Standing in the clearing of the mysterious woods, admiring Euphoria's latest stroke of genius, I felt SAM silently disengaging the Pegasus Frame, shrinking down to its quadruped form behind me. I rolled my shoulders and rechecked my rifle, hoping I wouldn't have to use it. At least I still had Vengeance, the magical halberd though I was wary of using such a weapon lightly. With my weapons secured I began to walk into the gloomy woods with the canopy of trees blocking out most of the sunlight.

Euphoria stood silently, scanning the surrounding. She could pierce any darkness with the visor on, though it made her look slightly cold and I could tell by the set of her jaw that she was ready for a fight if it came to that. Thankfully she wasn't silent. With the sensitive wires reading her throat movements, she could speak and if she chose to, the sound would be fed directly into my mind, bypassing the reality filter. Without the mental strain of the Pegasus Frame, it was easy to interpret the impulses through the DNI.

"Thank you for bringing me with you, and showing me your sky," her new artificial voice cut through the background noise, bypassing my ears entirely. The experience would seem otherworldly to almost anyone else, but I had 'otherworldly' experiences almost daily.

"Would you have allowed me to ditch you back in Ponyville?" I spoke aloud, silently enjoying the way her ear twitched as it angled itself to better catch my voice so I didn't need to yell across the woods.

As she walked, her lips pursed as she gave the question some thought before answering, "maybe, if you stuck me in a room full of Pinkie's treats, I'd pass out long enough."

That had me chuckling for a while. We lapsed into comfortable silence after that as we explored the ancient woods, traversing gnarly roots, overgrown rocks and briars. I was worried that the latter would prove difficult for the frail looking mare, but it turns out their fur coats were good for more than just looks. Compared against a pony, human beings really were the fragile ones. Any worries I had of Euphoria falling behind or slowing our progress were silenced when I saw her walking straight through a thick patch of briars without even slowing. The thorns stuck in her coat, never breaking the skin and her hooves paved the way for me to follow behind her.

She laughed and even with the synthetic quality to it, the peals of laughter sounded sweet and feminine. She made a show out of shaking the thorns from her coat once she was clear, leaving me staring at her backside for longer than I want to admit. When SAM brushed past me, proving equally impervious to the thorns, I came back to reality and found myself jogging to keep up.

Yeah, it was hillarious to both of them to discover that not only was I the most vulnerable of the three of us, but also the slowest. The only advantage I had on those two was my agility and later it was my turn to leave Euphoria gaping wide-eyed (at least I assumed they were wide under the hair/visor) as I traversed a chasm by balancing on a fallen tree no wider than a hoof. I was grinning smugly from my side as I looked back at her and SAM. She made an adorable snorting sound and turned, seeking a path around the chasm and SAM did likewise, breaking off to go in a third direction.

We had no problems splitting up like that since we were all wired in one way or the other. Euphoria had the visor tracking our movements on a minimap, I had the DNI which allowed me to visualize their location relative to my own and SAM's mind was the computer crunching all the data, so there was never any fear of leaving him out of the loop. Besides, we didn't even know if we'd been heading in the right direction to begin with. All we could glean from the dusty records was an approximate area where these Unicorns supposedly lived and studied ways to breach the gap between realms.

As I walked, I felt the soothing feminine voice with just a bit of a synthetic edge to it speaking into my mind, "I don't mean to sell you short, but are you not vulnerable without your Pegasus Frame?"

I chuckled inwardly, conveying these sounds to playback in Euphoria's visor. To anyone else, the act of synthethizing your own voice with nothing but your mind would be a challenge, but ever since day one I'd been verbally sparring with SAM and thus I'd picked up the skill quickly. I went on to soothe her worries, "I know my kind looks vulnerable and you sort of proved a point with the thorns back there, but I assure you that my skills in combat were never lacking."

"Good, I need you to be safe, my stallion," she spoke the title with a sense of significance which made me pause. I'd never known how she would refer to me in the quiet recess of her mind. Somehow it felt right, even if I couldn't rightly consider myself a member of the equine species.

"Don't worry, I am not planning on dying. No, dying is the most selfish thing I could possibly do," as I spoke the words, I'm sure she picked up on how strongly I felt on that topic. I'd been faced with death so many times and yet I knew very little about what awaited on the other side. As you may have guessed, I'm not a religious person, being so partial to the natural sciences. As far as I knew, all that awaited those who kicked the bucket was oblivion. No pain, no pleasure, just a lack of being.

No, you didn't hurt yourself by dying. In fact, all your worries would likely cease to be with that final act and so the only ones truly hurting would be the ones left behind. The situation was only made worse when you added responsibility to the burden. If you had fought for something important in life, then your untimely death would not only bring sorrow but also great calamity.

There was a lengthy pause before Euphoria spoke again, "yes... Dying is very selfish." She had been forced to watch so many ponies die futily before her eyes, each one only adding to her torment. If there was anyone, or anypony who could agree with me, then surely it would be her.

We lapsed into silence then, simply trekking through the woods in three different directions. I had picked an uneven path filled with ravines, ditches and gullies that my bipedal build allowed me to scale with relative ease. I sensed that both Euphoria and SAM had found more level ground and with four legs to propel them, they'd made good progress. So far, we'd seen no sign of inhabitants in these woods but there was a lot of ground yet to cover. Vegetation was quick to swallow up structures and the elements could erode stone, smoothing away any traces of artifice unless you paid close attention. Perhaps some of the structures had sunk below ground level. If that were the case, both halves of the visor had sensitive equipment that could pick up on such hidden structures.

"It is joyous to move again," Euphoria's voice broke the silence. "To run, to roll in the grass, to see and touch and taste and smell and hear," she breathed. I smiled as I tried to picture it. This was the first time she'd truly been left to her own devices with no one to watch her as she roamed the endless woods. I was glad she'd been given this opportunity and any concerns I had for her safety were dispelled the moment I consulted my mind map for her position relative to mine and SAM's. We were flanking her with SAM leading her by a few hundred yards and myself lacking behind just a bit but otherwise we were all largely going in the same direction, making a broad sweeping pattern to cover as much ground as possible. If anything jumped out at her, I was confident that SAM could intervene, and if not then I still had 3 live rounds in my rifle and strictly speaking I didn't need a clear line of sight to my target. Scary, right? With SAM's aray of hightech gear feeding information straight into my brain I could do some wicked trickshots. If he could see the target, I could shoot it dead.

Then of course, Euphoria herself was armed to the teeth. I knew she hadn't crafted those javelins just for show and even up close, well pretty much every part of her was dangerous from her four hooves to her teeth. I'd felt the impact of those hooves both in jest and in a panic. If not for my bionic right arm, I woul've fractured something by now.

So it was with relative peace of mind that I left her to free roam in the woods.

Euphoria

She was thankful for the privacy. Being self-conscious of her own clumsiness had weighed heavily upon her heart and she had so much to brush up on. She used to be, well if not downright athletic, then at least capable. She once thought it second nature to sprint and leap and traverse obstacles with relative ease. Her accursed prison had caused the muscles to waste away with disuse and she was in terrible shape, not to mention dangerously uncoordinated on the ground. But here she could make up for lost practice. At first she'd been cautious but as soon as she'd gotten past a brisk canter and broken into an earnest run, she found it impossible to stop any sooner than her surroundings absolutely demanded of her.

Working up a sweat was delightful and aside from elusive woodland creatures which she'd never felt any real bond with, she was alone. Every tree trunk presented a valid target for her newest creation and she was determined to become good at this as soon as possible. Who knew? Perhaps it would come to her as swiftly as all those other vital skills had. Prior to losing her Special Talent, she'd never considered picking up other skills, but somehow having been deprived of her destiny had perhaps made her more succeptible to learning new things?

Regardless, she wasn't going to halt this new development. It was quite a complex range of motions to unholster and throw one of the javelins. First she had to grasp it with her little black sock, using her teeth to tighten the little woven-in cord around the end of the spool and then balance the weapon atop her hoof. Then she had to throw it with enough force to build momentum and from there, the rest of the work virtually did itself. But grasping things without magic was a delicate task and the first several dozen attempts had ended in failure as she'd either stumbled, unused to walking on three legs, or she'd dropped the javelin entirely causing the carefully wrapped spool to unravel. Undoing that was a major pain and it took so long, that was actually the reason she'd thought to make six javelins, all prepared with their own spools rolled up neatly around the shafts.

Assuming she could just throw the damned thing and not waste all that preparation, she'd be free to pick up the next one and throw another in rapid succession. As it happened, instead of developing a talent for launching the misile weapons, she'd instead learned how to grasp the shaft in her teeth and re-spool it without breaking stride. That at least meant that the others would not have to deal with her lacking behind. Any time she'd wasted standing still she had to make up for by running, which was a joy in itself but it did leave her breathless.

Throwing the javelins on the move was both the most viable tactic and the least time-consuming. She'd waste none of their valuable travel time by standing still and better still, she could add her own running speed to the momentum of the javelin. But the process of grasping the cord with her sock was too troublesome. It was a wonderful tool for daily use, sure, but in a pinch it took too long to tighten a string with her teeth just to grasp something.

She pondered this problem as she walked. What would her stallion do? He liked to praise her for her ingenuity, but his own mind was leagues beyond hers when it came to creative problem solving, if she could even believe half of his tales. He was definitely not a mediocre human, but rather a prodigy that consistantly pushed the boundaries of what was possible for a species bereft of magic.

He would make it easier to launch the javelin by eliminating unnecessary movements. She'd seen how disciplined his body was in combat, how little of his movements he'd wasted. He never drew a breath or tensed a muscle unless that directly brought him closer to felling his foe. Yes, that was it. Eliminate movements. Tightening the string on her sock was unnecessary.

Blushing a bit at the thought of how silly it must've looked to an outsider, she sucked the end of the javelin's spool into her mouth and started working her tongue. Without magic in her hooves, she'd developed quite a talent with her tongue to the point where she could even knot a string just by putting it in her mouth. Moments later, she spat out the end of the spool, nodding pleased with herself as she saw the loop she'd created.

She inhaled and held her breath as she eyed a tree about a hundred yards in front of her. The visor informed her of its excact distance relative to her and she started running. During one of her strides, she reared up on her hind legs and flung her front hoof into the noose dangling neatly just in front of her face and off to the side. In one swift motion she pulled the shaft of the javelin from the hoop in her saddlebag and flung it into the air. As the spool unraveled, it imparted spin to the shaft which made it travel much farther and smoother than it would have otherwise.

She broke into a grin as she heard the heavy 'thunk' as the pointed shaft burried itself in the tree trunk, piercing much deeper than she'd anticipated. Had that been a living being, it would've been run clean through. She retrieved the javelin, having to yank quite hard to dislodge it. Soon, all six of her javelins sported a neat little loop at the end of their spools and she was practicing throwing both with her right and left hoof. A hundred yards had been a modest range to begin with. Even if she was in bad shape, she was still a pony and those were some of the fastest sprinters in Equestria. Soon she was launching deadly projectiles several hundreds of yards and with ever increasing accuracy. The visor helped a lot, calculating trajectory and wind speed among other things. SAM continued to update the visor, making it more clever at assisting her in laying down barrages on the run.

The only downside was that she had to retrace her steps and pick up the cords as she discarded them with every throw, now that they were no longer secured to her grasping sock. No matter, she would make more cords and keep a surplus in her saddlebags.

Samuel

It was growing late and we'd agreed to meet back up and make camp for the night. It was easy to coordinate as I'm sure you've caught on to by now, what with our constantly receiving updated information on each other's whereabouts, but to an outsider it must've looked uncanny as three very different creatures broke from the edge of a clearing at exactly the same time from different directions. I noted the Pegasus Frame had a few stains from grass and mud and so did Euphoria. By comparison I'd gotten off with just some muddy boots and a few smears up the lower portions of my leggings.

Rather than rush up to me and embrace me as was her habit, Euphoria approached me with a predatory slink, pausing a few yards from me. Her pristine white coat shone with its own luminescant light under the moon and the few grass stains did nothing to detract from her beauty. I still could not make eyecontact with her because her bangs concealed one eye and the visor sat resting over the other, giving her a sleek and dangerous look.

"I can hunt," she broke the silence and I looked to the six javelins strapped to her flanks, and I believed her. I sank to my knees and then finally she did embrace me. SAM made a show of watching our surroundings as we two lovers reuinited after our first day of being seperated.

"I almost feel sorry for your enemies," I chuckled and she smiled, nuzzling my face lovingly.

"Almost," she breathed.

...

Cute, sexy and dangerous. What more could I possibly want?

Author's Note

Finally, I got another chapter finished. I was sad to see my otherwise steady updating schedule broken for so long, but as I've said in an earlier comment, life demanded my attention. I won't bore you with the details.

I only write this fic when I feel like I have the time and the desire to do so and it takes quite a bit of freetime and the right frame of mind to do so. I'm all done dealing with life for the foreseeable future and should be back to cranking out chapters at my regular pace. I hope the story is still good and as always, please leave a comment.

I enjoy reading your reactions. I hope there aren't too many typos in this chapter. I'll double-check it later.