I opened fire, pouring every round in those pistols into the yak’s face…

…And it didn’t matter in the slightest.

‘Yona’ didn’t even react as round after round plinked off of her thick metal hide with about the same level of lethality as spitballs. I came closer to inflicting more harm on myself when a ricochet sparked off the floor next to me than I did to her. I didn’t stop pulling those triggers though. I emptied the magazines of both weapons, screaming at the top of my lungs that I wasn’t going to let her kill any more of my friends.

The slides of both pistols locked back on their spent magazines, their triggers no longer budging. Beyond their barrels, the heavily augmented bodyguard for the newly-crowned king stared back at me with detached indifference. An aggrieved cry erupted from my throat as I discarded the pistols and launched myself at the yak. I lashed out with my reinforced arcanetic forelimbs, striking at the heavily-augmented bovid’s face. Grinder had forced these limbs on me in order to hurt and extort others. I’d never used them for that purpose though, and had been quite conscious of not using them to their full potential lest I validate what my old herd leader had done to myself and others.

Now though, I wasn’t inclined to hold back and unbound the governors on those limbs, slamming my hoof into the side of the yak’s armored muzzle with all of the force that my arcanetics were capable of…

…And it still didn’t matter.

Her jaw barely even budged at the blow. I refused to let myself be deterred. I whirled around, preparing to deliver another strike to the bodyguard’s throat, where she might be less-heavily armored…only to be almost absently flicked aside by a twitch of Yona’s own forelimb which sent me sprawling back to the floor.

My diaphragm spasmed at the hit, causing me to cough as I struggled back up onto my hooves. I sneered at the yak, as I felt enraged by her apparent callous indifference to my efforts, and frustrated that I couldn’t seem to do anything to harm her. Or even get a reaction from her! In Yano’s eyes, I wasn’t a threat to her. I was just an insect that needed to be squashed, and worthy of about as much effort or attention. She strode over to where I lay, the hissing and humming of her thauma-mechanical joints marking each step like a count-down to my demise.

I didn’t try to run. There wasn’t much point. Where would I even go? I couldn’t fight her. I couldn’t beat her. My eyes fixed onto hers as I mustered up a defiant glare. I wouldn’t cower, and I wouldn’t flinch away from this. ‘Bullies’ like her didn’t scare me anymore.

“Fuck you,” I spat at the looming figure. “You can kill us; but someday creatures like us are going to win.” I thought back to the throngs of angry megasilo residents screaming in the streets outside of city hall. Creatures that had been pushed to their limits, and had little left to lose. Creatures upset by what the city and its rulers had reduced them to. Creatures who had just been waiting for one more little spark to ignite their rage and push them over the edge into revolution.

Jenny had sought to kindle that spark here with the death of the king. While her target was already dead, and not at her hooves, it was still possible that our mission here would bear fruit. If the others made it out, and if they could spread the word that a small group of dedicated creatures got onboard the griffon king’s flagship at around the same time that he died…

Whatever the ‘official’ reason was that the news outlets gave for King Grover V’s death, whispers would undoubtedly circle through the city about how ‘coincidental’ it was that assassins―from among the ‘common creature’ like themselves―were able to get onto the Anzû at the same time the king just happened to die of ‘completely natural causes’. Creatures would begin to wonder about what really happened. They’d reach certain conclusions. They’d figure that, if even the king could be gotten to, then surely reaching the high-level executives ruining their lives was within their grasp as well.

Even if we all died here, maybe it had been enough to start the first domino falling.

I could live with that.

An ironic final thought, to be sure; or it would have been, had I actually been killed shortly after having it. Fortunately for me, that didn’t come to pass thanks to the intervention of Jenny Silverhoof. Just before Yona could stomp me into a golden smear that would need to be deep cleaned out of the throne room’s carpet, the donkey charged in and slammed up against the larger yak.

Much to my shock, it was a move that proved moderately productive. Which was far more than I’d have assumed, given what I knew about the donkey. Or, rather, what it appeared that I only thought I knew. Given the apparent disparity in the extent of their arcanetic augmentations, any onlooker would have―quite reasonably―been forgiven for likening Jenny’s chance at attaining a positive outcome as being on par with the chances of your average foal trying to strong-hoof an overfilled dumpster. After all, Yona was one of the most heavily-modified beings that I’d ever seen. By contrast, the only modification that Jenny had was her left forehoof. She didn’t even have a standard arcanetic talisman to give her access to rudimentary telekinesis. She should have bounced off Yona just like my bullets had.

Instead, I actually saw the larger creature stagger when Jenny’s charge connected; and even the donkey didn’t look that much worse for wear as she slammed her non-arcanetic shoulder into the beast. I found myself remembering when the donkey had pinned me earlier back at the loft, and how her chest had felt far more reinforced than it looked. I knew that the jenny was prone to misrepresenting aspects of herself to others. Had she been hiding the true extent of her implants as well?

“Eyes on the prize, chrome-dome!” Jenny snarled. In response, her opponent wheeled around and tried to gore the donkey with her alloy-plated horns, but Jenny managed to roll away in time to avoid them. She came back up onto her hooves with her own pistol clasped in the crock of her arcanetic hoof and snapped off a pair of quick shots. I fully expected the donkey’s bullets to be just as ineffective as my efforts had been, but found myself surprised when the yak actually flinched away from the impacts. Whatever rounds the donkey was using were clearly more potent than what had been loaded into my own weapon.

Jenny grinned when she saw her adversary recoil, even if it was only a brief reaction to being shot. Yona shook off the effects quite quickly and rounded on the donkey. It looked like she was coiling up for a charge of her own, and I felt my breath catch in my throat as I found myself doubting that Jenny would prove to be as resilient when she was on the receiving end of a hit from the arcanetic behemoth. It looked like the donkey had her doubts as well, but also had no intentions of finding out for sure.

Just as Yona began her charge, I saw Jenny’s silvered limb snap out holding her pistol once more. However, this time she was not directing it at the charging yak. Rather, she was aiming off to the side, though she didn’t take her eyes off the threat bearing down on her. At first, I was unsure of what Jenny thought she was going to accomplish by very clearly not shooting at the yak. Yona launched into motion.

She fired off her shot when the yak was just meters away, aiming almost completely perpendicular to Yona.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out that Jenny actually managed to hit her!

Though, this was entirely due to the fact that the yak had diverted at the last moment in an effort to interpose herself in the path of the bullet…and keep it from striking the hippogriff king who was still sitting on his throne.

A smirk creased Jenny’s lips as she squared herself up on the yak once more. “Your new boss has you on a pretty short leash there, Masher,” the donkey chided. “Though, I gotta say, I’m a little surprised that you turned your back on the old one so quickly. I was under the impression that you and the king had known each other for a long time.”

The yak’s dull eyes merely stared back wordlessly. From behind her on the throne, the new king of the Griffon Kingdom spoke up though, rising to the donkey’s taunt. “Yona recognizes that my father was too weak to do what was truly necessary,” Grendel sneered. He rose up from the throne and began stepping down from the dais, though I noted that he was careful to keep the bulk of his yak bodyguard between himself and Jenny’s gun. “For half a century, Light City has sat off our shores enjoying nearly unfettered autonomy. Falling under the whims of no single nation.

“It was a deal struck between the Kingdom and Equestria long ago, the backroom dealings of Princess Twilight Sparkle and the freshly reforged Griffon Kingdom.” The soft yellow hippogriff continued to glare imperiously at the donkey. “For all the praises that have been heaped upon my father for what he did for the griffons, Light City is surely the ‘Great’ King Gallus Grover Gusty’s ‘greatest’ failure!” he spat contemptuously.

“A city of vast wealth and resources―built through the toil of my kingdom―and what do we receive for our efforts? Nothing! When Equestria still existed, perhaps it made sense to leave the city as a neutral port, but now that it has vanished from the world, it is well past time that Light City be reintegrated into the Kingdom.

“I understood this―Yona understands this,” the hippogriff gestured to the dead-eyed yak who appeared largely oblivious to her liege’s monologuing, merely continuing to keep her gaze fixed on Jenny and the donkey’s raised pistol. “And soon, even that arrogant old nag, Starlight Glimmer will understand!

“Though I certainly wouldn’t expect a simpleton like you to. Mule.”

Jenny’s expression doesn’t immediately change. Slowly, she lowers her arcanetic hoof and holsters the weapon, all the while not breaking eye contact with the king. She draws in a long breath, holds it for a short moment, and then slowly lets it out while the hippogriff sneers down at her. “Okay.”

The change in her demeanor is instantaneous. Jenny’s calm façade drops, replaced by an expression of unbridled rage as she hurls herself forward at the stallion. Yona moves to intercept her, but the donkey isn’t the least bit perturbed, slamming her arcanetic hoof into the side of the yak’s armored face with enough force behind it that the ringing of metal-on-metal actually hurts my ears. It’s inconceivable to me that nothing gave way during the impact, on either end.

My view of the fight is briefly obscured by a notification of an incoming call from Harriet, which I quickly accept. A frantic-sounding hippogriff mare’s clairaudient words sound in my ears, though I’m only paying half attention as I continue to look on at the melee unfolding in front of me. “Pel! What’s going on?! There’s a general alert going off throughout the whole ship!”

“The prince―er, new king―triggered an alarm,” I informed the nettrotter. “Jenny’s fighting his bodyguard.” My eyes darted towards the red and purple smear on the floor. I winced and suppressed the ball of bile that threatened to crawl up my throat at the grizzly sight. “Dandy’s dead.”

“...Shit,” was all that Harriet had to say on that point. Not that there was really all that much worth saying at the present moment. Mourning could wait until later. Right now, we had other pressing concerns. Some of us more than others it sounded like, as the hippogriff went on. “Well it’s gotten a lot of the ship’s crew to start taking a closer look at what’s going on,” she warned, “including the Anzû’s resident nettrotters. And they’re good.” It was then that I became aware of the strained note in Harriet’s voice, as though she were speaking to me while simultaneously doing something that was physically demanding, like struggling to lift a heavy load.

“Whatever you two are doing, do it fast! I―” the hippogriff mare’s words briefly slipped into a hiss, as though she’d just experienced some physical pain. When she recovered, her tone was significantly more ragged than it had been a moment ago. “We can’t stay here much longer if any of us want to leave.”

I swallowed back the fearful lump that her words had spawned in my throat. My eyes focused once more on the fight going on between Jenny and Yona Masher in front of me. It didn’t look like the donkey was having luck gaining any ground in their fight, while her opponent didn’t look even the slightest bit worse for wear. This was not a fight that was going to be over soon. Certainly not as quickly as it sounded like Harriet wanted. Or ‘needed’, more likely.

Though maybe there was something I could do on that front. I locked my gaze on King Grendel. My arcanetic telekinesis discarded Dandy’s spent pistol and slipped a fresh magazine into the grip of my own. With Jenny keeping his bodyguard occupied, I had an opportunity to complete our mission myself. I wasn’t sure how we’d deal with Yona quite yet, but the hippogriff was a solvable problem.

I stood up and leveled the freshly-loaded weapon at the hippogriff and pulled the trigger.

Then I blinked in shock as I saw the round spark off the armor-reinforced face of his yak bodyguard. I hadn’t even seen her move. Jenny seemed to be likewise caught off guard as she flailed around briefly to try and regain her balance when the swing she’d intended to land on her opponent’s face instead whiffed harmlessly through open air. Both the donkey and I stared blankly at the impassive yak for a stunned second. “What in the…?”

My blood ran cold as I realized that I’d once more gained the yak’s full attention. My mind filled with visions of what had happened to Dandy only minutes ago, only this time ending with a yellow pile of bloody pulp on the floor instead of purple. Yona charged at me. My hooves moved in a blur as I scrambled to avoid getting splattered.

Try as I might though, I wasn’t going to succeed, and I knew it. The yak simply moved too fast.

I heard the impact before I felt it, which struck me as odd. Then a fraction of a second later I was actually struck. However, it turned out that it was not by the heavily-augmented yak. Rather it was by Jenny, who had been sent sailing through the air when she’d interposed herself in front of Masher and took the brunt of the hit for me. The pair of us rolled along the floor of the throne room in a tangle of limbs before slamming against the wall.

A pained groan escaped my lips as I struggled to right myself under the weight of the donkey, which was considerably greater than I would have suspected for an equine of her size. Jenny likewise hissed in pain as her body was shifted off of me, though she did not make any immediate move to get back onto her hooves. I very quickly saw the reason why when I glanced over at her and saw the donkey clutching at a deep gash that had been rent along her abdomen.

Despite the clear peril that the two of us were still in at the hooves of the nearby yak, I found myself unable to look away from the wound on the jenny’s side, confounded by what I was seeing. Or, rather, what I was not seeing. Specifically the conspicuous lack of excessive amounts of blood…or internal organs. I may not have been a doctor or a student of anatomy, but I still knew that most creatures’ guts tended to be full of, well…guts.

Jenny’s was not.

What she did have was a device that bore a symbol which was just barely visible through the opening that had been torn through her synthetic hide. A depiction of three equidistant six-pointed black stars against a yellow background. It was a symbol that I recognized from a myriad of action-oriented shows and movies that I’d seen over the years, typically during the climax when the hero was tasked with disarming a bomb which threatened to destroy the whole city.

I was looking at a thaumanuclear device. A thaumanuclear device that had been physically implanted inside of the donkey where her organs should have been. Nor did it seem that I was the only one to notice this, or be given pause by the unexpected revelation.

Yona halted her advance towards us; and while her facial expression remained visibly unchanged, there was a subtle hint of trepidation in her stance. It felt like she was just as likely to sprint away from us as towards us in the next few moments.

From his own vantage point near the throne, Grendel couldn’t see what it was that had put his bodyguard off from continuing with her attack and his scowl depended. “Damn it, you chromed-out twit; what are you just standing around for? Kill them!”

Yona didn’t immediately respond, but Jenny started to laugh. It started out as little more than a pained cough, which slowly evolved into gasping heckles as the donkey slowly rolled back onto her hooves and struggled up to a standing position on trembling legs. When she finally managed to stand fully erect―though with a slight list as she kept her silver-foreleg over the gash in her barrel―the donkey smirked wryly between the king and his bodyguard.

“Killing me would be pretty redundant,” Jenny said through a pained wheeze. “I’m a dead donkey walking.” She finally lowered her chrome leg and turned her body slightly to reveal to the hippogriff stallion the telltale black and yellow symbol that was peeking through her wound. Grendel’s features twisted in visible confusion as he narrowed his hawkish eyes and sought out what it was that the donkey was trying to show him.

Then they widened with recognition and the terror set in. He absently stumbled backwards, tripping and falling over his new throne. Jenny’s mirth redoubled at the sight of the cowering monarch, setting off another round of laughter.

“And just like that, suddenly the great king of the griffons―the most powerful creature in the whole world!―is no longer the one in control,” the donkey chided. “You built a world where whoever’s carrying around the biggest stick gets to call the shots; figuring that you’d always be the one holding the biggest stick of them all. You and your friends,” Jenny tossed her head in Yona’s direction, though I got the impression that she wasn’t referring to the yak exclusively.

The donkey flashed a wicked sneer in the direction of the hippogriff, clearly reveling in seeing the king cower in her presence. “A second ago you were so fucking smug, sitting on your throne and talking about your plans for Light City and the world. So cocksure that nothing could stop you from doing what you wanted because you ‘knew’ you had the biggest stick, and everycreature else was just going to have to suck it in and go along with what you wanted.

“But…now the shoe is on the other hoof,” she chuckled. Her hoof waved in the direction of Yona. “You took out your stick and started waving it around. And, while it’s an impressive tool, I’ll admit,” Jenny briefly stuck her tongue out at the yak, who didn’t appear to respond to the barb, “now I get to show you mine and…”

Another series of chuckles bubbled up from the donkey’s throat. “As a jenny, I don’t get to say this often enough, but I think I get why jacks like talking about it:

“Mine’s bigger.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the throne room. Yona stood her ground, seemingly unfazed by Jenny’s implied threat of thaumanuclear destruction, but also not making any move to attack the donkey. The hippogriff king’s face was far more easily readable, and it was clear that he was utterly terrified. I didn’t blame him. I was pretty scared myself.

Scenes of thaumanuclear explosions from vids I’d seen played out in my head and I was forced to swallow back a nervous lump that formed in my throat. Some of those devices were capable of erasing the entirety of Light City and the island it was built on from the map, leaving absolutely nothing behind. While I didn’t believe for a moment that Jenny would have fitted herself with a bomb that was genuinely powerful enough to cause that much destruction―as her intent was ostensibly to save the city and not to vaporize it―it was pretty clear that it was intended to be a potent enough explosion to take out the Anzû.

Having seen how massive the ship was, I had a pretty good idea in my mind how large an explosion would need to be in order to definitively destroy the massive airship. For sure, nothing inside this throne room was going to exist as anything more than individual atoms if Jenny’s bomb went off here. And as I was presently in the throne room with her…

“So here’s what’s going to happen―” the donkey began, only to find herself cut off by the hippogriff king as he appeared to finally recover from his initial shock.

“No,” he stated firmly, glaring at Jenny. The donkey balked, surprised at the curt refusal to even hear out her terms. Grendel rose back onto his hooves and talons, making a show of dusting himself off. “I will not negotiate with your ilk. That is not how I will mark my rule.

“Nor do I believe that you’ll carry through with your threat,”

The king’s theory earned himself a frown from the donkey. “You really think I’d have gone through the trouble of having my guts scooped out with a melon-baller if I wasn’t one hundred percent committed to this?” she challenged. “It’s not like there’s any going back for me from this,” she snorted, waving her silvered hoof at her wound and the bomb within.

“And yet we’re still talking,” Grendel noted, not having seemed to be cowed by Jenny’s threat. “You could have detonated yourself the moment you boarded this ship. There was no need for this confrontation. What use would a whole dramatic speech have been when the only ones around to hear it were going to be vaporized a minute later?

“Oh, I have no doubt you intend to die here and take myself and the Anzû with you,” the hippogriff conceded. “However…” Now his eyes shifted over to me, “I suspect that not every member of your crew is quite as ready as you are to become kindling on your bonfire, hmm?”

My eyes darted back down to the donkey in my hooves. Jenny, on the other hoof, was apparently having trouble meeting my gaze. A lot of our past conversations and interactions were suddenly given a fresh context in my mind. The king was right: Jenny wasn’t keen on taking the rest of us with her. Not when she’d been essentially trying to groom me to take over for her, I realized. That was why she’d been exposing me to every facet of the group’s operations. Introducing me to her contacts. Telling the others that I was to know the whole truth to any question I asked.

I was supposed to be Jenny’s replacement when she was gone; and she’d known that her end was going to be coming sooner than any of us would have guessed.

Which meant that my dying here with her was indeed not part of her plan. If she detonated that bomb right now, she’d take out the entire crew. To include Baton Rouge, one of the Light City underworld’s most influential and well-connected fixers. With one blast, Jenny would absolutely cripple not just her efforts to undermine the megacorps, but countless other groups’ as well. It was actually hard to know who’d come out worse in the end: the corps, who would certainly all suffer in some way from the political disruption the loss of the royal family would cause the Griffon Kingdom, or the citizens of Light City, who would no longer have any effective groups working behind the scenes to improve their lives and protect them from the worst abuses the city’s corporate empires intended to inflict on them at any moment.

“Pel, what the fuck is taking you guys so long!?” Came the strained plea of our group’s nettrotter. “These security guys aren’t screwing around! Barkly is being pushed back, they’re storming the hangar, and I―AUGH!” The hippogriff mare let out a pained cry that seemed to echo around inside my own head as a result of the clairaudient link we shared, making me wince. “I…I’m trying to hold back their daemons, but…” Harriet’s words came out in a haggard breath. It was hard to miss the note of resignation in her tone.

“I don’t know how long―I ca…I…” It almost sounded like the mare was holding back tears now. “I can feel them…in my heaAAAUUUGHHH!”

That final anguished scream was cut mercifully shut as the hippogriff was no longer able to sustain the communications link. However, that didn’t leave me feeling any less shaken by the realization that I’d just experienced the death of a second member of our team essentially ‘first hoof’ in a vein similar to Dandy’s a minute ago. It was a feeling that wasn’t helped at all by Harriet’s revelation that the other members of our group were in similar dire straits. As tough as Barkly was, I knew there was no way she could hold off a whole ship’s worth of soldiers. She’d run out of ammunition long before they would. The same went for Gerry and Baton Rouge.

Not that it mattered, I supposed. With the Anzû on full alert like it was, and our nettrotter gone, there was no way that our little airwagon was going to be able to launch and make an escape, even if the rest of us could get to the hangar. I recalled those turrets sitting just outside the hangar’s entrance. They’d certainly be operational now, and ready to shoot us out of the sky the moment we took off.

I let out a disparaging snort of my own. That ‘we’ was doing a lot of heavy lifting. I certainly wasn’t going to be joining them back on the airwagon no matter how things worked out. With the security alert in place, the lifts were locked down and Harriet―our only means of circumventing the ship’s security protocols, was KIA. Which meant that Jenny and I were trapped here.

It seemed that Jenny and I were both dead mares walking. We all were now.

“Harriet’s gone,” I numbly informed the donkey.

Jenny shut her eyes and let out a muttered curse. When she opened them again, I could see her resignation. She’d reached the same conclusion that I had only a moment ago. None of us were making it off this ship alive anyway. Which meant that there was nothing more to be gained by drawing things out.

“I’m sorry.” I glanced at the jenny in mild surprise upon hearing the apology. I idly wondered if the donkey had found those two words as strange to say as I’d found them to hear. “I fucked up. None of you deserved this.”

A wan smile tugged at my lips. “Not a great end to the mission,” I acknowledged sardonically, “but it’s not like you twisted my hoof to get me here.” I looked back towards the hippogriff king and his bodyguard, who was still keeping her distance from us and the device in Jenny’s abdomen. “I can think of worse notes to go out on.

“Let’s ignite a revolution.”

“Heh. Say no more, bloom.” Jenny flicked her silvered fetlock. In that same moment, I heard a high-pitched whine begin to emanate from within the donkey. She smirked in the direction of the hippogriff king. “Hey, junior; how does a reunion with dear old dad sound?”

Grendel’s face paled in terror, the expression replaced a heartbeat later with rage as he began to scream at his guardian. “Masher, kill them! Quickly!” he all but shrieked.

“Killing me will accomplish fuck-all,” the donkey said, leveling her gaze at the yak. “Bomb’s armed. No going back from it. I ain’t no EOD tech; are you?” She let out a pained groan as she finally rolled up onto her hooves and squared off once more against the arcanetic monster before us. Her eyes swiftly darted up and down the uninjured behemoth. “If you run now, you’d probably escape the blast.”

At the back of the throne room, I once more saw the king’s eyes widen in fear as he heard the donkey float to his protector the idea of leaving him to die. “Y-yona,” he stammered hurriedly, “remember your promise to my parents! You told my mother you’d always keep me safe!”

The yak glanced over her shoulder to the newly-crowned king, her expression still wholly unreadable. However, a moment later she was staring back at Jenny with that same malice she had before. “Yona…will mash.”

“Well fuck you too,” the donkey sneered. Then she charged the yak.

I was too stunned to react immediately. It was sheer madness and folly to take on Yona Masher with our bare hooves. She’d tear us apart. Literally! Not that sitting back and doing nothing would work out any better for us in the end, I knew. Still, I wasn’t sure that I retained the courage to just sprint headlong into certain death like that, even knowing that my remaining lifespan was measured in minutes no matter what I did.

Swallowing down my own fear, I took a deep breath and prepared to join the fray as well. However, just before I made my move, a message flashed across the corner of my vision. The sender was unknown, which was quite irregular, given how such cantrips worked over arcanetic devices. The contents of the message itself also caught me by surprise:

ELEVATOR. MOVE!

As a result of the security alert put out through the ship by the king, the elevator was locked down. The only creature who could have overridden the lockout and granted Jenny and I access, Harriet, was dead. It was useless to even try and―

A nearby chime drew my attention. I turned just in time to see the doors to the lift inexplicably open up. I blinked in shock, my jaw going slack. I looked back to Jenny and Yona, who were currently both reared up on their hind legs and locked together in a wrestling match that even I knew was already a foregone conclusion. The donkey just didn’t possess the raw strength needed to overcome the yak’s arcanetic enhancements. Which meant that the chances of her being able to break away and get to the elevator were also slim to none, leaning heavily towards the latter.

Still, it felt wrong to leave her behind…

NOW!

I felt my teeth grinding as my desire to escape and maybe have a chance at living to see tomorrow battled with my apprehension of leaving another friend to die for me. I’d sworn that I wouldn’t let it happen again, and I didn’t want to be a hypocrite like that. The latter was winning out, and I took my first tentative step towards the melee…

…Only to be stopped when I caught Jenny’s eye on me. I saw it flicker towards the open elevator door. It was only the briefest of looks, but in that moment I knew that the donkey didn’t want me to come to her aid. She’d made this a one-way trip for herself. It wasn’t her desire for the rest of us to die with her when we had a chance at living on.

So I ran for the elevator. The second I was inside, even without needing to press any of the buttons, the doors sealed shut and the lift began to descend. Somecreature was clearly controlling it. The question was: who? Clearly a being who was inclined to have at least some of our crew make it out of here alive. That felt to me like it should have been a very short list of creatures on this ship. If whoever it was was even on the ship. But who else in the world would even know that we were here? We hadn’t known that we were going to be here until tonight!

And why were they having such an easy time circumventing the ship’s network security when even Harriet hadn’t been able to defend herself against the system’s intrusion countermeasures?

The doors opened on the hangar level and my ears were immediately assaulted by the sounds of sustained gunfire echoing off the walls. I sprinted into the hangar proper…and found what could only be described as a warzone.

Barkly and Gerry were both hunkered down behind some crates, the former apparently having abandoned her post on the second level at some point to get down here and assist in protecting their only way off the airship. Both creatures were being supported by Baton Rouge, who was using the Health Harras airwagon’s nose-mounted cannon to suppress the Griffon Kingdom soldiers spilling into the hangar. Even with the heavier ordinance provided by their borrowed ride, things clearly weren’t going very well for our side.

The reason for that was pretty simple: we weren’t fighting off mere corporate goons from Aeriesaka. These were professional soldiers, trained and equipped with the best that their nation had to offer, and it showed. That we’d lasted this long was likely due only to the high defensibility of the hangar itself and the limited points of entry into it afforded to the Anzû’s defenders.

My gaze landed on a discarded rifle from one of the fallen griffon soldiers and I snatched it up in the grip of my arcanetic telekinetic field before sprinting through the gunfire to join my comrades. I dove behind cover just as a burst of enemy gunfire sparked off the deck at my hooves. I was pretty sure I’d caught a sliver of a shattered bullet in my leg as a result, but I had far bigger concerns now than a flesh wound.

Gerry snapped off some retaliatory fire of his own before ducking back down and loading in a fresh magazine. I noted that it seemed to be his last one, given that the rest of the pouches on his barding appeared to already be empty. “Glad you could join us,” the griffon tiercel quipped, flashing me a smile which possessed very little genuine mirth behind it. “We saved you some bad guys.” He nodded his head back in the direction of the enemy.

“We need to leave. Quickly.”

“So soon? But we just got here,” the griffon quipped before popping over our cover and firing off a pair of bursts at our attackers. “I’m meeting so many interesting griffons!” He ducked down, wincing as a machine gun swept over our position, chewing away at the crate we were using for cover.

“You don’t understand; Jenny smuggled a nuke onto the ship!” I felt it wasn’t necessary to go into specifically how the donkey had managed to accomplish the task. “She’s already armed it. We don’t have much time left before it goes off!”

The tiercel gaped at me for a full three seconds in incomprehension as bullets continued to fly overhead. Then, “Where’s she get a fucking nuke? Did she just pull one out of her ass?!”

As unintentionally accurate as Gerry’s guess may have been, I declined to elaborate further. The specifics behind how Jenny had gotten the weapon onboard wasn’t the most pressing concern that we were facing. “We need to leave!” I reiterated before firing off another brief burst at the attacking griffon soldiers.

“Right.” I was grateful that Gerry didn’t press me on where the bomb had come from. Though that didn’t mean that the griffon didn’t pose other equally uncomfortable questions that I was loath to provide specific answers to. “We’ll leave as soon as she gets here. How far behind you is she?”

“She’s not coming.”

Another disbelieving stare from the griffon. “What do you mean she’s not―?!” His question was cut off by the metallic clattering of a grenade landing close by us on the deck. Our eyes locked onto the deadly cylinder. While my reaction was to freeze in terror, Gerry was spurred to action, lashing out with a hind paw and punting the offending explosive away. He then fell on top of me, shielding my body from the―mercifully―distant explosion and the shrapnel it spewed.

I heard the tiercel hiss in pain as he slowly rose and took the majority of his weight off of me. Beside us, I saw Barkly examining her right arm, the synthetic flesh of her arcanetic limb looking worse for wear, as she’d apparently used it to shield her face from the grenade. The NCPD barding that covered her torso was speckled with slivers of metal, but it didn’t look like anything had managed to pierce the armored vest too deeply. The diamond dog snarled and returned fire while I scrambled onto my hooves and looked over the griffon. He was certainly worse for rare, and his haunches bled from a myriad of tiny wounds, but it didn’t look like he’d been wounded too severely.

One thing was clear though: we couldn’t stay here much longer. If we remained, we wouldn’t live long enough to be killed by Jenny’s bomb at this rate. “She’s staying behind to protect the bomb and hold off the king’s bodyguard: Yona Masher,” I explained. “She wants us to leave without her.” While the donkey had not explicitly stated as much to me, I didn’t feel like I was grossly misstating her desires.

Gerry winced, and it didn't seem to me like he was doing it as the result of physical pain. “Yeah, that sounds like the sort of stupid shit she’d do,” he admitted. The griffon checked over his weapon before looking towards Barkly. “Alright, time to clear us a path out of here.” The diamond dog nodded. Gerry got my attention tilting his head in the direction of the attacking soldiers. “Covering fire on three. Ready?” I swallowed and delivered a shaky nod of my own. “One…two…

“Three!”

The griffon and I both popped up over the lip of our cover and began to spit out bursts of gunfire at the soldiers. We didn’t have a lot of rounds remaining, so we couldn’t be as liberal with our application of bullets as might have been preferable for a ‘covering fire’ situation, but the sudden appearance of two creatures firing at them was enough to at least give the other griffons pause. I even spotted a couple of them ducking down behind cover of their own.

It wasn’t as though we were the only ones shooting either. Either Baton Rouge had recognized what we were doing from inside the cockpit, or he and Gerry had been sharing a clairaudient link, because it felt like the Health Harras airwagon’s nose cannon increased in tempo as well, peppering the kingdom’s troops with additional fire. Even Barkly was snapping off poorly-aimed shots as the diamond dog stood fully upright, her weapon held only in her right paw. Meanwhile, she extended her left arm towards the hangar’s exit.

I spared a brief glance over my shoulder, curious what exactly it was that Gerry had expected the band’s bassist to do while we suppressed the enemy. My eyes widened as I spotted a port on her arm open up, and a small missile pop up through it. Barkly trained the weapon on one of the two small turrets which guarded the hangar’s exit and fired.

The projectile traveled at speeds that were in excess of what I could track with the naked eye. It almost felt like I’d simply seen the tiny missile vanish from its mount on the diamond dog’s outstretched arm, and then a fraction of a second later the turret she’d been aiming at exploded. The warhead might have been small in size, but it had clearly packed a not-insignificant punch!

Not missing a beat, Barkly swapped her rifle over to the expended limb and then raised her right arm in the direction of the second turret, preparing to finish clearing our way off the airship. However, after a second, the diamond dog’s brow furrowed and she looked down at the limb in frustration. She shook it, as though she were trying to wake it up after having slept on it wrong and extended the limb straight out again. Still there was no reaction. No tiny rocket popped out of its compartment as it had for her other limb.

“¡Carajo!” She spat as she tried a third time to deploy the weapon sequestered inside her arm.

A second later the massive canine jerked as a trio of rounds struck her in the chest and pitched her back.

“Barkly!” I heard myself cry out. Had I just watched another friend die in front of me? I turned my full attention back towards the enemy soldiers and leaned on the trigger of my rifle. The anemic burst of gunfire ceased far too abruptly as the weapon’s magazine ran dry. Beside me, I could see that Gerry was once more ducking down behind our shared cover, his own gun silent as well, and the pouches on his vest all empty. I couldn’t hear the more thunderous claps of the airwagon’s cannon either.

This was it. Our weapons were dry, and our path off the ship was still barred by an active turret. There was no way that Baton Rouge would be able to get enough speed built up to evade its shots at this distance. Trying to take off would be as sure of a death sentence as staying put and waiting for Jenny’s nuke to go off. Assuming the soldiers didn’t just shoot us first, of course.

We’d come so close. It felt like such a kick in the teeth to have it all yanked out from under us now―

GET READY.

My thoughts were interrupted as another of the odd messages that didn’t appear to have a sender appeared in the corner of my vision. Nor, did it seem this time, was I the only one who had received such a message, as I saw Gerry balk at almost the same time I saw the words appear. The griffon’s features contorted in confusion, and he was just about to remark on what he was seeing when an alarm began to screech through the hangar. A new alarm, accompanied by flashing amber lights. Even the griffon soldiers paused, looking around in confusion.

A moment later, there was an audible automated message: “FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS: ACTIVE. PLEASE EVACUATE HANGAR DECK.”

Then everything went white as a thick foggy mist was injected into the hangar from scores of vents and nozzles built into the walls and ceilings. It was thick enough that I couldn’t even see my hoof in front of my face.

RUN!

I was about to indignantly ask aloud where exactly it was we were supposed to run to, given that everycreature was effectively blinded by the ship’s extinguisher systems. Then a series of illusionary waypoints materialized before my eyes, guiding me towards an outline of the airwagon we’d flown in on. The airwagon wasn’t the only silhouette that I noticed was highlighted for me. I was also able to make out Gerry next to me, even though I could barely see the griffon through the manufactured fog. The more distant griffon soldiers were showing up for me too. However, if their own stumbling around and frustrated yells were anything to go by, they had not been provided with the same illusionary aids that I was.

Something in the mist blew past me, charging in the direction of the disoriented griffon soldiers. A moment later, thanks to the inexplicable presence of those illusionary highlights, I recognized that it was Barkly which had bolted into the fray. I called after her. She clearly knew exactly where the enemy griffons were, as I heard her clobber one of them without a moment’s hesitation, which meant she had to be receiving the same messages that I was. So why wasn’t she running like it was telling us to?

“Get to the airwagon!” Barkly yelled back through the fog. I could see her limbs struggling with something that wasn’t the griffon that she’d just tackled. Then the diamond dog turned to face the hangar’s exit and knelt down into a pose I’d seen in a dozen action flicks as a filly.

She’d found a rocket launcher to use against the remaining turret.

I was on my hooves and moving towards the airwagon as the shockwave produced by the turret’s destruction reverberated through the deck plating beneath me. Gerry and I were both clambering for the open side door. The airwagon’s engine’s began to audibly whine as the batpony pilot spun the craft’s engines up for takeoff. The pair of us made it inside at about the same moment that the alarm for the Anzû’s fire-suppression system went suddenly silent. A heartbeat later I heard the sound of exhaust fans evacuating the extinguishing gas from the hangar, clearing away the obscuring mist.

Suddenly the griffon soldiers were no longer forced to stumble around blindly. Nor were they ignorant of the diamond dog in their midst. For a fleeting moment, I saw Barkly look over at us. I could see her doing the math in her head. The distance she’d have to cross. The fact that the griffon soldiers were armed, and we had nothing left to cover her with. That something had to keep the griffons occupied, or they’d just turn everything that they had on our airwagon and disable it before Baton Rouge could get us out of here.

I saw her consider all of those realities in the space of a breath. Then I saw her smile…just before she spun around and laid out the nearest soldier with a vicious right cross to her beak.

“¡Salgan!” I heard her yell over our link.

Baton Rouge lifted the airwagon off the deck and it began drifting towards the exit. I wanted to protest, but choked it down. As much as I might have detested doing what Barkly had told us to…I was capable of reaching the same conclusions that she was. Without somecreature to keep the soldiers occupied, none of us would get out of here.

That didn’t really make leaving the diamond dog behind any easier though.

As hard as it was though, I couldn’t look away either as Barkly threw herself from one griffon to the next, tearing at the armored soldiers with both teeth and claws like a feral beast. The griffons had clearly not been prepared to face somecreature like her, who was fighting so ferociously, in close quarters. They fell back, trying to escape the reach of her massive paws and the deathly-sharp arcanetic claws that tipped them. Not all of them managed to evade the raging diamond dog.

…But a few did. As the airwagon drifted away from the mouth of the hangar, I saw a couple of the armored griffons gain enough distance on Barkly that they were able to shoulder their weapons and draw a bead on the much larger canine. I saw the muzzle flashes of their barrels as they unloaded on her. Her bulk staggered at first, but refused to go down entirely beneath the deluge of gunfire. Her paw descended, and very nearly rent an unfortunate griffon’s head from her shoulders. Even as their comrade was stuck down, the rest of the soldiers continued to fire.

Finally, the diamond dog dropped. First to her knee, her face contorted with equal parts pain and rage as she raised her paw once more to slash at her killers…

Her claws did not claim another victim when they fell this time though. Instead, Barkly slumped forward…and lay still. A pool of slick crimson blood was visible on the deck around her body. My illusionary HUD indicated that the diamond dog had ‘left’ the clairaudient link our group shared.

I shut my eyes, feeling my teeth grinding in the back of my mouth. Another friend gone. Dead before my eyes while I did nothing! Not that there’d been anything I could meaningfully have done anyway. However, while Future Pel would be able to process that reality later, Present Pel wasn’t in nearly that rational of a mindset. And so I just screamed. It was a wordless cry, born of grief and a general resentment for the cruelty of the universe at large. My eyes burned with unshed tears, as I fought them back.

A clawed hand came to rest gently on my withers. Gerry might not have joined in my scream, but he certainly shared in my feelings.

I turned to the griffon, my mouth open as I prepared to ask him to tell me that this―all of this death and pain―had been worthwhile. That what we’d done here would make a difference in the lives of the citizens of Light City. Because…I just couldn’t for the life of me see it for myself right now.

That question died on my lips though, as the airwagon was suddenly rocked, as though we’d been struck by something. A loud klaxon screaming from the direction of the cockpit, accompanied by a slew of multilingual curses from our pilot, suggested that we indeed had been. I was about to ask what we’d been hit by, concerned it had been a weapon of some sort, when that question was stolen from me too by something massive grabbing hold of me and trying to pull me bodily out of the still-open lateral door of the Health Harras airwagon.

I was halfway out of the transport before two sets of razor-sharp talons clamped down around my barrel, piercing into my flesh. It was anycreature’s guess what made me scream in pain louder: the nearly dozen veritable knives stabbing between my ribs, or the sudden weight latched onto my haunches which felt like it was threatening to detach my hips from the rest of my body. I started flailing at both sources of pain on instinct before the familiar words of Gerry yelling in my ear finally managed to breach my panicking brain and register.

“Hold on, Pel! I’ve got you!”

The strained words grounded me, but did little to clear up my confusion surrounding the abrupt change in my circumstances. It only took me a second after I opened my eyes to recognize what was going on though. Not that I wasn’t still just a little confused though.

I certainly hadn’t expected to see Yona glaring back at me.

There wasn’t time enough for me to piece together in that moment exactly how the augmented yak had come to be on our airwagon. I would later recall that the throne room was located just a couple levels above the small dorsal hangar that we were exiting from. How Yona had known that we were making our escape was likely a detail I’d never know with any sort of certainty, though I did come up with a few plausible theories. Not that any of them mattered in the moment. Whatever the specific circumstances might have been, the fact remained that Yona was here, and she had hold of me. The only reason I wasn’t a smear beneath her on the Anzû’s hull was because of Gerry’s hold on me.

How much longer the griffon tiercel would be able to maintain that hold was apparently a matter of some debate though, as I could hear him grunting with the effort of trying to keep me inside the airwagon. A feat that was being impeded by the fact that the small transport was apparently listing in the direction of the open door thanks in no small part to the imbalance created by the yak hanging mostly out of its side. A precarious situation which Baton Rouge was trying to correct…and failing.

Additional alarms were beginning to sound from the cockpit. While I knew little about the technicalities of piloting airwagons, I did know that it was a ‘not good’ thing when there were a lot of warning lights and things making noises in the cockpit. I also knew that, if those lights and noises persisted for long enough, an airwagon would inevitably go through an abrupt metamorphosis into a groundwagon. With little regard for the comfort―and physical forms―of the passengers inside.

The longer Yona had a hold of me, the greater the chances that Baton Rouge would completely lose control of the airwagon and we’d all crash. If that happened, even if we survived the crash itself onto the dorsal hull of the carrier beneath us, Jenny’s bomb would kill us all in the next minute or so. On the other hoof, if Gerry let me go, the yak and I would fall, but the airwagon would right itself and those two could escape the blast radius in time.

It didn’t take me more than a second after realizing that to make my decision.

“Let me go!” I had to repeat the order two more times before the griffon recognized that it was an order. That I was making a demand of him, and not the yak who had hold of me by my hind end. I saw the tiercel’s dumbfounded expression as he gaped at me, perhaps rightly concluding that I’d lost my mind. Then I saw the comprehension in his emerald eyes as he came to the same conclusion that I had regarding the consequences of him maintaining his hold on me and keeping the airwagon in this precarious list that our pilot couldn’t seem to recover from.

He realized that I was telling him to let me die, so that he could live.

For a second, I thought―hoped―that he just might. But the griffon shook his head in defiance and I felt his grip on my barrel tightened as he reset his footing against the heavily-angled floor of the airwagon. I tried to force his grip to loosen enough that I’d slip out, but I couldn’t overpower him. My struggling ceased when I heard his voice in my ear: “Don’t leave me too…”

At that moment, I felt ashamed. I’d been thinking only in terms of how much it had hurt me to watch the others die. Creatures I hadn’t even known for a month. Meanwhile, Gerry had known them―composed music with them―for years. As much as I ached, the tiercel’s pain had to have been of an entirely different order of magnitude, comparatively.

And I’d just asked him to effectively kill me.

Not that I really felt having all of us die was an objectively better outcome, of course…

There was another clambering thud of something bouncing off the hull of the airwagon just before I caught a brown and black blur drop past the door. A moment later I felt some additional weight straining at my hips and it felt like the airwagon tilted slightly further over. How the craft hadn’t yet just outright rolled over I assumed was a testament to the batpony pilot’s skills, because it felt like I was staring directly down at the top of the carrier by now. Though it wasn’t the airship below us that I was focused on; it was the battered and bloodied donkey who was clinging to Yona.

Jenny looked very much worse for wear since the last time I’d seen her in the throne room. Most of her coat and mane was matter with blood. Her eponymous arcanetic limb was in tatters, looking more like a collection of barely hanging together actuators and solenoids than a functional limb. Yet, in spite of her state―or perhaps in part because of it―Jenny was throttling the more massive yak like a donkey possessed.

“I’m not done with you yet, Masher!”

While it didn’t look like Jenny was inflicting a lot of serious damage upon the yak, her tantrum was having an effect. For just the briefest of moments, Yona’s hold on me slipped. Suddenly I was relieved of the several hundred kilograms of augmented yak wrapped around my flanks and was no longer being pulled simultaneously in two directions. I felt myself being heaved back into the airwagon as Gerry no longer found himself having to struggle against Yona’s mass.

Unfortunately for the both of us, Yona was not completely dislodged. However, between her descent further out of the airwagon, and my being hoisted deeper within it, the yak did find herself with precious few options available. Not that Yona seemed inclined to be particularly choosy at the moment.

I screamed again as I felt the yak’s alloyed jaw clamp onto my leg.

Once more there was the better part of a metric ton of augmented yak dragging me out of the Health Harras transport; and while Gerry’s talons were still embedded into my sides, the griffon had lost his earlier leverage when the two of us had lurched just a moment ago. I felt Gerry’s talons lose their hold. The two of us started to tumble out the side. I was suddenly wrapped in the sensation of freefall…

…And then it was immediately arrested when something very nearly ripped my forelimb from my socket. Another cry escaped me as I felt my shoulder and knee both simultaneously dislocate. I looked up, and spotted Gerry all but dangling out of the side of the airwagon himself, one hand gripping onto a hold inside the transport, and the other wrapped around my fetlock, his talons having carved deep furrows into the arcanetic structure of the limb. His face was a mask of pain as he strained to hold myself, Jenny, and the yak. I idly wondered whose limb would rip out of their socket first: his or mine. Either outcome would spell my end and his salvation of course.

“Rouge!” The tiercel screamed over his shoulder into the craft. “Help me!”

The batpony couldn’t leave the cockpit of course. His presence at the controls was the only thing keeping the airwagon aloft at the moment. However, I did see a brief glow of light, followed by a pistol flipping through the air at the griffon. Gerry lit his own arcanetic jewel and snatched the tumbling weapon out of the air. I saw the aura of magic dim and flicker though. The griffon was doubtlessly experiencing a lot of pain, making it extremely difficult to concentrate on the telekinesis cantrip. And he certainly could free a hand to aim the weapon.

Finally, he locked eyes with me. “Pel, take it!” The griffon lowered the pistol down to me. I reached out with my own magic to complete the transfer, trying my best to focus through the pain of my dislocated limbs. I felt my hold on the weapon solidify―

The airwagon gave a shudder and dropped.

It wasn’t much. Maybe a meter or two. Baton Rouge managed to correct whatever had gone wrong almost immediately. But it was too late. The damage had been done. As we dropped, I felt the strain on my limbs vanish in an instant. Then, when our plummet was arrested once more a heartbeat later…

There was no force on Equus that would have allowed me to maintain my telekinesis. Not through the pain of having two crippled limbs manhandled from two ends simultaneously. The cantrip failed and the pistol fell away, dropping past Jenny and the yak to the Anzû below. Though it might as well have fallen all the way to Tartarus for all the difference it made. I let out an aggrieved curse, hanging my head in despair.

That was it then. No weapon. A failing airwagon. A coin flip between whose shoulder tore away first, mine or Gerry’s―assuming all of us weren’t just atomized by the bomb in Jenny’s belly before that could happen.

It was over. We were over.

“Pel!”

It was Jenny who’d called out to me this time. I looked down at the donkey. My eyes widened when I saw what she was holding in her arcanetic hoof―or what was left of it: she still had her own weapon. Jenny tossed it up at me.

I tried to reach for it with my talisman, but I could instantly tell that wasn’t going to prove any more fruitful than the last time. I was just in too much pain to focus. So, instead, I swiped at it with my free forelimb; the one that Gerry hadn’t very nearly torn out of its socket. I made contact and scooped the weapon in close to my chest, clutching it up against me like I was a drowning mare who’d been tossed a life preserver, because that was exactly what this moment had felt like.

I slipped my hoof into the grip of the weapon and leveled it down at the yak’s face.

Then I hesitated as my eyes locked onto Jenny’s.

It was silly, of course. The idea that dislodging Yona would also cause her to fall to her death as well shouldn’t have bothered me. Both of us knew that she was a dead donkey walking no matter what. I wasn’t really killing her by doing this. Not really. She’d made that decision before we’d even flown out here.

This wasn’t me killing Jenny…this was me saving three others.

My features hardened as I looked down at the yak’s face through the pistol’s sights. Yona merely glared back at me. I spotted the faintest upturn of her lip in amusement. She wasn’t concerned about the weapon. After all, she’d already been shot by it several times that night. For all I knew, she’d shrugged off far larger and more lethal calibers than this in the past with no lasting effect. She knew that the weapon posed no threat to her. I knew this too. Shooting the yak would be pointless.

I let my point of aim drift downward…and fired a shot through my knee.

The round―whose destructive capabilities I’d previously seen demonstrated to great effect during the assault on Grinder’s headquarters―absolutely eviscerated the joint. Already being subjected to immense strain by the weight of the yak hanging from my leg to the point that it was an honest to Celestia miracle it had lasted as long as it did, the effect of the high-powered ammunition passing through it was both immediate and devastating. My knee effectively exploded into a cloud of alloys, plastics, and gemstones.

Once again I felt myself being heaved upwards towards the airwagon by Gerry even as the yak fell away. However, this time Yona was not able to find any additional purchase, though she did try. Her limbs swiped at me, but passed through empty air. I finally saw the yak’s calm indifference give way to fear and panic as she began to tumble end over end towards the airship below.

Jenny as well, though the donkey’s expression wasn’t one of fear. It was relief. She knew that we could get away now. We could escape, and survive. Honestly, in some ways, it was a little more unsettling to see the serene smile on the donkey’s lips as she dropped to her death. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look at it for long as I found myself being yanked bodily inside the airwagon.

Gerry once more lost his balance as the force that he’d been fighting against for so long vanished in an instant. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the Health Harras transport―who’s left-side thrusters had been redlining themselves trying to keep the craft from rolling over completely onto its back―now just about overspun the craft in the opposite direction. I missed most of Baton Rouge’s curses as the griffon and I tumbled into the other side of the fuselage in a pile of limbs and shared pain.

I felt the griffon’s arms wrap around me. Not in some desperate bid to keep me from falling to my doom. His hold was much more gentle now, though still quite firm. Like he needed to assure himself that I really was inside the airwagon with him.

The deck trembled and spun beneath us as our batpony pilot wrenched the beleaguered airwagon around and made all haste to get as far from the Anzû. I don’t think any of us knew how long we had before Jenny’s bomb went off, but it was known that we wanted to be as far away as possible.

Through the immense pain, I was vaguely aware of the scenery visible through the still open door of the airwagon. The fact that there even was any scenery only barely managed to pierce the fog that numbed all of my thoughts. I hurt, and tired, and emotionally drained, and I could feel the adrenaline leaving my body, taking all of my remaining fucks with it. Maybe that was why it only barely registered with me that I was seeing a lot more billboards and skyscrapers than there should reasonably be on the ocean.

Then a brilliant amethyst flash forced me to close my eyes and turn away, burying my face into Gerry’s chest. A moment later the airwagon shook. Violently. There were fresh alarms again. More yelling and cursing from our pilot. He yelled for us to hold on, so I clamped my good forelimb around the griffon who was holding me. In hindsight, that probably hadn’t been what the batpony had meant, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I wasn’t sure if the weightlessness I was feeling was because I was finally starting to pass out from the pain, or because the airwagon was losing altitude. Probably both.

More alarms. More Fancy-speckled yelling. More buildings flickering past the open door at ever concerning speeds.

I was numb to all of it.

The only thing I remembered clearly was the sound of Gerry’s voice in my ear: “I’ve got you,” he assured me. “I’ve got you…”

He repeated those three words over and over…

…And then we hit; and everything stopped.

Author's Note

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