Imaginerian

Chapters

A/05 - Before the Wasteland
A/01 - So a Diaspora Ends
A/02 - Connection
A/03 - Matchsticks
A/04 - Phosphorus
A/06 - Hydro

A/05 - Before the Wasteland

"Just the stragglers, that's all," says Eckhard from behind, following Tall who in turn is following Apple Bloom back down to the ground floor on black-crusted steps. The smell of burned flesh would've made most creatures vomit, but Tall ignores it every time it's emitted from every casualty he steps over. Killzone stairwell, this used to be, and how silent it now is.

The damage sustained by the corridor can best be described as less destroyed and more warped—allegedly fireproof walls show off dents and cracks, and ceiling lights sway and dangle in the nirik-made heat wave but don't fall. Through rooms with doors busted open or cooked away, more drawers and cabinets have fallen, their contents either emptied or smoldered.

When they reach the lobby, there's a different kind of sirens in the distance, past the barriers made of dead cars and headless drivers strung over fallen heavy guns—fire trucks. Instinct tells Tall to look up, check for sprinklers: they're there. Not a sign of water, not a sign of ever having turn on.

The fires have died down. The breeze of the open night air outside falls like winter on his coat and scales. He shivers.

"None's left," Apple Bloom says. "Come on, let's get up, see if we can 'ave an audience with the big stallion upstairs."

Burned linoleum tiles lie at the entrance to the patient's room. A personal guard of Fickle's told the squad that the Chief Executive does indeed want to see them. "Have a chat with you," in his words.

"That's… wow," Tall now says, hesitating to enter although the doors are wide open—the perimeter is secure, as far as everyone's told him. "It's a different feeling to… be here, you know?"

"Meetin' yer' heroes?" Apple Bloom says. Behind her, Nascente and Eckhard check their weapons. She nods, a silent order to please go inside.

Hooked up to bulging, beeping monitors, "the big stallion upstairs" doesn't look his age, looking the part instead of a silver fox. Whatever stress lines can be found in his forehead, for example, seem more like the minute details of a cliff than existential signs of advanced years. The more pressing matter about him is the gauze and other materials wrapped around one of his legs, which a doctor has been tending to though now he turns away to give Fickle and his visitors a midge of privacy.

Apple Bloom then bows down to Fickle. "Ya came in an' asked for us?" Tall picks up the break from tradition—not letting the kirin in authority speak first.

Fickle bares no sign of irritation. "Yes," he says; "however, I am under no illusion that you alone turned the tide… but I do not want to sound wholly ungrateful, so I would like to begin with some apologies."

Tall raises his eyebrows. "Chief Executive, sir, what do you have to apologize for?"

"For being important enough to get shot at." The wholehearted sneer he has now lightens the mood in the room and gets Tall laughing, if only a little. "Yes, actually, I've heard that an old name would be coming to help in any way he could. That is you, some Grass Clan member… a certain Fescue?"

"Tall Fescue, but yes, sir, I am honored that you remember even half of my name," he says, then bows down before him, closer to Fickle than Apple Bloom went.

"I do my best to remember our dear little remnant," Fickle replies, observing Tall's companions observing him back. "There are not many like you here, not in these later days, and especially not with an organization so closely tied to national values as virtuous as Equestria's."

"Funny ya' say that," Apple Bloom says, knowingly out of turn, "given how Equestria ain't seein' ya' in all sunshine an' rainbows."

"Well, Kiria is a nation built on progress, and that includes progress on how we conduct ourselves… and on the clients we choose. You will all see what I mean soon, but those are national matters. What matters more now is an old friend."

Tall blinks. "I'm your old friend? How?"

"Maybe that may be too endearing in hindsight," Fickle says, "but it warms the heart to see the next generation continue to take a real stand for Kiria. You are nothing like the sons and daughters of some of my own friends—presidents of their own companies, who have broken their backs to amass a great fortune and a well-oiled machine of subsidiaries, only for their children to blow their money off on yachts in some beach on the Spa Islands." His accent turns venomous for those last words before he coughs, changing his tune. "But you know your responsibility, Mister Fescue. You may have taken a long time to get here, but I feel that you don't plan on leaving by the next flight, am I not correct?"

The young kirin's response is to salute him. "I will not let you down!"

"I know you won't, but… don't let me keep you waiting." He gestures to the monitors and the other things plugged into his body. "I shall return. Do not worry."

Several thanks to the rest of the crew later, the doors close behind Tall and the rest, a spring in his step evident when they walk down the corridors of this rather unscathed part of the hospital. Most of the nirik, he's been told, never reached this part of the facility, which explains the doctors and nurses spiraling through the halls and in and out through other doors and patients' rooms—they huddled up here when the assault began.

"Ah don't believe it," Apple Bloom says. "Ah don't believe him a single bit."

"Very testy," Eckhard puts in, "talking about your employer like that."

"More like client. He's got big pockets on his hips, and he's gonna use 'em like bludgeons to try an' help solve this thing. Take a good walk through this city an' tell me if ya' can believe his words after so long."

"That stallion's a hero," Tall answers. "He was on the way to helping the rest of the country when everything fell apart and they tore at him and his party. The whole civil war started because everyone else ganged up on his side. From Rising Sun, Winter Frost, even Premier Autumn Blaze… they couldn't negotiate, didn't want to negotiate and bargain, so off they went to war."

"Ah'm glad ya' believe so, and Ah ain't gonna trample down on yer' rights. Speakin' of rights, Ah wanna hear ya' say that to the next workers' rally ya' see 'round these parts."

"There's a difference between the harmony that ponies envision and the kind of harmony Kiria needs. It's… ma'am, it's a harsher world out here. I've been here for less than a day, and I know that, and I'm going to know it's only going to get worse the closer we get to the nirik zones—"

"Don't need to spell it out, kiddo. Ah've been out here longer."

He opens his mouth, but Eckhard lays a claw on his withers. They keep walking. "Hey, you've got the passion, but I guess you're gonna need a rehab lesson on team building."

Once out of Bright Futures Health Center, the orange haze streams into view again, skyscraper lights smothering him in a claustrophobic taxi back to their little HQ for debriefing and rest, with the hope and vision for moving downstream to that electric dam job come morning time.

The lodge stands out of place, out of the way from the rest of civilization. Or, at least, the bound and gagged victim can tell it's a lodge judging by the fancy oriental chairs, the expensive-looking vases and jars, and the vertical pieces of thin paper flapping in the cool wind from outside, where Kirian letters were painted on with painstaking precision.

More than a dozen minutes, and this is much of what she knows. Her first moments after waking up, groggy-eyed and the opposite of bushy tailed, had her find out that her hooves were tied to the back of just one more chair—and a wet sensation had dropped onto her muzzle. Once, twice. Another drip. Above her head, a leaky pipe hung along with several sprinklers.

And across the room, she first met her interrogator, some kirin who then introduced herself as Burnt Sienna, cradling a rusty shotgun in her magic. A fire extinguisher hangs on the wall beside her. "You thought this torture method was from here?" she then asked. "No, it's from Wingbardy. They just said it came from kirin to make it look special, as if stretching your limbs apart until your body rips into pieces is boring."

Now, Sienna fidgets with her shotgun, having waited for her prisoner to break for the maybe half an hour. The water drops come and go, and so her victim squirms, hoping to guess when the next one will arrive.

"I don't know about you," Sienna starts, now walking over to her side, ignoring how wet the floor is now, though some of it is mingled with tears, "but this issue, hmm? Of bringing your family across the border?"

"I won't pay you, you psycho!"

"We're way past calling each other names. Very impolite." She takes a long look through an open window into the night. If she strains her ears, she can hear again the bubbling of the river eroding the slopes and barely grasping the bridges it streams underneath. "What is more impolite than that, hm? You tell me. You with your lack of payment, your lack of papers—"

"Are you insane?! Do you think the nirik would just let us walk in and get our identity papers photocopied?!"

"Rules are still rules. Rule-abiding refugees? I let them through. Not like the border itself doesn't have a few holes in its patchwork. I'm sure you can do your best in finding alternative ways in—"

"B-but we need the papers so we could live in Fragrance, and I was told Safflower's the place to be! I thought we could get it here!"

A shotgun shell is lifted from behind Sienna's figure. Sliding in with a crunchy sound, it loads itself. "You're right. You could get it here. What you don’t understand is that this is hardly under our control. Do you know how many nirik raids we have to endure from the Contumancy and the Champions and the Sworn Swords? That and more? Do you think I run my operation out of the goodness of my heart? I need payment, and if you don't have the money for it, I could use your family—"

"My husband and my son will never work with a tyrant like you! Burn me all you want! Drown me—I don't care! Have me as tribute for the rest of my family, sell me into slavery back into those cursed lands! Clearly, I'm no use to you!" Through it all, she's forgotten about the water still falling onto her disheveled mane.

"You have one use. As a martyr. I can send word back. They will gab about it: you've died in a nirik raid. Or, better yet, I made sure that no one crosses me without paying the price." For fear factor, she spins her long-barreled weapon around in her magic. It stops, aimed at her captive, touching her on the muzzle. She listens for the whimpers. Rust has colored the irregular flow of water. "What? Did you think you have anything to bargain with? I can see past the bravado."

"Y-you can't kill me! You'll be a monster, killing innocents, then what'll that do for your 'business?'"

Sienna's smile grows fangs, born of latent nirik spirit. "Ah, so you aren't aware of the other businesses I have?"

Panic settles in the prisoner's eyes. "B-but they said you help fleeing kirin into Fragrance!"

Now Sienna's hearty laugh fills the room, punctuated by that insistent pipe water falling on someone's head. "That costs money! Forging passports and papers? Tell me how I can fund that!"

With gun raised high, she aims and shoots.

Past the screaming captive's head, splinters flying harmlessly away, her ringing ears reeling from the sudden shot.

The shotgun spins again in Sienna's magic, and a shell is shot out of the barrel, only for it to be caught in her levitation, dragged right before her target's eyes.

She reads the Kirian letters and characters etched into the shell. She gulps. "You… you sell… these? Y-you're a smuggler…."

Sienna leans back and sits on the floor, eyes level with her, participating in a staring contest all cool and collected, enjoying the writhing fury of the barely contained mare on the other side of a finished conversation.

"I s-saw… those wretched priestesses… k-kill my whole village… hiding from the shadows, in the rivers, flooding everything and shooting the rest. I-I should've known there was something wrong… kirin hiding in the jungles can't possibly make rifles that good unless they've been… s-stealing them… o-or… YOU!"

White eyes shoot, manes are ablaze, then Sienna's magic pulls a lever to the side, and sprinklers spray water indiscriminately. The nirik's mane sizzles in this new flood, but her distorted groans are signs of life—she now tackles Sienna, yearning to bite her face off.

The fire extinguisher flies into her head, tearing Sienna's aggressor away. Now in her magic, its pin is pulled, and its nozzle is aimed at the raging, unthinking ball of fire. In one sweeping motion, Sienna paints her down with its foam, relishing in the flailing body like it's a cockroach in its death throes. The mane and tail attempt to remain on fire—a failed candle or lighter—but the shrieks turn to mewling. The hooves scratching at the floor, scratching at the walls—now the puddle is stained red. Coughed blood over the streams of extinguishing foam.

Sienna keeps the hoof on the handle, pulling until its contents are long gone, nothing but a white mess.

The fire sprinklers still rain over Sienna and the dead body.

A/01 - So a Diaspora Ends

Tall Fescue looks down from his airplane seat one more time, and he's rewarded with the sight of what should've been his home from the start: the precious, bustling, oversized city of Fragrance, port city and capital of the Administration of North Kiria.

North Kiria has wielded meanings of untold wealth and innovation, a wild west of kirin ingenuity. Most other countries tolerated corporations as a whole, trading meccas like Manehattan and Skyfall—Fescue's real birthplace, though smack-dab in the middle of an ethnically separate Kirintown district—but North Kiria has made its fame and fortune from inviting anyone with sufficient funds to invest and innovate. The results are clear enough even without looking outside: this very airplane bears the logo of a paper crane, the callsign of one Crane Heavy Industries.

Yet Tall's mind wanders away from promises of coin and gold. The name in his head: Walkover's.... The pony at the receptionist counter in a well-swept office back in Skyfall told him about their deal. He was smart enough to see through the legalese of "security consulting services." Mercenary was a bad word, so the kind mare assured him that, no, they weren't swashbuckling sellswords who'd put their souls on sale to the highest bidder. This is a creaturetarian organization, yes, sir, and she reminded him that it's for his homeland, the land of his kind.

Just like so many fellow kirin that had gone ahead, who no longer wanted to be part of a diaspora, who had generations of skills and wealth to give back to a realm that was opening up to the world.

"Every creature!" booms the attendant's voice through the speakers. "Please fasten your seat belts! We will be descending shortly into Current-Cypress International! Thank you!"

After seeing that he's kept his own seat belt on, Tall gazes beyond the window once more to take a better look: against the sunset shines a rainbow of hazy neon, their colors scattered everywhere, tinting every window from row house to skyscraper. Peeking out from the metal and glass, however, are the slanted rooftops of temples and pagodas, surrounded by faint lanterns that sway in the coastal wind.

This is home.

"Hey, are you daydreaming?" says Eckhard Vorbeak when the plane lands, a griffon from the Herzland, the core of the Griffonian Empire—the thick accent that sounds jagged tells Tall that. Fellow signees for Walkover's, to be part of the same squad along with Nascente, the Kasan zebra to Eckhard's left. The dossiers and the conversations after they first met left two impressions on Tall: Eckhard's the war-weary veteran, while Nascente's the potion specialist. And unlike Eckhard, Nascente has slept through the whole flight, his snores having earned the ire of those across the aisle (the closest anyone's gotten to stopping the sleeping menace was a diamond dog posing as security before he was hauled off by actual security for being a nuisance himself).

Squeezing past every other creature making a beeline to the terminal, Fescue smells the air in that foggy, smoky outside. The tarmac reeks of progress, of oil and smog, permeating even the inside of the airport. Then it hits him: He is on another continent.

"You're gonna gawk everywhere, kirie?" Eckhard eggs on. "Liking what you see and all?" The accent only irritates Tall further, but the records say he's a good shot. The receptionist mare told tales of Eckhard from a decade ago—one time, he beat back a full armored battalion with nothing but his tank and a few others hiding behind a barn, heaving a torn-off machine gun with his bare claws until the experience got him into shock. The scarred eye is some confirmation.

Deeper inside, now into customs, the smell becomes dank with the stench of creatures crowded together, pooling into duty-free shops and overflowing cafés and teahouses. The ostentatious touch of ancient Kirian culture slides its way into the vermilion carpets and jade walls, now reeking of incense instead of perfume or cologne or home-cleaning liquids. Signs are held up in both Kirian and foreign languages—Immigration! Tickets! Duty free! Departure!

"Guess somepony's lovin' the view, huh?" cuts in a voice with an unmistakably country twang. An Earth pony whose oversized mane bow comes off as childish compared to the denim jacket and jeans she wears.

"Miss Apple Bloom?" Fescue asks just to confirm.

"Sure am." She turns to Tall's would-be squadmates. "Were you expectin' some fancy get-up and all that? Sorry, but we're tryin' to be... what's the word they use 'round here? Economical. Yeah, that. Anyway, this is y'all's first time in the country, so I might as well give ya the crash course."

So she goes off, speaking to various kirin all in her southern-like Ponish tongue, which Tall can tell from having met many Equestrians passing through Skyfall's markets and stores, with their unfortunate reputation of being too naive for the "real world". "Now, give me y'all your IDs, passports, and the like. 'S a precaution like we talked 'bout before."

Nascente, trotting around with a slung bag over his withers, bursting with papers and herbs, shoots his head up. "Ma'am, taking your guest's IDs away at an airport was the opening move of a gambling scam they uncovered in Sen Kinh—"

"—where they got some bright come-uppers with not a lick of street smarts and they couldn't come home?" Apple Bloom completes. "This ain't it. At least you could fight back with some of that CQC I've heard ya like doin'." Leaving the airport proper and entering an unmarked van, she continues, "Now, here's the MO: you'll get a real briefing on what we've got for our first job, then later tonight, the boss of Kiria's gonna meet y'all. Don't be flattered—he does this to tons of other creatures. He'll thank ya' for comin' along and helping Kiria out of the goodness of our hearts and all that. Also likes to see his investments before they hit it big."

Fescue nods all the way through her explanation and the van trip out into the rest of Fragrance. The boss of Kiria, the Chief Executive of North Kiria—Fickle Current is his name, and that name has run on Tall's lips for a long time. He isn't a war hero, but the old stallion was once a middle-aged businesskirin, having grown up in Skyfall like Tall would decades later. Fickle and his crew did what they could away from the homeland, back when Kiria was united yet under the Silence: divine decrees to abolish nearly all forms of hierarchy as well as all currency.

"National suicide," Fickle claimed three decades ago when Tall encountered him by chance at a noodle shop in the Kirintown district back in Skyfall. "That's what this 'holy' madness is." Suicide and madness were certainly strong words to use before a foal that hadn't reached ten years of age. "But tell me," he then said, his tone softening, ruffling Tall's mane, "why should you care about me going away? I'm certainly not part of your family. You barely know me."

"Because you're gonna help fellow kirin back home!" Tall shouted so the whole shop would hear.

"Yes, yes," and he took a long slurp of his food, and Tall followed his gaze outside—into the streets where griffons barely roamed, where kirin had their little corner in the continent. Diaspora, strangers, remnants—and Fickle went on about their homeland being revived by the daughters of patriots. A National Association of Kirin Patriots—so goes the party's name.

A family of tourists then entered. Or, rather, they were native Skyfallians, but in a place so ungriffon-like, they may as well be foreigners on their own soil. The father spoke first in horrible Kirian before the cook spoke in his accented Griffonian that, no worries, the local language was fine.

Fickle pointed that way. "That's how we adapted. We learned and were not afraid to expand our language! The priests probably don't understand what our Goddess really wants. Is She not full of power? She made the world, right? That's what your parents taught you and what my parents taught me because it's true. And if it's true, why do we hold ourselves back?"

Now the windows are down as the van creeps along an alley brimming with food vendors under many orange lanterns. The sky went dark a while ago, leaving behind lights illuminating frying vats and pans, woks launching noodle clumps into the air, dumplings taken with magic-held tongs serving a deluge of hungry locals and excited tourists—and the scents are heavenly, fatty with so much oil. The orange of these cramped food lights clash with the blues and pinks and reds of more neon signs along with lit up billboards high up as if crowning this alley with the blessing of business, with an airplane coming in and out of view—from one side of the alley to the other.

Towering, that's what everything is here in Fragrance.

The books and tourist brochures about Kiria, Tall did read. After Fickle left Skyfall and headed to the homeland here, pamphlets soon spread across Kirintown. From across the sea, Fickle was praised as a great patriot, the one who'd bring sense to Kiria. A real revolutionary, and not the funny, foalish kind that the communists were having a fuss about. This revolution didn't need a war—as Fickle joked, quoted from another pamphlet, war wasn't good for the economy.

The economy does seem to be booming despite the constant war in North Kiria's borders. Far from the nirik-ridden frontlines, a whole mass of kirinkind rush from stall to stall, buying and selling fish, sometimes stepping onto hoofbridges over the many rivers here to bargain with moving boat shops boasting the freshest catches.

Nascente resists the urge to puke. "I thought you trained for this," Apple Bloom says from the passenger seat, having heard his stomach's growl.

Outside, the beautiful buildings meant for tourists disappear, giving way to alleys and tunnels, showing off temples and shrines with lines of devotees, the scents turning heavenly once more before smog and oil takes over again, this time guarded by helmeted figures in pitch-black armor.

The van slows to a crawl in another set of market corridors where shouting is commonplace over weighing scales and hissing fritters. The earthy colors of kirin coats drown out the pavement's gray, a writhing mass of hungry stomachs and worriers over grocery. A hawker knocks at a window, proudly begging that the van's passengers try out his latest mini-cakes. "Get a few of these coins for five, and get out," Apple Bloom yells with authority.

Miffed, the hawker slinks away, but not before loudly whispering, "I bet that pretty face you've got in the back of your vehicle thinks he's a local just because he's born a kirin."

Tall throws his head out the van window. "Hey, I heard that! Instead of wasting your life away like that, why don't you risk your life for something great?!"

Apple Bloom yanks him back inside, spouts out, "My apologies to you all—he is a very feisty creature, do you not agree?" in awkward Kirian, then to Tall in the international language that is Ponish, "What did I tell you about keeping quiet?"

"They don't know what it's like to fight!"

"Oh, they do, just not in the army. Either way, I can tell yer' patience is wearin' thin. Driver, let's step it up a notch."

A dozen aggressive honks from the steering wheel later, and down one more little alley, sandwiched between two steel-glass-concrete high-rises, they park in front of a comedically small office. The name glows on a rusty neon sign in rainbow colors: Walkover's. The little brochures and the mare by the counter back in Skyfall talked up big game about this world-class international organization. It is international, though Tall wonders about the world-class part.

"Just like what I imagined," says Eckhard, slapping the holster around his barrel. "Out of sight, right? Or what, Feskie? You thought you were going to serve in a real big army?"

Tall doesn't say anything. He tries to save face.

"Yeah, no, it's not gonna be like that, but that's fine! You're moving up in the world, so cheer up. We're gonna plop our flanks on some power station dam and hope some poor little nirik's gonna come over and make our wages worth it. That's private security for you. Or the start of it, yes!"

Even after Apple Bloom says "Hup!" and orders the squad to move inside and get settled, the griffon's words swirl in his head. Or, at least, that's clear enough to Apple Bloom herself once Eckhard and Nascente move up and she finds Tall sitting and pondering at the front where, across the street, a few abandoned storefronts sit and gather dust—a few lights in the upper floors are their only signs of life. "Look, yer' the best we've got for now. Yer the best wecan get.I trust ya'. You and all of ya."

Tall replies with a half-nasty, half-sincere smile. "Harmony and friendship is really sponsoring this intervention with a bunch of crazies, huh?"

Before they head inside for briefing in a dank, secluded second-floor room, Apple Bloom says, "Like I said, yer' the best we can get."

A/02 - Connection

Tall sits on a mushy little couch, waiting for this branch's receptionist to start up the projector. The room smells of weeks-old coffee, and worn-out teabags protrude from the garbage bins. Nothing like back in Skyfall; not much in the way of amenities here.

"I hear the MREs are pretty good, though," Eckhard says, still ribbing Tall on as the griffon slumps down with him, wings covering the kirin's back. "You can have everything go down in flames, but good food? That'll keep you alive, make you proud of your country for caring about you enough to excite your taste buds."

Apple Bloom talks with the receptionist—fortunately, Tall caught her nameplate, remembered her name… Paper Clip. Ordinary and foalish, that's how most Equestrian names go. With both ponies busy—and Nascente poring over the briefing's papers a few times—Tall pops a question: "I don't think I really caught what got you in Walkover's?"

Eckhard flashes a smile at him. "Ever heard of a little place called Brodfeld?"

"You mean that little griffon kingdom with the grain and wheat on the flag?" What little he knows of the place is that it's nearly to the other side of the Griffonian continent, far from anything he cared about back there. That and the whole civil war with communists.

"So proud about your heritage, and here you go thinking you can play fast and loose with mine, eh? Well, I'm no Brodfeldian, but it was nice to see a bunch of griffs not caught up with imperial politics back in the Empire's capital. I soaked up some time with a bunch of roaming knights in modern armor, and that's how Apple Bloom got me."

"How she got you?"

"Yeah," he says, sinking his back deeper into the couch, gesturing at the Earth pony fiddling with the projector. Maps and figures blur in and out of focus on a dimly lit wall. "A bit hard to enforce a monarchy these days, so there's the second civil war you probably haven't heard about. Ended up saving families from being burned by both sides. See, at least with the Empire and Aquileia and so on, they had professionals, had experience… Brodfeld's a backwater, plain and simple. When the prince got enough money to spend on artillery and claw-me-down chemical weapons he got from the black market? Imagine stuffing a family of five into your tank just so they could get a chance to breathe and get out of there."

Leaving Tall on that, Eckhard gets up from the couch. "Come on, I think we're about to start."
Now seated at the one and only round table, their silhouettes illuminated from behind by the projector beaming a map detailed with legend and text, the three soldiers drink in the information. After Paper Clip exits discreetly, Apple Bloom trots right in front of the projector, pointer in hoof.

It's only then that Tall notices the portraits of the Equestrian princesses high up on the walls, just outside of the projector's reaches. Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, and Flurry Heart—painted and regal, all five of them, with polite smiles and not much else.

"I've been honest with y'all, and as ya can see from the state of yer' livin' quarters in HQ here, times have been tough. As much as I like y'all to get on the frontlines and get in some real action, we're puttin' the three of ya' with… well, a certain Gallus from the Royal Guard would've liked to entertain y'all, but I jus' got word that he got a serious injury. I'm scramblin' to find somepony, though I know a good corporal. You'll like her… maybe. She's got certain skills."

She slaps the wall with the pointer. "Anyway, you've read the news. Nirik invasions here and there, another offensive on the west gone wrong. North Kiria's lost some ground to those poor folk and it's causin' chaos."

The nirik invasions—the three major nirik warlords, he recalls, having mostly stayed the same since they broke out a decade ago. The one to their west call themselves the Sororal State of the Champions of Concord, and as far as he knows, is the most unstable, both in theory and in practice—invoking the name of the Kirian Goddess who called for balance and temperance. A smaller map on the corner of the screen shows how much territory they've gained in the month before—up to Safflower, part of a delta, where two rivers split off. Just a days-long trip from Fragrance.

"We've lost a lot of good mares and stallions these past few weeks, and while we ground 'em nirik to a halt, we're pretty much startin' from square one, and that's where y'all are startin', too. Kirin don't care 'bout how we're doin' but how safe they're feelin'—they can't see the fiercest fightin' on the front, but they can see police officers and roamin' soldiers. That's where you come in."

She steps back to let everyone drink in the town map of Camphor. In dotted lines is laid out the structure of the under-construction "Dull Line Electrodam, which they hope will make enough energy for the place with just the local river—simple clean energy! Makes 'em not so dependent on some bigger power plants and havin' to turn off electricity in some parts of the year. However, the mayor's concerned about nirik attacks since the Champions got mighty close. Put two and two together, and you three an' your on-the-ground leader's on guard duty. Don't flex your stuff—we're not here to scare the locals. Ya stay there an' watch things 'till the rest of Walkover's push the nirik back where they came from. Any questions?"

Tall's hoof springs up. "Then we go to the front, right?"

Apple Bloom stares at him for a good while. "Well, depends, Tall. You three have the resumes, but Kiria is a different beast. Resident kirin aside, doin' combat with wrathful fire-breathing creatures ain't normal. If things go too well with Dull Line, then y'all be posted in Fragrance for a few personal jobs with some magnates, businesskirin, the works. Escorts an' all that. But that's neither here nor there. Right now, we've got a buildin' dam to protect."

She then takes out a cigar, lights it up, takes one long hard drag.

Private security services for a hydroelectric dam. With a spice of nirik, maybe.

"Can't be worse than the demons I've seen," Nascente says off-hoofedly, as if in a daze.

Tall still stuffs his time in the firing range with poring over the dossier and the maps. The village of Camphor is as close to nondescript as it can get: a settlement started by creatures gathering by the river to water their crops with, then boats went up and down said river for trade, then it changed hooves between petty nirik tyrants—back before the Realm had even been a concept. It seemed impossible to unite these vast tracts of kirin when a small argument over vegetable prices at the farmers' market could incinerate the homes of hundreds.

Then, peace came over when a new religion challenged the nirik norm. The Way of Fire. Many of his family and friends back in Skyfall paid, at minimum, lip service to it. The tenets were hazy to him—it had little to do with churchy religion like the griffons' with gods like Boreas. The one thing his father drilled into him—both of them in foreign, Griffonian three-piece suits—was that to go nirik was to corrupt the gift of their Goddess, Concord. Balance was what all true kirin should strive for—the balance of maintaining their inner flame without letting it explode into an inferno that would burn others along the way.

And so Camphor would remain at peace as a village with nothing of note. Not even when the Silence came. They had always been farmers and fisherkirin, so minus the trade boats, they sustained themselves on the river and the crops. Just a century-long season of poor yields.

"What's it like back in Skyfall?" Nascente says.

That gets Tall out of his mental journey. He just fired a full clip of a pistol, magically held, onto his target. Bull's eyes on half his clip. Nascente's been firing by his side, though without levitation magic, he reloads with his muzzle through the teeth grip. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Nothing out of the ordinary for your background," he says.

"Says the zebra who writes 'Basic demonic magic' as a skill in your CV."

Nascente can only chuckle. "'Trash management' isn't much compared to the horrors I've seen before the Equestrians approached me."

"It's like I'm boring compared to you two," Eckhard butts in before emptying his SMG in bursts. The shots are mostly clustered around the center. "Mafia baby here and the demon whisperer there."

"It's not a family like that—we're not the Wingbardian Mafia serving pizza and talking about self-made creatures."

"But a mafia all the same," says Eckhard. "I mean, hey, I'm not judging. I've met ponies with seedier pasts. It's the adorable ones with bullet cutie marks that you watch out for. And shoot first."

On that joke, Tall continues firing, sometimes imagining a nirik on the other side of the shooting range.

From the headquarters' top floor—of one of Sycee Trading House's subsidiaries—Chief Executive of the Administration of North Kiria Fickle Current sits with a sweeping vista of the city of Fragrance. The coast splits his view—on his right, the formidable fleet of cargo ships, importing and exporting a rainbow of shipping containers under the pier's harsh lights; on his left, a land lit by neon, with its rowdy nightlife under way—a mix of work and pleasure, of night shifts between oily gears and broken hooves, of innovators frying their horns over the latest in electronics.

A technological paradise. Made in Kiria. Or Made in Fragrance if Fickle fully had his way.

Fickle flexes a foreleg, cracking a joint. He counts the years and decades in his head. If he'd been raised here, he'd be long dead, relying on old treatments when the griffons had advanced medicine, had come up with surgeries… approaching eighty years of age, yet he's as hale and hearty as ever.

Said nearly-eighty-year-old reads through his planner pockmarked with a bevy of meetings and negotiations, scanning everything. A few bright spots appear—free time, time to schedule another meeting. The block of time before it, in his own scribbles, is marked, on unions + national reputation.

He takes the telephone on his left. "Miss Firecracker? May I ask you to make an appointment with the Equestrian embassy here? This is about public relations, you understand…."

A/03 - Matchsticks

Past the sheen of sweat covering his body and past the soundproofed walls of the shooting range, Tall looks up at his targets, riddled with bullet holes—mostly in bull's eyes. Gunpowder has left a mark—the dark roast it leaves on the senses, on the smell.

It's far from the first time he's noted the smell, though things came simple once upon a time. Back "home"—his Skyfall home—a little fish district stank to the skies. This was a meeting place, a hoof-off. His father was a notable figure in the local underworld, and following his school-of-hard-knocks brand of upbringing, he'd put a gun in Tall's foal-sized hooves, told him to hide it in his jacket. "Just point and shoot, it's that easy," were his only instructions.

Then again, he was just a foal. When a pony from the fabled land of Equestria came over—just his age—he asked what was the thing he was hiding in his jacket. A gun. It was a neat little thing, said the pony. They didn't have a lot of guns back there in Equestria. The soldiers, sure, but foals? The land of griffons and other weird creatures was truly different.

Tall remembers the foal's horrified face when he picked it up, pointed, and shot an assassin aiming for his father.

So that was how someone else said, hours later, when they'd successfully evaded the police, that Tall was on the path to greatness in the family, in the Clan. A good heir, a competent successor in the making. At worst, he'd be a legendary enforcer, far from the low-level chumps that would beg and grovel for anything higher before being shunted and ratted out in light of Governor Genevieve's anti-corruption laws.

The ring of a bell gets him out of his thoughts, his body in the middle of the motions for close-quarter battle training, preparing his equipment before a wooden replica of a house's insides.

Here, it's about coordination with his team. Eckhard is temporary squad leader, and he leads the way, wings held tight, barking out the orders, and Tall follows suit: check this door, flush out this corner. Each and every target is a crude drawing of a kirin or a nirik; signs of fatigue can be found in the tape covering old bullet holes.

The bell rings once more, and he finds himself on the other side of the replica. Apple Bloom's giving everyone an assessment of their skills—Eckhard is the clear winner thanks to his hardened battle experience that isn't obvious thanks to his experience as a tank commander; Nascente is more than decent, albeit a little paranoid and a bit jumpy.

"Tall," she then says, hoof pointed at him, "you're alright. Maybe a real natural."

Years ago, word came home that the war came for Skyfall. The merchants of the trade republic couldn't stay independent from the Empire for long, but it was always the traders—the innovators, the ones who look forward—who could see potential investments where others could see a defeated nation. A resurgent Empire, no matter how theocratically it preached, left a lot of room for sycophants, griffs praising the gods with their beaks but not with their hearts.

So they switched sides. Sided with the Emperor. Whatever politics was happening in the churches and the upper courts, Tall couldn't care less for. It was nevertheless a turning point, because that was when many of those sycophants, licking the regent's boots, crawled their way to Skyfall with their fundamentalist rhetoric that faith in Boreas was for griffons only. They pinched their beaks at the smell of the local kirin temples hidden away in Kirintown, and bribes meant nothing to a bunch of renewed converts to the faith who saw any moral failing as an affront to Boreas and His divinely appointed Emperor.

Which was a considerable weight to bear for a teenager, yet like many teenagers, the brain that he'd carried with it wasn't the brightest tool in the shed. Even now, he looks back with pride and confidence at his moment with some lowborn griffon noble whose name he's forgotten—a moment of defiance. "Ah, yes, the local crime family from a land of savages," so she had said. "I do respect your power here, but know your place, you pathetic excuse of a dragon. When the Gods have run out of patience, we'll evict you, plain and simple."

Against all advice for him to stay calm and to let her make a fool of herself, he replies, "The rabid priests are gonna come for your money first, so I'm not too worried."

On most days, the memories stop there, but for example, when he looks at the list of creatures who've passed the close-quarter battle and with how much time they took, only to find that his name is stamped in the bottom half—in moments like these, he continues remembering, for she then said, "Very rich of you to talk about priests. They already came for your family's money so long ago. And everyone else's, too. And the money and lives of everyone in your silly realm. At least Boreas is not as brain-dead as to tell every creature he's made to be a recluse, hmm?"

The fire in his chest: he remembers it rise.

"Feeling lonely?" Apple Bloom asks after he's found the time to sit down, facing the array of wooden walls and shot-down targets.

He takes a second to find anything to talk about. "My squad members here are just... well, them."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I know you have other soldiers on board, but... I figured being funded by Equestria should've given you a lot of money and resources. Not...."

"Ah understand, sorta'." She shakes the burning cigarette off of her hoof. "We ain't fishin' in a small pond. Lots of armed an' dangerous fish in the sea. Most of 'em want the action, the fun stuff, not this peacekeepin' deal we've got. Them desperate ones sign up for shady stuff... next thing they know, it's gettin' strapped to a pick-up with nothin' but a mounted machine gun, and yer' prayin' nopony's got a lucky shot on ya'. More young'ns die that way."

"That's part of being in a country like North Kiria," he replies, scrounging up a bit of courage. "Private security and military groups rising in demand in thanks to a few recent wars? Most countries put a lid on that. North Kiria doesn't."

"And it's clear that throwin' money at a bunch of livin' flamethrowers ain't cuttin' it, is it?"

"...we're private security, right? We can handle a bunch of nirik problems for some companies here and there. We can wait for them to invent something that'll help solve it for sure."

"Like when Stalliongrad inven'ed the tank and that didn't help turn their revolution into somethin' global? Or when we got magic rifles goin' and that didn't stop the changelings from floodin' our cities for years? Or when they made helicopters and that suddenly didn't turn every nirik dead?"

"Okay, I get it," he says, "but it's... incremental. It adds up. There's only so much nirik can do before they can't brute-force a victory anymore."

"Big on saving Kiria no matter the cost, hmm?"

His heart flutters. "This land is our land. Don't you agree that it's heartbreaking to see your home go up in flames for a hundred years, hear that it's risen up, and then hear that they're fighting each other like it's the era of chaos all over again?"

"Not to demean the kirin goin' loose, but there's still tons of 'em gettin' killed if we had it Fickle's way of totally annihilatin' them. We're supposed to deter, keep 'em away, not get happy over makin' corpses we'd have to pick up anyway since we're technically an 'intervention force.'"

She then scoots closer to him. "When you walked up to the office back in Skyfall, there's some standard thing that they tell ya there. What was it?"

"'Security solutions for you and all, and for your friends, too.' That's what she said."

"Right. Something like that's supposed to happen for everyone we meet. That's what makes us different from everypony else: we don't just protect some rich pony's assets and hope for the best. We're supposed to be out there, bringin' real peace to lots of sufferin' folk. We've done refugee runs for the longest time—'s only now we've had to ease up 'cause our resources are runnin' thin and we're doin' a few jobs for some chairkirin and board members for the extra cash...."

He coughs. "So... uh, how did you getin here, though? You're an apple farmer... used to be, right?"

"While my friends got into more normal things, I served big time during the war. When Scoots and Sweetie returned to their old jobs, I found that I really liked helpin' other creatures durin' the war with Chrysalis... you've had tons of colts and fillies lyin' about their ages 'cause of all the propaganda, and I saw a few of them get their cutie marks on the field. It's a strange feelin'. But that's what we're here for...."

And her stomach growls, catching all two creatures' attention.

"Welp, guess that's the call for dinner. Tell your mates we're hittin' the road. There's a bar an' noodle shop nearby where the owner knows us."

Firm, thick noodles pass through his teeth, his magic working its way through the chopsticks. Dry noodles, with a simmering bowl of broth and vegetables to taste, along with a side of skewered and steamed dumplings—these are topped with cold iced water flavored with herbs and decorated with slices of grass jelly.

The smoke of the outside world can't help but penetrate the squad's little table. The warm evening glow of orange haze thanks to sidewalks bursting with lanterns and neon emits a sense of nostalgia—a golden hour, even long after the sun's set. It's enough to get a bunch of curious tourists snapping pictures—a few obnoxious ponies talk and talk and talk and ask several kirin for directions because they're lost and they can't read the map because it's not in Ponish, they say, all while somekirin's eyeing their stuffed bags most likely filled with souvenirs, money, and Equestrian trinkets.

But Tall being here—it's fun, it's salivating. His eyes glaze over soomeone cooking with a wok, and just this once, it's not foreign or weird to use it here. This is the norm. The fire lapping at the food, the noodles coming over to the next customer in a hodgepodge of starch and produce, all while the cook keeps abreast of the ever-growing pile of orders with this specific broth or that specific sauce or this specific type of noodle....

A bowl in his magic grip later, and he lets it fall down, now taking stock of what else his friends ordered: Nascente sitting with a plain bowl of noodles and not much else, Eckhard slurping on the belly and shoulders of some meat mixed in with his rice, and Apple Bloom munching on a few local apples.

"So," Eckhard cuts in, "they're not going to rat you out, right, Fescue?"

Tall blinks. "Who's they?"

"Don't be stupid, your Clan. In the mafia business."

"They're not a mafia—"

"I know," he says, "but it's fishy. I thought about your story—got the boot from your family, so you're trying to get your big break by saving the motherland. That's nice. But after that, what happens?"

"I give them a cut of whatever I earn here."

"You don't have to owe them if you can trick them into thinking you can't pay them anymore," Nascente says.

Tall quirks an eyebrow. "And how's that?"

"How can they verify your death?"

"I'd assume they have someone in the city keeping tabs on me, reading the news to look for my name, you know?"

"Oh, wait—they'll notify next of kin, right?"

"I only have a few distant cousins left, actually. I am not sure if they're supposed to be notified."

Eckhard whistles. "That's rough, buddy. So you really can just pretend it's a freak accident, you 'die,' then we tell your non-existent folks the bad news, and you can go scot-free. Need a new identity, sure, but when's that gonna stop us?"

Tall shifts in his seat. The heat and sizzle of noodles flying high over the wok catch his attention for the moment. "It wouldn't feel right. What would I tell the nirik we're saving?"

"'The nirik we're saving'—spoken like a true shill."

"Hey, what's shilly about that?"

"For someone young like you, I was expecting someone more contrarian. You'd think a kirin of all creatures should know there's more to a nirik than just being mad. I've heard of the stories, you see."

And Tall fixes a blazing glare at him. "Oh, yeah? How reliable are those tales, then?"

"Tales, rumors, whatever you call them, there are patterns: one, they're all mad; two, they're all mad about something specific; three, they're intelligent enough to keep the factories running and to have some kind of government. You'd need an organized force to resist the armies of a dozen corporations. A temper tantrum alone can't do that."

"But that's chaos, and chaos is the unraveling of order," Tall replies. "When you see ancient paintings, you see walled cities... outside is the mess the nirik have made, while inside is stability and freedom."

"Spare the lecture, Mr. Professor," Eckhard says with raised claws. "Next thing we know, you'll be separating problematic kirin away from 'real' society."

"Ah say we cut the chit-chat?" Apple Bloom pipes up.

That ices any further conversation between kirin and griffon for a while, leaving the griffon to finish his food while Nascente and Apple Bloom eat in silence, where Tall drowns in the deafening sizzle of yet more noodles in the kitchen.

With bellies full and guns concealed, they return to their van parked at a nearby school. The lights there blaze on despite the late hour; faint echoes of lectures mix with the clanks and clangs of metalwork. Its tiny playground, occupied by rusty slides and swing sets, is a lonely green patch in a sea of brown and black and gray and yet more rainbow neon.

The next stop is a bar, with Apple Bloom chiding everyone to not get too drunk—deployment is tomorrow, after all, but drinks are on her, so it's a night to get half-wasted. Assuming they'll get there, which the heavy traffic—both motorized and hoof, with kirin flooding the crossings, messing with the traffic-creature and the traffic lights—threatens to stop.

Then several police officers form a line at the next intersection, blocking everyone from passing through. Several kirin on the bridge ahead stare at what's happening at the underpass.

A procession of black cars bearing the flags of North Kiria.

"There's yer' guy," Apple Bloom quips. "The Chief himself. Also, look up."

And past the van windows, movements against the harsh lights of the city. Soldiers on the rooftops, a few snipers detected—a pegasus hovering overhead, getting a bird's eye view of the sudden parade, likely protecting the Chief Executive.

To think that Fickle is in one of those cars for Tall. Tinted black, hidden—

A crash—down the road, a track having turned over, spilling its payload of food, blocking Fickle's way. Gasps and panic grip all onlookers, then he catches a whiff of potent food powder. The soldiers on the rooftop and every other place in the air scramble, speaking to their radios.

"Apple Bloom," Tall says, "how often do trucks tip over in this city?"

"How would I know?"

"What's the rush hour for noodles here, anyway? We're reaching midnight and—"

Though too far ahead to see the details, the procession's detour route is blocked by another truck. Right on time. Car windows open, the commands above go frantic—

"Situation!" Apple Bloom shouts, raising her rifle.

Out the van, traffic becomes an obstacle course, civilians fleeing the fight scene—distant gunfire, and Tall lets out a curse. First targets he can see are the trucks where enemies fire from behind. Police officers join the fray, their cars' sirens unintentionally jamming his senses—some sneak might fire from behind and he won't know until it's too late.

Fire streaks across the road—nearby buildings, he marks, downs one at the window, then a second about to toss a burning Angriver cocktail. Rocks rain from several more windows, and still more fire. He races to an abandoned sedan for cover, grateful for its bulletproof windows—didn't have many of those back when inter-Clan rivalries exploded.

He checks back to see who's safe. Eckhard's down by another car, not yet hurt but definitely alert. Nascente's the same, though at another car. Then he sees Apple Bloom on the car across him as the ground rumbles, erupting in more fire and commands meshed in Ponish and Kirian, and it's as if they're paranoid—the opposing forces seem to be firing from everywhere, every direction.

"Grenade!" someone shouts, and Tall falls over, vibrations racking him—now, he's face to face with freshly paved asphalt. More shooting from the windows, both cars' and buildings'. A storefront explodes, firing missiles of fragmented vases and other fine wares, scarring the few combatants unlucky enough to be stationed there.

"He's right there!"

Tall swings his head around, but all he can see and hear is a car revving up, burning tires, and squealing away down the other side of the avenue. More cars do the same, assaulting his ears as they sped away, following the leader.

"What're we waitin' for?" Apple Bloom yells, yanking Tall by the withers and planting him inside a car. "We're driving!"

He hits the accelerator once Eckhard and Nascente are in, now tailing the herd of black cars barreling down these wide roads, their little flags hole-ridden and ripping apart at high speeds, now taking the first available exit and into the urban maze that is inner Fragrance.

Tall swerves, barely dodging walls and running over who knows how many garbage bins, his eyes keeping tabs on creatures to not run over every time he blasts his way into a new block. Lights flicker in and out of view, zooming into blurs—

A pick-up truck blocks the way out onto the next road, machinegunner ready.

He crashes into the truck, whole body screaming at him to please stop the pain, endures the shockwave, notes that said truck hasn't fallen over but the machinegunner's busy trying to get back up, and Apple Bloom shoots him down from the open side window. The rest of the pick-up's crew, now also dead thanks to Eckhard and Nascente's well-placed shots.

Yet engines roar from behind. More pick-ups, and they keep shooting. Searching fast for a way out, he spots a gap. A bridge. "Get 'em down!" Hitting hard on the accelerator again, he speeds out of the alley, bobs and weaves through yet more scared civilian cars, then against every inhibition and his past driving teachers to not hit guardrails, he rams into one.

Falling down a bridge and back onto a lower-level avenue, he catches a glimpse of the speeding cars, though now they're finally slowing down. Skid marks on the street tell him that Fickle's crew have taken the long way around before making it here.

"Private hospital," Apple Bloom murmurs before stepping out of the car, Tall and the rest of the squad with iron sights aimed at those incoming pick-ups.

Though, this time, the machinegunners scream long, manes melting away into little infernos lighting up the night, eyes white-hot like the very core of the sun.

A/04 - Phosphorus

Their white-hot screams bubble in his ears. Tires rip up the road, their nirik drivers turning vehicles into inflammatory suicide vests. He releases a short burst from his rifle to leave the pick-ups headless, charred corpses rolling around on the road, scorching the asphalt they bounce upon.

He and his squad get out of the way of the still-moving vehicles, hearing the hiss of fire extinguishers from policekirin and Fickle's entourage behind them. He just has to hold it together to the steps of the entrance. "'Bright Futures Health Center' sounds rather optimistic," he quips, now swearing he can sense the sharp smell of medical alcohol from within.

By a few pillars, Apple Bloom talks with a few bigger guards. "Come on, we need ta get inside and help y'all!"

"No can do, miss," says one of them, the patches on his forelegs identifying him as the leader. "Your presence inside will only complicate matters."

"We just helped save the Chief Executive!"

"And I am extending you the mercy of not putting him in further danger by staying outside and guarding the perimeter," he says.

"And I say Fickle Current's our employer, Mister Leader, and we're not havin' any of this nonsense 'bout the both of us fightin' when we could be workin' together on the field!"

Then "Mister Leader" points a hoof outward, upon the burning car-strewn avenue ahead. "There's the field."

Apple Bloom replies with a curse at him and a knowing nod to the crew.

Tall follows suit, Nascente and Eckhard now standing by behind fallen cars and some huge chunks of fallen wall, evidence of a prior fight, one with explosives. He overhears orders from behind, asking for status updates on a code name whose meaning is all too obvious.

The soothing sirens of police cars are the next attraction to arrive, cadets set to secure the scene and advising onlookers to please not go beyond the invisible line. Tall peeks through the coming-and-going stream of passers-by, something about social camouflage. Who is this stallion wearing so many jackets? Or why is there a raggedy mare going around with a foalless stroller? Or the pair of plainclothes citizens on the avenue's far side chatting with each other, eyes shifting his way? Or those begging on the streets lying on cardboard boxes yet analyzing every angle of the hospital Tall's guarding? Away from the information overload, he turns back to the next train of pick-ups heading their way, accompanied by vans, not unmarked but bearing logos of TV stations, unloading armies of camerakirin and reporters now attempting to bargain with the local police force to get a literal inside scoop with the Chief Executive.

Tall growls at the unintentional distraction. He sees his zebra and griffon mates staring down the news crews as if daring them to come any closer. Squad leader Apple Bloom straightens up at the sight of them, looking past the babbling kirin in their dashing suits and dresses and make-up perfect for colored TV—and Tall follows her gaze.

A few silhouettes shuffle on a roof across the road.

Tall trots ahead of Apple Bloom, entering the fray of camera flashes and red lights declaring that they're recording him now. "Everyone, we advise that you please stay away. The situation is still developing—"

Then the bang of a gun, a fallen camera, and the screaming continues.

Under Apple Bloom's orders, Tall and company fall back to the doors of the hospital, taking cover behind the pillars and then the welcoming atrium inside with its comfortable air conditioning. No further gunshots, but the skidding of wheels and news vans leaving is a sign.

Now a distant hiss, and Tall can't help but look out the window—flare guns shooting from the rooftops. Multiple roofs, with nirik blazing against the starless sky.

Then flare guns shooting at them, disgusting smells of chemicals burning and spreading like a sticky sort of gasoline coating the grounds outside. He spots Nascente and Eckhard picking off nirik jumping down to ground level, one or two dropping dead like flies. "Hold the perimeter!" shouts someone—a grunt directly employed by Fickle, most likely—and she and her own squad rush deeper into the facility, disappearing behind clean, pristine white walls.

"We're not holding this fort down!" Apple Bloom yells back seconds too late, seeing what Tall's already deduced—the four of them left for dead at the gates of Tartarus. When she looks back, she beholds several flaming pick-ups, machine guns firing ear-splittingly on all cylinders, filled with intent to crash through the doors and windows.

As if they read each other's minds, they sprint back, maintaining a forward stance to keep shooting, praying that a few dead drivers will blunt the initial impact.

Those walls crumble; glass windows melt and shatter before the might of a herd of headless truck-nirik.

Tall hides behind the corner of a wall, leaning out for shots from anyone peeking out of the smoldering remains of their cars. One dead. Then another. One more pick-up drifting late to the scene—a few shots, its tires explode, and it swerves into an adjacent building, demolishing the storefront… he remembers that it had TVs on display.

Then a dot coming his way—

His magic grabs the grenade inches from his muzzle. Throws it back, a lucky hit on someone's face, and she disintegrates—the gory bits, he doesn't see, hiding his face from shrapnel. With his hearing recovering from the blast, he notes…

A ghostly tone. Haunting, slowed-down shrieks. Coming the nirik's way.

More nirik rise from the flames engulfing the atrium, pupilless eyes staring right at him.

Pulls down the trigger. He shoots, he scores a few. Down some more—one shoots back, carrying a machine gun mount she's ripped off from a nearby dead car, her sheer adrenaline- and rage-fueled strength keeping her grip on the hefty weapon. Primal roars attack his ears while bullets shred the wall dividing him from her. He scampers further into the hallway—looking back is the comforting sight of Eckhard telling him to get a move on and scram.

Against the hard floor tiles, his hoofsteps quicken, still facing forward. It's like one of those atomic bombs going off but truly slowed down: the fireball of the explosion eating every inch of the corridor, where from the mass of mindless fire, fanged faces appear, now brandishing guns and shooting wildly. He throws a grenade at them, which only feeds the fire, hastens its pace. A door falls, and he trips—Eckhard yells at him now to move up the stairs, second floor.

Gunfire from upstairs is now a badge of safety—he's on the same floor as Fickle's bodyguards, though questions pile up about their competence, which he shelves for now in the face of nirik ascending the steps. A choke point he'll hold. Apple Bloom's orders tell them to focus on that choke while Eckhard—with his wings for mobility—will scout out potential flanking points the enemy may spill in through.

"Is there anyone else out there?!" Tall shouts above the chaos. "Or is it just us?!" A sweeping view of his new surroundings—a kind of lobby, with elevators and seats for those waiting in line to be called by a number—confirms that several more of said bodyguards—taking care of their own stairwell killzones—are present. But not PMCs. No badges or anything. Black suits, some with glasses. "Hey, you! Any update on Fickle?! Hey, I'm talking to you! Are you—?!"

And he's sent flying, now across the lobby, now crashing through the window of a reception room, then through some kind of office space—shards of glass planted into his coat, clawing at his frying nerves. He can only grit his teeth, senses recovering to feel the flame washing over him.

The flames of the nirik that swatted him so far, so fast. To the other side of the hospital, so it feels, his joints firing pain at him, tearing him apart. Then, he feels for his gun. Empty holster.

Without looking, Tall leaps and roars at his assailant.

Blocked with a hoof, his head grabbed, then smashed against the counter, body falling limp on the floor. Still, he can feel the warmth of tiles kissed by nirik hooves. Behind the enemy, fallen cabinets and drawers incinerate themselves, fireproof magic spells vanishing in his blackening sight.

Now the hot, molten core that is the leg of a nirik touches his face. It pulls his neck, begs him to gaze upon the muzzle of its owner. Fangs as sharp as ever, eyes as white holes or voids. He growls. "Just you and me now, you traitor," the nirik whispers. The edges of what might've been his uniform fray at his collar. "Traitor… traitor! You smell like them, and I hear the beaks in your accent, you scaly… you smug snake!"

Despite it all, Tall manages a weak, fading grin. "Heard… all that before…."

"You don't get it, do you?!" The nirik's breath is rancid and blistering; Tall's own eyes might've evaporated were he not a kirin. "You're with them! I don't know you, I don't know you! I've seen many kirin, but I don't know you! Your lord Fickle is using you to rat his own kind out, and you don't know it!"

"No, no, I-I'm with harmonist forces, I'm with an Equestrian team, I—"

"They have nothing to do with us if you'll sell us out!" His hoof pierces the wall ahead of him; concrete falls. "Those stupid princesses!" He turns his head away, though the fire that was his mane rages brighter. Not looking.

A window of opportunity for Tall to bite his captor on the leg. So he does.

Feeling its searing warmth.

The nirik's howls flood the room. Bullets whiz by in his direction, deflected only by a small magical shield he conjures. Crouching down to avoid the guns, hooves wrap around Tall's neck, dissolving his uniform until his whole body's exposed, open for ravenous fangs to rip and tear through his flesh, the great white heat piercing into his being.

"You want to play smart, little one?!" cries the nirik, getting his face up close and personal, fangs inches away from snapping at Tall's jaws. "Do you want your masters to dim the life out of you? Live on while you die in fear inside? I will live, I will outlive you in death! The Primordial Flame will not welcome you back when you die… but I will be there! I will be there when Kiria returns, while you'll face the curse of non-existence!"

"What if I'm no believer?" Tall cries back, searching everywhere for hints of anyone coming in to strike his attacker from behind. No one.

A primal roar, and the nirik scratches Tall on his barrel—deepening pain, the seeping away of blood, and he can only grunt in pain, biting his tongue and grinding his teeth, breathing harder. His nostrils flare with every pained breath. The fire within him calls for his soul—he hears the crackling of flames from behind him, what he knows is the start of his burning mane.

So he roars. The feeling is fresh, minty relief.

He leaps at him, pins him down to the floor but only after crashing through several boxes and cabinets, mounds of papers falling and dying upon the two scrambling nirik. Lava-hot hooves scratch the floor, and the splinter of one severely broken cabinet he grabs in his magic, one of its ends sharp enough to do the job. He lunges it between the other nirik's eyes, though it stops with his enemy's own telekinesis in a magical tug of war. Their mutual shrieking at each other is meant to deafen the other, so the rest of the world is drowned out—so much force pulled from both sides, the fear creeps into Tall's psyche: whoever falters gets the splinter's pointy end.

Tall drains his lungs, roughens up his throat in yet more screams to pour in a few more ounces of magic into pushing the splinter through the nirik's defenses. He listens for the snarls, the angry and obsessive slobbering his assailant makes, the incoherent curses he's hurling at him.

With a hindleg, Tall strikes the gut, then strikes it again, pummeling his stomach, feeling the nirik's magic grip slip—

The splinter shoots forth. The flames of its nirik state vanish, yet the fangs and the pupilless eyes remain. Tall refuses to witness anymore of the damage done to the body, especially the head.

Said refusal lasts less than a second when the pops of guns remind him that keeping his eyes closed is a surefire way to lose sight of the enemy.

For his prize, though he spots the blurry visage of Apple Bloom hopping over the counter, asking him if he's okay and pulling him up and telling him that everyone's told them where Fickle's hunkering down, Tall doesn't avoid the spectacle of a burned skull split in two even as he walks over it and back into the growing ruins of a lobby.

A/06 - Hydro

Tall lies awake in bed, having taken in the bland ceiling and its turned-off light bulbs. A fitful fight with his blanket later, and he now finds himself at the staircase outside of his quarters, away from the snores of Eckhard and Nascente.

No lights except the soft, pulsating glow of the city that's engulfed him, or whatever is left of that that can filter in through the windows. His hind legs hang past the railings, heeding the call of the void (the fall is just one storey down). The roaring of engines and the bustling of nightlife activity are muffled in his ears.

He sits still, then now his legs sway.

A world of being alone.

"Oh, you're awake," a voice calls from below—Appe Bloom, in a faint whisper. Her form rises from the lobby until it reaches him, holding a mask and lugging along some cleaning materials—sponges, spray bottles, and rags. She's even wearing overalls to fulfill part of the southern Earth pony stereotype.

"I, uh, didn't know you were the janitor, too."

"Y'all learn how to do the dirty work together," she replies. "Least yer' doin' a great job tryna' rise above the grind of bein' the son of some scion guy. I've seen griffs from the Wingbardian mafia… bad apples, Ah say, they're sendin' bad apples, spoiled brats their parents'd rather have a drill sergeant deal with. So hey, yer' doin well."

Tall sets his jaw firm. "I really meant what I said about helping my homeland out. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Don't get all self-defensive, Ah ain't doubtin' ya." Now she takes out a tiny metal box. The lid taken off, there's cigars inside. After lighting one up, she takes a long drag, the smoke wisping away, form- and shapeless. "Want one?"

"No, thanks… I'm not a smoker. Despite the jokes about you-know-what and cigarettes."

"A livin' an' breathin' lighter doesn't want to smoke? Now Ah've seen everythin'."

The two of them share a silent moment, hindlegs dangling off the railings. Her cigar's earthy aroma can only mean freshness, high quality.

"So, ma'am, you really do clean the whole place up, huh?"

"Keeps ya' sane, keeps ya' focused. Have been doin' it for the longest time, even before Ah came in as a real soldier, ya' see." The scent of the cigar rests upon him as a hint luxurious. "Came in as one of 'em auxiliary types. We were that kinda' strapped before, but then the nirik war jus' started happenin'." She now leans closer to the railing, resting her head on it like she were behind bars. "Heh, I remember askin' Applejack that I wan'ed to go here, there, everywhere right after Chrysalis went down. Sweetie Belle soon got back to trainin' for her singin' career, an' now, she's a radio star. Actually, ya know what? Sometimes, when the pop station here bothers to play foreign stuff, Ah call in an' make a request if they could bring up a single from Sweetie."

"Records?" Tall asks. "Don't you have more advanced things? I heard about Vinyl Scratch and her electro genre being the hottest new thing when I was a lot younger."

"Call it pony talent or somethin'." Then she shrugs. "Ya can't mass-produce things like what Vinyl helped make, 'least not until like a few years ago. 'Electro' was a thing because of her, but Ah think everyone else really took so long to catch up ta' her." Now she straightens up, fixing a curious look into his eyes. "So, what's gotten ya' here, starin' and mopin' around in the middle o' night?"

His breath is hitched. He finds his inner self caught off guard, aswim in many dangling threads made of memory. "It's a lot."

"How many's 'a lot?'"

"Hmm, how about we start with the entire shooting gallery with Fickle in the center of it all?"

Apple Bloom whistles loud and sharp. "Ah figured ya' were made of sterner stuff, but it's the first time yer' doin' intense security stuff."

Tall's eyes shift in response. The first floor looks appealing to him, much more so than his supervising officer for now. "It was the same mostly. I did my time in close protection, escorting the usual list of names around in my corner of Griffonia. Makes the political connections come easier, too, for my clan."

Apple Bloom's replying stare cuts through the implication—or lingering question—like butter. "What do ya' think about stayin' here for the long haul?"

He does chuckle. "You know I'm not exactly free to do that. The Grasses will come asking for my whereabouts."

She leans in closer. Car horns pierce the air—an auto accident that almost was. "There's a way out you can take right now."

Tall's breath hitches again.

"Walkover's sometimes gets contracts for smugglin'—actually rescuin'—kirin 'cross the border through some big nirik fort or checkpoint, but that's not the whole thing. They need ta' get through bureaucracy and everythin' about it jus' so they can get registered as real North Kirian citizens. We know a few gals here an' there doin' the dirty paperwork for us. They're good at their jobs."

Tall nods, understanding the hidden invitation. "It's an honor system and you know that, too. I take the easy way out, then what? My reward will be the shame of running away from the responsibilities of adulthood."

"Yer' in yer' twenties, yer' prime, and ya' talk like yer' a foal too scared to grow up?"

"It's cultural."

She sits still in the silence, an invisible Yeah, fair discerned in her features. They filter out the rest of the sounds of the outside, the city closing in on them with the arguments of apartments across the street and the sizzling of a kitchen downstairs—the receptionist, whose name he's forgotten, cooking for herself a midnight snack. For him, it's a nice distraction, trying to recall her name.

"We can still protect ya'. Ya' don't have to abide by those standards forever if it's getting' at ya' hard."

"Says the pony," he says. Now he winces away.

Apple Bloom's ears wilt at that. She chooses not to answer. Instead, "Well, if that's so, how're ya' gonna leave the business when yer' contract here's up?"

More traffic noises give him time for the awkwardness he caused to slip away. "When we help bring enough stability to Kiria by taking down one of the big three nirik warlords. Have to get the kirin back in Skyfall feel safe moving back here—all of them. It's a pipe dream, but still…."

"Takin' down Winter Frost would be yer' best bet as a first target," she says. This, he knows from old newspapers back in old Griffonia—leader of religious fundamentalist kirin, the Sororal State of the Champions of Concord. The articles over the years have rambled on about this dying flame of the past, where Winter rules and reigns supreme, suffocating any chance for a spring of freedom. For all intents and purposes, Winter is the new Matriarch—Rain Shine having been missing for so long, the head of the national Kirian faith a pathetic no-show.

The scant few pictures taken of her, he remembers—tucked away in the front pages—are images of scowling fangs and flames trying to wear divine robes and headgear.

"She's a juicy target," Tall remarks. "Fickle's made enough speeches that dove deep into why her policies would doom the country."

"Can't imagine they'd be drinking buddies. Heard they argued over and over in that national plenum assembly thing right before Fickle did his north secession thing." Gone unsaid is the assumption or the insinuation that nirik can't really make a long-lasting government… otherwise, Fickle would've invaded by now.

A minute passes by in reminiscence and imagining scenarios—at least, for Tall—where such a war would happen and how it would end in decisive victory.

Apple Bloom then stands up, beginning to leave him to his own devices and his remaining capacity to stay awake. "What we do have now is Fickle's gonna make a big PR stunt. 'The attempt on mah' life has left me scarred an' deformed!' Somethin' like that…."

Then her hoofsteps move past him, accompanying the sprays of cleaning mixtures.

The waters bobbed around decades ago in another continent, another world, another city, in one of the hectic fish-smelling ports of the Grand Duchy of Feathisia where the griffons spoke a strange language. The joke was that it didn't sound like a serious language, and Tall in years before—back when discipline hadn't existed for a young, idealistic foal like him—had openly mocked those who used the "funny tongue." Beerken werken merken! A stern dressing down from his father on his last business trip had put an end to that nonsense.

His father's trips were frequent, then getting more so. Not so long ado, they'd obsessed over their homeland—distant and spoken in hushed tones or formal praise—returning to the land of the living. Emerging from the shadows of the Silence, Concord would bless the Realm once more. Hope had sprung around a new mare, a politically unknown wildcard—a poor citizen who'd dropped out of her temple's education… Autumn Blaze, the very one who'd taken two Elements of Harmony to the Matriarch of Kiria herself, Rain Shine, to spell out to Her the plain and simple truth: the Silence hurt everyone, and it would trap everyone in a cycle of pain and suffering unless she reversed course.

That train of thought made Tall ask, in a world-class café while his father was drafting up letters and his mother was busy being deceased, "Will we go back home?"

"We'll see!" he replied. The newspaper divided the table between father and son, kept the former's list of contacts well hidden. "We still have much to do back here, but if and when Autumn does her job, then we'll embark on something special."

Then marching into view was a griffon, chatting it up with a mare he'd met likely at some other café. A gun slung around his barrel, while she had a bag brimming with notebooks and quills. Their good-hearted laughter tickled the air around them.

"Maybe I could go home as a soldier?

"Oh, it's too dangerous for someone as young and inexperienced as you!" his father answered. "You will have to learn so many things before you can begin considering a tour of duty there, and that is if there will be any war at all! But this I promise you: if you can handle the work the Clan will provide you in the near future, then I will recommend you personally to the recruiters I know…."

Downstream, following the babbling river, zooming across the countryside on a rickety van to a humble village not too far from here, now they say. They say they'll still see the city when they make it, although every mile passing by shrinks the skyscrapers by a considerable lot. The river down here is part of a delta, Tall learns, churning in hues of blues and browns passing from the metropolis to the Greater Fragrance Area, where the apartments and the malls lose a few stories in height for every half-mile, which is every half-mile that the teeming remnants of jungle and forest reclaim. Only a bit. Nothing compared to the shadowy copses of griffon-run Adelart on the other side, once run by a merry band of bandits—

"So, ya were sayin' somethin' about how ya were fightin' in some magical place?" Apple Bloom asks Nascente in the middle of something, which gets Tall's attention.

He obliges. "Oh, Barrad? That very dark and magical place? It is… very unusual. You could say." He hopes to latch his eyes onto something else. "Many of our old refugees came over when we captured all of Barrad. The scenes I saw—they were really like fairy tales. A mad prince, a great fog… they say the rest is history, I know. To actually be there, in arms, however…."

So with every bump of the road, his tale grows: ghouls rising from the ground until their necromancer masters had their heads blasted by artillery, clockwork creatures turning their gears and winding up punches and guns, slowing down a magical deer whose aura shifted and glowed with dying souls from the underworld… and a zebra who could summon other demons and spirits from another version of the beyond.

"It was mayhem. Take a look from my perspective. You are down in the trenches, staving off dirt and mud, and what do you see? Emaciated skin on the other side, and their eyes glow all eery, and that corpse rips your friend apart. What did I do then? I shot my dead friend in the head—Brilharem—he had to die with his head removed from his body."

"I assume the obsession with demons was related?" Eckhard asks out of the blue.

For how sharp the probably intended faux pas was, Nascente takes it in stride. "Such arts were outlawed in Kasa until very recently. A culture built on liberation had to reckon with the liberty of 'those occultic freaks,' if you know what I mean? It did not go so well at first because we all remember what was leaked about Asinti who was a former Kasan citizen before they found out what he was doing to his victims, but we had to be true to our principles."

"He should've gone to Equestria, is what I'm saying. Hey, Captain Apple… hey, Apple, maybe they should've sent them to Equestria. The princesses could turn the demons into statues for redemption a hundred years down the line, right?"

The driver-captain shakes her head in embarrassment. "Ah swear, if Ah weren't this tolerant, Ah'd shoot ya on the spot."

Spectating the discussion, Tall nods his head at the Changeling War veteran's implication. The changelings' new republic has had its growing pains, so say the papers, and while there hasn't been any mass stoning of Chrysalian war criminals, the cries by the pony masses to have them stoned anyway persist. A panic to contain the ever-present threat of another war….

"By the way, heads up on the new corporal y'all 'll meet. She's a riot, Ah'll say."

The ride continues in solace. Fresh bridges crisscross over the river, traffic converging and diverging at these waterway crossroads. Flat slabs and ornate temples decorate the horizon, the latter slanting up as old pagodas alight in the sunshine with fragrant candles.

A little drop-off over a hill and down there lies more modern flat roofs and square houses though surrounded by old stone and wood covering vast courtyards, with wooden patterns matted in glorious, vibrant crimson. The earsplitting sound of drills hits Tall next, fading in as his eyes settle upon the organized chaos of the construction team wriggling up and down the hills, surrounding the river with concrete and dugouts and heavy-duty vehicles overturning vast heaps of dirt, marked with logos boasting about some Consortium. Nothing like the colossal water barriers proposed in Equestria, but a dam is a dam, and the idea of a "simple" wall taking a river by the throat and squeezing every last inch of energy it could from this natural feature is enough to stun him.

"The Indigo River Dam," Apple Bloom announces. "Decent electricity for cheap? Let's hope that promise sticks."

Their van slows upon their approach to the chain-link gates barring the public from the site, past boxy residences and onto grassless soil after clearing IDs by the guards. Work crews, organized by colored stripes on their vests, shovel and drill away or haul sacks of yet more material for the actual power plant, wires and transformers and the works. Waterproof suits are on hoof though quite plasticky, implying cost cuts and the fear that a few drops of liquid may penetrate the outer layers yet.

Helmeted police faces radiate suspicion upon the squad's arrival; Tall smiles and waves, which does nothing to lighten their mood. Apple Bloom does the talking now to the newly appointed mayor of this newborn village who replies, decked out in a three-piece suit, "Then it is decided. The last team has not been well-disciplined, but I blame the eternal fickleness of youth! You, on the other hoof, are a multi-racial team! I would like to confide in the four of you that they do not trust each other in the uniforms you are wearing—they say it makes you traitors! But you and your kind pony face? You will make this crack team much easier to swallow!"

"Thanks for yer' helpful racism," Apple Bloom deadpans.

He laughs at that instead. "That's what makes you Equestrians so useful! Very straight, to the point, when you cut through the cute facade! With a pony leading the way, I am sure you will operate like the clear-cut professionals you appear to be!"

"Oh, they're professional, alright!" shouts a high-pitched voice, and the owner of said voice trots in—a pink mare whose curls and freckles made her look more the part of a lost foal wearing a Nightmare Night costume party outfit than somepony geared up, hefting an assault rifle and extra ammunition.

Apple Bloom's deadpan face couldn't become more dead. "Everypony, meet Corporal Cozy Glow. She'll be your immediate CO during this operation."

"And it'll be an honor for you to serve under me!" Cozy boasts in that sickeningly sweet tone, and only now does Tall notice that she's been carrying a few boxes, walking alongside a few vested workers—now she's putting a few down, boxes of wires and plugs. "It will be so much fun to work together!" Fragments of coin-baiting headlines return to him: FOAL THREATENS STABILITY OF EQUESTRIA! VANQUISHES MAGIC FOR SEVERAL HOURS! A quick stint in Tartarus for her crimes ends up a blessing in disguise thanks to cries to give the foal a second chance in the aftermath of the Great War. The last he read of her, she was out "rehabilitating" in some vague manner. "And how's AB doing?"

"Doin' fine," she says, clearly trying to shrug it off. "Ah hope ya' know what to do with these folk?"

"Oh golly, these very clearly trained thugs have to ask little ol' m e?"

"Yer' thirty, and Ah still think yer' older than me by a smidge."

"But little ol' me?" She squishes her cheeks and her eyes grow sad like a depressed puppy's.

Apple Bloom responds with a roll of her own eyes.

Security shift begins at 1900, and the first thing to note in Indigo is, after getting used to the smells and sights, is how forced every design choice seems. The precise calculations for mathematically pleasing parks and gardens in the lowliest of apartment complexes in the Griffonian Empire's capital was at least democratically voted upon by a bunch of intellectuals. Here, the street grid and its prefab homes with only the faintest hint of local Kirian culture conjures up images of cardboard boxes surrounded by forest and jungle.

Spruced up by the tour which the mayor—who Tall learns to be Cottoned Roseate—is giving him from the crest of the hill. Down they trot, examining pipes and turbines, glad-hoofing the leaders of each work team.

"This here is the weir. See, the Consortium is very forward-thinking. They've scouted many dams across the world, but they've also scouted out many water mills, especially the ones in Feathisia—the tulips there are lovely, aren't they? Here, however, there many more kirin than there are griffons in their own kingdoms. What can work for them cannot work for us with how dense the population can get. So, may I ask you what the solution is? That is right: Modernize river dams! It's very clear to you and me. We shall run this lean, as they say. The risk that comes with conventional dams is that, with a reservoir, you risk having water build up gas and other unwanted substances that come from being stagnant for so long, so…."

After letting him ramble on for a few more minutes, Tall lays out a smile. "The idea seems very sound, sir."

"Oh, yes, it is sound! Which is why I am glad that you are here. The years I am sure you will accumulate in service of Kiria will not go unnoticed."

"More than just getting more rivers to dam?"

"Much more than rivers to dam, dear one," he says, now almost down to the foot of the hill, approaching the work-in-progress power station—more wires being rolled out. Lights smell of damp dirt and icky sweat. "Your presence here is both welcome and the result of a sorry state of affairs." Those nirik terrorists can blow this up and disrupt the lives of so many.

A little while later, Tall finds himself back with the squad. Orders were given before: patrol these routes, oversee these areas, watch out for these potential problem workers who might cause a scene.

There's something to overhear: a competition, cliquish behavior between two teams, marked by those differently colored vests and badges. An argument, a competition, calls for bets in coins and change before a helmeted foremare steps in—"Enough! We will assess this!" By the grip of her magic, she drags the both of them into a tiny concrete shack—her little office, flanked by a few police officers. Through the window, he can see outlines of a scoreboard for each team and smell faint notes of cheap, sacheted instant coffee around the rims of paper cups.

So the night continues.

"Heya." Corporal Glow strides right up the hill to where Tall has stationed himself. The city's skyline is alight with the glitter of neon from afar, hazy colorful lines painting the air all around. It births new lights, those of ships and cars slithering home after beating merciless traffic past the day shifts. Now she sidles up to him. "I bet you wanna know the feelings of a would've-been mass murderer? That look in your eyes just sparkles with curiosity, mister!"

"I… did not ask?" Tall confusedly asks.

"Oh, it's all about being a changed filly! My time as a stone statue was pretty sad! Just picture the absolute tragedy in your head—"

"I've read about it before, I know."

"Hmm, is that how you talk to your superiors? I am the corporal in this arrangement. Didn't your parents tell you to respect older creatures?"

Tall scoffs. "As Equestrians say, you're one to talk."
"Oh, well, I'm sure the dear moms and dads of Equestria didn't mind that their foals were okay with locking another foal up in eternal conscious torment just because she had a severe lapse of judgment. Can't explain why it's the teens and older folks that got on my case back in the day, but hey, that's all in the past! Which includes everything before prison reform!"

"The poster foal for prison reform," he half-repeats. The heyday that the Equestrian penal system had after Cozy Glow's grand pardon-slash-probation, of releasing so many prisoners and having nearly everyone go through smaller friendship schools…. "You ponies truly are strange creatures. They'll forgive you after petrifying you. With griffons or anyone else, they'll have stabbed you in the chest, even if you were just a child, for threatening a fundamental part of the world."

"Those griffons must have very bad manners," she says, eyes scanning the sectors downhill for any off-putting behavior. Tall remembers his duty and mimicks her. A security officer prevents access to someone's dinner—no eating on the job before your mandated break time.

"You're here for… redemptionary work, right?" After Cozy nods, "When does it end?"

"When they say so, and by they, that's Apple Bloom. She watches over me, you know? 'Don't give anythin' else another thought, Cozy! Ah'll take care o' everythin' while yer' here!' She's forgotten we're the same age. Her being a principal that one time at school must've gotten to her head."

It then hits him in the head that this whiny mare almost took over Equestria and would've drained it of all its magic. He straightens up, tries to keep her complacent. "So she's watching over you, making sure you don't, say, steal Kiria's magic and usurp the Vermilion Throne?"

"Watching over me with a hundred sticks and zero carrots. They promised something much worse than Tartarus if I pull that off."

Another fight down there breaks out. Dirt slung in the air from target to target, then shovels transformed into melee weapons and power tools threatened lethal action. Only the intervention of the foremare, with her rants about quotas, saves the night.

Cozy trots down the hill, following her patrol. So does he.

"How'd you like it here, Corporal? In Walkover's?"

She takes time to think on it. "I could tell you a lot about my first year against changeling insurgents after the war. The great thing about flushing out love bugs? Emotional manipulation is a virtue! And I'm good at that! But they're the bad minority. So many honest, hard-working changelings want to get rid of their speciesist legacy but they're bogged down by a few bad apples. What do you think of that? A terror cell busted here, a terror cell turned into fine green mist there, and before you know it, Apple Bloom finally caught on to what I could do!"

"I figure the princesses think if they can't fix you, might as well offload you somewhere else where you can't harm other ponies?"

"That makes them sounds speciesist," she jabs. Then, in a mock accent—the freckles not helping her attempt at being all scary—"What're you insinuatin', punk?"

With a chuckle, he offers, "Pony culture sounds utilitarian when I put it that way. That's what I'm insinuating."

Another argument by the dam breaks out as they descend, drowned out by distance and river sounds.

The temporary office shack stinks of old mint and foreign essential oils. The small dinghy square is lit up through the window, and now, Tall greets Nascente guarding the door, who says, "Want to shift, Feskie?" Examining the intent in his eyes, "You want to see the boss mare, no?"

"Breaks the routine." Then Nascente is off the door, letting him inside.

Generic paintings of landscapes with sentences in Kirian frame the single desk, glossy, recently varnished underneath a spreadsheet and several calendars. Typing away at a couple calculators and a new-fangled magi-computer—a hunk of gears and active spells—Quick Squall (so goes the nameplate) looks up.

"Ah, my next suitor?" she asks sarcastically. "Also, it's fortunate that you are a kirin unlike the rest of your military outfit."

"I sure do hope I am a kirin, yes," he says, half-joking.

Her restrained laughter grants him success. "You'll do, you'll do, but I'm on the clock, and they are, too." She side-eyes the scoreboard hanging on the wall. Noticing the hesitation on Tall's features, "Extrinsic motivation and turning intangible experiences into tangible information I can use to take us further. Business 101."

Tall doesn't ask about what happens if someone doesn't improve on the job. The trajectory is demotion in short order, he thinks. "You're making everyone compete against each other for prizes... to simplify, right?" He spots the badges differentiating teams and points. Promotion and relegation just like soccer leagues. A few names find themselves at the bottom—at risk of getting kicked out entirely. Or, replaying the scenes in his head of guns to associates' heads asking them to indeed leave the family of their own free will, do just that.

She wouldn't have been a hit with some of the more red-leaning creatures back in Griffonia, he concludes.

It's sitting at the edge of a tiny work camp, watching the darkness for what it is: a shroud where the real fears lurk in for their prey.

Several helmeted crewmates relax during their mandatory break, cracking open cans to the sizzle of affordable ice-cold beer mixed with energy drinks and powders. Mega Booster Flavor!!! advertises one such packet, and having witnessed a few kirin carry a dozen sacks of concrete in the span of a few minutes, Tall muses that the name may be appropriate. Finally, in the corner, a little shrine juts into view—a seconds-long prayer to Concord, then they walk away.

"Where's the wrench?" one of them cries out. Eyes wide open—it's missing. Curses string out of their muzzles shortly after. His team leader rises from the small crowd, now yelling, "Why are you all careless?" "It wasn't me! We just didn't know—" "Enough excuses! Find it! We can't fall behind!"

Tall takes a safe distance from the others. Now a routine check on the perimeter—nothing suspicious spotted. Choosing to feel more useful than looking scary to any would-be hooligan, he strides his way to the little work camp, scanning tufts of tall grass to see if the missing tool's dropped there.

Nothing yet but more grass, more of his namesake.

"I'm at risk, amn't I?" a voice whispers from the side.

Tall holds his rifle's grip tight, never to let it go. A sideways glance shows a vest and a helmet and a face just like the others. "You know better than to sneak up on a soldier like that. I could've shot you."

"Then you'd have taken out the garbage just as you were paid to do."

Several bags and toolboxes are overturned in search for that cursed wrench over the team leader's panicked insistence. "I pumped creatures in the scummy underworlds of Skyfall and Fezera much smarter than you and they cracked," Tall replies. "I've been through a war. An attempted revolution. I know how politics goes, and you're going to tell me that the bosses never cared about you, they'll throw you out because you'll slip and fall and you'll be abandoned on the streets."

The voice gulps and shakes his head. "You know about it. It sounds like you've never been there. This is the highest I've reached. My fall will be like none's ever seen, but you'll never know that."

His hoof ignites.

Tall wraps it with his own, extinguishing the little flame. One of the team leaders finally glances their way—Tall meets it with his own glance, assertive. "Doesn't seem to be here, sorry! If it's taking you all so long, though, I'll get some tools from the van."

The gruff figure—Tall mentally calls him Mr. Helmet, no name tag in sight—both snarls and smiles. "You have my gratitude. Just you, sir. Vetch here will have less than no gratitude."

Trying to ignore Vetch's own snarls, Tall perseveres with his own glad-hoofing smile. "You'll have a new wrench to replace the missing one! Just put it on my tab and leave this mess behind."

"I respect your very kind attitude, mister, but the Consortium is very picky with its tools and where they go. We certainly do not want them falling into the wrong hooves even as a stray weapon by some burglar. Please go on your way and get a temporary wrench for us while Vetch here will look for the missing item."

Tall squeezes Vetch's hoof tighter. The fire doesn't die, he feels, coursing against his coat. With his magic, he presses a button on his walkie-talkie. "Mister Boss, sir—I apologize, I haven't caught your name—"

Then the sky and the grass are alight in a screaming column of fire, enough to vanquish the night.