“So…”

I glanced up at the sunflower yellow earth pony mare sitting across the table from me through my right eye, as the left one presently had about a half dozen ice cubes wrapped in a towel pressed against it to try and get the swelling to finally go down. Neither of us had touched our orders of noodles that the waitress had brought out along with my improvised ice pack. Nor had we said a word to each other since sitting down at the little Trotson cafe, other than Daisy asking the waitress to get us “whatever the special here is and some ice for my friend.”

Honestly I wasn’t feeling very hungry, in spite of the fact that my stomach was presently quite empty. Visions of our recent encounter walking back from Clawcifica were still vividly fresh in my mind, and doing a superb job of keeping any semblance of an appetite at bay. I felt my other hoof tensing up on the table as another flash of blood and gore flickered through my mind. I glanced down at it, and jerked suddenly in a fleeting moment of shock when―for just a moment―I could have sworn it was still coated in the brains of that pegasus stallion. I took a deep breath and closed my good eye, doing my best to suppress those intrusive visions and force them from my mind.

“...How are you holding up?” Daisy finally asked, though her sympathetic tone suggested that she already had a pretty good idea of what the answer was.

“Better than that fucker’s skull,” I immediately quipped, trying to muster up a satisfied smirk to flash at the other mare. It didn’t last all that long and then I was feeling sick again. I pushed the bowl of noodles a little further away from me to help stave off my nausea. Noodles had been a poor choice.

The golden earth pony wasn’t buying my bravado though, it seemed. She leaned across the table slowly and reached out a hoof towards mine. At least I didn’t pull it back so hard this time that I fell off of my stool. It still withdrew slightly though before Daisy could manage to give it a light touch with her own. My mind still insisted that it was dangerous to let the mare touch me, considering what I’d just seen those hooves do less than an hour ago. I took another ragged breath, but it still didn’t seem to help much.

“It’s okay to not be okay with what you just went through,” Daisy gently insisted, not taking her emerald eyes off of mine as she spoke. Her hoof rubbed slowly over mine in an attempt to comfort me from the other side of the table. “It doesn’t make you weak.”

“I think just about getting my flank handed to me by one pegasus is what makes me ‘weak’,” I retorted with a snort, glancing away from the earth pony. I couldn’t meet her gaze without seeing how cold and empty those eyes had been during the fighting. It chilled my gut just thinking about it. “I only beat him because you―” I’d very nearly said ‘disarmed him’ for the sake of the pun, but I tasted bile at the memory and ultimately couldn’t go through with it. After swallowing back the bitterness in my mouth, I finally said: “...helped.”

Daisy craned her head to try and look me in the eye again, and so I closed it this time. “He was stronger, faster, and more experienced at fighting other ponies than you. I shouldn’t have encouraged you to fight him on your own. That was wrong of me. I’m sorry.

“Jenny told me you were a tough mare; I thought that meant you could handle yourself in a fight. I misunderstood what she meant and that was my bad.” I felt her hoof leave mine and make contact with my cheek. I tensed briefly, but ultimately allowed her to guide me back into meeting her gaze and opened my good eye back up. She was smiling warmly at me. “But I see what she was talking about now.

“The first thing you did when those thugs showed up was put yourself between them and me. Trying to protect me when you thought I couldn’t defend myself. That was very brave; especially when you clearly knew you wouldn’t be a match for them. You instinctively put yourself on the line for somepony else. Not many ponies would do that in this city.”

I frowned at the little yellow earth pony. “...Jenny told you I was ‘tough’?” I asked, dubiously.

Daisy nodded, obviously intending to stand by her unlikely claim regarding the donkey’s alleged opinion of me. “She told me about how you volunteered to help them get Grinder. Said that, if she were in your place, she wasn’t sure if she’d have had the guts to walk into a whole warehouse full of boosterherders unarmed, trusting that she’d be rescued just in the nick of time. Especially knowing that Grinder was just as likely to shoot you as talk with you. It took a lot of guts; she was very impressed.”

I was silent for several seconds as I digested the second-hoof praise that―again, allegedly―had been offered up by the gruff and rough-edged jenny who led the group. I was of the mind that Jenny Silverhoof entertained plenty of opinions on my competence and abilities. However, I was finding it hard to believe that any of her opinions of me were in any way flattering. “Jenny said that.” Daisy chuckled at the clear skepticism in my words. “You sure you didn’t mean ‘Gerry’?”

Daisy giggled at that. “Gerry had good things to say about you too,” the earth pony assured me. I found that I had to bite my tongue on my desire to ask the mare what ‘good things’ the griffon had said about me, specifically. “But Jenny was also impressed. Yeah, she’s not super great at being all touchy-feely,” she admitted, earning a chortle from myself, “but I promise that you earned her respect when you tried to do right by Hash. That was no small thing to her, believe me.” Her tone was much more sober and sincere-sounding as she mentioned the pegasus’ name.

My own mirth died too at the reminder of my former friend and roommate. I was having trouble meeting Daisy’s eyes again. “...It was the least I could do. I’m the reason she―”

“Nope.” The earth pony shook her head fervently. “That wasn’t your fault. Not even a little.”

“I blocked her shot―!” I tried to insist, but Daisy clearly wasn’t having it.

“Did you do it on purpose?” Was her response. Obviously, I denied it. Of course I hadn’t been trying to interfere in the fight. “Then it wasn’t your fault! Firefights are messy, and chaotic, and there’s no way you could have known how it was all going to play out.”

“Hash told me to stay down―” I tried to protest again; and again the other mare waved aside my attempt to shoulder responsibility.

“She wouldn’t have taken that shot even if you had stayed down,” Daisy insisted, further explaining upon seeing my unconvinced expression. “Hash wasn’t a gun novice. She knew exactly how unpredictable bullets can get after they hit, like, anything. If she knew that you were behind whatever cover she was aiming at, she’d have hesitated even if you’d stayed down.

“Hash wasn’t going to fire.”

“...I’m the one who shot her.” I said meekly. I didn’t need Daisy’s look of exasperation to know that I was making a fool out of myself trying to take the blame for my friend’s death. I’d been trying to save my friend. Even I knew that much. My inexperience with firearms was at play, to be sure, but would I honestly be sitting here and insisting I hadn’t had a hoof in Hash’s death if I’d simply sat there and watched her get gunned down by the hippogriff? I’d absolutely have been beating myself up over not picking up Grinder’s gun and trying to help her.

Which would have just put me right back where I was.

As though she were able to read my thoughts and recognize that I’d finally acknowledged the point she had been trying to make, Daisy nodded. “You weren’t in the wrong, Pel. You were in a bad situation and a friend tried to help you. Hash chose to put herself in the situation that she did.

“Just like you chose to help recover her body. Which, again, was an incredibly brave thing you did.” The smile was back on her cheeks. “Just like an hour ago when you were ready to take all the hits for the ‘defenseless little mare’ who brought you salads.” Daisy said the last with a playful little poke of her tongue out from between her lips as she perfectly guessed how’d I’d viewed her prior to that morning.

I wouldn’t pretend that my conscience was fully unburdened by the earth pony mare’s assurances and praise. It was unlikely that anything would ever convince me that I could be absolved of being the one who ultimately fired the bullet that ended Hash Stack’s life―intentionally or not. That was going to be something that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. But…it was helpful to hear that my subsequent actions had been appreciated by those who’d known my former roommate. Especially when it turned out that they’d known her so much better than I apparently had.

That last thought evoked a small frown as I once more considered how little I’d known about the pegasus’ life. To say nothing of my broader ignorance about how Light City was apparently being managed by the megacorps, or even how my own boosterherd had been in the employ of one such corporation. The revelations about the startling level of my ignorance were becoming almost painful. It was hard for me not to just conclude that I was simply an outright moron for not being aware of what so many others had apparently known for years, if not their whole lives. I couldn’t help but feel small. Insignificant. Worthless.

What was I even still doing with this group? I didn’t honestly think that I was going to be able to meaningfully contribute to what they were doing, did I?

My despondence must have been pretty evident, because Daisy was looking concerned again, her hood still gently rubbing along my own. “Hey…look at me.” It was a difficult command to follow, but I somehow managed it. The mare’s emerald eyes were filled with what looked very much like genuine kindness. “What’s wrong?”

“I mean…it’s not like I actually did anything any of those times,” I countered bitterly. “Jenny and them actually killed Grinder and the others and recovered Hash’s body,” I pointed out, “I just got beat to a pulp. Kind of like earlier,” I added, gesturing at my swollen eye. “You didn’t actually need my ‘help’, that’s pretty obvious, even to me. My being around didn’t make a difference. So how ‘meaningful’ were my actions, really? If they didn’t actually contribute to anything?”

Daisy’s reassuring expression faltered briefly, clearly taken aback by my assertion. She recovered quickly though and once again placed a reassuring smile on her face. “I promise you that intending to help matters, and it matters a lot.” I was about to protest, but the earth pony cut me off with a firm squeeze of my hoof. “It does!” She insisted vehemently, gaining my full attention now. “Being determined to help is the first―and perhaps the most important―step, and it’s one that’s incredibly hard to teach. Creatures are slow to change their nature, except under the most extreme of circumstances.

“Meanwhile, learning skills that give somepony who’s already motivated to do so the ability to help in a meaningful way can be far more easily taught,” the earth pony beamed. “Give me a month, and I’ll have you tossing donks like those around like they were hoofballs!”

I’ll admit, I did chuckle at the image of a little mare like myself suplexing a hippogriff twice my size, like I was one of those wrestlers in the vids. I was skeptical, yes, but I also was willing to let Daisy try to teach me how to protect myself. Though I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to bring myself to fight exactly like how the earth pony did. She’d left quite the mess on that sidewalk…

“In my opinion, ponies like you are way better than creatures who actually have the skills and talent to contribute, but have no interest in doing so,” Daisy continued, apparently missing my shudder as I once more revisited the memory of the fight’s aftermath. “Creatures like that are genuinely ‘useless’. Jenny would tell you that too.”

“Thanks. I guess,” I offered to the mare once I’d calmed myself again. “Doesn’t mean that I still don’t wish I had those ‘skills and talents’ now…”

“They’ll come with time. Nopony’s born able to buck flank without breaking a sweat,” Daisy pointed out. “We all have to start at the bottom. Some of us just have more friends willing to give us a leg up than others. Take Jenny, for example.” I quirked a brow at the other mare, earning a more mischievous smile from her. “Oh, yeah; she wasn’t always the ‘Silverhoof’, you know? There was a time when she needed her cherry popped, just like you did!”

“I beg your―w-what?!” I sputtered, stiffening up in my chair and wondering if it was possible for my arcanetic jaw to flush like my former organic cheeks were able to.

Daisy balked, cocking her head in clear confusion for a few seconds upon seeing my reaction to her statement. Then her own eyes went wide with comprehension and the little earth pony started cackling loud enough to draw attention from the diners at nearby tables as well as a few passing creatures ambling down the sidewalk. “Your job ‘cherry’!” Daisy finally managed to get out between snorts after she recovered from her fit of mirth. “You know, going on your first edgetrot? Taking down a street herd or a dirty megacorp?” The mare chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Sorry, that last one was kind of redundant…

“Anyway, my point is: that you’ll get better at this as time goes on. It’s silly to compare yourself to us when we’ve been doing this sort of thing for years, and you’ve only been with us for a week.”

I nodded, feeling myself relax once more in my seat. As I digested the other mare’s words, my gaze fell to my hoof on the table that Daisy was still gently rubbing. I winced as a brief flash of memory assaulted me, making me perceive it as still being covered in blood and brain matter. It wasn’t a long-lasting vision, but it was enough to make me suddenly withdraw my hoof and attempt to wipe it off on my jacket…which wasn’t exactly particularly clean at the moment either. I was left momentarily debating what to do with my hooves in the awkward silence that followed.

“...I’m not so sure I want to get ‘better’ at this sort of thing,” I admitted to the mare, unable to help but feel a little ashamed by the admission.

The other mare’s features fell in a look that suggested she was feeling no small amount of heartache. At first, I believed that she was disappointed in me for expressing my reluctance to become more adept at aiding their cause. However, her tone proved that wasn’t the case at all. “I already told you: it’s okay not to be okay right now.” A wan smile started to creep its way across Daisy’s lips. “And, personally, I think it’s a good thing that you don’t like what happened this morning. Both what those donks tried to do to us…and what we did to them.”

The earth pony idly glanced down at the frogs of her hooves and favored them with another sad quirk of her lips before folding her limbs in front of her on the table. When she spoke again, it was with no small amount of regret coloring her words. “The more blood you get on your hooves…the easier it is to excuse getting them even bloodier. You start to think to yourself: ‘eh, I’ve gone this far; what’s one more dead donk?’.

“You stop feeling like taking a life is a serious matter. You find yourself wondering how many more lives you’ll take before you finally flatline. You wonder how low the threshold will get that determines when you’re willing to take those lives. And…you wonder if it’s a bad sign that you’ve never been able to stick to a hard limit for that last one.”

The quiet that settled over our table was deafening.

I swallowed. “So…how do you feel about what happened?” I asked.

Daisy was silent for several long seconds as she studied her hooves. Then she shrugged and looked back up at me. “Eh. What’s four more dead donks?” The sham of a contented smile that the little yellow earth pony mare favored me with was as hollow as her suddenly glossy emerald eyes. It was a look that formed a cold pit in my stomach. I couldn’t help but avert my gaze, desperately wanting to look anywhere else that wasn’t Daisy’s face.

At first they went to my, as of yet, untouched bowl of noodles. The knot in my gut didn’t react well to the sight of the food, and I found myself almost feeling nauseous. I nudged the bowl aside so that I could instead just start at the surface of the table. The two of us didn’t say anything further for nearly a full minute. I was eventually compelled to say something when even the smell of our meal started to upset my stomach further.

“I’m not feeling very hungry. Can we go back to the loft, please?”

Daisy nodded her head. “We can go, but not straight back to the loft. There’s one more errand we need to run.” She must have seen me grimace at the thought of risking further encounters with unsavory donks who might accost us and followed it up with: “Don’t worry; it’s in a safer part of town. It’ll be quick too. I just need to pay for something that Jenny ordered.”

“Okay,” I relented, slipping off of my stool and waiting for the other mare to take the lead. It wasn’t like I knew where we were going, after all. Daisy counted out a few gibbies and left them on the table, then she started down the sidewalk, pausing only for a brief moment to make sure that I was following her. She was doing a much better job of looking genuinely content now, but I still wasn’t quite comfortable meeting her gaze.

I couldn’t shake the look I’d seen in her eyes just then: the look of a mare who’d killed so many, that the act of taking a life had lost all meaning for her now.

Daisy hadn’t been pitying my revulsion at the thought of killing, I now realized. She’d been envious of it.

“You’re going to have to explain to me the story behind how this place got its name,” I said to my guide as we stood outside what I considered to be a rather easily-missed entrance to the bar that Daisy had taken me to for her errand. “Because I’m not seeing a connection between beer and glue.”

The walk through Trotson had done the both of us a lot of good. It had given us time to process our earlier conversation, as well as the bloody events of that morning. Or, at least, it had given me time to process it. As best I could tell, the walk had simply given Daisy the time she needed to reinstate the happy and care-free expression that I’d known the mare for faultlessly wearing prior to today. While it was more than likely that her features were as lively and inviting as they had been when I’d first met the mare, I still couldn’t not see how shallow that same facade had seemed to me earlier. I lamented that I might never be able to suspend my disbelief and enjoy seeing her smile again.

“Oh, well there’s not,” the earth pony informed me, earning herself furrowed brows and cocked head. Her giggling sounded genuine to my ears at least as she gestured for me to follow her down the stairs. “The bar is in the basement of what actually used to be a glue factory. It never had a ‘proper’ christening that I know of. Its founding was very…organic,” the mare explained.

We finally reached the bottom of the staircase, now standing well below street level. A griffon was leaning against the wall by a pair of double-doors, eying us critically. When Daisy finally stepped into some better lighting, the feathered feline’s expression softened almost instantly and he nodded his head towards the door. The earth pony mare flashed him a brief smile and a nod of her head in his direction. “‘Morning, Guy.”

“DC,” the―I assumed―bouncer replied.

“The factory got shut down a long time ago after it was accused of using…” Daisy’s timely pause wasn’t just for the sake of opening the doors with her talisman, as it was clear that she was mulling over how she wanted to phrase the next part. “‘Creative materials-sourcing practices’ I think I remember one headline reading,” she eventually finished, sparing me a knowing look.

I flashed the earth pony another confused look, and received a sour expression from the other mare in turn. “Let’s just say that there’s a reason they set themselves up across the street from a Triple-C. Saved that place a mint on their cremation costs, I bet.” I was pretty sure my face blanched completely, despite its mostly synthetic construction, as the implication of the mare’s suggestion finally set in. Despite my best efforts, I spied no indication that the earth pony was simply messing with me for the sake of her own amusement.

My shock and revulsion―I was beginning to doubt whether I’d ever have an appetite again at this rate―were so complete that I was entirely oblivious to the fact that we’d attracted the attention of a nearby creature who had apparently overheard the subject of our conversation. I very nearly jumped to the ceiling when I heard a stallion say: “Allegedly” right beside me.

Now Daisy was giggling again. Once she saw that I wasn’t about to bolt back through the door, she directed my attention towards the new arrival, who I was now able to identify as a batpony stallion. A very nicely dressed batpony stallion too, I noticed. He was sporting a maroon crushed velvet vest stitched with gold over a white shirt. A deep blue ascot was tucked in snugly around his neck. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have pegged them for a corpo executive. Whatever his style of attire might have suggested though, there was no mistaking the stallion’s expression. He was confident, yes, but he most certainly didn’t come off as arrogant, like all of the ‘real’ suits did. But this was most certainly a pony who’d ‘been around’ the streets of Light City and come out the other side alive and well.

All of that to say: even I knew that this was not a stallion to fuck with.

The new arrival spared a few seconds to exchange a pleasant smile with Daisy before he finally turned his topaz eyes on me. I could see the unasked question on his face as he again looked to the other mare to introduce ‘the outsider’, and likely justify to him why I had been brought in here in the first place.

“Rouge, this is Pel,” the earth pony began. “She was a friend of Hash’s that Jenny brought into the fold. She’s helping us out now.” Daisy then turned to me and indicated the batpony. “Pel, this is: Baton Rouge. He basically owns The Glue Factory.” The stallion bowed his head in acknowledgement. “He’s also the preemest fixer in Light City, and a longtime―” The earth pony cleared her throat before lacing her next words with no small amount of innuendo. “...friend of Jenny’s.”

For his part, the batpony whose coat was so dark in color that it glimmered with a purple sheen―though I supposed that could have been a trick of the many low-intensity colored lights in the bar―merely rolled his eyes and turned his attention towards me once more, extending his hoof. “Enchanté, Mademoiselle Pel,” I tentatively raised my own hoof and let the stallion take it. Much to my surprise, the batpony bowed his head and lightly touched his lips to my pastern. I assumed that my arcanetic cheeks were indeed capable of flushing, as I heard Daisy doing a poor job of stifling a giggle from where she stood next to me.

“For the record,” the batpony said after raising his head once more and releasing his hold on my hoof, “There was never a proven link between Fixation Fixatives and the nearby Critical Care Clinic.”

“Regardless,” Daisy said with a dismissive wave of her hoof, “the factory closed down. It wasn’t long after that that some foals started coming around and sneaking into the basement to do some drinking and drugs and whatever. Eventually that evolved into some ponies smelling an opportunity coming around to sell those foals alcohol and drugs out of that basement.

“Soon after, it wasn’t just foals coming down to do the buying and drinking. Eventually, everycreature in the neighborhood had heard that, if you wanted to have a good time, you needed to go to: ‘the old glue factory’s basement’. That was later shortened down to just: ‘The Glue Factory’ by the locals,” the earth pony finished, matter-of-factly.

I nodded in understanding before looking back at the batpony. “So were you one of those early ‘opportunity smellers’?” The phrasing of my question earned me a chortle from Daisy, and an amused grin from the stallion.

“Non, I’m not from that far back,” he admitted. He then flashed me a brief pout, feigning some obvious offense. “But thank you for implying I look that old…” Daisy’s chortle escalated into an outright guffaw this time. I tried to quickly stammer out a correction, but the batpony’s expression morphed into a wide grin and he waved off the attempt. “It’s fine,” he assured me, “please, let us have a seat.” His eyes darted to Daisy. “I imagine this is not purely a social call?”

The tone was questioning, yes, but it seemed that it was only so by way of confirmation. Daisy had mentioned earlier that she’d had an ‘errand’ to take care of here, and I could only assume at this point that it involved the proprietor of the bar. As we were guided to a semi-private booth on the far side of the bar so that the others could conduct whatever business it was that they had, my own mind finally started to process on all cores again after getting flustered by Rouge’s sudden appearance.

It was only now that I realized that I had heard his name before. It was honestly hard not to run in the same sort of freelancing circles that I’d only just skirted and not hear about ‘The Bat’. Granted, I hadn’t really known all that much about them beyond their handle, and that they only dealt with the cream of Light City’s…erm, ‘independent contractors’, let’s say. A month ago, I’d have half-jokingly remarked that Hash Stack was probably counted among those ranks. Given how Daisy had introduced us just now, I doubted very much that that would have actually been a ‘joke’. I had just been introduced to another of Light City’s big-league players who knew my former roommate.

A dark cloud settled over my thoughts as I was once again reminded of just how little I’d really known about the pegasus I’d been living with. How much of her life she’d kept hidden from me. Not that I thought I’d been entitled to know everything about the mare just because she let me have a bed at her place. It just…it was really frustrating to know that I’d been so blindingly ignorant of how close I’d been to this larger world. Was I really just that much of a brainless idiot that I hadn’t managed to catch on to Hash being involved with a legendary fixer? To say nothing of her connection to an apparently rather well-known rock band and their quest to undermine Light City’s corporate overlords?

How was I supposed to be any kind of asset to these creatures when I was apparently that fucking clueless?

Rouge, ever the gentlecolt apparently, gestured for the pair of mares he’d been escorting to seat themselves first before joining us at the table. I then saw the garnet gemstone embedded in his head alight briefly just before a sapphire in the center of the table started to glow. In that same moment, I noticed that the background din of other bar patrons talking, laughing, and drinking, as bar patrons were wont to do, became substantially muted. It was almost like my ears had filled with water. To the point that I actually tried to ‘dig out’ the offending sensation with my hoof. Which earned me an amused look from the other two ponies at the table.

“Sound dampening enchantment,” Daisy informed me as I once more flushed with embarrassment and lowered my hoof, finding myself idly hoping that the enchantment also made me unobservable to other bar patrons.

Rouge merely smiled, reveling in my awkward shifting for a few more seconds before returning his attention to the far less ignorant of the two of us and apparently deciding that it was time to actually get down to business. I noticed his eyes dimming slightly as they lost some of their earlier mirth. Whatever it was, I didn’t get the feeling that it was great news. “I suspect you’re already aware that we acquired the…item.” The last word was said only after the stallion favored me with a cautious look.

I did my best to suppress a frown at the idea that I was being nominally ‘excluded’ from the true nature of the conversation, despite nominally being a part of Jenny’s crew as much as Daisy was. More or less, anyway. I mean, I acknowledged that I was still the ‘Fucking New Mare’ but Daisy had just finished telling me earlier that morning how much my contributions had been appreciated up until now.

Granted, I supposed that there was no reason that Rouge should know how deep I’d been brought into the fold; so I wasn’t going to begrudge the batpony being circumspect in the interest of protecting his client’s interests. Daisy could always fill me in on the details later.

The yellow earth pony mare nodded. “We saw the news reports, yeah. Obviously there were some complications. Anything serious?”

My gaze darted back towards the stallion. There were only a couple of news stories worth mentioning that I’d heard about in the last couple of days. One was obviously what was happening with Elysium as a result of the revelations that Dandy had made on his news segment and their imminent bankruptcy. I was plenty familiar with the details of that event. Certainly more so than would have been heard about on the news, given the ‘inside track’ I was a part of in that regard. The other big headline item was the break-in at GrimTech. On that, I knew quite a bit less.

Something told me that I was going to learn a little more in the next few minutes though.

“There was a fatality,” Rouge replied with a somber nod.

Daisy’s expression clouded just as much as the batpony’s had and she briefly bowed her head. “Who was it?”

“Buckeye.”

The mare let out a quiet curse under her breath. “Damn. He was a good colt.” The stallion nodded in solemn agreement. Another moment of silence, then, “I know his aunt. I should reach out. See how she’s holding up. Find out when the service is.”

“I can pass you those details if you’d like?” The batpony offered. Daisy was shaking her head though.

“Nah. Thanks, but I don’t reach out as often as I should anyway,” the earth pony admitted. “It’ll be good to call her and catch up.” Another brief pause as a wan smile touched her lips. “You know I did a couple ops with Buckeye a few years ago?”

“I remember,” Rouge nodded, adopting a slightly warmer smile of his own as the pair settled into reminiscing about ‘the good old days’. “You actually introduced him to me. Then I introduced him to Tracer.”

“Right, yeah…” Another moment of quiet reflection, and then the mare took a deep, cleansing breath, and apparently decided that it was time to set aside reflecting on the past and return to present business. “So…payment and delivery then?”

“Delivery is being arranged, per Jenny’s instructions,” Rouge assured her. His topaz eyes flickered and glowed briefly. “Here’s the account information.”

Daisy’s own emerald eyes were likewise glowing as she received the magical transmission from the fixer. “Got it…transmitting…done.” Both ponies’ eyes dimmed once more. A look from the batpony and a flicker of his talisman was all it took for the booth’s enchantment to come to an end, and my ears were once again filled with the sound of scores of reveling bar patrons. “Pleasure doing business as always, Rouge.” She favored the stallion with another smile, this one far warmer.

The batpony excised himself from the table and extended a polite hoof to help the earth pony out of her seat. “De rien.” As he’d done with me, he took her hoof and gave her pastern a chaste peck, much to Daisy’s obvious delight, judging by her giggle. “The pleasure, as always, is entirely mine, ma belle fleur.” He flashed the other mare an inviting smile as he spoke in what I could only describe as being a ‘purr’. “Perhaps your next visit here will be for…pleasure?”

“Perhaps…” The earth pony replied with a playful wink of her eye. She then glanced back in my direction and leaned in towards Rouge, saying in a stage whisper that I was clearly meant to hear, “Should I bring a friend?”

Now the stallion was smiling in my direction as he offered me that same helping hoof out of my seat. I found that it was quite difficult to meet the batpony’s gaze as he kissed it a second time. “I insist! One can never be entertaining too many pretty mares…”

Daisy’s sniggering seemed to confirm that, yes, my arcanetics did, in fact, allow for visible blushing. Great. I managed to mutter out a ‘thank you’ to the stallion and shuffled behind the earth pony. I’d like to have insisted that I wasn’t ‘hiding’...but that would have been a blatant lie. Getting attention from stallions was nothing new to me, but it had almost always been in the form of cat-calls and crude innuendo. Things that I’d learned to easily brush off with a snort and a roll of my eye. This sort of attention was very different, however, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.

Mostly because, unlike being propositioned by random thugs on the street corner, I wasn’t actually repulsed by Baton Rouge’s comments…or the stallion himself, come to think of it. If anything, I wouldn’t have minded hearing more. Yet, at the same time, I found myself very much of the notion that he was mostly teasing me. After all, the batpony was one of the most famous and important stallions in Light City, as far as those trotting in our circles were concerned. In contrast, I was a nopony. If Rouge wanted a romantic liaison, I knew that he had to have way better prospects than some naive little street filly. Case in point: the very mare that I most assuredly wasn't―quite―cowering behind as I tried to unflush my cheeks. Daisy was exactly the type of mare that I’d expect a stallion like Rouge to make an actual pass at: pretty, capable, and―as I’d recently learned―had quite a well-established reputation in this community.

I, on the other hoof, was nothing.

“...But that must wait for later,” Baton Rouge remarked with a tone that suggested he almost felt genuinely remorseful. “As they say: a bad pony’s work is never done. Please, stay and enjoy a few drinks ‘on the house’.” He waved towards the bar. A mutual flicker of his eyes and those of the mare tending bar just before she turned and nodded in our direction made it clear that he’d just cleared us for a few complimentary beverages. He shared another nod with the two of us before trotting off.

Daisy flashed me a smile and a questioning look as she nodded her head towards the bar, silently asking if I felt like having a drink. While I hadn’t possessed an appetite earlier―and honestly still didn’t feel like eating―the thought of a strong drink held some appeal for me. So I nodded and let her lead me over to a pair of vacant stools.

“Drinks?” The mare behind the bar asked.

“A Brain Dance for me,” Daisy began and then paused as she cast an aside glance in my direction.

“Whiskey double on the rocks,” I supplied to the bartender.

The earth pony stuck out her tongue and quivered in a show of mild disgust. “Ugh! Straight liquor? Why do you hate your mouth so much?” Her tone suggested a mixture of amusement and pity. “Mixed drinks are where it’s at, filly. All of the alcohol, none of the aftertaste!”

She stuck her hoof out as if to block me from the barpony’s view. “Ignore her. She’ll have a Sunburst.” I shot a sour look in the earth pony’s direction but elected not to overrule her correction, instead sighing and nodding my head in confirmation. It’s not like it was the taste of the drink that I cared about most, so long as it was strong and helped to take the edge off from this morning.

Our drinks were produced in short order. Daisy’s was a tri-layered concoction of blue, green, and purple liqueurs, it looked like. Meanwhile, my own drink consisted of deep red at the bottom, transitioning to yellow at the top. I had to admit that these were much more colorful, and even smelled much better, than what I’d usually ordered from Gary by the megasilo. It still tasted strong though!

I let out a long sigh and lightly shook my head, a little smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. “If you’d told me a month ago that I’d be sipping drinks in Rouge the Bat’s bar―” My comment was rather rudely interrupted by a spit-take from the mare sitting next to me, followed quickly by a rushed apology in the direction of the bartender and a series of laugh-filled coughs.

“Did you just―?” Daisy looked around us quickly to check if we were being overheard and then leaned in close to me. “Do not call him that where he can hear you,” she warned me in a hiss, despite her obviously amused smile.

“What? But I thought that was what creatures called him―”

“Not in polite company, it’s not!” Daisy still sounded far more amused than incredulous. “Who did you hear call him that?”

I squirmed in my seat, feeling decidedly uncomfortable knowing that I’d managed to finally make the faux pas I’d been pretty sure I was going to in a place like this. “...Grinder.”

“Okay, well that makes sense then,” the yellow mare acknowledged with a resigned shake of her head. “For future reference: do not call batponies ‘bats’, got it?” I hastily agreed to her recommendation and the earth pony secured a towel from behind the bar to clean up the mess she’d made, all the while wearing a sardonic smile on her face. “Even from beyond the grave, that piece of shit’s trying to get you into trouble…” she lamented.

“Anyway, I believe you were dwelling on your turn of fortune?”

I furrowed my brow. “Is that the right expression?”

“Maybe,” Daisy shrugged. “I’m using it regardless. But go on,” she urged me with a wave of her hoof.

“Right…” I eyed the mare dubiously, though a small smile was tugging at my lips all the same. “I was just going to say how much things have changed for me in such a short period of time. I never thought I’d be bumping flanks with such important creatures. I mean, can you imagine? A pony like me, talking with the Rouge?”

“The word ‘talking’ is doing a lot of heavy-lifting there, I think,” the other mare teased with a delicate poke of her tongue from between her lips. I winced, acknowledging the truth to the comment. Then the earth pony’s own demeanor shifted slightly to a less amused expression. “But what’s that supposed to mean: ‘a pony like you’?” Daisy asked, casting a critical eye in my direction.

“You know: a pony that isn’t important.” The answer came so easily and without even a moment’s hesitation, since I knew that it was the truth. However, it became immediately clear that the mare sitting beside me didn’t particularly care for that response at all.

“Who ever told you that you weren’t important?”

My first reaction was to laugh at the absurdity of the question, since Daisy had clearly been making a joke. Ponies like me didn’t need to be explicitly told that we weren’t important. After all, that was simply the default. Everypony wasn’t important until they became important. You earned your notoriety and status as a pony that was actually worth anything.

Until that happened though, you were just another donk flailing about in obscurity. Just like I was.

Then Daisy hit me over the head with a statement that called everything I thought I’d known into question: “Hash Stack thought you were important.”

It was like my whole body had just been plunged into one of my old roommate’s ice baths. Every thought I’d just entertained in the last few seconds suddenly had me feeling extremely guilty for even having it. My mind instantly flashed back to Hash Stack fluttering in to sit beside me at the cafe, knowingly delivering herself into the trap that I’d been used to bait her into. She’d placed herself in very real mortal peril in order to save my life. The pegasus hadn’t needed to do that. Leaving a worthless little filly like me to die would have been the smarter choice.

…Unless I hadn’t been ‘worthless’ to her.

Now I was faced with a rather uncomfortable mental dilemma: did I disparage the memory of a dead mare who was important to me by insisting that she’d thrown her life away uselessly? Or did I validate that sacrifice by acknowledging an implied opinion of me that I couldn’t bring myself to agree with?

While I didn’t want to disparage the memory of Hash Stack to somepony who clearly had known the mare a lot better than I ever had, I also wasn’t ready to agree with the assessment. “...I never did anything that should have made her think that.”

“Hash Stack didn’t think you were important because of anything you’d done,” the earth pony countered. “She believed in what you could someday do, because of who you were. Specifically: a pony who was willing to put themselves at risk to protect others.”

I frowned at the other mare. “I never did anything like that!”

“Hash Stack told me you refused to beat up the other residents in your megasilo for the ‘protection money’ that Grinder was collecting for Elysium. Even though you knew that you’d get punished for it. She said she was pretty sure he’d even threatened your life, and you still wouldn’t do it.” Daisy smiled wanly into her glass, her eyes growing distant. “You should have heard the way she gushed about you. She talked about you a lot.”

There was a very pregnant pause. Then, “Don’t ever say you’re ‘not important’.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Eh, it’s not really your fault,” Daisy assured me with an anemic shrug of her shoulders. “Growing up in a megasilo, living from one meal to another, never seeing any light at the end of the tunnel with hope that life will get easier one day? It’s easy to feel like you don’t matter. Believe me, I know.

“This whole city is built to sow those feelings of despair into creatures like us: the ones on the bottom rung,” the earth pony went on. “This society doesn’t function any other way: A psychopathic few standing on the backs of the more empathetic many. That’s easier to accomplish if those of us actually capable of caring about our fellow creatures believe that we’re ‘destined’ to stay on the bottom.”

I raised a brow at the other mare. “Calling the higher-up corpos ‘psychos’ is a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“Not at all,” Daisy insisted with a snort. “That’s exactly what they are: creatures devoid of empathy. And they built a system designed to keep themselves in power. Better creatures, like you and Hash, get filtered down to the bottom where they can’t become a threat.”

She must have noticed my rather dubious expression, because the earth pony chuckled to herself and nodded, uttering words that did indeed very closely match what I was thinking. “I know, I know, I sound like a nut, don’t I? Clearly just some sour grapes because I’m slumming it in The Glue Factory and not sipping top shelf cocktails at the top of Aeriesaka Tower, right?

“Well, let me ask you: how many meals do you think Grinder skipped because he was strapped for cash?” The question was clearly rhetorical, though Daisy did let the question hang between us for a good second or two so that I could digest the obvious answer before she continued. “And as bad as he was, do you think he was so messed up in the head that he could have conceived of a plan to extort nearly a million already-struggling creatures in order to pocket some extra gibbies? Or would that have taken an even more depraved mind?

“Heck, how about the mind that came up with the idea of making millions of creatures entirely dependent on Vend-O-Mats for a fundamental basic need, like we talked about earlier? Does that sound like a mind that cares how hard that makes life for less prosperous creatures in the city? And what about the execs running FF.Inc? Isn’t it also weird that the same corporation that created the arcanetic implants that poison our bodies also owns the company that’s the only producer of the potions that keep those implants from ultimately killing us? Implants that are basically essential to getting by in the city we’re trapped in?”

As much as Daisy did sound like she was raving by now, there wasn’t any particular point that she’d made which I could think of a way to refute. Even that last one. Yes, technically there were ways to leave the island and move away from Light City, but a ticket on an airship wasn’t cheap. To say nothing of finding a place to live after leaving. A creature would need tens, if not hundreds of thousands of gryphusbits to have a hope of setting themselves up off the island. And nocreature I knew from the megasilos was going to be able to save up that kind of scratch in their lifetime.

“Let me pose a hypothetical,” Daisy went on, sounding like she was changing tacks. “Say you owned a business―a bar,” the earth pony gestured to our surroundings. “And your bartender came up to you one day and said they were struggling to get by and needed a raise. What would you do?”

This time the mare paused long enough to make it clear that she was waiting for me to give her a real answer. Caught off guard, I was forced to stammer my way through one. “I-I would give them a raise, I guess?”

“Even if it meant you’d have to cut into your own earnings?” Daisy posed, eyeing me critically.

“I own a whole bar, I’m probably doing pretty well,” I pointed out with a roll of my eyes. “I’m certainly not living in a megasilo, I bet. I assume I’d still be okay.”

The other mare flashed me a vicious grin. “But the bartender’s only ‘struggling’,” she countered. “And if you pay them more, you’ll never be able to afford buying a second bar. Or a third. Heck, if you keep lowballing your employees’ pay, you’ll eventually be running a city-wide franchise of bars and be living in a penthouse downtown. You’d really give up having millions just so an ‘unimportant’ bartender could live a little more comfortably?”

“I don’t need ‘millions’. I’m happy with just eating three times a day,” I snorted. “I’m certainly not going to force anycreature else to live like I was so I could have it easy. I know what that feels like.” I closed my eyes against the memories of my mother’s anguish. There was no way I could bring myself to have a hoof in doing that to others. Whether that was directly through extortion, or by withholding raises to hypothetical employees.

“Exactly,” Daisy nodded. “You empathize with them. You actually care about others. You’d want them to have their fair share of the earnings from the bar, because you’d know those earnings came from their hard work just as much as yours.

“Those high-up corporate execs don’t feel that way though. They wouldn’t piss on you to put out a fire. They sure as shit wouldn’t pay you an extra gibby and hour so you can afford to eat anything more than nutri-bars. Having more money than they could hope to spend in ten lifetimes isn’t enough for them,” Daisy all but spat.

I thought back over my mother working multiple jobs simultaneously, and how the two of us had still struggled. I thought about every other creature in that megasilo who was almost certainly in the same boat. Then I thought about those high-level executives flying over the city to sip coffee more expensive than a month’s worth of vended meals.

My hooves tightened around my drink. Fortunately I realized how angry I was getting and what I risked doing before it was too late and released my hold on the glass. I let out a deep sigh and felt my head sulk. Getting angry about it wasn’t going to change anything. Besides, even if I recognized how fucked up the city was, what was I going to do about it? For that matter, what was the alternative? Daisy had been right earlier when she pointed out that rotten creatures were the ones who were going to end up rising to the top, because those with purer hearts wouldn’t even think to play for power and control in the first place.

That much I voiced allowed to the earth pony. “If we’re fighting against just the way creatures are, then what’s the point? You can’t fix that.”

“Who says you can’t?”

I frowned, looking over at the other mare, only to find her grinning back in my direction. Her talisman lit up and I saw that I’d received a prompt for a file transfer. Tentatively, I accepted the request. As the transfer was executed, the earth pony explained what she was sending over. “Gerry told you about the data cache that Hash Stack found a while ago, right?” I nodded. “Well, here’s one of the files she was able to successfully decrypt.”

The download completed and I examined what Daisy had sent to me. The name of the file read:

JOURNALOFFREINDSHIP.BOK

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated

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