Imaginerian

"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.