With surprising swiftness, Rose Quartz crossed the room and lifted me up on my rear hooves against the wall.

"Auburn, ordinarily I dislike ponies... however, I do not blame them all for what happened. Have you ever lived through a war? An honest-to-Celestia war between nations of beings where the lives of not only yourself and your fellow fighters are on the lines, but every last individual who is a member of your culture and species?"

Looking at her slightly manic expression, I gulp and shake my head no. I really had never experienced anything other than a fight at an individual level. Her words... they carried more than curiosity; they carried a weight I couldn't fully understand.

Rose set me back down but did not back away, her face losing part of her mania and gaining more stability. I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. "You said your village was attacked by an entity. If you had known they were going to do what they did, what would you have done? Would you have paused and asked, 'Should we actually do this?' Or would you have just done what you felt you needed to do, excusing your actions with 'we're doing this to protect ourselves.'"

Rose’s words hung in the air, thick and heavy. Sunset shifted beside me, clearly trying to digest the gravity of what Rose had just said. As for me... I was left... reeling. It was the first time I might possibly understand even a tiny amount of Rose's perspective. I was hard pressed to think of something I would not do to have saved my village. And... well, the thought of how far down the rabbit hole I would go absolutely terrified me.

As Rose spoke, her voice lost its earlier sharpness, growing steadier but harder, bracing herself for the weight of her memories. "My people were miners. We mined the iron and other metallic ores to supply for the war effort. Our lands were absolutely filthy with metals, and we weren't ponies like those folks near Hoofington with their coal, so we had almost no legal protection. At the start of the war, we were being requested to produce an extra 20% metal ores. Not even 3 years later, we were expected to produce double our baseline. And you know what? We did it; And not for those pony assholes who demanded it of us."

Rose seemed to unconsciously gesture at Sunset as she says this, but I cannot bring myself to look away from Rose. This was the first time she had talked about her past. I wasn’t about to interrupt.

I noticed Rose's shoulders stiffen, as though she were bracing herself for the weight of the memories. "We did it as an alternative to our people being conscripted as cannon fodder, or worse. We saw what they were doing to the diamond dogs, the buffalo, even the zony hybrids! We gave those damned ponies no reason to evict us from our lands for the ore, because there was no way in Tartarus they could mine the ores more efficiently than we could." It is clear that the topic infuriates her, but... she seems more proud of her people than spiteful to the ponies.

She pauses for a long time after this, and I want to say something, but cannot seem to get the nerve to say anything. Eventually, she sighs and says, "Our lands still exist, but they are a far cry from what they used to be." As she spoke, her eyes flickered with a strength that had survived the weight of war. It was clear — this strength had kept her going all these years.

Sunset speaks up gently. She seems to have lost the attitude towards Rose after hearing her explanation: Rose's story had clearly gotten to her. "Why are you helping ponies escape slavery after being treated so badly by the ponies here?"

Rose scoffs, dismissive of the question, "Because, despite their treatment, not every pony is a monster. Lady Albite showed me this."

Rose sighs, looking into the corner with a far-off glare. "I was her financial advisor during the war. Lady Albite was a social elite Earthpony who could trace her family back to when Puddinghead was in charge of the tribe. She had millions of bits of resources to her name. At the end of the war, she could barely afford food after paying her servants."

Rose then looks right at Sunset with an unreadable expression. "She never quivered, she never faltered. She advocated for the minor races, demonstrating their capabilities to bolster and improve our society even before the war. During the war she petitioned, fought, and did everything in her power to try to help."

Rose looks down at the ground and says with a hard, unwavering voice, "She is the only reason I give a shit about the ponies out here, and the reason why I refuse to let them die in shackles."

I cannot help but reflect on her words as she lets her words linger for a few long moments. She then spits out, not roughly, but not kindly either: "Now enough talk about the past. How can you help us get these slaves out of here?"

I pause, an idea beginning to form, but not yet clear. There was a way I could buy us time. I could feel it. The slavers wouldn’t be expecting a direct disruption. Still, something nagged at me. The thought of Sunset going up against them again felt... wrong.

She could open a gate for the slaves to leave, I knew that much. Beyond that, I still didn’t know how we could make this work. Distracting the guards, though—that was something I could handle. I just needed more details to pull it together.

I glanced over at her, a grin starting to tug at my lips. "How many ponies can you get through a gate? And what do you need to set one up?"

Sunset smirks momentarily before explaining, both to Rose and myself, "I can hold a gate for two ponies to pass at a time. It'll take me a few hours, and some kind of magical conduit for some runes to stabilize the entrance, to set up a relatively safe one for such a long-term use. I'll also need a target for the other side of the gate to open to. If we had a stable gate conduit as a target, it would be safe for more ponies."

Her smile fades as she thinks a bit, then adds with some hesitation, "I can probably hold one open for about forty minutes before I burn out, provided I can stabilize it on this end. With two conduits, I could hold it for two hours."

I then turn to Rose, and question her: "How many ponies need to get out of here?"

Rose frowns in concentration and I could see her counting in her head. "... 112 ponies. We just might be able to get them all out in 40 minutes." She flicked an ear back while frowning, "It would be close though."

"How... obvious would it be for you to make a gate? The spell seems highly complex, and easy to be detected." I ask Sunset.

"The gate is easy to detect, especially with me needing to make a long-term gate with a focal point here." Sunset says plainly. Sunset then looks to Rose, "Any of the slavers really good with magic? Or detecting it?"

Rose winces, looking away slightly, "Well, you know about Nighty. She... isn't quite dead from your... escape. And she is pissed."

Before I could fully realize what Rose was saying, Sunset quickly rounded on me and hissed: "You didn't make sure that bitch was dead?!"

I hesitantly answer, trying to keep my gaze steady on her, "I... I was kinda preoccupied with escape. My first thought is not to take out a downed opponent, Sunset." I swallowed hard. I may kill in self-defense, or when the opponent poses a clear threat to myself or others, but... this wasn’t one of those times. Nighty had been knocked out, unable to fight.

Sunset had been... more violent in escaping. I know why now, but she seemed clearly more upset that I hadn't taken Nighty out than I expected. Was this related to what they did to her? I didn’t know the whole story, but I knew enough to recognize that her anger came from something much deeper than Nighty just still being alive.

I started to ask, "Was she—" The facial expression on Sunset moved from disbelief to downright anger in an instant.

"NO, AUBURN—" Sunset shouts, ears folded back, stomping her hoof onto the ground. She looks downward, snorts, and then growls out, "She wasn’t the one. But she did... she helped." Sunset clenched her teeth, struggling to get the words out. "She was involved."

Sunset takes a deep breath, her body trembling for a moment before she steadies herself. "Let’s leave it at that."

I flicked my ears down and lowered my gaze to the ground, hoping it would show I understood—at least, as much as I could. Maybe I couldn’t fix what had happened to her, but I could show I was listening. I think that was the right thing to do, as she started to calm down when she finally noticed my expression.

Rose clops her hooves together in a sharp crack. "Girls, let's get back to the topic at hand? Planning these poor pony survivors' escape?"

Sunset and I exchanged a glance, a temporary truce settling between us as we refocused on the mission. Rose’s voice was firm, cutting through the tension. "Good. So, we need to figure out how to distract the slavers from the gate being activated, and for roughly forty minutes afterward."

"I have enough mana to support about twenty to thirty minutes of drawn-out combat," I said, the memory of the explosion making me shudder. "I can probably survive that long—assuming they don’t have another one of those things they shot at the supply shed."

Sunset smiled wryly. "That was a missile, Auburn. They shot a missile at us."

I nodded, taking the clarification in stride. "Right. Well, I could appear to 'teleport' near the front gate. You know, mimic a transportation spell to divert attention away from the gate spell and onto me?"

I glanced at her. "I’d need someone else to teleport me, though. I can’t do that."

Sunset rolled her eyes with exaggerated annoyance. "I can’t teleport you and activate the gate at the same time. That’s stretching myself way too thin. I’m already betting I can manage with this horn injury."

She smirked, then turned to Rose. "And when does that bitch have guard duty at the front gate? She’d be the perfect one to distract—she’s the only one who can detect the gate spell."

Rose nodded, her tone steady. "I’ll get that information. I know some people who could handle the teleport."

I let out a slow breath, offering a half-hearted grin. "So, all I have to do is hold the guard’s attention for ten to twenty minutes until it devolves into combat. How hard could that be?"

Sunset’s grin turned good-natured, though there was a spark of mischief in her eyes. "You’re forgetting something, Auburn. She saw you. You’re going to need to redo your pony form, just like you said earlier."

I muttered some choice words under my breath. "Yeah, I forgot. I’ll need time to redo my disguise spell, and that might cut down my combat time a little."

Smirking, I added, "Besides, I need to look more like Sunset for the father-daughter plan to work... though..." I slumped slightly, thinking. "Wait—you’re matriarchal, right? A mother looking for her daughter would probably sell better."

Rose chuckled, her eyes lighting up with amusement. "Yeah, the ponies are still matriarchal, to some degree. Instinctual, at least. A mother-daughter angle would feel less... out of place."

Author's Note

Footnote: Level Up (?)
New Perk Added: Silver-Edged Tongue
You get a +50% bonus to your speech skill when interacting with individuals whose goals oppose yours. However, perceived allies are more likely to react with hostility to your attempts to persuade or intimidate them.