One in a Trillion: Chronicles of the Traveler: Vol. 1

by UnkleBumbleHeck

Rating: teen
Tags: Science Fiction, Profanity, Adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe, Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance
Length: 42467

A collision of worlds. A test of one mare's mental and emotional fortitude. She withstood so much before, but could this "Equestria" break her? She came from the stars, and they were talking ponies. The future looked as unpredictable as ever.

Delta Three-Dash-Zero-Eight, otherwise known as number Eight, was an individual of little emotion. She preferred simplicity, never caring for the tedious hows and whys of a thing. She was an experiment, an entrepreneur, a soldier, a mercenary, and even, to some, a friend. But when so much fell apart so fast, and she became trapped on a world truly unlike any she'd visited before, she found she may have lost touch with her simple side.
Learning to live as a pony might just break her, but there are a few precious truths to Equestria. Truths number Eight will have to learn, or die trying.
~~~
Beautiful cover art by the talented WolfGoddessWitch > https://www.deviantart.com/wolfgoddesswitch

Published 2018-12-06 12:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-02-08 05:53:18 UTC

Prologue: Mbinguni Amina

One in a Trillion: Chronicles of the Traveler, Volume One

Prologue

Preamble:

I never asked for this. I never asked for any of this...

...

It says here I'm supposed to, 'Rectify insufficient data on tether twenty-three oh-three, dash eleven, dash twenty-two.'
Looks like I found someplace even God can't see.
Six years... It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.
But I guess I never was calling the shots.
...
Oh, you're getting this report verbally, I have no data to upload in regards to the events of the past six years. Just memories...
...
Also, consider this my second and final letter of resignation from the J.C.S... Or the N.J.L. or whatever you lot are calling yourselves these days.
I'll be running this in H.S. Six to accommodate file size, so program accordingly.

It's probably best if I start from the beginning.
It started with pain, cold and an awful lot of confusion...

Prologue

Mbinguni Amina

Location unknown
D3-08
2303.11.03?

The sensation of falling was a familiar thing, I'd experienced it many times. The sensation of an uncontrolled free-fall however, was very much unfamiliar.

All at once that unfamiliar sensation was replaced by so many new sensations, several familiar, several more not so familiar. A collision with a hard surface would usually warrant a rebound or recovery, but as I met the ground I found myself assaulted with new and horrible sensations: pain.

I had never known pain, not really. Sure, I understood it, in abstract. But to feel it, all so sudden - along with a chill so thorough I thought perhaps I'd been cast out an airlock unprotected - sent my mind reeling. Shock took hold of my psyche and against my will I cried out, and as a reflex I attempted to bring my hand up to my mouth, only to meet my mouth too soon with something not at all a hand.

I cried out again as I thrashed there, surrounded by white, unfamiliar terrain. In my thrashing and wailing, I caught a glimpse of myself as I tossed my head about, looking for anything to identify where I was or what had happened. My body was covered in blue fur, and did not in any way resemble the body I'd had moments ago.

The thing that had assaulted my cruiser, had it caused a malfunction with the rejuvenation matrix when it struck me? But then, where was the cruiser? And was this snow? There hadn't been snow on Externus-

Something gave out beneath me as I heard a great crash not unlike the shattering of thick glass. Then I was met with a new reality: the need to breathe. I reflexively tried to suck in air, and was met with a chilling fluid filling my lungs instead. Wait, lungs? Since when did I-

Air! Breathe! Scream! My head surfaced for just a moment, and I vomited frigid water out my lungs while simultaneously trying to breathe in and stay above the water. Quite a chore to do all that at once. I managed another half-shout before my head collided with something and I fell beneath the flow again.

Where's my compass? Was all I could think as my body quickly stopped moving as I asked it to, and my vision began to fade...

Maybe I'll see them all again, soon...

...

"Scotch! Over here, quick! I'm gonna break the ice!"

Thud.

...

Something new. Yet another new sensation. Like being crushed. And there was something being pressed against my mouth. I opened my eyes, to behold golden beauty.

"Shit, Butterscotch I think I broke my leg..." There was a voice somewhere far away. I didn't care. There was an angel's face mere inches away from mine, a very... equine face... My eyes went crossed as I stared along a blue furred protrusion to where it was pressed against a similar length of golden yellow. An equine angel, come to rouse me from this purgatory and put me back in the fight...

She pulled away after forcing her breath down my throat and into my lungs, a thin streamer of saliva trailing between our lips. I stared up into her glistening blue eyes, and she stared into mine. I'd never known panic, nor relief, but I felt both in equal measure at that moment. Something had saved me, and though it was completely foreign, I felt such gratitude for her mercy.

"Ah think I got her..." The angel's voice barely reached my ears as the world faded again. "Aw hay! Stay with us girl, you're gonna make it!"

...

1: Revelare

One in a Trillion: Chronicles of the Traveler, Volume One

Chapter One: Revelare

Location unknown
D3-08
2303.11.??

In twenty-six years I’d never needed sleep. Sure, I’d experienced it before, unconsciousness hadn’t been an impossibility for me, but all the same it never was a necessity.

I’d also never dreamt before. That said, laying on my back in a sterile smelling room with gently humming electrical equipment around me, I desperately hoped that night in the snow was just a dream.

There was an unpleasant feeling in my left leg, just below the hip, on my thigh. It felt like someone had clamped down on it with something. The fact I could feel that at all told me it hadn’t been a dream. Looking down at my leg only confirmed it, as an equine form lay its head there, atop its arms- no, not arms. Hooves. Those were hooves…

Could I just leave? Surely the – horse? Was it a horse? – would stop me. It had a uniform on, something darkly colored, I couldn’t quite tell in the near complete darkness. Trying to move would wake it, and considering I, too, was now a… horse… there was no way I’d manage to get far. Had to play along.

Speech was never something I had to do manually in the Service, nor anytime often outside of it. Most folk had an uplink module, so communication was just a glance away. Now, however, I was certain this individual wasn’t equipped with any such technology, and neither was I, anymore. A chill washed over me as I wondered if perhaps I’d been abducted, placed in a shell of a body or some other nonsense. That curiosity, along with wondering how sentient horses came to be, along with the numerous other maddening questions, made my sluggish mind feel cramped as I struggled to focus.

Right, had to focus on the here and now. Speech. Vocal communication. I had vocal chords, right? Did horses have those?

“Guh-“ not quite. Try harder. “G-gello? Hello?!” I fairly croaked. My voice sounded odd. Deep, gravely as if I’d nearly drowned recently. I struggled to recall what I’d sounded like in the first place. If you never needed to speak, why would you?

The unlit room and the individual using my thigh as a pillow gave no reply. I decided for more direct action. Bucking my hips gently, I managed to shake the hooved beast from its resting place, which landed it firmly upon the floor. Oops. Well, at least they’d be awake now, right?

“Aah!” Came the voice of the same girl that’d saved me that night. Mare? Pronouns would be important here, surely. She half managed to catch herself in the fall, tangling one of her hooves in the sheets over my bed, pulling them off me and onto the floor with her.

After a small moment she got back to her feet – no, hooves – and looked at me. I could just barely make out her features in the dark. Her mane was a mess, spread half over her face in an amber waterfall of hair. “Y-you’re awake? You’re awake! Oh, thank Celestia you’re awake!” She exclaimed as she adjusted her mane, before suddenly pouncing upon me and wrapping her forehooves around my neck. I immediately suspected strangulation and would’ve reacted were it not for my inability to control this alien body, and also the fact she seemed quite overjoyed to see me conscious.

“What’re you…” I grunted. I hoped I would be able to communicate with these people. They seemed to speak an old form of English, sounding almost American in its delivery.

“Oh! Oh, sorry, you’re probably real sore and all and I jus’ went and hugged you like that. Sorry!” She blabbered, removing herself from me. “I better go get the nurse. I’ll be right ba-“

At that moment, a door opened in one of the dark corners of the room and the lights came on, blinding me. “Is everypony alright in here?” came a voice from the same direction the sound of the opening door came from. It sounded young and feminine. I couldn’t quite bare to open my eyes again after the shock of all the lights being turned on, and so opted to just lie there instead, eyes shut.

“Oh, yes ma’am. Sorry ‘bout that, just got spooked when she woke up!” the mare I’d woken up said in her odd accent. The other mare had less of an accent, but it was still there.

“She’s awake? Oh, that’s wonderful news!” I heard movement, and the sound of what I supposed was hooves on tile as the nurse approached. “My name is Redheart – ah, Nurse Redheart – I ’ve been watching over you for the past three days miss. Can you hear me all right?” She said once she’d gotten closer. I still hadn’t opened my eyes again.

“Mmf…” Came an affirmative noise from my throat. “Lights.” I said more clearly.

“O-oh! Miss Butterscotch, could you-“

“Right, sure. Got it.”

“Thank you.” There was a click, and I opened my eyes to a still lit room, although not nearly so harshly. “Sorry about that, I heard the commotion and just rushed right in. Still kind of new here, sorry!” The nurse prattled. Looking at her, she had a red mane done up in a bun, with a lightly colored coat of fur. She wore, oddly enough, a nurse uniform.

“Where am I?” I asked. “Where’s the Hauberk? The Revenant? Dignity Alpha and Bravo?”

“I’m sorry?” the nurse replied in a confused tone. “You’re in Ponyville General Hospital, ma’am. You’d nearly drowned, then nearly died of hypothermia. What in Equestria were you doing out there? And without any clothes on…” she looked a little flustered.

No clothes? I hadn’t needed clothes before, although I guess I was an exception then. “I… I can’t… I’m not sure.” What was I doing out there? How had I got here? “Wait. Pony…ville? As in… town of ponies?” So, they were ponies. Not horses.

“Well, yes. I know it’s not the most imaginative name, but it’s the one we’ve got and it’s what we’ll have to stick to.” The two mares gave a glance at one another. “Miss, I’m going to do some quick checks to make sure you’re healthy, then I need some information from you. It seems we have absolutely no record of who you are.”

“Alright then.” Couldn’t exactly fight them off, could I? I relented and let the nurse do her tests, which largely involved prodding me with various instruments, asking me to open my mouth wide and make noises. Then she took an instrument and placed it atop my head, and I felt something quite odd. “What’s that?” I asked her.

“Oh, it’s an aetherometer. It checks for magical imbalances in unicorns.” The nurse replied.

Unicorns? Aetherometer? Magic? “What?” I blurted, then corrected myself. “Sorry, right. Aetherometer, I see. Okay. It measures Aetherialogical fluctuations, or variances in the ley-lines?”

The nurse and the other mare – Butterscotch, I’d gathered – both stared at me. “Well I suppose so,” the nurse replied, “I don’t know the specifics, exactly. I just know how to use it and what it is and isn’t supposed to tell me.” Made sense.

So, they understood magic. Or Aetherialogical science to a degree, at least. “Right. Okay…” I paused, waiting for her to remove the peculiar instrument from atop my head. It looked like a spiral of wires with a single wire feeding from the top to somewhere outside my view. “You’re ponies, then?” I asked, trying not to sound too suspicious.

“Yes, ma’am we are.” She then looked to Butterscotch, who matched the concerned look on the nurse’s face. “Do you think…?” The nurse half asked, then turned back to me. “Miss, what is your name?”

Name? A name… I’d never had a name before. Not formally. Usually I was referred to as Number Eight, or just Eight. Names were for… people. I wasn’t a person. Not really. Somehow, I got the impression trying to explain this to the pony folk would cause more problems than it solved, so a substitute would be due for the time being. “I’m…” A name for myself? But who even was I? I’d been called Eight for so long… Wait. There was something else. “Siniy.” It was a callsign I’d had in the Service, years ago. It would have to do, for now.

“Uhm… Shiny? I’m sorry, can you spell that?” The nurse asked.

“Sounds Ponussian, Nurse Redheart. She might be a refugee. From Stalliongrad…” Butterscotch said, sounding ominous in her tone of voice. A refugee? From what, I wondered?

“I think in your tongue it would be Blue. My name is Blue. Blue…” I glanced out the window to my side, seeing the faint glow of a moon. “Moon.”

The nurse had a clipboard in her hooves now and, resting on her haunches, she reached into a pocket on her scrubs with her mouth and grabbed a pen. She then began writing on the clipboard with said pen in her mouth. Fascinating. “Blue Moon,” she said around the pen, before looking up at me. “So, is that correct? You’re a refugee from the Changeling crisis?” She asked.

I was getting tired of being confused. “I’m… not sure, ma’am. Can you tell me, are there any JCS outposts nearby?” It was a long shot to be sure, but if I could get in contact with a JCS agent, I could just give them my ID code and they’d take me in. Technically, Amethyst Group was under mutiny right now, so I could end up incarcerated, but I’d escaped from worse things than prison before.

“J-C-S? I’m not sure what that is miss, sorry to say,” Nurse Redheart replied. Okay, so there was absolutely no Human or Kyn presence here. Or if there was, we weren’t being obvious about it. Goodie. “Can you maybe tell me a little bit about yourself? Where you came from and how, exactly, you got into the Everfree Forest during a blizzard?” She asked with an inquisitive look at me.

I paused for a beat. I didn’t know. I had no idea how I’d gotten here. Last I could recall, we were recovering Dignity Alpha from Externus, when… something attacked. “I think I was attacked, ma’am. I’m not supposed to be here…” I’d been guiding my cruiser, the Revenant, through the upper atmosphere of that obscure world, and then… What had hit me? It’d gone right through the outer defenses, the hull, and straight to me, like some kind of rocket. Perhaps this was purgatory? “Am I dead?”

The nurse glanced at Butterscotch again, then back to me. “No ma’am, you’re very much alive.” Okay, that answered a few questions. They had no idea what I was and assumed I was living. Of course, I probably was living, now that I had lungs, and a pulse, and whatever else a living thing might have. They didn’t know about the J.C.S. or the mutiny – although I doubted anyone outside the upper echelon of the J.C.S. knew about the mutiny. There was no recognizable presence of the Milkdromeda Empire here, at all. And they were talking ponies with colorful fur and expressive faces.

Stalliongrad, Butterscotch had said… That sounded like Stalingrad, Russia. Perhaps… “Yes, okay. I think that’s right, Stalliongrad. I’m unsure how I got here, I’ve traveled for quite some time…” Technically not a lie, I’d been on the move before the mutiny and the recovery operation. “I’m the only one left. The others… I’m not sure where they are now. Someplace better I hope.” Also true, I’d outlived my unit. The circumstances were not evasion of hostile forces or famine or whatever else might warrant a refugee status, but still, fair enough.

“You’ve been on the move for quite some time then, haven’t you Miss Blue?” Nurse Redheart said past the pen in her mouth. Butterscotch looked on with some worry.

“Nurse, I’m not familiar with this land at all. I couldn’t tell you if I’ve traveled ten miles or a thousand, all I know is I’m lost.” And another important topic… “As for t-the lack of clothes… I didn’t have any.” I said, feigning an embarrassed look down at the floor. “Lost everything,” I mumbled.

The two of them seemed sufficiently convinced. “Well, Miss Blue Moon, you’re in good hooves now. Butterscotch here has been by your side for almost the entire time you’ve been with us,” Nurse Redheart explained.

“I had to go in to work today – er – yesterday, but I took off early to come back. Ain’t about to leave your side ‘til you’re okay.” Butterscotch was the same mare that’d resuscitated me. She’d also opted to stay by my side as I recovered. And here she was looking at me like I was something important. I suddenly felt hot, and decided to look anywhere but at her or the nurse.

“I, ah…” I stammered. “Thank you… Butterscotch. I’m not sure how I’ll repay you-“

“Ain’t happening,” Butterscotch interrupted me. “You don’t owe me a thing. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, Blue. You’re safe now, though. I promise.” Her voice sounded like it could soothe a rampaging sea. Like the gentle tolling of bells through crisp air. I wasn’t sure why her voice fascinated me so, but I wanted to hear more.

“So, I’m okay then? Not dead, not crippled, injured, mad?” I asked, looking to either of them.

“I can’t see any sort of health concerns beyond some bruising around your hind quarters,” the nurse told me warily. “Don’t suppose you could tell us how that happened, dear?” She’d adopted a gentler tone.

Bruises around my hind quarters? “I… can’t remember. So much is just gone…” I thought about how I’d seen so much collapse so fast, how quickly it all came apart at the seams, and how we desperately tried to pull it all back together. Where were they now, I wondered?

I noticed I was shaking. My body seemed to be convulsing involuntarily, and I felt as though I’d lost my balance. “Oh… Oh dear,” Nurse Redheart checked a machine outside my field of view – which was currently occupied by my knees as I’d managed to fold myself into as much of a ball as I could. What was happening? “Okay, maybe let’s stay away from that topic for now,” she said, adopting that same motherly tone again. It was calming. “You’ve come very far, Miss Blue. You’ll be okay now, don’t you worry. Everything will be all right.” She raised my chin with her hoof, and I caught a glimpse of Butterscotch’s very distraught face. I didn’t like how sad she looked. The nurse was looking very intently at my eyes, one then the other. She jotted something down on her clipboard then placed her hooves on mine. “Blue, can you tell me how old you are? What your birthday is?”

Birthday? I didn’t have a birthday. I was never born! “That’s-“ I stopped myself, and looked at her. “I’m sorry. I just… I honestly can’t…” I inhaled slowly, and started again. “Twenty-six.” I finally got out. “I’m twenty-six years old, ma’am.” I’d been made by Amethyst Group twenty-six years ago, so that’d suffice. “I’ll be twenty-seven in two months… I think.”

“That’d mean you were born in January of nine-seventy-one?” She asked.

Nine-seventy-one? Was that a year? “We must use different calendars… I was b-born in January, yes. But I’m not familiar with the year…” That’d put me more than thirteen hundred years in the past if they adhered to the same calendar scheme as us. But back then we hadn’t even figured the scientific method out yet, or which religion was the least violent… God have mercy, where was I?

She wrote something down on her clipboard – my estimated date of birth or some such, I guessed. I lay back in my bed with a slow sigh.

“It’s still fairly early in the morning, you two,” Nurse Redheart explained. “I’m very glad you’re finally awake, Miss Blue, but I’m afraid there’s not much more I can do at the moment. I’ve scheduled an appointment with our psychiatrist, doctor Clarify. He’s very kind, he’ll be able to help us understand… everything that’s going on.”

A psychiatrist. They were putting me in a padded cell, for sure. “Okay, I’ll just… stay here I guess?” I shrugged shakily as I looked at her.

She nodded her head, stating matter-of-factly, “You’ll be nice and rested for doctor Clarify. I’ll take you to him at eight, just before I end my shift.”

And with one more look to Butterscotch, Nurse Redheart left the room, leaving me with the mare that’d saved my life then used me as a pillow.

“So, you’re… interesting,” she said to me with a smile after a few moments of silence. I guessed she wasn’t one for subtlety.

“I don’t belong here,” I half-mumbled. “This isn’t right… I can’t remember how I got here, I don’t know why. I don’t like not knowing things.” I watched her as she pulled a squat little chair up to the side of my bed and sat in it, before looking at me with an expression somewhere between amusement and confusion.

She took one of the pillows I wasn’t using from the bed and set it behind her head, against the wall. “Guess we’ll find out in the morning, huh?”

…

Ponyville General Hospital
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.?? ? 8:00 AM

True to her word, Nurse Redheart had arrived to collect me just before eight. She quickly discovered I had absolutely no capability to walk on hooves, so she procured a wheelchair for me, citing the cause of my inability to walk as “exhaustion from over-exertion.” An easier explanation than “I have no idea how to use hooves.”

She wheeled me to another wing of the hospital, however on the same floor. Butterscotch left for breakfast. The office area we entered had an entrance so unassuming I’d not even realized it was our destination before Redheart stopped us at the door. It was painted the same color as all the other doors and had the same type of placard as all the others. This placard, however, read “Psychology Ward.”

After opening the door, she wheeled me in, deftly managing to hold the door open with one forehoof as she pushed me through the threshold with her muzzle, before swapping her forehoof for her rear hoof, keeping the doorway open until both of us were through. The interior was decorated in warm, gentle colors, and the décor was decidedly ordinary. Wooden chairs with thin cloth cushions, wooden end tables at two adjacent corners of the room, both with small collections of books and magazines stacked atop them. In the opposite wall from the side we’d entered from was another door, this one wood panel. It was unlabeled.

“Doctor Clarity will be with you shortly,” the nurse said. She certainly looked tired.

“Thank you, nurse. Really. I’m… not used to being treated so kindly.” I gave her as much of a gracious look as I thought I could manage. “I suppose you’re ready to go home? It’s been a busy night.”

She made a noise I couldn’t quite recognize and smiled at me. “I’m exhausted, yeah. That’s okay though! I’m just really glad to see you up-and-at-‘em again!” She placed my hooves in hers. “I don’t know what all you’ve been through, Miss Blue, but I promise you’re in good hooves, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you, so much,” I replied, feeling… odd. With one last look at me, Redheart left the room, and I was alone. It was a strangely surreal feeling, being both physically and mentally alone. I’d never been disconnected from communicating with others before, and though I’d experienced being on my own physically, the lack of anyone to talk to left me feeling anxious. The room offered little to occupy my mind, and the books and magazines were out of my reach. Only…

Could it work? They’d mentioned magic, and though they hadn’t used it themselves I supposed there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t. I’d been able to before. Slowly, I focused inward, closing my eyes as I searched for that gentle flow of…

The door opened. Not the one we’d entered through, but the other one, made of wood. I started slightly, but kept my wits as I looked over to the commotion. In the doorway stood what I instantly recognized as a male, a stallion. His glasses hung loosely from chains that were tucked beneath the collar of his shirt. His eyes were a distant blue, and he looked tired but alert. His coat was similar to mine, perhaps a single shade of blue lighter. It never occurred to me what a unicorn might look like, but here one was. His horn was the same color as his coat, although the fur stopped at the base of it. Then my eyes went crossed again as he approached, and I had to shake my head to regain my composure.

“Hello, Miss Blue Moon, is it?” Doctor Clarity – I presumed – asked. “I’m here to get a grasp on what all has happened to you.” Oddly similar to what Redheart had said. “My name’s Doctor Clarity,” he continued, confirming my suspicions. “Let’s get this all figured out,” he said as his horn began to glow a cloudy blue and I began to move. He was pushing my wheelchair with kinetic magic, clearly.

“I’m hoping you can figure it out, I haven’t the foggiest myself,” I said to him as he wheeled me along. The office area we entered was simple enough, although obviously personalized to an extent. I saw a few picture frames of what I guessed were his family, some of a dog, a collection of certificates, all mounted to the walls or set upon shelves. The majority of the bookshelves were full up with an assortment of literature. Glimpsing a few of the titles provided little insight, I had no idea what they said. He stopped me in front of his desk, before walking around it to take a seat in the large chair on the other side. With his cloudy blue magic, he plucked a thin folder from nowhere in a flash and placed it on the desk. Inside was the single sheet on which Redheart had written what little she’d gathered about me the night prior, as well as another sheet that appeared to be nearly blank.

After a short glance at the two papers he looked up at me. “Aged twenty-six and ten months, from Stalliongrad, and suffering from possible psychological and emotional traumas due to expedited evacuation from home. Did I leave anything out?” He asked. His tone seemed friendly, but something told me to keep him at a safe distance.

“Sounds like there’s a lot missing, but I’m not sure what all I can tell you,” I said as I continued to watch his eyes. I felt strange, as I sat there looking at him. I’d noticed he hadn’t raised his glasses to read the paper, and his horn hadn’t stopped glowing either.

“How about starting with who you are, Miss Blue?” He asked calmly.

“Delta three, agent zero-eight, veteran, retired. Designation Emile project, mark eight. Synthetic with fully-integrated artificial-“ I bit down on my tongue to stop talking, glaring daggers at him.

He simply looked back at me with his mouth barely agape. I wasn’t going to let him take anymore away from me. I was well versed in illusion magic, but this was beyond that. This was something almost cruel. Almost. His horn stopped glowing. “I see. Well, you’re not a changeling, that much I’ve gathered.” He gently raised his glasses to his face, using his hooves instead of his magic. I’d have pounced him, hooves or no, if he’d lit his horn again. “Miss, who – or what – are you?”

I sighed. He’d pulled just enough out of me to spoil the disguise. “I’m just an old mercenary.” I watched him, knowing I’d have to give more. “I’m from… somewhere else. Not here. Don’t ask me how I got here because I don’t know, and don’t you dare try another spell on me.” I focused inwardly, carefully as I could such that he wouldn’t notice. I wasn’t sure if he could detect my use of magic. “I can tell you I don’t plan on hurting anyone here. I’m not going to cause any problems if I don’t have to, I just need to get home.” Almost there… Got him.

His eyes shot wide as I cast the spell and flooded his mind with the information he sought. Through his mind’s eye he saw conflict and turmoil and victory and failure. He saw vast armies slain and vast bounties claimed, empires consumed and betrayed. Then, in an instant, it was over. He lay slack in his chair for a moment, then shook himself. I stared at him patiently.

“I see… a traveler, of sorts. There’s no precedent for this,” he said as he grinned faintly. I continued to watch him silently. “You’re something of an enigma. I honestly can’t make heads nor tails of what I just saw.” He wrote something down on the near empty sheet of paper using his magic, and I slammed my hooves down on the table clumsily.

“Anything you put on that paper informs anyone of who I am…” I growled, not bothering to finish the threat.

He nodded in agreement, turning the paper so I could see it. It was written in a script I couldn’t decipher. At my glare he read aloud, “Blue Moon, mare, age twenty-six. Possible positive for post-traumatic stress disorder.” I continued to glare at him until he said, “I swear on my children, that’s what it says. You’re clearly an individual not to be messed with, however I think I can help you, if you’re willing.” I didn’t offer a reply, so he continued, “Miss Blue, you’re not in danger here. I swear it, you’re safe. I’m here to help ponies. That spell I cast on you was a necessity, please understand. The recent crisis, and all the refugees, surely you understand?” He pleaded. I could certainly understand the need for the extra security measures, but it made trust a challenge. I relented and sat back in my chair. He visibly relaxed. “Just so we’re clear, that’s not a diagnosis I’ve put on your file. It’s just an… assertion. After what you’ve shown me, I’m near certain you’ve endured more than any one mare should.”

“I’m not a mare. I’m not a… a pony. I shouldn’t be here!” I exclaimed. I couldn’t stand how I was acting, so impulsive. I couldn’t stand how sure he was. I couldn’t stand how my body wasn’t right, how my mind felt so silent and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Miss, if you could just let us help you,” he repeated. I didn’t want their help. I wanted… What? What did I want? I’d never wanted for anything before, but now I had nothing at all. If I was trapped here, if I had no way to reach home…

“Please… I shouldn’t be here.” I repeated.

“Let’s continue these meetings. I think we should focus on making sure you’re healthy, before we go about figuring out any of this other stuff.” He sounded like he was sentencing me. There was no way I was trapped here, was there? Surely, I could just contact the Service and they’d… What? Take me in, just because I told them to? I resembled nothing of my former self, I had no features they’d recognize, or if they did they’d think I was just some pony, even if I recited my ID code to them. I was trapped. “I know you’ve heard this a lot, but that’s because it’s the honest truth. You’re in good hooves. We want to help, that’s why we’re here.”

“Okay. Okay, help me then. Tell me how to… Live.”

…

Ponyville General Hospital
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.?? ? 8:45 AM

The visit with Doctor Clarity revealed much, to both of us. I was in good hooves, as I’d been reassured so many times. The ponies didn’t have anything to fear from me, mostly due to my inability to do anything beyond vague gestures and basic illusion magic.

Doctor Clarity had explained it would be necessary to create an alias for me if I wanted to go about life without being accosted by media, lookie-loos, and generally curious ponies. He’d decided Blue Moon the mare from Stalliongrad was a good enough alias, and suggested a few items to add to my back story like family, hobbies, and the like.

Once he’d finished a little more paperwork, the doctor wheeled me out and back to my room, where Butterscotch sat waiting with what I guessed was breakfast.

“Hungry, Blue?” The mare asked me. She was no longer wearing her uniform, opting instead for a pair of blue jeans and a simple burgundy shirt. A plain coat was hanging on a chair nearby. Her mane was down as well, giving her an entirely different appearance than how she’d looked an hour prior.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. I’d never eaten food before.

Butterscotch looked at me quizzically and shook her head. “Did the doctor confuse you that much?” She asked, looking over my shoulder at Doctor Clarity.

“I believe some food would do her good. Are you her friend, miss?” He asked Butterscotch after wheeling me to the table where an assortment of things had been laid out. I couldn’t quite identify the food choices, though I’d never had any interest in food to begin with.

“Lilac Skyes and I found her a few days ago out in that blizzard,” Butterscotch replied, before turning to me. “Pancakes?” She asked.

“What are pancakes?” I asked in return. She nodded her head towards the table. On one plate were several beige colored discs made of something I couldn’t identify. Pancakes I guessed, unless she meant the plate, or the glassware full of orange fluid, or the table itself.

“Blin, they’re called, in your language,” she said as she took a seat opposite me.

“You two take care. A nurse will be in after a while to discuss your departure, Miss Blue,” Doctor Clarity said before leaving.

I stared at the pancakes before me. “Blin.”

“Ayep, blin,” she replied. “Syrup?”

I stared blankly. This would be a long day.

Author's Note

For the record: Blue Moon has a European accent, and is multi-lingual. I am not European, nor am I multi-lingual, so please be patient as I try to write a character that is.
Furthermore, in this particular Equestria the new year is on July first. So November is the fifth month on the calendar. This is because of the Summer Sun Celebration which is on the Summer Solstice, which is typically June twentieth, twenty-first or twenty-second.

2: The Pegasus, the Parable and the Proposition

One in a Trillion: Chronicles of the Traveler: Volume One

Chapter Two:

Plott’s Sporting Goods Store, Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.23 1:00 PM

“Hey, can I get your help for a sec? You work here, right?” A customer asked me as I walked past.

It’d been two weeks since I woke up in that hospital room. “Sure, what can I do for you?” I replied.

“I’m looking for five-five-six. Y’all have that here, right?” The young buck answered.

In that time, I’d learned the concept of walking on hooves, the concept of needing to eat and drink to survive, and the concept of generosity. “Sure do, we keep centerfire cartridges behind the counter though. If you’ll follow me?”

I lead him to the counter and went around to where the ammo in question was. I’d started working at Plott’s about a week ago, and caught on quickly. “What kind of five-five-six are you looking for?”

“Oh, I’m just going to do some target shooting, nothing special.”

I was happy to discover that Plotts was a firearms distributor, as guns were something I understood well. “Okay, how about Whinnychester fifty-five grain ball? Twenty-three hundredths a round.” I had struggled with Equestria’s economic system at first, but quickly caught on once I realized bits were simply a fiat currency. Each bit could be broken up into hundredths, and you usually paid with either a charge card or a check. I’d been assured that bits actually did exist, and Equestria wasn’t just making money with nothing to back it up, but I’d yet to see a single actual bit in person.

“Not bad. What’s the muzzle velocity on that?” He asked me. I already knew it by rote. I’d discovered most of this world was parallel to my own, if a few hundred years behind technologically.

“Around thirty-two hundred feet per second,” I replied without having to read off the box. I levitated a twenty-round box onto the counter, which startled him.

“Whoa! Where’d that- oh, was that you? I didn’t see you use your magic,” he exclaimed. Apparently, all unicorns have a magical glow around their horns when they use their magic. I inexplicably didn’t. Best I could figure was because I used my magic differently, but it made no difference functionally.

“Yeah, don’t know why it’s like that,” I replied, putting on a fake embarrassed tone. “Just kinda always been this way. Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No trouble,” he shrugged. “Kinda cool, actually. But, do you got anything bigger?” He gestured to the box on the counter.

In Equestria, firearms laws were mandated by region. Most rural areas were lax, but the cities and more heavily populated regions had stricter regulations. According to local law, I could sell any non-pistol cartridge to anypony of adult age. Pistol ammunition was legal to be sold only to ponies age twenty-one and up. I didn’t get it personally, but I didn’t make the rules. “How’s this?” I asked as I levitated up one of the two-hundred round boxes we kept lower down on the racks. It made a satisfying rattle as I set it on the counter.

“How many’s in that?” He asked before reading the box. Upon reading the box, he answered his own question, “Two hundred, wow. How much is it?”

“Fifty even,” I replied as an idea came to mind. With my unseen magic I reached over to the next aisle where the targets were kept, and searched for… there it was. “Okay, sounds good. Uh, here,” He said as he reached into one of his pockets. I carefully levitated the object around the aisle and began to animate it as best I could to make it look like it was walking towards me. I was almost worried he wouldn’t notice, but as he looked up with his wallet in his mouth, he jumped at least a few feet high, his wallet falling to the floor. “Oh shit look out!” He shouted as the changeling-shaped target approached me in a gait somewhat resembling a trot.

I made the target wave its flat hoof at him. He stared, bewildered, before realizing it was fake. “We just got these in. Don’t worry, they don’t move on their own,” I laughed. It was apparently very lifelike, even had holes in its hooves and wings. I had to admit, if a changeling actually looked like that in person I’d be surprised. It looked too outlandish to be real. “They’re a hundred and forty bits. Not bad for something like this,” I said as I made it wiggle and dance.

He took a moment to pick up his wallet before laughing as well. “You’re funny,” He said to me. I shrugged along with the changeling target. “Sure, why not. I’m sure the guys’ll laugh their asses off at it.”

He hoofed over his ID and his charge card. I checked his date of birth on the ID, and put it into the computer after I scanned the ammunition. He was nineteen. Then I scanned the target. “One ninety-nine, oh two. Sound good? Anything else you needed?”

He shook his head. “Nope, that’s about it. Thanks!” I ran his charge card and returned it to him with his ID, and after double bagging the ammo, I levitated the target gently over his back so he could carry it out. He nodded as he took the ammo and then began making his way to the exit of the store.

I liked working, I’d discovered. It was relaxing, knowing what I was supposed to do, how to do it, and having a schedule to keep kept me from getting agitated. Doctor Clarity had explained that my something or other was in conflict with this other thing in my head. I didn’t understand most of it, so he had put it in terms I could better understand. The long and short of it was, my brain wasn’t right. He’d recommended I find a job, and when I mentioned this to Butterscotch, she’d mentioned it to Lilac, who was able to get me the job at Plott’s.

As I walked into the break room in the storage area in the back of the store, I could hear several other ponies in conversation, something about hoof-ball. Another thing I had no clue about. Doctor Clarity had also wanted me to start taking medication to help me with my issues. I’d mentioned this to Butterscotch as well, and she’d said it might help, but it could also make things worse. I pulled up a chair to the table where everypony else was seated, enjoying grilled veggie fajitas. I’d helped Lilac make the fajitas the night prior, and we’d brought them along to share with everypony else for lunch.

Lilac was at the table now, and she looked up at me as I pulled my chair up. “Hey Blue,” she said. Her coat was, oddly enough, lilac in color. Her mane was an electric blue which she wore in a moderately stylish bob. Her eyes were magenta. She’d been the other mare that’d been there to save my life that night. Apparently, she had decided to dive-bomb the ice that I’d gotten stuck under in the river I fell into. If an idea sounds dumb, but it works, is it really so dumb? She’d said on the topic. I had to agree.

She was the shift manager for first shift at Plott’s, so she was technically my superior. It didn’t mean much. “What took you so long? You’re like, ten minutes late to lunch.” She had a way of speaking that had taken me a day or two to get used to. She’d served in the Equestrian Air Guard, which apparently required her to speak loudly. It wasn’t that I disliked it, so much as it reminded me of getting shouted at when I was in training for the Service. I actually kind of liked it. The fact we’d both served in a military capacity made it easy for us to relate, and I found that I’d quickly made another friend.

Butterscotch had caught on early that I wasn’t actually from Stalliongrad. She’d been letting me stay with her at her condo, but made it clear if I wanted to stay, I’d have to be honest with her. When I first told her I was most likely from another universe, she laughed in my face. When I didn’t change my story, she listened more intently. I’d explained, to the best of my ability, what I’d been doing leading up to my arrival in Equestria. She seemed to understand it about as much as I understood it, which was little.

Lilac visited that night, and Butterscotch encouraged me to tell all to her as well. She took it well, and quickly she and I were discussing militaria. Combat tactics, weapon specifications, and the like. I’d discovered she had a particular interest in “Trotviet” designs, which were apparently this universe’s parallel to Soviet designs.

“Blue, are you even listening to me?” Lilac said loud enough to rattle me from my reverie.

“Whoa, Blue. Were you actually spacing out there?” Walnut asked. He was another pegasus, and though he’d also served in the Air Guard, he hadn’t been in the same platoon as Lilac. “Damn, I guess your Trotviet bullshit really is that boring, Lila.” He laughed.

“Sorry, was just thinking. What’s up?” I replied to Lilac.

Lilac glared at Walnut for a second before looking back to me with a forced smile. “Five-five-six, or seven-six-two? Which kicks more ass?” She asked.

I paused for a moment, considering all that I knew of the two vastly different calibers. Then a sly grin formed on my face. “Oh, Lila, you mean you don’t know?” I said conspiratorially.

“Wha? Know what?” She looked confused.

I laughed. “Five-five-six versus seven-six-two is a trick question. Surely you realize? Oh, maybe you don’t…” I waited to see if she’d catch on, but it looked like I’d sent her mind reeling. Her eyes were wide, with one brow raised high and her mouth in a twitchy grin. “Seven-six-two…” Another pause, and just as she looked like she was about to revel in victory, I said in a mock cough, “By fifty-one!”

Walnut burst into hysterical laughter. Lilac buried her face in her hooves. I shook my head and began fixing myself a fajita. Seven-six-two by fifty-one was a NATO cartridge, or as in Equestria, a FATL cartridge. FATL apparently stood for Friendship Allies Treatise and Legislation, or something. For ponies they sure had a brutal streak.

“Blue,” Lilac groaned. “You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?”

I laughed as I patted her head as she lay it on the table. “No, Lila. I’m supposed to be on the winning side,” I said in a sympathetic tone.

Walnut was now out of his chair in raucous laughter. I think his brother, Buckeye, hadn’t caught on, because he was still eating his fajita as he stared down at him. He was an earth pony, and had tried to join the standard infantry, but was denied when he attempted to bash the instructor’s skull in with his own helmet. I’d learned that story directly from the source; apparently Buckeye was a very literal person, and had a short temper to boot.

“Okay, smartass,” Lilac yelled down at Walnut. With her wing she swept his empty plate off the table and onto him, which only made him laugh even harder. I was certain he was having convulsions at this point. Perhaps he’d hit his head in the fall?

…

As lunch went on, we discussed other things. I tried to listen in and learn what I could as they discussed sports, but it was completely beyond my comprehension. Then a small device on the table began to buzz loudly. Lilac picked it up and tapped it, then lifted it to her ear. “Yeah?” She said into it. It was called a smartphone, and they’d apparently just released that particular model – the first of its kind – this year. It had a touchscreen, which was a pane of glass which could sense the electromagnetic something or other in hooftaps. All I knew is it seemed to operate a lot like an uplink module. It allowed ponies to call one another from afar, to browse something called the internet, and a myriad of other things. “Yeah, yeah we’re still on. What, snow’s not due for another like, week right?” I’d also learned in my time here that Equestria controlled its own weather, and I’d just managed to land in the only part of Equestria that was still wild, a patch of forest called Everfree. Local legends abound on that one.

“That Chestnut?” Walnut asked. Lilac nodded.

“Cool, I’ll let ‘em know. Yeah, laters.” She tapped the screen again and set the device down. “We’re on for tonight, boys!” She exclaimed. Walnut cheered.

I looked on, clueless as usual. “What’s on for tonight?” I asked.

“Around this time every year we have a big party. We were worried we’d be screwed by the weather team though, but looks like somepony was able to convince them to postpone!” She picked the device up again and began tapping on the screen some more. “I gotta tell some more ponies about this, just so we’re all on the same page.”

I looked at Walnut. “Yeah, it’s basically just a big get-together of sorts. Friends, friends-of-friends, that sort of thing. Dunno how many we’ll have this year, but last year there must’ve been fifty of us.” He looked at his brother, who shrugged.

“Yeah, it’s pretty fun. Just don’t drink too much, couple of the guys that show up have a habit of taking advantage of drunk bitches,” Buckeye explained.

“I’ve never been drunk,” I replied. “What, does it do?”

“Being drunk? Makes ya dumb, basically. Dumb, wimpy, and easy to fuck,” he said in his usual bored tone. “Or, maybe it won’t. Maybe you’re an angry drunk. Or a loud drunk. Who knows.”

Okay then. Don’t get drunk, got it.

…

Plott’s Sporting Goods Store, Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.23 5:30 PM

The rest of the day went by without incident. I’d finished lunch and got back to work, sold some more items off the shelves, a shotgun, and more ammo. I restocked the shelves throughout the day, so by the time I left everything was set in order for the next shift. Second shift arrived at four and worked until closing time. The store stayed open until midnight, which was unusual for Ponyville. But Plott’s was a franchise, so each store ran the same, regardless of region.

I was supposed to leave at five, but I’d stayed to restock and help out a little. As I walked out the front of the store, I passed Buckeye at the entrance. He was lighting a cigarette, but his lighter looked to be inoperable. I lit the cigarette for him with a spell.

“Thanks,” he said, then took a puff off the freshly lit cigarette. “Why do you stay late like that? Ain’t no point to it.”

I sat next to him beside the front door. “I just restock and stuff like that, that way the next crew doesn’t have to.”

“Why, though? It’s not like they give a damn, and it ain’t your job to give a damn about ‘em.” He looked at me with an empty expression. “Guess it just doesn’t make sense to me.”

I shrugged. “Way I see it, if I make their job easier, maybe their day will go better. It’s not like I have anything better to do at the moment anyway.”

He cocked his head to the side and smiled at me. “You’re real weird, you know that?”

We sat for a moment longer, until he finished his cigarette. “You goin’ to the thing tonight?” He asked me.

I hadn’t thought much of it. “I don’t know. I don’t really have a ride,” I’d been getting rides with Butterscotch, the world’s most generous mare, as my work was on the way to hers.

“Lilac could bring you. She’s gonna be picking up a few others anyway, probably wouldn’t matter to her.” He got up as he spoke. “I’m gonna sit this one out, though. Last year some bastard tried to steal from me. I’ll see you next week.” And with that, he walked out to his vehicle in the parking lot.

Ponies drove cars, I’d learned. They could maneuver the pedals and steering wheel just fine, and apparently had enough dexterity in their hooves to do many other things as well. I was still a little clumsy on my hooves, but I’d caught on well enough. Having magic helped a lot, because it meant I could do many things as I’d done them before – with magic.

I sat there for a couple minutes longer until Butterscotch arrived in her little beige sedan. It looked ancient, but she had assured me she’d bought it new six years ago. When I inquired why she picked such a boring car, she threatened to deny me a ride to work, so now the car wasn’t boring anymore.

“Hey Blue. Hop in,” Scotch said after rolling the window down. I did as she asked, getting into the passenger seat and strapping myself in. The cars of Equestria, like so much of pony technology, seemed identical to human technology, further confirming my theory that this was a parallel world.

“Lilac said there’s some kind of party tonight?” I mentioned to Scotch as she began driving out the parking lot and into the road proper.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “It’s this yearly thing her and all her army buddies do. I’m not so into it, mostly it’s just drinking and banter and some games. If you like beer and poker and hoof-to-hoof you’ll like it, otherwise it ain’t for you.” Her accent was generally pretty mild, but I’d learned the more agitated she got the thicker her accent became. “Last time I went, some buck tried to marry me. I don’t remember his name because he was too drunk to pronounce it right. That was a weird night.”

Sounded like weird was the norm in Equestria, to me.

…

‘Casa-del-Scotchy’, Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.23 6:40 PM

I’d had Butterscotch call Lilac and ask her if she could give me a ride to the party, to which Lilac replied with a “Heck yes!” so loud I could hear it from where I sat across from the kitchen table.

Lilac’s arrival was announced with the sound of a truck horn. She’d installed a loud aftermarket horn to her vehicle, a large truck. Apparently it was meant for off-roading, but I’d yet to see it dirty.

“Guess that’s me,” I said to Butterscotch.

“Have fun, don’t get too drunk. You’ll probably be out there til morning,” she replied. “Ain’t no designated drivers in that crew.”

I nodded and made my way outside. Lilac’s truck was a four-wheel-drive Buckler 2500, with a lifted suspension and a brush guard on the front. She’d repainted it in the past week, before it was grey, now it was bright red. There was nopony but her in the vehicle, so I climbed into the front passenger seat. It took some effort to get in, as the vehicle was fairly high off the ground and I was by no means sure enough on my hooves yet to just jump in. “Ya got it, girl?” She laughed as she offered her hoof across the center seat to help me in. “You’ll wanna sit in the middle, we’re picking up like eight other ponies so it’s gonna get cramped.” The center seat’s backing doubled as a center console, which could lift up or down depending on what it was needed for. I strapped in next to her, and she drove along.

As we rode we talked about various things. I asked her about the party but wasn’t able to get anything more than “You’ll see” out of her.

When we turned up a driveway, she suddenly reached between my legs and I flinched reflexively. “Easy girl, just putting it into four high,” she said and nudged me. “Don’t let what Bucky said get to you, it ain’t like that. He’s just sour ‘cause some young colt drank too much and got his and Bucky’s wallets mixed up, that’s all.” I hadn’t realized that what he’d said had bothered me, but maybe my subconscious was a little spooked.

“Okay, okay. Just, never been to an actual party before,” I explained as we went up the dirt road. It forked to the right and went straight on, and we took the right turn. Along this road, which ran lengthways of mountainside, were a few large cabins, each of them unique in their designs. “I’ve hosted parties before, run security for them, but never actually been.” We stopped at the last one, which also appeared to be the biggest. I had no idea who built cabins this big, but the timber frame had three stories on one wing of the structure and two on the other, with two carports which were both full of various types of vehicles, ranging from trucks to tractors to other vehicles I couldn’t identify. “Who lives here? The Princess?” I asked Lilac.

“Nah, Sunbutt ain’t got shit on this dude. He’s rollin’ in it. C’mon,” she said as she switched the ignition off and got out. Lilac went up the steps which lead to the front deck and quickly began knocking her hoof against the front door. “Lilac’s party bus!” She exclaimed through the door.

She waited a few moments longer, then as I got to the deck Walnut opened the door. “What- oh, it’s just you,” he said to Lilac. “Hang on, let me see if dad’s ready.” I could see several ponies inside, but the lighting was dim.

“Wally lives here?” I said after the buck in question went back inside. “If he’s got a home like this, why’s he working at Plott’s?”

“It’s not his house, it’s his dad’s,” she replied. “And if you ask him, he works at Plott’s because it’s more fun than the family business, but if you want the truth, it’s because I work there. He’s always been stuck to me like dumb on his brother since he got out.” Lilac was my age, and Walnut was a year younger. I wasn’t sure how old Buckeye was – he looked like he could be a decade my senior – but according to Walnut he was younger than us.

“Family business?” I asked, but before I could get a reply the door opened again and out stepped a stallion I thought could’ve been the Prince of Equestria. He had on a well fitted grey blazer, over a similarly colored vest and a white button up. His slacks were black, and his shoes looked like they’d been polished mere seconds ago.

“Oh, hello Lilac. I knew I heard something obnoxious at the door,” he said with a grin. He bumped Lilac’s hoof then nodded to me. “Hello there, I don’t think we’ve met. You’d be the mysterious Blue Moon?” He asked me politely.

I nodded. “That’s what they call me, anyway.” I opted for a casual tone, despite his fairly regal appearance and mannerisms. His coat was a shade not unlike Butterscotch’s car, and his mane was coffee brown with a few errant streaks of grey, all tamed elegantly in a short high-and-tight fashion. He was a unicorn, I noticed. “You’re Walnut’s father?” I offered my hoof.

“Indeed, or so I’m told,” he returned my hoofbump. “The name’s Ash, but most folks just call me boss. Don’t worry, you don’t have to call me boss if you don’t want to.” Why did this stallion remind me of the types of people I’d done business with back home? Old, expensive, and charismatic in an almost creepy sort of way.

We all got into Lilac’s truck, and the tone quickly changed as Ash buckled himself in, saying, “Well come on, Lila. Don’t bore me to death here. Play us some tunes.”

“What kind of tunes, boss?” She replied, reaching over to the stereo controls on the dash. I got the feeling it’d be more suitable of me to call him boss, rather than by his name.

“What do you think?” He said, bumping her seat with a hoof. He was in the back seat, directly behind Lilac. Walnut sat to my right, as I sat in the middle. I now realized I hadn’t needed to sit so close to Lilac on the ride over, but it didn’t seem important.

“Oh I don’t know, chief.” Lilac looked back over her shoulder at Ash. Hearing her say chief sent a small chill down my spine. I’d been called chief before. The memories of those days were fighting for my attention, but I focused on the here-and-now. “Blue’s not the sort of mare that’d like that kinda thing. I think she’s more of a rock-n-roll kinda gal.”

I looked over to Lilac, who winked at me before looking back to Ash. Ash looked at me, then asked, “Well, Blue? What kind of music do you prefer?”

“Music?” I said incredulously. “I never really listened to it before. I didn’t really have the time to, with the work I used to do.” I bumped Lilac’s shoulder. “Play whatever you want, I’m sure I can handle it.”

Before Lilac could reach the dial, though, Walnut had already turned on some music. Loud, raucous and incomprehensible rage spewed out of the speakers as what I could only assume was a band of children unleashed hell upon a series of guitars, synths and drums. I suspected the intention of the performance wasn’t to produce music, but to destroy the equipment meant to produce the music. Then an angry sounding male voice came on, shouting something just as incomprehensible as the music he was backed by.

“Not quite what I had in mind, Wally,” Ash said as he sat back in his seat. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but as I listened on I noticed how there was an actual rhythm to the sound, a sort of cadence that it all followed, however chaotic it seemed. Walnut just shrugged.

…

As we rode along we picked up more ponies, whom we first loaded into the cabin of the truck and then the rear once there was no more room in the actual interior. I tried to keep up with the various conversations that were had, but couldn’t understand much of it. Hoofball was brought up on more than one occasion, and I feared that was one topic I’d never understand.

Once we’d picked up a final group of ponies, whom all piled in to the bed of the truck, we began on our way to our actual destination. I had no idea how many we had with us now, but there were seven of us inside the cabin, four up front and three in the rear. Ash seemed to demand respect with everypony, because he was greeted by all as they joined us, and no one dared crowd him in his seat. Despite all that though he was very friendly and carried himself in a way that left me feeling like he was already my friend, even though we’d only just met.

The ride wasn’t terribly long, as we were staying in Ponyville, and as we reached another dirt road, Lilac reached between my legs for the lever she’d manipulated before. I made the conscious decision to not flinch like I had last time.

Not long after we’d began driving down the dirt road, we came upon a well-lit area in front of a lake where there were already dozens of ponies participating in various festivities. I saw drink and food laid out on a long table upon a wooden platform a ways from the lake, and along the lake were parasols and seats where some ponies were sat enjoying one another’s company.

Along the dock that ran down one side of the lake before jutting out into the lake were several paddle boats, and further along the dock was a gathering of pegasi. They appeared to be in a debate of some sort, but before I could gather more about what was going on, we turned down another dirt road and my view was obstructed by a building.

Lilac parked the truck and turned off the ignition, and we got out. I had to wait for the two ponies to my right to get out before I could, so I sat still.

“Aw hay,” Lilac said next to me. “Don’t guess you brought a swimsuit did you?”

“Swimsuit?” I asked. “Do I need one?”

“Well if you wanna swim, yeah. I mean, water’s pretty cold but once you’ve had a bit to drink it won’t bother you.” The others got out and I followed, exiting the vehicle before circling around the front to continue talking to Lilac. She had a bag with her and opened it to show what appeared to be underwear. “See? Swimsuit.” She unfolded the swimsuit, and as best I could tell, it was a single piece of clothing that ran from a pony’s shoulders down to the groin, with a gap in the back, presumably for wings. It was bright orange.

“Couldn’t just stay out of the water?” I asked her. I wasn’t even sure how ponies swam.

“I mean, yeah, but you’d have to be damn good at hoof-to-hoof,” she replied as she started walking towards the building. I followed, listening. “There’s always a sort of king-of-the-dock championship. Last year, I won. Year before that, too. Come to think of it, I’ve never lost.”

“I don’t follow,” I said.

“Well, I’ll show you. For now, I’m gonna change into this, and while I think it’s real cute that you wanna watch, I do like my privacy.” I’d not realized I’d followed her into a changing room.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

…

Lilac returned a moment after I’d left the changing rooms, and met me next to her truck. “You can go and mingle or whatever, y’know. Don’t gotta stick next to me the whole time.” She shrugged. “I mean I guess you could stick around, you’re not bad company. But be warned, if you follow me onto the docks you’re gonna get wet.”

I looked around. “I don’t know anyone here,” I said idly. “Show me around?”

“Sure. Let’s get something to drink first.” She lead me along a path after putting her bag back in her truck. As she flexed her wings, I noticed how toned her body was. I’d never really seen her with so little on. “See something you like?” She asked me.

I guessed she’d noticed me looking. “Never seen you like this before, that’s all. You have a very… athletic shape.”

She nudged me. “You expect anything else? I am like, the single most awesome mare in Equestria.” She struck a pose and I laughed. “What? Come on, don’t make me look dumb. You gotta play along, I got a reputation to uphold around here!”

“You’d have looked better in black,” I replied. In all honesty, she looked fairly spectacular in the orange swimsuit.

“You’re not one of those mares that only likes black, are you?” She asked, looking me over. “I mean, you probably are. You only wear like, one outfit.”

We reached the table where food and drink had been prepared, and Lilac selected a brown bottle of something I couldn’t identify. “I like what I like. I’m fairly simple, I guess. What’s that?” I asked as she removed the metal cap and drank from the bottle.

“Want some?” She offered it to me. I smelled it and recoiled immediately. I couldn’t quite tell what it was, but it smelled foul. Not unlike rotting carrion. “No? Fine, more for me,” she said before taking another swig. “Anyway, I’m gonna go teach those idiots who’s queen of the deck.” She downed the rest of the drink and took off. “Mingle!” She shouted back at me as she flew away. I was drawn to the view of her flying, for some reason. I shook my head and walked over to the selection of fruits and other food items.

…

As I sat and watched the others going about the festivities, I noticed some things. The mares seldom enjoyed the company of the colts, but the colts certainly seemed determined to pester the mares. On more than one occasion a young buck approached me, and they would always ask very dull questions, such as “Come here often?” or “Can I get you a drink?”

Eventually I realized if I just ignored them completely, they’d wander off.

I watched on as Lilac stood on the deck, at its furthest point, poised to engage another challenger as they approached. The tactic her challengers used was usually to charge blindly and get shoved off the deck effortlessly, and that’s just what this next one did. Most were pegasi, but this one was an earth pony whom managed a spectacular drunken wail as he was flipped off the side of the deck. As it was with most of the ponies that Lilac shoved off, they needed help out of the water. Several onlooking pegasi flew down to help the drunken colt out of the water and back to his hooves. He looked freezing.

“Miss Blue?” Came a voice from behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see who it was, and saw Ash, still in his stylish outfit. He too seemed to like whatever dreck it was Lilac had downed earlier, as a bottle of the stuff floated next to him in a golden aura that matched the one around his horn. “Not interested in any of the fun?” He had two other stallions with him, both looked as disinterested in the goings-on as I was.

“Not really. I’m still getting used to just being in Equestria,” I said as he took a seat on the edge of the platform, next to me. “I’m sitting here, listening to dozens of ponies talk about things I don’t know anything about, and trying to avoid the advances of overly-confident males.”

“Sounds like this little soiree isn’t really for you,” he said, looking out over the water. “Can’t say I disagree, but it’s best that I be here.”

We sat there for a short while, and graciously, I received only cursory glances from the colts rather than their previous attempts at conversation. Then, after he’d finished his drink, Ash stood back up and floated the empty bottle over to one of the stallions that were still stood a ways back, whom threw it away in a metal drum nearby. “How about a boat ride?” He said, offering me a hoof.

I took it and got to my hooves. I eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

“There’s something I’d like to show you. But we have to take a boat, it can’t be reached otherwise.” He began walking towards the docks. “Come on.”

I glanced at the two suits, but they again seemed entirely aloof as they began to follow Ash. I shrugged and followed as well.

Once we reached the dock, Ash turned left along the shoreline. “Are we not taking one of those?” I asked, gesturing to the paddle boats. I then realized the gesture was futile, as I was behind him, but he replied regardless.

“No, those are too hard on my old knees. I have a boat of my own here.” He lead me along the shoreline a short distance until we reached a small boathouse. One of the two males that were following us went up to the door and unlocked it. Inside was a canoe. It looked like it had been made decades ago, but had been maintained well. “Behold,” he said as he lowered an oar with his magic from the rafters. “A boat I can actually manage.”

I looked at him then to the boat, and back again. “What’s all this about, Ash?” I asked him.

“Like I said, I wanted to show you something.” The two stallions began freeing the boat from where it had been tied up. “And I wanted to discuss something with you.”

Once the boat was in the water, Ash stepped in with little issue, but I was a little timid. He offered me his hoof again and I took it, balancing myself as I stepped awkwardly into the vessel.

Now, the two stallions looked directly at Ash, whom simply grinned. “Relax, it’s my own damn boat. And she’s certainly nopony to worry about. Take a break, go have something to eat and drink, just leave the mares alone.”

They looked at him for a moment longer, then left. With that, Ash instructed me to sit opposite him on the little seat at the end of the canoe, and face him. Then he lowered the oar into the water and began maneuvering us out the opening of the boathouse. I noted he was using his hooves to hold the oar, rather than his magic. I inquired upon why, and he simply shook his head. “Some things are meant to be done the old-fashioned way,” he said as he continued to pull us along.

As we floated along, I looked around at the lake and surrounding wilderness. I could faintly hear the sound of a highway in the distance. The undulating sound of the waves softly lapping up against the boat. I watched the water, the sky, the trees. Then looked to Ash. He was watching me, with another one of those expressions I couldn’t quite decipher.

“You wanted to talk to me about something?” I asked him as we passed the dock where Lilac was facing yet another drunken male.

“Not here. First, I want to show you my favorite place in this park. It’s an island in the middle of the lake.” I looked towards the center of the lake but saw nothing there. “No, no, not this part of the lake,” he said, nodding his head backwards towards the direction we were moving. I looked past him and after a moment spotted a small opening in the trees. Following the gap between the trees down to the ground, I saw there was what looked to be the mouth of a river feeding into the lake. It was maybe a hundred meters away.

“Forgive me but this really is peculiar,” I said. “Taking me to someplace away from all the other ponies, after meeting me for the first time only an hour or so prior.”

He laughed. “I know, I lack the tact of my youth. But trust me, once we’re there you’ll see why I was so eager to take you.”

We floated along for a while longer, and made our way through the gap. I discovered it wasn’t a river, but a body of water joining this lake to a larger one. We came out of the small tree-covered waterway into a much larger body of water. “This is technically part of the Everfree,” Ash said as he paddled us along towards the middle of the lake. A thin mist was beginning to form on the water, despite the cold. “But for whatever reason, it’s the calmest place in the world. At least, I think it is.”

Again I looked around, at all the evergreen trees and the misty water and then towards the island he was guiding us to. A rock wall had been built all around it, such that it had no bank, and the mist just barely floated over the top of the wall and onto the lush green grass. Trees stood silent and leafless in an irregular pattern along the island, and as I watched, their bare limbs swayed idly in a gentle breeze. The air smelled sweet, and I felt a sudden pang of sadness as I longed for home.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Blue?” Ash asked me. I looked at him and, again he was watching me.

“Well, using Aetherological science we can conclude that…” I stopped talking as I saw the look on his face turn sour. Something told me he didn’t like the answer I offered.

“I didn’t ask what Aetherological science says about ghosts. I asked if you believe in them.”

I paused for a moment, again looking to the island. He had stopped using the oar, and we floated listlessly in the water, turning slightly clockwise. “In my experiences, what I’ve been through, there’s no doubt they exist.”

He nodded his head and began maneuvering us towards the island again. “This island, this place…” I paid closer attention to his voice. It sounded like the rustling of leaves, like wind whispering through the trees of that island. “It’s been here for centuries, at least. Nopony knows where it came from, who put it here or why. There’s no trace of its purpose, no record on it on any of the old maps and charts. But in my old age, I think I've figured it out."

We reached the island. He pulled the canoe along the side of the squat rock wall, and with a rope that lay in the bottom of the boat he tied it to a small stake that stuck out of the soil there. “Come,” he said as he climbed out, before offering me his hoof.

I followed him out, careful not to fall into the water. The mist and soft grass felt cool around my hooves as I stepped upon the island. I looked along the trees, and saw nothing but the flat ground and the other side of the island a few dozen meters away. Turning back to the water, I looked out towards where we came from and could just barely see the gap in the trees that marked the pass we’d come through. It hadn’t felt like we’d traveled that far, but from where I stood it looked to be nearly a kilometer away.

“If the state had their way, this park would be leveled, the flora removed and fauna displaced.” He walked towards the center of the island. “There’d just be more commercial bullshit here, instead of this,” he gestured around himself. “Were it up to me, it’d be the other way around. Equestria can have its cities and shops and grand expansion, but not here. Take all the ponies, take all the technology and the money and get out of here. Go west, or north, or keep expanding along the eastern coastline. Let nature have her forests.”

I watched him as he stared at the trees, the grass, the sky. I found myself struggling to follow along, yet again.

“Today, this is public land. Anypony can come here and visit this place, at any time. Just like you and I, and everypony else down at the docks. But they don’t. This is more or less the only time ponies ever come out here,” he said in his whispery voice. He sounded tired. “The more I see of the world, the more I long for this place. And as I grow older – and I am old, Blue. Older than you realize. I find I visit this place more and more often, whenever I find the time. I’ll come here, and spend some time with the trees, and the air, and nature. Then I feel young again, and I return to the world at large so it can suck me dry of my vigor once again.

“There are certain truths in this world, Blue. Things that are pure, and honest, and good. Like the honesty of a child. A mutual first kiss. The ancient wisdom of nature. These things can teach you much, even when you’re old. Especially when you’re old.” He looked back to me. “I see in you something familiar. Maybe I see myself, maybe I see my youth, maybe I’m old and senile. But I see it in how you look at all this. In how you look at her.”

I raised a brow at him.

“Someday long ago a pony came to this place and decided to build something. But they didn’t build a strip mall, or a clubhouse, or whatever else. No, they learned from nature, and put an island here in the middle of the lake, safe from predators. And then, once they’d put the island here, they didn’t bother putting a house on it, or even a dock. No, they planted trees, such that the leaves would keep the sun and the rain off their back, and grass such that they would have the food they needed to survive. They trusted nature, and so nature loved them. Now, that pony is gone, but the island remains.

“Do you know what happens to strip malls, clubhouses and all that shit when the ponies go away? Nature does away with it. It all decays, reduced to its basest elements and consumed, returned to the world.” He sighed. “But enough out of me, I’ve said my piece.”

We sat for a moment longer there on the island. I didn’t quite know what to make of what all he’d told me, but I decided I’d remember it. Something told me it was important.

“Come, it’s getting cold. Let’s go back, they’ll likely start the fires soon.”

…

Once we’d gotten back into the canoe and Ash had paddled us about halfway back to the passage, he spoke again. “I do have something else to discuss with you, Miss Blue.”

I nodded. “What is it?”

“A proposition, of sorts. A fair bit irrelevant to our discussion on the island, but important all the same.” He looked up at the stars for a moment before continuing, “Blue, you’re a resourceful mare. I can tell that just by looking at you. According to Wally and Bucky, you take your job at Plott’s too seriously. Setting up the next shift so they can have an easy night, taking extra time with customers to help them however you can, that sort of thing. They seem to dislike it, but I can appreciate good work ethic. So I’m wondering if I can tap into a bit of that hard working attitude of yours.”

“You have a job for me?” I asked him. This felt strangely familiar.

“Of sorts. Well, yes, you’ll be paid to do a task. Two hundred bits for a job well done.”

I watched him for a moment, then laughed softly. “You’re telling me my payment before I know what I’m getting into. Isn’t that a little backwards?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you got me. Didn’t think I could bait you that easily, but it was worth a shot,” he said, winking at me.

“Two hundred bits to say, educate myself on something or someone might be reasonable, but depending on what I’m educating myself on, the risk might outweigh the reward. Or, maybe I’m moving some things around. Could be an easy job, just a single day of work, no hassle. Two hundred would be fair for a job like that. But what if there’s something in there somebody else wants? Two hundred caps doesn’t convince me to convince them they don’t want it.”

Now Ash laughed, heartily enough to rock the boat slightly. “You’re genius. A real gem,” he said after he paused to catch his breath. “It’s nothing like that. You’ve gotten into some wild shit before haven’t you? No, while it is a move-shit-around kind of job, I doubt anypony will come after you for what you’re moving. Unless they’re in real desperate need of some-“

I waved my hoof. “Don’t tell me what I’m moving, I have little interest in things that don’t concern me. I was really just giving you a hard time. I’ll do the job, two hundred is fine. So long as I’m not expected to do this while I’m supposed to be working at Plott’s.”

He nodded. “It’s this weekend, tomorrow and Sunday. You’ll be working with Wally. Chestnut was supposed to help, but he’s blown out his shoulder again, so that’s a no-go. How strong is your magic?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t found it to be lacking thus far. Maybe three hundred is my max?” Really, I’d never tested the limits of my telekinesis, even before I’d arrived in Equestria.

“That should be fine, not likely you’ll be moving anything on your own anyway. Wally has the address for where you’re going, and if I recall correctly there’s a fork lift on site, that should help with most of the heavy lifting.”

A new job offer. From a complete stranger, more or less. Money is money, though.

…

As we floated past the docks, I saw that several ponies had already started some campfires alongside the shore.

Then we came under artillery fire. It sounded like it was close, couldn’t have been more than a few hundred meters out. I had almost lunged at Ash to get him and myself under the water to conceal our location when he grabbed my shoulder.

“Easy, girl, easy! It’s just that damn pink party pony and her party cannon again.” I struggled to focus on his features. Why did it feel so hard to breathe? “I swear, that mare’s gonna… Hey, you all right? Listen to me. You all right?” He shook me once or twice and I managed to focus on him. “You ain’t got shell shock do you girl?”

“I was certain…. It sounded like…” I stammered. I couldn’t seem to suck in enough oxygen. It felt like I was burning. I forced myself to take long, deep breaths, just like Doctor Clarity had instructed. After a moment, it seemed to have helped, because I was able to think cohesive thoughts again. “What the hell was that and where’d it come from?”

Ash pointed his hoof at the party that was going on at the shoreline. There I saw, in the center of it all, a very pink mare pushing around what appeared to be an old cannon. “Pinkie Pie. Local party planner and menace to society. Last I checked she wasn’t supposed to be here on account of doing exactly that the last time she was here. Ain’t supposed to have explosives in the park.”

I shook my head hard, trying to clear the panic away. I felt like I wanted to sprint a mile. “Why does she have that? What even is it?”

“It’s a cannon she fills with confetti and glitter and shit. Detonates a charge and sends it all up into the air, if it doesn’t combust in the chamber.” Ash seemed about as thrilled as I was about the thing. Who puts confetti in a cannon?

…

By the time we reached Ash’s boathouse I’d managed to calm myself, though climbing out of the canoe proved challenging, as my knees seemed unwilling to hold my weight. With some help from the older buck though, I was able to free myself of the vessel. The two we’d left behind were still here, looking as though they were no happier about the party cannon than I was.

Ash motioned for them, and they began tying the canoe back up to the rigging. Before we left, however, Ash stopped me. “One more thing, Miss Blue,” he said, gesturing me to follow him to the side of the boathouse away from the other two. “I am curious. Where are you from, really? What I’ve seen of you tonight, as well as what I’ve gathered on my own, tells me there’s more to you than just an ordinary mare with a few odd quirks.”

I stared at him for a moment, before realization struck me, and a cold chill washed over my body. “Lilac?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I hear what I hear. But I’m asking you, now. And I do hope you’ll be honest with me. I know we don’t really know each other, but if I’m going to be hiring you, I’d like a little… background information.”

I sighed, and looked over at the two males. They’d finished tying the canoe up. Ash gestured for them to step outside, and they did.

I sighed again. “I don’t know how to explain any of it. I’d like to visit someone who could make sense of it all beyond me being crazy, but I know what I know, and I know I’m not from here.”

“You’re familiar with Aetherialogical science, I’ve gathered,” Ash said. “Do you mind if I cast a little spell? It may help me with understanding you.”

“As long as it isn’t an interrogation spell. I don’t react well to those,” I replied, recalling my ordeal with Doctor Clarity.

“Nopony reacts well to those, Blue. No, this is a simple memory spell. So long as you’re not going to feed me false memories, I could just take a look and see where you came from myself. That is, if you’d really rather not try to put it to words.” He lit his horn and waited for my answer.

I had cast a similar spell on Doctor Clarity that day. I supposed Ash planned to cast the reverse of it, an inspection rather than a projection. “Okay. Just, fair warning. Not much of it is pleasant.”

“I’ve had my fair share of unpleasant experiences, Miss Blue,” he assured me. “This’ll only take a moment.” He closed his eyes and his horn flared with that golden glow, and my ears began to ring. It felt like someone had shoved me hard, but I hadn’t moved. I stumbled a bit, but caught myself before I tripped and fell.

After a moment, Ash opened his eyes again. I almost thought I saw something in his eyes, but then he blinked, and it was gone. I shook my head and looked back at him.

“Well,” he said, looking me up and down. “You’re certainly not from here. I haven’t a clue where you’re from. Been a while since I saw something I really couldn’t comprehend. Tell me, was that some sort of a spacecraft or something?”

I guessed he’d seen a memory of the Revenant. “That’s my cruiser. Did you see the Bridge? Bright purple displays, people standing around in grey uniforms?” He nodded. “Yeah, that’s the Revenant, my Cruiser. Bought it after I got out of the service. Did some work with it on my own, before it got shot down. Had to get it replaced, but never got a full crew after the first one was destroyed. Wound up here before I was ever able to really give the new one a fair shake.” I remembered all the work I’d done with that machine. The people I’d worked with, the lives…

“Easy, girl. Sorry, I know what it’s like to lose something, or somepony.” Ash laid his hoof on my shoulder. I lifted my hooves to my face, careful not to bash my muzzle like I’d done that first night. They came away wet.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said. It was hard to breathe again. “Why is this happening? Am I crying?” I wiped my face of the tears. “I don’t cry. That isn’t me.”

“No shame in shedding a few tears. Especially when it’s for a good reason.” He looked me over again. “Curious why you took the form of a pony, though. Best I could gather, you weren’t exactly a living thing before.”

“No, I wasn’t. Not really,” I replied, glad for the slight change in topic. “I’d been made to resemble life, but I wasn’t living, not like them. Or you. But now I am, I guess. I… wish I had answers. To any of this, I mean.”

“Whatever happened to you, what you’ve been through,” it felt like Ash was looking right through me as he looked at me. “You’re surrounded by ghosts. They follow you, they’re within you. You’re haunted.”

I sighed. “I know.”

…

I took a few moments longer to gather myself, then returned to the shoreline where the other ponies were. I had a certain lilac colored pegasus to be very cross with.

Looking around, I quickly discovered she still hadn’t left the docks. She stood at the very edge, waving a beer bottle at another pegasus that was hovering a few meters away. I decided on my course of action, and began walking along the dock. At this distance, the light from the various campfires wasn’t really enough to illuminate us, and in my dark clothing I was barely visible. I took slow, even steps, making sure I didn’t make any noise or rattle the wood of the dock. I don’t know how long it took, but by the time I was nearing Lilac, she’d already felled one pegasus and had begun taunting another.

I considered my options. I could probably tackle her and take her in the water with me, but I didn’t know how cold that water was, and after my last time being submerged I didn’t like the idea of it. I could shove her, but she could just alight on her wings. Wait a minute… that might work.

Standing to my full height, I readied myself. Time to be an idiot. “Hey, Lilac!” I shouted, as I charged her. With my shoulder, I shoved her off the dock. Before she even touched the water, just as I’d predicted, she took off and flew up into the air. Now, if she was anything like I’d been in the air… there it was. With a pirouette, she doubled back around and flew right back at me.

“Wha- Blue?” She shouted as she approached from above. Even if she wanted to back out, she couldn’t. She had to either collide with me, the dock, or take a plunge in the cold water. I was the obvious choice. As she approached, I feinted left, which she corrected for. Then I moved right, and as she came in, I hooked my left forehoof around her neck and held on as she tumbled along the deck.

We rolled over and over until we stopped about halfway back towards the other end of the dock. I’d managed to end up nearly atop her as she lay on her stomach, and I used this to my advantage. I quickly got up over top of her and clamped my rear legs down on her wings, hard. Lilac was quite a bit larger than me though, and I nearly couldn’t get her under my control. She let out a shriek and tried to free her wings. As she flexed them, I pulled back with my left forehoof which was still around her neck and hooked my right forehoof around the left as her head came back. Each time she tried to move, I’d crush her windpipe. She quickly got the message.

Carefully, I leaned my head in next to hers, and whispered to her, “Did you tell him?”

She bucked hard on the deck, nearly knocking me off her. I tightened my grip as hard as I could, and she let out a choked gasp. “I’ve already got one good reason to knock you out right now. Don’t give me another. Did you tell Ash?”

She stayed still for a second, then gave a faint nod of her head. I released her and backed away quickly, shaking. She collapsed to the deck, sputtering and wheezing. She didn’t move for a while, and I didn’t either, beyond looking to see if there were any lookers on. It appeared that we were alone in the dark, though, which was good. I watched her as she slowly tried to stand. I stood as well, planning my escape. She had managed to get on the side towards the shore, so if I couldn’t get past her, I’d have to learn how cold that water was. I didn’t look forward to that.

Then, just as I was sure she was going to charge me, she laughed aloud. It became a cough quickly but returned to a laugh as she cleared her throat. I just sat back down, dumbfounded.

“Holy fuck, Blue! You go hard! That was fuckin’ badass!” She exclaimed, looking at me through her mussed mane. I just stared back, with my usual incredulous look. “Shit…” she said. “Aw, wait a sec. That’s what this was about? Aw shit.” She swore a few more times, then approached me. I got to my hooves, looking at her hooves to see if she’d charge me or launch into the air, but she stopped. “Blue I ain’t gonna hit ya. You got me fair and square, and like you said you had a good reason.” She sat back down. “I uh… I dunno what all I told him, but I’d been pretty drunk. That was like, last weekend, maybe? Yeah, gotta be. You came up in the discussion and I don’t remember what I said but I guess I told him about you and your… uh. Past, and shit. Ah fuck.” She looked at me, shame clear in her expression. I couldn’t expect her to just make it easy and try to retaliate, could I? No, she had to feel guilty.

I sighed and got to my hooves, walking over to her. She shied away a little bit, but I shook my head. “Thanks for telling the truth. I’d appreciated it more if you’d have told me sooner, but it is what it is. Not like it’ll bring the world to an end or anything.” I sat down next to her. “He asked me about it. Ended up giving me a job actually.”

She looked at me. “The boss gave you a job? What is it?”

“I’m helping Wally move some stuff tomorrow. Two hundred bits.” I looked at her. She seemed to consider this for a moment, before trying to reply, but ended up coughing again. “Sorry, I really shouldn’t have been so rough.” I looked at her throat. It already looked like it was getting discolored. “You’re going to have some bruising, I’m sorry.”

She looked at me and smirked. “What, you worried about my looks, blue?” I stared for a moment but before I could reply, she said, “I mean, I know I’m good looking and you got the hots for me and all, but really,” she reached up to her throat. “If you wanted to get rough and wild with me, you coulda just asked.” She winked at me and kissed my cheek as I sat there feeling very hot and awkward. “C’mon, tough stuff. It’s freezing out here and all I got on is this swim suit. Let’s go park up next to one of the fires.”

I couldn’t quite parse what had just happened, so simply followed Lilac down the dock and onto the shoreline where everypony else was gathered.

Author's Note

Disclaimer: Chapter may be changed.

3: An Introduction to Triggers

“Got a new job.”

“Good. What kind of job?”

“We’re taking on that crew from the other side of the city. They’ve got a package we want.”

“Finally. Rules of engagement?”

“They’re expendable, Eight. You could kill half the people in this fuckin’ city and nobody’d give a damn.”

“And what about her?”

“Who, Queeny? Bitch probably has the package on her person. Don’t know what it is, just know it’s worth a lot.”

“How much is she worth?”

“Like two or three mil. You figure out if she was your sister or not?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll kill ‘em all.”

…

“Casa-del-Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.26 6:45 AM

I stared up at the ceiling. It’d been the third time I’d woken up, and now there was just no point in trying to get any more sleep. I sat up in the bed and rubbed my eyes gently. I was in Butterscotch’s guest room, which she had been using as storage prior to my arrival. I had tried to assure her that the couch would’ve been fine but she insisted, and once she’d moved all the junk out of the room and made it ready for use, I couldn’t really refuse. Now the room was near empty aside from the bed, and a single small wardrobe which held my meager collection of apparel. There had been a mirror in the room but I’d removed it. I didn’t like seeing my own reflection, wasn’t quite used to seeing myself as a pony yet.

I thought back to my dream. It was the same one I had most nights, a repeat of my final moments back home. I didn’t like how often it came to my mind, replaying over and over. I’d been so complacent, so uncaring. At that point I was beyond caring, I simply wanted an escape. I guess I got one.

I’d mostly accepted being trapped in Equestria by this point, so I chose to focus on the here-and-now rather the there-and-then. I slowly got out of bed and made my way to the bathroom, which was just outside the guest bedroom. Butterscotch had a nice home, with three bedrooms and two baths, although one of the bedrooms had been made into an office of sorts.

Despite my dislike of looking at my own reflection, I had to make sure I was at least semi-presentable before work. It was Monday, and I had to get ready. Looking at myself through the mirror, I studied my disheveled mane, the way my coat looked matted on one side where I’d laid on it, how my eyes appeared sunken. I looked tired. I felt tired, I hadn’t slept right. It didn’t matter. Picking up a nearby brush with my magic, I began the tedious work of taming my mane and smoothing my coat. As I worked, I studied my body, as I usually did. I was smaller than the average pony, at around eighty centimeters tall. Most ponies stood three or four centimeters taller than me.

I had a curious mark on my flank, I couldn’t quite identify it. It looked like maybe a reticle for an optic. Apparently all ponies had these, and it was a magical marking that represented some core part of who you were as a pony. I had no idea what mine represented. I smoothed my coat over, feeling the way the bristles of the brush coaxed each small hair into place. I liked how it felt, it almost made me feel relaxed.

My mind drifted to thoughts about Butterscotch. I’d inquired on several occasions as to why she was being so kind to me, so caring. Each time she simply shrugged and gave an answer to the tune of “It’s the right thing to do.” I was sure there’d been an ulterior motive, but after two weeks she’d done so much for me I couldn’t imagine what she could gain in return to make up for it all. She’d provided shelter for me, allowed me to confide in her, even bought me clothes. It was comforting to know I had someone I could rely on. No, not someone, somepony.

My ears twitched as I heard motion outside the bathroom. Butterscotch was up, I guessed. I continued grooming. I wasn’t sure what I would do about the tired look in my eyes, maybe it’d go away after some time?

“Oh hey Blue-“ Butterscotch said as she came up to the open door of the bathroom. “Sorry! Sorry, didn’t know you were uh, not wearing… anything. Why didn’t ya shut the door?”

“Sorry, guess it slipped my mind.” She was facing away from me. “Did you need something?”

“Uh, yeah,” she replied. I could hear the embarrassment on her voice. Apparently nudity was a major taboo in Equestria. “Out of shampoo. Should be some in the shower over there…”

I floated the bottle of shampoo over to her. “I’ll try not to disturb you with my unclothedness anymore,” I said teasingly. She took the bottle and trotted away.

“Yeah it’s fine, just shut the door if you’re y’know… busy or whatever, yeah?” She said from another section of the house. Ponies were so temperamental sometimes.

…

Plott’s Sporting Goods Store, Ponyville
d3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.26

The weekend had gone well. After having slept under the stars at the party Friday night, I spent my Saturday moving large wooden crates in and out of a truck. Sunday, we finished up the last of the job and got paid. I then spent the rest of the day with Butterscotch. I found I enjoyed spending time with her, it always made me feel happy just to be around her.

Today was Monday. I’d gathered that it was standard operation to loathe Monday, but I saw it as just another day. I had work, sure, but that was a good thing. I was lucky to have this job. As the day went on, I discovered Buckeye hadn’t showed up for work, but thought little of it. Maybe he was out sick or something. Things were fairly uneventful, made a few sales, enjoyed lunch with Lilac and Walnut. Ash visited the store, bought some ammunition for a rifle of his, and said hello to his son before leaving. By the end of my shift I felt good. Maybe not completely energized, but certainly not as tired as I’d felt when I woke up in the morning.

I did my usual routine of re-stocking the shelves and cleaning up, and by around five thirty I was ready to leave. Lilac and Walnut had already left, so the breakroom was empty. I was taking off my employee badge, and was thinking about what I was going to do when I got home, when a horribly loud noise startled me out of my reverie. It sounded like an alarm, not unlike the missile lock warning in my cruiser. I panicked, and dove for cover, expecting an impact. I wasn’t sure how I’d managed it, but I found myself underneath a table. The alarm was so loud it hurt my ears. I covered them with my hooves and made myself small.

As I lay there on the floor, my heart racing, hooves pressed against my ears, I wondered when the impact would come. Surely it was a warning for some sort of an attack? But nothing came. The alarm just wailed on and on and on. I had no idea how long I lay there, but it felt like an eternity. I curled myself up tighter and hoped I’d be okay. On and on it went, the unbearable ringing of that alarm. Then I noticed a haze creeping into the room. It was dark, almost black. Was it smoke? I couldn’t tell, and simply hid my face between my knees. I didn’t know what to do beyond hide there in the break room.

Some time passed, and the air became unpleasant to breathe. It smelled a lot like the campfires we’d had set up at the party Friday night. My eyes burned as I looked around the room. It was noticeably darker, the smoke so thick I could just barely make out the doorway now. It looked like there was something glowing out in the storage area? I couldn’t tell, and simply returned to hiding my face.

I stared at the floor, wondering what was going on. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been there, it felt like an eternity, and no time at all. Then the alarm shut off and the lights went out. I raised my head to look around, and inhaled thick smoke. I coughed violently, and buried my face to the floor. Looking towards where I thought the doorway was, I could see that glowing again. It was bright orange, and I could feel an intense heat radiating from that direction. Had I not noticed when a missile hit? Was it a missile? What had happened?

Every breath I took filled my lungs with searing, toxic air, and sent me gagging and coughing. My eyes felt like they were going to melt from their sockets, and my skin itched terribly beneath my coat. As my ears recovered from the abuse they’d suffered from that alarm, I noticed a faint popping sound coming from outside the break room. Then it picked up in volume, and I knew instantly what it was. Gunfire. Thousands of rounds seemed to be going off all at once, like I was listening to an intense firefight. Maybe the J.C.S. had come after me? Were they slaughtering everypony they saw? The sheer volume of gunfire sent my mind reeling and my ears ringing again. As my panic redoubled, I began trying to back away from the doorway. Then the ground shook beneath me, and I felt the air in the room shift as the sound of rending metal joined the cacophony of gun battle. As the noise increased, I noticed more light flooding in through the doorway. This light looked brighter than the orange glow that’d been there before.

Then, silence again, spare for an inconsistent crackle in the distance and the ringing in my ears. I was now in the corner of the room on the far side from the doorway, again cowering with my head in my knees. I could breathe slightly easier, but there was still a lot of smoke in the air. I lay there, terrified as I coughed and wheezed. My eyes burned terribly. I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare make a sound. I had no idea what had just happened, or what was going on at all. Was I even in the same place anymore? I couldn’t tell.

I stayed like that in the corner for so long I was sure I’d be safe to maybe move, but as I raised my head to look around, I breathed in more of the smoke flooding the room and began coughing violently. Then I heard a voice from somewhere far off. I couldn’t make out what it said, but I knew I had to stay as silent as possible. But I couldn’t stop coughing! I struggled to stop myself, but each time I tried to hold my breath it just brought on more coughs as my lungs burned furiously.

“It’s coming from over here!” A voice said in the distance. It sounded muffled. “Hurry, there’s somepony in here!” I finally got my breathing under control as I buried my face back in between my knees, and tried to stay as still as possible. I hoped whoever it was would just look right over me and go on. Surely they were looking for survivors or something? Come to take me back after I’d sided against the J.C.S. so they could question me and then kill me.

Why was I like this? I’d never behaved like this before! I had to get myself under control and assess the situation properly. But as I tried to look up again, the smoke caught me and I was thrown back into a coughing fit. “There! Hear that! Don’t worry, were coming to get you out of here!” The voice shouted. It was much closer now. As I watched through tortured eyes, a figure passed by the doorway, then came back to stand in it directly. I fought as hard as I could to control myself, but could do nothing more than cough and wheeze as my body was starved for oxygen. I felt numb as I thrashed on the floor in the corner, desperately trying to get away from the figure as it approached me. I bashed my hoof against something and fell on my side. “Easy, easy, I’m gonna get you out of here. Are you hurt?” The figure said to me. I stared at it. It was a pony in a bright orange and yellow suit, with a strange hat and mask. I just lay there wheezing and staring. “Here,” the figure said, and took its mask off.

It was a stallion, with light blue fur and green eyes. He looked down at me, worry in his eyes as he pressed his mask against my face. It felt like a cool breeze was blowing across my muzzle, and as I inhaled I filled my lungs with clean air. On his back the stallion had a metal tank with a tube which fed to the mask. I looked at it, followed the tube to where it met the mask, then went cross-eyed again. Refocusing, I looked at the stallion, who stood holding his breath. I pushed the mask off and towards him, and he took it and put it back on. “Ready? We need to get out of here.” I nodded. I was still scared, but I didn’t feel threatened by this pony. “I’m going to carry you out of here, the way through isn’t safe,” he said and readied himself for something. “On three I’m going to lift you onto my back, okay?” I nodded again. “One, two,” he put his muzzle beneath my middle, then mumbled, “three!”

In a surprising display of strength, he lifted me with his head, and set me on his back, just behind the tank. I leaned forward and wrapped my hooves around him to steady myself as I began hacking and coughing again. There was so much smoke…

Then we were moving. It wasn’t terribly fast, but it was faster than I could’ve managed in this mess. We went out the door of the break room and into absolute chaos. All around us was smoke and fire, and the heat was indescribable. I curled my tail closely to my body and buried my face in the back of the stallion’s suit collar. The air was simply unbreathable. I took occasional glances at what we were doing. It looked like the entire back of the store was on fire. The racks that held extra stock had collapsed, and the ceiling had collapsed on top of those, but I couldn’t see the sky. There was just smoke. The stallion I was riding took a hard right turn and I nearly fell off, but he caught me as he moved and kept me stable. We left the back room and entered the sales floor, where the smoke and fire was less intense. Several of the shelves were burning, and I could see where there had been boxes of ammunition that’d cooked off.

Then we were outside, and as I was set down in the parking lot away from the building, I was greeted by more ponies in brightly colored uniforms. I was barely able to keep up with what was happening. One was looking at me, staring into one eye then the other. Another one was cuffing something around my forehoof. Another still stood nearby talking on a radio. I simply lay there, dazed. I looked around and then finally saw it. The store was on fire. From behind the store rose a great pillar of smoke and flame, and I could see through the front windows where the fire was spreading to more sections of the sales floor. Several bright red trucks with red lights and loud sirens were parked nearby, and hoses ran from them to more uniformed ponies. These ponies were spraying water up and over the building, where it then fell back down onto the fire.

I lay my head back and just breathed. My lungs felt like they were full of hot coals, but I didn’t care. Every breath was agony, but I just didn’t care. I had no idea what had just happened. I looked at one of the ponies nearby, who looked back at me. She was a young mare, but there was age showing on her face already. She looked back to what she was doing a moment later.

“Ma’am. Ma’am?” A voice said from above me. It took me a moment to focus on where it was coming from. Then a pony pressed another mask against my face and oxygen filled my lungs. I looked at the pony who’d administered the oxygen mask. It was the same pony that’d pulled me out of the building. “Can you speak?” He asked me.

Once he’d pulled the mask away, I tried to speak but just ended up coughing again. Once I was done coughing, he offered me the mask again but I waved it off. “I-I’m… yeah. Yeah I can talk,” I replied. My voice sounded wrong. Several kinds of wrong. It was nearly a whisper, and as I spoke it felt like my throat was tearing apart.

“Do you know if anypony else was in there with you?” He asked me. He looked at the burning building.

“There was the second shift crew. They’d just clocked in,” I answered while trying to rub my throat. The apparatus on my forehoof stopped me though. “I was alone in the breakroom though.”

“Everypony from the second shift is accounted for, they’re all safe. You don’t know if there’s anypony else that might’ve been in there?” The other ponies that were looking at me started taking their instruments off me and packing them away.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand, what happened?” I asked him. But before I got an answer, an electric blue blur filled my vision and I was being squeezed.

“Blue! Oh Blue! Thank Celestia you’re okay! I was terrified when I’d heard what happened and flew back here. Are you okay? Anything hurt? Any burns? Oh, Blue!” Lilac was looking me all over as she spoke so fast I was struggling to understand what she was saying. The stallion that’d saved my life put his equipment back on and began walking back towards the burning building.

“Lilac? What are you doing here?” I asked her. “What happened?”

She looked at one of the ponies in a uniform. “Did you check her? Is she okay?” She asked in a harsh tone. She patted my shoulder. “It’s okay, Blue, you’re gonna be okay. Oh I swear I’m never letting you work over again!”

“What? Lilac I’m fine, just… a little shook up I guess.” I sat on the pavement and looked at the fire. It was getting worse. “What happened, though?”

Lilac sat next to me and put her wing around me. “I don’t know, Blue. I just got a call from the second shift manager saying there’d been a fire, and I pulled right over to the side of the road and flew back. Didn’t even bother with the truck, traffic is so bad right now. It’s probably been towed by now. What happened to you though? You look… rough. You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

I looked at my rear left hoof. It looked okay, but it did hurt. “I think I hit my hoof on something. I don’t know. I was in the break room when an alarm went off and I… panicked, I guess…” I looked down at my hooves. “I just hid under the table.”

“That was the fire alarm, Blue. Don’t you remember me telling you about that?” She had done, in my orientation for the job. But I hadn’t realized what it would sound like. “Don’t worry about it, you’re okay, and that’s all that matters. Which hoof is it? You, paramedic! Come here please?” She waved over one of the uniformed ponies. It was the same young mare with the tired eyes. “Blue said she hurt her hoof. Can you check to see if it’s sprained or anything?”

The paramedic pony asked me to show her which hoof was hurt, and as I moved it I winced. She looked at it, touching it carefully, which also hurt. She went to a large vehicle nearby and got out what looked like a boot of some kind. “Here, looks like you just bruised it. Put this on and don’t put too much weight on it for a couple days and you’ll be okay.” She helped me put the boot over the leg. It kept me from moving my hoof, which I guessed was to keep me from injuring it further. “Anything else?” She asked me. I shook my head.

“Thank you, miss,” I said to her. She just nodded and went back to the vehicle.

…

We sat there for a short while longer, Lilac continuing to poke and prod me over everything that happened, asking repetitively if I was okay even after I’d told her I was fine several times. Then Butterscotch’s car pulled up to the parking lot but was stopped by one of the uniformed ponies. “That’s Scotch,” I said to lilac, pointing towards her vehicle. “Looks like they don’t want to let her in. Can you do something? Let them know she’s okay to come in?” Lilac went to stand up, but before she left, Butterscotch pulled past the uniformed ponies and drove around the parking lot and towards us.

“Guess she didn’t like what they told her,” Lilac said, and waved at Butterscotch.

Butterscotch pulled up and got out of her car, rushing over to me as I sat there with my injured hoof stuck out awkwardly. I couldn’t exactly stand up at the moment, so she got down to my level and threw her hooves around me. She was shaking. “Blue, you’re okay, thank Celestia you’re okay,” she whimpered. “I saw the fire as I was driving in to pick you up and I didn’t know what was going on. Are you hurt? What’s wrong with your leg?”

“I’m okay, really. I just hurt my leg, hit it on something. One of the medics said I’d just bruised it.” I twisted my leg back and forth, showing off the boot. “She gave me this fancy thing. I think it makes me look kinda cool,” I tried for some levity.

“Lilac?” Somepony said from behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw an older stallion approaching. He was wearing a tee shirt and jeans, but from how Lilac looked at him I guessed he was important. “What the hay is happening?”

“I have no idea, I just got here a minute ago. Blue was trapped in there, but I think everypony else got out okay.” Lilac looked towards the fire as she spoke to the buck. “I don’t know what caused this, it had to have been something bad though if the suppression system failed.”

Suppression system? Wait… “Hey, I think the ammunition was cooking off in there. It sounded like one hell of a firefight from where I was,” I said from where I sat nearby. “Could have prevented the fire from getting doused completely.”

The buck came up to me and looked me over. “Don’t think we’ve met. I’m the store manager, Toro. Your name’s Blue?” He noticed my hoof in the boot. “You were trapped in there? Was anypony else with you?”

“No sir,” I answered politely. “I was in the break room and got scared when the alarm went off, so I hid. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? What for? I’m just glad you’re alive. Did you get checked out by the paramedics?” He gestured to the boot. “What happened to your hoof?”

“Not sure, the medic said it was just bruised and I should keep my weight off of it for a while.” I felt tired of all the questions, but figured it was in my best interest to answer anything he asked me. He was my boss, after all, even if this was the first time I’d ever met him. “I’m still kind of confused about what happened, but somepony came in and saved me. He was wearing a bright orange suit.”

“Firefighter,” he replied. “That’s their job. I’m glad you got out okay. And you’re sure nopony else was in there with you?”

“Certain,” I replied. “I was just about to leave for the day. Nopony else was in the back.”

“Okay. Okay. Well, I’m going to go check on everypony else. Damn what a mess. I’ll call you about what the verdict is once I have a clue, Lilac. Get this mare someplace away from all this, yeah?” He said to Lilac before heading towards another part of the parking lot where there was another big vehicle.

“Mind giving us a lift, Scotchy?” Lilac asked.

…

“Casa-del-Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.26 6:30 PM

We arrived at Butterscotch’s condo and went inside. I was exhausted, so laid down on the couch in the den. Butterscotch brought me a glass of water as Lilac sat down nearby.

On the car ride over I’d explained everything I could. Butterscotch was convinced I’d had a bad reaction to hearing the alarm, and I had to agree. Looking at her now, she had that same concerned look on her face that I never liked to see. “Thanks. I’m okay, I promise, Scotch. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you’ll be fine, because I’m gonna make sure of it,” she replied, sitting in a chair next to Lilac. “You’ve been through hell these past few weeks, and now you got caught in a fire like that. It ain’t fair.” She was always so concerned for me, it really boggled my mind. What was I to her? It wasn’t like I meant anything to her. If anything, I was just a burden.

“What’s wrong, Blue?” Lilac asked me.

I looked up at both of them. I’d buried my face in my hooves without realizing. “I just… I’m just a little shook up, that’s all.” I forced myself to relax. “I guess I’ll need to see if Ash has any more work for me to do. I probably won’t be back to work at Plott’s for a while, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s gonna take a pretty long time to repair,” Lilac said. “Don’t suppose you could get me on with you? Ash always has some work available. Me and you would make one hell of a team.”

I was grateful they agreed to change the topic. Or at least Lilac had. “You hungry, Blue? Have you had anything to eat today?” Butterscotch asked.

“I’m definitely not hungry, no.” She seemed determined to make sure everything was absolutely perfect with me. It almost irritated me, but I couldn’t be mad at her for it. “I’m kind of tired, though.”

“You wanna go to bed? I’d say a night’s sleep would do you a lot of good,” Butterscotch said, getting up from her seat. “Here, I’ll help you.”

“Scotch, please. You’ve already done so much. You do too much, it’s kind of weird actually,” I said teasingly. “I should probably shower before I get in bed, though. I’m pretty filthy. And I won’t need your help with that, either. Unless you really want to.” And with that, I’d won.

…

After a warm shower I found I really did feel a lot better, and my hoof didn’t hurt nearly so bad. I dried myself off then went to bed. Lilac had left after I’d gone to my shower, stating she needed to find out where her truck was. Butterscotch was watching her television. She liked to watch police shows, which I guessed made sense, because she worked in corrections. Being a prison guard, she enjoyed militaria similarly to how Lilac and I did, but not to the same degree. She didn’t know much about tactics beyond how to stop somepony from moving, and how to track, but she was very knowledgeable about firearms, which I liked.

Thinking about Butterscotch would always make me feel somewhat odd. It was as if being around her was simultaneously exciting and terrifying. Why was that? And why did I think about her so often? She always did so much for me, cared so much. It reminded me in a way of Alpha Thirteen. Thirteen had been my superior in the Service, but she’d never really done a lot for me, not like Butterscotch was doing. Come to think of it, the only time anyone ever cared for me to nearly the same degree was…

…

“We’re bingo fuel, Chief.”

“Yeah, I’m guns dry. Anybody left on the ground?”

“Nope, we’re out here on our own.”

“Can we RTB?”

“They’re between us and home, Chief. Can’t get high enough with them there.”

“Get around them then?”

“Trying to. Hold on. Missile lock. Missile lock… Missile lock. They’re sending their entire payload at us looks like.”

“Go evasive. Get away from the salvo.”

“We have no countermeasures left. Winchester all. Twenty seconds. You gotta get out of here, Chief.”

“No, not without you.”

“You’re too important, Chief. You gotta go.”

“Not without you. You’re all I have left. I can’t be the last one standing.”

“Don’t worry, I have a plan. I’ll see you on the other side, Chief. It’s been an honor. Delta Three, Zero Two out.”

>Gunner Compartment One jettisoned.
>Master Caution: Engine fire.
>Critical failure.
>Impact imminent.

…

I woke screaming at the top of my lungs for Number Two. I flung myself from my bed and into the floor, hitting my injured hoof against the bedframe. I’d dreamt of when I’d lost my cruiser, along with the last remaining member of my team.

As I lay there on the floor, shaking and crying, Butterscotch came rushing in. “Blue! Blue, it’s okay. I’m here. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” She picked me up and helped me back to the bed, where I sat down.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked her.

“Did you have a nightmare?” She asked in reply. I took a moment to collect myself, then tried to explain what I’d dreamt. It was difficult to explain.

“The fire alarm sounded a lot like that missile lock alarm. I guess that made me dream about… that.” I stayed quiet for a moment, and Butterscotch put her hoof around my shoulder. She was usually uncomfortable about my nudity, but apparently she didn’t care at the moment.

“You’re okay, Blue. You’re safe now. I’m sorry, I can’t imagine what that was like, losing him like that.” She pulled me into a sideways hug. “This is why I care about you, Blue. It’s just like I said. You’ve been through hell, and I want to help.”

I leaned into the hug, and let my emotions flow. I hated it. How out of control I felt, how easily I fell apart. But I was glad to have her. She made things easier. “What time is it?” I asked after I’d calmed down a bit.

“About two in the morning, I think,” she answered. “You want anything?”

“I don’t want to be alone right now,” I said shakily. “I’m sorry I’m such a burden.”

“You ain’t a burden. You’re important, whether you believe it or not.” She got up from where she sat next to me. “Come on, let’s go sit in the living room.” She helped me to my hooves. I winced when I put weight on my injured hoof, so she helped me hobble along until we got to the couch, where she helped me sit down, before sitting next to me.

We sat like that for a while, in the quiet and the dark. Then she put her hoof around me again, and I leaned into her embrace.

“I’m glad you care,” I said. “I just wish I knew why.”

She stayed quiet for a moment, then explained, “I care because I understand what you’re going through. Maybe not completely, but I do get it a little bit. Me and my dad left Saddle Arabia when I was very little. We had to leave behind everything, and flee the country. When we got to Equestria, I felt scared, and alone. I needed somepony I could trust, somepony to rely on, and that had been my dad.

“He taught me right from wrong, taught me to be good and true, to never hurt another pony that didn’t deserve it. And what you’ve gone through reminds me of that, somehow. So I wanna be there for you.” She looked at me. “You’re an interesting mare, but just because you’re different doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. If you won’t let me care for you for your sake, at least let me do it for my own.”

I considered what she said, and relaxed into her embrace further, laying my head on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

“Sure thing, Blue.”

…

Ponyville General Hospital
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.27 9:30 AM

We’d stayed together for the rest of the night like that, with me eventually falling asleep in Butterscotch’s hooves there on the couch. I slept dreamlessly, which was what I needed.

Now we were visiting Doctor Clarity, as I’d had an appointment today anyway. I’d explained what had happened the day prior. “One crisis after another, it would seem,” he said after I’d finished. “The alarm really bothered you, and that makes sense. It reminded you of a traumatic experience, and triggered your fight-or-flight response.”

Butterscotch was in the waiting room outside the doctor’s office, which I didn’t like. I’d wanted her in here with me, but that wasn’t an option. I’d become slightly less untrusting of Doctor Clarity, but he still creeped me out a little. “It sounded exactly like the missile lock alarm in my cruiser. So I thought I was in my cruiser, about to be hit by a missile salvo. I even had a nightmare about it last night.” He wrote that down on the paper in front of him.

“I’m glad you made it out of that fire relatively unscathed. Your hoof really is okay?” He asked. “We can have it looked at by someone with a little more professional expertise than an overworked paramedic, if you like.”

“I’ll be okay. As long as I don’t touch it or move it or do anything to it at all, it doesn’t hurt.” I looked at the hoof in question, in its goofy boot that made walking less painful, if a little awkward.

“If you insist,” the doctor replied. “I also have something else I’d like to do today, if you don’t mind.” He pulled a framed paper off the wall and set it on the desk in front of me. “This is my medical license. Without it, I’d have nothing.” I looked at it, and then at him, curious where he was going with all this. “Legally, if I disclose anything we discuss here, not only would I lose that license, I’d also likely get many, many years behind bars.” He paused for a beat, then continued, “I know you’re afraid to trust me, Miss Blue, but please, if you won’t take my word for it, at least know that there’s genuinely no way I could disclose anything you tell me here without putting everything I hold dear into jeopardy.”

Then he pulled something out of a box in the corner. “If you’re willing, I’d like to get a better look at your memories. This device works similarly to that spell you cast on me when we met. It simply projects anything you think of.” It was a helmet with a wire feeding from it to a device with a lens on it. “It should help me better understand your past. Would you like to try it?”

I considered the strange device for a moment. He was desperate, I could tell. He wanted more information on what all I’d gone through, but if I told him, I feared he’d turn me in to the government, or something. But he had said all that about the laws… An idea. “Before we do, I’d like to ask Butterscotch to confirm what you just said, about your license and all that.”

“Sure, that’ll be fine.” He got up and brought Scotch in.

I asked scotch about what the doctor had said. “Uh, yeah, that’s majorly illegal. He could wind up with decades on his sentence. Patient confidentiality is taken very seriously,” Butterscotch explained. “If he’s willing to sacrifice all that just to show you off, you’re really something special, Blue,” she teased.

“See? I’m not the enemy, Miss Blue,” Doctor Clarity said.

“Okay. Thanks, Scotch.” She nodded and left the room again. “So, under threat of a fate worse than death, you’re bound to secrecy. I guess I’ll wear your weird device.”

The doctor chuckled softly. “Yes, a fate worse than death. That’s putting it mildly.” He floated the helmet apparatus onto my head. It was a little loose. He then plugged the other device into a socket in the wall. “Okay. How this works is, it casts a very simple spell that’s not unlike the spell you cast, like I said. It’s going to project anything you want it to. Think about your past, and anything that might have been traumatic, if you can. If at any point you feel uncomfortable, just let me know, or take the helmet off.”

I nodded my head. “Ready.” He nodded as well, and flicked a switch on the projector with his hoof. On the wall the projector faced appeared exactly what I saw at present. Then it doubled, and doubled again, and I closed my eyes.

“Okay, it tends to do that. Just keep your eyes shut if you like. That may help.” I thought about what he wanted me to think about. He wanted me to remember traumatic experiences. I thought about the fire, and how that made me feel. That reminded me of my dream, and so I thought about that.

…

The Revenant flew silently over the city, its engines pushing it low to the ground. “Entering the merge,” the captain said over her Uplink. “Looks like a heavy, maybe a Sixer or something. Hold on. Something else is coming in. Eleven-oh-clock, high. Angels eighty-five, looks like seventy miles out, feet wet.”

“Tally. Bring her ‘round, Chief,” the gunner said. He and the captain were the only two on board, the rest of the crew having been ordered off the ship. “Okay, eyes on. Firing on target one.” The gunner fired, and six thirty-millimeter cannons spun up and began sending thousands of rounds at the fighter. It was shredded.

“Good hits, target destroyed. Got another coming in, same as number two. Hold. Got another contact, directly above us.” The radar showed solid red. “It’s bigger than us. Can’t get a read on what it is or where it’s at.”

“I see it,” the gunner said in reply. “That’s a siege ship, Chief. They’re going to glass the city. Looks like a yankee ship. Got anything new on target two?”

“Negative, holding position. Definitely another sixer. Probably called in our coordinates for the big guy. We got anything to scare him off?” The captain began piloting the cruiser higher into the air to get a closer look at the giant ship overhead. It was larger than most mountains, and cast a shadow over the entire city below.

“Not really. Could do some gun runs on it, maybe piss it off. We’re outgunned here for sure.”

“Okay. Let me switch with you.”

“Affirmative.” The gunner and captain switched places.

“I’m going to need you to orbit at thirty, maybe thirty five. I’ll be calling for inversions on occasion, can you do that?”

“Yeah.”

…

I opened my eyes. I looked at Doctor Clarity. “Was that your ship again? The Revenant?” He asked me.

“Yeah, and the other person was Caveman, or Delta-Three-dash-Zero-Two. He was the second-to-last member of my team to die.” I made the conscious decision not to look at the projection. “I was the last.”

“You certainly don’t look dead,” he said to me.

“Death doesn’t really apply to me the same as it did to him, or to you. You can copy a program and put it somewhere else, then delete that copy. The original still remains. So then it can never die, and neither can I. Surely they won’t be making any new copies of me though, so I am effectively dead.” I looked at the pictures of his family, and he watched the projection.

“It’s fascinating to see what you saw, though. Was that really how you saw things? Everything, all at once?” He asked me.

“When I was connected to the Revenant, yeah. The ship had its own surveillance system, so I could just watch everything through that and piece together a cohesive image from what I saw.”

“And that person piloting the ship, that was you? Before you switched, I mean?” He was writing something else down now.

“In a way, I guess it was. To use the computer analogy again, that was the storage media I was stored on at the time.” I thought about how the tether worked. “Imagine your consciousness being transmitted from one place to another, so that you can be somewhere without actually being there.”

“A very… alien concept, but I think I follow. Mostly,” he replied. The doctor put his notepad down and looked at me. “Was that the traumatic experience you were reminded of when you heard the fire alarm?”

“No. The… trauma came after.”

…

The Revenant was soaring straight up through the clouds, towards the massive siege machine that hovered above.

“We’re bingo fuel, Chief,” the man said to the captain, whom was currently occupying the gunner seat.

“Yeah, I’m guns dry,” she replied, scanning the ground through her gunner scope. “Anybody left on the ground?”

“Nope, we’re out here on our own.” The two of them were indeed alone. There was only the siege machine above.

“Can we RTB?” She asked, turning her scope towards the south.

“They’re between us and home, Chief.” The man turned the ship hard to the side, and the vast ship above them reacted with agility far too quick for its size, moving to keep them trapped beneath. “Can’t get high enough with them there.”

“Go around?” She asked him.

“Trying, hold on.” A loud ringing alarm sounded throughout the cabin. “Missile lock.” The alarm doubled, then tripled in a near-deafening cacophony of chaotic sound. “Missile lock. Missile lock… They’re sending their entire payload at us, looks like.”

“Go evasive,” she said in reply, watching missile after missile leave the giant ship overhead. “Get away from the salvo.”

“We have no countermeasures left. Winchester all,” he said in a resigned tone. Then he smiled. “Twenty seconds. You gotta get out of here, Chief.”

“No, not without you,” she said, turning away from her display to look at him.

“You’re too important, Chief.” He took a small chain out of his pocket and handed it to her. On it was a thin plastic disc. “You gotta go.”

“Not without you,” She begged as she held his hand to her chest. “You’re all I have left. I can’t be the last one standing.”

“Don’t worry, I have a plan.” He looked at her, with his easy-going smile. “I’ll see you on the other side, chief.” He freed his hand from hers and placed it on the eject switch for the gunner position. “It’s been an honor. Delta Three, Zero Two, out.” He flipped the switch, and the woman, along with the entire gunner position, was jettisoned out of the cruiser and into the empty air below.

She watched as she fell. Above, the Revenant soared higher and higher, its engines roaring to full power. It quickly gained incredible speed. As it neared the giant siege machine, it banked hard to the right, and maneuvered towards the front of the ship. It then soared past the nose of the thing, before the engines shut off.

She struck the ground with such force that her vision failed. She saw the readouts from the ship in her Uplink feed.

>Gunner Compartment One jettisoned.
>Master Caution: Engine fire.
>Critical failure.
>Impact imminent.

…

“I see. That missile lock alarm sounded identical to the fire alarm.” Doctor Clarity looked solemnly at me. “Was that how you lost your friend?”

“He did something we called the suicide feint.” I shook my head. “Caveman… we always joked with him for being kind of slow, but I always knew he was smarter than he lead others to believe. To pull off a suicide maneuver one has to get above the target, then cut power and let their ship fall to the planet below. Then, as the enemy reacts, you watch for when they enter the merge and begin rotation lock, and gun them down. It’s called the suicide feint because if you mess up, you’ll fall to the ground and die.”

“Sounds complex. Caveman was your friend, then?”

“More than a friend. When you spend years with someone, fighting by their side, protecting one another, keeping each other safe, you become more than friends. I don’t know what you could call it. I called him my brother.” I felt myself begin to shake again.

“Okay, Miss Blue. I think that’s told me a fair bit. Let’s take a break for now.” He sighed, and removed the apparatus from my head. His hooves wiped tears from my face. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It’s bittersweet,” I said after I calmed a bit. “I know where he is now. I don’t know how it works here, but back home, after a living thing like a person dies, they awake in a paradise.”

“A paradise?” He asked.

“Yes. I’ve been there myself, it’s a real place. Can visit the gates themselves. But somebody like me can never go inside, because I haven’t got a soul.” Heaven was where they all were now, and even though I knew I’d never be able to get inside, I still wished to see them all again. “There’s a saying we had in the Service, called the Melancholy. Try as you might, you can never stop circling the flame. And someday, it’ll burn you up.”

“You’re the last one left, then?” He was speaking softly, gently. He’d stopped doing anything but speaking to me.

“A Juggernaut never dies. That’s just a fact. My teammates were the first to ever actually die, in the entire history of the J.C.S. One by one we were killed off. The first two were freak accidents, really. But after that... well. I won’t go all conspiracy theorist on you. Suffice to say, it is no small shame to be the last of your team left standing. It’s… unheard of.”

“Juggernauts, then? That’s what you were called?”

“In the service, yes. We each retired, after learning a little too much. Then we were picked off, one by one. That siege ship was there for me. Caveman wasn’t the target. Caveman could’ve survived.” I began crying again. “Stupid idiot. Just had to leave me behind like that…”

“Hush now. Here, let’s get you calmed down, and then you can have a nice restful day with Butterscotch.” He offered me a bottled water. I accepted it, thanking him.

I’d need a lot more than some water to calm my nerves.

4: Getting Up To Speed

Author's Note

Disclaimer: Guns and in-depth gun-related content ahead.

4: Getting Up To Speed

“Tell me one good reason I should let her enlist.”

“With all due respect, Thirteen, tell me one good reason you shouldn’t? She was built for this. It’s what she’s made for.”

“She wasn’t built for anything. She was a prototype, at best a showcase, a look-and-see type of thing. She’s not meant for this sort of work.”

“Her sister was identical to her in every conceivable way. She singlehandedly-“

“We’re not discussing Number Six, here. We’re discussing Number Eight.”

“Yes, madam. Forgive me. All I’m saying is, she’s every right to enlist as anyone else. More motive than anyone else too, I think. After all, you had similar motives, did you not?”

“My motives- That’s hardly relevant. Yes, she has the same rights as anybody else. That doesn’t mean she should.”

“And you can make that decision for her? What about the ones that came before her? Echo One through Seven? You didn’t care about them, even as we scrapped their frames for parts and wiped them from existence. Why is this one so special?”

“She’s special because of what she is. Because of what we did. What I allowed to happen.”

“Give her a chance. She’ll be under my tutelage, she’ll be fine. You’ve known me since the beginning.”

“I have known you since the beginning. That’s why I worry about you.”

...

“Casa del Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.28 9:30 AM

Sleep was a peculiar thing. On one hoof, I craved it, because of the rest it provided. On the other, I loathed it, because of the repetitive nightmares I had as I slept. My mind always returned to my past as I slept. A past that was full of nightmares.

Doctor Clarity had explained much in our meeting. I was suffering from a definite case of something called post-traumatic stress disorder. It was not uncommon in Equestria, he’d explained, what with the war and all. And though my particular circumstances were far afield, the majority of Doctor Clarity’s other patients had similar symptoms, or so he’d said. Furthermore, he’d also explained that those other patients were medicated, and were living happy, successful lives because of it. I again expressed my uncertainty, due to the wariness Butterscotch had shown in regard to medication.

Butterscotch was at work now, and so I was alone. With Plott’s all but destroyed, I was presently without a job, and so I remained in bed when morning came. I found it difficult to stay there, however, not only because of my nightmares, but also more mundane, natural needs.

Once my business was done, I’d decided to attempt browsing the internet. I’d had a small crash course on how to use it from Lilac, but she’d shown me on her phone. Butterscotch had shown me how to operate her computer, and she was able to access the internet on it, so it stood to reason I could too. As I sat down in front of her office desk, I looked at the thing in front of me. A flat display showed an assortment of icons across a field of gradient blues and greens. I looked for one called internet, but saw nothing of the sort, until I came across an icon in the bottom left of the screen which was called ‘Intertrot Explorer.’

It was a close enough match. Now I had to figure out how to operate the thing. Tapping the screen with my hoof provided no result at all. Then I looked closer at the keyboard in front of me. It appeared identical to the ones I’d used back home. The sort that had been around for centuries. I was still uncertain with much of Equestrian language, but it was similar enough to English that I could approximate the meaning of most things. So then, this keyboard was surely meant to be used the same as the ones I’d used back home.

Finding the arrow keys, I pressed one and an icon was highlighted. I maneuvered my way down to the Intertrot Explorer icon, then pressed the enter key. The display changed to a readout with various reports on worldly news, weather, and the like. There was an entry field with the universal symbol for search next to it; a magnifying glass. I attempted using the arrow keys again, but failed to render any results. In my activity however, I saw I’d moved the device to the right of the keyboard, and as I did, so too did a small arrow shape on the screen. Moving it again, I saw that the little device did indeed control that small pointer. I directed it to the search icon, but pressing the enter key then produced no result. This was bound to be a steep learning curve.

…

After much trial and error, I’d learned to use the machine well enough to access a few sites. At first, I’d tried searching for the J.C.S. but putting Juggernaut Combat Services into the search query offered zero results. Upon searching for Amethyst Group, I was presented with information on purple rocks. No joy there either. Then I happened upon a site which let me watch videos based upon my searches. I reacted to the first few by trying to reply to the individual on the screen, but quickly found it was merely a playback, the pony on the screen wasn’t able to respond to me.

I spent most of the day doing that, educating myself on various things, ranging from machines, to aviation, to Equestrian history. It passed the hours quickly, and soon I heard the garage door raise and a vehicle enter.

I got up from the desk and went to the door leading into the garage, which was in the back of the kitchen. I opened the door and sure enough, there was Butterscotch getting out of her car. “Welcome home,” I said to her.

“Oh, hey Blue- Oh, you’re still… uh. Hang on a second,” she replied, then tapped a device on the inside of her car. The garage door began to close, and she shut the door to her car and approached me. “C’mon, let’s get inside. It’s been a long day.”

I turned and walked back inside, and waited for her to come in. She seemed to have hesitated at the threshold, as she was just closing the door to into the garage as I reached the other side of the room and turned to face her. “Something the matter?” I asked her.

“You really don’t like wearing clothes, do you?” She replied, smiling sheepishly at me. I hadn’t even thought of putting clothes on today, considering I had nowhere to go. I told her as much, to which she replied, “I guess that makes sense, no reason you can’t go around in just your coat while you’re at home. Still, kinda unusual.”

“I rarely wore clothes back home,” I explained as we entered the den after Butterscotch put her jacket down on a counter. “I would either occupy my cruiser, or something called a unit. Think ah, remote control body. It would have its own exterior casement which could identify me clearly enough. I only wore a uniform on occasion, for more official purposes.”

“What did you look like, exactly? Back then, I mean,” She asked me after a pause. She’d sat in her usual chair at one side of the room, and I laid down on the couch.

“I looked… however I wanted, I guess. I opted for a humanoid appearance, of course. The better to associate with the people I worked with. But as far as any specific identifying feature… I really didn’t have any. I was identified by simply being what I was. There wasn’t anyone else like me, so it wasn’t hard to spot me in a crowd, so to speak.”

“And you never had to wear clothes?” She asked, furrowing her brow.

“That’s right. Like I said, if I ever occupied a unit, it would have a sort of exterior appearance that marked me from the rest. This isn’t very easy to explain, I’m sorry.” Communicating the intricacies of my past were never easy, not for me or my audience.

“It’s okay,” she answered. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, if you’re happier like that I won’t stop you. But if somepony else visits- oh, speaking of which, Lilac’s coming over tonight. She’ll be by soon actually, so you may want to get dressed.”

“Alright.”

…

In the time I’d put on my usual black shirt and beige pants, Lilac had indeed arrived. As I stepped out of my room to greet her, I immediately noticed how drained she looked. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and her stance was slouched. She greeted me with a smile, none the less. “Hey Blue! How you holding up?”

“I’m doing alright, thanks,” I said, offering her a hoof bump. “What about you? You look… tired.”

She accepted the hoof bump, replying, “I am tired. I’ve been pretty stressed out over everything that’s happening with Plott’s. They’re thinking it may have been arson, you know that?”

We sat down on the couch. “Arson?” I asked her as we got settled.

“Yeah, arson. They said the fire suppression system never activated. What’s more, Buckeye hasn’t been seen since Friday.” She looked down at her hooves. “Ash isn’t happy about that. Can’t say I blame him.”

“Not since Friday? Did he go to the party?” Butterscotch asked.

“No, he said he wasn’t going again, not after that one guy got their wallets mixed up. Shit,” Lilac said. “Damn it. What the hell is going on… Oh, Blue, I’m just glad you made it out okay.” She turned to face me directly. “I swear, when they catch the star-fucked bastard that set that fire, I’m going to personally perforate his ass with some nice seven-six-two sized holes, just for you.”

“That’s really not, I mean… Uh, thanks Lilac. I’m glad I’m okay, too. I guess?” I wasn’t sure how to reply to that. She really did look distraught.

“Yeah, maybe leave the corrections to the corrections department, huh?” Butterscotch laughed. “If you kill him, then it’s your ass in the lockup, hot-shot.”

“You’re such a spoil sport, Scotch. Go rut a cactus or something.”

…

We spent the better part of an hour talking about various things. I’d described my experiences on the internet, and received a few helpful tips from the two mares. Then the topic turned to me, specifically.

“Hey, Blue,” Lilac said, grabbing my attention in her tone of voice. She sounded pensive. “What all, exactly, did you do back in your uh… past life?” Always with the past. I guess it made sense they were curious.

“Ask anything,” I said. “I did all sorts of things. In the first few weeks of my existence, I was an experiment. Then, for six years I was a civilian, and another six years after that I was a sister as well. Then my sister… disappeared. So I enlisted with the Service.”

“The Service. You say that like it’s something big. I get that it was a military kind of thing, yeah?”

“Right. More or less. The J.C.S. commissioned my creation. They also commissioned my sister. She was called Vincent Six. When she went missing, I enlisted, hoping to find out where she was.” I paused, sighing.

“Sorry, shit I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask you about this shit, I know you’re kinda trying to deal with it and all right now,” Lilac said in a rush. “I’m just kinda curious about you is all.” She looked away from me.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it with you.” I thought back to my days in Delta Three. “It’s not like I did anything extraordinary in the Service. I was technically just part of a reconnaissance team. We did the recon thing. Occasionally we also got to make some noise. For the most part, though, nobody even knew we existed. And now, there’s no record of us at all. Aside from me, of course, and I’m a universe away.”

“Recon? That’s not a very…. High speed kind of job, is it?” Lilac asked me.

“High speed?” Butterscotch asked her.

“Yeah, you know. High speed shit.” She made various gestures with her hooves that resembled maneuvering a rifle and looking overtly sneaky.

“I don’t… what? Lilac you’re weird, you know that?” Butterscotch said.

“Nah, just damaged.” Lilac turned back to me. “Don’t worry about it, Blue. Whatever you’ve been through, you’re here now. And I’m glad you’re okay, okay?”

...

“Casa del Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.29 10:00 AM

Lilac had chosen to stay with us at Buttercotch’s place, sleeping on the couch. She woke several times in the night, which I noticed largely because I too woke several times in the night. I didn’t get out of bed, however.

Now it was morning, and I was getting tired of laying around. I got dressed in my usual attire and left my room. Lilac was sitting on the couch, looking no more rested than she had the night prior. “Hey, Blue. Sleep well?” She asked me. Her tone sounded cheerful, but I was still skeptical.

“Not really, but I never do. You look like you haven’t slept at all,” I said, opting for a direct approach.

“I’ll be fine, just stressed out. This shit’s got me all kinds of pent up, need a distraction.” She had in her hoof a device which I’d learned controlled the display in the den, something called a television. The display was off, though. “Was thinking about checking up with Ash and company today. Wanna tag along?”

It was an enticing offer. While my day of internet browsing had been interesting, it hadn’t exactly proven productive enough for my liking. Ash likely had work I could do, and that was something I definitely had a more vested interest in. “I could do that, sure. When do you want to go?”

“I’ll call ahead to see if we’re okay to visit. He might be busy today, don’t know. Everything’s so crazy right now,” she said, looking past me.

I walked over and sat next to her. “We don’t have to do anything today if you don’t want to. If you want to just relax, that’s fine by me.” She looked exhausted there on the couch, as she again seemed to stare right through me.

“Uh… Yeah… No, no. I’m good. It’ll do me some good to go do something today actually. I don’t like to be idle,” she said, looking at the blank television screen. “Sooner I find some income the better, too. I don’t think Plott’s will be open again anytime soon, you know.”

So, then. Ash’s place it was.

…

Ash Residence, Ponyville
d3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.28 10:45 AM

Arriving at Ash’s house, we found Walnut to already be outside, doing something with a machine I couldn’t identify. It looked like a hydraulic press that’d been laid on its side, with a blade affixed to it. He left the machine and approached us.

The outside air was cold, and as I stepped out of Lilac’s truck, I lamented my lack of any sort of a jacket. “Hey, girls. Y’all holding up all right?” Walnut asked, looking at me.

“I’m doing fine, yeah. Blue’s the one you gotta watch out for, though. Totally hardcore. I don’t think you ever found out what she did at the party, did you Wally?” Lilac replied, bumping his hoof.

Walnut continued to look at me. “You holding up okay, Blue? Really, I mean. What happened… that’s some messed up stuff.”

I nodded, smiling at him. “Yeah, yeah. It shook me up pretty bad, but I made it out fine, so I’m okay. We’re actually here because, well, we’re out of work.”

Lilac looked at me, then to Walnut. “Is the boss in?” She asked him.

“Yeah, c’mon inside.” He lead us in through the back of the house. The back door opened into a kitchen the size of Butterscotch’s den. The floor was beige tiles, and the cabinets were beautiful cherry wood. The ceiling, I noted, was hardwood, with exposed rafters. Beyond the kitchen was a sort of sitting area, with chairs and a couch, and a wood stove furnace on the exterior wall. The floor was hardwood there. The two stallions that had been present that night at the party were standing there in that room. They had the same suits on, like it was a uniform or something.

“Dad’s probably in his office. I’ll see if he can talk.” Walnut pointed to the seats in the room with the two suits. “Hang out here, I’ll be back in a bit.” With that, he walked through an open doorway towards the other side of the house.

We sat down on the couch and Lilac took out her phone. I looked at the two standing there. They were stood next to a staircase leading up to an unlit upstairs area. I could see there was a desk up there, but couldn’t identify more. I caught one of them looking at me, and decided not to look up the stairs anymore.

After a minute or so Walnut returned and gestured for us to follow. We got up and followed him past the two stallions in suits and through the doorway he’d went through. The next room appeared to be a dining room, with a large table in the center and seats all around. There was a piano in the corner with several books sitting atop it. Following Walnut through that room, we came through a closed breezeway which connected the two wings of the house. The set of glass double-doors ahead had two more bucks standing in front of it. They too were wearing similar suits. They opened the doors to the next room, and Lilac and I walked in. Walnut turned and went back the other way.

This room was clearly a study, with book cases lining nearly every wall, another wood stove furnace on an exterior wall with a section of stone floor around it, a door and a staircase leading up on the opposite wall to that, and a desk at the far wall from where we entered.

Ash sat at that desk now, looking at a book. He looked up, and greeted us. “Hello there, ladies. It’s good to see you, I’m glad you’re doing well.” He got up and walked around his desk to us. “I heard you got caught in that fire, Blue, I really am glad to see you’re all right,” he said, taking my hooves in his. “Tell me, what can I do for you today? Just a social call, or is this business?”

“Let’s call it business,” Lilac said. “We’re out of work, was wondering if you had anything available.”

Ash pondered this for a moment as I looked around the room some more. I was still a bit uncertain on some of Equestrian language, but I was catching on quickly. He appeared to have books on everything from Aetherological science and geology to high fantasy and science fiction. I couldn’t identify the book on his desk.

“Yeah, actually. Ah, where is that young’un,” Ash said as he went to the door we came in through and opened it. “Go get Wally for me, would you?” He said to one of the bucks standing on the other side. He nodded and went on his way. “He swears we don’t have enough wood split to last us this winter,” Ash said as he shut the door and returned to speak with us. He gestured to seats near the unlit fireplace. “I think he just hates to stay still.”

“You don’t say?” Lilac said.

…

We sat there for a short while as we waited for Walnut to return. Once he did, Ash asked him to go to the other room and get something, which he did. When he returned, he had with him a folder. Ash took it in his magic and opened it up.

“This is a job we’ve had for a few weeks, just haven’t gotten around to it yet. It’s something we used to do a lot of.” He shuffled some of the documents around in the folder. “Essentially it’s the same work you and Wally did Saturday, Blue. You’ll be going to a sort of frontier town to the west a ways, and you’ll bring back a load of steel. There’s a shop here in town that you’ll take it to. Ask for Beowulf, they’ll know what you mean. You’ll leave the trailer there, and the job’s done. Six hundred bits.”

He hoofed over a paper with a list on it and some addresses. I didn’t recognize the addresses, save that one was in Ponyville. I floated it over to Lilac. “That’s… a solid two hundred miles, boss. There’s not a closer supplier than that?”

“Not for the materials listed there, no. What you’ll do is match the manifesto of the shipment to that list. If anything’s not right, come straight home, don’t pick up the shipment.” He looked at Walnut. “You think you can get your army pal in on this one? He was a great help last time.”

“Who, Rolo? Yeah, I think he’s in town right now. I’ll hunt him down and see if he’s up for it.”

Lilac got my attention and pointed out some of the items on the list. There were items like “RecL, RecU, and BarA” on the list. Lilac gave me a raised brow. I just shrugged, and she smiled and nodded her head.

“All good, then?” Ash asked. “I will warn you, the folk out there aren’t exactly civil. The last time we did this job we had an issue with the locals and had to back out. Things have reportedly gotten worse since then, but we’re the only group doing this kind of work around here.”

“This kind of work… Usually demands a degree of insurance,” I said to him. “I don’t suppose you have anything like that for us?”

Lilac looked at me. “Blue, it’s kind of an off the books deal. There’s not really a benefits program or anything.”

Ash just smiled and nodded his head. “I was going to get to that. I’ll be right back.

He got up and went back to the room Walnut got the folder from. I heard what sounded like something heavy being moved, then heard it again. Then he returned, with four rifles and four green ammo cans in his magic. “Know how to use these?” He asked me and Lilac.

Lilac groaned but nodded. “I had to use one for years. Don’t like ‘em, but I can use ‘em.”

I recognized it immediately. It was, to me, an ancient design. The AR-15-style rifle was ubiquitous in that it saw action in so many theaters in the past. It was eventually usurped by newer, more refined designs, but the rifle never really did fall from popularity. I gestured for one to be hoofed over to me, and he floated it over. Taking it in my magic, I checked if it was loaded. It was not. I then studied it as it floated in front of me. It was relatively basic, with no accessory rails or any kind of optic. I pointed the rifle towards an exterior wall away from everypony else and looked down the sights. Standard sights, the kind the rifle was first issued with. I looked on the lower receiver and saw only two pins. Not an automatic. “This is fine,” I said.

“Insurance?” Lilac asked as one was given to her. “I guess that’s insurance, kind of.”

…

“Casa del Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.29 12:00 PM

We would be heading out on Friday, which was okay. I got some more time to explore the internet at Butterscotch’s house. I had tried looking up the name of the town, but got nothing useful. The place was called Whisper Hollow, or just Whisper. I put in the address to the destination into the search function and got a map with directions, and studied that. It lacked some important details, like elevation, but I was able to gather that the town was in a region of mountains and forests. Similar to Ponyville, only more wooded and less developed.

After I’d done all I cared to do on the computer, I had lunch with Butterscotch and talked to her about the work I’d be doing. “There’s really no established authority out there,” she explained. “Folks just kind of take care of their own. I really don’t know much about the place.”

If there was any trouble, we’d been instructed to just leave. It sounded like trouble wasn’t very uncommon there. If there was trouble, I’d want to be ready. “Can you call Ash for me? I have something I need to ask him,” I asked her.

“Sure thing, Blue,” she answered, and got her phone out to dial the pony in question.

Once she’d made the call, she gave me the phone, and I left the room to talk to Ash. I was still a little uncertain on how to use a phone, but I understood how to talk through it. It rang once, then twice, then somepony picked up. “Ash residence, who’s calling?” A gruff male voice asked.

“Blue Moon, I’ve been hired to do a job for the boss. Needed to discuss something with him.”

“All right. Just a second.” I waited for a moment, then Ash’s voice came through the phone. “Blue? Everything okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just had a question. I’d like to get some experience operating that rifle before I head out tomorrow. Would that be possible?”

“Sure. We have a range here on the property, so just head on over and you can shoot it there. We have ammo to spare so don’t worry about that.”

So I’d have some range time with the rifle. I’d need it, surely.

…

Ash Residence, Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.29 1:00 PM

I’d gotten Butterscotch to drive me to Ash’s place as she went back to work to finish her shift. Arriving at the place, I could already hear the report of a rifle in the distance. I approached the front door and knocked, and one of the suits answered, waving me in. He lead me to the study, where Ash sat at one of the chairs near the fireplace, the rifle disassembled before him. “Hello, Blue,” he greeted me as I entered. The suit closed the door behind me.

“Hello.” I sat across from him in another chair. “That’s the rifle, then?” I asked.

“It is. Are you familiar with these?” He asked in return, floating the disassembled thing to me.

I took it in my magical grasp. “In theory. I’ve never actually used one, but they’re very common so I shouldn’t have any trouble with it.” I looked the rifle over. There was the upper and lower, the charging handle, the bolt carrier, the bolt group, and the trigger assembly, along with the grip and safety. I looked at Ash and he looked back expectantly. I nodded, getting the picture.

I began with the trigger assembly. The rifle had a drop-in assembly, which made the task easier. I slid it into place in the lower, then put the two pins into place. Looking closer, I found the assembly was still loose, and upon further inspection found two set screws inside the casement on either side of the assembly. I looked at Ash, and he floated over a small tool. I took the tool and used it to tighten the set screws, after which I found the assembly to be set firmly within the lower receiver. I checked that it operated correctly, pulling back the hammer and releasing it several times, being sure not to let it fall freely under the full power of the springs. The trigger had a very light pull, with no take-up and very little distance to return for the reset.

Next, I took a look at the safety and the grip. The safety was significantly larger than what I remembered it being, but that made sense considering it had to be manipulated by hooves rather than by thumbs. It looked like a normal AR-15 safety that’d been swelled into a sort of paddle shape. I slid it in through the left side of the receiver. Making sure it went in correctly was somewhat of a challenge, but I eventually discovered it had to be in the fire position to go in, then rotated to the safe position. Next I turned the entire thing upside down, careful to make sure nothing fell out, and looked at the grip and the safety detent. The detent was a very small piece of brass which I inserted into a small hole on the bottom of the receiver which would later be covered by the grip. Then, I took the safety detent spring and placed it in the grip, in a small hole. Carefully levitating the grip and spring, I slid them into place on the receiver. I then took the grip screw and screwed it into place.

I tested the safety to make sure it worked correctly, and it did. It was an unfortunate design flaw of the AR-15 that the safety had a ninety-degree throw. That was surely even more inconvenient for users that had hooves.

I set the lower down on a nearby chair and took to the upper receiver. I quickly went to putting the bolt carrier group together, but found that there was no firing pin. I mentioned this to Ash.

“Good eye. Yes, I keep the firing pins separate from the rifles when they’re in storage. We often have young colts and fillies here at the house, so it’s just an added measure of safety. Here,” he said, and floated the part in question out of a pocket in his shirt and over to me. I put it into place in the bolt and assembled the rest of the group, then put the charging handle into the upper, followed by the bolt carrier group.

Next, I took the lower, and lined up the pivot pin holes, then slid the pin into place. Then, making sure the bolt carrier group was completely seated within the upper receiver, I pivoted the upper down to mate it with the lower, and slid the second pin into place. I dry-fired the rifle a few times, making sure everything worked properly, then floated it over to Ash.

“Well done, you know your stuff. I’m particularly impressed you knew what to do with the trigger. Have you worked on these rifles before?” I’d never held an AR before. I told him as much. “Well, that’s surprising. You managed that like a pro.”

“I’ve spent thousands of hours around firearms, and I’ve read plenty about the AR platform. It’s an antiquated design, but it has done its fair share of work.”

“All right, then. I suppose you’re ready to shoot, then?” He asked me.

I nodded, and we got up from our seats.

…

We’d collected some ear muffs to protect our hearing – I hadn’t even thought of it, having never needed to protect my hearing before – and headed outside. Ash lead me up a path behind the house which lead to a gate. He opened the gate and we went through. I could hear more rifle fire in the distance ahead. We walked up a slight incline, and after a few minutes we reached an opening at the crest of the incline. There was a building here made largely of steel, it looked not unlike a barn. Behind that was an array of shooting lanes, one of which was occupied by a unicorn mare floating a rifle in front of her. Several ponies were here, all of them wearing the same suits. I gave in, I had to ask him.

“So, are these your employees or something?” I asked Ash, gesturing to all the suited bucks.

“In a way, yeah.” He lead me to the building and we went inside. There were a few vehicles, some more tractors like the ones he’d had back at his house, and a table with a pony sat at it. “They keep things nice and orderly around here. It’s always good to have ponies you can trust, and money helps with that. So yeah, I guess they’re my employees. Welcome to the range, Harbinger Ranch.”

“Harbinger Ranch?” I asked him. We approached the pony at the table, and she looked up at us. She was an older mare with a green coat and a blond mane.

“Howdy, boss, how can I help ya?” She asked Ash.

“Harbinger Ranch, that’s right. It’s our side project. Walnut’s idea, actually, but I liked it, so I capitalized on the opportunity to make it a reality. Now, here we are.” He addressed the mare at the table. “This is Miss Blue Moon. She’ll be taking the Rifle One course today, no charge.”

“On the house then, got it.” She got up and went to a room nearby. She came back out a moment later with an ammo can. “Here you go sir. Lane two’s open if you want to use it, or I can have lane one emptied.”

“Two is fine, thank you.” And with that, we went on through the building and out the other side, putting on our hearing protection as we exited.

At the furthest left shooting lane was the unicorn mare I’d seen from the distance. She’d stopped shooting and appeared to be reloading magazines. She looked over at us, and sat down what she was doing. Getting a closer look at her, I discovered she was in fact a he. His coat was a dark blue and his mane was a dark green which he had tied back in a particularly elegant fashion, with a braid along one side of his head which ran down to his shoulder. His face and the way he carried himself made him seem feminine, and I would have continued to mistake him for a mare, were it not for his muscular build.

He had on a well fitted pair of beige trousers not unlike mine, and a white tee. I noted he had an AR strapped to his back as he approached. “Hello, Ash. Good to see you. You’re rarely seen here.” He bumped Ash’s hoof. His voice was feminine too, and I noticed he had an accent. I couldn’t quite place it, though. I also noticed he was calling Ash by his name.

“Hello, Rolo. It’s good to see you as well. Rolo, this is Miss Blue Moon,” Ash said, gesturing to me. Rolo bumped my hoof as well. “She’s going to be working with you tomorrow, and wanted training. She’d apparently never seen an AR before today, if you can believe it.”

“Blue Moon? I think Walnut mentioned you before. Refugee, right?” He asked me.

I nodded. “Yeah, something like that. Just want to get used to life here in Equestria. Everypony here is so accommodating, it’s really nice.”

“Rolo and I are both from Saddle Arabia,” Ash explained. “A good friend of mine raised him here in Equestria after we fled the old country. Things really are just better here.”

Saddle Arabia again… It seemed I’d fallen in with a bunch of ponies from that place. “It’s nice to meet you, Rolo.” I said.

He nodded. “Tell you what, if you like I can take her through the course. I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, Ash.” Rolo looked me up and down. “You’re a bit small, though.”

I grinned at him. “The better to get around you.”

“Good, you’ll need to be agile to complete this course.” He nodded to Ash. “Anything else you need?”

“No, I think that’s everything. It’s a good thing you’re here, I’m not sure I’m up for the task of running this gauntlet with her.” Ash floated over the rifle and can of ammo. Rolo took it in his own glow, which was a light green. “She’s clever, so don’t go too easy.” And with that, he turned to leave.

…

Once we’d set up at the table, Rolo opened the ammo can, and I found that inside were several loaded magazines for the AR. “Is this the rifle you’ll be using tomorrow?” He asked me.

“Yes, Ash is providing all of us rifles like this, isn’t he?” I asked him, looking at the rifle as he floated it in front of him, cycling the bolt and the trigger.

“I’ll be using my own,” he said, nodding his head to the rifle on his back. It was an AR, but much more modern-looking than the one I’d been given. It had a shorter barrel with an accessory rail, and an optic. “It’s what I’m more accustomed to.”

“I see.”

“Well, Miss Blue, do you have experience with this sort of thing?” He asked me.

“Using a rifle? Yes.” I opted for a nondescript answer. If he inquired how I knew about rifles, I’d just make something up, like hunting or the like. He wasn’t in the loop, and it was best to keep it that way I figured.

“Okay. And you’re certain you can do this kind of thing?” He was looking at me, watching me. He didn’t trust me yet.

“Where I come from, certain lessons must be learned. I can hold my own. I’ve done it before.” I didn’t like being doubted.

“Alright.” He broke his stare and went over to the table. “Keep your muffs on, and stay behind me. I’m going to run the course first, and I want you to watch what I do. Then, you’ll do it yourself, with my tutelage.” He swung his rifle from his back with his magic and pulled a magazine out of nowhere. It simply popped into existence in the rifle. I wondered if I could do that?

He looked at me and I nodded, and he stepped forward into the range. There was a large array of targets set up, with various points of cover and the like dotted throughout the course. As I looked over the range, I thought I saw one of those changeling targets from Plott’s. I couldn’t be sure though, it was thoroughly shot up. Most of the targets were pony shaped, some stylized to look like aggressors with weapons, some looked like innocent civilians. I knew this kind of gauntlet.

Rolo touched something on his waist and readied his rifle. I stood behind him, to stay out of his way. Then there was a quiet little Beep! and he took off in a full sprint towards the first plywood blockade that served as cover. He dove to his knees sliding to a stop against the plywood, the rifle floating beside him, before raising the rifle up along with his head, sighting along the optic and shot at two targets at the other side of the barricade, about twenty yards away. They gave audible Ping! noises as he hit them.

He then rolled to his side, and as I watched he shot under the barricade at another target further away. It too rang out as he hit it. Getting up, he sprinted to the next point of cover, which was next to the first two targets he’d shot. This was a largely shot-through wall of cinderblocks, and he leveled his rifle on the top of the half-destroyed wall, sighted down the optic again, and shot three times. A split second later, two more Pings! rang out. I looked towards where he’d shot and found two targets at about a hundred yards away. Before I’d spotted those targets though, he was already on to the next, moving his rifle away from the top of the wall and to the side. He leaned over towards the left of the wall and exposed his rifle past the cover, then sighted along the optic again. He fired three more shots, and again the targets rang out. Three good hits.

We were moving yet again, directly towards the three targets he’d just shot. They’d been closer, behind another plywood barricade. He reached the barricade and began firing immediately between the targets at a row of circular targets. Five shots, five hits, and as he hit each target it fell backwards. He then leapt over the plywood and ran to the right. There was a tall wall made of more plywood to our left, and as he ran around it he began firing. I looked to the left and saw that there was a backstop behind his line of fire, that was good. I could hear more targets being hit. Then he stopped shooting, dropped his rifle, levitated out a pistol and shot four more times, with another four hits.

He holstered his pistol, and checked the device at his waist. He sighed, and said, “fifty-nine seconds. Not my best. But that’s not important. Did you catch what all I did?”

I thought back on everything that’d just happened in the past minute. He’d fired twenty-one rounds from his rifle, and four from his pistol. I told him that much, adding, “you missed a shot at the hundred-yard targets.”

“That I did. You paid attention, good. It’s important to keep your rifle steady. You have to aim true if you want to hit anything. Fast is cool, but it’s not always effective.”

“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,” I said to him. He laughed.

“That’s a new one, but it makes sense. Yeah.” We began walking back to the table, and as we did he floated back up the five circular targets that he’d knocked down. “Think you can get through the course, or do you want to watch me do it again?”

“Let me try,” I said. We reached the table and he unloaded his rifle and set it on the table. The magazine disappeared again. “First, just a little precaution, if I may?” He nodded. I floated over my rifle and checked it, it was empty. I then looked down the sights, aiming at one of the targets at one hundred yards. “Ordinary iron sights.” I then levitated over a single round from the magazines that had been in the box the mare in the building had given us. “What brand is this? Do you know the ballistics for it?”

“Pretty sure it’s Whinnychester White Box,” he said. I floated it over to him and he looked at the bottom of the case. “Yeah, that’s it. I don’t have a dope or anything for that rifle, if you want-“

“No, no that’s okay. I can manage with this.” I took the cartridge back and cast a spell on the bullet, making it leave a red trace in the air as it moved. I then locked the bolt of the rifle to the rear, and loaded the single round into the chamber, then released the bolt. Next, I cast a spell on the fore-end, the grip, and the butt of the rifle, securing it there where it floated. Lastly, I cast an illusion spell on the sights of the rifle, such that a blue line projected from the sightline down to what I’d aimed the rifle at. The blue line terminated on the target at one hundred yards, just as intended.

“Thirty-two hundred feet-per-second, out of a twenty-inch barrel, one-in-nine twist,” I said quietly, inspecting my work to make sure it was done right. Rolo simply looked on with a curious look on his face. “Firing,” I said matter-of-factly. I then flipped the safety to fire, applied around five pounds of pressure to the trigger, and flipped the safety back to safe once the rifle had completed its cycle.

As intended, a red beam of light traveled from the barrel of the rifle to the target, intersecting the blue line just as it met the target. “Inpressive,” Rolo said as he looked from the rifle, down the blue and red lines of light to the target, then back to me. “I have never seen anything like that. Where did you learn it?”

“It’s something I was taught to do to simplify the process of sighting in a firearm. This way, by casting the spell on multiple rifles at once, you can do the work of many minutes, in less than one minute.” I freed the rifle from where it was locked in place, and floated it back to the table.

“I see. And, forgive me, but I really must ask. Is there something wrong with your horn? It does not glow,” he asked me, looking at the thing upon my forehead.

“I couldn’t tell you for certain,” I replied. “It’s been this way for as long as I can remember. Best I can guess, I just use my magic differently.”

“Or, you use different magic,” he offered. I shrugged.

…

Over the course of several hours, we worked together to get me up to speed operating the rifle. He taught me how to be mobile with it, good stances for shooting when behind cover, and the like. By the end of the day I’d run the gauntlet perhaps a dozen times and had exhausted all of the ammunition I’d been allotted, along with several magazines worth of Rolo’s in addition. My final course time was a minute and twelve seconds. I still wasn’t as sure on my hooves as I’d like to be, but Rolo assured me that was more than adequate for what we would be doing the next day.

“In fact, I don’t think anypony has ever run this course that quickly on their first day,” he told me as we packed up our equipment. The sun was beginning to set, and had in fact already sunk below the surrounding mountains. The air was already very cold.

Despite the cold however, I was oddly happy. Very happy. I breathed in through my nose, taking in the scent of spent ammunition and cold winter air. “I’ve missed this,” I said to him. “That smell, it makes me feel at home.”

“Home,” he said. “Home is a funny thing. What is your home like, Blue?”

“My home is far away. It’s hard to describe.” Oops, shouldn’t have brought that up. What could I tell him? Maybe a diversion. “My work required me to be mobile a lot, so I seldom stayed in one place for long. I do miss it in a way, though.”

“So your work kept you moving. What, exactly, did you do?” Good, he took the bait. Work was an easier topic than home.

“Plenty of things. I just did whatever was asked of me. It was a lot like the work Ash seems to have. Odd jobs, not entirely regular, largely an off-the-books sort of thing. I like to think I was good at what I did.” I was good. The best. I’d made sure of it. Only my best hadn’t been enough. And in the end, that cost me everything.

“Miss Blue?” Rolo asked. I’d not been paying attention, must have missed something he said.

“Sorry. Just reminiscing.” He had readied his gear and was beginning to walk back towards the metal building. I collected my things and joined him.

…

“Casa-del-Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.29 5:30 PM

“Yeah, he’s actually her cousin,” Butterscotch explained. She had come to pick me up from Ash’s place after I’d called her using his phone. “Well, kind of? I don’t rightly know how their family tree works, but more or less, he’s an honorary member of their family, kind of.” She was explaining – or at least attempting to explain – the familial relationship between Lilac and Rolo. I’d learned that Rolo had left Saddle Arabia with Butterscotch and her father, but Rolo had in fact been an orphan. “Essentially, Rolo was raised by Yuri, who was a comrade of my dad. When Yuri arrived in Equestria with Rolo, he met Lilac’s uncle, Barron. Barron helped Yuri set up a shop in Canterlot, and they kinda became like brothers or something?”

“You’re not helping,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. They know each other, that’s all I need to know. How old is Rolo, anyway?”

“Not sure.” She paused for a moment, considering what I’d asked. “I think he was around fourteen when we fled Saddle Arabia? Maybe… I really just don’t know. Never have asked him. I’d guess somewhere in his mid-thirties?” She rubbed the back of her neck with her hoof.

“He’s pretty peculiar, that’s for sure. Doesn’t seem that old, either.” I’d really been astonished by how androgynous-looking he’d been. I wanted to ask her about that, but wasn’t entirely sure how to go about it.

“Well, you’ll get to find out more about him tomorrow,” Butterscotch said. “From what I gather, Ash is worried y’all might get into some trouble out there?” She looked worried again.

“We’ll be fine, I promise. It’s just a simple delivery job, so nothing should go wrong. But in the event that something does, we’re going to head straight home. Ash’s orders.”

“Promise you’ll stay safe?” She asked me. Those eyes stared into mine, and I was yet again struck by the view before me. How was I living in the same household as an angel like her? She cared so much for me, and try as I might I just couldn’t make sense of it.

“Y-yeah, I promise…” I stammered. “I’ll make it home safe, swear it.” I had to. I didn’t want to spend any more time away from her than I had to.

5: Whisper

“Casa-del-Scotchy” Ponyville
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.30 6:30 AM

“You got everything you need?” Butterscotch asked me.

It was time to get to work. Lilac had arrived to pick me up for our job today. “I’m all set, yeah. Thanks again for letting me borrow your jacket, it’ll help a lot.” We were leaving early, hoping to have the job done by the end of the day. I had to agree, I’d rather be home by nightfall.

“Okay,” Butterscotch said with that concerned look I never liked to see.

I sighed. “Scotch, I’ll be fine, I promise.” I looked out the door where Lilac sat in her truck, waiting for me. “I better get going. I’ll see you tonight.” I turned to go, but had a thought. Before I reached the door, I turned back around and gave Butterscotch a hug. It made my heartrate increase, for some reason.

“Okay, be safe. Good luck,” she said, hugging me back.

And with that, I left for Whisper Hollow.

…

When I joined Lilac, our greetings were brief. She explained – or tried to – that she hadn’t had enough sleep and wouldn’t be fully operational until she got a cup of coffee. I simply agreed and rode along in silence as we went to pick up Walnut.

Ash’s residence was visible from the road below the mountain, and as we began driving up the gravel road, Lilac again reached down and switched the vehicle into four-wheel-drive. I’d chosen not to sit directly next to her this time, so I got no hooves between my legs this time.

Walnut was already waiting outside on the porch when we approached, and he quickly got into the vehicle. He carried under his wings the rifles and ammunition that Ash had provided for us. “Morning, girls. Y’all ready?”

Lilac gave a non-descript grunt, and I nodded genially. “She’s not quite awake yet, I’m afraid,” I said to Walnut as he got into the vehicle after stowing the rifles and ammo in the back of the truck.

“Well she better get there soon,” he replied, bumping the back of Lilac’s seat. “You ain’t gonna fall asleep behind the wheel are you?”

“Coffee,” Lilac said.

“Rolo first, then coffee,” Walnut replied.

“Coffee…”

…

We picked Rolo up from a local hotel. Apparently he didn’t have a residence in Ponyville, but preferred this town all the same. He spent most of his time overseas doing work for the Equestrian military. He was waiting for us outside the hotel, and when he saw us he waved, then went back inside. A moment later, he came back out, along with a young employee who was pushing a cart which held a large duffle bag.

“Best for last?” He asked Lilac as he trotted past her open window. She simply looked over to him, then turned to the front again. “Yeah, me too.” He levitated the bag into the back of the truck, then got in with Walnut in the back seat.

“Coffee,” Walnut said to Rolo.

“Coffee,” we all agreed, and Lilac drove out the parking lot of the hotel and down the road towards a gas station.

“I’ll stay here with the gear. You all go get coffee. Large cup for me, nothing in it but coffee,” Rolo said from the back seat as we pulled up to the station. Lilac nodded agreement, and shut the engine off after putting her truck into park. We all got out, sans Rolo, and went inside. The mare at the counter was old but attentive, and looked at each of us as we came in. Nopony else was in the station.

On the far side from the entrance was the coffee machine. It had several different kinds, like espresso and cappuccino. We each got cups of the regular variety, plus one for Rolo, and went to the counter. “How y’all doin’ this mornin’ all bright and early?” The mare at the counter asked.

“Coffee…” Lilac mumbled.

“We’ll find out in about half an hour, once the coffee kicks in,” Walnut replied.

“That all for ya’ then?” She asked. Walnut nodded and paid the mare, and we left. Rolo was standing outside the truck, and I floated his coffee over to him. He took it in his glow and drank from it.

“Okay, get a couple sips of that in you, then we need to discuss the plan,” I said to Lilac.

She stared at me, then at her coffee, and then back to me. I gently lifted the hoof she had her coffee in towards her face, and she took the hint, drinking from the cup. She then took a few more sips, and looked more directly at me. “Okay.”

I looked to the others. “Rolo and Walnut, you’ve been to this place before, what can you tell us about it?”

“Well, it’s like this, see. Folks out there take care of their own. If you ain’t their own, you ain’t taken care of, ya get me?” Walnut began explaining. “They’re good ponies, they just don’t take too kindly to outsiders. Less so as of late, what with the refugee crisis, and all that.”

“You can stop into any shop or restaurant there and get what you need, you’ll be served just fine. But don’t expect any more than the bare minimum.” Rolo looked down at his cup as he spoke. “They’re not fond of prying eyes, either.”

“Okay. So then, we just mind our business, get the job done, and get out. Just like Ash said, yeah?” I hoped it would be that simple. I suspected it wouldn’t be.

“We can try. Worry is, they may not appreciate us coming by,” Walnut said, and looked to Lilac. She was still fairly out of it, not really paying attention to us. “It’s a good thing featherbrain here is the driver, they won’t recognize her truck.”

“Speaking of…” I looked to each of them. Two pegasi, two unicorns. “Seating positions. I need to be behind the driver.”

“Why’s that?” Rolo asked.

“Because if we’re tailed, and they want to stop us, they’ll pull up to the driver side. So we also need somepony that can take control if the driver is disabled.”

“Whoa now, it ain’t like we’re goin’ to war, Blue!” Walnut exclaimed.

“No, but I like to take precaution. This is the sort of work I did for a living back in the day.” I was enjoying it, I found. Discussing the plan. I smiled. “I don’t guess we have a R-O-E to go by, do we?”

Rolo chuckled. “I’ll ride co-pilot,” he said, looking at Lilac, who was sat on the pavement staring at me. Her eyes were not directed towards mine, however. She didn’t seem to be aware she was looking at my rump, but rather that was simply where her eyes were directed at the moment.

I turned to face her. “Are you good to go? You’re up for this, right?” I lifted her chin with my hoof and her eyes met mine.

She took a moment, then looked past me at my rump again, then blushed. “Oh gosh, sorry Blue!” She shook her head and looked back at me. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, sorry I kinda spaced out there. Uhm… I’ll drive!” She exclaimed, waving her hoof in the air.

“I don’t know, girl. You’re kinda out of it. Maybe sit in the back and take a nap, let me drive,” Walnut said, tapping his hoof on the metal cab of the truck. “I’ll treat her good, don’t you worry.”

“Oh no you don’t!” Lilac shouted, and lunged at him, her coffee forgotten on the pavement.

“So, Lilac’s driving, Rolo is passenger front, I’m driver rear, and Wally, you’re passenger rear. Sound good?” I asked, looking to each in turn.

Lilac looked over at me from where she was trying to force-feed Walnut his own hoof. “Oh no, I want you up front with me, girly.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because you’re cute,” she replied.

…

Equestria
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.30 7:15 AM

“After a certain point your GPS ain’t gonna work, so I’ll just direct you from there,” Walnut said. We’d begun our journey to Whisper. It was a long way apparently, and according to Walnut, not all of it was mapped.

“When I looked it up on the internet, it showed directions,” I said to him. He’d ended up behind me, in the back seat on the passenger side.

“Oh yeah, it’ll get you there. But where we’re going in Whisper sure ain’t on a map. Don’t worry, it’s not far into the territory, maybe just a few miles in.”

“You’ve never been, Lila?” Rolo asked once Walnut was finished speaking. He was sat behind Lilac.

“Nope, afraid not. Place sounds like it’s a little too… back-woods for me. I’ll stick to Ponyville, where things make sense. Mostly…” Lilac winked at me. She had her phone plugged into a charger, and had propped it up in one of the many cup holders in the vehicle. It showed a map with a highlighted route for us to follow.

We’d gotten our rifles and put them in the cab, below our seats. They were loaded, safeties on. Thinking of the rifles brought something to my attention. “When we get there, we should keep our rifles on us,” I said. “It’s not a good idea to leave them behind.”

Lilac glanced at me. The others looked at me, Rolo with a raised eyebrow and Walnut with a perplexed look. “It ain’t like we’re goin’ into a warzone girl,” Walnut said. “You’re really takin’ this seriously, huh?”

“Should I not be?” I asked him.

“No, you’re right. It’s a good idea to keep our weapons with us,” Rolo said. “Last time we were here, there were… complications.” Rolo looked at Walnut, who looked away. “Let’s also make sure the driver stays with the vehicle. At least until we get there.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lilac agreed.

…

We rode on for some time, the scenery largely unchanged. Long, boring roads and bare trees on either side, with mountains in the distance. Occasionally we’d go through a tunnel, or over a hill, or through a small town.

We talked about inconsequential things like buckball and racing sports. Then, Walnut asked Lilac a peculiar question.

“So, when you gonna ask her out on a date?”

Lilac stiffened up and focused on the road ahead. “Don’t know what you mean,” she said in a tone not at all like her usual self. I looked back at Walnut and Rolo. They were both grinning.

“Yeah you do. You did tell her to sit up front with you after all.” Walnut said.

“Because she’s cute, you said,” Rolo added.

Lilac’s nostrils flared, and her face went a shade of red. I simply looked at her, then to the other two in the back seat. Rolo grinned at me. Walnut gave me a wink. I had an idea.

I unbuckled from my seat, lifted the center console up so I could sit in the middle, and did just that, buckling in right next to Lilac. I made sure to brush up against her too. She was warm to the touch, and her wings twitched as we came into contact. I patted my hooves against my knees idly, feigning innocence.

“Okay okay, let a mare have her fun damn it!” Lilac said suddenly. “I just like to pick on Blue because she’s so…”

“Cute?” I offered, saying it right next to her ear. We nearly drifted off the road as Lilac appeared to have fainted.

…

I’d decided to return to my seat on the other side of the cab, once we’d made sure Lilac wasn’t going to burst a blood vessel. “You’re pretty knowledgeable about this sort of thing, Blue,” Rolo said to me. “Lessons learned from previous occupations, I presume?” Did he talk like that on purpose, or was it just a slip?

“It comes with the territory, I guess,” I answered. “Need to know how to push somepony’s buttons. Besides, Lilac set herself up.” I looked out the window. There weren’t many other ponies on the road, and for the most part the mountains appeared uninhabited. Occasionally we’d see power lines traveling across the landscape, vast swaths cut through the vegetation below them. For the most part, it was beautiful, if a little eerie. “All of Equestria isn’t like this, is it?” I asked, gesturing to the surrounding environment.

“What, mountainous? No. We have mountains, plains, swamps… you name it. “Lilac looked out her own window. On her side was a sheer mountainside, which appeared to have been blasted out to make room for the road. “In fact, Ponyville is one of the younger settlements, believe it or not. Only about four or five generations have lived there since it was founded. Most of Equestria’s population lives on the coasts.”

I remembered what Ash had said about civilization, how nature should take it all back. “Do you think it’s right?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Is it right to turn all this into cities and towns?” I asked, gesturing out the windows.

“She had the talk with Dad,” Walnut groaned.

“Oh, that. Don’t worry about it Blue, it’s all the same in the end. We can’t exactly be expected to live like animals, now can we?” Lilac laughed and we drove along. I watched the scenery.

…

Somewhere in Equestria
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.30 9:45 AM

We’d exited the freeway some time ago and had begun traveling along a two-lane road that had all but been reclaimed by nature. We were in a valley, following the twists and bends of a nearby river. Eventually we came upon a sign that was entirely illegible, damaged by weather and by time. Beyond it, the road lead in to what could have been described as a town. It could have also been described as deserted. There wasn’t a soul around. The battered and crumbling sidewalks were dusted with snow, and there were no tracks on them. The skies overhead were overcast grey, and I couldn’t see any pegasi. “Where is everypony?” I asked.

“They are all indoors. Look at the windows,” Rolo said. I did as he said, and sure enough I could make out silhouettes of ponies. Some of them stood close enough to the windows I could make out their faces. Their coats were mostly dull colors, the males had short manes and the females had theirs up in buns. None of them seemed pleased to see us.

“Take the next right,” Walnut said to Lilac. At the intersection, Lilac was about to take the turn, but didn’t. “What’s the hold up?” Walnut asked her.

“Bridge is out,” she replied. I looked over, and sure enough the road just stopped dead and dropped off into a river below.

“Damn, gotta take the other way. Keep going down main street.” Walnut blew out his nostrils. “If the bridge is out, it’ll be a miracle if the other way in is still there.

We drove on, keeping our eyes on the windows of the structures we passed. Sometimes we’d catch a pony looking out their window at us, but never anypony outside.

“They knew we were coming,” I said. “Scouts maybe. Or somepony back home told them. We’re definitely not in friendly territory.”

“No we ain’t,” Lilac said, and sped up a little.

“Don’t do that,” Walnut warned. “Keep goin’ at a regular pace, don’t wanna spook ‘em.”

“Shit, I don’t like this. Whatever.” She slowed back down. We were going maybe twenty miles an hour now. After some time, we reached another bridge, which was intact. We crossed it without issue. Looking along the river, I could see several rope bridges going over the river further downstream.

“Next two rights,” Walnut said. Lilac took the turns and we started heading back along the river on the other side, going the other way. “Left ahead,” Walnut said next, and Lilac took that turn as well. We passed by what looked to be a school. Yellow busses were parked neatly along one side of the structure, and a field in the back told me the school had a hoofball team. There were no signs of activity, but that wasn’t surprising.

We followed this road for a while, until we came to another intersection, with a group of ponies around a utility truck parked at the corner. One of them waved for us to stop, and we did.

“What y’all doin’ out here?” He asked after Lilac rolled down her window. He was tall, and bulky. His eyes were searching each of us in turn. “Lines’re out, ain’t no power up yonder. Y’all gonna want to go back where ya came from.”

“Jussa passin’ through, need to get to Jack Ass Holler,” Walnut said in a rather convincing replication of the linebuck’s accent. “Heard Momma Withers needed a new couch.”

“Aight, be careful though. Folks up there been mighty weird lately. Lotta new faces.” He let us pass.

“What?” Lilac blurted once her window was up.

“I second that,” I said, looking back at Walnut.

“Momma Withers is kind of the authority up this way,” he explained. “Her name usually gets things moving again if I ever get in a bind around here. Take the next left, before the bridge.”

To our left was sheer mountainside, and on our right was slowly encroaching another branch of the river. Once we’d come to the bridge he’d mentioned, Lilac turned on to the next road, which appeared to have once been paved, but was now merely gravel. The power lines were cut between each pole. I pointed that out.

“A little excessive, no?” Rolo said. “Breaking the circuit in one place would be enough.”

“Not if you want the repairs to take an eternity,” I said. I was getting an uncomfortable feeling about this job. No wonder it was worth so much.

“Follow this road. Don’t take any turns. Follow it until it ends. We’ll come up and over a hill, and you’ll take the last right turn into Jack Ass.” Walnut was all business now. I guessed we all were.

“Why’s it called Jack Ass?” Lilac said with a laugh. Three out of four?

…

The road we followed was barely a road at all. It was largely eroded and barely wide enough for us to fit down in Lilac’s truck. Looking out my window, I could see there had once been a road down next to the creek that ran below us now, but it had long since been over grown and reclaimed by nature.

We’d stayed on the broken road for some time, and I was about to say as much when we began traveling downhill. Soon we reached the old road I’d noticed before, and joined it, traveling right next to the river. On either side of us now I saw nothing but steep mountainside, with thick flora all around. We passed through a particularly tight section of the ravine we were now in, and came into a glade of sorts. On the left was a pasture, with an ancient structure of some kind on one side, and on the other was another road going uphill. The road we were on ended ahead.

“Take that turn there,” Walnut said, gesturing towards the road going uphill. It looked like it went deep into the woods.

“We’ll be able to get the trailer out of this mess, right?” Lilac asked. “That was one nasty route we just took, Wally.”

“We’ll make it. There’s another way in here, but there ain’t no sense in taking it considering the bridge is out.”

…

Traveling along the road going uphill, we were quickly surrounded by dense forest on all sides. It was dark, and the air smelled sweet. It set me on edge. “Relax,” Lilac said to me, patting my shoulder. “You’re all tensed up. Was she like this on the last job y’all did, Wally?”

“Nah, she was all cool then.”

I forced myself to relax, breathing in deep and slow. Letting out my breath, I looked to my right. I couldn’t see very far into the woods at all. Same case for the left side. “Don’t like this. It’s so perfect for an ambush. This whole area is like one natural fortress.”

“Why do you think the folks that live here don’t want to leave?” Walnut said. “It’s perfect for them. They like their way of life, and don’t plan on changing it.”

“I can respect that,” I said. I continued to watch the forest, the innumerable trees, the thick underbrush, the way the leaves overhead seemed to drain all the light from the world. I really didn’t like it. Then we came to another opening. On the right was a small pond, with a millhouse on the far side. On the left was another pasture with a well-kept wooden fence around it. Ahead were several structures, all ancient looking, yet well-kept. They were timber framed houses, I could see three. One directly ahead, and two up a drive to the right, beyond the one ahead of us.

“Pull up to the back of the house there,” Walnut said, gesturing to the road that lead up to the two houses above the one directly ahead. “The trailer is up there.”

“Don’t see it,” Lilac said. “But okay.” She drove up the gravel road to where the houses were.

I noticed something in the air. “It’s snowing,” I said, maybe more to myself than to any of the others.

“Yeah, this part of the country isn’t really monitored by the weather management. Occasionally you’ll get a stray cloud or even a wild storm. Doesn’t matter to these folks though,” Walnut said as Lilac pulled to the back of one of the structures and sure enough, there was the trailer. It was made of corrugated aluminum and looked to be brand new. “There it is. Don’t hook up yet, we gotta stop in and say hi. Would be rude not to.” He got out of the vehicle once Lilac put it in park. “Bring your rifles with you, leave everything else here. Leave the doors unlocked too. Don’t worry, they won’t take anything.”

“Easy for you to say, ain’t your damn truck!” Lilac exclaimed. She still did like he said though, bringing her rifle with her and not bothering to lock the vehicle. “I’ll clip your wings if there’s a damn thing wrong with this truck when we get back, you hear me?”

“Need to check to see if everything’s there,” Rolo said. “I’ll be quick.”

“Can’t do that without the key. We gotta go inside.” Walnut began walking back down the gravel road towards the first house.

I noticed despite the snow, I didn’t feel all that cold. “There’s no wind,” I mentioned, following Walnut.

“Can thank the tree cover for that,” he replied.

“You gave her all that trouble for taking this too seriously, and now look at you,” Rolo chided Walnut. We reached the door to the house. It was a screen door. Behind that was a wooden door with the tree of life painted on it.

“I recognize that,” I said, gesturing to the painting. “Didn’t know you had mythology like that here.” The others just looked at me, bewildered. I shrugged, and Walnut knocked on the door with his hoof.

“Keep your rifles low, don’t do anything dumb. Y’know, obvious shit.” We waited for a short while, then the door opened. Behind it was what looked like a pony, only different in every conceivable way. Their fur was grey and rougher than a pony’s, their mane choppy and dark. It had on a pair of black overalls and a white button up under that. The not-pony looked at Walnut, then me, then the others. Then back to Walnut.

“Wally! Get in here, you’re early!” His voice was deep, like splitting stone.

“Everypony, this is Jack.” I realized Jack was a donkey. “Jack, this is Rolo, who you’ve met, and that’s Lilac,” he gestured to Lilac. “And this here is Miss Blue Moon. She’s our newest member.” I nodded to the donkey. Was there any creature on this weird planet that wasn’t sentient?

“Nice to meet you, Jack,” I said in my best American accent. The others all looked at me, again with bewildered expressions on their faces. Jack looked pleased with the greeting.

“Well get on in here, ‘fore you freeze your tails off,” Jack said, opening the screen door for us. I noticed the wood door opened inward, but the screen door opened outward.

We all trotted inside and were met by the sweet smell of cooking. There was the deep, regular tick-tock of a grandfather clock which stood in the corner to the right. Immediately in front of us was a fireplace, which was not lit, yet the house felt warm all the same. The floor was hardwood, old and creaky, yet firm. There were two matching plush couches sat facing each other, adjacent of the fireplace. To the left of the fireplace was what appeared to be a kitchen, and to the right of it was a staircase leading up. Looking up I saw that there were weapons of all kinds mounted to the rafters. Modern weapons of war, ancient hunting rifles, even spears and clubs and the like. Peculiar.

“Welcome, welcome!” An elderly woman’s voice came from the kitchen. I couldn’t see who was speaking, until she stood up from behind one of the counters. She held a pot by her mouth and set it on the countertop. “Y’all sure are early, ain’t ya? Well come on in and sit down, I’m sure you’re tired from the long drive over here.” She was also a donkey.

“Hey there Momma Withers, it sure is good to see you,” Walnut said, walking over and giving the old donkey a hug. She had on a flowery dress and an apron. “Y’all been doing all right out here? Heard the power’s out.”

Walnut walked over to join the rest of us near the fireplace. “Well you know we don’t need no electricity up here, Wally. No, it’s those damn rough-ridin’ cunts from up north. They came in ‘bout a year ago, well you know. Well they’ve decided they want control over the power now too, so they went and snipped all the wires!” Momma Withers was chopping various vegetables now with a knife she held in her mouth. She was speaking past it clearly all the same, even as she did her work. “They don’t come up here none, though. Guess they know who’s really in charge,” she said, winking at us.

“Things haven’t really improved here, then,” Walnut said. “That’s a shame.”

“Well, if they’d stop rushing down here and muckin’ up our country and start fightin’ for their own, there wouldn’t be a problem. But I guess they don’t make ‘em up there like we do down here,” Jack said. “But enough about shit what don’t matter. Y’all are here for the steel, ain’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Walnut replied. “Looks like a pretty good order this time, too.”

“Aw, shucks Jackie, we ain’t loaded it all yet. Didn’t know y’all would be here so early,” Momma Withers exclaimed. “Tell you what, I’ll get the boys to load the rest up now. Give ‘em something to do besides sitting around like a bunch of lumps.” She trotted over to a nearby window and opened it. “Go ahead and load it up, make sure it’s all in there,” she said as if there was somebody just on the other side of the window. She then shut the window and went back to doing her thing with the veggies and the knife.

“Well, I hope we’re not being a nuisance ma’am,” Walnut said to Momma Withers. “Here, how about we help you in the kitchen?” He offered, standing up.

“No, no, y’all stay put. I like doin’ this sort of thing.” She was putting water in the pot now from a nearby faucet. “Tell me about these two young mares you got with you!”

Walnut looked to Lilac and me. We were sitting together on one of the couches, the one facing towards the kitchen. “Well, Lilac has been a good friend of mine ever since I got out of the service, and her uncle is a real good family friend. Blue here is a recent acquisition, just started working for us last weekend. Believe it or not, they’re here because the shop they worked at burned down.”

“I think I remember tell of you, Lilac,” Jack said to the mare in question. “Your uncle visits occasionally. Damn quick flyer he is, don’t guess you’re any like him, are you?”

“yes sir, quicker even,” Lilac said, beaming. “I learned from the best and made it better. Served in the air guard same time as Wally. Never worked with him while I was in, but I met him the day I got out and he’s been chasing me around ever since.”

“Don’t guess he can keep up, ‘cause it don’t look like he’s caught you yet,” Jack said, grinning at Walnut.

“She’s interested in mares, Jack. Total dyke, don’t listen to her.”

“Yeah well, I think I’ll just snatch up Blue here and then you’ll never have a chance,” Lilac said, throwing her wing around me. I raised a brow at her.

“What about you, Miss Blue? What’s your story?” Jack asked me. Everypony was looking at me now. Well, everyperson. Everyass?

“I’m just a mercenary, really. Been round and round, done just about everything. Ended up in the Everfree during a wild blizzard, and this doll saved my life, along with a friend of hers. So now I stick around as a good gesture.” I nudged Lilac in the ribs with a hoof. “She’s kinda fun, too. Sometimes. Real dull in a fight, though.”

“So, you been doing this sort of thing long?” Jack asked.

I knew lying to Jack would be a really dumb idea, so I decided to tell the careful truth. “Started when I was twelve, lost a sister and decided I’d roam around until I found her. By the time I was old enough to drink, I’d gotten so used to this kind of life I never wanted to do anything else.” I looked at the fireplace. “Home wasn’t somewhere I could stay. Just wasn’t viable. Sometimes I miss it, but I think home is what you make it to be. And,” I looked to the others. “I think I can make a home here. This crew isn’t too bad.”

Jack nodded. “Makes sense to me. You seem like the sort that’s been through enough to teach me a thing or two. Say, where is your home, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Don’t rightly know. It’s been so long, and when I ran off I had no idea where I was going. Honestly, even if I found the place again someday, I probably wouldn’t recognize it. I think the open road is the closest thing to a home I have. That and a good rifle.”

Jack grinned. “Yeah, you’re definitely the right sort for this crowd. Welcome to the crew, lass. You’ll like it here.”

…

We spent the better part of the next hour chatting with the Withers, whom were very hospitable. They seemed genuinely glad to see us. Momma Withers offered us coffee, which we politely accepted. Jack regaled us with tales of fancy. Fighting against changelings, encounters with beasts known as wendigos, and other things.

By around noon there was a knock at the door, and Jack let the pony in. It was a young buck with a sandy coat and a blonde mane. He seemed like he would rather be anywhere but right there in the doorway. “Got it all loaded up boss, just like you asked,” He said to Momma Withers, without stepping inside. “Anything else we need to do?” His voice cracked on more than one occasion as he spoke.

“No, no I think that’s everything,” Momma Withers said, looking to us. “Give the key to old Walnut there.”

The young buck stood there for a few seconds, then slowly made his way inside. I could tell something was off. The buck got about halfway to where we were all seated and reached into a pocket on the front of his overalls. He pulled out a key.

He took a few more steps closer, then fell to the floor as a shot rang out and a hole formed in his throat.

Something was definitely not right here.

Author's Note

Here we go.

6: Return to Form

Author's Note

Disclaimer: Scenes of violence ahead.

6: Return to Form

There’s no sense in that, Eight. You need to slow down. You can’t solve everything by drawing blood.

Watch me.

…

Equestrian Wilderness
D3-08 “Blue Moon”
997.05.30 11:00 AM

The young buck hit the floor gagging as his throat was ripped away. I jumped up from the couch, as did Lilac. With a deep growl, I shoved the dying pony to the side with my magic, then began pushing the couch towards the door. “Everybody Alive? Anyone hit?” I shouted, a bit unnecessarily. I heard the others make various sounds of affirmation. Lilac was by my side, rifle at the ready as she hovered close to the floor. Rolo and Walnut had pulled their couch back towards the wall, and Momma Withers was taking cover behind the kitchen counter. Jack was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Jack?” I asked.

“Right here,” he said from above me. I looked up and saw him in the rafters, trying to free a rifle. I pulled it free from its mounting for him with my magic. It was an old lever-action rifle, looked to have seen a lot of use long ago. “Thanks, missy.”

“Rolo! Need ammo, all our spare mags are in the truck, think you can pop some in here?” I said over to him from where me and Lilac were. We’d backed up to the other corner of the house. I was looking for things to cover the windows with. We hadn’t taken any more fire yet, but I was sure it’d come.

The duffel bag Rolo had brought with him appeared next to me. “Green tip, hope you don’t mind,” he said calmly from across the room.

“Thanks.” I levitated out three magazines and set them in front of me. “Lilac, you okay?” I looked over to her. She was still hovering with her hooves just barely off the floor. “I need you.”

She looked at me. “What do you need?” She looked to be all right.

“I need eyes out there. Range, heading, that sort of thing. Think you can fly fast enough through the trees to avoid getting shot?” I rummaged around in Rolo’s bag some more as I spoke. “I’m buying a compass when I get home,” I said.

“House faces directly East, little lady,” Momma Withers said. She had procured a shotgun and was approaching the window.

“I can do it Blue, just need an out,” Lilac said. Then Momma Withers shot out the window, and somepony outside screamed. She shot again, and the screaming stopped.

“You got one, least until some other bastard takes those two’s places,” Momma Withers said, nodding to the window.

“Two?” Walnut asked.

“Doesn’t matter, Wally! Thanks, Momma Withers!” Lilac took off. “I’ll be quick,” she said to me before launching out the window.

“Two shots, two kills. First one hit ‘em both, second one finished the job,” Momma Withers said to Walnut. She loaded two more shells into the shotgun. She appeared to have loaded the pockets of her apron with shotgun shells.

“We wait for Lilac to get back with her report, then we take action.” I began passing out magazines. “Everyone make your shots count. I need accuracy, not volume. We’ll clear as many as we can, then we break for the vehicle. Jack, Momma Withers, you two need to come with us. Isn’t safe here,” I said, and began covering the windows with quilts and the like. “Need you to cover that window up when Lilac returns,” I said to Momma Withers as I floated a bear skin to her. She nodded.

“Y’all gonna just take us from our home like that? What about all the stuff we got here?” Jack asked.

“It’s just stuff, Jack, it ain’t worth a damn if we’re dead,” Momma Withers said to him.

“You remind me of one of the guys I used to run with. Same name, too,” I said to Jack. He was struggling to free the action on the old rifle. I levitated over mine and the three spare magazines. “Always worried about the materialistic, saw value as a tangible thing. Was a good friend.” He looked at the AR and shrugged, then took it in his hooves and sat back down next to a wall.

A few shots rang out outside. They were met by fire from an AR which sounded like it was circling the house. A cacophony of gunfire roared all throughout the nearby forest for maybe half a minute, then dulled as the report of the AR continued. I counted thirty shots from the AR, then silence. A moment later, Lilac soared back in through the window she exited from and Momma Withers jumped up onto the counter and hung the bear skin in front of the window.

“Got a couple. There’s two down below the house, East-South-East, fifty yards. I hit one of them.” I passed her a magazine and she reloaded quickly. “Three more North of the house, along the road right next to the pond. Don’t know if I killed the one I hit down there, but he dropped. At least five above the house, West side. They’re deep into the woods though, couldn’t get close enough to be sure. Maybe a hundred yards?”

“Okay, that’s good. Thanks Lila. Rolo, think you can teleport in the spare rifle?” He nodded, and it appeared in front of me. “Okay. Need to formulate a plan here.” I paused for a moment. All was silent for a while, then somepony outside shouted something incomprehensible.

“They’re going to smoke us out,” Jack said. “We need to move, soon.”

I inhaled deeply. “Okay. Everyone take up a position near a window.” I moved to the West side of the house, and made my way towards a window. “I’ll need you with me Rolo, need your accuracy. Make your shots count, we don’t want to burn out of our ammo now. We have a long road ahead, and I doubt it’s friendly.”

“Shit, Blue,” Lilac said as she took a position on the East side of the house. “Forgot to mention, sorry. They hitched the trailer to my truck. I don’t know if I can unhitch it quick enough-“

“Don’t worry about it,” I interjected. “Deal with it when we get there.” I looked to Walnut. He was at the only window facing North. Jack was with Lilac on the East side, and Momma Withers was at her window near the kitchen, facing West. “No hostiles to the south?”

“Too dense, couldn’t have come from back there,” Momma Withers said. “You gonna signal us or something?”

I breathed in, filling my lungs. I did it again, and again, closing my eyes. Had to focus. This was a simple spell, but I hadn’t used it in a long time. Focusing on each of the windows and what covered them, I cast my spell, then tore the cover away. “Hold fire. Take aim first, let me know when you have a clear shot. They can’t see us.” I waited for a moment, then gradually I got affirmation from the others. Once everypony had a clear shot, I took aim. It was hard to focus through the spell, my eyelids felt heavy. I leveled the sights on one of the far targets, he was leaning up against a tree with a bottle at his hooves. “Okay, fire.”

We all shot nearly at once. The sound made my ears scream in agony. The feeling in my chest was not unlike how I felt when I fell from the sky all those weeks ago. I focused through it all and took aim at my next target, as I watched both mine and another fall. I shot again, and couldn’t hear the shot, but watched as the pony fell to the ground writhing. Another fell with him. Then I took the last one as he began running, putting two in his rump. He fell to the ground as well.

I slumped to the floor, and looked all around. I couldn’t hear the others shooting, just a constant scream in my ears. I didn’t expect that, didn’t anticipate for it. I saw the others had their ears folded. That probably helped protect them. I felt something running down either side of my head. I reached up to touch it, and my hoof came away bloody. Not good.

Rolo looked over to me and set his rifle down. He maneuvered me onto my stomach and placed his horn to my head. It began to glow, and slowly my hearing returned. It wasn’t perfectly clear, but I could hear clearly enough. There was just a really annoying buzzing sound.

“Blue, are you all right?” Rolo was asking me. I looked at him for a moment, then shook my head and stood back up. I was shaky on my hooves, but I didn’t fall back to the floor.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just wasn’t paying attention. Took a lot of focus to cast that spell.” I looked at the others. They were scanning their windows, watching for any other hostiles. The shooting had stopped. “We need to move,” I said. None of them reacted. “We need to move!” Shouting seemed to do the trick, as they all looked at me, then began making for the door. I followed. “Truck, now. Lilac, get it cranked up and ready to move, quick.”

We hurried out the door and around the house towards the truck. Running proved challenging, it felt like I couldn’t balance at all. I stumbled on more than one occasion, but Walnut came by my side and helped me along. “You all right? You’re bleeding,” he said in my ear. It sounded like he was half a mile away, I could just barely hear him.

“I’m fine, we need to move,” I replied, and kept moving towards the truck as Lilac cranked the engine. “We’ll take the trailer with us. Souvenir.”

“Sounds good.” He helped me to the truck and I got into the passenger seat with my rifle. Rolo had thrown his duffel bag into the back and gotten in with it. Walnut got in the back seat of the cab, along with Jack and Momma Withers. “Okay, that’s all of us, go,” Walnut said to Lilac. I slumped into my seat.

“Yeah, we taking the trailer?” Lilac said, putting the truck into gear and beginning to drive down the gravel road from whence we came.

“Souvenir, Blue said,” Walnut replied. Lilac looked at me and her eyes shot wide.

“Shit! Shit! Blue, are you okay? Fuck!” She slammed on the brakes and put her full attention on me. I tried to push her away but I felt like I was spinning. “Rolo! Celestia damn it, get in here! Need your magic, now! Wally, switch with me.” Lilac put the truck in park and lifted the center console before scooting over next to me. Walnut got out and flew over the truck to the driver side and got back in. Rolo got in where Walnut had been. “Heal her! Do something, what the fuck happened?”

“Over-pressurization of her ears. Messed up her equilibrium. I’ll see what I can do.” Rolo leaned over the center console as Lilac held my head in her hooves. I felt like I couldn’t move. I was looking down at Lilac’s belly and hind legs as she sat. Her pants were getting stained red as blood dripped from my head.

I felt Rolo’s horn contact my head again and felt a cooling sensation in my ears. The buzzing sound eased, and I could hear more clearly, but still felt like I was in a whirlpool. I tried to lift my head, but Lilac kept me from it. As Rolo worked his magic, I slowly felt better. After a moment, I felt as though I could hear as clearly as normal, and I was able to push Lilac off me. She grabbed me again and held on to me, wrapping her hooves and wings around me.

“Fuck, I thought you’d been shot, Blue,” I heard her whimper in my ear. I shook my head. “Shit, shouldn’t have gotten involved in this mess, coulda got us a job bagging groceries or something. Fuck.” She sounded distraught. I hugged her back.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll just need a minute.” I looked out the front window. We were moving again, down between the trees. I could hear the trailer behind us rattle as it was pulled along the gravel. We traveled down the road until we reached the clearing at the bottom, and I saw a wall of white. It was snowing. The tree cover had been so thick behind us I hadn’t noticed how heavy the snowfall was, but it looked almost as bad as the blizzard I’d arrived with.

“Gonna put it into four high,” Walnut said before reaching down and pulling the appropriate lever between Lilac’s legs. The road we’d taken in was covered in snow.

…

We traveled in silence for a short while, then I heard something hit the metal cabin of the truck. Thump. Thump. It happened again. “Taking fire, get moving Walnut,” I said. I still didn’t feel great, but that didn’t matter. Walnut floored the throttle, and we began accelerating faster down the snow-covered road. I looked out the window but couldn’t see anything past the heavy snow. I growled in the back of my throat. “They’re shooting at your tires, I’m sure. Get us out of here quick.”

“Gonna have to slow right down anytime we take a turn, that trailer ain’t gonna like bein’ swung ‘round a corner too quick,” Jack said.

I growled again. “Rolo, need you to help me steady the trailer when we come to a corner. Walnut, tell us when you’re about to make a turn and which direction it is. We’ll steady the trailer.” I turned in my seat so I could see out the back window. I looked right at Jack, and he ducked his head.

Rolo and I watched the trailer out the back window. It was white, same as the snow, which was frustrating. The red glow from the tail lights of the truck were a big help in managing to actually see the thing.

“Taking a turn, left,” Walnut said. Rolo and I focused our telekinesis on the trailer, keeping it from swinging out and dragging us off the road. I pushed and pushed as we turned, and the trailer stayed steady, but the effort nearly knocked me out. I slumped against Lilac, who held me up.

“You okay, Blue? You sure you should be doing that? Here, let me fly out there and push on it-“

“No. I’m fine. Stay here, safer inside,” I said through gritted teeth.

We rode along until we took another turn, and we did the same routine of steadying the trailer. Again, I nearly passed out for the effort. It felt like there was a hot iron right behind my eyes, and I was starting to lose color vision.

“Easy, girl. Don’t push yourself too hard, we’ll be okay from here,” Walnut said from the driver seat. He floored the throttle again and we barreled down the road.

“Watch for ice, damn it!” Lilac said as we swerved slightly. Walnut tried to correct but it was no good, he’d lost control of the vehicle. “Brace!” WHAM.

…

I awoke to that insufferable buzzing sound in my ear. I looked up and found that we’d slammed into a snowbank in a ditch. Everypony else was also just coming to. Thump. Thump thump thump…

“Under fire!” I shouted as loud as I could, and levitated out my rifle. I folded my ears and blasted the window next to me with a push spell and it shattered, then began firing blindly out at the vast empty white. “Get down! Small caliber, not piercing the hull! Avoid windows!” I searched all around for where the fire was coming from, then the bolt locked to the rear. I released the spent magazine and a new one appeared before me, in Rolo’s magical glow. I nodded my head, reloaded, and kept firing. I heard a shout from outside and directed my fire towards it. The incoming fire stopped. I got out of the vehicle and began making my way towards where I’d heard the voice.

The snow was already several inches deep and felt cold against my hooves. The way the wind pulled at me and buffeted me with snowflakes felt simultaneously refreshing and unpleasant. I stared straight ahead and watched for anything that moved, rifle at the ready. I needed answers.

Eventually I came upon a few drops of red in the sea of white, just off the other side of the road from where we’d gone off. They lead down a slight decline towards the river below. I carefully followed them, trying to keep my rifle steady. I could hear them now, the sound of someone drowning in their own blood. I recognized it.

“Where are you?” I shouted into the bleached air. I heard movement dead ahead, they’d fallen into the river. They’d likely freeze to death soon, I had to hurry. Eventually I reached the water’s edge, and I could see the shape of a pony half-submerged in the flow. They were shivering violently. With my magic, I dragged them by their tail back to the bank of the river and flipped them on their back. I’d hit them in the chest, through and through. Definitely hit a lung. “I want answers,” I said to them through gritted teeth, as I smacked the side of their head with the barrel of my rifle.

The pony looked over to where the barrel of the rifle was, right next to their head, then grinned. Their plaid shirt was soaked through, and with the wind blowing like it was, they were losing heat fast. They knew I didn’t have long to get my answers. That wasn’t good for them.

I passed my field of magic over the pony’s body, searching pockets and body cavities. I found a broken cell phone, a wallet with nothing in it, and a knife. I took the knife and inspected it. Dull, good. They were likely numb in their hooves, so I couldn’t get any reaction from them by going there. Had to be center mass. Keeping my rifle steady next to their head, I lowered the knife towards where I’d shot them. This pony was young, they surely didn’t have any experience in dealing with torture. I did. Turning the knife sideways, I pressed the flat of the blade into the open wound, and the pony screamed in agony. I leaned my face down next to theirs on the other side from my rifle and let off with the knife a little.

“You have information I need. I’d appreciate it if you shared it with me.” I shoved the knife hard against the wound and they yelped again. “Where’s the rest? Your crew, friends, whatever?” I asked loudly, staring into their eyes. No reaction, they just stared back at me and grit their teeth. I growled, long and low, pressing slowly with the knife again. “You’re not tough. Cough it up, where are they?” The pony spat in my face. I turned the knife and dug it into the wound, cutting flesh, and they screamed again.

“Answers! Now!” I yelled in their face. My voice was hollow, and I felt hollow. Like I wasn’t even there. My hooves were getting numb, I didn’t care. “Who do you work for?” I screamed, pressing the knife harder, the blade digging deeper. The pony under me tried to thrash and move, but their motor functions were failing as they gave in to hypothermia. “Names! Locations! Now!” I was getting angrier and angrier. It didn’t matter, I had to have answers. I could hear shouting behind me, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was me, this pony, and the knife I’d buried in their chest.

The young pony coughed and hacked up blood, then looked back up at me. I saw fear in their eyes. That was good, I could use fear. I pulled the knife away a nd got my face close again. “Stay with me here, I’m not done with you,” I said, tapping the barrel of my rifle against their head when I said done. "You lot have really pissed me off. You've made one hell of an enemy out of me. My name is Delta Three, Zero Eight, last living member of Delta Three. And, considering I'm the last living member, that means you've made an enemy of the whole of Delta Three. Now tell me what I want to know." Their eyes were pinpricks, staring into my empty eyes. I was a machine, I didn’t care what I felt, what they felt. I had an objective. I had to find the people that’d sent this pony. It was necessary.

The pony coughed again, wheezing as their lungs began to fail. I tapped the barrel against their head again, and they wheezed. “Krysinny… Kogot.” Rat Claw.

Then their eyes unfocused and they stopped moving. I dropped the knife to the ground and turned around.

Up the incline I’d gone down was Rolo and Lilac. They were looking at me with odd expressions. I began climbing back up, but couldn’t get my footing, and fell back down. I needed to go find out what, or who, Rat Claw was. I just had to get up off the ground. The world felt like it was spinning again. I needed to move, but I just couldn’t. The snow was so cold, the sky was so grey. I looked over to the corpse I’d created nearby. There was a lot of blood. The young buck had an amber coat, not unlike the color of Butterscotch’s mane.

Butterscotch…

…

I woke up in the truck. We were moving. I was in the back seat, next to Jack. On my other side was Lilac. She was looking at me with a worried expression. I looked back at her.

“Blue?” She asked me, tentatively. “You okay?”

“Where’s my rifle?” I asked. I patted around below the seat with my hoof. There it was. There wasn’t a magazine in it.

“We’re clear, Blue. Don’t need it anymore,” Walnut said from the driver seat. “Leave it there.”

“Blue,” Lilac said my name again. I looked at her. She had fear in her eyes. I remembered what I did.

“Rat Claw,” I said. “Got that out of him. Who or what is Rat Claw?”

“What? Blue…” Lilac looked away from me. “That was…”

“Lilac. You asked what I used to do for a living. That was it. That’s what I did. What I’m good at, getting answers. Rat Claw, what is it?” I wasn’t what was important. We needed to focus on getting to the enemy.

“Never heard of it. Organization, maybe?” Rolo said.

“They were Russian. I mean, Ponussian,” I said, rubbing my face with my hooves. At least I was warm a gain. Who was I kidding? It didn’t matter if I was warm, I had to find the enemy.

“Blue, slow down. What did you do that for?” Lilac asked.

“I told you. Needed answers.” I looked at her. “You’re a flier. Don’t do the ground work. Folks like me go places no one else knows about and we do things that no one hears about. Whoever set us up is going to pay for it. Just need to find the enemy.”

“Enemy? Blue, we’re in Equestria!” Lilac started, her feathers ruffled. “There is no enemy, we just got caught up in-“

“No, Lilac she’s right. That was a sting. They knew we were coming, knew where we’d be, and were ready to take Jack and Momma Withers out with us. This is bigger than some gang shit,” Walnut said. I breathed in, trying to calm down. Maybe Lilac was right, I was a civilian now. I couldn’t just go hunting for these ponies on a whim, could I?

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “Used to be, something like this happened we’d gear up and hunt them down, it’s how we did things. Now, I’m in a strange land surrounded by strange faces and I’m trying to drag all that old stuff back to the surface. Maybe I should… I don’t know.” I sighed. Lilac wrapped a wing around me.

“It’s okay, Blue. You did what you felt you needed to do, nopony can fault you for that. But, next time give us some warning, okay?” She looked me in the eye. Her wing was so warm.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll do it.” I leaned into her and closed my eyes.