“Gunfire.”

That single word, uttered like a death sentence, shattered the silence in the APC.

“I don’t hear anything,” I stated after a couple, tense seconds. It had barely been two hours since we left Black Slab’s hideout; we were still far too close to our latest misdeeds for my liking. “You sure we’re being fired at?”

“No.” Saios shook his metaphorical head. “It’s distant. I can hardly pick it up through the ambient noise. It’s reverberating against something, so it’s unlikely to be in our direction.”

“Okay, stop,” I ordered.

The vehicle slowed down to a halt. With the utmost caution, I peeked outside through the upper hatch.

We were riding on the hillside of a shallow valley. A few sick-looking shrubberies littered the slope, their roots deeply entrenched in the rocky soil. The wind cared little for that burnt vegetation, blowing dust into miniature tornadoes. Bigger boulders showed traces of civilization where a road had laid oh so long ago – otherwise, nothing noteworthy to be seen.

“Wait, I hear it.” My left ear suddenly perked up at the familiar sound. “Something loud, like a shotgun. It’s nowhere close to us.”

“None of our business then. Gunfire in the Wastelands, it is hardly breaking news. Nothing worth investigating.” Chrystal’s voice came from below, all too close to my liking. I glanced down and sure enough, there she was, head mere inches from my belly and looking up with that wry smile of hers. I could feel her hot breath against my skin. “Unless you have other reasons to want me to get up there, of course.”

All she had to do was to level her head and inch forward to bury her muzzle into my…

“Celestia damn it.” I jumped sloppily from the turret’s ring to the APC’s roof. It was stupid, of course, because it exposed me to potential sniper fire, yet right then I suspected this was preferable to my previous predicament.

“Something the matter, honey?” Chrystal leaned out of the hatch, posing seductively against the cold steel. Her question seemed innocent, but the playful tinkle in her eyes betrayed the act.

“Nothing.” I tore my eyes away from there, toward the surrounding landscape. Below me, the APC groaned and hissed as Saios lowered the heavy rear hatch.

“Perhaps we ought to check it out, just, you know, not to walk blindly into an ambush or something.” I honestly didn’t think some random thugs had the firepower to take our tank down, but I didn’t want to get back into close proximity of Chrystal just yet. I wasn’t fooling anyone, especially not myself: that mare had a hold over me, something fierce that derailed my thoughts and shook my body down to a primal level. A few days before, I would have dismissed that as Chrystal being Chrystal, as in ‘that one mare so hot even other mares want her’, but then, something changed. Black Slab happened. In a way, I was glad it wasn’t just seduction, or else I would have had to put my own sexuality into question. On the other hoof though, shit, what was really going on with her?

“I concur.” Evey stretched after stepping out. She wasn’t complaining, but I could feel she felt like she had been traveling in a matchbox. She did spend two centuries in a cell, only waking up every once in a while – I suppose caring little for closed spaces was the very least that could have happened to her.

Personally, I would have gone mad after a few days, yet alone decades.

“Ponies may be in need of our help,” Meridian added, looking at me expectantly. “We could be of assistance.”

“Ugh, we’re not here to play heroes.” I facehooved softly. “The whole point of scouting is finding the safest route, not running toward danger.”

“Aye, but those bloody raiders are sneaky basterds if I ever saw some.” Sunburn lit a cigarette and held the pack toward me. “With a wee bit of initiative, you get rid of that problem. Fag?”

“Spring does not smoke.” Evey’s glare could have leveled a mountain, yet Sunburn seemed unfazed. If anything, inside he was probably laughing his ugly ass off. She turned toward me and her expression grew softer, if somewhat concerned. “Still, while I am deferring to your expertise in those matters, you already know where I stand.”

“You... But…” I stammered, looking around for support and finding exactly none. “Gah! Luna fuck me with an hair dryer, fine, if we find raiders and it’s not a suicide run, we’ll kick their asses. Happy?”

“Delighted.” There was not an ounce of deception on Evey’s face. Likewise, Meridian tipped his hat in a silent acknowledgement, a hint of pride glittering in his eyes.

Shit, those guys were going to turn me into a goody-two-shoes goddamn good Samaritan if they kept on going that way.

“Hm. I didn’t know you had a soft side, darling,” Chrystal chuckled.

“No comments.” I jumped down to the ground. “Saios, got any idea where the gunfire was coming from?”

“Thankfully, I have placed multiple microphones on the APC, so I could get a detailed spectrum of the sound. The echo made it much harder, but I believe I managed to clean up the signal,” he announced proudly, blatantly ignoring the fact I had asked him a very simple question and not for the details. “My best guess would be that it came from the north-east, in the neighboring valley.”

“We need to get right over this ledge then.” As I looked up, I felt my stomach sink into my hooves. “Damn that’s steep.”

To be perfectly honest, ‘steep’ was a gross understatement for the hundreds-meters-long obstacle course before us. It wasn’t vertical enough to be called a wall but I’ll be damned if anypony looked up to that and thought, yeah, that seems like an easy stroll all right.

“I doubt the APC can take that shortcut,” Chrystal added. “Honestly, I don’t think any wheeled vehicle would have the horsepower to make that climb.”

“Any alternate route?”

“To the top? Not a chance. All the maps I have show steep angles in excess over fifty degrees all around,” Saios answered at once. Celestia bless AIs and their computing power. “We could get around it but we would be very exposed.”

“So climbing it is,” I sighed. “Just my luck.”

“I’ll stay with the car and our luggage, if you don’t mind,” Chrystal chuckled. “Please try not to get killed, honey. You still owe me a nice heap of caps.”

“Thanks for the support,” I deadpanned.

“Sunburn and I can get ahead to the top, if you so wish,” Evey nodded toward the ghoul. “This way you shan’t have to climb if you needn’t to.”

“Geez, thanks, but I’m not that slow,” I huffed. To hear her talk I was an old mare in a damn wheelchair. “I’ll get up there all right.”

“Um, Spring?” With an apologetic smile, Evey deployed her big, feathery wings. “I don’t want to imply you would slow us down… but you cannot fly.”

“Well we could make the lad fly,” Sunburn laughed, somehow juggling a grenade with his foreleg. “However the landing might not be pleasant, nor in a single place for that matter.”

“Spring, we have reached the crest,” Evey announced in my earpiece.

“Good, I’m almost there,” I lied through my teeth, stopping a couple seconds to catch my breath. By Luna’s blue tits, even a goat would have had a hard time getting through there. Damn, and Meridian made it look easy, not even breaking a sweat or anything. “You see something?”

“I’ll show you.” Oddly, the voice didn’t seem to come from the radio.

At once, the world shifted from beneath my hooves. The Wastelands laid before me, unfolded as a never-ending stretch of dust and rocks. The grey sky above shone of its pale light on the depressing scenery, and the powerful muscles on my back contracted and stretched as the air beneath my wings shifted and…

I stumbled, avoiding quite a long fall by little more than a hair. My consciousness flared, switching on and off, as every blink brought before my eyes images both foreign and confusingly familiar.

Then it was gone. Speechless, I sat against a boulder, eyes wide, heart thundering in my chest.

“Spring, I’m so sorry.” Evey seemed somewhat concerned. “I had not anticipated such an adverse reaction from you.”

“I have the confusing feeling I should be mad at you, but I don’t even know why,” I muttered absentmindedly. The way the world still spun around me did little to convince me to get back on my hooves. “What the hell just happened?”

“I tried to make you see from my eyes, just like I always do with yours.” Somehow, I knew she had landed and Sunburn was shooting her a very puzzled glance. “However, when I pulled your consciousness toward mine it behaved like a kitten thrown in a pool of cold water. I had no choice but to let you go, somewhat abruptly.”

“I… wait, what?” I managed to shake some torpor off my poor, tortured brain. “What do you mean, ‘just like you always do with mine’?”

“I…” Evey paused. “I see. You had not realized. My telepathic powers are more than an informed ability, Spring. Whenever I touch somepony with my mind, a bond is formed. You broadcast your thoughts and your feelings through that link so clearly, sometimes they could as well be mine. Sometimes, during time of… extreme duress, let us say, it bleeds out the other way – your mind grabs unto mine. Since you never reacted to it, I took it for a silent acknowledgement.”

I wanted to burst into some kind of mad rage right then. I really did. Still, something in the way she had talked – something in the way she felt – smothered my anger like flame retardant on a camp fire. For yes, now that she mentioned it I could feel her in an odd, indescribable way. I would have expected a blatant invasion of my personal space, like a voice constantly whispering to my ear, but no. I knew she was there just like I knew I could touch my muzzle with my eyes closed. It was so natural I probably wouldn’t have noticed had she never told me.

“Evey, there might have been a slight misunderstanding,” I began, choosing my words with the utmost care. “I am aware of your mind-reading abilities and I gave you my trust. Implicitly, I expected you not to invade my mind on a daily basis.”

“I… understand.” She sighed sorrowfully, then something grabbed her attention. “However, this will have to wait. The situation here looks dire.”

“Define dire.” This was the kind of conversation you had to have face to face anyway. “Any threats to the APC?”

“There is an ambushed caravan below. They seem to be fighting back but the raiders have the upper hoof.” I didn’t need no fancy telepathic link to feel her distress. “I can see foals hiding under a cart. Spring, we have to intervene.”

“Celestia’s holy mackerel, see, that was exactly the kind of situation I was hoping to avoid,” I cursed. I looked uphill toward Meridian, only to realize the earth pony was almost to the top already. “Can’t they save their asses by themselves?”

“Lads, raiders are moving to get behind them,” Sunburn noted. “Caravaneers can’t see them. If you want to give them a wee help, now’s the time.”

“Shit. Just, fuck.” I looked around for an easier route and found none. “Okay, listen, I’m kind of stuck here. Go help if you want to but don’t count me in.”

“Sunburn, if you get yourself killed, I am holding back your wages,” Chrystal warned. Tst, of course she would be delighted to save on a few caps.

“Aye, milady,” he answered. “Spring, we can’t go ahead if you aren’t covering our sorry arses.”

“The terrain’s too steep, she won’t make it in time.” By then Meridian had probably reached them already – not that he could do fuck in a gunfight.

“I am going to get you up.” Evey’s silhouette appeared in the skies above me. “We are running on borrowed time.”

“Wait, wait.” I stepped aside as the alicorn landed right next to me. “What do you mean, getting me up?”

She still had her composure, yet the poor girl’s eyes betrayed her turmoil.

Okay, so not saving bystanders? Very bad in her book. Duly noted.

“This is not the issue, Spring.” She shook her head, looking back and forth as if she had been trying to gauge how in Tartarus she was going to proceed. “I know every war has heavy collateral damage, and you cannot always save them all, but this? Leaving them to their fate is not fatality, it is negligence!”

“Hey, I said it was okay.” I blinked. “I mean, I’m okay to save their sorry asses. Good intentions can’t give me wings, y’know.”

She cocked an eyebrow and deployed her feathery appendages.

“Oh hell no,” I backed up against a rock. “Don’t even think about it.”

“The only alternative is me, teleporting the both of us to the top,” she pointed out.

“I would strongly advise against it,” Saios said. “Evey, you know your teleport spell is dangerous. In fact, I’m not even sure it deserves to be called a spell in the first place. More like a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Worst case scenario?”

“You die,” Saios stated bluntly. “On the bright side, it would be relatively painless because you would be instantly vaporized, crushed or asphyxiated.”

“Well, then it’s an improvement from me falling to my death, isn’t it?” I chuckled nervously. “Okay, go girl. Work your magic before I chicken out.”

I saw her eyes close, her horn light up. My whole life came crashing in front of me as I realized how bad an idea this really was. My mouth opened up to scream, I blinked…

And we were at the top.

“…fuck me,” I finally stammered, “I’m alive.”

“Lucky lad,” Sunburn chuckled. The ghoul was tinkering with his launchers, probably switching to yet another round type.

“Glad to see your faith in my abilities were not misplaced.” Evey smiled before nodding toward the fight down in the valley. “If I go now, shall mine in yours own be honored?”

“Shall yours in…” My nose scrunched as I faced the awkward phrasing. “Look, I have no idea what you just said, but yeah, go ahead, I got your back.”

“Thank you.” She nodded and took off. “I shall head toward the caravan to stabilize their critically wounded. Sunburn, would you kindly take the heat to the raiders?”

“Aye, m’lady!” He threw a mock salute and blasted upward. How somebody with so little feathers could fly so fast was a complete mystery to me. “They won’t know what hit ‘em.”

“All right, Meridian, you…” I began before realizing the earth pony was already running down the slope toward the defenders. “… yeah, just… do that, I guess. Saios, can you be my spotter?”

“Well, my vision cone is limited to your goggle’s cameras, but I shall do my best.” A pause. “Wait, I have an idea. Maybe there is… oh, yes, you are going to love this.”

“What?” I lay down behind a rock that was giving me a good vantage point over the fight below. Our two fliers had disappeared in the skies, assessing the situation one more time before losing the element of surprise. “C’mon, don’t keep me in the dark.”

“I have yet to recover all the data from the hard drives you brought back from Manehattan but I have gained access to a few wartime satellites in low orbit. One of them is nearby and has high-end IR cells. Let me just fire the RCS to get a line of sight…”

“Okay, you lost me at ‘yet’,” I deadpanned. I carefully placed half a dozen clips on the ground near me as I set up my rifle against the rock. “Dude, I just need somepony to keep track of those bastards, not one of your fancy solutions of yours.”

“And done. I got a visual on them.”

“Which ones?” Through the scope, the situation seemed even direr for the caravan. There was at least a dozen raiders firing at them from the hillside, a few were sneaking around the back and some were even engaged in melee combat with hapless security guys. “Hmm. Doesn’t look like a random bunch of raiders.”

“All of them.”

“What?” I licked my lips, racking my faithful rifle’s bolt back and forth. I had to cover the party’s back or the fight would be over very soon. “What do you mean?”

“I see all twenty-three of them.” Saios was beaming. “Thermal cameras, see? Oh, you might want to start with that one before he reaches cover.”

“’see him,” I mumbled. The cross of my sights strafed over the terrain, stopped over some raider’s head. He was running toward a boulder that would have given him a good vantage point over the defenders. “’got him.”

The raider’s brains splattered against the dry dirt. His friends failed to realize a sniper had entered the game.

Three more shots and two of them followed him in the afterlife.

“Weapons hot!” Two explosions rocked the hillside where most of the raiders had been. “Ooh, that ought to hurt.”

“Finesse in all its glory,” I mumbled. One of the raiders near ground zero stumbled back to her hooves, shaken but seemingly unharmed. “Of course now I got to clean the mess.”

The first round missed by half an hair, shattering against a rock a couple feet behind the target. Cursing inwardly, I shot again. This time, the high-powered round tore through her chest, piercing her metal armor like wet paper.

“I am on the descent,” Evey announced.

“I can’t see you.” I looked up from my scope but the whole place was a mess. “Saios, where’s she at?”

“Six hundred meters from your position, one o’clock.” A pause. “On a steep downward vector, touchdown in less than ten seconds.”

“Discord fuck me with a handlebar, she isn’t going to land there, is she?” I moved my scope toward the area. “Listen, Evey, it’s a clusterfuck of pain down there. Those guys are screwed. They got raiders coming at them from everywhere.”

“Descent vector unchanged.” Saios’ voice had a hint of what seemed to be panic. “Evey, get the hell out of there!”

“Celestia damn fuck SHIT!” I didn’t even bother to make an articulated curse, focusing instead of slamming a new clip in my rifle. “Evey, damn it!”

“I have landed and am unharmed,” I heard her say just as her silhouette appeared in my sights. The caravaneers around her had a shocked look on their faces, as if an alicorn had suddenly dropped to the ground in a suicide nose-dive.

“Calm down, I am a friend,” I heard her say to a colt. He was barely old enough to qualify as a young adult, and yet there he lay, covered in blood. “I am a doctor.”

He muttered something I couldn’t make out and relaxed slightly.

Angel. Evey almost stopped but duty prevailed over shock. She unstrapped her saddlebags and began cleaning up some nasty wound.

“Evey, hostiles coming down on your position!” Saios warned.

I muttered a curse. Her cover was less than ideal. She might have been an alicorn, but a shotgun blast to the face wouldn’t do her any good.

“He needs stitches now,” Evey answered in a no-nonsense tone. “Keep them off my back.”

“What?” I sputtered in the microphone. “You gotta be shitting me. Listen, I don’t want you to get hurt but that’s-”

“This was not a question, Spring.”

“You… gah, fuck me, fine!” I angrily shot a poor chap who had the brilliant idea of running into my sights. “But next time-” -I shot another- “-you’re-” -bolt rack, scope strafe- “-cleaning up before charging in!” Quick squeeze of the trigger, splatter of blood down the road. “You got a death wish?”

“No, I have an efficient sniper by my side,” she muttered, clearly annoyed. “Please, I really need to focus.”

“Fine,” I grumbled.

Another three-o’-eight flew through the air and ended the life of a hapless raider some seven hundred meters away. Without a word, I removed the empty clip and accidently knocked the others down in the dust.

“Damn it,” I muttered as I levitated them back to eye level. They were coated in dirt. “Can’t risk a jam, now can I?”

No sooner had I begun tapping the first clip against the rifle’s butt, however, than my radio sputtered again.

“Spring, right behind Evey!”

“What?” I looked down the sights as I slammed the clip in. Right there, out of nowhere, some bastard with a shotgun had circled in Evey’s back. “Shit, watch out!”

Time seemed to slow down. She looked up over her shoulder, the raider stopped in his tracks, I forcefully pulled the bolt back. Her horn lit up, his shotgun rose toward her, my rifle chambered a new round.

He fired.

Her shield shattered.

I cried out in pain.

The bullet sailed through the aftermath, in a second that could have been an eternity – and down the raider went.

“Celestia fuck me around the sun!” I buried my head in my hooves. My horn felt like a minotaur had tried to pull it out and given up halfway. “Shit, Evey, you’re alright?”

“I have been better.” A deep breath. “I am unharmed. The blast collapsed the shield and the feedback… well, it was not pleasant.”

“No it wasn’t,” I said between my grit teeth. Another explosion rocked the hillside, scattering the few raiders still standing. “Let’s not do that ever again, alright?”

The ambush ended in a most anticlimactic way possible. We kept on fighting for half a dozen minutes, top, until I realized I had ran out of targets. Evey moved over to another wounded pony; Sunburn shot a couple grenades at raiders running away with their tails between their legs, and just like that it was over.

I stayed there, laying in the dirt, for some time. The pain in my head had subdued, and so had my emotions. It left me… empty, hollow, stunned facing the Wastelands.

“Saios?” I finally found the will to talk. “Just between the two of us…”

“Yes?”

“What the hell are we going to do with Evey?” I sighed. “This filly got issues.”

“Hello kettle, my name is pot. I’m black.”

“I’m serious!” I kicked a small rock down the slope. “Okay, I realize our whole team is a clusterfuck of psychos, myself included, but at least I don’t have a death wish!”

“Neither does she, for that matter.” A pause. “Listen, she is a kindred spirit capable of god-like levels of empathy. The War hardened her, for sure, but…”

“The Wastelands are even worse, aren’t they?”

“Let us just say this is the kind of place which makes you wish you had been sent to Tartarus instead. When the damned walk the earth, how could hope be more than a forlorn notion? Harmony has forsaken us, threw in the towel as we murdered each other over pieces of scrap. You need to understand that, at this point, someone who lived through bygone ages, who can remember the warmth of the sun on their shoulders, well, needs a purpose to carry on. Evey is slowly coming to terms with the fact you are not her, and she is not part of you. You did not fail to remind her of it earlier. She has yet to find her place in this big mess we now call home. Just give her time… and be there for her, because otherwise no one will.”

“Wow, that’s… deep, I guess.” I scratched my left ear. “Wait, can’t you talk to her? I’m mean, I’m not exactly the kind of pony good at helping people – unless they want somepony dead.”

“Can I speak to her? Yes,” he chuckled darkly. “Can I make a difference? That’s not likely. I won’t pretend I understand what is really going on in her mind, but one thing is for sure: she has formed a bond between the two of you, one that I do not share… I am dead to her, and so is most of the world; you are the only thing she can truly see, as something that is not a phantasm. I… I don’t know how to explain it. The Evey we know? You made her. You shape her consciousness to the idea you have of her and she would not have it any other way.”

“That’s impossible.” I frowned. “I never did that. For that matter, I sure don’t want to.”

“Hence her confusion. It is a paradox: in a way, you order her not to follow your orders.” Saios sighed. “Of course, this is far more complicated than any analogy we could ever find. Her past personality remains, strengthened by your resolve not to interfere in her life and by… other factors that depends on you. What happened earlier was nothing but a surge from her past self, most likely seen through the lenses of your perceptions.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Down below, the caravaneers had begun sorting the mess out, digging graves for their fallen brethren and leaving the raiders’ corpses to the vultures.

“She wouldn’t have survived the War pulling those kinds of stunts,” Saios explained. “However, it does fit the image you have of an inexpugnable hero of Old, doesn’t it?”

“I see your point.” And I didn’t like it one bit. “I made her act that way, by expecting her to do what I thought she used to do.”

“Which, incidentally, was triggered by your response to her earlier attempt to meddle with your mind,” he continued. “You basically told her to be her own pony…”

“… so she did, conforming to the idea I had of her previous life,” I finished with a painful facehoof. “Fuck damn it. I’m going to get her killed, am I not?”

“There is hope yet. Do you recall how she ordered you to cover her after her nosedive?”

“Yeah.” I scratched my mane behind the goggles’ strap. “She shouldn’t have been able to do that, according to that theory of yours.”

“It means her personality – a real personality, not a figment of your imagination – is still there,” he nuanced. “It isn’t the first time she took initiative, either. All you have to do is talk with her, make her understand she cannot rely on you to find her path in life.”

“Easier said than done,” I grumbled. “I tried to find my own by myself, and look what I ended up doing for a living.”

“I’ll discuss all I just said with her but I need you to cement it.” He sighed. “You can’t push her away. Not without breaking her, at least. The poor soul would burn all bridges if she felt she was hurting you but Celestia knows what toll it would take on her psyche. She needs to sever it on her own, one step at a time.”

“You make her sound like a drug addict,” I accused.

“A fitting analogy. After all, she spent two centuries in silence, alone with her own thoughts. You are like a branch thrown to a drowning pony. She may not be in deadly peril anymore but she cannot bring herself to let her savior go just yet.”

By the time I got down the slope, everypony else had already reached the caravan – Chrystal and the APC included. It was a good thing, too, in a way, because I really didn’t want to be the one to explain to the traumatized caravaneers why they had been saved by ponies traveling with an alicorn and a tank in the first place.

No, when I arrived, they had already begun to tend to their wounded and drink to the memory of the fallen. Evey and Sunburn helped, respectively with the former and the later.

Meanwhile, a beefy-looking stallion was engrossed in a conversation with Chrystal. Right next to him, a young mare was shamelessly gaping at the businessmare with the kind of lustful glare that left little to the imagination. While the stallion seemed completely oblivious, Chrystal basked in it, her smile growing wider with every passing moment.

As for me, well, I tried to keep to the shadows. I have never been the kind of pony to shine in social gatherings, after all. The ones I attended to all too often ended with somepony else screaming bloody murder.

“You should go and meet people.” Meridian seemingly appeared out of thin air, but by then it barely startled me anymore. “Who knows? You might even make some friends. Don’t forget you are a hero in their eyes.”

“Wanna bet on that?” I chuckled humorlessly. “And how about you? Why don’t you go and find yourself a fillyfriend, like Chrystal just did?”

“Did she?” Eyebrow raised, he looked over to the businessmare. The stallion had gone away and the poor beige mare’s eyes were now completely locked on Chrystal’s lips, drinking her every word. “Mmh, she has indeed. I dislike that kind of behavior. Ponies and their hearts are not toys to be played with, just to be discarded when you grow bored of them.”

“There’s something wrong with her,” I avowed. “Something… nefarious, even.”

“Agreed.” Meridian frowned. “We need to keep an eye on her. She might be an ally but she is definitively not a friend.”

“Saw right through her, didn’t you?”

“She is a mystery I have yet to unravel.” He shook his head. “Honestly, at that point I’m afraid to dig.”

“Who knows what unholy secrets we would unearth?” I chuckled darkly. I would have bet my bottom cap on Chrystal having more than one skeleton in her closet. “Yeah, I think it’s better not to ask.”

There was a pause, which stretched into the night. It wasn’t unpleasant, to sit there with Meridian by my side. I knew I could rely on him, unlike Chrystal, Sunburn, or, hell, even Evey. He didn’t have an agenda, nor serious psychological issues. I mean, I liked Evey, I really did, and I knew the poor girl would cut her own leg with a rusty spoon before harming me consciously, but I was concerned she might just snap, break down as the weight of the Wastelands fell down on her, frying my brain in the process. I had to talk to her – sadly, pep talks weren’t exactly the thing I was known for.

“Oh, h-hey there.” A voice disrupted my bleak train of thought. “S-Sorry, I didn’t see you there, standing in the dark… I’ll just be on my way, okay?”

The voice belonged to a mare in her late twenties. Blue-ish coat, light grey mane, trading related cutie mark – she had to be a caravaneer, then. She wasn’t even armed.

As I stared back at the newcomer, Meridian discretely nudged my shoulder. He then nodded toward the mare, the significance of the gesture all too obvious to be ignored.

Damn, way to throw me to the manticores, old nag…

“Hey there.” My smile felt so forced it physically hurt. “Nah, it’s okay. I was about to get off to see what were my other friends doing anyway.”

“Oh.” I felt her eyes scan my stuff, halting on the rifle strapped to my back. “Wait, you are the sharpshooter from the ambush, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” I pointed over my shoulder to the ridge I had been shooting from earlier. “Sorry for not rushing in, but I don’t get into close quarters if I can help it.”

“Not the social type, are you?” A genuine smile was growing on her lips. “Nonetheless, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Come, I know some ponies who would love to thank you in the flesh.”

“I’m not sure I should…” I trailed on, realizing Meridian had taken a Prench leave, the coward. “Really, you shouldn’t bother. I didn’t do it to be praised.”

“Aw, and she’s modest too!” The mare laughed and took a few steps toward the lights. “Come on, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Girl, you’re soon going to wish you hadn’t said that,” I mumbled under my breath as I followed her into the night.

Soon enough she had dragged me deeper into the camp.

“I’m Meadow Song, by the way.” Ponies all around us kept on giving us side glances. I was growing more uncomfortable by the second. “And what’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Spring,” I heard myself say. “Just call me Spring.”

“Why the long face? It’s a lovely name,” she chuckled. A colt bumped into me, let out a shrill scream as he noticed my weapons, and scampered away in a blink. “Don’t mind them. No offense, sweetheart, but you look…”

“Terrifying?” I helpfully supplied.

“I was going for ‘ferocious’,” Meadow clarified with a smile. “We are simple ponies, you see. Well-armed wanderers are seldom good news to us. This is why you had me… surprised for a second back there, clouded in shadows and mysteries.”

“You make it sound way more glamorous than it really is,” I shook my head. “I just don’t like company very much.”

“Nonsense!” She laughed. “You’ll see, you’ll fit right in. Look, we’re here!”

‘Here’ was a large circle among the carts. A large bonfire had been lit at its core, providing light and warmth to the ponies around. They were drinking, singing, laughing and crying, their long shadows cast against the horizon.

Uneasy, I shifted my weight on my hooves as Meadow waved somepony over. The contrast between the fire’s light and shadows would have blinded anypony, and so she most likely failed to see the shock, soon followed by anger, that had appeared on many faces as I stood there.

Unfortunately, thanks to my enhanced vision I did not miss a second of it.

“Casset, is that you?” Meadow called to an approaching group. “Tap, Axle, girls, guys, I want you to meet somepony.”

Teeth clenched, I watched them stop right in front of us – two mares, three stallions. Some of them were dragging their hooves, but the rest seemed mighty pissed.

“Spring, meet Beer Tap-” Meadow pointed at a dark beige earth pony with some kind of grain for cutie mark, “-Strong Axle-” enormous crimson stallion, image of a cart on his muscular flanks “-Coin Toss-” dark unicorn, female, bicolor mane, gambling-related mark “-Best Buy-” shady looking male, pale green coat, pile of coins on his ass “-and Scotty, the best repairpony from here to Baltimare!”

Since said repairpony (female, light grey coat, somewhat even shorter than me) was doing her best to disappear behind Mr. Steroids, I assumed that particular meeting did not feature on her bucket list.

“Guys, girls, please meet Spring.” Meadow had probably noticed something was amiss in the way her friends gave me the cold shoulder, because her cheer had melted from one sentence to the next. “She’s the leader of the party that rescued us from that dreadful ambush.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I mumbled out of duty. Then, for myself, I added: “Mark my words, this is not going to end well.”

There was a pregnant pause as they shared an all-too-meaningful look.

Meadow’s brow started burrowing into a frown.

“She’s not welcome here,” Beer Tap finally stated. She would have taken a menacing step forward, too, had she not realized my pistol’s holster’s strap had just magically come undone. “Do you even know who she is?”

“Okay, once more with clarity.” Meadow sighed, massaged her forehead with a hoof. “This is Spring. She is the only reason my son is sleeping tightly in my tent right now and not lying dead in some ditch. Now, I would have expected the sweetheart to be drowning in thanks and beer by now, but for some reason everypony in this caravan turned into a senseless jerk overnight. I found her alone in a dark corner, watching the festivities from afar. Please welcome her with the warmth she deserves.”

“She’s due many things, but a warm welcome is not one of ‘em!” The one called Best Buy barked. I turned toward him and all of sudden he became very busy making an impressive impersonation of a mole. He squeaked: “I mean, uh, respect is what you’re due, right?”

“I shouldn’t have followed you,” I truthfully told Meadow without letting the others out of my sight. “I’m not welcome here.”

“For good reason,” Strong Axle growled. His voice was akin to a rockslide – deep, rolling, and of ill omen. “You should not be here.”

“Wait a minute.” Meadow looked back and forth between us. “Do you know each other?”

“She’s the Ghost.”

By all means, Scotty’s pitiful squeak should have been lost in the noisy ambient background. And yet, as the words escaped her lips, all sounds seemed to grind to a halt, as if buried under an intangible lead coffin, as if she had uttered a word forbidden by ancient laws and the world had taken a deep breath, anxious to see on whom might the mighty hammer fall.

A cold shill seemingly froze the air between me and them – we faced one another on some forlorn glacier.

“You shouldn’t have brought her here,” Strong Axle continued, somewhat tenser than before. A foe of that size couldn’t be trifled with; he could without a doubt snap me in half and not even break a sweat. “No one here wants to meet this bi-”

It happened so fast, at first I failed to realize Meadow had even moved. One moment, she was standing by my side, staring at Strong Axle as he was merrily trotting toward his untimely death, and the next, she was standing three steps ahead, hoof raised as the stallion underneath staggered from the blow.

“Finish that sentence and you’ll see I have all its friends in store for you,” she growled. “Paranoia makes you dumber than a single-headed brahmin’s droppings. Look at her – ignore the armor, just look at her: does she even look like the Ghost?”

“She’s scary,” Scotty pipped. “She got fancy weapons and stuff.”

“Well, so does the Stable Dweller,” Meadow pointed out. “Would you call her a bad pony?”

“… no,” she admitted bashfully.

“Even then,” my defense attorney continued, not missing a single beat, “last time I heard, DJ-P0n3 said the Ghost was travelling away from Manehattan, toward Marypony. Filly’s a bit out of the way, don’t you think? Besides, I don’t believe that kind of personage would stop to help helpless chaps like us, or hell, even have friends at all.”

The others seemed unconvinced at best.

“Hey, thanks, but don’t bother.” I lightly prodded Meadow’s shoulder. I had to get out of this situation fast if I didn’t want to have to finish what the raiders had started earlier. “You can’t make them like me. It’s okay. I have… other stuff to do anyway.”

And with that, I walked away, blood drumming in my ears. I expected a blow to land in my back any second, prompting me to roll, dodge, engage-

But no. Nopony dared move as I left, toward the shadows where I belong.

“Luna preserve me, I’m going to kill those assholes and piss on their corpses.” I slowly banged my head against the APC’s cool plating. “Serve me right for saving them. A waste of good ammo, that’s what they are.”

“You’re not thinking that.” Meridian was sitting against a rock nearby, his hat pulled down on his eyes. “You should stop that before you hurt yourself.”

“You weren’t there.” I let my head rest against the metal and closed my eyes to bask into the blessed darkness. “The damn bastards treated me like some kind of monster in pony form. Problem is, I’m not even sure they weren’t right.”

“Actually, I was watching you from afar,” he avowed. “It didn’t feel right, leaving you on your own.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I deadpanned. I bumped my back against the vehicle’s side, letting my rump lazily slide all the way to the ground. “So I assume you heard what they called me.”

“Ghost.”

He had said the dreaded word without any kind of intonation; yet – but perhaps it was naught but my imagination – yet, it echoed oddly in the cool air. It did not fail to bring back to my chest that ominous feeling, as if somepony had been stepping on my grave.

“Luna fuck me with a powerdrill, I hate that nickname.” I shivered involuntarily. “Nothing good’ll ever come out of it.”

“That name can be whatever you want it to be,” Meridian calmly noted. “Homage has eyes everywhere, as well as a strange fondness for heroes. Do some good in the Wastelands, and before you know it you’d be hailed as a messiah, or perhaps a guardian angel, always watching from the shadows.”

“I’m pretty much sure her shortlist does not include ponies who recently tried to kill her,” I chuckled darkly. “Besides, the novelty is bound to run off eventually. This place can only have so many selfless heroes, afterward they are just tasteless copycats. All I want is for Homage to forget about me and cut me some slack.”

“Ponies don’t always get the credit they deserve,” Evey said. Her dark coat blended almost perfectly into the night, only leaving her bright, tired eyes. “In this place, it appears gratitude is hard to come by, and trust even more so.”

“Well of-” I stopped midsentence, breath caught up in my throat. “What happened?”

“Nothing nefarious, I assure you.” She smiled softly at me. “But I was given to understand my mere presence might be harmful to the well-being of my patients, and as such they were moved to the care of local, less-competent caretakers.”

“What?!” I sputtered, jumping to my hooves. “You saved their fucking lives, and that’s how they repay you? Okay, that’s the last straw. I’m going to kill every single one of those fuckers.”

“Please abstain.” Evey’s wing abruptly appeared in front of me, cutting my path. “I spent a long time fixing their friends and I would rather not have to do it more than once.”

“But-” I looked up and saw that bright blue eyes looking down at me. I threw in the towel. “Fine. Let them be assholes with impunity. We got other stuff to talk about anyway.”

“Yes.” She smiled tentatively at me. “Yes, there are many things we have to talk about.”

“We do?” My recent fiascos came back to my mind. “Err, yeah, we do, but I’m trying to focus on the short-term problem right now.”

“Which happens to be me.” Her smile grew dimmer still.

I felt my stomach turn upside down.

“Okay, no, listen, this is not the way I wanted this conversation to be headed.” I reached out to her shoulder with a hoof. “I’m not mad at you. I just… I’m lost, that’s just it. I’ll be honest, I’m completely at a loss about what I should say to you right now.”

I sighed. “Listen, let’s just build it up from the ground up, okay? I know you’re lonely. Fuck, you’d be one hell of a sociopath if you weren’t after all you went through. And I know you can read minds and stuff and sometimes you just don’t know where to draw the line. It’s okay, you earned my trust three times over so I’ll just forgive you over and over again. But…”

I paused. Talking to people really wasn’t the thing I was known for.

“But your mind is your own, your inner sanctum, and you cannot let me invade it lest you feel violated,” Evey continued. “Therefore I have to keep my abilities in check and keep my thoughts and feelings to myself.”

“Yes! Yes, exactly!” I burst excitedly. However, my happiness was short-lived, for I realized Evey was still sporting her sad, sad smile. “We haven’t moved an inch, have we?”

“I’m afraid not.” She broke eye contact a second and sighed. “Or perhaps we did? Sometimes… Sometimes I simply cannot tell anymore.”

“Celestia fuck me with her pet phoenix, we are hopeless.” I facehooved. “I mean, come on, the obvious solution is so fucking simple: you don’t read my mind anymore and I help you cope with loneliness the normal way, without any psychic mumbo-jumbo involved. Why can’t we just do that?”

“I cannot turn this… ability on and off like one would do with a machine, Spring.” Evey sighed and sat down, head hung low. “No more that you could decide to stop seeing or hearing. It is there, whether I want it or not. I can ignore it, I can make it so faint it becomes imperceptible, yet it requires a focus and a dedication I do not have and indeed cannot afford…”

“So you’re always reading everypony’s mind?” I frowned. Something didn’t add up. “Like, all the time?”

“No.” There was an uneasy pause. “Shift most likely shared with you his theories. While his love for convoluted metaphors may make them sound far-fetched, I am afraid a large part of it is based on experience. A mind is unlike a book that you can peruse and read at will. It is something active that will react to whatever it is exposed to. I suspect those telepathic and emphatic abilities share a common origin with the disappearance of my cutie mark and my amnesia. For the lack of a better word, my mind is unfinished, more than a blank canvas but less than it ought to be. As such, the mind of an alicorn will latch onto anything that can seemingly complete it – make it one by being part of a greater whole.”

“The Unity,” I whispered. “You are talking about the Unity.”

“Yes. Sadly, this is a fool’s errand.” Her eyes locked into mine. Even in the darkness, I could see anger burning in her soul – and for certain it was not my own. “This thirst cannot be quenched. You cannot make a soul out of spare parts. You cannot make a being from shards of two others, nor ten, nor a thousand. Our magic and perhaps a hint of superstition made us see the mind as an incorporeal entity, something unearthly yet quantifiable, when in truth it is little but the sum of our brain’s biological functions. When one’s mind is broken, it is but a metaphor; when one’s soul is incomplete, it does not mean it has physically lost anything. It is akin to a work of art, a statue maybe that would be shattered, piece by piece. In the end, you do not lose anything, any mass if you may, yet it was the form, and not the matter, that made it a work of art. When you join two broken minds, you do not get one sane spirit, but two miserable souls in one half-empty vessel.”

“Okay, so your mind is a statue.” My head hurt so much. “A broken down statue. Okay. So… what? Where do I fit in this picture? I feel like we’re drifting off-topic…”

“I felt the context was necessary for you to understand.” Evey looked down to the dirt at her hooves. “Whenever such a bond is formed between an individual and another, it has to be initiated by somepony such as I. There has to be a mind weaker than the other, in terms of individuality. The Unity, because of its large base, cannot be easily swayed by whoever it incorporates anymore. However, I am but one mare. Part of a mare, at least. As such, my broken mind can be, and is, easily swayed by whoever I come in contact with.”

“Wait, you said you could hear – see, feel, whatever is the right word – pretty much anybody,” I recalled with growing horror. “Does that mean anypony can mess with your mind?”

“In theory, yes. However…” Evey hesitated a second. “Thankfully, I came to this conclusion before I bonded with anypony but you… and Meridian, at a different level. I locked my focus on you.”

“So basically I’m getting the privileged treatment,” I deadpanned. “Great. At least now I understand why you’re invading my brain.”

“No, you do not!” Evey’s voice cracked a little. “You are my anchor, my sole point of reference. Before you entered my life, I didn’t even have a solid grasp on reality! Do you know how it is, to dream an entire life? To grow up, have foals of your own, only to wake up on the cold hard floor after taking a fifty-year nap? I cannot… I cannot…”

By then she had been shaking and I had embraced her in a gigantic hug. She gratefully leaned into my embrace.

“I cannot live through this ever again. And even if we found a way – even if my mind did not break apart after the severance,” she continued in a whisper, “I couldn’t bear to be alone. Not anymore.”

“This has never been an option anyway.” I haphazardly stroked her mane. I hadn’t realized that she had it tied in a copycat of my own ponytail. “I just need some space, you know?”

“I understand.” She wrapped her wings around my body. “Spring, can I ask you one more favor?”

“Go ahead.” I chuckled. “But it has better not be about my new shampoo. I like it too much to change.”

“Do you mind if I sleep with you tonight?” A pause. “As in, next to you. I could use the company.”

“And snuggle those soft thingies of yours?” I laughed as I patted her immense wings. “Granted. Granted, sister.”

From the bottom of my cup, the lonely tea bag starred back at me, as if it was apologizing for my brew tasting so bland. I sighed, twirling the lukewarm liquid out of pure habit. Three months. I hadn’t slept in a real bed for three months. I was not complaining, of course – the injured needed their comfort much more than we did, and the Princesses knew how numerous they were. And those who made it back to the hospitals behind the frontline were the lucky ones. Each day, hundreds of medics like me had to separate the hopeless cases from those who could be saved. Each day, hundreds ponies died in our hooves, their last words a variation of ‘please save me’.

I shivered, and the cool air had little to do with it. The bloodshed didn’t seem to be losing any momentum. If anything, each side was competing in a terrifying course to armament. The higher ups saw more casualties on the adverse troops. We on the grounds saw ponies and zebras alike torn apart, gazed ‘til asphyxiation, burnt alive, their organs hanging out of their wide open belly like grotesque streamers… Pegasi lying broken on the ground, shot down by balefire; zebras crying and wailing, their eyes and face melted down by our own white phosphorus grenades. Everywhere, soldiers valiantly charged, only to die by dozens a couple strides forward, mowed down by machineguns like wheat under a scythe. The newly introduced tanks may give them some protection; but already rumors of new weapons cooking the crews inside their own vehicle were spreading like wildfire. How long before I had to jump inside a burning husk of hot metal to save a radio operator, only to forsake him to save my own hide?

“Hey, you alright?” Somepony prodded my shoulder. Startled, it took me a few seconds to recognize a familiar face. Redheart, earth pony, nurse behind the lines. Very good with children. She probably hadn’t seen any in years.

“Hey,” I answered with a tired smile. “Sorry. I am exhausted. I just came back from Stalliongrad with the 158^th and I couldn’t find a bed, so…”

“Nopony told you? The personnel quarters have been moved in a prefabricated structure behind the hospital. We needed the space for a new section to treat balefire injuries.” She frowned. “Never seen burns like that. It isn’t natural.”

“Trust me, you were spared the worse of it,” I replied grimly. “Most of the time, when you are caught in the blast, you are done for. There is some kind of agent that stays in the air afterward, it reacts with anything living. It starts to decay. Wounds gangrene almost at once. Necromancy, possibly.”

“The Princesses have mercy on us all,” Redheart whispered. I didn’t answer, and opted to stare down at my cold tea instead.

“Hey, do you mind if I use your bunk to sleep for a couple hours?” I finally broke the silence. “I would petition for my own, but I don’t think the higher ups will let me stay around here for very long. Medics are in short supply on the front, it seems.”

“Of course, of course,” she smiled wearily. “You can even spend the night in it if you want.”

I opened my mouth to answer, and froze.

“I’m working the night shift,” she added.

“Oh. Of course,” I chuckled heartily. “Sorry. I don’t even know how I am supposed to help people, let alone perform surgery, when I am so sleep deprived.”

“You are faring better than I would,” she bitterly admitted. “I have been to the front, once. Somepony had to drag me back by the tail after the first explosion.”

“Psychiatrists are going to have a field day with me once it is all over,” I mumbled. “I can already see the great Professor Slip asking me to sit down on a couch, and-”

“Captain Cross is asked for in Colonel Bandaids’ office,” the speaker in the room interrupted me. “Captain Cross.”

“Captain?” Redheart raised an eyebrow. “You have been promoted, haven’t you?”

“They promoted everypony who survived the assault on Birds’ Hill,” I sighed wearily before standing up. “Since they pinned a lieutenant insignia on me as soon as I joined the med corps, that means captain. Captain of nothing, though.”

“It’s odd they used the military terminology. Bandaids is usually very stiff when somepony calls him anything but ‘doctor’.”

“So am I,” I grumbled. “He probably wanted to pull rank on me, so that means I am going to get a run down.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she poked me playfully. “The old colt loves you since that day you interrupted his lecture to point out the surgeon on the slides had been removing the wrong kidney.”

“I remember that one,” I couldn’t restrain a tired smile. “Who would have known a green stallion could go from white to red in such a short amount of time?”

“We could hear him yell after the guy from the other side of the campus.” She shook her head. “He didn’t have the authority to fire him, but I think he did it anyway.”

“That would not be surprising,” I grabbed my worn-down saddlebags and put them on. “All right. I shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

“Did you ask for me, sir?” I asked, standing at the threshold of the cramped office. Huge stacks of paperwork were overflowing from everywhere, stacked precariously on all available surfaces. I winced internally. Dr. Bandaids’ hate for bureaucracy was Equestria’s worst guarded secret, and if the perpetual frown stuck on his face as he vigorously scribbled something on a form was of any indication, he had still not gotten over being kicked upstairs.

“Oh, Cross.” He barely looked up from his desk. “Good. Enter and take a seat.”

“Yes sir.” I answered before closing the door behind me. “Did something happen?”

“Something happens every five minutes around here,” he grumbled, filing his form away. “You just came back with the 158^th, correct?”

“Yes sir,” I nodded stiffly. “I arrived a couple hours ago.”

“Come on, cut the ‘sir’ bullshit, you’re not on the front anymore.” He sighed and slowly massaged his temples. Black rings were visible beneath the fur of his cheeks. If I ever felt exhausted, he looked more dead than alive. “I’m aware you probably haven’t slept in a couple days, but I needed to see you before the higher ups decided you hadn’t seen your share of carnage yet. Goodness knows it’s a waste of your potential to risk your life like that, but we both know this is not something we get to decide.”

“Something has happened.” I bit my lower lip.

Bandaids sighed once more, but didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed a document from a stack and gave it a rapid glance. Then he held it toward me.

“Does this ring any bells?”

“Yes,” I frowned. It was a health report, the one-page form that we on the frontlines used instead of files when we sent somepony to the back for better care. “I filled this one a few days ago. Bullet wounds, but the patient was stabilized when he got shipped away. Did I miss something?”

“No, no, the report itself is flawless, as usual,” Bandaids shook his head. “Most medics are so overwhelmed they don’t even fill them anymore because it takes too much time to find out exactly what tore that pony’s leg off, or what burnt his face to the bones.”

“No,” he continued, “the issue is that you sent back to us a zebra.”

I stayed speechless for a second.

“I will provide my care to anyone who seeks my help,” I recited, voice shaking, “without prejudice of race, gender, nor opinion, and I will…”

“I know the words as well as you do, thank you very much,” Bandaids snapped. Then, softer, he continued: “We both took this oath in a world at peace, Cross. I so wish we never had to make those decisions, but…”

“But what?” I interrupted. “Should I have let him to die?”

“Yes.” His answer was blunt and without joy. “Yes, you should have. Or, if it was his misery that pained your heart, you could have spared him an agonizing end. But to send him back? Damn it, Cross, you’re not one of those MoP hippies. You do know better. You’ve seen it with your own eyes!”

“There are very few things the zebras do that I did not see being done by our own troops,” I answered bitterly.

“Then I believe you haven’t seen it all yet.” Bandaids banged his hoof against the desk. “Remember Flu Shot? He was in your promotion, wasn’t he?”

“A skinny colt, always awkward when around mares?” I smiled fondly at the memory. “Wait, ‘was’? Is he…?”

“Shot by a sniper two weeks ago,” Bandaids grabbed a folder behind him and dropped it in front of me. “Wish Card?”

“Stout earth pony mare, always smiling?”

“Gunned down on the front a month ago.” Another folder landed on my lap.

“Stray bullets-” I began reading.

“Kindheart?”

“Isn’t she in the-”

“Was.” Another folder, this time with pictures. “Gutted from the pelvis to the throat by a zebra she was trying to save.”

“And there, last week, my favorite.” He opened a folder and began reading. “Suture Point, twenty-six years old, killed by a necromantic explosive device hidden inside an Equestrian soldier’s corpse. The medic was drawn to it by frantic cries for help, which proved to be the work of a recording device.”

“Suture?...” The rest of my sentence died in my throat. “She lived right next door on the campus…”

“I’m sorry.” Bandaids sighed, closing the file. “But I need you to understand: this is not some fluke, or some bad luck, or some stray bullets. The zebras want to bleed our country dry, and they realized the med corps was doing their job a bit too well. The higher ups would have my hide if they knew I told you this, but the zebras are now instructed to shoot the medics first, if only because it ruins the other soldiers’ morale. You can’t take that risk, Cross.”

“I… I understand,” I whispered. “So from now on it’s to each their own, isn’t it?”

“If only.” From a drawer in his desk, he retrieved a laser pistol. “Here. Take it. It’s much better than the second-hand crap you would have gotten through a requisition.”

“Sir?...” I stared at the weapon with uncertainty. “Medics are unarmed. You know that.”

“Not anymore. Trust me, in the upcoming months you’ll have to fight for your own life.” I could hear his voice crack, though he tried to conceal it. “Paint over your bags. Use insignias from other corps when you are on the field, regulations be damned. Don’t let those bastards make a target out of you.”

“Yes sir,” I croaked.

“Good.” He smiled at me, but there was no hiding the wariness in his eyes. “Dismissed. Go get some sleep.”

“Oh, and Cross?” he continued as I was passing the door. “Please… Come back to us in one piece.”

“Spring, we’ve got a situation.”

“Hm, what?” I yawned. Evey’s wing slid off my back as I stood up to stretch, and the alicorn opened an eye in silent acknowledgement. “What time is it? What’s going on?”

“Homage reported on yesterday’s events.”

I stopped mid-stretch. Of course, it was to be expected that DJ-P0n3 would include the disappearance of the factory into her morning bulletin… but then Saios wouldn’t have woken me up just to tell me this.

From the way Evey started strapping her armor back on, I suspected she had reached the same conclusion.

“Shit. I don’t like the sound of that.” I grabbed my mask and fastened my belt and my weapons on the armor. “How bad it is?”

“The report itself was detailed but entirely to our credit. Homage barely reminded her audience it might have been a freak occurrence and you were still an unpredictable and dangerous individual.” Leave it to Saios to find that to be laudatory. “However, she mentioned the caravan. While I would have welcomed the good publicity in other circumstances, we cannot expect anyone in the area not to connect the dots, had they listened to the broadcast in the first place.”

“Luna damn it.” I racked my pistol’s slide all the way back and checked the chamber. I had the uncanny feeling I would need it very soon. “Caravaneers listen to DJ-P0n3’s ramblings like gospel truth. Somepony’s bound to have heard it. How long do we have?”

“Based on how fast rumors spread in a community, I’d say six minutes. Eight if luck is on our side. It seems unlikely, however, because I cannot reach neither Sunburn nor Chrystal on their radios.”

“Of course you can’t.” I cursed internally. Lady Luck was seldom on my side – Fate, on the other hoof, had the disturbing habit of screwing me up real bad. “We can’t leave without ‘em.”

I nodded toward Evey and she took off, dashing through the skies to find Sunburn.

“You and Meridian, make sure the APC’s ready,” I continued in the radio. “We may need to leave on a hurry.”

“Last time I saw Chrystal, she was flirting with that young mare back in the camp,” the earth pony piped in. He had probably been up for hours already. “She didn’t spend the night here. I wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to have some fun instead, which mean she could still have company.”

“That does sound like Chrystal,” I said through gritting teeth. “Well, she’ll have to find somepony else to defile. She’s too valuable to be left behind. Saios, can you work your magic like you did yesterday and use those cameras of yours to find her?”

“Thermal imagery is out of the picture. I have too many heat sources and no way to distinguish them from one another.” I could almost hear his gears grind. “Had her radio been transmitting, I could have given you some directions. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’m powerless to help you right now.”

“Keep searching. In the meantime, I’ll do it the old fashioned way.”

I dashed into the camp.

Truth to be told, all my instincts were screaming at me as I ran past rows of carriages and tents. Ponies were looking at me warily, which would have been bad enough in a normal situation; as it was, it simply meant the news hadn’t reached their ears just yet.

Otherwise there would have been less staring and more shooting. Some of them had been ready to shed blood the day before, when they had but a faint suspicion on my identity. Now that they knew for certain that I was, indeed, the one they called Ghost, they would need more than a slap from a kindred spirit to shake them out their fear-induced bloodlust.

Still, I was rushing into the viper’s nest to save a snake perhaps even more venomous. At this point, I had to wonder: of the black widow or of the angry caravaneers, which party needed protection the most against the other?

As good a seductress Chrystal was, I doubted even she could manage to get into the pants of a whole angry crowd at once.

At least, not without the whole gigue turning into a grim business. I honestly doubted this was a sacrifice she was willing to make and I sincerely hoped someone would shoot her dead before things turned off that way.

“Fuck, where the hell is she?” I tried to focus my thoughts away from those grim prospects. The camp wasn’t that big, she couldn’t have gone very far...

“Wow there, careful!” I barely avoided a full head-on collision with somepony. “Spring! What’s the hurry? Don’t tell me those idiots are giving you a hard time once again?”

“Meadow!” Sparkle fuck me with a bookshelf, I really didn’t have time for that. “Listen, I don’t…”

“Hey, slow down.” She moved back in front of me. “What’s the matter? Need some help?”

“Nothing you can…” I stopped. “Actually, no. Remember my friend, Chrystal? Tall unicorn, pink mane, dashing good looks?”

“The one with the silver tongue?” Meadow snorted. “I don’t think one can forget a mare like that. I’m sure glad my husband died off years ago or otherwise I would have had to tie him up to the bed… not that he wouldn’t have enjoyed that, the old mule.”

“Right, that’s her all right.” I breathed out. “Do you know where’s she at?”

“Not really, no.” She frowned. “Has something happened?”

“Yes. No. Not yet.” I cursed internally. “She was with a young mare yesterday night. Beige coat? With an innocent smile, almost suspiciously so?”

“Over seventeen, with a golden mane?” Meadow raised an eyebrow. “Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth?”

“Yes, that’s her.” Find the mare… “Where is her tent?”

“Her name’s Honeypot. She ought to be in the bright red one right over there.” Meadow’s eyes frowned slightly. “However, if your friend is with her, you have to know-”

“No time!” I bolted past her, my hoofsteps drowning out the end of her sentence. “Thanks!”

I skidded to a halt in front of the alleged tent. It was, indeed, bright red, and slightly less patched-up than the other tents.

Taking a deep breath, I braced myself to face whatever spectacle I would be interrupting in there.

Silently, I hoped Chrystal was actually in there.

Sadly, I did not get to find out just yet.

“Don’t take another step, scum!”

I turned around, slowly. More out of habit than out of necessity, the suit’s muzzle piece locked itself into place in an inaudible click.

Before me stood ponies of all kinds – mares and stallions alike, facing me in righteous anger. Some were armed, most were not, but I couldn’t find any solace in dying trampled rather than shot.

I should have been afraid. Terrified, even, but… no. There I was, facing the writing on the wall and still, the best way to describe my feelings right then would have been… fury.

Nay, scratch that. I was not furious. I was mighty pissed.

“What the fuck do you retards want?” I growled.

It was incredible – all the fear, all the terror I should have been feeling; the inevitable outcome of that fight, the shadow of my impending and gruesome death – the rage, unending, washed it all away.

And I knew, from the look in their eyes, that look of helplessness one had when facing the doom they had engineered, I simply knew they felt everything that I did not.

I was the one facing the abyss, yet they were the one facing the fall.

“Mind your tongue, bitch!” Somepony in the third row yelled, oblivious to the heavy screed of silence that had been cast over the crowd. “Before we cut it off!”

“You and what army?” I chuckled darkly as the crowd parted away from him, as if they had all decided of a common accord not to stand in my line of fire.

Evey landed heavily right by my side. In the distance, I spotted Sunburn watching the scene from a distance. I had little doubt he had the perfect ammunition to clear the crowd with extreme prejudice.

I also knew for certain the mob in question did not know that.

I took a step toward the stallion who had spoken earlier. I had seen him the day before, I realized. He had been the one talking to Chrystal when I saw the mare using her charms on this ‘Honeycomb’ lass. A stallion of great valor, without a doubt, and yet – yet, as he realized he was not as well accompanied as he had expected, he could barely stand to face me.

“You people have heard the broadcast, haven’t you?”

I hardly needed to tell which one. I paused to look around. They were all holding their breath, as many as they might be, and I, well, I felt just like I could have taken on the whole world.

“Oh, you’re not so talkative, now, are you?” A sinister smile crept on my face. “Where are your ‘scum’ and ‘bitch’ now, uh? Of course you’re heard it, or heard of it. And all of you fucking ingrates, you just had to get a piece of me. Well, here I am!”

I faced the silent crowd.

“COME AT ME!” I roared.

The outcry echoed in the valley, but only distant carrion eaters answered my call.

Somewhere on my left, a mare started sobbing in silence.

“Ah, but now you remembered the rest of the story.” I calmly walked toward the stallion, now standing in the eye of a large, empty circle. “Perhaps the rumors, the legend behind the name…”

My claws sprang to life just a hair away from his face. The crow let out a gasp of horror.

“Well…” Arcs of unbridled energy bolted from one blade to the others, the blue flash highlighting the utter terror in his eyes. “Do you want to put the legend to the test?”

Something moved on my far right. In a blur, my gun was away, and off that mare’s hat went.

“Come on, grab it.” I motioned toward the shotgun she had been clumsily reaching for. “Who knows? You might just get lucky, fucker.”

“Please… leave us alone.” The stallion from earlier finally found it in himself to beg for his life. “We don’t want any trouble…”

“You don’t…”

I laughed. Oh, Discord take my soul, I laughed right in their faces. It was not a happy laugh, nor a joyous sound. I could barely recognize my own voice in that dreadful sound, this… diabolical roar.

“Of course, now you speak proper and shit.” I spat right at his hooves. “Tell me, where were your manners when we saved your asses yesterday? Where was your fucking gratitude, tell me, when Evey, that poor soul, risked her life to save your own? Are fear and death the only fucking languages you understand?!”

By then, I had been screaming at the top of my lungs. The stallion – as did, indeed, many in the crowd – was no longer standing as so much as quivering in place.

“Is this the picture of people not looking for trouble?” My pistol embraced the whole mob, ponies ducking as the gun passed by them. “I could fucking kill you all but at this point you’re not even worth the ammo I’d be shooting you with.”

There was a ruffle behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted Chrystal exiting the large tent we had been standing in front of.

“Took you long enough.” A pair of eyes peeked through the hole in the fabric before Chrystal let go of the flap. She stared warily back at me.

“That’s… that’s my daughter’s tent!” The stallion blurted out, his voice dying out as I shifted my attention back to him. “Please, she’s… she’s…”

“Chrystal, was it worth it?” I didn’t even look back at her. “Did you have fun?”

“I… did.” She seemed slightly hesitant. “But now I believe we should take our leave.”

“Yes, we should.” I grabbed a single cap from one of my pouches and threw it in the dust, right at the stallion’s hooves. “There. That’s more than you bastards deserve.”

And then, in a most perfect silence born out of fear and outrage, I walked away.

As we drove toward Big Mountain, it took three hours for somepony to dare break the tense atmosphere in the APC.

“We ought to talk about what happened back there.” Meridian stated, his blue eyes squarely riveted on mine. “I don’t want it to fester like an old wound.”

“I just got a little angry.” I rolled my eyes and chuckled, but it sounded hollow, even to my ears. “Eh. Didn’t even shoot the bastards.”

“It went a bit beyond mere anger, Spring.”

“Aye.” Sunburn had his trusty flask out and seemed to have lost a bit of his cheer. “Honestly, lad, I think I can speak for everybody here and say you scared the bloody hell out of us all.”

“Come on, I get a little pushy and you crap your pants? I don’t believe it.” I looked around, stopping on each and every member in the party. “They got what was coming to them, we got out of there alive, what’s the matter with you all?”

“What they mean, darling, is that you showed a facet of your personality we did not know you had.” Chrystal smiled devilishly at me, yet it felt a bit… off. As if her implicit approval filled me with shame. “This... presence of yours you displayed earlier was quite impressive. I have little doubt you left a permanent impression in their mind.”

“Bah.” I shrugged. Inside, however, my uneasiness was undergoing a steadfast growth. “That went better than I would have expected.”

“Spring, the results were unquestionable,” Evey finally said quietly. “However, your behavior…”

“She would have made an impressive actress,” Chrystal chuckled. “Perhaps the cap toss was a bit too much, thought…”

“This was no acting.” Evey shook her head. “It was real. You cannot pretend otherwise.”

“So what?” I snapped. “All right, I wanted to kill every single one of those motherfuckers. I didn’t. What’s your point?”

“I am worried about you.” Her gaze seemed to pierce right through my soul – and sadly it wasn’t that far away from the truth. “That is all.”

“This is not who you are, Spring.” Meridian laid his hoof on my shoulder. “This is not who you want to be, and you know that.”

“Right…” I sighed, suddenly exhausted. “I’m going to take a quick nap. Wake me up when we arrive.”

My uncomfortable nap was interrupted by an ominous feeling of dread.

“Something’s not right.” I looked around to my companions. “Saios, where are we?”

“As of now, we are driving through the ruins of Pearshire. We still have hours to go before we reach Big Mountain.”

“Something’s not right,” I repeated. “Stop for a sec’.”

“What is going on?” Chrystal perked up from her own slumber. “Why are we stopping?”

“I don’t know… yet.” I opened the turret hatch. “I intend to find out.”

The landscape outside made for a dismal sight. We had been driving down the remnants of a long-gone street surrounded left and right by crumbling masses of concrete, which could have once been four-story buildings. Some, sturdier than the others, had better fared through the test of time – nonetheless, the weather in those parts had not been kind to pre-War infrastructure.

There was naught to be heard but the faint echoes of the wind.

“Someone’s there?” Meridian whispered from below.

“I don’t… Wait.” Something had moved in the shadows, further down the street. “It may be nothing, but I think I saw something.”

“I am picking up encrypted radio chatter,” Saios warned. “From multiple sources.”

“Hit the gas!” I pulled the heavy machine gun toward me. “Let’s get-”

“Incoming!”

I haven’t watched a lot of wartime action movies – because I find them dumb as fuck, of course, but mostly because time was not really kind to the kind of cheap storage they had been recorded onto.

Still, even through my limited experience of them I couldn’t help but notice an odd trend in those movies; that is, the heroes dramatically running away in slow motion from an explosion in the background, or selflessly tackling some token helpless civilian out of the way of a bullet or something.

Well, I have more than a decade of experience in the matter. In fact, if the symbols stamped on my ass are of any indication, this is the very meaning of my life, my greater purpose of a sort.

And yet, by the time I realized that a rocket had missed my head by half a hair, I had been knocked around by the blast and the debris from the explosion had begun raining down on me.

“Saios, get us the fuck out of here!” I yelled as I dove behind the fifty. “We’re sitting ducks here!”

“Hold on, they are cutting us out.” The heavy vehicle, its engines still screaming in reverse, suddenly veered right into a narrower street. “Damn, it’s a dead end.”

“Open the hatch, lad!” Sunburn’s voice pressed us from inside. “Your steel lady may be tough, she can’t handle that kind of ordinance. Trust me on that!”

“Shit. We’ll have to clear a path the old fashioned way.” I cursed as I jumped down from the roof. “How many of those bastards are there?”

“No more than a dozen.”

“It’ll be a walk in park, then.” I chuckled darkly before arming my rifle. Chrystal got out of the APC, somewhat greener than usual.

“They appear to have first generation power armor,” Saios continued. “Could they be Steel Rangers?”

The party and I shared a look.

“Bloody hell, I knew raiders couldn’t use RPGs to save their life. This changes everything.” Sunburn grumbled. With a swift kick in his battle saddle, he ejected a few unspent grenades and replaced them with others from his bags. “There. Those wankers are in for a nasty surprise.”

“Steel Rangers?” Evey repeated. “Couldn’t they be on our side? It may have been friendly fire.”

“Nay, lass, those basterds have nothing to do with the mighty Rangers you and I used to know.” The ghoul shook his head. “Bloody bullies, that’s what they are. Poor fighters, too. They rely far too much on their superior gear and armour – believe ‘emselves to be all-mighty and invulnerable.”

“Well, on that particular part they do have a point.” I bit my lower lip. “Those armors just shrug off bullets as if they were plastic pellets. My three-o’-eight might do some damage, but unless we use the fifty…”

“Forget it.” Chrystal interrupted my train of thought. “You’d be right to think you would tear them to shreds, darling, but you would be far too exposed up there. You might kill a couple, and then they would resort to tossing a few grenades in here.”

“Right, and it’s too heavy to be carried to a better position.” I sighed. “But hear me out: only Sunburn and I can even hope to scratch those guys, and while they are not real soldiers in your book, believe me they are worlds apart from the raiders we killed yesterday. If only because their weapons are real enough all right.”

“Well, inexpugnable armor or not, I am not much of a fighter anyway.” Meridian winced. “Whether my Colt would or would not have what it takes to hurt them is not really relevant if I cannot hit them in the first place, is it?”

“I do have a couple aces up my sleeves, darling.” Chrystal winked at me. “I can handle myself.”

The memory of Black Slab and his untimely demise came back to my mind. I could hardly suppress a shiver.

“Power armor was not designed to protect against blunt trauma,” Evey continued. “Furthermore, their weaponry is solely facing forward. They cannot fire upward. Perhaps I can disable them, or at the very least disrupt their plans.”

“Meaning?”

“She’d drop bloody rocks on them!” Sunburn burst into laughter. “Brilliant, lass! Just brilliant! With those narrow visors of them, they won’t even see what’s cracking their bloody skulls open.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” Evey frowned. “They do have EFS, after all.”

“I’ll take the high ground, then.” I motioned toward the building next to us. “I should be able to snipe a couple heads off before they realize we’re not helpless peons. Good luck, everypony.”

“There you are,” I murmured, a sly smile beaming on my face as my scope lined up with the Ranger. “Everybody’s in position?”

I had set shop on the fifth floor of an old apartment building overlooking the street. One of its outer walls had collapsed, dragging along part of the structure. Still, enough remained for me to stand at a window and still be reasonably hidden from my targets.

“On your mark, lad.”

Evey and Sunburn had stealthily taken the skies. As often, the first blow would be the paramount to our success, as the Rangers had no idea who they were dealing with. Overflowing with confidence – not that it would be completely unwarranted in a different context – they would never anticipate us getting on the offensive.

Of course, our action solely hinged upon Sunburn, Evey and I. While I did not doubt Chrystal’s resourcefulness, there was a damn reason those power armor had turned the tide on the battlefield back in the day.

“Good.”

The rifle kicked into my shoulder. Right across the street, the Ranger’s head kicked back with an unhealthy jolt.

“That ought to hurt.” I racked the bolt and aimed at another tin can. Somewhere down the street, a cry of alarm was quickly muffled by a heavy detonation. “All right, you’re next…”

The bullet flew true but hit the side of the helmet. The earth pony – I couldn’t imagine any horn fitting in that metallic fishbowl of them – collapsed to the ground. However, the way they held their head with their front hooves told me I hadn’t quite killed them.

“Shit, bounc’d off,” I mumbled between my teeth. Bolt out, bolt in. “Try to survive that, asshole.”

This time I aimed for a weak spot – the mobile plates covering part of the neck. If it was anything like my armor…

Bang. From across the street, I could see the Ranger jerk off, try to hold the flow of blood in a panic.

Gotcha.

Two other tin cans showed up on a roof. Evey got to them before me and smashed a piece of concrete the size of my flanks right onto the spine of the leftmost guy. He fell; and before he had even hit the ground, Sunburn had swooped in and hit the other Ranger with one of those grenades of his.

They swayed a little bit, for three little seconds. Then the grenade exploded, and what do you know, those armors aren’t that sturdy from the inside.

“Good job folks.” I couldn’t see anyone else from my spot. “I’m moving out. Saios, how many... Oh, Luna fuck me with frying pan...”

“Damn. Stay calm. If they wanted you dead, they would have shot you in the back.”

‘They’ were two Steel Rangers, standing not five meters from me in the way of my only exit.

“Drop your weapons. You are surrounded!” A clearly female voice crackled from some shitty speaker on the chest of the rightmost Ranger. “Surrender and you will be treated fairly.”

“Fairly?” I looked around. There was a corridor on my left but it ended in a dead-drop over the street, where the rest of the building had collapsed. “Does that include firing fuckin’ rockets at us?”

“Listen, you cunt, you’re in possession of stolen MoT technology,” the other Ranger – obviously a male – snapped at me, reeving his miniguns for additional effect. “Now, I really don’t see why we shouldn’t do it the way you punks understand…”

“Enough, Sergeant.” I couldn’t see their face, but there was enough ice in that sentence to freeze the Badlands three times over. “Remember the mission parameters. We wouldn’t want the Elder to be disappointed in you again, now would we?”

“… yes ma’am.” The miniguns stopped spinning.

“Good. Now…” The mare marked a step toward me, seemingly unfazed by the barrel trailing her movements. “As my colleague said, you are in wrongful possession of items property of the Ministry of Wartime Technology. I assure you this…”

“No.”

The word actually flowed out of my mouth, and I think I was, of the three of us, by far the most surprised by it.

“Listen.” The mare sighed. “I know you feel you have found those items in all fairness, and therefore you are their sole owner, however-”

“No,” I repeated. “I mean, just… no. What are you even talking about? My APC? Your long-gone ancestors forgot it in a hangar some two centuries ago. Now, I don’t know a lot about pre-War jurisdiction, but I’m pretty damn certain that’s long enough to consider they abandoned it, y’know, with them being busy cowering in their bunkers and all – and that’s not even considering the fact the damn thing had to be almost rebuilt from scratch anyway. My armor? It never was Ministry’s property in the first place! So hooves off, pal, or otherwise I’ll show you your gear is way overrated!”

“All technology belongs to the Ministry.” The male recited. Goddesses above, that sounded almost fanatical. “You can’t lie your way out of this.”

“Yeah, and the truth ain’t cutting it either with you bastards.” I looked again to the left. There, maybe… laid my salvation. “Tell me, how fast are you in those tin can suits of yours anyway?”

With that, I shot the mare right in the face and bolted down the corridor.

“You fuckin’ cunt…” His minigun took three precious seconds to start spinning; by then, I had gotten out of his line of fire. “Shit, officer down!”

“Spring, there are no exits over there!” Saios said… before realizing was the hell I was about to do. “You’re out of your mind! You can’t make that jump!”

After all, I had done it before.

“Shut up… Hng!” I reached the end of the corridor.

Every muscle in my body, every servo in my suit stretched out, strained forward in an impossible motion.

I jumped right across the street.

The building on the other side loomed closer, closer – for a split second, I thought I was going to end up short of the floor I could see beyond the collapsed walls.

But the suit did not fail me. I landed without grace on the concrete, rolling in the dust as I tripped over loose rubble.

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if the impact of my body didn’t prove to be too much for the centuries-old slab.

“Sh-” The air got knocked out of my lungs as I splattered against the ground of the fourth story, which promptly gave way in turn. “Shit!”

As I began to slide down, I reached for everything – anything! – to slow down the fall.

In a moment of clarity, I sprang out my claws. It took me four or five precious meters of freefall before I could get them in a crevice.

I almost stopped. Then, the claws snapped.

“Fuuu-”

I hit the ground.

New side quest: Blast from the Past
Objectives:

[ ] Investigate the Steel Ranger issue (Primary)

Level up!

New perk:
Armor Buster: The funny thing about armor is that you don’t even need to penetrate to do massive damage. All your team gains a permanent bonus to penetration, and you now have a chance to cripple your target through their armor, even if you failed to penetrate.