If I’d thought I was going to be loafing around all day in the loft while the others rehearsed for their concert tonight, I’d have been dead wrong. It turned out―and I agreed rightly so―that I was expected to ‘earn my keep’ even when I wasn’t helping with the band’s clandestine operations. Gerry informed me that this would consist of ‘running errands’ with Daisy. Which, it turned out, had not been any kind of euphemism for participating in shady dealings in back alleys and such as part of laying the groundwork for future operations.

I was legitimately helping Daisy run errands. Specifically: shopping for groceries.

Well, ‘shop’ might have been a misleading label. At least, I felt it was. That was how Daisy had put it though. In any case, I felt like that terminology mischaracterized what we were doing: which, presently, was wandering through an underground garden picking fruits and vegetables.

Now, when I use the term ‘underground’, I am―again, somehow―not referring to it being anything shady or criminal in nature. I mean that it was literally ‘underground’. As in: the garden in question existed in an old below-street-level parking garage. While I felt I could be forgiven for assuming that the reason the ponies running this multi-level gardening operation were doing so in an abandoned part of Clawcifica explicitly to escape notice of city officials because there was something illegal about what was going on, Daisy assured me that the actual reason was much simpler than that: This was just one of the few places on the island with enough open space to grow real vegetables. Which…was correct, I acknowledged.

Light City was not, in any way, self-sufficient. This wasn’t even strictly-speaking due to any fault of the city officials or the result of gross mismanagement due to corporate greed. It was just a fact that the island wasn’t particularly large. It certainly wasn’t a tiny island, to be sure; but nowhere near big enough that arable land could have been set aside to feed the local population. Light City played host to the better part of six million creatures. Daisy explained that feeding that many creatures would require the better part of sixty thousand square kilometers of farmland. And that was accounting for supplementing diets of more carnivorous-minded creatures with fish from the sea.

Meanwhile, the island Light City was built on was only a couple hundred square kilometers in area. The consequence of this was that pretty much the population’s entire food supply needed to be imported. This really wasn’t a ‘problem’, per say. A lot of raw materials and such needed to be imported to support the city’s manufacturing sector too. But, because space was at such a premium, as much of it as possible was dedicated to manufacturing and services and such that could make the city money.

The nominally ‘abandoned’ Clawcifica region of Light City existed as something of an anomaly. It had been intended as a way to draw in tourism to the island, but had flopped spectacularly when it turned out that griffons, the primary residents of the largest nearby nation, weren’t all that much about the ‘fun and frivolity’ associated with theme parks. Meanwhile, the homelands of any other species which might have been were too far away to make coming to Light City worthwhile, especially when there were other options closer to home which were just as good. It wasn’t as though merely being located in Light City did anything to make an amusement park particularly worthwhile to visit. So, for now, the grounds of the decaying theme park existed in development limbo until the city’s competing political factions could finally decide on how the land could best be repurposed to become profitable.

Until then, there was simply a lot of land and buildings that were being largely ignored by city officials. Which meant that there were areas which were nominally ‘up for grabs’. At least until the city’s council made a decision on what to do with Clawcifica and came in to clear out all of the squatters. Until then, there were places like this.

I found myself marveling at the engineering which had apparently gone into the garden. This had clearly been quite a thoroughly thought-out endeavor. Beds of rich soil had been built and organized along the paved surfaces and planted with all manner of root vegetables and tubers. Above them were suspended trays flush with legumes and even berry-producing plants. A network of pipes criss-crossed in seemingly random directions, letting out a steady misting of water vapor; and yet I realized that I could see a method to their arrangement if I paused to really examine their placement. I spotted a few earth ponies wearing green coveralls and carrying datapads wandering past the bed and trays, making the occasional note or adjusting a valve.

In stark contrast to my gawking, Daisy was strolling among the plants entirely nonplused, offering the occasional friendly greeting to a passing gardener. She was without the slinky black dress that I’d previously only known her for wearing, and was instead dressed in much more ‘normal’ street clothing, sporting a short-cut black and neon pink synthetic leather jacket. Her mane was no longer tied up in a professional bun, but instead draped loosely over her right side. She looked like a completely different pony honestly.

Every so often, the talisman mounted into her forehead would ignite and she’d pull out some plant or other, floating it over to me and stuffing it into my saddlebags. That was the division of labor that was in effect here: Daisy collected the food, and I would be the one hauling it around. My gaping at the irrigation system was diverted as I spied several red orbs being stuffed into my bag in a glow of emerald magic. “What’re those things?” I sniffed at them and was quickly forced to swallow back the drool that almost immediately filled my mouth.

The sunflower-hued mare favored me with an amused smile. It was not any sort of malicious expression, but it put me off slightly all the same; because it felt a lot like the sort of look a mother would give to a young foal who was asking about some common and mundane topic like clouds or trees. “They’re apples,” she answered warmly before turning back to examine a trough full of bristly plants with little purple flowers.

“Really?” I cocked my head in mild surprise. “Huh. I never expected red fruit to make yellow juice.”

Daisy paused and looked back at me again with a bemused expression. “...Have you…never seen a fresh apple before?” Her magic had grasped several of the purple flowering plants and was drifting them into my bags as well, roots and all.

My ears folded back as I frowned at the mare. I knew she wasn’t trying to make fun of me, but that didn’t change the fact that I was feeling pretty self-conscious right about now. “...No. The vending machines in the megasilo don’t sell them.” I added the last bit with something of a reproachful look, which did prompt a slight wince from the other mare.

“Right. Sorry.” She flashed me a small apologetic smile, which was followed up by an amused snort and a tiny shake of her head. She cast her gaze at the garden around us. “I’ve gotten so used to this place, I kind of forget what it’s really like in Light City.”

“Yeah, about that…” I looked briefly around us again too for a moment before returning my attention to the other mare. “How and why does a place like this exist? Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool and everything; but Jenny and them give off this whole: ‘fight the corpo elite fatcats’ vide. But then they’re also eating better than Aeriesaka executives!” I waved a hoof at the fresh produce surrounding us. Even a small plate of which I knew would cost hundreds of gibbies.

Daisy chuckled in response, but wasn’t looking too put off by my insinuations of hypocrisy. “Well, for one thing: it’s not like this stuff is really all that expensive. They are just plants, you know?” She pulled up another plant from a nearby trough, showing me the collection of brown growths hanging beneath it. She gave the bushel a couple of shakes to dislodged most of the dirt and then shoved it into my saddlebag. “The price is only as high as it is because…well, that’s what the restaurants want to charge.

“There’s a little ‘supply and demand’ in there, but not as much as you’d think,” the mare continued, nodding her head for me to follow her to another part of the garden. “It’s actually kind of more nefarious.

“Did you have a fridge in your apartment in the megasilo?”

I balked slightly at the apparent nonsequitur. Not entirely sure what one had to do with the other, I hesitantly responded, “...No?”

“Why not?”

I shrugged. “The apartment didn’t come with one. Didn’t need one, really. There was a vending machine built into it that you could get ready-to-eat meals and drinks from. Everything from breakfast bars to dinner loafs.”

Daisy was nodding along as though she’d already known the answer I was going to give, which she almost certainly had. I may not have known exactly what the other mare’s own living situation was, specifically―she wasn’t living in the loft with the rest of the band like I was―but I doubted that it was too different from what mine and Hash Stack’s had been. She did live in Haywood after all. “Exactly. You have a vendor, and not a kitchen.” She briefly peered over her shoulder and I gave a nod of agreement. “Which means you don’t cook for yourself or have to worry about leftovers. You get your meals from the building. Like most of Light City.

“I bet it was a ‘Vend-O-Mat’-brand vendor too, right?” Another nod from me. “Care to name another brand of vendor you’ve seen? Or even heard of?” She paused and waited for me to answer, but it was pretty clear from the smile on her face that she knew I was going to come up empty, and I did. “There isn’t one. Every apartment in every building in Haywood, Trotson, and Santo Dingo is furnished with a ‘Vendo-O-Mat’-brand food vendor and no kitchen or refrigerator.

“Fewer than ten percent of the city’s population lives in an apartment with a kitchen,” she went on even as her attention was redirected to collecting narrow green pods from several viny plants. “If a creature wants fresh vegetables, they have to go out to eat. And every restaurant in Light City is supplied by one of two corporations: YummyTummy Inc. and GoodEats LLC. If you’re a street vendor or run some little quick-eats dive on the corner, you only get to do business with YummyTummy, and they only offer heavily processed swill. Honestly, it’s not much better than what you get in your apartment. It just gets served to you in a reusable bowl instead of a vacuum-sealed plastic tray.

“Meanwhile,” she turned back around and stuffed the pile of pods she’d collected into my pack before leading me over to a planter featuring balls of green leaves sprouting out of the ground, “GoodEats, which actually does deal in ‘real’ food, will only work with ‘sufficiently upscale’ establishments in order to ‘keep up their image’. If you’re not a members-only cafe in City Center or Westhoof, you don’t get to work with them. But they’re also the only company that has distribution rights for fresh produce.

“So if you want an apple, or a carrot, or a fresh salad,” Daisy turned back around, levitating two heads of freshly harvested lettuce with her talisman, smiling knowingly at me. “Your only option is high-end restaurants with a waiting list. Places where they’ll charge you a hundred gibbies for a bowl of greens worth, like…two? Though, to be fair, the cafes aren’t the ones seeing the real profit margin; that’s still GoodEats.”

I frowned―and swallowed down more drool as I watched the heads of lettuce get stuffed into my bags. “But wouldn’t GoodEats make even more money if they sold vegetables to everycreature, even if it was at a lower price? Hash Stack used to talk about ‘scale economies’?”

“Economy of scale,” Daisy corrected gently, “and that’s a different thing.” She motioned for me to follow her as we turned around and began to ascend towards the underground garage’s exit. “You’re not wrong though! GoodEats could make more money by appealing to a larger customer base. But! Do you really think Vend-O-Mat is going to give up their customers that easily? After everything they did to work with architects to omit kitchens from ninety percent of the apartments in the city?! Who’d buy one of their ‘Nutri-Bars’ if you could get an apple for the same price?

“Meanwhile, who’s going to buy lettuce if you can’t keep it from wilting after two days?” I had no answer for any of the mare’s questions, but it was pretty clear that she’d known that when she posed them. “Those companies divvied up their customer bases a long time ago, and they don’t want to risk upsetting their profit-margins by getting genuinely competitive with each other. They save a mint on advertising by not having to actually attract customers away from a competitor. To say nothing about not having to R&D better products. They just have to worry about printing money.”

We paused at the garage’s exit, and the repurposed attendant booth that was located there. Daisy withdrew a small wad of gibbies from her jacket pocket and passed them to the pegasus stallion working the till. “See you next week, Blue!” The two exchanged waves and then the mare led me back onto the empty streets of this ‘abandoned’ section of the city.

“Okay, I guess I get it,” I murmured, though I knew I sure didn’t like it. “But so then what about that Green Room at the concert hall or whatever? Don’t tell me that place is meant for concert-goers.” I narrowed my eyes slightly at the mare, daring her to suggest that I was wrong.

She didn’t, instead offering another mirthful chuckle. “Hardly. Aside from the band and…” she briefly looked back at me, “special friends, we mostly serve high-ranking corporate executives who have certain expectations of service.”

It took the mare a few seconds to realize that I wasn’t walking with her anymore. I’d frozen in my tracks when I heard what she’d said. When she finally did notice and turned around to find out what was wrong, I was incredulous. “Wait. You mean Jenny and them invite corpos to that place? What the fuck?!”

The eye roll I received from Daisy wasn’t quite patronizing. I didn’t think. “Of course they do. Who do you think hires them―and groups like them―for most of their underground gigs?”

“They work for the corporations?!”

This time my outburst was met with a resigned sigh from the mare. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this: but gearing up for their ops takes money, and a lot of it.” Daisy pointed out to me before she narrowed her eyes slightly. “Remember that last op you did with them? Did you count how much money you paid for that truck you guys ‘borrowed’? What about the forged IDs? Harriet’s good with computers, but she’s not a genuine forger; that part had to be ‘outsourced’.”

I was frowning again, but this time it was directed inward. I hadn’t actually thought about that. There’d been a lot of groundwork laid for that mission into Aeriesaka, and it obviously had to have some cost associated with it. To my knowledge, the band hadn’t been doing that mission for money either. It had been undertaken solely on principle in order to help out creatures like me who’d lived in those megasilos under the hooves of thugs like Grinder.

Which wasn’t to say that it didn’t still seem weird that Jenny and the others were still taking work―and, by extension, ostensibly helping―the very corporations that they decried; in both their songs, and to my face. Daisy seemed to be reading my mind though, and had an answer. “So, yeah, they work with the corpos…against other corpos.”

Now I was confused again. “I thought you just said the corporations maintain some sort of truce with one another so they don’t compete?”

“Not in Light City they don’t, no. This place is mostly ‘neutral ground’,” the mare agreed. We were once more trotting down the street towards Haywood. “Light City is where many of the big players in the world have their headquarters located; but they operate all over the world. And the gloves really come off out there. Like, big time corporate espionage and sabotage and stuff.

“However, in order to engage in all that sabotage, the corpos need intel on each other. And, since Light City is where most of them keep their HQs…” The earth pony trailed off and looked over at me, prompting me to finish her statement.

“...This is the best place to get that intel,” I concluded, nodding along. “But something tells me that the ground won’t stay ‘neutral’ for very long if one of the corps catches agents from another corp breaking into their offices…”

“Exactly!” She beamed at me. “Enter: the Edgetrotter!”

“That what?”

“Edgetrotter,” Daisy repeated, her grin not losing any of its luster. “Creatures that ‘trot’ on the ‘edge’ of society and do all those under-the-table jobs that corps don’t post on their ‘help wanted’ pages.”

“...Did you make that term up yourself?” I asked with a raised brow and a not-at-all judgmental smirk.

The mare stuck her tongue out at me before descending into a fit of giggles. “I think it’ll catch on,” she insisted. “Anyway…yes, Jenny and the others take jobs for the corps for the preem gibbies they offer. I know you’d think that somecreature as principled as The Silverhoof would rather suck off her gun than help some crystal tower types, but keep in mind that their target is more often than not other corps. She actually gets quite the kick out of helping them fuck each other over and getting paid for the pleasure of doing it.”

“I guess I could see that,” I said with a shrug. I guess it wasn’t quite as hypocritical as I’d first thought. It still felt weird picturing Jenny playing nice with some GlimTech exec though. I idly wondered if she was the type to wear a suit or a dress? Assuming that she even dressed up at all. Honestly, that was the hardest thing to picture: Jenny ‘cleaned up’. I knew Dandy was capable of looking professional though. Daisy had been quite the piece of eye-candy herself during my first visit to the Green Room.

I idly wondered how Gerry would look if he wore a proper suit…

The wolf-whistle that issued from behind us interrupted my musings; and the follow-up cat-call cemented the souring of my mood. “Dammmmn! Call the LCPD, because it has got to be a crime for two fine mares like y’all to be walking along…unescorted.”

“Oh, fuck me…” I heard Daisy mumble through an exasperated sigh as we turned around to see who it was that had accosted us.

“Well, if you insist!” A burly brown hippogriff stallion said with an amused laugh. He wasn’t alone either, I realized with a note of dread. Three other creatures were flanking him: two more hippogriffs and a pegasus, all stallions…and all of them wearing matching colors blended into their clothing. They were part of a boosterherd, I realized. I couldn’t identify which one, I’d rarely been outside of Haywood, and I certainly hadn’t had much reason to travel to Clawcifica until recently. “I was thinking we could get to know each other a little first before we got to the good part; but if you want to cut to the chase, I’m game if you are…” The lead hippogriff’s smile was entirely too predatory for my liking.

Without even realizing I’d done it, I found myself standing protectively between Daisy and the herd members. Somehow, despite my own fear, I was even managing to maintain what I felt was an intimidating glower. Not that I saw any sign on the faces of our winged assailants that they felt the least bit intimidated. If anything, they actually looked even happier about my defiance.

“Ooh, looks like we got a fighter here!” The sage green pegasus crowed. He even dared to flutter closer to me, hovering just out of reach of a punch. “I like fighters. I like seeing the fight leave their eyes when they finally realize they can’t stop what’s coming…” In spite of the brave front I’d been trying to affect, I wasn’t able to keep myself from taking a half-step back, which only earned another snicker from the stallion.

“The one in back seems a lot more like the quiet type,” one of the other hippogriff stallions observed before exchanging a look with his partner, with whom he shared an uncanny resemblance to. “I bet I could make her get pretty loud…”

“I don’t like ‘em loud,” his familial-looking counterpart replied as he also eyed the mare behind me. “But I got something that’ll keep her quiet!” The hippogriff gave a not so subtle thrust of his hips. His remark earned some additional laughter from the other three stallions as well.

“We don’t want any trouble!” I heard myself say. I was pretty grateful that all of my limbs were arcanetic now; it meant that it was easier to keep them from shaking. I only wished it was as easy to keep my words that steady too. I’d sounded a lot less unimpressed with these four boosterherders than I’d intended to, and they’d quite obviously noticed given how much they were all laughing at me now.

“‘We don’t want trouble!’” The lead hippogriff parotid between fits of derisive laughter. “That’s great, because we don’t want trouble from you either.” I took another step back as I saw the other three winged stallions move to encircle us, doing my best to try and cover Daisy in spite of the obvious futility. I could only be on one side of her, after all.

“Now why don’t you two play nice and come with us?” He continued, directing a wing down a nearby alley. “If you behave, we’ll let you go…eventually.” Another round of snickers echoed from all directions. “Depends on how soon the rest of the boys can come on by for a go at you…”

I briefly entertained the notion of casting clairaudience and signaling to Gerry and the others that we were in trouble. Not that I expected it to do us a lot of good in the short-term. There was no way that the rest of the band was going to get here in time to stop the herd from subduing us and dragging us back to…wherever. Daisy and I weren’t likely to get out of this unscathed, but if I called them now we at least had a good chance of ultimately surviving…

My thoughts were distracted by a series of ‘popping’ sounds coming from nearby. I turned my head slightly to find Daisy cracking her neck, muttering to herself, “...this is what I get for wearing my favorite jacket…” Then the earth pony noticed my gaze and flashed me a wry smile that was devoid of any hint of worry. Her eyes then darted briefly to the pegasus stallion nearby. “Think you can take that one? I’ll get the other three.”

None of that was said with any hint that she meant it to go unheard by the stallions. All of whom balked for a brief moment as they exchanged confused looks. Clearly they didn’t feel that Daisy was reacting ‘appropriately’ to the situation at hoof. Frankly, I found myself in agreement with them on that point, but I somehow managed to nod along in response to the mare’s question. I was pretty confident that I could handle one stallion in a fight. But was Daisy really serious about taking on the three hippogriffs on her own?

Before I could ask if the little earth pony mare was sure, she answered my question for me.

Without another word, Daisy reared up on her hind legs and clopped her forehooves together. Her talisman burst to life with orange light. As she drew her hooves apart again, I noticed that her frogs seemed to be joined together by a glowing ethereal tether the same color as the magic emanating from her talisman. Her lips were spread apart in a hungry grin. The earlier jovial radiance in her emerald eyes was gone, replaced now with a darkness that formed a knot in my gut just looking at it.

This was not the same mare I’d just been speaking with five minutes ago.

I could only assume that the brown hippogriff leader of this small band was entertaining similar thoughts when Daisy lashed out at him with her right hoof. The ethereal string disconnected from her left frog and whipped out towards the now thoroughly shocked stallion, the glowing cord wrapping itself snuggly around his left wrist.

The sunflower mare twisted her hips to the right, pulling on the translucent tether.

The wet smack of the severed hand hitting the concrete was the loudest sound that I’d ever heard in my life. Everything seemed to remain quite still after that for what felt like a small eternity. All eyes were riveted on the disembodied talons and the smoldering wrist that they were attached to. Then, slowly, I saw the brown hippogriff’s wide eyes slowly pan up towards his fresh stump, his beak moving in soundless shock. I saw him take in a sharp breath, as though to scream…

He didn’t get the chance.

Daisy’s left hoof lashed out this time. It too spawned a glowing arcane whip which struck at the hippogriff with an audible snap of sound as it shot through the air. The end wrapped itself two times around the gaping stallion’s neck before he knew what was happening…and then the earth pony mare twisted once more on her hooves, completing her turn to the right and coming down with her back fully towards the lead hippogriff.

I wasn’t sure what hit the ground first: his head, or the decapitated body.

As though either one hitting the pavement had been the signal the rest of us had been waiting for, chaos erupted a heartbeat later. I lost track of Daisy when the pegasus stallion tackled me to the ground. All thought of the other mare vanished from my mind as I suddenly found myself fighting for my life. A hoof connected with my jaw, and I could feel my new arcanetic joints doing their best to resist being dislocated like their organic predecessors had been a week ago.

I responded by coiling my hind legs and unleashing a double-buck right into the feathered stallion’s gut, again grateful for the recent augmentations that I’d received. My arcanetically enhanced hooves slammed into his gut and I could see the other pony’s eyes go wide as he let out a pained gasp. His wings swept down and propelled him up into the sky, out of reach of any follow-up hit that I might have wanted to land. However, the distance he’d afforded me did give me the opening I needed to draw my weapon from where it had been tucked under my vest. I levitated out the pistol Gerry had provided me with and leveled it at the pegasus.

My shots went wide as the stallion rolled to the side and dove once more. I could feel my teeth grinding in frustration as I found myself unable to land a hit on the fast moving target. In fairness, most of my practice up to this point had been with stationary targets. I wasn’t used to trying to shoot at things that were moving around. At least the pegasus didn’t seem to be armed, so I wasn’t in danger of being shot myself.

The pegasus swooped for the ground in what seemed like an effort to outpace my aim, but my talisman’s magic managed to keep the green blur in my sights. His wings flared out and brought him to a near total stop just above the ground, which I recognized was my opportunity to finally get a clean hit. I lined up the floating pistol and peered down the sights…

And promptly froze.

Just beyond the stalled pegasus, I spotted Daisy in motion on the ground as her ethereal whips ensnared one of the two remaining hippogriffs. She was almost directly in line with the barrel of my gun. If I fired now, I knew I risked striking her too. I had just long enough to see a brief flash of Hash Stack’s anguished expression in my head before I felt another hoof slam into the side of my head.

I lost focus on my talisman and its magic flickered out, dropping the pistol I’d been holding with its telekinesis. Somehow I managed to stay on my hooves though, which seemed like quite the accomplishment given the situation. I reared back and instinctively threw up my forelimbs to block follow-up punches from my attacker. However, the pegasus didn’t continue to strike me from the front, instead he whirled around through the air and bucked me in the side of my barrel. I did get knocked all the way to the ground this time.

He was stradling me again, his hips on either side of mine as he pinned me beneath him. My head was spinning, and I couldn’t hear anything through the sound of the blood throbbing in my ears. The stallion’s lips were moving though, so I knew that he was saying something to me. Probably some inane description of exactly how he intended to violate my body after beating me into unconsciousness. I saw him cock his right hoof back in preparation to begin his presumably promised beating.

Then I saw glowing golden threads wrap around his fetlock.

When he threw his punch, his hoof did not travel with the rest of the swinging limb. Instead, it dropped beside us on the sidewalk. The stallion didn’t even seem to notice at first. Indeed, he initially seemed only mildly confused as to why his punch had not managed to connect with my face, and instead only splattered it with copious quantities of blood. He slowly raised the problematic hoof and stared at the gory stump with the puzzled expression, as though he were trying to work out where he’d misplaced the hoof that he was certain had been there earlier.

Rung though my bell had been by the early successful punch the pegasus had landed, I was not quite so far gone as to not recognize that I’d been granted an opening I could ill-afford to pass up. He still had my hindquarters pinned beneath him, but my own forelimbs were free, so I took a swing at his face with my own right hoof. Seeing as how my own limb was still wholly intact, my punch had little issue connecting with the other pony’s jaw. The hit managed to succeed in rolling the stunned stallion off me.

I immediately scrambled after the pegasus, not keen on giving him another chance to recover and take to the air again where he’d have the advantage over me. I threw myself upon the stallion like a madmare. There was no style or form to my fighting. I wasn’t formally trained in any type of martial arts. I simply threw hooves and bit at whatever came near my mouth. The two of us were a writhing mass of sage and golden limbs. Patches of fur and tufts of feathers littered the ground around us, dislodged either by gnashing teeth or the scraping of our bodies along the rough concrete we were wrestling on.

Halfway through the melee, I realized that the ‘red haze’ I was looking through as we fought wasn’t my own rage, but blood which had flowed into my eyes. It was even money whose blood it was at this point. It started to cloud my vision so much that most everything I was seeing appeared as little more than a blur.

Eventually, by virtue of my having more functioning hooves than the pegasus now did, I managed to finally achieve dominance in the fight, and soon I was the one straddling him and raining down a flurry of blows. However, unlike when the pegasus had been atop me earlier, he had no companions who came to his aid, and so nothing impeded the flaying of my hooves upon his face. I felt the impact of each blow vibrating up my forelimbs as I struck. It was a sensation I wasn’t used to, but I set the feeling aside for the moment. I had to win this fight.

I had to survive.

The stallion’s forehead-mounted talisman flared to life as the boosterherder attempted to summon a cantrip of some sort to his aid. I might not have been able to see much, but I could make out the magical glow which appeared directly in front of me, and I recognized it for what it was. My hooves fell upon it, arcanetic musculature and joints putting all of their enhanced power into the blow. Grinder had ‘gifted’ me these limbs years ago with the intent that I would use them to strong-hoof struggling creatures into forking over ‘protection money’. I’d never used them for that purpose. I’d honestly never availed myself to their advantage at all since receiving them.

I did now though.

I brought them down onto the pegasus’ head with every last pound of force that those artificial limbs were capable of, planting my hooves directly onto that talisman. I felt the faceted jewel shatter beneath the blow…and then I felt my hooves continue downward through it. Bone gave way to my blow just as easily as damp cardboard might have, the stallion’s skull imploding like an egg, and leaving just as much of a mess upon my hooves.

Suddenly the stallion wasn’t moving anymore. I didn’t fully comprehend why in the initial moments. I was simply too relieved that the fight appeared to finally be at an end and that I was safe. A limb that was trembling with adrenaline and muscle fatigue wiped its way across my face, removing much of the blood which was in my eyes. I furiously blinked away the last little bits of crimson fluid and finally surveyed the aftermath of my struggle with the stallion.

I immediately retched, which only added further to the horror of the gory scene before me as the remains of my breakfast splattered onto the mushed bones and brains which were all that existed above the green pegasus’ muzzle.

Looking away from the nauseating sight did me no favors either as I only ended up turning my head just in time to catch Daisy dispatching her last remaining opponent. The hippogriff had already lost numerous bits and pieces of his body to the earth pony mare. It looked as though he’d been about to flee the fight as well, clearly recognizing that no victory could be salvaged in the face of such a monstrous opponent like the little red-maned pony. However, he was unlikely to get far: Daisy’s ethereal cords were presently wrapped tightly around the stallion’s midsection. His wings gave a mighty flap in an attempt to escape her grasp.

Daisy threw her hooves out to either side.

His torso was carried nearly ten whole meters, borne away by two complete strokes of the hippogriff’s wings before it appeared that his brain became aware that it had left everything below his diaphragm behind and elected to react as it felt it should, and finally die. The feathered half of the hippogriff bounced off of the nearby brick wall of a building with a wet slap, leaving behind a crimson and pink splotch. The pink, I soon noticed, was the result of bits of intestine which were sticking to the bloody smear. I retched again.

I very nearly wiped at the corners of my mouth before realizing that most of my forelimbs were still coated with the pegasus stallion’s blood and mashed up brain matter. That recognition very nearly compelled my stomach to fully secede from my body as I collapsed into a fit of dry heaves. I wasn’t ready for this level of violence. Who could be?! This was…was…

I didn’t know, but it certainly had to be something that no sane pony was comfortable with!

That thought finished forming in my mind as Daisy calmly lowered herself back down onto all four hooves. Her talisman dimmed until it was dark once more, all signs of the glowing tendrils which had been affixed to her frogs earlier now gone. The little earth pony idly brushed her mane back into place, straightened her neon pink jacket, and finally turned around to face me.

I watched in stunned silence as the little yellow whirlwind of carnage that I’d seen lay waste to three grown hippogriff stallions vanished…and was replaced once more by the affable earth pony who never seemed to be without a warm smile on her face. Only, now, I felt that I was able to spot the hollow affectations that lay just beneath the expression’s surface.

She took note of my battered and bloodied face and her expression immediately became one of concern. “Ooh, that looks like it stings; are you alright?”

She reached out for me and I instinctively recoiled away, and not just because I had a bad association with other pony’s hooves coming near my face. I knew these hooves in particular to be especially dangerous, after all. I saw the brief flash of hurt behind Daisy’s emerald eyes and she withdrew her hoof, instead using it to awkwardly rub her shoulder.

“...Sorry you had to see that.” The mare idly glanced at our surroundings, and cringed slightly as she seemed to recognize how unsavory they’d become thanks to the copious quantity of dismembered appendages littering the sidewalk. “And all of this…” She waved a hoof broadly around us.

Now it was my turn to feel awkward. It was stupid, I realized, to be afraid of the mare who’d likely just saved my life; to say nothing of my ‘virtue’. She’d hardly done anything strictly wrong, least of all by me! I was just…taken aback, was all. Not by somepony I barely knew saving my life―sun and moon, that was becoming a tired trope for me by now! But, Daisy…

I wouldn’t pretend that I knew the mare well, but I’d at least thought that I’d had a decent read on her based on our past interactions―as brief and as few as they might have been. In my mind, the little earth pony had been the pretty mare who made delicious food and served us drinks. She wore a warm smile and a cute black dress and was always kind to me. She wasn’t this rough-and-tumble brawler that could almost single-hoofedly lay waste to a whole boosterherd the way Jenny or Barkly could. She was…sweet. I needed a sweet mare in my life, since the last one…

…Since I’d gotten the last one killed.

Not that Hash had turned out to be a helpless damsel either, I ruefully noted to myself. What was it with everycreature I knew turning out to actually be some sort of hidden badass? I idly wondered if Gary, the griffon bartender I’d known for years, wasn’t also some variety of professional brawler who just looked and acted like an ordinary creature…

“It’s alright. I’m glad you were here,” I assured the other mare. “You just…surprised me, is all. I had no idea you could do…this,” I gestured vaguely at the carved up bodies that surrounded us.

A small smile appeared on Daisy’s cheeks again. “Well, in fairness, I guess we were never officially introduced.” The mare did have a point, I conceded. She once more reached her hoof out to me, but this time in a clear invitation to a friendly hoof bump. “Hi! My name’s Daisy Cutter, and I’m not just the crew’s cook,” she said with a wink.

I touched her hoof perhaps a bit more gingerly than I otherwise might have with anypony else. But, in my defense, I had just seen her summon strands of pure arcane death from the bases of those same hooves. I felt I was justified in giving them the same careful respect that I would any other potentially dangerous implement.

“...I’m also their accountant!”

Author's Note

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