One Last Mission

Trotson Streets

Day 3

We choose to stick to the ground, figuring Sharpshot, Gold, and Gemini would likely find us easier than we would find them. If it wasn’t for the wound that fucking ghouls had rudely given me, Willow and I would probably have stuck around the M.A.S. hub. Considering how ransacked the ground floor was, and how dangerous the underground labs were, it wasn’t our best bet for getting me patches up.

Thus Willow and I wandered through the city streets in search of a place that might have medical equipment. I kept my sight on my MentaBuck, acting as Willow’s navigator so I didn’t feel completely useless on her back. It also helped distract from the fact I was currently bleeding, since it blocked my peripheral vision. Granted I could still feel it under me, but it was better than nothing.

Truth be told, the wound itself didn’t actually seem that horrible. It was bleeding badly, yes, but the ghoul hadn’t really cut much. Emphasis on “much”, because the muscles its horn had hit were certainly doing a fair amount of complaining. I wasn’t sure if a horn cutting muscle was normal, but then again those ghouls were anything but normal. Extremely durable, strength to rival a fucking alicorn, and possibly sharper horns.

Can whatever megaspell they were producing really cause all that? I didn’t want an answer.

At least we got out with Angel Hair’s location… or destination. Selling the Enclave’s secrets for a father she didn’t know, who likely didn’t know her, and wasn’t a pegasus. None of it made a lick of sense to me. She liked her step-dad, and her relationship with her mother was incredibly strong. Whether she agreed with Calamity or not doing everything she did made no sense with that all taken into consideration.

Of course, it was entirely possible the problem didn’t lie with her parents. Perhaps the problem was me, and how I had reacted upon learning she wasn’t purely a pegasus.

I tilted the cup around on its bottom edges, watching the liquor within move in bored fascination. It was a habit I had picked up upon seeing my dad drink when I was younger. Of my parents he was easily the better of the two, though that wasn’t saying much when he was always drunk. I know that, when mom had landed herself in prison after that horrible incident at my birthday, he had been given enough of an excuse to divorce her. Maybe she was the reason he had started in the first place, but even after she left the picture he continued to drink.

I did my best to not be like either of them for Rainy and Clear, because I knew my only family weren’t exactly role models. Didn’t mean I was sober non-stop, but I watched myself carefully and always had somepony else there. Usually it was Anchor, but at times my old squadmates would take his place. One of them was more common than the rest, but considering her mother ran the bar in question that made a lot of sense.

That night, Angel was right there next to me. She was lost in thought, head on the bar counter. I was on my second glass of the night, but she hadn’t even touched her first. That was probably the strangest part of it all, because nopony held their liquor better than Angel and nopony I knew enjoyed it as much as she did. To see her sitting there, eyes looking past the glass before her, behind the counter, and even still behind the taps to something far off in the distance.

Whenever her mother passed by her eyes moved. She had joined me to get her mind off of something, but it was more than clear that “something” had become all encompassing. After minutes of her melancholic stare into nothingness, I pushed my cup away and faced her. The movement got her attention, but only long enough for her to glance at me. She immediately turned back to her stare off with the abyss.

“Okay, the fuck is on your mind corporal?”

Her muzzle sunk lower into her hooves, though I had no idea how that was possible. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Just cause you don’t want to, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. You’re acting like somepony just broke up with you, and if I’m remembering correctly you aren’t the romantic type.”

“There is a difference between being aro and not being romantic.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I think you’re saying words you don’t completely understand,” she pushed herself up, giving me a deadpan look. “You're a good soldier boss, but not always the best at understanding ponies. Telling you wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Pegasus stared at pegasus. A very different wound from the one I was currently sporting in Trotson formed in me at my own friend's declaration. She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t about to admit that. Place a hoof on my chest, I let my expression slowly shift from the mild curiosity that had started our conversation to mild frustration.

“So you just don’t want to tell me.”

“I don’t want to tell anypony. I doubt most of them would understand; I’m still trying to grasp it all. It’s just… well ....” Her head collided with the bar counter. “I have a lot of mixed feelings right now.”

This wasn’t typical Angel Hair, though that had been clear the moment she had started talking. She was a lot less stern than usual, and her being this indecisive was even more shocking. We were soldiers; we were conditioned to follow orders, not question them, and never speak up against the pegasus giving them. Angel had practically been born to play such a role, which made her current state worrying.

I looked at the glass I had been playing with beforehoof. Grabbing it, I gulped down a decent portion of its remaining contents and then put it back down. My eyes then turned to the rest of the bar, noticing how every other pegasus around us was too preoccupied with their own conversation. That, combined with the general noise of the bar on a busy night, made discerning one's voice near impossible unless you were right next to them.

“Angel, listen,” I whispered to my fellow pegasus, getting her attention. “We’ve been through a lot together. You, Lucky, Medicine, Dew, and I have fought and lived through a lot more than most Enclave soldiers could imagine. I can promise you this: whatever you are dealing with, I won’t judge you for it.” I reached out a wing and gently patted her on the back. “Nopony else is listening. Tell me.”

Her eyes looked from pony to pony, trying to find some excuse to not talk to me. Her attempt ended with a sigh of defeat, her ears flattening as she looked back in my direction. Never in my life had I seen her so nervous.

“You promise you won’t tell anypony?”

I made an x over my heart with my hoof. “As your friend, sister in arms, and superior officer, I promise.”

For a brief moment, her lips twitched upwards. Her right wing pushed her liquor glass closer to her, and with a quick swipe she brought it to her lips. The entire thing was gone within seconds, and Angel slammed it down with a force no pegasus should have been able to. A telling moment for the words that next left her mouth.

“I’ve got grounder blood in me.”

My jaw tried to hang but my lips refused to part, several confused blinks at the mare next to me. I slowly brought my wing back in, eyes suddenly finding the bar counter far more enticing than the pony next to me. Everypony around me suddenly sounded a lot quieter, but I knew it was just a trick of my mind. Nopony heard, and for Angel’s sake that was a good thing.

“You’re… you’re sure?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure how to handle this situation. Angel was Enclave, but she wasn’t fully pegasus, and pieces of me had immediately flipped my perspective of her. Where once was a shining example of pegasus might, I now saw a pony desperately trying to be more than they were. Her strength scared me more now than it had before. I did my best to keep it all inside like I had promised.

The hurt look on her face was enough to tell me I had done a terrible job.

“According to mom and dad, yeah. My mom was pregnant before they met, and she didn’t know.”

My eyes went wide, and my outlook shifted again. “Why did you never tell us?”

“I didn’t know until recently. My mom… everything with that officer happened and my mother and father felt they had to tell me. I’m not sure how to feel about it all. Should I be upset that I was never told, or angry that I’m… what am I?”

Her question was emphasized by a look of terror, one gained not through the fear of what is happening but what could. The damage her blood could do to her career, her standing, was immense. Perhaps the Council would declare her unfit to be part of the Enclave, and instead of running off with classified documents she would be branded. The truth had made her scared for her own life.

“I think you're still Enclave, even if you aren’t the pony I originally thought you were deep down.” She winced at my words, but I wasn’t watching her. My attention had returned to my glass, and I had started playing with it again. “You know, a fair few of those promotions you got would likely have been denied to you if anyone knew.”

“Y-yeah, I’m aware.”

“You ask me, the best thing to do is just forget all about that part of you. Act like you never learned and nopony will ever find out. Besides, who the fuck would want to say they have a grounder for a father?”

I gave her another firm pat on the back, not noticing the look of indecisiveness on her face. While Angel no longer stared off into nothingness, her gaze lingered on me. A gaze of somepony who hadn’t gotten the answer they wanted, and maybe not the one they needed.

Was I… no, I wasn’t the cause behind this all. Sure, it may have been my words that sealed it, but Calamity is the one responsible for putting the seeds of doubt in her mind to begin with. Besides, no matter who was responsible for what it didn’t change the fact she had sold out her home to find a grounder she didn’t know. Just thinking about it was sickening.

“Hold up.”

I removed the MentaBuck’s map from my vision, Willow stopping. I looked at a building to our right, smaller than most others around us. The sign on top of it was too faded to read, but the MentaBuck had told me what it would say: Nature Care. Judging by the fact it was marked with the Ministry of Peace’s logo in the MentaBuck, they either were associated or trying really hard to fool ponies into thinking they were.

Either way, if we were gonna find a place to patch ourselves up, there was no better place than either a clinic or a pharmacy. This seemed like the latter.

“You think it’s been looted yet?”

“Only one way to find out.”

I leaned my head as Willow turned to walk inside the building. She opened one door, but we hadn’t actually entered the building proper just yet. We were in a small square room, two more doors that had been made mostly of glass stood before us. Willow stepped through the door frame carefully, wings tucked tightly at her side and bending her legs so that her head didn’t get cut by the small pieces of glass still hanging above us.

That alone told me my guess had been wrong, and the first real room in the building was proof of it. It was a lobby, one door leading into the rest of the clinic, a window with the receptionist area behind it, and overall not in the greatest shape. End tables, chairs, and paintings had either rotted to the point of collapse, fallen over, or otherwise. The remains of ponies who had come here on the last day still hung around, though none of them could be called whole. There was also a small area with what seemed to be books and toys meant for foals. Outside of some wooden blocks and the faded remains of jigsaw puzzles, age had twisted a decent chunk of them into forms unrecognizable.

Despite nopony being present and the lack of society deeming it necessary, Willow walked up to the counter. She smiled, giggled at something unseen, and placed a forehoof on the counter. I looked to see if there were some ponies' remains or a dead ghoul in front of her. All I got was desks with moldy and faded paperwork, terminals.

“Hello, I have an appointment for my friend here,” She said to nopony, giving me a grin more cocky than even her husband was able to manage. “Somepony put the wrong horn into a hole that shouldn’t be there.”

At first I was shocked, then I tried to scowl, and finally my sense of humor got the better of me. A barely audible chuckle left me, a hoof going to my head to hold. It was so dumb, but I couldn’t help myself. It helped distract my thoughts from the fact there indeed was a hole in my body that currently shouldn’t exist.

“You seemed like you needed it,” the alicorn explained.

“It helps,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “Not as much as getting it patched up, but it does help.”

“Good. That’s what I was hoping for. At least it isn’t a life threatening situation… yet.”

I looked over to the door no doubt leading into the rest of the facility. “Let’s keep it that way. We should probably look somewhere other than the lobby.”

Willow nodded, and trotted over to the door I had eyed. Opening it, we followed once-white hall on the other side. She followed it around the corner, my eyes catching onto what looked to have been a station for doctors or nurses in the past. Outside of the broken terminal in the alcove’s leftmost corner, I recognize very little of what I was looking at. So I looked away and watched Willow enter yet another room.

It was on the smaller side. A raised bed was in one corner with three chairs, none of which were still standing, and with a counter directly across from it. Willow turned so that she was side to side with the bed, and then motioned for me to get on. Clutching the atomizer tight to my chest, I did as she asked. A small hop, a flap of the wings, and then I tucked my hooves under me as I hit the bed.

It wasn’t the most comfortable bed in the world, but it would do. With me off her back Willow turned to rummaging through the cabinets and counter for anything of use. After a time she tossed an old Ministry of Peace med kit at me, smacking me in the face before falling comfortably in front of me. Hopefully anything inside would be fine, if its contents hadn’t been pillaged at least.

“I hope you don’t mind me waiting till Sharpshot gets to us to take care of anything substantial.” Willow said, turning away from the cupboards she had overturned. “He’s the pony who has actual medical experience.”

I gave her a firm nod. “That’s fine. Some bandages should be good enough for right now anyways. A healing potion too, though considering the time that has passed...”

Willow walked over to the medkit and myself, willing the bag open via telekinesis. Her expression turned into something between being upset and confused.

“We got bandages. Somepony already took the healing potion though.”

“It’ll work. Just means I’ll have to be a bit more careful for some time.”

Once my front was all wrapped up, we returned to the lobby and spent the rest of our time there. Moving would only make it harder for Sharpshot and the rest to find us, and the clinic provided us with protection from the scorching desert sun. Willow spent a majority of that time relaxing, though it was clearly not helping. The cloud nine’s effects were starting to wear off, and tears were in her eyes. We didn’t have any on us, and there was no way in tartarus Nature Care had any lying around.

I, meanwhile, started the long and absolute idiotic task of trying to take apart and fix a prototype weapon. It gave me something to do, even if I knew the task before me was impossible. The only thing that seemed easy to do was take off the strange energy cell that was on it, but that was what a magazine was designed to do. Nothing else about it was standard, though considering this was made by scientists and not a standard old world arms company that made sense.

As if it might help, I had taken out the statuette of Twilight and held it to my chest. All it did was make me seem younger than I was, a foal at heart instead of one of the Enclave’s best. The piece of junk still didn’t make a lot of sense, showing that even the power these strange little figurines contained were nothing to scientific stupidity. It was a real shame, because it sounded damn useful.

“Doesn’t even make sense to you too, huh?” I asked the statuette, holding it out in front of me. I tapped Twilight on the head. “It was your grounders that made this, you know. I figured you would be able to help me figure out exactly what they broke.”

“You’re talking to a statuette?”

“Sometimes you want a one-sided conversation with the pony unable to tell you whether you're right or wrong. Correct Twilight?”

I shook the statuette so that it looked like it was nodding, fully aware that I had to look rather crazy. I was high enough up in the food chain to know these things had some strange power to them, and if they couldn’t help me take apart the atomizer then it was a lost cause. I put the statuette away, kicked the prototype towards my battle saddle, and walked over to one of the broken chairs.

It may have been missing all of its legs, but it still had a cushion on it. A sat down on it, getting off the old, uncomfortable carpet that the rest of the room’s floor was drenched in. Willow came over and joined me moments later, though choose to forgo a chair of her own on account of most of them being in much worse shape. We sat together in silence, the alicorn watching the door to the clinic like a pot of water.

As her gaze wasn’t focused on me, I decided to take in her form as a way of passing time. I didn’t understand Willow, how she seemed so sane and yet crazy. Blind optimism and cheer mixed with bloodlust and the standard wasteland crazy. She was everything I expected of the surface, but at the same exact time she wasn’t. Perhaps it was the fact she had once been a pegasus, but I felt some light in her that many ponies didn’t have.

“Hey Willow. Do you know anything about your family?”

Her ears went flat, a heavy breath releasing from her nostrils. Her eyes first looked back towards the rest of the lobby, and then to me. The sadness that dripped from her form could practically be tasted.

“I should. I really should. I can’t remember them much. After he bought me I never saw them again,”

“You were quite young I’m guessing?”

“I think I was a teenager. I’m not sure why we were below the clouds, but things happened and… I’m not sure. Maybe they were killed, or perhaps they were also sold to somepony. It’s so long ago it isn’t easy to remember.”

“Yet you still remember Dead Hooves and those other ponies you mentioned. Stitches and Joy I believed you called them.”

“Yeah, but that was because my travels with them… they were some of the happiest moments of my life.” She snorted, shook her head, and dared to smile. “Dead Hooves, as I mentioned, was our little leader. She couldn’t walk, but she had a sense for right and wrong unheard of in the wasteland outside of perhaps DJ-PON3. She was rather brutal with how honest she was at times, and there were some screws loose in her brain, but that just made her fit in.”

A deeper chuckle brought my attention to the chair next to me. Dead Hooves had shown up at some point, sitting on the chair’s backrest and letting her hind legs dangle free. It turned out ghosts could blush, because her face was bright red from the compliments Willow was throwing her way. How she could hear them I didn’t know.

“Perhaps a bit too honest for my own good,” she said, a front hoof reaching behind her head as she looked away from Willow and I sheepishly. “Though that one Sprite-Bot liked me a lot.”

I turned back to Willow, ignoring the ghost for the time since she wasn’t the one I was talking to.

“Stitches is where Sharpshot got most of his medical expertise. He was training to be a medical pony in his Stable but that never exactly worked out. She was typically rather calm, though anytime one of us would get hurt she would get really upset. She wasn’t happy to have to save us all the time.”

“All the time?”

“We got shot at a lot.”

Dead Hooves nodded. “Kinda impossible not to have a gun pointed at your head when you’re a wanted mare.”

“Fair enough,” I said, answering both ponies as simplistically as possible. “Now how about Joy. You mentioned she was a zebra.”

“One dumb enough, or perhaps smart enough depending on how you see it, to leave Stalliongrad,” Willow explained.“Most ponies there didn’t believe anything existed outside the city anymore. She gave them the closest thing to a “fuck you” anypony can and journeyed out here to prove them wrong. She never went back.”

“That’s one way to abandon the ponies you care about. Guess she was in her adolescence when she decided to do that.” Willow gave me a nod and grunt. Something told me the latter was because of her throat pain and not my statement. “Stalliongrad must be a shitfest if they thought everypony else was dead.”

“With how she described it, I wouldn’t be surprised. Pretty much everypony lives underground, and most everypony who heads to the surface dies. Joy was one of the lucky few who didn’t.”

It checked out with what little info I had on Stalliongrad from the Enclave. Even to the council the place was an enigma. Grounders were rarely seen, and there were creatures that existed in Stalliongrad that were in no other parts of Equestria. Then there was the lack of radio signal in it and the many reported hallucinations and other phenomenons reported. I think I would rather fight an alicorn again then find out what is true, what isn’t, and what hadn’t been discovered.

“I’m guessing she didn’t get out of Stalliongrad unscathed.”

“Definitely not. We met her because she was working for the pony that framed Dead Hooves. It was his way of making her pay off the debt she accumulated for saving her life. Something like that.”

My expression went blank. “In other words, you met her by getting shot at.”

“As is wasteland tradition!”

I groaned. Getting shot and becoming friends with the one responsible being considered a “wasteland tradition” was not a good sign for the future. Grounders truly were as backwards as the Enclave thought they were. It just so happens that the one I was talking to at that moment was both more and less backwards in ways I could deal with.

“All of us changed because of that time together. Sure, how we all ended up working together wasn’t great, but neither Sharpshot or I would be the ponies we are today if it wasn’t for them.” She turned away from me. “Except, none of them were like us. Dead Hooves died before the rest of us did. She got her revenge on the pony who had set her up, but it cost her her life. Joy and Stitches died after I became an alicorn. Seeing that did another change in Sharpshot, and while he was still the same to me, he started acting like the pony you are probably more familiar with.”

I turned to Dead Hooves, who in turn looked at me. The frown on her face said it all, but she felt the need to give a more vocal answer.

“He was an ass. We had a bit of a love-hate sort of deal between the two of us, though at the end of the day we were friends. I… I didn’t get to say goodbye to either of them, and when I found them Joy had gotten herself killed. The effect it had on him was hard to watch.” She hung her head as if it was attached to a ghostly cinder block. “He became a lot worse. Stitches left them, and not long after they learned she too had been killed. Sharpshot felt it was for the best. The less he had to care about a pony dying, the better.”

The quiet that followed said every word that needed to be said. Some soldiers, after finishing the required amount of service they had signed up for, turned worse. The friends they had seen died, the things they had seen on the surface, all proved to be too much. Sharpshot needed a therapist, but down here he wasn’t going to get one.

“Becoming his friend isn’t going to help him, Willow,” I told her. My voice was harsh, but I deemed it necessary for what I had to say. “Sure he needs ponies around him, but he is the issue. Everypony has a point before they break, that goes for friendship just as much as it does for sanity.”

“I have to try something!

Her hoof slammed into the ground, her angry voice filling my mind like a song I couldn’t completely remember. She tucked her head in, brought her hoofs over her, and curled up. Dead Hooves got up from her position and trotted over to her old friend. She looked like she wanted to cry, but her ethereal form forbade her the ability. All she could do was give Willow Wisp a hug, her form bound enough to the corporeal plain that she didn’t phase through.

“I know what you mean, and I know you don’t mean anything hurtful by it. Sharpshot is a part of the problem, but he isn’t the whole problem. I love him, I care for him, and I want to stay by his side but… it’s because I’m alive he is still like this!” Her front hooves slammed into the ground again, sounding like thunder booming just above our heads. She cried for both herself and Dead Hooves, even though she was likely unaware the latter was there. “And I’m not going to be there forever. Either I stop taking cloud nine and the pain becomes too much to bear, or I someday assimilate into the Unity. The killing joke wins no matter what happens, and he loses me either way.”

“So what am I supposed to do? I… I don’t want to think about either situation so I was hoping that you could have some secret third solution. A pony he could latch onto so I… so I… so I can die, and he won’t miss me as much.”

The silence that came from her words stayed, my being too shocked at her words to give any real response. I sat there, still as a statue, watching a grounder – a wife – cry at what she saw as unavoidable. Telling her it was wrong would have been a lie. Comforting her would have given her false hope, and doing that felt wrong.

So instead we sat, and Willow cried. Dead Hooves stayed with her for a time, but vanished from sight after a time. All the while I waited and rested for Sharpshot, Gold, and Gemini. At some point, exhausted from the day's events, I fell asleep.

My dream was similar to the one I had the night prior.

My body was no longer mine, but this time I was certain who I was: Dead Hooves. I was seeing her life, or at least portions of it. The question of why would probably forever be unanswered, so instead I asked a different question.

Where the fuck was she?

Everything she felt, I felt, and in this case I felt fucking disgusting. My… her coat felt like it had been dragged through all the muck a grounder could wish for, mane and tail horribly disheveled. My front hooves also felt like they were in horrible shape but that was probably because grounders didn’t take care of them. My hind hooves were numb, as if they weren’t there to begin with.

Considering Dead Hooves was a cripple, that made sense. Even as a passenger in her body it made me feel significantly weaker than usual. I was unable to run, unable to hide, and without wings unable to fly out from wherever this horrible place was. I was what every predator wanted: the sickly prey that couldn’t escape.

I felt a headache hit me as Dead Hooves tried to move her head. It didn’t stop me from taking in where we were: a building. I recognized, in fact. Not because of the actual building itself but because of what I could see outside the window. A tree and building all in one was visible, one of the center pieces of the place once known as Ponyville. In the current time, the place was practically an ever expanding pool of blood; you stepped in, you died.

Whether it was the same back then remained to be seen.

There was another important detail about the outside world: the sky was red, and gray clumps were falling. I had heard of this, but they were so rare in the present wasteland that I had never seen them before. It was an ash storm.

The balefire megaspells couldn’t pierce the cloud layer once we pegasi had closed the sky up. They were able to absorb it, however, in some way similar to how they could absorb water vapor. When the immediate effects of the balefire bombs ended, their power stayed within those bottom clouds, raining ash upon the landscape below. They were somewhat more common a century ago, and that lined up perfectly to when Dead Hooves lived.

She pushed her torso up with her hooves, looking around in confused terror. The environment was unrecognizable to her, and she started twisting back and forth to look for something familiar. Her emotions started to affect mine too, causing me to feel her same terror. It was irrational – I knew where I was and what was going on – but during that time I didn’t feel like Singing Rhapsody. In fact, it might be more correct to have said that, the moment the terror took root in her body, the pony known as Singing Rhapsody ceased to be for a period of time.

I was Dead Hooves in body and mind. I was the scared little grounder who had know idea where they were. The idea that I had been somepony else was as foreign as walking.

“What the f–”

Dead Hooves, Singing Rhapsody. I contemplated both names to find out which one was the correct one name… yes. I knew who I truly was.

I, Dead Hooves, gasped and looked down at my hooves. Shoddy, rusted chains bound all four of my hooves, which was incredibly funny. Who the fuck would bind a pony as worthless as myself? They must have not known my hindlegs were even more worthless. I tried to pull them apart, but without the ability to operate all my hooves that was impossible. Instead I looked like a flailing feral ghoul who was so damaged in the brain it couldn’t remember how to stand up.

“Off! Off you useless piles of shit!” I yelled.

I lifted one front hoof as close to myself as possible and bit down on the metal with all the strength my jaw could muster. All I could was rather unhappy teeth. It hurt like tartarus, and I’m damn sure I chipped one or two of them. Fuck, might as well have been all of them; I didn’t exactly take care of myself after dad passed away.

Thinking about it hurts. He died and I… no, don’t think about it now. It was necessary to survive; I wouldn’t be alive right now otherwise.

“Just give up and stop flailing.”

My attention turned to the rest of the room, though I didn’t find the voices cause immediately. The room was bare, ugly, discolored from years of neglect. In my fright I looked around the same spaces over and over and over. I was sending myself spiraling into a temporary insanity.

“Behind you.”

I turned around, my jaw dropped. A pure white pegasus with a filled grave for a cutie mark was behind me, or at least she was supposed to be pure white. Blood, new and old, had dirtied her figure and caused my stomach to churn. The cuts, bruises, marks, the fact half of her left ear was missing. Had she been mangled by Cerberus when trying to escape the pits of tartarus?

“Just sit still,” she said. Her voice was deep, avoiding emotions and hope. Despite that lack of hope, I could sense a fire in her eyes. “Want to live? Do as I say. Go against my words and I’ll shoot you.”

My eyes widened, ears folded back, and heartbeat quickened. “Want to li- what the- where the fuck am I?! Who the fuck are you?!”

“The pony they thought was the Bloody Angel before you arrived. Apparently they think I’m just some pegasus slave now,” she replied, a small smirk gracing her lips. “That’s good. It means they’ll probably be more interested in you than me.”

“That explains… nothing!”

“It should explain everything. You grow up under a rock.”

I gave her a shrug. “More a decrepit house in the middle of fuck-alls-where, but it still explain nothing!”

I stared at her, the first pegasus I had ever seen in my life. I knew what they were – dad had told me about them – but I didn’t expect to ever meet one. The lifeless glare she gave me, only broken by infrequent blinks, scared me. She wasn’t terrifying, but there was something about her. The word to describe it… I’m not sure it exists.

I shifted around into a more comfortable position, facing towards the pegasus. “Dead Hooves.”

“Willow Wisp.”

“So the ponies that captured me are in some other room I take it? I doubt they would want to be outside right now.”

My vision shifted back to the window, which was still in decent condition and somehow not shattered. The red haze of the world outside was of immediate alarm, and the falling clumps of ash made it worse. Nopony in their right minds would go outside in this sort of weather.

“Either another room or another building, yeah,” Willow Wisp said, nodding her head. “Negotiations probably stalled. Unfortunate for both them and myself; we will have to wait for a while to be free.”

I fell backwards on purpose, wincing at the discomfort the hit gave my back but not regretting it. Willow’s gave me a look that embodied disappointment, but I ignored her. With a groan, My eyes bore into the ceiling.

“Great. I traded a casket of solitude for a slightly prettier casket.”

“You're being dramatic.”

“You got wings, I don’t,” I explained, tapping my thigh. “You have four working legs, I don’t. It’s not being dramatic when it’s practically fate. I’ve only survived these last few days because of my fathers….”

I grimaced, trailing off in shame and sorrow. Willow opened her mouth to respond, but the door behind us opened instead. An earth pony wearing a hodgepodge of parts walked in. A rusted knife was holstered on his forehoof. He was eyeing me, or trying to at the very least. He started violently coughing ash falling from his back.

This stallion had just walked through that ash storm. His lungs were no doubt very pissed off at him for a decision like that.

“Well… well well, the bitch is awak–“ he started to hack up again, but his pupils never strayed from me for too long. “Fuck, there goes my imposing entrance.”

If I wasn’t glaring back at him I might have laughed. “Who are you? Where the fuck am?”

“None of that is information you need to know,” he replied. With his coughing subsided, he trotted up to me with a smile that screamed psychopathy. “All you need to know is that we got a bunch of fun little toys to play with by capturing you. “

I acted before I thought. My horn lit up, grabbing his knife in my telekinesis and starting to raise it out of its sheath. A flash of pain to my right cheek ended my idiotic escape attempt, clenching my teeth together. That was the first time somepony had ever hit me, and it hurt so bad it made me want to cry.

Only thing holding tears back was the fact I didn’t want him to know how much of an advantage he had over me. As soon as they realized I couldn’t walk, with or without my chains, I was a goner. So even as he took his knife out himself, staring at me with amusement. I kept a face of steel. One that was already fractured, given my eyes were starting to water.

“You’re a feisty little filly I see. That’ll just make killing you all the more fun!”

His hooves stamped down on my neck and stomach, my breath taken away in multiple means. I struggled to get out, but then I screamed. The earth pony had sunk the knife into my shoulder, experiencing the third worst feeling in my life. The tears couldn’t be held back anymore, and I started to cry.

“You know, I don’t know how he managed to fool those idiots in Tenpony into thinking you're the Bloody Angel, but oh boy was it all worth it.” the stallion said, the insanity within his eyes filling my vision. Dread and anxiety mixed together as I weakly slapped him, but he took every hit. “The things he gave us, the armor and weapons, the caps, it was all worth it! Even better, I get the permission of making these last few moments of your life as painf–”

I let out a gasp, his hooves suddenly removed from my body and lifted into the air. Looking above him I saw Willow flapping her wings as hard as she could, the chains binding her wrapped around his neck. He struggled, trying to find some way to free himself from his attacker. Lighting my horn, I decided that would only happen with his carcass on the ground.

Pain erupted through my body as I tried to take the blade out of my shoulder, only to gasp and shudder as it was freed. With a thrust of my magic, the knife sailed through the air and into his chest. He started to scream, but Willow then slammed him into the ground at full force. His neck bent in a fashion I was pretty certain wasn’t normal, the pegasus would the chains that bound it flapping her wings to keep on her hind hooves.

When we were both certain his breathing had stopped, she fell back onto all fours. My eyes stayed on the corpse before me. A few days prior I would have been terrified at the sight, but instead I just felt empty. They were the second pony I had killed in a few days, and the second I had killed in my life. I probably should have felt sick at what I had just helped Willow do, or maybe angry or ashamed of myself.

While their was the slightest bit of shame, it was aimed at myself for every reason besides the murder. His dead body left me empty and somewhat relieved.

“Not even a century and ponies have forgotten how to bind a pegasus,” Willow said. “Quite sad, but incredibly useful.”

She searched his body, a smirk growing on her face as she removed something from his possession. It was a key, one she tossed my directions. I watched it land between my hooves, missing the look of shock she gave me. Wincing, I reached my injured hoof out to paw the key closer to me, looking between it and the chains to see if they were the correct ones. They certainly seemed correct.

Looking back up to Willow Wisp, I noticed her gaze was on the wound in my shoulder. As I lit my horn, grabbing the key and fitting it into the locks for my hooves, she grabbed something else from his body. A healing potion, though it was only half full. She shuffled over to me, chains binding her movements. I only looked away when a click sound manifested below me. The chains around my front hooves had come off.

“Undo my chains, and this is yours,” the pegasus offered.

I gave a nod and levitated the key towards her, sliding it into the lock and turning it. Another click and the first set fell away, a repetition of events with the second set leaving her free. Seeming satisfied, Willow held out the potion to me. I took it in my hooves and lifted it to my lips, emptying the container. I instantly felt it getting to work, the cramping in my shoulder unpleasant but necessary.

“Thanks,” I said, giving Willow a smile. I did nothing to hide my tears, having held them in for long enough. “You didn’t have to. I’m sure most ponies would have just left.”

The world started to blur. A blur I now remembered from a night before. A blur I remembered not as Dead Hooves, but as Singing Rhapsody. It quickly dawned on me that I was dreaming, and was on the verge of waking up.

Before it all ended, however, I heard one sentence. It came from Willow.

“You’re right, but I wanted to know what it felt like to save a life instead of taking it.”

Nature Care, Trotson

Day 4

When I awoke, the world was dark. Night had fallen on Trotson, though how early or late into the night it was evaded notice. Willow Wisp, the one I had gotten to know, slept on the floor. She squirmed every now and then, either from a nightmare or the killing joke. Sharpshot hadn’t arrived before she had fallen asleep, and the plant’s effects were no doubt getting worse and worse with each second.

I stared at her, thinking about the dream I had just witnessed. Unlike the one I had had yesterday, I decided it was best to shove it aside. Like I did with reminiscing about my own memories, I had felt myself get absorbed in by the pony whose head I was in. Going even further, small parts of her memories mingled with my own for some inexplicable reason. I knew now her father was dead by whatever time those series of events accord, but mine was still alive.

I felt grateful, knowing that I could still separate which was which in my mind. Having the memories of two separate ponies was uncomfortable.

Then there was the matter of the pegasus I had seen, and the alicorn before me. Willow and Dead knew each other, that was long established, but the Willow Wisp I had just met seemed like a different pony entirely. She lacked most of her emotions, hope, possibly the will to live. In some ways it felt similar to how I had been the days after my failed mission in Trotson. Lost, not completely there, but she seemed significantly more attuned with the world around her than I had been.

“Fuck, your parents suck,” Dead Hooves said to my side. My body went rigid, head snapping to the ghost laying down next to me. No amount of angry glares made that look of sympathy that was etched on her face fall away. “Alcoholic father and drug dealer mother? I’m surprised you’re as right in the head as you are.”

My glare intensified. “Where the fuck did you learn that? I didn’t tell Willow or Sharpshot anything about my parents.”

“I had a talent for mind magic when I was alive. I got curious what you were like. Since you were joining my old friends I thought I would get a look at your history,” the ghost looked away sheepishly, rubbing her front hooves together. “D-d-don’t worry, won’t use it on you… a lot. You can’t blame me for–”

“You were peering into my mind?!”

“I take it you aren’t exactly happy about that.”

“You were peering into my mind!”

“Th-they kept on saying you were related to Star Chart, okay? I wanted to know if you were lying or not,” Dead Hooves said, inching away from me in fear. “It’s been a long time since I’ve even considered having a living family member, okay? Well, not close family, but family nonetheless. You can’t blame–”

“Even ignoring the fact you used mind manipulation magic on me without my permission, you don’t just enter someone's head! That isn’t how… wait what?”

My anger faded into confusion, fear, and disbelief as one word she said came to the forefront of my mind: family. I stayed focused on the ethereal unicorn before me, who in turn couldn’t bring it upon herself to meet my gaze. She inched even farther away, resting her head against a still standing chair. She rubbed her forehooves together faster and rougher than she had previously.

“It's… it's like with Angel Hair, ya know?” She explained, voice timid. “Pegasi comes to surface on deployment or whatever, fucks a cute stallion, and then you get a foal. Star Chart was like that too.”

I growled at her, lips peeled back in a snarl. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not lying I sw–“

“You heard me mention Angel Hair’s origins and thought you could win me over to you grounders side by making me think I was just like you.”

“What? No! I’m telling the honest to Luna truth ri–“

“And to make it even more believable, you flooded my dreams with your memories! All in some desperate bid to turn me into some crazed, mud loving, freak like the rest of you grounders are!”

“I swear I’m tell- wait you saw what?”

She seemed terrified, intrigued, and a little embarrassed when I was all done revealing her plot. I allowed myself to be a little smug, crossing my forehooves and puffing out my chest in victory. Oh how good it felt to put a dirty, disgusting grounder in their place. After letting my temper get the better of me back in the M.A.S. hub things going right felt so good.

“You… you saw my memories? How in tartarus did you see my memories? That makes no fucking sense,” Dead Hooves said, a hoof rubbing the area just above her horn. My smugness fell away as I saw the genuine confusion and worry on her face. “Am I rusty from years of not casting? Did I forget some part of the memory peering spell? Maybe me being a ghost has something to do with it because that never happened when I was alive.”

I blinked. “You… didn’t mean for me to see your memories?”

“Oh course I didn’t! Why would I want you to see all the highly embarrassing and dumb things I did.” Her eyes turned to the floors. “All the ponies we- I used.”

There was a brief pause in conversation, and then Dead Hooves looked at me again.

“Look I… I should have asked first. I fucked up royally, and I apologize for that. Still I… I just want to make sure it’s the same Star Chart. I want to know if you are family or not.”

I blinked, and then turned my attention to Willow Wisp’s still sleeping form. While I was certain the ghost had been wrong about me having any familial ties to them, I was curious about the alicorn’s story. How had that pegasus I had seen in Dead Hooves memories become the pony before me? I desired an answer, and I wouldn’t get that any other way.

“Okay, you can continue to search my memories. Just know some of them might be rather unpleasant,” I responded, turning back to the unicorn. She had a big, dumb grin on her face. “Just know I’ll be looking through yours as well. I’ve got my own questions that I wish to answer.”

Dead Hooves nodded. “That’s fair. I’ll just give you the same warning you gave me. I did a lot of stupid, horrible things.”

“Since we got that all figured out, I got a question for you.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Why do you think you are related to Star Chart?”

She stared at me for three seconds, and then looked up at the clinic’s ceiling. She smiled, her ghostly spirit mimicking the motion one would make while sighing. The grin on her face grew the smallest amount.

“We met her and a bunch of other Enclave during our travels. They were the only ponies not fooled by Twister, the pony who had convinced everyone I was the Bloody Angel,” she explained. “They knew it was another pegasus, and they had also figured out I couldn’t walk. We both wanted the real bloody angel dead, so we worked together.

“Over that time I got to know both the Enclave and Star Chart well. They weren’t always nice ponies, but they were good ponies. They weren’t in it for infamy or caps, but rather justice. Many of them had come down to avenge somepony they had known. All were victims of the same pony. Star Chart was no different; her mother had been killed by the murderous pony.”

I looked over to Willow Wisp. It wasn’t hard to piece together who the Bloody Angel must have been, and it explained a bit about how they acted in Dead Hooves memory. My face wanted to frown and smile at the alicorn all at once, seeing who they once were in comparison to how they had become.

“Did you know it was her?” I asked.

Dead Hooves followed my eyes to Willow Wisp, and shook her head. “No. She seemed constantly on edge every time we worked with the Enclave, but none of us had any reason to believe it was her. She was always nice, if a bit distant.”

“Yet you did have reason to believe it was them.” Turning back to me, Dead Hooves tilted her head. “The memory I got absorbed in was the day you two met. She made it clear she had killed a lot of you grounders.”

Once again she was rubbing her hooves together. A nervous tick no doubt.

“I didn’t know what the Bloody Angel even was back then. I spent a large chunk of my life in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, and dad told me nothing of the world around me. It was Willow that told me about this wanted pony I was being pinned as. I kind of just trusted it wasn’t her.”

My disappointment in the mare was indescribable, but I was coming to terms with her intelligence. To be more exact, the seeming lack of intelligence, at least upon leaving home. She had taken out the knife that was stabbed in her, after all. There was no better way to lose blood than to take a bladed weapon out of your own body.

She was damn lucky that stallion had a potion on him.

“Anyways, a good number of years before Star’s mom died, she learned about her birth. Her mom met a stallion while deployed on the surface, the two got drunk, sex happened, and two months later she found out that she was pregnant with me… and the stallion responsible was named Arcane Glyph, my father.”

I felt my heart halt for a second, taking in the shame and disgust that Dead Hooves had on her face. It was what I had feared Angel Hair’s father would be, and according to the grounder… no, it was all from a grounder. This had to have been a lie and the only way I would be able to prove that is by allowing Dead Hooves to continue peering into my mind.

“I still call bullshit on your story Dead Hooves. After my meeting with Bone Breaker earlier today…”

“That was yesterday by now.”

“The point is I don’t trust what I’m being told. You have nothing to hide, you’ll continue to show me your memories every single night until I either believe you’re lying or learn you are telling the truth.”

“Alright, sounds good.” To my surprise, the dead mare was giving me a rather smug look. I had expected her to back off immediately, but the twisting of a knife in my heart told me there was at least some truth to her story. “I mean, can’t blame you anyways. To be clear, Bone Breaker wasn’t lying about her son but, well, take a guess at who was the actual slave.”

I narrowed my eyes on her. “Is her real name actually Bone Breaker?”

“Yep.”

“Then her lies tell me everything I need to know.”

The sound of a door opening drew my attention away from the ghost, a large shadowy outline visible through the darkness. A light, or two to be exact, soon illuminated the area around them, the darkness only fading enough to make a decent size dome around the creatures. It was still bright as tartarus, a hoof going in front of my eyes to shield myself. Dead Hooves faded from my left, and Willow didn’t stir from her sleep.

“I’m telling you, that filly is sending us on some wild goose chase for her entertainment,” a stallion spoke up. I instantly recognized it as Sharpshot’s voice. “Bet your scarred ass they’re back at the cinema. This place is far too creepy to sleep in.”

“After today, you judge Invisible Mare?” Another familiar voice replied. It was Gold. “Not sure whether that’s dumb or braindead.”

“Hey, I got all the right to not trust her, okay? I knew those were more than just cameras.”

Griffon and ghoul looked each other in the eye, neither seeming willing to back down. Another, far more tired sigh sounded out as one of the lights moved away from them. It was Gemini, the bags under her eyes saying everything that needed to be said about her. In her grasp was also a pistol, her telekinetic grasp seeming ready to press the trigger on the first thing that jumped out of the shadows.

Unfortunately for myself, I was too tired to realize that she was heading in my direction.

“Fact you're familiar with it is concerning. Not hiding horrible spells, I hope,” Gold said, a talon pointing at Sharpshot. “Hm, might be too dangerous. Controlling minds is bad.”

“Trust me, I’ve seen what that kind of magic can do to ponies. I wouldn’t do that myself,” Sharpshot replied. His anger had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Seeing other ponies get hurt by it brings back some not-so-great memories.”

Gold raised his brow, head tilted slightly to the left. “Want to talk about it?”

“No. You got as much of that story out of me as possible,” The ghoul answered, walking past the elderly griffon.

I sat up, opening my mouth to announce myself to the individuals who had just walked into the clinic. Instead I found my eyes blinded as Gemini’s, having to close my eyes at the sudden change in brightness around me. There was a scream, a bang, and I felt my right shoulder erupt in sudden pain. Collapsing to the ground and using all my willpower to not scream, I grabbed my shoulder with my left forehoof and looked up at the pony responsible.

Gemini had a look of horror that many fresh recruits would wear on their first trip to the surface. Disbelief at what they had just seen, or in this case at what they had just done. She canceled her telekinesis, dropping her gun and dashing towards me. Sharpshot and Gold quickly followed as soon as they saw me on the floor, Willow rousing from her slumber due to the sound of the gun firing.

“Oh sweet Celestia I’m so, so sorry!” Gemini said. She looked at my shoulder, gagged and then looked away in shame. “I didn’t know it was you and…”

Sharpshot shoved her out of the way, the mare nearly falling onto her ass if Gold didn’t catch her. I turned my attention to my shoulder, trying to get an idea of exactly what damage she had done. All I could see was a bullet hole going clean into me, but trying to move my foreleg proved more had happened. A wavey breath left me as I tried to roll my shoulder, the bone inside fractured by the bullet in question.

“And you were doing so fucking well,” Sharpshot whispered. He briefly turned back to Gemini, the mare cowering as he pointed enthusiastically at her. “Consider yourself damn lucky you didn’t hit an organ.”

“I-I know, and I said so–”

“That does nothing if she's dead!”

Gemini hung her head then nodded. Sharpshot turned back to me and hit me over the head with his hoof. I glared at the unicorn, my dislike for him renewed quickly with every word he said.

“Perhaps let us know you’re here next time,” he told me. Even in his anger there was an ever present smugness in his voice. “It helps keep twitchy trigger hooves from doing something stupid.”

“Good to see you again,” I said, gritting my teeth as my injured shoulder flared in pain.

Then it suddenly went completely numb. I looked at it, I didn’t see anything immediately off with my shoulder that would cause it. Then I noticed it wasn’t responding to my wishes to move it, locked in place like it had been turned into steel. Sharpshot patted me on my other shoulder, grabbing my attention.

“Incredibly simple stasis spell. It should keep the muscles and cracked bones from doing anything done for a bit,” he explained. He once again turned back to Gold, who was doing his best to calm down a terrified Gemini not too far away from us. “I’m gonna go search for medical supplies. If Willow wakes up, tell her I’ll be right back.”

“I would actually prefer it if you all were a bit quieter,” the alicorn said, drawing everycreature’s attention to her. Gold was taken aback, likely from hearing Willow’s voice in his head for the first time. “Though some of my medicine might also help right now.”

This time it was Sharpshot’s turn to be scared, his horn immediately lighting up as he looked between me and his wife. “Right, uh, fuck I’ll take care of miss trigger happy’s mistake in a moment.”

My jaw dropped as I watched him go to Willow’s side. He had just given his wife drugs over fixing my fucking leg! He dared to consider himself a doctor with actions like that?! With a shake of my head I did my best to calm my nerves, though it was impossible to look away from the husband before me. In the same exact manner she did it earlier, Willow inhaled a bit of cloud nine. Sharpshot stood up and turned back to me.

“Okay, you’re next. If the stasis spell ends before I get back just keep from moving.”

I watched him sprint off, bounding easily over the chairs and into the darkness of the clinic. I stared at where he had been, and then to the griffon who had been doing the same exact thing. Gemini, though still clearly shaken over her horrible mistake, was doing the exact same thing. After a couple of astonished blinks, I managed to get my mouth to move.

“Did he just… my bone was shattered and he…”

“Prioritized addiction over healing,” Gold finished. Seeming rather troubled.

“As far as I can tell,” Gemini said in a quavering manner. “Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

Growling like a rabid animal, I slammed my unfrozen hoof on the ground. Gemini tried to flinch back, but was stopped by Gold. He was far less shocked at my action, as was the fully awake alicorn laying down to my left.

“That dirty mud-fucking horn head!”

“Kind of hard for him to fuck mud if his banana is–”

“He’s still a mud fucker!”