his forearm, rending his armor open and drawing blood. Crossfire turned the blade sideways and made a backslash, but Zeikfried halted that with the shaft of his spear.

“For a half dead pony, your skill and tenacity is to be lauded. If only you were properly bonded with that ARM, you’d be a respectable challenge. Still, I find this curious. I was given to understand you’re a mercenary by trade. Is coin truly such a strong motivator for you to fight when you’re this outmatched?”

Zeikfried’s words prompted a deep, guttural snarl from Crossfire that resonated deep from within her chest. Her own horn bloomed with crimson light as she pushed harder on Iskender Bey, actually managing to force Zeikfried back a lumbering step.

“You. Hurt. Knobs!” Crossfire roared with blood stained lips.

As if in response to her words, Iskender Bey itself began to pulsate with a silvery white light. It’s edge then burst with a lining of raw white light, as if becoming encased in pure energy. This then became mixed with the blood red magic of Crossfire’s horn, turning the white energy around the blade to the same sanguine hue. The energy casing made the blade nearly twice it’s original size, and Crossfire cut down with it hard against Zeikfried’s Gramzanber. Sparks flew in a rosy shower, and Zeikfried was driven back. He actually paused in surprise, seeing a scorch mark upon his spear from where Iskender Bey had struck.

“Perhaps I spoke too soon. You are neither a mercenary, nor an unworthy opponent... but I also see that you’re done. A pity.”

I saw what he was saying was true. I knew all too well that using an ARM’s power had a price. A backlash. Crossfire’s desire to protect Knobs might have helped her bond with Iskender Bey and access it’s initial power, not unlike I had with Gramzanber and Accelerator, but that came with a draining effect on the user. I could see it hit Crossfire like a proverbial ton of bricks. The red energy faded from the edge of Iskender Bey and Crossfire seized up like somepony being electrocuted. Her body fell in a heap of spasms, her mouth opening in a strangled cry.

I didn’t know how bad the backlash was, but it was probably exacerbated by it being her first time, and already in such bad condition when it happened. Either way, I could tell Crossfire wasn’t going to be able to stand back up anytime soon.

However, it would turn out that she didn’t have to. While she’d been taking up Zeikfried’s attention, the rest of the group had been preparing.

I wasn’t sure who’d come up with the idea. Knowing how it all went down, I suspect it was LIL-E’s idea, but she probably hadn’t told B.B and Arcaidia everything. Just the bare bones to make it work, while Crossfire had been keeping Zeikfried occupied. It happened entirely too fast for it to have not been planned, and even later I had to think through it multiple times to recall every detail like I am now.

It started the moment Zeikfried had given his backhanded compliment to Crossfire and she’d fallen. B.B and LIL-E both came at him from the sides, at slight inward angles. LIL-E’s back chassis had opened to reveal a pair of conical rocket boosters that fired off blue flames, propelling her like a high speed battering ram, while B.B’s wings beat as fast as a hummingbird’s. Both of them slammed into Zeikfried, LIL-E firing her twin gatling guns and B.B unloading with the Twin Fenrir. The bullets didn’t do much damage, but they added to the force that pushed Zeikfried backwards.

Then his feet touched the ice. Ice that Arcaidia had formed when she’d slipped silently behind him and touched her horn to the ground, pushing out the last embers of her magic to create a frozen sheet of ice upon the parking lot’s concrete. The ice formed a path straight into one of the warehouses.

Between LIL-E and B.B’s efforts, and the slippery ice, Zeikfried was pushed back like a sled, right through the open doors of the warehouse. The moment he was through, B.B broke off and flew back, and I remember seeing her momentarily look satisfied, but then also confused when she saw LIL-E was still pushing Zeikfried inside.

Given Arcaidia, who’d been galloping away from the warehouse, also paused and looked back with confusion, I can only assume LIL-E hadn’t told B.B or Arcaidia what the full plan had been. They probably thought the idea was to collapse the warehouse on him and make a run for it. Get reinforcements, maybe, or hell, just escape with our lives.

I don’t think any of them knew the warehouse was one filled with fuel barrels for the wagons and Vertibucks used by the NCR. LIL-E did, of course. She was an NCR built eyebot, and would know about the fuel depot. That, or her highly advanced scanners picked up the details of what was in the warehouse during the fight, while the rest of us were just focused on staying alive. I’d like to think it was a good thing that I often forgot LIL-E was a robot, and not a flesh and blood creature like the rest of us.

I still tell myself that, sometimes.

I only really remember two other things at that instant. One, that my Pip-Buck made a beeping sound at me, one who’s meaning at the time I didn’t understand. The other was that I got a good view of LIL-E, rockets still firing full bore as she pushed Zeikfried the last few meters to the center of the depot, before aiming her grenade launcher and rocket pod at the stacks of barrels around them... and fired.

Heat. Light. Sound that I didn’t so much hear as feel like a giant hoof pressing down on my whole body. Binge shielded me with herself, hooves never letting go.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed after that, but it couldn’t have been long. A few minutes, at most. I heard Binge cough roughly above me and opened my eyes to the blurry vision of her face above me, looking down at me.

“You okay?”

“Think so...” I managed to croak out in a hoarse voice, trying to turn my head, “What happened?”

I was shell shocked and my brain was effectively mush. Binge helped me turn over, rise to a shaking single hoof as I looked at the warehouse. Or what was left of it. The area was a pure inferno. Angry orange and yellow flames formed a river of smoking heat that had consumed the warehouse LIL-E and Zeikfried had been in, and had spread to the neighboring warehouses, creating a wall of fire.

I sat there, slack and numb, starring.

Nearby, Arcaidia shuffled on three legs towards us, collapsing into a panting, bloodied pile beside Binge and I. Her silver mane was covered in sweat, ash, and streaked with blood. Her eyes gave me an exhausted look, but somehow she managed to keep her voice strong, “Ren solva, did LIL-E... did you see...?”

I was mute, and shook my head. B.B suddenly landed on the opposite side of us. Her currently crimson eyes were filled with a silent pain as she took a shuddering breath, her wings drooping, “I didn’t see her get out of the warehouse. Damn her, she told me she’d break off the same second I did.”

I felt Binge’s hooves hold me tighter as I started to shake. Her snout touched my neck comfortingly. I tried to stand, and only managed to get one more hoof under me as my mind started to seek rationale, “It’s just... just fire. She’s a robot, right? She might still be intact in there. Got to... find water, or something, put the fire out. Arcaidia, do you have any magic left?”

My friend looked at me with eyes filled with numerous layers of pain, both physical and emotional, and her head dipped to hide tears in their silver depths. “Sorry... magic dry. Can’t... summon anymore.”

“Then, uh, shit, we got to find water-” I started again, but felt strong hooves on my leg. B.B passed in front of me, looking me straight in the eye.

“Longwalk, stop. We’re in no shape to do anything. Crossfire’s down. I’m going to try and tend to her. You three stay put.”

“But what about LIL-E-?”

“Longwalk, she’s gone!” B.B snapped, “That wasn’t just fire, it was an explosion strong enough to flatten a building. We can’t put that fire out, and... just stay put dammit! ...Dammit all...”

She moved with a purpose, gliding over to the fallen Crossfire. I saw her fish out a healing potion to start to feed to the unconscious unicorn mercenary, while I stared blankly at the still raging flames that had consumed both Zeikfried, and one of my friends.

Then I saw a shape stir in the flames. For a second my heart jumped, hoping. That hope burst into ash a second later as the shape that came stomping forth from the fires was not LIL-E, but the towering form of the Hyadean warlord.

Zeikfired had not escaped unscathed from LIL-E’s last ditch effort to kill him. His armor was scorched and melted, in some places blasted off entirely to reveal ropes of shining purple muscle, shot through with cords of metal and bizarre alien machinery. Half of his helmet was cracked and torn asunder, revealing the charred features of a humanoid visage beneath. A single, fierce purple eye regarded us from the ruined flesh coldly. In his smoking, burned hands he still held his dark Gramzanber, it’s edge wafting with heat trails and still burning flames. Blood coated him, seeped into the ground at his booted feet, and his breathing was ragged, but he still stood, alive.

A sense of genuine hate started to beat in my chest at the sight.

“A valiant effort,” he said, past clenched teeth, “If a wasted one.”

I coughed and grunted in pain as a short burst of fury fueled adrenaline got me back to my hooves. However I was only able to just barely raise Gramzanber before my legs gave out again, and if not for Binge holding me, I would’ve dropped back to the ground. Arcaidia rose beside us, snarling, while B.B, eyes wide, started to feed another healing potion to the still unconscious Crossfire.

“Esru vi dorma mal vas, sobek!” Arcaidia let out in a chilling growl.

“Such language from a member of a Veruni noble house? What would your sister say?” Zeikfried chided, and Arcaidia tried to light up her horn, only for it to spark and sputter a few frosty motes before it’s light died out. Zeikfried shook his head. Already the flesh beneath his armor was pulsating and growing new tissue. Not quickly, mind you, but enough so that I could tell that the damage he’d taken wouldn’t last more than an hour or two. Still, it was clear he was hurt. If we only had more strength to give, a little more and we could have finished what LIL-E had started!

Arcaidia certainly looked about to try, even if she had to do it with her bare hooves and teeth. She took a step towards Zeikfried, and I saw B.B rising as well, ready to make a final stand.

Only instead Zeikfried looked up, and the one eye of his that I could see narrowed.

“Ah, it seems our time for today is up. The so-called ‘cavalry’ has arrived.”

This was followed by him raising his hand and tracing a series of white, gleaming Crest circles in the air to cast his barrier spell. This occurred just as a volley of green plasma blasts and ruby laser beams fell upon him. A loud, female voice called out from above, familiar in its authoritative yet youthful tone.

“Surround the xeno target! Don’t let him escape!”

Odessa soldiers in their brilliant white combat armor landed around us, griffins and pegasi alike. All blazed away with magical energy weapons, most of which bounced off Zeikfried’s barrier, but they at least appeared to keep him pinned in place.

In front of me, Sunset landed, her cybernetic limbs making whirring noises as they absorbed the impact of her landing, and the mare opened fire with the plasma rifles mounted beneath her cyber-wings. She glanced back at us as she did so, saying breathlessly, “Sorry we’re late. The big ugly one gave us some serious trouble.”

“Did you at least manage to kill the frog-face?” asked Binge, and Sunset grimaced.

“No. Bastard ran off. The NCR Rangers went after him, but Odessa ordered us to get to your position ASAP. Looks like she made the right call.”

“Odessa?” I breathed, and looked up as a shadow passed overhead.

She was clad in her well cut uniform of white and blue, trimmed with gold tassels on the shoulders. A white combat vest covered her chest, but otherwise Colonel Odessa, leader of the entire organization of Odessa, wore no further armor to impede her movements. She already carried naked in her right talon a white blade with gold cross guard, it’s surface reflecting just enough silver sheen to mark it as an Artificial ARM.

She moved like a straightly shot arrow or well cast spear, angling down upon Zeikfried, sword first. As she swung her blade, the sword itself separated into a series of shards, chained together by a band of silver light, effectively turning the weapon into a whip that she lashed down on Zeikfried’s magical barrier.

The barrier held, but visibly cracked, and before Zeikfried could respond, Odessa moved with slick speed, delivering another blow immediately behind the previous. At that, the barrier crumbled, and Zeikfried was forced to use his own spear to deflect the next blow. He still largely ignored the shots from the Odessa force’s energy weapons, even as they splashed upon the parts of him that were unarmored and scorched his flesh anew.

“Always a pleasure, Colonel. I see your tribe of aerial miscreants have not become better shots since my last major engagement with them. That was when I killed your mother, was it not?”

“Save your banal words, alien scum,” Odessa said, dodging back from his seeking spear and readying to dive upon him again. “This ends today.”

“Unfortunately, I must disagree,” Zeikfried said, and actually turned his back upon both her and the Odessa troops shooting at him as he called out, “Alhazad! It is time for us to depart.”

As if he’d been there the entire time, space warmed like water draining down a tube, and in a flash of light suddenly the other Hyadean was there. Alhazad, in his golden mask and bizarre body hidden beneath his flowing white robe, floated in the air beside Zeikfried. A swarm of his strange insectile servitors flew out from his robes, and the blue gemmed ones erected a series of energy shields around both himself and Zeikfried.

Odessa let out an eagle's screech and attacked the barriers, but I knew from my own experience that Alhazad’s barriers were made of stern stuff and even Odessa’s Artificial ARM didn’t do much damage to them upon impact.

“You’re rather scuffed up, my lord,” Alhazad commented in his ear warping voice. “Did these creatures really prove so troublesome?”

Zeikfried made a waving gesture with his free hand, “As I have told you so many times, my doubting friend, this world’s denizens offer more than their appearances would indicate. Of course, I confess I took them too lightly today, and as a result was more wounded than I expected. It’s no matter. We’re done here for now. Signal the troops to withdraw.”

“As you wish, but are all of our objectives complete? I saw survivors on the rooftop.”

“Yes, a few of Skull City’s Guild leaders remain alive, and President Grimfeathers still draws breath as well. While not all of our objectives are met, we’ve done enough damage to generate the desired result. I’m inclined to allow the ponies their small victory today, in honor of the virtue of... sacrifice.”

Upon those words, Zeikfried’s gaze moved towards the flaming remains of the warehouse, and I found the strength to get my hooves working once again and took a step forward, yelling, “HEY!”

He looked back at me, his one eye filled with mild curiosity, “Yes? Speak, warrior. You’ll not have another chance.”

“Her name was LIL-E,” I said with all the seething force I would muster, “Remember it! And this; we’re going to stop you. I swear it on the Ancestor Spirits.”

Zeikfried paused, then nodded once. “I shall remember the name of your fallen, and your vow. Now, don’t disappoint me by dying before our next meeting, young warrior. Alhazad, it is time for us to leave.”

Odessa and her followers certainly tried their best to stop him. They poured everything they had into trying to crack Alhazad’s barriers, including tossing grenades and bringing in a Vertibuck to unleash a barrage of rockets. But by the time that occurred, Alhazad had already started to warp space for another teleportation. I watched both Hyadean beings vanish through a swirling vortex of air and simply vanish back to wherever they’d come from.

And that was that.

The battle for Manehatten was over.

I learned later that the army of Hyadean bio-monsters had retreated through similar portals, leaving behind a city mauled and battered in their wake. Thousands of NCR residents, both civilian and military, had lost their lives in the attack. More than half the NCR’s leadership, including numerous department heads that the citizens had come to rely on, had been murdered by Zeikfried’s rampage. The Skull City Guild leaders had not gotten off any lighter, with many dead or missing.

It would be hours before anything became properly organized to reign in the chaos, and days before any semblance of order was restored. Of course, none of that mattered for the immediate present of myself and my surviving friends. Amid the swirl of activity and confusion, the one thing on my mind was lying in the center of a blazing warehouse.

Many hours later, when that inferno was put out, injuries were tended to, and I’d found the strength to search, we all went to that blackened ruin. It took time, but we found her. What was left of LIL-E.

There were pieces of her, but not enough to put together an entire body.

The most important part, the Memory Orb that formed the core of her cpu, I found that last. Underneath a charred slab of wall, I found the orb. It was blackened by the flames, and cracked all the way through like a spider’s web. Dull. Lifeless.

I clutched that broken crystal tight, crying as I was held by my friends. I made my vow anew, silently in my heart.

If Zeikfried wanted a war, he was going to get one.

And I was going to make damn sure he lost.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Die Harder: You may not laugh in the face of Death, but your body certainly seems to be trying to flip Death the bird. Whenever you are dropped to 0 HP for any reason, there is a 50% chance that instead of dying you remain standing with a 1 HP remaining. This chance drops by 10% every subsequent time you're dropped to 0 HP within the same 24-hour period and resets to 50% once you rest for at least 8 hours.

Companion Perk Lost: LIL-E

End of Disc 2...

...Please Insert Disc 3.

Author's Note

First of all please allow me to say I'm sorry for the length of time it has taken to get this chapter written. Second of all, let me thank all of you who have decided to stick with the story, despite these long delays in updates. Suffice to say, 2020 was not a good year for many of us, myself included. But regardless, I have never had any intention of abandoining this story. No matter how long it takes, we're getting to the end of this, folks, that I promise you.

Now, that said, this marks the end of "Disc 2" and the end of the NCR arc. For those who might be curious how long the story actually has left, the best answer I can give is that htere are two "arcs" remaining, which comprie of Disc 3, the final Disc of Trigger to Tomorrow. I'm hoping that with certain life events smoothing out in 2021 I can re-organize my schedule to allow for a better focus on getting stories like Trigger finished.

When next we join Longwalk there's to be some recovery time and licking of wounds, both physicall and emotional, not to mention a few loose ends left over to wrap up (such as Scythe), along with the NCR taking stock after the attack on their home. Until next we meet, everyone take care out there.

Chapter 1: A Colt Meets a Filly and ARMs

Chapter 1: A Colt Meets a Filly and ARMs

“So, why is this place called Ghost Ridge again?” I asked as we came up on the crest of dry baked sand and rock with tufts of brown barbed plants that looked like just about every other ridge I’d ever seen in my ridge seeing life of sixteen years. A warm and dry wind was blowing over the ridge, causing my short and utterly unruly blue mane to dance about my head.

Next to me Trailblaze snorted and adjusted the grip her mouth had on her hunting spear, long black strands of her mane being blown by the wind into her clear, sky blue eyes as she looked at me with what I’d came to think of as an endearing glare.

“Might be cause there’s supposed to be ghosts haunting the place, or maybe the Chieftain that named it way back when just thought it sounded appropriately ominous. Y’know to keep idiots from exploring beyond it.”

“I can’t figure why,” I said, ignoring the obvious implication that we weren’t being too bright, breaking tribal law to come here to hunt, “Doesn’t look any different than any other part of the wasteland…”

This much was true; the barren, rocky terrain was mirrored for miles around. My tribe called a small valley home, and our village, Shady Stream, was situated right underneath the shadow of a protective cliff past which a gentle stream flowed down from the mountains. One of the few clean sources of water to be found for I-had-no-‘effing-clue how far. Shady Stream had been settled centuries ago after the Great Fires burned the world, a handful of pony survivors clinging to the hope that shelter could be found in the foothills of the mountains far from any centers of the civilization that was burned away. As luck had it the unpopulated mountainous region wasn’t hit nearly as bad by the Fire Spirits that according to tribal legend were unleashed from the Great Fires themselves, and poisoned plant, animal, water, and even the very earth itself in places with invisible fire that would seep into your body and kill you with horrible sickness.

I imagined at least in part the tribal laws concerning never going too far from the village itself and specifically to avoid certain places had to do with all those old superstitions and fears about the Fire Spirits. Personally I’d never seen much of anything to indicate such things existed, or if they did that they weren’t as close and as dangerous as the Chieftain made them out to be. I found myself poking at one of the rocks on the crest of the ridge.

“Hello? Any Fire Spirits in there?” I asked the rock as I prodded it hard enough to send it rolling down the other end of the ridge. Okay so maybe I wasn’t the brightest colt in my tribe, but I’d never seen a Fire Spirit before so I had a hard time taking the legends as seriously as some of my tribesmates did.

Trailblaze groaned.

“Y’know if we end up dead because you taunted Fire Spirits into burning our insides I am going to haunt the crap out of you.”

“How? I’ll be dead too in that case.”

“Ugh, let’s just get this over with. If we’re gone too long somepony is going to suspect we’re doing something we shouldn’t. Which we really shouldn’t be doing this by the way, Longwalk. Why are you so damned insistent on coming here to hunt anyway?”

I frowned, really trying to come up with an answer that didn’t involve the truth, which amounted to ‘because I’m curious’. Trailblaze would probably smack me into unconsciousness with her spear and drag me back hog-tied for the Chieftain if that was the case. Lucky me my brain managed to dream up an acceptable sounding excuse for my disapproving mare-friend. Well, friend who is a mare. Me and Trailblaze weren’t like that. Not that I hadn’t thought about it, but I usually bucked those thoughts right back from wherever they came from when they did rise. Me and Trailblaze had been friends since we were both old enough to walk for crying out loud! Thinking of her like that was borderline the equivalent of thinking about my sister in that way. Not that I had a sister to think about in that way, which I wouldn’t if I did, but I didn’t and…okay off track now.

“Look Trail, we’ve been having a piss poor hunting season right?” I explained in what I was hoping was my best ‘honest truth’ voice, “So bad there’s been talk of starvation. Starvation, Trail! It’s clear we just can’t keep to our old hunting grounds. We gotta expand; look for where new game might be hiding. Now I respect tribal law much as anypony-“ a snort from Trailblaze, “-but rules aren’t gonna fill bellies. Gecko meat will though. And last time I was out this way I’m certain I spotted gecko tracks near this ridge.”

Okay, that wasn’t a total lie. It wasn’t the whole truth either, but it was close enough. I did find some kind of tracks out this way last time I decided to go exploring, I just wasn’t sure they were gecko tracks. They certainly had looked like gecko tracks, but had been a little on the large side. Alright, a lot on the large side. Now that I think about it perhaps trying to find something larger than a gecko wasn’t such a good idea, but hey, remember when I said I wasn’t the brightest colt in my tribe?

Trailblaze was looking between me and the ridge itself as if she didn’t entirely believe me, which I had to admit she had plenty of reason to doubt. The best tracker in the tribe I was not. Now I wasn’t without my talents. I was one fine aim with a thrown spear or rock and could go hoof-to-hoof with Stone Crack, our tribe’s best hunter, in an unarmed match. Half of the time anyway; he was the best hunter for a reason after all. He had me beat hooves down when it came to spear fighting and Trailblaze had me beat in that department as well, not to mention she was ten times the tracker and pathfinder I was. Really aside from throwing and bucking I didn’t seem to be good at much else besides getting into trouble. And talking my way out of it. I attributed that to my good nature more than having anything resembling a convincing and solid grasp of how to speak convincingly.

After another moment of doubting expression Trailblaze heaved a sigh, her soft brown flanks shivering a bit in a sudden unpleasantly chill wind that swept the ridge and drew my attention to her cutie mark. A peering eye. I never really understood cutie marks. I mean I got that they were supposed to represent what your ‘true calling’ was or something like that, but I mean, c’mon, an eye? The hay did that mean? That Trailblaze was good at looking at stuff? I suppose she did have pretty sharp eyes, better than mine anyway, but that just seemed like…a really vague thing to have as a personal talent.

Maybe part of it was I, despite being nearly old enough to be a considered a proper stallion, didn’t have my cutie mark. Yes, sad but true, my flank was blank as the day I entered this world. I used to feel rather embarrassed by the whole thing but by this point in my life had come to grudgingly accept it, maybe even take a little pride in it. After all didn’t this just mean that my talents could lead anywhere?

“-follow you but we’re not going to go more than a mile or two past this point. If by then we don’t see any sign of gecko or anything else we can hunt we’re heading back…Long, what are you staring at?”

Trailblaze had been speaking as I’d been staring at her cutie mark, lost in my thoughts. I blinked and stammered out, “W-what? Nothing, nothing at all.”

She peered at me, and then shook her head, “I’ll bet. Let’s go. I want to be back home before it gets dark. I’ll take lead, you spot.”

“Sounds good,” I said, a good deal of cheer back in my voice now that I knew for sure Trailblaze was with me on this one and wasn’t going to try and drag me back to the village.

We settled into our customary hunting routine as we stepped down the far end of Ghost Ridge and headed into what lay beyond; a dense patchwork of old dead and brown trees whose branches splayed about like claws. The old forest wasn’t a proper forest since the Great Fires probably, every tree a desiccated husk of what I imagined a proper tree ought to look like. Not that I’d ever seen a real live tree, but the passed down stories of the tribe spoke of them as things of great beauty and lush green life. The trees that came to surround me and Trailblaze as we entered their territory did not match the mental images I had. The only green in the area were my own eyes as they cast about curiously, looking for any signs of movement in the dead forest.

The forest floor quickly began to slop upwards as we entered proper foothills and through the thin dead and leafless canopy of the forest I could see the distant looming shapes of mountains miles off. Trailblaze kept her eyes low, searching the ground for signs of quarry while I kept mine up and watchful for any possible approaching dangers. I too had my spear though it was slung across my back attached to my barding of gecko hide. I felt confident that whatever me and Trailblaze ran into we could handle it. After all I’d never met a critter that a pair of decent tribal hunters with good ol’ pointy sticks couldn’t handle. Looking back on it my naiveté was monumental.

An hour into the forest and we were climbing a particularly steep hill when Trailblaze stopped in her tracks, causing me to almost bump into her. I didn’t ask any questions, we were both experienced enough in hunting together to communicate without the need. A soft tap of my hoof caused her to respond with a tilt of her head and flick of her long streaming mane, followed by a twitch of her tail that meant ‘fresh trail’.

I came up next to her and looked at what she’d spotted. A nice tiny pile of gecko droppings, fresh enough to be no more than an hour old. I gave her a look and grin that caused her to roll her eyes. Yes, yes, I guessed right about there being game in this area, good for me. Never mind that totally wasn’t the real reason I wanted to come, but hey I’ll take credit where I can get it. Honestly this forest was proving to be not nearly as interesting as I’d hoped it would and so while my curiosity wasn’t all that satisfied with the trip finding food was a more than acceptable alternative in my book.

We tracked the critter that had done its business for a short time longer, its tracks now rather easy to spot. Those tracks were soon joined by others and while at first me and Traiblaze were perfectly happy about the prospect of being able to bring a good haul of fresh gecko meat back to the tribe as an offering of apology for breaking the rules we began to get a tad nervous and exchanged nervous glances with each other as we noted just…how many tracks we were finding and how strangely large they seemed.

Geckos were pack animals yes, but they usually never ran in groups of more than five or six. There had to be at least a dozen sets of tracks all moving together up the hill by the time me and Trailblaze were reaching the top.

“Longwalk, I think it’s time we headed back,” said Trailblaze, her voice calm and level with only just a small dash of the unease I too was feeling, “One or two geckos is fine, but those things still have teeth, and these tracks are kind of big. This might be part of the reason we’re not supposed to come this way.”

“Just a bit further,” I said, feeling my curiosity burning away at the nervousness that was slowly spreading through me, “I want to see if this really is the biggest gecko pack of all time. I wonder why so many are together. What do you think Trail?”

“I think,” she said with a low growl to her voice, “That we’ve gone a little further than we should and we really need to go back now!”

For just a moment I seriously considered her words. They were spoken with such a sharp edge of urgency and growing fear that I could see in my friend’s eyes that my heart clenched a bit and I realized the only reason she was here at all was because she was worried about me. For that alone I maybe should have turned back. I sometimes to this day wonder what my life would have turned out like if I had listened to her.

I turned away from her, saying softly, “Sorry Trail, you can go on back if you want, but I’m going ahead. Just a quick peek I promise. Any hint of danger and I’m out of here. Never met a gecko yet that can keep up with me at full gallop.”

“That’s out in open desert,” she hissed, “You try galloping that fast in this forest you’ll break a leg in no time, then you’re gecko food. And I didn’t come out this far just to leave you on your own. You go, I go.”

I gulped, suddenly realizing that if something did go wrong and something happened to her that the responsibly for that would be squarely on me. As much as her words stirred something warm in me and caused thoughts that I quickly bucked down into the corners of my mind I’d have much preferred it if she’d turned around and went back to the village. I was fine with the notion of putting my own neck at risk in the name of curiosity and laughs but Trailblaze was only here because of me. I ground me teeth for a moment in frustration and indecision but ultimately nodded my head and began heading up the hill to its top, Trailblaze following behind me with a resigned whinny.

At the top of the hill we saw it descend briefly into a shallow ravine that unlike all the land around it was utterly bare of trees. Down in that ravine was the dark foreboding mouth of a cave, yet its shape was…strange. The cave was at one end of the ravine, its shape oddly triangular. The ravine itself was a long thin and shallow furrow in the earth and it occurred to me that it was very out of place amid the much deeper and sharper ravines me and Trailblazed had seen everywhere else. The lack of trees or plants of any kind in the ravine itself was also disturbing and set the hairs of my coat standing on edge.

“…shit…” Trailblaze breathed and I saw what caused her exclamation just a moment after she made it.

Emerging from the cave mouth was a gecko, but nothing like any gecko I’d ever seen.

Geckos were cute little lizards about a fourth of the size of a proper earth pony. They ran around on two legs for the most part, had bulbous eyes and gleaming silver scale hides. And nasty teeth and claws. They were quick, agile, and aggressive, but a skilled hunter could get a spear in their gullet or pop a sling stone between their eyes and put them down before they could bring those natural weapons to bear. The hunters of Shady Stream had hunted geckos for generations and their meat, bones, and hides were important commodities to our daily lives. Practically our only commodity. While a single gecko wasn’t too dangerous if you didn’t let yourself get cocky, a pack of them could kill if you weren’t careful or didn’t have a party of other skilled hunters guarding your back. Even then, we weren’t ponyfolk accustomed to feeling fear when it came to dealing with geckos.

The gecko I was looking at filled me with a profound sense of dread as it strolled from the cave mouth and lifted its head to the air, sniffing it, I imagined, for me and Trailblaze’s scent.

It was easily twice the size of a normal gecko and its scales were of a pure gold hue that caught the pale light of the cloud covered sky and radiated it like a mirror. Its claws were larger than any other gecko I’d seen but that wasn’t what was causing the dread I felt. No, that was due to the presence it gave off. Geckos were predators yes, but never before had I felt such a concentrated sense of malice coming off of a critter. I could tell just by looking at this thing that it wanted to eat us, not for food, but for pleasure.

“Longwalk, can we go now?” Trailblaze whispered.

Three more golden geckos joined their companion at the cave mouth, all of them sniffing the air searchingly. They started to turn their heads our way. I gulped and I think maybe made a small ‘eep’ sound before saying, “Yes, yes we can.”

However just as we both turned to start our stealthy climb back down the hill we heard an unearthly hissing sound that was quickly joined by a chorus of others that filled the ravine and echoed through the trees like…like the hungry wail of ghosts. I didn’t need to yell for Trailblaze to run but I did anyway as we both began to bolt down the hill as fast as we could without risking that prophetic leg-breaking fall Trailblaze had mentioned just moments earlier. As we barreled down the hill I risked a look behind me and I imagine my face must have gone an exceptional shade of pale as I saw not just the four golden geckos but nearly ten of the monstrous critters bounding over the crest of the hill after us with a speed and agile pace that suggested they weren’t nearly as hampered by the forest terrain as we ponies were.

“Split!” Trailblaze shouted, apparently having stolen a glance like I had at the golden horde descending on us and I realized what she intended. It was a practical tactic, splitting up to try to either disorient and split our pursuers and hence increase the chances of one of us making it back…but damned if I didn’t want to scream my protest at the notion.

Traiblaze wasn’t giving me the chance though as she bounded off to the left and I knew I needed to head right, otherwise it was possible the whole damned gecko pack would just go after her. So I turned a sharp right and began leaping down the sharp hill at an angle, praying to the ancestor spirits that more of the geckos would come after me instead of her. I could hear the unnaturally loud hissing and the scampering of clawed feet behind me but I didn’t dare risk another look behind me to see how many were following. Tree and bush branches clung and scrapped at my flanks, tore at my mane, and more than once I almost felt the uneven ground beneath me hit my running hooves at an angle that could have spilled me into a fatal fall, but whether through luck or agility I kept going.

At the bottom of the hill I began a proper full on gallop towards the edge of the woods but my progress was halted by the feeling of something large, warm, and violent slamming into my back. I tumbled, instinctively curling in my limbs and rolling with my shoulder in an attempt to keep from breaking anything. Pain stabbed at me from all sides, first from the bruises of the fall but next from the feeling of something sharp ripping into my flank right through my gecko hide barding. Not even getting proper look at what was attacking me I pivoted and bucked out with both legs. I hit something scaly and hot to the touch and heard a piercing hiss.

I was not a small colt. Almost to my full adulthood I was pretty damned big and while I couldn’t claim to be the strongest of my tribe I had quite a bit of muscle for my age. I got picked on quite a bit due to my blank flank and my talent for breaking tribe rules, so I learned early on how to place a proper buck to defend myself. I’d rarely run into anypony or anything that could take one of my bucks and shrug it off like it was nothing. Stone Crack was one of them, the Chieftain was another…and now this golden gecko was the third.

The critter had been sent flying back a half dozen paces by my hooves but it stayed dazed on the ground for only a second before it got back to its feet, shaking its head and hissing at me with such a deep rumbling sound that it sent a chill straight to my heart. ‘Yeah, you are so going in my belly’ the golden gecko seemed to be proclaiming. I believed it. I also noticed it was the only golden gecko around.

I understood with a feeling not unlike being bucked straight in the gut that all the others must have gone after Trailblaze. My mouth was dry and in place of fear was sparking another feeling, anger, both at the gecko for being in my way and at myself for letting this all happen. I had to take this thing down, much as the thought made my brain want to pack up and leave town for the next forever and leave me to my suicidal tendencies, and go help Trailblaze. Nevermind the whole point of splitting up in the first place had been to give at least one of us a shot at getting back to the village alive. The knowledge that she was the one in real trouble and not me and it was my own damned fault she’d come out here in the first place and even now might be getting torn to bloody ribbons by these things was overriding any sense of self preservation I’d had just moments before, drowning out even the lancing pain in my sides and the wet feeling of blood coating my body from the gashes the golden gecko had given me.

I planted my hooves wide and lowered my head, feeling an angry growl rearing up from my throat. I turned my head and gripped my spear haft in my mouth, drawing the weapon of thick oak and sharp flint spear head and levered it at the golden gecko as it coiled to pounce.

“Bring. It. On.”

The golden gecko sprang, claws splaying out, massive oversized jaw opening to reveal rows of wickedly gleaming teeth. I charged to meet it, using the same method I’d learned to use on this critter’s smaller cousins. Geckos loved to leap, and while this brought their most powerful weapon, their fierce jaws, into play, it also exposed the softer scales underneath their chin where their throat met up with the rest of their head. A well timed spear thrust could get a gecko every time if you got them just as they leaped at you.

I shoved my head forward, thrusting the spear just under the golden gecko’s throat. The thing may have been twice the size of a normal gecko but that still made it smaller than me. I was sure I could get a fatal blow in. I felt the spear hit home solidly. My eyes widened in shock as the spear didn’t penetrate but instead skidded off scales hard as metal and the gecko kept coming. The hit had caused the gecko’s leap to turn into a haphazard stumble but its jaws snapped at me all the same, and even though I rolled to the side while keeping my teeth firmly gripped on my spear I felt those sharp teeth bite clean through my hide barding and gouge the flesh beneath.

I had to grit my teeth all the tighter as I screamed, otherwise I’d have dropped my spear and been truly well screwed. As it was I was wounded once more and the golden gecko only looked more pissed than before, my spear having done next to nothing to where I’d struck it. I was heavily disappointed in generation’s worth of passed down hunting knowledge. Curse you nature and your evolutionary processes! Or whatever had caused this golden gecko’s scales to act like some kind of freaky natural armor.

The golden gecko didn’t give me any time to contemplate the general unfairness of my situation as it pressed in at me, jaws snapping. I backpedaled, swinging my spear more like a club now just to try to keep the thing at bay while my not so fast brain labored to come up with anything resembling a plan. But with each second my anger at this thing was growing, burning at the fear. Trailblaze needed help dammnit! I didn’t have time for this!

Backing up I felt myself hit something solid and realized I’d just backed into a tree. On instinct more than conscious thought I threw myself forward and rolled as the golden gecko made another spring for me, gaining quite a bit of air as it sailed over my rolling form. I came up to my hooves awkwardly and turned, hoping to see the critter face plant into the tree. Instead the damned thing in a feat of impressive acrobatics landed on the tree feet first, claws digging into the bark, turned, and sprang from the tree right at me again! However now it had a lot more height on me and was descending on my shocked self from above. What happened next was pure accident but I’ll still take credit for it being a brilliant martial maneuver on my part. I won’t tell anypony else if you won’t.

I reared up, more in instinct and fear than any idea that the golden gecko, much like its smaller normal not-big-and-near-freaking’-invincible cousin had a very big mouth that opened very, very wide when it made its leaping attack. Such a wide open mouth that my spear had very little trouble slipping right into as the golden gecko bore down on me. A mouth that had no super armor scales at all but rather very soft tender flesh that my spear had no trouble at all penetrating through all the way to the back of the beast’s throat, through its spinal cord, and out the back of its neck in a spray of crimson blood.

I was still bowled over on my rear as the thing’s body slammed into me, the golden gecko dead before either of us finished hitting the ground, but still twitching enough in its death throes that its teeth and claws still got in a few vengeful cuts on my already abused flank before I managed to disentangle myself from it.

I stood there a moment, drenched in blood my own and from the gecko, and stared at the corpse, breathing heavily. The adrenaline was still pumping hotly through me but not enough to keep the pain from registering. I hurt all over. A lot. Shaking somewhat and feeling my stomach wanting to vacate that morning’s meal I retrieved my spear from the golden gecko’s body, pulling it free with a wet splorching sound. I barely had time to realize I needed to go find Trailblaze, barely time to even start considering how I was going to pull that feat off as a not-so-skilled tracker, or how I was going to help her given my only partially successful golden gecko slaying record, when at least the former question became moot.

“Longwalk! Run!”

Trailblaze’s voice registered in my head only a split moment after her dashing form burst from the thick dry brush of the forest, fully galloping past me. I looked her way, eyes wide and blank, then back the way she came, and this time I’m very sure I went ‘EEP!’ as I saw the rest of the pack of golden geckos that had been hot on her tail coming out of the same brush.

It didn’t take me long to catch up to Trailblaze. No that wasn’t a yellow wet trail following behind me. I’m far too manly a buck for that.

“I…thought…the plan was…split up…” I huffed as we ran.

“It was,” she breathed back, keeping her breath far better than me. I was good in the strength department but Stone Crack always told me I needed to work on my endurance. What can I say, it’s not my fault I was born big and strong; I don’t even exercise! But I guess that meant my cardio wasn’t what it could be. I’d caught up to Trailblaze but I could already feel my legs flagging, my lungs burning with ragged gasps. I wasn’t going to keep this pace for long, motivated for it or not.

“I ran into more of them the way I went, had to double back this way just to stay ahead of them all!”

Well, that explained that. Wait, there were more of them!? I chanced a glance behind us. Eeyup, there was a lot more of the bloody things than there were before, all still hot on our heels like we were the last fresh meat they expected to find in months. Which I reflected might actually be the case. I didn’t have time to really think about the ecology of these critters but since I hadn’t seen any other animals out and about this area I could only guess at how they all kept fed. They certainly seemed very intent on dining on me and Trailblaze though, and my brain could only handle so many activities at once. Theorizing on reptilian ecological survival was way below ‘run run run run run!’ on my brain’s list of activities to focus on.

We were running along the bottom of one of the foothills, neither going further uphill nor heading the way that would take us out of the forest.

I doubted Trailblaze knew where we were going any more than I did, I think the plan was just to try keep running until either we ran out of juice and got eaten or the geckos got bored and gave up the chase. I was starting to seriously doubt our chances of the later occurring when Traibaze suddenly veered to the right, almost causing me to trip and take a very unpleasant tumble before I managed to course correct and follow, the horde of teeth and scales close behind us. Before I could ask what she was doing I saw what she was going for and felt my face drain of blood.

Another cave. Not the same as the one in the ravine higher up but still a bloody cave. And Trailblaze was leading us right into it! What was she thinking!? What if the thing was just a dead end? Even if it wasn’t, how were we going to lose the golden geckos inside? I didn’t know what her plan was but I hardly was in a position to question it. Putting on a final burst of speed born of desperation we reached the cave mouth and charged into its dark depths. The inside of the cave was incredibly cool in comparison to the warm suffocating exterior of the Wasteland and some little pony in the back of my brain was informing me that the cave seemed a little too cold. I told that little pony to please shut up and let me focus on not dying today.

The sound of many clawed feet scrabbling over stone echoed through the cave, joining the thunderous hoofclops of me and Trailblaze. The golden geckos hadn’t even slowed down following us inside. Trailblaze forged on ahead into the dark and I could barely see her in front of me as we ran deeper into the cave, the ceiling and walls around us both closing in as the cave became more and more narrow.

Just as I feared we were about to hit a dead end, and hence meet our dead end, the narrow cave suddenly opened up again and where for a moment things had gotten so dark I couldn’t see and was moving more by following Trailblaze’s sound more than anything else there was now an odd pale blue light that was allowing me to see.

We’d entered into a large open cave where rubble and rocks from some ancient cave in filled the side of the cave opposite where me and Trailblaze came in. A deep fissure ran through the center of the cave with only a narrow stone formation spanning its several meter wide gap. Though I couldn’t get a clear look at it the soft icy blue light was coming from something inside the pile of rock rubble on the far side of the cave. Trailblaze didn’t even slow down, crossing the narrow rock bridge and heading right for the light. I followed, hearing the golden geckos not far behind us. It sounded like they’d slowed down a bit in the narrow passage we’d come through, hissing and clawing at each other in their eagerness to get through first to bite at the fresh meat. That ravenous nature was buying me and Trailblaze the precious seconds we needed to cross the fissure, catch our breath, and take stock of our surroundings.

“What…what are we doing here…?” I managed to breathe, looking at Trailblaze questioningly more than accusingly. I figured she had to have had a reason for coming into this cave, effectively trapping us with the things trying to eat us. We might not have had much of a chance outside of getting away, but a small chance had been better than nothing. In here we were just meat waiting for the slaughter.

“I,” Trailblaze hesitated, looking confused and more frightened than I’d seen her in all the years I’d known her. The light of the cave was making her dark mane luminescent and cast her whole face in a pale light that brought out the real shine of her eyes. She was beautiful and for just a moment I felt very regretful I’d always bucked away the warmer thoughts I’d sometimes had about her. We were probably about to die. I might not have been so bad to at least try seeing if our friendship could go anywhere else. I shook myself. No, not thinking like that, especially if these was going to be my last moments with Trailblaze. We spent our lives together as friends; I didn’t mind leaving this life together with her as a friend. No need to make it weird by saying something awkward.

“I heard singing…” Trailblaze finally said, even as the sounds of the geckos got much louder as they neared the cave we’d entered. She pointed a hoof, “From that. It was…calling to me I think.”

I turned, for the first time really looking at the object that had been producing the blue light. And blinked.

“What the hay am I looking at?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.

The object looked like it had come through the cave ceiling, the hole punched in the solid rock above where all the rubble was strewn indicative that some time, who could guess how long ago, the very object I was looking at had actually blasted through the cavern system above and to this point. The little pony in my brain that apparently was better at putting pieces together than I was noted that this object probably came from the caves above us where that strange shallow ravine had led, and the golden geckos had come from.

The object itself was about three times the size of me and Trailblaze, a hunk of metal shaped smoothly like a spearhead, tapering to a point that looked sharp enough to pierce…well…solid rock. It was an incredible sheen of silver unlike any I’d witnessed before, or honestly, since. Back then my mind didn’t even have a word to categorize that kind of bright metallic sheen. I’d never seen the moon in full beautiful glory before otherwise I might have made that comparison. The light of such soft blue was coming from strange geometric lines that crossed back and forth over the metal surface of the object, literally lighting the thing up and filling the room with a blue hue. As I looked at it I felt just how cold the cave was, unnaturally so, and to my shock saw small licks of frost coating the rocks around the object. The thing was generating cold, radiating it like an aura.

I took an involuntary step towards the object, my curiosity drowning out fear. Then the hisses of the golden geckos reached a new height of loud as they echoed through the cave, and I turned to see they’d arrived, a little over a dozen of the things, spilling into the cave from the narrow entrance. They paused, heads shaking, as if disoriented by the blue light emanating from the object and the pack took a few seconds to sniff us out before they started to advance at a slow prowl towards us.

I turned to Trailblaze, not noticing that as I did so my back left hoof had gotten very close to the object. I’d noticed Trailblaze didn’t have her spear.

“Trail, catch!” I said as I tossed her my own spear with a flick of my head. She was way better with spears than me. I’d make do with my hooves. My only plan was to try and buck as many of the bastards down that fissure as I could to give Trailblaze a fighting chance against the rest.

Trailblaze caught my spear expertly, her fear being suppressed now with a look of determination.

“We take them at the bridge, side by side, Long,” she said “We can get through this.”

I nodded, letting her confidence become mine, though I was pretty sure, even with the narrow rock formation the golden geckos had to cross, that they could still overwhelm us. I was wounded and I could tell Trailblaze hadn’t fared much better during her flight. She must have lost her spear against one of the critters and I could see gashes on her neck and one of her forelegs, dark blood matting down her light brown coat. The geckos were at their end of the rock bridge spanning the fissure. I looked at Trailblaze and she looked at me. For just a split moment we only saw each others eyes and nothing else.

“Side by side,” I said back to her, and started forward. As I did so the way my back left hoof rose to take a step made it brush along the object.

Freezing cold run through my whole body, shattering my senses into a thousand screaming pieces. The cold pierced into my very brain and I could think or feel, but I was pretty sure the strangled whimper was my own and the thudding sound was me hitting the floor. I think I heard Trailblaze call my name but the freezing numbness had covered my mind like an unpleasantly wet blanket. I was struggling just to get breath in and out of my lungs, which felt like they were trying to draw breath after a ten mile run in dead of winter. I could still see, though, and what I saw was that the object had lit up far brighter than it had been a second ago, the room bathed in such intense azure hues that it made it look like we’d all just been dipped in paint. The geckos were hissing loudly now and there was a very different tone to the hisses, a tremble that made it sound like they were quite suddenly afraid.

Then there was another hiss, but this was no gecko. This hiss was coming from the object, a high pitched bursting sound of air releasing from having been under great pressure. Frosty mist flew from around the center of the object in a circular pattern, and I watched in numb amazement as the object’s front half rose up away from its mass like the lid of a cooking pot, only there was nothing holding up the lid! It was moving through the air on its own, up and away from the object which was now gaping open, blue light spilling from within. The lid softly floated through the air and landed lightly on the rubble next to the object.

I was starting to get feeling back into my legs and was trying to stand, Trailblaze standing beside me, staring at the now open object with her mouth gaping, my spear lying on the ground at her hooves.

From the pale blue light pouring from inside the object something rose up out of the object, casting a shadow over me as I looked at it…

…No, at her.

She was a pony, standing straight and regal, an impossibly long and shimmering mane of pure silver falling in waves around a lithe body of azure blue, her wide eyes a silver that matched her mane exactly. She was rather short though, young looking, perhaps a filly a few years younger than me. If her appearance from within the object wouldn’t alone have been enough to make me stare at her boggle minded and struck dumb, noticing the horn jutting proudly and sharply from her head would have done the trick. You must understand my village consisted only of earth ponies. Unicorns and peagasi existed only as passing myth from the time before the Great Fire. I had no way to easily categorize in my head what a strange young filly with a giant horn growing out of her head was. My brain was still back-logged with the task of accepting what was happening, let alone factor any minor details like head horn thingies.

So obviously my first words to her were quite suave and well thought out.

“Guwhahuh?”

The blue filly who I totally didn’t quite understand yet was a unicorn looked down at me and smiled in such a bright and cheerful way that it rather made me want to smile right back at her.

“Estu ren masa fes. Estu dol shae?”

Well…that made no sense at all now did it? Before I could decipher at all what the filly’s words meant, though I could hear a strikingly strong note of relief and beaming happiness coming from them, Trailblaze got her wits about her first and ducked down, snatching up my spear with her teeth and turning back to the geckos.

“Talk later! Longwalk can you stand? Those things aren’t gonna stay stunned for long now that there’s even more meat for them to gnaw on!”

I was shaking, my body still feeling weak and numb from whatever the object had done to me to open itself and let the blue filly out, but I felt strength returning to my limbs pretty quick.

“Y-yeah, I think so. Good as I’m gonna get anyway.”

The geckos had overcome their own trepidation and fear of the object opening itself and our new arrival’s appearance and were now scampering over the bridge. Me and Trailblaze both charged forward to meet them but were both suddenly halted as what felt like a faintly cold breeze surrounded our bodies, a pale blue haze filled with tiny motes of sparkling lights gripping both me and Trailblaze and lifting us into the air.

“Th-the hay!?” I think both me and Trailblaze said at basically the same time.

The blue filly, which was I was starting to gradually get information from my hard-at-work brain might be properly termed a ‘unicorn’ according to tribal legends, was striding forward under and past where me and Trailblaze were floating, our legs kicking uselessly in the air. The unicorn seemed a little shaky on her feet as well I noticed but she had her head held high and I saw an aura of light identical to the ones levitating me and Trailblaze was emanating from that large horn in her forehead.

“Mas mas, estu ren tevali! Estu ren mei survas dol kurvai ren reval.”

“…Okie dokie lokie,” I found myself saying in reply, still too shocked by present circumstances to really think of anything else to say.

“Wait!” Trailblaze shouted, apparently her brain being more pro-active than mine, “You can’t fight those things by yourself! Let us down!”

The unicorn filly just chuckled, a chiming laugh as she reached our end of the stone bridge, facing down the first of the golden geckos that had nearly made its way across. She stared right into its wide open mouth filled with deadly sharp teeth like she was looking at an adorable kitten. An adorable kitten she planned on drowning. The look that passed across that filly’s face turned so ice cold heartless in an eye blink that the only way I could think to term it was a ‘kitten drowning’ expression.

The unicorn filly’s horn flared a pale blue so intense it nearly turned white, an overlap of magical aura dancing around her horn. Then there was a flash of light and my eye caught the most peculiar image of a symbol, some kind of complex crest, appearing in the air in front of the horn. Then the cold in the room spiked and there was a burst of freezing wind and the shriek of golden geckos. A blast of icicles had burst out from the filly’s horn and engulfed the first three golden geckos that had gotten furthest across the stone bridge. Their bodies turned blue and white as frost ate up their scaled hides. They tumbled, shrieking from the bridge, one of them breaking in half at the waist, its upper half bloodily flopping into the abyss of the fissure as its lower half remained frozen ice solid where it had died.

“…Sweet spirit ancestors protect us.”

I didn’t know who said it, me or Trailblaze.

Neither of us were the praying types, but in that instant, I think we were both temporary believers.

“Ha!” I cried, finally recovering some of my senses as I think my brain was just too blown away by the display it’d just witnessed to stay locked up, “That was awesome! Do it again! Crazy ice horn filly for the win!”

“Longwalk, don’t encourage her! She might aim at us next!”

Unfortunately it was a moot point either way. After her dazzlingly display of discharging freezing death the unicorn filly swayed on her legs, her look of cold intent to harm replaced by sudden alarm as her horn fizzled and the blue aura around it faded. Me and Trailblaze fell back to the ground with an ‘oof!’ and a ‘gah!’ respectively. The filly had fallen back on her rump, her mane falling about her like a cloak and pooling about her body like a puddle as she barely kept her front half upright on her fore hooves. Whatever magic she’d unleashed had apparently drained her and by the look of shock and something akin to betrayal on her face I could guess she hadn’t been expecting her magic to run dry so fast.

And there were still ten golden geckos left, the ones behind the group that had gotten iced edging forward in a slow prowl, alert for more magic attacks but intent on claiming their kill. Trailblaze gave me a look and I nodded to her. Time for us to step in and do what we’d been planning to do anyway. We charged the bridge just as the lead gecko made a leap for the still stunned filly.

Still too distant to have a shot at intercepting the gecko before it sunk its jaws into the young unicorn Traiblaze gave a sharp and guttural growl and whipped her head, throwing my spear. She might not have been as good an aim as me when it came to spear chucking but her aim this time was true and my spear struck the springing gecko in its bulbous left eye. It howled and tripped, cart-wheeling off the bridge and into the fissure. My spear went with it.

“Doombringer! No!” I cried, still charging forward. I loved that spear. I’d had it for a whole year, longer than any other spear of mine had lasted!

“You named your spear!? Ugh, if we weren’t about to die I’d smack you!”

Oh, thank you Trailblaze, for such uplifting commentary before we enter into suicidal battle. And why shouldn’t I name my spear? That question put aside for later debate me and Trailblaze reached the bridge and planted ourselves between the geckos and the unicorn filly. I tried giving her an encouraging smile but form the look I got from the filly I wasn’t succeeding. Poor thing seemed real tore up over her magic failing her all of a sudden. I’d have felt bad if I wasn’t so damned terrified, high on adrenaline, and about to get ripped apart by golden geckos.

Trailblaze positioned herself to the left side of the bridge while I took the right. The golden geckos came scampering right up the middle, only partially slipping on the ice still covering this end of the bridge. I recalled the way the one I killed earlier had so easily used its claws to grip into tree bark and figured the same was happening here with keeping their grip on the stone even through the ice. Didn’t say much for our chances that their claws were that sharp. The first one didn’t leap but instead came slithering in low, its mouth gaping wide for Trailblaze’s legs. She reared up, expertly smashing her hooves down on the gecko’s head as it snapped its jaws on empty air. Though the golden gecko only seemed momentarily dazed by the blow rather than honestly injured it was all the opening I needed to follow up Trailblaze’s move with one of my own; a hefty back-buck that sent the gecko plummeting into the dark. I let out a whooping tribal war cry, which very quickly turned into a yelp of pain as a second gecko, faster than its companion, jumped in and racked my back right leg with its claws.

I kicked out with my left uninjured leg and caught the gecko a glancing blow on its jaw but that just seemed to make it angry, and it was quickly joined by another as now two pairs of razor tooth filled jaws were snapping for my flesh. Traiblaze was stuck also engaging another pair of geckos that were trying to get at her. Seemed like the space where the stone bridge met this half of the cave was just wide enough for me and Trailbaze to hold against four geckos, while the others writhed about in a mass on the rest of the bridge behind their fellows. If either me or her took a single step back though it’d give the geckos room to spill onto our half of the cave and surround us. Then the dinner bells would ring, lights out for us in a very unpleasant and bloody way.

So we braved the jaws, using every little hunting trick and maneuver we knew. We ducked and bucked, pivoted and reared, kicking out with vicious fore hoof jabs. In response the geckos lashed out with lacerating claws and snapped over and over again with teeth that were now running red with pony blood. Before long both me and Trailblaze were covered in even more bite and claw marks, that while none of which were immediately crippling or fatal, were sapping our strength as our blood pooled on the ground under our hooves. My mouth was dry and my body was on fire from the pain, and for our efforts we’d only managed to knock one more gecko into the fissure, leaving eight left hissing for our meat.

“Soval! Estu soval ARMs!”

Huh? I chanced a look behind me. The unicorn filly had, while me and Trailblaze fought, scampered back to her weird coffin-pod-thingie and had retrieved something from it; a tiny spherical object that she held in her mouth, apparently in lieu of levitating it. She was hopping up and down excitedly, trying to get our attention as she repeated, “Soval! Soval ARMs!”

With no further attempt at explanation she swung her head and mouth-tossed the object at us. It clattered to the ground at our feet and I barely could catch a glimpse of it before I was too busy trying to push back a pair of gecko jaws from my neck. It looked like some kind of silver orb, no bigger than your garden variety rock. What was that supposed to do to help!? I really found myself wishing this unicorn knew how to speak something other than fancy gibberish!

The gecko’s clawed feet scratched at my back legs while my front pushed back at the thing’s jaws, inches now from my vulnerable neck. Suddenly the thing’s weight lifted from me as Trailblaze took a second having body slammed her own opponent into the fissure to back-buck at the one on me. It tumbled away under her hefty blow and it freed me up just long enough to turn and grip the silver sphere in my mouth, figuring that the unicorn must have tossed it to us for one of us to take and use…somehow. The silver orb felt ice cold in my mouth and I had the weirdest sense of an invisible unnameable pressure snaking its way into my head the moment I’d touched it. I didn’t have time to ponder.

I saw the golden gecko leaping at Trailblaze’s back as if in slow motion. It was a strange, dull piece by piece movement the way I witnessed the whole jaw clamp down around the back of her neck. I mostly remember though the way her eyes were looking right at me when it happened, and the way they went from exhilarated at having saved me to wide with terror filled knowledge of what was happening.

I’ll note for the record that gecko’s don’t kill their prey quickly. They worry at it like a dog with a bone, wringing their heads from side to side savagely once they’ve got their jaws on you. Which is exactly what this golden gecko started doing to Trailblaze. She reared and shook her whole body violently, trying to dislodge the thing that was killing her, blood pouring from her neck in crimson dark rivers. I knew I was screaming her name but somehow the whole world had gone quiet to my ears, my brain in lock down and only processing snippets of information at a time. I was only vaguely aware of the other golden geckos following behind me as I chased after Trailblaze, who was running towards the back of the cave with that gecko still attached to the back of her neck. I think she was planning to try and smash it into the cave wall or something. I never found out. What happened next happened so fast that I didn’t have time to properly register any of it.

The pressure in my head intensified a thousand fold.

My body became a glacier of cold, starting with my mouth.

Words were shoved through my brainpan at the speed of thought.

ASTRAL RESONANCE LINK ESTBLisssshhh-

CONNECTION ERROR/NON-VERUNI ORGANISM DETECTED

CALIBRATE SYSTEM TO MATCH ASTRAL PATTERN

/////calibration status…13%..59%..92%, complete/////

ORGANISM RECOGNIZED/TERRA EQUIS

ASTRAL RESONANCE LINK ESTABLISHED

Gramzanber requests weapon identification protocol.

I didn’t know what any of what had just slammed through my brain meant, or what the thing in my head wanted, but in that moment all I could think about was the sight of the gecko’s jaws tearing into Trailblaze’s flesh and the soul piercing need I had to stop it. To have anything, any way, to get that gecko off of her. More than anything I wanted my spear back, so I could throw it.

Understood. Weapon identification protocol accepted, initiating ARM manifestation.

I felt the freezing cold in my body abruptly replaced with searing hot heat that rather than cause pain caused all of my senses to burst alive with vivid alertness and life like I’d just been smacked awake from a long sleep by a hoof made out of the sun. I felt the sphere in my mouth burst into a cloud of sparkling silver dust and in the next microsecond my brain could process it had become a spear. Whatever energy was in me then surged through me and I could feel it pouring into the spear. I didn’t waste a single second throwing that spear with everything I could muster.

There was a blinding streak of light, the sound of slicing meat, and the next moment I was staring at Trailblaze laying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, the severed head of the gecko still clamped onto her with its dead jaws. The rest of the gecko was flopped on the ground. Embedded in the wall above my friend was the spear I’d thrown. It was nothing like a tribal spear made of wood and flint. A spear made of pale silver with a blade large and more shaped like a serrated knife than any spearhead made by tribal hooves.

The strength I’d felt just a moment before abruptly faded and my body rapidly decided that it had had just about enough of my shenanigans. I felt myself tip over and hit the ground. I heard sounds, the geckos hissing, and a sound like howl of wind. The air had gone cold again but now I wasn’t sure if that was from outside forces or the fact that I’d lost so much blood or the fact that I was staring at the body of my best friend bleeding out before my eyes . I think I tried crawling towards Trailblaze, intent on getting the dead gecko’s jaws off of her, hoping to somehow stop the flow of her blood over her once clean coat, to somehow save her, because it was my fault she’d been here in the first place.

I don’t think I made it to her before I passed out.

I awoke to singing. A soft humming melody without words but carried a powerful note of calm and peace. I lay in darkness and for a minute just let that song wash over me. It almost coaxed me back to sleep before my exhaustion chocked brain recalled the events of the previous however-long-ago it was. The second I remembered what I’d last seen I shot to my feet.

“Trailblaze!”

I looked around, feeling dizzy, disoriented, and frightened to my core. Last I’d seen of my closest friend in life she’d been laying in a widening pool of her own blood.

It didn’t take me long to realize we were still in the cave me and Trailblaze had found the strange blue unicorn filly. The filly in question was sitting by what I’d come to start thinking of as her ‘pod’, curled up on her belly with her legs folded under her as she cheerfully hummed her calming song. Next to her lay Trailblaze, her body covered in a faint luminescent aura of icy blue that matched the glow on the unicorn’s horn. She was so still that for a moment I felt the world drop out from under me with the certainty that she was dead, then I saw her flank slowly rise and fall with a small breath and I felt the world return. She was alive. Trailblaze was alive and I wanted to go crush her with the biggest hug I could muster. But instead I looked to see what had happened to the golden geckos.

The ones that had remained had gotten over the bridge…but apparently not much further than that. The cave was littered with frozen gecko statues, and shattered iced gecko parts. The only unfrozen gecko body was the one I’d killed, its severed head and headless body lying next to each other by the wall…the wall where the silver spear still stood planted a foot deep in stone.

I gulped, barely recalling throwing it, barely remembering the strange alien thoughts that had seemingly been forced through my brain before the weapon had formed. I turned my attention back to the unicorn, who had stopped singing as she noticed me standing and was giving me a happy look, her smile bright.

“Tu vira, ren solva!”

“Um…good morning to you too?” I said cautiously. I wasn’t really afraid of the filly per se; after all she’d clearly saved both me and Trailblaze’s lives. But I really didn’t know how to act around her. She was a complete unknown. She shot ice from her forehead and moved stuff around with glowy sparkly horn aura. She could go from bright smiles to cold death ‘kitten drowning’ stares in an eye blink. And she’d crawled out of a giant metal pod thing that, near as I could tell had fallen from the sky and punched its way through dozens of meters of solid rock to rest here in this cavern for…who knew how long?

I approached slowly, looking down at Trailblaze’s still sleeping form and saw the scars. Not wounds, scars, nearly healed, as if she’d been recovering for months. Even the massive deep furrowed scars on the back of her neck, while severe looking, had already re-grown some of her light brown coat over them. Seeing those wounds healed melted away whatever doubts I was feeling about our new companion and I sat down next to Trailblaze opposite the unicorn and gave the filly a wide grin of my own.

“Thank you. A thousand times thank you.”

Whatever language she spoke the tone of my voice and my expression must have gotten the meaning across because she giggled, smiling brightly.

“Danku.”

She then looked over at the cave wall where the spear rested, lifting her chin, “Estu dol ARM ren solva, nes?”

My face scrunched up in a frown as I really began to wish I could grasp even a small part of what this unicorn was saying. I would’ve settled just for having a name to attach to her. None of the nicknames that floated through my mind worked for me; Ice, Frosty, Littleblue, Scary Death Unicorn. In any case she seemed perturbed by my inability to comprehend what she said to me and with a lady-like sigh she lifted her chin again towards the spear.

“What? You want me to fetch it?” I asked, not expecting an answer but heading slowly over to where the spear was anyway. I looked back at her and pointed my hoof towards the spear. She nodded enthusiastically and rewarded me with one of those cheery smiles of hers.

I shrugged and gingerly gripped the spear in my mouth, surprised for a moment by the cool touch of its surface. It slid out of the stone with shocking ease and I was left wondering at how light it felt, and the strange way it felt so…right, to hold it. Like being in contact with the spear was filling in a part of me I hadn’t known was missing to begin with. I shook off the odd feeling and gave the spear a closer examination as I trotted back over to the unicorn and Trailblaze.

The haft of the spear was a little shorter than the ones used by the tribe, but also somewhat thicker, and the butt end was capped by a sharp point as well, which I imagined for a second you could use to give a nasty stab to anypony trying to come up behind you in a fight. The spear head itself was easily four times larger than any spear head I’d seen and was shaped with an obvious slicing edge, more like an over sized knife blade than a spear, with the edge itself serrated. Tilting the spear this way and that in the soft blue light I noticed letters marching across the center of the blade, a sheen of silver just a tad lighter than the rest of the metal and hence only visible in the right angle of light.

Gramzanber.

The word meant nothing to me, but I was surprised I even recognized the letters at all. The spear was a complete mystery, just like the unicorn filly who bestowed it on me. My brain wanted to try to piece this all together but getting a puzzle together generally required more than just having one or two pieces and unfortunately the only pony I could ask questions to try and get more pieces didn’t speak the same lingo as me. At this point I wasn’t even sure what the puzzle was let alone how to put it all together. So instead of making my very tired brain do any more work I settled for shutting out the questioning little pony in my mind and contented myself to sit back down next to Trailblaze as the unicorn filly did her magic healing thing…which almost immediately led me to a new line of questioning that this time the little pony in my head managed to clamber enough to get me to ask.

“How’d you get your magic back?” I asked after setting down the spear, Gramzanber apparently, in front of me and looked over at the unicorn, “I mean last I saw you’d run yourself dry with that icicle number.”

The unicorn filly cocked her head at me, perfectly round silver eyes blinking. Of course she had no idea what I was asking. I took a second to dream up a proper pantomime. I got up and pointed to my forehead where a horn would be if I were a unicorn. I then made a ‘whoosh-frzzzz’ sound I hoped sounded something like the burst of icy wind did when she’d cast that magic, and then I wobbled on my feet pretending to be tired and fell on my rump just like she had. I then pointed at the glowing aura of magic around the sleeping Trailblaze and then at all the frozen golden geckos, then finally shrugged my shoulders in what I hoped looked like a questioning manner.

That seemed to do the trick as the unicorn filly’s eyes widened a bit and her face flushed red. She looked away from me a moment to float up something that had been behind her, a small blue glass flask filled with what appeared to be a glowing blue liquid. I was starting to sense a color theme with this unicorn.

“Estu dol mana res zerplas,” she said as she uncorked the flask and took a long sip of the liquid. As she did so the magic aura around her horn, the flask, and even Trailblaze suddenly got more intense and bright, though it faded again a second later. She set the flask back down and let out a refreshing ‘Ah’ sound and looked at me expectantly.

“Ah, so to replace your juice you drink…more juice. Makes sense. I think. Never figured it’d be healthy to drink something that glows, but then I’m not a magic horn pony, so I guess you know more than me on the subject.”

She nodded as if she understood what I said though I was sure that wasn’t the case. A minute or so passed in silence between us. I started to think about how I was going to explain all this to the Chieftain when we got back to the village. With a small groan I realized that I had no idea how long me and Trailblaze had been here. It was probably already nightfall, if not getting close to next morning. Way past any reasonable time for me and Trailblaze to be out hunting. The village had to have been in an uproar. I was just the son of a hunter, but Trailblaze was the Chieftain’s daughter! And I’d drug her off into a forbidden territory, nearly gotten her killed, and now had a complete stranger in tow to bring back to the village; which I should add right now had very strict laws about bringing in outsiders.

“Longwalk?”

I nearly jumped to my feat, hearing Trailblaze’s voice. As it was I was still pretty tired and wounded from our encounter with the geckos and so my jump was more like a hobbled stumble. Trailblaze had opened her eyes but hadn’t quite gotten to raising her head or even really moving. Instead she was blinking as if trying to recall where she was.

“I’m right here Trail,” I said as I brought my head right up to her so she could see me clearly, “You’re alright.”

“I’m alright…?” she repeated slowly and her confusion was plain as her muzzle drew up in a concentrated grimace of memory, “I shouldn’t be. How am I not dead?”

“Our resident magical mare apparently has healing in her bag of tricks,” I said, nodding my head towards the unicorn who was watching me and Trailblaze with a warm expression, apparently quite pleased to see her patient awake. I shared the sentiments. I was also concerned, wondering just how much the magic was actually doing. All I had to go on were less than fully detailed tribal legends concerning unicorn magic, and even diluted by centuries of telling the stories still basically got across the point that the powers unicorns wielded were far from all powerful. The surface wounds looked closed up, but Trailblaze had lost an awful lot of blood, and now that I was looking close enough I could tell she was pretty pale underneath her brown coat.

“I can see that,” Trailblaze said as she looked about nervously at the magical aura surrounding her, then to the unicorn herself, “Thank you.”

“Danku.”

I chuckled, “I think that means ‘you’re welcome’ but I’m just guessing. Never heard a language like hers.”

“You’ve never heard any other language, period,” Trailblaze commented, stretching her legs experimentally and slowly trying to stand. That experiment ended up with her swaying and almost falling over if I hadn’t gotten up quick enough to brace her, letting her lean on me. The unicorn got up as well, looking at Trailblaze with a stern look as the magical aura around her horn fluctuated and the smoky blue light around Trailblaze seemed to condense. My friend lifted off the ground and she gasped, more in surprise than pain, and gave the unicorn a glare.

“I can walk on my own!”

“Mas!” the unicorn filly said, stomping a hoof.

“Think that one means ‘no’,” I commented.

“I figured that. Hey, maybe you can convince her to put me down and let me do this with my own four legs, since you seem to be the self-appointed linguist of the group.”

I shook my head, “No way. I’m on Littleblue’s side on this one. We don’t know how badly you’re still hurt, and if the lady who did the healing number on you is saying you don’t walk; you don’t walk.”

Trailblaze’s eyebrow shot up at me, “Littleblue?”

I shrugged, wincing at the motion. My own wounds hadn’t gone anywhere, though none of them seemed that bad the overall affect of dozens of bite marks and claw lacerations over my hide was not at all pleasant. I’d need a few days of the tribe healer’s attention by the end of the day, assuming Trailblaze’s mother, or my own, didn’t kill me first over this mess.

“Out of my short list of bad nicknames for her that’s the one that rolls off the tongue the best. Got any better ideas?”

“You could try, I don’t know, asking her name.”

My turn to do the eyebrow raise, “How? No speak-y same language, remember?”

Our benefactor was being quite patient with me and Trialblaze’s discourse, watching us banter while still keeping Trailblaze firmly floating in mid-air with her blue glowing horn. She seemed perplexed by us, her silver eyes studying both me and Trailblaze with wide curiosity and intensity. Maybe she was as confused by us as we were by her. I couldn’t imagine where she came from or how she got here, but she had to have about as many questions concerning us as we did about her. Trailblaze had rolled her eyes at me and then waved a hoof at the unicorn to get her attention. She got it.

“Okay, let’s try this,” Trailblaze pointed a hoof at herself, “Trailblaze…Trailblaze.”

She then stuck a hoof at me, “Longwalk.”

Back to her, “Trailblaze.”

Back to me, “Longwalk.”

Finally a hoof at the unicorn herself, and Trailblaze waited quietly to see if Littleblue would get it.

Littleblue’s head canted to the left slightly, and then a smile of understanding played across her face. She stood up straighter, drawing herself up to her full proud height of up to my shoulders, thumping a hoof to her chest.

“Arcaidia Del Chevail Del Luminariaso Dol Graza Venti Veruni Halastra Mi Surta.”

Me and Trailblaze exchanged looks. I spoke first.

“So, uh, that um…all of that’s your name then?”

Littleblue nodded happily.

“Can we just call you Arc?”

“...?”

“Arc?”

Oh, that frown was not a good expression. It wasn’t quite on par with her ‘kitten drowning’ look but I got the impression she was seriously considering something involving me and an icicle that I would not enjoy at all. My hair was standing on end for several long seconds as she bore into me with that look before she finally sighed and said, “Arcaidia.”

“Fair enough,” I replied and stuck out my hoof towards her, giving her my best ‘pleased to metcha’ grin, “Arcaidia.”

She looked at my hoof curiously for a moment before sticking out her own. I wrapped mine around hers and shook it, which seemed to surprise her but she went along with the gesture.

“Well, now that we’re all properly introduced, shouldn’t we be getting out of here?” asked Trailblaze, still suspended in the air, “I really don’t want to spend any more time in this cave and the sooner we get back to the village the better.”

I gulped, “The Chieftain is not going to like any of this.”

“No, no she’s not, but I’ve got your back on this Long,” Trailblaze assured me, “Yeah it was dumb of you to come out here, yeah we’ve broken tribal law, yeah we’re going to be punished for it…and I don’t know what the tribe will want to do with Arcaidia here. But she saved our lives, that’ll have to count for something. And the responsibility for this falls with me anyway, as I really should have stopped you when I had the chance. I’ll try to keep most of mom’s anger focused on me.”

“The hay you will,” I stated firmly, “This was my idea, hence my fault.”

“Fine, we’ll figure it out when we get there, let’s just go.”

I could hear the strain in Trailblaze’s voice and realized she was actually still more than a little spooked by her near brush with death. I couldn’t blame her. We’d been through plenty together growing up, gotten into all manner of trouble, but nothing had come even close to what had happened today. Both of us had nearly kissed Death on the cheek and combine that with the pure strangeness of discovering Arcaidia and it was understandable that our nerves were more than a tad frayed. I looked down at the spear that still lay at my feet. Such a bizarre looking weapon, utterly unbalanced in its over sized blade and undersized haft, not the mention that it had seemed to spring from the tiny metal sphere Arcaida had tossed me.

I hesitated only a moment before picking up the spear with my teeth. Not really having a good harness to stow it I just kept it clutched there. Trailblaze eyed the weapon. I think she’d seen it out of the corner of her eye while we’d been talking but hadn’t really gotten a good look at it until now. Whatever she was thinking her eagerness to depart kept her from making any comment, which was just as well because I certainly couldn’t have answered any questions concerning the spear. Any knowledge about it was firmly planted in the inscrutable mind of Arcadia.

Taking my grabbing of the spear as the sign it was time to go Arcadia made a quick ‘hold a moment’ gesture with her hoof and cantered over to the object she’d been inside. Hopping up with a graceful movement that sent her hair wafting about her like smoke in the wind she leaned forward and began rummaging inside the pod. Inside of a minute she clambered back out, floating around her a myriad of objects.

One was a set of clothing, a dark blue dress that fitted snugly over her back and hindquarters, the edges lined in silver. In the right light I could see strange hexagonal patterns running the length of the dress, like it was made out of segments. And seriously? More blue and silver? Did this unicorn understand there were other colors in the world?

Apparently not as one of the other objects was an odd bulky silver bracelet she floated over and attached to her left foreleg. I walked up to her side and peered at the object, as it had some strange boxy protrusion on it with a number of smaller round things. The box had what appeared to be some kind of clean, clear glass on it, which would have seemed weird enough but what made me jump was when she raised her other hoof and hit one of the small round protrusions. The bracelet made a clicking sound and the clear glass box suddenly lit up and showed a display of bright blue patterns…letters, I realized!

Letters I could read!

This led me to notice that the bracelet itself also had letters on it, and as I read them my confusion over Arcadia only tripled.

Status…Inventory…Data…what is all this…?

Then I saw the words on the left side of the bracelet; Pip-Buck 3000.

Something in my memory sparked, banging on the back door of my brain, trying to get out. I knew I’d heard that term used before. I was certain of it. I just couldn’t dredge up from the depths of my admittedly less than stellar memory where I’d heard it or who had mentioned it. I resolved to ask around the village once things with the Chieftain were settled. After all Shady Stream only had about a hundred resident tribals. Shouldn’t take me more than an afternoon to find out who had mentioned the term ‘Pip-Buck’.

Arcaidia, noticing me scrutinizing her newest accessory, coughed politely and stepped away, floating the other objects she’d retrieved from her pod to her. One was a large silver (surprise surprise) set of saddlebags that she strapped to herself. The rest of the objects floated into those saddlebags in orderly fashion; a half dozen more bottles containing that blue magic-restoring juice, about ten smaller but similar vials that were too opaque to tell what was in them, a thin rectangular device no bigger than my hoof, a number of silver wrapped packets of some circular objects, a metal canteen, and finally a strange bright silver object with a long pointy bit connected to a slightly bulkier tube-like portion that was in turn connected to a grip that looked like it was meant to be held in a pony’s mouth. That final object didn’t go the saddlebags but instead fitted into a small blue holster that Arcadia strapped to her right foreleg.

Apparently done equipping herself for travel our unicorn companion smiled at herself in a satisfied manner and began heading out of the cave at a brisk trot, Trailblaze floating behind her. My friend managed to look both relieved and indignant at the same time.

Outside the cave the air was cold and biting, the cloud covered sky dark with only the barest amount of light turning the horizon a softer gray than the charcoal cloud cover above us. I realized the light on the horizon meant it was the next morning. Which meant the entire village had to have been well aware of the fact that me and Trailblaze were missing. I wouldn’t have been surprised if groups of hunters were already out searching for us. Despite my earlier assurance to Trailblaze that I fully understood this whole mess was my fault and I was willing to accept responsibility for it…well, let’s just say I was hoping I’d catch the Chieftain in one of her rare good moods.

Footnote:
Level Up!

Perk Added - Hunter: In combat, you do 75% more critical damage against animals and mutated animals.

Quest Perk Added – ARM Bound Stage 1: You’ve begun the bonding process to an ARM. At this stage the connection is weak, allowing familiar use with the weapon equivalent to a +5 to the relevant weapon skill while using the ARM.

Chapter 11: Only You Can Cross Your Own Barriers

Chapter 11: Only You Can Cross Your Own Barriers

With the poorly lit terminal station’s shadowy expanse quickly filling with the skittering forms of spider ponies, their clicking legs and throaty hisses filling the air with a spine tingling wave of noise I did not take long to conclude that we were in a less than desirable position.

“Back in the elevators,” I said, “now!”

I had no shame at the idea of running away. We’d met up with LIL-E, Iron Wrought, and Fine Eye’s family, so we had zero reason to stick around this death trap.

“We have a problem,” said Sweet Pear as she’d already backed up to the elevator, pushing her two foals behind her as she rapidly punched the button to open the elevator door, “the doors aren’t opening!”

I took a quick glance to confirm this, feeling my face flush with fresh fear. Why weren’t the elevators working!? We’d just come out of them! I heard a raucous coughing hiss that loudly reverberated off the walls of the huge terminal station and looked up to see the massive brown spider pony was slowly lowering itself towards the ground on a tree trunk thick strand of webbing as it…laughed. Was it responsible for the elevators suddenly not working? I abruptly recalled LIL-E mentioning someone or something controlling parts of the Stable, closing doors on us, or activating the energy barrier that split us up from Binge and B.B. I wondered at how this monstrously sized spider pony could do that, but it wasn’t as if I was in a position to ask.

“A new plan would be fantastic right now,” muttered Iron Wrought, then he drew his pistol while giving me a meaningful look. Was he expecting me to come up with something? Did he forget how well me and plans got along? As in; not at all?

However nopony else was taking charge, or making any move other than to tense up and raise weapons to try and fend off the enclosing horde chitin and fangs. LIL-E was oddly silent as she extended her weapons and trained her turret, and even Arcaidia seemed grimly subdued by the situation, her eyes fixed with a cold determination as hard and uncompromising as the icicle shards she began to form in a floating cluster around her. Seemed my companions were setting themselves up for a last stand, and the very notion ignited an angry spark of fire in me. I felt weak in the legs from the after affects of poison still coursing through me, but the warm core of anger was pushing that back. I would not let another death like Shale’s happen!

“LIL-E,” I said, knowing time was short, “where’s that armory you said was down here.”

“Straight across, to the left of that control room,” was the mechanical reply.

“There’d be some pretty powerful weapons in there, right? And it’d be a decently defensible position?”

“Can’t guarantee there’ll be any weapons actually in there, but the room itself has only the one entrance so it’d be easy to defend.”

“Did you find anything in the medical lab that was labeled Buck, or Med-X?”

The floating metal orb was silent for a second, which was a second longer than we had so I ended up shouting, my tone harsher than I intended, “LIL-E!”

“Yes,” was the terse reply.

“I’ll take it.”

“Take what?”

“Both. Everything. Anything you found that’ll give me a boost.”

“Longwalk, you don’t want to do that,” LIL-E started, but I cut her off.

“There’s no time! Our only shot is to smash through these things and get to the armory! Tell me you’ve got a way to open it!”

“I do. I downloaded the passcode from the Director’s terminal, but-“

“Then give over the drugs. Quick!”

By now the spider ponies had coalesced from the deeper gloom of the terminal station into a small horde of many legged monstrosities that we could only barely see. They clambered over stacked metal crates, and filled in gaps between machinery that dotted the room. All avenues by this point were covered by the creatures, and we only had a dozen meters of space between us and the advancing mass. Fine Eye and his wife both had their weapons at the ready, even their two little colts aiming their small pistols with fearful looks. Arcaidia’s wavy mane was bristling now and she was leaned down, ready to spring into action, her face etched with her kitten-drowning expression that brokered no notion of mercy or fear. Again I wondered at her. So inquisitive and friendly under normal circumstances, but in a fight, so brutally ready to unleash death. Would I ever become the same? Did I want to be the same?

Iron Wrought was giving me an odd look as LIL-E floated up to me, a side compartment opening on her that revealed a stash of various chems. I didn’t recognize most of them, but the tablets of Buck and the Med-X syringes were familiar enough from my last encounter with them. I hastily set down Gramzanber so I could snatch up the tablets with my mouth, downing one of them in one gulp as I stuffed the others into my saddlebag. The hissing of the spider ponies was getting louder and their sizable leader had reached the ground, a towering shape over the skittering masses. I ripped out a syringe of Med-X even as I felt the burn of the Buck coursing into my weakened limbs and fumbled around jabbing the needle into my leg, wincing at doing so but shoving aside my fear of needles.

A cool wash of relief hit me, mixing oddly with the heat in my muscles from the Buck. I felt my heart doing acrobatics in my chest but felt oddly disconnected from the sensation as I grabbed Gramzanber back in my teeth and took a few steps forward toward the waiting army of spider ponies.

“I’ll go first; cut us a path through them. Everypony follow close behind me. No stopping. Watch out for the webs. Don’t. Stop.”

“So the idea is to charge blindly ahead, hope we make it to the armory without getting swarmed?” asked Iron Wrought.

“Basically.”

“And this is sane, how?”

“We don’t have time to be sane,” I replied simply, “Give me a better option and we’ll go with that.”

At Iron Wrought’s silence following that I took a single, heavy breath, and readied myself.

Thinking straight was hard now with the drugs coursing through my system, but I didn’t really need to. I knew where my destination was, and how I was going to get there. Even the shuddering doubt that skipped across my mind about whether or not I was going to end up killing any of these creatures in a few moments was somehow quieted; which I probably should have taken as a serious warning sign. A warning sign I ignored as I let the boiling fire of the Buck burning in me rise up in my throat in a wordless warcry as I reared up on my hind legs briefly, forelegs kicking, before barreling forward at a full gallop into the dark. I only had a vague direction to go, but that was all I needed.

The echoing cracks of gunfire, from the rough explosive sound of LIL-E’s incendiary rifle to the tiny pops of Fresh Pear and Crumb Trail’s little 9mm pistols, filled the air as I charged forward. Orange tracers lanced into the waiting spider ponies, igniting them in bright flame. Cold caused my coat to bristle as shards of ice flew by my head in a well aimed spread that smashed into the lead spider ponies before I even reached them and I could already hear the humming energy of Arcaidia channeling another spell before the last shard hit its mark.

The roaring thud of my heart hammering in my ears almost drowned out the gunfire and hissing as I crashed into the line of spider ponies, head bowed low like a battering ram. Despite the spider pony’s numbers, their bodies were light weight, and the first one I hit was bowled over and sent flying. The one behind it was more prepared than its kin and nimbly skittered aside my charging path and reached out with hooked legs to try and trip me up. I whipped my head, weaving Gramzanber in a silver arc that sent the spider pony’s outstretched limbs spinning into the gloom without me even breaking stride.

Hypocrite.

The thought was a stray, tattered thing in the back of my skull as I dove headlong through another pair of spider ponies, ducking a flying strand of web to smash one of the creatures in the face with the flat of my spear, hearing chitin crack and feeling green blood splatter across my face. Without thinking I planted my front hooves and spun on them, slashing out with my hind legs in a hefty buck at the other spider pony’s mid-section as it reared up to try and engulf me with all eight legs. Instead it felt my buck smash through chitin and come back coated with green blood and chunks of internal organ.

You don’t want to kill? But maiming is fine? Crippling is okay? Leaving them to a slower, more painful death of their wounds? Is that how your tribe taught its hunters to act? Wasn’t one of the first lessons learned as a hunter to make your kills quick and clean, so the prey doesn’t suffer?

My teeth were grinding so hard around Gramzanber’s handle that I could feel my gums starting to bleed. This wasn’t a hunt! This was a fight. These creature’s weren’t animals or monsters. I’d clear my friends a path, I had to, but if I could do it without killing then what was wrong with that!? It was like my mind itself was turning against me though, forcing me to think about it when thinking was the last thing I wanted to do.

We were charging through a dense section of piled crates and barrels, stacked along one side of the terminal station. It limited the route I could take, but it was also granting us a little cover against what was an increasingly dense blanket of webbing the spider ponies in the rear of the horde were sending our way. One quick glance behind me showed me how well my companions were doing.

Arcaidia was furthest behind, not because she was slow, but because she was deliberately brining up the rear and using fast, accurate sprays of frost to freeze the strands of web in mid-air before they could strike any of the others. Her horn was like a strobe light, flashing with crest after crest of magic as she kept up a constant stream of spells, faster than anything I’d seen her attempt before. She had one of those vials of blue liquid floating right in front of her as she run, practically chugging the thing as she went.

In the middle was Fine Eye and his family, and I could only admire the way the salvager family handled themselves, showing me that they hadn’t taken on their profession idly. Fine Eye used his double barreled shotgun with slow, practiced ease, using its powerful blasts to keep many of the spider ponies charging in from the sides at bay. His two sons, despite being small colts, fired their pistols with aimed, practiced shots, each colt supporting the other and firing on the same target so their relatively weak weapons could combine their firepower. Sweet Pear, despite her kind sounding name, was now a mare with a fire in her eyes. With just a lead pipe in her mouth the earth pony mare covered her husband and foals, smashing the skull in of a spider pony that got past the gunfire and tried leaping at one of the colts. I saw no remorse or hesitation on her face.

Iron Wrought and LIL-E were flanking either side of me, just a few paces behind. They kept up a steady barrage of fire pouring towards the encircling spider ponies, LIL-E’s incendiary rifle mount lighting up the dark room with flashes of fire and her turret spinning around and blasting relentlessly while Iron Wrought kept his own shots slow and deliberately aimed to take out any spider pony that he could see trying to spit webbing at us.

Not one of my companions was wasting effort on avoiding killing blows. It didn’t make me pause or slow down, but as if my brain was now acting entirely separate from my drug soaked body thoughts kept stabbing through my mind even as fought.

Fine, don’t listen to me then. I’m only your brain, something you’re clearly not planning on making use of anytime soon. But the longer you avoid taking the lives of your enemies, the harder it’s going to be to protect the lives of your friends. What’ll be your excuse when one of them dies? Oh, wait, scratch that, one of them already did; Shale.

I wanted to start shouting at myself, to tell my little brain pony to shut its condescending mouth and leave me alone. As it happens I didn’t start full on yelling at my own brain out loud, but I did start muttering under my breath, “Shut up, shut up, shut up.” Over and over again like a mantra those words poured out of me as I desperately tried to slice and batter a path for my friends through the clustering mass of spider ponies.

On and on they came at me, piling in my way like living barriers of fangs and slashing hooks. While I was disassociating one spider pony’s body form its legs with an overhead chop of Gramzanber another jumped onto my back. I felt its hooked legs rip into the flesh of my back, and I bucked wildly. It hissed in my ear, a shrieking sound that rung my eardrums, as it tried to work its fangs past the dented metal and shredded leather of my barding. I threw myself back first into one of the larger metal crates and heard a gut wrenching squishing sound and the high pitched whine from the unfortunate spider pony who was no longer on my back but was instead decorating the crate’s surface with a unpleasantly colorful splatter of bits. Only the fact that it was hissing pitifully in pain indicated to me that it was alive at all as I scrambled forward once more.

We’d broken through the area filed with the piled crates and barrels, reaching a fairly open portion of the terminal station. To my left I saw a pair of yellow and black stripped pillars set in the wall that led up to the ceiling, a empty square space in the ground between them. It reminded me of the big elevator lift I’d seen in the Ruin that had carried the Golem to the surface. Dead ahead was the raised control room and metal walkways that led up to it. On the ground floor, just to the left of the control room, was a small closed door, presumably the armory as LIL-E had said. We were almost there!

A shadow passed over me, and I felt the distinct feeling of dread even past the hefty affects of the drugs in my system, as the massive spider pony with the white mane and brown bristling carapace landed in front of me. It turned towards me with its huge legs pounding the metal floor like pistons and as its red eyes bore down on me I could see its all too pony-like face was wearing a faintly amused grin. At this distance I could make out details about this giant among spider ponies that I hadn’t seen when it’d been up on the ceiling. Parts of its face were covered in pieces of metal that seemed to grow from its chitin, metal spars rising up from the back of its mane like spines. Its legs contained metallic plates that were almost like armor, and its foremost legs ended in huge scythe like blades that were clearly shining with a sheen of metal rather than that of chitin.

A scratchy, buzzing feminine voice filled the air, which I realized with shock was coming from the giant spider pony even though its, her, mouth wasn’t moving.

“Ah, ah, ah, my little ponies; that’s far enough. No more running for you, now. My children are hungry and you’re just tiring yourselves o- Hey, listen to me when I’m talking to you!”

I’m not sure why this monolithic spider pony thought I was about to stop to have a chat with her, especially because her first sentence had the word ‘hungry’ in it. Instead I used the brilliant and carefully well thought out maneuver of ‘jump at the house-sized spider pony’s face while shouting a undulating warcry that sounded like somepony was stomping on a sick cat’. The drugs might’ve had something to do with my tactical mindset.

I had been planning on trying to blind this huge spider pony with a well aimed slash across the eyes, but this concept was somewhat spoiled by the fact that it battered me out of the air with one leg much like somepony might smack a ping-pong ball.

I bounced along the floor not unlike a ball in the above analogy, and I was thankful for the Med-X dulling the impact. Wonder why B.B warned me about this stuff anyway? So far I wasn’t seeing the downside of these drugs, as I clambered back to my hooves. I’d been knocked a fair distance to the side, near a dip in the floor that contained rails that, for what little I could tell, seemed to be what that train thing was designed to move along.

I didn’t have time to see more than that as I heard Arcaidia’s voice ring out, “Longwalk, tu aruvai!”

Wasn’t sure what that meant, but given the giant spider pony was stomping its ways towards me at frightening speed it was probably a warning. I could see my companions slow as the huge spider pony came at me and I shouted at them, my throat going hoarse, “Keep going!”

Then I didn’t even have time to glance their way as two massive blade tipped legs slashed down at me, the air whistling as they tore through it. I stumbled in backing up, barely ducking one slice that took of parts of my blue mane. I couldn’t dodge the second, just managing to get Gramzanber’s blade in the way of the slicing leg before it would’ve sliced me open from flank to neck. The strength in just that one thick leg was enough to almost cause me to bowl over, only a combination of the Buck and my own skill in keeping myself on my hooves keeping me up. Even so, I was forced back a few meters by the blow and my teeth were rattled something fierce.

The over sized spider pony’s face was glaring down at me, her hinged mouth opening to reveal fangs as long as one of my legs, coated in a thick viscous purple goo I could only imagine was less than safe for my health by the way drips of it caused the metal floor to hiss and steam. Again the scratchy mare’s voice seemed to speak from nowhere at first, though at this distance I noticed it might’ve been coming from some metallic node near the base of the spider pony’s neck.

“You’re not with the pegasi, despite this weapon of yours,” she said as she casually pressed her one bladed leg heavier on Gramzanber, forcing me down to one knee under the strain, “Too dirty for their taste. Not too dirty for my children’s tastes, given how starving we are, but before I turn you into food I’m curious to know…where did you get this weapon from? Surely not our own excavation site?”

I could see the other blade arm twitching in anticipation to strike. She was trying to distract me with these questions. I decided to play along, tensing myself to move even as I kept pushing back against her massive strength with my own drug boosted muscles.

“Why do you want to know? Who are you? What are you?” I figured answering a question with a question was a good way to avoid giving any information out while simultaneously irritating my foe. One of the few lessons I remembered from what my mother’s friend Hawker taught me about fighting, if you can make your opponent mad, they’ll also get stupid.

“You don’t need to know any of that, little morsel,” said the big spider pony with a haughty, confident tone, “But I’ll do the polite thing and introduce myself; Director Midnight Twinkle, Ministry of Arcane Science. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

My eyes widened slightly as the implications of that hit me. Director Twinkle? As in the same one mentioned in those messages I’d read? As in the ‘Overmare’ in charge of the Stable!? If that was the case then how did she end up as this gigantic monstrous fusion of spider and pony? Did that mean all of the spider ponies here were former Stable residents?

Director Twinkle didn’t even fully finish her introduction before stabbing in at my gut with her other bladed leg, but I’d been keeping one eye on it, ready for the move. I pulled back sharply with Gramzanber, ducking my whole body down to let the blade arm I’d been holding back pass over me while I thrust forward with the spear, intercepting the other blade. I couldn’t possibly stop its momentum, but I tried to redirect it so it’d stab pass me instead of straight into me. It…sort of worked. I wasn’t skewered by the large curved metal blade but it still sliced along my side. Whatever kind of metal it was it cut through my barding almost like it wasn’t there and even through the dulling Med-X I felt a painful line of sharp pain as my hide was sliced.

I didn’t stay still, knowing I needed to get around Twinkle and get to my friends. I couldn’t see what was happening with them past Twinkles massive bulk, but I could still hear their gunfire so at least I knew they were still fighting. I galloped to the left, rushing along the edge of the divot in the floor that held the train tracks. I wasn’t able to get far, as the sharp hiss of cutting air behind me was my only warning of another attack Director Twinkle was making with her bladed legs. I spun on my hind legs, Gramzanber clashing again with the flashing strikes of Twinkle’s foreleg blades. She was remarkably fast for her size, and I had difficulty just keeping the curved razor edged blades from splitting me in half, let alone finding any opening to counter attack.

I felt the familiar and comforting pressure from Gramzanber and knew if I needed to, I could make use of Accelerator. I was hesitant though. My heart was still pounding rapidly in my chest from the dose of Buck and my body still felt numb from the Med-X. What affect would using Accelerator have on me, if I used it while these drugs were in my system?

Gotta get away, lead her further from my friends.

I couldn’t afford to look away from Director Twinkle and her death dealing bladed legs, but I could catch a brief glimpse from the corner of my eye the muzzle flashes of my companion’s gunfire and the tell-tale frost blue glow of Arcaidia’s magic in the darkness of the terminal station. They were near the wall; hopefully LIL-E was getting the armory door open. Just another minute or two and they’d be safe. Just had to stay alive until then and find a way over to them while keeping Director Twinkle distracted.

“You’re being quite the rude little pony, not answering my questions,” commented Director Twinkle without breaking pace with her quick and halting strikes, smashing her blade legs at me with almost casual ferocity, forcing me further and further back from where my friends were, “But that’s alright, I can theorize given what I’ve seen thus far. You’re no Odessa agent. They just wouldn’t associate with a haphazard, dirty earth pony, nor with the kind of ratty group you’re with. So, more likely you’re salvagers. You having that ARM must be coincidence. Or, rather, I would say it is, if not for the presence of a unicorn amongst your number who is using Crest Sorcery.”

Despite Twinkle’s completely relaxed manner of talking the huge blades hadn’t stopped their stormy flurry of blows at me, leaving me with no choice but to duck, roll, dive, and parry without a split second of breathing space. I’d been forced to back up until the train was just a little ways behind me, and I was even further away from where my companions were. I could hear a distant shout, one of both alarm and pain, which sounded like Fine Eye’s voice.

“Crest Sorcery?” I asked, casting a worried look towards where I’d heard that shout of pain from, “She’s a unicorn, so she uses magic, like any other one, right?”

It was weird seeing a twenty foot tall partially mechanical spider pony roll her eyes, and Twinkle’s voice took on a chiding lilt to it, “Not the most perceptive type are we? Have you seen any other unicorn form symbols around their horn when they use magic? I’m willing to bet not. No, that is Crest Sorcery, a technique of magic not native to Equestria. My department took many years discovering its secrets from the relics and fragments taken from our excavations, among other things.”

She raised one leg and slammed it down towards me as she talked, and I threw myself to the side, the scythe shaped blade cutting a sparking furrow in the floor as I rolled to my hooves. I looked towards the far wall where my friends were but I couldn’t get a clear look though, the darkness and far too many darting shadowy forms of spider ponies obscuring my view. But I heard another cry of pain and it incensed me, shoving aside my hesitance. I’d need to use it to get past Director Twinkle! While I was deathly curious about what she was saying, I just didn’t have time to talk. I needed to find a way to disable her, or at the very least get past her. With her ridiculous speed for her size I had only one option available to me.

Accelerator

I felt the pulse of energy from Gramzanber, the spear blade flaring with its blue ghostly fire as the world tinted cerulean. My plan was to try rushing Twinkle with my increased speed and try to blind her again, but the moment my body entered that state I felt a wrenching pain in my chest and a twisting sickness flow through my limbs. I felt as if a hole was being bored into my chest from the inside out while my limbs simply drained of energy. I quickly ended the Accelerator state, before my heart literally ripped itself free from my rib cage. Even as the blue glow faded the pain redoubled, and a blast of blood, bile, and foam burst from my mouth as I went into convulsions, dropping to the ground.

Above me Director Twinkle loomed with her massive bulbous body, lowering her face towards me with curiosity on her arachnid features.

“Oh my, what is this all about? Don’t tell me you tried to use that ARM’s power? You must be rather ignorant of how incompatible they are with a pony’s physiology. And I was enjoying myself, toying around with you. Hm, perhaps I won’t turn you over to be food for my children. Your body would be of greater use as a source of data for further experimentation.”

Even past the blood and vomit in my mouth I managed to grit my teeth and force out words as I glared up at her. I’d dropped Gramzanber in front of me, and I tried making my limbs move, but it was like they had dozens of tiny vices inside them, keeping them stiff and still. I could only surmise that whatever Accelerator did to my body when it increased my speed like that, it hadn’t reacted well with the drugs. It was the only explanation I could think of…that or the less pleasant possibility that B.B’s father had been wrong and I was no different than any other pony that’d used an ARM; I just happened to get an extra day or two out of mine before it killed me.

“Not…dead yet…”

“No, but that is an easily rectifiable state of affairs, given your current condition.”

Though it felt like my insides were twisting in on themselves I forced myself to roll over onto my back, blinking past sweat coating my forehead and dripping into my eyes as I hooked a foreleg around Gramzanber’s shaft, even as Director Twinkle raised one of her huge scythe tipped legs.

In the distance I heard a cry of rage and heard a burst of magic and cracking ice and out of the corner of my eye saw Arcaidia’s frosty shards smashing into the horde of spider ponies that had been encircling my friends. I could barely pick out the blue unicorn filly with the silver mane, all but charging into the mass of spider ponies while throwing spears of ice left and right in an attempt to get to me.

Don’t Arcaidia…stay with the others… even my thoughts were getting heavy as I tried to summon up the energy to shout, to tell the unicorn to stay back. She was only going to get herself…

Killed? Yes, yes she will. Trying to save you, because you’ve been holding back trying not to take any lives. If you fought seriously, without hesitation, you wouldn’t have gotten poisoned to begin with. You wouldn’t have needed any drugs, and Accelerator would’ve worked. You could have finished this monster in front of you, and your friends would be safe. Congratulations moron.

I felt tears stinging my eyes as I tried to tell Arcaidia to stop, tried to lift Gramzamber haphazardly with my weakened hooves to stop an attack I knew I couldn’t. I saw the scythe begin to descend even as out of the corner of my eye I saw Arcaidia get swarmed by half a dozen strands of webbing, coating the unicorn to the ground even as she struggled to get to me, horn flaring with a blast of ice and a scream of rage on her lips.

The room shook and was filled with yellow flashing lights as a blaring klaxon alarm sounded. Twinkle’s strike paused as the big spider pony, and indeed most of the spider ponies, looked up towards the sound of gears grinding. I looked to past my blurred vision, seeing the two pillars I’d seen earlier lit up with the strobe of yellow lights as a square section of the ceiling broke off and began to descend along the pillars… revealing it to be a huge lift.

On that lift was a large black plated vehicle. It was bipedal in shape, the Stable-tech logo painted in bold yellow on its side. It was standing on two squat legs, but it had a thick, rectangular body, two mechanical arms sprouting from either end, one ending in a sizable multi-barreled gun, the other in a long blade covered in smaller gleaming teeth. The top of this vehicle was open into some kind of cockpit, and inside the cockpit space were two familiar mares the sight of which made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

“Awww, look how many pretty ponies started to have fun without me? Makes Big Sis Binge sad to see ponies playing without her around to make things extra juicy!” said Binge as she slammed a hoof down on the cockpit dashboard, “She’s gonna have to punish some ponies for premature fun doubling!”

“Stop clownin’ ‘round dangnabbit and start makin’ this ‘ere thing shoot somethin’! Which o’ these levers is fer blowin’ stuff up!?” shouted B.B, who was hanging on the side of the cockpit while looking over a dizzying arrow of switches, values, and handles on the dashboard.

“All of them, silly filly!” I heard Binge cry happily as she demonstrated what she meant by running a hoof over half a dozen buttons and levers simultaneously.

Chaos ensued.

The barrels on the vehicle’s gun arm began to rotate with a dull whine and with a harsh, ear drumming roar it unleashed a wild torrent of destruction. Bullets slammed into the massive form of Director Twinkle, who hissed like a broken steam valve as she was forced back by the wave of gunfire and raised her bladed forelegs to shield her face. The rest of her body was pelted by the heavy rounds, though I immediately noticed that while some chunks of dark chitin was being blasted off, Director Twinkle’s carapace was remarkably tough and was withstanding the punishing storm of bullets.

The bipedal mechanical vehicle leaped off the lift before it got the ground floor and Binge was still madly pressing buttons and flipping levers as she cackled merrily. B.B had flown up out of the cockpit as the machine jumped, spreading her wings and taking flight towards the horde of spider ponies that’d surrounded everypony else. The white pegasus mare gracefully banked and rolled through the air as the spider ponies overcame their surprise and began to shoot streams of webbing at her.

I could see she’d drawn her .44 revolver in her mouth. She must have found some ammunition for it, because the heavy revolver barked loudly alongside the two slightly lighter booms from her twin foreleg revolvers. I’d never seen a pony use three guns at once like that, and could only admire B.B’s precision as she dove and twisted in the air through the wave of webbing while picking off spider ponies with expert shots; scattering the group that had swarmed on Arcaidia.

As for myself, my body was still in the process of pretending all of my internal organs were being replaced with razor filled plastic bags, and my muscles were doing a fine impression of being made of brick. At most I was succeeding in being able to twitch my limbs a bit and move my head just enough to see what was happening, but actually doing something useful, like, say, standing? Apparently not. As good as it was to see Binge and B.B alive I was frustrated and ashamed of not being able to do so much as lift a hoof to help.

The heavily armed vehicle, which in my mind I was starting to mentally dub a ‘Mini-Golem’, landed on the ground with a crash that dented the metal floor. Binge was tossed about the cockpit, but didn’t seem to mind it even when her head smacked the dashboard. All she did was giggle as she licked blood from her face and put her hooves on more levers. I had no idea how she knew how to control that thing, but control it she did as she sent the Mini-Golem stomping towards Director Twinkle.

The huge spider pony glared at Binge, face screwed up in an angry snarl.

“How did a clearly mentally challenged pony like you get access to our prototype Full Tuned Gear? It was sealed with my personal passcodes!”

I made a scrunchy face at the name. I liked ‘Mini-Golem’ better, but trying to voice my protests came out as something more akin to “Blllarrrg” rather than an actual sentence. Stupid vomit and blood, getting in the way of talking. On a brighter note, I was managing to get my hoof to lift a little, rather than just uselessly twitch. Progress!

Binge just cracked a mad hatter grin, “You meet all sorts of playmates in the dark, looking for a good time. Found a shy friend who whispered secrets in my ear for the promise of blood, and this shy friend showed us to this shiny new toy to play with! Would’ve preferred a stuffed animal or a new set of knives, but Geary is good too. He’s got lots of fun things to make ponies burst apart like confetti!”

Binge’s hoof jammed down repeated only one particular button while her smile split her face and her eyes became like two dilated white gems that gleamed in the dark. Metallic clacking sounds followed the sight of several hatches opening up alongside the bulky sides of the Mini-Golem (screw calling it the Full Tuned Gear, Director Twinkle’s not the boss of me). From those hatches roared out a swarm of small missiles, trailing white plumes of smoke as they spread into the air and seemingly split apart into dozens of even smaller micro-missiles which then rained down upon the entire terminal station.

Rather indiscriminately.

Small expositions like those from a frag grenade detonated all over the place as the howling rain of tiny missiles landed in an utterly untargeted and indiscriminate swarm. They pelted Director Twinkle, who howled in anger and pain. A few landed right near me, pelted me with shrapnel. Many more detonated among the mass of spider ponies, scattering limbs and other body parts among splatters of green blood, while sending many other spider ponies scrambling for cover. To my horror I heard a pony scream as well, a female voice, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I heard B.B shout though, “Blast it all ya daft crazy Raider watch where ya shootin’!”

“Whoopsie!” said Binge as she giggled, “Geary’s real enthusiastic about partying!”

“Stop playin’ ‘round and git Long already!”

“Oh, right, Binge’s little play buck! Hiya Longwalk, what are you doing laying on the ground all moopey eyed for?” Binge sent the Mini-Golem pounding towards me and Director Twinkle with clanking steps, “Throwing up blood too? Tsk tsk, you shouldn’t party so hard without your Big Sis Binge to show you how to do it right! Or to lick up the blood.”

Binge’s eyes took on a violent, manic sheen to them as they looked at the hulking form of Director Twinkle, “Especially not if you’re partying with another mare. Hurts my feelings.”

I had no reply to that, even if I had been able of forming a sentence at that time. I was starting to get more feeling back into my limbs, and as awkward as it was I was managing to twist a fetlock around Gramzanber’s shaft, though I was less than sure how I’d use the spear with my hooves. My mouth was too slick with my own blood and bile to make for a good grip, not that I was able to really move my body enough to get my head to the spear yet anyway. I just wanted to stand up and help, to try and end this fight before anypony else got hurt.

Does that include your enemies? Do you think this fight can end without ending their lives? Does that monster in front of you look like she’s going to back down short of death?

That inner voice was referring to Director Twinkle’s increasingly enraged visage as the huge spider pony moved to meet Binge’s advance, lips twisted in a sneer, “Oh spare me your dithering, simpleton! You break into my domain, steal my possessions, and slaughter my children!? Some of you I might have added to my little family, but you, you’re not worth anything more than food!”

Twinkle raised both of her bladed forearms and smashed them down towards Binge and the Mini-Golem. In response the green coated Raider mare pulled back on a lever while licking her lips and the Mini-Golem’s right arm began to whine in a high pitched metallic squeal as the metal teeth on the blade mounted there began to spin around rapidly. The Mini-Golem raised that blade and intercepted the descending scythe shaped talons of Director Twinkle. There was a ear splitting scream of metal on metal, sparks flying between the rotating saw-blade of the Mini-Golem and the thick blade arms of the spider pony.

“Eating ponies without proper cooking is strictly a no-no. Especially with no hot sauce available,” admonished Binge with a tone like she was lecturing a class, “Pony meat is very dry, needs something to spice it up. Hm, but spider meat, I wonder what that tastes like?”

“Cease your mockery! Dangerous ponies such as yourself is the very reason I have kept my children safe within the confines of this Stable, and deal with any intruders who wander inside our home swiftly and decisively. You are a twisted thing, and your infectious presence shall be removed!”

“Gee, all this dirty talk is making me a little hot and bothered. Can we call a break while I hit the little filly’s room for some relief?”

Binge’s crass manner only seemed to enrage Director Twinkle further. This was good, as it meant she was no longer paying attention to me. It was bad in that Binge and Twinkle were having their clash right where I was still laying partially paralyzed. I barely got my body to flop out of the way of one of Director Twinkle’s stamping legs, this one a albeit smaller bladed hook on it but still as large as my body nearly skewering me before I managed to roll aside.

Sparks continued to shower down around me as Binge tried to bring the Mini-Golem’s buzzing chain blade to deadly bear, swinging the entire body of the mechanical biped around in a spinning back slash that Director Twinkle halted with both her foreleg blades. Meanwhile I had managed to prop one hindleg knee underneath me and was slowly pushing myself into a quasi-upright position. If I could just get a little more leverage I’d be able to swing Gramzanber, albeit awkwardly, with my forelegs. Perhaps if I could trip up Twinkle by hitting one of her back legs, or just thrust up into her pulsing abdomen?

Suddenly Director Twinkle backed up a few skittering steps, causing Binge and her Mini-Golem to go off balance, and Twinkle opened her massive maw wide with a hocking, hacking sound that reminded me of youthful days with Trailblaze spitting off the cliffs near our village to try and hit our fellow villagers. What; we were foals, we didn’t have to be mature! In any case I recognized the noise and realized the giant mutated part pony, party spider was about to spit something, and with a painful drawn in breath I shouted hoarsely, “Binge, dodge!”

The earth pony mare seemed to be ahead of me and was rapidly moving her hooves over a wheel on the dashboard, sending the Mini-Golem almost randomly clanging around in a lazy circle just as Director Twinkle spat out a massive glob of dark purple phlegm that stank with a cloying and burning scent that mad my nose hairs wither as it sailed over my head. The glob partially impacted on the Mini-Golem’s blade arm and almost instantly I saw smoke rising from the metal as the bright sheen began to corrode to a blackish hue.

Binge, apparently sharing the maturity me and Trailblaze had when we were eight, blew her tongue out at director Twinkle and spat at her.

“Acidy spit is so overdone! That’s fine, I have bullety spit!”

Binge aimed the rotary cannon arm at Director Twinkle and began to unleash another barrage of heavy gunfire, but the massive spider pony moved with amazing agility and actually jumped into the air above the hail of bullets, sailing through the air in a move that I imagine was the same kind of jump she’d used to get between me and the armory in the first place. The will aimed jump landed her right on top of the Mini-Golem, the weight of her landing causing the vehicle to topple over. I shouted Binge’s name as I saw the earth pony mare tumble from the cockpit and roll across the ground, but she got up to her hooves rather quickly and apparently with little harm done. She ran directly towards me at a full gallop while Director Twinkle shoved one of her scythe blades into the dashboard of the Mini-Golem, wreaking its controls with one fell swipe.

Binge skidded to a halt before me, breathing heavily, still smiling despite us being caught in a deadly battle and her having just lost our best weapon.

“Hiya! Having fun? I’m having fun! You’re covered in blood. It’s a good look for you. You’re face is really cute when it’s all scrunched up in pain like that. Hey, wanna help me kill the big yelly pony?”

“Binge, we have… ” bit back a groan as my body shuddered, cold sweat mixing with blood on my face as my everything protested my current attempts at moving, talking, and living in general, “… we have to get to the others… get into armory.”

“Aww, and I wanted us to tag-team the boss ourselves,” Binge said with disappointment, supporting me as we began to hobble towards the armory, “You still haven’t gotten a proper kill yet. It makes me sad.”

“Fine with me… not trying to… kill anypony… “

“Look, though, everypony else is doing it! C’mon, give in to peer pressure! I promise you’ll learn to like it, and it’ll stop hurting after the first dozen or so times!”

Binge was nodding towards our companions. B.B had landed next to Arcaidia while the unicorn filly used small bursts of ice from her horn to freeze and then break off parts of the webbing that had covered her while B.B kept the spider ponies surrounding them at bay with her revolvers. LIL-E had gotten the armory door open and was now floating higher, using her turret and rifle mount to try and provide enough cover fire for everypony else to get through the door. At first I couldn’t spot Iron Wrought, but then I saw him, taking in a sharp breath as I saw he was dragging a blood covered and limp Sweet Pear back towards LIL-E while desperately firing with his pistol at spider ponies crowding in. I couldn’t see where the other salvagers were, and I hoped that just meant they’d already gone through into the armory. Despite the sight of what was probably close to a score of dead spider ponies I could see dozens more of them closing in on my friends from every corner of the cavernous terminal station. More than that though, I noticed that there were other spider ponies that were just… hanging back. Where they scared of us?

I wondered how many more spider ponies we’d killed up to this point between this fight here and the fighting that’d taken place throughout our moving through the Stable. It seemed pointless. Director Twinkle had said she had to have intruders dealt with, but why? Was all of this just to try to keep outsiders from…

Just like my tribe. Isolation, even at the price of blood.

The realization hit me hard. This was no different than if we’d wandered into my own tribe’s territory. Any group of outsiders that got too close to Shady Stream would’ve been dealt with bloodily if they’d refused to turn back.

But isn’t that the difference? My tribe would’ve at least granted warning first.

Yet that seemed a nitpicky detail. Overall I still felt like little more than a trespasser. We’d come here to loot and take what we wanted; it hadn’t even occurred to us the Stable might still be occupied, or that its occupants would defend their home. If I thought there was a chance of talking this through I would’ve taken it, but one look over my shoulder at the sight of Director Twinkle’s disdain and rage filled visage as the massive spider pony began to chase after me and Binge made it clear any attempt at communication was going to be an exercise in futility.

Do I really not have a choice this time?

The thought was the least of my troubles though, as my body was still being rather uncooperative. The attempt at using Accelerator had burned through the Buck and Med-X apparently, as I was feeling as weak as I had before I’d taken them and the amount of pain coursing through me made it clear I wasn’t getting that pleasant dulling affect either. At least I could move under my own power, and Binge didn’t have to keep supporting me as we broke into a gallop towards our friends.

Arcaidia, now free of the webbing that’d held her down, saw us coming and called out to me, “Longwalk! Estu vi shivatea, ren solva! Rir, esru ti givol hathriv!”

The icy blue unicorn filly galloped to meet us, twisting her head this way and that to send tightly packed blasts of frozen air to clear away converging spider ponies and give us a path. Behind her B.B shot up into the air, reloading one of her foreleg revolvers with her mouth, no free as she’d holstered the .44, and was shooting with the other foreleg revolver to try and pick off some of the spider ponies that had gotten onto the ceiling and were shooting strands of web down at us. LIL-E also floated forward, her incendiary rifle mount sending blazing tracers streaking over our heads. I heard Director Twinkle hiss in pain and assumed LIL-E’s shots were slowing the huge spider pony down a bit.

“Move yer flank Long!” shouted B.B, “Not carryin’ ya again! Yer freakin’ heavy!”

“I’m not… that heavy,” I said between breaths, “I’m an appropriate weight for my… height and age.”

“Esru ti havir shae? Talk later yes?” Arcaidia asked as she caught up with me and Binge, making a skidding turn to reverse course and join us in a gallop towards the open armory door, B.B now flying above us in an odd and to my eyes seemingly physically impossible fashion as she was essentially flying backwards. I didn’t get pegasi at all.

“Talk later,” I agreed with Arcaidia, putting on an extra burst of speed. The armory door was right ahead, less than ten more paces and we’d be there. LIL-E was floating right in front of it.

“Iron Wrought and the others are already inside,” said the robot, “I’ll be right behind you. Give you all cover.”

Instinct would’ve told me to argue that, that there was no way I’d let a friend stay put to take all the risk while I ran to safety. But even my slow and less than stellar brain understood LIL-E wasn’t actually there, in danger. She was a pony who knew how many miles away, controlling a robot from some much safer place than where we currently were. She was using her head and making the smartest call. Better than any call I’d made so far on this journey.

I gave LIL-E a quick and grateful nod before I head straight for the door-

-which slammed shut in my face and I smacked right into it painfully, bouncing off and almost tottering over.

Binge and Arcaidia ground to a halt next to me, Arcaidia already bending over and starting a healing spell with a concerned look on her face while Binge gave the door a quizzical look and knocked on it.

“Knock-knock? Mr. Door? Why are you trying to kill us? Must we answer questions three before you shall let us pass?”

Ignoring the mare’s strange questioning LIL-E said, “Luna twist my teats with her teeth the door’s been overridden! Passcodes just got changed!”

“Muwah…?” I asked, a little brain dead from my head’s introduction to the solidarity of metal doors. Gramzanber was dropped at my hooves, which I tried to scoop up with my mouth and could only barely get a grip on it, my mouth a slick and numb mess.

“So we ain’t gettin’ in!?” asked B.B as she floated above us, revolvers fully reloaded, though she hadn’t drawn the .44 again yet, apparently wanting to be able to speak clearly without a massive gun in her teeth. I’d have to teach her how to talk like I did at some point… assuming we all got out of this alive.

“Not unless whoever was helping us before decides to undo the override,” said LIL-E, somehow an edge of grimness entering her mechanical monotone, “I’m sorry everypony, I should’ve stayed interfaced with the door terminal. I didn’t think the door would get closed on us so fast… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, we’re not dead yet,” I said, getting my wits about me as I turned around to face away from the armory door.

“A state of affairs I intend to soon remedy,” said Director Twinkle as she advanced on her large spindly, tree trunk thick legs until she was a dozen yards away from us, flanked by the hosts of her smaller “children”. Though there was no less an amount of anger dripping from her shining red eyes there was also a satisfied smirk on her arachnid features.

“I’m quite vexed that you thought I’d allow you to simply walk into an armory filled with weapons with which you could bring even more destruction to my home. You ponies have caused enough of a stir here, I think. This whole affair is quite over, now, as are you.”

“Why?” I asked, playing for time as much as anything else as I could see Arcaidia was trying to be subtle about downing more of her magic restoring drink, “Why did you attack us in the first place? If you’d just come to us openly and asked us to leave, we would have!”

Twinkle laughed derisively, “Do not take me for some wasteland born moron! I know all too well what ponies from the surface are like. They take, and kill that which stands between them and what they take. Even if you did leave of your own volition, rumor would spread from your lips and the lips of your fellows as to where this Stable is and what lies within. We’d have Raiders and more salvagers combing these halls inside of a week. No, while occasionally ponies stumble into this place our safety is maintained by slaughtering or converting those who come in before they can flee and spread knowledge of us to the outside. My children’s safety cannot be compromised.”

“Converting…?” I wanted to keep her talking for as long as I could, and I had plenty of questions I wanted cleared up about this place anyway, “What are you talking about?”

“Oh no, no I don’t think I’ll be indulging you in any further Q&A sessions, little pony,” said Twinkle, dashing my hopes of having a nice drawn out conversation to have a chance to catch my breath and give my friends a minute to recover with, “You all die here, and then I shall find which of my children has decided to betray me by interfering with my connection to the Stable systems.”

She waved one of her large bladed forelegs and made a series of complex hisses and clicking sounds, and the horde of spider ponies backed away. At my cock headed look Director Twinkle scoffed.

“Do not misunderstand. I merely have no desire to see any more of my children die at your hooves. I shall be more than enough on my own to finish you lot off. You have no weapons that can do more than scratch my chitin. Even that ARM shouldn’t prove too much of a problem, given your weakened condition.”

“If you’re so worried about your children’s lives then you shouldn’t be starting this fight at all! We don’t have to do this, we can-” I was cut off by a hoof on my shoulder, B.B floating down to hover just above me. The white pegasus mare wasn’t looking at me, her eyes were locked on Twinkle’s massive form, but she shook her head slowly. Her face was a tight mask of concentration, only letting some of her sympathy leak through.

“Don’t waste yer breath Long, she ain’t gonna listen. I know ya don’t wanna accept it, but facts fact, this is only gonna end wit us killin’ her, or her killin’ us. I know which o’ those outcomes I’m shootin’ fer.”

With that her mouth went to draw her .44 revolver, raising her two forelegs and aiming the revolvers strapped to them squarely at Director Twinkle.

I felt a bump on my flank, glancing over to see Binge had knocked her flank against mine and was licking her lips with a hungry smile on her face. I shifted a bit away from her, to which she just giggled at me.

“You’re adorable. If you want I’ll hold your hoof and walk you through it. It’s messy, but fun. You’ll learn to like it.”

“… You are talking about the whole ‘killing’ thing, right?” I asked, incredulous, shifting another step away from the mare.

“Mmm, I wonder,” the dark coated earth pony said while still licking her lips.

“Everypony? Giant spider mutant? Fight to the death?” LIL-E buzzed nearby.

“Indeed,” said Director Twinkle, “You can sort out your myriad interpersonal issues in the everafter, where I don’t have to listen to them.”

She didn’t give us another second of time, Director Twinkle’s large bloated form crossing the distance to us in one smooth, skittering charge. Scythe blades cut down with a flash of speed, causing us to dart to the sides; Arcaidia and I to the left, Binge and LIL-E to the right, and B.B flying straight up. We spread out around her, my companions focused on the fight, the kill, my own mind still coming to grips with what I would need to do.

As if I wasn’t already slow enough by the poison and weakness of the failed use of Accelerator, my hesitation wasn’t helping. It made me an easy first target.

A vicious back-swing of one forearm blade would have bisected me if I hadn’t gotten Gramzanber’s silver shaft around in time to block, but the force along rocketed me backwards like a foal’s doll and slammed me back first into the wreaked remains of the Mini-Golem. I crawled to my hooves, stumbling back into the fight, some of my strength having returned to me from Arcaidia’s healing spell moments before, but my body still groaning in protest to my every movement.

Arcaidia retaliated with a lashing hail of icicle shards, but most of them cracked harmlessly off the thick armor-like chitin of Director Twinkle’s body, leaving frosty marks but little else. B.B rained down a swarm of shots from above, the rounds bouncing off with ringing clamor. LIL-E’s own shots seemed only marginally more effective, the eyebot strafing around the monstrous spider pony with incendiary rounds plinking off Director Twinkle’s head and causing her to use one blade arm to shield her face with irritation etched on her features. I could see Binge dash under the spider pony’s main body, nimbly avoiding the many shifting barbed legs to stab up at Director Twinkle’s underside with a knife clenched in her mouth. I could hear Twinkle scoff at this and rear up, using her huge roundish back end to slam Binge suddenly and knock the earth pony mare to the ground hard.

Director Twinkle backed up until she had Binge directly in front of her, the spider pony still reared up on her back four legs while brining her four front legs to bear, using the scythe blades on the foremost legs to slash at B.B and LIL-E respectively; forcing them both to rapidly evade. Meanwhile she reached down with her hook ended other legs to try and grab Binge, who was still trying to get up from having been knocked down.

I dashed forward, ignoring my body’s protests to the rapid movement, and slashed with Gramzanber at one of the hooked legs. The silver spear bit into the chitin, drawing a small spurt of green blood and a hiss from Twinkle. The leg pulled back and I suddenly had the other one raking at me, gouging a chunk of hide from my shoulder where the metal barding was already torn and weak. I didn’t back away though, jabbing my mouth held spear at the leg that’d raked me, catching the hook portion and shearing it off. By now Binge had gotten back to her hooves, and for whatever reason was still giggling under her breath as she charged right back in at Director Twinkle like a madpony.

“Oh this is getting tiresome,” Director Twinkle muttered as she slammed her body back down to the ground, brining her scythe tipped forearms to bear on me and Binge with long, sweeping slices that forced us both to roll away… well, me to roll away, Binge just kept right on charging in, leaping over the scythe blade that could have taken her legs off if she’d been just a second early or late in her leap, and threw her knife at Twinkle’s face. I heard a harsh hiss of pain as the knife sunk into one of Director Twinkle’s beady black spider eyes, her red pony eyes going wide as she shook her head.

“Our weapons can’t hurt you huh?” twittered Binge happily, “Then why are you singing that delightful sound of pain? Underneath all that chitin you’re a squishy little pony, just like us, filled with blood and guts just begging to be pulled out!”

Director Twinkle responded to this by hocking a thick glob of violet melting spit at the Raider mare, but a streak of white knocked Binge aside at the last second. B.B flapped her wings and winced as some of the purple goo had touched her right wing tip, the feathers smoking as she stood over Binge.

“Dangnabbit! Not lettin’ mah wings git messed up again! Ya alright, Binge?”

“Whoooo, dizzy,” Binge shook her head, but was smiling, so couldn’t have been too badly injured I figured.

LIL-E had floated around so she wasn’t too far away from my right side as she fired off more shots from her weapons, but I noticed her rate of fire was slowing and I learned why as the eyebot said, “My internal ammo stores are running low, and unless I can get a clear shot at an eye or an open mouth I’m not doing enough damage here. Longwalk, we need a plan.”

I desperately tried to think of one. There just wasn’t much for us to work with. I knew my spear could penetrate that chitin hide, but if I… if I was going to deliver a killing blow I’d need a clear shot of my own, at the head, or neck, or heart. She was too big to just wear down with smaller wounds, and I was pretty sure I’d run out of endurance before Twinkle did. Was there no other way to finish this!? Around us the dozens upon dozens of spider ponies waited and watched, hanging from walls and ceiling, hiding behind crates around the far sides of the terminal station. They were making no moves to interfere with the fight, just as they’d been told to. However, even if we won and killed Director Twinkle what would all of these spider ponies do then? Would we simply be overrun and slaughtered in an act of vengeance?

Even escape didn’t seem a viable option, as we’d be leaving behind Iron Wrought, Fine Eye, Sweet Pear, and their two colts. And that was assuming we even could find a way to get out of here.

The situation seemed impossible.

Then my eyes came to rest on the train, the long boxy vehicle sitting on the rails that cut through the terminal station. An idea formed, quickly, haphazardly, as ideals always did with me. I knew nothing of what the train was beyond some kind of conveyance, that I could surmise ran along those rails. But I was willing to bet LIL-E knew what they were and probably could figure out how to operate it. There was little time to refine the notion in my head so I quickly conveyed my intentions to her, to which the eyebot slowly floated around, giving me the impression of the pony on the other end looking straight at me.

“You have a better chance of Celestia flying down from the sun to distract the bitch with a personal lap dance than this plan working, but since I have it on good authority Celestia is indisposed, and only rarely gives lap dances, I’ll go along with this.”

I gave her a grateful smile, though it was ruined a bit by the grimace of pain that followed it, “The comment was mild, coming from you. Slipping?”

“Hey, there are only so many different ways I can blaspheme against the Goddesses in a day. Got to save the good ones for really desperate situations.”

“This doesn’t count?”

“Add a few hellhounds to the mix, maybe have the Stable’s self-destruct system activated, giving us only three minutes to win, then fill the room with toxic gas that is also slowly killing us, then I’ll call it a desperate situation.”

“I’ll just take the one giant, seemingly indestructible spider pony, thank you very much,” I said and scuffed my back hooves along the ground, readying myself to charge, “Now get going LIL-E, and remember the plan is to pin her, not smash her.”

As LIL-E floated off towards the train I galloped in towards Director Twinkle, who was trying to spit more thick globs of her acidic venom, this time at Arcaidia. The unicorn filly was proving quite agile as she dove and ducked around, the purplish liquid always just inches from hitting her but never quite touching. In response Arcaidia was sending spears of ice lancing into Twinkle’s huge body, but I could see the frustration on my friend’s face as her ice was just chipping off Twinkle’s chitin. B.B and Binge had backed off slightly, the pegasus mare looking over at me as I galloped past them and shouting, “Long, hold up! What’s the plan!?”

“Everypony follow me!” I yelled to them, and B.B and Binge only looked at each other briefly before doing so, the pegasus flying close behind me while the Raider mare kept pace with me easily.

I galloped right by Arcaidia, tapping her on the shoulder as I went. She seemed to take the hint and began to gallop after me as well. Seeing all of us running off Director Twinkle gave a large and annoyed huff, an odd sound coming from the mechanical apparatus on a twenty foot tall spider pony.

“Running is pointless. I’ve sealed all exits from this chamber. Even sending your little toy to the train is a useless gesture, the exit tunnel doors are all closed. You’re trapped in here… are you listening to me!? You’re going to force me to chase you aren’t you? Argh, this is so aggravating! Now I remember why I don’t do things myself anymore.”

I heard Director Twinkle groan in irritation, followed by the scuttling ringing of her bladed and hooked legs stamping after us. We were running back through the small maze of large metal containers, crates, and barrels, and I could see the train to our left. Its dark, boxy structure was slowly lighting up as LIL-E on the inside began to do her thing, powering on the vehicle.

Now I just had to quickly communicate the basic plan to the mares running alongside me in the thirty seconds we had before Director Twinkle would catch up.

“Binge, I need you to help me make the big spider pony very, very mad. B.B, try to keep her blinded, or at least force her to shield her face from your shots. Arcaidia,” the unicorn filly glanced at me, “Vril. Ice.”

I pointed with the tip of my spear at the divot in the floor that contained the tracks for the train, “A lot of ice, do you get it?”

Arcaidia cracked an eager smile and I could see her silver eyes took on a cold sheen as she nodded, “Vira!”

“Don’t know what yer tryin’ ta do, but I’m trustin’ ya!” said B.B as she banked upwards and spun around in mid-air, letting loose a volley of shots at Director Twinkle, who was smashing through the metal containers behind us.

Binge nudged me with her nose, grinning conspiratorially, “Gonna make the yelly pony nice and angry before we deliver the final blow and find out how her blood tastes? What fun! You’ll be just like the rest of us happily dead ponies before you know it!”

I had no idea what she was talking about but surmised she was at least enthusiastic about our part of the plan and wasn’t going to question it. While B.B was shooting at Twinkle me, Arcaidia, and Binge looped to the left, heading for the train tracks. We ran alongside the train itself and I could see the lights on in the front cabin, though the angle kept me from seeing LIL-E herself in there. I knew the train was technically pointed backwards from the direction I’d want it to go, but I was leaving the details of how to work that out to LIL-E. I was not a technically minded buck, though a part of me was sorely fascinated by technology.

As I heard Director Twinkle growl in frustration at the pegasus mare who was letting loose shot after shot at her face, forcing her to shield it with one of her large scythe bladed forelegs lest risk losing another eye, I halted my gallop. I looked towards Arcaidia and gestured at the section of train track we were standing next to.

“Here. Make it slippery as you can,” I pantomimed as if I was tripping on something and falling down, and Arcaidia nodded her understanding. I glanced over at Director Twinkle. Good, she was still distracted by B.B and wasn’t watching us, wasn’t seeing what I was trying to put together.

As Arcaidia got to work, sending frosty blue beams of ice around the train tracks themselves and all the metal around the divot in the ground that they occupied I turned to Binge.

“Right, ready your best taunts, it’s time for us to become bait,” I said, hoping I was putting more confidence into my voice and expression than I was honestly feeling.

My tribe used to do this with gecko packs. One or two of the smaller hunters would go and make a big racket, draw the pack of geckos out and get the little lizards to chase them. This was done so that larger gecko packs didn’t have to be dealt with up front, but could be led to a proper ambush point. I often got selected to act as the bait. I wondered if how often I was put up to be the bait was because I was good at it, or if it was just the tribes way of picking on the pony with the outsider’s blood in his veins. Trailblaze often volunteered to help me act as bait, back then, but her mother also often refused her. That was alright, I was pretty good at causing a ruckus on my own and getting the geckos to try and run me down. This time though I wasn’t alone, as Binge’s ready grin was testament to.

“Oh yes,” she said, pumping a hoof into the air, “Let the drawing of agro commence!”

With galloped towards Director Twinkle, just as the huge spider pony gave an enraged hiss and raised the back portion of her body. From a pair of large spindly stocks on, for lack of a better term was her butt-end, I saw Twinkle finally make use of her own webbing, something she hadn’t done despite the rest of the spider ponies making liberal use of it. Unlike other webbing, which were small, single strands, these spinnerets let loose something much closer to a sheet of web, like a spreading net. B.B clearly wasn’t expecting the move and I grit my teeth as I saw her get easily trapped in the wide burst of webbing, which to my horror Director Twinkle then used to swing the pegaus mare around in the air like a lasso and flung B.B into the nearest wall.

“B.B!” I shouted as I charged forward, but Director Twinkle stepped between me and where the pegasus mare had fallen.

“May we please finish this farce now? I am not used to exerting myself to this extent and it is quite irritating! Even for the sake of acquiring food for my children this is simply becoming too much tiresome work.”

I almost abandoned the plan, just to try and get past Director Twinkle so I could check on B.B. I couldn’t tell how badly injured she was, only that her web wrapped body had slid to the floor and wasn’t moving. She might just be unconscious… but…

Stick to your plan, Longwalk. You can’t help her if you don’t deal with this first!

Even telling myself that it wasn’t easy to look away from B.B’s slumped form and instead focus on Twinkle as the huge spider pony loomed over me and Binge. I licked my lips and tried to put on a cocky grin, though I imagined any blind pony could see how fake my bravado was.

“I doubt you can ‘finish this’,” I said, “For all your big talk, all you’ve done is knock us around a little! Thought you said you’d be more than enough to do this yourself. Maybe you should call your ‘children’ back in, though I guess we’d just kill more of them then!”

I made me feel sick inside spouting off at the mouth like that, especially because I honestly had no desire to see any more killing at all, but the idea was to make Director Twinkle mad. Binge chimed in herself, and I was amazed at how easily she changed the tone of her voice to sound as if it was slathered in haughty sarcasm and arrogant self-assurance.

“Kill more? No, no, no, we’ll kill all of them! Watch them squirm and hear them scream as we pull their little gooey bits out and decorate the walls with them like pretty party confetti! Mmm, and I can’t wait to find out what they taste like!”

Director Twinkle’s large red eyes narrowed to slits, “You dare… ?”

Binge carried on, as if having a casual conversation with me, “How do you think we ought to prepare the bodies? Boil, bake, or fry? I think deep frying those big, long legs will be best.”

It was hard, but I managed to smile at Binge as if I was in total agreement with her as I said, “Oh, I’ll try anything once, so take your pick.”

Binge’s sudden look of overwhelming eagerness made me shudder a little inside, “I’ll remember you said that.”

“Enough!” roared Twinkle, mouth opening wide and fangs dripping violet venom, “If you were seeking to enrage me then you’ve succeeded, if only because you have too little respect for my intelligence that you think your foalish banter would serve to cause me to lose my composure. Now cease your prattle and die already!”

She lunged forward, again with the kind of speed one simply could not foresee in an opponent of her size. I jumped back, seeing fangs flash inches from my face. Before I could even blink a follow up attack with a scythe blade whizzed towards my head, forcing me to jump back again, feeling the tip of the blade slice through the chest plate of my barding and cutting a burning line of pain across my hide. Binge was faring about the same, ducking and back stepping rapidly to avoid Twinkle’s snapping jaws, though she was at least avoiding injury.

Despite Twinkle’s words I could tell how angry the giant spider pony was. Her red eyes were also now bloodshot, and I could see a fire burning in them that hadn’t been there at the start of the fight. Whatever I might’ve thought about the Director’s foolishness in not just approaching us openly and asking us to leave, or that she was wrong to kill anypony that just wandered into her Stable, I couldn’t deny she at least seemed to have a genuine concern for the spider ponies under her care. Talking about killing and eating them had gotten under her hide, whether she was admitting to it or not.

I saw her back end raise like it had just moments ago when she’d snagged B.B and shouted a warning to Binge just as the webbing flew out. Like before it was a wide, spreading net of strands, and the only thing that kept me from getting wrapped up was that I was able to dash around a large metal container. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Binge had barely managed to dart clear of the webbing, mainly because most of it had been aimed at me.

I rushed back out, nodding to Binge, who caught my gesture and turned to run with me. I heard a piercing whine of metal scrapping on metal and dared a look back, eyes going wide as I saw that Director Twinkle had pulled on the webbing that’d wrapped up on the metal container and was now spinning the large metal block around and around over her head like a flail.

Oh-

Twinkle let fly with the metal container, the object rushing through the air at me and Binge.

-buck-

I threw myself to the floor and felt a rush of air over my head, pulling at my blue mane, and felt a brief harsh squeal of twisting metal as the container crashed into the floor ahead of us and kept going, bouncing and flipping from the force of the throw until it hit the wall on the far side of the terminal station.

-me…

Well, that could’ve taken my head off. It made my already fairly weak feeling limbs turn even more shaky as I got back to them. Binge was faster than I was, her green coated form a galloping blur in the gloom ahead of me. I followed her lead, getting up and running as I heard Director Twinkle coming after us. Ahead was the divot with the train tracks, and while I couldn’t see Arcaidia around anywhere, I knew what to look for and could see the tell-tale glitter of ice covering a large portion of the floor and tracks. Hopefully Twinkle wouldn’t know to look for the same sign and would be too focused on chasing us.

To avoid getting caught on the ice ourselves Binge and I both leaped the divot, though I tripped over myself doing so when I landed on the other side. I rolled on the ground, pulling a muscle in my back left leg, but the injury just felt like a drop in the bucket compared to the overall state of me. I felt a hoof wrap around my front leg and help me up, looking to see Binge’s face inches from mine. Her mane was matted with sweat and honestly at this range I could tell more than ever that her hygiene was no better than any of the other Raiders she’d been with back at the school, but her eyes shone with a strange, enticing light.

The moment passed as she tapped me playfully under my chin with a spiked bit on her hoof wrappings, just hard enough to draw a bead of blood and make me wonder… just how far I should trust this mare who up until a few days ago was a willing part or a group of ponies whose hobbies included torture and cannibalism.

“Still running, aren’t you?”

I didn’t know what she meant by that, but she just turned and ran off, flicking my face with her tail. I galloped after her just as Director Twinkle reached the tracks. Her eyes were focused solely upon Binge and I’s retreating forms and not the ice beneath her. With a screeching of chitin on metal and a hissing gasp of surprise the massive spider pony’s legs flew out from under her and she fell on her side right on the tracks.

This was immediately followed by another hiss, this one of hydraulics and releasing air as the wheels on the train began to turn, the block shaped machine rapidly picking up speed as it backed up towards the fallen Director Twinkle. I could not see LIL-E in the train’s control room, connected to a terminal. She’d kept the train dark until Twinkle had been right on the tracks, but now she lit up the exterior lights on the train and sounded a horn, the deep blaring noise echoing in the station.

Director Twinkle tried to get her eight legs under her, but abruptly more ice shot down in a concentrated blue ray that spread even more ice beneath her and the spider pony fumbled about. I looked up to see Arcaidia had climbed on top of the terminal station’s control booth catwalk, giving her a field of fire for the entire station.

“Simpletons! This won’t kill-urk!”

Director Twinkle’s sentence was cut off as the train’s back cabin slammed into her side, pushing her along the tracks as the train picked up more speed. The huge spider pony tried to slow herself by digging her large scythe blade’s into the floor, causing sparks to shower out as she did so, but it barely did anything. I swallowed, seeing that LIL-E was putting a lot of speed into this. She did recall the plan was just to pin Twinkle against the closed tunnel door, right?

I breathed out a small sigh of relief as when the train slammed Director Twinkle into the sizeable metal door at the threshold of one of the station’s three exit tunnels it wasn’t with the kind of force that would’ve broken her in half. It was enough to shove her against the thick metal of the door and keep her firmly pinned between it and the bulk of the train, just like I’d explained to LIL-E. The massive spider pony was trapped, her front half sticking out one side of the train, her back half stuck on the other. Her leg’s flailed about but could find no purchase, at least not enough to give her leverage to push off the weight of the train.

“Arrgh! Free me this instant! I will then kill all of you!”

“Poor thing, she doesn’t understand how this game works at all,” commented Binge as me and her slowly approached the train.

I looked up at where Arcaidia was, seeing the unicorn filly trotting down the catwalk, “Arcaidia, B.B’s hurt!”

I gestured and that was all Arcaidia needed as I saw her nod at me and pick up from a trot to a gallop once she got to ground level. I wanted to go over there as well, to make sure B.B was alright, but I didn’t know how long the train would hold Director Twinkle and this needed to end.

LIL-E remained inside the control cabin of the train, apparently to keep just a little pressure on to keep Twinkle stuck where she was.

The air was now filled with a chorus of sharp hissing coming from all around us as the dozens of spider ponies that had been watching from the sidelines began to shift around. I was worried they might try to swarm us, but to my surprise from what I was seeing it looked like they were… arguing amongst themselves? They were gradually forming into two groups, one slightly smaller than the other, and were hissing at each other and making odd gestures with their legs.

Meanwhile Director Twinkle was growling, “What are you all waiting for!? Assist me! I command it!”

From the ceiling a particular spider pony dropped down on a strand of web, followed by a few others. I noticed this spider pony had come from the slightly larger group of the two that were starting to square off. I tensed as this spider pony landed on the floor a few paces from me.

If the long orange mane and feminine facial structure was any indication this was a mare. Her arachnid body was a light gray, streaked with strips of white. Most notable were the large rimmed glasses she wore awkwardly perched on her snout, which she adjusted with one spindly spider leg as she looked between us and Director Twinkle. To my surprise I heard an off mechanical voice issue from her, from a similar module to the one Twinkle had.

“This is over Director. Now that they’ve seen that you can fall, your ‘children’ have started to lose their fear of you.”

“Misty Glasses,” Director Twinkle scoffed, adjusting against the press of the train, twisting her head to glare at the smaller spider pony, “I knew you chaffed under my law, but does your rebellious streak run so deep you’d forsake the safety of the entire Stable!? Only I can protect us from the horrors of the surface! Only I can make the proper decisions that will ensure our survival!”

“No, Director! You would have us remain hidden in this hole without a proper food source and have us continue to be murderers. I am not alone in thinking the time for change has come,” the spider pony, Misty Glasses (why did that name sound familiar?) gestured a thin leg at me, “These strangers are proof enough it is no longer safe to simply stay hidden in the Stable. How many of us have lost our lives today simply because you insisted the ‘intruders’ had to die!?”

“Umm…” I was a tad out of my depth now, having not expected to suddenly have a supporter amongst those me and my friends were just fighting, but then again I’d noticed from the get go that more than a few of these spider ponies had been hesitating to leap into the fray, “Sorry, but, who are you?”

The spider pony looked at me, adjusting her glasses again. Her spider eyes were simple black beads that reflected the light eerily, but her two pony eyes were pale green.

“Misty Glasses, former researcher for the Ministry of Arcane Sciences Stable 104 branch, Theoretical Arcane Physics. I’ve been waiting for some time for a group of ponies to enter the Stable who were well armed enough to pose a threat to the Director-“

“Waiting!? How long have you been planning this betrayal, Glasses!?” Twinkle heaved at the train, to little avail.

“Long enough. Too long,” said Misty Glasses with a sigh, “Too many ponies have died to fill our bellies, when all of my data suggests we could hunt fauna on the surface with minimal risk, given our physical abilities in these… forms. The moment this group entered our Stable I did what I could to help them, guide them, and show them what I could of what happened here.”

That’s when her name clicked in my head. Misty Glasses! That was the name of the pony whose terminal I’d read those messages on.

“That was you?” I asked, then blinked, and glanced at Binge, “Binge, you said you had a friend who whispered things to you… ?”

Binge smirked and nodded, “Pretty shy pony, hiding in the shadows, but told Binge all sorts of helpful things!”

Misty Glasses nodded, “My control of the Stable systems was limited, but I was able to send messages to terminals your friend here and the pegasus passed by when you got separated from them. I directed them to the vehicle bay. I figured the Fully Tuned Gear would be useful against the Director.”

“So that was ya’ll?” asked a familiar voice and I turned to see B.B limping up, with Arcaidia by her side.

I smiled in relief at the white pegasus mare, “You okay?”

She waved a hoof at me, returning the smile, “’Bout as right as I’m gonna be. Arcaidia’s patched me up proper, but legs a’ little stiff still. Wings’re good, an’ that’s what counts.”

She flexed her wings at me as if to prove they were still functional. Arcaidia trotted up beside me, casually glancing at the two groups of bickering spider ponies, and the huge form of Director Twinkle pinned by the train. She looked at me curiously, her silver eyes questioning.

“Estu di vilar tu shir, ren solva?” she gestured at Director Twinkle with her hoof, and then stomped with it, “Esru di shir harvae.”

The cold look in her eyes as she turned from me and looked at the giant trapped spider pony left my mouth dry, as I didn’t have to have a translation to know what she was asking. She wanted to know if we were going to kill Director Twinkle. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, grimacing at the pain in my chest, and through my whole body, as I did so.

“Okay, let’s get to the meat of this,” I said as I took a few steps towards Director Twinkle. I was cautious, knowing she had a long reach with those scythe tipped forelegs, and she still had the ability to spit that melting purple goo. She glared at me as I approached.

“Director, I don’t want to kill you,” I said levelly, “I don’t want to kill anypony. We thought this place was going to be empty when we arrived. I won’t lie, some of my companions came for salvage, but personally all I wanted was to copy some discs so I could help a pony in my group save his family. If you let us do that, maybe take a few items my friends might want so they don’t come out of this empty hooved, we’ll leave and be out of your mane.”

“Tch, I have no reason to believe you,” said Director Twinkle with a scowl, “And even if I did, the chance you’d spread word of this Stable’s location is too high to risk. We can survive the occasional salvager or wanderer who enters our home, make them our prey to keep my children fed. But an army of Raiders? No, the dangers of the surface are too many to risk anypony leaving here with knowledge of us. My law exists for a reason; to protect my children, even if they are foolish enough to resist me!”

“Director, we are dying slowly,” said Misty Glasses, “Year by year our limited food supplies cost us lives, and surviving off of wanderers who you force us to prey upon is not only not enough, it is abhorrent! Look!” she pointed with one leg at the spider ponies, now with one group having gained enough members to clearly outsize the other, “More than half of us are against you. You were always a logical mare, before that monster transformed us into this. Think logically now! We can survive the surface. We must survive the surface; otherwise we simply can look forward to a long, slow death in this hole!”

I could see a brief moment of hesitation cross Director Twinkle’s face, a single second where she seemed to seriously consider Misty Glasses’ words. Then rage replaced that look and she said, “No. This place is mine. All of you are mine, and you will obey!”

I’d been so focused on her possibly using her long arms or acidic spit to attack I hadn’t noticed the way she’d pulled up her rear end over the other side of the train and fired off a wide spread of webbing. The white strands flew by me and gripped around Arcaidia, who caught off guard gave a small yelp of surprise as she was pulled off her hooves and dragged rapidly by Director Twinkle right up to the huge spider pony’s maw. Arcaidia struggled to turn and bring her horn to bear, but Twinkle brought a hooked arm around to push Arcaidia to her stomach and force her head to the ground, keeping her horn pointed away.

I’d taken a step forward, and I heard B.B’s revolvers clink as the pegasus mare raised them, but Director Twinkle shouted, “No sudden movements, or I will inject this filly with venom that will kill her very quickly and very painfully.”

Twinkle had lowered her fanged mouth to Arcaidia, holding the dripping fangs right above her.

My teeth tightened around Gramzanber, hearing only my heartbeat in my ears in the silent seconds that followed as Director Twinkle looked to see if we’d try making a move. When we didn’t she smirked.

“Good. Now, disarm.”

Nopony made any immediate move and Director Twinkle lowered her fangs, pressing the points against Arcaidia, the unicorn filly growling something in her language I didn’t catch but I could imagine from the tone was exceedingly unladylike. Her horn was glowing with a fierce overlay of blue light, the horn creeping with frost, but she just didn’t have an angle to fire a spell with her head pressed against the ground like that.

“I said disarm! And get this train off of me!”

Despite the way my heart was pounding in my chest I felt oddly numb and calm. I didn’t need to be all that perceptive to grasp that the moment we threw aside our weapons and freed her from the train that Director Twinkle would kill Arcaidia, and then us. It was clear in her eyes, the hardened intent to kill. I’d seen it in Crossfire’s eyes when she’d had the drop on me back in Saddlesrping. I’d seen it in the Odessa’ soldiers eyes when she lunged at me with a knife and B.B had been forced to shoot her. I’d seen it in every Raider’s eyes that’d tried to kill me, even Binge’s when we’d fought. And I saw it now, burning in Director Twinkle’s blood red eyes.

Nopony else in the room had a weapon that could penetrate that chitin covering Twinkle’s body.

Just my ARM.

I’ve made so many promises since the start of this. Spoken a lot of words. Were they all empty? I’ll help Arcaidia find her family. I’ll protect her and B.B. I won’t let any more homes be destroyed. Did I mean any of that? Do I throw those promises away because I don’t want to take the life of another… ?

Would this change me? I didn’t know. I don’t even recall the exact moment I made the choice. There was just one instant where I was standing there; staring at Director Twinkle with her fangs poised over Arcaidia, then another instant where time seemed to freeze. Not because of Accelerator, I hadn’t activated it, didn’t intend to risk it if there was a chance any trace amount of drugs in my system would cause it backfire like before. No, there was just this single instant where the image of Director Twinkle and Arcaidia was replaced with another sight, that of the cave. The cave where me and Trailblaze found Arcaidia. The place everything had changed for me. I saw Trailblaze, the gecko’s jaws clamped around her neck, the blood flowing like red rivers. I remembered that feeling of helplessness, of utter powerlessness, and the absolute unrestrained need I’d felt to save my friend.

The image of Trailblaze and Arcaidia interposed over one another, and all hesitation left me.

A single silver streak pierced the darkness of the terminal station.

I stood there, breathing hard, blood still dripping from my mouth from all my earlier injuries, legs shaking as the numbness left me and pain returned full force.

“I said… I didn’t want to kill you… ” my voice sounded hollow between heavy breaths, drained of feeling, “But that didn’t mean… I wouldn’t… “

Director Twinkle didn’t respond. She couldn’t, really. Gramzanber was embedded to the shaft between her eyes.

The massive spider pony twitched once, twice, then simply slumped, red eyes glassy with the empty stare of the dead. Arcaidia shook her head to free it from the dead grip of the hooked leg and looked over at the body, then over at me.

“Esru tu vira?”

I didn’t respond, just kept standing there. It was like I was a dreamer in my own body, only vaguely connected to it. Suddenly the floor looked very, very comfy. I began to tilt over but felt a warm body on one side of me, steadying me as a white wing draped across my back.

“Steady there Long, steady,” said B.B, looking at me with gentle calm, “Deep breaths. Yer alright, we’re alright, it’s over.”

I didn’t even notice how badly I was shaking until I felt her next to me, steady as a rock. Binge was on my other side, grinning and resting one foreleg in front of the other as she gave me what seemed to me like an appraising look.

“Mmm, that’s a good look, my little bucky-wucky. You’ll be swimming in it before long, so savor this first step into the foal’s end of the pool. Getting your hooves wet for the first time is always the hardest, but such a special moment. If only I had a camera.”

B.B gave the green mare a hard look, “Now’s not the time fer that kind o’ talk. Just leave off him, ya hear?”

“…Arcaidia… ought to get her out of that stuff… ” I said faintly and took a shuddering step forward towards where Arcaidia was already extracting herself from the webbing. I was trying very hard not to look at the slumped form behind her, or the silver spear sticking out of it.

“I got her, Long,” said B.B, “You go find a’ spot ta sit an’ rest. Yer lookin’ rather tore up, so I’ll get Arcaidia over right quick to give ya some healin’.”

Nearby Misty Glasses was starring at Director Twinkle’s body, and all the hissing arguing among the spider ponies had completely stopped. I wasn’t really paying much attention, but I did hear Misty Glasses say under her breath, “They really did it… they really went and did it.”

There were a few minutes, or maybe longer, I wasn’t sure, where I found myself sitting on my haunches against the front of the train. Arcaidia was next to me, looking me over with concern as she cast a healing aura over my body. While the injuries were fading from my body, the hollow feeling hadn’t gone anywhere. Arcaidia nuzzled me a bit, to which I tried to give her a smile, but I think the emptiness of it unnerved her more than anything else.

LIL-E had exited the train and had floated over to where Misty Glasses was talking amongst the spider ponies, all of which had gathered around us. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I heard the eyebots mechanical voice, catching a word here or there, but not enough to really follow the conversation. I think they were trying to decide what to do with us, now that their leader was… dead.

Dead…

…fuck…

I had to do it… didn’t I… ?

Somehow I couldn’t get a fully coherent thought to form. I didn’t want to. I was fine just sitting here, not thinking. Because I’m not the brightest buck in my tribe. Thinking isn’t my strong suit. Especially about complicated questions like whether or not there’d been any other way out of that situation besides… what I did.

It’s funny. For so many ponies in the Wasteland killing is just a way of life. Part of the status quo. To say you’ve killed is to say you’ve learned how to walk. There are some who don’t like it, good ponies who recognize it’s not a good thing, but they acknowledge it’s an irreversible part of the world they live in, especially if they want to live in it a long time and protect what’s important to them. Even in my own tribe this was the way of things, every hunter knowing that protecting the tribe may involve killing.

So if what I did was something that could be considered commonplace, even acceptable, by the world at large… why did I feel like I’d failed? It was a line I never wanted to cross. A barrier I'd set for myself. I felt like I'd betrayed my own ideals, breaking through that barrier. What excuse would I have in the future, when faced with others who'd inevitably seek to harm me and my friends? If I tried to avoid killing them, would I then be truly a hypocrite?

I knew I'd made the choice. I had no idea if I'd be able to make it again, but ultimately it had still been my own will that had crossed that barrier. I had no idea at all how to feel about that, so I think I spent a fair bit of time sitting there, trying very hard not to feel anything.

It took me a bit to notice Misty Glasses gray coated form standing in front of me, her eight legs clicking as they shifted about in place, one of them raising to adjust the big rimmed glasses on her nose which I noticed got misted up so that they obscured her eyes for a moment.

“It has been decided among us that you and your companions may rest and recuperate here. Those that supported Director Twinkle have… fallen in line, as it were. I’m going to unlock the armory and let your other companions out now, if you’d like to be there to keep them from reacting violently and tell them the conflict is over.”

I nodded slowly, standing and following the spider pony towards the armory door, where I saw B.B, Binge, LIL-E, and Arcaidia all waiting. The rest of the terminal station I noticed was empty. I suppose the spider ponies had gone off, in case my companions got violent again. I couldn’t blame them, we’d done a number on this place, now that I thought about it. I was surprised they were taking things so well, but then maybe I wouldn’t be so eager to start another fight with a group of ponies that killed dozens of us, including our twenty foot tall leader.

As I approached I noticed Arcaidia was carrying Gramzanber in a ice blue aura of magic, and once I was close enough she looked to me and floated it towards me, bowing her head.

“Estu dol ARM, soval.”

I looked at the spear, at its wide serrated blade. A part of me wanted nothing more than to turn it away. I felt the old familiar pressure in my head, alongside a impulse to take hold of the spear. If it’d just been that feeling alone I might have just refused to take the spear back, but I also felt a comforting and familiar presence from the spear, and encouraging feeling almost pulsing from the silver weapon. I went up to Arcaidia and took the spear into my mouth.

“Thanks for holding onto it,” I said, and then added after a pause, “Sorry if I… worried you before. You’re alright?”

“Esru gloval, ren solva,” she said with a small smile.

“Can we get this door open now?” asked LIL-E, “I’m worried about Sweet Pear. She was badly injured when the door closed.”

“Do not worry,” said Misty Glasses, “Even if you cleaned out our medical bay, the equipment still there should be more than enough to heal the injuries you have suffered. Now let me just get onto the terminal here. The Director’s wireless control of the system was problematic, but since she’s no longer a factor, I should have no trouble overriding the lockdown.”

“Wireless, just like me then,” commented LIL-E, “So, you and her, are you both cybernetically enhanced?”

“The module that allows me to speak to you is a cybernetic implant, yes, but that is all I have. Director Twinkle modified herself far more extensively, and forbade anypony else from doing the same, not that many of us wished to… ah, here we are.”

Misty Glasses clicked a few last buttons on the terminal monitor that was beside the armory doors and they slide open with a heavy hydraulic thud. We were immediately greeted by the tube of what I recognized as a rocket launcher, which caused many of my companions to gasp and dive to the side. The rocket launcher didn’t fire, however, and soon Iron Wrought poked his head out from behind the weapon.

He looked at us sprawled on the floor, covering our heads, and he coughed apologetically.

“Sorry. Does this mean we won?”

Before any of us could respond there was a growl from behind him and Iron Wrought was roughly shoved aside. Out came Fine Eye, double barreled shotgun floating next to the salvager unicorn’s head as he looked around with angry, wide eyes.

“Where is she!?” the unicorn stallion shouted, “Where is that damned Raider that fired those missiles!?”

Iron Wrought gave a harsh curse under his breath, “Fine Eye, calm down! LIL-E, get in here, quick. Sweet Pear needs a healing potion or ten, and I don’t have any medical skills.”

“I am not calming down!” shouted Fine Eye, “My wife is dying because you all have a Raider in your midst, and she fired missiles at us!”

Iron Wrought face hoofed and just gestured for LIL-E to enter the armory, which the eyebot did after giving me a brief look, to which I nodded for her to go ahead. Misty Glasses had scuttled off to the side, a scared look on her face from the enraged and armed Fine Eye. I’d moved close to him. I didn’t need more of this, not now. There had been enough violence and death for one day.

“Fine Eye, we’ll help your wife. She’ll be fine. Just put the gun down.”

“Don’t tell me things you don’t know for sure!” he yelled in my face, and I could see he was shaking, almost as much as I was when I’d killed Director Twinkle, “You haven’t seen her. She’s… she’s… ”

I was about to say more to try and calm him down, but Binge chimed in, hoof rubbing her chin.

“Hmmm, I didn’t think any of Geary’s party favors would make such big bangs, so I’ll just say ‘my bad’ on that one. There wasn’t an instruction manual, so I just had to button mash for that portion of the game. At least it wasn’t a quick-time event. Can’t stand those.”

Binge’s speaking up finally clued in Fine Eye, who I imagined had been seeing with tunnel vision up until now and hadn’t really noticed the Raider mare off to the side. When he did look at her I saw the way his eyes widened and there wasn’t a second of hesitation as he swung the double barreled shotgun around to aim at Binge’s face.

Ancestors damn it not again-!

I’d shoved myself between them without thinking about it, only intent on putting something between Binge and that barrel before-

BAM!

I’d been shot before, and that had always hurt. This didn’t hurt. It was just one second being in my right senses, and the next being flat on my back, unable to breath, and the world echoing with a distant ringing.

For the record, this made the fifth time I’d passed out thus far in my journey. Just for those who were keeping count.

I woke up in a much more pleasant manner than how I’d lost consciousness. There was a soft bed beneath me, and pleasant, if sterile lighting above me. As my green eyes flicked open I had to squint them for a moment against the florescent light in the ceiling above me. I was tucked into a medical bed, I could see, one of several situated in a somewhat dusty but otherwise clean and fairly decent sized room.

A tube ran into one of my hooves leading to a metal pole that had a plastic bag, dripping some liquid into me. I was a tad unnerved by that, but didn’t dare touch the tube. Looking to my left and right I saw the room had a number of tables covered with what I figured must have been medical equipment. There was a door to my right, and beside that a desk with a soft glowing terminal.

At this terminal was Misty Glasses, her spidery legs clacking away at the terminal keys with soft, rhythmic taps. I quirked my eyebrows as I noticed she’d, somehow, fit on a white lab coat awkwardly over her arachnid shaped body.

As I stirred she stopped typing on the terminal and turned to me, adjusting her glasses as they nearly fell off her nose. She smiled, as she approached me, her synthesized voice coming from the module built into her throat.

“Good morning Longwalk, or rather, good afternoon. I suppose it is around three o’clock after noon. How are you feeling?”

What a simple question; but even as I opened my mouth to answer I found I couldn’t really say much. How was I feeling? My body, shockingly enough, felt fine. But I couldn’t really account for the rest of me. Too much too fast. My brain stabbed an image of Director Twinkle’s dead eyes at me and I had to resist the urge to vomit. I swallowed back bile and tired to meet Misty Glasses smile with one of my own, but could barely get my lips to twitch.

“I’m here,” I said, “Um… where is here?”

“Medlab,” she replied, “You’ve been recovering for three days, almost a full twenty four hours longer than Fine Eye’s wife took to recover.”

“What happened?” I tried to sit up in bed experimentally, finding that I could without much trouble. There was a faint tightness to my chest, and my limbs felt pretty stiff, but otherwise I didn’t feel any pain.

“Well, after your companion shot you in the chest, shielding that mare Binge, the rest of your companions subdued him. I think that unicorn filly Arcaidia was inches from turning him into a popsicle, but your pegasus friend talked her down. Both you and Fine Eye’s wife were rushed to the medlab here where I spared no effort in saving your lives. You’re welcome by the way. Sweet Pear I believe her name was, well she’d suffered severe burn and shrapnel wounds from the Fully Tuned Gear’s missile payload, but honestly her injuries looked worse than they were. You were the harder case. The buckshot tore through the metal barding and pieces of that barding got lodged in your lungs. I had to be very careful in extracting them, and utilize Arcaidia’s healing Crest Sorcery in conjunction with a direct healing potion IV drip to ensure all the damage was repaired. I would recommend you take it easy for the next few days as well, as your body has had no small amount of trauma to overcome and you shouldn’t push yourself.”

I absorbed that information, slowly sitting back down in the bed and running a hoof through my messy blue mane. My stomach grumbled suddenly. Misty Glasses sighed.

“I’ll see if I can find something for you to eat. I’m afraid my Stable’s food issue was quite severe, however. I’ve already sent a party to the surface to see what can be foraged. Perhaps they’ve returned.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “My friends might have something. Just… Ancestors above I have so many questions for you.”

“I imagine you do, but they can wait until you’ve gotten your hooves under you. I’ll go let your friends know you’re awake now.”

“Can you answer just one, then, before you go?” I asked, and she paused at the door.

“Was there any chance at all that Director Twinkle was bluffing? Would she really have killed Arcaidia?”

I asked because, from all I could see, Misty Glasses had at least known Director Twinkle on a somewhat personal level. While I had dozens of questions in my head about how Stable 104 came to be how it was, where the spider ponies came from, what Crest Sorcery was and how they knew about it, and what all the things they were researching here was… those questions sat at the back of my mind in comparison to the big on at the forefront of my brain.

Had there been any other way out of that situation?

Misty Glasses looked sidelong at me, slowly adjusting her glasses again, her expression solemn.

“The Director was not a mare who bluffed. She would have killed your friend.”

“Oh… ” I said.

“I’ll go get your friends now,” Misty Glasses said after an uncomfortable pause, leaving me to my thoughts.

I lay there in the bed, trying to rest, and feeling anything but restful. I should have been relaxed, or even felt some sense of accomplishment, right? My friends were safe, for the time being, despite a little hiccup with Fine Eye. I’d need to get that sorted out as soon as I could, but I was glad Sweet Pear had survived her injuries. Theoretically there was now nothing to stop us from getting a copy of Dr. Lemon Slice’s research to give to Iron Wrought so he could protect his family, and the rest of us could go link up with Doc Sunday. After that… well I’d finally be able to actually take Arcaidia to the NCR to find Persephone.

I should have been happy things had turned out so well…

The dead, red eyes of Director Twinkle stared at me from the depths of my own mind.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added – Dead Throw: You may not like it, but when it comes to thrown weapons, you’re becoming a real killer. All thrown weapons deal 50% more damage on a critical hit.

Skill Notes:
Speech: 50
Survival: 50

Current Conditions: Poisoned cured!

Bonus EX-File: Party Weapons “B.B’s Custom Dual Revolvers”

Dmg: 35
Crit chance multiplier: x1
Capacity: 6 (.357 magnum)
Weapon spread: 0.2
Value in caps: 2000
Skill Req: Guns 50
Special Bonuses: +1 LUK, +10% AP regeneration

Author's Note

Annnnnd, here we are, chapter 11, or as I liked to call it 'the boss battle that took too long'! Just about finished with the Stable 104 arc though, just some rest and wrap up for our party, then its off to Skull City! Geez, for a place that so central to the story sure is taking me awhile to get there, but hoping you folks are enjoying the ride so far. So let's thank our usual suspects: KKat of course for creating FoE in the first place, and Media Vision for creating Wild Arms. Without either, I'd never have thought to write this story. Also big thanks to all commentators and readers in general; especially you folks who keep finding my many, many typos and errors and letting me know to fix 'em.

Chapter 14: Dangerous Eyes

Chapter 14: Dangerous Eyes

The cold concrete stairs switched back upon each other once, leading to a shattered wooden door that was already hanging off its hinges, a huge chunk blown out from both it and parts of the plaster walls around the frame. My Pip-Buck’s soft light provided just enough illumination for me to see ahead of me as I barreled through the door into a tight corridor with a simple gray felt carpet, broken light fixtures, and doors lining either side as it stretched ahead.

Immediately I noticed the heavy smell of blood, and didn’t have to go far before I saw the corpses. Woven together with the smell of the blood was the thicker scent of sour, sickly tang of filth that identified the Raider bodies before I got a clear look at the patchwork bloodied armor, spiked like rusted bushes. The Raiders, of which I counted four as I cantered quickly down the hall, were all dead. One mare bore blackened scorch marks that burned holes through her chest and out her back, yellow eyes rolled up and glassy. Another stallion had half of his face melted away into a small pile of green goo, some of the liquified flesh pooled beneath his mouth, open in a now silent death scream. The others were dead in similar fashion, and remembering Saddlespring I recognized the work of Odessa magical energy weapons.

Whatever had been attacking the Odessa squad, then, had either been with the Raiders, or waited until after the Odessa soldiers had dealt with the Raiders to attack. It was clear now Silver Mare Studios had been a Raider nest, as glancing into some of the open doorways as I passed them revealed small, filth stained dens that indicated these Raiders had been living here for some time. Old bodies hanging from hooks, decomposed to the point where (thankfully) I couldn’t tell if they had been ponies, or just Wasteland critters, and horrifically violent and pornographic graffiti plastered the walls and ceiling. A part of me wondered if Raiders decorated their homes in this just to keep themselves reminded of what they were; as if to reinforce their special brand of crazy on a daily basis. I know I might go a little crazy if I had to wake up to rotting bodies and gore porn every morning.

I tried to ignore it all as I hurried forward. I could hear my companions behind me, the blue glow of Arcaidia’s light filling the corridor, mixing with the green light from my Pip-Buck. Binge made a small cooing sound as we passed the bodies. I also heard a small muttered curse from Arcaidia in her language. B.B, wings flapping as she hovered through the air behind me, said, “Long, slow yerself down a’ mite, could be more Raider’s ‘round here, and they like ta leave-”

I felt my leg trip something small and thin, hearing a snapping sound. I felt an impact on my back and the woosh of something over my head as I was forced to the ground. I rolled, seeing that B.B had thrown herself on me, and above us, just where my head would have been had B.B not jumped me, a steel girder swung across the hallway from one of the adjoining rooms.

“What was that?” I asked, seeing the broken wire I’d tripped over. B.B gave me a rueful look as Arcaidia and Binge caught up to us.

“Like I was sayin’, Raiders like ta leave traps, an’ Odessa peagsi’d probably floated over most o’ them. Gotta take it slow, Long, if yer takin’ the lead. Or you’ll lose yer head.”

I gave B.B a thankful nod as we both stood. I eyed the still slightly swinging steel beam warily, but also with a confused tilt of my head, “I don’t remember there being any traps like this in the school.”

Binge tittered, playfully batting at the steel beam with a hoof, “Boss Bloodtrail didn’t like us leaving our toys laying around and spanked any bad colt or filly who didn’t clean up after themselves. Friendly Fire was so sad to have to put away her bouquets.”

“Bouquets?” I asked, resuming a still quick, but somewhat cautionary trot down the hallway.

“Grenade bunches, designed ta drop on ya an’ blow in seconds,” muttered B.B, “We trip one o’ those an’ any o’ us that survive’ll be scrapin’ pieces o’ the others outta their mane’s fer days.”

Fun. I was feeling properly foolish for having rushed in here, but urgency still coursed through my limbs, tension building in my spine. I hadn’t heard another scream or gunshot since we burst down the stairs and that was bothering me. I sent a small prayer to the Ancestor spirits to let us be in time to do the Odessa squad some good, but the silence of the building was not a good sign. Living ponies, scared, and fighting for their lives, tended to make a lot of noise. Dead ponies, not so much. It didn’t help that my E.F.S wasn’t picking anything up yet.

The gratuitous amounts of Raider decor made it difficult to tell what purpose any of the rooms we passed might have once served, though from their size I guessed they couldn’t have been used for much besides habitation, maybe. When we got to the end of the hall it split into a T-junction, and I paused as I noticed a miraculously intact poster hanging from the wall before us that had avoided the worst of the Raider’s love of horrific, bloody graffiti.

The poster was of a mustard yellow pegasus mare with a striking mane and tail of multi-toned dark hues from jet black to smokey gray. She had magenta eyes, and was wearing a rugged green shirt and odd hat of a style I’d never seen, with a wide, hard brim and roundish dome top. The pegasus was shown in an arctic climate, reminding me of the scenery I’d seen in Arcaidia’s dream. She was facing, with a daring expression on her face, a large stone opening in the side of a mountain cliff, with pillars bearing strange writings on it flanking the entrance. Standing in the entrance was another mare, a blue unicorn with a curled, silver mane, violet eyes, and wearing a black military uniform of some kind. The unicorn was smirking at the pegasus, clearly blocking the path into the mountain as she reared up, brandishing a thin bladed sword.

The poster was headlined by bold orange lettering, declaring, ‘Daring Do and the Search for the Guardian’s Shrine! Coming to theaters this summer!’

Below that in smaller print ‘Starring former-Wonderbolt Fleethoof as Daring Do! And co-starring, in her first major film appearance, The Great and Powerful Trixie, as Madame Rapier!’

There were other posters lined along the wall to either side of this one, though those ones were so slathered with grime that it was hard to tell what they depicted. However I could tell they seemed to be of similar style to this mostly clean one; showing ponies in various poses and in exotic scenes and locations, usually with some kind of bold title in big eye-catching lettering. What was all this?

I gave the posters a cursory glance, but my curiosity was subdued by the knowledge pony lives were still possibly in danger, so I turned from it and started for a distant, green glowing sign I saw down the left path of the T-junction that read ‘Stairs’. Behind me I heard B.B make a small, happy exclamation as she spotted the poster.

“Ha! Not ta pop the serious mood o’ the situation, but... mine!” the pegasus declared as she snatched the poster rolled it up carefully, and tucked it into her saddlebags,“Lucky find. Didn’t think I’d ever spot ‘nother poster wit her in it, an’ in a’ movie ta boot!”

I assumed she was talking about the blue unicorn, Trixie. The same one that’d been on the poster back at her father’s tavern in Saddlespring. It occurred to me that she had mentioned that she’d taught herself those magic tricks and performance skills because that old poster had inspired her, and the poster had probably burned up with the rest of the town. That being the case I decided to cut her some slack about looting while we were in the middle of trying to rescue ponies. Wasn’t like she paused for more than a second to grab the poster, and I had to slow myself down to a canter as I kept my eyes out for more trap wires anyway. Still, my anxiousness was rising with every step. What had made the howling sound we’d heard on the roof?

“Maybe it was the cry of the dead, inviting us in to play?” whispered a voice on the back of my neck and I nearly jumped out of my own hide, spinning around to see Binge’s grinning face. The mare’s dark green coat all but blended into the shadowy surroundings, barely revealed by my Pip-Buck’s light or Arcaidia’s soft glowing horn.

“Binge! Damnit don’t do that!” I said, blowing a hefty snort as I tried to calm my racing heart, then I paused. How did she know what I was thinking!? The Raider mare licked her lips, yellow teeth flashing in the dark.

“Don’t do what?” she asked in a sickly sweet tone. I shook my head. I swear, that mare was going out of her way to shorten my natural lifespan! Binge suddenly whinnied as she was lifted in Arcaidia’s frosty blue magic aura, the unicorn filly floating over the Raider mare. Binge smiled wide and innocently at Arcaidia.

“Shivol bir behave herself. Get in back of place of formation, guard rear,” Arcaidia punctuated her statement by blasting a frosty bit of air in Binge’s face, not harming the other mare but causing a bit of her highly tangled and unruly mane to ice up at the tips. Binge licked her lips, saluting with a expression of what might have been mock seriousness, or actual seriousness. Impossible to tell with Binge.

“Ma’am, yes ma’am! Rears shall be guarded with excessive and enthusiastic levels of violence!”

Arcaidia rolled her eyes and floated Binge to the rear of the group. I only spared the scene a quick look before focusing my attention ahead of me. Almost to the next set of stairs I almost didn’t notice the dripping of something warm and wet on the back of my neck. I froze in place and slowly looked up, raising my left foreleg to shine my Pip-Buck light towards the ceiling. The warm wetness dripped onto my face, but I didn’t wipe it away, too busy transfixed by the sight above me.

An earth pony stallion had been nailed to the ceiling with what appeared to be broken off stakes of wood, probably from some of the shattered doors nearby. He was wearing an Odessa uniform, the stark white material now soaked red in many places, and the plates of his combat armor torn off him in chunks. The uniform confused me for a moment, as I thought Odessa was a pegasi and griffin only organization... then the stallion groaned in pain, twitching in place on the stakes that impaled him. Including twitching the stubs of wings that had been torn off, little bloody nubs I hadn’t noticed earlier.

“Ancestors... Arcaidia, we need healing here!” I said, as I reared up on my hindlegs and put a hoof on the pegasus’ face. He was a dark brown coated pony, with a two-toned purple mane, mostly dark, but with a lighter streak running through it. As I touched him he cracked open light brown eyes.

“P-please… no...” he shook his head, and his eyes flicked about rapidly, dilated and delirious.

B.B had flown up first, with Arcaidia right behind. B.B had a stoney look on her face as she examined the other pegasus, hovering next to him and putting a hoof to his brow. She sucked in a sharp breath and let it out slowly.

“Fella’s got a’ stake through his gut an’, all his limbs. Pullin’ him down is gonna be risky. We could do more damage an’ end up killin’ him.”

I turned to her, “Can we do anything to lower the risk? If Arcaidia uses her healing spell?”

B.B looked pensive, “Gonna hafta do it real careful. Arc’ll need ta hit him with her spell and hold it while we hoist him down.”

I nodded, and then thought about the medical supplies she’d taken from Stable 104, “Do you have any of that Med-X stuff, to help him with the pain?”

B.B’s frown deepened, “I do. Didn’t want ta use it less I had ta. Arc, ya mind gettin’ yer spell going while I dose this fella?”

While B.B and I got into position to start pulling out the wood stakes in the Odessa soldier Arcaidia’s horn flared a brighter blue, the familiar ring of crest symbols appearing in the air around the horn as she cast her healing spell. The pegasus’ body was wrapped in blue light, causing him to instantly groan in response. B.B withdrew a Med-X needle from her saddlebag and carefully injected the pegasus stallion, which eased his twitching. With a nod exchanged between us B.B and I both started to quickly pull the stakes free. Blood flowed freely, and the pegasi grunted, but the combination of Arcaidia’s healing spell and the Med-X seemed to keep him from panicking or feeling too much pain. B.B caught the Odessa soldier before he fell. The Odessa trooper let out a pained whimper, and I felt him try to pull weakly away from my grasp, even as he shivered in my hooves. He fearfully lashed about with his limbs, trying to push away from us, but his attempts were weak as a newborn foal’s.

“No... no... NO! Lea… leave me… alone.”

His eyes were wild, terrified, and he clearly wasn’t seeing us, but something else. Some nightmare vision of whatever had done this to him. I noticed now that aside from the wounds from the stakes in his limbs and gut, and the missing wings, the stallion had been wounded in numerous other ways. Claw marks ripped along his chest and neck, or criss-crossed over his face. The claw marks were all shallow, the kind that would not be fatal, but still bleed profusely. The were wounds made to inflict suffering, not to kill.

“Did Raiders do this?” I asked, wondering at the claw marks. I’d never seen a Raider with claws, specifically, though given the imagination of Raiders I didn’t doubt one of their twisted minds could easily fashion a gauntlet of some kind out of animal claws.

Binge was actually doing as she’d been told, to my shock, and wasn’t looking at the pegasus but instead was dutifully peering into the darkness we’d come from, but she still responded, “Silent, silent, silent, too much for party ponies like me who want to hear the screams. If the pretty pegasus was a party guest, where’d the party go?”

It took me a moment to understand what she was saying. If Raider’s had done this to him, then that would’ve meant the rest of his squad were probably dead, and we’d be knee deep in Raiders right now. But it seemed like the Odessa soldiers had killed the Raiders here. Whatever had done this to this poor stallion, it’d happened after the Raiders had been dealt with.

The pegasus had only marginally calmed down, though his face wasn’t twisted up in pain anymore. Arcaidia’s healing spell had halted the bleeding from what I could see, and closed up most of the shallower wounds. However the pegasus stallion was clearly exhausted and suffering from massive blood loss, and Arcaidia’s spell hadn’t closed the deeper wounds from the stakes. I knew nothing of medicine, but even with a healing spell I was worried it was only buying him time. I looked up at B.B, the only pony in the group I knew had any kind of medical training. She was giving the soldier a strange look, one that was part ire and part sympathy.

“B.B, is he going to be okay?” I asked. She looked up at me, eyes unreadable.

“Ain’t rightly sure. Healin’ spell will keep him from dyin’ on us, short term, but I’m guessin’ this buck won’t last the night if he don’t keep gettin’ hit up the spell, pump full o’ healin’ potions, or gits to a’ proper medical facility. ‘Summing he’d even want our help. Pegasus without wings, ain’t somethin’ many take to easy. Can break a fella’s spirit, an’ this one’s lookin’ mostly gone in the brainpan already.”

I looked at pegasus stallion, trying to imagine what it might even be like to lose something so intrinsic to oneself as those wings. Maybe it’d be like losing a leg? Something about that comparison just didn’t seem apt, though.

“We’re going to do all we can for him,” I thought quickly over options, eager to try and find the rest of the Odessa squad but unwilling to leave this buck alone, “Arcaidia, Binge, do you guys mind going back to the roof with this stallion? Give him a healing potion if you can, but either way leave him under LIL-E’s guard. B.B and I will go ahead, and you two can catch up to us. Arcaidia, I’m assuming you can track my Pip-Buck with yours, so you can find us quick?”

Arcaidia nodded, “Yes, easy find. Mistake, though, breaking group. Enemy soldier not worth risk. Why do this?”

I took a deep breath and let it out, trying keep my own anger in check. I really didn’t want to argue about this. Especially because Arcaidia had a perfectly logical point; it was stupid to split up in a dangerous situation to help a soldier who was part of an organization that was hunting us. But we were already here to help the Odessa troops, so no point splitting hairs over the risks of doing so, now that we were in the thick of it.

“Because I’m asking you, Arcaidia, to do this for me,” I said, “Please.”

Arcaidia gave me a hard look but dipped her head in a nod and floated up the Odessa pegasus in her magical field, “Do not go far, ren solva. No dumb risks while I gone!”

“Icydeath’s right, no having too much fun while we’re playing doctor with the yummy soldier buck! No shaking hooves with Mr. Death until we get back!” said Binge firmly, her poofy tail flicking back and forth, with a knife dancing in its grip. How did she do that with her tail anyway? It was a neat trick.

“B.B and I will be careful,” I assured them and turned to B.B, “Right?”

She snorted, crossing her hooves over her barrel as she flew beside me with short hovering beats of her wings, “I know I’ll be all sorts o’ careful like. Ain’t me they’re worried ‘bout, its yer reckless flank. No worries Arc, I’ll reign in our thick-headed white knight so he don’t git himself dead.”

Arcaidia nodded, “Good. Trust you much, bruhir. Watch back of ren solva. I return soon with shivol bir, if she behave and not make me turn her into block of ice.”

The two quickly departed, heading back the way we came. I didn’t imagine they’d take more than a couple of minutes to get the soldier to LIL-E, who could at least keep an eye on him until we found the rest of his squad, dead or alive as the case may be. That’s why I didn’t want to wait for Arcaidia and Binge to get back; we’d used up too much time as it was and I had a sinking feeling about what we’d find further in.

With B.B flying just behind me we carefully moved down the hallway to the next set of stairs, gingerly avoiding another trip wire. This one was connected to a large cinderblock filled with rebar spikes attached to a swinging chain, which was in turn wrapped in barbed wire. The cinderblock had a smiling face painted on it with what I had an unsettling suspicion wasn’t mud or chocolate.

I shined my Pip-Buck light down the stairwell, the door hanging open, its knob melted away. Looking down at the bottom of the stairs I saw another set of dead Raiders. That along with the burns and bullet marks along the walls I got the impression of an intense firefight here. Amid the Raider bodies most bore wounds from magical energy weapons, but at least one poor mare looked like she’d had her throat torn out by what I could only assume was either a knife or a large claw.

As we passed the bodies I paused, the dots floating around my vision changing as the Eyes Forward Sparkle on my Pip-Buck finally started picking things up. Four dots appeared ahead of me and a little to the left. I understood the E.F.S designated hostiles and non-hostiles somehow, with green meaning more or less friendly, and red meaning I could expect violence. I was understandably confused then as these four dots kept flickering back and forth between green and red, never staying on one color for very long.

“I think we’ve found our ponies,” I said, B.B flying up next to me, her guns aimed out the door to the next floor, “Not sure if they’re going to shoot us or not. My Pip-Buck apparently can’t decide.”

“They better keep their mouths offa them trigger bits,” B.B said grimly, “Don’t screw ‘round Long, they shoot, ya ain’t stoppin’ me from shootin’ back.”

“I know,” I told her, jaw tightening, “I won’t ask you to not defend yourself, just... just give me a chance to talk it out, and don’t spook them. An injured gecko will bite even its own kind.”

She gave me an odd look but said nothing as we exited the body strewn stairwell and moved into the third floor. We exited out into what looked to be a break room. Old round metal tables, some still standing, others overturned, covered a wide room with a few ripped up couches shoved up in one corner. The smell of the bodies in the stairwell mixed with the smell of two century old junk food, though judging from the growths on some of the tables ‘food’ was not really an applicable term anymore. I saw a couple of doors to the right, both next to each other, and bearing on them odd signs that looked like ponies; one wearing a dress, another not.

“Restrooms,” B.B explained to me as she saw where I was looking, “Ain’t likely ta find much in ‘em, though sometimes ye’ll luck out an’ there’ll be a first aid kit in there.”

There seemed to be something odd to me about putting medical supplies in the same place ponies did their business, but I was the uncivilized tribal pony, so what did I know? Turning from the restrooms I looked across to the only other door out, and blinked. Not only was the door gone, but a good portion of the wall had been completely ripped apart, as if something huge had just torn through the plaster and wood like it was little more than paper.

I trotted forward, carefully poking my head through the massive hole in the wall. The moment I did I nearly jumped out of my own hide as the eerily quiet building was filled with a thunderously loud gunshot. I instinctively ducked, and angled Gramzanber like a shield to cover part of my body, but it was unneeded as another gunshot echoed loudly from nearby, but nothing hit me, or even nearby me.

“Ain’t comin’ at us,” B.B said as she poked her guns out the hole and peeked around the corner, “It’s comin’ from down here.”

She was aiming to the right down a hallway that was partially blocked by a collapse in the ceiling from the floor above. Just after the gunshots I heard a few lighter snapping hisses that sounded like a magical energy gun, and faint cursing. I picked myself up and started galloping towards the sounds. Behind me B.B shouted, “Dang it Long, wait up!”

I slowed down, heeding B.B’s words, though every instinct in me told me to get to the sound of fighting as fast as possible so I could help protect lives. But B.B was right, if I just rushed in I was likely to get shot. Forcing my pace to slow I worked my way around the debris from the collapsed ceiling, B.B right on my tail. I heard her sniffing and glanced back at her. B.B’s nose was twitching and she sniffed the air, and I saw her face tighten in sudden worry. Like I’d noticed several times before there seemed to be a slight red hue to the rims of her eyes.

“Long,” she said as her nose twitched again, “I know this smell.”

The gunfire intensified, then I heard a high pitched scream ahead, a pony crying out in pain. I could tell B.B was scared, her eyes wide, but that scream, filled with terror and despair, washed away any notion I had that I was about to turn back.

“No time B.B, we got to move!” I said, not breaking into a full gallop, but trotting as fast as I dared as we went down the hallway and rounding a corner. Just as we did so I heard B.B speaking, voice tight with fear.

“Long, we gotta run! Its the-”

Around the turn in the hallway I saw it. This hallway went past several doors on either end, one of which had been torn to pieces, much like the wall behind us had been. An Odessa soldier clad head to tail in thick white armor, the same kind of sleek demonic looking suits with the scorpion-like tails I’d seen before, was standing in the hallway and was blazing away with two energy guns that fired pulses of red light. Beside the Odessa pegasus was a griffin, male, wearing a suit of white armor made of ceramic plates that covered his chest and legs, along with a round sturdy looking combat helmet that covered one of his eyes with a glowing piece of glass. This griffin blasted away with a large shotgun with a drum clip as large and some pony’s heads.

What they were shooting at was a nightmare I remembered.

“-Hellhound,” B.B finished past clenched teeth.

It was a Hellhound, the very same hulking dark monstrosity that we had encountered in the Wasteland during the fight with the radscorpions. Its thick black hide was taking the shotgun blasts and energy weapon shots with indifference. What little damage the weapons were doing didn’t seem to bother the creature. The massive bipedal, vaguely canine creature took up most of the hallway, its hide blending in with the shadows and making it hard to make out even amid the flashing lights of gunfire. Its glowing eyes glared at the Odessa soldier’s shooting it, but was ignoring them in favor of what it held in one of its claws.

In its claws another Odessa pony struggled in vain to get free. He was a young buck, small in frame, with a yellow coat and short red mane. He wasn’t wearing the same heavy armor as his compatriots, instead wearing a less bulky white uniform that was more lined with belts storing what looked like medical supplies; a medic? The Odessa medic was crying and screaming, beating at the Hellhound with his hooves. I saw a broken energy rifle on the ground by the hellhound’s feet.

“H-help me!” the medic cried as the Hellhound’s grip on him tightened, claws digging past his barding and into his flesh, red seeping into the white uniform. The Hellhound could have just ripped the pony apart, yet seemed to be taking its time, slowly putting pressure on, and I could see in the creature's bestial features that it was watching both the Odessa medic and his comrades... and was it smiling?

That’s when it hit me. The Odessa soldier from the top floor had been left for dead after being cut up by dozens of claw wounds, none of them fatal, but put there to inflict pain. The Hellhound wasn’t trying to kill the Odessa medic; yet. He was trying to make it slow. He was enjoying watching. This creature could tear through walls, but had let the Odessa squad barricade themselves in a room, thinking they were safe.

This Hellhound wasn’t hunting just to kill, or for food.

It was trying to hurt its prey. It was trying to maximize their fear and suffering, not just kill them.

Anger flared to life inside me, pushing back my initial shock at seeing the Hellhound and the instinctive fear such a beast seemed to naturally inspire. Without saying a word or wasting another moment I surged forward. I barreled past the two still standing Odessa soldiers, careful to duck my head low and maneuver between their lines of fire. I heard exclamations from both of them at my sudden appearance, and both halted firing for just a moment out of surprise. The Hellhound itself turned its gaze on me as I charged it, its head cocking slightly at me, as if more curious than threatened.

I didn’t care if the Hellhound considered me a threat or not, all of my attention focused on striking. I dove in, jumping the last of the distance and landing right in front of the Hellhound, and I tore my head upwards, aiming Gramzanber’s serrated upper edge at the join of the elbow of the Hellhound’s arm that was holding the Odessa medic.

My jaw was jarred as the ARM was stopped in its tracks by a backhand from the Hellhound’s other arm that was so fast I barely saw more than a dark blur. I was flung back like a toy tossed by an angry foal. I kept my mouth gripped on Gramzanber, and rolled with the fall, dizzied and bruised, but on my hooves again quickly. However the Hellhound hadn’t stayed put. Using the Odessa soldier's surprise and the time I needed to recover from being flung, it retreated with remarkable speed into the darkness of the hallway, dragging the crying medic with it into the shadows.

“Suture!” shouted the Odessa pegasus in the scorpion-tail armor, flapping his wings and rising into the air as if to give chase, but the griffin moved over and gripped his comrade’s leg with one talon.

“Corporal, you go after him and that thing will pick you off too!”

“I don’t care! We’ve lost too many! Not one more! Let go of me Bernard!”

The griffin, Bernard, narrowed golden eyes and his beak moved into a hard scowl with more dexterity than I would have imagined something like a beak could twist with. I could see pain in the griffin’s eyes, however, even as he spoke.

“Can’t do that, Glint. You got to keep it together,” Bernard said, then glanced at me, and B.B who flew up next to me, “Besides we got another problem.”

Another voice called from inside the room with the smashed door, a female voice, “G-guys!? Everypony alive out there!? Sh-shit, did it get Suture?”

“Spring, stay in there!” said the pegasus, corporal Glint I was assuming, then he glared at me. Or, well, I guess I couldn’t tell if he was glaring or not. That helmet covered his face with a glowering visage that was somehow both insect-like and demonic, with two huge glowing orange bug eyes. I couldn’t see the pony underneath, but the helmet gave an intimidating impression.

He looked over my weapon, then me, then at B.B, “Did you two come because of my transmission?”

I nodded, though my eyes kept looking down the hallway where the Hellhound had dragged the medic, Suture, “We did. Let’s skip intros though, we need to save your friend.”

Glint made a sound that was like a sudden sharp intake of breath before saying, “I hate it, but Bernard’s right. Suture is as good as dead. Every time that fucking thing has taken one of my squad it just... it just stays one step ahead of us, never letting us engage, as it takes its time killing them. Let’s us hear every scream, but runs off every time we try to give chase!”

Even as he said that I heard an echoing scream from down the hallway, Suture crying, begging, “Pl-please... help! Aaaargh!”

I shuddered, and next to me B.B growled, “I knew Hellhounds could be downright nasty, but this things a’ piece o’ work.”

My anger was only growing, though it was joined by a little shock as I looked at Gramzanber’s blade. The spot where the Hellhound had deflected it was scored slightly by faint claw marks. Claw. Marks. I’d deflected energy weapons with this thing, and had cut through metal with it! What were that Hellhound’s claws made out of that they could damage Gramzanber!? I shook off my surprise. It didn’t matter how fast or deadly the Hellhound was, I had to stop it!

Controlling my breathing and shoving down my fear I turned away from the Odessa soldiers and started down the hallway. The Hellhound wasn’t showing up on my E.F.S, but Suture’s position was marked by a flickering green dot.

“I came here to help, and that means getting everypony out that I can. I’m going after your friend. Help or don’t.”

Glint and Bernard looked at each other, and after a second another pony poked her head out into the hallway from the ripped open doorway. She was also an Odessa soldier, a pegasus mare wearing the standard combat armor I’d seen in Saddlespring, her coat white and little wisps of a sand colored mane sticking out from under her helmet. Her eyes were a familiar sharp green and I recognized her the moment she recognized me.

“You!” she shouted, bringing up a tube covered magical plasma rifle, her eyes flashing with anger, “Glint, its him! It’s the ARM user that’s with Target 02! The ones that killed Summer!”

B.B had her hooves up and her revolvers aimed, and both Glint and Bernard tensed, the griffin slightly raising his shotgun but not quite pointing it at us, while Glint turned his helmet towards me and the scorpion tail of his armor twitched.

I slowly raised one placating hoof, speaking without dropping Gramzanber, slightly angling it so the large flat of the blade was between me and the energy weapons pointed at me.

“Okay everypony, and, uh, griffin, let’s not get all trigger happy. My friends and I came because you folk called for help. Any issues we got with each other can wait until after we don’t have a murderous nine foot tall monster trying to kill us, sound good?”

“Like hell!” snarled the Odessa mare, “We can’t trust you! You’re working with the enemy, and we lost dozens of our own because of you, including my... my sister...”

I’d figured as much. She bore a clear resemblance to the pony that had chased B.B and I after we’d fled the Saddlespring Ruins, and B.B had been forced to kill. This mare had the same green eyes, now slightly wet with unshed tears as she aimed a plasma gun at me, mouth just barely keeping from biting down on the trigger bit.

“Missy, I tell ya now if yer teeth bite that bit it’s gonna be the last thing ya ever bite down on,” warned B.B, her eyes narrow, her mane and tail bristling. The mare turned her glare from me to B.B, and was about to speak but Glint held up an armored hoof.

“Private Spring Breeze, stand down,” he said in an authoritative tone. She shot him a look, eyes wide.

“Glint!? You can’t be serious! You’re going to trust them!? We lost half our platoon because of them! Summer Breeze-”

“I know damned well what happened to Summer!” snapped Glint, but his tone quickly softened “Spring, I miss her too. I miss a lot of ponies we lost. I don’t trust these two either. But they’re here, to help, just like I called for. Right here, right now, I need to get my squad out of this death trap. I’d take help from Discord himself, if that’s what it took.”

Spring Breeze took in a few shaky breaths, clearly torn between following her superior’s orders and wanting to turn me and B.B into puddles of goo. After a heaving breath she lowered her weapon and stood at ease, “Yes sir.”

Bernard lowered his shotgun, his feathers along his head ruffling, “Right, so now that we’re not shooting each other, now what? We making a break for it?”

Echoing off the walls the distant screaming of Suture could still be heard, and I bristled imagining what the Hellhound must have been doing to the Odessa medic, remembering all too clearly the way the soldier we’d rescued on the top floor had been impaled on the ceiling. Arcaidia and Binge ought to have delivered that wounded soldier to LIL-E on the roof and should have been on their way back by now.

“I have friends that should be here soon,” I told Glint, looking square into his helmet’s orange insect-like eyes, “We found one of your squad alive on the floor above us. Brown coat, purple mane. He’s still alive.”

The griffin make a quick, halting and choking sound, his gold eyes going wide, “Nosedive is alive!? Where is he!?”

“I had my friends take him to the roof to treat his wounds and keep him safe. I got another friend up there guarding the roof as our escape route,” I explained, “Anyway, my point is when my friends catch up with us, we’ll have this thing outnumbered seven to one. We have to at least try to get your other squadmate back.”

Bernard’s talons gripped the handle of his combat shotgun tightly and the griffin looked at Glint, “Corporal, forget what I just said; if Nosedive survived, and these ponies saved him, then maybe we got a shot at getting Suture back.”

“Did a one-eighty real quick there, didn’t you?” asked Glint, but I heard a smile in it, even behind the helmet, which he turned towards me, “I can’t guarantee what happens after we leave this building, but as long as we’re in here and you stay true in trying to help my squad, then I’ll forget who you are and who you’re with. Work for you?”

I nodded firmly, “Works for me.”

B.B lowered her guns, though she remained tense, and her nose twitched repeatedly. I was hoping her sense of smell was a sharp as I suspected, because I intended to rely on it to track the Hellhound. Between her nose and my Pip-Buck, I had confidence we’d be able to find it, no matter how hard it tried to hide.

The soft echo of hoofbeats reached our ears and a pale blue light shone from the hallway, pushing back the shadows and illuminating the forms of Arcaidia and Binge as they worked their way around the rubble strewn hall and joined us. Arcaidia immediately narrowed her silver eyes coldly at the Odessa soldiers, but to her credit she did not aim her starblaster at them, merely approached me with a curt, proud manner that reminded me, oddly enough, of the Odessa soldiers military manner.

“Pegasus pony still breaths,” she said to me, “LIL-E watch, but not happy on roof. Says should be with us.”

Upon seeing her the Odessa squad all tensed, Spring Breeze giving Glint a sidelong look as she whispered, not all that quietly, “Target 02”

“Say that a little louder, Spring, don’t think they heard you,” muttered Bernard with a roll of his eyes. Spring gave him a sharp look and stuck her tongue out at him. Glint sighed, his wings fluttering. They were encased in his armor the same as the rest of him, and I found it fascinating to watch how the many faceted metal plating moved so fluidly with the wings. What kind of magic and technology went into a suit like that? I sort of wondered if the spider ponies back at Stable 104 could make something similar?

“For now, we’re ignoring her,” Glint said, gesturing at Arcaidia.

I felt a tug on my tail and glanced back to see Binge giving me a welcoming, if crooked smile of yellow teeth, “Are we eating chicken tonight?”

I blinked at her, then rapidly shook my head, “No! They’re friendlies. For the moment. I think.”

She giggled at me, her dilated blue eyes looking at Bernard in a way that made the griffin shift uncomfortably and adjust how he was holding his shotgun so that it was vaguely pointed in her direction. I stamped my hoof to get everyone’s attention and cleared my throat, “We’re going after the Hellhound. B.B, can you still smell it?”

A brief shadow passed over her features, but she nodded, her brown tail twitching, “Sure can, an’ the poor buck it’s got. Lot of blood in the air, ain’t sure how long we got ‘fore the fella kicks it from blood loss alone.”

“Our best chance is to box the Hellhound in,” I said, thinking back to my tribe’s hunting tactics. Being able to surround the prey and cut off its escape was important, because you usually only had one shot at taking it down. With this Hellhound, we’d need to surround it and limit its movement to have a chance. A part of me was wondering, though, did I intend to kill the Hellhound, if I could? It was clearly intelligent. It was also pretty damned clearly malevolent. Like I’d decided after my talk with LIL-E, I’d just have to focus on saving Suture, and kill only if I saw no other choice. Maybe, once it lost its own prey, and was wounded badly enough, the Hellhound would flee?

“How are we going to ‘box it in’?” asked Spring Breeze, still giving me the stink-eye, “It can burrow through walls, or the floor, and is faster than any of us.”

“Waitasec,” said B.B, “If it can go through walls why’d ya’ll barricade yerselves in a room? Wouldn’t that have been kinda pointless?”

“We tried to get to the roof, but that’s where it killed three of my squad. I knew it was trying to keep us in here, so I decided holing up and calling for help was our only remaining option,” said Glint, a tightness entering his tone, “I thought the walls would at least slow it down.”

“To answer the question though,” I said, looking at Spring, feeling uncomfortable meeting her eyes but unwilling to look away from the hate an accusation burning in those green orbs, “We split into two groups and try to catch it between us. B.B can smell it, and I can track Suture with my Pip-Buck, so we’ll take the lead, any objections?”

“None,” said Glint, cutting off Spring before she could voice what was a clear objection from her frown, “I’ll go with you and Target 02, and Bernard and Spring with your other two friends. Agreed?”

I cocked my head at the Odessa soldier, wishing I could see his face behind that expressionless helmet. I wondered why he chose that set up? He was putting himself at a disadvantage by coming with me and Arcaidia by himself. We could easily team up against him, if we needed to. Maybe that was the point? He was trying to show me some trust? That blank, demonic helmet was giving me no answers, though, so I just nodded.

“Agreed.”

We got moving, following B.B’s lead at first until we reached a turn off in the hallway, one leading to the right, the other continuing on ahead. Checking my Pip-Buck’s local map feature I could see the hallways wrapped around several sets of rooms, and it looked like there was a single large room taking up the entire second half of this floor past that. B.B’s nose sniffed the air and she looked to me, nodding down the hallway past the turn off.

“It went thatta way, but I’m catchin’ a whiff o’ it strong ‘nought ta I’m sure it ain’t off this floor yet.”

B.B led her team down the turn off, Bernard having moved up next to her, while Spring Breeze hung back alongside Binge. The Odessa mare looked nervously over Binge, who just gave Spring that giant crescent grin of hers. As they went down the hallway turn off and I proceeded forward past the turn off, light shining down the gloomy corridor from flashlights mounted on the Odessa trooper’s helmets, I whispered a silent prayer to the Ancestor spirits they would be okay. Next to me, Glint gave me an look, tilting his head.

“What was that?”

“Huh?”

“What did you just whisper?”

“Oh, just a quick prayer. Asking my Ancestors for a little luck and protection,” I explained.

Glint continued to look at me a moment longer before shaking his head and then trotted on in silence. Arcaidia was projecting her horn’s light in front of us, completely illuminating the hallway ahead. I picked up on the trail of dark blood droplets that were no doubt from Suture being dragged this way. The sounds of the Odessa medic’s cries had stopped, but that didn’t mean he was dead. It was possible the Hellhound could hear us coming and was keeping Suture quiet... in fact, it didn’t have to keep holding onto the pegasus. The Hellhound could have easily stashed him in any of the rooms on this floor, knowing we’d at the very least be able to follow the blood trail...

Which would mean we’d be walking right into a trap.

I stopped, throwing my hoof out to halt Glint. Doing so was the only thing that ended up saving the pegasus soldier’s life as a Hellhound claw smashed through the wall to our right, slashing through the air right where Glint’s head would have been if I hadn’t stopped him trotting forward.

Things began to happen quickly. I tried to slash at the Hellhound’s extended arm, but had to duck away to avoid getting gutted by the Hellhound’s second claw that came bursting through the wall, showering me with plaster and wood chips. Glint swore and flew back, firing pulses of red magical energy at the claws, to little effect. Arcaidia said something sharply in her own language and her horn came alive with crest symbols forming around it as she cast a spell.

The Hellhound finished what it started and came ripping through the wall, growling with a rumbling noise that vibrated in my very bones. I turned to get Gramzanber lined up a thrust at the creature’s chest, but it was far faster than anything its size had a right to be. Before I knew it I felt a snap of pain in my chest as the Hellhound bunched one claw into a fist and slammed me so hard in the guy that it lifted me off the floor and sent me smashing into the ceiling. As I fell, stunned, part of my brain wondered; why had it used a fist on me instead of its claws? It could have skewered me, easily, in that instant.

I hit the floor, coughing, and heard the familiar buzz of magic as Arcaidia unleashed a torrent of ice shards at the Hellhound. The conical spears of ice smashed into the Hellhound’s dark, thick hide, icing over some of the creature’s skin but failing to penetrate. The beast fixed Arcaidia with a glare of glowing eyes and snorted, seemingly unimpressed.

Then Arcaidia shot it with her starblaster.

That impressed it more.

The Hellhound recoiled from the brilliant lance of silver light fired by the starblaster, a part of its hide burned from the bright beam. I was just getting back to my hooves and was shocked. Arcaidia’s starblaster had never failed to turn what it hit into a pile of char. It had hurt the Hellhound, but that was it. Arcaidia herself seemed surprised, looking at her starblaster as if it had betrayed her. Unfortunately the Hellhound took advantage of that surprise bursting forward with that same shocking speed it’d hit me with.

“Arcaidia!” I cried out, surging forward myself, wanting to activate Accelerator to intercept the Hellhound. However I was more aware of the nature of the pressure I felt in my head that signified my connection to Gramzanber; and knew the pressure hadn’t built enough quite yet for me to use that power. I was stuck relying on my own speed, and it wasn’t enough to reach Arcaidia in time. Whatever was holding the Hellhound back when it hit me apparently didn’t apply to Arcaidia as I saw the creature’s claws descend towards the unicorn filly, who was trying to backpedal away from the incoming deathblow.

Suddenly Glint was there, having flown right by Arcaidia in a low flying maneuver that had him skimming upside down along the floor, his twin beam guns blazing away. The red beams stitched a path from the Hellhound’s head all the way down to its crotch as Glint flew between the Hellhound’s legs, landing on his back as he did so and skidding a few meters before flipping to his hooves. The Hellhound roared, I think more from the indignity of having its groin shot, rather than any real damage the magical beams managed to do.

Glint’s stunt bought me enough time to get to the Hellhound and slash at it with a huge sideways swing. The Hellhound twisted away from the blow, but I felt Gramzanber pull along the creature’s side and saw the blade lash a light cut past that seemingly impenetrable hide. My sense of accomplishment was short lived, however, as the Hellhound bunched one claw into a fist again and with a distinctly annoyed snort smashed the fist into my back. Tight corridors were just not good for dodging, or at least that’s how I was going to explain things to B.B when she inevitably would chew me out for getting injured so much again. I smacked into the floor, the air knocked clean out of my lungs, and a pain in my spine that heavily suggested I’d bruised it.

“Matta esru dol shivate!” Arcaidia snarled, a new series of crests appearing around her horn. The crest flared and instead of an ice attack, I instead noticed an incandescent light blue shimmer appear around her body, Glint’s, and my own. The Hellhound seemed confused for a moment, but then kicked me as I tried standing again.

I couldn’t dodge and took the Hellhound’s clawed foot in the gut, but was surprised when, while I was still hurled backwards, the pain was significantly less than I’d expected. The shimmering blue field around me had seemed to flare and absorb a large chunk of the blow.

Landing on my feet, I looked at myself, then at Arcaidia, who grinned at me.

“New Crest Graphs found in place of spider ponies. I not one-trick pony!”

The Hellhound looked between us all for a second, a look of intelligence and contemplation on its face that contrasted sharply with its bestial features. Then it smiled, lips pulled back to reveal its rows of razor teeth. It reached its claws up and sunk them into the ceiling. For a moment I was confused as to what it was doing, but that quickly became obvious as it tore at the ceiling, pulling out and around with its claws. The entire ceiling groaned as it’s supports were torn apart and in seconds the entire thing started to come down.

Arcaidia was on the other side of the Hellhound from me and I saw her throw herself back the way we’d come, running away from the collapsing ceiling. Without thinking about it I tried to rush towards her, but I felt hooves dragging me back and a voice shouting in my ear.

“Run!”

It was Glint, pulling me away from the collapsing ceiling. I was reluctant, but I had to trust that Arcaidia would get clear. I’d be doing her no favors by getting crushed. So with a growl of frustration I turned and ran with the Odessa pegasus away from the falling debris. I had no doubt the Hellhound wouldn’t even be slowed by the collapse, as it seemed to treat this entire building like one giant playground it could move through with impunity.

By the time the noise and dust settled Glint and I were catching our breath against the wall of another T-junction, the hallway behind us now blocked off by the fallen ceiling. We did not have long to recover, as the rubble before us shifted and then blasted outward in a shower of plaster dust. When the dust cleared we saw the Hellhound filled the hallway, its baleful glowing eyes glaring at us as it let out heavy, growling breaths.

“Buck me,” said Glint, “What does it take to kill one of these things?”

I let out a grimacing sigh, “I’d just be happy to get us all out of here alive.”

“I think our friend here has other ideas about that,” Glint replied, and though I couldn’t see it behind his helmet, I could hear the exasperation that was masking fear and frustration.

The Hellhound took a single, menacing step forward, saliva dripping from its snarling jaws, and I and the Odessa pegasus exchanged a look.

“Run?” I asked

“Run!” Glint confirmed.

We proceeded to haul proverbial flank down the hall to our right, heading for where theoretically B.B, Binge, and Glint’s two squad members would have ended up if they’d continued on their path. I could confirm this with my E.F.S, seeing the four green dots clustered together somewhere to my right. There was also the fifth green dot, indicating Suture, somewhere directly ahead. So the Hellhound had stashed him somewhere to come ambush us.

It was small comfort, as the Hellhound let loose a hair tingling howl and I could hear it ripping up the floor as it tore after me and Glint. Glint was flapping his wings, able to fly faster than gallop, and I was barely keeping pace. Neither of us chanced a look back. There was no need to; the sound of floor being torn apart and the steady, growling breaths of the Hellhound was more than enough to let us know how fast death was approaching behind us.

C’mon, c’mon, I could really use that speed boost right about now! I thought frantically, mentally probing that sensation of pressure from Granzanber. Still not at the point where I could use Accelerator. Close, but not quite.

Glint and I saw a door ahead, with no turn offs or other directions we could go. I was worried having to stop and open the door would take too much time, but Glint had a simple solution to that as the Odessa pegasus fired away with his magic beam guns, the red pulsing lights burning into the door’s wood and its metal knob. The knob turned bright red and melted, and Glint shouted, “Break through!”

I didn’t argue, and we both hit the door at the same time, shattering the weakened wood. Splinters dug at my face and I had to close my eyes to protect them, but I made it through. Beyond the door was a large, rectangular room that looked like it ran the length of the building. What little light my Pip-Buck generated illuminated cubicles with small desks and old terminals, lined in neat rows before us. The far wall held a number of boarded up windows, and above the tall ceiling a few old fans lazily hung, covered in dust.

We didn’t have time to take in more than that as the Hellhound burst through the door behind us. Glint, taking advantage of being winged, went up towards the ceiling and darted off into the darkness. I instead dove into the lines of cubicles, scrambling away from one very pissed off Hellhound. The creature tore through the neck high cubicle walls and intervening desks like they were made from sand. I rolled away from one overturned desk and ran past an old water cooler, the contents of which had ceased looking much like water a long time ago.

I paused a second as my E.F.S showed me Suture’s blinking dot rapidly shift to the left in my vision; not due to any movement on his part I imagined, but my own. I must have been close enough that his marker was shifting position quickly. On top of that, I noticed Glint’s dot meet up with a cluster of others at the far end of the room and in the shrouded gloom could pick out several lights, some from Odessa helmet lights, the other Arcaidia’s frosty blue horn light. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad she’d gotten away from the collapse and linked up with the others.

My relief was short lived as I heard a grunt behind me and turned just in time to see the Hellhound heft the water cooler I passed by and chuck it at me. The water cooler hit me in the side full force, bursting apart and splashing me with mucked up water and knocking the air clean out of me as I was propelled by the force of the blow into, and through, another set of cubicles. I felt the impact, but it seemed subdued, not nearly as painful as it should have been, I suspected because of the spell Arcaidia had cast over me.

I heard a deep, throaty series of grunts, and while trying to recall how to breath I looked up to see the Hellhound’s shoulders shaking as it looked at me. It was laughing at me! Despite my daze, I gave it a gesture with my forehooves I hoped was universal in its meaning. Given the way the Hellhound stopped laughing and snorted, returning a similar gesture with one of its hands, it understood me just fine.

Wiping blood from my nose, which had apparently taken a bit of blow when I smashed through the cubicle, I heard a soft whimper to my right. I glanced over to see Suture’s battered, bloody yellow form huddled in another neighboring cubicle. His left wing had been pinned to the floor by a length of sharp wood that looked like it’d once been a chair leg. The pegasus looked terrified, brown eyes wide as he looked at me.

I gave him my most reassuring smile, “Don’t worry, we got everything under contro-”

My sentence was cut short as the Hellhound surged forward, gripped my tail, and lifted me into the air. I kept from yelping and dropping Gramzanber, instead trying to get the spear around to slash at the Hellhound’s legs, but it was having none of that. The moment I twisted to attack, it gripped my tail tighter and spun me around once, twice, then thrice time before releasing and sending me flying across the lengthwise of the room. I had a brief moment of enjoying the feeling of being airborne, perhaps the pegasus part of my bloodline liking the feeling of air over my coat, and I even got a look at my companions as I flew by them, managed a brief wave at a very confused looking B.B and a worried Arcaidia, before my flight was rudely interrupted by a wall. Arcaidia’s shield spell seemed to have trouble subduing that particular impact.

While I was trying to remember who I was and what I was doing and why my head seemed to be implanted in a wall I felt grimy hooves wrap around my flanks and a muffled female voice say.

“Come now my little fun times bucky, this is no time to be making kissy face with walls. You should at least take it out on a date first before being so forward.”

Yup, that was Binge. The earth pony mare showed remarkable strength as she got a solid grip on my and yanked my head free of the wall, my entire face and mane plastered with dust and wood chips. My head was still ringing as I looked up at Binge’s smiling visage, the mare helping me up with a hoof and steadying me before I fell over. I heard gunshots, both the heavy physical roars of B.B’s revolvers and the water boiling hisses of energy weapons and glanced to see the others were laying down an entire hurricane worth of fire downrange at the advancing Hellhound. The Hellhound had picked up a desk and was using it as an impromptu shield as it slowly pushed its way down the length of the room, despite the storm of bullets and energy blasts pelting it.

Binge patted my head and held up Granzanber for me. I must have dropped the large silver spear when I’d hit the wall. I gave her a grateful nod and took the spear, though as I did so Binge leaned down and whispered, “Your blood tastes like cinnamon.”

With that she gave my nose a lick, my still bleeding profusely nose, and danced away with a giggle on her lips. I would never understand that mare. Shaking my head to clear the proverbial cobwebs I rushed to join the others.

B.B, Spring Breeze, and Glint were all airborne, their weapons firing non-stop, save for brief pauses to reload. Glint’s red beams and Spring’s green plasma balls gave contrasting illumination to the room alongside Arcaidia’s blue magical light. My unicorn filly companion was at the very center of the group, standing atop one of the cubicle desks, her horn a beacon the others seemed to rally around. Her starblaster was out and she seemed focused more on using it than throwing ice magic downrange, which made sense given her ice had seemed less effective against this Hellhound before. Her starblaster’s silvery lances of light were the only things the Hellhound was putting effort into dodging, the beastly form sidestepping with its incredible speed and reflexes from the silver bars of light the starblaster sent its way. From the deep frown on Arcaidia’s face I could tell she was frustrated with her inability to land a hit.

On the ground, Bernard had propped his combat shotgun on top of a terminal and was laying into the Hellhound full bore, seeming to focus his fire on the desk the Hellhound had grabbed as a shield. The griffin gave me a look as I came up next to him.

“Shit, you’re still breathing after getting smashed into a wall? Dirt ponies are made out of some stern stuff. You see Suture over there before getting tossed?”

I was still a little mind-fogged, but answered “He’s over under one of the cubicles. Thing pinned his wing to the floor.”

Bernard made an angry squawking sound, beak twisting in what I figured was a griffin’s version of a scowl as he shouted towards the Hellhound, “Monster! You don’t fuck with a flier’s wings!”

If he thought Suture having a wing pinned was bad, wait until he saw the other soldier, Nosedive’s, entire lack of wings. I decided it was best not to say anything right then, though. The griffin seemed pissed off enough already.

The Hellhound had gotten within ten meters of our position and I saw Glint and Spring seem to pass a look between them, some kind of understanding of action, and I saw the two split off, flying to either side of the Hellhound. B.B, seeing the move, took off as well, flying directly above the Hellhound, all but hugging the ceiling.

The three fliers, despite one of their number not being from the same group, moved with almost instinctive precision. The Hellhound’s shield became quickly useless as each pegasus flew a rapid circling pattern all around and above it, sending shots into the beast from all angles. B.B had stopped using her foreleg revolvers and had drawn her .44 magnum in her mouth, sending accurate shots into the Hellhound’s head. Shockingly even that wasn’t enough, the Hellhound growling in annoyance but its skull deflecting the heavy slugs. Glint and Spring’s energy weapons were scoring little black marks on the Hellhound’s already dark hide, but it occurred to me, that despite the skill of their maneuvers, they just weren’t doing enough damage.

“Binge, we’re going in!” I told the Raider mare, “Go for the legs.”

Binge gave me a very eager grin and wagged her tail about happily, and I noticed the sharp gleam of the wide bladed kitchen knife that she’d called a ‘Cosmic Knife’ while she gripped in her mouth the other weapon she’d gained from Stable 104; the strange motorized knife with the chain saw teeth.

As we charged in I saw the Hellhound snort and throw the shattered remains of its desk into Glint, catching the Odessa soldier mid-air and sending him crashing into a filing cabinet along the inner wall. Spring cursed and tried to fly to his aid but had to bank away to avoid the Hellhound’s slashing claws. B.B, spotted me and Binge as we rushed the beast, and gave us cover fire, rapidly letting lose another six shots from her .44 and keeping the Hellhound’s attention on her darting form.

That distraction allowed Binge and I to get close, and I whipped my head in a slash at the back of the Hellhound’s legs. At the same moment Binge dove past the Hellhound’s front, her tail flicking about with the Cosmic Knife in its grip, a metallic streak in the darkness. Her mouth gripped the handle of the strange knife with the chain-link teeth, and it hummed as the teeth spun, Binge slashing with the weapon at the same time she struck with the Cosmic Knife, going for the Hellhound’s legs. Both our attacks struck home and I saw blood spurt from the thick hide of the Hellhound. The creature howled as Binge and I passed each other in a cross pattern and rushed to get distance before the Hellhound could counterattack. B.B’s distraction had worked well enough, we’d gotten in and out before it had a chance to respond.

Turning, I saw the Hellhound had gone down to one knee and was glaring at me and Binge with baleful glowing eyes. To my shock, despite the wounds we’d just inflicted on its legs, the Hellhound stood back up, and almost instantly crossed the distance to where Binge and I stood with a single powerful leap. How could it do that after we’d cut the tendons in its legs!? I didn’t have time to question, having to angle Gramzanber before me like a shield as one claw flashed down and skidded along the ARM in a shower of silver sparks. The Hellhound certainly hadn’t held anything back with that blow! Even blocking the force nearly crushed me to my knees and I heard wood splinter and crack under me, the ancient floor of the building stressing under the impact.

I heard a gasp of pain to my left and glanced to see Binge had thrown herself away from the Hellhound’s other claw, but had taken a nasty trio of gashes along her right flank, the Hellhound’s claws parting through her security barding like it wasn’t even there. The Raider mare hobbled back, her tail flicking again like a living thing, a poofy green serpent, and the Cosmic Knife cut a reprisal slash across the Hellhound’s hand.

“You okay Binge!?” I asked as I parried the Hellhound’s follow up swing, jaw aching from the force of the blow, and was a little too slow on my own counter slash, the Hellhound nimbly bounding backwards from Gramzanber’s edge.

“Toasty!” she replied, which if I wasn’t in a deadly battle with a mutated monster capable of cutting me in half I would have given her my best ‘Huh?’ look.

The Hellhound crouched, ready to charge me, or so I thought, but it was suddenly thrown off its legs by a spike of ice that jutted up from the ground underneath it, sending the Hellhound tumbling. Arcaidia, standing well back, smiled in satisfaction as she pelted the Hellhound with a follow up barrage of ice shards conjured above her head. The damage the ice did was minimal, but Arcaidia was just using the ice to throw the Hellhound off its game before lining up a shot with her starblaster. The little beam weapon spewed another line of brilliant light at the beast, hitting its shoulder and making the thing roar in pain.

I felt a surge of hope that we had the Hellhound on the ropes.

I saw Suture, his wing torn loose from the wood that’d kept him pinned, shakily get to his hooves and stagger from the cubicle the Hellhound had stashed him in. The yellow coated, small buck looked pale and confused as he looked around, and I saw the Hellhound surge to its feet right in front of the Odessa medic. The Hellhound’s teeth were pulled back in a full snarl, its eyes containing rage. That rage was directed at Suture and I saw the Hellhound raise a claw, bringing it down at the injured pegasus.

“Suture!” I heard a voice yell and a brown form surge past, rustling my mane with the wind of his wingbeats. Bernard flew forward faster than I’d have given the large griffin credit for and shoved his comrade aside.

The blow meant for Suture instead hit Bernard. The Hellhound’s claws cut through Bernard’s combat armor and split the griffin straight down the center of his back, a gout of gore and blood coating the broken cubicles all around.

I’d been moving forward myself, intent to throw Gramzanber, but Bernard had moved faster. I hadn’t thought fast enough to use Accelerator, even though at that moment I realized I’d just reached enough pressure to use it. Too late. Too damned late. Bernard had a look of mild surprise on his face as one half of him went forward, while the other half didn’t. His front half skidded to a sloppy stop, the griffin, in his last seconds before his brain caught up to the message that he was dead, turned around and fired a last shot from his combat shotgun at the Hellhound. Then he simply went limp, eyes going empty.

Suture raised his head from where he’d been shoved to the ground and looked over at his comrade, eyes wide, lips trembling. He mouthed something but I couldn’t hear it. My own ears were roaring with blood from my suddenly blazing heartbeat. I noticed B.B hovering near me, reloading her .44, slapping rounds in with a speed loader and snapping the cylinder closed with practiced ease. She was saying something, frantic, but I couldn’t hear, even when she started firing.

Accelerator

My vision turned cobalt blue, throwing the dark room into bright contrast. Gramzanber felt alive in my mouth, a heated extension of my body, and my emotions. I thought, maybe, I understood a little of what LIL-E meant when she talked about the fury she felt when she first killed Raiders. It was a hot, blinding thing, that called for blood. My moral mind didn’t want to kill the Hellhound. My heart, on the other hoof, wanted to skewer it’s head on my spear. I figured cutting its arms off would be a suitable compromise. It couldn’t complain, if it was just going to go around killing and torturing others. It didn’t need those arms.

I get grumpy when things kill people I’m trying to protect.

Its not a positive quality, but I’m learning to live with it.

With my now boosted speed I threw myself at the Hellhound. I thrust Gramzanber’s serrated edge at the clawed hand that’d taken Bernard’s life, the claws still dripping the griffin’s blood and bits of his innards. With everything moving in slow motion around me I could see the Hellhound’s features clearly. Including the way its eyes snapped to lock onto me, with a speed and awareness that I didn’t think should have been possible.

Its hand moved. Not as fast as I was, but fast enough that the Hellhound saved its arm from Gramzanber’s edge. My surprise lasted just long enough for the Hellhound’s other claw to slash down with speed I could match, and hence dodge, but that alone left me wanting to gape. I thrust again, not believing the Hellhound was doing this. It twisted aside, only taking a light scrape from my spear. It managed a counter, a back blow that I had to duck under.

It was keeping up with me while I was using Accelerator!? I could practically dodge bullets while in this state! I breathed hard, trying to calm myself. I was faster, I could see that much. The Hellhound’s own ridiculous speed and reflexes were just letting it keep pace. I had to press harder! I launched myself into a relentless series of thrusts and slashes, refusing to let up, even as my heart beat faster and faster. The Hellhound danced away from my attacks, deflecting them where it could, and rolling with slashes that turned what would have been grievous injuries into flesh wounds. It was not purely on the defensive either, managing several slashes at me amid my own blaze of attacks that I couldn’t fully dodge while maintaining my attack. My own golden gecko reinforced armor barding was put to the test as the Hellhound’s claws cut several lines through it, burning bloody slashes on my chest and the side of my barrel. Like the Hellhound, though, I managed to keep my wounds of the shallow variety.

For a single minute that felt closer to an eon, me and the Hellhound exchanged blows. I didn’t notice we’d pushed each other across the entire room, destroying cubicles as we went. I didn’t notice where my companions were. I just saw the Hellhound, its claws, and the blinding silver edge of Gramzanber, all framed by the electric blue tinge of Accelerator.

-isten to me! You have to stop! Longwa-

The voice snapped through my consciousness, for just a second. I almost lost my concentration. I was certain the Hellhound was tiring. Its arms seemed to slow, its shoulders sagging. I saw saliva dripping from its ragged breaths, and perhaps just a flash of worry in its otherworldly glowing eyes. I knew if I could press just a bit further I could finish this! It’d slip, I’d get its arm, and then... I didn’t know. Kill? Perhaps with its arms gone it’d run. The thought for some reason made me want to laugh. Just a little more...

-aid you have to stop! You can’t take anymore of this! Can he hear me!?

Again that voice. Female. It sounded both faint and distorted, like it was coming through from another room, or another place. So familiar. Who? What was she saying? I had to stop? But I was winning! I was...

I was using Accelerator far longer than I’d ever dared use it before!

With a sense of cold panic I cut off Accelerator just as I jumped back away from the Hellhound, which had its back pressed against the wall. The world turned back to its normal color again and for a second I felt nothing. Then my heart pulsed once and horrible, fiery pain twisted through every centimeter of my body, wracking me from my gut all the way to every extremity. I screamed, or at least I was pretty sure I was. I stopped hearing things but I could feel my throat making the noise. My vision dimmed, and a blackness closed in around me. When I was able to see clearly again I was looking at the floor, blood covering it that I was fairly certain I’d just coughed up, if the coppery taste on my tongue was any indication.

I was being dragged back and I saw a very pissed off looking B.B, her pupils dilated around her pretty violet eyes as she fired her revolver at something while pulling me away by the tail. I craned my head to see the Hellhound, its body covered in numerous small gashes, being battered by B.B’s gunfire. That was soon joined by a curtain of icicle spears thrown by Arcaidia, who had jumped up on a table to get towards me and B.B. I could see concern in the unicorn filly’s eyes to match her fury.

“Ren solva! Alive?” Arcaidia called out.

“Idiot is alive alright!” said B.B, “Gotta keep him that way! Where’d that damn Raider go!?”

“Here, bird of prey! Naughty dog, playing too hard with the little puppy,” said Binge as she seemed to materialize out of the shadows, “He’s very sensitive, you mean doggy!”

I didn’t know where she got them from, they just seemed to appear in her hooves as she stood on her hind legs, but Binge started throwing knives at the Hellhound with remarkable volume. Aiming for the wounds already there, some of the knives even managed to sink in.

I tried to speak, or stand, but found I could do neither. Pain still churned through me. I saw something float over in a field of Arcaidia’s levitation magic. Gramzanber. I must have dropped it. I always do that. Tether. Needed a bloody tether. Thinking was getting hard.

“Spring Breeze,” I heard Glint saw somewhere I couldn’t see, “Can Suture fly?”

“He’s barely able to walk Glint! I don’t think he’d make it if he had to fly, but I’ll carry him if I have to!”

“Right, blow open the windows! We’re flying out of here!”

I heard the thrum of magical plasma weapons firing, and B.B dragged me back to a spot where I could see Spring Breeze and Glint both trying to blast open the boarded up windows, with Suture laying on the ground between them. I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t thought to just tell them to do that to begin with. They might have made it out with all their comrades still alive then. Never enough time to think.

There was an ear splitting roar and I glanced back at the Hellhound. Its wounds piled up, the beast had thrown its head back in a ear splitting roar. It hurled itself into the air in a powerful leap, and as it sailed through the air it occurred to me where were all standing very close to the spot where I’d felt the floor crack earlier.

“R… run...” I managed to croak to B.B, who gave me an odd look just as the Hellhound hit the floor, claws first, and ripped.

I felt the ground shudder. A series of shouts, followed by a loud, splintering crack. Then the floor fell apart beneath me and the entire world around me became sound and pain.

I don’t think I was out for very long. I woke up quickly, my body still feeling like a large slab of bruised meat. I was laying on something soft, which I took as a good sign as I looked up at a dark, wood ceiling. A wavering pool of white light provided illumination, which as I turned my head I noticed was coming from a few plastic tubes set on the ground. They reminded me of larger versions of the same glowing plastic sticks Fine Eye and his salvage family used, only white instead of green.

I was laying on a mattress of an unusual shape set along the brick wall in what looked to be a large room, large enough I couldn’t see the other walls aside from the one to my right, which was marked by a massive pile of fallen rubble. I recognized some broken cubicles, and the inward slant of the rubble suggested it’d come from above. So was this the floor beneath the one we’d been fighting on? Or was it even lower? From what little I could see of the room it was filled with odd sectioned off portions, like the cubicles above, only larger and rather than holding desks and terminals these sections were set up like they were designed to look like different places. I saw one where the inner walls of the sectioned off portion were painted like some kind of mural of a forest, another that looked like a desert, or another that just looked liked it was designed to look like the interior of a house. All these places had beds, and set up near the beds were tripods carrying devices with lenses that purpose of which I didn’t know. Seeing one of the nearest beds devoid of a mattress I figured where the one I was laying on had come from. My wounds were bandaged, my barding, saddlebags, and Gramzanber propped up against the wall by the mattress.

I heard a faint rustling to my left and looked over to see B.B laying on the mattress next to me. I gulped, seeing that she was both unconscious and her middle was heavily bandaged, the bandages soaked red with blood... far too much blood. When had she gotten so badly injured!? Was it during the fall? Where was everyonpy else!?

“O-oh, you’re awake! Um, uh, just stay still, don’t move!” said a frightened, small voice and I looked over as a pony entered the pool of light. It was Suture, the Odessa medic. He was limping, his left wing bandaged, but his other wounds suffered from the Hellhound left mostly untended. His red mane was plastered to his pale, sweating face, and his eyes looked at me with trepidation.

“What happened? Is B.B okay?” I asked, ignoring the pegasus’ words and rolling off the mattress. My body shouted its complaints at me, but I ignore them as I got to my hooves and started pulling on my barding.

“I-I said don’t move!” Suture said, louder, shaking as he reached to pull an energy pistol from a holster tucked under his uninjured wing. As he pointed it at me I just looked at him.

“Seriously?” I asked, “Why go through the trouble of bandaging me up if you’re just going to shoot me?”

“I… I... you’re on our Target list!” Suture said, remarkably clearly for holding a gun in his mouth. I realized he was using a technique the same my tribe used to talk when holding weapons.

“Great, I’m on your list,” I said, “You think that matters right now?”

“Suture, stand down,” said another voice, Glint’s, and another pegasus appeared from the room’s shadows. Suture gulped again, but obeyed, seeming more relieved to holster his weapon than anything else, and lowered his head with a shaking sigh.

Glint wasn’t wearing his Odessa heavy armor, I figured due to the fact that one of his own wings was wrapped up in a splint. He was a rust colored stallion, of an age with myself, perhaps a few years older. He had a wild orange and streaked yellow mane, and his eyes were a vibrant red. His cutie mark looked like a orange ball of light peeking from behind a mountain, and I realized that ball of light was probably what the sun was supposed to look like.

Glint looked at Suture, eyes both stern and concerned, “I told you to look to your own wounds Suture, while I was scouting the room.”

“Yes sir, sorry sir. I… I just finished with the mare, and was getting supplies to work on myself when I heard him-” a nod at me, “-stirring awake. I didn’t want him going anywhere until you got back.”

“Well, I’m back. No go see to your other injuries,” said Glint, and Suture gave a short salute with his uninjured wing and trotted away, pulling a small flashlight to light his way.

Glint turned his attention to me, and those red eyes looked me over, measuring. I kept strapping on my barding, using the motion as a way to keep my mind occupied before it could reel with questions about where the rest of my companions were and if they were alright. I remembered the collapse of the floor and my fears were awash with images of Arcaidia or Binge being crushed.

“They’re probably alright,” Glint said, and at my look he explained, “My power armor can track the vital signs of the squadmates keyed into it. My com relay is damaged, but the vital tracker is still working. Spring Breeze is alive, and if she is, then chances are so are your friends. At the very least I doubt Target 02 would die easily.”

That did some good to my fears, though it hardly erased them. I gave Glint a thankful nod, then noticed the pain in his eyes, and I didn’t think it was from his injuries. “I’m sorry about Bernard.”

Glint flinched, “He’s not the only friend I’ve lost today, but... thanks. He was always the first to take risks, if it meant helping one of us. Suture’s alive because of him. That’s something. You also said you got Nosedive out. I’ll take your word on it, because I lost his vital sign well before you showed up, but the sensors could have been damaged.”

“He’s alive,” I assured Glint, “LIL-E wouldn’t leave him, and if my friends and her have regrouped, they’re probably looking for a way to get to us. Where are we anyway?”

“The basement level of Silver Mare Studios,” Glint said, nodding off into the dark, cavernous room, “We fell all the way through the ground floor to here. From what I’ve seen this basement level is where they filmed most of the studios cash makers.”

At my confused look Glint coughed, face reddening slightly as he explained, “Silver Mare Studios was a film company that got its start making low budget propaganda films for the Ministry of Image. It tried to make bigger budget adventure films, but didn’t have the capital until its owner, a stallion named Money Shot, decided to start making pornography on the side. The studio was able to make enough bits with that side business to fund some actual adventure films, most notably film adaptations of the Daring Doo books.”

“Pornography?” I asked, and was bemused by the pegasus stallion’s now glowing face.

“Well, you know, when ponies, or other species... do things... mares and stallions... shit, do you really not know?”

“Oooooh,” I said, putting the piece together, “Like Wingboner magazine!”

Glint gave me boggle eyes and a double take, before gradually regaining his wits and saying, “Yeah, like that. Only film. Before you ask; films are moving pictures, with sound. The technology was invented before the Great War, and developed quite a bit before the balefire bombs dropped. Its all but a lost art now, though Odessa has the technology.”

Film. Sounded like the holoprojections I’d seen in Stable 104, only not as three dimensional. I tried not to let my mind wander to what a pornogrpahic film would be like and refocused my attention on more important matters.

“My friend, how did she get hurt? Will she be okay?” I asked, nodding my head at B.B

“She got her stomach stabbed by a length of broken metal in the fall. Suture spent a few hours stitching her back together, and even spent the last of our healing potions to make sure the internal damage was minimized. He said she should pull through, but she’s lost a lot of blood,” Glint said, then gave me a strange look, starring.

It made me uncomfortable as I slipped my saddlebags on, checking to make sure the contents were all there, “What?”

“You’re not what I was expecting,” Glint said, shaking his head, “You don’t look, or act, like a pony that’d burn an entire settlement to the ground, or willingly aid in the subjugation of the planet.”

I blinked at him, feeling a coldness enter my gut, “Wait, what? Run that by me again, this time with less crazy, please?”

Glint frowned, looking at me sideways, his posture tensing, “You know what I’m talking about. Settlement 216, locals called it Saddlespring. It was destroyed, despite our best efforts to protect it, by a Veruni infiltrator and her minions releasing a S-class relic from the Ruins underneath the settlement. You’re one of Target 02’s chief minions; a tribal earth pony, who uses a genuine weapon-class ARM in the shape of a large bladed spear. Code Name: Pale Rider. Threat Class: B. Standing orders are Capture-On-Sight. The only reason I’m not following that directive is because you’ve put yourself at risk to save my squad, and it would be stupid of me to fight with you under these circumstances. That, and I’m starting to think you’re not willingly helping the Veruni infiltrator.”

I was floored, trying to process his words. It took me a few seconds to order my thoughts enough to get a complete sentence out that wasn’t “Bwuwuh?” Or “Zaaaa?”. After a few tries I got it right.

“We didn’t destroy Saddlespring! Mostly! Its kinda my fault, yes, but it was an accident! Don’t go making assumptions without all the facts! And what’s this about me being Arcaidia’s minion!? I’m not a minion! I’m her friend. You Odessa ponies have been after her, and it was Odessa that finished the destruction of Saddlespring by firing on it with some stupid powerful weapons! And that was after you ponies were shooting up the ponies who lived there, under Shatter Sky’s orders!”

I breathed heavily after my little tirade, my lungs burning, my chest aching. The backlash from overusing Accelerator was still leaving my whole body feeling ragged and torn. While Glint had said Suture had used up all their healing potions, my saddlebags still had the ones I’d taken from Stable 104, and I took Glints surprised pause as an opportunity to down one. I thought about giving B.B one as well, but if Suture had used a bunch while healing her, I wasn’t sure another would do any good. I was still unsure of the limitations of healing potions. Glint, eyes looking at me widely, eventually replied.

“My squad was present during the operation. A Veruni infiltrator, Target 02, entered the Elw Ruins underneath Settlement 216, and while down there activated the S-class relic that then assaulted the settlement. Captain Shattered Sky and the 11th Company had tracked Target 02’s location through information gained from ground sources, and we were securing the settlement in preparation to capture Target 02 when they were engaged by the S-class relic. 11th Company engaged under the Captain’s orders to try to minimize damage to the settlement, but we took heavy casualties and were forced to retreat to the Vesuvius when it became clear the settlement was a total loss. There was some conflict with civilian elements, but Odessa only returned fire in self-defense. As for the bombardment, that only occurred after the town was deemed a total loss and that no other survivors were present. By all accounts, it was the release of the S-class relic that destroyed Settlement 216, not us.”

I balked. It was... from a certain twisted perspective, an accurate assessment of what happened. I tried to imagine things from this Odessa soldier's point of view. I remembered charging through the Saddlespring streets with unarmed civilians, trying to get to the gate, getting shot at from all sides by Odessa energy weapons. Some of us were armed, yes, but weren’t we the one’s fighting in self-defense? But... if I was an Odessa pegasus, under orders to secure the town, and its citizens fired at me and my comrades, would I see shooting back as self-defense? And he was right that most the damage to Saddlespring was already done by the Golem before Shattered Sky called down that bombardment. However that didn’t mean they didn’t have some responsibility for being there in the first place!

“Why?” I asked, “Why does Odessa think Arcaidia is some kind of threat?”

Glint frowned, a look coming over him that was like a door closing, “I’ve already said more than I should to a pony that isn’t one of us. You don’t know what she is, so I can understand it seems confus-“

“I know she’s not from this world,” I told him bluntly, and he blinked at me.

“You... do?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling a little like an ass for feeling satisfied at his dumbfounded look. It did feel kind of good to be the one causing that look rather than giving it, “I know that she was at least raised by these Veruni you’re talking about, on some world other than this one. I don’t know anything about what the Veruni are, though, other than they’re not ponies. Really, it all goes right over my head, and I try not to think too hard about it because it doesn’t change that she’s my friend. What I want to know is what Odessa’s connection with the Veruni are, why you see them as enemies? Glint, Arcaidia isn’t a bad pony. She’s done nothing but help me. She saved my life, and the life of a close friend of mine. Please, just trust me a bit, and tell me why Odessa wants Arcaidia! We might be able to avoid having to fight if I just knew what all this was about!”

I could see it in his eyes, the struggle to decide. A part of him wanted to tell me, to trust me. I understood, we’d fought together. I’d saved his life, and he mine. Even over a short period of time that kind of experience builds a connection between ponies. But I also saw a lifetime of belief and conditioning pushing back that desire to trust. Odessa was his tribe, and to trust me, from his point of view, was a betrayal of that tribe. I saw that loyalty win out in him as his red eyes hardened and he shook his head.

“I can’t divulge classified information to ponies outside of Odessa. I’m... sorry. You seem like a decent pony, just being duped into helping the enemy. When we get out of here, I’ll let you go your way... but next time we run into each other, I’ll have to follow my orders.”

I sighed, ears drooping. “I understand. Let’s just focus on getting out of this building then. You scouted the area, did you find any exits from here?”

“No, but then I didn’t go far,” Glint said, seeming to relax now that the subject had changed. He jutted with his chin down to my left, deeper into the wide, open room, “I found an office over there, past all the bodies, but I didn’t explore it. We might find an exit if we can clear the rubble, but injured as we are, that would take time, and it’s be dangerous.”

“So we’re buried down here?” I asked, not quite keeping the quaver out of my voice. I wasn’t fond of being underground, and the thought of being buried alive was making parts of me clench tightly in fear.

“Maybe, but I doubt it. There’s probably more than one way back up. There was another door leading out of the office, but I didn’t want to leave Suture by himself while treating you and your friend, so I left it,” Glint said, then give me a look with a slight smile on his face, one that reminded me of Trailblaze, oddly, “Want to check it out?”

I looked at B.B, and Glint said, “We can wait to see if she wakes up, but I’d rather finish scouting quickly. Suture can keep an eye on her.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to leave him alone?”

“I didn’t want to leave him alone until he took care of his wounds, and I didn’t want to leave him alone with two unknown quantities like you and your friend there. Now that I’ve taken your measure, I think I can at least trust you won’t turn on us,” Glint said, and cocked his head at me, “So? Shall we?”

I thought about it, shrugged, “I’m not helping things by staying here.”

I retrieved Gramzanber, hefting the spear in my mouth and nodding to Glint to lead the way. He strode a short distance along the rubble filled side of the room, where Suture had gone. I saw not far from where B.B and I had been set up the two Odessa ponies had sat up another area of light with more of those light sticks. Here Suture was slowly applying bandages to his own wounds while laying down by a few saddlebags of equipment, and what I assumed was Glint’s disassembled armor. Suture looked up as we approached.

“Suture, me and… uh...”

“Longwalk,” I said with a small laugh, “We never did actual introductions.”

“Right,” Glint said with a laugh of his own, “Me and Longwalk are going to look for a way back to ground level, and see if there is anything useful down here.”

The way Glint emphasizes the word ‘useful’ and the way Suture gulped and made me think of something I hadn’t really questioned up until now. Why was Glint and his squad even in this building in the first place? What had drawn them here, before getting attacked by the Hellhound? Was it under specific orders, or had they noticed something about the building worth investigating? Given how tight lipped Glint was about Arcaidia I doubted he’d tell me anything, even if I asked.

“Okay, sir. I’m almost done, though I could use a healing potion to really get my wing moving again,” Suture said with a wince as he tightened the bandages he was wrapping around his right foreleg, which had been gashed pretty badly by the Hellhound’s claws. I reached into my own saddlebag and retrieved one of the healing potions there.

“Here,” I said, holding my hoof out with the potion balanced on it. Suture looked at me in trepidation for a moment before taking it with a mumbled thanks. He still looked scared of me.

“While we’re gone, I want you to keep an eye on Longwalk’s friend, and do whatever you can to keep her stable,” said Glint as he went to his armor and began to strap on parts of it, the chest and leg pieces primarily, which housed the saddle for his beam guns, though one of the guns looked smashed and unusable, “We shouldn’t be long.”

“Do you need any more healing potions?” I asked the medic, “For yourself, or B.B?”

“I… uh, no, this should do for me. As for her, healing potions have done all they can. It’s all on her now,” Suture said. His nervousness was infectious and I felt my own nerves straining. Glint finished with his armor by sealing his helmet on, his features now hidden beyond that white, bug-eyed visage. His voice was slightly distorted by whatever device projected it from inside the helmet.

“If we’re not back in, say, twenty minutes, assume something’s happened and try to find a way out yourself.”

“Y-yes sir.”

With that Glint and I proceeded into the larger portion of the room, my Pip-Buck light providing a path of illumination through the dark. We passed by numerous sectioned off portions of the room made from wood side panels, film sets, Glint explained to me. The devices on tripods were cameras, devices that captured the images that’d take place within the frame of the set. Given the rumpled beds and shelves of... questionable items, it was clear a lot of the sets were used for the pornographic films Glint had talked about.

He’d also mentioned the bodies.

They weren’t quite skeletons, though from the clothing these ponies were from the time of the war. There were at least twenty, all gathered in various clusters of four or five near the back of the room. Scraps of flesh and bits of fur from hides not entirely rotted away gave more definition to these corpses than a simple skeleton, giving me bursts of imagery I could put together. One pony was laying on her knees, doubled over, her forelegs crossed over her belly; the dark stains by her mouth indicating she’d been throwing something up. Blood? Vomit? Another pair of ponies had fallen on their sides, legs wrapped around one another, their muzzles touching in a final nuzzle. Another pony had laid on his back, spread eagle, as if he’d just fallen down and said ‘screw it, I give up’.

“Unlucky,” said Glint, “They got down here to escape burning, but there wasn’t any running from the radiation.”

“Radiation,” I said, shivering. I used to laugh at the notion of Fire Spirits that would burn a pony from the inside out. I was feeling a lot less amused now. I wondered, even though I’d been told magical radiation was just a form of fallout from the balefire bombs, if there wasn’t some conscious spirit to the radiation. The way it just invisibly killed living things, seeped into the land and choked the life from it... it almost seemed like it had a malevolent force keeping it going.

Past the bodies the far wall was mostly bare, a few electrical lines and a breaker box being the only things to break up the brick monotony beside the single wooden door near the corner to my left. The silence of the room was weighing on me as I stepped around the last of the corpses, and I paused as I noticed a faint smell of burning. I glanced down to notice three of the bodies were all clustered together, burn marks on their heads and chests; fresh marks.

“They were ghouls,” Glint explained, noticing my look, “I was lucky so few of them turned.”

“One of my friends mentioned ghouls before, but what are they? These ponies, were they alive!?”

“No. Not alive. Not like you’re thinking. The radiation turned them into violent, rotting animals,” Glint said as he trotted up to the door, gesturing me over. Another body was slumped pitifully against the wall right next to the door, a mare who, if I looked past the rotting flesh, seemed little older than I was. She had a black bullet hole that had cratered half of her skull, the contents long since turned to a congealed pile on the floor. I swallowed, trying to keep my bile down. Did ponies know what balefire would do, when they created those weapons? Or was it the zebras that made them? Either way, the after effects seemed worse than the initial blast. At least the blasts killed quickly. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to live through watching your own body slowly rot.

Glint reached over and hoofed open the door slowly, peering in cautiously. When the door was open wide enough he moved inside and I followed. The room we entered wasn’t small, but it felt cluttered and confined. The middle was taken up by two large metal sets of shelving cluttered with round metal cases, each with tiny labels on them. The walls were lined with similar shelves, though some of them held books rather than those round metal cases. Despite the size of the room there was little space to move. Glint nudged me and pointed to the right, where I saw there was a desk tucked into that corner of the room, and next to it was a blackboard like the one’s I’d seen in the classrooms at the school the Raiders had used as a base.

There, at the desk, was what looked like a pony body, a fair bit more intact than the one’s in the studio. It was a stallion, by the bulk, with a light purple coat and wisps of a gray mane clinging to his skull. He was dead, by the way he lay slumped in the chair at the desk, and while the light from my Pip-Buck didn’t give perfect lighting, I could make out he was wearing the tattered remains of a suit that matched the color of his mane.

“I didn’t approach,” said Glint in a low whisper, “Don’t know if that one’s a ghoul. E.F.S won’t give a reading, but that doesn’t mean anything, if its sleeping.”

The words left my mouth before I really thought about it, “If you’re not sure, why not just shoot it from here?”

Glint gave me a look, and I licked my lips, “Just saying. You’d rather I poke it with my spear?”

“Truthfully? Yes. I don’t want to waste ammo I don’t have to.”

I snorted, letting my irritation push back my nervousness and I swished my tail as I trotted forward, “I can see we’re off to a great start in this team-up. What’s next, getting me to taste any strange liquids we find?”

“If you’re volunteering, sure.”

From his deadpan tone I wasn’t even sure he was joking. I deferred my right to make a snarky comment back at him, mostly because I was close enough to the body that I didn’t want to risk it hearing me, if it was a ghoul. I crept up behind the slumped stallion, heart starting to thump louder in my chest. Decided to get this done with fast, rather than draw it out, I quickly nudged the back of the pony’s head with Gramzanber’s tip. The head lolled to the side and the chair tipped over, dumping the pony to the ground. I jumped back, poised to strike.

The pony didn’t move, and now clearly saw his face. Eyes closed, expression cast in a look of despair. I saw the hole in the side of his temple that hadn’t been visible before, and now the pistol laying on the desk amid a few spots of blood. The pistol was a light caliber, semi-automatic, matte black, but with a dark red wood finish on the handle. It looked to be a remarkable condition for the age of it, and despite its small size it was, oddly enough, scoped, and its magazine seemed larger than what I’d seen on other pistols of its type.

I felt a little bad about it, but waste not want not. I was crap with guns, but perhaps B.B or Iron Wrought might like a back-up. That or it might sell for caps. I put the pistol in my saddlebag as Glint trotted up, looking at the body, shaking his head.

“Guess he didn’t want to go like the others,” Glint said.

“Wonder why his body is more intact than the others?” I asked.

Glint shrugged then I heard him make a pained grunt, “Damn wing, hurts like a bitch.”

I began searching the desk while Glint double checked the body, searching the shirt pockets. On the desk I saw several stacked books, some with distinctive titles like ’The Early Exploration of Northern Climate Regions’, ‘The Origins of Equestrian Life: A Study on Pre-Paleoponic Civilizations’, ‘A History of the Crystal Empire: Separating Fact from Fiction’, and ‘Are we Alone? A Short Story Anthology of Close Encounters!’. Odd choice of reading. Another book caught my eye, mainly because it lacked title. It was just a simple blue bound book, a little ancient blood turned brown with age having stained some of the bottoms of the pages from the stallions long ago suicide. Flipping it open to the first few pages I realized it was a journal.

The initial entries didn’t seem to be anything more than just the stallion, who didn’t name himself, talking about his day to day. I quickly gathered he was, however, he was a major player at the film studio. He talked about working on films and directing others.

“What do you have there?” asked Glint.

“His journal,” I said, and Glint rather quickly peered over my shoulder, faster and with greater interest than I would have figured normal.

“What does the last few entries say?” he asked, eagerness in his tone.

“I, uh, well let’s find out,” Why was he so intent on this? I didn’t ask, however, and flipped to the last few pages, starting with the third entry from the last I read, Glint hovering over my shoulder...

I tried to get in contact with her again. Used the terminal Shock Pad set up for me that has the secure connection. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Can’t blame her. Its crazy. I know I sound crazy. But its her. I know it is. My dreams, they’re more real than the world is around me these days. World’s gone gray, lifeless, nopony cares anymore. Directing the sex feels like I might as well be telling robots to buck. She feels real though; in my dreams, she’s vibrant. A flame, an exploding firework. I know we’ve met, and I think like me, she’s been made to forget. They did it, but why? What is the MoA hiding? The answer I know is somewhere in the north, in that frozen valley, but the only proof we were there is in that film reel, and they took it. They don’t know about the copy. I don’t know if I can risk contacting her again, even with the terminal. They’ll find me again, and maybe they won’t stop with my memory this time. I have to do something though. I’ve been trying to find the truth since that day I woke up with the headache, missing months of my life. Told it was a coma, an accident while filming. Lies. All lies. She had an ‘accident’ too. And others didn’t make it. Fleetfoot, Drops, Dust. Can’t be coincidence they’ve all dropped off the map. Are they dead? I saw the film, the copy. Fleetfoot has to be dead. I don’t think that was special effects. And the last scene. Not a film. No script is that poorly acted but with that much emotion. Who is she? Why do I know her? Why do I constantly dream of Trixie Lulamoon if I’ve never met her!?

I looked over at Glint, and his expressionless helmet looked back at me. I put my hoof on the journal.

“This is part of what you’re after isn’t it?” I asked him.

He was silent for a long second, then asked me, voice guarded, “Did you kill Summer Breeze?”

The question caught me completely off guard and I gaped at him for a second. The question had come out of nowhere, but perhaps that was why he’d asked it. Deflect my uncomfortable question with an uncomfortable question. I rocked back on my hooves, still keeping one on top of the journal. Glint was looking at me, body still, waiting. I was painfully aware of how his weapon pointing roughly in my direction. How was I supposed to answer? I was almost certain the pony B.B shot in Saddlespring was this Summer Breeze he was talking about. Spring’s sister. One of Glint’s squad. The mere fact he was asking, and his tone, suggested to me he already knew the answer. Maybe he wasn’t expecting me to answer and just wanted me to drop my own line of questioning. Well... he didn’t know me very well, yet.

Meeting his blank visor, keeping my voice calm, but also with the regret I honestly felt, I said “Yes. Not by my own hoof, but I was there when she died. I’m pretty sure it was her. Same eyes as Spring Breeze. I remembered those the clearest, the eyes.”

“Which one of your group killed her? The Veruni? Or the grounded pegasus?”

“Does it matter?” I asked.

Glint’s tone was strained, clipped, the pain in it evident even as the Odessa soldier tried to hide it, “I just want to know, for certain, how she died. We couldn’t recover the body, but I heard her report over my com line that she was pursuing your group. I saw her lifesign flatline in my HUD a minute later. Look, I won’t lie, a part of me wants to just burn a hole through your skull just thinking Summer died because of you. My responsibility is to my squadmates that are still alive, however, not the one’s already gone. Right now you’re my best chance to get myself and Suture out of here alive. I won’t jeopardize that by trying for some half-assed revenge. I just want you to tell me the truth...”

So I did. I told him exactly how it went down. The brief scuffle, the standoff, Summer charging with the knife, and B.B ending her life with a single gunshot. No embellishment, nor any attempt to deflect blame of justify it with the excuses of ‘it was us or her’ or ‘it was self-defense’. Both were true, but that wasn’t the point. To those who lose loved ones, the justifications are never worth anything.

Glint looked at me for a long moment, then slowly, very slowly, I heard him let out a breath he’d been holding.

“Thank you, for telling me,” he said, and I watched as the armored pegasus seemed to gradually drain a tension out of his body, like a weight was being pulled off his back, “I hated not knowing how it happened. Just that flatline, and nothing else.”

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely, just not knowing what else I could say to him.

“Forget it. Even if I blamed you, and dusted you right here, it wouldn’t get her back. If I do try to kill you, Longwalk, it’ll be for the sake of living members of Odessa, not the dead,” Glint said with a finality that said the subject was now closed.

“Alright,” I said, still feeling awkward about the whole conversation, “So, about my question?”

I could have sworn the jerk smirked at me underneath the helmet, “Classified information.”

“Hey! I answered you’re highly sensitive, uncomfortable question! Now answer mine!”

At Glint’s silence I bristled, grumbling under my breath, “Fine, keep your stupid secrets. I didn’t want to know any of them anyway.”

“Geez, how old are you?”

“Old enough to ignore ponies who won’t answer questions,” I said, as I got back the journal and read the next entry, Glint chuckling lightly as he joined me. The jerk.

Fuckers, all of them. Knew it could happen, but to have it actually happen. The sirens only gave us minutes worth of warning. Minutes. I didn’t even know until ponies started charging down here, screaming, those that didn’t want to try for home. Heard the blasts like loud popcorn. Felt the shaking. Now I’m down here with a dozen office workers, film crew, and a couple of the actors. They’re scared shitless. Can’t blame them. Chanced a look topside and its a fucking mess. And we’re already feeling the sickness. Won’t be long before there’s nopony left. World’s gone and all I can do is write. I can’t even try to call her. I couldn’t warn her. Maybe she got to a Stable, maybe not. Her cottage was near Manhattan. Close enough that a blast could have just taken her. Celestia, Luna, whichever you two bitches happen to be listening up there, I hope you’re fucking happy with how this all turned out. Fuck. I should have tried harder. Should have pushed, even if it ended in tears, or me in a nuthouse, I should have gone to her. Just to see her face. To see if my dreams weren’t entirely crazy. Or maybe just to end it before it got to this point. Maybe to be with her when the bombs fell. Better than this. I thought about burning all these books and notes, my search for the truth. Why bother? Maybe someday somepony will find this and pick up where I left off. More likely nopony will ever find me, or care, but dreams are all I’ve got left; maybe all I ever had.

The last entry was dated six days after the previous one and was written in a more shaky, jagged script.

Others are dead, save a few that turned out like me. Not them anymore though. Had to put a bullet in Sweet Tart before I could get the door closed. Don’t know why I still have my mind, while the body’s going. Doesn’t matter, going to end it myself, but need to get this last bit down, just in case:

To anypony who finds this. My name is Money Shot. I’m a filmmaker. An entertainer. For two years I’ve lived with a part of my memory missing. Supposedly an accident while filming ‘Daring Do and the Search for the Guardian Shrine’ is the cause, but I don’t believe that. I think the Ministry of Awesome altered my memory. I risked a lot to find the truth, and all the evidence and information I’ve managed to gather about what happened to me and the others who were making that film I’ve hidden behind the third shelf on the west wall. Maybe you don’t care, and I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I can’t imagine anypony living in the world after what’s happened would really give a shit about some dead pony’s futile search for the truth; but it’s all I have left to leave behind. The only proof I can leave that I was alive, and that she was too. Take it or leave it.

Cut. That’s a wrap.

Glint made a ‘hmm’ing noise next to me as he finished reading, and looked towards the shelving along the wall that the entry had indicated, “Third shelf, eh?”

He went over there and I followed, noticing the other door Glint had mentioned earlier occupying the corner opposite where the desk was. As I passed the body I gave Money Shot a look, and on impulse I bent down and turned him over, placing his hooves in a more restful position. Seemed like the right thing to do.

Glint was already moving the shelf aside as I finished with the body, and behind it I saw a safe. Glint sighed, “Great. Bernard was the expert on cracking these things. Buck me...”

“You really need what’s in there?” I asked.

“Enough that I’m kicking myself for not taking those optional safe-cracking courses during advanced training and instead took underwater operations training because I thought the scuba gear fits real tight on the flanks and Summer looked damned fine in them,” Glint said with a sad sigh and strained laugh. I was starting to realize that as hard as he was trying to keep it together and focused on his mission, his emotions were boiling over inside.

My brain pony poked me with a devious little thought that I could offer to open the safe with Gramzanber in exchange for answers. It might even work. Or it might destroy what little trust I might have built with the Odessa soldier. I gave my brain pony a mental buck into the nearest closet and put a hoof on Glint’s shoulder.

“Let me open it up,” I said and motioned for him to stand back. He did so, cocking his head at me.

One slice from Gramzanber later and the safe door swung open, and Glint whistled.

“Armor really wouldn’t do a damn thing to stop that, would it?” he said in wonderment, “Do you even know how you can use that ARM without it killing you?”

“Haven’t a clue,” I replied, looking into the safe, “It nearly does, if I’m not careful. Are Odessa’s ARMs that different?”

“I wouldn’t know, that information is classified, even to me, despite the fact my father...” he trailed off, shaking his head, “Nevermind. What do we have in there?”

“Papers,” I said, “Lots of notes it looks like, and some pictures... and looks like one of those case thingies.”

I backed up and let Glint go for the stacks of papers wrapped up in folders. Behind the papers was also one of those metal cases, its label reading ‘DDatSftGS- 11/3-11/25’. Glint began reading through the papers intently, while I began to pull out the metal case. I blinked. Behind the case was a small black gem. A memory orb. I glanced at Glint, who was absorbed by the papers. Breathing calmly, I quickly snatched the memory orb and hid it in my saddlebag.

Glint looked up at my movement, but I masked my action by pulling out the round metal case and hoofing it over to him, which he took to put in his own armor’s pack alongside the folders of papers.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Film reel. Not important to you,” he said, then looked at the safe, “Was that all that was in there?”

I frowned, my curiosity burning. This entire situation just screamed at me with all of its strange secrets. While nothing about it seemed directly connected to my own journey with Arcaidia I had a hunch that the connections were there, even if I couldn’t see them yet. Why would Odessa want this information so badly? What did some old film and the mysterious events surrounding it, including Money Shot losing his memory, have to do with an organization of militaristic pegasi and griffins who were apparently fighting some kind of war against beings from another world? How was this mare Trixie connected to it all?

I wanted answers.

“The safe looks empty,” I said, dancing around the truth. Glint seemed to take my word on it and nodded.

“Well, I’ve got what my squad was sent here for,” he said with a bitter undercurrent to his voice, “Cost us too much. Now we just need a way out of here.”

“Got one door to check,” I said, and made an ‘after you’ gesture with one hoof. We approached the door, a padlock holding it shut proving little issue for Gramzanber. Glint opened it, peering in. Beyond was a hallway leading to another door at the far end, and one along the right wall.

Checking the door on the right first we found a small restroom. Checking the yellow medical box on the wall of the restroom revealed a packet of orange liquid and a bottle of remarkably clear water, a roll of medical bandages, and another packet of red liquid. Glint explained the orange packet was RadAway, something I could drink to help remove radiation that’d gotten into my body. The red one was a blood pack. Glint let me take the supplies, stating that salvage of mundane items was not Odessa’s directive. As we approached the door at the far end of the hallway I decided to chance another question, not really expecting an answer.

“So, do you know the name Winter Sun?”

Glint, who’d been about to open the door, halted, and his head whirled back towards me. He raised a visor on his helmet that exposed his wide, red eyes.

“How do you know that name?” he asked, not quite disguising his shock.

I fidgeted on my hooves, wondering if there would be any drawbacks to just telling him the truth. Would he even believe me? If he did, would it put my father at some kind of risk? Would it put my tribe at risk? Or would it be more beneficial if Glint believed I was Winter Sun’s son? I ended up leaning towards the truth. Besides, it wasn’t as if I could backpedal and feign ignorance.

“My mother told me. Said it was the name of my father, and that he was with Odessa.”

Glint stared at me, hard. After a minute, he breathed out, “You’re bucking serious? You’re an earth pony. A dirt pony! Was your... mother?”

I tried, and failed, to keep the deep frown off my face, “An earth pony, why, yes, she is. What is the issue Odessa has with earth ponies?”

“Its not an issue we have with earth ponies specifically,” said Glint, his tone changing as if he was quoting from something, “We of the sky are duty bound to shield the ground from the danger’s above, for only those with wings have the strength needed to do so. Its not that we have issue with the landbound, but we are the ones chosen to be the shield in the sky. I... I guess a lot of us tend to use terms like ‘dirt ponies’ because of... well, you do spend a lot of time in the dirt down here.”

“Yeah, and it's not an insult at all, right?”

Glint shook his head, “Maybe it is. Sorry. Look, my point is, there’s a difference between us and the landbound, and we’re not supposed to mix with the other pony breeds. If we did it’d dilute the bloodlines, and we’d have fewer pegasi and griffins to shield the skies. So why would one of our Colonel’s have a foal with a landbound mare?”

“Love?” I suggested, still frowning, though there was an uncertainty in my tone. I was certain of how my mother felt about my father, there’d been no mistaking it in the way she’d talked about him. But had my father felt the same?

Glint’s squinting eyes suggested he might have been frowning too, “That’s... possible. We do have some ground based operations and facilities, and Colonel Winter Sun is in charge of a lot of those due to his work with the Research and Development Division... shit I shouldn’t even be talking about this with you! But...”

“But?” I pressed.

“But I’ve heard the rumors about him. He is a proponent for recruiting landbound into our ranks. There are some among Odessa who agree with this notion, but they’re few in number. There were even rumors that the Colonel has even temporarily enlisted landbound aid on several occasions... damn, now that I’m looking at you, you do have a resemblance to him.”

“So you’ve met him?” energy entered my tone as I leaned forward, eager for any scrap of information I could glean about my unknown father. For all my trepidation about learning about him it’d become a focus for me. Perhaps, just so I could know for certain how I ought to feel about him. Disdain for abandoning my mother, or being part of Odessa? Pride, for him trying to bridge the gap between Odessa and those living on the ground? I didn’t know, and that lack of knowledge was bothering me. A colt ought to know how to feel about his father, shouldn’t he?

“Only seen him on screen and in datafiles, never in the flesh,” said Glint, looking me over, “The coloring is the same, though. That doesn’t prove anything, but I’m not one to talk. I share my mother’s coloring so closely it’s been joked I may as well be a clone of her. So, let’s say I believe you’re our Colonel’s estranged bastard son, why are you asking me about him?”

I hung my head, “Just to have a chance to learn something about him. And Odessa. I can’t really explain it well, because I still don’t know how to feel about all this. In a strange way, you’re all like tribesmates I never knew I had. Does it seem weird I’d want to know about who my father is, and what his tribe is like?”

“I suppose not,” said Glint, sounding thoughtful, “I’m not saying I believe you, but if it is true, I can see why you’d want to know. I wish I could tell you more, but I don’t know anything more than I’ve already said. Even if you are his son, the fact that you’re an earth pony, and born from one... I don’t think the normal laws concerning bloodlines would apply.”

“Bloodlines?”

“Normally any pony born from a member of Odessa is also automatically considered part of Odessa,” Glint explained, lowering his helmet’s visor again, “Like me. My parents are both Odessa officers; though my mother was formerly Enclave before she was recruited. Odessa recruits pegasi and griffins from outside its ranks if they show skills we need, or have something else we want. The rest of us are born into it. There’s no provision I know of for ponies born of the landbound, though, so I doubt you’d be considered one of us, Colonel for a father or not.”

“Wasn’t really planning on joining up with Odessa, so not exactly a problem for me,” I said with a small shrug, my thoughts turning towards the door before us, “I think we’d better hurry up, in any case. We told Suture we’d be back in twenty, remember?”

“Yes, we’ll see what’s behind this door, then head back,” said Glint, and we got on either side of the door, both of us poised to either fight or run depending on what we saw when he swung it open. As we looked at each other I thought it strange. Odessa reminded me of my own tribe, at least in the fact that they seemed a very tightly knit group, uninterested in the affairs of outsiders. It must have been hard for Glint to accept my help like he was, if he’d grown up believing his tribe superior to all others. Was it a sign of strength in him, or weakness, that he was able to put aside those beliefs to team up with me; a pony who was in all other respects, his enemy?

I found a painful thought wash through me; that before the day was out, if he and I still lived, we’d just become foes once again. It didn’t seem right. If we could get along, work together, even joke a little with each other here, now... what should stop us from staying that way?

Reality. His tribe was an enemy of my friend. I’d never abandon Arcaidia, and I wouldn’t distrust her intentions. As long as Odessa sought to harm her, I’d have to fight ponies like Glint. Even if I could avoid killing, my friends wouldn’t feel the same compunctions, and ponies would die. Like Summer.

I took a deep breath, to clear my head of worries I could do nothing about at the moment and focus on the task at hoof, and nodded to Glint to open the door.

He threw it open and went in, I right behind him, both of us barring our weapons. What greeted us was a room about the size of the saloon back in Saddlespring. It was filled with crates, many of them open topped with colorful props sticking out. Stacked around were other objects I could only imagine were meant for use in the films made here, background screens, ponyquines with costumes draped over them, one of them looking suspiciously like the kind of painted and feathered headdress Crossfire had once joked I ought to wear to complete my ‘tribal’ look. At the far end of the room there was a set of doors covered by a metal grating.

“And here I was expecting, I don’t know, some corpse filled lair for that Hellhound, or just another dead end,” Glint said with a small laugh, raising one hoof and pointing at the doors at the other end of the room, “Looks like an elevator over there. Might be our way out, if its working. If not, well, shit, we’ll see how well I can fly with my wing like this.”

“Worst comes to worst we can climb out,” I said, then an unpleasant thought entered my mind, “Wonder what happened to the Hellhound though?”

“Hope the damned thing buried itself alive,” growled Glint, then grunted, “Though that’s like hoping for a fish to drown itself.”

“Huh?” I asked in confusion.

“Hellhounds are subterranean by nature. Can tunnel like a living excavator drill. Their unnatural toughness and armor shredding claws would make them good soldiers if they weren’t impossibly aggressive and unmanageable,” Glint said as we turned and started making our way back to the main studio.

“You sound like you know a lot about them,” I commented.

Glint sighed again and I asked, “Classified?”

“Classified. Mostly. I can tell you Odessa’s tried adapting some of the Enclave’s old tech for controlling Hellhounds, but that project got canceled fast. Was deemed too much trouble for troops that couldn’t fly anyway.”

We were just exiting the room we’d found Money Shot’s body when we heard a high pitched shout echo through the large, dark studio. It sounded like Suture. Glint and I didn’t even bother looking at each other, both breaking out into a gallop at the same time. We crossed the room quickly, getting to the corner we’d left Suture and B.B in. Both of us skidded to a stop as we saw the scene before us.

I think we were expecting to see the Hellhound attacking.

Instead what we saw was B.B, her eyes like two red pools, wide and wild, as she advanced on Suture, who was scrambling away from her on his back, one of his fore legs with a torn bloody bite out of it. B.B’s mouth was stained red, blood dripping from the flesh that was still in her mouth as she greedily chewed and swallowed. My friend was issuing out a low, animal growl, her brown and pink streaked mane bristling. Her mouth was twisted up in a predatory snarl, her stance ready to pounce.

I threw myself towards her before Glint could shoot.

“B.B!”

She wheeled towards me, her growl rumbling. I dropped Gramzanber and tackled her, worried about her injuries, but knowing I had to get her subdued, now, before she got herself killed. I hit her and we rolled. I felt her hooves scrambling against me and her head moving to try and get her mouth to bear. As I looked I caught a glance of fangs, and those wild red eyes, pupils so dilated it was like looking at a black island in a sea of blood.

“B.B, damn it, calm down!” I shouted, trying to pin her. She was so much stronger than I imagined her slight, lithe frame being. She fought back with mindless ferocity, and as we rolled about she got her mouth around my collar. Fortunately my barding kept her teeth, fangs or no fangs, from penetrating, though the pressure and the way she worried at me like a gecko with a bone was frightening. What in the Ancestor’s names was wrong with her!?

“B.B, don’t you recognize me!? Get ahold of yourself!”

I suddenly remembered my dream from the day before, the images blasting through my consciousness like fingers of lightning.

The dead colt, B.B, blood covering her, crying over the body. Her mouth, slick with red, her eyes mirroring the fresh blood.

I tried to remember the details. Difficult, with one of my friends trying to turn my throat into a warm meal. Despite her strength, which I was fearing might exceed mine while she was like this, she didn’t seem to know how to wrestle. I might have lost a lot to Trailblaze back home when it came to this kind of thing, but it meant I got plenty of practice. No, not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

I wrapped my forelegs under her own and hooked a hindleg around her backside and managed to roll her over. I wriggled her teeth off my collar and though she managed to smack me solidly with a flailing foreleg I got around behind her with one fast movement and pulled one of her forelegs back behind her while I pressed her head down towards the floor. She bucked, trying to throw me off, but I held firm and managed to get her forelegs into a proper lock, while also trapping one of her hind legs as I wormed my way into a stable position where I had her more or less trapped. She was still growling, snapping her jaws at me, but she couldn’t twist her head in a way to get at me. My shoulder ached from where she’d bitten on it, and my head still rung from where she’d clocked me good, but other than that I was fine.

“Glint, is Suture okay?” I asked, not taking my attention away from keeping B.B held down. Her wiry muscles strained against my own with strength I just didn’t think could be normal for her slim frame. It was taking everything I had to keep her held and my breathing was starting to get ragged from the effort, veins popping out over my forehead.

“He will be,” I heard Glint say, “We’ll need another healing potion. Suture, what happened?”

“I don’t know!” I heard the medic say, his voice shaking with pain, “I was just checking her bandages when she snapped awake and attacked me!”

“Longwalk, you got her?”

“I got her,” one of her wings smacked me with a loud thwap of noise, “Mostly.”

“Good,” I heard him approaching, and glanced to see him angling his energy rifle for a shot at her head.

“Hey! Wait!” I moved so my own head was in the way, though that put it dangerously close to her snarling fangs. Glint paused. I gulped. He really could have decided to kill us both then and there. Instead he spoke with a calm, measured tone.

“If she’s infected with something, it’d be better to put her down.”

“She’s not infected with anything,” I said, trying to keep my own voice calm, “I think this is, I don’t know, a thing she’s dealt with before. I just got to get her to calm down. Please put the gun away.”

Glint slowly backed up, “Do what you have to, but if she gets out of your grip while she’s like that, I’m dusting her. So you’d better calm her down.”

I nodded and made sure to keep my grip on B.B tight as I started to speak to her in as calm and soothing a voice as I could manage, given the circumstances, “B.B. B.B, you got to get a hold of yourself. Its Longwalk, I’m your friend. I don’t know what this is, but I know you beat it before. I saw it. You don’t want to hurt anypony. This isn’t you.”

It didn’t help immediately, or even within the first five minutes. Glint stayed close by, keeping his eyes on us. He retrieved one of my healing potions to give to Suture so the medic could help with his leg and bandage it. B.B remained snarling and giving me low growls as I talked to her. She continued to struggle, but not quite as frantically as before. I didn’t loosen my grip, not wanting to drop my guard. I just kept speaking soothingly to her.

After ten minutes she was growling less, and her struggles had all but ceased, but she hadn’t returned to normal. I started to fear, a feeling of a frozen, clammy hoof on my heart. What if she didn’t get better? What if she couldn’t? How long would I hold her like this? How long before I had to let go, and then watch her get put down, like the animal she’d seemed to slip into being?

I wished I knew what was happening to her. I knew so little about B.B, really. Obviously there had to be a way she went from being whatever she was in the past to the dependable pegasus mare I knew. Maybe something her adoptive father did helped her return to normal? Too bad he wasn’t here. Even if she wasn’t struggling as much as before, she kept trying to turn her head to get at my neck, or any part of my exposed flesh. She was hungry, and I watched her lick the blood off her lips.

As she licked the blood, I noticed something. One of the small scrapes she’d gotten on her face from our scuffle slowly closed up. I blinked. She’d healed herself, with blood? Blood... Blood!

“Glint, could you get that blood pack out of my saddlebags?” I asked, hope in my voice.

“I can. What do you need it for?” he asked as he warily approached, keeping his beam gun pointed at us. I supposed I ought to be grateful he didn’t shoot us both, now that he knew where the exit was, and had the materials his squad was here for. Perhaps he really was, in some way, grateful for the help my friends and I had brought to him and his own, despite recent developments.

“I want you to just put it in front of her, just within reach,” I said to him, and he flipped up his helmet’s visor and gave me a look that said he thought I was crazy and I bit back the urge to shout, keeping my voice calm, “Just do it, please.”

He let out an exasperated sigh and dug into my saddlebags, putting out the blood pack. He trotted around to the front, where B.B’s snarls intensified and she surged, trying to break my grip to get at him, or I hoped, the blood pack. I held firm, keeping her from doing more than straining her neck.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Glint said as he set the blood pack on the floor and nudged it over towards B.B.

She licked her lips and ripped into the bag. Blood burst out, dark and warm. I wondered how it remained preserved over two hundred years. Some kind of spell? I supposed it didn’t matter, B.B lapped it up greedily, reminding me of a gecko at a watering hole. She stained her face crimson, her throat gulping, her growls turning satisfied. I could feel her body shuddering beneath me and her hide felt burning hot. For several minutes she did nothing except licked at the blood pack, as if she were a pony dying of thirst and this was her only water. I tried not to, but I felt a little nauseous, looking at it. But I didn’t look away. This was my friend, and I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I wasn’t going to look away from her either.

Slowly, bit by bit, I felt her body relax. Her eyes washed away from red back to her normal violet, safe for just a slight tinge around the rim of her iris. Her breathing slowed, steadied, and she blinked.

“What...? Where am...” she looked at the blood, and I felt her body stiffen, her face turning into a taunt look of horror, “No... no, no, no, no-”

“B.B, it’s okay, I’m here.”

She looked at me as if just noticing I was there, on top of her, holding her to the floor, and her horror only intensified, “What did I do!? Who did I hurt!?”

Her voice, I noticed, wasn’t speaking with her normal drawling accent. She was speaking with the voice she used when doing her Mirage act. Smooth, light. Right now filled with fear. I looked at her with as reassuring a look as I could manage, “We stopped you before you could do any lasting harm. Just a little bite on Suture, he’s fine.”

“I... no... you shouldn’t have seen this. I shouldn’t have...” she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, let it out. She did this several times, and with each breath I could feel her body shudder a little underneath me. Eventually she said, “I’m okay now.”

“B.B? Can I let you up?” I asked.

She looked at the licked clean blood pack and I watched as her face composed itself, like putting on a mask, her voice going back to her accented norm, “Yeah, mah body’s gone an’ taken what it wanted, permission from me or not. Dang sloppy o’ me. Shoulda expected it. Shoulda taken some blood from 104 ta keep the urges down. Stupid. An’ I call you wool headed...”

I let go of her and gave her some space to stand. As she did so I noticed that much of the bandaging around her torso had fallen away, but rather than the deep gut wound that should have been there, instead there was a mostly healed scar. She’d healed herself by ingesting the blood. Glint was nearby with Suture, the medic having retrieved his energy pistol, which I noticed was damaged. He must have either dropped it or B.B bashed it when she’d attacked him. Glint was looking at both of us cautiously, though he seemed to relax a bit when he saw B.B’s face, and that her eyes were more or less back to normal.

B.B lowered her head, gritting her teeth as she spoke, “I’m mighty sorry fer hurtin’ ya. Weren’t mah intention, an’ won’t be happein’ again ya can bet the farm on that.”

There was an intensity to her eyes as she said that, and it sounded to me more like she was saying as some kind of oath to herself, rather than just saying them to the Odessa medic. My friend was breathing heavy and there was an energy to her stance I wasn't used to seeing, as if she could still break out into animal violence at any second. It left me unsettled and worried for her both at the same time.

“What was that?” Glint asked, eyes narrowing, “Are you a mutation?”

B.B returned the narrow eyed look, expression frosty, “Might be sorry fer what I done, but don’t beholden me ta tell ya nuthin’. It’s a Family matter an’ let’s just leave it at that, soldier buck.”

For a moment I thought Glint was going to press the issue, but thankfully he just lowered his visor again, turning towards the distant door that would lead us out, “I’ll accept that for now. Let’s just go see if that elevator is our way out of here. I’m tired of being underground.”

We all shared that sentiment. I took a second to retrieve Gramzanber and secure it to my side, and B.B got her own barding, dress, and saddlebags back on, we all tiredly began to trot in a loose group towards the way that would take us to the exit. After a few steps, though, I heard a stirring of sounds behind me; a rustling of debris. I turned my head, seeing bits of wood and dust falling from the rubble pile we were walking away from. I started to say something, but my words were swallowed by an explosion of sound as the debris pile burst apart, and leaping from it, came a hulking dark form.

The Hellhound’s bone shuddering roar filled the studio. I noticed its body was almost clear of all the wounds we’d inflicted on it before, as if it’d regenerated.

We ran.

Except I noticed one of us wasn’t running.

“B.B! What are you doing!?” I shouted, as my pegasus companion stood her ground, facing the Hellhound. She turned to look back at me, a small, calm smile on her face.

“Ya go on ahead Long. I’ll catch up inna minute.”

Glint and Suture had already ran ahead of me as I slowed and turned, reaching to grip Gramzanber’s shaft at my side, “Not a chance! You fight, I fight!”

B.B’s voice became hard, almost... viscous, as the Hellhound took a menacing step forward, “Ain’t a’ debate Long! Yer still injured an’ I ain’t havin’ ya usin’ that damn spear o’ yers again. It’ll kill ya. Just leave this ta me!”

Her eyes changed, turning crimson once more. They held that predatory, dangerous edge they had before, reminding me of the Hellhound itself. However her poise, her expression, was still B.B. She seemed in control of herself, not some beast out for blood. Almost. I had an icy, instinctive feeling trickle along my spine, the kind that warned us ponyfolk when predators were planning on feasting upon our warm, soft insides. I didn't know what to think of B.B giving me that vibe.

“I ain’t dyin’ on ya, Long. Believe in that," she said, her voice still filled with that hard edge, but mixed in was an almost palpable need for me to trust in her.

Her wings spread and she took to the air as the Hellhound charged, slashing its deadly claws. She spun her body in the air with artful grace, her fore legs flashing out in a twin dance of bullets, letting fly all six shots from each revolver at a speed that made it all sound like a single echoing gunshot. The Hellhound was rocked back by the rounds that impacted with its skull one after another, not penetrating, but clearly rattling the monster and making it fall through one of the set up studio sets in a crash.

B.B, remaining airborne, and looked back at me, “Go Long! I’ll be right behind ya, so git yer flank movin’. I’ll buy ya’ll time ta git that elevator goin’!”

My every natural urge told me to stay and stand with my friend against that beast, but a growingly more practical part of me said that she was being the sensible one. She wasn’t planning to beat the Hellhound, just keep it busy so the more wounded of us could escape to the elevator. With her being the only pegasus in the group with two good functioning wings she was the most able to evade the Hellhound, and get away once we had gotten a safe head start ourselves.

“Right behind us!” I reminded her, turning and running just as I saw her smile and draw her .44 revolver and load it up with what I suspected was either armor piercing or high explosive ammo.

Seconds later I heard the Hellhound roar and B.B shouting, “C’mon ya varmint! Ya caught me inna right foul mood so ya’d best be ready fer a beatin!”

This was followed by a cacophonous series of gunshots and explosions. So, high explosive ammo it was. I wondered if even that would do more than slow the Hellhound down.

Up ahead I saw Glint waiting for me at the door into the office, and he turned and ran as he saw me coming. I followed him through, and then past the hallway with the restroom. Beyond was the room of film props and equipment. Suture was hovering nervously by the elevator doors.

“Is-is-is it coming!?” he asked.

“Damned if I know,” said Glint, looking at me, “What happened to your friend?”

“She’s keeping it busy for us,” I said, rushing up and yanking on the metal grate covering the elevator. B.B’s gunfire was still audible, echoing in the room, alongside the Hellhound’s roars. Glint helped me with the grating, shooting the lock and pulling the metal grate open. Suture had tried stabbing at the call button for the elevator but there was no response.

“Damn thing is dead, no surprise,” growled Glint as we both pried the doors open. What greeted us was a smashed elevator car, its entire boxy frame tilted to one side and half of it buried in rubble. Glint cursed, but threw himself onto the rubble and clambered up to the bent roof of the elevator car. There he jabbed at a ceiling panel until it came bouncing off. Looking through it I heard the Odessa soldier’s voice.

“Shaft isn’t that high, think it just goes to the ground floor! Suture, you come through first, I”ll boost you up to the next floor!”

“O-okay!” Suture said, gulping as he started climbing up the rubble. From behind us I heard a crash of wood and felt the ground shake. More gunshots, followed by what sounded like a lot of shattering and breaking objects. B.B and the Hellhound must have ended up in Money Shot’s office and were tearing it up. I grit my teeth, suppressing an urge to go join the fight. B.B. was buying us time.

Suture had gotten to the top of the elevator car and Glint pushed him through, then clambered up himself. I hesitated a moment before beginning my own ascent, hooves lightly treading up the fallen chunks of concrete. Looking up through the ceiling panel I saw Glint pushing Suture up a short, square, dusty shaft, a broken metal wire hanging limply in the center. About twelve paces up was another elevator door, hanging partially open. Glint, grunting in pain, flapped his wings, his injury causing him to hover unevenly, but long enough to boost his equally wounded medic to the next floor.

Glint landed, panting heavily, and I climbed up next to him.

“You next,” I told him, and offered my back. He nodded and hopped on, and I braced myself on the wall, stretching to give him as much height as I could. With Suture pulling from above, we got Glint up to the next floor. At the same moment I heard another crash and poked my head down just in time to see B.B getting flung through the door into the prop room. She skidded on her back, but quickly flipped to her hooves and dove out of the way of the charging Hellhound that rushed into the room. Its claws tore up the concrete floor beneath her as she speedily flew around the best, all three of her revolvers blazing a deafening chorus.

The Hellhound jerked about under the fusillade, the explosion of the high explosive rounds from the .44 magnum staggering it backwards.

“B.B!” I shouted, “This way!”

The pegasus mare, her eyes still blood red, glanced my way, her hooves moving with lightning speed as she reloaded the six shooters faster than my eyes could properly follow. The Hellhound took advantage of her reload time to grab huge crates of props to hurl at her. She dodged aside with the grace of water flowing downhill, even bouncing on her hindlegs off of one of the crates while it was in mid-air to give herself a boost towards the elevator shaft. As she did so she let loose another gatling raid of shots, each round seeming to strike the Hellhound in a leg or arm joint. While even the high explosive rounds couldn’t seem to penetrate the Hellhound’s thick hide, the blasts sent it reeling to crash into the wall.

If she could fight like this after drinking blood a part of me wondered why she didn’t do it more often. Then I remembered the dead colt from the dream and wanted to hit myself for wondering that at all.

“Told ya I’d be right behind ya!” she said as she quickly flew into the elevator car and up into the shaft, snatching me and dragging me up with her to the next floor.

“Didn’t doubt you,” I said back as she flung me through the open doors onto the ground floor. Glint and Suture were waiting for us, in what looked to be a debris strewn hallway, with a pair of open double doors hanging off hinges on the right side of the wall.

B.B landed beside me and we galloped up towards the doors, Glint and Suture joining us.

“Please tell me that thing is dead,” Glint said, his words followed by an echoing roar of rage that shook dust off the ceiling.

“Not as such,” B.B said, her eyes turning back to violet within a few eyeblinks. She visibly slowed, her breathing turning rough, “An’ I just ran outta juice.”

Past the doors was a decently sized lobby. A receptionist desk with a smashed terminal was situated at one end, and waiting chairs lined the tattered, stained walls. Broken stairs led up to the second floor, and a balcony ringing the lobby. Shattered light fixtures hung from the ceiling. There were a number of doors leading further into the building, but we had eyes only for the big doors leading outside.

We ran for them, getting halfway there when the wall behind us smashed out, covering all of us in a wave of smoke and dust. The Hellhound, standing in smashed out hole it’d just put in the wall, let out an ear crushing below, its eyes knit in a narrow glare of frustration and rage.

“Hey!” I shouted at it, “We’re as tired of you chasing us as you are of doing the chasing, so why don’t you just call it quits already!?”

The Hellhound cocked its head at me, its eyes narrowing even further. It pointed one clawed finger at me, then at the two Odessa ponies with us, and made a cutting gesture with a claw. What? I didn’t get it. The Hellhound seemed to grasp my confusion and it pointed again at Glint and Suture, making a clawing gesture, then at me and B.B, and then made a small waving gesture as if to say ‘go’.

That’s when I understood. It didn’t want me, or B.B, or any of my companions. It didn’t care about us. It just wanted Glint and his squad. I could only assume because they were with Odessa.

By now we’d reached the entrance doors and found they were locked. Glint grunted as he strained against them, “No good, got to blast them-!”

I drew Gramzanber and swiped with it in one motion. The front doors fell apart in two halves.

“-or that,” Glint finished while giving me a look.

Unfortunately stopping by the doors had slowed us just long enough for the Hellhound to grasp that I wasn’t taking its offer to stand aside and let it kill Glint and Suture. It growled and sprang at us just as we got through the doors and ran out into the open.

Immediately we were flooded with bright light and I felt the air grow incredibly chilled.

A lance of ice as large as a pony slashed by my head and smashed into the Hellhound in the middle of its springing attack, the force of the blow sending it flying back into the building. Glint, Suture, B.B, and I all blinked at the glaring light, which I could not see was coming from the front floodlights of the Ursa ATW.

“Longwalk, B.B! Much gladness to see both of you not dead!” came Arcaidia’s voice, chiming with joy as the azure unicorn filly hopped down from the top of the Ursa and came running over towards us. I could see the rest of my party, LIL-E hovering above the Ursa’s roof, Binge hopping out the side door to the pilot’s cabin, Iron Wrought following close behind her. The Hellhound’s growls from inside the Silver Mare Studios building indicated it was recovered from Arcaidia’s attack.

I turned around as I was quickly surrounded by my companions, Glint and Suture being joined by Spring Breeze who gave her two companions an ecstatic look before the trio faced the entrance alongside the rest of us.

We all readied weapons.

The Hellhound stalked out of the cut open doors. It stretched to its full height, and then paused, hesitating as it saw all of us. All three still standing Odessa ponies had their energy weapons up aimed. LIL-E had both her guns deployed and targeted. Arcaidia’s horn was alight and ice shards danced in the air around her, next to her deadly starblaster. B.B, whose revolvers had just done a number of the Hellhound, were steady on both her hooves and in her mouth. Iron Wrought had his submachine gun out, a grim look in his eyes. Binge was bouncing on hooves, tail wagging with her Cosmic Knife. Then there was me, standing in the center of the line, Gramzanber drawn and poised.

The Hellhound stood there, breathing heavily, wounded from its tussle with B.B, and clearly counting its odds against all of us combined, in an open area where it had little to no cover. I saw the Hellhound think things over, its burning eyes alight with hatred. Hatred I noticed was still almost entirely directed at the Odessa soldiers. A tense moment passed, then the Hellhound, with a growl, backed up into the darkness of the building’s entrance until it vanished from sight... and didn’t come back out.

All of us let out a collective sigh as we started to get a little gray pre-dawn light on the horizon, the dull light gradually washing across our tired, battered forms.

“Well,” Iron Wrought said, “That was a bucking hell of night.”

Nopony voiced any disagreement with the statement.

“Suture, Glint, I’m so glad you two are alright,” I heard Spring Breeze say as the Odessa mare slumped, giving her comrades each a hug in turn, “When I saw Bernard get killed ... then the two of you got caught in the collapse. Just happy you made it. I can’t keep losing you guys. Skies above... Bernard.”

Glint gave her a pat on the shoulder, his voice both reassuring and commanding at the same time, “I know, Spring. We’ll mourn when we’re back at base. How’s Nosedive?”

“He’s okay. Unconscious, but okay. He’s in the vehicle over there.”

LIL-E, who hadn’t taken her guns off the building’s entrance in case the Hellhound came rushing back out, said “Longwalk, are these ponies currently friends, or foes?”

“Not exactly friends, but they’re not enemies right now, either,” I told her, then made a small ‘oof’ sound as Arcaidia wrapped me up in a hug.

“Estu risair di virol, ren solva? Can’t fly, no dropping into holes, good yes?” she playfully hit my leg even as she gave me a hard look, “Bad to go where I can’t. Good that B.B keep watch on you. Helpless without help, like... bah, esru dol ricarti vi shurm. Learn words later.”

“So did you have fun playing with the big puppy downstairs?” asked Binge, her tail wagging excitedly, “We had a lot of fun too! When the floor went boom the nice birdie caught me! So I got to ride her, and even nibble her ear a bit! Oh, but I didn’t bite her hard, so don’t get mad, okay? You’re still my favorite, bucky!”

Spring Breeze shuddered, “Don’t know why I didn’t just drop her.”

Iron Wrought, trotting back towards the Ursa said, “Can we carry on our conversations later? Somewhere away from the building that still has a nine foot tall death machine in it? I’d like to put some distance between us and this spot, honestly, but if you all feel fine just standing around chatting, that’s fine. I’ll just be inside the safe, armored transport.”

I let out a shuddering laugh, suddenly feeling all of the fatigue of the night catching up with me, the adrenaline finally running out, “Yeah, leaving sounds good.”

There wasn’t a one of us that wasn’t tense as we trudged up into the Ursa, LIL-E remaining on top of the vehicle's roof to cover the door as we settled ourselves inside. Glint and the remains of his squad along with our own numbers made things a little cramped, especially with Nosedive laying on the lower bunk bed, but nopony complained. Glint and his squad stayed in the back cabin, Suture checking Nosedive’s injuries and Arcaidia watching the Odessa soldier’s with a measuring stare. The air was thick with tension, but we were all too tired to say anything. B.B particularly looked downcast, huddled on one of the booths of the dining table and staring out the window. I watched quietly through the door between the driver’s cabin and the passenger compartment, an uneasiness settling in my gut while my body ached from the new set of wounds I’d collected that night. I kept thinking about B.B, and the way she’d lost control of herself. Would I be pushing too hard, to ask her about it? Should I tell the others what had happened, or would that be betraying B.B’s trust? I didn’t know, and couldn’t do much about it right this moment. Binge was the only one of us that seemed energetic and content, hopping into the seat next to Iron Wrought as he revved the Ursa’s engine in a dull roar, pulled us away from the bleak and dark remains of Silver Mare Studios.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Toughness (Rank 2): Seriously? Are you a masochist or something? One would think so, given how you much of a magnet for pain you are. The grueling injuries you’ve put your body through have continued to strengthen it, proving that whatever doesn't kill you should try harder. Have another +3 to DT.

Companion Perk Added - Leave it to Me!: As long as B.B is in your party whenever you fail to drop a target after using S.A.T.S there is a 50% chance B.B will attempt a follow up shot of her own with her currently equipped weapon, as long as she is both within range and has ammunition.

Bonus Ex-File: "Boss Rush Stats! - Magtortus"
Location: Saddlespring Elw Ruins, antechamber to Roaring Metal's Tomb
Level: 12
HP: 400
DT: 20
Perception: 6
Attack Skill: 80
Claw Damage: 60
Bite Damage: 80
Special Attack "Electrigger!": Magtortus spends two turns gathering energy inside its shell, DT increases to 40, then on third round attacks all opponents in 50' radius with energy bolts. Inflicts 150 electricity damage.
EXP: 250
Loot: None
Weakness: Water element attacks

Author's Note

This chapter was a little tough to write, if only because I was trying to do a lot of little things all at once and keep it within the timeframe of a single chapter. Also trying to make Hellhounds seem balls scary without going overboard. Of course this wasn't exactly your garden variety Hellhound either. And we also get our first taste of Trixie's mysterious connection to all of this; although not more than a glimmer at this point. As always I got to thank doomande for helping me out with prereading for this, and to the awesome FoE community that makes writing stories set in this universe so much fun. And of course thanks for all those readers who keep my creative juices flowing. Comment, criticize, and speculate away!

Chapter 16: The Power That Supports the World

Chapter 16: The Power That Supports the World

For a moment my senses were dominated by the overwhelming, searing heat that surrounded me, drowning out my hearing with the primal, volcanic roar of flames. Wiping away my sight was an all consuming red light, destroying my sense of where I was. All I could do was cover my head and pray I’d survive, because there certainly wasn’t much of anything else I could do.

When the flames abated finally I was shocked to find myself not only alive, but completely unharmed. More surprising than that, however, was that I was no longer inside the underground cavern Odessa had brought Trailblaze and myself to. Instead I stood with a bewildered look plastered on my face, ears perking up as I looked around in confusion at my new surroundings.

I was back in the valley of Shady Stream, my home village. The familiar cliff to my left protectively stood over the gecko hide tents of my tribe, its shade cooling me as I stood within it. Immediately I knew something was wrong here, despite the comforting burst of satisfied homesickness that washed through me upon seeing my home.

First off, the village was neither destroyed, nor my tribe missing, as one would expect from what Odessa had supposedly done here. I saw numerous earth ponies of my tribe going about the village, some working on curing gecko skins, others cleaning up after a morning meal, and even a party of hunters trotting off towards to the hunting grounds, spears in mouth.

The second thing I noticed was that everything had a faint, washed out look to it, as if the second my eyes didn’t focus on a pony or an object it started to lose its distinct form. Curious, I broke into a fast trot, wanting to get a closer look. As I got within easy shouting distance I yelled out, “Hey! Hey everypony!”

Nopony even glanced my way, all of my tribe continuing their chores or other business as if they hadn’t heard me. I slowed, reaching the edge of the village, a few hunters trotting by me, chatting amiably amongst themselves, and not even giving me a single look.

“The buck...?” I furrowed my brow, but before I could stew in my confusion for too long I heard a familiar voice.

“Longwalk, where do you think you’re going!?”

I wheeled around at the sound of Trailblaze’s voice, though it’d sounded oddly high pitched, and I saw why almost immediately.

Trailblaze was pumping her legs in a tiny gallop, her small filly legs catching up to the other young pony she was chasing. It’d been some time since I’d seen Trailblaze so young, without her cutie mark, but she still had that same stern-eyed, exasperated look that I’d grown in time to cherish. Right now she fixated that look not on me, but on, well, a younger version of me that was currently only partially pausing in his gallop to slow down enough to turn his head and give Trailblaze a wide, happy grin, half of his face obscured by a fall of wild blue mane.

“Heya Trail! I heard the hunters talking about seeing a huge bird flying around the clifftop yesterday! I’m gonna go check it out!”

The younger me tried to resume his gallop, but was halted by Trailblaze snatching his tail in her teeth and yanking him to a stop. My younger self yelped, fell flat on his face, and while rubbing his head turned over to look at Traiblaze with a pout.

“What gives!? Don’t just pull on my tail like that!”

Trailblaze, who came up and put a hoof on my younger self’s chest, looked down with a roll of her eyes, “Well if you’d just stop running around and give me a chance to talk to you I wouldn’t have to do that, you dummy!”

“I’m not a dummy, dummy!” my younger self retorted with a confident smile that said he thought it was the most witty comeback imaginable. I found myself facehoofing. Was I really like that back then? Ah, who am I kidding? I’m still like that.

Trailblaze huffed, taking her hoof off of my younger self’s chest and helping him back to his hooves, “Whatever. I’m just going to pretend you said ‘sorry Trailblaze, I’ll stop and listen to you next time’. Anyway, you can’t go up to the cliff.”

“Uh... why not?” my colt-sized self asked, genuinely confused if the way he tilted his head almost entirely sideways was any indication.

“Because we’re not allowed up there!” Trailblaze said with a tiny stamp of her filly hooves, “Don’t you ever listen to anything my mom or the shaman says!? We’re too little to go up the cliff! It’s too dangerous!”

My young self just laughed, “It’s only dangerous if we fall off, Trail.”

“We? When did I say I was going with you? I’m here to stop you.”

With a pleading, puppy-dog look my younger self slid up to Trailblaze, “Awww, but Trail, don’t you want to see the big bird? What’s it called? An eagle? They’re, like, never, ever seen around here! It’d be so absolutely amazing to see one! Wouldn't it?”

Trailblaze frowned, her lips pursed together in thought. I could see her young filly mind being swept up by equal desire to see something neat; a simple kind of drive that any young pony could be vulnerable too, no matter how much they wanted to obey the rules. My devious younger self knew how to push Trail’s buttons as he smiled with confidence at her hesitance and kept talking.

“We won’t get caught or anything. All the adults are too busy to notice us gone, and we’re not supposed to help the shaman with tonight’s feast until the sky starts to darken. So nopony’s going to be looking for us for hours! It’ll only take an hour, at most, to get to the top of the cliff, then we can spend an hour looking around. We don’t see anything, we’ll come right back. See? Easy.”

“Its never easy...” said a voice, and it was Trailblaze’s, but not her young, filly self, but her adult voice, “With you, Longwalk, it’s never as easy as you think.”

I jumped, looking around, but I didn’t see Trailblaze anywhere. I stared about in confusion, “Trail?”

But nopony answered. Had I imagined her voice? Shaking my head, I looked back at the village in time to see my young colt self and Trailblaze’s filly self wandering off towards the side of the cliff, where a narrow, dangerously unstable looking path lead towards the top of the cliff.

I remembered that day, now. It’d been one of the few days in my younger life where I’d gotten in real, serious trouble. Trailblaze and I hadn’t found an eagle to see up on that cliff, but we had found a weakened portion of the clifftop that’d come apart as we’d trotted past it. I’d nearly fallen to my death that day, and would have, if Trail hadn’t caught me. But everypony in the village sure heard me screaming, and by the time Trail pulled me up, and we found our way back down, half the village was waiting for us. Chief Hard Tack had been furious, and my mother had practically tanned my backside off.

One would think I’d have learned my lesson from that, but no, that was just one in a long string of times I went wandering off, dragging Trailblaze with me. Whenever I was in trouble, whenever I got in over my head, it was always Trail who saved me. I never noticed it back then, how much I depended on her.

“And now I’ve gotten her into trouble again,” I found myself saying, and the second I spoke aloud another voice answered me.

“Correct, young pony, but as before, her strength may save you both.”

The voice was loud, deep, clearly male, and had a resonate snap to it that wasn’t at all natural. I looked behind me to the source of the voice, but only saw a wavering in the air, a shimmer not unlike heat rising from the rocks on a very hot day. I tensed, turning from the illusion of my village and stared into that wavering shimmer.

“Where is Trailblaze?” I asked, heat in my voice. I was scared, both of these strange circumstances, and of the fact I didn’t really know what was happening to my friend. Anger was a good blanket to cover up fear.

If the being remotely cared about my anger it certainly didn’t show it in its condescending and dismissive tone, “She faces her own trial. Do not fear for her, she will not come to harm. Unlike you, her spirit is strong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!? What trial? Who are you!?” I shouted, stamping my hooves, lowering my head as if I was about to charge. Which I wasn’t, because I didn’t have anything to charge at, except a vague wave of air. I took a few deep breaths, working to calm myself and gather my wits. Meanwhile the being laughed.

“Well, perhaps you, too, have some fire in you. But not nearly enough to be worthy of serving as my Medium. That is the purpose of my trial for your friend, young one. She has the potential, but I must test her to see if she truly has the spirit needed to be the Medium of Moa Gault, Guardian of Fire.”

Upon those words the shimmer in the air sparked with a singular, intense point of crimson flame, that suddenly grew rapidly in size, expanding and flaring like a bubbling geyser until, standing before me, was a humungous bird. Its entire form was seemingly made from solid flames, yellow and orange at the edges of its massive wings and the tip of its sharp avian beak, and more intensely red towards the core of its body, and its two ruby red eyes. Its chest and head were clad in dark steel armor, rigid plates etched with swirls that mimicked the flames which they encased.The bird outsized me easily, even taller than the Hellhound I’d faced at Silver Mare Studios, and exuded far more power and menace than even that creature had.

I gulped, understandably, and backed up a step. A wave of superstitious fear welled up in me. I’d always been fairly dismissive of many of my tribe’s notions concerning spirits, only really starting to find a need to pray to my Ancestor spirits when the Wasteland started seriously challenging my sense of moral solidarity in the world. However I still hadn’t put much credence towards other beliefs of my tribe, like the notion of elemental spirits dwelling inside everything. Especially our fear of the great Fire Spirits that scorched the world. I’d learned by now that it was the megaspells, not some vengeful spirits of fire, that’d destroyed the Old World, but now, seeing this huge bird of fire, well... one could perhaps understand my sudden dry mouth and somewhat shaky knees.

“Guardian of Fire...?” I shook my head, trying to think, which was hard to do when you’re being stared down by a giant flaming bird, “Never heard of you.”

“Mmm, of course you have not,” said the bird in its voice of resonating, crackling flames, a voice that pounded at my mind, “Few ponies in this age have even an inclining of the existence of myself or my kin. Our time long since passed from this world, before even the time ponies became ‘civilized’ and stopped living in caves and using pointy sticks to fight.” The bird glanced at the sight of my village and I could almost see its beak twist in a small smirk, “My how the circle of time comes around, does it not?”

Feeling like I ought to be insulted by that smirk I huffed out an irritated breath and sat back on my haunches, looking up at this fiery bird, Moa Gault. My fear was gradually being beaten back by both irritation at this spirit’s cryptic and condescending attitude, and the fact that it still hadn’t really told me what was happening.

“So you’re, what, exactly? Some kind of fire spirit?”

“That is one way of looking at it,” the bird replied haughtily, rising up and puffing out his chest, “I and my brethren were born in the dawn of this world, from the elemental streams of magic that infuse it; what some in this age call ‘Ley Lines’. We named ourselves the Guardians, for we saw it as our purpose to protect and guide this world we were born from.”

I spoke before I thought, giving Moa Gault a deadpan look, “From what I’ve seen of the world’s condition, you haven’t been doing a very good job.”

My entire body felt a blazing heat as fire erupted around me, though it faded before I could feel more than a momentary pain. Moa Gault, his eyes now spearing me with undisguised fury, spoke in a clipped, angry voice like a simmering volcano.

“We are not at fault for this world’s state! We sacrificed almost all of our power to protect it eons before you ponies... you... animals, tore it apart. We trusted your kind to keep this world’s balance, until we could recover from the war that sundered our strength, but your kind failed, and has brought this world to the brink of ruin! You and the zebras, who tainted my pure fires!”

“Come again?” I asked, cocking my head.

The bird scowled, “Balefire... tch, that the zebras would so corrupt the beauty of fire with such filthy necrotic energy is an insult I have yet to forgive, not that you ponies were any better. Some of your so-called ‘megaspells’ were even more twisted than the necrotic arts of the zebras. You have no idea, young pony, how much I howled in rage the day that your kind scorched this world with those nauseating flames. Had I the power, I would cleanse this world of that corruption! Unfortunately, like all my fellow Guardians, my power is... limited these days.”

Despite myself I found that I was getting curious, “Because of another war, from way back when? Was it against creatures from a different world?”

Moa Gualt looked down at me, his head only giving the barest of nods, his tone grave, “You know that much, then, already. Yes. Ages before ponykind raised their tiny heads towards the sky, we Guardians flourished in a world of primal energy and life. Our first children, the Elw, were creating wondrous things under our guidance. It was an age of glory and peace. Then terror descended from the heavens, invaders and despoilers! They called themselves the Veruni, and in their silver ships they brought war upon Filgaia!”

“Filgaia?”

“The name we gave the world, long forgotten by you ponies.”

I’d heard the name used before, by the ghostly image of that strange almost-pony creature I’d seen in the Ruin beneath Saddlespring. Things were starting to gradually come together in my mind; the Ruins, the weapons, my visions of battle I’d seen in my dreams. There were still a lot of missing pieces, but by now I gathered that our world had been subjected to a devastating war long before the Great Fire where Equestria and the zebras burned their nations with balefire bombs. Now, just as we were struggling to recover from the destruction rained down by the balefire, the ghosts of an even more ancient war were rising to threaten us again.

“So, you won that war, but lost all your power doing so?” I asked.

“No,” Moa Gault said simply, “We defeated the Veruni. However, we were complacent in our victory. We did not realize that defeating them once would not be enough, or that the Veruni themselves had enemies who would wish to use Filgaia for their own ends. After we fought off the Veruni’s first attack we had a few centuries of peace, but then they returned, in greater numbers, and following in their wake was yet another enemy. The Hyadeans. Twisted, monstrous things, that had long ago abandoned their natural forms in favor of turning themselves into supposedly ‘better’ beings through bio-techonology most foul and unnatural. It was this second war that nearly destroyed us. It was only because the Veruni and Hayadeans fought each other as much as us that we had any chance of surviving the onslaught. Our Elw children were forced to use the technology of our enemies to gain advantage, and time and again we became more like our foes in our desperation to win.”

This was starting to sound eerily similar to the war between ponies and zebra. I had a sinking feeling it had the same ending, too. I waited patiently, and Moa Gault continued.

“The war raged on for decades. The details are without importance. All that matters is that, in the end, we Guardians made a final sacrifice to put an end to it. We damaged our own Ley Lines, exhausted our power, and used ourselves up to push back the Veruni and Hyadean menace, shatter their fleets, destroy their leadership, and... the final measure... we hid the world.”

“Hid the world?” Okay, that confused me. How does one hide a world?

“A subspace fold in the fabric of relativistic space time...” Moa Gault began to explain, but upon seeing the utterly blank look on my face the Guardian of Fire sighed, “Like a teleport spell. We moved Filgaia to another point in space, one inside the void between stars. Normally that would doom the world to death with no sun, but we used our final strength to create a newer, smaller sun to warm the world, and counterbalance the gravitational pull of the moon. Regulating these two celestial bodies would fall to our Elw children... though I do not know how, or why, that power transferred from the Elw to you ponies.”

“You’re talking about the Goddesses, Luna, and Celestia,” I surmised, remembering B.B’s tale of the two Alicorn sisters.

“Yes. We Guardians have slept for a long time, trying to recover our power, and while we’ve been able to watch, much remained hidden from our view. I have no idea where the Elw went, or why ponies suddenly gained the power the Elw possessed to regulate the sun and moon. I believe the Elw may have created a means for the world, and the new races in it, to protect themselves and maintain the world, before they vanished.”

“Why would these Elw vanish anyway? Aren’t they kind of like your successors or something?”

I’d never seen a giant flaming bird shrug before. It was weird.

“I can only guess at what drove them into hiding. Perhaps it was shame at being unable to win the war without the sacrifice the Guardians made of our power. Or perhaps they just felt that, in this new age, it was the younger races such as ponies, griffins, and zebra that deserved a chance to flourish. Regardless, they vanished, and so the world was left to you and your kind. From there the rest, as they say, is history.”

I absorbed that, my mind feeling a little bloated and fatigued from trying to take in all of what the Guardian had told me. Ultimately I could barely absorb any of it and just shook my head, forcing myself to focus on the more immediate issue before me.

“Okay, neat story, but I doubt that’s why I’m in this weird memory world or why you're screwing with my friend. So what am I doing here? This place isn’t real, obviously, so where are we?”

Moa Gualt gave me a frowning, displeased look, as if he was somehow insulted I didn’t seem more awed by his story, “It is not ‘real’, no. Our minds are linked, though I will not be able to maintain this link for much longer. I was examining your memories, and this imagery is partially built from those memories, though I can manipulate it at will if I so choose. Your body is unconscious, where you last left it, as is that of your friend. She cannot awaken until she passes my tests. As for you, I intend to keep you like this until I’m satisfied that you are not only a worthy companion for my Medium, but not a threat to the Guardians or this world we still try to protect, despite our weakened state.”

I rose back to all four hooves, glowering up at the bird, “Well get on with it then! I’ll do whatever it takes to help Trailblaze and the rest of my tribe, and I can’t do that while you're picking through my brain! So what’s this going to take?”

Moa Gault fixed his glowing, solid eyes upon me and I felt, for an instant, like a blazing hot metal spear had gone through my chest. The feeling passed just as fast as the bird gestured with a wing at my village, “Do you not love your home?”

“Huh?” I asked, confused, turning, “Of course I do, why wouldn’t...”

My words died in my throat as I turned and saw my village once more. Gone was the small, peaceful little community with ponies going about their daily lives. The tents were wiped away, mostly turned to burned sash, or toppled over and broken. Smoke still trailed up in small black wisps from piles of ash that, in my heart, I knew were the remains of hunters who had died defending their home... my home. I shuddered, seeing the place I grown up, the home I and Trailblaze shared, turned into a dead, blackened corpse.

“That home is no more,” said Moa Gault with iron in his voice, “Destroyed by the ponies you continue to try and show compassion to, and seek to reconcile with.”

“Odessa... “ I hadn’t, up until that point, really absorbed the fact my village was gone, and that Odessa was responsible for it. Seeing the charred remains of my home brought the reality of it straight to the surface, but even as my emotions began to boil I still had to wonder what the Guardian was getting at.

“Why show me this?” I asked, teeth grinding, ears flattened, “I know Odessa did this. What does that have to do with anything!?”

“Do you forgive them, young one? Seeing this, would you still seek to hold back in your fight against them?”

My chest tightened, the words causing a riot of thoughts. I was angry at Odessa, of course. How could I not be? This was the place I lived and grown up, where I’d gone exploring with Trailblaze, and been taught to hunt by my mother. This was home, even if I hadn’t been the most popular pony there, even if I’d been treated poorly by my tribesmates at times... it was still home. And Odessa took it, along with the lives of many, and the freedom of the rest. So, could I forgive them? When I had to fight the ponies and griffins of Odessa again, could I do so without hating them for the destruction of Shady Stream? Would I hold back, try not to kill, as I have in the past?

“... I’ll fight Odessa,” I said in a quiet, steady voice, “I have to, if I’m going to save my tribe, and protect Arcaidia,” I noticed Moa Gault flinch at the mention of Arcaidia’s name, and I turned to face him fully, meeting his eyes with an even stare.

“But if you’re trying to provoke me into wanting to kill them out of vengeance then you clearly don’t know a damned thing about me.”

Moa Gault instantly burst into flames so intensely hot I had to take a step or two back to keep my fur from smouldering. The bird’s entire form seemed to nearly double in size as a pillar of fire rose around him and he loomed over me like the thunderhead of a storm.

“I will not abide weakness, little pony! Not in my Medium, not in her companions, and not in any whom my brethren would see fight beside us to defend this world. You show mercy to those who do not deserve it. You lack the will to take life, even when it is necessary. You cannot fight with such a weak, unwilling spirit. The enemy will use you for their own ends, and your weakness will in turn doom this world.”

Even under the extreme heat that rolled off of Moa Gault in waves I forced myself to stand firm and look up into the Guardian’s eyes, even as bits of my mane and tail started to smoke from the intensity of the fires making up Moa Gault’s body. I set my jaw, swallowing no small amount of fear that bubbled up inside me at facing this being. If Moa Gault’s story was true, then these Guardians were primal, powerful spirits. It probably wasn’t the smartest move, to try defying one. So clearly that’s what I was going to do.

“I don’t care if its weakness or strength. I don’t fight to take lives or for some half-baked justice or revenge! I fight to protect lives. That’s it.”

“To protect, one must also destroy,” said Moa Gault harshly, “That is the truth, the core truth of fire. Fire gives life, and warmth, and protection, but not without consuming, not without destroying. Deny this truth, and you will only find pain and sadness, young pony.”

“Guess I’ll just have to find my own truth then,” I said with the same kind of confident smile I’d always given Trailblaze when I was doing something I knew I shouldn’t, “Because honestly, yours sucks.”

“It remains truth, regardless,” Moa Gault said evenly, lowering his head and turning it to one side so that one of his ruby red eyes, the size of a dinner plate, was level with me, “You are naive. I do not believe you are strong enough to be... no, you do not yet deserve to even know that much. Others among my kind may think you're worth observing, but all I see inside you is cowardice; a child afraid to accept the world as it is and grow up. You are unworthy of walking beside my Medium.”

“Funny thing,” I said, eyes squinting and watering at the radiant heat washing over my face from the Guardian’s proximity, “I find myself not caring what you think. You got no right to decide what Trailblaze and me do, especially walking beside each other!”

“You do not understand, little pony,” said Moa Gualt, raising his head back up, and letting his whole body flare up brighter, “I said I was going to test you with my flames. I believe you weak, unworthy! Now, you must prove me wrong. With force.”

I blinked, noticing that the ground, illusion of my mind or not, was smoking from Moa Gualt’s flames, and that everything around me had turned a hazy, flaming red. Even the ruins of my home village was now gone, obscured by a wall of flickering, crawling fire that encircled me and the giant Guardian of Fire.

“What? You mean fight? But this is just us inside a weird mind... place... thing. None of this is real, so how are we supposed to fight?”

Moa Gualt’s laugh was like the snapping of a thousand burning campfires, “This is not a battle of flesh, pony, but one of wills. We can hurt each other here, I assure you. If you fail, here, then your body will be no more than a mindless husk. Fear not, I shall... hold back just enough to make this sporting.”

“You already seem to have made you mind up about me, so why bother holding back? Why not just crush me, if you have that kind of power?” I asked, gulping, and trying to gauge how I’d even try fighting something like Moa Gault. He was made of fire, for Ancestors’ sake! It wasn’t like kicking him would do much other than turn me into a crispy critter. Or would it? He said this was a battle of wills, not bodies. Everything here was basically symbolic, wasn’t it? Even my own body?

“Because we Guardians are not perfect,” Moa Gualt said simply, for a second his avian features turning grim, even... sad? “We have made mistakes. I do not believe you worthy but if I am mistaken, I will only accept you as my Medium’s companion if you show me your strength. You claim to want to find a truth of your own, little one? Then prove to me you are strong enough to do that!”

With that the bird launched himself into the air, flames dripping off of his body like droplets of water. I immediately gave him a flat, frustrated look. For someone who seemed to want to give me a fair chance in fighting him, he sure was going about it backwards by taking the air. Moa Gualt rose a few dozen feet into the air, then with a screech that reminded me of twisting metal he dove at me.

Not having much choice I broke into a side gallop, darting away from the Guardian’s flaming path. I felt a pressure wave flow over my back, heat curling painfully across my withers as I rushed away from the trail of flames Moa Gault left in his wake. For a bird his size he was quite maneuverable, easily banking around in a sharp, hairpin turn that brought him on a course to chase me. The wall of flames loomed ahead of me and I turned quickly, running along its length as Moa Gault turned to follow me. His speed easily overcame my gallop, and I rolled desperately as he passed over me.

Fire crawled over my body, searing me with pain I had never before known. The flames hit me with more than just physical force. I felt the burn down to my core, as if they were scorching at both my mind and soul. I felt Moa Gault’s fire pressing down on my very being, trying to crush me under the pain of burning flesh. I howled in both pain and defiance, rolling and forcing my hooves underneath me. Horrible burns covered my legs, neck, and back as I stood, making every twinge of skin a agonizing feeling as I patted myself out and tried to spot Moa Gault. For a fight that was supposed to be of wills and not flesh, this both felt all too real, and not very much like a fight. This was more like an execution.

What do I do!? What can I do? I don’t have any weapons, and he’s flying around so even if I did have something to hit him with, I couldn’t do it without getting burned. Have to do something, though, other than just run.

Moa Gault turned sharply around and came back at me for another pass, his wings dripping fire like a rain storm. Pushing past the pain wracking my body I decided to try something crazy. Yeah, real shocker, I know. But I was basing my actions on logic this time; sort of. Moa Gault had said this place was made partially from my memories. He also said this was a battle of wills. So it stood to reason that if I thought hard enough and focused...

Suddenly the world shifted and I was standing on top of my village’s cliff! With Moa Gault at eye-level with me instead of above. Even the Guardian of Fire seemed surprised as he abruptly found himself flying directly at me instead of over me, and wasn’t able to completely stop in time as I turned on my hooves and unleashed a full on buck straight to his beak.

The impact of my hooves was immediately like trying to buck a boulder, and both searing heat and crushing will like a searing hot blade, shot through me from Moa Gault. While the Guardian’s willpower made me want to howl in agony as it burned through every inch of my body, I also felt my own focused will send a jolt into Moa Gault, not unlike a concentrated spear stabbing into the core of the Guardian. Moa Gault screeched in irritation as our clash sent me sprawling, but also sent him flapping backwards.

Painfully I got to my hooves, feeling drained and weak. It was as if I was a bucket that had its side burst open and all the water let out, then replaced with sand. I felt heavy, and I stumbled around to see Moa Gault circling above, eyeing me in anger. I think I might have hurt him a bit, but I was far worse off for our clash. I could barely keep on my hooves, and my vision was swimming. My hind legs were a charred mess, and the pain in them was rooted down to my bones.

I wasn’t going to last through another exchange like that. However much ‘willpower’ I had, it just wasn’t an even match for an eons old fire spirit with a serious chip on his shoulder. What was worse, I got the feeling he wasn’t trying very hard. I’d gotten one surprise hit in, but I doubted he’d get caught off guard twice, and his next pass would easily finish me off.

What now, Longwalk? I asked myself, You talked a good talk, but right now you’re looking kind of beat to crap, and are about to get your soul crispified by the same kind of fire spirit you used to laugh at the idea of... heh... Trailblaze would definitely be saying something like ‘I told you so’ right about now... Trail...

I wanted to see her again. I was just starting to understand how much she meant to me, dammit! She and my tribe were still in danger, still prisoners of Odessa. Even if I couldn’t win this fight, I had to survive it. One last strike, if I could get through one more strike, maybe that’d be enough. He had said he’d wanted to see my strength. I had no intention of giving him anything less.

Squaring my hooves and taking a deep breath, I pushed past the pain and exhaustion I was feeling, realizing none of it was physically real. I just had to focus. This was a matter of will, so if I just pushed myself, I ought to be able to still move. My body obeyed, though I could feel a strain inside me that I’d never felt before; like my heart was being stretched out more than it should with each beat.

Moa Gault had flown directly above me, and was looking down at me with the air of absolute assurance and superiority.

“There is no shame in surrender, little pony,” he said, voice an inferno in my ears, “It is not a crime to admit one’s weakness. Would you persist in your delusion of strength at the cost of your life?”

Sweat trickling down my face, I looked up at him and growled, “I never claimed I wasn’t weak. Doesn’t matter. I don’t care if I’m weak, or strong, or any of that crap! I’m going to keep going until I can’t go anymore, and if that means dying somewhere along the line, or even right here... I won’t quit. I won’t take a single step back from the path I’ve chosen! Now come at me!”

Moa Gault glared down at me, looking every inch like an imperious spirit of judgment, looking down upon the mortal beneath it with scornful wrath.

“So be it.”

With that, he dove, an unrelenting comet of fire that tore through the mental mindscape with such force that it blurred the air around his wings. In response I imagined the cliff I was on rising to meet him, pouring my own will into the desire to rise, to strike. In response the cliff shuddered and rose, speeding me towards a clash with Moa Gault. I tensed my right hoof, readying, planting my other hooves on the rocky surface of the cliff. Inside myself I tried to feel out my will, my desire to stay beside Trailblaze and my friends. My need to pay my debt to Arcaidia, and protect her in a world she was only starting to understand. My desire to deepen my bond with B.B and show her the kind of trust she’d already invested in me. My hope to somehow, someday pull away the layers of madness and violence inside Binge, and show even a Raider that it was never too late to find another path. Even my anger, at wanting to prove Iron Wrought’s constant cynicism, or Crossfire’s pragmatic, cap-driven lifestyle wrong.

I took all of it and imagined it pouring into my right hoof.

When the Guardian and I met, Moa Gault extended a talon, a blazing spear aimed for my heart. I yelled a defiant cry, rearing up and smashing my right hoof straight into that descending talon.

The impact destroyed my senses and completely washed everything out with monstrous, charring pain. The Guardian’s will burned through my own the way a flame heats up a piece of metal to the melting point. In this mental landscape a blast of flame exploded atop the rising cliff, which shattered apart as the Guardian drove through the stone, all the way down to the ground in a massive impact that sent a shockwave of fire flowing all around.

A few seconds went by, Moa Gault rising from the ground. Beneath his talon I was held, pressed into the dirt. My coat was blackened, red, fleshy burns marking more than half of me from the tip of my muzzle down to my flanks. I twitched, trying to raise my head, but could barely move as Moa Gault towered over me, his flaming talon still burning my hide as he pressed down on me.

“And so we see what your limit is, small one,” the Guardian of Fire said, taking his talon off of me as he stepped back, “Do you still think yourself strong enough to deny the truths of this world and find your own?”

I couldn’t really respond. It was taking all of my concentration not to pass out. Wait, wasn’t I already technically unconscious? What happens to you if you pass out while passed out? Well, if I still had enough presence of mind to ask myself a silly question like that, I couldn’t be that bad off. I tried moving a hoof and wrenching, torturous agony shot through me. Okay, maybe I was that bad off.

“Its over, then,” Moa Gault noted, and turned away from me, tucking his wings to his sides and slowly walking away, though it seemed more a symbolic gesture than a practical thing to do, given he had nowhere to go in this empty mental landscape.

I kept trying to move, despite the pain, and the fact that my body seemed to refuse to respond to me. This wasn’t a physical world, but it certainly felt real. This was all I had, then? It was over? Even with so many reasons to prove this arrogant spirit wrong, I just couldn’t overcome his will by myself...

… by... myself?

Wait.

“Wait!” I shouted, smashing a hoof to the ground, forcing my head to slowly raise. I felt it. It’d been there the whole time, I felt like an complete idiot for not noticing it sooner.

I was so used to that feeling of pressure in the back of my mind, it’d become natural. But now that I was paying attention to it, the feeling spiked so high it was like somepony was pushing a warm, soft hoof down on the back of my skull. As I saw Moa Gault pause to turn his flaming head to regard me quizzically, the pressure only increased further. I knew exactly what it was.

Gramzanber. I could feel my ARM clearly as if I was holding it. Its warm presence spread through me from the base of my skull, down my spine, and into every extremity of my body. It was a warmth not at all like the hard, consuming heat of the Guardian’s flames. This was a soothing warmth, one that both calmed my racing heart and filled me with confidence. Before I knew what was happening I found myself standing, the burns across my body melting away, replaced with unmarred flesh. I felt as if somepony was propping me up, helping me move. My shredded feeling of willpower felt like a uplifting breeze was embracing it, replenishing what had been battered and burned to the near breaking point.

Moa Gualt seemed to know something was changing, as his body flashed brighter, his red flames turning nearly white, and he turned face me again, spreading his wings in a flare like the corona of a star.

“What is this? The Veruni’s weapon? A waste of time. Those things only provide a physical focus for your soul’s energy. They do not make your will inherently stronger. You still stand alone, little pony!”

Like a flaming sword, trailing white fire, Moa Gault came at me again, and I knew he planned to finish it with this blow, here and now. Despite all my brave words earlier I couldn’t help but feel a deep, primal fear, seeing that massive bird of flames diving towards me. His wings looking like an expanding firestorm, his eyes gleaming like two pits of lava, and his screech vibrating through me, it was hard not to see the Guardian as any other than a god of flames, descending to smite a foalish mortal who’d dared to stand once more to challenge him.

In that moment, I felt a hoof on my shoulder, and a kind, mare’s voice speak.

”He’s wrong, Longwalk. You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. You understand that now, don’t you? I’m here for you, and so is everypony else!”

Was that...?

I snapped my head over, but saw nopony around me. The feeling of the hoof was gone, like that of a fleeting ghost’s. I couldn’t believe I’d heard what I’d heard, but my fear was replaced with calm, and with no time to think about it, I reached out with a hoof, guided by both instinct and what I understood now was my inherent connection to the weapon that had been defining me, bit by bit, in this journey.

I wasn’t even surprised as my hoof touched familiar metal, and in a shimmer, the silver form of Gramzanber appeared before me, its shaft resting against my hoof.

“I know,” I told the spear, or perhaps the spirit that I was starting to believe was inside it, “Sorry I was ignoring you. I’m kind of dumb, so just give my flank a swift kick if I start acting like I’m fighting alone again.”

I thought I might have heard a feminine laugh, one that seemed a little exasperated, but perhaps it was just my imagination. But with Gramzanber in my hoof I could face Moa Gault’s descending form with confidence welling up in me. Strangely, instead of grasping it in my mouth, I was letting a different set of instincts take over and before I knew what I was doing I had reared up on my hind legs, Gramzanber gripped in my right fetlock in a manner I didn’t even think ponies could do.

Moa Gault was nearly upon me, his entire body blocking out my sight of anything else as his talons reached out for me once more, the heat of his flames making my fur smoke and my blood seem to boil. Then Gramzanber pulsed with a silver and blue fire of its own. That fire washed across my body, and as I drew my hoof back I felt strands of warmth course through me from the spear, and with that feeling, I saw flashes of images.

I saw my friends. Arcaidia and B.B were inside a laboratory, speaking with Misty Glasses, and looking at a platform containing a circular arch at the apex of which was a solid green orb. Binge was bouncing around the Stable’s corridors, apparently playing a game of hide and seek with some of the spider pony foals. Iron Wrought was inside a vast room where the Ursa sat on a raised apparatus, he and several spider ponies worked on fixing the armor plating on the huge vehicle. LIL-E was outside Stable 104, at the entrance to the canyon, watching the distant form of Odessa’s airship rising towards the cloud covered sky.

I saw all of these images simultaneously, and at the same time each of my friends paused, either looking around, or at each other, as if they’d been able to sense me for just a second.

Then the images were gone, and I felt a clear, crystalline moment of certainty that Gramzanber was ready to be unleashed. With all the force I could muster I threw the spear.

Gramzanber flew true and it and the Guardian of Fire met, there was a raw burst of light and heat that blinded me completely. When my vision cleared I was standing in a black void. Disoriented, I stumbled about for a second, trying to discern up from down, and not just flail around. There was solid... something beneath my hooves. Not ground, because I couldn’t see anything other than myself, but when I thought to stand, I found I could.

“Did I just win? Or is this me being dead?” I asked myself, poking at my own body.

“You are not dead, young one,” said Moa Gault’s voice, and in a moment the fiery bird burst into existence before me, preening at one of his wings, “And yes, I suppose if one was to twist my wing and force me to admit it, I shall concede your victory. Don’t tell the other Guardians. I’ll be hearing nothing but ribbing about this for decades to come.”

“Really?” I blurted.

“Hmph, do not sound impressed with yourself. You had help from others, but since I never said you could not have help, I won’t count it against you.”

He sounded rather miffed, and raised one wing to idly preen it, “Now, as I tested you, your companion has finished her own trials. She is worthy. She shall be my Medium. That means... many things. Things, I think, I’ll leave her to explain to you, should she so chose. That is part of her responsibility now, as a Medium. She shall have to decide how to pursue her quest, and who shall help her in it. Perhaps that shall involve you, perhaps not. Regardless, I am done with you, little pony. I’ll concede that you... may be strong enough to find your own truth in this world. If you can endure the pain of that search, and are not broken by the costs you’ll no doubt incur in the process.”

“Wait a dang second!” I said, confused, “What do you mean ‘her quest’!? What are you trying to make Trailblaze do!?”

“Ask her, when you awake. It is up to her to decide what to trust you with knowing,” the Guardian said as his form started to fade, and I felt a strange pull on myself, like slowly falling.

“Hold on,” I shouted, “We’re still prisoners of Odessa! Any clues on how we can escape? I mean, its not like Trailblaze can do any quests or whatnot from you if she’s stuck as a prisoner.”

“I have every confidence in the resourcefulness of the pony I have chosen as my Medium. And you, I suppose,” Moa Gault said, stretching a wing and preening it, “Mostly my Medium. A way to escape your foes will be found. They are not nearly as clever as they believe they are, and some among them have reason to help you.”

That was the last Moa Gualt told me before his voice and form faded completely and my own consciousness awoke back into the waking world.

I woke up to the unusual sensation of feeling physically fine, but internally drained. I stretched my limbs, feeling satisfying pops all over, and the comforting sensation of full, undamaged hide. The horrible burns from my strange dream battle with the Guardian were just a memory now. However inside I felt completely tired out, though strangely... satisfied.

Less satisfying was the cold metal floor beneath me, and the now all too familiar feeling of the Odessa energy manacles on my legs, and the collar around my neck. Blinking my eyes, I looked up at bright, pure white lighting from a few crystalline panels mounting in a solid metal ceiling. I was in a small room, perhaps no more than ten paces wide, with plain metal walls on three sides, and a strange glowing screen of green energy in place of the fourth wall.

Cylinder-like devices built into the corners of the wall to either side of the green energy wall seemed to be the source of the barrier, and it looked similar to the energy shield I’d seen in Stable 104. Beyond that field I could see a larger room, its walls lined with more... cells, like mine. In the middle of the room was a smooth, metal desk with a white terminal on it, and at the desk a pegasus stallion in a white Odessa uniform was monitoring several other screens that popped up on either side of the terminal like thin pieces of glass.

On either side of the desk other Odessa pegasi in standard combat armor and helmets stood, straight necked and alert, with magical energy rifles of the tube-covered variety slung across their chests. I felt a faint vibration in the floor and heard a distant, ever present hum in the air.

“W-where...” I coughed, licking my lips. My throat and mouth were completely dry, “Where am I?”

I unsteadily got to my hooves and approached the energy field, hesitant to touch it, but wanting to get a better look at what was outside my cell. The pegasi didn’t answer me, though the nearest guard mare gave me a frowning look and turned to the stallion at the desk. I saw her mouth move, but didn’t hear any words. Was the energy barrier blocking sound somehow? The stallion at the desk glanced at the guard mare who’d spoken and then at me, making a motion like he’d just laughed as he smirked. I saw him reach over to a device that looked to me like a small, metal tentacle with a fuzzy ball on the end of it, and he spoke into it. He then said something to the mare and he laughed, or at least I’m assuming that’s what the opening of his mouth and the shaking of his shoulders meant. The guard mare for her part just rolled her eyes, as if she didn’t really think anything was funny, and resumed standing alert, giving me a narrow eyed look that seemed to say; don’t try anything, punk.

Examining myself, it didn’t take me long to notice, rather dishearteningly, that my Pip-Buck along with my Grapple had been removed. I was now naked as the day I was foaled, save for the manacles and collar. Damn.

However, I closed my eyes and focused for a second, and felt the pressure I wanted to feel. Gramzanber was here, and close. I looked to my right. My spear wasn’t far, probably just a few rooms down. That was good. Now all I had to do was punch my way through a magical energy barrier, take three guards in hoof-to-hoof combat, then break down whatever locked doors were between me and Gramzanber, find Trailblaze and the rest of my tribe, then figure out where I was, and escape without anypony dying!

Easy.

Only not.

Closer to impossible, really.

“I am officially declaring this my worst day ever,” I muttered, bringing my head closer to the magical barrier, trying to get a good angle to look at the other cells.

I felt an instant wave of joy upon seeing a black tail on a brown, mareishly slim flank with a familiar blue-eye cutie mark pacing in one of the cells. An instant later the pony turned around and paced the other way, confirming it was Trailblaze. I blinked, however, upon seeing her. She looked the same, her features a mask of barely contained fury... but the shimmering heat waves around her was new, as was the strange mark upon her chest, right over her heart.

It looked very much like a stylized, flaming talon, black as if somepony had tattooed it into her flesh.

She caught sight of me, and instantly stopped pacing, her face turning shocked, then grateful as she let out a huge sigh of relief and went to the magical barrier blocking her own cell and put a hoof on it. The field glowed a little brighter, but didn’t hurt her, and Trailblaze’s mouth moved, saying words I couldn’t hear, but could well imagine. ‘Are you okay?’

I nodded to her, smiling my own relief at seeing her and gave myself a hearty pat on the chest to show I was fine. Traiblaze sighed again, then glared at the Odessa guards. She looked at me and made motions with her head to the left and right, indicating I should look at the other cells. Doing so I could now clearly see most of my tribesmates that had been down in the Ruin were now occupying the cells of this prison. I could see Whetstone curled up in her own cells, her mouth opening and closing in wide, no doubt horribly loud snores as she snoozed away. That mare, to think she could sleep at a time like this. But then she probably had the right idea. Not much we could do in circumstances like this.

I looked back at Trailblaze and pointed a hoof at her. At her confused look I pointed at my chest, right at the place that mark was on Trailblaze’s own chest, then pointed back at her. Getting what I meant she looked down at herself, and when her eyes met mine again they were... guarded. She just shook her head at me, a hard look on her face that reminded me way too much of her mother. I just nodded back, and with a shrug at her I began to walk around the perimeter of my cell.

I didn’t expect to find anything I could use to escape, but I didn’t have a lot of other things to do at the moment. I couldn’t move quickly, due to the energy manacles and their pain and nausea inducing qualities, but even at the steady walk they allowed it wasn’t as if it took long to examine my confines. It was a plain cell, with only a single, hoof sized vent in one corner of the ceiling to let warm air in. A pair of buttons on the back wall produces a sink and toilet respectively, unfolding from the wall, but it took only a minute of checking to find out there was nothing in the cubby holes those unfolded from.

Despite needing to go, honestly, I was not doing that while those pegasi guards were watching, so I turned my attention to the cylindrical devices producing the magical barrier. I was just starting to consider what might happen if I tried bucking the cylinders as hard as I could when I noticed the pegasus at the desk turn his head at something and rise from his seat, standing at attention. The other guards followed suit, all of them saluting with their wings at somepony I couldn’t see.

Then she came into view, marching by the desk, saluting the guards there, but with a hoof instead of a wing. She didn’t have wings that could salute.

She was still a pegasus, however. At least I thought she might be. She didn’t have the small, almost dainty wings of other pegasi. Instead triangular, thin slabs of metal were mounted on her back, built into an apparatus that connected to a pair of turbine engines like miniaturized versions of the ones seen on a Vertibuck. Her metal ‘wings’ were folded up, forming a steeple above her back, but I could see the grooves in her sides that would allow the wings to fold down for use. Her body was practically all metal. Her legs, front and back, were steel gray, with small, smooth joints barely showing the wires beneath the metallic carapace. Her sides and chest, from the base of her neck nearly to the edge of her flank was little more than a series of armored plates, segmented so that they rolled almost as naturally as flesh with her movements, but still clearly nothing more than a shell that made it impossible to tell how much beneath them was actual flesh and blood pony. Above the base of her neck, however, she was still ‘normal’, more or less. She had a copper red coat and a short, messy mane of orange with yellow highlights. Her eyes were a pair of crimson pools, set in a face that might have one time been pretty, but was now marred by a series of jagged, massive scars that turned her features into valleys of old, torn flesh.

The very first thing I thought upon seeing those ragged claw marks was that this mare had been on the losing side of a hoof fight with a Hellhound or three. Given the fact that it seemed most of her body had been replaced with mechanical implants I could imagine her face had been the least damaged part of her from whatever had happened to her.

Her flanks and tail were still intact, though, and I noted her cutie mark; a orange sun seemingly setting behind a field of purple and red clouds.

The metal mare made a gesture, speaking to the stallion at the desk, and he immediately touched a few buttons on his terminal. A small hole, no bigger than a bottle cap, opened in my cell’s energy barrier, letting sound in. The mare fixed me with a steady look and approached the barrier, and on impulse I also approached it, meeting her look.

“Prisoner 1138,” she said in a light, faintly scratchy voice, “You are to accompany me. Any resistance will be met with immediate and overwhelming force. Do we understand each other?”

My immediate instinct was to quip, but I’d already thrown up once from the nauseating power of the manacles, and wasn’t interested in dry heaving right now. I nodded, silently. The mare seemed to find that acceptable and glanced back at the desk guard.

“Open it.”

A few more keystrokes and my cell’s barrier flowed away like vapor. I blinked curiously at my now open cell, and carefully stepped out. The two guards on either side of the desk moved as if to flank me, by the metal mare raised a hoof to stop them.

“No need. I’ll be escorting the prisoner myself.”

The guards exchanged looks and the female of the pair looked at the metal mare worriedly, “But, Lieutenant Sunset, he’s-”

The mare, Sunset, cut off the guard with a sharp, clipped tone, “I am well aware of what he is. Even if he were to try something, there’s nowhere for him to go, even if he did somehow escape me while wearing suppression manacles and an explosive collar. I think I can take care of walking him to the bridge.”

The guard mare straightened, looking as if she’d been slapped, “O-of course ma’am!”

Nodding in satisfaction Sunset turned her red eyes towards me and said, “Follow me.” She turned, metal hooves clanking upon the floor heavily as she walked, apparently completely confident that I would follow. Which I did, but not without first taking a look around to take in the details of this prison. Escape for the moment might seem impossible, but every small advantage I could gather might count.

The prison was a long rectangular room, about sixty paces long. That gave room for six cells on either side, all of the ones across from mine occupied by members of my tribe. Aside from the one guard desk, there was a raised platform at the far end of the room to my left where an area closed off by metal barricades held a gun emplacement with what looked like a gatling version of the red energy beams guns of common Odessa troopers. Another pair of guards occupied that gun emplacement, and above them, in either corner of the room, hung small gun turrets with camera lenses blinking with green lights. There were no obvious panels or locks on the outside of the cells, so I could only surmise that the terminal on the desk was the sole means of opening or closing the cells. From her cell Trailblaze gave me a worried look, and I tried to give her a reassuring nod. I saw her taking a deep breath and return the look, lips moving in words simple enough that I could read them, ‘Be safe’.

I nodded to her, mouthing the words ‘You too’, then trotted along quickly so I wasn’t too obvious about my looking over the room. Following Sunset towards the right I saw there was a heavy metal set of sliding doors opened up to let us out into a wide, angular corridor of metal. The corridor was lighted with more bright ceiling lights built seamlessly into the metal panel, and aside from occasional vents or small access shafts, the corridor was bare, utilitarian. The same hum I’d felt in my cell was also prevalent here, and in fact was slightly louder.

“Where is this?” I asked as Sunset led me to the left. She didn’t respond, instead raising a hoof in salute to another pair of guards who were standing outside a small metal door set at a t-junction where several other Odessa pegasi and griffins were passing by, these ones not in armor but instead in simpler, white and gray cloth uniforms. These pegasi and griffins also paused to salute Sunset, and I noticed some of them had what looked like grease stains on their clothes, and the faint smell of oil. It reminded me of the machine shop in Stable 104.

Was I in another Stable, maybe?

We turned to the right, but as we did I almost stopped, feeling Gramzanber’s presence, now closer and more defined, practically a second heartbeat. It was behind that guarded door, I was sure of it! Even as we trotted by I got the notion in my head to see if I could summon the ARM, the same way I had in the mental battle against Moa Gault. I put my hoof out and focused, trying to concentrate on the feel of the spear in my grasp.

I supposed I shouldn’t have been too disappointed when the ARM didn’t appear in my hoof. It wasn’t as if I had a plan for escape yet, after all.

“What are you doing?” Sunset asked me, looking over her shoulder at me with a slightly tilted head as I still stood there, hoof out, apparently aimed at nothing.

“Uhhhhh... hoofbump?” I suggested on the fly with what I hoped was a disarming smile.

She clearly didn’t grasp my sense of humor, her scared features turning into a small, bemused look of irritation she snorted and said, “Follow. No more screwing around.”

I made a quick face at her, sticking my tongue out as I followed glumly. We were now in a longer corridor that gently curved to the right. Along the left of the wall there were metal grates, or perhaps shutters, the purpose of which I didn’t know. I wished I could get this mare to talk, but she had completely ignored my initial question. Despite myself I was intrigued by her metallic form. Her limbs made small, barely perceptible whirring noises as she walked, though they moved with fluid motions, not unlike real limbs. Seeing her from behind I could tell that, along her back, were metal nodes of some sort, which connected to the circular disc at the base of her back where most pegasi’s wings were connected. Here, though, it was where that metal pair of wings and tiny engines connected. I wondered if she really could fly with those?

I also could tell from this angle that her backside was flesh, rather than metal, her hind legs the only things back here that were machine. Not that I was looking that closely, mind, but it wasn’t as if I had a lot else to look at in these bland corridors... Stop judging me!

Frustrated, I decided to try and get something more out of her, “Hey, would it hurt to answer just one question? Where is this? C’mon, you just said I couldn’t get away, so what’s the harm in answering one little question?”

I saw an annoyed bristling run up and down Sunset’s mane as she paused just long enough to reach over to one of the metal shutters and slide it open. Bright light poured in, illuminating a square shaped patch of space on the opposite wall. The Odessa mare just pointed a hoof and said, “Take a look, if it’ll satisfy you.”

I did so, trotting over and glancing through the opening. A thick glass window was behind the metal shutter, and beyond it I saw something I didn’t immediately comprehend. A seemingly endless, stretching expanse of white, rolling substance extended as far as my eyes could see around and below us. Above it was a field of stark, blindingly pure blue that I’d only ever seen in my dreams, or perhaps on a pony. I didn’t understand what I was seeing until, in the distance to the left, I saw the faint rows of gray and white capped rock that looked like... mountains?

That’s when it hit me. I was looking at the sky. The honest, to goodness, uncovered sky from above the blanket of clouds! I just stared at it all for a few moments, enraptured by the open beauty before me. I felt an illogical urge to want to jump out there, spread wings I didn’t have, and just soar through that expanse for as far as I could.

“Ahem, are you done gawking?”

I blinked, shook my head, and with some effort tore my gaze away from the window and what it showed, “I... yeah, just... its, wow, you know?”

Articulate I am not, sometimes. Most of the time.

Sunset gave me a measuring look, the irritation slowly draining from her eyes, replaced by an expression of shared understanding as she nodded once, a trace of a smile on her lips, “I guess it is, if you’re not used to it. That answer you question?”

“Mostly. How are we up this high?” I began to ask, but my mind snapped back into action and provided the answer and my eyes widened, “We’re on the airship!”

“The Varukisias,” Sunset confirmed, a hint of pride creeping into her voice, “We’ve pulled above the cloud cover for communication purposes. Still have things to load on board from the site below, but they’re not ready down there yet for us to finish. In the meantime someone wants to talk with you.”

“Who?” I asked. Sunset motioned for me to follow her and we resumed our walk down the long corridor, which now that I knew where we were I could imagine was following along the contour of the ship’s left hull. She didn’t answer me immediately, staying quiet as she led me to a sharper curve in the corridor, passing a number of hatches along the right side, and a few more Odessa ponies, including even a unicorn. At the end of the corridor it opened into a room shaped like a slice of a circle, where three elevator doors were lined up along the wall.

Sunset went for the one on the left, and once we were inside and the doors closed I saw a change come over her. Her tense, rigid posture relaxed, and her ever present frowning look softened, and when she looked at me it was with far more curiosity than animosity. It was like looking at a different mare, a mask removed.

“You really do look like your father,” she said, shaking her head, “Its uncanny.”

Her words made me blink in puzzlement, at seeing it she seemed to realize I had no idea what she was talking about, quirking her lips and nickering lightly, “Right, you don’t know. Sand Storm probably hasn’t told you anything.”

“My mother!?” I burst out, turning towards Sunset swiftly, too swiftly, as the manacles activated at the fast movement and forced me to double over in pain and nausea. I barely kept from dry heaving as Sunset sighed.

“Take it easy. Those manacles aren’t there for show,” she said, a bit of her sternness and annoyance returning as she frowned at me.

“I… ugh... can feel that,” I said, raising my head slightly, “H-how do you know my mother’s name?”

Sunset’s eyes, her entire face, pitted though it was with those deep grooved scars, went through a complex dance of emotions. Tightening with anxiety, softening with understanding, eyes flicking with worry, finally settling on calm, steady control, “She’s an old friend. I met her the same time she met your father. We were part of the same team; fought together and... let’s just say I owe her my life more than once. She’s still one of the only landbound I’ve ever come to respect, and without her I doubt I’d have come to support your father’s ideals.”

I remembered my mother’s story about my father, how she and Hawker had traveled with my father on some expedition to find a Stable. She’d never mentioned having made other friends among Odessa, but then, I suppose that was the kind of detail that she hadn’t had time to tell me. It made sense, though. Through Glint I’d discovered that not all Odessa ponies were unwilling to be friendly towards us ‘landbound’. It wasn’t that surprising my mother might have forged a few bonds with others in Odessa besides my father while she’d been working with him. Though I was brimming with an entire barrage of questions for Sunet about my parents and what happened in the past, a certain matter of the present soured my mood a little.

“That’s cool and all,” I said, suddenly remembering my circumstances, “But it seems an odd way to repay my mother’s friendship, by letting her village be destroyed.”

Maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say. Sunset’s eyes flashed angrily and she put her face right up in front of mine, one metal hoof pressing hard against my chest.

“Hey, you listen, and listen good, colt! I didn’t want that to happen to her home! There was nothing I could do about it! If I went against orders I’d be in the brig at best, or killed at worst. And I can’t help you if I’m dead! You got that? I’m supposed to help you, and have had to swallow a lot of unpleasant things to be in a position to do that. So don’t you judge me. Flaming skies, I owe you almost as much as your mother for being there for my Glint, but I’ll smash your face through the deck if I hear another bullshit remark like that out of you!”

I’d have been more intimidated if I hadn’t, just a short while ago, faced down a primal spirit of fire, but credit where it was due I believed she was serious. Whatever I might of thought of what happened to my tribe, there was a shimmer of very real pain in Sunset’s eyes that, despite her visage of anger, told me she regretted what had happened at Shady Stream. Besides that something else she’d said piqued my interest.

“Wait, Glint? You said ‘my Glint’?” I asked, but even as I said it I noticed the similarities. The coat and mane color, the eyes, even a bit of the attitude. Glint’s own words about sharing his mother’s colors came back to me and I found myself smiling despite myself, which seemed to unnerve Sunset a bit.

“You’re Glint’s mother!” I blurted, my mind immediately derailing and switching tracks, “Is he on board this ship? What about his squad? Last I heard they were being sent here to be healed.”

She seemed taken aback by my barrage of questions, and I saw her glance off to her left, seemingly at nothing, and her expression tense, “Yes, he’s on board, and as far as I know the survivors of his squad are still being treated in our medical bay. Look, there is a lot I need to tell you, but I don’t have time. They’re expecting us, so I have to take you to the bridge. Just look like a prisoner for now, okay? I’ll be looking for a way to get you and the others of your village out of here, but right now you have to play along.”

I nodded slowly, “I don’t think ‘looking like’ a prisoner will be hard, given circumstances. About what I asked before though, who wants to meet me?”

Sunset hit the button to send the elevator going and said, “Our leader... Odessa herself.”

The bridge of the Varukisas was situated at the end of a exceedingly long and well guarded hallway. Remembering what I’d seen of the airship from the outside, recalling its avian shape, including the long slender neck that had led to a sharp, bird shaped head, I figured that’s where we’d arrived. Sunset had resumed her stiff, irritated but professional attitude the moment we’d left the elevator. I had no idea if this was just a mask she wore, or if it was just a different part of her genuine personality. I was still a little shocked that she knew both of my parents, and was apparently willing to help me, but I was glad of it. I was curious as to what she could do, though. Given the security I’d seen so far on the ship it wasn’t as if she could just open the prison cells and send us on our way. Anything she might do would certainly put her in danger. Just how far could I trust her?

Putting it out of my mind for now I looked around the bridge, not bothering to try and disguise my curiosity. The bridge was like an egg, a stretched oval tapering down to one end. At the far end a wide bank of windows wrapped around the bulkheads, showing a wide cloudscape married to a clear blue sky, as if we were sailing on a rolling white ocean. Along the walls a series of terminals were arranged, nine in total, each occupied by either a pegasus or griffin in trim, white Odessa uniforms. Each one also wore over one eye a thin, plastic eyepiece attached to a wire headband. Hooves and claws worked on keys, and glass screens in front of the operators projected various images, some of which I thought looked like parts of the Wasteland.

The center of the bridge was dominated by a raised portion, steps leading up to a platform that oversaw the rest of the bridge. A single chair up there was surrounded by enough space for others to gather, but the chair itself had a large, crescent shaped control panel in front of it and from the top edge of the panel a series of tiny, blue crystalline nodes projected holographic screens around the chair like a spiderweb.

Sitting in that chair was a stately looking pegasus mare, with a minty green coat and a neon pink mane tied in a neat bun and mostly tucked under a Odessa officer cap. The mare had a stiff posture and one of her hooves was tapping on the deck as she glared with barely hidden annoyance at the four individuals who stood around her, locked in a debate.

“We should just blanket the entire region with a bombardment until we flush them out,” said a pegasus stallion who looked like he could give Brickhouse a run for his money in the muscle department. His bronze colored coat was chiseled with muscles that looked toned to a iron hardness and he wore a modified Odessa white uniform, with an open vest that showed off his stout chest. Unlike most Odessa clothing, that usually had parts that covered the flanks, his was bare and showed a cutie mark of a boulder, split down the middle as if by great force. A wild, spiked mane of dark brown fell around his head, long sideburns tinging yellow towards the tips, and a bushy, short tail that was similarly yellow towards the tip. He had a cocksure grin and brown eyes sparkled with a youthful energy despite the fact that he looked to be in his thirties. He wore a strange bladed weapon strapped to his back, a long blade extending from a bulky box-like apparatus. The blade was rimmed with razor sharp teeth, and for all the world the weapon looked like a giant version of the ripper knife Binge used. It was also the tell-tale silver color that identified it as an artificial ARM.

“We’re not carpet bombing anything Hammerfall,” Francheska said with a gruff sigh, “For two minutes could you use your brain? We want Target 02 alive, not turned into chunky fuckin’ salsa!”

Francheska was joined by Shattered Sky, the gray pegasus adjusting his glasses with one wing while giving the griffin an amused, snark filled half smile, “Restraint is hardly one of your own qualities, dear Francheska. Much as it may seem like overkill I actually agree with Hammerfall’s suggestion. We can bring our prey out into the open easiest by burning the ground it tries to hide in.”

“Holy crap, somepony agrees with me!” Hammerfall laughed, and clapped a hoof on Shattered Sky’s shoulders, nearly flattening the smaller stallion, and earning a displeased glare from Shattered Sky as Hammerfall continued to laugh, “I got to mark this on the calendar. So c’mon Fran, its two against one now!”

Hammerfall turned his grinning visage to the last pony in the group, “How about you? What’s your vote, Black Petal?”

The pony he addressed was a young pegasus mare, who looked little older than myself. She had a coat a shade of such dark red that it was nearly black. Her mane and tail were a platinum sheen, the mane tied into two curly pigtails, and her tail a similarly curled affair. Pink, gleaming and wide eyes stared boredly at the ceiling, as the mare was laying flat on her back, hooves wrapped behind her head. She was laying on, and I had to blink once or twice before I gauged what I was looking at, what appeared to be a large floating silver key. It was about as large as the mare’s own body, and she easily lounged on it as if it were a couch. I could only assume that it, too, was one of Odessa artificial ARMs.

Which meant I was looking at all four members of Odessa’s Cocytus special forces unit gathered in one place.

“Don’t care. Do what you guys like,” Black Petal said, one hind hoof dangling over the side of her floating key/bed lazily, “Wake me up if something interesting happens...”

She trailed off as her nose twitched and I saw her take a sniff, in a manner that directly reminded me of B.B. Almost instantly Black Petal had turned over and was perched on her floating key alertly, her wings flared out and her pink eyes boring into me as a feral grin crossed her face. As she shook her flank back and forth excitedly, like a hunting hound eager to pounce, I noticed she had a cutie mark that was also reminding me of B.B; a white rose rosing from a pool of what looked like liquid fire, the flames licking the white petals black.

“I smell something good, and it looks like somepony’s brought me lunch!” Black Petal suddenly said, excitedly as she looked at me and Sunset, “Sunset, you shouldn't have! You even brought a young, strapping buck, just the kind I like!”

Black Petal smiled wide, pearl white teeth, and I felt a frozen shiver tap dance over my spine. Did... did that mare have fangs!? My mind immediately thought of B.B and wondered if there was a connection, or if this was just coincidence.

Abruptly the green mare in the command chair slammed a hoof on her console, “Enough! I’ll have proper behavior on my bridge.”

Before Black Petal or any of the other gathered Cocytus members could respond to that the green mare went on, rising from her seat and approaching the stairs down, looking over Sunset and myself. Sunset was fast to salute with one of her metal limbs, the green mare responding with a salute with a wing.

“Lieutenant Sunset reporting with prisoner 1138 as instructed Captain Straight Course!” Sunset said curtly, “He’s cooperative.”

“Thank you Lieutenant. The communication hub is ready to receive him,” said the captain, glancing around her at the Cocytus members, who had all now taken an interest in proceedings and were looking our way. Shattered Sky looked vaguely displeased for some reason, though that might just be because I was still alive, or at the very least not beaten to within an inch of my life. Francheska had a grumbling, resigned cast to her features, through that wasn’t directly at me, just at her fellow Cocytus members. Black Petal was still looking at me like I was a tasty treat, slowly licking her lips, her curly tail bouncing happily in a manner that disturbingly reminded me of Binge. I decided then and there I never wanted Binge in the same room as this mare; they’d either destroy each other, or team up. Either way it’d end poorly for me I imagined. Hammerfall, oddly, wasn’t looking at me at all, but instead was smiling at Sunset as he bounded down the stairs to her.

“Heya hunnybun~!” Hammerfall cooed, practically dancing towards Sunset, “Betcha weren’t expecting to see your one and only loving hubby-kins here! Now how about a little affectionate lovin’ for your number one stallion, just returned from the frigid north!”

What he received was a metal hoof to the snout that stopped him in his tracks, like a macabre still frame picture, as Sunset, eyebrow twitching, said, “Not. Now. Honey.”

“B-b-but,” Hammerfall continued to try talking around his... wife’s(?) hoof in his face, “I’ve been longing for your loving embrace for months! The north was cold! And boring! And filled with snow! Did I mention it was cold? I was loooonely!”

“Well you’re going to be lonely for a while longer,” growled Sunset, breathing heavily and her red eyes blazing like twin suns, “We’re on duty! Act professional, or at least try, you meathead!”

“Oh, but you like my meathead!” Hammerfall said with a lustful grin, and a completely unneeded hip thrust.

In a surreal moment the rest of the bridge crew, in its entirety, facehoofed. Even Shattered Sky. I would have too if I wasn’t wearing the manacles.

Sunset’s face was glowing with a beat red heat and her face was a picture of embarrassed rage as she looked at Captain Straight Course, “Ma’am, I respectfully request permission to wait outside until I’m needed to escort the prisoner back to the brig.”

“Granted,” said the captain in a terse tone, “And perhaps you’ll escort your special somepony to the brig as well, as he seems to need to cool off even after spending so much time stationed in the north?”

Hammerfall was quick to realize he’d probably gone too far and adopted a haphazard version of military posture, standing at attention and saying, “Won’t be necessary ma’am! I’m cooled off. Not at all thinking about sexy-times with my hot wife in the near future. Nope!”

I just couldn’t stop myself, looking over at Sunset, my voice deadpan as I said, “You married him?”

Sunset, seemingly without thinking, said, “He has his good points; including a very nice-” she bit off her comment mid sentence and glared at me, “None of your business, prisoner!”

Hammerfall had shifted his attention from Sunset to me, the burly pegasus stallion eyeing me up and down and stepping over towards me. His eyes were still carrying that jovial gleam, but a new edge had taken root in his muscles, the kind of thing I might not have noticed a few weeks ago but by now, after so many near death experiences, was recognizing as a warrior’s tension. For all his grinning and joking this stallion was ready to unleash violence at the drop of a pin.

“So this is the colt that ruffled up Shattered Sky, eh?” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the pegasus in question with a laugh, “What’s got you so worried Shattered? He’s a kid! I could bench press four of him stacked up and not break a sweat.”

Shattered Sky, who’d remained up next to the ship’s captain, smiled thinly, tilting his head just slightly downward so his glasses became twin solid gleams of light that hid his eyes, “That child ruffled nothing, and I am not worried about him. He’s a minor player, just a pawn of the Veruni, and soon to be little more than another test subject.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Hammerfall, looking back at me, “The top boss herself wants to chat him up. Curious that, if he’s just this nopony. What do you got to say for yourself colt? Way I’ve heard it you’ve put yourself up against us, helping out a xeno, and getting mixed up in our business. Think you can take us?”

I didn’t know what this stallion was getting at, and my slight sidelong glance at Sunset revealed nothing. She wasn’t even looking at me, she was looking at her husband, expression neutral. Was Hammerfall on her side, knowing about her relation with my mother and father? Was he going to help her with getting me and my tribemates free? What was I supposed to even say? Swallowing my doubts I just answered on impulse.

“If I have to,” I said, chin up.

Hammerfall laughed, giving me a hefty smack on the chest that staggered me, making me cough to get my breath back. Hammerfall’s hoof had been more solid than rock.

“Hahaha! Buck doesn’t lack for moxy! Be my pleasure to cut you down when the time comes, colt! Don’t go messing around with anypony else in Cocytus. When the horseapples hits the fan, you just find me and we’ll have ourselves a damn good fight!”

He turned and gave Sunset a wink, “Well hun, think I’ll go take a peek and see how our own buck’s doing in medical. Knowing him he’s probably beating himself black and blue over the losses in his squad. Better go set him straight.”

Hammerfall briefly looked back at Captain Straight Course, “Captain, permission to visit the medical bay?”

The captain nodded once, seemingly eager to just get on with things as she waved a hoof, “Yes, granted.”

As Hammerfall left he and Sunset shared a final look and though she still kept a straight, professional look on her face, I saw a bare twitch of a smile on her lips as she flicked her tail at his nose and whispered, “Tonight. Missed you.”

Hammerfall just grinned and left. With him gone Captain Straight Course walked down and came up to me. Up close I noticed she was taller than me by a good margin. It meant she could look down her snout at me, eyes glittering with a combination of curiosity and distaste.

“Under normal circumstances a prisoner like you, let alone a landbound, would not be allowed on my bridge,” she said in a matter-of-fact manner, “But circumstances in this case are far from normal. Now, if you’ll proceed to the door over here and go inside, you’ll be given the rare honor of speaking with our leader. She wishes to speak with you alone, but do not even think of attempting anything to escape. I personally give you my word that any shenanigans from you on my bridge will earn you a personal flight lesson from me.”

“Flight lesson?” I asked, glancing at my wingless back, “But I can’t fly.”

The captain’s hard expression of warning didn’t change, “Exactly.”

That said, she turned away from me and returned to her chair on the raised platform. The remaining Cocytus members returned with her, Francheska immediately getting back into it with Shattered Sky about how to best flush out my friends from hiding. I doubted any of them suspected my friends weren’t actually out in the Wasteland at the moment. Granted, I wasn’t sure myself that they were in Stable 104, but I remembered my vision of them during my dreamscape fight with Moa Gault. They’d certainly looked like they’d gone back to Stable 104, if for no other reason than to repair the Ursa, and I was glad of it. As long as they were there my friends were safe. It was a comforting thought. Even if the worst happened to me, my friends would survive.

Black Petal kept looking at me with those unnerving eyes of hers as I trotted towards the door that’d been indicated to me, a pair of sliding metal doors that hissed open the moment I got close to them.

Inside I found an odd room. It was circular and completely bare, lit from above by a solid sheet of white plastic, while the floor was a smooth black material that wasn’t metal. It clinked oddly on my hooves as I walked over it, meandering towards the center of the room. Was the floor made of glass? Or some kind of crystal? The curved walls were metal at least, but I noticed diamond shaped blue crystals mounted in the wall at regular intervals around the entire room.

When the door closed behind me the lighting from above dimmed, the blue gems began a faint, steady hum, and were wreathed with smokey blue magical energy. The room was lined in a soft blue light, and then, in the center of the room, a figure appeared from thin air.

She was a female griffin, with bright yellow eyes and a golden coat, her feathers pure white, and her stance stately and proud. She wore a white uniform over her shoulders and chest that had prominent gold tassels hanging from the arms. The sword emblem of Odessa was large on her breast and crossed by four lightning bolts, all of them gold, where the blade remained silver. She was armed with only a blade, a broad sword with a ornate X shaped crossguard mounted with a single green gem. The hilt itself was a silver sheen of an artificial ARM, and I assumed the blade would be the same color, though it was currently hidden by a blue scabbard tooled with gold.

While this griffin’s appearance was striking, and carried with it an aura of authority and strength, what struck me about her was that I quickly recognized the similarity between her and another griffin I’d seen. She looked like a dead ringer for the Odessa I’d seen in Airheart’s memory orb, the one who’d been part of Rainbow Dash’s Shadowbolts. There were small differences, however. A slightly smaller beak, a few headfeathers placed differently. Just enough that it was a resemblance rather than looking exactly like Odessa.

The griffin looked at me with calculation, and smiled in a way that left me feeling off balance. It was an inviting smile, like she was going to trust me with secrets only I could be trusted with, and given responsibilities only I could handle. It was the smile of a leader confiding in a subordinate that they knew would fight to the death for them. At the same time it was a cold, terrifying smile. The smile of someone who knew others would die for her, and was perfectly okay with that.

“So I finally get a look at you,” she said in a voice that was shockingly young, and bursting with a note of optimism that, despite that disturbing smile, made me want to trust her, “I am Colonel Odessa of, ha, Odessa. Yes, feel free to take a moment to find that redundant!”

Her smile warmed and she chuckled, shaking her head, “Really, some of our traditions confound even me. But great, great, great, great grandmother wanted the name to live on, so not only was the group renamed, but each first daughter takes on the mantle as well. I’ll be stuck naming my own daughter the same, when I finally get around to having one.”

At my utterly blank stare Odessa cocked an eyebrow up and her smile turned amused, if a tad confounded, “Tell me you’re not a silent protagonist.”

“Huh?” I asked, confused, and finally getting my wits about me.

“Nevermind; question answered,” she said dismissively, “While I’d love nothing more than to have a lengthy, revealing conversation with you, Longwalk, I actually don’t have a huge amount of time, so I hope you’ll understand if I keep this brief. If you have questions, rest assured I’ll answer them all if you give me a positive answer to what I’m about to ask.”

“And if I don’t give a positive answer?” I asked, already feeling on the defensive despite this griffin’s casual manner. I didn’t bother wondering how she knew my name. By now, after several encounters with the organization of Odessa, I wasn’t going to be surprised about anything they knew about me.

Odessa’s eyes became harder than steel and her voice thin and sharp as a shard of glass, “Then I’ll have far fewer answers for you, I’m afraid.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, trying not to gulp, feeling my mane wilt slightly under that look.

It was gone in an instant, through, replaced by that confident, warm gleam as she nodded, “Then we understand each other. Right then, to the point; Longwalk, I want you to take a place with us in Odessa.”

I blinked. Then I blinked again. I don’t know why I was surprised. Glint had borderline tried to recruit me. Odessa was, for all their blatant disrespect for wingless races, still a group focused solely on fighting the ‘xeno’ threat, represented by Arcaidia, those strange Hyadean creatures, and who knew what else. I had access to a weapon they wanted, and having seen unicorns among Odessa’s number plus what I’d heard about my father it was clear Odessa could bend it’s anti-landbound sentiments. So why wouldn’t their leader make an offer like this? She had nothing to lose if I said no, and a capable ally to gain if I said yes, all for the small price of taking two minutes to ask.

“Look,” I said, trying to order my thoughts, not at all certain that if I said no I wouldn’t be summarily executed, “I’ve been over this already with others, uh, ma’am.”

“Just call me Odessa,” she said with an off-clawed gesture.

“That’ll get confusing, given this whole army is called Odessa,” I said and she groaned in understanding exasperation...

“I know, right? Can’t imagine what great great great great grandma was thinking! It is what it is, though. My close friends used to call me ‘Dess, but that doesn’t exactly fly since I took command. Look just roll with it, okay? I can suss out what you mean by context, so just use ‘Odessa’.”

“Alright, alright,” I said, taking a deep breath, getting my mind back on track to the matter at hoof, “Like I was saying, I’ve been over this before. One of your soldiers talked about me joining Odessa, and I’ll tell you what I told him. No. Not happening. Even if you weren’t coming after Arcaidia do you honestly think I’d want to join you after what you did to my tribe? Or Saddlespring?”

Odessa looked at me with that calculating expression again for some lengthy moments that left me feeling a nervous, watery disquiet in my gut. I could have lied, eagerly accepted her proposal to try and get myself and my tribesmates free, but I didn’t think she’d buy it. Those eyes had this clear quality to them that said she’d cut through any lies I’d conjure. On top of that there was an earnestness to her that encouraged a honest streak in me, as if this griffin was not only lacking a dishonest bone in her body, but brought that out in whoever was around her. I just... wanted to tell her the truth.

“What happened to your tribe, and that Wasteland settlement, was unfortunate,” Odessa said, sounding so sincere, even matching it with a dour look coming over her youthful features, “Unfortunate, but unavoidable. We needed your tribe to discover potential Mediums, and your chieftain refused any kind of parlay with us. The intent was not to bring harm, but neither could we afford to back down. We cannot compromise the safety of the world because the stubbornness of a few who are unwilling to work with us, so force became necessary.”

“You killed them,” I said flately, teeth grinding, “You killed my tribesmates and imprisoned the rest! For what? To screw around with tests on us, to see if you could get one of us to react with a Guardian? That’s the only reason you murdered ponies who didn’t do anything to you!?”

My anger didn’t seem to bother her, instead she raised a curious glance at me and leaned forward, interested, “So you know what the Guardians are? Did the Guardian in that sites’ Ley Line speak to you? But it was your female companion that bears the mark of a Medium now, not you.”

Her sudden intensity deflected a bit of my anger, if only because it put me off guard, “Well, uh, yeah, Trail apparently impressed him or something. He just yelled at me. Then tried to kill me. Then apparently decided I was alright.” I paused, “It’s been a weird day.”

Then I remembered I was angry, “Anyway don’t change the subject. My tribe aside how many other settlements has Odessa destroyed? How many ponies have you killed for not cooperating with you?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she took in and let out a slow breath, “Less than you’d think. Odessa has been operating since before the creation of the Wasteland. Situations like the capture of your tribe or the destruction of Saddlespring are... rare. Thankfully rare. But over two hundred years its been inevitable we’ve had to get a little blood on ourselves. Believe me, compared to the horrors visited upon the Wasteland by the likes of Raiders, slavers, organizations like the Steel Rangers, and even so-called ‘heroes’ that try to protect it, Odessa is an army of saints.”

I hated to admit it but she did have a small point. I’d seen Raiders and had only sampled some of madness and suffering those ponies brought to the world, and hoped never to be at the mercy of their kind. I’d also seen the wretched way the Labor Guild treated its slaves, striping ponies like Shale of freedom since foalhood. As far as I could see Odessa was nowhere near as bad. But that didn’t change that what they’d done was still wrong, and that their single-minded willingness to commit atrocity and then justify it under a blanket of rhetoric was not acceptable.

“That may be so,” I told the griffin simply, “That doesn’t justify what you did in Saddlespring or what you’ve done to my tribe. You should have just left my tribe alone. They were harming nopony. What’s so important about finding more Mediums that makes it worth what you’ve done?”

“Mediums are just another potential war asset,” Odessa said bluntly, “That’s what we do. We collect war assets, then we expend them. The Guardians once beat back the xenos entirely. Gaining their power would be a remarkable war asset.”

“How do you even know about them?” I asked, “The one I talked to said nearly nopony alive today knew about their existence.”

Odessa shrugged her wings, “Ancient history, dating back to our Ministry of Awesome days. Not important to you. Just know we’ve been after the Guardians and their power for a long time, and its up there among our highest priorities.”

I just shook my head, laughing helplessly, “High priority or not you went about it in the worst way possible. Trailblaze wouldn’t willingly help you any more than I would! Not after seeing you kill our tribesmates and keeping the rest of us prisoner!”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Odessa replied with confidence firm in her voice, “But I will seek to convince her, regardless. First with words. If my words cannot reach her, well... Odessa does have other means to coerce cooperation.”

The way she said that made my mane bristle, “And all this to fight an enemy that isn’t even actively invading yet?”

“Yet?” Odessa laughed, putting a claw to her face, “Skies be good, do you think we’d go through all this trouble if we weren’t already neck deep in it, Longwalk?”

“Uh... maybe?”

“Odessa has been actively fighting xenos since the time of the Ministries and the war against the zebra. You think we built all we have, the weapons, the vehicles, the armor, all without having fired a single shot at our enemies?” the young griffiness shook her head in plain wonderment that I could see etched in her gold eyes, “I suppose my mother died fighting something imaginary?”

“Your mother?” I saw a small crease of pain wash over her features as she nodded at me.

“I’m barely into my sixteenth year,” she said, “Normally it would’ve been decades before I took over leadership from my mother. But she died last year, leading an operation in the Frozen North, in what was once known as the Crystal Empire. Odessa lost over a hundred soldiers that day...”

“What were you doing there? What was the fight about?” my curiosity got me asking before I could stop myself from insensitively pressing for more information.

Odessa’s gloom quickly faded and she was back to being in control as she said, “Doesn’t matter. Classified information. My point is; we know what we fight for, and that our enemies are very real, and very dangerous. There’s no doubt that any advantage we can gain, any edge we can acquire, is worth the questionable moral decisions that need to be made to do so.”

I didn’t have an immediate counter for that, nor was I up for further argument, “Sorry about bringing up any bad memories, if I did.”

“I have shed my tears over it,” Odessa said with a sigh, “I know I’m doing her proud. Anyway, I’m out of time. I want an answer. Will you join Odessa? Or will you continue to serve the machinations of the xeno you traveled beside, this Arcaidia you’re so dedicated to?”

“She’s not even a real alien!” I said firmly.

“Xeno,” Odessa corrected.

“Whatever,” I said, tail twitching, “My point is that she’s a pony! A normal... okay, not normal, but a harmless... okay not harmless either but she is a pony and she doesn’t deserve to be targeted like this!”

“I can see she truly has gotten her claws dug deep into you. I understand,” Odessa said with a smile still on her beak, through her eyes held a dangerous edge to them still, “She looks like a pony, sounds like a pony,” Odessa winked, “Perhaps she even feels like a pony.”

Did... did she just insinuate that I... that Arcaidia and me...? Odessa continued on, either not noticing or not carrying about the outrage that was now naked on my face.

“That is all a facade. Her species have ways to create false bodies they can inhabit when they wish to infiltrate a world they’ve targeted for conquest,” she said in the tone of a teacher lecturing a student, “The ‘pony’ you know, and are so dedicated to protecting, is just a xenomorphic extraterrestrial wearing that body like a camouflage suit.“

“So what?” I said, heat in my voice as I took a step towards her, even though she was just a projection and the threat was non-existent. I was tired of running in circles with Odessa, both the organization and its leader, over Arcaidia, “Let’s say I believe you, and Arcaidia is what you say she is. That changes nothing. It doesn’t change that I owe her, and even if I didn’t, she’s my friend. Until she proves otherwise by her own actions, I’m going to stay by her side.”

Odessa’s eyes maintained that unblinking edge to them as her smile slowly faded, and I watched the young griffiness’ stance change from the open casualness of moments ago to a hard figure of absolute authority.

“You’re not currently by her side. You’re a prisoner of Odessa, and that is what you’ll remain. By refusing my offer you’re only condemning yourself. I was offering you your only chance to avoid the unpleasant fate of being given over to our Research and Development Division,” Odessa’s eyes flickered for a second with a ripple of sympathy, but it was soon buried under hardness, “To learn of what it is about you that allows you to wield an ARM without being killed by it they will spare no efforts, nor give any care for your health. It will be miraculous if you survive.”

She took a deep breath, “Knowing that, you still refuse?”

My only response was to nod once.

Odessa looked at me a moment longer, and her image of hard authority and judgement wavered for only a second before she said, “I’m... honestly sorry to hear that. I would’ve liked to have gotten to know you better. Goodbye then, Longwalk. I know you don’t agree, but what Odessa does, it does for the sake of something a lot larger than any one individual.”

With that the image of Odessa shimmered and flickered, until the griffin vanished and the lighting in the room returned to normal, leaving me alone for a second before the doors back to the bridge slid open. Waiting outside the door was Sunset, standing at attention. She relaxed slightly seeing me, through her face remained impassive as she said, “Exit the room prisoner 1138, and I’ll escort you back to your cell.”

Joining her on the bridge I resigned myself to follow her back to the brig.

As Sunset led me back down the long corridor that connected the bridge of the Varukisas with its main body I felt the deck shudder slightly and a slight shift in the forces on my body. Looking at Sunset in confusion she gave me a look that said I was being dumb.

“The ship’s just lowering back below the cloud cover,” she said, “Don’t have your air legs under you yet? Spend enough time up here you get a feel for the way the ship moves. If you could fly, you’d also have a more innate sense of movement and where the ground is in relation to you.”

“Pegasense,” I said, and Sunset blinked at me. At her look I shrugged, “Just something a pegasus friend of mine mentioned.”

“Not the term I’ve known,” Sunset said, “Back in the Enclave it was called ‘intuitive spacial awareness’ and Odessa uses the same term. Every race with natural flying ability has it.”

“So you were in the Enclave?” I asked in a prompting manner. I already knew this because Glint had mentioned it, but I honestly just wanted to get a better feel for Sunset, maybe lead the conversation around to my mother and father. Sunset wasn’t going to be cooperative, however.

“No more questions,” she said irritably, “Remember you’re a prisoner. Keep quiet.”

I didn’t know if it was the fact I was asking questions in general or the specific question I asked, but I think I’d struck some kind of nerve. Sunset clammed up, her ears dropped down and her expression flat as she escorted me to the elevator that’d lead down into the hangar. We’d crossed the hangar on our way up to the bridge, and I was just as impressed the second time through.

There were apparently two hangars on the airship, and this was the port side one. The elevator doors opened and as Sunset led me out into the hangar I couldn’t stop myself from gaping at the sights around me. There was more marvelous machinery here than I’d ever seen so far, and unlike the often broken down and rusty examples of technology that was the Wasteland’s norm, this hangar was vibrant with sleek, shining tech.

The hangar was shaped like half an egg, with one wall curved, with four different, wide open doors to the outside. The opposite wall was lined with stacked racks, two high and six across, that held Veritbucks in robotic scaffolding. Robot arms could swing down and around to grasp a Vertibuck and lift it from its scaffold to either a launch ramp in front of any of the doors, or to a trio of maintenance and repair bays housed in the back section of the hangar. At the moment I got the treat of watching one of the Vertibucks being repaired in one of those bays, like a lowered pit surrounded by an array of robot arms, making it look like some mechanical tentacle monster that was ravaging the Vertibuck in its grasp... and that just gave me a real unpleasant mental image. I stared in fascination, regardless of weird mental analogies. I had to admit I just loved watching the machinery at work, the dance of wires, sparks, combined with the smell of faint ozone and oil. I noticed the scrunched in nose of this Vertibuck and realized this was the one that I had crashed.

“You guys really don’t let anything go,” I mused aloud.

Seeing what I was looking at Sunset made a small whinnie of agreement, “Of course. We can’t leave things like that laying around for Wasteland scavengers to find. Odessa repairs anything it can, and destroys what it can’t, so others can’t use our technology.”

Made sense. Walking by the repair bays, passing teams of pegasi in engineering overalls with pockets bursting with tools as they swarmed over other Vertibucks, I noticed a gaggle of them gathering near the two furthers bay doors. Was gaggle the right word, when talking about pegasi? Should it be flock? Flock of pegasi? I liked gaggle better.

Yellow lights started to flash on the section of bulkhead between the two bay doors, and fascinated, I watched as that section began to fold up and outward. The result was that two smaller bay doors had suddenly become one large bay door, and from outside I could hear the soft *whumpwhump* sounds of Vertibuck engines. I paused, and Sunset didn’t stop me, as I stood there and watched as a pair of Vertibuck’s rose in front of the large open bay.

Suspended between the Vertibuck’s by dozens of steel cables was an object. Battered, its ancient and cracked surface was a dark grayish brown, yet some parts were lined with marble white. Its form was bipedal, with two long bulky arms swinging from a stout torso; through one of the arms was missing up to its elbow. The bottom of the object was a single massive armored skirt, with just a hint of thick booted feet poking out. Its head was like a rounded helmet, with two long, curved horns sweeping up from either end of the head. Two blue jewels for eyes were dead, dark, and lifeless set deep in the armored face of the Golem, and I felt rooted in place as I watched it being deposited on the hangar floor by the Vertibucks, which then landed on either side of it as the pegasi and a few griffin techs began to swarm it.

A Golem. Odessa had a Golem.

“Where...?” I couldn’t really finish the question, too busy staring.

“The Ruin below,” Sunset said simply, “You only saw the shrine chamber, but there were other areas. One of them had this S-class Relic in it.”

Seeing huge gouged scars in the Golems armor, the cracks along its surface, and its missing arm, I realized this Golem was in much poorer condition than the one found beneath Saddlespring. It looked like it’d been put through a serious battle. Still, didn’t these pegasi understand the danger of this thing?

“After what happened in Saddlespring you guys think its smart to put one of these things on board one of your airships?” I asked, incredulous.

Sunset shrugged, “Its inactive. We can’t pass up a shot at learning how weapons like that one are made. If Odessa could reproduce them, it’d be another solid addition to our arsenal.”

I wasn’t nearly as confident as she was, and gave the Golem an apprehensive look, feeling my tail flick behind me nervously, “If you say so.”

We just reached the elevator that’d take us back to the corridor that’d lead towards the brig when another shudder ran through the ship. I assumed it was just another shift in the way the ship was moving, and kept trotting, but stopped when I noticed Sunset had now stopped and was looking around with worry. I saw a number of other Odessa ponies and griffins giving each other strange looks.

“Um, is something w-” I began, but then the ship rocked, the deck shaking beneath my hooves and nearly throwing me off them, and a rapid, repeating blare of an alarm sounded throughout the hangar. The alarm was followed by a female voice over an internal com system speaking in a tone of professional calm hiding a tremor of fear.

“General quarters, all crew, general quarters,” another shudder through the ship and I saw a ceiling lights flicker on and off, “This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill. General quarters-”

The voice went on, but Sunset came up to me before I could question anything and grabbed me around the neck with one metal hoof while giving me a piercing look, “No questions! We get to the brig, now!”

She shoved me towards the elevator with shocking strength, and as she did so I saw a compartment built into her upper right shoulder open and a small, smooth energy pistol extend out. She snatched it up with her mouth and followed me to the elevator doors. I saw technician ponies wither quickly securing and packing away tools or gathering weapons from racks that had emerged from hidden cubby’s in the walls. All of the bay doors, including the enlarged one, were now closing rapidly and I saw shimmering fields of force appear along them, emitted by crystals built along the door rims.

As we entered the elevator and the doors closed I caught sight of something strange; weird wavers in the air at several points around the hangar. I couldn’t tell what they were before the doors closed, however, and Sunset hit the button to take us down.

“What’s going on?” I asked again, tension brimming inside me. I was unarmed and wearing manacles that restricted my movement. Not really a comforting position to be in during an emergency.

Sunset got that look on her face I’d seen before as if she wasn’t looking at me or listening to me, but her eyes quickly refocused as she said, “The ship’s under attack. Security channel is buzzing with alerts. Something hit us from outside, but the shields held. Reports are coming in...” another pause, her eyes unfocused, her ears then twitched and her face twisted into a snarl, terrifying with her scars, “Borders. Something’s fucking boarding us!”

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened as I asked, “Something? What somethin-”

A hiss and the whoosh of sharp metal flying through the air was my only warning to dodge, and I threw myself to the side. The manacles didn’t like that at all, and I got to feel the delightful sensation of extreme pain combined with nausea as I saw what had attacked me.

It took me a second to understand I was looking at a pony’s skeleton. A pony’s skeleton that was moving around, carrying a sword in its boney muzzle. The sword didn’t seem to be made from a normal metal, but some dark grayish matter that pulsed with violet veins, as if it were alive. Similar veins crossed the pony’s skeletal body, and I could see that while there was no real flesh or organs in these bones, there was more of that purplish matter between the bone joins, like glue keeping the skeleton together.

The sword the skeleton had slashed at me ended up embedded in the metal floor of the elevator, a testament to how sharp the weapon was, and the skeleton yanked the blade out, taking a step back. While I writhed on the floor from the pain of the manacles, Sunset, surged forward. Her energy pistol let loose a quick double-tap of green magic bolts that seared the skeleton’s chest and face, blasting off part of it. Still it moved, and tried to take Sunset’s head off with a sideways swipe. She ducked the blow and came up with an uppercut, her metal hoof catching the skeleton squarely underneath its chin.

The blow took the skeleton’s head clean off and the body shuddered before it collapsed, the purple material between its bones seeming to disintegrate and turn into vapor, leaving behind just a pile of bones. The sword itself appeared to shrivel like a dying plant and cracks appeared all over its surface before it, too, turned to vapor.

“Move your flank!” Sunset yelled, and I staggered to my hooves, still feeling woozy from the manacles.

I heard the sounds of more distant gunfire from magical energy weapons and ponies shouting as I exited the elevator. Sunset waited for me, but one look at me and I could see what she was thinking. The situation suddenly called for speed, and with my manacles on, I was not a pony of speed. She gave me a meaningful look as she came up and reached into another hidden compartment in her other shoulder, withdrawing a small device using mechanical fingers that extended from her hoof.

“If I use this to take those off understand that if you run, or try anything, I’ll have to subdue you,” she told me flately, speaking perfectly fine despite the gun in her mouth.

“I understand,” I said, still looking at the fallen skeleton, “What is that thing?”

She frowned as she pressed the button on the device, and the manacles clicked and fell off my hooves, “Hyadean shock troop. They use the bodies of the dead as hosts. The sword is the real entity, kind of a parasite that grows into a body to control it. Don’t know how they got on board. They’re not strong, but who knows how many there are? Come on, stay behind me and keep your head down.”

I just sort of had to take her words in stride, since she clearly wasn’t going to take the time to elaborate or let me ask any questions; not that I could blame her for that. I heard the sounds of fighting, along with the screams of hurt and dying ponies. If it was my tribe, I wouldn’t want to spend time answering questions either, I’d want to get into the fight to protect my comrades.

We rushed down the curving corridor that’d lead us back towards the brig, and in moments we ran into more skeletons. There were four of them, standing by a flickering waver in the air like a heatwave, and even as Sunset and I approached I saw another pony skeleton step from that waver as if walking through a doorway in the air. They were portals?

The skeletons were aiming the dark swords in their mouths down the corridor, some towards Sunset and I, others further down where I could barely make out a few Odessa soldiers taking cover behind steel barricades that looked like they’d extended from the wall. I didn’t know what the skeletons were doing until I saw the tips of the swords they pointed glow with a series of crests I immediately recognized. They were using Crest Sorcery, just like Arcaidia!

“Shit!” I heard Sunset say as she suddenly grabbed me and pulled me against the wall, her hoof reaching out and hitting a button on a wall panel. Just as the skeleton’s swords fired bolts of darkness a metal barricade just like the one’s I seen ahead shot out of the wall, giving Sunset and me cover. The bolts of inky black hit the wall with a hiss like acid, and I saw some of the metal corrode. I gulped, suddenly very glad Odessa was such a thorough organization when it came to setting up internal defenses. The barricade was chest high and Sunset and I had both ducked down to avoid another barrage of bolts. An energy turret opened in the ceiling and laid down a stream of red bolts back at the skeletons, but it was hit by return fire inside a second and black bolts smashed into the turret, melting it on the spot.

Sunset cursed again, peeking around the side of the barricade and firing off a shot. I stayed hunkered down, and experimentally reached my hoof out. I could feel Gramzanber clearly, its presence nearby behind those doors I’d passed earlier.

“Come on...” I said, “Magical spear summoning powers, go!”

“Stop playing around!” Sunset snapped at me, firing again and ducking back as black bolts of magic shot past her, and giving me a smack upside my head.

“Hey,” I said, “Can’t blame a buck for trying!”

If I couldn’t get Gramzanber, then that left me with my own four hooves to work with. Not exactly my first choice, but I didn’t want to just sit here while Trailblaze and my other tribesmates might be in danger. For all I knew more of these skeleton troops had appeared in the brig.

“Cover me,” I told Sunset, to which she gave me a surprised look as I ducked around the barricade, head down, and charged at the skeletons. I heard Sunset shout something, but soon enough green energy bolts flew over my head and into the lead skeleton, blasting it apart even as it sent a dark blast of magic from the tip of its sword. Another skeleton was emerging from the wavering portal as I got to it, and I planted my forehooves, turning around and bucking out into the skeleton’s chest. It slashed at me with its sword, cutting my flank even as it hit it and sent it back into the portal at an odd angle. There was a screeching pop of sound and the pony skeleton’s body distorted in mid-air, then seemed to get sucked into a pin-prick point before the waver vanished entirely.

Huh. So you could close the portals by sending something back through them? Good to know. There were still three skeletons in the corridor with me, two of them busy engaged with the Odessa soldiers. The other skeleton’s attention was on me, and it was already mid-swing with its sword as I’d bucked its companion back through the portal. I saw the blade coming out of the corner of my eye and pulled my head back, getting cut along the cheek instead of losing half my face. The skeleton, ludicrously fast for something without any muscles, followed up its attack with a straight thrust at my chest. I backpedaled, throwing up a foreleg to protect myself. Pain exploded in me as the blade cut a bloody line across my hide, but I’d managed to keep the thrust from my chest. My back hit the wall and I dropped down, narrowly avoiding getting my throat torn by a viscous backswing. Sparks flew above my head as the skeleton’s sword cut through the metal bulkhead. Cursed things were nearly a sharp as Gramzanber!

Seeing the skeletal pony slightly off balance from its swing I surged forward, ramming my head into the skeleton’s ribcage as hard as I could. I lifted the thing off the ground as I charged forward, and slammed its back into the opposite bulkhead. I heard the snap of bone and the skeleton fell to the ground in two halves. For a second I thought I had won, but the moment I turned my head I heard a hissing chatter and saw the top half of the skeleton crawling towards me, trying to swipe again with its sword.

I jumped back, and then Sunset was there, rushing up and smashing down with one of her cybernetic hooves, crushing the skeleton’s skull completely. I gave her a nod of thanks and turned to see that the other two skeletons had been dealt with by the squad of Odessa soldiers in the corridor. There were a few of them down, with melted holes in their armor, or in one case with half her face grotesquely melted away, presumably by the bolts of dark magic. I swallowed rising bile, and glanced at Sunset as she trotted forward to the Odessa troops who were catching their breath, tending wounds, reloading weapons, or just looking solemnly at their fallen.

I thought back to how I questioned Odessa herself if her organization was even really fighting an alien threat and suddenly felt quite foalish.

“Report,” Sunset said to the soldiers, “What’s the situation?”

One of the soldiers, a yellow mare with a brown mane, saluted, “Lieutenant, we’re holding this deck from three separate points of attack, one of which you just helped us deal with. They don’t seem to be trying too hard here though, I think this is just a distraction.”

Sunset nodded, “Com chatter indicates the heaviest attack is back in the hangar. Probably after the Relic we just loaded on board. Once your squad is ready, go to the port hangar and help repel these boarders. I’ll join you as soon as I make sure the prisoner is secure back in the brig.”

“Ma’am!” the soldiers saluted, and despite what Sunset said all of them, wounded included, got to their hooves and began a fast trot back towards the elevators. Most of them gave me suspicious, unfriendly looks as they went by. When they were out of sight Sunset came up to me.

“Come on, we need to hurry,” she said.

Remembering the portal as we started moving again I said, “Shouldn’t you tell somepony those portals can be closed if you shove something back through them?”

“We’ve had bases and operations attacked by these Hyadean portals before and know that weakness,” she said, “Normally don’t have ponies close enough to take advantage of it, but rest assured we have other means to shut portals down. This attack won’t last long, if all they’re sending are these shock troops. Just surprised they’re trying. They’d need to have known our ship’s exact position, and had a good reason to come after us. I’m betting they just don’t want us taking that Relic you were worried about. Be curious to know how they knew we were taking it today.”

“You think somepony is spying for them?” I wondered aloud.

Sunset scowled, “If somepony is, they will sorely regret the choice when they’re found out.”

We continued down the corridor, passing the room where I sensed Gramzanber was. Looking at the door, which was now unguarded, I halted. Sunset gave me a hard look and whispered to me, “If you want your stuff, just wait.”

She had a serious look in her eyes that told me not to press the issue, so I just nodded and followed her. In a minute we were back at the hatch to the brig. Inside the same guards from before gave us worried looks, their weapons out and aimed. They relaxed only slightly upon seeing Sunset, the stallion at the terminal even smiling as he rendered a salute.

“Good to see you made it ma’am,” he said, pausing as he looked at me minus my manacles, “Ma’am?”

Sunset strode over to him, returning his salute, “I had to remove the prisoner’s manacles so he could keep up with me during the fighting. He still has his explosive collar on.”

The stallion nodded, “Understood. Um, ma’am, how bad is it? We’re just following standing orders to maintain guard of the prisoners.”

“This deck is secure, for now,” Sunset said, “The ship itself has only taken minor damage.”

I’d been feeling more of the shudders I’d felt before running through the ship, including the kind that I could now recognize as indicating the ship was moving. Alongside the skeletal warriors that boarded the ship I wondered if something had attacked from outside as well?

One of the guards had opened up my cell and Sunset motioned for me to enter. As I did so I caught sight of Trailblaze and my other tribesmates. Whetstone was awake and standing at the force field of her own cell, poking at it over and over again. Trailblaze looked at me, relief on her face, but also worry as the ship shook again. I could see my friend’s tension, the way she shifted on her hooves as if ready to buck something. I just gave her as reassuring a smile as I could manage as my own cells energy field shut.

Cut off from hearing what was being said I just saw Sunset talking more with the guards. They all looked nervous, which made sense given their ship was under attack. What I didn’t understand was why the guards suddenly stiffened, readying their weapons and quickly filed out of the room, except for Sunset, who remained behind. Sunset casually went up to the terminal after the guards had left and hit a few keys on it.

Sunset remained at the terminal, occasionally glancing back towards the hatch, a perpetual frown now on her features. I knew that only a few minutes were passing, but it felt like the slow crawl of hours, and I jumped every time the ship went through another shudder. I didn’t have to actually wait all that long, however, before the lights in the brig flickered then shut off, followed by the energy barriers on our cells.

“Hey! We’re free!” I heard one of my tribe call out.

“The Ancestors are looking out for us! Let’s get out of here!”

“Longwalk, the guard! Get her!” that was Trailblaze.

I quickly charged out of my cell, but only to stand protectively next to Sunset as I said, “Wait, wait, she’s on our side!”

The lighting had flickered back on by now and I saw my tribesmates gather around me, many of them glaring at Sunset, ready to pounce. Whetstone was standing next to Trailblaze, who in turn was casting a stern glance between me and Sunset. I felt a strange heat coming off of Trailblaze, and her blue eyes bored into mine as she spoke.

“What do you mean she’s on our side? She’s one of them!”

“Its complicated,” I said, “Look, just trust me, she knows my parents, both of them! She wants to help us... uh... right?” I glanced at Sunset for confirmation. She rolled her red eyes like we were all idiots.

“Sand Storm always told me her tribe were alarmists,” she sighed and locked eyes with Trailblaze, “I could have just left you all in your cells, but the colt is correct, I owe his mother and I am loyal to his father. I’d like to explain more, but we don’t have time. The guards got called to reinforce the fighting in the higher levels. This is the best chance you’ll have to escape, while most of security is tied up. I shut down the surveillance in this room with a little hacking program. Ought to make it just look like a short circuit to anypony monitoring the ship systems. I can’t help you escape personally, not without being seen. Instead I need one of you to knock me out.”

Whetstone raised a hoof, “I totally volunteer for that.”

Sunset shrugged, “Just make it look good. Longwalk, that room we passed, it has all of your gear in it, I have a keycard that can open it.” She showed me a compartment built into her leg and gave me a serious look.

“Just take it off me once I’m knocked out. Break the leg open to make it look like it was damaged in a fight. You’ll also need to shut down the collars on your necks using the terminal here. It’s already logged on with one of the guard’s passwords. Once you do that you can get off the ship using escape pods in one of the hangars. Go for the starboard hangar. All the fighting is taking place in the port hangar, so security ought to be thin towards starboard.”

At my blank look she said, “Right. Starboard means right! Just go the opposite way we used to get to the hangar you saw. The lifts should still be working.”

I nodded, putting a hoof on her shoulder. The metal plating covering her form was surprisingly warm, and I felt a buzzing hum beneath it of the machinery and circuitry underneath. I wondered how much of her underneath the metal surface was still flesh and blood pony. Enough to have Glint, I supposed, so she couldn't be too much machine under there.

“Thank you for the help Sunset. When I find my mother again, I’ll tell her you paid back your debt.”

She laughed, “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you where she is. If I find out, I’ll try to find a way to contact you. Just don’t die in the meantime.”

“You too. Oh, and tell Glint that despite what he said when we last met, I’d like to see him again sometime.”

Sunset gave me a weird look, then shook her head, “Get going. Try not to kill anypony on the way out. I like most the ponies on this ship.”

With that I moved up next to Trailblaze, who gave me a small nuzzle. Her hide was warmer to the touch than I remembered it. She gave Sunset a wary look, a conflicted crease to her brow, as if she was arguing with herself. Knowing what I knew now about Moa Gault and the fact that Trailblaze was now somehow tied to the fire spirit, I could imagine she might not be so much arguing with herself but arguing with the aggressive Guardian inside her.

“I don’t know that I should trust you, but for now, I’ll trust Longwalk,” Trailblaze said, glancing at Whestone, “Whet, knock her out.”

Whetstone smiled wide and practically skipped over to Sunset, rubbing her hooves together, “I always wanted to try knocking a pony out with one hit! Nopony back home ever gave me an excuse. Alright, let’s wind up...”

Whetstone pulled her hoof back, put it up against Sunset’s face like she was phantom aiming, pulled it back, aimed again, until Sunset just huffed, “Do it already!”

Before Sunset finished the sentence Whetstone’s hoof smashed into her face, knocking Sunset to the ground, and not unconscious at all by the way Sunset glared up at the gray earth pony mare. Whetstone shook her hoof, “Owowowow! What are you made out of, lady!? Stone?”

“My skull is normal, you just didn’t hit hard enough,” Sunset grunted as she got back to her hooves, “Now stop playing around and try agai-”

She went silent as Trailblaze hit her solidly on the back of the head with the gatling energy weapon she’d ripped off its tripod, swinging it like a club. The weapon broke apart, and Sunset hit the ground like a rock. I looked at Trailblaze, who was still holding the smoking remains of the energy weapon, and she shrugged.

“What? She wanted it to look real.”

I sighed, checking to make sure Sunset was still breathing. She was, and I just hoped the head trauma wasn’t too bad. She wasn’t bleeding or anything, which was a plus. Trailblaze put a comforting hoof on my withers as I rose and she looked at our gathered tribemates, most of them scarred and nervously looking around at this unfamiliar environment. Except Whestone, who looked oddly chipper and was smiling at me and Traiblaze.

“Well, chief, are we getting out of here?” Whestone asked.

Trailbalze blanched, “You shouldn't call me chief, Whet. Not until we know for sure if my mother is alive or dead.”

Whetstone bobbed her head, braided black maine bobbing with her, “I know, I know, but for now you’re our chief, Trail. We’ll follow your lead.”

Trailblaze didn’t look all that happy about what she was hearing but I saw her take hold of herself and give us all a confident nod, “Right. Everypony, follow me, protect yourselves and your tribesmates, let nopony fall behind, and let’s get out of this cursed place!”

All of my gathered tribe, myself included, smiled, despite our fears. Trailblaze’s confidence became theirs and I saw a willingness on each of their faces to follow her word, wherever she might lead. I was smiling because I was proud to see my friend filling in for the role of chief, knowing it couldn’t be easy for her, but finding I trusted her in the role completely; in a way I’d never felt towards her mother. Part of the warmth in my chest, I realized, stemmed not from friendship, but the budding of something deeper, that feeling I had yet to tell Trailblaze of.

Not yet. Not now. Not until we were all safe.

After snatching up the keycard from Sunset’s leg, breaking the panel over it to make it look as if it’d been torn off in a scuffle, I used the terminal to turn off the bomb collars. My tribemates all let out sighs knowing at least one threat to their lives was dealt with. Then, with Trailblaze leading the way, we fled the brig, and our escape began.

Footenote: 50% to next level!

Companion Perk Added - A Mare Worth Fighting For: As long as Trailblaze is in your party whenever an attack would drop you to zero hit points there is a 25% chance that your desire to stay by her side will push you onward and allow you to shrug off the attack entirely.

Author's Note

So, Guardians, that's a thing now. Believe or not one of my first ideas for the opening of Trigger to Tomorrow involved Longwalk and Trailblaze discovering Moa Gault's shrine near their village and the Guardian tasking them with finding the other shrines, and that being what led them out into the Wasteland. But then I was stumped on how to bring Arcaidia into the story, so I reworked it, figuring I'd just bring the Guardians in later. They're an interesting bunch, and a staple of the Wild Arms series. As always my sincerest thanks goes to KKat for creating FoE, and to Doomande, who remains watchful for those ever-present errors I always seem to miss and providing suggestions here and there on improving wonky sentences. And of course a big thanks to everyone who continues to read and comment; I can't ever get across how awesome it is that folk give my little tale here any attention. Until next time, take it easy folks.

Chapter 31: The Scars of Leftover Memories

Chapter 31: The Scars of Leftover Memories

I didn’t bother with the elevator and instead hit the stairs leading to Tenpony Tower’s bottom floor, bounding down three or four steps at a time and all but galloping out the door. My speed was halted abruptly by a tug on my tail and I glanced back to see Arcaidia’s magic holding me still as she took the stairs at a slower clip, her metal peg leg slowing her down.

“No point in fastness, ren solva, unless you want all ponies to see us and wonder what is wrong.” she said, her smooth, controlled features starkly contrasted with the deep shimmer of worry in her eyes.

Behind her LIL-E floated down, and past me, “She’s right. Let’s not give the guards at the door any reason to wonder why we’re in such a rush. I know how you feel, Longwalk, but this Scythe asshat is probably expecting you to charge in headfirst. No reason to give the bastard that satisfaction.”

They were both right, I knew that, but it still took an effort of will to slow my pace and try to adopt a look of calm when I was feeling anything but calm. My mind kept showing me nightmarish images of what might be happening to Binge at that very moment, and with my own torturous capture by Redwire still fresh in my memory, my mind could conjure some particularly unpleasant images. However at the top of my list of fears was not finding Binge tortured (although that thought alone made my stomach churn), but of finding her dead. After all, Scythe didn’t necessarily have to keep her alive to still use her as bait to draw us in.

That fear was a knife edged in ice cutting right into my gut as I trotted in as casual a manner I could manage across the main lobby area. I nearly got to the door before I heard a cheerful voice call out to me from across the way.

“Hey! Longwalk, Arcaidia, LIL!” Knobs said with a loud and happy voice, the wheels of her artificial back legs squeaking as she wheeled herself over towards us with Blasting Cap’s surly looking form riding atop Knobs’ withers while Crossfire trailed behind them, frowning.

I halted reluctantly, forcing a strained smile onto my face. “Hey guys. Uh, what’s up?”

“Not your IQ, obviously.” Blasting Cap spat towards me, and Knobs gave the filly’s head a brief flick with her tail before looking to me with an easy smile. It was the smile of a mare who didn’t have a friend in mortal danger. Compared to my stiff, unnaturally forced smile, Knobs’ beamed with glowing warmth.

“We were just heading out to shop. Turns out I didn’t have anything to put little Blasting Cap in for the dance tonight, and the dress I want to put Crossfire in is, by her definition, too ‘frilly and stupid’ so we’re going to see about finding something with a bit more slink. Wanna come?”

Crossfire emitted a sound somewhere between a hissing steam pipe and a growling Hellhound. “I didn’t say anything about a dress with more slink, but something practical, Knobs.”

“And high cut dresses that show of your flank is practical! Practically stunning! Oh, and you could totally fit a sexy leather holster for a pistol there.”

“I don’t use pistols.”

“Well, buy a pistol then. Diversify your arsenal. Accessorize girl!” Knobs said, all but prancing in place happily.

I cleared my throat nervously, eyeing the door, and Arcaidia stepped forward and gave Knobs a short bow, managing to smile far more convincingly than I was. “We would muchly enjoy the barter trip with you, good friend Knobs. But I ask Longwalk to show me to building in town called ‘orphanage’. Is important personal matter.”

Knobs looked at us curiously while Crossfire’s eyebrow raised, her lips pressed in a tight, suspicious line.

“An orphanage?” Knobs asked, “I guess the NCR would have a few of those going, but why do you want to visit one?”

Actually that was an excellent question. I knew Arcaidia had brought it up earlier in regards to the memory orbs Bartholomew had given her to view, but I had no idea what she’d seen in the or what they had to do with this orphanage. Arcaidia’s expression transmuted into one of conflicted unease, and I couldn’t tell if she was acting or not when she said, “I have reasons to think orphanage is place where I come from. May not be orphanage anymore, but building is important. So I ask Longwalk and LIL-E to come for moral support.”

“Why not bring your whole gang?” asked Crossfire, still looking at us suspiciously, “Where’s your pegasus pal and the pet Raider?”

“Binge drank a bunch and is sleeping it off,” I said hastily, “So we asked B.B to keep an eye on her and hold down the fort while we’re gone.”

“That right?” Crossfire looked me squarely in the eyes, and I could see she wasn’t convinced. “You’re sweating an awful lot for a colt who’s just taking his marefriend out to check on some orphanage. Also noticing you’re shifting on your hooves a lot.” She leaned towards me, yellow eyes flashing dangerously.

“What’re you hiding?”

I clenched my jaw, saying past my grinding teeth, “Nothing.”

I turned to leave, but Crossfire moved swift as a bullet to slap herself into my path, getting snout to snout with me. “Don’t hoof me that shit. You’re heading out, fully geared up, so scared you’re sweating rivers, with two of your team oddly not with you, and you expect me to buy it's to take the little filly on an excursion to some orphanage? Horseshit. What’s really going on here, and is it a threat to the job we’re doing here?”

I forced myself to take deep breath and let it out slowly, steadying my frayed nerves. “It’s got nothing to do with you, Crossfire. Now move.”

“Or what?” she said with a low and dangerous tone.

“Or I’ll move you.” I replied, dead serious.

“Heyheyheyhey!” Knobs managed to push herself between the two of us, forcing me and Crossfire apart with a surprising amount of strength in her little ghoulish limbs. “We’re all friends here. No reason to get all snarly with each other. Crossfire, whatever they’re doing, it's not really any of our business if they don’t want to tell us.”

“I beg to differ. Whatever this buck gets his nose stuck in tends to lead to complications, and right now the last thing this job needs is some Longwalk related insanity derailing an otherwise smooth job.” grunted Crossfire, looking away from Knobs with a sullen grimace, “Besides, I’m bored. If there’s some action going down, I want a piece of it.”

“I’m sorry Crossfire,” I said, sighing, “But this is something only me, Arcaidia, and LIL-E can deal with. If I thought I could bring anypony else in on it without making things worse, I would. You’ll just have to trust me on this.”

“So something is going down!” Crossfire snapped, then let out a frustrated whinny at Knobs’ pleading look. “For fuck’s sake... if this is something that’s going to bite us in the ass I’m putting a bullet in you, buck. Whatever shit you’re in, get it sorted out.”

I nodded with the feeling of the world’s weight crashing onto my shoulders, but really it was the weight of a single life. Then again, perhaps those two things weight about the same.

“Was what you said true?” I asked Arcaidia as we cantered at a swift pace down the Manehattan streets, heading west from Tenpony Tower while following LIL-E’s lead. The eyebot claimed she knew where Arbu was, and was taking us along the fastest route to get there by hoof. All she’d said so far was that Arbu was on the north side of the city, across the river, and that it’d take a few hours walking to get there.

Meanwhile I decided to distract my worried thoughts by asking Arcaidia about what she’d seen in the memory orbs and what this orphanage had to do with it.

“Is what true, ren solva?”

“About the orphanage and you coming from there.” I said, “What did you see in the memory orbs to make you think that?”

Arcaidia looked thoughtful for a moment, chewing her lower lip. She idly kicked a rusty old can out of our path, the can bouncing with loud, metallic tings as it bounced down an alley. Arcaidia’s tail twitched about beneath her deep blue dress. There was a hesitance in her voice when she finally said, “I see many things, much still not make sense. But last thing I see is pony putting small filly into orphanage, and small filly was me. So young I don’t have memory, but it was me. If that true then...”

She trailed off, then shook her head sharply, “Not matter right now, Longwalk. Binge more important. Focus on mission. Make plans of battle for defeating stupid Scythe pony.”

While I was deathly curious about this orphanage and what it might mean for Arcaidia, I couldn’t deny she had the right idea. We needed to be focused on getting to Binge and dealing with whatever Scythe had in store for us. A plan of some sort might help with that, despite my track record with plans. Well, maybe if I just helped Arcaidia and LIL-E plan, then it’d avoid my aura of bad luck. Not that making any plans while we were walking through crowded streets seemed like a good idea to me, so we waited until we’d left the more crowded streets around the central area of Manehattan behind and were instead walking along pathways mostly clear of anypony besides us. While restoration efforts could still be seen in evidence in almost all of the city, it was clear the further one got from the center the less work had been done, and I saw more rubble strewn between alleys, buildings with knocked out walls, and streets that were occasionally blocked by fallen pieces of former skyscrapers. LIL-E navigated it all with smooth ease, as if she’d been here a hundred times.

“So, uh, about Arbu,” I said to LIL-E as we crossed a winding alley between two former office buildings, “What can we expect to see when we get there?”

“Not a lot.” replied LIL-E, slowing her floating pace slightly to let me and Arcaidia catch up to her. “The prison that was built there is now mostly just a burnt out hollow. The blaze that started from the prisoner riot was pretty damn bad. I got files in my memory banks concerning the incident. Some Enclave war criminals tried digging a tunnel out of the prison, and incited a riot to cover their escape attempt. Problem is, their tunnel hit an old gas line, and somepony somewhere must have used the wrong gun or spell, so... boom. The President didn’t bother having the prison rebuilt after that, and frankly most of that area hasn’t been hit with any restoration efforts yet. So what we can expect is a charred ruin, with maybe some of the buildings still standing, but not much else.”

“What about before it was a prison?” I asked, my curiosity driving the question as I recalled that horrific dream I’d shared with Binge, what felt like a very long time ago. I remembered her hometown, with its friendly atmosphere, and the images of Binge’s mother and brother, just moments before they’d been killed. Was that vision of blood and fire true? I had a feeling LIL-E knew the answer, but she took a long time giving it, as if the eyebot herself was remembering things she didn’t want to.

“It was a settlement. Then... it wasn’t.”

“That’s it?”

LIL-E’s response came sharply, the eyebot spinning towards me with a sense of forceful anger that took me by surprise. “There’s nothing else to say! It happened a long time ago and doesn’t matter anymore! Arbu was destroyed, and most ponies were better off for it!”

I blinked at the eyebot, hearing a popping, static noise that I think was LIL-E simulating breathing hard, as if her emotions bypassed her mechanical nature to simulate the kind of ragged breathing an upset pony might have. I softened my tone, holding up a hoof.

“I’m sorry LIL-E, I didn’t mean to dig into a sore spot. But I think... no, I know what happened in Arbu is what was getting to Binge. Its her home. She was... she was just a filly when it was destroyed. She watched her family get killed in front of her.”

Arcaidia, whose eyes had gotten a tad wide at hearing this, said, “How you know such things, ren solva? I never hear Binge speak words of home.”

I licked my lips, hesitant to talk about my dreams, because either I’d sound crazy, or my companions would find the fact that Gramzanber had established a connection to them that had the side effect of showing me some of their own dreams to be a violation. After a moment of hesitation I took a deep breath and told them exactly how I knew about Binge’s home. LIL-E was quiet, while Arcaidia just blinked at me.

“I hear of ARM users that...” Arcaidia seemed to struggle for words, “Estu... ren tiverich hirva dol gravae vir. I don’t know right words. Make bridges with comrades. Bonds. Not common gift, but makes ARM user stronger with team. You do this, ren solva?”

“I don’t really understand the particulars.” I said with a shrug, “I just know I’ve occasionally seen dreams from you guys, like I was physically there. I saw a dream, a nightmare, of Binge’s where her hometown was wiped out by some pissed off madmare who was armed to the teeth and didn’t have much of a sense of mercy.”

“You don’t know anything.” LIl-E said with a static laden hiss. “She... that ‘madmare’... arrrgh, what the fuck’s the point!? I could tell you, but it won’t change anything! We just need to rescue Binge, deal with Scythe, and then leave Arbu where it belongs; in the past.”

LIL-E went silent then, floating along faster now, and refused to answer any further questions, even when I tried to ask her. She just stayed dead silent, save for the soft murmur of her robotic floating device. Arcaidia trotted beside me, alternating between giving me and LIL-E equally worried looks. I just gave her withers a comforting pat and nod, and we continued onward at a swift pace. My thoughts were still mired, but I tried to push aside concerns over Arbu’s fate and focus instead on the notion of rescuing Binge from Scythe’s clutches. I didn’t have much of a plan as of yet, but so much depended upon what we’d find at Arbu that it was hard to decide on a particular set of tactics.

Arcaidia and I whispered between ourselves, pitching ideas. Given Scythe had incredible potent illusion powers we’d need a way to pin him down. Arcaidia agreed to focus on that part of the fight, suggestion she’d might use her ice magic in a few ways that might reveal invisible opponents. She wanted to put her shielding spell on us before we got to Arbu, as she doubted she’d have time to do it once we were inside. As for me, I planned to put the paralysis toxin Misty Glasses had made for me to good use. The toxin was supposed to stay potent on the blade for around a day, and theoretically would paralyze normal ponies for hours with just a scratch. I had no idea how well the toxin would work against Scythe’s mutated body, but I was also ready and willing to do a lot more than just scratch him, too.

I wasn’t going in there intending to kill, but I was afraid for the life of a friend, more than a little pissed off, and was more mentally and emotionally prepared for the possible necessity of ending a life, especially if it was a psychotic bastard like Scythe, who so far seemed not too far off from Redwire in terms of general disposition. I certainly wasn’t planning on holding back, when the time came to fight.

Still, my anger must have showed, because Arcaidia leaned towards me and said quietly, “Is your mind in right place, ren solva? Can you fight with clear head?”

“Of course I can!” I barked, but quickly shook myself and said, softer, “I hope I can. I’m sorry Arcaidia. I’m... everything is out of whack, right now. I’m getting tired of my friends being in danger. This country was supposed to be safe Ancestors dammit! And I knew, I knew that Binge was feeling out of sorts... but I left her alone anyway.”

The guilt hit me harder than I thought it would, like a spiked hammer right past the rib cage. I’d left Binge all by herself, when I had known she wasn’t feeling right in the head. I had just assumed she’d be okay for a bit, that I had time to sort things out. Now she could be going through literal hell because I’d been careless. She might be dead... and if not, she might soon be. The thought twisted inside me worse than Redwire’s tendrils had lashed my flesh. Part of it was the pain of fearing for a friend’s life and all the guilt of believing the fault for it was your own.

And part of it was something else. Something deeper. Something I really didn’t want to acknowledge yet, partially out of stubborn ignorance, and partially out of simple fear of what I was feeling.

Regardless, I had to get Binge back, no matter what it cost me.

Arcaidia, staring into my face with at first deep rooted worry that soon shifted into a stoic, icy mask, shook her head at me. “Don’t wound self before even meeting enemy, ren solva. Guilt kills, in battle or not. We save Binge.” Arcaidia’s voice became solid steel, like an anchor that pulled me up from the dredges of self doubt, “I swear it on my name, we save her. Veruni take name-pledges very serious headed, so know I not stop until Binge safe, yes?”

Her words helped me get a hold of myself and fortify my emotions, wrangling them back under control. “Thanks Arcaidia, I think I really needed to hear somepony else say that.”

“Most welcome, ren solva. I know you well, like brother. You get head twisted up easy,” she smiled and swatted at the back of my head playfully with a hoof, “But give it good smack and you think straight again.”

“Oh, brother is it? Does that make you the little sister?”

She smirked and tilted her head up in a challenging look, “Little? Very much big sister to dopey little brother.”

I held up a hoof, checking my height in comparison to hers, which hadn’t gotten any higher than my shoulder since I’d met her. “I don’t know, I think it's pretty clear which of us is the older pony in this hypothetical sibling relationship.”

Arcaidia’s eyes flashed mysteriously at me and her smirk turned coy, “You may find surprise in learning truth, Longwalk. I much older than looks appear. Veruni medicine very good, make body age slower.”

“That right?” I blinked, wondering at the implications of what she was saying. “So, um, just how old are you?”

Her smile didn’t falter as she chuckled and flicked her tail at my snout. “A lady not tell her age.”

As I gave her a flabbergasted look LIL-E slowed down ahead of us and said, “We’re almost there.”

We’d come upon the banks of a river that cut through the northern most edge of what was Manehattan’s main city area and the former suburbs that lay beyond. The waters ran smooth and clear under the late afternoon light, and looking around I saw there was next to nopony around. The area across the river looked all but abandoned, the restoration efforts having not reached here in any meaningful manner. there was a makeshift bridge of pontoons with well welded planks of sheet metal that cross the river off to our right, not far away. To our left, more distant at maybe a quarter mile away was a much larger bridge, clearly pre-war in its construction. It didn’t look particularly intact, and I saw what looked like some sort of collection of buildings clustered around the center of the bridge, though they looked abandoned.

“We need to cross the pontoon bridge. Once we’re across Arbu is just a little ways further.” LIL-E said.

As she led us to the bridge, I took a deep breath.

Hang on Binge, we’re coming.

I wasn’t certain what I was expecting to see at Arbu, but somehow the charred husk I witnessed was worse than my mind had conjured. I had seen it once, in Binge’s dream, as a settlement formed from the ruins of a strip mall, with a simple but solid junk-forged wall around a set of low and long buildings that the ponies there had transformed into homes.

This looked nothing like that.

First, it was obvious that the strip mall itself had been built upon and re-purposed, with an entire new level built atop the roof of the two different sections of the strip of buildings, made from what had once been tall wooden panels and sheet metal. The old wall had been all but torn down and replaced with a wall of wood planks and poured concrete, topped with loops of razor wire and guarded with twin towers at either end... only now the wall was all but burned to its concrete foundation, with the towers like dark shafts of broken bone. I could see where the fire had raged across the front of the prison, consuming the interiors of the former strip mall’s buildings to only leave ash ridden ruin. Each building was like a blackened skull, the windows akin to hollow eyes, filled with foreboding shadow. The ground itself was still scorched, as if years of time and rain couldn’t erase the scars left behind.

I felt like I was looking at a corpse, not even still rotting, but long since stripped to its bones. More than that, the moment we stepped within a few dozen meters of the place the air started to feel heavy and cold, like we’d just had a cloak of chill fog draped over us. I wasn’t the only one to shudder. Arcaidia shivered as well and gave me a sidelong look.

“This land is bad.” she said, licking her lips.

“It feels wrong here.” I admitted, “Like stories the old shamans told of cursed land.”

Arcaidia shook her head, “What I mean is that I not feel Leylines right. All land is having Leylines. It is what help me fuel Crest Sorcery. But... the Leylines in this area are wrong. Twisted.”

“What does that mean?”I asked, and she frowned deeply, a haunted look briefly flashing through her eyes before she hardened them with steel composure.

“I not know, but will lay bet Scythe is pony to blame.”

No argument there from me. Keeping my eyes carefully roving over the ruin of Arbu for any signs of movement, I said, “LIL-E do your sensors pick up anything?”

“Nothing I can make sense of.” LIL-E replied after a long pause, the eyebot slowly rotating on its hovering axis from left to right, then back to left, clearly scrutinizing the area. “There’s distortions on my readouts that suggest magical interference, but I can’t pinpoint locations or magnitudes. My E.F.S is picking up some hostile signatures but they keep blipping in and out. How about yours?”

Right, Arcaidia and I both had E.F.S on our Pip-Bucks, but I wasn’t seeing any readings on mine, hostile or otherwise. After a confirming glance at Arcaidia, who shook her head, I said, “It doesn’t look like either of us got anything on ours. Yours must have the better range. You can’t spot anything though?”

“Nothing that tells us anything useful. This place looks like it’s filled with ghosts, for all I can tell.” LIL-E made a muttering sound, floating a little lower to the ground as she growled in a muted, static pop, “Should've burned it all down back then. All of it. Down to the fucking rocks. Nothing good can come out of this Goddesses damned place.”

“LIL-E?” I asked, gulping at the angered menace I’d heard in her tone, but the eyebot just floated back up, turning towards me.

“What? Oh, shit. Sorry. I’ve got a lot of memories boiling up to the surface here, Longwalk. Her memories. I can see them all clear and loud in my head as if I was living it all myself. One problem with being a robot, you can’t really forget anything. If it's in my databanks, its permanent. Including the first time Arbu got burned.”

“Are you going to be able to hold up alright?” I asked, “I mean, once we go in?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m... not her. No matter how real the memories feel. I’m in control of myself, so don’t worry about me.” LIL-E made a low static sound very close to a sigh, “I just wish to hell and back that Binge came from anywhere other than here. No point wasting any more time. Let’s get in there and pull Binge’s scarred ass out of the frying pan.”

We moved in cautiously, myself taking point with Gramzanber drawn and in my mouth while Arcaidia kept to my right and LIL-E floated to our left. The charred rubble in the wall was simple enough to climb, and passing the threshold only increased the earlier chill I felt. Standing on the ground of Arbu itself, inside the walls, it set every hair of my mane to tingling with frozen unease. Everything felt too still and quiet, and every single one of our hoofsteps echoed like gunshots in my ears.

Almost immediately my eyes started to play tricks on me, making me think that every time I looked at a shadowed doorway or window that there was something moving there. I looked at my E.F.S, but it was all but useless, showing me nothing but the occasional blip that vanished as quickly as it appeared. I was attentive for anything resembling a trap, but saw no obvious tripwires or scuffed dirt to hide mines or the like. I also looked for any telltale glints from sniping scopes, but there weren’t many positions somepony could snipe us from that wasn’t in range of the E.F.S, and LIL-E scanners were even better than that.

Still, B.B had warned us that Scythe was a master illusionist, so trusting anything I was seeing felt like a bad idea.

“Alright, we’re here... now what? Do we just start searching the buildings?” I asked, but before either of my companions could answer, Scythes laughter echoed with phantom resonance across the ruined former prison and settlement. I couldn’t pinpoint where his voice was coming from, it seemed to just fill the air from all directions at once.

“Welcome, welcome! I’m absolutely thrilled you managed to make it. Miss Binge is also happy that you’re here to see her beloved hometown, despite its rather poor state of repair.”

“Where is she!?” I demanded, “Come out here and show her to me!”

“Ah ah ah, let’s not get ahead of ourselves my delightfully dense young friend. To meet with inheritor of Arbu’s restless spirit you must first become enlightened to this ground’s rather tragic and bloody history. I’ve gone through a great deal of trouble to dig up the ghosts of the past hidden in this soil, and I would just love to share what I’ve learned with all of you.”

“Why you do this show and dance?” asked Arcaidia, lips twisted in a disapproving sneer, “Come fight if one wishes but why play stupid games first?”

“Well I did swear an Accord upon my blood oath with my sister to bring no harm to innocent ponies while I was here in the NCR. That being the case I can hardly fight you, can I? Of course the terms of the Accord were that I not harm innocents. It said nothing of others doing the deed for me. And as you’ve likely guessed, Miss Binge is hardly innocent herself, so her body and mind have been free game for me.”

“You bastard!” I growled, “What have you done to her!?”

“Nothing she wasn’t equally willing to do to herself. Such a self-destructive mare. She takes so much after her mother. All the best intentions, yet so easily twisted. Fear not, I’ve not partaken of her blood. I can smell something wrong about it, and I have no desire for indigestion.” Scythe’s voice turned a dangerous octave lower, “I’ve merely fed her some of my blood to establish a link to her mind. It’s been a fascinating place to explore. I learned quite a lot in a very short span of time, and the rest I learned from... heh, well, you’ll find out soon enough.”

Everything began to darken around us. A thick fog, like sheets of solid white stone, rose from the ground, engulfed the walls of Arbu, then swallowed up the evening sky above us. In mere seconds we were surrounded by the fog, as if all that existed now was just us and the skeleton of Arbu. The cold in the air only increased, making me shiver, and Scythe’s voice echoed around us.

“Follow the path. See the echoes of the past, and if you can survive the vengeful ghosts of this place’s many tragedies, then you’ll see your friend again and have your chance to save her soul.”

“You didn’t answer Arcaidia’s question.” I said, “Why are you doing this!? Aren’t you here for B.B?”

“It’s precisely because I’m here to bring my beloved sister back into the fold that I am doing this.” Scythe said in a disdain filled tone, seasoned with the sharp spice of rage. “She belongs with her Family, yet I know she won’t see reason, no matter how I plead. So I must break her will. She taught me, you know. Taught me much of what I know of how to inflict pain. A better teacher there never was. To sunder her will to resist I will first break those she cares for. I must make her suffer, to remind her of who she really is. That’s also why I frame this as a game, because she taught me that you cannot break a pony’s spirit without first giving them hope. So... hope, Longwalk. Hope that you can save your friend, and when you fail... break.”

A pathway parted through the fog with a chilly, dry wind, leading to the remains of one of the buildings to the left. The swirling white fog looked to me like the foreboding shape of fangs surrounding the yawning darkness of an empty doorway leading inside. I took a deep breath, trying to settle my raw nerves.

“One day, I don’t know when, but one day I’m going to wake up and not have to wonder what’s going to try to kill me and everypony I care about today.”

“Patience, ren solva. All be better when enemies dead and gone and world safe again.” said Arcaidia, to which LIL-E quickly chimed in.

“Not nearly as easily done as said, Arcaidia. But let’s put the philosophy talk on the back burner and find out what horrorshow we’ve got to deal with here.”

I nodded slowly, my teeth tightening around Gramzanber, and trotted towards the doorway revealed by the parting fog. It was pitch black inside, so I turned on my Pip-Buck’s pale green light. The light barely seemed to push back the dark, just enough for me to see a few steps ahead of me. The interior of the building at first glance appeared to be cracked and blackened concrete flooring and the burnt remains of several desks along with a half-melted filing cabinets. Maybe this was some kind of office for the prison? I stumbled over the ashen bits of a burnt metal chair, the crashing noise startling in the dark and stifling quiet.

Then, as LIL-E and Arcaidia entered behind me, there was a bang like thunder as a door that hadn’t been there before slammed shut, trapping us inside. Arcaidia whirled towards the door, tail raising like a freaked out cat, and she seemed to nearly hiss at the door, but contained herself with an embarrassed smile.

“Stupid door trick. Easy to break down with ARM, yes, ren solva?”

“Yeah, totally.” I said, trying to force a smile. Sure, Gram could probably make short work of any doors or walls around here, but that wouldn’t help us find Binge. We were stuck following the path Scythe was laying out for us, and dealing with whatever dangers he left along that path, until we found our friend... and whatever condition she was in.

“Something’s coming.” said LIL-E suddenly, her pistol turret swiveling around, “My scanners are lighting up like crazy.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about until a few seconds later my own E.F.S started to go absolutely bonkers. Dozens of dots started to appear, both green and red, flickering between colors and moving about without any clear pattern. The air grew colder still and I swear I started to see frost built up on the charred desks and floor. Then, even stranger, there was a bone pale shimmer in the air, filling the room, and then my eyes blinked as everything changed.

The room shifted, transforming from a burned out prison office into a intact, if somewhat dirty space that resembled a living area. It was ramshackle Wasteland style, but there were couches and a few mattresses set up here and there, and a out of place metal shelf against one wall, piled with knick-knacks, and a fold out table surrounded by mismatched stools. A novelty lamp shaped like a toy rocket stood against one corner, and somepony had hung up a plant pot despite it only containing a leafless small bush. Everything was gray and pale, as if filtered through a veil of mist.

“What... is this?” I breathed, then nearly jumped out of my hide when a pony walked through me.

She was as pale and gray as everything else in the room, yet I got the faintest impression of color, the deep green of her coat and bright blue of her poofy mane. Her cutie mark stood out against her narrow flanks, the image of a trio of hearts.

“Isn’t it great dad!” said the mare happily, ignoring me, Arcaidia, and LIL-E, “I mean sure it needs a lot of work still, but the place cleans up nice and once we get the wall finished we should be pretty safe here too! Overwatch and Deep Pockets will be done scouting soon, so we should get the lay of the land in no time.”

There was a youthful exuberance to the mare, a healthy glow that arrested my attention, and I didn’t notice until a second later that the mare’s belly was prominently large with the late stages of pregnancy as she rubbed her stomach with a grin. “Just think of it dad, a safe place to raise a family. Something you and mom never could find.”

“That’s because ‘safe’ ain’t something you find, Heartchime. You make it, wherever you can, and that ain’t often.”

An elderly stallion walked into view, literally seeming to appear from the wall in a puff of fog. Like everything else, he was gray and ethereal, with barely any hint of color. He wore dusty leathers that hid his cutie mark, but even without the gray tone saturating him he looked old. And uneasy, with a worried look he gave the mare, Heartchime.

“Oh c’mon dad, you’re way too pessimistic. We’ve been wandering the Wasteland since mom was pregnant with me, and in all that time you couldn’t find one spot worth settling down?”

The old stallion grimaced, “It ain’t that simple. We thought our home was safe, but Raiders swallowed it up. We’ve stayed alive since by wandering, not sticking to any one place for too long. Settling here, settling anywhere, it's a mistake.”

“Yeah, well, maybe that's what ponies thought back then, but after twenty years of wandering, and being prey to any damn monster or bandit we ran across, younger and braver hearts have prevailed. The vote was cast, and it’s settled. We’re making our home here, in Arbu.”

“Damn stupid name for a town if you ask me.” the stallion muttered, and the mare laughed, a sound very much like beautiful, gold chimes. It was then I suddenly realized how much the mare resembled Binge, and I understood I knew this mare.

“Ancestor Spirits, this is Binge’s mother.” I breathed in a low whisper, then cast a equally shocked look at the older stallion, “And her grandfather.”

“What magic is this?” Arcaidia said with amazed curiosity, cautiously looking around while unholstering her starblaster and poking the barrel through the phantom image of Heartchime. She pulled the weapon back immediately and I saw a rime coating of frost on the weapon barrel.

Ignoring us, as if we weren't there, the... images, ghosts, whatever they were, continued talking, Heartchime coming over and giving her grumpy looking father a hug and a light kiss on the cheek.

“Maybe then name’s a bit silly, but it's the name of home. Maybe it won’t be perfect, and we’ll run into difficulties, but I have to believe it's worth making a go of it here. Don’t you want your grandfoals to grow up somewhere other than on the road? The same road that lost us mom?”

The old stallion blew out a reluctant sigh, “No, and much as I prefer the road, I get why all you young folk want to settle down. You’re not the only mare who’s gotten herself knocked up lately. Guess we older ponies should’ve figured our little colts and fillies would stop being so little, and might want a solid homestead.” He returned the hug slowly, but held his daughter tightly. “I’ll try to stop bellyaching so much. It’s just...”

Heartchime looked at her father questionly. “Just what?”

The temperature in the room dipped further, and I felt frost forming beneath my hooves as a dark and fearful look crossed into the eyes of the old stallion, his voice dropping to a ominous low. “Just that I got a real bad feeling about this place. Can’t rightly put my hoof on what, but there’s just something... wrong, here. Eh, maybe I’m just getting old.”

“Heh, nonsense dad, you’ve got lots of years left in you, and you’re going to spend them in peace, watching your grandfoals grow up. Just wait, you’ll see, everything is going to turn out alright.”

I felt my teeth rattling at the near unbearable cold in the air as darkness and shadow clung around the room now, the ghostly images drifting away like so much mist in the wind, leaving us once more in the burned remains of the prison office. Rubbing my forelegs to try to get some blood circulating, I chattered, “I don’t understand. Are these memories? They can’t be Binge’s, she wasn’t even born yet. How would Scythe know any of this? Why show us?”

LIL-E floated in front of me, swiveling around to face me, “He’s just trying to rattle us. None of this can be trusted as real, Longwalk. And... and this can’t be how Arbu began.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because Arbu was full of-” LIE-E began to shout sharply, but halted herself and said, more slowly, “Arbu wasn’t... it didn’t have good ponies in it. Not like... not like what I just saw. They weren’t like that.”

I looked at her with confusion, tilting my head. “LIL-E, what exactly happened in Arbu?”

“I killed... I mean, she killed them. The Lightbringer. Littlepip. It’s complicated Longwalk, okay? She came here thinking the Arbu ponies were just another settlement in need of help, and she found out they were...” LIL-E paused for a long time, as if trying to collect herself. “Cannibals.”

At that word it seemed like the shadows around us got even darker, and I blinked in mute shock at LIL-E. “What? Cannibals? As in... as in they ate other ponies?”

“Yes. That. When Littlepip discovered the truth she slaughtered the settlement. All except the foals. But you know that part, don’t you? You just didn’t know the why.” LIL-E floated away from me, turning to face one of the walls, her robotic chassis sagging in the air. “So that’s why all these images have to be horseshit. Good ponies who want to raise a family don’t turn cannibal.”

My own mind had a hard time processing that as well. When I looked at Heartchime I didn’t see anything resembling a murderous cannibal. I just saw a hopeful, excited young mare eager to start a new life in a safe home where she could raise her foals. How does somepony like that become willing to eat other ponies?

A small voice whispered in the back of my head, however, speaking with plain, hard logic. Your tribe hunts geckos for meat, Longwalk. In a time of famine, would it be such a stretch of the imagination to use another source of meat, if nothing else was available? And what about the spider ponies in Stable 104? They hunted and ate ponies, despite most of them wanting nothing more than to live peaceful lives. It's not so impossible, Longwalk. You’ve seen how it could happen already.

I shook my head, banishing the thoughts. This was probably what Scythe was after, to screw with our heads. “Okay, let’s just assume for the moment that whatever we see, we keep moving forward until we find Binge. Whatever the truth is, saving her is more important than worrying about what’s real here or not. Everypony on board with that?”

“If it gets us out of this Goddess damned shithole faster, then yes.” said LIL-E emphatically.

“Moving fast is good.” said Arcaidia, looking around with suspicious eyes at the encroaching shadows filling the corners of the room. “I feel sick to stomach thinking about cannibals, but finding shivol bir more important than throwing up lunch, yes?”

Just as she finished speaking, she looked at me, eyes popping wide, and her starblaster swung around in her pale blue aura of magic. Instinctively I ducked, Arcaidia firing the starblaster in a silver white-hot flash of alien energy. It streaked past me, though I could tell the bolt hadn’t been aimed at me, but instead in a shadow that had moved behind me. The silver bolt struck the shadow with a sound that pierced my skull with its high, scratching wail. I saw the shadow take the vague shape of a pony, translucent and seemingly made from dark gray shadows. Its shape was so twisted and jagged that it was impossible to tell gender, or facial features. I only saw two shining, star-like pin-pricks of light where eyes should be, and a gaping black maw where the mouth should be, which issued forth a howl that tore at my soul.

Arcaidia’s shot had forced the wraith (a name that popped into my head as fitting in that horrifying moment) back briefly, but it soon howled again and surged forward, flying across the floor in a frightfully swift glide. I backpedaled, Applegate’s training kicking in as I reared up onto my hindlegs and pivoted to avoid the wraith’s charge. Even just passing by me, the wraith’s near presence sent a cold shock through me, frosting my fur.

I slashed with Gramzanber as the wraith passed, and to my horror the ARM just passed through the ethereal thing while meeting no more resistance than cutting air. It still howled, a bit of its shadowy form tearing away from it, but while my strike might have hurt the thing, it seemed more pissed off than injured as it twisted around to come at me again.

LIl-E’s gunfire roared with deafening results in the confined area, her pistol turret tearing bullets through the wraith, albeit to seeming little effect, but it distracted the ethereal shadow just long enough for me to shift my hind hooves around to evade its second charge, swinging my forelegs with Gramzanber hard to cut another small chunk from the thing. It screamed in a manner that ran a icy razor blade down my spine, and vanished into the wall. Any relief I felt was short lived, however, as its voice was joined by a dozen other unearthly wails that seemed to echo from every wall.

“This way! Quick as wind!” Arcaidia shouted, pointing towards a staircase at the back of the room. Needing no further prompting we scrambled in that direction, charging up the wooden stairs. However they were old and burnt, and in seconds I felt my hoof break through one of the steps, nearly dumping me to the floor if Arcaidia’s quick reflexes didn’t allow her to catch me with her magic and haul me the rest of the way up the narrow stairs.

Wailing noises followed us, and I saw stains that looked like blood start to drip down the walls of the staircase as beneath us the doorway to the first floor turned into a black wall of dark, wraith-like faces. Only the swift slamming of the wooden door at the top of the stairs cut off the howls, the door closing once I was through much like the one on the bottom floor had.

Scythe's voice filled the shadowy space we were now in, laughing.

“What, scared a few ghosts? They’re just welcoming you to their home. The spirits of Arbu haven’t had a chance to show anypony hospitality since they were murdered brutally and mercilessly eighteen years ago. One might say they’re a tad... restless. But fear not, I can keep them in check. When I feel like it.”

“Stop fucking around with us!” shouted LIL-E, “Those were illusions. Had to be. You can’t raise the damned spirits of the dead!”

“Damned spirits? Hmm, apt choice of words. One could argue the philosophy of the afterlife forever I suppose, but when one knows the secrets of Necromancy one at least can confirm that something of us persists after leaving the mortal coil.” Scythe’s words dripped with mocking, taunting venom. “I don’t know if these spirits rested in a heavenly afterlife or roasted in a punishing hell. I only know that when I exhumed their bones and cast the right spells, they came to my call... and they are very, very angry. Shall I show you more of why?”

“More visions?” I asked dubiously, attention divided between trying to get my bearings and warily eyeing the door down the stairs. “Is what you’re showing us even real? And why show us?”

Scythe’s voice was chiding as he replied, as if mocking a foal. “They’re real enough to hurt. Binge believes them to be true, and seeing the story unfold, over and over again in her mind, has certain had an... hah, adverse effect on her psyche.” He chuckled in cold mirth, “That’s why I want you to see it as well, so you appreciate in full the painful weight of the scars your friend has inflicted on herself. Assuming of course you survive the continued attentions of Arbu’s former residents. I can only hold back their fury for so long, after all.”

I felt an intense chill coming from the door at the bottom of the stairs, and saw the door slowly frosting over. I wasn’t sure how long we had before the wraiths would be let off the leash again by Scythe to attack us, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

Gram, I need to know, can you actually take one of those wraiths out? I thought at my ARM, and his voice resonated in my head a second later.

I cannot say for certain. They are ectoplasmic beings whose forms are made up of magical fields bound together by a central will that one might call a ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. I am designed to manipulate and connect to this type of energy, it is how ARMs bond to their wielders and utilize our abilities, but conventional attacks with my edge only carry minor traces of this energy. This means normal strikes will do minimal damage. I suggest using Accelerator or Impulse. Either ability infuses me with more energy, hence a potentially greater effect on these “wraiths”.

“Great...” I muttered.

“Not really.” Arcaidia said, glancing at me incredulously, “I think this may be most not great thing that happen to us in... um, two days? Three?”

“Let’s call it three.” said LIL-E, “That shit underneath Skull City was the pits.”

“That’s not what I meant, but yeah, our ratio of good days versus bad days isn’t nearly as skewed towards good as I’d like.” I said, trotting deeper into the room and putting distance between us and the frosting over door. It looked to me like we were in some sort of processing area. The prison probably sent prisoners through here to be registered, searched, fitted out in prison garb, all before being sent to their cells. I guessed this much just from the look of the long desk filling the center of the room, behind which were a number of bins, perhaps for storing items taken off of prisoners, and the rack of orange jumpsuits, all half burned, that lined the far wall.

“Should be stairs to the roof over there.” said LIL-E, floating forward, “Might be able to hop to the next building from there. Still don’t have a read on Binge’s location, but she might be in the other side of the prison.”

As we moved across the room, heading for those stairs LIL-E pointed out, the silvery glow of gray mist filled the room, just like downstairs. The grayish glow transformed the room once more into something else entirely, a sort of communal bunk room with many mattresses strung out along either wall, and a small dining table set up in the center. A number of ponies sat at that table, among them Heartchime, but now the ghostly mists formed several other ponies, including a young unicorn stallion around Heartchime’s age, perhaps a bit younger, who sat next to her with their tails entwined. However despite the cuddly appearance of the two, both ponies had worried, grave looks that were shared by the other ponies at the table.

“I know it looks bad,” said Heartchime, “But it’s only been a few weeks. We’re not done searching the ruins to the east, and-”

“And we lost Granite out there!” snapped one of the other ponies, a slightly older mare, eyes tear streaked. “Those Raiders blew his brains out not two paces in front of me! I’m not going back east. I’m not.”

“We’re dealing with the Raiders, Apricot.” said the unicorn stallion next to Heartchime, “We can’t let them stick around long enough to work up the nerve to hit Arbu. We’ll get them back for Granite, I promise you.”

“I don’t care about revenge, Nightdust! I... I want my brother back.”

Heartchime’s ears drooped and her face trembled with emotions she was clearly trying to keep in check as she said, “I’m sorry. None of us can fix what happened to Granite, but Apricot you know that the exact same thing could have happened if we’d been still wandering. I know this is hard. There’s not as much food as we hoped there’d be to scavenge, and the soil no more clean for growing food. There’s water nearby in the river but it's as poisonous as anywhere else. But there’s cover and shelter here, good salvage in the ruins, and by the Goddesses if we can just get some regular merchants coming through here we can trade for the food and water we need. It's hard, and we’ll take hits... but I believe Arbu is worth fighting for. We can make this work.”

There was silence for a few seconds, then another stallion piped up. “I’m all for digging our hooves in, but the Raiders are still a major problem. With them around we’ll have trouble getting merchants to come in from New Appleoosa or Friendship City. Then we’ve got other problems. Deep Pockets and me checked out the bridge to the south, and its occupied. I don’t know who they are, but they’ve got big, scary ass armor and weapons and didn’t look very friendly. They’ve got some kind of bunker built into that bridge, so I wouldn’t count on crossing using that. Then there’s rumors of the slavers up in Fillydelphia.”

“That’s miles away Two Bit. The slavers wouldn’t come this far out.” said Heartchime.

“We didn’t think we’d have Raiders this far from the city’s downtown area, but here we are.” Two Bit shot back, and Heartchime looked ready to retort, but a foal’s cries cut through the conversation.

“Whoops, sounds like our little colt’s awake again.” said Heartchime, starting to rise, but Nightdust put a gentle hoof on her shoulder.

“Let me dear, you finish up the meeting.” He gave her a quick kiss, “I know we can do this. I for one am in all the way, to whatever end.”

As the stallion trotted away from the table the silvery mist of images started to swirl away and Scythe’s voice cut through the dark, biting and amused. “This isn’t an uncommon story. I’ve seen it play out many times among these budding settlements. Hope, at first. Then the difficulties begin. Deaths occur, supplies dwindle, and with it that hope starts to transmute and twist, becoming rotten, decaying...”

“Shut it,” I said sharply, closing my eyes as I felt the sting of his words. I wasn’t stupid. I could already see where the story of these ponies was leading. I could well imagine how things would progress, with the trials and pains of the Wasteland pushing the ponies of Arbu further and further towards unsettling ends. I still couldn’t imagine how bad it must have gotten for them to resort to cannibalism, but I didn’t doubt Scythe would delight in showing us the gory details, soon enough. The thought made me sick, which translated into an acidic tone in my voice. “So what if things went bad here? So what if things go bad anywhere!? Just because hope is fragile, that doesn’t make it wrong to have!”

“Even if believing in it so completely is exactly why, when it fails, supposedly ‘good’ ponies turn into monsters?” asked Scythe with a pointed and condescending tone. “The ponies of Arbu weren’t the only ones. Even the NCR’s vaunted hero, the ‘Lightbringer’, believed so much in righteousness that the moment her fragile beliefs met with ugly reality she turned into a monster as well. Ah, and speaking of monsters, you might want to start running.”

I felt the chill at our backs even before Scythe was done speaking, and I looked to Arcaidia and LIl-E only long enough to shouted, “Move it!” and we all got to running.

Not a moment too soon either, as the stairwell all but boiled over with the writhing mass of shifting darkness that was literally dozens of wraiths. Their combined voices formed a freezing wail that scraped along my eardrums like icepicks, making it all the easier to gallop towards the stairwell as fast as I could. However I heard a yelp behind me and turned to see Arcaidia stumbling in her stride, her metal peg leg slipping on the charred floor. She wasn’t used to moving so fast with the artificial leg, and it wasn’t built for this kind of galloping in the first place. The wraiths surged forward, sensing Arcaidia’s weakness.

Accelerator.

I didn’t hesitate to activate the power, letting the world shift to stark indigo clarity. My heightened perception of the world gave me a horrifying view of the mass of wraiths, allowing me to see the deformed and twisted cast of their shadowed faces. They looked like they were in pain. Each phantom of shadow had features I could barely make out, but each one had a look of both rage and anguish twisting what little of their visage I could see. The sight tore at me, as I pitied these poor lost spirits. Yet I couldn't spare much thought for them, as I took full advantage of Accelerator’s speed boost to turn around and cross the distance to Arcaidia in a cobalt flash of adrenaline.

I could see the fear and frustration etched in equal portions on Arcaidia’s face. She was still in mid-stumble when I reached her, trying to get her hooves properly under her as the jointed metal peg leg struggled to right itself. The wraiths were nearly on top of us, their mouths opened wide, screaming desire for blood, hooves like stretching, tarred claws reaching for us. I grabbed Arcaidia around the waist, careful to avoid hitting her with Gramzanber as I shoved her onto my back and awkwardly started to do a three-legged hobble towards the stairs, still using one fore leg to hold Arcaidia in place on my back so she wouldn’t slip. Under normal circumstances this would’ve been a slow way to try and move, but with Accelerator we managed to outpace the wraiths by a tail’s breadth. LIL-E had waited for us at the stairs, having shot open the door and pushed it open with her chassis.

All three of us hit the stairs running, or in LIL-E’s case floating. There was little elegance to my speedy scramble up the uneven stairs, tripping every third or fourth step. I didn’t dare end Accelerator. I knew I needed every ounce of speed I could squeeze from myself to stay ahead of the swirling pile of wraiths that I knew was still chasing us by the way ice frosted over the stairwell walls.

The door at the top of the stairs was a dark, charcoal mass that we easily smashed through in a cloud of ash, leading us up to the cold and frigid air of the roof. The mist still clung thickly around Arbu and I could barely make out anything around me, but I could still see a small armored catwalk on one side of the roof that, at least in theory, spanned the gap between the two long buildings of the former prison. Feeling Arcaidia tap my head, I glanced back to see her, in Accelerator’s slow motion, casting a beam of ice from her horn that covered the doorway we’d just come from. I had no idea if that would even slow the wraiths down, but since it was magical ice maybe it would work better than a mundane barrier?

I didn’t stop to think on it too much, ending Accelerator so I wouldn’t outright kill myself. The backlash ran through me in a hot sting that, while painful, actually helped push back the hold a little.

“Across the bridge!” LIL-E said, “Should be another stair access over there.”

“I-I can run, ren solva, no need to carry me.” Arcaidia said, voice tight with frustration as she hopped off my back and started to gallop, face cast in a hard and determined mask. I followed her just as the wraith’s wailing reached the iced up doorway, and I chanced a glance back to see the shadow draped figures seeping out of the sides of the stairwell and even through the floor of the roof, scrapping with hooves like corpses rising from their graves.

“Shitshitshit!” I sputtered, rushing behind Arcaidia and LIL-E as we hit the catwalk spanning the street between the two buildings, our hooves banging loudly on the grated metal. I saw movement beneath us and nearly screamed as I saw a flock of wraiths reaching up from below the catwalk, their dark limbs passing through the grating under our hooves. Arcaidia and I both awkwardly jumped about and side-stepped the grasping phantom hooves. Arcaidia snarled and fired her starblaster down into the mass if wailing ghosts, the silver beams painfully bright and driving the wraiths back like fish scattering from a rock tossed into a pond.

Once we were across I turned to see the wraiths that had chased us up to the roof were crossing over the catwalk. I wasn’t at all certain about how these things moved around, and if they could truly fly or not, but it looked like these ones were using the catwalk. That being the case I didn’t hesitate to swing Gramzanber around, severing neatly through the metal catwalk and causing it to bend downward with a metallic whine. The wraiths wailed as they tumbled off the catwalk, though I noticed they didn’t so much fall as just lightly float down before starting to hover and slowly rise, as if they’d only temporarily forgotten they weren’t living ponies who had to obey the laws of gravity.

As I turned to join the others in running across this roof towards a shed with a door in it, presumably stairs, the mist swirled in thickly around us, obscuring our view, and Scythe’s voice penetrated the air smugly.

“You’re good at running, at least. So were the ponies of Arbu, if only running from the truth of their situation.”

The mist parted around us to show that we were turned around, now facing the front courtyard of Arbu from atop the roof. The wraiths were nowhere to be seen, but I didn’t doubt for a second they were out there, only be held in check by Scythe as he shows us more of Arbu’s history.

I saw a group of ponies gathered in the courtyard near the front gate, the mists casting all in gray tones. The courtyard looked not like a burned out prison yard and now like a busy outdoor gathering spot and eating area, with several wooden tables set up on one side, and an open space where a pony with a big wagon was set up. Other ponies were gathered around this mare, an earth pony by the look of her who stood by her wagon looking tired, even scared. I saw Heartchime among those greeting this pony.

“Welcome to Arbu!” Heartchime said, “You’re our first merchant to come out here, so let us make you feel right at home, miss...?”

“Call me Chancy,” said the merchant mare, gulping, eyes shifting around nervously. She wore thick leather barding and carried several pistols strapped to her sides. “Look, I just made this run because I lost at drawing straws. Nopony from Friendship City wants to risk coming out here, but we heard you might have a regular source of food for trade.”

“Well, we discovered the river nearby has a population of gators in it, and we’ve experimented with hunting them for the meat.” explained Heartchime, looking embarrassed, “Thing is, the stuff is pretty heavy on the radiation. You can still eat it in small amounts-”

“Look, do you guys got anything useful to trade or don’t you?” Chancy said with a rough tone, voice shaking. “My tail nearly got shot off by Raiders on the way in, so you’d better have something to make this worth my while or you can forget getting any more of us out here.”

“No! I mean, yes, we have other things...” said Heartchime, gesturing towards the tables, “Let’s sit down and have a look at what we can do.”

As the two ponies headed for the tables the mists swirled and shifted, painting a fresh image of the Arbu ponies all gathered, looking worried and angry. Hooves were being pointed. Heartchime was not among the group, but Nightdust was, and he looked like a stallion in agony, face bent low as if he’d been crying.

“Two of us dead and Heartchime captured. I knew trying to take down the Raiders was a stupid idea!” spat the mare I recognized as Apricot, “Even if we cleared the roads, the merchants won't come! This is the end. We have to abandon Arbu.”

“What about my daughter!?” shouted the old stallion I recognized as Heartchime’s father. “We can’t just leave her in their filthy hooves! Nightdust, aren’t you going to do something, damn you!”

Nightdust looked up, eyes haunted and sunken, shaking. “I... I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Just then there was a shout from the gates. “Wait, somepony is coming this way! Shit! It’s Heartchime! Get the gates open!”

As the gates swung open I saw the smokey, ghostly image of Heartchime entering Arbu’s town courtyard. She looked like two shades of death rolled over by hell, covered in wounds, dirt, and blood. She carried a knife in her mouth, which she spat out as soon as she saw Nightdust and slowly started to trot over to him. Nightdust, along with all the other ponies, looked stunned, until Heartchime’s father broke the spell by galloping forward to put gentle hooves around his daughter.

“Thank the Goddesses, girl, you’re alright. What happened? We thought the Raiders caught you after our botched attack.”

“They did take me...” Heartchime said in a quiet, dull tone. “Took me and... did whatever they wanted to me. But, heh... heheh, they eventually let their guard down. Got two of them with the knife, then ran for it. They’re... probably going to come back, try and finish the job. Finish Arbu.”

Horrified looks crossed many of the gathered ponies faces, most of all Heartchime’s father and Nightdust, the later of whom rushed forward to carefully nuzzle the obviously traumatized mare. “Oh hun, I’m... so sorry. I should have fought harder. I shouldn’t have let them take you.”

“It’s not over.” Heartchime said, taking a deep breath, “They’re going to come again. Its us or them.” Anger, hot and blazing, entered her tone. “I’m going to make damn sure it's them.”

The scene shifted once more, the fog billowing around as if being directed by stiff breezes. I heard gunfire now, and glanced around to see the ghostly images had now taken form on the roof beside us. I saw Heartchime and Nightdust, along with several others, all wielding rifles as they took aim from the roof to fire down upon scrambling forms in the courtyard below. I saw the gate broken down and several dead ponies, both Arbu settlers and Raiders alike, scattered about.

“Don’t let them near the foals!” Heartchime roared, taking careful aim with her rifle and firing a shot that sent one Raider sprawling with brain matter splattering the ground. “We stop them here and now! Keep firing!”

Arbu ponies, both on the roofs, and behind makeshift barricades around the base of the buildings, held strong and fired into the Raiders rushing through the broken gate. The cacophony of gunfire was so intense it felt like one long wave of noise for a minute, but eventually the Raiders broke and started to flee, firing back as the few survivors rushed just as fast to retreat as they did to charge.

Nightdust let out a whoop, grinning at Heartchime. “We did it! I don’t believe it! We really beat th-”

A bullet, fired by the last retreating Raider at complete random, tore through the back of his throat in a gout of blood that, amid the gray mist making up this ghostly memory looked more like a puff of smoke than blood. Yet all the same Nightdust’s eyes went wide with shock for a second, then rolled up into the back of his head, glazed with emptiness of death before Heartchime even managed to reach his falling corpse.

“N-Night! Goddesses, no, Nightdust!” Heartchime reached him, tossing her rifle aside and cradling his body, shaking him. “Nonono, you... you, fuck...” she tried to stop the blood stemming from his neck, giving me an uncomfortable flashback to my own futile attempts to do the same when Shale had been bleeding out in front of me. Heartchime’s efforts slowly stopped as she stared at her dead mate’s eyes, and she just... I saw her collapse in on herself. Not physically, though she did curl over his body and start sobbing, but rather what I saw was the light flashing out inside her eyes, turning dark and heavy with pain.

The wail Heartchime let out over the corpse of her mate was a twin to those of the wraiths.

With a gust of wind the mists faded away from the scene, leaving us still shrouded in fog, but with the memories of Arbu for the moment now silent. Scythe’s voice didn’t mockingly accompany the following moments, and I wondered if this was because even he was giving us a second to absorb this. More likely he was just focusing on preparing the wraiths for their next attack, while letting us get unsettled by the sudden silence. Struck me as more his style. Either way, I was glad for the moment to think, though my thoughts mostly consisted of one word.

“Fuck.”

Arcaidia gave me a sidelong look, lips drawn down in a deep frown, but after a moment she breathed out a sighing whinny of agreement. “Is sad, but not make being cannibals have any more head sense. Still disgusting.” She hung her head, silver tail drooping, “But also I feel grieving for them. None should face pains like this. Is bad world, not bad ponies.”

“It's never that simple Arcaidia.” said LIL-E, tone stiff, even for her. “I get that the ponies of Arbu might’ve gone through a lot, but they still own their choices. They could have left, if things were getting too hard for them here.”

I shook my head, “Like you said LIL-E, never that simple, for either argument. But we’re just giving Scythe time to prepare his next nasty surprise for us. Let’s get to those stairs. Binge might be in this building.”

“He’s leading us around by the snouts.” said LIL-E, “Pisses me right the fuck off.”

“Hold,” said Arcaidia, eyeing us, her horn alighting with a halo of blue magic, “Should have thought to do magic thing earlier, to protect better from wraiths.”

Her magic flared, the symbols of the magical crest forming in a bright series of blue lines encircling her horn. Then the magic streamed over all three of us, encasing our bodies in a tight, form fitting magical shield.

“Huh,” I waved my hoof around, looking at the pale, near invisible barrier of energy. “This stuff works well for bullets, but will it work on those wraiths as well?”

Arcaidia nodded, “Should work. A little. Not stop them entirely, but maybe slow them. Best I can do.”

Despite the grim circumstances I managed to give Arcaidia a brief, but sincere smile. “I’ll take your best any day of the week. Now let’s move it, before Scythe decides to send the spook squad flying up our tailpipes again.”

The top floor of the second building was one wide cell block, with the darkness stretching out ahead of us in a long corridor. Barred cells lined either side of the wall, the bars slick and melted in places from the blaze that had consumed this place years ago. The air hung heavy with motes of ash, and I could almost still catch the scent of burned flesh, even though my brain pony bopped me over the head with the logical conclusion that there’s no way any lingering scent from the victims of the fire could still be present.

We trotted forward with our nerves stretched tight. Arcaidia kept her horn alight, bathing all in pale blue radiance, while I shone my Pip-Buck light into every empty cell we passed. I didn’t know what Scythe was cooking up, but I didn’t want to be caught unprepared when he decided to hit us with it. So far he made it a point to send the wraiths after us between each scene from Arbu’s history, so he had to have something prepared for us before we go too much further.

“Hey LIL-E, I don’t suppose you can figure out a way to detect where Scythe is with those fancy scanners of yours?” I asked, if only to break up the growingly heavy silence.

“I’ve been working on that since the second we got here.” the eyebot replied quickly, her from turning this way and that, her chassis making small whirring and buzzing noises. “I’m having a hard time believing how much magic this asshole must have to hit this entire area with illusions this thickly interlaced together. Its got to be his special talent or something, because this is alicorn-tier bullshit magic levels. Anyway, yeah, I’m trying to calibrate my scanners to cut through all the ambient magic to pinpoint where anypony real might be, Scythe or Binge. It's just not easy, even for a robot with a processor capable of millions of calculations a second. So, short answer; I’m working on it, but no ETA on when I’ll have something useful.”

We continued on, and it wasn’t until about five minutes passed before I stopped and said, “Wait... this isn’t right. We should have seen a turn, or a door by now, or something. This building can’t be this long, can it?”

Arcaidia paused, frowning as she looked at her Pip-Buck, “Map function not working. Showing only static.”

LIL-E halted as well, making a frustrated growl. “He’s got us trapped.”

Her words were punctuated by the return of the deep, dark cold as the floor both in front and behind us started to freeze over. The shadows gaping to either side of us started to shift, and the chilling wail of the wraiths returned. They were surrounding us, coming down both ends of the corridor while also slowly rising from the burned debris within the cells. Arcaidia and I went back to back instantly, while LIL-E floated above us.

“Arcaidia, LIL-E, we’re going down!” I shouted, following my gut instincts on this one and rearing up on my hind legs, grasping Gramzanber in my forelegs. As Arcaidia glanced back at my questioningly, I plunged Gramzanber into the floor and started to carve a circle around us. Arcaidia’s eyes popped wide.

“W-wait, ren solva! I not sure that such a non-toaster headed id-”

Before she finished I managed to get the circle around us carved, and the floor beneath us collapsed, dropping us down in a pile of dust and broken bits of wood and concrete. It wasn’t a long drop, landing us in a disorganized pile on the floor below. I rolled to my hooves, putting Gramzanber back in my mouth as I hauled an irate looking Arcaidia up as well. LIL-E floated above us.

“Guess that’s faster than stairs.” said the eyebot as we rushed away from the hole I’d carved, the wailing of the wraiths trailing behind us. We were now in what looked like another cell block, but this one was more shaped like a cross, with a T-section right where we’d dropped, and several hallways spanning in either direction. I just chose the one that had a visible door and barreled for it.

I didn’t slow down, smashing into the door with my shoulder with enough force to knock the already deteriorated thing off its hinges. As we emerged into the new room, we heard Scythe laugh... albeit with a bit of annoyed strain underneath the mocking tone.

“Now that was just cheating, Longwalk. I haven’t gone through the trouble of setting all this up just for you to bypass all the fun. Hmm, but I do suppose this is becoming a bit tedious for us both.”

“Then stop playing this damn game and show us where Binge is!” I shouted, my own patience running well past dry.

“Soon enough.” Scythe said, “You’re closer to her than you think, but there’s still a few twists and turns to go before I’ll allow you the privilege of seeing her.”

With that the room we were in was revealed in a silvery glow of gray mist that floated up around us in a torrent. The faded, fog-like memories of Arbu given illusionary life in front of us showed a scene in what looked to be a living area, similar to what we saw in the first memory. The room itself was empty, but the windows along the far wall showed the front courtyard, and from there I heard the shouts of an intense argument.

My friends and I cautiously approached the windows, and the door set open between them. Exiting out into the courtyard we saw what I guessed had to be most of Arbu gathered in a large group around one of the several tables set up as a communal eating area. The town’s damage had been clearly repaired, and the bodies of the Raiders long since cleared out. In fact I could guess some time had passed since Nightdust’s death, because I saw Heartchime standing atop the table and she was showing signs of pregnancy once more. There were a number of foals, many of them looking fairly recently born, among the crowd. Many of them were bundled up on their mother’s backs, or held close in the crooks of one foreleg. Heartchime’s own young colt was clinging to her back as she addressed the crowd, and its many angry faces.

“I know there’s no food left. We’ve rationed all we can.” Heartchime looked back at her son, who I couldn’t help but notice was rail thin, his ribcage showing through his hide. The foal gulped and hugged his mother tightly as she nuzzled him. She then looked back to the crowd, “But if we leave Arbu, not only are we risking the lives of every single one of our foals on a journey many may well die trying to make, but we’d be spitting on the memory of everypony that’s died so far to make this home a reality.”

“But there’s nothing left to eat!” exclaimed one mare, desperation thick in her voice. “We’re running out of water too!”

“We’ve got even more Raiders moving in to take over from the last bunch we fought off, so there’s no merchants coming either!” shouted another pony. “What do you expect us to do Heartchime? We’ve got no choice but to leave!”

From the crowd stepped Heartchime’s father, looking older and more tired. “They’re right, hun. There’s nothing more we can do but pack up and try the road again.”

Ponies shouted agreement, all looking worn out with flagging tails, hung heads, and defeated, hopeless eyes. I saw the same desperation shining in Heartchime, a deadly, dark twin to the hope that I’d first seen in them. With a fierce look she said with heavy firmness, “There’s a way. A way for all of us and our foals to have full bellies, and give the merchants a safe passage here, and goods to trade for more water.”

She hopped down from the table, ponies clearing the way for her as they all looked at her with mixtures of curiosity and unease. She trotted towards where several rifles lay propped up against one of the other tables. The tension in the air increased as she took the weapon up and started loading it. Her father looked at her with the most worry of all.

“Heartchime... daughter? What are you doing?”

She looked back at him, eyes like sharp flint. “I’m going to hunt, dad. I’m going to get us food.”

“Hunt what? There’s nothing around here but those gators, and they’re too radioactive to eat.”

Heartchime’s expression faltered for a moment, the sharp look momentarily showing all of the raw fear, doubt, and desperate need for hope bubbling underneath the surface. “The Raiders. I’m going to hunt the Raiders.”

For a moment, stunned silence. Then voices exploding into shouts and cries, some of shock, others of dismay or horror, certainly none in approval. Amid the shouting, however, it was as if the sound dropped away so I could only hear Heartchime and her father.

“Heart... what are you saying? You can’t mean that. You’re talking, seriously talking, about... eating our own kind?” the old stallion looked disgusted and in complete disbelief. In response Heartchime reached back and hugged her confused looking little colt tightly, while strapping the rifle to her back.

“Yes, dad, that’s what I mean. Its meat. Its food.”

“They’re ponies, girl! Other ponies!”

“The Raiders are barely ponies.” muttered Heartchime, eyes regaining their fierce, dark light. “You know what they do. None of us, not you, or me, or anypony else where would think twice about killing a Raider. So once they’re dead, why let that meat go to waste? It's as nourishing as anything else we could eat out here, and more to the point...”

She brushed past her father and approached the rest of Arbu’s settlers, eyeing them all with her head held high and challenging. “Our only other choice is to run away. Run away from all the work we’ve done here! Flee into the Wasteland, leaving our lives to chance on the unforgiving roads!”

She turned a hard gaze towards one mare. “Apricot, you just learned you and Whiteout are going to have a foal, right?”

“Y-yes, but-”

“So what do you think will be safer? Traveling miles over Raider and slaver infested territory hoping we might find a place in Friendship City? What if the Fillydelphia slaves got to us first? Do you want to bring your foal into the world with a slave collar ready and waiting for them!?”

Apricot gulped, glancing uncertainly at a stallion at her side, who also looked worried, and held her close. Heartchime then turned to another pair, two ponies who already had two young foals with them, both looking as thin and hungry as Heartchime’s colt did.

“What about you, Smokescreen, Lilypad? Do you think your daughters will survive the road? Between us and Friendship city are Raiders, slavers, and monsters. If we head north the slavers get even thicker, and to the south there’s nothing but dead Wasteland. East, even more Raiders in the Manehattan ruins. West? Want to try your luck in Hellhound territory? How far before one of you dies?”

“Look, Heartchime,” said another stallion, one I recognized as Two Bit, “We hear what you’re saying, but... but to resort to cannibalism? That’s a leap I don’t think any of us signed up for when we decided to settle here.”

“Neither was watching my husband die in front of me!” shouted Heartchime. “I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m not watching somepony else I love die. Not my son...” she rubbed her stomach, eyes closed, watering. “Not the foal growing in me. I’m going to make a safe home for them. A place they can grow up full, happy, and warm. If I have to break a damn taboo to do that, so be it.”

Suddenly Apricot stepped forward, approaching Heartchime, looking scared, but also more determined as she reached out and put a comforting fore leg around the other mare. “Heartchime I... I understand. I lost my brother. I don’t want to lose anypony else I care about, and I care about everypony here. We’re all family.”

Apricot licked her lips, doubt creeping over her face, but also a sense of purpose as she stood beside Heartchime and addressed the crowd. “I know what Heartchime is saying sounds crazy to some of us. But she’s right. The Wasteland is too dangerous for us to travel. Not when all we have to do to feed ourselves and our foals is to kill a few monstrous Raiders and use them the way they’d use us!”

There were still numerous looks of mixed shock, disbelief, and outright disgust among the other gathered ponies, but I could see in their eyes that Heartchime and Apricots words were starting to sink in. Several ponies found themselves nodding, only to look confused and ashamed as the did so. One such pony stepped forward, one of the younger stallions, perhaps not much older than myself.

“Are you really sure there’s no other way we can feed ourselves? S-somepony could take the chance of traveling to the other settlements, trading what salvage we can to bring back food from elsewhere.”

Apricot glanced at Heartchime, who sighed deeply and went over to the young stallion, putting a kind hoof on his shoulder. “I don’t doubt you’d volunteer, as would others. And if some of you honestly want to try, I won’t say you can’t. It's not like I have that right. I’m no more in charge here than anypony. But the risk of trying to make our own trade route is high. If you didn’t make it through, we’d be left waiting for food that might never come.”

She stepped back, steel back in her eyes, “But the Raiders are food, sitting there and waiting. We know now that we’re stronger than they are, and can hunt them like they’ve hunted us. They’re not ponies, but animals, and I say we treat them like animals. That way, nopony in Arbu will go hungry again.”

“Never hungry again!” Apricot shouted, stomping a hoof to the ground, and very slowly other ponies joined in, until at least half of the town’s population had taken up the cry. Others still looked hesitant, a few still downright horrified, but the resistance to the idea had lessened significantly. As Heartchime gazed upon her fellow Arbu settlers I could still see that dark, desperate spark in her eyes where hope had been, now shining stronger in a way that was uncomfortably familiar yet disturbingly wrong.

And in the background, behind Heartchime, I saw her father, and the way his face contorted with both deep, wounded sadness and wide eyed rage.

It was then I noted the chanting cries of, “Never hungry again!” had also started to change and control. The voices of the ponies went from a desperate but normal sounding shout to a warbling, twisted chant. The voices then grew hollow and colder, intermixing and stretching out until each voice was a blood freezing wail.

The pony images contorted with their voices, each one slowly warping in disturbing flickers of movement into deep, shifting shadows. Within moments the misty images of memory were overtaken by the writhing reality of hungry, maddened wraiths that now advanced towards me and my friends.

Arcaidia spat out a curse, “Sivrial mas! I have enough of screeching dead ponies! Not what I traveled stars to deal with! Back! Back not living dumb ponies with heads of the worst toasters!”

Arcaidia punctuated her statement with a round of rapidly fired beams from her starblaster, combined with a swiftly cast spell that brought forth an entire conical burst of white and blue ice shards that spread from the tip of her horn to engulf the front ranks of the wraiths. The starblaster and spell only slowed the wraiths down a moment, but a moment was all we needed. Soon Arcaidia, LIL-E, and I turned around and rushed back towards the building we’d come from. It was the closest, and the door was still open, so it made the most sense to head for it. The wraiths let out piercing howls behind us, mingling into a black mass that tore after us in a churning wave of gaping maws and desperate glowing eyes.

Once we rushed back into the building I noticed there was a stairwell to the left leading up, but also a open door to stairs leading down, with a hallway in the middle.

“Up, down, or straight!?” I shouted.

“Down.” said LIL-E.

“Down!? Are you crazy!?” I balked at her.

“Why did you list it then!?” she shot back.

“I didn’t think you’d choose it!”

“Less yell more run!” Arcaidia yelled, taking the lead for the door leading down. With the wraiths right on our tails there wasn’t any choice but to follow her. We hit the stairs at a dead gallop and descended down their darkened steps without slowing down.

The stairs didn’t go down far, and we crashed right through the door at the bottom. I spun around to slam it closed, only to have a wraith right in my face, its screaming visage inches from my snouth.

“GAH!” I screamed, in my customary masculine warcry, completely free of pissing myself, and slashed with Gramzanber even as the wraith’s icy claws raked my chest.

Agonizing cold tore through me, making the breath in my lungs feel as if it was freezing up. I gasped, barely able to get air past my chattering teeth as I stumbled back. Gramzanber had cut a small chunk of shadow from the wraith, which flew off to the side while more of its brethren rushed into the room from the stairs, only to be met with a beam of ice magic tearing across the door, quickly sealing it off.

Still, several wraiths had gotten through and even as I stumbled back and tried to get my bearings I soon found myself surrounded. Once wraith flickered by my side, striking at my neck as if trying to wrap its claw around my throat. The claw glanced off a sparkling shimmer of Arcaidia’s shield spell, but I still felt the chill on my hide. The previous wraith must have gotten a particularly good shot in before, to hurt that much, but at least the shield was still active.

Arcaidia had thrown over a table of some kind with a rattle of old plates and silverware and threw it with her magic at another wraith. The table didn’t do much, but it seemed to make the wraith reflexively shift to avoid the hurled object, setting it up for a perfect shot from Arcaidia’s starblaster that caught it square in the face. That seemed to hurt it, making it howl as its head was blown into bits of twisted shadow, and the wraith fell through the floor. I didn’t think it was destroyed, but it at least was gone for the moment.

LIL-E fired a few rounds from her pistol turret, but soon gave up in a frustrated string of colorfully descriptive phrases concerning alicorns and their anal capacity for various objects. Unfortunately the eyebot was just not equipped for fighting pissed off ghosts. The problem was, neither were Arcaidia or myself. Our weapons could hurt the wraiths a little, but this was like trying to fight air. Angry air that could tear into your soul with a touch.

Slowly we all backed up, Arcaidia firing with calm, precise shots of her starblaster while I slashed at any wraith that got close. However it was clear we were in deep trouble. The ice Arcaidia had used on the stairs had slowed the other wraiths down for a minute, but I saw them slipping in through the walls and ceiling beyond the threshold of the stairs. Soon we were faced with an entire room full of wailing wraiths, and our backs hit the wall. We were in some sort of storage basement, I thought, but I couldn’t make out any details beyond that.

“Any bright ideas guys?” I asked, gulping, “Because hate to say it, I’m sort of fresh out.”

Arcaidia’s silver tail flicked behind her, magic flaring from her horn, “Go down fighting.”

“Was kind of hoping for a less death oriented plan.” I said with a labored sigh. If worst came to worst, I’d activate Accelerator again, and keep it active until there weren’t any wraiths left standing. I didn’t doubt the backlash would kill me, however. That said, it didn’t look as if there was much choice except to try it, and hope for the best.

“Arcaidia, be reading with the healing when this is over, because I might just keel over dead without it.” I said, and mentally prepared to activate Accelerator. Arcaidia seemed to realize what I was about to do, and I also saw the light of an idea spring into her mind, her silver eyes flashing wide and bright as she put a hoof on my shoulder.

“Wait, ren solva! I has idea!”

“Huh?” I glanced at her, only to see her horn start to flare with one, then two additional layers of glowing blue magic. Along with it several layers of complex Crest script flowed in multiple circles around her horn. She then gestured at Gramzanber.

“Quick, touch ARM to my horn!” she said, the wraiths just a few steps away.

Not hesitating, trusting my friend wasn’t crazy, I rose to my bipedal stance and tipped Gramzanber towards Arcaidia. She touched her horn to the ARM’s silver edge. Suddenly the arm glowed bright blue, becoming wreathed in warm, pleasant flame-like waves of indigo magic that felt quite familiar. The wraiths instantly recoiled from the light, hissing in one large mass, sounding like a gigantic snake.

“Wait, is this... healing magic?” I asked, dumbfounded as I looked at Gramzanber.

Arcaidia grinned fiercely, teeth flashing in the darkness, and she nodded. “I fuse healing spell with ARM resonance. Healing magic not mix with dead things. Old story sister Persephone tell me. Go, ren solva!” She pointed with her hoof dramatically, “Heal undead to death!”

Letting out a surprised laugh, I decided to give it a shot and advanced towards the wraiths, swinging Gramzanber in a wide arc. Most of them backed away, seeming to want nothing to do with my newly empowered ARM. One got a bit cocky, however, and after a hideous screech flew right at me. With a calm breath I followed my lessons with Applegate and pivoted, side stepping its lunge, and cleaved down hard with Gramzanber. The glowing ARM tore through the wraith as if it were made from solid matter, like cutting into soft flesh. The flaming blue aura around the blade tore through the wraith’s shadowy matter and it made an unholy piercing shriek as its form dissipated into motes of darkness.

I turned to the other wraiths, pointing with Gramzanber, “Next?”

The wraiths continued to fall back, until one by one they slipped through the walls or ceiling, still wailing, but clearly not wanting any part of a fair fight. After a minute the room was silent, lit only by our Pip-Buck lights and Arcaidia’s magic. Grinning from ear to ear I went back to all fours, Gramzanber comfortably in my mouth, and trotted back to Arcaidia and LIL-E.

“Okay, Arcaidia, I’m just gonna say this; you are an absolute genius! C’mon, bring it in for a hug!”

Arcaidia, blushing slightly, coughed and held out a hoof. “Hugs another time.” She showed me a smile that, after tangling with wraiths, did wonders to warm me. “Was good idea, yes? Not sure it work, but know principles of fusing Crest Sorcery with ARM.”

“That’s something you could have always done?” LIL-E asked incredulously. Arcaidia shifted nervously, shaking her head.

“No. Such... ah... Tivoro esru dol yirae vimarro... not knowing right translation. Combination... Arts? Such things done by rare Crest Sorcerers and ARM warrior with good, hmm... connection? Trust? Yes, much trust. Not work if not trust.”

I believe that Specialist Arcaidia is describing the bond an ARM can create with a wielders comrades. said Gramzanber in my head. When she used her Crest spell upon me, I was able to use the bond between us to draw in the spell and interlaced it with my energy matrix. Note, Longwalk, that the effect is not permanent and shall dissipate soon. I suggest haste in our search for the missing Binge.

“Right,” I said, looking at Arcaidia, “That’s still awesome. Gram tells me its not long lasting, but if more wraiths show up you can pull that trick again?”

Arcaidia wiped some sweat from her brow, and rummaged into her saddlebag, removing a vial of blue mana restoring liquid. After taking a long quaff, she wiped her mouth and said, “Now, yes. Very tiring. Not something to do often, yes?”

“I’m shocked that actually worked.” said LIL-E, drooping down slightly, “Be nice if you could pull that trick off with me. Getting real tired of not being able to shoot this screechy bastards.”

I hoof bumped her chassis, “Hey, you’re still helping out. Your scanners are our only real shot at finding Binge, or spotting that Scythe asshole. Uh, how’s that coming by the way? Picking anything up yet?”

The eyebot was silent for a second before replying, “Now that you mention it, I am getting a weak reading from somewhere nearby. Might be Binge. Might be a radroach. Given there hasn’t been a living thing here besides us, I’m guessing Binge is more likely.”

“Where? Can you give us a direction?” I asked, turning about, trying to get a better feel for the room we were in. It was a remarkably bare basement area, with plain concrete walls, floor, and a wood ceiling. The scorch marks of the long ago fire that burned down the prison had charred a lot of the ceiling, but the walls were mostly just blackened in a few spots. There was a door opposite to where the stairs were, a big and heavy looking metal door with a long handle.

LIL-E had turned towards that door, here voice getting a uneasy sounding hesitance to it. “Through there, not far ahead. Its... weird. Being down here. Its different than before.”

“Before what?” I asked.

“My memories from Littlepip. A lot of renovation went on down here since she... well, this is the area where she discovered the truth behind Arbu. Found their... pantry, I guess you’d call it. Everything went to hell from there. Weird thing is, I don’t remember that door. I don’t know if that was added after this place become a prison, or if it’s always been there. I have no clue where it leads. That’s actually got me a little freaked out.”

I couldn't help myself, laughing a tad hysterically, “What, the hungry souls of the tortured dead trying to kill us weren’t enough to do it, but a door is?”

“It’s a spooky door.” LIL-E said after a moment’s pause.

“Indeed it is a door of spooks.” Arcaidia confirmed.

I took a deep breath, facing the door. “And Binge is behind it. Alive. And Scythe has basically led us straight here.”

My fear facing the wraiths was nothing compared to the creeping terror that welled up in me as I looked at that door. In moments I’d find Binge. In whatever state Scythe had left her in. No doubt the bastard had some final horror to hit us with. He wasn’t letting us go without trying to pull something. Stepping through that door was the only option, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to turn around now. One way or another, however this went down, I was taking Binge away from this place. With that thought in my head I opened the door, its hinges groaning loudly in the dark, and stepped through with LIL-E and Arcaidia right behind me.

Beyond the door was a concrete hallway, which soon opened up into a wider space, perhaps ten paces across and three times that long. Small metal benches ran up and down the room in two rows, leading towards a raised portion at the far end with a few carved steps going up to a pew. I’d seen this kind of setup before, and felt an eerie sense of familiarity as I saw the statue behind the pew, set up in a simply carved fresco. The statue was of a combined sun and moon, encircled by twin alicorn figures. The sun and moon iconography was repeated in small carvings in the walls to either side.

“Its a chapel.” LIL-E said in a low, barely audible tone.

The reason for her keeping quiet was because the room, the chapel, wasn’t empty. Scythe sat in the middle of the room, in a awkward position with his hind legs crossed underneath him and his forelegs locked together before him in an odd arcane gesture. His horn was lit up with flows of gold and black magical energy, which extended to the circle of bones around him. The dark streams of magic that stemmed from his horn looked unnatural in the way it twisted and undulated, seeming more like it infected the more natural golden aura of his magic rather than worked with it.

The circle was a complex looking arrangement made entirely of the bones of ponies, with multiple rings each defined at regular points by skulls that absorbed the magic from Scythe like sponges.

I wasn't sure who fired first, LIL-E or Arcaidia, but both cut loose the moment Scythe was in view. However his image shimmered like water rippling in a pool, the bullets and starblaster beams alike passing through harmlessly. In response Scythe opened his eyes and smiled in a manner as polite was it was dripping with corrosive poison.

“I’m not actually here, my eager audience. My ceremony is being conducted nearby, but I did swear not to directly harm innocents, so I won’t be fighting you. However I couldn’t help but want to witness the fun, now that you’re here. Well done, by the way, driving the spirits of Arbu back, however momentarily.”

“Where’s Binge!?” I shouted, stepping forward.

“Right behind me. Here, let me show you.” Scythe smiled in cold, predatory fashion as he shifted his image, the view of him and his magical ceremony blinking out and reappearing deeper into the chapel, and to the left side, leaving the pew easier to see, along with the fact that Binge was laid out on the steps leading up to it, curled up as if she was sleeping.

“Binge!” I cried, galloping forward.

“Longwalk, wait!” I heard Arcaidia shout behind me, but I was already nearly to Binge, and I could only think of grabbing her and getting out of this place as fast as possible.

I was completely unprepared for when Binge struck. She went from seeming to sleep peacefully, to moving in an instant with speed that took me completely off guard. Only my modified Stable security armor saved me, the thick golden gecko scales deflecting enough of the knife blow that it merely cut a nasty gouge rather than stab straight into my heart.

I stumbled back, utterly bewildered, and would’ve likely had my throat cut right then and there if Arcaidia’s magic didn’t wrap around me and yank me back faster than Binge could make a follow up attack. Arcaidia deposited me right beside her as she and LIL-E moved up to face Binge, who remained back near the steps to the pew. Her head was hung low, one of her insanely sharp knives held in her mouth, her eyes momentarily hidden by her dirt ridden poofy green mane.

I winced, holding the wound in my chest as I faced her, mind reeling. “B-Binge?”

“Heeheeheehee!” Her giggle was high, strained, and somehow warped. The chapel became wreathed in flickers of strange dark flame that gave off ghostly grey light as candles mounted along the walls flickered to life. Shadows crept up around Binge, the smokey forms of wraiths crawling up Binge’s body, standing around her, floating to coil around her, to whisper into her ears. Binge’s voice didn’t sound right as she spoke, like it was being squeezed through a filth ridden tunnel.

“Mamma is hurting. Big brother is hurting. Everypony is hurting. The voices are all screaming. The bad ponies won’t go away! She’s hurting them! But it’s okay, heeheehee, it’s okay because I’m gonna make it all okay. I’ll stop the bad ponies. I’ll make them go away. Nopony will hurt mamma or big brother ever again, because...”

Binge raised her face, her eyes shining from behind her long hanging mane. Eyes that were solid white as she grinned, far too wide for a normal pony’s mouth to contain.

“Binge has come home.”

I felt the blood draining from my face, my whole body going cold in a way the wraiths alone could never have achieved. I stared at Binge’s mad, twisted visage, the wraiths coiling around her like a horrible cloak, and then turned to look at Scythe with pure fury boiling across my features.

“What in the name of the Ancestor Spirits have you done to her!?”

“Oh, nothing special. A little Necromancy to reunite her with her family.” Scythe showed fangs with his malicious grin, “I may have united them a bit too closely. The proper term in Necromantic jargon would be ‘Revenant’. A living vessel possessed by multiple undead souls, a conduit through which the vengeful dead can wreak havoc upon the targets of their fury. You see, wraiths normally can’t leave the boundaries of a limited area, usually where they died. But with a Revenant host they can take their vengeance on the road, so to speak. And while at least one of the ponies responsible for the destruction of Arbu are already dead, that leaves three ponies these wrathful souls would gladly go tear apart. It’d be too much to expect Binge to succeed in dealing with, say, the NCR’s vaunted Lightbringer... but Chairpony Velvet Remedy? I imagine she wouldn’t see an assassin of this type coming.”

That was a lot to take in all at once, and I struggled to understand it as I stalled for time by asking, “Velvet Remedy? What does she have to do with any of this!? I thought this was all about B.B!”

Scythe laughed in pure amusement. “Oh it is. I don’t care about the NCR’s Chairpony of Diplomatic Affairs, nor the peace talks currently occurring. As I said, my only objective is to bring Blood Bloom back to the Family. To this end I will do all I can to weaken her resolve. I imagine she’d hate to know one or more of her allies died while caught up in either attempting, or stopping, an assassination plot. After all, the only way to stop a Revenant is to kill it. Dismember it, actually. Full decapitation. So, Longwalk, what will you do? How far into despair will you fall when you’re forced to murder one of your friends to stop her from butchering one of the most famous leaders in the NCR?”

A deep throated growl escaped me as I pushed back the pain of my wound and took on a wide stance, Gramzanber at the ready. “Dude, you’re completely nuts. Is literally every screwed up asshole that wants to mess with me and my friends a pure whackjob? Is it some kind of contractual obligation?”

Scythe’s eyes darkened with dangerous rage, “I suggest you take this more seriously-”

“No, fuck off. I’ve had enough of this horrorshow. I’ll tell you what’s going down, Scythe, I’m saving my completely platonic no-sexual-tension-at-all crazy friend from your stupid ass Necrowhatever magic, then I’m going to find you and fuck your shit up beyond belief!”

Scythe was silent for a second or two, staring at me, then with a snarl he made a sweeping gesture at Binge. “Well then, let the violence ensue.”

To be honest I probably should have been paying more attention to Binge than Scythe in that moment, given that he was just magically projecting his image there, while Binge was the actual physical threat. Chalk it up to just how worked up and rattled I really was in that moment. I’d dealt with a lot of messed up things so far, but never a friend literally possessed by the vengeful spirits of her dead family. Who could think or act clearly in a situation like that?

When Scythe spoke, Binge shuddered and jerked about like a marionette with a drunk handler, letting out soul grinding sounds somewhere between crazed giggles and mewls of pain. I felt my heart freeze over and drop into my stomach as I saw the wraiths physically crawling inside Binge, like living shadows playing across her hide. Binge’s voice was broken up like static over a radio.

“Got to kill the bad ponies. All the bad ponies. No more hurting my home. No more no more no more nomorenomorenomorenoooooo!”

When she jumped it was like a puppet being pulled high into the air by invisible strings, limbs akimbo. Her tail flicked about like a writhing snake, and from it knives flew out like bits of sharp, deadly rain. I stumbled to the side while Arcaidia quickly backpedaled from the lethal barrage. LIL-E floated the opposite direction I went, a knife skipping off her metal chassi in a burst of sparks. I saw LIL-E’s pistol turret swivel to track Binge’s fall, and my breath caught in my throat as the eyebot fired.

Fortunately LIL-E was a crack shot and also understood full well that we weren’t here to kill Binge, no matter what insane schemes Scythe had. The bullets struck Binge in the front left fore leg, drawing gouts of blood. However when Binge landed it was as if the wounds didn’t even slow her down. Her giggles reached a fever pitch.

“Hahahaha! Bang bang bang goes the dead lump of metal! Who are you!?”

“Binge! It’s us!” I shouted, “I’m-”

She whirled on me, eyes solid white pits, mouth grinning. “Meat! Momma says you're all meat for the table! Got to keep the home fed. Bad ponies that hurt the family get cut up into bitty pieces, just like mamma taught her little Bingey!”

Her tail flicked about again, only this time it moved with prehensile agility to grasp something from her mane, pulling out a strange, compact object that looked like a long, smooth rectangle of silver metal. My confusion only lasted as long as it took Binge’s tail to snap out, making the metal rectangle extend and shift in expanding segments until it grew into the full and sinister form of the scythe shaped ARM, Azrael.

With a great deal of smugness infecting his words, Scythe said, “I thought allowing her to borrow the ARM would make this confrontation more interesting. And lethal. Especially given Azrael's unique power...”

To my wide eyed shock Binge started to single into the ground, wafting right through the stone floor of the chapel as if she herself was a ghost. There was a silvery glow of energy around the edges of her body as she did so, until she, and the scythe she still held in her tail, vanished from view.

“Phasing.” Scythe finished, “Perfect weapon for an assassin, wouldn’t you say?”

Glancing at my E.F.S readout, I couldn’t spot where Binge’s blip had gone. Gulping, I said, “LIL-E, Arcaidia, either of you got her on E.F.S?”

“Shit, no!” said LIL-E, “Buck my virgin plot with a bowling pin, I should’ve just shot her in the damn face! If she’s going for Velvet Remedy then we’re in deep, dark, dank excrement here! She could float all the damn way to the Capital building into Velvet’s office and... and... fuck.”

“I not think she’s smart enough to realize that.” said Arcaidia with heated intensity as her silver eyes burned, her horn lighting up fully. “Shivol bir want to kill us first.”

Which turned out to be true, and I felt a strange moment of relief when Binge rose out of the floor behind me, giggling as she swung Azrael at my back. At least she was only trying to kill us right now. Which was small comfort when the giant silver scythe was arcing towards my spine. With instinctive quickness I immediately activated Accelerator, having already been more than built up enough energy for it by now.

The world flashing to clear shades of glowing indigo only emphasized how tortured and twisted Binge looked, with her milky eyes solid like twin eggshells. Her far too wide smile somehow now looked more like a pleading grimace of stark pain, pleading for release. Every inch of her scarred body looked bent, the skin stretched taut and wane over her lanky frame. She looked so... tired and desperate while at the same time filled with the insane menace and dark hopelessness that had been mirrored inside the wailing cries of the wraiths of Arbu. The wraiths bubbled and boiled around her, shadows writhing over Binge’s body like an infestation.

With Accelerator’s speed I side stepped Azrael's edge, the scythe cutting a sparking path through the stone floor I’d occupied a moment earlier. Carefully, as gently as someone holding a newborn foal, I aimed Gramzanber’s flat end for the back of Binge’s head, acutely aware of how easily a misjudged hit could prove fatal rather than just knock her out.

To my heart clenching dismay Gramzanber passed through Binge as if she were a ghost, her form shimmering silver.

Immediately Gramzanber spoke in my head.

Longwalk, I believe Azrael is more aware than previous versions of Odessa’s artificial ARMs. I sense its awareness spreading through the room the same way mine does. It will automatically activate its phasing to defend against physical attacks.

Ancestor's dammit! Just like the wraiths! I thought in frustration as I backed away and quickly circled behind Binge, Is there a way around it!?

Azrael appears to need to solidify in order to strike. I do not believe it can deactivate phasing while already within an object or organism. Striking in the same instant she strikes, without evasion, could produce a solid hit.

You’re saying I have to let her hit me, to hit her back. Great. Just great. Nah, I can deal. No problem. That scythe is only the size of a pony. I’m sure I’ll survive taking a straight hit from it.

I can offer no better options at this time.

It would have to do. With a deep breath I deactivated Accelerator, soaking the shock of the brief backlash pain, and quickly backed away from Binge while waving for Arcaidia and LIL-E to back up as well. “Guys, stay back. I need to let her hit me.”

Arcaidia blinked at me, “That is stupid. It is the most of stupid that can be stupid.”

“Kind of on her side here, Longwalk.” said LIL-E, “That sounds exactly like the textbook definition of a bad idea.”

“Of course it is, it’s one of my plans. But it’s the only way to counter her phasing.” I said, keeping my focus on Binge, who stood between me and the rest of my companions at this point. I had my back to the stairs leading up to the podium, and kept backing up, hoping to lure Binge further away from LIL-E and Arcaidia.

That turned out to be a terrible idea, however, because with a distorted laugh, Binge turned and launched herself at Arcaidia, skipping across the pews like a foal at play. Arcaidia responded immediately with a large pillar of ice she summoned directly beneath Binge, but Binge phased right through it, then solidified to twist about and lash with the scythe in a wide arc that could have easily taken Arcaidia’s head clean off if the little blue filly didn’t quickly roll back, casting out another pillar of ice that absorbed the blow in a shower of ice shards.

Binge was wickedly swift, however, and phased back into the ground before any of us could respond, leaving us to look around nervously for where she might pop back up again.

Longwalk, I will also point out that even if we can inflict damage on Binge, it does not change the underlying problem. She is possessed by spirits, and as long as this is the case, she will remain a danger.

We are not killing Binge! I growled mentally, also letting out a deep growl physically as my mane and tail bristled. Even as I thought those words with sincere and absolute determination, there was a voice of reason in the back of my mind that told me that if it was a choice between Binge, and any of my other friends’ lives... what other option would I have? The thought made me queasy to my core. Losing her would split me wide open like a gutted gecko, the notion alone hurting enough to make me double-think just what it was I really felt about Binge.

Save her. Whatever it takes. Then after that, figure out what it is you’re feeling... I told myself. Fortunately Gramzanber had more to say as well, while Binge remained hidden, presumably waiting for the right moment to strike.

I was not suggesting eliminating her, yet. There is one possible method to free her from the spirit's’ control. Azrael appears to function in similar fashion to myself, including its links to its wielders. There is a dual link, presently, between her, Azrael, and Scythe. Scythe’s magic is flowing through this link, which may also connect to his blood magic and Necromancy both. If you can get me into contact with Azrael, then through that physical contact I can link you to Binge and Scythe’s minds. Form a sort of mental cage for all three of you. It will allow for combating Scythe directly, and possibly reaching Binge. It may also be possible to reason with the spirits possessing her. The only problem is this link risks all of your minds to potentially lethal bio-feedback. If you can accept that ris-

Let’s do it! I all but mentally screamed, tensing my whole body up as I looked around for where Binge would pop up next.

“Arcaidia, LIL-E, I have a plan. Just... whatever happens don’t hurt Binge. Promise me.”

“Ren solva, what are you-?”

“Promise me you won’t hurt her, no matter what happens to me!”

Arcaidia looked at me with naked worry, but nodded. “Is promise.”

LIl-E gave a popping, static sigh, but said, “Same here. Whatever you’re about to do, I hope to fuck it works.”

I was about to say that I hoped it worked as well, but Binge didn’t give me the chance. I flowed up out of the wall, coming at Arcaidia again, time from the side. Arcaidia, caught looking the other way, wasn’t moving nearly fast enough to avoid the shining scythe coming for her head.

Acting without bothering to think, I activated Accelerator again, already feeling the strain of using the power so soon after the previous use, and all but flew across the chapel. Even then, I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it in time. I barreled into Arcaidia at full speed, shoving her out of the way as I tried to turn myself to intercept Azreal with Gramzanber. My angle was slightly off, Gramzanber impacting with the scythe ARM in a flash of silver sparks, but Azrael's blade crossed my vision in a blur. Pain exploded across my face, and I screamed, feeling scalding warmth blossoming over my face like liquid agony.

Then Gramzanber established the link to Binge’s and Scythe’s minds through their link to Azreal, and my consciousness was torn away from my body, the last thing my ears being able to hear was Arcaidia screaming my name in fear.

Footnote: Level Up!

Perk Added - Claustroponia: Having spent entirely too much time stuck in tight quarters, whether underground or inside huge airships, you've gained an unusually sharp combat sense when trapped battling in limited spaces. Whenever you're in an enclosed space, your gain a temporary +1 STR and +1 AGI from your know-how in making the most of your limited area to move.

Quest Perk Added - Combination Arts: You're bond with your companions through your ARM has allowed you to access Combination Arts, powerful combo attacks that allows your friends to add their power to your ARM, and if they possess an ARM as well, vice versa. Combination Arts use the Force Gauge the same as your Force abilities. Each ally has their own set of unique Combination Arts to unlock, and these are not level dependent. Even if you reach max level, further Combination Arts may yet be waiting to be unlocked!

Combination Art Added (Arcaidia) - Healing Blade: By infusing healing magic into Gramzanber the ARM gains the ability to affect undead with +50% damage and can affect incorporeal undead. The healing energy can also be shunted from the ARM to heal the injuries of others like a normal healing spell.

Author's Note

Where's a proton pack when you need one? I always liked the idea of Fallout Equestria having some ghost stories to tell in it. It is a fantasy world, after all, and its not too far of a stretch to imagine various spirits and ghosts being a real thing that Wasteland ponies might have to deal with. Especially given that not a lot of ponies die happy and content in this setting. And the fact that you've got Necromancers like Scythe running around, stirring up the restless dead.

Exploring Arbu's history is also something I've been interested in doing in this story for awhile, and Binge is the conduit for that. We really know nothing of the town prior to Littlepip and co. coming across it, so there's lots of blank space to work with. And we're far from done, as now Longwalk is going to have to deal with Binge's own pscyhe and memories. That's gonna be a mess. A fun mess.

Anyway, hope you guys are still enjoying the story. I know these chapters are taking their sweet time, but rest assured, I'm not stopping until we hit epilogue! As always I welcome all comments, questions, and critiques. 'Till next time!