Fallout Equestria: Jakintsu

by Clint Ambrose

Rating: teen
Tags: Comedy, Tragedy, Adventure, Princess Celestia, Human, Lyra, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Romance, Princess Luna, Changelings, Original Character
Length: 30475

A Fallout Equestria fanfic. 23 years after the Last Day, Flag, Chief of Stable 68 Security, emerges into the Wasteland to find he was born a pawn in a looming interstellar war. Security saves ponies. Time to save the world from its demi-god...

This is a fanfic of the Fallout Equestria universe. It has been 23 years since the Last Day, when the once peaceful zebra empire and the kingdom of Equestria exchanged megaspells in their mutually assured destruction. Stable 68 Security Chief Flag is forced to leave his secure underground home in its defense. But when he emerges into the irradiated lifeless Wasteland, Flag finds that he has become a critical part of the beginnings of a new war between his world and the stars. The oncoming storm is feeding off the physical, military and political fallout of the Great War and Flag's struggles to accept his lineage, his belief in a divine power in a hellish world, and the origins of alicorns. While the forces of a conflict that would horrifically outshine the Great War marshal in the stars, Flag comes to realize the greater threat has been living in Equestria for eons... and that only he can stop them both.

Published 2012-12-30 20:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2013-08-12 19:14:00 UTC

Prologue + Chapter 1: Lying To Your Loved Ones

A mashup story by Clint Ambrose

Publishing started in December 2012 under the pen name of Clint Ambrose.

This is a parody/ “mashup” fan fiction story. It was not created for the purpose of monetary gain.

Resources from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic © Hasbro and its parent and affiliate companies.
Resources from the Fallout video game series © Bethesda Softworks and its parent and affiliate companies.
Resources from any other franchises are copyright of their respective owners.
This being a parody, no copyright infringement has occurred under United States statute.
The author simply wishes to acknowledge the primary franchises upon which this story is based.

The author wishes to state that other fan fiction authors are welcome to reference events from this story’s plot, but wishes the characters within it to not be used in other works, as the author will wrap up all character’s stories on his own. The author specifically does not want “clop” fiction made of his characters. If these characters are used in other works, the author will be very, very cross.

Original story Fallout Equestria by Khat.
Additional material from Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons by Somber.

War is born in a series of mistakes.
Every war starts with one mistake.
Every war is lost with one mistake.

We owe a debt to our forefathers to
know our history so that we never
repeat the mistakes our species has
already paid for in precious blood.

There is no greater waste of life
than fighting a war previously fought.
There is no greater waste of time
Than repeating our past mistakes.

Introduction

In the magical land of Equestria, there came an era when the beloved ideals of friendship, love, and peace gave way to greed, paranoia, and a jealous raping of any resource of value. Energy resources were depleted at an alarming rate, and soon, a viscous war broke out over them. Equestria hadn’t known war for over a thousand years, and the first battles against their zebra foes went terribly. But the earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns pushed back, shoring their defenses with new inventions, new magics, and one horrible weapon of mass destruction: the megaspell. Originally designed for healing, the megaspell was reworked to magnify the power of any base spell or magical mechanism. Soon, megaspells were attained by the zebras, and then they were weaponized. An arms race erupted, and even mutually assured destruction was not enough to sate the destructive hunger of either nation. One day, the megaspells were cast, but the zebras and ponies were not content to their doom without casting the same fate on neutral parties. No nation was spared from ragnarok. Nine tenths of all living things on the planet died, and the desecration was obvious from space. Too obvious, as it would turn out.

But it was not, as some had predicted, the end of the world. Every war since the first is a result of the unresolved issues of a preceding conflict. Even now, this would not be denied. While thousands of ponies were saved in underground communities known as Stables, another more final apocalypse was approaching. One foreseen by only one individual, an individual who wanted a final confrontation with all his foes, despite the inevitability that his subjects would pay the highest price. But there was another who would assist that individual—and perhaps, one day, destroy it. For as long as life has existed, the struggle for power has been a war without end.

And war… War never changes.

Prologue

Hi. My name is Flag. Flag die Verdediger. Oh, sorry, you probably don't speak Zebrikaans. That last bit means "the (legal) guardian," or "the caretaker." Kinda says everything about me. I take care of others. Not like a doctor, more like... a judge. Without judges, there is no fair rule of law. No equitably distributed peace.

Why do I even bother...

Look, if you read this, you're gonna get ideas about me. Ideas about what my powers mean. Ideas about my deeds being heroic. Well, let's get this out of the way right now.

This ain't the story of a heroic demigod.

This isn't the story of how a savior emerged from humble roots to become a paragon of the Wasteland.

This isn't a story of a righteous avenger striking down the evil ones with hellfire and damnation.

This isn't a story of how the least likely of ponies can be anything they set their mind to.

This is my story.

And it's kinda morally ambiguous.

I have killed scores and sent thousands to their deaths, but I did so knowing that it was a better option than he had taken in the past and would have taken in the future. This tale was originally meant for my people, so that they could know the pony that built their nation and why I did what I did. Now, I give this tale to you.

Sure hope you like long stories. Here’s the Book of Flag die Verdediger, otherwise known as...

Fallout Equestria: Jakintsu

Chapter One—Lying to Your Loved Ones

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be
fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

Security Chief’s Office, Stable 68
Year of Celestia 1230 (1230 CY)
Twenty-three years after the Last Day

I looked up from my paperwork at the hooftap against the frame of my open office hatch. “Mistah Flag,” Primrose said in her creaky old voice. “You got an unscheduled visitor.”

“Let ‘em in, it’s why the door’s open,” I said, using a wingtip to slide my paperwork atop the heap of unfinished papers on the floor that within a few inches of desktop height.

“Go on in, little missy,” Primrose whispered to whomever was outside. “Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of.”

Shit, I thought, remembering the last time I’d heard Primrose say those words. One of these again. Dammit. I mean, consarn it! I cussed too much for my position as Chief of Security. I was trying to cut down.

The shy young mare crept inside, her flowing red-and-brunette mane covering one of her azure eyes. My face-hugging tech glasses brought up her file: Chrysanthemum, goes by Crissy. Female Unicorn, age sixteen. Flux generator technician career track. Cutie mark of a geode.

“Crissy, come on in. Close the door.” I flicked a desk drawer open with a wingtip, and scooped up a tin with my pinion feathers. “Fudge?” I asked. Crissy looked at me silently, then nodded. I flicked the lid off and slid the tin across the table. Crissy levitated out a piece with her magic, and took an exploratory nibble. I flicked a piece into the air with a pinion feather and caught it in my mouth, then put the tin back in the drawer.

“You know, I sure do wish my horn was good for something other than finding cabinet doors via physical contact,” I said as I chewed, waving a hoof up at my small horn that was mostly obscured by my shaggy brown-and-blonde mane. Twenty-three years (all my life) of intense training and not so much as a flicker from the dang thing. “Guess that’d make me an alicorn though, and what’s so special about that? Outlive all your friends, get prayed to and have everypony’s failed dreams placed at your hooves, rule a kingdom, yadda yadda yadda… None of that for this buck, no sir. Besides, we wouldn’t be living inside a tunnel boring machine if alicorns had made decent leaders.” Crissy nodded slightly at my statement. We were stuck in the Stable because of the failures of our parent’s generation, especially their leadership.

After a pause, I addressed the elephant in the room. “So, what brings you here?”

Crissy looked down at her hooves. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

I blinked slowly and nodded. “Let me go out on a limb here and say that you weren’t willing when the child was conceived?” I asked.

“I wasn’t, but… Out on a limb?” Crissy asked.

Right, Crissy and I had never actually seen a tree. Well, I probably had, but I was nine days old when the Stable sealed on the Last Day, so that didn’t count. “Trees were big old plants on the surface. Most were about as tall as the main tunnel is, but some were even bigger. Their limbs were like plant stalks, but a little stiffer and about as strong. So to go out on a limb is to risk the limb breaking under you and you falling out of the tree. Anyhow, who’s the father?”

“Rastus,” she whispered. Of course it was our Stable’s young problem buck. Damn, I was hoping that the kid could have been straightened out.

“Ok, I’ll need to get a memory orb made of the event,” I stated. “Sergeant Rowbuck will perform the spell. This will likely be shown to an entire jury. I’m sorry for trotting your personal life out in front of everypony, but this is the only way.”

Crissy nodded. “Ok…”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t put Rastus in line sooner,” I stated. “Preventing crime is the hardest and least successful part of Security’s work. I hope the child is a blessing to you. I pray for some good out of this. Don’t you worry none; the Laws of Stable 68 will bring you justice.” I tapped the gun cabinet behind me with my left wingtip, indicating 68 Laws, the custom five barreled drielling shotgun the first Security Chief of Stable 68 had brought inside with him. Driellings were a break action combination of shotgun and rifle. Most driellings were basically a side-by-side double barrel shotgun with a rifle barrel slung underneath the two. Mine had four twelve-gauge barrels boxing in the central rifle barrel. I’d named it 68 Laws for several reasons. First, Stable 68 originally had only 68 laws (go figure). Second, when loaded like the original security chief preferred, flipping the fire selector to “Full” fired 68 projectiles out of all five barrels. Finally, 68 Laws had performed the only executions to date in Stable 68, only one of which had been during my tenure. It looked like there would be another to add to that list.

The punishment for a rape conviction in 68 was execution.

I sighed, and brought up an incident report on my terminal. Tapping away at the keys with my hooves and pinions, I was one of the fastest typists in Stable 68. The massive report would take me less than an hour, but I was interrupted by a summons on my emergency comm terminal.

*** *** ***

In the Overmare’s Office of Stable 68
1230 CY

“What do you mean, we can’t go forward?” I asked the Overmare, as I polished my black-rimmed technician’s glasses while sitting at the conference table in her office. From the looks I got from around the room, I knew everyone else had been thinking the same thing. I just asked it first.

“The drill head hit a void,” the Overmare, Miss Emerald Shard, stated. “The seismic scanner and ground-penetrating radar picked it up several weeks ago, but the maneframe didn’t issue a course correction. Flag,” she said, turning towards me to give an order, “I want you to assign somepony to find out why. Until then, I don’t trust the automated guidance. In the meantime, we need to find out what we hit—or didn’t hit, actually.” She pressed a button on the keyboard in front of her, and the overhead projector warmed up. The slide shown was a color diagram of sonar returns from the drill head’s sensor package. It painted a portion of the main tunnel of Stable 68, a spiral carved into the bedrock of Equestria almost a hundred fifty miles long. The tunnel was sixty-five feet in diameter, and the mined rock was processed by a series of magical talismans to extract all useful material from it. The entire Stable was pulled behind the drill head like train cars, and as the population grew, more cars were added, made from mined materials. In theory, we could sustain an infinitely large population, once we got enough hydroponics bays to lift the birth rate cap.

The slide showed the next inside track of the spiral, a couple hundred feet to the side of the drill head. The main tunnel was painted blue, but the blue curve ended near the corner of a multi-colored plaid pattern, right where the drill head had punched into the void.

“We hit a mine,” Rocksalt, the unicorn mare in charge of the drill head itself, stated. “Room and pillar construction, but the pillars are very small. Either they’ve been mined, or the mine is near the surface. But considering how we’re on the bottom level of the mine, and it extends upwards for at least a thousand feet, I don’t think it’s the latter.”

“The rock strata are very metallic here,” stated Mucker, the earth pony stallion in charge of refining operations. “It seems very, very strong, although we’re still making reinforcing rings like normal. It could be that they don’t need large pillars for the mine.”

“The greater question is whether the mine is active,” I stated, then tagged on an addition. “Or radioactive. This would be a huge breach in our defense either way. We need to examine it. I propose getting our best SPAT team members, put them in radiation suits, and I take them out the maintenance hatch in the drill head, say tomorrow afternoon or evening, after the TubeScooter races. We’ll reconnoiter and place sensor packages at every street and avenue intersection, and we’ll work our way up. In the meantime, we need to back the Stable up and start digging under this mine. If we have to, we can collapse the tunnel in front of the drill head with charges, then place a giant plug of synthetic granite in to seal it all off. Then we’ll spiral down and out for a while, then start climbing after a few passes.”

“But what if the mines are clear and safe?” Green Leaf, the elderly hydroponics supervisor, asked. “We could convert this area into a massive hydroponics bay, living quarters, power plants—and set up a second community nearly independent of the drill head. Maybe even remove our birth rate caps for a few generations. Imagine being able to have as many children as we wanted.” Green Leaf and her husband, Redleg, the power systems supervisor, had grown children before the war, but neither one had made it into a Stable. For a while, they had tried to have another child, but never did.

I knew this because I, at the young age of 23, was the Security Chief of Stable 68, and I had to understand the personalities of the senior staff. And Green Leaf had been my foalsitter many years ago.

“We still need to reverse the drill,” Rocksalt stated. “We punched through the roof of the bottom floor. That won’t take the Stable’s weight. We have to regrind the slope. Regardless, we need to know more about what we hit than we can through passive observation.”

“Scouting party approved,” the Overmare stated. “However, I’m sending Amethyst Shard with you. She’s a much better negotiator than you, Flag. On the off chance that anything is living in there.”

I sighed. Amethyst Shard—or Amy to her friends, of which she had many—was next in line to be Overmare, as her Cutie Aptitude Test (CAT) had determined. Mine had come up with Offensive Security Actions Officer and the Administrative track, which had put me in charge of a newly created department of the security force. At age seven. When Chief Checkmate passed away two years ago, I had the most seniority of any department head. The Overmare had promoted me, but I mainly let the department heads run things. I trusted them to do their jobs and they got it done, leaving me to focus on the Special Purpose Assault Tactics (SPAT) team.

I must say, Cutie Marks are a nice feature of ponies, but they have their downsides. Cutie Marks appear when a young filly or colt discovers the thing that makes them unique, usually some kind of specialized skill. In Stable 68, once you got a Cutie Mark, you then started training towards a related field (often as not, though, the CAT pointed you into a field that you found your Cutie Mark in after you started training). Some ponies get their Cutie Marks later than their classmates, the so-called “blank flanks.”

I’d never been the blank flank of my class for two reasons. First, I was the only child brought into Stable 68 when the megaspells hit, although I was only a couple weeks old. No child was born for another three years—that had been Amethyst Shard. So I was the first child to enter the Stable 68 School, alone in my class.

The second reason was that I never had a blank flank. I was born with a Cutie Mark, a red-orange flag bearing an emblem of a winged black dagger superimposed over a blue lightning bolt. That’s why my name was Flag.

Some ponies complain that Cutie Marks tie you down to a set future, others that we’re more than just a single skill. Ponies are complex individuals. Cutie Marks are simple. I don’t like them because everypony has been guessing what my Cutie Mark signified (the flag wasn’t known to be used anywhere in the world above, at least before the megaspells hit) since I was born. That’s why I got the CAT at age seven, three years early. The Overmare then thrust a child into a position of authority.

That had been at the order of our original Overmare. I try not to think about her—all of those memories just piss me off. Emerald Shard was far better.

My childhood hadn’t been easy, especially without any foals my age to play with. I had just started playing with Amethyst Shard when I got my CAT. But I was also a pegasus in a Stable, and the last word from the surface before Stable 68 sealed the entrance tunnel behind it was that the pegasi had seceded from Equestria, clouded over the sky to camouflage their remaining cities, and left us to die at the hands of the zebra megaspells. They didn’t even mount interception missions to shoot down the zebra missiles before they hit Equestria. I can’t say I blame them—the pegasi had taken the heaviest loss rates in the war, and provided more troops per capita, so they had earned a little salvation. But not at the cost of everypony else.

In truth, my lineage has always been in question. I have a horn like a unicorn, but it’s very small and I had never been able to perform unicorn spells, despite thousands of hours of training and tutelage. I personally reckoned that it was a birth defect, but a benign one. Except when I rammed into the underside of a cabinet or skewered a light socket while hovering—it was certainly malignant then with the pain it caused! Besides, alicorns had led us to Equestria’s destruction. I was glad I wasn’t one. I’d rather be a traitor pegasus than a self-centered egotistic alicorn.

Wings weren’t much use for me inside a mineshaft, but I regularly flew through the tunnels behind the Stable, sometimes for recreation, sometimes to go replace a sensor unit miles behind us. I had pretty good stamina flying, but I’d never tried aerobatics inside the concrete tunnels. They were too tight and too hard to crash into comfortably.

Anyway, back to the meeting. I mildly protested bringing Amethyst Star along because she was a civilian, but that didn’t get very far—Amy had taken self-defense and martial arts classes alongside me, and she could handle herself in a fight. We discussed the timetable for our recon mission, which security officers I planned on taking, and a few other things, including one vote on another issue.

The Overmare finally dismissed us, and I galloped back to my office a few cars away. I had to get a hold of everypony I wanted for the recon team, and fast. Most of them would probably be off-shift, but some wouldn’t, and I needed them all to go home and get a good night’s rest before tomorrow afternoon—that meant cancelling shifts and finding other ponies to work them the day before the Stable’s main sporting event. I hated to do it, but I’d have to make a few work double shifts.

I noticed my secretary—Primrose—wasn’t at her desk, but had left her “BE BACK SOON. To REPORT ANY PROBLEMS, please speak to the secretaries at the FRONT DESK or DIAL 111 on your PipBuck” sign out. She was probably using the little filly’s room—at her age, frequent bathroom breaks weren’t too bad a tradeoff for the bang-up job she did as my secretary. I walked up to my office door, and waved my PipBuck over the scanner I used instead of a lock and key.

“DIE, YOU STRIPED BASTARD!” somepony shouted. In the heightened state of alert I was operating in, I spun around and had started to draw my sidearm before I saw my unicorn friend, Amethyst Star, standing to the side of the passageway hatch.

I took my mouth off the revolver’s bit as I reseated it. “Amy, you bugger,” I said, tapping the firearm back into position. “This is no time to be playing with me!”

“I’m sorry,” Amy said, giggling. “You were so rushed and so wrapped up in your own thoughts that I had to scare you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a little busy right now, so…”

“Too busy for our date?” She asked.

How in the name of Celestia had I forgotten about our date? Stupid, stupid, stupid Flag! Amy was in a light blue sundress that went with her tan coat, her normally straight blonde mane set up in curls. The dress covered her cutie mark, a golden scepter. It was our third date, and we’d be going to Sarsa’s, the up-scale dining car not far from the administrative section. Afterwards we were going to the theatre to watch a movie. (68 was a little sparse on dating locations, with only four cafeterias and one rec center. Unless you were into watching ore extraction talismans running or staring at thermoconcrete tunnel walls. Fun fun fun.) I’d somehow completely forgotten about it.

“Oh pony feathers,” I said. “Amy, something’s come up, and I’ll need you on this one, but right now I need to reschedule my officers so the ones I need are available tomorrow. We can’t make the movie, and I don’t think Sarsa’s will hold our reservation long enough…”

“Well, hello there, Miss Amethyst!” I heard Primrose say in her loud voice as she walked in. “Migh’ty fine seein’ ya this evening!”

“Good evening, ma’am,” Amy replied.

The obvious struck me. “Primrose, I need you to do something for me,” I stated, and trotted over to her typewriter—Primrose didn’t use her terminal very often, and preferred to use a manual typewriter whenever possible. I fed in a new sheet of paper and set my hooves to keys as quickly as I could. “These officers are going with me on special assignment tomorrow afternoon. I need you to get a hold of them, tell them they’re off regular duty and on special duty, and get somepony to fill-in for their shift. Got it?”

“Easy-peasy, Mistuh’ Flag. I’ll get right on it,” Primrose replied as she walked (slowly) over to her chair.

“I am blessed by Celestia and Luna themselves to have you for a secretary,” I complimented the elderly mare as I stood up and went into my office to take my uniform barding off and slide on my black dress coat. I stepped back out, and escorted Amy down to Sarsa’s for our date. “Oh, did Sergeant Rowbuck get the…”

“Yes, mistah Flag, she did,” Primrose answered. “Supports the poor lass’s claim.”

“Right, well, we’ll see to that the day after tomorrow. Give the bastard one last day of celebration. Have a good night, Primrose.”

“Goodnight, mistah Flag.”

“So what’s this thing that’s come up?” Amy asked me as we descended the stairs towards the Transit Hall in the center of the Security Section. The Transit Halls were walkways that speared through each section of the Stable for quick transit. They were a little more than two stories tall, and once the Stable got big enough, there were provisions to install a chairlift-style system of mass transport on the bottom deck and board the top half up for pedestrians. Plans were to start that in five years, just after we finished the new reactor section to provide additional power. Until then, everypony hoofed it.

“We hit a mine,” I said. “Room and pillar, seems rather extensive. Didn’t show up on any hazard charts, so we think it may be recent.”

“Could somepony still be working it?” Amy asked.

“That’s why you’re coming,” I said. “You’re our negotiator, and you can still handle yourself.”

“What if it’s a sand dog tunnel?” The sand dogs—previously known as diamond dogs, before their relocation during the war—were adept tunnelers, although not exactly the most intelligent of sentient species of Equestria. The massive mine complex that had been constructed under their Splendid Valley home had been dug by sand dogs in a couple years.

“Don’t think so,” I answered. “We’re in an iron-nickel ore body with band of iridium-osmium. That would be hard for them to claw through. And the tunnels are square-edged—sand dogs dig circular tunnels.”

“I still feel sorry for them,” Amy said. “Getting kicked out of their homes.”

“We wouldn’t be down here if both sides had fought the war smart,” I stated. “Smart ponies and zebras don’t rush headlong towards apocalypse. Still, not our place to judge, even if they damned us all.” And with that we arrived at Sarsa’s.

Sarsa’s serviced the fewest ponies of all the cafeterias, as it’s placement near the front of the Stable meant most of the neighboring cars were devoted to ore processing and administration. As a result, it was the most upscale (and expensive) dining car in the Stable. The walls were draped in velvet curtains, and the inlays in the ceilings dampened the noise level. It was dimly lit during the evening hours, and they’d even through drawn sheer red curtains over the lights to color the otherwise bleaching white of the Stable’s illumination source.

“Bonsoir, monsieur et madame,” our waiter asked when we settled at the table I’d reserved. “May I interest you in our wine menu tonight? Stock is running low, you never know which drink might be your last.”

“Tell Chef Mozzarella to pull the special bottle,” I instructed.

“Of course, sir,” the waiter said and trotted off.

“Special bottle?” Amy asked.

“Roseluck Vineyards Champagne, ’72,” I said. “I hear it’s the best champagne made in the years before the war. And we do have something to celebrate.”

“Oh really?” she asked. “What is it?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment,” I said. We browsed the menu until the waiter returned with the bottle. “Ah, thank you. Now, please bring us an order of lettuce wraps and an order of eight-layer salad to split.”

“A bit presumptuous tonight, aren’t you?” Amy asked. “Even if that does sound delicious."

“My emotions are swinging between extremes today,” I said. “Looks like we have a rape trial coming up.”

“Oh, horseapples,” Amy said.

“Yeah,” I stated as I uncorked the bottle with my teeth and poured our glasses. “But, I don’t want you to think about that.”

“You want me to think about why you ordered the champagne,” she said with a coy little smile.

“Yes,” I said after taking a sip. “Chef’s right: that is good stuff. Amethyst Shard, it is my honor to inform you that your proposal to establish a Department of Advanced Research and Techniques in Stable 68 has been approved by the Council.”

“Oh my gosh!” Amy said, putting her hooves up to her face.

“I’m not finished yet,” I said. “Furthermore, the dee-ay-ar-tee will be granted a seat on the Council so that the new department will be able to support existing departments equally.”

“Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!”

“Still not done,” I said, raising a hoof. “We had a unanimous vote as to who will be the director of the new division. Congratulations, Councilor Amethyst Shard.”

Amy leapt over the table and tackled me in a hug.“Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh!”

“A little decorum, Councilor,” I said on the floor with a smile.

At ten ‘til eleven, I walked through the hatch of my quarters with a still very excited Amy bouncing on her hooves beside me. Neither of us were ready to part just yet, but Alpha shift curfew was coming up. Amy had bunked at my quarters so often over the years most didn’t find a sexual connotation to it. Not that I’d ever made moves to make a sexual connotation the appropriate assumption with any mare, even if Amy and I were dating. Nice and easy does it every time, know what I mean?

My mother, Enduring Faith, was stretched out on the couch, reading a book. No, she was pretending to read the book—her eyes were studying the amulet around her neck, a family heirloom handed down for countless generations. The clear sphere of crystal was bound in polished bronze filigree hung on a golden chain. “Hello, Amy,” my mother said, slipping a bookmark into the pages and closing Daring Do and the Griffin’s Goblet.

“Hello, Faith,” Amy replied. “Has Flag told you yet? Has he? Has he has he has he has he has he?”

“Told me what?”

“I’m a COUNCILOR!” Amy sang out, then started bouncing again.

“We approved her DART proposal this morning,” I told my mother. “A full department.”

“Well done, Amy. Now, sit down, both of ya,” my mother said, getting up from the couch. “Got some things to talk about.”

“OK,” I said, and let Amy sit down first, something she was not inclined to do in her joyous state, which had only been further augmented by half a bottle of champagne. I metabolized alcohol pretty quickly compared to most, and as long as I stayed away from moonshine or low quality liqueur, I didn’t get hangovers. I plopped down on Amy’s right as my mother sat down in the recliner opposite us.

“I have something to tell you,” my mother said seriously. “And Amy might as well hear it now, too. She’s been your best friend for o’er fifteen years now.” My mother paused. “Remember how when you were a foal, Flag, how you would ask me about your father?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve found his records, though. Pitahaya, known as Dragonfruit Pete, a zebra sympathizer and smuggler. Imprisoned at the Shattered Hoof Rockbreaking Camp about seven months before the megaspell strikes. I understand why you didn’t want to tell me. Zebra sympathizers aren’t well liked down here in the Stable, and for good reason. I’m at peace with the fact that my father sided with the zebras…”

“Your father was a zebra,” my mother said. “I didn’t know until five years after the Stable sealed itself. Pitahaya was an alias. His real name was Gaius Xebec Caesar.”

I was stunned, confused, dumbfounded. My jaw was literally hanging open.

“Yeah, the uncle of the zebra that started the whole damn war in the first place. The biggest thing, though, is that I’m not your mother. Hell, right now, you’re probably the last surviving member of the Equestrian Royal Family. Your mother was an alicorn, the daughter of Cadenza.”

*** *** ***

Three hours later, I lay awake in my bed, Faith’s amulet heirloom in my hooves. But it wasn’t an heirloom; according to her, it was a memory orb from my true mother, in which she explained “everything.” I doubted a simple memory orb could explain “everything”—why she had left me with Enduring Faith, why she didn’t enter the Stable herself, why she had mated with the enemy. So many question. How could a few hours of memories explain my entire life? I was her infant child; should I not have been fated to perish with her in balefire? Why spare me?

I closed my eyes and held the memory orb tight against my chest. Why couldn’t you be there for me? Why did you have Enduring Faith raise me? I gave out a sob; in one fell stroke, my entire world had been destroyed as surely as the surface had been by balefire. Why would you not be here to love me?

Something snapped. I felt what I can only describe as a magical click, some sort of arcane lock releasing its hold. And the floodgates opened.

An entire lifetime of memories poured into me. Trillions of images flashed before my eyes. My skin crawled under the rapid waves of tactile sensation. I strobed from hot to cold as I smelled everything that had ever been around her. Spasms of pain racked my body in fits, and I tasted a lifetime of delicacies. The babble of a hundred thousand overlapping voices deafened me. And then, it all stopped.

I crashed into sleep, my mind weary from the deluge.

*** *** ***

Stable 68 Tunnels
23 years post-war, 1230 CY

“Hey, chief, you racing today?” Stress Shear asked, acting as referee for the TubeScooter races.

“What in hey could stop me?” I asked, strapping on my safety helmet with a look of false optimism. “I invented the sport with Amethyst, and I’m not giving the game to the upstart kids just yet.”

TubeScooter was a racing sport that used the slight incline of the drill head’s excavated tunnel as a gravity track. Obstacles and ramps were placed along the steepest thirty miles of the tunnel, and there were several divisions of play. Flash division was based on judge scoring of stunts performed, Dash division was based on time, Drag was a two-mile course with the highest ending speed winning, and Crash division had twenty or thirty contestants racing alongside each other for the full course. Each division was further separated into unicorn (unicorns could use spells to increase their speed or perform insane stunts), Earth pony, and open enrollment sections. Age was another dividing line. Cameras at each obstacle allowed the audience to watch the action, and several armored grandstands were built into some obstacles.

The scooters for kids were leftover RedRacers brought down before the megaspells. Adults used custom built metal scooters, although small wagons were finding popularity in the informal competitions of both age groups.

I was the sport’s figurehead. I competed in the Earth pony Dash (already done, blue ribbon), having my wings lashed to my sides to be fair, and Open Crash (again, done, second place) and Open Unrestricted Crash (any scooter or wheeled contraption could enter). Amethyst Shard did Unicorn Flash, Unicorn Crash, and Open Unrestricted Crash, her and I always battling it out one-on-one in the latter.

“Howdy, Chief!” the small, squeaky voice of a colt said beside me. I turned, and saw the light-gray unicorn Regolith beside me, standing on his RedRacer, crash helmet and pads taking up most of his ridiculously small frame.

“Hey, Reg,” I said, rubbing the colt’s helmet with my right forehoof. “What races ya in?”

“Marked Unicorn Flash, and Open Unrestricted Crash,” he said with a grin.

“Day-umm, Reggie, that’s some stiff competition there,” I stated. Marked was for foals with their cutie marks, but Reggie hadn’t gotten his yet. The officials had moved him up a level to balance the scales, because Reggie was good at TubeScooter—in a few years, I knew he’d be beating me and Amy at the sport regularly. “Good job, fella’, but ain’t the Marked Uni-Flash about to start?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, and pushed off on his scooter, weaving through the crowd of waiting contestants towards the start line. “See ya later, chief!” he yelled back.

“At the winner’s podium!” I replied back with a smile. I sighed. Damn good kid, that one. Not like the Rastus colt I had to bring in every other week for vandalism... and soon enough, rape charges. No, Reggie would be a good sort of pony. And his parents, Gordo and Torch, were some of my best security officers.

Reggie looked at me like I was a hero. Yeah, being the figurehead for TubeScooter was fun and all, and I did like the cheers of the crowds, the pats on the back after a particularly good race, the fans. But Reggie idolized me, and that was a little unsettling. Besides, at some point in everypony’s life, you find out that your heroes aren’t perfect, and I didn’t like the thought of Reggie finding out I wasn’t perfect.

And how would he take learning I was the son of an alicorn and a zebra? I felt no hate for zebras, but the fact remained that they had detonated their megaspells on Equestrian soil first. I may not hate zebras, but I didn’t trust them at all. And now I was part zebra.

All right, I always had been half zebra, but I didn’t know until then, and that changed how I thought of myself. It was a major shock to my self-image. It made sense, actually. My tan coat had always had stripes of green and brown through it. And there was my little horn. I always figured my dad had been a pegasus, which explained how I was one when Mom was a unicorn…

No, a little pony in my head said, Enduring Faith is not your mother.

Fuck that noise, another part of me said.

“You know, she may not have born you in her womb,” I heard Amy whisper into my ear before my mind could come up with supporting evidence, “But she raised you as her own. She loves you as her son, and sees you as such. That counts for something.”

I turned towards Amy. “How do you always know what I’m thinking?” I asked.

“I’ve known you my entire life, Flag,” she said. “I’m been reading you since before I could read books.”

“I’m just… I mean, me, son of a… you-know-what and a member of their family… their families… What does that make me? Prince of a dead kingdom? The bastard child of mortal enemies? The legacy of the imbeciles that killed us all?”

“You were always what you were,” Amethyst Shard said. “Now are you going to make yourself something different than that? That choice is up to you.” She leaned her muzzle next to my ear, and whispered in a sultry voice, “Myself, I’m rather partial for you not changing…well, not changing very much…”

“Let’s find a monitor,” I said to change the subject, my face flushed. “Regolith will be racing soon. He’s in the Marked division now.”

Amy rolled her eyes at my dodge. “He is a good TubeScooter, that one,” she said, and pointed towards a monitor on a wall. We trotted over, and nudged our way through the crowd until we could see.

“By the way, nice job on the Flash stage, Amy,” I said to my companion. “The trailing light beams in darkness was a bit unorthodox for the sport, but it did look great. We’ll have to think about that one for the rulebook revision.”

“Alright, ladies and gentlecolts,” the announcer on the monitor said, “Give it up for Rastus, with a respectable third place. But can he hold onto it? ‘Cause it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, ponyfolks! Here we go for the Marked Unicorn Flash final contestant, a little colt without a Cutie Mark yet. I know whach’ya’ll are thinkin’, but this is our own protégé of the TubeScoot, the destroyer of records—ok, we’ve been doing this for three years now, just about every run is unprecedented in some way—anyhow, this is the talented, the brave, the awesome, Stable 68’s little underdog pony, REGOLITH!”

The crowd around the monitor started cheering, and I could hear echoes from deeper down the tunnel. “Now we all know Reggie’s record—nothing below third place in every event he competed in last year, and scorching hot preliminary scores, but will our little pony be a one-hit wonder or will he make this just a competition for Second Place Overall every year? Let’s find out in three… two… one… GO… holy carp, look at him take off! I’ve never seen such acceleration! Little Reggie is going with a spell right off the start, but the acceleration doesn’t match any spell we’ve seen before. The little guy has some tricks up his sleeve, but does he have the stamina to keep that spell up throughout the race? Ok, he’s crossing into the obstacles now, a quick hop-and-rail-grind, a 360 coming off the rail, dodges the ramp, the halfpipe, the second halfpipe, he does realize that he has to pull off some stunts here, right?

“OK, he takes the ramp at Macintosh Hump and OH MY WORD, did you see that! He landed on the ceiling and is spiraling down the tunnel! I know what the competition is saying: horseapples! Ok, he’s tightening the spirals, he’s losing speed, HE’S FALLING! HE’S—Damn, that was slick! He fell off the full-pipe of the tunnel, righted himself, and pulled a 360 mime-and-barber-pole off to boot! Nice moves kid!

“Now he settles into the familiar routine, hitting every obstacle he can for a trick. Ollie, and Annie-Annie-Over, a vaudeville-cane-juggle, wait, a double, TRIPLE vaudeville-cane-juggle on the hump, he was just shuffling back and forth over the vertex. Look at him, there is no downtime between tricks, he’s just going at it. Is he even looking at what he’s doing? Look at his head, folks, it’s always pointed downslope at the next obstacle he hits. He isn’t looking at his scooter, he just knows where it is. This kid is gonna be something, folks, I can tell ya’ll that right now. This far outstrips his performance last year. Remember, this is the medium course, so he’s almost out of distance.

“Coming up on the Camelbacks, and he does an excellent series of vaudeville-cane-juggles at each hump. Look at him go, he’s building his speed up very quickly, must be that spell again, he must have something planned for the final ramp. I’m betting it’s that spiral he pulled off, we’ll see, because HERE… HE… GOES! Whoa, Nellie, he’s not on this scooter! Oh-no-no-no-nononono-YES! YES! YESSSSS! He had his board spiral around and he flew on through the air to land on it on the far side of the finish line! Did he self-levitate, or move the board telekinetically? The judges should look at that, but, from the lights on the table, there’s no foul—no, wait, the possible foul light came on. Regardless, that was undoubtedly the best Flash performance we’ve seen across the board. Give it up for REGGIE, my little ponies! Woo-hoo!”

“Day-umm,” was all I could say about Reggie’s run.

“Agreed,” Amethyst said. “Day-umm! That was great!”

The intercom buzzed for the Adult Open Unrestricted Crash contestants to form up at the starting line. Sadly, I would miss Reggie’s final event, but I’d catch it on rerun. That was great stuff he’d just pulled off. Fuck the foul, he’d made a hell of a show out of it, and that’s what Flash was all about.

“Ready to go, Flag?” somepony said from beside me, on my left. Razor, the older brother and legal guardian of our Stable problem child Rastus. Razor had brought Rastus into TubeScooter to try to focus the colt, to get him to apply himself to something non-destructive. It hadn’t worked, but Razor was trying to get Rastus straightened out. But Razor and I didn’t get along, and that didn’t help things on my end. Razor was a decent stallion, don’t get me wrong; we just couldn’t be in the same room. Unless we were racing.

“You bet, Razor,” I said, mounting my new custom-built scooter. It was longer and a bit wider than the standard adult scooters, but that’s what the Unrestricted Division was for—experimentation.

“I gotta say, your little protégé is good,” Razor said. “He beat Rastus fair and square, even if he hadn’t done that foul at the end. But don’t tell Rastus that.” See what I mean? Decent stallion.

“Got it,” I said. “Rastus wasn’t too bad, either. Fourth place ain’t shabby, though I suspect he won’t take being knocked off the winner’s podium well.” I saw Reggie running up through the starting grid. I briefly wondered why he hadn’t stayed down at the bottom of the run to watch me cross the finish line.

“I’ll try to lessen the blow,” Razor said. “Reggie and Rastus have never gotten along.”

“Think your plank’s got what it takes, Chief?” Amethyst said, three ponies to my right.

“Got more of what it takes than your deathtrap,” I hollered back. She wore roller skates on her hindlegs, and had a scooter with aerodynamic cowling in her forehooves. Except the scooter was missing the back wheels, and Amy had the front of her right-side skate magnetically snapped in where the rear wheel would be. She’d go down side-on.

“Ladies and gentlecolts, get ready for today’s big event, the Open Unrestricted Crash!” the intercom buzzed. The announcer paused to let the cheering die down. I slipped my goggles onto my eyes, and grabbed my scooter’s steering column in my hooves. The other contestants hunkered down, getting ready to shove off at the starting horn.

“Ok, folks, here’s how it goes—seventy competitors in a fifty foot diameter tube, 30 miles long with obstacles—ramps, half-pipes, full-pipes, rails, boxes, all kinds of stuff spaced randomly along the way. Anypony on any unpowered wheeled contraption that posts a good enough qualifying time can compete. There’s plenty of talent in the tube right now, but of course, nopony without talent makes it into competition. But we do have a list of the who’s who of TubeScoot down there. We got Razor, the caped Mare-Be-Quick, the Bounce, Hop, and Skip siblings, Amethyst Star—congrats on the Council seat, little lady—Security Chief Flag, and, if I may be so bold, our new crowd favorite, Regolith!”

I started coughing, hard. Reggie was in the adult division? I looked behind me, and sure enough, in the starting position that indicated he’d qualified at 67th of 70 competitors, was Reggie in a modified red toy wagon. But… the rules didn’t specify a minimum age requirement for the “adult” division, just an ability to post a good enough qualifying time/score. But Crash involved a good deal of body contact—I hoped Reggie wouldn’t be injured running into the bigger ponies.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking, folks, but there ain’t an age restriction on the so-called ‘adult’ divisions—ya’ just need to do a good job in qualifying, like I said. Alright, ponyfolks, let’s do this in three…”

I turned back around, and hunkered down, my hindlegs spread slightly, ready to shove off.

“Two…”

At two, the Eyes-Forward-Sparkle (EFS) of all the competitors’ PipBucks was remotely activated. The display was modified to display a minimap of the course (not very necessary, as the route was a spiral, but it did let you know how much farther you had left), had a speedometer, and displayed distance to each competitor and the next checkpoint. The internal processors of the PipBucks were forced into an overclocked operating mode, as they normally couldn’t generate the framerate needed for the EFS hologram to work for a racer. All contestants had their PipBucks go through a servicing after a competition.

“One…”

I sent a quick prayer to Celestia for good sportsmanship, and one to Luna for victory.

The starting gun fired. I shoved off, gaining enough speed to catch a little air on the second camelback just after the start line. I hadn’t gotten the best headstart, but it was better than most. I lowered myself down, putting most of my body behind the aerodynamic cowling I had attached to my scooter’s steering column. The contestants started to accordion out as individual skill levels stratified. Razor, Amy, and I were side-by-side near the front (that order, me being on the far right), with Mare-Be-Quick in the lead with that crazy cape billowing behind her. Mare-Be-Quick was a nickname, as the mare under the cape didn’t want fans off the track, but I knew who she was in real life—you’d never guess our schoolteacher could TubeScoot with the best of them.

The pony in second, a unicorn chap named Soybean, had the rear wheel detach from his scooter at Mile Three. He managed to throw himself onto his back, skidding down the tunnel towards a padded box obstacle on the right-hoof side. Soybean lost hold of his scooter, which the next pony (ironically named Ramrod) rammed into, sending him hooves-over-mane.

I cut right, swinging onto the tunnel’s side and over the box-obstacle Soybean had hit. Razor broke left on his lightweight scooter, and Amy actually hopped over Ramrod, clipping his scooter with her left hindleg on landing. She wobbled badly, then steadied, several yards behind Razor and me. We were side-by-side, hunkered down to catch up to Mare-Be-Quick.

I heard a rhythmic clatter behind be, occurring about once every three seconds. As Amy pulled up on my right, mane whipping behind her, I saw she was using the brake on her free roller skate to kick herself to higher speeds. Smart. I soared over a ramp, and landed on the other side. Now we were getting into the Flash section of the track, were the obstacles were thickest and smart ponies slowed down—and the unwise didn’t. I started laying on my brakes, trying to shed just enough speed to be safe but not so much I had to make up ground. I banked off a half-pipe and swerved around a rail. A quick glance to my right showed Razor grinding on a rail, but with his scooter parallel to the rail. I filed that image away—I had to concentrate on dodging obstacles.

Mare-Be-Quick wiped out, screwing the landing off a ramp when her lightweight scooter snapped in half. Like Soybean, she threw herself onto her back, the safest way to slow down after a crash. The three of us dodged her, and reformed into a triangle, Amy and Razor in front, me in back, catching their slipstream as we cleared the Flash area and went into the speed-geared Dash section, half the course left to go. I looked back quickly, and my EFS showed three racers within a hundred yards—one of them Reggie. I looked back forward, and willed myself to go faster. But every time I moved to get around Amy or Razor, I dropped out of the slipstream and lost speed.

Amy performed a hop-skip-kick, swapping her tired left hindleg into the back of her scooter to let her rested right hindleg kick up her speed.

As she did, I heard a rattling behind me, coming up on my right. I leaned left, trying again to pass Razor, but this time I hunkered down so low and so far forward that my muzzle was against the handlebars, with only my eyes and helmet peaking over the cowling. I leaned left, and edged out of Razor’s slipstream, but I continued to gain on him this time.

As I passed, I saw Reggie on my left, in that three-wheeled modification of a wagon he’d made. He was on his back, with the wagon’s handle squeezed between his hindlegs—it looked like an awkward way to steer. His forelegs wrapped around two handles, and as I watched him clear Amy, he twisted himself, canting the large rear wheel and sliding the wagon sideways. I noticed his horn was aglow, with a magic field wrapped around himself. I slid right, and got into his airstream. I could hear Amy and Razor slide in behind me.

We came up to the gentle slaloms, and the four of us started snaking back and forth. Reggie released his magic spell, and his wagon started to slow, but he switched to another spell that targeted his wagon, and he started weaving sharply through the slalom. Too sharply—he was shedding speed fast. I leaned harder, and, at a shallower slalom, shot past him, gaining the lead. I tapped my brake, slowing slightly for the remaining slaloms, but I was in the lead—and I stayed there for the next five miles. But with only five miles left, Reggie came barreling past me, his horn shining brightly. And there were no obstacles on the final five miles, just a huge speed run.

Reggie slowly opened up the gap, and I knew he had me. Still, I wasn’t giving up—the speed run had yet to produce an upset, but this time, by Luna, it would. I willed myself to go faster, to slice through the air—and somehow, I think it worked. I started gaining on Reggie, not quickly, but it was there.

The bend of the tunnel reversed for about a half mile, then swerved back to its old direction, but tighter. Here, the drill head had detoured around a subterranean spring, making a switch-back in the rock. Reggie and I took different lines through the feature, mine less aggressive. Again, Reggie’s sharper turns shed energy, and I really started to gain on him.

We hit the finish line neck-and-neck. I couldn’t tell who won. And neither could the judges. But the crowds cheered wildly for both me and Reggie, the champions of TubeScooter.

*** *** ***

Stable 68 Security Department Locker Room
1230 CY

The victory party for us went on for hours, but I had to excuse myself to go ready my men for the excursion into the mine we had hit. We were all barding up—I guess you can use barding as verb when you’re putting on barding—in the Security Section Locker Room when the SPAT team sounder went off. Everyone who wasn’t on the team (which was three ponies, I think) scrambled out, and the rest of us waited for the intercom to kick on to tell us which team was activating.

My heart stopped when I heard what it said.

“Rastus has taken Regolith hostage at gunpoint. Chief, take the expedition team to the drillhead immediately, we think Rastus is trying to get into the mines.”

Oh fuck me with a manticore tail!

“Alright, drop your cocks and grab your socks!” I barked out. “Finish with the hazmat suits, then don your plate carriers and weapons. Move it!” Within two minutes, everypony was ready and galloping towards the drill head with me. I had three weapons on me—the PDW I’d used on the SPAT team, my 10mm pistol, and my shotgun, 68 Laws. The hazmat suit and plate carrier combined had made it uncomfortable to carry 68 Laws in its quick draw holster across my chest, so I attached a sling and hung it on my neck. We got to the drill head just in time to see the lower access hatch swing shut.

“Gordo, throw the latch on the top hatch,” I ordered the unicorn. “Highway, do the same on the bottom. Torch, throw a smoke grenade through the lower hatch and close it. Everypony else, boost me through the top hatch when the smoke starts coming through. And keep your EFS and SATS spooled up, they’ll tell us if we can take Rastus alive.”

I tied the end of a rope ladder around my waist, climbed up the ladder of ponies, and as soon as the smoke started to float through the hatch, I pushed over. But my shotgun got stuck on the edge, leaving me dangling, and I couldn’t work my way out from it. Gordo drew a knife, and used his magic to slice through the sling. I fell through the door, turned back, and Gordo telekinetically passed me my shotgun.

I slung 68 Laws across the back of my neck, and untied the rope around my waist. Lashing it down to a roller on the drillhead, I told everypony else to come out. Once the twelve of us were through, the access hatch on the drill head was closed. The drill didn’t use spiral grooves to cut through the rock, but instead used a flat face with magically-hardened rollers to crush through the rock as it went. The whole thing was animated by unicorns, and it worked very well, averaging a hundred feet of tunnel a day ever since the megaspells had struck. Refining talismans pulled valuable materials out of the mined rock at the molecular level. (I didn’t get molecules at the time—if I couldn’t see it with a microscope, then it was less real to me than magic—but I did know that it was a very small scale, and at it, there was a teeny little bit of gold or iridium or titanium or carbon or whatever in any rock.) We reworked the most common compounds into the waterproof lining of the tunnel walls, and stored what we didn’t need right then a density-enhanced state in containers along the tunnel.

“Alright, form up. I’m taking point, non-SPAT personnel, stay in the middle. Torch, Highway, Beige Ball, take our six, walk backwards. I’ll lead us to Rastus and Reggie. When I say ‘biscuit,’ pair up and fan out into a semicircle, half the ponies facing Rastus, half facing out. We don’t know if there’s anything in these caves, so eyes open. Let’s move!” I drew my PDW.

The drill head had reversed two hundred feet from the point its lower edge had breached into the mine. The smoke reduced visibility and we couldn’t see the end of the tunnel. As we moved forward, the smoke began thinning. With fifty feet between us, I spotted Rastus and Reggie, dead ahead, both of them with their PipBuck lamps on. Fortunately, my EFS was painting both Reggie and Rastus as friendly. We could still talk this out.

“Stop!” Rastus yelled, telekinetically drawing the revolver he’d obtained. He waved it at us, then pressed the muzzle against Reggie’s head.

I motioned with my left foreleg for a skirmish line. For some reason, Rastus didn’t want to go into the mines. Ok, we could play that angle for a while, long enough to get some knockout gas pumped into the tunnel and mine, hopefully. Our radiation suits had full rebreather gear, so we’d be alright.

“Rastus, what’s going on?” Amethyst asked kindly, softly, as she walked up alongside me.

“What does it look like?” Rastus demanded. “All my life, ponies have treated me like shit! Mom, Dad, teachers, strangers, they all see me, kick me down, and trot all over my ass! When I try to ask for help, nopony does fucking nothin’! I finally get into something they can’t push me down at, and then—BAM—they move this fucking worthless cheatin’ blank-flank against me, and let him cheat his way to victory! Swiped the medal I’d earned away from me! And then that little bitch goes screaming rape when she was the one coming on strong to me. Too damn bad I didn’t get a chance to waste her, too!”

“Why do you have the gun, Rastus?” Amy asked. I kept looking for an opportunity for a shot, but my EFS still tagged Rastus as friendly, non-threatening. The kid was just blowing off steam. In the worst possible way, but he didn’t seem to want to harm Reggie. But things could change real fast.

I swished my tail horizontally twice, the signal for kill when hostile.

“I’m gonna kill him!” Rastus roared. “Oh, don’t be so pissed off about it. We’re stuck in this fucking tunnel, stuck in the Stable until the day we die! It’s a death sentence to live down here! What’s so wrong…” Rastus moved his head onto the opposite side of Reggie’s, “with taking a worthless cheatin’ little fuck out of the picture a couple decades early? We all die, whether by a tunnel collapse, an electrical fire, a gunshot wound, or old age. Why let the worthless ones waste our resources? Resources aren’t infinite, that’s what the fuckin’ war was over! So let’s conserve them, stretch them out by removing the worthless ponies, and make sure there’s more than enough to go around. Besides, it’s not like the truth can stack up against a memory orb in court. I’m a dead pony; I just choose to go out on my own terms!”

Something let out a piercing scream, one that made you screw your eyes shut in painful reflex. Everypony gasped, but as soon as it started, it stopped.

“What the fuck was that!?!” Rastus yelled, glancing behind him. The scream had come from behind him, from the mines below. But my EFS wasn’t catching anything.

“Rastus, maybe you should step away from the edge,” Amy suggested.

“Yeah, yeah, ok, but you all move back, too! We’re keeping the same distance between us all,” Rastus said. “And you ponies first!”

I nodded my head. “Alright, do it, ponyfolks,” I ordered. “Three steps back.” Our skirmish line took three steps back. Rastus took three steps forward.

“OK, Rastus, you wanna move anymore?” Amy asked. Rastus shook his head. “That’s fine, that’s fine,” Amethyst said, taking a deep breath. “Now, Rastus, is there anything you want from us? Anything we can do for you?”

A loud growl filled the tunnel. I saw Rastus’s IFF pip turn red—no, there was something hostile on the same bearing, directly behind him. I spit the bit of my PDW, and cradled it in the crook of my right foreleg. “Rastus, there’s something hostile behind you,” I said, taking a step forward as I rose onto my hindlegs, standing tall. “Let’s continue this inside the Stable…”

“No, NO, STAY BACK!” Rastus yelled, pressing the pistol harder against Reggie’s head, just as ten—no, twenty hostiles, fuck, too damn many red ticks appeared on my EFS.

“Rastus, bring up your EFS, NOW!” I shouted.

Rastus flicked his right forehoof against his PipBuck, then turned pale.

“Orders, sir?” Gordo asked.

Rastus turned around, and looked into the mine.

Everything happened at once.

Rastus screamed as his IFF tick turned red. He’d put his back to us and Reggie’s head out of the line of fire.

My markspony put a single fragmenting round through the back of Rastus’s skull. He was dead instantly and quite messily. It’d be a closed casket funeral for him.

Four nightmare monsters leapt up from the mineshaft—that’s all I could describe them as, an armored carapace with three glowing red-orange eyes and seven orifices with squirming, shadowy tendrils bursting forth from the openings. They slung tentacles at the tunnel floor, and pulled themselves to the ground, between us and the living Reggie.

Three squid-like tentacles, each as big around as I was tall at the withers, burst over the ledge into the tunnel. One grabbed Reggie, one grabbed Rastus, and one anchored itself in the ceiling.

“Open fire!” I yelled, locking targets with my SATS (Stable-tech Arcane Targeting Spell). I slammed the foregrip of my PDW with my left foreleg, driving the gun’s bit into the flesh of my right foreleg until it pushed against bone and the trigger activated—it was painful, but faster than switching the bit into my mouth. My spell guided the wild burst into what I and SATS figured was the middle creature’s head, fifteen rounds pouring in with a single burst as I used up the full spell charge. All around me, ponies were firing, pumping rounds into the monsters, tendrils severing under the withering fire, but the abominations weren’t even phased. They started advancing.

A glow snapped on beside me, then stepped up in intensity twice. The monsters stumbled back, mainly, I think, because of the light—subterranean creatures can be very sensitive to bright lights. I glanced, and saw Amethyst, standing tall on her hindlegs like me, her horn covered in two layers of overglow, her mane whipping wildly in the energy field she was gathering.

Amethyst Shard wasn’t the strongest at unicorn magic, but she had been able to master a wide variety of spells, a very rare gift. Most importantly, no unicorn known could cast spells as rapidly or ramp her power into non-sustainable levels as fast as she could. She’d once achieved a burnout-level spell in ten seconds flat—and been magic-less for a month afterwards. But we’d be dead within five minutes if she didn’t change the battle dynamic into our favor.

Amy collected three balls of energy around her left forehoof, grabbed one with her right forehoof, and chucked the magic sphere at a monster. Quickly, mechanically, she threw the other two energy spheres with practiced ease and precision. On contact, the monsters were repelled backwards with great force, splatting into the tunnel face behind them. Their bodies slid down into the mine, but five monsters leapt up to replace them. These lashed themselves down with their tentacles, and when Amy immediately hit each with the propulsion spell, they were bucked backwards… but held their ground, several tendrils snapped under the strain.

“Swap spells!” I ordered. “Incendiary ammo if you have it! Fighting retreat, let’s go!” I placed my PDW’s bit into my mouth, and fired it as designed until the magazine was spent. As soon as I had reloaded a magazine with red-tipped bullets, my targeting spell was refreshed.

Amy was sloughing the monsters with fireballs, which burned away their tentacles, but not their bodies. As tentacles regrew out of their armored carapaces (WHAT THE FUCK!!!), they’d lash themselves back to the tunnel floor, negating her propulsion spell. And dozens of the monsters were now in our tunnel, advancing at the same speed we retreated. There was a flash as a third layer of overglow covered Amy’s horn.

“Everypony inside!” I ordered, again holding my SMG in the crook of my right foreleg, this time to reload. “I’ll go after Reggie, try to save him. Amy, I need you to bring the tunnel down behind me, and then get the Stable moving in reverse. Seal the shaft as you go, and stay the fuck away from these things!”

“Fuck that noise!” Amy said, as she starting slamming the monsters with Weight Gain Spells, scaling up their apparent mass until they collapsed against the floor. But the fresh troops just walked over their fallen brothers, still advancing on us. “That’s a one way trip, and you aren’t taking it! Not on my watch!”

“Not up for discussion, my love!” I screamed. I flexed my wings with all my strength, and tore them out of my radiation suit. My PipBuck started clicking as I started to be lightly irradiated.

“Goddesses dammit, you’re coming back!” Amy yelled.

“Of course I am,” I lied. This was suicide, and even if it wasn’t, then I’d never be able to get back inside the Stable. The main door had been sealed via tunnel collapse. “I’ve had a good run. No regrets, my love.” I finished my reload, pulled up Reggie’s tag on my PipBuck’s homing/tracking system, placed the PDW in my mouth, and leapt into flight. I skimmed just over the monsters, rolled, and bolted into the mine. I heard Amy scream a stream of curses, and then she did as I asked.

We were thousands of feet underground, with millions of tons of rock above us. A Weight Gain Spell on the tunnel roof brought it crashing down. I turned on my PipBuck lamp, and sped through the mine after the signal from Reggie’s PipBuck tag.

I flew harder, faster, and longer than I ever had before. While Reggie’s signal took a convoluted path through the mine, it kept jumping up to the next level, slowly headed for the surface. I kept flying, knowing I couldn’t lose him. If I lost him, all would be for naught.

I must have flown for hours before Reggie’s signal stopped moving, one floor above me. I flew up, and saw something my mind could not believe.

I was at the surface. The surface. I’d spent my entire life underground, and here I had emerged into the clouded twilight of the surface. I was outside, and it was HUGE! So much space! This was what a pegasus needed! SPAAAAAAAACE!

But my reverie was smashed as I saw the mining and refining facility downslope of me. It stretched through the entire mountain valley, a massive operation that pulled the metal-rich rocks the Stable had been drilling through out of the ground and loaded them onto barges, all locked together and pulled by a single mighty tug.

Except the barges weren’t in the water. They floated several hundred yards over the mining camp. A camp inhabited only by the monsters that had snatched Reggie, who’s PipBuck tag read as coming from the tug vessel.

And from the middle of the camp, right underneath the tug, came a distorting pulsating field of rainbow light. It was emanating from a complex geometric shape of zebra construction—a balefire bomb. What the fuck was that doing there? I knew what it was from a government document on them that the Stable had somehow gotten a hold of. So why did these bastards have one sitting inside their camp?

I focused on what I was doing. I needed to grab Reggie and fly us out of here. Then, if I could, maybe come back and wipe these bastards out. With a shotgun, a PDW, and a pistol. Long odds at best, but I knew I could do it.

“You need more than confidence to defeat them,” someone said behind me. I turned, and I saw an alicorn hovering behind me. An alicorn! He was a member of the Royal Family! His body was brown with off-shade spots, and his draconic eyes were yellow-green. His wings were a random mass of feathers, but they kept him aloft. His black-and-grey mane and tail were sharply swept back into large spikes. His horn had been broken off at some point, and his left ear had the tip bitten off. He sported forest camouflaged barding, but carried no obvious weapons. And he was easily three times my height at the withers—he was massive, and that probably meant old, too. True alicorns, like those of the nearly immortal Royal Family, were said to take over a thousand years to reach full size, but they never truly stopped growing.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He paused for a while. “Someone who only cares for those strong enough to aid himself. Sorry, but you get to die today.” A light formed on the jagged end of his horn, and then slammed into me. I collapsed to the ground, completely immobilized.

“You want to live? Destroy these creatures, these oodalekka. Earn being of the alicorn species,” the stallion said before he flew off. Within a few moments, several of the tendril creatures came along, some sort of impossibly fat and stocky rifle clutched in their tendrils. Two of them picked me up and stuffed me into a large canister.

I passed out, and a memory came into my mind.

ooo OOO ooo

I’d been in memories before via recollector, so I was only surprised, not disoriented, by the shift into the mare’s body. She felt young, her wings were strong as they flapped idly. I saw that she was in a stonework building draped with rich banners and adorned with stained glass. My host walked up to a mirror, and I got a good look at the alicorn.

She was taller and more gracefully built than most ponies. Her royal purple coat was stained with blood and mostly hidden by the armor and battlesaddle she wore, but what I assumed was her Cutie Mark was emblazoned on her armor’s flanks—a golden flagpole with an alicorn topper bearing the blank outline of a flag. Her crimson mane fell past her belly, with streaks of gold, silver, and ivory in it. Her golden eyes bore exhaustion, a terrible grief, and a fierce determination.

“If this is anypony but Flag watching this memory," she said in such a musical voice, "Then I ask that you pass this memory orb off to another pony as soon as you can. The enchantments I’ve laid upon it will ensure that it gets to its destination through barter and trade.

“If this is Sparrow, I’m sorry, honey, the spell must have locked onto you instead of your Flag. Get this to him, but know that much of what I say is meant for both of you.

“Now, to business. Where do I begin? I know your destiny, my child. If you haven’t been told, yes, you are my child. Your father was a zebra, Gaius Xebec Caesar. He was the uncle of Gaius Xavier Caesar, the Caesar whom we fought the war against. You have as much blood right to being Caesar as Xavier did, but you must gain the Senate’s acceptance to do so. I met your father when he was disguised as a pony, a buck who went by the name Pitahaya, after his cutie mark, or Dragonfruit Pete. He was a good person. I did not know his lineage until after we mated… until after he was imprisoned.”

The alicorn paused, and her musical voice took on a tone of that tore my heart up in sympathy for her pain.

“I just watched him die in my hooves…

“I guess you should know who I am," she continued after a moment to compose herself. "I’m Princess Mi Amore Azienda, child of Mi Amore Cadenza, the Princess of the Crystal Empire. I served as the alicorn caretaker of the nation of Ponyvois, the true superpower of our world that ensured they profited from both sides of the conflict. I left the government to run itself—perhaps too much so. Here at the end, we are at war with both the zebras and Equestria, a fate which has doomed us to the wrath of both.

“As I speak to you, Equestria falls. I feel the balefire bombs going off—Cloudsdayle, Maripony, Manehattan, the Hoof, Fillydelphia… Roam. The pegasi have abandoned us to our doom, saving themselves as they cower behind their cloud cover. Fools, they fail to realize that they can’t survive without us. I can feel the echoes of our own megaspells—Celestia Prime is dormant now, with the Manehattan skies clouded over. But I feel the earthquakers sundering dams and uncorking volcanoes, the thermals and photonics are vaporizing all combustibles, and Luna Station is raining down Mjolnir warheads on my beloved Ponyvois. And I know that they have a weapon within the Canterlot shield already.

“I parted from you because I foresaw this outcome while I was pregnant with you. I had to ensure you survived, because I’ve seen your destiny. Flag, you will bring a true end to the Age of Alicorns. Our world has always been under the sway of immortal beings. As alicorns, it is our destiny to reshape the world. But what I realized was that alicorns are not meant to rule, we are meant to advise. The populace is meant to rule."

I felt her ears twitch to sounds of distant screams, and the mare turned her head to look out a busted stained glass window. Outside, a pink fog was rolling across a huge plaza and reflecting pool. Ponies caught in it where dropping dead and... melting into whatever they touched.

“Necromantic gas, like at the Academy. Of course. Not the best way for me to die. I’ll try to shield Celestia and Luna as long as I can—their shield will keep the gas inside Canterlot, maybe long enough to evacuate Zebratown and the other settlements. But I must cut this short.

“My child, I do not envy you your fate. But our fate is divined by another—our destiny is what we do to accomplish that fate. It’ll take a lifetime to truly understand what I’m saying, but know this: the things that will happen to you are tests. How you pass those tests is up to you. You have a nation to build from the ashes of the world.

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. Which are you, my child? You must find out, or he will destroy you."

ooo OOO ooo

Footnote: Level Up—Lived Under A Rock—Whoever said dim lighting was bad for your eyes wasn't you. You see better in low-light conditions, and your eyes adjust to changes in lighting faster.

Species Trait—[REDACTED]

Species Trait—Zebra—You striped traitor! Ain’t ya supposed to be fighting for Equestria? +1 Agility and +10 to Stealth and Melee skills. Your relationship with all faction starts off at -50

Starting Trait—Four Eyes—The more the merrier, in a way. You suffer a -1 Perception penalty when not wearing corrective lenses, but gain at least +1 while wearing corrective lenses.

Author's Note

Author’s Note: Hope ya’ll will come along for the ride—this ain’t exactly a short story, I’m figuring it’ll be 300,000 words (about half the size of the original Fallout Equestria) absolute minimum, plus the possibility of post-epilogue side stories. Sorry this initial chapter is so big, but I needed to set up a lot of material. Trust me, I trimmed a lot out—this is the second version I’ve posted. Thanks go to Khat for creating the universe, and also to Somber for his excellent Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons, which inspired me to write this story. Props to Adder1 for his excellent FOE: The Last Sentinel; I'm borrowing his Mancer concept for several characters.

Now for some of my friends, whom I will refer to by initials. To SH: you tried to keep Fallout Equestria hidden from me, and that was a wise decision. But you failed and I am happy for it. To JG: You and SH made me a brony. Nuff said. And CB—you’ve given me an open ear regarding this story since before you were a pegasister, so thanks a lot for listening to the crazy person.

On another note, I need editors! Check my fimfiction.net bio for details. Thanks for reading.
Note: Revised as of 3/25/2013; didn't want as much foreshadowing as I had originally put in.
Note: Revised as of 8/1/2013 for the same reasons, and because the foreshadowing made it suck.

Chapter 2 The Great Escape

Chapter 2
The Great Escape

“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed,
given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.”

1230 CY, 23 years post-war
Alien vessel

“Hey, you awake there?” somepony asked me. I opened my eyes, and saw an earth pony mare (spiked black mane, short cut tail, blue coat, red eyes, Cutie Mark of a bull whip) in makeshift armor (leather and… tractor tires?) staring at me from the far side of an oval room. A quick examination of the room showed walls of an off-white beige that were curved beyond all necessity, one doorway, a hole in the ceiling, and some sort of electric green film that covered the latter two. No beds, food dispensers, or features on the walls that could be picked apart. My weapons, armor and equipment was gone, including my tech goggles, but I still had my PipBuck.

“Where are we?” I asked groggily.

“How the hell should I know? One day I’m escorting sl—serfs and then bam, I’m up here! I don’t know what these two legged bastards want, but… Shit, get down!”

There was a whirring noise from above, and I looked up to see a robotic arm slide along an overhead rail past our cell.

“Whew, it’s not for us,” the mare stated with a sigh. “They don’t stop at a cell they aren’t nabbing from, so we’re safe from it. Just so long as you don’t cause any trouble, that is.”

“What is this, a prison?” I asked.

“No dip, Sherhoof, it’s a prison,” the mare said. “I’ve been here over a year, based off my menstrual cycle. Just stay low, and they probably won’t come after us.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Shasta. Yours?”

“Flag, Security Chief of Stable 68,” I said. “Where are you from?”

“Shattered Hoof Rockbreaking Camp, before the war,” she answered. “Me and some… companions found a hospital on Route 52 with a massive stash of RadAway. Not much on food, but out on the surface, RadAway is more important.”

“You’re living on the surface? How bad is the radiation?” I asked.

“Pretty bad anywhere within ten miles of a balefire strike,” she stated. “The Societies are the major players—the Twilight Society in Manehattan, and the Grimhoof Society outside of Hoofington. And the New Equestrian Army and the Steel Rangers are still out there, but as long as you aren’t shooting them, they aren’t shooting you, and that’s fine with me. We just started to see the first of the Stable ponies start emerging onto the surface about five years ago.”

I heard a faint screaming, and looked back up at the overhead track just in time to see the robotic arm slide past, with a familiar colt squirming in its mechanical grasp.

“Reggie!” I cried, then looked at Shasta. “How do we get out of here?”

“We can’t. The only time the door or ceiling opens is when one of them comes inside,” Shasta said cryptically.

I spread my wings and vaulted into the force field over the door as hard as I could, bouncing off like it was a brick wall. I bellowed in anger, and charged the opposing wall, hammering the unsuspecting structure with my hooves as hard as I could. After my hooves began to bleed, I turned around, shouting out the doorway. “Hey, you cunts! Why don’t you come after me? Yeah, ME! I think you’re afraid of me, you lousy fucktards! Your father was a sea anemone and your mother was a feral mutt, you limp-dicked flea-ridden bastard sons of bitches! I wanna see who thinks they can do this to me! I wanna see just how fucking tough you think you are!”

“You can rant and rave all you want, they won’t come,” Shasta said.

I turned towards her. Inspiration struck.

I went for her throat.

In a moment, three bipedal creatures were at the door, glowing shock batons raised in one of their three arms, shouting orders at me in some indecipherable language of clicks and bops. Shasta’s face was getting bluer as I keyed a command on my PipBuck with my pinion feathers. One of the creatures hit a control beside the door, and the forcefield snapped off.

I triggered SATS and lined up my shot.

I used Shasta’s body as a springboard, and shot through the air, wings tucked close to my side. My forehooves plowed into the head of one alien with so much force its head simply disconnected. I bounced off the passageway’s opposite wall and twisted midair so that I landed in a run. And I was off like a shot.

Alarms began hooting throughout the facility, which I quickly realized was massive. I came across a guard alien, shock baton raised. I leapt into the air, started a frontflip, and grabbed the alien’s head in my hooves. I snapped the creature’s neck with a metallic pop, and slammed down onto my rear hooves. I pulled the body forwards, tossing it at another guard coming around the corner. The corpse collided and knocked the alien off his feet, both shock batons dropping to the floor. I raced forward, and cinched the double straps of the batons around my forelegs. Now I was armed.

The next guard to come around the corner got a shock baton driven through each eye socket. I could smell his brains cooking under the electrical discharge. I hurried along, my front legs sparking as the shock batons slammed into and discharged against the floor. I rounded a corner into some kind of storage bay, right where my PipBuck was placing the RFID tag of 68 Laws. I snapped on the pinging feature and waved my PipBuck around the room, quickly determining that the drielling was in chest-like structure on my left. I tapped the button on the chest, and a plane of light popped into existence, displaying hundreds of pictographs. I felt lucky, and punched out a sequence with my pinion feathers. “Ice cream cone, camera, bird, umbrella, clover,” I muttered as I hit the corresponding symbols. The chest hissed open, and I saw all of my gear inside. My guns were even loaded! I started to give a whoop of excitement…

A thatch of tendrils wrapped around my neck, and pulled me off my hooves. I slammed into the floor, and the tendril monster moved to position its armored carapace above me. Tendrils ripped the shock batons off my hooves as it studied me with those three blazing orange eyes. The nightmare slammed me into the ceiling, a wall, the floor, a rack of chests, the ceiling again, the floor again, the ceiling again, and then the sole window of the storeroom, all within a second.

Dammit, I needed my PDW! I mentally screamed against the pain of so many broken bones, staring at the weapon that lay twenty feet across the room, uselessly out of reach. It wouldn’t put this bastard down, but it might loosen its grip so that it couldn’t choke me to death! The monster wrapped two more thatches of tendrils around my chest, constricting me as I choked. The fourth tendril thatch reached to its belt and drew one of those impossibly chubby rifles. I kept staring at the PDW, willing it to float int—

Son of a bitch.

The creature leaned its head closer, retracting tendrils to reveal a three-part maw of plaque-yellowed teeth as it screamed into my face. I struggled to focus as my vision narrowed. Satisfied with the positioning, I hit SATS, and put fifteen incendiary shredder rounds into the back of the bastard’s head.

The nightmare creature dropped me, tendrils clutching at its head. The burst had launched my PDW from my newly discovered telekinetic grasp; I had no idea where it had gone to. But I did know where the monster had dropped its rifle, which was easy enough to pick up in my forehooves.

Turns out aliens use triggers like everyone else, and that triggers are easy to pull telekinetically.

The world filled with a flash of blinding cyan, and steaming hot gore coated my body. I shook myself like a wet dog trying to get it off. My vision returned with a severe red afterimage, intensifying the scene of boiled viscera coating the room. The only thing left of the creature was the back of its carapace. I knew from the battle at the drill head that these things were insanely though.

If this is what their weapons do to them, I shudder to think what would happen to a pony.

I was able to don my hazmat suit and barding and restow my gear. I set my tech goggles to 80% polarization, and grabbed the chubby rifle. My EFS labeled it a “karabin fulmen,” and it had 99 shots left in the magazine. I cradled it in my arms and started following my PipBuck’s routing to get me to Reggie.

“Oh, you made it,” Shasta said from the doorway. “Holy fuck, you killed a tentacle? How’d you pull that off?”

“Incendiary shredder rounds to the head,” I stated. “Then I stole its gun.”

Shasta whistled. “You find your gear in there?”

“Yes. Grab yours if you can find it.”

“Finding it’s not the problem,” she said as she trotted up to a chest. “I’ve never been able to hack the lock.”

“Allow me,” I offered, and pushed keys with my pinions while I covered the doorway. “Frowny hexagon, catfish, pyramid of gold bars, ice cream cone. Bam, said the lady.” And the chest hissed open.

“How the hell… you know what, I don’t want to know how you did that. Can you open any other chests?” Shasta asked as she pulled a battle saddle and two LMGs out of the chest and set about attaching them.

“I don’t feel lucky with any of the others,” I stated. “I figure release everypony we can, grab every weapon we can, grab Reggie, and GTFO this trash heap.”

“Who’s this Reggie, your kid brother or something?”

“He’s from my Stable. I came out here to rescue him, and that’s what I’m doing. Might as well free everyone else along the way. You’re free to take them on yourself and leave now, but you’d have a pretty hard time killing the tentacle ones with a machine gun.”

Shasta sighed. “Your goody-two-horseshoes attitude will get you killed out in the Wasteland, but I’m in. Let’s go.”

*** *** ***

“So you’re Apple Bumpkin?” I asked the tan filly we’d just rescued. She had three candied apples for her Cutie Mark.

“Yep,” she said. “Hey, are you Colonel Cosmos?”

“I’m not familiar with Colonel Cosmos,” I answered.

“Now that she mentions it, you do resemble Cosmos,” Shasta said. “Pre-war teleBuck program. My little filly used to spend hours watching it. Unique in that it had a male lead.”

I looked at Shasta curiously. “Shasta, how many years do you reckon it’s been since the war?”

“About five—no, ten years. Why?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Your age didn’t line up, is all.”

“You’re lying, I can tell,” Bumpkin said.

“Fine, I’m lying,” I said. Kids, sheesh. “You just look really good for your age, Shasta. That’s all. Come on, Reggie’s this way.”

“Oh, you don’t want to go that way,” Bumpkin said. “That’s where they torture people and grow new things. If you want to escape, we need to head to the bridge.”

“And why should we listen to you, short stuff?” Shasta asked.

“Cause I escape all the time, silly,” Bumpkin said. “It’s really fun to go crawling around the inside of the ship. The bridge is really fun to watch, it’s almost like Colonel Cosmos! But the torture chambers aren’t fun, and if they find you’ve escaped there, they don’t take you back to your cell, they strap you into a chair.”

“My friend is there, Bumpkin,” I said. “I swore I’d save him, and I do everything I swear to do.”

“OK, that was definitely Colonel Cosmos right there,” Shasta said.

“Come on, we’re headed for the torture chambers,” I said, and set off.

*** *** ***

“Alright, this is it,” Bumpkin said as we came up to massive door. “The growing rooms and torture chambers lie on the other side of this door. Let me crawl through and unlock it!” And with that, the filly shimmied into an air duct faster than you could say, “Hey!”

“Where’d she go?” Hazard, the unicorn medic we’d picked up, asked.

“Nani o itte orunoda,” our samurai friend asked. “Kono chi ni mioboe no nai. Ittai sessha ni nani wo shita?"

“Toto, we can’t understand you,” Brindle Young, a genuine cowpony, said very slowly, as if that would help comprehension. “Why don’t you learn Equestrian like everypony else? Aliens like you and the Lexicans are bad enough, but with these aliens walking around, I don’t need your shit.”

“Brindle, when he’s from, there is no Equestria,” I said.

“What do you mean by that?” Shasta asked.

“I mean Toto, as he’s affectionately known, is a real Neighponese samurai,” I said. “His sword he was so happy I found? I know metallurgy, and that is real pre-Celestia steel. So either he’s the richest cosplayer in post-apocalypse Neighpon, or he’s been on this ship over a thousand years.”

“What are you saying, that the aliens snatched him out of time?” Hazard said. “If they snatched him out of the past, then… Sweet Celestia, who knows what year it actually is?”

“It’s the Year of Celestia 1230,” I said. “Even though Celestia died 23 years ago. PipBucks use a quantum chronometer, it always shows the date as it actually is at the place it’s at.”

“Horseapples, no way Celestia can die,” Brindle stated. “She’s the Goddess of the Sun.”

“Yeah, and what about Princess Luna?” I asked.

“Ain’t no such pony. Celestia’s the only Princess,” Brindle stated. “Wait, you ain’t talking about that Nighmare Moon stuff, are you? That’s just an old mare’s tale, and an excuse to wear funny clothes and get candy once a year.”

“Hazard, what’s the last thing you remember in the news? Not a day-to-day thing, but the last big thing?” I asked.

“Well, MacIntosh’s Marauders had just got back from Dawn Bay,” Hazard said. “Missed the stripe they were gunning for, though. There was talk of a peace summit, a real one—Celestia was supposed to go to that one. I volunteered—anything to shorten the war, right?”

“But Luna was the Princess in charge, right? The Ministries had been formed and all of that jazz?”

“Oh, yeah, all of that had happened, sure,” Hazard said.

“Shasta, he’s pre-Shattered Hoof Ridge,” I said to the mare. “Obviously, they can negate time or permanently stall aging. Toss up as to which, but these critters can do it.”

“Incoming!” Hazard said, firing his assault rifle on full auto, dumping an entire clip into the alien that had come around the corner.

“Hazard, conserve your ammo!” I ordered. “Short bursts, the little ones die pretty easy. Remember, leave the big ones…” Three tendril monsters came around the corner. I triggered SATS, aimed center of mass of what the targeting spell called an oodalekka, and fired the karabin fulmen twice. The cyan bolts were much more tolerable with my tech glasses polarized. I lined up on the surviving oodalekka, and pumped a bolt into a leg-like thatch of tendrils. Damn, this thing was hard to aim manually. I fired again, this time dead center of the carapace, and the monster exploded in a flash of vaporizing flesh, fluids, and gore.

“Leave the big ones to me,” I said, the barrel of the karabin fulmen glowing white-hot. Three more worker aliens came around, and this time Hazard kept it down to a ten round burst for the two targets he engaged. Toto charged forward on his hindlegs, his blade grasped between his forehooves. With one powerful uppercut, he bisected the remaining alien.

Young finally figured out the trigger on the pistol I’d given him, and shot Hazard in his flank armor.

“Brindle! Keep that thing pointed at the enemy!” I shouted. The cowbuck nodded, and pointedly kept the pistol in his teeth pointed aimed the hallway.

The door behind us irised open. “High guys, did you miss me?” Dumpling asked.

A brace of workers and seven oodalekka chose that moment to attack. “Get through, now!” I pumped out two shots with SATS, then pulsed the trigger as rapidly as I could. As soon as I counted four ponies through, I stepped back, ordering Dumpling to shut the door. It irised down to about a three foot gap and stopped with a clang. “Suppressing fire!” I shouted, dropping the karabin fulmen and drawing my PDW. Shasta and Hazard lined up beside me, and we rained lead with our combined automatic fire.

“Shirizoku!” Toto shouted, and shoved Dumpling aside before he plunged his blade deep into the control panel with a mighty crack. An armored panel snapped into place over the doorway, negating the jammed main door.

“That works too,” Dumpling said.

“They probably have a way to get through from their side,” I said, checking my EFS. Damn, the karabin fulmen was at less than a third of its maximum condition; it’d just been nearly full before that last engagement. “Guess these things don’t take rapid fire very well. Sure am glad we have spares.” I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out a second karabin fulmen I’d picked up earlier.

“Thanks, Mr. Toto!” Dumpling said as she hugged the samurai pony’s foreleg, which did not offset the fact that his sword had snapped at the hilt.

“Looks like your sword broke, Toto,” Brindle said, the pistol in a holster I’d provided. I laid my forehoof upon the samurai’s shoulders. Sure, the sword was just a tool, but a tool that serves you well… it’s like it becomes a part of you.

“Naze imana no ka, kekkyokunotokoro, wareware wa susumete kita?” he whispered as he clutched the hilt of his weapon to his chest.

“It’s OK, Mr. Toto, we can fix your sword. Here, let me show you!” Dumpling said, pulling at the warrior buck’s forehooves. “Come on, Mr. Toto, I can fix it, just let me show you!” The samurai finally relented, and the filly positioned his hooves so that they held the hilt snug against the snapped blade. Then Dumpling pulled out what looked like an oversized alien toothpaste tube, and squeezed out the contents onto the blade. The clear gel smoked and whined, but as it evaporated, I saw the fracture sealing itself. The gel spread up and down the length of the blade, and quickly dissolved away.

Toto gave an exploratory tug, and the now intact sword pulled free. In fact, it was missing the knicks in the blade it’d had when I first found it.

“Some sort of repair potion?” Hazard asked.

“I don’t know, but its damn good stuff,” Shasta said.

Toto gave his sword a few experimental swings. I turned to Dumpling. “You have any more of that stuff?” I asked.

“Sure, right here,” the filly said, digging in her Stable-Tec lunchbox saddleboxes and pulling out several tubes that she deposited into my saddlebags. I activated my PipBuck, and saw the tubes labeled as “alien epoxy,” with a value of over twenty thousand each. Twenty thousand what, I had no clue, but if it was in pre-war bits… Insert wolf whistle here.

“Grab all of these things you can,” I said, glancing back at Toto just in time to see him drop his sword to the ground and start walking off.

“What’s with him?” Shasta asked.

“Hey, even the Neighponese know to stay away from dark magic,” Brindle muttered.

“It’s not magic, it’s technology,” I stated. “Technology beyond your wildest dreams.”

“I’ve heard this technology horseapple before,” Brindle Young said. “Even seen me a train powered by a giant tea kettle, and that was mighty impressive. But son, technology can’t do that.”

I sighed. “You don’t have to agree. You just have to fight alongside me,” I stated as I picked the sword off the floor with my teeth. I walked up behind Toto, and slipped the sword into its scabbard across his back. Toto spun around, anger on his face.

His anger paled in comparison to the determination on my face.

“You can’t understand me, but I think you can understand tone,” I stated. “Let me make this clear. I need you fighting with me. And I need you armed with your sword, understand?”

Toto was silent a moment, then stood back up on his hindlegs and drew the sword.

“Alright, everypony, Reggie’s this way. Follow me.”

*** *** ***

“What in tarnation…” Brindle muttered.

“Dumpling, you said that they… grow new things, right?” I said, staring out at the massive foundry floor in front of us.

“Yeah, at least, that’s what I call it,” the filly said. “See all the clusters of seven big fish tanks? They’re all full of that fixin’ glue stuff. They put what they want in the middle tank, and then the robot arms drop baskets into the tanks. Then the baskets get pulled up, and there’s six perfect copies of the original. It’ll make anything: toys, Giddyup Applejacks, Bucking Brahmin, Sweetie Bots, scooters, those sparky pain sticks. It doesn’t do food, though. Or spark batteries.”

“Replication,” I said. “Any inorganic substance inside the master tank is copied perfectly. They only ever need to make one of anything, and the alien epoxy does the rest. Remarkable.”

“What are those… things?” Shasta asked, pointing a hoof at a group of tanks making some sort of mechanoid.

“They look kinda like the really old zebra combat robots,” Hazard said. “The ones that stood on their hindlegs and moved like a baby dragon. I only ever came across one. It was missing its arms, rusty as hell. Sarge said it was probably a relic of an old battle, been unable to fight for years, only able to find the enemy.”

“I have a theory about those,” I said. “And I’m a-hopin’ I’m a-wrong on that un’. But I think we can use those tanks to our advantage.”

“How?” Shasta asked.

“Ammo,” I said. “We pop a handful of bullets in the center tank, and scoop them off the baskets before they get whisked off. We could also copy Hazard’s combat armor, after we use some alien epoxy to fix the original. Let’s get down there.”

After twenty minutes on the foundry floor, we’d quintupled our ammo supplies and placed everypony but Dumpling and Toto in combat armor. Toto had stood to the side and watched nervously. Once we were done, I checked my PipBuck routing on my automap. We were to follow the robot’s assembly line into another chamber. While the foundry floor had been a stunning display of what the alien’s technology could do, the “stockyard,” as my PipBuck called the next chamber, was an expression of the alien’s grotesque side.

“Cows,” Dumpling said as we entered the chamber. “We got cows!”

“Good granny, what is that smell?” I asked, covering my nose with my foreleg as I surveyed the cages of animals.

“That is the smell of money,” Brindle said, taking a deep whiff. “Finally, something I understand. Boy oh boy, looky here, these would fetch a fine price in Dodge Junction, a fine price.”

There was an explosive blast of Neighponese cursing from Toto. I turned around to see the samurai pony sprawled on his back, having stepped in a fresh cow pie and lost his footing. I slung the karabin fulmen and helped the swordspony to his hooves, then proceeded to wipe the dung off his armor with Dumpling’s help. Don’t ask me why, but the filly liked the Neighponese fellow, and I think he liked her.

“These are all pre-war cows,” Shasta stated.

“How can you tell?” Hazard asked as we started moving again.

“They only have one head.”

I raised my eyebrows at that one. “Only one head? What the hey?”

“Don’t ask me why, but all the cows born after the war have two heads,” Shasta stated. “They ain’t nearly as smart as they used to be. I guess the heads split the smarts and don’t share it no more.”

“These certainly ain’t as smart as a run-of-the-mill cow,” Brindle said. “Ain’t one of them try to talk with us.

“I’m calling horseapples on two-headed cows until I see that one for myself,” I said. A moment of silence followed as we walked past rows and rows of cages.

“I still can’t believe they blew everything up,” Hazard said. “I mean, sure, things were bad, but what did the zebras gain by using balefire on us?”

“The way I hear it in my Stable, Equestria came up with several war-changing systems all in the last few weeks of the war,” I said. “Shields that could protect cities against balefire bombs. Combat cyberponies. Undying soldiers. Add in the SPP towers being activated and the influx of pegasi combat personnel, and the zebras are said to have faced certain defeat. Not immediately, but soon. The Caesar’s job was to protect his people. With megaspells, the only way he could ensure Equestria didn’t defeat his people was the guarantee that Equestria would be laid to waste as well. It didn’t seem like that was possible anymore. So, if the zebras couldn’t win, the Caesar made sure Equestria couldn’t either.”

“What were the SPP towers?” Shasta asked. “I see them all over the place, and they survived the war intact, but what do they do?”

“They control the weather,” I said. “Don’t know the specifics on how, but what used to take most of the pegasi race now took a few dozen. And our pegasi were the best fighters we had, and when they had to go back home at each season change, the zebras had gained ground. Thus, the Ministry of Awesome made the Single Pony Project.”

“We should be quiet now,” Apple Dumpling said. “We don’t want to be heard on the other side of that corner.”

“Fire only when fired upon,” I ordered, and slid the silencer for my PDW out of my saddlebags. I didn’t like the reduced muzzle velocity, especially with the incendiary shredder rounds I was using, but better to use a few more bullets than get a few words said over your casket. Although I severely doubted that if I died there I’d get a casket.

Dumpling need not have silenced us. What I saw around the corner left me speechless.

Four horseshoe-shaped troughs, each several hundred yards long, had been cut into the floor of the room. The overhead assembly line of mobile robotic arms held replicator baskets with the robots we’d seen being made back in the foundry. Each arm dipped it’s basket into the buttery yellow sludge in the trough as it traveled, and at the end of the line picked the basket back up.

“I thought so,” I whispered. “The guard aliens… they’re cybernetic.” I spooled up SATS, and locked onto the contents of a finished basket as it came by. The targeting spell pipped the creature as a ‘Cylonic combat platform,’ instead of just ‘alien’ like it had before.

“Those black pipes supply the troughs,” I observed, pointing with a foreleg. “They run overhead and merge into that big pipe, which goes over there.” I consulted my PipBuck’s automap spell. “Which just so happens to be where my PipBuck is routing us.”

“So we just follow the pipe, right?” Hazard asked.

“The pipe is the only thing that leaves this room,” Dumpling said.

“I’ll bet you five bits that that gunk is flammable,” I said, lifting my PDW and firing a burst into the nearest trough. Sure enough, the gunk ignited, but I hadn’t foreseen the fire suppression system. Every robotic arm jerked it’s basket into the air, and twin covers snapped shut over the trough as alarms began whooping.

“No oxygen, no fire,” I said as I switched to the karabin. “But I bet they weren’t expecting this.” I slipped into SATS, lined up my shot, and deactivated the spell to save charge. Repeating this cycle, I pumped five bolts into the junction of the overhead pipes. By the second round, the metal was glowing cherry red. By the third, it was white hot. The fourth breached it, and the fifth ignited the material. The pipe burst at several points, which I ignited with rounds from my PDW. Soon, the entire pipe was awash in fire.

Then the wall exploded into foot-thick sections of shrapnel. The flame front of the conflagration washed over us without much harm, then the water deluge kicked in, pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a second onto the stockyards floor. Despite the onslaught of water, the fires in what remained of the pipes just kept burning.

“Quickly, let’s get there before we all drown!” I shouted as I activated my PipBuck light, trying to find everypony in the haze of the downpour. “Everyone, form a line and bite the tail of the pony in front of you. This way we don’t lose each other when they cut the power. Make sure Toto gets in on it, too!”

“I ain’t biting your tail,” Shasta said.

“It’s my tail that was washed in the last week or somepony’s that hasn’t,” I stated, swooshing my tail back and forth. “No time to argue. This place is already filling up. Come on!”

Shasta sighed as I turned around, and after a moment I felt a tug on my tail. “Everypony ready?” I asked.

“MM-HMPH!” was the chorus’s answer. I turned my head forward and set a firm but manageable pace. We needed to do this quick; the water was already over the tops of my hooves and rising, and the lights…

Had just gone out. We were left in eerie purple emergency lighting that didn’t really penetrate the thick spray of water. I kept us walking forwards, my eyes scouring the PipBuck’s automap feature that I was displaying on my EFS by draining SATS. I really didn’t need to walk us into a trench full of water; I suspected most of us, like me, couldn’t swim. Normally, a PipBuck didn’t have the processing power to accomplish this, but mine was still set to overclock from the TubeScooter races.

With the water now past my knees, we finally made it to the wall the hole was in. Except the hole was at least thirty feet up, and we were on the floor. “Circle up!” I shouted over my shoulder, and everypony released the tail of the pony ahead of them with a gagged breath. I looked up, trying to remember the details of the hole when a pocket of the goop exploded into a fireball. “This water isn’t stopping the fire. That gunk must be oxygen rich. When they run out of water, they’ll probably gas the place with argon or somesuch, under the assumption that all of their kind has had time to leave. When the gas goes off, we won’t have any air left to breath, and our lungs will be frozen solid. So we have to climb up to that hole and then get through a door before that happens.” I pulled a long leather beltstrap and a rappelling line off my barding. “We’re gonna make a pony ladder. Dumpling, I want you to climb up there and loop this rope around a piece of undamaged pipe. Then throw the belt end down. We’ll work it like an elevator to get us all up there, and ya’ll will pull me up last.”

“Why not just fly up there and do it yourself, airhoof?” Shasta asked.

“My wings and armor are waterlogged,” I said, the water now up to our bellies. “I can’t take off like this. And the rope is integrated into my barding. I can’t pull you up with my own strength.” There was another explosive fireball to accent the urgency of the situation. “This’ll work, now let’s do it. Brindle, you’re the strongest, you’re on bottom. Shasta, get on top of him. I’ll explain this to Toto.” I grabbed the samurai pony’s shoulder and pulled him close. I swept my hoof to point at Brindle, Hazard, Shasta, Toto, and myself. I mimed piling my hooves one atop another, pointed at Dumpling, then mimed climbing a ladder.

Toto was silent a moment, then nodded, and walked over Brindle and Shasta. And shoved them over.

“What’s the big idea?” Shasta asked in anger. Then Toto braced himself against the wall, and nodded at Brindle.

“He’s gonna be bottom rung,” I said. “Brindle, get up there! Shasta, you’re next! Hazard, you’re after that! Dumpling, climb on my back and get your hooves around my wings. This ain’t gonna be easy, so let’s make it quick.”

The water was lapping at my saddlebags when I climbed up after Hazard, who had apologized the whole way up the pony ladder for stepping on everypony. I nearly slipped on Shasta’s water slicked leather armor, but the tractor tire shoulder pieces made excellent footholds to use to crawl over Hazard. Damn, Dumpling was getting heavy. Something about the leverage of her hold against my wings was very tiring. “Alright, my little pony, up ya go,” I said once I was braced. Dumpling shimmied up my back and over the lip of the explosively formed hole. We all stayed there a moment, waiting.

“Why are we still standing here?” Brindle asked. “Not all of ya are made of feathers, ya know.”

“You saying I’m fat?” Shasta asked.

“No, ma’am,” Brindle said. “You are a picture of petite beauty and femininity. With a scattergun.”

“So which of us is the fat one, me or Flag?” Hazard asked.

“You straining to keep me up, Hazard?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“Then you da fatty,” I said jovially as Dumpling came back over the edge of the with the belt in her mouth. “Good work, Dumpling. Now throw me the belt. There we are. Everypony, we’re disassembling the…”

At that moment, Toto’s strength gave out, and we all plunged into wither-deep water. After spending a moment spewing, I grabbed Toto and wrapped the belt around him.

“He’s heaviest in that waterlogged armor, he goes first,” I ordered. “Grab on, and let’s pull him up, quickly!”

Everypony grabbed the rope in their mouth and pulled as I pulled backwards against my barding’s built-in harness. Toto grabbed at hoofholds as he ascended, then scrambled over the lip and tossed the belt back down. We moved Shasta and Brindle up as fast as we could, with those on top helping to pull.

“Alright, soldier buck, you’re up,” I stated, tying the belt around Hazard.

“Oh fuck!” Hazard screamed, back pedaling in the water.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Dumpling asked.

“Don’t listen to her, Haz, I’m proud of ya,” Brindle called down.

“What’s wrong, Haz?” I asked.

Hazard raised a hoof above the chin-deep water. “Something’s in here! Something with lots of…”

I triggered SATS, telekinectically readying the karabin fulmen as I panned for…

Oh shit, lots of TEETH! I thought as I locked SATS and fired.

The aquatic creature had six rows of teeth, half serrated triangles and half needle-like points. Twin orange eyes burned with primal rage above a snub snout. Its scaleless brown body sported razor-sharp metal spines down its fifteen feet of length, and the two pectoral fins looked like limbs meant to grasp things. SATS called it a “Fury.”

That’s all I saw before the karabin fulmen fired while still underwater. Hundreds of gallons flashed to superheated steam along the bolt’s travel line, propelling me and Hazard back explosively and flipping the Fury end for end. The rope snapped taught, and Hazard and I swung back into the water. Hard.

“What was that thing?” Hazard asked in panic.

“Hungry,” I said, gritting my teeth against the intense steam burn I’d sustained. Noticing that the barrel of my karabin fulmen had split open. I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out another karabin, holding it tightly in my hooves. Obviously not meant to fire underwater.

“Everypony, get ready to pull the rope,” I ordered. “We got a lot of open water between us and the wall for that Fury to get us.” I spotted the metal spines slipping through the water, and pumped three bolts into the area. “I don’t think I can kill this thing in the water,” I stated. “Any ideas?”

“We don’t even see what you’re talk…” Shasta started as the fury leapt up, coming straight at me. I locked SATS and fired.

The bolt just sizzled against the Fury’s skin. Then it grabbed me in its maw and pulled me under.

The monster’s jaws got stuck on the armor plates of my copy of Hazard’s combat armor, unable to penetrate. But the damn thing was very close to crushing me to death as it swept me farther away from my allies. I started kicking out with my legs, beating at it with my wings, but nothing slowed the monster down.

Damn it, I am not dying here, I thought, but nothing I tried increased my chances of survival. I could sense the blood loss through my adrenaline, and my vision began to narrow. Then it felt like I was being torn in half. I screamed, water rushing into my mouth. But we weren’t moving.

My right hindleg kicked against the rope, now strung taught. The fish had run out of line.

The Fury swung around, using it’s pectoral fins to brace itself against some beams. It thrashed wildly, trying to reverse with all its might. The teeth grated through my armor, and I knew that it’d soon saw through the harness, or have whichever half of me it deemed tastiest in its jaws. But my armor slipped, freeing my forelegs just a little.

SATS saved me again as I shoved the karabin fulmen down the monster’s gullet and triggered the targeting spell.

As a testament to the monster’s durability, it didn’t die. Not immediately, despite having all of its guts blasted out its ass. It kept trying to backpedal, but now I could feel myself being pulled away. Finally, the beast released its hold, turning tail to the prey that hurt too damn much to eat.

I felt the continued tug of the rope against the harness in my barding as my world went to black.

ooo OOO ooo

I was in a memory orb again. I’m not sure how I had gotten into it, but I had. Once more, I saw the mare that was my mother staring into a mirror, except…

This was different.

Instead of a castle, this was a small personal bathroom. The metal walls were painted with in a bland yellowy shade. Light was provided by a single bulb in a protective wireframe. And my mother lacked her armor and battle saddle, although she still wore the two-leg PipBuck system.

“Alright, Azienda,” she whispered to her reflection. “Time to do this.” She turned to the open hatch, and stepped into an adjoining suite, which was furnished with a pull-out couch, a bed, a large table with a lip around the edge, and a bookcase with glass cabinet doors. A stallion the color combination of a legal pad stood inside, idly inspecting his crisp crimson and white dress uniform. “How far out are we, admiral?” Mother asked.

“Fifty miles from the coast,” he stated as he looked up. “A pegasi raptor is coming towards us full-burn, and just dispatched two squadrons. One is pulling chariots, the other isn’t. ETA seven minutes. The Celestia is on an intercept course, and our early-warning keeps picking up the Luna’s rangefinder from just over the horizon.”

“As if they could stop us,” Mother said. “Or get a shell to us. Get the Maple Seeds and Pyros fueled and spooled. Get the Peregrines in the air.”

“Already being done, sir,” the admiral said.

Mother nodded and hung her head, giving me a detailed view of the floor. “Am I doing the right thing, Post?”

The admiral was silent for a moment. “It’s not my place to say, Princess, but… Yes. The Stables are a far more robust and polished design than our own shelters, and many of them are removed from likely targets. All of ours sit under major population centers. This is the best way to ensure your children survive.”

Mother nodded. “Lead me to the flight deck, Admiral.”

They stepped out of the suite into a narrow hallway that was rather tall for ponies. Hatches were swung open every fifteen or twenty feet, and the floor was swaying slightly, but my mother handled the unexpected motion with ease. As they walked, other ponies in tan working uniforms wearing crimson berets would move out of the hallways they were about to occupy. Then the admiral opened a hatchway, and they stepped out into the sunlight.

Sunlight. Glorious, warming sunlight that bathed everything in its reassuring glow. I had yet to see the sun, and after this, I could not wait to feel it on my own coat. Oh, how I yearned to fly amongst the clouds of that beautiful blue sky.

The whirligig aircraft was wider than the ship’s deck, so instead of resting on its landing gear, it sat atop a raised platform and a shipping container. Several griffins in complicated mechanically assisted armor were standing around the deck, weapons locked down into battle saddles as three ponies inspected the whirligig.

“Good afternoon, Princess,” a one-winged pegasus (ouch—I’d wrenched my wings badly on a few occasions; removal must be excruciating) in a skull cap and flight goggles said from beside the whirligig. “Pre-flight checks are finished. Go ahead and board while we await takeoff permission.”

“Thanks, Barrel Roll,” Mother said, and trotted to the back of the whirligig. The shipping container was actually some sort of interchangeable troop bay, with twin recessed miniguns on each side and a chain gun hung off the ceiling in the back. With the pull of a lever, the back doors and side hatches would open, the weapons would snap into place, and the whirligig could start suppressing enemy positions. Coupled with the twin gatling cannons mounted under each wing, I could tell these whirligigs were not something to tangle with if you were earth bound. It’d be a pathetically slow target for pegasi, though. “Loadmaster, is the precious cargo secured?” Mother asked the pony inside the troop bay.

“Yes, sir, Princess, sir,” the mare answered. “Just got confirmation on the cargo of all the other Maple Seeds, and the Pyros are loading up.” There was a buzzing sound, and my mother turned to watch a pair of some kind of aircraft pass low overhead. She turned her gaze to the large flattop naval vessel a couple miles away, which was launching more of the aircraft off a ski jump on the bow.

“Wish we could be doing this with Peregrines, Pyros, and Centipedes,” Mother said wistfully. “These Maple Seeds are just too slow.”

“We can hold our own, ma’am,” the mare said as the admiral entered the troop bay with three aides and another servicepony in flight gear. “Alright, everypony strap in tight. If the shit hits the fan, we will snap the rotor blades off trying to maneuver. You wingless folks only have one shot, and that’s to ride it down and pray that the gods like you. Princess, you do what you want. I’d like the aimed fire your PipBuck will give us if it all goes bad.”

“I’ll stand,” Mother said, grabbing a flight helmet off the deck and donning it. “I couldn’t sit still if I wanted to.”

“Delta flight, this is Catnip Actual.” The helmet’s comm gear started to crackle out an authoritarian voice. “Begin launch operations. Be advised, two Shadowbolt squadrons will be escorting you in from your twelve and six. Gun crews, keep an eye open.”

“Catnip Control, Maple Lead is spooling up,” came the voice of the one-winged buck. “Engine one… on.” There was a whirring noise from above that dopplered through the audible spectrum. “Engine two… on. Engaging rotors.” The shadows outside started to spin as the double contra-rotating rotors started moving. “Engine three… on. Spinning to seventy... Increasing cyclic... Liftoff.”

The whirligig was humming with the engine note as it came off the ground and started to tilt right, crabbing sideways through the air. Mother walked to the rear doors of the container, and started to survey the fleet. There were frigates, destroyers, cruisers, the flat-top pegasi carriers that didn’t carry pegasi, even a surfaced submarine and a trio of dreadnoughts. But in the center of the fleet were two ships of advanced design that were obviously the crown jewels of the fleet.

The ship they had lifted off from sported three main gun turrets, one forward and two aft of the bridge tower and a separate radar mast. Each turret housed 5 medium-high caliber artillery tubes, a significant arsenal against lighter warships. Dozens of vertical missile tubes were arranged between the tower and radar mast, and several anti-dragon and anti-pegasi gun batteries adorned the deck. On the stern was a large heart-like cutie mark set in a gilded frame, and the bow read SRO Cadenza.

Alongside her sailed another ship of the same model, but instead of three identical 5 gun turrets, this had a 5-gun turret aft, a heavy-caliber three gun turret forward, and a single colossal howitzer resting inside an armored gimbal in the central mount. This ship hadn’t received the gray camouflage stripes of the Cadenza, but instead had a bright pink underlayer exposed to the surface, like she’d been rushed from the docks before her topcoat could be applied. This vessel bore a cutie mark of a gilt flagstaff holding an empty banner. I did not need to read the bow to know its name.

The Azienda. Named for my mother.

“Strange having a warship named after me,” Mother said. “Hope her crew’s ready for the battle. They’re all green.”

“They’ll do fine,” the admiral said. “The active defenses will keep all but the heaviest blows from hitting, and the repair talismans will counteract whatever does. Besides, the Cadence is staying closer to the capital ships. Azienda will provide support.”

“Doesn’t matter. We both know the shore guns will target them, and the Luna could put a megaspell shell into the middle of the fleet anytime she wants.”

“They’ll get through it,” Admiral Post insisted. “Gods help the zebras and any Equestrian that wants to take them on.”

“May God help us all,” mother whispered as the whirligig gained altitude and a few dozen other aircraft and a gross of griffin mercenaries formed up around them. “The time of gods and alicorns is ended.”

Note: Level Up!—Comradeship is Witchcraft—You're at your best when in a team. +4% to all combat stats and an additional +3% per companion in your party, up to a max of +25%.
Spell Unlocked: Basic Telekinesis—you can now move objects and project force by thought, but the strength of your spell is rather limited.

Author's Note

After much debate, I finally decided to break up this sequence into two chapters. Thanks to SH, JG, and CB--who's now a pegasister! yay. Also, thanks to the few "regular" readers I've acquired—it's very encouraging this early on, but tell your friends!

Chapter 3: Soul

Chapter 3: Soul
A blow to the head will confuse... whereas a blow to the foot has no such effect: this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul.

Somewhere in Equestria

“Hoy, vessel!” somepony was shouting. “Anypony in there?”

I opened my eyes groggily. I was at the bottom of a steeply slanted metal tube lined with busted displays and filled with debris. A large metal support beam lay upon my chest, and my EFS was flickering in and out. My saddlebags were missing, and I couldn’t remember how I had gotten here. I cast my gaze around, trying to find my possessions when a spotlight illuminated me from above.

“Oi! You alive down there?” Somepony—a mare by the voice—encased in metal armor called from the top, the spotlight emanating from her helmet. I shifted my right wing and tried to speak, but I could do no more than squeak.

“We got a live one!” The metal-clad mare said.

“Big deal,” said a buck’s voice outside of my sight.

“Quiet, Spitzer,” the metal-clad pony said.

“We should try to rescue them,” came a deep, gravelly voice. “Before we harvest the technology inside.”

“Agreed,” the mare said. “Spitzer, ‘Hooves, Maraca, attach tow lines to me and winch me down.”

“My armor does not have a tow winch,” said the gravelly voice.

“Oh, right. Here, give me a moment… OK, I’ll winch for you, you just make like a paperweight, understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Gravel Voice.

The metal-clad mare pulled herself onto the edge of the tube backwards, then extended her wings and started to rappel down, three inch-thick cables supporting her. She came down about thirty meters, reaching the top of the debris pile—still several meters away from me.

“OK, we’re gonna start pulling up debris,” she said, and a magical glow surrounded two of the cables. The cables snaked themselves around a beam, fastening themselves tight. “OK, Spitzer, Maraca, hoist!” A magical field enveloped the beam, and the cables went taught as the beam rose upwards.

I examined my immediate surroundings, knowing that my rescue was still a long time coming. I placed my forehooves onto the beam pinning me, and once I found some purchase with my rear hooves, I pushed with all the strength I could muster. It was slow and it took several attempts, but I finally wormed out from under the beam.

“Who are you?” I rasped.

Spotlight mare swung her head down. “Hey, don’t move anymore! This whole thing could come down on you at any second.” I nodded my head. “Anyhow, my name’s Sparrow, First Lieutenant, Eleventh Power Armor Cavalry Regiment. The Blackhorse”

“Steel Ranger?” I asked. I’d heard of them in pre-war articles—magically powered strength-enhancing steel metal-matrix-composite armor and heavy weapons battle saddles. A real game changer in the war.

“Indeed, but I’m not a veteran of the Great War,” she said. “So, who are you?”

“Flag, Security Chief, Stable 68,” I said.

“Your Stable just open up recently?” Sparrow asked.

“I was trying to keep it sealed,” I answered.

“And got trapped on the outside? Figures. Well, the Rangers could use somepony like you. We found an abandoned Stable not too far from here, but we can’t get the security system to recognize us as friendlies. Mayhaps when we get you patched up, you could help us.”

“Where am I, exactly?” I asked.

“The Hoofington no-pony’s-land, right in the middle of the New Equestrian Army and the Zebra Remnant’s firing lanes. Luckily, both sides have learned to leave us Rangers alone.”

“Who’s casting the levitation spell? Or is that a talisman of some kind?” I asked as another piece of debris was raised.

“I am,” Sparrow said, flapping her wings. “Good ole TK.”

My first memory from the memory orb sprung to mind.
“If this is Sparrow, I’m sorry, honey, the spell must have locked onto you instead of your brother, Flag. Get this to him, but know that much of what I say is meant for both of you.”

“Are you an alicorn?” I asked.

Sparrow sighed. “Yes I am. Natural born, unlike those mindless creatures we keep encountering.”

“Oh, come on, Sparrow, we don’t know the origin of those things,” somepony said outside the tube’s mouth.

“Alicorns are an extremely delicate genetic mix,” Sparrow said to whoever was at the top. “There is no way that the one hundred and seventy-three catalogued meta-ponies are natural offspring of the five known alicorns left unaccounted for at war’s end.”

“Unless there was an unknown male,” the topside pony countered.

“Doubtful he’d be that promiscuous,” Sparrow said. “But possible.”

“Sparrow, who was your mother?” I asked.

“Princess Azienda, child of Princess Cadence of the Crystal Empire.”

“Any siblings?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“A twin, from what I’m told,” Sparrow said, then paused in the middle of hooking up the next piece of debris. “Funny, I seem to trust you a little too much.”

“Not too much,” I stated. “I am Flag, child of Azienda, child of Cadenza. I am your brother.”

Sparrow was silent for a moment. “We’ll confirm that later. Right now, we need to get you out of there.”

I sighed. “Agreed.” It was another hour before debris was cleared and the Steel Rangers were hoisting me over the lip of the shaft.

And the memories came pouring back in.

ooo OOO ooo

My comrades had me hoisted up over the lip within minutes of black out from the Fury attack. Hazard started working his medical magics on me as I coughed up water and blood.

“What was that thing?” Shasta asked. “We got a pretty good look at it, but I ain’t never seen a fish like that.”

“A Fury,” I sputtered, then heaved to empty my stomach. “That’s what my PipBuck called it. Tough as fucking hell. It’s still alive down there. Let’s move before the water level reaches here.”

“One problem, we can’t open the door,” Brindle said.

I sputtered what I thought was the last of the water out. “I’ll handle it,” I said as I staggered to my hooves. “I’ve got a cracker module on my PipBuck. It might take a while, but it’ll work.” After several shaky steps, I slumped against the control panel and levitated the datacords from my saddlebags. Stable-Tec had wisely produced datacables with amorphic photonic/magnetic/electric plugs that could fit into any data port and configure themselves to match. Even with the alien tech, I could set my cracker module to remove the door’s firewalls and access the control systems.

“OK, so now we wait,” I said, three seconds before the door irised open. “Well, waiting time over. Let’s go!”

ooo OOO ooo

My mind rushed back to the present, reeling and setting gears in motion. Was this memory problem a side effect of the heirloom memory orb that left to me by Mother? Or was this a sign of physical damage from my (presumed) escape?

“Hey, you’re back,” Sparrow observed. I was outside of the metal shaft, which had apparently recently buried itself into a crater about a hundred meters across. I was laid out on a cot in a command tent erected on the crater lip. My armor, chem suit, weapons and personal affects had been stripped from me. Several armored ponies were clustered around the metal cylinder, the exterior of which was scorched black by intense heat.

“I think I went unconscious,” I stated. “I just hope this isn’t permanent. If Mother did this to me…”

“I doubt Mother would do such a thing on purpose,” Sparrow said, her purple magic field wrapping around her helmet’s neckseal.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking upon you with my own eyes,” Sparrow said as she lifted her helmet off her head.

She was beautiful, but more than that…

She looked a hell of a lot like my mother, Azienda.

Her crimson mane with streaks of gold and silver was cut short, and hung flat against her royal purple coat. Her eyes were silver instead of gold, and she had a short snout and horn like me. The latter was so short it didn’t interfere with her helmet. Unlike mother, her eyes were silver, not golden, and her facial structure was more angular, more like my own.

“Shit,” Sparrow said, her alto voice smooth and silky without her helmet’s amplification system. “Just my luck that the first cute buck I meet is my brother.”

I laughed. “Sounds like my luck, too. Damn, there’s no denying you’re Mother’s daughter.”

“I have gotten that before,” Sparrow said. “Usually followed by ‘I wonder if you’ll turn against Equestria, too.’”

“Not a very trusting bunch, I assume?”

“Ah-nope,” Sparrow said. Her drawl was less pronounced than my own, but definitely there.

“Ah, the tribal is awake,” somepony said next to me. I turned my head to see a pasty-colored mare in a set of filigreed power armor, her helmet removed to show fairy-like pink eyes. She was definitely a looker, but her angular, ethereal beauty didn’t hide the fact that…

Oh, dear. She had cut off her own horn to wear power armor.

“I am Limburger Cheese the Elder,” the mare stated. “Senior surviving member of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, and leader of the Steel Rangers. Although I doubt that means much to a tribal like yourself.”

I sat up on the cot and swung my rear hooves off the edge. “Tell me sister,” I began, hocking up a load of phlegm from my throat and spitting to the side, “Are all Surfacers inconsiderate, or are they just stupid?”

Limburger Cheese’s expression soured as Sparrow chuckled. I hadn’t realized mares could chuckle.

I lowered myself to all four hooves and stretched my wings and legs tentatively. Looks like the forelegs are still attached. That’s a good start. Wings are still intact. Wiggle the hindlegs, yep, they’re functioning fine. Yup, I’m fine.

“I am Flag, Security Chief of Stable 68,” I said. “I hear that I might be of assistance?

ooo OOO ooo

“You need to rest,” Hazard said for the umpteenth time.

“We need to save Reggie,” I said as I limped down the hall. “His PipBuck tag shows he’s still alive and nearby.”

“Flag, you took quite a thrashing back there,” the medic argued.

“I know. I had front row tickets,” I quipped.

“You’re damn lucky the thing didn’t chomp you in half, much less to be alive, much less to have no spinal damage,” Hazard stated. Again, for the umpteenth time.

“After we find Reggie, we rest,” I insisted, and turned down a hall. “About a hundred yards left. I’m not stopping now.”

“Alright, 100 more yards, or I use my anesthesia spell and you don’t have any muscle control,” Hazard stated.

“Now that we’ve almost found your pal Reggie, how do you plan to get off this ship?” Shasta asked.

“Dumpling, any ideas?” I asked.

“Well… We could go to the bridge and take over,” Dumpling said. “Then we could land wherever we want to.”

“Or crash wherever we want to…” I said, palming the unencrypted controls for the next door. “Alright, Reggie, then rest, then the bridge. Let’s move.”

An oodalekka fell backwards through the doorway as it irised open. I reflexively fired into it with the fullmen karabin, blasting a large crater in its armored carapace. The propulsive force of the blast threw the beast forward and sprayed me with steaming hot gore. I charged into the room, sweeping from left to right, pumping a bolt from the fullmen karabin into each Cylonic drone I saw. Then I assessed the room.

We were in some kind of observation room that looked over three bays of some sort. Each bay had two beds with a machine between them. I watched as three Cylonic drones wrestled a screaming pegasus mare into one bed as an oodalekka laid down in the other. The walls had to be soundproofed to deafen her pleas. Once the pegasus was restrained, the machinery started. Electricity crackled along the cables as an ominous voice filled my mind.

<>

“Who’s talkin’ in such a creepy manner?” Brindle asked.

“The machine,” I said as tendrils of golden light began to coalesc above the mare. “It’s the machine.”

<>

“Don’t watch,” Bumpkin warned, curling into a fetal position of the floor as the tendrils flashed from gold to blood red.

<>

“We have to do something,” Shasta said as a vortex of deviously arcane energy encapsulated the mare.

“You’re right.” I drew the fullmen karabin and fired at the glass seperating us and the chamber. Their was a flash of light and a puff of smoke, but the window held, a shallow crater three inches across the only evidence of the strike.

<<"Lapurtzen da! Lapurtzen da! Lapurtzen da!>>

An inequine scream erupted from the mare, driving into my skull like a railroad spike. I collapsed to the ground, dropping the karabin from my telekinetic grasp as I drove my hooves into my ears to no avail. This was not a scream of the flesh, but of a being's core essence. Their very soul cried out in agony.

But some part of me wanted to see what was happening.

I wished I’d never looked.

The pegasus mare... Her heart was beating so hard in panic that amidst her convulsions, the blood arteries in her eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and nethers—where the vessels are closest to the surface—had burst under the pressure. Her convulsions had snapped her leg bones and ribs like twigs.

I have to break style here and say something. I’ve seen a lot of bad things in my time. But nothing puts shivers down my spine like revisiting that.

Damn iedetic memory.

Wait, how have I not mentioned that before? Yeah, I’m cursed to be an nigh-omnipotent immortal with flawless memory of all my failures. Seriously, no sarcasm—it freakin’ sucks. The bad way. And no, ponies don’t actually do that kind of oral sex—that’s something we humans...

Uh, forget that I said that. Yeah. Just... don’t ask.

Zero to awkward in three words or less, guaranteed, that’s me!

Oh, by the way—immortal means I’ll never die of old age. I could still be murdered. Bullets, artillery shells, spells, something like that could kill me.

Anyhoof, back to the gore show. The chanting kept going as a sphere of light rose out of the mare’s chest.

<>

I remember thinking that I was going to kill every single oodalekka and cylonic in the universe for what they were doing as the sphere traced lines of conduit and wiring in the machine to the oodalekka in the other bed.

<>

The sphere immersed itself in the oodalekka, and the monster’s eyes blazed brighter. The mare’s heart exploded out of her chest in a final self-destructive heave. The arcane energies in the chamber faded, and I managed to raise myself to my hooves.

“This ends now,” I said. “Everypony, get to the bridge and crash this ship. Try to get off if you can. I’ll get Reggie and draw their fire for you.”

“That’s suicide,” Shasta reminded me.

“These machines must be destroyed. We cannot risk the enemy recovering them,” I stated, picking up the fullmen karabin with my telekinesis and drawing another from my saddlebags. “But the same is true for the ship, and it likely will require several individuals to operate. There is no debating this. Now go!"

ooo OOO ooo

“You’re back,” Sparrow said.

“Yeah, another memory flash,” I said. “I still don’t have it all pieced together yet, though.”

“Well, perhaps you could enlighten us as to what occurred aboard the ship,” Limburger the Elder said/implied.

“Certainly,” I said. And I relayed the events aboard the alien ship as best I could, purposefully leaving out most details on I had come to be aboard the ship or on my Stable. I’d been running non-stop, as best as I could tell, since I still couldn’t figure out what had happened to Reggie. And Amy... No, I didn’t want to hurt right now.

“So these creatures were called Oodalekka?” Limburger Cheese asked after I had relayed the tale of my time aboard the alien vessel.

“And Cylonics,” I said. “They appeared to be biomechanical robots—no indications of intelligence, but better combat skills than your average pony.”

“How did you get into the escape pod?” Sparrow asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “My memory’s spotty. I might have taken a knock to the head or something. I am recovering bits and pieces. I just hope Reggie got out ok.”

“We didn’t find him in the pod,” Sparrow said. “The debris field is hundreds of miles across. If he’s alive, his PipBuck will lead him to safety.”

“Miraculous things, PipBucks,” I said.

“Indeed. Which is why we’ll be confiscating yours,” Limburger Cheese dead panned. “Ponyvois technology is remarkably advanced... and rare in Equestria.”

“Ponyvois?” I asked.

“Your PipBuck rests over both forelegs,” Sparrow said.

“Yeah, lets it do mirrored computing and have equipment redundancy,” I said. “Of course, the redundancy is pointless—PipBucks are nigh indestructible. Uses a fiber-optic cable wrapped in a titanium sheath for data interlink. Mine runs across my back.”

“True Gamma-series PipBucks are worn on one leg,” Sparrow said. “Double processors indicates Ponyvois origin.”

“Ponyvois?” I asked.

“A backwards nation in the Western Sea,” Limburger stated. “Barbarous cannibals... and the best warriors on the planet. They always had a technological leg up on us, though. But with your PipBuck and technician goggles, we can upgrade the spell matrixes on all our Steel Ranger armor to match. That’ll make us potent enough that the nem-gee will fall in line behind us. Insolent welps.” Whatever ‘nem-gee’ was, Limburger Cheese the Elder did not like it.

“They are not part of our pre-war command structure,” Sparrow countered. “Nor were we part of theirs. While hegemony would be preferrable under present conditions, we must respect their decision to keep fighting the war.”

“Who’s this ‘nem-gee?’” I asked.

“New Equestrian Military Goverment,” Sparrow said. “The remains of Equestria’s armed forces and the government officials not wiped out by the balefire or the Partypooper Contigency."

"Elder Cheese," said the Gravel Voice pony from before. I turned to see him standing outside the tent. I thought it strange that his armor seemed... fused together in some places. Maybe he'd been in a fire or something. "Star Paladin is requesting reinforcements. The Stable seems to have activated another layer of security systems and is fighting back."

"Alright, Lieutenant Sparrow, Sergeant Steelhooves, take the alicorn and six Rangers to Stable 202," Cheese ordered. "Break through that security system and strip that Stable. Use him for help. We'll figure out what to do with him later."

"Yes, sir," my sister and Gravel Voice answered.

Limburger turned to me. "Now, you listen here, tribal," she said. "You will not attempt to hinder our operations, or you will be terminated. Understand?"

I rolled onto all four hooves and nodded. I wanted to come up with some whitty comeback about that tribal comment, but I held my tongue, determined to show her up when I was in a position of strength. "I need my saddlebags and weapons in order to assist you."

"Granted," Cheese said, levitating my gear from a trunk before exiting the tent.

"You don't have to come with us," Sparrow said. "You could just fly away and we'd never be able to catch you."

"True," I said, seriously tempted by the idea. I stood for a moment, deep in thought. "But it's not like there's anything here for me right now." I levitated out my SPAT armor, staring at it. It was a reminder of home. Of a major part of me that was now an open wound.

"We aren't exactly an order of paragons here," Gravel Voice said. "We're survivors, so if you have some 'I'm here to right wrongs and kill law breakers' mentality, we're going to have problems."

"The Law is indifferent to good and evil," I said. "It merely ensures order. And out here..." I smirked, gesturing a hoof to indicate the world around us. "Time to toss the refuse overboard, haul anchor, and set sail for tomorrow. I'll find safe anchorage out there somewhere, but it ain't here in the present."

And so I tossed the refuse. My chem suit and SPAT armor, my citation notebook, the few personal mementos I had, and then I donned my web belts and holsters.

And I cast off into the storm, somehow knowing that on the other side was my safe anchorage. I cared not it my anchorage lay in the fires of hell.

I started trotting right for it.
Note: Level up!—Rapid Reload—All weapon reloads are 25% faster. That makes you 20% cooler. Yes, the math does add up.
Quest Perk Added—Xenocidal—You cause 20% more damage against targets not of your homeworld.
Spell unlocked—Rend—[Details Redacted]

Author's Note

Well, here’s the third installment. For the few readers I’ve garnered so far, I want you to know that Chapter 1 has been revised (again). I have no clue as to when the next chapter will come out. My personal life is a Gordian Knot of self-induced shitstorms and betrayal. College starts again soon and I still haven’t decided whether to focus solely on my major’s requirements or to take that Fiction Writing II class, cause Fiction Writing I was a blast and it’ll push me to keep writing. I also need to decide if I’ll be finishing college or losing fifty pounds and joining the Air Force. I’m stuck in a Catch 22 either way. Gah.

I still need editors if anyone’s interested.

Chapter Four: Enter the Jester

Chapter 4
Fiery Entrance

“The elite shock troops of Equestria,” I muttered to myself as I carefully trotted around piles of decaying fecal matter, “Are crawling through sewers to avoid danger. If only Applejack could see you now.”

Gravel Voice Pony, one Master Sergeant SteelHooves, stopped midstride to orient his helmet lamp onto my face.

“Did I strike a nerve?” I asked.

Sparrow stepped between me and SteelHooves. “Flag, rule one of traveling with Steel Rangers,” she said sternly. “Do. Not. Mention. Applejack. While she was the creative impetus behind the program, her legacy—and how exactly we should honor it—is somewhat of a contentious issue amongst us.”

“Got it,” I said.

“The young one has a point,” SteelHooves rumbled in that gravelly voice. “Applejack would not approve of us breaking into her sister’s creations just to loot a few trinkets from them.”

“Orders are orders, Sergeant,” Sparrow said. “Besides, I doubt the ole girl would appreciate us carving our way through the Equestrian Army.”

SteelHooves whinnied and resumed walking. Sparrow and I soon followed behind him.

“So, how do you become a Steel Ranger?” I asked.

“You are born into it,” Sparrow said. “Oh, we’ll have to recruit outside our own ranks eventually, but there are very few civilians left unmarred by the apocalypse. And those that were… we don’t think they have much time before they lose themselves.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did ponies actually survive the megaspells on the surface?”

“Not exactly,” Sparrow said as the Ranger in front, a buck named Spitzer with twin .338 magnum Light Anti-Machine Machine Guns hung off his armor, raised his armored tail in a halt gesture. We all came to halt, and I drew 68 Laws and snapped on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. The laser hologram spell beamed a heads-up-display directly to my retina, allowing me to see a targeting pipper, compass, threat indicator/motion tracker, and various meters for my current weapon condition, ammo supplies, radiation level (which was rising by about half a rad a second), and overall health. My motion tracker showed two red ticks ahead, panning right to left, soon to enter the sewer tunnel we resided in via a side tunnel.

“Shadow, move up,” Sparrow ordered. A unicorn mare in light recon armor carrying suppressed weapons on her battle saddle sidled past took point as we waited for the red ticks to emerge.

Just as the first emerged around the lip of the side tunnel, I hit SATS and halted time. I wanted to study my enemy.

The “feral ghoul” used to be a pony. Of that I was reasonably sure. But its coat and mane existed only in patches, with diseased muscled tissue exposed throughout. The lipless muzzle seemed to be grinning insanely below eyes clouded by cataracts. They looked like zombies from an old monster flick.

Can you say creepy?

I disengaged SATS to see Shadow put a burst of fire into the feral ghoul’s head, which exploded like a piñata. There was an inequine hissing growl from what I assumed was another ghoul, but another burst of suppressed fire silenced it. “Clear,” Shadow whispered.

Sparrow motioned for us to continue forward. I stepped around to the side tunnel, studying the corpses quickly before resuming my place in line.

“So, what the hell turns a pony into one of those?” I asked.

“Megaspell exposure,” Sparrow said. “For some reason, a noticeable percentage isn’t killed, and they become, well, ghouls like that.”

“Are they always hostile?” I asked.

“Only if we’re insulted,” SteelHooves rasped.

“Ok, that makes sense…” I stopped mid-sentence. “Wait, you’re a ghoul?”

“Back off, Flag,” Sparrow warned. “It’s a touchy subject for him.”

“Sorry,” I said. “My curiosity seems to control my tongue.”

SteelHooves whinnied and carried on, as did we all for a few hundred yards.

“So, uh, I mean no offense,” I started to say, “But, uh, why does SteelHooves seem more or less mentally stable and those ferals… well, weren’t.”

“When the balefire fell, some just had a reason to keep living,” Sparrow said. “Regardless of the horrors they were cursed to become. But when hope disappears, so does the mind.”

I shook my head. “A terrible fate,” I mused.

“You have no idea,” SteelHooves said. “Anypony got some Med-X? My tank’s running low.”

I made a leap of logic. “Your armor dispenses painkillers?”

“Along with a suite of other combat drugs,” Sparrow answered as she levitated over a bulk bottle of the painkiller, lifted a hatch on SteelHooves’ armor, and slotted the powerful painkiller into place. “Healing potions, Buck, Psycho, Dash…”

“Whoa nelly,” I whinnied. “That’s a hell of a lot of addiction in your suits.”

“It’s only injected in extreme need,” Sparrow said. “Officers can reset the parameters of their squad’s suits remotely, weaning addicts off cold turkey.”

“Smart,” I said. “But why would SteelHooves…” A lightbulb went off in my head. “He became a ghoul in his armor, didn’t he? He’s… merged with it, hasn’t he?” If balefire was, well, based on fire, then in theory there’d have been a range at which his armor could have save him and melted into him.

“Yes I have,” SteelHooves said.

We’d already walked about five miles that day. If he was fused to his armor, then every step, every movement would put him in agony I couldn’t comprehend at that point in my life. That he lived with that and still held onto some shard of hope that kept his mind from becoming feral was remarkable.

“Sergeant SteelHooves,” I said, “You are one tough son of a mule, and it for whatever its worth, but you have my respect.”

SteelHooves scoffed and continued walking, passing beneath a stream of meltwater from a storm drain in the street above us. My PipBuck started clicking ominously as I neared the stream, so I hopped to the other side of the tunnel, landing on a trash can lid that rang like a cymbal, my wings unfurled to help me make the next leap back to the walkway along the side. The Steel Rangers turned towards me, their head lamps spotlighting me.

“What?” I asked just as the light from the storm drain ceased. I slowly rotated my head to look at the storm drain.

The robotic arm on the other side held an integrated Gatling gun that was rapidly spooling up.

“Shit!” I cursed, pumping my wings and leaping into the middle of the sewer flow as a torrential rain of tracer rounds traded positions with me. My PipBuck began ticking rapidly, unhappy about my current location. I was engulfed in a telekinetic field as Sparrow pulled me free of the radioactive muck and threw me onto the walkway. I staggered to my hooves as shouts on the streets began to filter through the storm drains.

“NEMG,” Spitzer hissed. “Nice going, FNG.”

“Spitzer, lead us out of here,” Sparrow ordered. “Steel Rangers, three, two, one…” Sparrow spun around and leapt into a gallop. “CHARGE!”

I found myself running at full speed with the thundering herd of Steel Rangers down a sewer tunnel, my mother's heirloom bouncing against my chest on its short steel chain. The Rangers shouted war cries through their external speakers as we ran away from the enemy. I didn’t know what was going on, but I learned one thing very fast—don’t get between a charging Steel Ranger and a wall on a corner. They tend to use the wall as a springboard. I figured the risk of getting shot was better than getting between a Ranger and a wall when they decided to become equine bumper wagons, so I quickly made my way to the back of the herd. Of course, this meant that I had a front-row seat as ponies in combat armor started diving through ponyholes, weapons at the ready. I levitated out my PDW and 68 Laws, stopping at turns to spray a hail of suppressing fire back towards our opponents before they got a shot on me. I was at the rear, and I was also unarmored!

I came around a T-intersection to find myself in the way of Sparrow and Spitzer, who were running back the opposite way that the Rangers had turned.

“Dead end!” Sparrow shouted.

I spun around, seeing a dozen ponies in combat armor spill around the previous turn. I triggered SATS, and used the precious moments of stalled time to think. My PDW probably wouldn’t penetrate their armor, and it certainly wouldn’t down them fast enough to spare me. I needed to shove them out of the way, or at least keep them from aiming at me…

Bingo.

I fired up my horn and disengaged SATS. I pushed my newfound magic farther than I had before, sweeping the refuse and fecal matter off the sewer floor into a swirling vortex that I that I sent barreling down the tunnel. The veritable shitstorm gained mass as it went, slamming into my opponents at the other end. When the shit cleared, all of them were buried wither-deep in crap. One mare had become entangled in a shopping cart, although how that got into the sewer, I still have no clue.

“Get,” came a gravelly order from behind me. “Down.”

I ducked just in time for SteelHooves to salvo off a hail of grenade and missile fire at the center of the tunnel. The roof cracked and groaned, then collapsed in dusty chaos. I pulled myself to my hooves and glanced at the Steel Ranger ghoul.

“Good thinking,” I said.

“Back at ya,” SteelHooves said, then turned and charged off down the tunnel.

Wait. SteelHooves had complimented me?

Unusual to be sure.

My reverie was disturbed as the nearest ponyhole on this side of the collapse slid open. I let off a burst of suppressing fire from my PDW, and took off running down the tunnel. This wasn't over yet.

*** *** ***

We had been running through the sewers for the better part of an hour, occasionally laying down a hail of suppressive fire, before we hit a blast door that sealed off the tunnel. This tunnel was larger, large enough that four powered armored ponies could stand flank-to-flank in it.

“Spitzer, what is this?” Sparrow asked.

“It wasn’t here last time!” Spitzer replied.

“Look at the cameras,” I said as I telekinetically ejected the buckshot loads from 68 Laws and reloaded with TS sabots and an AP round for the rifle barrel in the center. “Seems like a security system to me. Must have passed a dozen others along the way. Probably detected our gunfire and sealed.” I pulled out my PDW and my supply of incendiary shredders—off which I only had thirty five. I topped the mag off with JHP rounds and charged the weapon.

“Well there isn’t another way out of here,” Sparrow said as an enemy soldier rushed around the bend. I triggered SATS and gave him a full dose of 68 Laws. The four shotgun barrels roared as the tool-steel sabot rounds—a primitive armor piercing load I’d developed back Stable 68—erupted from the barrel at nearly fifteen hundred feet per second. The 6.8mm rifle round beat them to the target, cracking the ceramic trauma plate of the stallion’s armor. The massive sabot rounds tore through the meat of the torso like cuisinarts. A spray of gore erupted out his backside.

“Fuck that noise!” I declared as I snapped the breach of my Drieling open, auto-ejecting the spent brass and tossing in a speed loader. “I ain’t dying here!”

“Neither am I,” SteelHooves said from my side. He fired off twin missiles that bent around the corner and detonated a second later with a massive concussion.

“SteelHooves, you were supposed to turn in your thermobaric munitions,” Sparrow stated.

“Put me in front of a firing squad,” SteelHooves challenged.

“Yeah, like that’d do something meaningful to a Canterlot ghoul,” Sparrow said.

My mind catalogued the tidbits that ghouls came in flavors—I had more pressing concerns. Also, terrible choice of wording. Flavors of ghouls. Yuck.

“What about that ponyhole?” I asked, pointing to the ladderless surface access.

“We can’t fit through that,” one of the Rangers said.

“I can,” I said. “Give me your comm protocols and I can call for help on my PipBuck from clear skies.”

“There’s not any reinforcements in this area,” Sparrow said, shaking her head.

“Maybe I can get around to the other side of the door and open it from there,” I offered as a grenade came sailing around the corner. It was wrapped in a telekinetic field and flung back, by whom I didn’t know.

Sparrow sighed. “Flag, Shadow, get up there and do it. Go!”

I spread my wings and leapt forward, jamming my hooves into the ponyhole shaft. I scrambled a moment and got my hooves onto the remaining rungs of the ladder, then climbed up to the top. But instead of a ponyhole, this was covered in a trapdoor that locked from the other side. I cursed and banged my hoof against the trapdoor with a resounding bang that almost drowned out the more important sound.

Something rattled atop the trapdoor.

I grinned wickedly.

“FNG, open it up!” Shadow hissed below me.

“Hold on t'ya horses.” I broke open 68 Laws and unloaded the shells, patting myself down with a hoof to find a particular ammo pouch… ah, there they were. I loaded four shells and snapped the weapon closed. A few exploratory taps located the source of the rattle. I held the drieling a few inches off the trapdoor, and fired a single barrel.

The report was deafening, but an exploratory push told me I’d missed the lock. I mentally cursed and adjusted the fire selector. I put three rounds of door-breaching ammo into the trapdoor, and this time, it opened. I heaved myself onto the surface, then drew my PDW and scanned my surroundings. I was in a guard shack in a parking lot for a shopping mall. EFS said the coast was clear. I grabbed my rappelling gear and tied off a line to the shack, then threw the other end down the hole. “All right Shadow, come on up,” I hollered, then I began looking for the door. According to my PipBuck’s automap, there should have been an access hatch fifty yards due west…

Right in the middle of an apartment building. I cursed as I heard the funneled reports of Steel Ranger weaponry firing in the tunnel below.

“Flag, can you see a ponyhole?” Sparrow asked over her external speakers.

“Negative,” I said, looking back down the ponyhole. Tracers and shells were flying in both directions down below. “It’d be inside a building if anywhere. I don’t know if you have enough time for me to find it.”

“We don’t have a lot of options,” Sparrow said.

“No you don’t,” I said. “SteelHooves! Blow the roof! It’s only about five feet deep, you’ll open up surface access.”

SteelHooves responded with a single word. “Move.”

I sprinted away from the ponyhole, desperate to cover as much ground as I could. The asphalt heaved and shattered from the twin thermobaric missiles. A hail of disintegration grenades vaporized holes around the crater’s lip, expanding the cracks and fissures until a forty foot section of the parking lot collapsed into the tunnel below. I grabbed my rapelling lines and threw them over the edge.

“Everypony up!” I shouted. The power armored Rangers leapt over the lip in a display of brutish power while the unicorns scrambled up the edge. Another salvo from SteelHooves sealed the tunnels behind us.

“Well done, everypony,” I said.

“That was some quick thinking,” Sparrow said, landing beside me and folding up her armored wings. I noticed Shadow being strapped to another Ranger’s back, a nasty gash on her head and several bleeding holes in her recon armor.

“Not fast enough for everyone,” I said. “And I guess we should get moving before they find us again.”

Sparrow sighed. “Alright, listen up, everypony, we’re moving out. Hopefully we can get ahead of the NEMG and stay ahead. Sergeant.”

“You heard her, my little nimcompoops,” SteelHooves said, shifting to his hooves. “Spitzer, on point. Smiles, Ducky, take…”

Krang. SteelHooves buckled, a fountain of gore exploding out his side.

“Sniper!” somepony yelled.

“The office building!” somepony said. “Third floor!”

“Rangers, suppressing fire!” Sparrow shouted. All the Rangers turned towards the office building to our east and started pouring fire into it. The façade deteriorated in hooffulls and great gouging tears as everything from pistol to howitzer rounds tore at the enemy’s cover. I pulled out my PDW and started hosing the empty window frames.

My mind switched gears of its own accord.

ooo OOO ooo

I was hosing down targets on a balcony above me on the alien ship. Three-fourths of a mag from my PDW later, and I had cleared all the Cylonics from the room. I glanced backwards, checking on the colt slung across my back. He was breathing, but still hadn’t awoken.

“It’ll be alright, Reggie,” I said as much to the colt as myself as I renewed my run down the corridors. The entire vessel rocked violently, throwing me to the floor. I staggered back onto my hooves and pushed my telekinesis to place Reggie back on my back. “It’ll be alright.”

An oodalekka slithered around the corner, four fullmen karabins held in its tentacles. I ripped off a burst of PDW fire into the creature’s face, stalling for time as I drew my own karabin. A searing bolt into the monster staggered it enough that I could telekinetically disarm it. I turned the weapons around and used them to annihilate their former master.

My PipBuck chimed, and the EFS hologram scrolled text. “Comm signal found: Intraship Equine Frequency.” I pressed buttons and operated dials, swapping my PipBuck to radio mode and tuning into the new channel. Hazard’s voice came through the static.

“…message is a warning beacon, hence the lack of coding. We are aboard a starship of extraterrestrial origin. The inhabitants appear hostile, and… they’re doing things here. Creating an invasion army the likes of which we’ve never seen. Handheld megaspell firearms, invisibility, and… some sort of unkillable abomination made from the souls of ponies. A small group of equines and I have taken over the ship’s bridge. We’ve… come to a concensus. We will attempt to move the ship out of orbit and self-destruct. If anyone is receiving this… get ready. We might be able to destroy this ship, but whatever these things are, wherever they’re from, more will be coming. I’ve heard the world was destroyed by megaspells. Well, I think these things were waiting for us to do it, to catch us at our weakest when we can’t defend ourselves. But if all of you down there band together, we CAN win this. We CAN beat them.

“And Flag, if you’re hearing this: get off this ship. Bumpkins says that there are escape pods on the ship’s exterior. There’s nothing on the surface for us, but there’s a life for you and the colt. Get him off. Warn everypony, no, everyONE that’s left. Make sure there’s an army capable of defeating these bastards. Message now repeats.

“This is an automated broadcast by Petty Officer Hazard of the Equestrian Navy. This message is a warning beacon, hence the lack of coding. We are aboard…”

My PipBuck’s EFS popped up a new tasking. “Escape!”

Simple enough.

I set off with renewed vigor.

ooo OOO ooo

“Flag! Flag! Snap out of it, Flag!” A hoof slapped me across the face, and I snapped back to reality. Sparrow had a hoof on my shoulder, and her other had been the one that just slapped me.

I shook my head and swore. “I’m back, I’m back, what’s happening?”

“Snipers got us pinned down,” Sparrow said. “Anti-machine rifles and Dash guns. I sent Ducky and Spitzer to clear out that apartment building, you’re to assist them. I’ve got other teams in the adjacent buildings. SteelHooves and I will stay out here and draw their fire. Got it?”

“Roger wilco,” I said, drawing 68 Laws into my telekinetic grasp. I rushed over to the apartment building, a .50 cal round buzzing over my shoulders. I somersaulted through a plate glass window, rolling across the floor and smashing into a dinner table. I rose onto my hindlegs, looking around the apartment. Finding the front door ajar, I walked out into the hallway. No targets, but I mentally kicked myself for not clearing the doorway like I’d trained in SPAT. I rotated the bit on 68 Laws so it’d fire from the shoulder, and wrapped my forehooves around it. This let me sight along the top without taking the Drieling’s massive buck to the teeth. I would shortly learn that this was how the griffins had intended the weapon to be fired, and that it’d been converted to pony use decades later.

I crept up the stairs, sweeping every angle as I rose. “Ranger?” I whispered, hoping for a response. I walked onto the second floor landing, seeing a broken Mr. Hoofshake custodial robot sitting in a corner next to a radiator. I quickly looked into the apartments along the hall, and not seeing anypony in any of them, I took the stairs at the opposite end of the long hallway to the Mr. Hoofshake. But once I got to the third floor, I quickly backed down, inspecting the far end of the hallway.

No Mr. Hoofshake. The robot had moved. The robot was functional. The robot had orders to play dead. The robot had something giving it orders.

We were going to be ambushed.

I walked into the nearest apartment and slid down into a belly crawl, hoping to avoid notice by snipers. I wriggled my way to the nearest window, then picked up a kitchen chair in my teeth and bashed the glass out with a twist of my head. An anti-machine round tore the chair from my teeth, jarring my mouth into numbness.

“SPARROW!” I shouted, hoping to be heard over the near constant barrage of AM gatling guns and a grenade machine gun. “SPARROW!”

“FLAG?” came the distant reply, drowned out by a far more eminent mechanical voice.

“For Equestria, dirtbag!” The Sergeant Hoofshake—the militarized model of the custodial robot—shouted as it began firing blobs of disintergration magic into the room with reckless abandon.

“AMBUSH!” I shouted, rolling onto my back before dropping into SATS. I cued up targets and gave the machine all five barrels with the targeting spell. A birdshot shell slamming into the optical tracking sensors, two shells of double-aught buckshot hammered the weapon armature, a TS sabot blasted through the main hull, and the 6.8mm AP round shattered the glowing levitation talisman. All that happened in less than a second.

“DESTROY THE ROBOTS!” I shouted as I rolled onto my knees and then rose on my hindlegs. I remembered that the few maintenance model Mr. Hoofshakes in Stable 68 could be used as remote camera platforms. I turned my head back towards the window and shouted a final warning. “THEY’RE ACTING AS SPOTTERS!”

No sooner had I finished saying it than the exterior wall turned into Swiss cheese as a heavy machine gun opened up. If I hadn’t of moved, the rounds would have torn me to pieces.

Eeyup, definitely acting as spotters.

I reloaded 68 Laws and swept my way back into the hallway. No new targets. I quickly climbed the stairs to the third floor, and came around into the hallway.

Face to face with a garishly pink three-legged semi-equine guard robot. It was the size of a filly or colt with a rigidly mounted head and neck that ran parallel to the back. The optics sensors looked like a pair of sunglasses, and the mouth was opened to reveal a twin beam emitters and a machine gun barrel.

I twirled back around the corner as the robot opened fire, gouging great chunks of rotting plaster out of the wall as bullets tumbled by. “Lethal force may be used without notice,” the robot chimed.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I demanded as I broke open 68 Laws and loaded up fully for armor piercing.

I heard the robot whirring as its legs/wheelstalks rotated and it crabbed sideways to get a good shot at me. Instead it got an Applebuck to the face. The robot spun and flipped onto its side, the legs twitching as it tried to right itself. I blasted a TS Sabot into the wrinkled midsection, correctly guessing that the wrinkles were radiators and that radiators would be wrapped around something vital. The thing sparked and smoked.

“That’s how we do it in the Broncs!” I shouted, popping my weapon open and telekinetically replacing the spent shell.

“Target acquired. Added to local b-net target roster.”

“Ah fuck.” There were four of them at the far end of the hallway, two hunkered low and two standing high so that all could engage me.

“Engaging. Have a pleasant death.”

“I am sick of this crap!” I shouted as I leapt over the stairway railing back towards the second floor. “Everywhere I go…” A blob of magic wizzed by, and I spun around, triggered SATS, and put two TS sabots into the Sergeant Hoofshake. “I’m shot at!”

I oriented my weapon upwards, and fired thrice into the belly of one of the flat-back robots that was just coming around to the top of the stairs. Another robot came around the stairs as I reloaded, flopped out a pair of skis (yes, skis) and slid down the staircase. I spun around on my hooves and gave the robot a shove, sending it beyond the stairs until it embedded itself in the wall beyond. The robot’s motors whined and the carpet smoked as it tried to pull itself out. A quick buck ensured it never would. I decided to try my luck, and galloped down the hallway towards the staircase on the opposite side of the building. I reached the far side just in time for tracers to begin streaming down the hallway. The two remaining flat-backs were now on the second floor, and I was heading for the fourth. They may have had skis, but I doubted skis would let them climb stairs. I leapt up onto the fourth floor landing, only to find that the roof and most of the walls had caved in.

And that there were about a dozen jack-in-the-box automated turrets with clear fields of fire on the street and the fourth floor.

I could not come up with a curse for how much my situation sucked.

Instead of running, I dove for the nearest turret, using SATS to target it and its neighbor to my right. The sabots tore the robotics to pieces, but thankfully left the HMG on the nearest turret intact. I curled into a ball, using the ruined turret as a meatshield. My position meant that only one turret had a clear line of fire on me. I focused my telekinesis and tore robotic components away, quickly leaving only the MG and its universal joint mount. I telekinetically depressed the butterfly triggers, and the weapon erupted into a thundering fountain of anti-machine rounds. I started to peek around the edge of the turret’s base mounted power pack, but a sniper round cracked down next to my head. I quickly abandoned that idea, then started searching my surroundings for something I could use.

Ah ha, a wall mirror! I levitated the large pane of glass of the wall and angled it so that I could spot targets on the other side of the street. From this angle, I could see another dozen turrets on the other building. I used tracers to walk the HMG’s fire into each of them until the weapons sparked and smoked in destruction. I used the mirror to spot the streets, noting Sparrow and SteelHooves, both eerily immobile, but nopony—or robot—else. I sighed, then I levitated the auto turret, using its height to dispatch the rest of the turrets on my floor.

Right, now for the sniper. If only I didn’t have weapons meant for CQB.

Krang! A high velocity slug burrowed into the wall just a few feet in front of me, as I was still huddled up against the turret.

Krang! Krang! Krang! Each shot inched closer and closer to me. The sniper knew exactly where I was and was adjusting fire.

That meant… The mirror! I studied the large pane of glass, seeing a slight flash before the next Krang!

Gotchya, you son of a mule. Let’s see how good you are with aerial targets.

I grabbed the control bit of my PDW in my teeth, angled the mirror to reflect as much light at the sniper as I could, and I leapt into the air, wings pumping hard as I fought for altitude in a near vertical climb. The sniper rounds kept passing me by, all concerningly close, but I kept up my plan of attack. I pulled a half loop, and started to dive bomb my target. I used my wings to jink left and right, up and down, dodging shots as I gained speed. And while you think that I would have been a better target the closer I got, realize that a five or six foot jerk to one side covers a much greater angle at one hundred feet than a thousand. And at three hundred yards, I opened up with my PDW, laying down a hail of suppressing fire. The incoming fire ceased as my horn and the roof of the building lit up in a golden light.

I pitched my hindlegs forward at the last moment, dividing the cataclysmic impact across all four of my hooves. The roof shattered under me, but my telekinesis strengthened the structure, causing a far larger piece of the roof to detach beneath me. About a fifty square foot section tore loose, and as a whole, we fell onto the floor below. A scream of pain erupted out from under the rubble, and I levitated out the source, a unicorn mare in black form fitting full body armor. A little extra telekinetic pressure around the neck communicated the need for her cooperation.

“Are there any other others with you?” I asked. The mare shook her head. “What about your robots, will they continue to attack us?” A nod. “Why did you attack us?”

“You are the enemy,” she whispered hoarsely. “Equestria launched megaspells against Ponyvois. You killed millions who were not involved in your war, alicorn.”

“I was nine days old when the megaspells fell,” I stated. "I don't bear much blame."

“You work with Steel Rangers, the greatest theft of Ponyvois technology ever created. Technology that originated with me, not Applejack. If you support their ideals, you will fall as they do. My pulse spells might be able to knock out their power armor, but my lightning will strike you dead.”

“If you could strike me dead, you’d have done it by now,” I stated.

“Alright, so I never got the lightning thing to work, but a strong enough series of precisely time EM pulses in your heart should theoretically stop cardiac function,” the mare said, a little more whimsical than she had a right to be.

“Any chance that you can actually do that?” I asked.

“Well, no, not with radiation poisoning as bad as I have.” She coughed wetly—for dramatic effect or not, I could not tell.

“Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” I asked.

“What do I have to say for myself? You’re the assholes that collapsed a sewer tunnel, pissed off a few companies of NEMG, and disturbed the peace in my corner of the Hoofington shithole.”

“We didn’t shoot first,” I stated.

“Touché,” the mare said, pointing a hoof at me as she conceded my point. Then she cocked her head to the side, and I felt my heirloom being tugged away from my neck. I grabbed it with a hoof and clamped it to my chest.

“Hey, no touching my stuff,” I said.

“Where did you get that?” the mare asked.

“Family heirloom,” I said.

“You’re Flag, child of Azienda, child of Cadenza,” the mare said in a reverie. “You were sequestered in Stable 68 in the Four Broncos Desert to survive the apocalypse. You are the first natural born male alicorn in over sixteen thousand years. You have battled aliens and encountered your true enemy, whether you realize it or not. You are our world’s only hope.”

“How do you know me?” I asked.

“I traveled with your mother,” the mare said. “And I took you to Stable 68 myself before riding out the apocalypse in Ponyville.”

I was silent. “What have you done to the Steel Rangers?”

“Pulse mines on most of them,” she said. “The non-power armored ones were hit with stun rounds. I had to use live ammunition or SteelHooves down there would have noticed.”

I sighed. “Look, I’m going to trust you, but if you cross me, I will kill you.”

“Sounds good,” she said. “Besides, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to reboot the Steel Rangers’ spell matrices without me.”

“Good point,” I said. “Alright, I’m letting you down, just as soon as you tell me who you are.”

The mare nodded, tilting her head to the side as she did. “I am Lyra Heartstrings.”

Note: Level Up!--Total Comprehension--Your advanced reading skills allow you to gain +1 permanent stat boosts from magazines and double the stat boost from books.

Author's Note

A chapter of nothing but action. I feel like I'm writing Ted Bell's next book, and I don't like Ted Bell cause he writes nothing but action. Then again, Ted Bell's made a few million bucks, so maybe... nah. Anyhow, I cranked this out pretty fast. I'm hoping to get more out rapidly as the start of semester looms. I at least want to get the story out of Equestria and into the main plotline.
And I still need editors! PM me if interested!